The Man Who Would Be Daddy Read online

  Spinning the wheel, he stared straight ahead. “Yeah, except sometimes the future doesn’t turn out quite the way you planned.”

  His words stung her conscience. She turned to him as they drove out into the daylight again. He’d probably gone shopping countless times with his wife for his daughter. “I’m sorry, I’m just thinking of myself. Is all this hard on you?”

  He shrugged off her concern. As usual, it was misguided. “I never went shopping for Robin, except for the occasional souvenir when I was traveling. Shopping was my wife’s job.” He could feel her eyes on him. Malcolm turned to look at her as they came to a stop sign. “What?”

  Her heart quickened. He hadn’t even realized his mistake. “You said ‘Robin.’ You never went shopping for Robin,” she paraphrased. “You meant Sally, didn’t you?”

  Malcolm flushed, annoyed at the slip and guilty because he had substituted one child for another in his subconscious. He blew out a breath. Traffic was stopand-go to the light leading out of the maze of lanes that fed into the mall.

  “Yes, I meant Sally. They’re the same age, or would have been if—” Malcolm caught himself before he said too much. Christa had proved to be amazingly easy to talk to, but there were some things he just wasn’t going to talk about with anyone.

  “So,” he said abruptly, “where’s this last store we’re going to?”

  Christa could almost feel the wind from the door as he had shut it on her. Almost, she thought. But not quite. Maybe next time, she would be able to get into that inner sanctum where he kept his deepest feelings, his deepest hurts.

  Looking straight ahead, she pointed down the street. “Just past the main intersection. On your left. You can’t miss it. The letters are three feet high, or they look like it. Toyland,” she said, adding the name for his benefit.

  “Toyland,” he muttered, inching up the street. It felt as if everyone in Southern California were on the road today, bound for the same malls they were. It took five minutes to make the simple turn into the parking lot.

  He wondered how far from the store he’d have to park this time.

  “There,” Christa announced suddenly. “Quick.” She pointed to the left, and he looked to see a woman pulling out of a space that wasn’t more than twelve feet from the front entrance of the store. “Before someone else gets it.”

  He laughed. “You would have made a great driver on the track. Good reflexes.”

  She smiled in response, treasuring his comment as if he had just handed her a dozen long-stemmed roses. Compliments from Malcolm were rare.

  “I just didn’t want you to have another long walk to the store.”

  “I could stay behind,” he volunteered. The idea was appealing.

  It was another ninety-degree day. The interior of the car would be up to a hundred and ten in minutes. “You’d roast by the time I got back.”

  He sighed as he got out. “That long, huh?”

  She merely laughed. It told him all he needed to know. Malcolm braced himself.

  It wasn’t quite the ordeal he thought it would be. As soon as he walked through the automatic doors, he found himself in another world entirely. Everywhere he looked, there were toys, toys of every size and nature. The age range was from pretoddler to those who were just kids at heart.

  He had feeling that Christa fell into the latter category. He never had, not even as a child. Life had been too serious, except with Gloria.

  And now, with Christa.

  He shook off the thought and concentrated on this newest wonderland she’d taken him to. Malcolm stood, hands on hips, surveying the store. “Wow.”

  The reaction was genuine and uncensored. Christa grinned, pleased.

  “Haven’t you ever been to one of these before?” The huge toy warehouse was part of a nationwide chain. There was a Toyland in every major city in the country. She didn’t see how, as a father, he could have avoided encountering one of them, no matter where his racing had taken him to.

  “No.” The shelves went clear up to the ceiling. Who the hell did the inventory here? Overwhelmed, he looked at her. “Is the whole store filled with just toys?”

  “Toys, clothes,” she said, ticking them off on her fingers, “bikes, modeling kits—”

  His eyes brightened. “Modeling kits? What kind of modeling kits?”

