Can't Take the Heat (11 page)

I reach across the table and place my hand over hers, which is still turning the glass. “And I won’t blame you for that.”

Her mouth presses into a thin line of disapproval, and for the first time I can recall, I actually see Sam Barrows in more than her height and force of will. It’s a look I’ve been on the receiving end of more than once, but never from her. “I didn’t want Wes to take you home, you know. I thought you should have stayed with me. And also, I think your neurologist is a quack.”

My lips twitch with a wry smile. “Don’t keep your opinions to yourself,” I crack. Like Chelsea ever has. Another way she resembles her father. “Seriously, though, I get that you’re worried about what’s going to happen when my memory comes back. I’m worried, too, but you’re going to have to trust Wes and me to figure this out. And to handle whatever comes next.”

She sighs, her frown relaxing into resignation. “I guess he’s a big boy.”

I have to laugh. “Understatement.” Wes pushes six foot four, after all.

The waiter appears at this moment to ask if we want anything else. After we both decline, Chelsea pulls out her cell phone and taps on the screen. A wrinkle appears between her eyebrows as she taps a couple more times before cursing under her breath. “Shit.”

“Everything okay?” I ask, prepared to make a quick exit if some hotelier emergency is underway.

Looking up at me, she shakes her head. “No, everything is not okay. My assistant texted me twenty minutes ago to tell me my father is on his way over here.”

“Actually,” I murmur as a suited figure striding past the hostess stand catches the corner of my vision, “he’s already here.”

Chelsea’s head swivels in the direction of my gaze. Sam reaches our table literally as the words “Well, hell,” escape his daughter’s mouth.

“Nice way to greet your dear old dad,” Sam deadpans, but if I didn’t know better, I’d swear he was on the verge of smiling.

Have I ever seen Sam Barrows smile? For the life of me, I can’t remember.

Chelsea picks her phone up off the table and slips it back in her purse. “To what do I owe the...um, honor of this visit?”

To my astonishment—and Chelsea’s, too, if I’m not mistaken—Sam leans down and kisses her cheek. “Not here to see you, sweet cheeks.” He jerks his thumb in my direction. “Came to talk to your lunch date.”

All the delicious food I’ve just consumed curdles in my stomach.

Let’s just be honest here: my relationship with Wes’s father has never graduated beyond grudging mutual tolerance. Although Wes always assured me that’s par for the course—Sam doesn’t get along well with anyone—his disdain for me goes deeper than that. He’s more than once made snide remarks about my mother, suggesting she probably wasn’t so much a showgirl as a stripper with a sideline in prostitution.

Honestly, it’s hard for me to argue with at least part of that assessment. Although she had a perfectly respectable job in the chorus line on a show at the Flamingo when she conceived me, she confessed when I was about ten that she had no idea who my father was because she’d had more than one “admirer” at the time. When I was a kid, I didn’t understand the implications of this admission beyond the fact that it meant I couldn’t expect my bio-dad to burst onto the scene one day and declare his everlasting love for my mom and me.

By the time I was in my late teens, though, I’d sort of figured out that the men she called admirers had probably been paying for her favors, if not in a pure cash-for-sex style transaction, then in gifts of jewelry and other expensive trinkets. My mother, at least before I was born, was a kept woman, which wasn’t quite the same thing as a prostitute but it wasn’t far off, either. Of course, once she had me, her entire lifestyle became unsustainable—a single mother with a baby can’t work until all hours of the night or entertain gentleman friends on a whim—and so she’d become a dance instructor and choreographer instead. Fortunately, she’d been good enough at both to earn a decent living for the two of us. If she hadn’t, she might have been forced to resort to that oldest profession, and I can’t say I’d hold it against her if she had.

Sam obviously wouldn’t agree. And maybe he’s right in one respect. Because my unwillingness to condemn her probably does say something about me.

Standing next to Chelsea, Sam says, “So, you gonna let me have your seat or make me find another chair?” He casts a skeptical glance around the restaurant, calling attention to the fact that every table in the room is filled to capacity.

Chelsea looks at me, her eyebrows raised in question.
You okay with this?

I shrug.
I guess so
. What’s the worst that can happen, after all?

Slinging her purse over her shoulder, Chelsea rises and concedes her place to her father. “I’m glad we talked today,” she tells me. “If you want to talk more later, I’ll be in my office.” I notice she directs this invitation only to me and not to her father.

Apparently, Sam notices, too, because he watches her retreating back with a smirk and says, “Takes after me, that one.”

It’s not an altogether inaccurate observation. Chelsea may not
look
that much like Sam, and she’s certainly easier to get along with, but she has his mental toughness and force of will. If she didn’t, she couldn’t successfully run a business this large and complex, especially as a woman in her early twenties. I doubt many women twice her age could pull it off with half her confidence.

As he settles in across from me, though, I can’t help noticing how much Wes takes after Sam, too. No, Wes doesn’t have that over-the-top take-no-prisoners alpha male mentality, but he’s got every bit as much stubbornness and determination. He had to just to survive being raised by Sam. The resemblance goes far deeper than personality, though. Both Wes and Chelsea may look like their mother, but Wes
moves
like his father. When Sam sits down, I see Wes in the casual way Sam stretches his legs out and crosses his legs at the ankles, and in the angle of his head when he appraises me across the table.

“How did you know I was here?” It may not be the politest conversation-starter, but a perfectly reasonable question, I think.

