Firefighter Daddy (8 page)

Chapter Six

Mitch kept a firm grip on his daughter’s slender little hand as they waited for a walk signal to cross Powell Street. She was old enough to know better than to rush into traffic, but he felt better knowing she was there at his side, safe and secure.

“Have you ever been to an art opening, Dad?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Me either. Miss Sunshine said there’d be wine an’ cheese.”

“You’re a little young to be drinking wine,” Mitch teased.

Miranda giggled. “I wonder if there’ll be pop. I can have some if there is, right?”

“Sure. It’s a special occasion. But just a small glass, okay? Or maybe there’ll be juice.” Laura hadn’t wanted their daughter eating a lot of junk food.

“You already said yes to pop. You can’t change your mind.”

“I won’t. But just one,” he said, doing his best to sound firm.

“I hope there’ll be other stuff to eat besides cheese. I only like orange cheese, not the stinky white stuff that Grams buys.”

He had to agree with that. “They might have orange cheese.”

“I hope they have cookies.”

Wine and cookies? He doubted it, but what the heck. Aside from the breakfast cereal he bought, his mother kept the house stocked with health food, most of it organic. Miranda had a healthy diet. How much harm could there be in a glass of pop and a couple of cookies?

His mother’s boyfriend, Thomas, had picked up Rory and his mother and they’d gone downtown to have dinner with Annie McGaskell and Copper Pennington. He and Miranda had been invited to join them, but he had declined. He wasn’t ready to spend that much time with their new neighbor. He felt a little bit out of control when he was around her, and that scared the hell out of him. Luckily, Miranda hadn’t been around when the dinner invitation was extended. She would have begged to go along, and he had a hard time saying no to her.

Rory had been living upstairs for less than two weeks, but it felt like much longer. In a good way, mostly. Miranda talked nonstop about her, declaring she was the best teacher ever, his mother claimed she was the best tenant she’d ever had, and he was slowly coming around to agreeing on both counts. Miranda seemed to be behaving at school, which meant no unexpected phone calls from the teacher, and he was grateful for that. He’d also developed the habit of checking to see if her van was parked on the street, and wondering when she’d be home if it wasn’t. In a nonstalkerish way, he hoped.

For the past year, he’d often tried to figure out how Laura would have handled their daughter in a given situation. Now he also found himself wondering what Rory would do. Although she had insisted she didn’t want a family of her own, she had a natural, comfortable way with children that he envied.

A cable car jangled past and, as if on cue, Miranda brightened. “Will you ever want to go for a cable-car ride?” she asked.

“We’ll do it one of these days.”

“When?”

He sighed. At least the familiar old sound hadn’t made him feel as though he was suffocating. “I’m not sure.” And that was the truth.

He had assumed the exhibit would be at the Museum of Modern Art, but it was at a private gallery near Union Square. The place was all windows, and from the sidewalk across the street he could see it was already teeming with art aficionados. He hated crowds.

“Look,” Miranda said, pointing at the gallery across the street. “I can see Miss Sunshine. And Grams and Thomas and Annie.”

Mitch squeezed his daughter’s hand. He had already spotted Rory. She stood near a window with the others, but she might as well have been alone. As she laughed and glanced animatedly from one companion to another, her long hair swung around her shoulders and reflected the light. Was she aware that she stood out from the rest of the crowd? In a good way, of course. He was pretty sure she wasn’t. She was definitely the only person he knew who could wear turquoise pants with a lime-green jacket, and make it work. From where he stood, he couldn’t tell what she had on her feet, but he had a hunch he was going to like it.

His mother had her arm linked with Thomas’s. It had taken Mitch a while to get used to his mother having another man in her life, but he was slowly coming around to the idea. Thomas was a quiet, thoughtful man who’d spent his working life as a reporter for the
San Francisco Chronicle,
and who wrote poetry in his spare time. Mitch had read some of it, and he’d taken his mother’s word that it was good. Thomas had a full head of unruly gray hair and a beard to match, which reminded Miranda of Santa Claus. Next to Thomas and Betsy, Annie’s petite stature made her look like an elf.

