“Nothing wrong with a little jealousy.” Lilah slid the bar across the screen to activate the phone.
He cocked his head sideways against the screen. “Hello,” he answered the call, still juggling the plates.
“Daddy? I’m ba-ack!”
CHAPTER FOUR
IT©WAS©A©SMALL©MIRACLE that Nick hadn’t dropped the plates. Maybe it would have been better if he had.
Then he’d have an excuse to disconnect the phone and regroup before responding to the caller. Instead he looked up. “I better take this call.” He eased the plates into the sink and stepped out of the kitchen into the hallway. He figured he needed as much privacy as possible where his seventeen-year-old daughter was concerned.
“What’s up, Amara? I got your email about your graduation, but unfortunately I’m shooting an episode right now, so there’s a possibility that I won’t be able to make it.” He glanced out the arched window over the landing to the traffic below. Across the street the Grantham Public Library was ablaze with light. Maybe there still were people who read books, Nick mused.
“Well, it’s not like I really expected you to come. Since when have you made it to any of the important moments in my entire existence?” a sarcastic, high-pitched voice complained. “Anyway, Mom was the one who told me to tell you.”
Well, I was there at the moment of your conception, Nick could have said. But he wisely kept that remark to himself.
“Anyway, there’s no need for you to interrupt your busy schedule on my account,” Amara went on.
“I really want to,” Nick insisted ingenuously. Hanging out at the snotty prep school Amara attended in upstate New York—and where his well-mannered, maturely sensible ex-wife happened to work in the development office—was not high on his list of favorite activities.
“Don’t even pretend, Daddy.” She made the word sound ugly. “Besides, it’s not like I’m going to be there anyway.” The last remark was almost a throwaway.
Nick was immediately suspicious. “Are you trying to tell me that you’re not graduating? I thought you were supposed to be some hotshot student?”
“Have you ever seen a single one of my report cards?” she snapped back.
“No, but, somehow I remember you or maybe your mother…”
“Forget Mother.”
Gladly, thought Nick.
“She’s out of the picture, on her honeymoon in Tahiti with Glenn.”
“Honeymoon? Tahiti? And wait a minute. Glenn?”
Nick heard a sigh of exasperation on the other end of the line.
“God, you’re so lame. Don’t the two of you ever talk? I don’t know why I even bother to ask. Anyway, I blamed it all on defective genes, inherited from you.”
Now Nick was really suspicious. “Back up there, Tonto. Blame what on me?”
“My getting kicked out. I figure I’m just keeping up the family tradition.”
So this is what fatherhood was all about? Not that he would really know, given his rare contact with his daughter. “Listen, Amara,” he responded, not bothering to hide the annoyance in his voice. “As amusing as you may find it to pick on your old man—” he heard snickers, which didn’t improve his mood one bit “—it’s quite another to get kicked out of high school right before graduating. If nothing else, just think of how your mother will take this.” That sounded like something his father would have said about him growing up, Nick thought.
A loud whooshing noise on the phone drowned out whatever Amara was saying. That’s when he went beyond being suspicious to downright panicked. “Where are you? Did you run away?”
“Hardly. I’m at the Grantham Junction train station. I called your production-company office and the receptionist told me where you were. The school wouldn’t let me leave except into the custody of a parent. And since Mom is now doing the dirty with Glenn…”
Nick cringed at the thought. Whatever affection he had had for Amara’s mother, Jeannine, had long since vanished. Still, he couldn’t deny a sense of irritation that his ex had managed to get on with her life while he was still floundering through random relationships.
The least he could do was put on his big-boy pants and do the right thing. “So I guess this means you’re planning on staying with me, right?” he asked.
“It looks that way.” Amara was not giving an inch. “So are you going to pick me up at the station, or do you plan on sending one of your lackeys? I always thought your cameraman was kind of cute.”
Now Nick was really scared. “I’ll be there. It’ll be a few minutes. My car’s in the garage, and I’m at a dinner party right now.”
Lilah approached him with a look of concern. “Problems?” she asked.
“Are you sure that party’s just dinner?” Amara asked sarcastically over the phone.
Nick narrowed his eyes. “The voice you heard was my friend and married host for dinner, thank you very much. Listen, I’ll be right over. Whatever you do, don’t move. And don’t talk to any strangers,” he barked before hanging up.
He thrust his phone into his pocket and rolled his eyes. “That was my teenage daughter. She’s unexpectedly descended on me.” He didn’t feel the need to elaborate. “I’m just going to pick her up at the train station, and somehow I’m gonna find her a place to stay, which, given that Reunions and Commencement are just about to start, is going to be quite a feat.” He rubbed his mouth. “I don’t think she’s up for the close, personal experience of sharing a room with me.”
“Surely there’s another option.” Lilah frowned in thought, and Nick could practically hear the machinery of her altruistic fervor grind into action.
Lilah snapped her fingers. “I’ve got it. I was going to call Mimi about Press and Hoagie Palace. Why don’t I ask her if your daughter can stay at her family’s place on the western side of town? The house is enormous.”
“It could easily provide shelter for a whole village,” Justin said.
“Well, it’s probably going to take a whole village to keep my teenage daughter in line.”
“It can’t be that bad,” Lilah said with a shake of her head. “Listen, wait a minute. I’ll call Mimi now before you leave and that way you’ll know.”
Nick watched her leave and turned to Justin. “Is she always this determined?”
“Why do you think she’s so good at what she does?”
“You’ve got a point.” Then he waved to the sink. “Move over, and let a pro take charge.”
After a few minutes, Lilah returned, phone in hand. Nick was wet up to his elbows
