Her Daughter's Father. Anna Adams
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were heading back there. I guess she and her father go where they find work. Al told me he remembers an ad they placed in the paper a month or so ago.”
“Oh no. Their business must be off.” Softhearted to a fault, Nettie leaned around Colleen. “And the only work they found here was the Tanners?”
Jack nodded, his attention split uncomfortably between Nettie and India’s image in his mind, her feminine, soft body lost in her overalls. Water blisters on her palms puzzled him. “I assume so.”
“Then you’ll have to find them something else,” Nettie said.
He almost hit the brakes. “You mean find another job for them?” His daughter’s amused expression caught his eye. “How am I supposed to find another house for them to paint?”
“You know everyone on this island. Whose house needs paint?”
Jack cast a glance at the bay on his side of the truck. Fishing didn’t provide the living it had for his father and his friends’ fathers. “Who can afford new paint?”
Nettie settled back in her seat. “Just go through each of your friends, Jack. You’ll come up with someone. A young girl like that, giving up her life to work for her father. Where is her mother anyway?”
“Maybe she likes to paint,” Colleen suggested.
“Do you like to work with your father?” Nettie made it sound like duty on a garbage scow.
Tense, Jack waited for Colleen’s response. She took her time.
“Well, no, not really.” She caught hold of his wrist, but quickly released it. Fifteen-year-olds must never show affection. “You don’t treat me like one of your employees, Dad. You always have to instruct me, like I’m a kid.”
Her explanation hurt his feelings as much as her first answer. “You’ve never worked the nets for me, Colleen. You’ve only sanded paint since we’ve had the boat out of the water. Did you know how to sand before I showed you?”
A mocking laugh gusted out of her mouth. “How hard is sanding? I can figure out how to push a piece of sandpaper back and forth.”
Jack tightened his hands on the wheel. “Let’s let this go for now. I’ve enjoyed the past hour with you, and I’d like to stretch it as far as we can.”
To his astonishment, Colleen laughed. A sweet, rich peal of laughter he’d known all her life. He grinned. Somewhere inside her lingered his little girl, the child who’d once firmly believed he knew all the answers.
“You know, Dad, Marcy’s mother has been after Mr. Shipp to paint their house.”
“Marcy?” Jack knew the girl. “How’s her eyebrow ring working out?”
“We’re talking about her house. Honest, the paint looks as bad as Mrs. Shipp says. Maybe we should stop by there.”
Her sincerity reeled him in. Jack nudged her shoulder, teasing. “All right, but I have to know one thing, and tell me the truth.” She looked so worried, he almost laughed. “Did Marcy pierce her own eyebrow?”
“Dad!” She shoved back, which apparently didn’t count as affection.
“All right, but your eyebrows are off-limits. Agreed?”
A FEW DAYS LATER, Colleen couldn’t remember the laughter she’d shared with her father. With one swift glance at him sanding the bow of the Sweet Mary, she dropped over the boatyard fence. Chris waited, engine running, behind a stand of trees that hid his car from her father. Boiling with resentment, Colleen slid into the passenger seat.
“What did he say to you?” Chris didn’t even wait for her to speak before he turned into the street.
Colleen twisted on the vinyl. “Everything. He just kept on. He said if they had nothing to teach me I’d be bored, but making straight A’s. Then he started on how I wouldn’t be able to get into a good college.”
Chris snorted. “How can he expect you to know what you want to do for the rest of your life? I’m eighteen, and I don’t know.”
Colleen held a careful silence. Her father wouldn’t be surprised to hear that. “He said I let you change me, that I’ve been different since you came along—like I needed you to tell me school is a waste of time.”
“Since I came along?” Chris’s derisive laugh raised prickles of discomfort along Colleen’s spine. He leaned over for a swift, hard kiss. “I don’t see a thing wrong with your attitude. Maybe I should talk to your dad, myself.”
“He’s not kidding, Chris. He really doesn’t like you.”
“Do I care?” Chris nosed the car to the curb. “He doesn’t have to like me as long as you do.”
Pretending to check the buckle on her boot, Colleen shifted away from Chris’s hand. Lately, when he touched her, he made sure she knew what he wanted and how hard he’d try to take it.
She edged another thin slice of space between them. “You could try more with Dad. My grandparents agree with him, and they all try to keep me from seeing you.”
Chris slammed his fist on the gearshift. “I’m tired of Jack Stephens. Who does he think he is? I heard the bank came sniffing around to see how much work he’s done on the repairs. He’s a deadbeat, Colleen.”
She might be mad at her dad, but Chris’s opinion made her madder at him. She shrank against the car door. “Don’t talk about him that way.”
Chris burned her with angry eyes. “I’ll bet you don’t tell him to shut up when he talks about how bad I am.”
“I didn’t say shut up.” She wrapped her palm around the door handle. “He is my father.”
Chris snatched a handful of her sweatshirt. “Maybe it’s time you picked one of us. Look at the way I treat you. Are you loyal to me or to a guy who acts like you’re a baby?”
Unwilling to admit Chris frightened her, even when he forced her to recognize her fear, Colleen tightened her hand on the door. “You want me to choose between you and my dad?”
“Yeah, between me and some guy who’ll be lucky to keep one of those old broken-down nets on his boat. He thinks he’s such a man.”
Colleen opened the door with a slow screech of metal against metal. “I called you because I needed to talk to you. You say you care about me.”
Chris softened his grip on her shirt, trying to turn his palm against her breast. “I say I love you.”
She shoved him away. “I’ve asked you not to do that.”
His pupils glittered. “Maybe you are a baby after all.” His voice hissed like a snake.
Truly afraid now, she slid backward out of the car. He laughed when she landed on the pavement on her bottom.
“Maybe I am a baby, but I’ll walk from here.” She scrambled to her feet, hauling her short skirt down. “Okay?”
“No, it’s not okay. Don’t act like this. You always try to ignore me when you’re mad. We’re just arguing.”
“I wanted to talk.”
“You want me to guess what you want. I know what I need.”
As if that settled everything, he pulled the door shut and drove off. Colleen stared after him, her legs shaking. He drank more than she ever let on, because he hated living in this small town where everyone knew his life inside and out. But Colleen didn’t think he’d had anything today.
He’d left her in the middle of the street, said terrible things about her father. And he’d tried to grope her again. Could her dad be right about Chris?
What had he meant by that crack about making him guess what she wanted? She’d told him, in every way she knew, not to