Baby, It's You (19 page)

“I’ve been planning this trip for years. Never thought the day would come.”

“That’s a hell of a business you’re leaving behind.”

“Hell is right. A vineyard is nothing but blood and sweat for the things you can control, and a lot of hope and prayers for those you can’t. I need a break. Daniel will handle things.”

Daniel will handle things.

Marc had said those words to himself so many times he thought he actually believed them, but saying them out loud turned out to be a very hard thing to do.

“What about Angela?” Luke asked.

“I doubt she’ll come back here after college. She wants to be a vet. This town already has one and probably can’t support another one.”

Luke nodded.

“What was it like?” Marc asked. “Traveling the country on the rodeo circuit?”

Luke shrugged. “Pretty good for a while. Drinking. Partying. What’s not to like about that when you’re twenty years old?”

“A woman in every city?”

“Just about.” Then Luke’s smile faded. “After a while, though, I think I was pushing so hard for the championship that I didn’t notice when it stopped being exciting and started being a hard, lonely life.”

Marc couldn’t imagine loneliness like that. All he could see was peace and quiet and the freedom to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.

“Sometimes responsibility is like a noose around your neck,” he said. “I love my daughter. She’s just amazing. But raising a kid is hard. Raising a kid by yourself is even harder. Over the years I’ve wondered what I’ve missed by doing that.”

“Sometimes freedom isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

“Yeah, but I’m sure going to give it a shot, anyway.”

“If you want to leave that bad, you should do it. But I gotta tell you, Marc. I’ve been both places. And now all I want to do is stay.”

“That’s because you have Shannon.”

“So find yourself a good woman.” He nodded toward Kari. “I see a certain little redhead you can’t seem to keep your eyes off of.”

Suddenly Marc heard applause. When he turned around, he saw Kari standing on a chair. What was she doing? Balancing a
spoon
on her nose?

He wasn’t sure how, but that spoon stayed there as if she’d superglued it. She held her arms out in a
ta-da!
pose. After several seconds of showing the trick to everybody in the place, she grabbed the spoon off her nose and bowed deeply, and the crowd erupted with more applause.

“She’s something else, isn’t she?” Luke said.

Marc couldn’t have agreed more.

As she handed out spoons for everybody in the place to try the same trick, she glanced over at Marc and gave him a wink. She was crazy. He’d known that from the first time she knocked on his door. But when he looked at her now, he didn’t see anything wrong with that. He saw a woman who loved life, who enjoyed people, who made friends easily, who had injected the kind of light in his life he’d totally overlooked all these years.

Then she turned toward the front of the café, and all at once her broad, beautiful smile fell into a look of dismay. Marc spun around to see a tall, stout man standing at the door. He looked to be about sixty years old, wearing a pair of sharply creased slacks, a buttoned-down shirt, and dress shoes. His salt-and-pepper hair was set into a rigidly conservative style, and judging from the heavy downward creases at the corners of his mouth, he looked as if he hadn’t smiled a day in his life. And when Marc looked out the window and saw a black Mercedes sedan parked at the curb, he knew who the man must be.

Every muscle in his body tightened with anger. What was that bastard doing there?

W
hen Kari saw her father at the door of the café, the incongruity was so overwhelming that for a moment she thought it couldn’t possibly be him. She wondered how long he’d been there, but judging from his expression, he’d seen her spoon-on-the-nose trick. She was instantly filled with the same humiliation she’d felt so many times in her life—the kind of humiliation only her father could heap on her with a single frigid expression.

She took a deep breath and walked across the restaurant. “Dad? What are you doing here?”

“May I have a word with you?” he said.

Before she could respond, he turned and walked out of the café. Kari paused for a moment and looked at Marc. His eyebrows were pulled together and his eyes narrowed in anger. That told her he knew who’d been standing at the door, and she read his thoughts as clearly as if he’d shouted them.

It’s your father. Something’s up. Do you need me?

It’s okay
, she said, moving just her lips, even though she wasn’t sure it was going to be okay at all.

She left the café and followed her father to his car. His driver opened the back door. She got in, and her father followed. The interior of the car was so quiet Kari could hear the blood rushing through her ears. And in that moment she realized how much she associated the smell of the rich leather upholstery with negative feelings, and a single whiff nearly made her sick.

She couldn’t believe this. Her father had driven all the way from Houston to see her. That had to mean something. Maybe it meant he would acknowledge her self-sufficiency, give her money back to her, and maybe tell her he was sorry.

Oh, right.
Had her own wishful thinking ever gone her way where her father was concerned?
Ever?

He looked her up and down, focusing on her pink bib apron. “So this is what you’ve been doing for a living?”

His face was all hard planes, with a bullish nose and eyes so impenetrable that Kari felt as if she were talking to a stranger. “Yes.”

“Your job is waiting for you in Houston.”

“I have a job.”

“No. This isn’t a job. This is what uneducated, uncultured people do in order to feed themselves. Is that what you want to be associated with?”

“I like it here.”

