Mischief 24/7 (12 page)

“We’re here now,” Court reminded her as they walked to the sidewalk and then to the narrow cement path leading up to the door of the only slightly shabby, midcentury brick house. “Why do you look so worried? Does he bite?”

“No, of course not,” Jade said as Court put his arm around her shoulders, tucking her in close to his side. He couldn’t seem to keep his hands off
her and kept finding ways to touch her, even casually.

She selected one of the keys from the ring that held her car key and inserted it in the frontdoor lock. “I don’t know why I bother,” she grumbled as they both realized she had just locked the door, not unlocked it. “He never locks the door. He never puts on the alarm. Life is just one big welcome mat for Teddy.”

“Good to hear. That gives me hope.”

“Then cling to that hope, because I’m pretty sure it won’t last,” Jade said, smiling for the first time in a while.

As they stepped into the small foyer area, Court immediately came up against a mix of smells, none of them unpleasant, that reminded him of years of pot roast cooking in the oven, and of his maternal grandmother’s lifelong affection for pine-oil cleaners. “It looked to me like this is a pretty quiet neighborhood.”

“It is,” Jade said as she stripped off her jacket and tossed it, and his, onto the back of a worn, overstuffed chair the color of overcooked spinach. “But we sometimes come up against disgruntled husbands who don’t like that we’ve provided their wives with photographs showing them coming out of motel rooms with young blonds on their arms. Uh-oh, brace yourself.”

Court looked across the living room to see a large Irish setter bounding across the carpet after
entering the room through a doorway at the far side. “Nice dog” was all he got out before the animal stood on its hind legs, put his front paws on Court’s chest and began trying to lick his face. “Watchdog, I take it?”

“Rockne! You know you’re not allowed to do that. Come on, boy, get down.
Now,
Rockne.”

“Obedient, too,” Court said as he rubbed the ecstatic dog behind its floppy ears until Rockne, probably knocked off balance by his wildly wagging tail, finally backed down.

“I’m sorry about that. My sister Jessica trained him, which explains a lot if you met Jessica. Come on, let’s get this over with. Teddy’s in his office, and obviously knows we’re here.”

Court followed Jade across the carpet as Rockne led the way back the way he’d come, allowing Jade to enter the room—office? den?— ahead of him. He was suddenly just the slightest bit nervous, as the last time he’d met a date’s father had been his high-school senior prom. After that, it was college girls, and then the parade of beautiful, independent, interchangeable women he met along the way. How did that Frank Sinatra song go?
At thirty-five, it was a very good year…

He wasn’t quite thirty-five, but it had been a long time since a doting father had stared him down, sized him up.

“Teddy? Sorry to bother you if you’re busy, but I’ve brought a friend home to meet you.” Court
stepped forward and put out his hand. “Teddy, this is Court Becket. Court, my father, Teddy Sunshine.”

“We spoke on the phone, sir, I believe,” Court said, his hand not only taken by Teddy Sunshine, but nearly crushed in the man’s ridiculously tight grip. “It’s good to meet you.”

“Nonsense,
my
pleasure,” Teddy replied with a broad wink. “I like when my girls bring their little friends home.”

“Teddy…” Jade said wearily, but Teddy Sunshine’s booming laugh took any sting out of his words. His warning?

Teddy Sunshine wasn’t exactly as Court had pictured the man. He wasn’t as tall, for one thing, probably not much taller than Jade, and he didn’t think anyone would recognize them as father and daughter. Teddy’s coloring was ruddy, his nose and cheeks flushed red with either long exposure to the outdoors or some sort of skin condition. He had the look of a once rather handsome, muscular man going slightly to fat around the middle, while still imposing enough to make anyone think twice before attacking him physically.

The thick shock of hair was a mix of silver and fading red, the eyes were Irish green, keenly intelligent, belying the loud Hawaiian print shirt that could otherwise trick a person into thinking him an affable, slightly silly middle-aged man interested in his dinner and his football games
and the cold glass of beer at his elbow as he sat in his overcooked-spinach-colored chair.

“Becket, you said?” Teddy asked, taking another shot at forcing the bones in Court’s right hand to cross over one another before he finally let go. “Any relation to Sam Becket?”

“My cousin, sir,” Court said with a smile, resisting the urge to rub his abused hand. “But I’m hoping you won’t hold that against me. We can’t pick our relatives, Mr. Sunshine, can we?”

