Angel's Peak (8 page)

T.J. was more than happy to do that. As they made the quick drive north to Arcata, he talked about his recent diving trip to Cabo San Lucas. He’d gone with a group of instructors and students. It wasn’t clear from his conversation whether they’d gotten all their research done, but they’d had some great dives and had eaten at some fantastic Mexican restaurants. Altogether they had taken only sixteen students, twelve of them were women, he said.

And suddenly Franci asked, “Aren’t you ever tempted to sleep with them? The female students who worship you?”

He gave her a surprised look, which was followed by a huff of laughter and a shake of his head. “Franci? What the hell? I thought we went over that.” He grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze. “Are you serious?”

“Curious,” she said. “I’m sorry, was that offensive?”

“Depends on the reason for your question. Did you hear something? Some gossip about me?”

“Nothing like that,” she said with a laugh. “But it must be difficult sometimes,” she said. “To be a single man thrown into so many situations with young women—like trips out of the country and on boats where you spend days at sea or anchored offshore. Probably surrounded by beautiful, nubile, irresistible young women who are sure you just walk on water and wouldn’t even have to think twice about—” She stopped before she really became offensive.

He frowned and gave her hand another squeeze. “It might be, if I were interested in any of them. I’m much more comfortable with women I can have a conversation with. I’m not interested in being with a college freshman or sophomore who’d be more than willing to help me lose my tenure.” He glanced at her. “Just in case you’re thinking of dipping into that well, it’s how you get fired. Messing with the student body—so to speak.”

“Oh, please,” she said with a laugh. “Not in a million years. But men are different.”

“Not that different. This is so strange, coming from you. You’ve never even brought it up before…”

“Sure I have,” she said. “It’s apparently well-known around the campus that the girls are hot for you. And you are a bachelor…”

“Be careful you don’t start to sound like Glynnis, the ex. She was obsessed by my female students, especially after she’d had children and didn’t feel as comfortable in a bikini.” He grinned at her. “For a woman who’s had a child, you sure didn’t lose your bikini body!”

“Well, that’s exactly what brought it to mind,” Franci said. “That you’re out of the country with a dozen beautiful, barely dressed eighteen-year-old women who think you’re nothing less than a god, and…” She cleared her throat. “I would imagine it has its distracting moments…”

He chuckled. “You’ve never once asked me a serious question about how I handle that situation. Just so you know, I have to go to a lot of trouble to keep things on the up-and-up. I have an assistant or associate professor on hand at all times. I can’t visit with female students in my office behind closed doors. If the door is closed for a meeting, a teaching assistant is right outside. On trips, everyone is assigned a buddy or two—I only travel in groups. Seriously, the first time I touch one of them, she’ll be the one to scream foul and get me fired.”

“But aren’t you tempted?”

“I’m actually made of flesh and bone, Franci—of course I’ve been tempted. Not in the past several months, however,” he added with a smile. “Now what brought this on? You aren’t jealous, are you? Are you worried about being completely safe with me? Because not only are we careful, I told you I’ve been screened and I—”

She laughed uncomfortably. “Not at all, T.J. It just occurred to me. You’re back from a week in Cabo, had a great, fun time away from all the prying eyes, and I wondered.”

“I’m aware there’s gossip from time to time and there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do but ignore it. Believe me, if there was any truth to the rumors about my behavior with the young women on campus, someone would have caught me with my pants down by now.” He laughed again. “You give me credibility. Having a steady woman with your looks and brains has slowed a lot of that idle bullshit down to nothing.”

“My pleasure,” she said.

“Paranoia about all my potential affairs kept my ex-wife up nights, but it’s pretty new coming from you. I’m only human. But I’m smart enough to know better.”

“Bronson married his student—she was nineteen to his forty,” she pointed out, speaking of another one of the professors.

“Yeah, well, that doesn’t show so well on him. I’d rather not be that kind of legend.” He grinned at her. “Besides, that’s not what I’m after. If you came with us on a dive trip, the only kind of talk you’d hear would be about the two professors rocking the boat.”

“That could be fun, T.J.,” she said. “One of these days you’ll throw out an invitation for me to go with you on a specific trip and I’ll shock you by saying yes.”

