All That Lies Broken (Ashmore's Folly Book 2) (19 page)

Well! That was plainer speaking than the princess of Ashmore Park was used to hearing. Julie was staring at her, the cookie sheet dangling from her hand; the jeans were starting to ride down again. Laura gave her one last exasperated look and went to the refrigerator to pull out the blueberries she’d bought fresh the evening before.

“Hookers charge a hundred dollars an hour?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care. Maybe they charge a thousand.” Laura let her tone get snappish. “That’s not the point.”

“I know,” said Julie. “I’m very sorry.”

She didn’t look at Laura; she bent to put the cookie sheet in the oven. Some of the dough chunks had slid on the sheet and were running into each other, but Laura decided it didn’t warrant comment. Cookies were the least of what was going on.

“You know,” she said, “I don’t really enjoy this, Julie. You did this last week – little barbed comments because you wanted to ask me something and you didn’t know how to get to the point. Let me tell you right now. You’re far better off if you just come right out and ask me.”

She stared hard at her niece.

Julie’s eyes widened, and Laura had the sense again of that mind working away furiously. Just like Richard’s – but no,
not
like his, more like Lucy’s. Even discounting the lack of blood ties, Richard thought analytically, objectively, while Julie and Lucy thought in terms of power and advantage.

“I’m sorry,” Julie said again, and her gaze sidled away from Laura’s.

She took a leaf from Richard’s book. “Not good enough. I don’t want your apology, I want you to stop playing games. What do you want?”

Julie had never learned how to handle confrontation, that much was certain. She looked like the deer in the headlights, trapped with no idea how to get out. Richard might have said that Cat Courtney was at work again, flattening someone who wasn’t a fair match for her; Laura thought it wasn’t Cat so much as it was Meg’s mother with thirteen years of experience.

Julie gnawed at her lower lip, her eyes darting around, never looking right at Laura. Whatever she wanted to know, she must be afraid it would provoke a backlash. Laura’s instincts went on alert.

“Did you know my parents are getting a divorce?”

That question, low and miserable, dented Laura’s irritation. Richard had said that Julie had taken the news well, but then the perfect daughter would never let her father see anything but a positive reaction. “Yes,” she said, “I heard about that. How do you feel about it?”

Julie shrugged, but she looked tense and strained. “Okay, I guess. I mean, they’re never going to get back together, so I guess it’s a good thing.”

Laura’s heart hurt for her niece. She mustn’t forget how bitterly broken Julie’s home was. “I don’t know that divorce is ever a good thing,” she said gently. “Sometimes, it’s the lesser of two evils.”

Julie was staring at the floor. “I don’t even remember when they lived together. I know they were together till I was five, but I really don’t remember it, you know?” She bit her lip. “I mean, I don’t remember us ever doing anything as a family. I did stuff with my dad, but not with the two of them together.”

Laura watched her with concern.

“I mean – other kids at school, their parents have split up, and it’s been okay for them.” She looked up. “I heard you and your husband were getting a divorce before – well, you know—”

Laura nodded and moved a little closer to her niece. She sensed that Julie might not hold together very much longer.

“How was Meg when you broke up?”

An honest question. It deserved an honest answer. “We were very worried about that. We’d been separated for almost a year when we made the decision, and we told her together.” She hesitated. “She didn’t like it, Julie, no kid does. But our situation wasn’t the same – we were very much parents together, and we let her know that wasn’t going to change. She and I moved to London a couple of months before, and she and her father talked every day. He came over twice to see us. If he had lived, we would have spent holidays with him. It was a very different situation.”

Julie said, and Laura was surprised at the hostility she let show in her voice, “Well, my mother and father certainly aren’t parents together, that’s for sure.”

She wondered if she should let Richard know that, despite appearances, Julie was definitely not taking this well. The chickens were coming home to roost – the crime of Julie’s parentage, his infidelity with Francie, the bitterness of those unfiled pleadings. Julie’s absent relationship with Diana. Despite his efforts, damage ran deep here.

But she was still on the outskirts of his life, and Julie was at the core. Just a week before, he had still been warning her away from this part of his life; she didn’t think he would take kindly to any interference in his relationship with his daughter, even now.

Still – she remembered the grief counseling that had done so much good for Meg the previous fall. Maybe she could suggest to Richard that he get counseling for his daughter, just as a precaution.

Julie said, “Are you my dad’s new girlfriend?”

Her mind froze. “What?”

Julie looked scared at her own temerity. “I – Dad has a new girlfriend. I wondered if it was you.”

Oh, dear
God
. Here was disaster beyond reckoning. She had to think fast. “How do you know he’s got a new girlfriend? I hadn’t heard he was seeing anyone.”

Julie wasn’t old enough yet to see the deflection. “Well, he went off for the weekend with her, and he’s come home a couple of nights real late, you know? And it was weird last weekend. He came home real late on Friday, then he left again and he stayed away all night, and then he came home real early to get some stuff, and then he left again. So I figured she must live around here, and I wondered if maybe it was you.”

Richard really needed to know that his baby girl wasn’t a baby anymore; she was an astute observer more than capable of putting two and two together. And she herself shouldn’t have forgotten; she should have remembered Julie’s detective work in tracking Cam down last summer. She made her voice sound puzzled. “Why on earth would you think it was
me?
”

As if the idea was so fantastic as to be absurd. She’d deal with being a hypocrite later on.

“Because—” Julie stopped, and Laura saw clearly as the girl reshuffled something in her mind. “I just wondered.”

She hadn’t yet noticed that Laura hadn’t flatly denied it. Lucy would have been all over the evasions.