  “Aha, we’ve located the inner child in the man.” Christa hooked her arm through his. “All kinds of kits,” she promised. “C’mon, they’re on aisle 3C—unless they’ve switched things on me. All these stores tend to be laid out the same way,” she explained. “Something comforting in familiarity, no doubt. It’s not just for kids. Adults like patterns, too.”

  She talked so fast at times that she made his head reel. “Don’t you want to see about getting Robin’s toys?”

  The novelty of having him actually appear interested in something was too good to pass up. “Sure, but aisle 5A isn’t going anywhere. Let’s go see what’s on 3C.” With very Little coaxing, Christa drew him over to the appropriate aisle.

  There was an entire wall of models. They ranged from all sorts of aircraft to cartoon characters to cars. Each had its own section.

  The one devoted to cars had a wide variety to choose from. There were a number of futuristic ones and several that were rooted in the past and nostalgia. What drew his attention were the race car models:

  There was one in particular. A flaming red one that resembled the very first car he’d ever driven. Malcolm took the box down from the shelf and just held it for a moment, remembering. A smile curved his mouth, though he was unaware of it.

  Christa watched as he ran his hand along the side of the box. She’d never seen quite that expression on his face.

  “Found something you like?” she asked softly.

  Embarrassed at being caught with his emotions exposed, Malcolm shrugged. He quickly shoved the box back on the shelf, wedging it between a black Trans Am and hot pink Chevy.

  “Just reminds me of the car I ran my first professional race in.”

  Interested, Christa picked up the box and looked at the drawing on the cover. It was realistic enough to be a photograph. “Why don’t you buy it?”

  Malcolm took the box from her and put it back where it belonged, on the shelf.

  “Some other time.” Taking her arm, he drew her away from the aisle. “Didn’t you say something about getting Robin a wheelie?”

  “Big Wheel,” she corrected. “And yes, I did.” Why was it every time she got close to him, he pulled back so abruptly it rattled her teeth? Wasn’t she ever going to get past the initial hurdles?

  “So when do I get to see one of these marvelous inventions?”

  She couldn’t believe he’d never seen one before. But she dutifully pulled him to the correct aisle. “There’s one.”

  Like the model of the race car, it was bright red. It had oversize, cartoonlike wheels, three of them, and large blue hand grips with multicolored streamers hanging from them. The seat, yellow, was almost on the ground and, like the rest, oversize.

  Malcolm could just visualize Robin on something like that, laughing, with the wind whipping around her soft blond hair.

  “Oh, damn.”

  He turned to see Christa frowning over an empty plastic envelope. The envelope was hanging on the wall just above the tricycle. “What’s the matter?”

  “They’re out of tickets.”

  He hadn’t the foggiest notion what that had to do with anything. “So?”

  He wasn’t kidding when he said he’d never been to Toyland. “If there’s no ticket,” she explained patiently, “it means they’re all out of Big Wheels.”

  Before Malcolm could tell her to buy something else, Christa was striding over to a blue-smocked salesgirl.

  “Excuse me, are you out of Big Wheels?” Maybe someone had miscounted tickets, and there was one still in the back.

  The girl hardly turned around. She seemed completely involved in straightening the latest action figures hangin
g on the end of the aisle. “You’re supposed to get a ticket.”

  “There aren’t any,” Christa told her.

  “Then, yeah, we’re out of them.”

  Malcolm came up behind Christa. He didn’t see what the big attraction was, but it seemed to mean something to her. “Would you mind checking the storeroom?” Quietly worded, his statement was an order, not a request.

  The girl paused only to look at him before she began to move to the rear of the store. “Sure.”

  Five minutes later, the salesgirl returned to confirm the verdict. “We’re all out.” Her eyes shifted to Malcolm. “Sorry.”

  Christa nibbled on her lower lip. Robin was going to be disappointed. The Big Wheel was one of the few things Christa actually knew her daughter wanted. She would squeal every time a commercial for the product came on. Robin had even tried to take one away from a little girl in the park. She’d cried, “My, my,” as Christa had dragged her away.

