Father of Two Read online

  In the mirror, he saw her nod.

  He scooted ahead, down the ramp to the residents’ garage. He unlocked the gate by poking a magnetic card into a slot, then cruised through the garage to his reserved parking space. Rather than hike up the ramp and around to the front of the building, he rode elevator to the lobby.

  Two sets of glass doors set the lobby off from the vestibule and the vestibule from the outer door. In the vestibule, Stan, the daytime doorman, was stationed behind his desk, armed with monitors, apartment intercom buttons, and a telephone. For all his state-of-the-art equipment, Stan generally had a hard time keeping anyone out of the building, if the number of useless fliers, proselytizing pamphlets, and take-out restaurant menus slipped under Dennis’s door was any indication.

  Outside the outer door stood Gail Saunders, her battered leather briefcase gripped in one fisted hand and her other hand wrapped around the shoulder strap of her purse. The late-afternoon sun threw her face into shadow, but it highlighted her hair, turning it silvery-pale. Below the decorous hem of her skirt, her calves were well-toned. She must work out. Dennis wondered whether she played squash.

  He pushed open the door into the vestibule. “It’s all right, Stan,” he said to the doorman, who was rising from his desk to open the door for her. “She’s with me.”

  “Is she, now?” Stan lifted a bushy white eyebrow, then winked.

  Not that way, Dennis wanted to emphasize, but his gaze settled on her taut calves again, for some reason, and he said nothing. Were her thighs that sleek, too? Any cellulite anywhere on her?

  He remembered to force a smile as Stan let her into the vestibule. Before Dennis ushered her into the lobby, he thought to ask the doorman, “Did you happen to notice my kids’ nanny leaving this afternoon?”

  “Ummmm...let me see,” Stan mumbled, which meant he didn’t know. Betty Grover might very well have blown right past him on her way out of the building. She probably had. Given that she was sixty years old, Stan wouldn’t have bothered to pay any attention to her.

  Unwilling to wait for the doorman to come up with a good lie about Mrs. Grover’s untimely exit, Dennis cupped his hand around the bend in Gail Saunders’ arm and guided her through the vestibule, into the lobby, and across the vaulted lounge area to the elevator bank. Beneath the linen of her sleeve he could feel the angles of her elbow. If she played squash, she’d have a fine, firm upper arm, he thought. But her wrist, visible below the edge of the sleeve, didn’t look like a squash player’s. The bones were too narrow, the lace of blue veins splaying across the back of her hand too delicate.

  Of course she wouldn’t play squash. She was a public defender. In her free time, she probably unwound by booking passage on whale-watching tours, or marching on Washington, or hugging trees and raising money for goat adoption programs in sub-Saharan Africa.

  The elevator arrived. Dennis accompanied her into to the cubicle and released her arm. She sent him a passive smile and took a safe step from him. “How old are your children?” she asked politely.

  He pushed the penthouse button and the doors slid shut. “Seven. They’re twins.”

  “I see.” She studied the panel, where the floor numbers ticked upward on an illuminated grid. “And their mother—?”

  “In Seattle with her new husband.”

  “I see.”

  What did she see? That he was going to be distracted once they reached his apartment? That his impulsive decision to invite her to his house was highly unorthodox? That because of the distractions and the unorthodoxy of the situation, she and her Slavic client had a chance at taking the Arlington Gazette to the cleaners?

  They most definitely did not have a chance. Nobody was going to wind up cleaned and pressed today. He intended to get the kids settled and then give Gail Saunders a good hosing. That was as clean as anyone was going to get.

  “Do you have kids?” he asked, remembering that friendly collegiality was the best strategy for making her amenable to his client’s wishes.

  Gail pursed her lips. “No—although I recently acquired a step-nephew.”

  “Step-nephews are good,” he said.

  Her frosty silence implied that she didn’t agree.

  The door glided open at the top floor, which his apartment shared with one other, although its owner—the head of some minor principality whose daughter attended Choate—used the apartment only when he was in the country to visit the girl. Dennis slid his key into the lock and then turned to Gail. “As soon as I get things straightened out with the kids, we’ll discuss your libel case. All I’ll need is a minute to find out what’s going on with them.”

  “One minute,” she said, that damned passive smile shaping her mouth once more.

  Turning from her, he unlocked the door and pushed it open. Playful shrieks echoed down the hall from the kitchen. He cursed.

  Scarcely remembering to hold the door open for Gail, he dropped his keys into his trouser pocket and jogged down the hall, swinging his briefcase. Skidding to a halt in the kitchen doorway, he surveyed the scene and grimaced. A murky puddle of milk spread across the tiled floor, with chunks of a soggy solid floating in it. Erin, clad in pink stretch pants and a brassy green blouse, her feet bare and her straw-blond hair pulled back into a green scrunchy, was wielding the mop, the handle of which had to be at least a foot taller than she was. Sean, in jeans, a Yankees T-shirt and a Red Sox cap—he was of divided loyalties when it came to baseball—was standing on the butcher block table and singing a foul rock song that had to do with visiting a whore.