Laura made herself turn back to the pastry and start working, casual, unaffected, not at all someone with a pounding heart. “Julie, you should ask your father. He’s the best person to tell you about his private life.”

“Oh.” Julie went over to the oven and checked the cookies. “He’d never tell me that stuff. I mean, he’s had girlfriends. Not a lot, I don’t think, I don’t want you to think my dad is a – a—”

“A rake?”
Three in ten years? Six in his entire life? I don’t think so.

Her niece looked blank. “What’s that?”

“Someone who chases women a lot.”

Julie looked relieved. “Yes, that. I know he dated someone who worked at my school when I was in third grade. Lucy saw them together once. Then this girl named Jennifer used to call all the time, but I guess he wasn’t in love with her, they broke up a long time ago. Do you think he’s in love with this one?”

Laura said firmly, “I don’t have the faintest idea.”

Unfortunately, I have it on good authority that he isn’t.

“But doesn’t it sound like they’re having sex?”

Lovely, glorious sex….
“Julie, you need to ask your father this stuff. The rest of us aren’t in a position to know.”

It would serve Richard right if his daughter did ask. They’d have to scrape him off the floor.

Julie helped herself to a spoonful of cookie dough. Laura started to warn her about salmonella poisoning and stopped cold. She could see Julie trying to frame another question.

“Do you think he’s going to get married again?”

Oh, she’d like that answered too. She stopped herself, appalled. He had warned her not to consider the future until he was free of Diana, and she was practically ready to start addressing invitations. “I don’t know. He hasn’t said anything to me.”

And he wouldn’t
.
Richard had drawn his line in the sand. Having failed so spectacularly in the past, he intended to do everything right in the future, and that included settling the past before looking ahead. He wouldn’t allow himself to know how much he needed her, that in her he had found his last best hope. He needed her, he needed a woman with the heart of a warrior, who would cherish him, challenge him, fight for him. He needed never to doubt that he was the father of his wife’s children. But Richard would not allow himself to consider that yet.

“Check the oven again. The cookies should be done by now. You don’t want them to burn.”

Julie obediently retrieved the cookies. They were just turning golden brown on top; they would continue to bake a few seconds longer on the cookie sheet. Laura laid out a sheet of aluminum foil as a cooling rack and handed Julie a spatula for removing the cookies from the sheet. Julie carefully lifted each cookie, another of Peggy’s students doing her proud.

“I don’t want a stepmother.”

Laura spooned ice water into the food processor and hit the button to blend it into the pastry. Here was the heart of Julie’s message.
I don’t care what you and my father do. Don’t trespass on my territory.
“That’s natural. You and your dad have a routine. You don’t want it disturbed.”

“Yes, but—” Julie looked at her seriously, so she had a split second warning before her niece’s next words. “It might not be so bad if he married you.”

The hand holding the spoon faltered. Ice water splayed all over the counter.

Laura couldn’t help herself; she was shaking. She stared at her niece, and this time, she read no agenda in Julie’s eyes, no hidden probing. Not Lucy, provoking a protest to lay bare her deepest feelings, but instead Richard Ashmore’s daughter, saying plainly that her aunt would be a suitable stepmother.

This didn’t make sense. If Julie didn’t want a stepmother, why was she the exception?

She took a deep breath. “Julie, I don’t know where you get this idea that your father and I—” Maybe she was getting it from the brief interaction she’d seen last week. Maybe Julie had understood more than they had realized. She turned the offensive on her niece. “Why are you saying this?”

Julie looked shaken too, but she was an Ashmore – no, she was an Abbott, and Dominic’s daughters, like Dominic himself, could carry through with a performance even in front of a hostile or unwelcoming audience. “I know you like him, and – I think he likes you too. I remember how he looked when we saw you in London. That’s the first time – well, I realized he might be able to be in love with you someday. And – you’re not married anymore, and he’s not going to be, so—”

She had to be the adult here, no matter how stunned she felt. “Julie, it takes a great deal more to make a relationship than a man and a woman being single at the same time. Your father has a very rich and settled life, and I have my life too.” Right, she didn’t even have a settled home. She belonged nowhere. “Look, your dad and I were very good friends when we were growing up. I had a crush on him, I’m sure you’ve heard all about that, but that was a long time ago. We’re different people now. I’m not the same girl who used to follow him around.”

“But you could be,” said Julie eagerly. “I could help you. If you want, I can tell you all sorts of things. I know all the things he likes. I know his favorite meals and his favorite books and TV shows and movies – I even know how he votes, and you could tell him you agree with him, and—”

Oh, dear heavens.

“—And church is real important to him. You could come with us, I’m sure he’d like that, you could even convert.”

That did it. Time to put the brakes on Daddy’s little girl.

“That’s enough.” Laura put her hand up decisively. “Quiet.”

Julie stopped.

“Listen, I know your intentions are good, but I don’t want to hear any more of this.” She fixed her niece with a stern look. “Your father’s private life is just that, Julie, it is private. It is quite improper to speculate on what he feels or what he is planning to do. Frankly, it is none of your business, and,”
unfortunately
, “it is none of mine either.”

She let the full force of Cat Courtney’s authority fall on the girl and watched her retreat.

“As for making myself over to suit him – I hope you don’t think that’s an acceptable thing for a woman to do.” But of course Julie thought that. She’d spent her lifetime making herself into the perfect daughter, the perfect niece. “A woman who pretends to be someone she isn’t – who pretends to like what a man likes just to get his attention – is setting herself up for failure. What if she succeeds and he falls for her? He’s not falling for her at all. He’s falling for some phantom that doesn’t even exist.”

“But,” Julie swallowed hard, “maybe she can learn to be what he likes.”