She was right. Men were jerks. Except for her grandfather who’d always been there for her, but he was a lot older. Maybe they improved with age. Sort of like cheese. Then again, didn’t some varieties just get stinkier the older they got?
“You’re the child’s father and you haven’t bothered to have any contact with her before now?” she questioned incredulously, forgetting in her ire how very large he was. “They had to track you down to inform you of her mother’s death? What kind of a man are you?”
“A tired one,” Luke informed her grimly. “A very tired one. Carolyn refused to stay in her own bed last night. She kept climbing in with me. And let me tell you, that child has the boniest elbows and knees you’ll ever run into. I know. I ran into them consistently and constantly all night long. Most restless sleeper in town, no, on the continent. No joke. She got me once in the throat. I couldn’t breathe. Thought I was going to die.”
“You evidently survived the ordeal,” Marie said without a great deal of sympathy. She was amazed by the man’s total lack of sensitivity. “I’m sure she’s just feeling insecure. For heaven’s sake, Luke, her mother just died and she’s been shuffled off to a father she doesn’t even know.”
Luke half rose out of his chair and pointed his finger at her. “Listen, lady, you don’t know what—” He stopped in midsentence, paused, shook his head, then sat back down. “No, never mind. It’s nobody’s business but Carolyn’s and mine. Just trust me on this. There are things I’m not free to discuss here. They’re between Carolyn and me and we’re the ones who’ll work them out. I hope.” He’d muttered that last and Marie barely caught it.
Puzzled, she stared at him. Luke Deforest, the man who only yesterday looked like he could take on the world and win suddenly looked like he’d gone a couple of rounds more than he should have. The man looked defeated. Marie felt the tug on her heartstrings and was confused and angered. He pulled on her in so many different ways how was she supposed to stay uninvolved here? Well, she’d done her share of mothering for this month. Maternal instincts, sexual instincts and any other kind of instincts that had her thinking about jumping on the bandwagon here were just going to have to forget it. Marie was currently unavailable. Jason was enough to deal with. She wasn’t going to take on Luke and his defenseless little daughter.
She was getting going while the going was good.
Once again Marie tried to rise. “It certainly sounds like you’ve got your hands full so I’ll just get out of your way. You’re not ready to leave and I’m sure the insurance company can deliver the loaner car to you if you ask. Here, I stopped and picked this up on the way over.” She tried to hand him a copy of the police report she’d filed. “I’ll leave this here for you to look over and I wrote down my phone number and insurance information so you can—”
“Daddy?”
If Marie hadn’t been looking right at him, she wouldn’t have noticed the slight recoil.
“Yes, Carolyn?”
“All done.”
“The movie’s over already?”
In other circumstances, Marie would have laughed at the look of sheer panic Luke wore. She was sure he’d never admit it, but he was so obviously clueless as far as how to entertain the child that it was almost funny. Funny in the abstract, that was. Funny only until you took a good look at the little girl. Yesterday Carolyn’s face had been buried in Marie’s chest. When the child had finally fallen asleep in her car seat, her features had been red, swollen and splotchy from crying.
Today, well my goodness, today Carolyn was a beautiful child not yet a yard tall with crooked wheat-colored pigtails cascading in curls to her shoulders and soft brown eyes framed with embarrassingly long lashes. There was a spattering of freckles running over her cheeks and bridging her nose. As Carolyn’s top teeth bit into her quivering yet pink perfect lower lip, Marie noted those teeth were small, white and charmingly askew. Luke would drop a quick five grand straightening those in a few years, Marie decided.
Oh, God, Carolyn was still virtually a baby and she was so forlorn and lonely-looking as she stood there uncertainly in the doorway. So lost and vulnerable appearing as she looked to Luke for guidance as to what to do next in this foreign house with this foreign dad in this foreign town.
Marie’s heart went out to the little waif. Marie was a goner.
Not liking this situation didn’t change it.
“It’s almost lunchtime,” Luke finally suggested hopefully after staring nonplussed for several seconds. “How about if I open a can of tuna fish and put it on whole wheat bread? Doesn’t that sound good?”
Marie did a double take and stared at him. He was kidding, right?
“Do we got any hot dogs? I like hot dogs,” the child offered hopefully.
“A hot dog.” Luke raked a hand through his hair. He’d never get it to lie flat again, Marie suspected. “Let me look. Maybe there’s a package in the freezer. A hot dog’s protein. Sort of,” he mumbled to himself. “But there ought to be vegetables. Kids need vegetables to grow right.” He snapped his fingers. “A salad. We could have salad.”
Marie shook her head. Luke was lost, no doubt about it. No two-year-old worthy of the name would willingly eat salad. The man was definitely out of his milieu. Of course it would be a month or two before he’d admit it.
“Uh, Luke?”
“Yeah, what?”
“What about grapes or a banana? Don’t you have some fruit you could cut up for Carolyn?”
“Yeah, I suppose.” He frowned as he mentally reviewed his grocery supplies. “Maybe.”
Tactfully Marie suggested, “That might be a better choice than salad. Maybe you could convince her to try a little bit of carrot if you cut it up into matchstick size, but you might want to hold off on the salad for a little while.” Like twenty years.
Luke frowned and studied the tot. “I don’t want her to develop bad eating habits.”
“No, no, of course not,” Marie quickly assured. “But it would be all right to work up to salad, wouldn’t it? I mean, you could start with cooked carrots with a little brown sugar on them and go from there, couldn’t you?”
Luke picked up the paper clips from the holder on his desktop and began pouring the clips from hand to hand and back. “I don’t know. I’m still not sure about this hot dog thing, either.”
“It might be easier. Just for today, you know. Until Carolyn’s a little more at home, that is.” Marie gave the guy a month, two tops. She, too, had prepared only nutritious balanced meals and snacks when she’d first taken over responsibility for Jason. There’d been a lot of tension, unhappiness, and sneaking out to the local fast-food burger place with friends until Marie had finally caved. She’d never regretted sinking to PB and J and pizza. The peace alone was worth it. Now she slipped him his grains and oatmeal in cookie format, his milk and calcium in pudding or tapioca. Veggies were still a sore point, but life, if not perfect, had at least been salvaged from the proverbial toilet, which was about all you could hope for with an adolescent on the premises, Marie had decided.
At the time, Marie had had her epiphany. She’d discovered that all of life was a balancing act, a compromise if you will.
