Her Man Friday (39 page)

Lily nodded. "Good. As bad as this was, maybe, ultimately, some good will come of it. Now then," she added quickly, "how about the two of us make an example out of them and do likewise?"

He studied her in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"How about the two of us do a lot of talking on the way to your place? And even more after we get there?"

He shook his head adamantly. No way was he going to let her take advantage of his emotions right now. No way was he going to let her talk him into doing something he knew better than to do. No way was he going to let her get under his skin again. No way was he going to set himself up for that kind of fall.

"Forget it, Lily. It's over."

She expelled an impatient breath, running a restless hand through her bangs. "Leo, you have got to give me a chance to explain," she told him.

"No. I don't."

She dropped her hand in front of her, curling it into a fist. "Yes, dammit, you do." She snarled at him. Actually snarled, he noted. How incredibly… arousing. "You
will
give me a chance to talk about this before you take your findings to the board. You
will
."

"Why would I do something like that?"

"Because I deserve the opportunity, that's why. You know I do, Leo. You know it."

"Hey, kids, if I'm interrupting something here…" Eddie began, edging backward a bit, in an obvious effort to free himself of what was promising to be a pretty rabid confrontation.

"You're not interrupting anything, Eddie," Leo snapped. But he kept his gaze fixed on Lily. "Nothing except the usual farce that is my life, anyway."

"Oh, well, in that case," the other man said, jutting a thumb over his shoulder, "I think I hear my mother calling."

"Wait," Lily said, reaching out to curl her fingers around the other man's arm to prevent his flight.

Leo became unaccountably jealous at the sight, curling his own fingers into loose fists, before he remembered that he wasn't letting Lily Rigby under his skin again. He wasn't. He
wasn't
.

"Mr. Dolan," she continued, her voice much softer than it had been when she'd been addressing Leo, "I can only assume that you're the friend Leo called to help out. Thank you for what you did tonight, helping Chloe."

Eddie bunched up his shoulders and let them drop. "Don't mention it. I just hope everything works out okay for the kid."

Lily nodded. "Look, why don't you come to dinner at Ashling tomorrow evening?" she said. "It's the least we can offer you after your contribution tonight." Before Eddie could respond, she added, "And bring your friend Leo with you, would you?"

Eddie smiled, letting his gaze wander between Lily and Leo. "Yeah, okay. I think he's available."

"Eddie…"

"But ya know, Miss Rigby, he don't got the greatest table manners in the world. You sure you want him?"

Lily smiled, too. "Yes, I want him. And he'll have you there to keep him in line, won't he?"

Eddie smiled back. "Yeah, well, one of us will keep him in line, anyway."

She turned to face Leo again. "Will you come?" she asked him, her voice urgent now, instead of threatening. "And will you wait until after dinner tomorrow night to confront the board of directors? I promise you, Leo, it will all make sense to you after tomorrow night. You just have to give me the chance to explain."

He didn't want to. As Leo stood there in a spill of yellow lamplight on the street corner, he told himself not to go for it, not to give Lily the chance she was asking for, because she was a thief and a liar, and she didn't deserve an opportunity to mess him up again.

But her eyes were so big and so beautiful and so full of earnest need that he couldn't quite find it within himself to refuse her. It was only one more day, he told himself. Less than forty-eight hours. The board of directors would be no worse off hearing his report in two days, should he wait until then to get it all prepared.

God, he was such a sap.

But maybe, just maybe, if he gave Lily the chance she requested, she would tell him the truth. And better still, he thought—
hoped
—further, maybe, just maybe, that truth would even make sense.

As Schuyler's dark limo rolled down rural county roads toward home, he studied the young girl seated across from him, who, thankfully, had finally stopped crying. Considering the wash of tears she had released since they'd left that abominable place, he supposed that at this point, she was pretty much dried out. Now Chloe simply stared numbly out the window at the swiftly passing darkness outside. Whatever she had been through tonight, it had humbled her greatly. It had terrified her. It had humanized her. And now, Schuyler knew, her life was going to be even more difficult than it had been before.

His daughter.

How extraordinary.

Of course, he'd known since the day she arrived at Ashling that she was his daughter. Her eyes were identical to his, and he'd learned quickly that she'd been cursed with the same kind of brain. But something other than that, something more immediate, more profound, something he would be hard pressed to explain, had made the inescapability of their blood relationship even more clear to him.

Something in Chloe had spoken to him that day. Without words. Without expression. Even without thought. He had discovered within himself the existence of some previously unfelt emotion, the genesis of which had occurred that very day. Because as he'd gazed for the first time upon the young girl whom a now forgotten social worker had introduced as his daughter, Schuyler had known—had
known
—down to the very depths of his soul, that she was, quite simply, his.