  “What are you doing?” Dennis bellowed, dropping his briefcase in the hall and storming into the kitchen. “What the hell is going on?”

  “Don’t swear, Daddy,” Erin chided. “’Specially ’cuz Sean is singing.”

  “He’s singing about a whore!” Dennis wrested the mop from Erin and glared at Sean. “Since when has standing on tables been allowed around here?”

  “Well, you never said it wasn’t allowed,” Sean reasoned, although he had the wisdom to climb down onto a chair. “’Member what you said about how when there’s no law, you can legally assume it’s legal. Or something like that.”

  “What is this?” Dennis pointed at the puddle.

  “Erin spilled her milk,” Sean reported, settling into the chair. “Then it was such a mess, I dropped my Pop-Tart into it.”

  “First he broke it into pieces,” Erin elaborated. “He thought it would look ickier that way.”

  “But I didn’t put it in the toaster-oven,” Sean added in his own defense. “You said I shouldn’t, so I didn’t.”

  “We were gonna take turns mopping,” Erin said. “It was supposed to be my turn first.”

  “I was the music. Erin was supposed to sing when it was my turn to mop. Mrs. Grover said when you clean up you’re supposed to make a game out of it.”

  “We each had to pick one of Mr. Potato-Head’s favorite songs,” Erin explained. “Sean was gonna do Green Day and I was gonna do Alanis Morissette, ’cuz I’m a girl.” Something in the doorway caught her eye, and she paused in mid-breath. Pivoting with the mop, Dennis saw Gail Saunders filling the doorway, staring at the three of them with a peculiar expression on her face, a cross between amusement and terror.

  “Who’s that?” Sean asked. “Your girlfriend?”

  “No,” Dennis said, so quickly and firmly the kids flinched. A glimmer of superiority flickered in Gail’s eyes, and he realized he was undermining his position. He had to remain cordial. He had to make light of this fiasco so he could woo her into viewing Kopoluski’s complaint from the newspaper’s perspective. “She’s a lawyer,” he told the children.

  “You work with my daddy?” Erin asked her.

  “As a matter of fact, no. I work against him,” Gail replied, her smile as sharp as a razor blade.

  “That’s too bad,” Erin commiserated. “He’s the best lawyer in Arlington. Actually, he says he’s the best damn lawyer in Arlington, but I don’t like to swear. He does
, though.”

  “I don’t like to,” Dennis corrected her.

  “I like to swear,” Sean volunteered. “I’m Sean, and my daddy is the best damn lawyer in the whole, wide universe. And I ought to know ’cuz I saw Star Wars, and there wasn’t any good lawyers in that.”

  “Katie Goodland says there’s no such thing as a good lawyer. Her daddy is a doctor,” she informed Gail. “I think he gets sued a lot.”

  The spilled milk was seeping into the cracks between the tiles. Shuddering, Dennis loosened his tie and pressed the sponge end of the mop into the mess. “Erin, do me a favor and take Ms. Saunders to the study, okay? I’m going to clean this up,” he called over his shoulder to Gail, “and then we’ll get some work done.”

  Erin walked in a wide circle to the doorway, carefully avoiding the area he was mopping. “Daddy’s study is the best room in the house. I wish I could sleep there. I think he does sleep there sometimes, only he can sleep while he’s sitting at his desk. Did you know Sean and I are bank robbers?”

  Gail sounded as if she was choking on something. “No, your father didn’t mention that.”

  Erin pointed the way down the hall. “Yup. We got arrested and everything. Actually, our baby sitter was the bank robber. We were just compasses.”

  “Compasses?” Gail’s voice drifted back to Dennis.

  Without Erin present to lambaste him, he felt relatively safe mouthing a few earthy expletives while he crossed to the sink to squeeze the sopped-up milk out of the sponge end of the mop. “Now, tell me what happened with Mrs. Grover,” he commanded his son.

  Seated on a chair, Sean kicked his feet back and forth and sighed. “I don’t know what happened. She just left.”

  “You didn’t do anything naughty?”

  “Nope.”

  “Erin?”

  “Nope.”

  “She just up and left?” Dennis found that hard to believe.

  “She got a phone call first,” Sean told him. “Then she got off the phone and told us to do our homework. We told her we don’t have homework. We’re in second grade.”

  “You should have homework. I had homework in second grade,” Dennis lectured. “And look at me now. The best damned lawyer in the universe.” He swabbed the floor with the mop, feeling more like a mediocre janitor than the best damned anything.

  “Do you think if we had homework she would have stayed?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know where she is. But I’ll tell you this, Sean—there’s going to be a new nanny here tomorrow.”

  “I don’t like nannies. I liked Todd.”

