Baby, It's You (17 page)

“How so?”

“All Daniel wanted to do was play video games and poke around on his computer. And he hated working in the vineyard. That crawled all over our father like nothing else.”

“But he’s going to run it for the next three years?”

“That was our deal,” Marc said, sticking the cracker box back into the pantry. “But I’m going to have to set him straight about a few things first.”

“Like what?”

“He has this crazy idea about aging the wine with micro-oxygenation.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a half-ass way of making wine. I should have known he was going to go off on some weird tangent.”

“Hmm. The app he created must have been pretty amazing for him to make so much money from it.”

Marc’s brow crinkled. “What has that got to do with anything?”

“He’s an idea guy. He’s telling you his ideas.”

“His ideas are nuts.”

“Uh-huh. So were the Wright brothers’. And Einstein’s. And Steve Jobs’s.”

“He’s hardly in that company.”

“It’s the way he’s wired, though. To come up with better ways of doing things.”

“Wine making isn’t as much about innovation as it is about tradition.”

“Tradition is important. But change is good, too, isn’t it? As long as it’s for the better?”

“Micro-oxygenation is not for the better.”

“Daniel has a hard time turning his brain off. He wants to tell you every time he has a new idea. Just talk to him about it. Make him feel as if you’re listening.”

“He’s wrong.”

“Just
listen
.”

“Fine.
Then
I’ll tell him he’s wrong.”

“It’s official. You’re the most stubborn man I’ve ever met.”

But he was also right. He’d spent his entire adult life keeping alive the tradition his grandfather had begun and his father had guarded and passed on to him. And now Daniel was going to screw it up?

“Invitations came today for Luke and Shannon’s wedding,” Kari said, still stirring. “They sent me one, too.”

“Yeah? That’s nice.”

“Isn’t it? I love weddings. You know. Unless it’s me getting married to Greg. Oh! You know what I was thinking?”

“What?”

“Since Nina, Daniel, and Angela will all be here for the wedding, maybe we could have dinner here afterward.”

“Nina and Daniel would love it,” Marc said. “I’m not too sure about Angela. I haven’t told her we’re seeing each other yet.”

“I know. You won’t hurt my feelings if you don’t want to include me.”

“No. Actually, I think it’s a great idea. It would be a good opportunity for you to meet each other.”

“Great! And since Nina will be busy with the wedding, I’d be happy to cook something. Oh!” Kari hurried over to her iPod. “I
love
this song!” She jacked up the volume, and some god-awful rap song reverberated through the kitchen, but he didn’t care. All he cared about was watching Kari. She went back to the pot on the stove, where she continued to stir it as she rocked her head back and forth to the music, singing along in a voice that was never going to make her a star, that gorgeous head of curly auburn hair and its pink streak bouncing along with it. She was so full of life, making Marc feel as if he was bursting beyond the straight and narrow path he’d been trudging along for the past eighteen years, showing him things along the way he’d never seen before.

He slipped up behind her, put his arm around her waist, and pulled her back against him.
God
, she felt good. Smelled even better. He gave her a kiss on the neck. She stopped stirring, laid the spoon on the counter, and turned in his arms.

“So with Daniel gone, we have the house to ourselves, right?”

“Right.”

“Ever do it on a kitchen table?” she asked.

“Can’t say that I have.”

She went to the table and boosted herself up on it. Then she grabbed him by the collar and pulled him between her thighs. He spread his hands on her waist and leaned in to kiss her as she looped her arms around his neck.

“We only have about five minutes,” she said against his lips, “or the water’s going to boil out of that pot.”

“Maybe we should turn the burner off.”

“Maybe we should take off our clothes and get on with it.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Marc unbuttoned her shirt as she unfastened his belt. Buttons weren’t quite the challenge for him that they used to be, but the bottom one on this shirt was giving him problems.

“Ticktock,” Kari said. “Or dinner will be ruined. You don’t want dinner to be ruined, do you?”

With a growl of frustration, he finally unfastened it and shoved her shirt open, pleased to see she wasn’t wearing a bra. He took her breasts in his hands, marveling one more time at their sheer perfection. As he dove in for another kiss, she pulled his belt out of its loops, flung it aside, and started on the buttons of his jeans. The beat of the music pounded inside his head, and he had to admit that sex and rap actually went together pretty well, particularly since this time it was all about speed. He had a condom in his pocket and a hard-on for the record books, so if she wanted it fast, that was exactly what she was going to get.

