Father Of The Brood

“Hey, kid, it’s okay,” Ike tried to reassure him over the noise.

He started down the walk toward the car, watching in amazement as the little boy’s fear grew more tangible with every step he took. And when he rounded the front of the car toward the driver’s side and reached in to deactivate the alarm, the little boy covered his head with his hands, curled into a tiny ball and screamed.

Screamed as if his lungs were about to burst.

Ike could do nothing but stare dumbfounded as Annie calmly came up behind him, reached into the car instead and effortlessly plucked the boy out of the driver’s seat and into her arms. He curled himself over her body as if he wanted to crawl inside her forever, then buried his face in her neck and began to cry with all his might. Annie patted his back and murmured soothing sounds until the boy’s sobs abated some.

Then she looked at Ike with a perfectly normal expression and stated in matter-of-fact terms, “Mickey was badly beaten by both of his parents before he came to live with me. He thought you were going to hurt him for setting off the alarm.”

Ike shook his head dumbly and couldn’t think of a single thing to say. So he watched in silence as Annie carried the boy back up the steps and sat down on the front stoop beside him. Ike didn’t know what she said to the boy to calm him down, but within a matter of minutes, the little guy was nodding and scrubbing a finger under his nose. Not long after that, he was smiling shyly again. Ike watched as Annie kissed the crown of his head with much gusto and hugged him close one final time. Then Mickey jumped up from the stoop and raced past Ike without looking at him, and joined the other kids in their completely disorganized and unorchestrated game of street hockey.

Annie, too, stood and ambled after him, stopping to pick up her duffel bag and toss it into the back seat. “I’m ready when you are,” she said again as she opened the passenger side door and climbed inside.

Ike nodded and joined her in the car, then eased his way into the street at about a half a mile an hour to avoid the wildly scattering kids. When he braked for a stop sign at the corner, Annie looked over at him with a broad smile and asked, “If you could be any vegetable in the world, what would you be?”

As questions went, it wasn’t one Ike heard often in his line of work. “I beg your pardon?”

“If you could be any vegetable in the world,” she repeated, “what would you be?”

He turned right and headed toward the Schuylkill Expressway. “Why?”

Annie’s smile broadened. “Because it occurs to me that we know absolutely nothing about each other, other than the fact that we were both gullible enough to be sucked into going to that bachelor auction. We’ve got a long drive to the shore ahead of us, so why not use the opportunity to find out a little bit more about each other, right?”

Sounded reasonable, Ike thought. But… vegetables?

“I’d be an eggplant, myself,” she volunteered without being asked. “Eggplants seem to have it so together, don’t you think? Not to mention having a sleek design and gorgeous coloring.”

Ike drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and said nothing.

“Now you I see as more of a cauliflower kind of guy.”

He flicked his right turn signal, veered onto the entrance ramp and melded smoothly with traffic before glancing over at Annie and repeating blandly, “Cauliflower.”

She nodded. “Cauliflowers are pretty moody.” She offered the observation as if that explained everything.

Ike sighed again, slipped on his Ray·Bans and settled back in the driver’s seat. As Annie had just pointed out, it was going to be a long drive to the shore.

It was also, he admitted grudgingly some time later, a rather enjoyable drive, one that allowed him to discover a great many surprising things about his companion. In addition to wanting to be an eggplant, if Annie could be any fruit in the world, she wanted to be a kiwi. If given the choice of any animal in-the world, she would be an ocelot. Any color, she would be green. Any musical instrument, she would be a banjo. Any supermarket product, a box of Velveeta. Any mode of transportation, a streetcar.

And so it had gone across the entire width of the great state of New Jersey. Whether he’d wanted to or not, Ike had learned more about Annie Malone than he had about any other human being he’d ever met. He knew she was thirty-two years old, a Virgo, and the youngest of two children. He knew she had two degrees in social work and one in child development, and that she had kicked the smoking habit three years ago, but still craved a cigarette now and then. On the few occasions when she indulged in alcohol, she always drank vodka martinis, very dry, no olive. She had gone to her senior prom stag and had received six stitches in her knee when she was seven years old.

