Father Of The Brat

“That’s ridiculous,” she assured him. “Why would I want to have anything to do with an overbearing, cynical, sarcastic egomaniac like you? Besides, you were always too thin.”

He patted his belly. “Yeah, I can’t believe I only weighed 150 when I graduated from high school. Age has added about thirty pounds to this carcass.”

And all of it exquisitely arranged and proportioned, Maddy thought as Carver turned to make his way toward the cashier. Funny, she’d never noticed what a nice tush he had. She felt her face flame and covered her cheeks with her cool hands before he could see her reaction and sense the waywardness of her thoughts.

Good heavens, what had come over her? Clearly she’d gone too long without any kind of male companionship, she told herself. That could be the only reason for why she was so thoroughly turned on by Carver Venner.

She hadn’t been with anyone since her husband, but even before Dennis had expressed his desire to be rid of Maddy, their sexual relationship had been on a steady downhill slide. She supposed, looking back, that there had been plenty of warning signs to let her know what was coming. Dennis had been staying at work later and later, and going in earlier and earlier. He’d usually been too tired to make love, and had always had something else to do on the weekends besides spend time with her. And if she was perfectly honest, she had to admit that she hadn’t missed him all that much when he was gone.

They’d stopped talking about anything of significance, their conversations simply stilted exchanges of daily experiences and observations. Her own job had become extremely demanding by then, and she hadn’t really had the time to think much about where her personal life was headed.

Still, when her husband had announced his intention to leave, Maddy had been floored. What had been the real shocker, though, was his reason for wanting out. Before they’d married, they’d talked extensively about the subject of children. Dennis had known exactly what he was getting into with her. Back then, he’d assured her that remaining childless wouldn’t be a problem. He wanted Maddy, not kids. Bottom line.

But suddenly, finding himself childless in his mid-thirties was a realization he couldn’t tolerate. He wanted kids, right away, and Maddy wouldn’t provide him with any. So he’d found someone who would. A nice, ripe, enthusiastic twenty-three-year-old who was more than ready to settle down and start a family.

So Maddy had said sayonara and wished him well. What else could she have done? The divorce had been as amicable as the two of them could make it under the circumstances. In a lot of ways, she supposed she was still a little numb from the experience. Maybe that was why she hadn’t dated anyone since her separation from her husband. Or maybe it was because no one had seemed much interested. Or maybe it was because she just didn’t have the time.

Watching Carver Venner as he paid for their lunch and exited the café, however, she realized it wasn’t because she didn’t have those kinds of feelings anymore. The way that man filled out a pair of jeans…As she continued to study him, he turned to look at her, waiting for her to catch up. He pushed up the sleeves of his charcoal sweater to reveal truly phenomenal forearms, then hooked his hands over intriguingly trim hips.

If Carver Venner had indeed gained thirty pounds since graduation, she thought, it was all solid muscle. The belly he had patted only moments ago was as flat as a steam iron. She wondered if the flesh covering it was as hot.

Bad move, Maddy, she told herself. The last thing she needed to be doing was wondering what Carver Venner looked like naked. Maddy Saunders had certainly never done that. Well, not for any length of time anyway. And none too accurately, either, since the high-school Maddy had never seen a naked man outside the Encyclopaedia Britannica. However, since married life had provided her with some working knowledge of the male anatomy, she could now imagine all too well what kind of equipment Carver was carrying. Boy, could she imagine.

“According to the arrival screen, the plane’s on the runway,” he said as she exited the café behind him. He looked anxious and agitated and not a little uncertain.

“Something’s been bothering me about this thing,” he added when she rejoined him. “Beyond the obvious, I mean.”

“What’s that?”

He began to walk slowly toward the terminal, and Maddy easily fell into step beside him. “How come there’s no one contesting this arrangement?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, how come there are no outraged grandparents who are insisting that Rachel should come to live with them? I remember Abby saying she had a sister, so why isn’t Rachel’s aunt demanding custody? Why is everyone sending the kid off to live with a total stranger, even if the total stranger is perceived to be the kid’s father—which I’m not,” he added hastily.

This was always the toughest part to explain, Maddy thought. How did one make people like Carver—people who came from loving families—understand that a lot of kids didn’t grow up in the same kind of environment?

