The Daughter Merger. Janice Kay Johnson

does. So much so, she’d rather hitch a ride across three states than stay with me.”

      “Thirteen-year-olds don’t think anything bad can happen to them.”

      He wasn’t so sure about that. Claire knew that divorce happened, that mothers became drunks, that fathers disappeared from their daughters’ lives.

      “Maybe. Just remember,” David said, “if you have trouble with her, you’re not stuck with her.”

      “If she doesn’t keep her word, you’ll be the first to know.” She gave him an odd, crooked smile. “Now, would you go yell up the stairs? Tell the girls dinner is ready.”

      She made it sound so easy, so casual. Bemused by the idea of being able to call, “Dinner’s ready,” and have his daughter come running in good humor, David went to the foot of the stairs and braced himself for the customary rejection.

      “Claire? Linnet? Time for dinner.”

      “Okay!” Linnet’s voice floated cheerfully down from above.

      David didn’t wait. The less obvious his presence was to Claire, the better.

      Back in the kitchen, he discovered Grace had the phone tucked between her shoulder and ear as she took a strainer out of the cupboard and set it in the sink.

      “Mom, Claire is a very nice girl.” There was a pause as she lifted the huge steaming pan of pasta to the sink and dumped the spaghetti into the strainer. “No, she won’t be here forever.” Seeing David, she rolled her eyes although her tone was very patient. “Mom, I really can’t talk right now. Claire’s father is here to see his daughter, and I’m putting dinner on the table.”

      He mouthed, “Can I help?”

      Covering the receiver, she whispered, “Will you put this on the table? Are they coming?”

      “Linnet answered me,” he said noncommittally.

      “Oh, good. Here.” Grace handed him a heaping bowl of sauce. Then, into the receiver, she said, “No, I wasn’t talking to you, Mom. Listen, I’ll call tomorrow. Say hi to Dad, okay?” She listened for another minute, repeated goodbye and set down the phone, shaking her head. “Maybe we forever feel like teenagers in the presence of our parents.” Her gusty sigh told him she did not look forward to speaking to her mother again. “Oh, well. Okay, here’s the spaghetti.” She handed him this bowl in turn, although clearly she was murmuring to herself now. He could all but see her ticking items off on her fingers. “The garlic bread is on the table and all I have to do is dish up the green beans.”

      “Smells good.”

      So did she. Close to her, he caught a whiff of an elusive, flowery scent. His gaze lingered on the slender, elegant line of her neck, on tiny wisps of hair against the cream of her skin.

      Thank heavens, she didn’t seem to notice his momentary reverie…oh, hell, call a spade a spade—what he’d felt was yet another spark of sexual awareness that was, to put it mildly, highly inconvenient. For crying out loud, this situation was complicated enough without her becoming self-conscious around him, or him having to stonewall yet another emotion. As it was, he couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t developed an ulcer.

      “Why don’t you sit down?” Grace suggested, smiling at him. “Pick any place.”

      The talking-to he’d just given himself didn’t keep him from noticing how pretty that smile made a face he’d labeled plain.

      His daughter’s timing was, as always, impeccable. She chose that moment to slouch into the dining room, Linnet at her heels. She had a gift for killing any good mood of his.

      “Oh, girls.” Grace bustled from the kitchen. “I hope you’re hungry. I made tons. Sit, sit!”

      “Hello, Claire,” David said quietly.

      She rolled her eyes and dropped into a chair.

      Grace cleared her throat meaningfully.

      Claire stirred, shot him a resentful look and mumbled reluctantly, “Hi.” And I wish it was goodbye, her tone seemed to say.

      He was too surprised by getting a semi-civil response to take offense.

      “Well…” Grace smiled at them all from her place at one end of the table. “Linnet, why don’t you start the pasta? Claire, would you like garlic bread?”

      David’s sense of unreality grew as the meal progressed. An outsider would guess this to be a family—Mom, Pop and kids. Grace, with help from her daughter, maintained a cheerful stream of chatter that disguised Claire’s sullenness and David’s monosyllabic responses to his hostess’s occasional questions. He had the queasy feeling that he was delicately balanced over a deadly precipice.

      Claire had come to the table. She was keeping her head bent, but she was eating. She even laughed once at something her friend said. She wasn’t refusing to break bread with her father. She wasn’t shooting him dagger looks. She was following Grace Blanchet’s first rule of basic civility.

      It stung, of course, to know that she was trying this hard only because she was so desperate to stay here, to not have to go home with him.

      But she was trying.

      And David knew damn well it would take only the smallest misstep on his part to fuel one of her explosions. So he couldn’t make that misstep. Unfortunately, his care made him a lousy guest. Not by glance or tone did Grace acknowledge that this meal was anything but a pleasure.

      The girls were done and looking restless when she said, as casually as when she asked him to summon their daughters to dinner, “David, Linnet’s thinking about trying out for the middle school play on Wednesday. Claire is considering the idea, too. At the very least, she wants to stay and watch the audition. Unfortunately, I have a meeting that might run until almost six. PTA board. We’re planning the autumn dance and carnival. I hate to have the girls hanging around waiting too long. Any chance you could pick them up?”

      “A play?” He couldn’t help sounding startled. Claire? On stage? And taking direction from someone in a position of authority?

      “I told you he’d be busy,” Claire said, not looking at him.

      “No. Of course I can pick them up.” He ventured a toe in the waters, speaking directly to his daughter. “I just didn’t realize you were interested in theater, Claire.”

      She slouched lower in the chair and twirled her hair on her finger. “I don’t know if I am.”

      Grace was looking at him with obvious appeal. Persuade her, those extraordinary eyes begged. Be a father.

      What a joke. If he said a single damned word in favor of the idea, Claire would…

      Whoa.

      He gave his idea a lightning assessment and deemed it sound.

      “It would mean a lot of reading and memorization.” He sipped his wine, shrugged. “And it’s no fun to try out and not get a part.”

      Claire’s eyes flashed at him. “That figures! You’re so sure I wouldn’t!”

      “I didn’t say that,” he argued mildly. “What’s the play?”

      “Much Ado About Nothing,” Linnet contributed, her anxiety about the new-sprung tension evident in the way she hastened to fill the silence. “You know. Shakespeare.”

      Grace made a sound that might have been a suppressed laugh, buried in her napkin.

      “I know that one,” David said, straight-faced. “Beatrice and Benedick. The wimpy Hero and the jerk…what’s his name?”

      “Claudio,” Linnet supplied. She frowned. “You think Hero is a wimp?”

      He saw the error of his ways. Hero was undoubtedly her dream part, and with reason: she was no Beatrice. “Actually,” he said hastily, “she is