Oh, yeah. And she was a widow.

That bit of information, when she’d offered it, had nearly sent Ike driving off the side of the road. She was too young to have experienced such a loss. Too fresh-looking. Too nice. She hadn’t mentioned how her husband died, only that he had five years ago. And even having known her a short while, Ike could tell that Annie hadn’t surrendered the information easily. Her husband’s death was simply a part of her, like everything else she had told him, and therefore worthy of mention.

In turn, Ike had spoken little of himself, other than to oblige her with one- or two-word responses like “grapes,” “wolf,” “black,” “tenor saxophone,” “top sirloin” and “steam locomotive.” He didn’t like to talk about himself, preferred to keep private things private. He hadn’t pried into Annie’s life or asked many questions of her. She was just the type of person who revealed herself freely. Ike liked that about her. But it didn’t mean he had to unburden himself in the process.

Now as he tossed his leather weekend bag on the bed in his room, he couldn’t quite put thoughts of Annie to rest. She was, to say the least, an enigma. She was bright, attractive, and capable of doing just about anything she wanted to do. She smiled freely and spoke without inhibition. She was the kind of person one would expect to find living in sunshine and wide open spaces, amid nature’s bounty, if not an actual part of it. Yet Annie Malone had buried herself in a decaying urban landscape, and had surrounded herself with damaged children who were the victims of life’s darkest secrets.

It made no sense to Ike. He was the kind of man who put unpleasant thoughts as far from himself as he could. He’d had the most ordinary of upbringings and a very happy childhood—middle middle-class suburbs, public schools, a bicycle for Christmas when he was ten, twenty-five cents from the Tooth Fairy on a pretty regular basis, a craving for marshmallow cream on graham crackers that he’d never quite outgrown. He’d never had a reason or opportunity to suspect that other people had grown up any differently.

And although as an adult, he did know better, he still couldn’t begin to understand the drive or motivation behind people who purposely put themselves into ugly situations when they didn’t have to. Why would someone like Annie choose to live the way she did? What could she possibly be getting out of it?

Unable to answer the questions, he unzipped his bag and began to halfheartedly unpack. The early afternoon sun hung high in the sky, its rays tumbling through the open window to spill over the hardwood floor in streaks of white and gold. Across the street from the Hanson House Bed and Breakfast, the mighty Atlantic roared and crashed against the beach like a hungry beast. A warm breeze danced with the lacy curtains, redolent with the fresh scent of salt and the far-off fragrance of a barbecue grill warming up for lunch.

Ike paused in his activity to move to the window, inhaling deeply as he pushed it open more. He loved the ocean. Even with Craggedy Annie along for the ride—who, was growing less craggedy, he had to confess—it was going to be nice to get away for the weekend. His work had become so demanding since he’d joined his company with his partner’s some years ago. The merger had come at an ideal time and had suited well both men’s needs. Ike had wanted more business, more opportunity. His partner, Chase Buchanan, had wanted more time to spend with his family. Both men had gotten exactly what they wanted from the deal, and the business had grown by leaps and bounds as a result.

Buchanan-Guthrie Designs, Inc. was now enormously successful, and Ike had more work than he had ever imagined he would. He ate, drank, breathed, slept…he absolutely lived his career, and liked it that way just fine. Working was what Ike did best. Maybe Chase was a family man, the perfect father. But Ike couldn’t imagine living his life that way. He was too full of ambition to ever settle down. What would he do with kids?

Kids. He couldn’t stop thinking about that kid.

That kid at Annie’s. The one with the eyes so big and blue, they seemed to peer right into his soul. The one who had screamed in terror that Ike was going to hurt him. The one who had been so badly abused by his parents he didn’t know any other way of being treated. Even a guy like Ike, who had no desire to have children, couldn’t begin to understand how anyone could do that to a kid.