He sighed—that bone-weary, long-suffering sigh intended as a wordless reprimand. There had been times in her life when that alone had intimidated her enough that she’d stopped being herself and started being whatever her father wanted her to be.

“I’d hoped the older you got, the more you’d get this kind of nonsense out of your system,” he said. “Apparently that hasn’t been the case.”

“I don’t want to go back to Houston. And I don’t want to marry Greg.”

“Forget him. If he couldn’t hold on to you, he doesn’t deserve my money.”

So that was all this was to her father. A game played for money. He dangled millions in front of a man to see if he could be the one to control his wayward daughter, and when he failed, he was out the door. The very thought of that made Kari dizzy with despair. But was she really surprised? Didn’t she know it already?

“I thought it was possible…” Kari’s voice trailed off.

“You thought what was possible?”

She nearly choked on the words, but she had to say them. “That you might be proud of me.”

Her father raised a single eyebrow, tilting his head with disbelief. “
Proud
of you? For being paid a pittance to entertain the masses by balancing a spoon on your nose? I fail to see the accomplishment.”

“I’m taking care of myself.”

“By waiting tables and living with a man? Again—I fail to see the accomplishment.”

Kari felt as if she were ten years old again, looking for any chink in her father’s wall of disapproval. But now, like then, she saw nothing. She wasn’t looking for total approval. She wasn’t looking for a pat on the head. She just wanted some acknowledgment that maybe she was doing something at least marginally admirable by sticking it out and running her own life.

“And just so you’ll know,” her father went on, “Marc Cordero is hardly a wealthy man. That vineyard barely affords him a decent living.”

“How do you know that?”

“Kari, please. Is there anything on this earth I can’t find out if I want to?”

“I don’t care whether he has money or not.”

Her father shook his head with disgust. “After your upbringing, how can you stand living like a pauper?”

“I’d have an easier time if you gave me my money back.”

“As I’ve always told you, there are consequences to everything you do. That money will remain with me until you come to your senses. Then I’d be happy to return it.”

Consequences.
God, how she hated that word.

“I’m still in the middle of my shift,” she said, clasping her hands together to keep them from shaking. “I need to get back to work.”

“I could buy that place, Kari. With a single swipe of my pen, I could own it.”

Kari’s heart skipped with apprehension, because she knew her father wasn’t just blowing smoke. “Rosie would never sell.”

“Everybody has his price.”

“If you buy this restaurant,” she said, her voice trembling, “I’ll quit.”

Her father’s expression slowly turned ugly, and his voice took on an undercurrent of fury. “I gave you everything a person could want or need in this life. A decent upbringing. A college education. A position at my company. A wedding not one in ten thousand women will ever have. And this is how you repay me?”

“That’s the point, Dad! You gave those things to me. You never asked me what
I
wanted!”

“And there was a reason for that. If you’re given the opportunity to have what
you
want, this is where you end up.”

With that, every last bit of the pride she’d felt at finally getting near the point of self-sufficiency evaporated. She knew he was angry. But if they could just talk a little when the anger subsided, maybe he’d see her point of view. Maybe that awful expression on his face would finally melt into a smile, and he’d tell her that after thinking about it, maybe he did feel just a little bit proud of her.

“Like I said,” Kari told him, “I have to go back to work. But maybe we can talk again later. There are a few inns in town. Maybe you could—”

“Enough!”

Kari’s heart slammed against her chest.

“I don’t allow anyone to disrespect me,” her father said. “No one. Not friends, not business associates, and certainly not my own daughter.” He sat back and took a deep, silent breath, letting it out slowly, regaining his composure. But still the anger was there, laced around the edges of his voice. “If you forget this nonsense and come back to Houston,” he said, “I’ll overlook all this. But if you stay…” His face turned to stone. “You’re not my daughter any longer.”

Kari was stunned. Those words…those horrible, dismissive words…she couldn’t stand the sound of them. For all her father’s criticism, his manipulation, his disapproval, she’d always thought deep down that he loved her. He had to love her, didn’t he? Didn’t all fathers love their daughters?

Now she knew it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true, or he wouldn’t be talking to her like this. He was the one person on this earth who should have loved her and protected her and stood up for her. Instead, he did everything he could to tear her down into a meek, helpless waif of a woman without a shred of self-respect. She was hovering in that terrible realization that he intended to hold a hard line no matter what. That nothing she did was ever good enough, and it never would be, making her feel more lost and alone than she ever had in her life.

Then she looked through the side window of the car into the café and saw Marc staring back at her. He was so strong, so sure of himself. It radiated from him even at this distance, and just looking at him made her feel a burst of courage and resilience. She knew it was only a matter of time before he left Rainbow Valley, before she couldn’t count on him being there every day for her, making her feel strong and self-sufficient. But it was because of him that maybe she could do what needed to be done right now.

She looked at her father, and this time her words came out with strength and conviction even though her hands were shaking and her stomach was in turmoil.

“Then I guess I’m not your daughter any longer.”