“Rachel does have a grandmother,” she began. “And she has an aunt and uncle. But the grandmother is an alcoholic who’s incapable of raising a child. And the aunt and uncle are financially strapped at the moment. Not to mention the fact that none of them, nor any of Rachel’s other relatives, has expressed an interest in taking her in.”

Carver glanced away, at some point over Maddy’s left shoulder. “In other words, nobody wants her.”

She nodded. “Unfortunately, that’s pretty much the gist of it.”

He said nothing in response to her assertion. Instead, he shook a cigarette from a pack that appeared out of nowhere, tucked it between his lips and lit it with a less than steady hand.

“I’ll go with you to the terminal,” Maddy told him. “But I’ll hang back and give you a few minutes alone with your daughter. There will be time for the three of us to talk later.”

“She’s not my daughter,” Carver insisted, inhaling deeply on the cigarette again.

“I guess we’ll have to let the courts decide that.”

“Regardless of what the courts decide, Maddy, Rachel Stillman is not my daughter.”

“Whatever you say, Carver.”

“She’s not my daughter,” he repeated adamantly. “She’s not.”

She was his daughter.

As soon as Carver saw the girl walk into the terminal, he knew without question that she was she was the fruit of his loins. Her dark brown hair and pale blue eyes, her lanky build and accelerated height, her square face, thin nose and full lips…

Had Carver Venner been born a girl, he would have looked exactly like Rachel Stillman when he was twelve years old. And he probably would have dressed like her, too, he thought. Except that his clothes would have fit. Everything Rachel wore—from her plaid flannel shirt and Pearl Jam T-shirt to her tattered army fatigues—were about four sizes too big for her. Even her boots looked as if she’d pilfered them from a six-foot-plus construction worker.

Her hair hung down around her shoulders with two strands in front wrapped in some kind of multicolored thread, and when she tucked the uncombed tresses behind her ears, he saw that one was pierced approximately a half dozen times, the other even more. Seemingly hundreds of bracelets made of everything from rubber to straw circled her forearms, and a long pendant—a peace symbol almost identical to one he’d worn when he was her age—swung between what would someday be breasts.

She approached him without ever slowing or altering her stride—as if she knew as immediately as he that they were related—eyed him warily, sighed dramatically, cracked her gum a couple of times and said, “I’m not calling you Daddy.”

Nonplussed, Carver fired back, “Who asked you to?”

Rachel shrugged, as if she couldn’t care less about anything, nodded toward the cigarette burning between his fingers and asked, “Got another smoke?”

He glanced down at his hand, then back at the girl. “What, for you?”

She nodded.

“Are you nuts?”

This time she shook her head.

He sucked hard on the cigarette, and amid a billowing expulsion of smoke asked, “Don’t you know these things will kill you?”

She eyed him blandly. “Doesn’t seem to worry you too much.”

“Yeah, well…” Carver looked down at the cigarette, reluctantly tossed it to the floor and ground it out with the toe of his hiking boot. He frowned. “Well, maybe it should worry you.”

She made a face, one Carver was certain was endemic of twelve-year-olds everywhere. “Nothing worries me. I’m a kid. Haven’t you heard? We’re immortal.”

Oh, yeah, Carver thought. She was his offspring, all right. Sarcastic, cocky and smart-mouthed as all get out. He suddenly regretted a lot of things he’d said to his own parents when he was a boy.

Without even realizing he needed to sit down, he slumped into a nearby chair. He dropped his head into his hands, raked his fingers through his hair and tried not to panic. A daughter. God. Who knew?

“Mom told me I could get my nose pierced back in L.A., but she, you know, checked out on me before she could sign the permission slip. So, what do you say? You got a problem with it?”

Carver looked up again to find that his daughter—his daughter—had taken the seat next to his. She studied him with a steady, to-the-point gaze, apparently completely unburdened of any grief one might have expected her to feel for the loss of the woman who had raised her.

“Checked out on you?” he repeated incredulously. “Your mother is dead, and that’s all you have to say about it?”

Rachel rolled her eyes and toddled her head around in the way kids do when they don’t want to be bothered with adults who are clearly idiots. “She wasn’t exactly June Cleaver, all right? It’s hard to miss someone who wasn’t, you know, there to begin with.”