“Wes mentioned it.”

Makes sense. I left a voice mail for Wes after I talked to Chelsea to let him know he didn’t need to rush through his meetings.

Static crackles in the ensuing silence, but I refuse to ask him why he came looking for me. The ball’s in his court.

His mouth twitches, not in an amused way, but in an uncomfortable one. If I were sitting across from anyone other than Sam Barrows, I’d say he was trying to figure out what to say. As it is, I’m not sure what to think.

Finally, he says, “I know we haven’t always been on the best of terms.”

Understatement ahoy!

“I’m not gonna apologize for that.”

I didn’t expect him to. I doubt he’s ever apologized to anyone, even his wife.

“I was hard on you because I thought my son needed someone more like Jean. Someone who’d be happy playing the socialite and rubbing elbows with the rich and famous at charity events. Not to mention someone who’d be happy to raise the kids while he put in eighty-hour weeks running the company. I didn’t see that in you, and when the two of you broke up over your damned job—”

What?
I smack my palm against the table. “We broke up over
my job
?” I’m so stunned by this revelation, the question squeaks out before I remember that these are questions I’m not supposed to ask, let alone have answered.

“Fuck, I wasn’t supposed to mention that.” To give Sam some credit, he does sound genuinely sorry for the slip. But now that he’s made it…

“What job?”

Sam looks away. In profile, the pugnacious angularity of his features softens and his perpetually grumpy expression seems less angry than tired. After a few seconds, he shakes his head. “One mistake is bad enough. I’m not gonna make it worse.”

I’m not sure whether I’m disappointed or relieved that he won’t tell me. If he did, it might jar my memory loose, but do I want that now? And if he told me and I still couldn’t remember, how would it help me to know? I still probably wouldn’t be able to actually
do
my job, whatever the hell it is.

“Anyway,” he continues, “the point is, when the two of you broke up, I figured it was proof I was right all along. Yeah, it was hard on the kid, but he got over it. Or at least I thought he did, until he got the phone call saying you’d been hurt.” Sam leans forward now, punctuating his speech with an earnestness I didn’t know he was capable of. “I was there when the call came in, and the look on his face—I swear to God, it was like the will to live drained right out of him. That’s when I realized he wasn’t even close to over you. You’re it for Wes, and you always will be. Took me a couple of days to come to it, but I’m here swallowing my pride to tell you I was wrong, and if you and my son can find some way to work out your differences, then you both have my blessing.”

I sit there slack-jawed, trying to process this sudden, inexplicable one-eighty. Not once in the time I’ve known Sam Barrows have I seen one iota of evidence that he’s capable of change. Frank Sinatra has nothing on this man when it comes to doing things his way. I don’t think I could be more surprised if he went out to the pool and demonstrated the technique for walking on water.

And yet, there’s no doubt in my mind he’s completely serious. Sam doesn’t mince words, doesn’t march to anyone else’s drum, and definitely doesn’t pull practical jokes.

So, with tears that feel a lot like gratitude prickling my eyelids, I make a joke of my own. “Who are you, and what have you done with Wes’s father?”

His mouth kicks up at the corners and his eyes glint with what is unquestionably amusement. The man is
grinning.
You could knock me over with a heavy breath.

“Maybe my heart just grew three sizes that day.”

“Your father came to see me at the South this afternoon.”

Wes pulled his head out of the refrigerator, where he’d poked it in search of a beer, and looked at Delaney. She sat on the couch, her legs tucked up underneath her. The book she’d been reading, which he suspected she’d found in one the boxes from her mother’s storage unit because the cover looked faded and worn, lay open and facedown beside her.

“That’s…” He cleared his throat. “Unexpected.”

“Not any more unexpected than what he had to say. Your father apologized to me, Wes. Or, at least, it was as close to an apology as I think he’s capable of. Plus he gave us his blessing, which sounds corny and old-fashioned, but I was…well…touched, I guess.”

Wes grabbed a cold bottle and shut the refrigerator door. “I could tell you I’m as surprised as you are, but it wouldn’t be true.” He cracked a rueful grin. “I had a similar conversation with him yesterday. It shocked the hell out of me, but I forgot to tell you about it because I was just so damn glad you came home last night.”

“Really? What did he say to you?”

“Well, aside from implying I’d be an idiot if I let you break up with me again, he told me he’s taking my mother on a round-the-world honeymoon six months from now, and turning the business entirely over to me and Chelsea.”

Delaney’s eyes went wide and round. Her mouth hung slightly ajar for several beats before she said, “You’re shitting me.”

“Nope. Scout’s honor.” He opened his beer and walked around the counter back into the living room. “Believe me, I was as shocked as you are. Still am. But as far as I can tell, he means it.”

Frowning, she watched him cross the carpet toward her. “I hate to say this, but are you sure he’s not sick? Because this sounds like the kind of thing people start doing when…well, you know.”

After leaning down to move the book—it was, he saw, an old hardback edition of
The Wizard of Oz,
clearly much worn and well-loved—he settled onto the sofa beside her. “I won’t say the thought didn’t cross my mind. But why would he be planning a trip six months from now if he knows he’s sick now? That doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“You’re right,” she admitted, “it doesn’t. Still, it’s all so out of character, it’s a little alarming.”

Sliding his arm around her shoulders, he took a swig from the bottle and swallowed before answering. “It is. But I saw on an episode of
Mythbusters
once that old dogs
can
learn new tricks.”