“It’s a deal!” he returned enthusiastically. “The next good one, you’re coming with me. With us,” he amended. “Me and the students.”

“Where are you going next?”

“I’m putting together a trip to Kino Bay, Mexico—a nice little shrimp town. I’m saving you for a more exotic trip, so be patient. But before Kino Bay can be accomplished, there’s a coral study to finish—that’s about five days offshore…”

Having effectively kept the subject on him, Franci was able to listen more than she talked. They got to the restaurant, were seated right away and he ordered wine for them. He was the expert at that, as well, she thought, but she didn’t mind. It seemed only moments before the salads arrived and T.J. was still second-guessing whether they’d made the right choice for their appetizers. She hoped he wouldn’t change his mind—she didn’t care if he ordered for her, but she hated it when he caused a lot of trouble for the waitstaff. Plus, she was looking forward to the crab-stuffed mushrooms; that and the salad might be all she enjoyed of this dinner. She really didn’t like salmon, and to night T.J. had insisted upon it. But dinner out, for T.J., was a constant negotiation, a complicated ordering process. She got a kick out of it, but he took it way too seriously.

As they ate, she listened to more details of his work, his plans for doing a coastal coral study with one of his classes that would take an intense five days off campus, and then in winter there would be a couple of dive trips out of the country to warmer climes. And—

“Francine?” he said, drawing her attention. “Ms. Duncan?”

“Huh?” she said, looking up. “I’m sorry, was I somewhere else for a moment?”

“I was just saying, I think I’d really like you with long hair,” he said dreamily, gazing at her.

“Well, ordering for me is one thing, T.J., but I’m going to be in charge of my own hair. This cut is so easy!”

“You won’t even consider growing it out? Even if I said I think I’d love it?”

She was gazing off again. “Huh?” she said, when she realized he’d been talking to her again. “I’m sorry.”

He put down his fork. “You’ve been a little weird all evening. Different.”

“Really? Sorry.” She sighed. “Well, I was this close to calling you to cancel. I have a nagging headache. I know I’m probably not the best company.”

“You’re not only distracted, you’ve brought up a couple of things you’ve never even mentioned before. Like the girls—the students. This isn’t a symptom of a headache.”

She looked into his beautiful brown eyes for a second. He had a slight smile and it made her laugh. T.J. was too intuitive for her mood to slip by him. “I do have a headache. His name is Sean Riordan.”

“Oh?” T.J. asked. “Dare I hope he sells insurance?”

She shook her head. “He’s an air force pilot. I knew him when I was an air force nurse. I ran into him the other night while I was out with some girlfriends.”

“Ah,” T.J. said, sitting back. “And can’t get him off your mind?”

“You can say that again,” she said, putting down her fork. Not only did she feel like getting this whole thing off her chest, she felt she owed T.J. an explanation. After all, they were a couple…“I haven’t told anyone this, T.J. Not my mom, not girlfriends, certainly not Rosie…”

“Should I be honored?” he asked, lifting his wineglass to his lips, taking a sip. “Or should I panic?”

“He is Rosie’s father,” she said, staring him straight in the eye. But then she glanced away.

He put down his wineglass. “You don’t say.”

She looked back. “I always knew the day would come when I’d have to face this, but I thought I’d get to choose when and where. Just by chance he saw me a couple of weeks ago, chased me down and asked to buy me a cup of coffee. He said our breakup was a big mistake that happened to a couple of stubborn people, and that we should talk about things.”

“Well, direct, isn’t he? Obviously you didn’t agree.”

“I told him to get lost, but that was just my anger talking. I have no right to keep him away from Rosie. I’m going to have to tell him about her, T.J. And I don’t look forward to it.”

“Uh-oh. This doesn’t sound good. When you said Rosie’s father didn’t know her, I always assumed it had been his choice to take off, ignore his responsibilities.”

“Not exactly,” she said, shaking her head. “It wasn’t like that. But it wasn’t a mistake, like he says. The mistake was us getting together in the first place. He always said he’d never get married or have a family. I always said that’s what I ultimately wanted for my life.”

“Well, hell—why were you with him, then?”