  “When do you think you might get some more in?” Christa pressed.

  The girl shrugged in response, then, slanting a glance at Malcolm, she called out to someone at the front desk, “Hey, Alice, are we supposed to get in Big Wheels this week?”

  A disembodied voice answered over the PA, “No, they’re coming in at the beginning of next month.”

  “Thank you,” Christa murmured to the salesgirl, walking away.

  Malcolm didn’t understand why she looked so crushed. “You just bought her enough things for three kids and you’re probably not finished. What’s the problem?”

  “The problem is that Robin really wants a Big Wheel. She tries to hug the TV every time she sees a commercial for one.” Sighing, Christa shrugged. There were still a couple of other items she wanted to get, not to mention wrapping paper and a card. “C’mon, let’s get this over with.”

  Malcolm fell into step beside her as she made her way over to the stuffed-animal aisle. “I thought you liked shopping.”

  “I do, but you look as if you need a break.”

  He didn’t like the fact that he could be read easily. “I can keep up with you.”

  The smile on her lips was sassy. “Nice to know.”

  They weren’t talking about shopping anymore, he thought. The woman should come with a code book so he could decipher her.

  * * *

  “At least,”Malcolm amended forty-five minutes later when they were finally getting into his car again, “I thought I could keep up with you.” She’d made short work of the aisles, selecting and discarding with the speed of a gale. Then they had spent the last twenty minutes in line. You would have thought tomorrow was Christmas. “I never saw anyone get such a kick out of toys before.”

  There was no denying that she did. There were times she felt that she got just as much pleasure playing with the toys as Robin did.

  “I just want her to have everything I didn’t.” It was a familiar old story but no less true. “We were pretty strapped when I was young. I want Robin to have all the advantages.”

  It was a relief to be heading for the freeway and home. Her home, he reminded himself, not his. He still had to drop her and her countless bags off. “I never thought of having forty stuffed animals as an advantage.”

  Christa tossed her hair over her shoulder, feigning indignation. “I only bought four.”

  “Six,” he corrected. “I was there, remember?”

  He had been there, but he hadn’t been paying attention. “Mommy Bunny and Babies was a set. They’re supposed to count as one, not three.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “Anyone ever tell you that you have a very unique way of twisting things around to suit your purposes?”

  She didn’t think of it as twisting, just as seeing things differently. “It’s harmless.”

  He thought of the way she made him feel. Twisting his thoughts around, his resolve. Making him go against his own self-imposed rules.

  “Not always,” he murmured under his breath.

  Christa wondered if he was talking about them. She hoped so. She hoped that she was making such an impression on him that he couldn’t get away from it. He was certainly having that effect on her. And she liked it.

  It frightened her, the level of intensity of her reaction to him. Frightened her but excited her, as well.

  In another moment, they were going to be past the mall and on the 405, heading south. “Buy you a cup of coffee, sailor?” He spent her a curious look. “C’mon, you’ve been such a good sport, let me buy you some coffee,” she urged.

  There were times she was really hard to follow. Or were those just his own tangled thoughts getting in the way? “You can pour me some at your house.”

  She’d pictured him opting for a quick getaway once they reached her house. After all, he’d put in over three hours squiring her around. That went way past the point of being a good sport.

  Christa sat up. “You’ll come over?”

  “I can’t very well just toss you out as I’m driving by.”

  No, but it could come close. She already knew that from his manner. “There’s a difference between dropping me off and coming inside. Will you come over?”

  “Yes, I’ll come over.” The traffic light blinked them onto the freeway. He thought it best to qualify his answer. “But only for a little while.”

  It was becoming a familiar pattern, doubting the wisdom of his own words when he was around her. He should have told her that he didn’t have time to stop for coffee, that he would only be able to drop her off before leaving.

  The Jaguar was there, parked at the curb. He had forgotten about her father. Christa had become an exception, but Malcolm wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone else. “Maybe I’d better take a rain check.”