“Well, now, that’s God’s truth,” Teddy agreed. “A few of mine come to mind that I could toss away and not miss.” He waved Court to one of the pair of straight-back wooden chairs on the far side of the old desk that was one of the few pieces of furniture in the long, narrow room. “Where’d you meet my Jade?”

“Sam introduced us when I saw them the other day, Teddy,” Jade said quickly. “Court really can’t stay, but how about I get you both something to drink? Some coffee?”

“Shame on me,” Teddy said with a self-deprecating chuckle, retaking the old leather swivel chair he’d risen from as they’d entered the room. “What a poor host I am. You do that, my angel, get us something to drink. Yes, coffee, I think, a fresh pot, and a plate of those sugar cookies you made the other night and think I don’t know are hidden in the flour canister. I’ll do my miserable best to make your new friend feel at home.” He winked
at Court. “Just slice and then bake, that’s the best she can do, but still better than store-bought, right?”

Jade looked at Court as if suddenly sorry she’d made the suggestion, but then turned to quit the room, Rockne behind her, tail still wagging madly, as if he knew she was heading for the kitchen.

Having remained standing as long as Jade was in the room, Court now watched her leave and then turned his attention to the knotty-pine paneling, a wood he hadn’t known still existed, frankly, before pointing to the wall behind Teddy’s desk and asking, “May I?”

“That’s why they’re there,” Teddy said affably. “Shameless promotion, but Jade thinks they add a little something to the room, so I humored her.”

Court quickly scanned the framed certificates. “Jade didn’t tell me you were a policeman, Mr. Sunshine. I’m very impressed. These are very impressive commendations.”

“It’s Teddy, and what the hell are you doing here? Most people would have figured she didn’t want to see them again.”

The friendly tone was gone. So was the wide smile that made the man look like a cross between a cherub and a Saturday-night drunk.

“I beg your pardon?” Court said as he returned to his chair. This time he sat down.

“No, you don’t. You don’t look like the kind that begs for anything. I tried to warn you off, but you’re
like Sam. You Beckets don’t take hints well, not too swift on the uptake or something. So what do you want? Jade? Of course you do, or you wouldn’t be here.”

Court didn’t bother to dissemble. “I think I’m falling in love with your daughter, yes. In fact, I’ve already told her I want to marry her. She may have thought I was joking, but I wasn’t. I’m not joking now.”

“Is that so? Too bad for you. Forget it. That’s not happening. I told Sam the same thing when he came to see me.”

Court sat back in the chair, his elbows on the wooden arms, his right hand pressed across his mouth, and looked at Teddy Sunshine. Just looked at him. Then he sat forward again, his fingers interlaced in front of him, and he smiled. “I think my cousin and I need to have a small talk. He’s still laboring under the mistaken impression that you were trying to
help
him with Jolie.”

Teddy shrugged, the hard edge leaving his tone, the affable smile back in place, although Court was fairly certain both changes were temporary.

“Who said I wasn’t? I put my girls first, Court. I knew what Jolie needed. I knew what she wanted and I knew her dreams. Lord knows we all lived with them day and night since she was old enough to walk and talk. A genuine drama queen, my Jolie. I want only her happiness and set
out to get it for her. Making your cousin Sam happy didn’t interest me. Still doesn’t.”

Court decided to give the man a small push. “So you decide what makes your daughters happy? Do they know that?”

Teddy’s green eyes narrowed behind his slyly lowered lids. “How many daughters do you have, Court? How many motherless daughters have you had to raise alone in this cold, dangerous, nasty world?”

Court nodded. “Point taken. That said, though, Jade’s a grown woman.”

“In some ways. In many ways, she’s the brightest of the bunch. In other ways, she’s the only child who still keeps me up nights worrying about her,” Teddy said, and then sighed. “I did some checking up on you since you called, you know. You live in Virginia. That’s along way away from Philadelphia.”

Court was beginning to sense where this was going. He was after Teddy’s chick, and had been cast in the role of fox in the henhouse. “If you were walking, yes, or traveling by ox cart. Not that long driving or flying.”

The leather chair creaked as Teddy tipped it back on its sturdy legs. “You’ve got money, too, I’ll say that for you. Just like Sam. That doesn’t mean anything to my girls, to their credit. Or to me, either.”