A soft rap on the door connecting his room to Annie’s pulled him away from his thoughts, and back into his room. The Hanson House was a Victorian wonder, the owners clearly having cared for it as if it were a much-loved relative. Outside, the looming structure was trimmed in yellow and green, and it soared three stories high in a seemingly unplanned zigzag of angles and corners. Inside, the rooms were furnished with period pieces and accessories, painted soft colors suited to ocean living, and filled with sunlight. Ike and Annie had been placed in rooms on the third floor, rooms that had apparently been assigned to the servants way back when the Hanson House had been a private residence. And although his room was a bit small, the ceiling slanted on one side, it was cozy and welcoming and surprisingly accommodating.

“Nice place,” Annie said when Ike opened the door. “Must be setting you back a bundle.”

“Yeah, it is a nice place,” he agreed, deciding it might be best to just avoid commenting on the second, more acerbic, half of her observation. “I guess Hanson House is a world away from Homestead House, isn’t it? Which reminds me,” he added quickly when he saw her frown. “Just exactly what is Homestead House, anyway?”

She rotated one shoulder in what he decided was a defensive gesture. “It’s a house in town,” she told him evenly. “It’s a place where people live. It’s a home.”

Ike nodded. “A home for unwanted kids, you mean.”

Annie shook her head. “No, I mean it’s a home. Period. Exactly like your place—whatever that place may be—is a home.” She straightened as she added, “And just for the record, every one of those kids is wanted. Wanted by me and my staff. They just have nowhere else to go for the time being.”

Ike eyed her thoughtfully. “You don’t like me much, do you?”

“No,” she replied quickly, clearly not at all surprised by the question or quick change of subject. “I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re the kind of person who’s in the best position to help other people, but you don’t make a single effort to do so.”

“Because I have money?”

Annie shook her head again. “Not because you have money, but because of the way you use it. And because you have prestige and a position in the community you let go to waste, too.”

Ike took a step forward to lean against the doorjamb, a gesture that brought him close enough to Annie to detect just a hint of her perfume. It was a spicy scent, vaguely familiar. But he couldn’t quite identify what it was. “What do you mean?” he asked softly.

Relentlessly, Annie continued, “People like you run around in an impressive social circle and have a lot of clout. You have the ear of government officials, society leaders and corporate bigwigs. You’re high profile. You could do a lot to improve the situation of other people who don’t have such opportunities. But the only benefits and profits you reap from your status are strictly of a personal nature.”

“Is that so?”

She nodded. “Yup.”

“And that’s why you don’t like me.”

“That’s why I don’t like you.”

“Then I guess we’re even,” he muttered as he pushed himself away from the doorjamb again. “Because I don’t like you, either.”

His blunt statement appeared to surprise her, in spite of the fact that she’d spoken so frankly to him herself. “You don’t?” Her voice was quiet and timid when she uttered the question, and she seemed to be genuinely distressed that he would find her unappealing. “Why not?”

“Because you’re full of anger and resentment, you make snap judgments about people, and you’re completely unrealistic. And dammit, Annie, nobody dresses the way you do nowadays. The Age of Aquarius ended twenty-five years ago. People found out they couldn’t change the world with love-ins and protests. Nobody cared then. Nobody cares now. Deal with it.”

He hadn’t meant to go off like that, and, too late, Ike realized how awful he must have sounded. There was just something about Annie Malone that put him on edge and made him feel defensive. Something that made him quick to overreact. But before he could apologize and try to explain himself—no easy feat, since he didn’t understand his behavior himself—Annie withdrew, both literally and figuratively.

She narrowed her eyes and clamped her mouth shut, then reached past Ike to curl her fingers over the doorknob, clearly intending to close the door tight, too. But she could only pull it closed a few inches before it hit his big body and stopped. Instead of moving away, he circled her wrist with loose fingers.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly. “That was out of line.”

“Yeah, it was,” she agreed every bit as quietly. She glanced up and met his gaze, then looked past him into his room. “But you’re right. I did make a snap judgment about you. And for that, I apologize, too.”

Neither seemed to know what to say after that, and as much as Ike wished Annie would look into his eyes again, her gaze ricocheted everywhere but there. She did have nice eyes, he thought. Pale green irises ringed by a darker circle of color, and thick, dark lashes that were so perfect, they almost looked false. But if there was one thing Ike was certain about in Annie, it was that there was absolutely nothing false about her.