“I don’t know. Because I couldn’t resist him? Sounds like the pining of a teenager, doesn’t it? I wasn’t a teenager. And I had a wonderful time with him—it was just the whole marriage and children thing he couldn’t do.” She shook her head. “I knew either one of us would have to change our minds or we’d part ways. My date of separation from the air force was coming up, Sean had accepted a change of assignment and we’d been together almost two years. And guess what? I got pregnant. And being a nurse, I knew immediately. So I made him talk about what was next for us. Where were we going, as a couple. He said things like, ‘You’re getting out of the air force. You can go anywhere you want. You can move to where I’ll be, or not.’ It went downhill from there. I said I wanted to be married, have children, and he said, ‘Me? Not in this lifetime.’”

T.J. swallowed. He looked down for a moment. He picked up his fork and poked at his food but didn’t eat, a clear indication he was unhappy. When he finally did look up, he said, “And you didn’t tell him.” It wasn’t a question.

She shook her head. “The parting standoff was I needed to take the relationship to a committed level and he wasn’t interested. I said that if it was possible he’d never be ready, I should move on, and he said if I needed guarantees right then, I’d better start planning my move.”

“Well, the man clearly knows what he doesn’t want,” T.J. said with an unmistakable sneer.

“We were both angry,” she said with a shrug. “I told him if he wasn’t serious about a commitment with me, I was going to take the walk. He told me not to let the door hit me in the ass. We both said unforgivable things. I could have told him about the baby, T.J. I could have shouted it at his back as he was leaving. He probably would have done the responsible thing.” Her eyes glistened and she swallowed hard. “And I would never have known if…” Her voice trailed off. She inhaled deeply, straightened proudly. “I didn’t want it that way.”

“Good God, Francine,” he said. “You lied to him.”

“I always intended to tell him,” she said. “Really, I thought I’d tell him when I found out she was a girl, then I couldn’t. I thought I’d tell him before she was born, but I was still so angry, so lonely. I planned to tell him right afterward, but he left me a couple of messages—a couple of those arrogant, cheerful, we-should-keep-in-touch-babe messages, and I couldn’t do it then, either. Next thing I knew, four years had passed.”

He shook his head and frowned at her. “You should have told me this before—you owed me that much if we were going to be involved. And you should have told him.”

“You know what, T.J.? I owe a lot of people a lot of stuff, but at the top of the list is Rosie. I owe her my absolute protection. Not just physical but emotional and psychological protection. I know Sean’s going to be angry—his mother’s going to be very angry and, trust me, she’s a force of nature. But, in the end, you know how much I meant to Sean? He let me go at the mere idea of a child!”

“Listen, there are men who don’t want children. But we still need to know the truth,” T.J. said.

“When Rosie was a new baby, just a couple of months old, I realized that I cried every single day. On and off for hours. I cried through the second half of my pregnancy and every day after she was born. And I made a decision—I couldn’t do that to her. If the only way Rosie could be raised by a happy, positive mother was to forget Sean Riordan, then that’s what I would have to do. Yeah, Sean might’ve been willing to do the right thing, but it wasn’t what he wanted. Rosie and I—we deserve to be loved and wanted. We deserve to never doubt it.”

They sat quietly for a moment before T.J. replied. “This explains a lot. You’ve always kept a part of yourself back. Tell me, Franci, just where did you think we were headed? You and me? Because your ex and I have a few things in common…”

“You and I aren’t headed for any kind of standoff, T.J. We seem to agree on everything. Everything except salmon,” she added with a smile. “I thought it was only fair to tell you why I’m a little distracted.”

“How’s that headache?” he asked.

“Actually, not a lot better.”

“I think I caught it,” he said. “I was very optimistic about where Rosie’s sleepover at Grandma’s was going to leave us.”

“I should have canceled,” she said, shaking her head. “I can’t invite you in tonight, T.J. I’m just not in the right frame of mind.”

He laughed a bit loudly. He leaned toward her. “Believe me, Franci—tempting as you are, I’m not getting in the middle of this situation. You work this out with the man, draw your single-parent lines in the sand, refine the details and, when you’re all set there, we’ll pick up where we left off. There is one more thing you might tell this guy, if you’re going to be completely honest.”

“Hm?” she asked, frowning.