Then all at once, Marc heard something behind him. The back door? His sex-fogged brain told him it must be Daniel coming back. But before he could dislodge his lips from Kari’s, he heard a gasp. Then came a voice that clearly wasn’t his brother’s.

“Dad? What are you
doing
?”

M
arc whipped around to find Angela standing at the back door. Angela?
Angela?

At first he was so dumbfounded he couldn’t move. But then he sprang into action, yanking the sides of Kari’s shirt back together. As she buttoned it, he reached over and killed the music. Big mistake. The dead silence was worse.

Angela just stood there with her mouth hanging open. Finally she swept past them, walking through the kitchen to the entryway. Then Marc heard her footsteps as she ran up the stairs.

“Where’s she going?” Kari asked.

“I imagine she’s going to her bedroom.”

“But my stuff is still…uh-oh. What do we do now?”

Marc didn’t answer. He couldn’t answer, because he had no idea what to say. Kari had just buttoned her shirt about the time Angela marched back down the stairs. Instead of coming back to the kitchen, though, she made a beeline to the front door. Marc heard it open, then slam closed.

“Crap,” he muttered. “I guess I need to go talk to her.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Just stay here.”

“I’ll get my stuff. Go back down to the cottage.”

“No! Not yet. I don’t want you down there until we find out what was going on the other night. Stay right here until I talk to her.”

Marc strode out of the kitchen to the front door. He stood with his hand on the doorknob and took a deep, calming breath that didn’t calm him in the least. Then he opened the door and stepped out onto the porch.

Angela sat on the porch swing, rocking it with her toe, her arms folded, staring straight ahead.

“I wish you’d called first,” he said.

“So that’s the way it is now? I have to call before I come back to my own house?”

Marc sat down beside her.

“I’ve never seen her before,” Angela said. “Who is she?”

“Her name is Kari Worthington. She’s new in town.”

“You’re my
father
.”

“That’s right.”

“That was really creepy.”

He blew out a breath. “Okay. I can understand why you’d feel that way.”

“Stop being all understanding. That’s not like you.”

“I’m not understanding?”

“Not like that. You sound like one of those TV shrinks. Validating my feelings, and all that. This is weird enough already.”

Well, hell. The truth was that he didn’t know how to behave in a situation like this. But hadn’t her whole childhood and adolescence been filled with situations where he didn’t know how to behave? Why was this any different?

Because his daughter had seen him on the verge of having sex on the kitchen table. Yeah, that was pretty different.

“Why did you come home?” he asked her.

“Is it so wrong for me to want to see my family?”

“Well, no, but classes have barely started.”

“You said Uncle Daniel is here. I wanted to see him.”

“He’s out tonight.”

Her lips tightened, and he could tell she was trying not to cry.
Great.
He thought about apologizing, only to stop himself. There really wasn’t anything to apologize for. He hadn’t done anything wrong. Of course, he would have preferred that she hadn’t seen that particular thing he’d been doing that wasn’t wrong, but now he was just going to have to deal with it.

“Kim and I had a fight,” she said finally.

“Your roommate? I thought you were getting along.”

“We were. For a while. But then she started staying up late. Like, till one o’clock in the morning. And she brings her weird friends over all the time. They don’t like me. She told me I’m too uptight. And then I come home, and I don’t even fit in here anymore.”

“Don’t fit in here? Of
course
you fit in here.”

“Where?
She’s
in my bedroom!”

Oh, hell. What was he supposed to say to that?

“I hate college,” Angela muttered.

Marc’s heart skipped with apprehension. “You have to give it time.”

“I’ve given it time.”

“A couple of weeks isn’t enough.”

She sighed, her eyes glistening with tears. “Don’t worry. It’s not like I’m going to drop out or anything.”

He started to say,
Well, I sure as hell hope not!
Fortunately, he managed to keep that comment to himself.

“I needed a break,” Angela went on. “I thought if I just came home for the weekend…”

Her voice trailed off, and Marc felt like shit.