Her father’s hard, expressionless face never changed. “Well, then. You’ve left me no choice.” He nodded toward the car door. “Get out.”

In spite of everything she knew about her father, she still couldn’t have imagined those words coming out of his mouth, and her heart crumbled to dust.

In a daze, she turned and opened the car door. Stepped out. Closed it behind her. Her stomach felt like shattered glass, but she kept walking. Even when she heard the car pull away, she didn’t look back. She just kept walking toward the door of the café, but now tears clouded her eyes so much she wasn’t even sure she was walking in the right direction. She had the sense of Marc jumping up from the booth with Brandy at his heels and hurrying out the door. He caught Kari as she reached it, and she collapsed in his arms and her tears spilled out.

“Kari? What happened? What did he say to you?”

Kari opened her mouth, but she couldn’t speak. Didn’t want to speak. Didn’t want to verbalize just how awful her father had been to her. All she could do was cry. It was as if every lost, lonely moment of her childhood had built up inside of her, and now every one of them was being released in a torrent of tears.

“Get in my truck,” Marc said.

“The Bomb—”

“Leave it. I’ll bring you back in the morning.”

“I can’t. I have to close out. My checks. I have to—”

“Stay here.”

He sat her down on one of the outdoor chairs, handed her Brandy’s leash, and went back into the café. Looking through the window, she saw a tear-clouded image of him talking to Rosie. Rosie nodded, and Marc came back outside.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Marc helped her to her feet. He put his arm around her shoulders and led her to his truck. All the way there, the terrible words her father had spoken to her circled around and around in her mind until she thought she’d go insane with misery.

When they got into Marc’s truck and Kari told him what her father had said, Marc decided Stuart Worthington was one lucky son of a bitch not to be within his reach right now. If he had been, Marc would have ripped him to shreds.

“It’s been this way all my life,” Kari said. “Once—just
once
—I wanted to see something from him. Something that said he gave a damn.”

Now Marc knew. Now he knew the full extent of why she’d let herself get caught up in an engagement she didn’t want with a man who would have only made her life miserable. She was dying for love from a father there was no way to please.

“I miss my mother,” she went on. “God, I’m twenty-eight years old, and I’m telling you I miss my mother. She died when I was eight. I’m supposed to be over that by now. I’m supposed to be
over
it.”

But how do you get over that?
Marc thought.
When in anyone’s life do they stop looking for love?

“Tell me about her,” he said.

“I barely remember her, really. When I think about her, all I see in my mind is green eyes like mine and a soft smile. I was eight when she died. It’s hard to remember stuff from when you’re eight.” She paused. “No, I do remember something. I remember how that smile went away any time my father came into the room.”

“Why did she marry him?”

“She came from a broken home. Parents divorced. Her mother sweated blood just to keep their heads above water. It must have felt like such a relief for her to marry a man with money. But she traded a lot in return for that. My father likes controlling people, and my mother was no exception. But I think she would have done anything to keep from having such a hard life.” She let out a heavy sigh. “Maybe I’m a lot like my mother. I’ve always settled for somebody else running my life.”

“No,” Marc said. “Not anymore. You’re doing the right thing, Kari. No matter what your father says, there’s honor in good, honest work, and what you’re doing is just that. Don’t listen to him. What kind of father tells his daughter she’s a fool for trying to stand on her own two feet?”

“I know. But he’s still my father. The only family I have. Yeah, a few distant relatives, but essentially, he’s it. Do you know what it feels like to have no one?”

Marc wanted to say,
You don’t have no one! You have me!
But did she really? He was leaving soon. Was he supposed to tell her she could count on him when he might be hundreds of miles away?

“Do you like living in Rainbow Valley?” he asked her.

“Yes.”

“Are you going to stay?”

“Yeah,” she said. “I think I am.”

“This is a good town. Good people. You’re going to be just fine.”

Kari nodded, but he could tell she didn’t quite believe it. Suddenly that day he was going to ride off into the sunset seemed more like a curse than a blessing.

Wait a minute.
Ride?

He didn’t have a clue how to help Kari forget all this crap with her father, but he did know something that would make her feel better.

“Let’s go to Rick’s Automotive,” he said.

Kari blinked. “What?”

He started his truck. “I promised you a ride on my motorcycle. He’ll have a spare helmet you can borrow. How about it? When is your next day off?”

“Friday.”

“Have you covered shifts for anybody who could return the favor on Saturday so you could be off then, too?”

“I can ask. Why?”

“Because then we can go to Fredericksburg. We can leave Friday. Stay over until Sunday. Visit some vineyards there. I have a few friends who’d be happy to see us. How does that sound?”

“What about the vineyard?”

“Daniel is there. He’s supposed to be handling things, so I’m going to let him do it.”

“Wait. Luke and Shannon’s wedding is Sunday.”

“We’ll be back in plenty of time. Their wedding isn’t until four o’clock.”

“I have to be back early enough to cook. Nina, Daniel, and Angela are coming to dinner after the wedding, remember?”