The silence between them stretched until it became even more uncomfortable than their-angry exchange had been. Finally, he released her wrist and stepped away from the door. Without a word, she began to tug it toward herself again.

“I guess I’ll just have to prove to you that you’re wrong about me,” he said when the door was nearly closed, wondering why it was so important that Annie Malone not misjudge him.

The door paused in its slow movement for only a moment, and he heard her reply softly, “I guess you will.”

“How about grabbing some lunch?” he rushed on before she could close the door completely. “I know a great little place that most of the tourists overlook.”

For one long moment, when she didn’t reply right away, Ike thought Annie was going to tell him to take a flying leap. Not for the first time, he wondered why she had come along on this jaunt when she clearly would have preferred to be anywhere but alone with him in romantic surroundings. Then she surprised him by pushing the door open again.

She surveyed him slowly, literally from head to toe, then lifted her shoulders in a quick shrug. “Okay,” she said. “I guess I am pretty hungry. And I wouldn’t mind doing a little shopping. I promised the kids a couple of souvenirs. Just give me a few more minutes to get unpacked.”

Ike nodded, oddly pleased to discover that he wouldn’t be spending the entire weekend alone after all. He decided it might be best if he didn’t think about how curious a realization that was when he’d awakened that morning wanting nothing more in the world than simply to be left alone. He hadn’t wanted to leave Philadelphia, hadn’t wanted to go anywhere with Annie Malone. But now that he was here in Cape May, alone with the woman he had been so sure would annoy him, he felt anything but annoyed.

What exactly he was feeling, he wasn’t quite certain. But Annie’s presence was doing something to him—something rather weird and wonderful—of that he was sure.

While he was mulling the revelation over, however, the door connecting his room to Annie’s—and to her—closed with a quiet, but resolute, click.

Three

Ike needn’t have worried that Annie would take his remark about her dressing habits to heart. When he knocked on her hotel room door some hours later—the real room to her door, not the connecting one—she responded to his summons wearing an ankle-skimming dress of some crinkly fabric, that buttoned from hem to scooped neck, claret in color and patterned with tiny flowers in pale yellow and ivory. A velvet, burgundy ribbon tied around her neck and simple gold hoops looped through her earlobes served as her only jewelry, and her hair hung down her back in a foot-long, loosely plaited braid. Her shoes were flat, the same texture and color as the ribbon around her neck, and as a result, she was forced to tip her head back substantially to meet his gaze.

She still looked like a hippie, he thought. But there was something about her getup that he found more than a little appealing.

And Patchouli, he suddenly realized. That was the scent that surrounded Annie Malone. But only faintly, as if it were the result of soap or powder, and not a heavily applied perfume. The fragrance was clean and fresh and slightly exotic, much like the woman herself. For some reason, Ike wanted to bend to bury his head in the curve of her neck and drink in great gulps of her scent. Only with a massive amount of restraint did he keep himself from doing just that.

“You look lovely,” he said, surprising himself. He’d never called a woman lovely before. Beautiful, many times, ravishing on a few occasions, and incredible when the word seemed appropriate. But lovely? It was an outdated term, something a person normally used when referring to an elderly aunt. At least, that’s what Ike had always thought before. But the word seemed somehow suited to Annie.

“Thanks,” she said. She eyed his dove gray Hugo Boss suit, his pale lavender Geoffrey Beene dress shirt and his multihued pastel silk tie. Then she grinned mischievously. “You look like an ad for GQ.“

He narrowed his eyes at her tone of voice. “You don’t make that sound like a compliment.”

Her grin broadened, and her tone was playful as she assured him, “Oh, it wasn’t meant to be.”

He smiled back in spite of himself. “I see. You, no doubt, prefer a man in Levi’s, Earth shoes and a Grateful Dead T-shirt, right?”

She lifted a hand to finger the necktie that was splashed with color like an abstract painting. She turned it over to check the label, smiled, then flattened her palm over the length of silk as she patted it back into place. “Hey, you’re the one wearing the Jerry Garcia tie, Ike, not me.”