“It’s always been just you and me, you know?” she said. “And then I came through the door and there was this other person…” She nodded toward the house. “Is it serious?”

He started to say of course it wasn’t serious. He didn’t know Kari well enough for it to be serious. But what kind of example was that to set? He was having sex with a woman, but it wasn’t serious?

“We haven’t been seeing each other very long,” he said finally.

“Are you going to keep seeing her?”

Marc felt as if he was treading through a minefield. “Yeah. I think I am.”

Angela turned away, and he could tell that wasn’t the answer she wanted.

“Why is she in my room?”

He told her about the guy who’d been trespassing outside the cottage and that was what had led him to move Kari to the house. But it didn’t seem to make her any happier. She let out a shaky sigh.

“What?” he said.

She shrugged weakly. “When I was at school, I got to thinking about harvest, and that afterward…” Tears filled her eyes again. “When I come home, you won’t be here anymore.”

“I won’t be gone forever,” he told her. “I’ll be back home to visit. We can just make sure we’re home at the same time.”

“Not if I come home every weekend. You might be in another state or something.”

“You said you thought it was cool that I was going to travel.”

“I know,” she said. “But now that I’m thinking about you actually doing it…”

No!
Whether he was in Rainbow Valley or halfway across the country, it wasn’t supposed to matter. She was supposed to be thrilled with college. Meeting other kids. Finding a boyfriend. Enjoying the experience. It made him miserable to think that
she
was miserable, but he had no idea what to do about it.

“If you don’t want me in the cottage,” Angela said, “then I guess there’s nowhere for me to stay.”

“I can move Kari’s stuff to my room,” Marc said.

“Oh,
God
.” Angela squeezed her eyes closed and dropped her head to her hands. “No. Please, no. That’s
so
weird.”

Marc thought about putting Kari up for a couple of nights at Animal House, but that really wasn’t a solution to the problem. Maybe this time there just wasn’t one.

Angela looked up again, sniffing a little. “It’s okay. I’ll just go back to school.”

“Angela—”

“No, really. It’s all right. I’ll go back. I need to face my problems, right? Isn’t that what you’ve always said? I’m just going to go back. I’ll talk to Kim. It’ll be fine.”

She grabbed her purse and stood up. Marc hated this.
Hated
it.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Of course I am. I have to go.”

Without another word, she turned and trotted down the porch steps to circle the house rather than going back through the kitchen.

“Will you call me when you get back to Austin?” he called out.

“I’ll text.”

And then she was gone.

He went back inside to find Kari sitting at the kitchen table.

“Where’s Angela?” she asked.

“She went back to school.” Marc collapsed in a chair beside Kari.

“God, Marc. I’m so sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yeah, it kinda was. You’re not a sex-on-the-kitchen-table kind of guy.”

Marc sighed. “First Daniel, now Angela. From now on, when we get naked, maybe we’d better keep it behind closed doors.”

Kari nodded. “I guess Angela doesn’t like the idea of her father having a sex life. Then again, I can’t imagine any kid who wants to spend much time thinking about that.”

Marc exhaled, his eyes drifting closed.

“You’re having a really hard time with this, aren’t you?” she asked.

He was silent.

“It makes you feel guilty,” she said.

“Yeah. I guess it does.”

“So how did she feel about the relationships you had with women when she was growing up?”

“There weren’t any.”

Kari drew back. “Are you telling me it’s been
eighteen years
since you had sex?”

“No! Good God, no. It’s not as if there haven’t been women. But every time I dated a woman in Rainbow Valley, the gossip went wild. I hated that. Everybody knows everybody else’s business around here. And then Angela got older, to an age where whatever women I saw affected her, too. And then I got so busy with the vineyard, and years passed, and suddenly…here I am.”

“So you haven’t had any real relationships?”

Marc realized just how pathetic that sounded. “No. I was always afraid of it causing a problem.”

“And now it has?”

Marc didn’t know what to say to that. Yeah, it was a problem, but at what point was he supposed to stop worrying about how his daughter might feel about his personal life and start
living
that personal life?

