Daddy To Be Determined. Muriel Jensen

was to be put to more trouble on her account.

      He shook his head. “Cab service died last year.”

      Roxie, still kneeling on her chair, leaned across the table to shake cereal into the empty bowl. “We really like Frosted Pups. It has colored candies in it, but Daddy says we can’t have that except sometimes on Saturdays. It doesn’t have enough…” She turned to her sister for help.

      “Nutrition,” Vanessa enunciated carefully. She pushed the milk in the direction of the empty chair. “Daddy said you could stay for dinner,” she added in a rush.

      Natalie guessed by the way Ben Griffin stopped in the act of removing a battered suede jacket from the back of his chair that the child had lied.

      But he shrugged on the jacket without correcting her.

      “That’s very generous,” Natalie said, beginning to feel his disapproval like a weight and hating that she couldn’t respond to the children’s warmth. She knew he wouldn’t like it. “But I really have to go today.”

      Both girls looked crestfallen, and she was at a loss to understand their interest in her when she’d hardly spoken to them.

      “But I can have breakfast first,” she said, hoping to draw back the smiles. She put her suitcase down by the door and went to the table.

      Ben poured coffee into her cup, then excused himself to find his car keys.

      Vanessa took a napkin from the holder in the middle of the table and walked around to hand it to her. “Would you like a banana for your cereal?” she asked.

      Natalie opened the napkin onto her lap. “No, this is fine, thank you. What grade are you in, Vanessa?”

      “I’m in second. Roxie’s in preschool.”

      “But I’m gonna get my ears pierced,” Roxie said, coming around the table to press in on the other side of Natalie. She put a fingertip to the jade stud in Natalie’s closest earlobe. “And I’m gonna get earrings just like yours!”

      Vanessa rolled her eyes. “She’s not getting her ears pieced until she grows up. Daddy says we’re too young. Do you think we’re too young?”

      “Definitely,” she said. “You have to take care of your ears very carefully when you have them pierced or you get an infection. And it’s easier to remember all the things you have to do if you’re older.”

      “How old were you?” Vanessa asked.

      “I was in high school,” Natalie replied. “My friend gave it to me as a present for my birthday.”

      “You were sleeping last night,” Roxie said, leaning her elbow companionably on the table beside Natalie’s bowl and smiling up into her face. “I thought you were Sleeping Beauty! I wanted Daddy to kiss you, but he didn’t want to.”

      Natalie bet he didn’t. “I wasn’t feeling very well.”

      Vanessa confirmed that with a nod. “Grandma said you had a cold, then you had some brandy, and you didn’t answer the phone.”

      Natalie propped her elbow on the table and rested her forehead in her hand. It ached abominably.

      “Dillydally if you’re able,” Roxie sang to her, quoting the old aphorism, “but keep your elbows off the table.”

      Natalie dutifully lowered her elbow.

      “That wasn’t polite!” Vanessa scolded Roxie. “She’s company.”

      “Daddy says we have to have good table manners all the time!”

      “Us, but not her! She’s a grown-up!”

      “No, no, that’s all right.” Natalie put an arm around each girl to defuse the argument. “Thank you, Vanessa, but Roxanne is right. Good manners are always important.”

      Their father returned with a key ring hooked over his index finger. He took in the scene of the three of them and his brow darkened.

      Natalie dropped her arms from them and swallowed a lump in her throat as she smiled. “You girls have a good day at school,” she said. “And thank you for getting my breakfast together. I’m very glad that I got to meet you.”

      “You ready, girls?” their father asked.

      Vanessa sighed. “Yes. Come on, Roxie.”

      Vanessa picked up her lunch box from the counter, and Roxie took a well-loved doll from beside her bowl. They stopped to wave as their father held the back door open.

      “I’ll be right back,” he said to Natalie.

      The heroic thing to do, she thought, as he closed the door behind him, was to quickly finish her cereal and start walking to the B-and-B. Her suitcase had wheels, and Dancer’s Beach was small enough that it would take her only a moment to figure out how to get to the B-and-B from here.

      She congratulated herself on the first reasonable plan she’d made since her unfortunate decision to use a sperm bank to get a baby in her life.

      She finished her cereal hurriedly, had several sips of hot coffee, then rinsed out her dishes and put them in the sink.

      Nothing about the view from the window above the sink looked familiar. She walked into the living room and looked out the large window. She saw that the house was on a hill just above town, and that it was probably six or seven blocks downhill, then just about half a mile to the B-and-B and her car. A cinch. At home she ran three miles every other day.

      Unfortunately, she discovered a moment later, she ran far better than she walked. When she turned to head back to the kitchen to retrieve her suitcase and leave quickly, she caught her foot on a two-by-four in the hallway that she hadn’t noticed on her way in. She fell flat on her face, a burning pain ripping through her right ankle.

      Chapter Three

      Ben dropped Vanessa off at Matthew Buckley School. Children streamed toward the building from all directions.

      “I think you should ask her to stay for dinner,” Vanessa said as she leaned over to kiss him goodbye. “I think she’s very nice. It isn’t her fault that she couldn’t wake up and Grandma had to make her leave ’cause she’d promised her room to somebody else.”

      All he needed at this point in his life, Ben thought, was a ditzy blonde with eyes like those of a silent-film star, all anguish and repentance. Life was hard, but you had to behave with some common sense and resist being splashed all over the news. Even if you were beautiful.

      “You heard her, Van,” he replied. “She has to go home.”

      “That’s ’cause she knows you don’t like her.”

      “I don’t even know her.” He tried to plead innocence.

      “You look at her the same way you look at us when we do something we’re not supposed to do.”

      “But it doesn’t mean I don’t like you, does it?” he challenged. “It just means I want you to do the right thing.”

      “Yeah, but she doesn’t know you like we do,” his daughter explained patiently. “She probably thinks you don’t like her.”

      She was so much like her mother. “Will you please go to school?” He pinched her nose and unlocked her door. “I love you.”

      “I love you, too,” she said, but grudgingly.

      Roxie was silent all the way to the day care. He’d have probably gotten the same treatment from her before she got out of the car, except that Marianne came to open her door. She was tall and angular with a long dark braid and soft hazel eyes that devoured him every time she looked at him.

      To his recollection, he’d never done anything to encourage her, but she’d either misinterpreted something