It was the first time she had referred to him using his given name, and they both seemed to feel a little uncomfortable at having it hanging between them that way. Annie continued to meet his gaze levelly, tracing an idle pattern on his tie with her fingertip, seemingly oblivious to the oddly heated sensations her gesture raised elsewhere on his body. Before he became completely undone by the careless meanderings of her hand, Ike curled his fingers around hers and lifted her palm to his lips.

“You’re right,” he said after pressing his lips against the warm pad of her palm.

He had meant to say more, something about there being a little of the sixties in everyone, as hard as people like him tried to exorcise the decade. But the taste and feel of her skin on his seemed to numb his lips. Annie Malone may seem brittle and clipped, he thought, but she wasn’t. She was soft. Warm. He didn’t know how he could be so certain when he knew so little about her, but there were no edges to Annie, as much as she might try to make people believe that there were. And when Ike realized he was about to lift her hand to his mouth again for an even more intimate exploration, he quickly released her fingers and shoved his hands deep into his pockets.

“We’d better go,” he said, hoping his voice sounded steadier than it felt. “Our reservation is for seven.”

She nodded silently and preceded him down the hall. Ike followed closely behind, watching with much interest the way the skirt of her dress swung first one way and then the other in response to the subtle sway of her hips. He sighed. He had spent the entire afternoon following Annie all over Cape May in much the same way, wondering how he could have been so bothered by her hip-hugger jeans initially, when they hugged her hips so damned beautifully. The woman had some way of walking, he decided. And he couldn’t help but be mesmerized by the way she moved.

Annie could feel his eyes on her as she made her way quietly down the stairs toward the first floor, just as she had felt his eyes on her all afternoon. For Pete’s sake, what was he staring at? she wondered. He’d already gone out of his way to disparage her wardrobe, and she knew he didn’t like the way she wore her hair. He quite clearly didn’t like her, had even said so to her face. Although she loved the dress she was wearing, she knew it was old-fashioned and shapeless and revealed absolutely nothing of interest.

So, dammit, what was he staring at?

And what had that kiss on her palm been all about? She closed her eyes briefly as she remembered the rigidness of his torso beneath her hand when she’d straightened his necktie. She had always thought executives and businessmen were supposed to be flabby and soft. But Ike must get some kind of regular exercise, she thought, because he’d felt like solid rock beneath her fingers. Hot, solid rock, she realized further. Hot, solid rock that was alive and rabid and…

Stop it, she ordered herself when her thoughts started to become far too graphic. She was being silly. He was just some guy she was spending the weekend with. Some hot, rigid guy who—

Annie sighed fitfully and forced herself to pause at the foot of the stairs to let him catch up. She had no reason to be running away from him to begin with, she told herself. Just because he’d kissed her hand, and just because she’d felt that kiss wind a blazing trail all the way from her fingertips through her heart to her toes… Annie squeezed her eyes shut again and tried to remind herself that she didn’t like Ike Guthrie. Unfortunately, that deep-seated animosity she had been so certain would be her constant companion this weekend had evidently packed up and gone home.

She made herself relax when he joined her at her side, inhaling a calming breath as he took her elbow lightly in his hand to lead her toward the dining room. The Hanson House was as renowned for its restaurant as it was for its hospitality, and Annie figured out why almost immediately. Even if they served nothing but greasy burgers and fries, people would keep coming back to this place. Because the dining room was so beautiful.

Where the bedrooms of the bed-and-breakfast were light and airy, the dining room was dark and intimate and cozy. A huge crystal chandelier hung at its center, dimmed low to mimic candlelight. Real candles flickered in crystal votives on each of the tables, all of which seemed to be isolated by virtue of very strategically placed potted ferns and lacy screens. The walls were papered in sapphire moirè, the mahogany chairs upholstered in gold velvet. The table to which the maître d’ led them was draped with ivory lace, a single yellow rose rising from a crystal vase at its center.

“Wow, this place is wonderful,” Annie said as she made herself comfortable. She tried not to notice how the candlelight flecked Ike’s hair with bits of golden fire, tried to ignore the way his cheekbones appeared even more prominent in the shadows. Tried and failed miserably.