When the light turned green Mitch and his daughter crossed the street and went inside. San Francisco was full of art lovers, and judging by the size of this crowd, Copper Pennington’s work was well-known. The throng was shoulder-to-shoulder, and the place was abuzz with conversation and anticipation. Mitch took a quick inventory of the fire exits.

“Do you like Rory’s mom’s paintings, Dad?”

“They’re very…colorful.” They were modern or abstract or whatever the term was, and huge. Floor-to-ceiling huge.

“Can you see stuff in them?”

He had no idea what she was talking about. “What kind of stuff?”

“Like in the clouds. Miss Sunshine says if you look at her mother’s paintings long enough, you’ll see animal shapes and other things like that.”

He searched the closest painting, wishing this sort of thing didn’t make him feel as uncomfortable as it did. He had no imagination and he didn’t mind admitting it, but it was also possible that he couldn’t see anything in this painting because it wasn’t there.

After they joined his mother and Thomas, Annie and Rory, the conversation focused around Miranda’s excited chatter, giving him a moment to surreptitiously check out Rory’s footwear. Lime-green sandals, turquoise toe polish and a gold toe ring. He was pretty sure his heart missed a couple of beats.

When he looked up, she was smiling at him. “I’m so glad you two could make it. My mother is looking forward to meeting you.”

He was intrigued by the prospect of meeting her, too. He took a quick look around to see if he could spot her. He imagined she’d be tall and blond, like her daughter, and probably wearing something even more outrageous, in keeping with her paintings. Maybe a long, flowing caftan or something. If people still wore caftans.

Finally, Rory raised an arm and waved exuberantly. “Mom! Over here!”

Mitch couldn’t identify the object of her enthusiastic gesture until the crowd parted and a tiny, small-boned woman emerged. She was wearing a pair of extremely wide-legged black pants, a high-necked, hip-length tunic affair made of patchwork—a quilt?—and shoes with ridiculously high heels. Even with the several extra inches, she barely cleared Rory’s shoulder when the two of them embraced.

With voluminous hair in an orange-red shade that surely didn’t occur in nature, she more than lived up to her name. Mitch doubted she’d had the name or the hair since birth, but she was as beautiful as her daughter and she looked exactly like the kind of woman who would name her child Sunshine.

“So?” she said to Rory. “What do you think?”

“Definitely your best work ever. I love every single one of them.”

“Have you picked your favorite?”

Rory laughed. “Trust me, Mom.
None
of these will fit in my apartment, but I especially love the canvas behind the reception desk. The one that looks like a pod of whales surfacing at sunset.”

“That’s one of my favorites, too. It’s called
California Gray.
I’ll have them mark it sold and we’ll keep it at my place until you have room for it.”

Mitch stared hard at the painting. Gray whales? He assumed that was what she meant. And a sunset? All he saw were huge splashes of dark blue and red and orange paint.

“I have a canvas from each of my mother’s series,” Rory told them.

That explained all the artwork he’d carried upstairs when she moved in.

She placed a hand on Miranda’s shoulder. “Mom, this is Betsy’s son, Mitch, and his daughter, Miranda.”

Copper extended her multi-ringed hand. “Ah, yes. The firefighter.” Then she shifted her attention to Miranda and smiled. “And what do you do?”

She giggled. “I go to school. I’m in Miss Sunshine’s class.”

“You are? Is she a good teacher?”

“The awesomest!”

“I thought she would be. Do you like art?” Copper asked.

Miranda’s head bobbed excitedly. “We do art at school, and Miss Sunshine’s bringing us here on a field trip next week.”

“So I hear.”

“Did you paint all these pictures yourself?” Miranda asked.

“Yes, I did. What do you think of them?”

“I think they’re very watery, like the ocean.”

Copper’s smile indicated she was impressed. “That’s an excellent observation. I was thinking about the ocean when I painted them.”

She shifted her attention to Mitch. “She’s very perceptive for someone so young.”

He was tempted to tell her that Miranda didn’t get it from him, but he had a hunch Copper Pennington already had him pegged. Before he could think of something intelligent-sounding to say about her paintings, they were joined by a tall, intellectual-looking man and a young, hip-looking woman.

“Dad? What are you doing here?”

