Rather than commenting on Krista’s complete lack of courtesy, or asking about Krista’s negative reaction to her, Erin forced herself to remain calm and hang on to the dwindling amount of control she had left. Excusing herself, she turned her attention back to the kitchen and preparation of the meal. She could hear the quiet reprimand that Kane was giving his daughter, but Erin tried to ignore the tension between father and daughter—tension that she somehow felt guilty about. Perhaps she shouldn’t have intruded on the homecoming. It was obvious that Krista would have preferred that she had never met Erin.
As Erin extracted the platter of warm rolls from the oven, she tried to convince herself that she was overreacting to Krista’s indifference. After all, the girl was a cripple and probably extremely self-conscious about her condition. Aside from the obvious, it couldn’t be easy moving away from the only family and friends she had ever known to start a new life with a father she barely knew in an unfamiliar city. It was no wonder that the child was frightened and misbehaving. Give the girl a chance, Erin told herself. It’s barely been a year since the young girl witnessed her mother’s death. Armed with a new sense of conviction, Erin decided to ignore Krista’s coolness.
As she carried the meal to the table, Erin forced herself to smile and say, “Let’s get started. I bet you’re both hungry!”
“We ate on the plane!” Krista announced, and Kane threw his daughter a grim reproving glance. Krista ignored it.
“That we did,” Kane acknowledged, “but that was several hours ago, and it wasn’t particularly good.” His steely eyes never left his daughter—it was as if he dared
her to act up again. “As I recall, you didn’t eat much.” The muscle cords in his neck stood out clearly against the collar of his shirt, and Erin could tell that he was holding on to the rags of his patience. He was about to explode. Erin hoped that Krista realized how dangerous the situation was becoming.
Erin tried to steady her rapidly disintegrating nerves as she went back to the kitchen for the rest of the food. She couldn’t gloss over it, not even to herself. For some reason Krista was determined to hate her. Erin mentally counted to ten, took several deep breaths, and once again poised, returned to face father and daughter. It took a lot of determination, but she was able to hide her discomfort and take some pleasure in serving the dishes that she had so meticulously prepared, although Krista’s discriminating eye took a little of the satisfaction away from her. Though the aroma of the food was tantalizing, and the marmalade-glazed game hens looked delicious as they sat on a platter of steaming wild rice and mushrooms, the meal was tense and uncomfortable. Everything seemed to have soured slightly under Krista’s disapproving blue-eyed gaze.
“This looks great!” Kane exclaimed a little too heartily as he helped Erin to her chair. His fingers brushed against her arm, and startled by the intimate gesture, Erin turned her eyes away from the meal to look more closely at him. He seemed more than tired—he seemed weary. She could tell his jovial words were just a cloak for the tension coiling rigidly within him. Although his voice was cheerful, the lines on his forehead, the muscle cords strung tightly at his neck, and the darkness of his gaze betrayed his calm exterior.
“Doesn’t this look delicious, honey?” he asked his daughter as he took his seat. Krista remained silent. Kane cleared his throat and rubbed his hands together. “I’m famished!” He looked at Krista with concern. Her large, liquid eyes met his, but still she didn’t speak.
Finally she broke her gaze from that of her father, and stared instead at the napkin in her lap. Kane’s forced smile disappeared into a frown. He was obviously distressed by Krista’s coolness and lack of manners, but he wisely said nothing, preferring to wait until he was alone with his daughter before having the argument that he knew was brewing between them.
The meal began in silence, and Erin thought that she would scream if some of the icy tension in the air didn’t melt. Fortunately the telephone rang, and Kane excused himself to answer it. The conversation was extremely one-sided and uncomfortable.
“Not tonight,” Kane argued but was apparently interrupted. “No—it’s absolutely impossible! I just got in from California with my daughter. You’ll have to handle it yourself!” A pause, and the muscle in Kane’s rigid face tightened again. “Can’t Jones handle it? No—how about Martin?” Another long pause. “For God’s sake, Jim, doesn’t anyone down there know what they’re doing?” Kane was shaking his head, raking his fingers through the burnished copper of his hair and pacing the length of the telephone cord. “All right, all right! I get the picture. I’ll be there in—” he checked his watch “—about twenty minutes!” He slammed the receiver down viciously and uttered a curse under his breath.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized sincerely, once he had subdued his temper. His gray eyes pleaded with Erin to understand. “It seems that there are major problems in the computer center tonight. I have to go to the bank for a little while….”
“No…” Krista began to wail, looking frantically from her father to Erin and back again. “Don’t go….”
“I’m sorry, honey,” Kane responded with a fond pat on her silky blond curls. “But, really, I have to go—just for a little while…”
“No…no…” Krista pleaded, clinging to her father’s shirtsleeve.
“I’ll be back in a couple of hours. You can stay here with Erin.”
“Daddy! No!”
Kane’s expression became confused, and for a moment Erin thought that he might reconsider. She fervently hoped so, but when his dark brows straightened again, she knew that the decision had been made. He was leaving Erin with the adolescent girl who obviously hated her.
“Erin, do you mind?” he asked, ignoring Krista’s pleading eyes.
“Not at all,” Erin agreed, as kindly as she could, and rained a warm smile on Krista. “We’ll get along just fine!” Kane’s gray gaze was dubious.
“Daddy, please, don’t go!” Krista cried in a shaky voice. Her frightened blue eyes skittered over to Erin and back to her father.
“Look, honey,” Kane answered, taking both of Krista’s hands in his. He squatted next to the chair, so that the child could look him squarely in the eyes. “You know I don’t want to go, so let’s not make it any harder than it already is. I’ll be back soon. I promise.” He planted a loving kiss on the top of her forehead as if to ward off any further protests. His silvery eyes locked with Erin’s for a moment, begging her to understand, but there was something more—the same old sense of wariness seemed to flicker across his face for an instant as he grabbed his jacket and walked to the door. Krista stared at her plate, unable to watch her father leave, but Erin followed him.
Kane stretched into his coat, took Erin’s hand in his and gently guided her out into the semiprivacy of the hallway. “Thank you,” he stated and his eyes held hers. Erin could see a question in their steely depths.
“It’s no problem,” she replied, doubting her own words as she thought about the headstrong blond girl.
Kane looked at her and seemed unconvinced. “You don’t have to mince words with me. I know that Krista’s a handful!”
“I can handle her,” Erin insisted.
“I know.” Still he hesitated, and in the dimly lit hallway Erin could sense an uneasiness creep over both of them. It was the same feeling that seemed to keep them from completely trusting each other. He began to reach for her and then let his hand drop. “I’ll be back as soon as I can….”
“I’m sure it won’t be long,” she agreed, knowing that her voice sounded feeble. What was it that was bothering her? Something didn’t seem right. “I thought that the repairmen fixed the computer on Friday,” she puzzled, shaking her head in an effort to remember the details of Friday afternoon. “Yes, I’m sure that we got a call around five o’clock, stating that all systems were go.”
Kane’s jaw flexed. “Apparently there have been additional problems.” His voice was strangely devoid of emotion—cold.