“Marc, I want you to listen to me,” Kari said. “If I’m causing a problem between you and your daughter, I’m out of here. All you have to do is say the word. I’m serious. What we have is just fun and games, right? That was our deal. But you and your daughter—that’s forever.”

Yes. Fun and games. Wasn’t that what they’d agreed on? But when he thought about Kari leaving, he had the oddest sensation that it would open up a hole inside him he’d never be able to fill again. Being with her was like having a window into the life he’d put on hold all these years, and the last thing he wanted to do was let her go.

“I want you to stay,” he told her. “Angela is just going to have to deal with it.”

When he dropped his head with a sigh, she squeezed his hand. “You’re still having a problem with this.”

“I’m just worried about her. She says she doesn’t like school. That’s why she came home.”

“Don’t a lot of freshmen get homesick?”

“So I hear. I just never imagined she’d be one of those kids. She says she had a fight with her roommate.”

“She’ll work it out.”

“Maybe. But if she can’t concentrate on her classes—”

“Did she do well in high school?”

“Valedictorian.”

“Did you raise her right?”

“Of course I did.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about. A smart girl who was raised right is going to be just fine in the end no matter what happens in the middle. So you don’t need to worry.”

“She told me she’s not going to drop out.”

“Well, that’s good, right?”

“I don’t like it that she even said the words.”

“At her age, kids can change from day to day,” Kari said. “Hour to hour sometimes. I know it’s pointless to tell you not to worry because that’s what you do, but things really are going to work themselves out.”

She leaned in and gave him a kiss. Just the touch of her lips and the feel of her palm against his cheek calmed his nerves and cleared his mind. When she pulled away and smiled at him, he ducked his head and kissed her again, losing himself in the feeling, and soon he found himself believing every word she said. Maybe everything really was going to be all right.

The next day at Rosie’s, Kari went out of her way to keep her momentum going, to let loose on the job, have fun, be charming, and play with the kids. Bobbie sidled up to the men, practically doing pole dances without the pole. As they compared tips at the end of the day, Kari just about jumped for joy.

She came out five bucks ahead of Bobbie.

Bobbie looked horrified. “That’s impossible!”

“Oh, no,” Kari said. “Do you think I counted wrong?”

“What I think is that you told Marla to give you all the kids. Of course you get all the tips. That’s not fair.”

“You’ve never wanted the kids,” Gloria said.

“I do if that’s where the money is!”

“You’ve never made much money on tables with kids before. What’s going to change now?”

Bobbie looked a little bewildered at that, her brows drawing together angrily. “You’re right. The last thing I want is all the snot-nosed brats.” She glared at Kari. “Game
on
.”

The day after that Kari hit the ground running, smiling at everyone and making certain all her customers had a good time. She made a fuss over the babies, which wasn’t hard to do because she loved babies. She ran to take photos if tourists wanted them. Even during the busiest shift, she found she had plenty of time once she got into a rhythm. If she goofed and it delayed somebody getting their lunch, she gave the customer a good-natured apology and moved her tail to correct the error. And through it all, she kept a smile on her face.

Unfortunately, camera guy showed up again and started asking her a ton of questions. Since he wasn’t movie star hot, Bobbie didn’t horn in, even though this time Kari wished she would.
I think he likes you
, Gloria said, and when his questions got increasingly personal, Kari was starting to think she was right. She excused herself as quickly as she could in case he was working up the nerve to ask her out. She breathed a sigh of relief when he finally asked for his check and left.

As the lunch rush wound down but there were still plenty of customers in the restaurant, Kari had a crazy thought and ran with it. She asked a couple of kids if they could balance a spoon on their noses, then proceeded to do it herself. She held her head very still, rested the bowl of the spoon against her nose, and when it looked as if it was going to stay, she held her arms out with a flourish.

The kids clapped, which led everybody else in the place to turn around and look. Kari turned slowly, showing off the spoon as it dangled from her nose, and pretty soon people were asking for spoons so they could try it. As they did, Kari took a few orders and delivered a few lunches. Bobbie rolled her eyes and told her how stupid it was, but there was nothing stupid about the attention Kari got from the customers.

At the end of their shift, when Kari innocently reported seven dollars more in tips than Bobbie, Gloria said, “Gee, Bobbie. Maybe the last few days weren’t flukes after all.”