Daddy's Home

He had done his best to forget that face. Done his best to put the plane crash behind him. He had put it behind him. It was others who wouldn’t let him forget. His mother. Kristen Kellar. If she hadn’t sent him the letter, he wouldn’t have had her image haunting him tonight.

Well, he would tuck the memories away in a remote corner of his mind again. The crash was in the past. He had survived. She had survived. End of story.

He was not a hero. Not even close to being one.

THE DOORBELL RANG and for one brief moment Kristen Kellar wished she had the time to wash her hair, change out of her sweats and apply some makeup before answering it. Then the moment passed.

She had spent too much of her life fussing about her appearance. In the past three weeks, she’d discovered that it was hard to worry about her outward appearance when she felt so awful.

She struggled to her feet, reaching for the crutches propped against the sofa, and hobbled over to the intercom to hear her fiancé’s voice say, “It’s me.”

Good grief! What was Keith doing at her apartment in the middle of the day? She should have washed her hair. Or at least changed her clothes. Keith always looked as if he’d stepped off the pages of GQ.

“Kristen, are you there?”

“Yes.” She buzzed the lobby door open, then smoothed her hand down the front of her gray sweatshirt. When she heard a knock at the door, she checked through the peephole before releasing the dead bolt.

Standing on the other side with not a hair out of place, looking every bit as polished as he did on television each night, was the man voted the Twin Cities’ number-one news anchor, Keith Jaxson. In his arms were flowers, lots of flowers.

Ever since the crash, he’d seemed distant and a bit impatient with what he considered her slow recovery. She knew he’d been disappointed by her request for a leave of absence from work. But now here he was bearing flowers, and she pushed such thoughts aside.

Her smile faded, however, the moment he spoke. The flowers weren’t from him.

“Mailman.” He grinned as if he’d said something witty. “Bob was going to have a messenger bring these over, but I said I was coming to see you and I might as well take them. I thought that the gifts and flowers would have stopped after a couple of weeks, but they just keep coming.”

He didn’t drop a kiss on her mouth as he stepped into the apartment but simply marched past her and headed for the dining-room table. Actually, he hadn’t kissed her since before the crash... unless one counted the light brushing of his lips across her forehead he had given her in the hospital.

“Bob says he’s never seen anyone get so many get-well wishes. You are one popular lady.” He set the flowers and a large shopping bag filled with cards and packages on the table. “It’s a good thing my ego’s healthy, isn’t it?”

“Isn’t it, though,” she murmured, wondering how she had never noticed just how self-centered he was. As he passed the mirror in the dining room, he smoothed his perfect hair.

“There are two more bags in my car. I can get them now or when I leave. Which do you prefer?” He didn’t look at her, but rather past her, as if there were a roomful of people behind her.

“It doesn’t matter,” she answered as she hobbled toward the sofa.

“Then I’ll get them later.”

“Fine.” She eased herself down onto the sofa.

Instead of coming to sit beside her, he stood at the edge of the glass-topped table, his hands in his pockets. “So how are you feeling?”

“Okay.”

“Good.” There was an awkward silence, then he tugged on his ear, saying, “I suppose the leg’s starting to itch under that cast.”

She ignored his comment. “Aren’t you going to sit down?”

He shifted from foot to foot before finally settling on the chair across from her. He unzipped his black suede jacket but didn’t take it off.

“I’m supposed to say hi from everyone at the station and tell you they miss you,” he said with the same smile he used during his newscasts. The one that made women’s hearts skip a beat. Kristen knew how easily that smile came to his lips and didn’t return it.

“I’m sure Janey doesn’t miss me. She’s been wanting more air time.” It was no secret around the station that Janey Samuels’s goal was to be one of the evening anchors, and Kristen knew Janey would make the most of every minute of her absence.

“The less time she’s in your chair, the less chance viewers will have to grow fond of her,” Keith continued.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“You said the doctor’s given you a clean bill of health. Maybe you should think about coming back to work.”

“My leg’s in a cast! What do you suggest I do? Sit sideways on the set and stick it out behind the desk?”

“You wouldn’t have to do the entire thirty minutes on the set. You could sit in the newsroom and have the camera shoot a head shot. No one needs to see your cast.”

“And what about this?” She pulled her hair away from her face and turned her head so that her puffy, discolored cheek was in full view.

He didn’t try to hide his discomfort. “Makeup will take care of that,” he said weakly.

Her laugh was without humor. “I doubt it.”

“How do you know if you won’t try? Bob told me he sent a makeup artist to the hospital and you refused to talk to her.”

“What’s the point? I told you I’m not ready to go back to work. That’s why I asked for a leave of absence.”

“Eventually, you’ll be going back. Wouldn’t it make sense to have a professional come here and show you how to apply the makeup? That way, you can practice so by the time you’re ready to return, you’ll feel comfortable.”

From the way he was staring at her, Kristin couldn’t help but wonder if the practicing-at-home part wasn’t for his benefit. Did he want her to wear the makeup so he wouldn’t have to look at her scars? Not for the first time she had the feeling that he was repulsed by her swollen and bruised face.

She let the hair fall back across her cheek and angled her head to hide the scars. “Why are you pressuring me about this?”

“I’m not pressuring you,” he denied. “It’s just that I miss you at work, and in the hospital you told me you wanted to get back to the newsroom as soon as possible.”

That was before the bandages had been removed from her face and she had seen the damage.

“I’ve changed my mind. I need more time to get my strength back.”

“You told me a few minutes ago that you were feeling fins.”

“I am. I’m just not ready to return to work.”

“Your viewers will be disappointed.” Then he gave her his heart-stopping grin and said, “I’ll be disappointed.”

It didn’t stop Kristen’s heart for even a moment.

“Have you read KC’s column lately? Even she misses you,” he added.

KC was a gossip reporter who had followed their romance with a fervent passion, never missing an opportunity to mock the two of them in her biweekly newspaper column under a special subheading—“Amorous Anchors.”

“What she’s really missing are the opportunities to make fun of us,” Kristen said cynically.