Rory hadn’t said anything about her father joining them, and her surprise suggested she hadn’t been expecting him. In an instant, Copper’s demeanor switched from warm to icy. Her greeting was a single word.

“Sam.”

If his appearance caught her off guard, she wasn’t letting on.

Rory hugged her father warmly, but when she spoke to her mother, there was a hint of accusation in her tone.

“Did you know he was coming?”

“Of course. He knows better than to show up at one of my openings unannounced.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“He asked me not to.”

“I wanted to surprise you,” Sam said. “And I wish the two of you wouldn’t talk about me as though I’m not in the room.”

Copper gave him a wry smile. “If you’d rather we talked behind your back—”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Rory said. “Let’s be nice.”

“
Nice
isn’t in your mother’s vocabulary.”

Copper ignored the jibe and studied his much-younger companion instead. “At least I’m not—”

Rory cut off her mother’s response. “For heaven’s sake, stop. Please.”

She made another round of introductions and while she did, Mitch took stock of the newcomers. Rory’s father was as carefully put together as his ex-wife, albeit very differently. If he was deliberately striving to look literary, he’d succeeded. Longish salt-and-pepper hair pulled back into a ponytail. Bifocals low on his nose. Black turtleneck. Charcoal tweed jacket with suede elbow patches. Blue jeans. His only accessory was the stunning young brunette on his arm.

“I’d like everyone to meet my assistant, Daisy Dumont,” he said.

“It’s spelled
D-a-y-z-e-e.
” She smiled as though she was revealing a secret.

D-a-y-z-e-e?
What was wrong with
D-a-i-s-y?
At least with that she wouldn’t have to go through life spelling her name every time she was introduced.

Sam made a pretense of taking Dayzee’s hand in his. “Copper. You’re looking well.”

Between Rory, her mother and the girlfriend, Mitch wondered who would strangle Sam first. He usually was not a fan of family drama, but this was more interesting than art. Especially
this
art, because no matter how long or how hard he stared at these paintings, he couldn’t make out anything familiar. At some point he would have to say something to the artist, and he had no idea what that would be.

These are mighty big paintings for such a small woman.
Even he knew better than that.

Nice use of color.
Duh.

Go ahead and strangle him.
Yep. Under the circumstances, that seemed most fitting.

“Did you fire your last assistant or did she find a real job?” Copper asked. Ouch.

Sam didn’t respond.

Her next comment was addressed to Dayzee. “How’s the book-writing business these days?”

The young woman looked completely at a loss, making it clear that whatever she did to “assist” Sam, it didn’t involve his literary pursuits.

Sam seemed to take his wife’s barbs in stride. “Dayzee’s on my PR team.”

“How nice. What’s your specialty, Dayzee?” Copper asked. “Reader satisfaction?”

Rory elbowed her mother, and Mitch found himself feeling sorry for her. If this was an indication of what her family life had been like, no wonder she’d sworn off having one of her own.

Dayzee gave them all a benign smile. She didn’t look offended, probably because she missed the innuendo. “Your daughter is adorable,” she said to Rory, giving Sam’s arm a playful swat. “Naughty man. You didn’t tell me you were a grandfather.”

It was a few seconds before it dawned on Mitch that she thought Rory was Miranda’s mother, and then he had a hard time drawing a breath.

Rory broke the stunned silence. “I don’t have children. This is Mitch’s daughter.”

Dayzee mustn’t have been paying attention when they were introduced.

Miranda, who had started to fidget, tugged on her grandmother’s sleeve and whispered something to her.

“Excuse us,” Betsy said. “We need to find a wash-room.”

Mitch nodded his thanks to his mother as she hustled Miranda away. Thomas and Annie took advantage of the opportunity to escape with them. After they left, a tall middle-aged woman with a gallery name tag pinned to the lapel of her gray blazer approached them. “Ms. Pennington? We’d like to get started in about ten minutes. Is there anything you need?”

“I should check the podium.”

“Good idea. I’ll help you get set up.”

“Rory, would you come with me? I’m giving a brief introduction to the show and I’d like you to check my notes.”

If it was an excuse to get Rory away from her father, it worked. The three women walked away, leaving Mitch with Sam and Dayzee.

“I totally see what you mean about how impossible she is,” Dayzee said.