Court had negotiated with some tough customers, but in business, most people danced, feinted, worked the edges, avoided going head-on
with the other side of the bargaining table. Teddy Sunshine didn’t seem to think he needed to do that. He just stepped right up and used his best weapon at the start, the loving-father routine, to flog his opponent—in this case, Court. He must have been a barrel of laughs in the interrogation room.

When Teddy didn’t say anything else, Court obligingly filled the silence. “If you’re waiting for me to respond to that, I don’t have an answer for you. I’m certainly not going to apologize for having money, nor am I going to attempt to use that money as a weapon—the way you obviously use your influence over your daughters.”

Teddy’s smile was wide and unashamed. “Noticed that, did you? They’re good girls, the three of them. Jade made certain of that, more than I did, I’m ashamed to say. Nobody knows better where her responsibility lies than my Jade, maybe too much. So I’m not warning you off, the way you think I am, Court. I’m saving you some heartache by telling you—Jade’s going nowhere. Any bending will have to come from you, and I don’t think you bend too easy, do you? You don’t look the type.”

Court got to his feet and looked down at Teddy Sunshine, still sitting at his ease behind the desk. “So let me get this straight. It’s not me, it’s Virginia. It’s that I’d be taking Jade away from here. From you. Am I straight on this?”

“That’s only me warning you. I know my daughter.”

“Yet Jolie’s in California, and Jessica is it? Where’s she?”

“You said it, Court, you don’t have daughters of your own. They’re all different, my girls. Jolie never fit here, a real duck out of water. She fits now, where she is. It may not be where I wanted her to fit, but it’s where she wants to be, so that’s fine. And Jessica?” Teddy smiled again, looking all cherub once more. “Nobody has ever been able to steer that one anywhere she didn’t want to go, or stop her once she figured out where that anywhere was. I’ll say this to you in all honesty, Court, I’d rather try to hold up my hands to stop a train barreling at me down the tracks. You see? I know my girls.”

“So you say.”

“So I know. I’d let Jade go if I thought that would make her happy. But she’s stuck to me like gum on the bottom of my shoe, my boy. That responsibility thing she’s got firm in her head. Can’t shake her from it. My fault, a lot of it, after her mother up and left, but here she is and here she’ll stay, thinking her dear old dad can’t wipe his nose on his own. I can be ready to let go, but until she is, here we are, and there’s nothing you can do to change that.”

“You seem so very sure of that.”

“Only because I am. Now, I’m guessing you’ll take this as a personal challenge, and I thought of that. Don’t do it, son. It’s not that I’ll win, because

I’m not out to win. I’m just saying that you’ll lose. And Jade will get hurt. I won’t forgive you if she gets hurt, and I make a bad enemy.”

“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind,” Court said, and then turned as Jade reentered, carrying a tray holding a coffeepot, three cups and a plate piled high with sugar cookies. She looked pale and painfully nervous.

He gave her a reassuring smile as he took the tray from her and said, “So soon? Teddy and I were just getting to know each other.”

“L
ET’S TRY TO KEEP
moving. I don’t know Morgan all that well,” Court said, taking Jade’s hand as they negotiated the considerable foot traffic heading toward the security checkpoint of the departures area of the terminal, “but I’m guessing a woman like her isn’t used to being kept waiting.”

“We’re not that late, Court,” Jade told him, glancing up at one of the many clocks scattered along the walls. “Anyone would think you’re afraid of her.”

“Not afraid of her, no,” Court said, edging them past a woman pushing a stroller while also trying to hang on to a crying toddler. “I just have a busy person’s dislike of being late. It’s a failing I try to fight.”

“Obviously a losing battle for you so far,” Jade complained, narrowly missing having her shin banged by a wobbly-wheeled carry-on. “Where \did you say we’re meeting her?”

“Morgan arranged for a private room somewhere near the security checkpoint and—Wait, there she is now.”

Jade looked down the seemingly endless terminal, saw the well-dressed young woman waving at them and couldn’t help herself. She said, in some awe, “Wow.”

She wasn’t the only person in the terminal who had noticed the raven-haired woman in the trim, apricot two-piece suit. Both men and women were turning their heads, slyly or openly, to catch a glimpse of Morgan Eastwood as they passed by on either side of her.