Mother, Please! - By Brenda Novak & Jill Shalvis & Alison Kent Page 0,29
in two hours, okay?”
He covered the mouthpiece as though he wanted to say something to stop her. They certainly hadn’t reached any agreement about how they might proceed with their relationship. But now obviously wasn’t a good time to discuss it. Instead of interrupting the call, Gunner nodded grudgingly, and she left.
April wondered if she’d be giving too much away if she showed up at her father’s door wearing the same thing she’d had on last night. She considered going back to her room to change, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to escape again once she saw her mother. Besides, she’d never been much for pretense. Smoothing down her hair, she promised herself she’d have a nice hot shower soon, found her father’s room and knocked.
“Who is it?” he called.
“April.”
April thought she heard voices inside, followed by movement. Then Walt finally called, “Just a minute,” and, after a prolonged silence, opened the door wearing a robe.
April glanced beyond him, but didn’t see anyone else in the room or anything out of the ordinary.
“Hi, honey,” he said. “How’d it go last night?”
“Good.” She hugged him and was fairly sure she smelled perfume on his clothes. “Did you have Regina fly down or something?”
His face reddened. “No, no, of course not.”
“Then can I come in?”
He stepped more squarely in front of her, as if he’d actually bar her way, and alarm bells went off in April’s head.
“Actually, I was just about to take a shower,” he said. “Do you want to meet me for breakfast in an hour or so? You can—” he cleared his throat “—you can ask your mother to join us if you’d like.”
Her mother! Of course. That was the scent April had smelled—it was her mother’s perfume! She recalled her father’s asking Claire to join them in the Jacuzzi, remembered leaving them alone afterward—and felt a moment’s terror. What had she been thinking? She wanted to get her parents back together. But a one-night stand wasn’t what she’d had in mind. If her father returned to Regina after something like this, it would push her mother over the edge.
“Mom?” she called, absolutely positive that Claire was hiding in the bathroom.
Her father winced. “Honey—”
“Don’t ‘honey’ me,” she said. “Are you two fooling around? Because I can’t take any more of your emotional ups and downs.”
Her mother finally came out of hiding—also wearing a robe. “I’m sorry April. The secrecy is my fault. I didn’t want you to know we were seeing each other because nothing’s been decided.”
So now what?
Walt was scowling, his customary expression. But when Claire caught his eye and smiled, April saw her father melt—which completely defused her anger despite what her mother had just said.
“Want to join us for breakfast?” Claire asked.
April looked from her mother to her father. “No, I had breakfast with Gunner. And I think you two could use the time alone. Just don’t—” she took a deep breath “—just be patient with each other, okay?”
GUNNER SAT ON HIS BED long after he’d hung up with his father, staring into space. Quincy Senior had talked to him for almost thirty minutes, but he hadn’t really said anything. He’d gone on and on about how the Murray town council was considering naming the new park after Gunner, and mentioned that they were thinking of putting up a statue of him—as if Gunner cared about that sort of thing. Then his father had talked about going ice fishing when Gunner came to visit and how he’d found the perfect fishing hole.
Gunner had done his best to act interested, but he wasn’t sure how he’d get through the week he’d promised to spend with his father when he returned to New York.
The telephone rang again, and this time Gunner welcomed the interruption. He didn’t want to think about his father, didn’t want to acknowledge that Quincy Senior had been trying for years now and Gunner was the one holding out…. “Hello?”
“It’s me.”
April. She wasn’t much easier to deal with than his father. Why couldn’t she simply fall into his bed and put an end to the desire that licked through his veins every time he saw her? She said she wasn’t cut out for casual relationships. Well, he wasn’t cut out for any other kind. He was good at fast and fleeting. He’d had lots of practice.
“You all set for deep-sea fishing?” he asked.
“Just about. How did it go with your father?”
“Fine.”
“When you were talking to him, you seemed a little tense.”