And the knowledge of that had terrified him.

So he had turned from it. He had tried to deny it. He had made every effort to wish it away. Unfortunately, when one was "gifted"—he still curdled at that word—with the kind of brain capacity he had, one could never banish knowledge completely. And the recognition of Chloe's relationship never hovered far from his consciousness. Still, until tonight, he had never acknowledged it to anyone but himself. And now, of course, he realized how foolish he had been in thinking he could maintain that status quo.

Chloe was his daughter. He was her father. And now, he was going to have to deal with that, beyond the physical, genetic repercussions. Whether he liked it or not, from this day onward, he was going to have to accept the emotional ones, as well. Somehow, he was going to have to join the two without harming either structure. And he was going to have to try to make Chloe understand why he hadn't bridged the chasm between them before now.

To do that, he would have to make allowances, would have to offer explanations, would have to try and make sense of it all. He didn't relish the coming days and weeks and months and years, but he understood now that he could no more avoid them than he could stop the sun from rising in the morning. Reality, it would appear, had intruded into his perfect life, and would taint it for the rest of his days. He would have to be human now. He had no choice. And he would simply have to make the best of it.

"When I was fourteen," he said suddenly, softly, noting with dubious satisfaction the way Chloe flinched at the sudden sound of his voice in the otherwise silent car, "I had a friend who was much like your Lauren. His name was Jason, and I didn't like him much. But there are times in life when intimacy is bred with those who offend and annoy us the least. Plus, my mother detested him, something that went a long way toward cementing my friendship with him. He was not, shall we say, a good influence. Nor was he particularly reliable."

Chloe's face was still turned to the window, but she glanced his way as she said, "What happened to him?"

Schuyler crossed one leg over the other and flicked at a nonexistent piece of lint on his trouser leg. "I have no idea. I like to think he's in a Turkish prison somewhere, but something tells me he doubtless became either a highly successful CEO or else is, at this moment, holed up in Montana somewhere plotting to overthrow the government with a band of hired ex-Green Berets. He wasn't a very nice person."

There was another brief bout of silence, then Chloe remarked, "But you were friends with him."

"Yes. I was," Schuyler conceded. "For a time. I remember one night in particular—when I was fourteen, as providence would have it—when Jason convinced me to do something I shouldn't have done. Actually, that night wasn't the first occasion upon which he did that. It was just the first time doing something I shouldn't have done backfired on me."

Chloe hesitated only a moment before asking, "What happened?"

Schuyler inhaled deeply and released the breath slowly, trying to keep at bay memories of that night that remained far too fresh for his tolerance. "To make a long story, whose details I'd prefer not to discuss, short, I ended up alone, facing down five young men who had exceeded their genetic potential in the brawn and ugliness departments. Unfortunately, they weren't likewise gifted with brains, and any effort I made to talk them out of doing what they wanted to do failed most profoundly. To put it simply, they beat the hell out of me that night."

Chloe turned her head then, to face him fully, but in the dim light of the car, he had no idea how to gauge what was going through her head. Especially since she said nothing in response to his assertion.

"They broke my arm, my wrist, three fingers, and two ribs," he said. "I received a minor concussion, and had to have five stitches under my chin. If you ask me nicely, when we get home, I'll show you the scar. I am, after all, rather proud of it."

"Why?"

He sighed again and uncrossed his legs, leaning forward to weave the fingers of his hands together between them. Then he waited until he was sure Chloe was looking at him full on before he continued. "Because, my dear daughter, it's a very effective reminder of how close I came to submitting with much success to my own feelings of self-destruction." He leaned back in his seat, and this time, he was the one to stare out the window at the swiftly passing darkness.

"I hated myself when I was young," he told her, surprised at how easily the words came. "I hated being different from everyone else. I hated standing in the middle of a crowded room, pretending I felt comfortable, when I knew I would never be comfortable around anyone. I hated being able to easily comprehend things that baffled other people completely. I hated seeing things differently, understanding things differently, reeling things differently. And I hated knowing that no matter how hard I looked, I would never, ever, find anyone who was like me, anyone who shared the same thoughts and feelings I claimed myself. And I hated knowing that, even though I was surrounded by people—people who cared about me, even—I would essentially be alone forever.

"There were times, Chloe," he continued more softly, "when I wanted to die instead of having to go on with the rest of my life feeling the way I felt, knowing the things I knew. And because of that, I frequently cast myself into situations that might, somehow, achieve such a goal for me, when I couldn't go about doing it on my own."

This time he did turn to look at her again. "At best, I wanted to create some understandable, identifiable reason for why I felt so angry and resentful and dissatisfied all the time. I needed an excuse for why I was so utterly unhappy. Talk about your rebel without a clue…"