The Daughter Merger

“I doubt anyone believes there’s a magic formula. And think about it. You can be knowledgeable about something you’ve never done yourself. Just remember all the coaches and movie directors and teachers, for example.”

“Maybe.” David’s eyes, clear and intelligent, pinned her. “Tell me what you were going to say earlier. Your two cents.”

Her cheeks warmed again. Wishing passionately that she had never opened her big mouth, Grace said diffidently, “Only that I believe the most important thing we can do is praise our children often, and tell them just as often that we love them.”

“Love and praise,” he repeated, deadpan.

He wanted some secret, and she had offered the equivalent of the ABCs. Something stupidly obvious. Her chest burned. She felt stupid.

“I’m sorry,” Grace began. “I’m sure the answer for you and Claire is far more complex.”

David let out a sound that might have been anything: a sigh, a grunt of wry laughter, self-disgust. She realized he hadn’t even heard her hasty apology.

“Love and praise,” he repeated. “Neither of which I have any talent whatsoever at expressing.”

Appalled, she began, “Oh, but…”

“My personal life, Ms. Blanchet, has not been an overwhelming success. Chances are, you’re right about why.” He looked at her without expression. “Perhaps we should go for dinner now.”

She couldn’t leave it at that. “Rebellious teenagers can happen to anyone.”

His eyes were opaque. “Can they?”

“And divorce sure as heck can. You weren’t the alcoholic.”

“Maybe I drove Miranda to drink.” He seemed to be musing, as though the subject were of merely academic interest.

“Did you?” she dared to ask, and then instantly wished she hadn’t. She already knew as much as she had to know to help Claire. The rest of this wasn’t her business. This man did not want her help, assuming she would have the slightest idea how to give it.

With sudden and ill-concealed impatience, he shrugged. “Who knows? That disaster is long past mending. Let’s stick to Claire, if you don’t mind.”

Translation: Keep your nose where it belongs. He might as well have waved a sign.

And he was absolutely right. She’d been nosy. Worse—although mercifully he couldn’t know—she had let herself be intrigued by David Whitcomb himself. Big mistake.

“I’ll go call the girls,” she said, rising hastily enough that she scared Lemieux, who shot out of the room. To top it off, Grace stepped carelessly on one of her shoes and lurched into the coffee table.

David started to rise. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, yeah.” Just being her usual graceful, elegant, self. Why, she mourned, had her mother not insisted on ballet lessons? Pretending she didn’t feel ridiculously self-conscious, she said, “I’ll tell you what. If you don’t mind waiting about three minutes, I’d like to change clothes. If we’re really going out for pizza, jeans sound more comfortable.” Besides, poor Lemieux had dampened a goodly portion of her skirt.

“No hurry.”

“Right.” She ducked behind the coffee table and grabbed her navy pumps. Aware of his gaze on her back, she clutched at her dignity and strolled out. Only when she was out of his sight did she race up the stairs, banging her knuckles against Linnet’s bedroom door as she passed.

“Girls! We’re leaving for dinner in about two minutes.”

She stripped off her panty hose and suit with record speed, sighed over the skirt, which would now have to be dry-cleaned, and pulled on jeans. At least a full minute was wasted by her agonizing over which shirt to choose. Finally, annoyed with herself, Grace grabbed a vee-neck cotton sweater in a luscious shade of soft coral, brushed her hair firmly and slipped on a pair of clogs.

Linnet’s door was still closed. Grace rapped again. “Girls?”

“Can’t we just phone in an order?” her daughter called. “We have homework.”

Now, why did that sound canned? Could it be that someone else had planted the words in Linnet’s mouth?

Without asking permission, Grace opened the door. Both girls were sprawled on the rug with a teen magazine open in front of them. Linnet made a jerky motion as though to push the magazine out of sight under the bed and then blushed when she realized she was too late.

“We do,” she said hurriedly. “Have homework, I mean. It’s just that my YM came today, and we were only looking.”

“That’s fine,” Grace said equably. “You’ll have plenty of time to do your homework later. But right now, Claire’s dad is waiting to take us out for pizza. And I’m waiting to hear all about the audition.”

“Oh!” Linnet’s face lit and then clouded as quickly. She jumped up. “It was so scary. Wasn’t it, Claire?”

Before the other girl could answer, Grace smiled at her. “I hear you were fabulous. Your dad says you’re a natural.”

The pretty dark-haired girl squirmed. “It, um, went okay. But it was scary.”

“I would never, in a million years, have gone out on stage in front of an audience at your age,” Grace admitted. “I’m amazed at you two.”

They blushed and mumbled something, not protesting again as she hustled them downstairs where David waited. He opened the rear passenger door of the sedan. Linnet climbed in with a smile of thanks. Claire, of course, sauntered to the other side and got in on her own, refusing to accept even a routine courtesy from her father.

Once in herself, Grace repeated her praise. “What about you?” she asked David. “Did you ever do any acting?”

“Actually, I did,” he stunned her by saying. “I even played Benedick in Much Ado, once upon a time.”

“You did?” his daughter exclaimed from the back-seat. She sounded as if he’d admitted to having flown to the moon or served time for murder one.

“Uh-huh.” He was smart enough to keep his response low-key. Starting the car and pulling on to the street, David continued, “I acted in both high school and college. Not during football season—I was a wide receiver. But the rest of the year…heck, I did A Streetcar Named Desire, Inherit the Wind…probably a dozen plays.”

“Well.” Grace tried very hard not to sound as poleaxed as Claire had. “I can see you as Benedick,” she heard herself saying, and realized it was true.

He shot her a glance. “Flailing against the inevitable?”

Marriage and love, he meant. Benedick had been determined never to take a wife. To his horror, his friends fell one by one to the lure of gentle women—or, perhaps more accurately, to the lure of the manors and acres with which fathers were willing to dower daughters of marriageable age. And Benedick, poor Benedick, loved a sharp-tongued spinster without even knowing it, until she taunted him into admitting to his weakness. And until she admitted to needing him.

Grace wondered if Benedick had tried marriage once before, and failed. Shakespeare hadn’t said, not that she recalled. Benedick might well have been a man who didn’t know how to tell his daughter he loved her. He was rather clumsy about expressing affection.

She could hardly say that, however. “I was thinking more of his cynicism.”

Could a man’s eyes smile when his mouth hadn’t curved?

“So you think I’m a cynic,” he murmured.

“What’s a cynic?” Linnet piped up.

“Somebody who thinks everything is going to turn out bad,” Claire said.

“Not exactly.” Grace smiled over her shoulder at the two girls. “That’s a pessimist. A cynic is more somebody who thinks everyone is really behaving selfishly no matter how it appears on the surface.”