  Now that he was here, she wasn’t about to take no for an answer. He’d had his chance at the mall. “It’s not supposed to rain for a long time.” She’d seen the way he’d looked at the Jaguar. Christa rounded the hood to his side. “Come on in. My father isn’t going to bite. We’ve had him defanged.”

  The two men had exchanged wary nods the other day, but nothing more. “I’m not afraid of your father—”

  “Good, then come in.” She pulled on his arm. God, but the man was stubborn. “Besides, I need help with all these packages.”

  “Since when?” he snorted. If he’d ever met anyone who didn’t need help with anything, it was Christa. Except, perhaps, when it came to her van….

  “What did you do, buy out the malls?” Jonas said after he’d opened the door in response to the doorbell she’d rung with her elbow.

  Malcolm stepped back, letting Christa go in first. “She tried.”

  “That’s the trouble with women,” Jonas grumbled with a shake of his head. “You give them the right to vote, the next thing you know, they’re buying and selling things right out from under you.”

  “You can philosophize later,” she told her father. “Right now, I need you to take Robin someplace while I put these away.” She lifted one shopping-bag-laden wrist.

  Taking Robin by the hand, Jonas muttered something under his breath about disrespectful daughters and walked off to the minuscule backyard.

  “Coast clear,” he sang out.

  “Subtle,” Christa muttered.

  “I don’t think she caught on,” Malcolm assured her as he followed her, carrying the remainder of the bags out to the side patio.

  Christa unlocked the storage unit housed beside the sliding screen door. “I can’t wait for her to see all this.”

  Grinning, Malcolm nodded toward the backyard. “Easily granted—”

  “Don’t you dare,” she warned. “I meant on her birthday.” One by one, she piled the various bags into the storage unit.

  “Maybe it’s lucky you didn’t get the Big Wheel,” he commented as he helped her. “Where would you put it?”

  Things could be rearranged to fit. If worse came to worst, she could hide some presents in her bedroom. Robin wasn’t old enough to go hunting for
her gifts. Yet. “I’d manage.”

  Yes, she would. Christa was the type to manage, Malcolm thought. He was beginning to get the feeling that no matter what, Christa would always manage. It was an admirable quality.

  She had a great many admirable qualities, he mused, watching her as she stuffed package after package into the unit. Admirable qualities wrapped up in a woman with soulful eyes that seemed to get to him no matter what he did.

  He wished things could be different. But wishing that meant wishing away Gloria and Sally, and he couldn’t do that.

  Christa turned in time to see the look in his eyes. Something was bothering him. Something she instinctively knew he wasn’t going to share.

  “So,” she said brightly, “ready for that cup of coffee yet?”

  If he was going to remain, he needed to justify it to himself. “You can bring it out to me in the driveway. Time I started on your car.”

  “Take a break,” she suggested. “Life isn’t all work, Malcolm.”

  “There isn’t anything else.”

  She was losing him. Any headway she’d made was slipping out of her grasp. “Yes, there is,” she insisted. “Life goes on for all of us until the day we die. Giving it up is a little like dying.”

  He knew what she was saying. It wasn’t right to lead her on.

  “This isn’t any good, Christa,” he told her. But even as he said it, he filled his hands with her hair and his eyes with the very sight of her. Her smile wafted to him, nudging feelings into existence that he wanted to keep buried.

  They rose up despite his efforts.

  “Christa, I died three years ago. I just haven’t laid down yet.”

  “Tell me about it,” she urged softly. Please.

  He shook his head, dropping his hands to his sides. “Some other time.”

  She didn’t want it to be some other time. “I could ask around or go to the newspaper morgue and read until my eyes are tread worn. Eventually, I could find out what it is that’s eating away pieces of you. But I’d rather hear it from you.”

  He couldn’t make himself say it. “Later,” he said. “I’ve got work to do.”