  “Todd was a juvenile delinquent.” Dennis recalled the teenager his ex-wife had hired to watch the children last fall, while they were still living with her. Todd had indeed robbed a bank’s ATM in November, and he’d made the twins his accomplices—or compasses, according to Erin. That was why, when Dennis had gotten full custody of the kids, he had chosen the allegedly safe route of hiring a child-care professional through a registered nanny service. The service was supposed to screen its employees. But the service had screened Betty Grover, and she’d raced off after a phone call, forgetting all about the children she’d been hired to watch.

  It was enough to make a single father swear. A lot.

  The floor was relatively clean, and he didn’t want to spend any more time with it while Gail Saunders was poking around in his study. “I’ve got to go do some business with Ms. Saunders,” he told Sean. “Can you and Erin behave yourselves for a half hour?”

  “What kind of business?” Sean asked.

  “Law business.”

  “Can we watch?”

  “No.” Dennis rinsed the mop in the sink, then left it hanging over the basin to dry. He hurried across the kitchen to the hall, where he lifted his briefcase and started in the direction of the study.

  Sean trailed behind him. “How come we can’t watch?”

  “You’d be bored.”

  “I’m already bored. Can I watch television?”

  “Yeah.” Dennis knew he ought to be vigilant about how much TV his kids watched, but right now he had to be even more vigilant about Gail Saunders. At this hour, there was probably nothing on but cartoons, anyway.

  He swung around the doorway into the study, Sean directly behind him. “Daddy says we can watch TV!” he bellowed.

  Erin refused to let him interrupt her demonstration of the flexibility of her Barbie doll’s joints. Barbie was dressed in her cheerleader outfit, and Erin twisted the doll’s legs about fifteen degrees wider than a split. “This doesn’t hurt Barbie,” she explained solemnly, holding the doll up for Gail to see. “It would probably kill you, though. Your vagina would probably tear if you tried to do this.”

  Gail sat rigidly on the leather sofa, her hands folded on her lap and her knees pressed together, as if to defend herself against tears.

  “Can it, Erin,” Dennis barked, plucking the doll from his daughter’s fingers on his way to his desk. He discreetly pressed Barbie’s legs back together and sent Gail a contrite smile. “Both my children have extensive vocabularies.”

  Gail was clearly not amused. Her cheeks were pink, her eyes round and her lips clamped into a grim line.

  “Okay,” he said with forced cheer. “Go pickle your brains, kids. Watch some tube. Ms. Saunders and I have work to do.”

  Erin shrugged, then skipped out of the study after her brother. Dennis closed the door, took a deep breath, and smiled at Gail. “Life can be interesting when you’ve got children.”

  She still didn’t speak. He traced her gaze to his hand, in which he still held Barbie. The svelte, pinch-faced doll puckered up at him. “She’ll take dictation,” he suggested, twisting her legs so she could sit on the edge of his desk.

  “Can we get to work?” Gail asked tightly.

  It dawned on him that she was extremely uncomfortable. Annoyed. Furious. Maybe a touch panicked. “You don’t like kids, do you,” he guessed.

  “No.”

  He tried to repair the situation. If he opened negotiations while she was still keyed up about the twins, they’d get nowhere fast. “I’ll grant you, Erin and Sean can be mischievous. But they’re good kids.”

  “They’re loud and messy. They’re rude and crude.”

  “They moved in with me less than a month ago. Their mother is off on the other side of the continent, marrying some computer wonk whom they don’t much like. So I cut them a little slack.”

  “Perhaps you ought to stop cutting them some slack. That your daughter could explain to me—a total stranger—the intricacies of her doll’s genitals...”

  Dennis laughed. What else could he do? Unfortunately, Gail didn’t join his laughter. “She’s a kid,” he defended Erin. “She didn’t realize you’d get all uptight about it.”

  “I’m not uptight,” Gail muttered, looking about as prissy as a cloistered nun. “I just considered her behavior inappropriate.”

  “Look.” He gave Gail his most ingratiating smile. “Everything about this situation is inappropriate. I’m very grateful you’re being a good sport.” So be a good sport, okay?

  Not okay. Her eyes were deadly, as blue as a clear winter sky reflected in ice. They were so sharp, so cold he wondered if she was going to double her demands against the Gazette, penalizing the newspaper for his kids’ rudeness.

  Let her try to double her demands. She might think the Russki was owed more because Dennis had had to conduct this meeting in his home—but if she pushed Dennis, she’d find out why Dennis pulled down the hourly fees he earned. His kids had been exaggerating only slightly when they’d ranked him number one in the universe.

  He removed his jacket, taking his time, and draped it over the back of his chair. He gave his tie another tug, unfastened the collar button of his shirt, and then unbuttoned his sleeves. Slowly, painstakingly, he rolled one up to his elbow, and then he rolled the other. He could almost hear his watch ticking. He hoped she was getting more uncomfortable with each tick.

&n
bsp; “Is this a strip-tease?” she asked as he finished cuffing the second sleeve.

  Her eyes were still cool, her mouth giving nothing away. But a hint of humor filtered through her voice. He smiled and hooked his thumbs conspicuously around his belt buckle. “What a great idea,” he said. “If I say yes, would you be willing to reconsider that ten-thousand dollar offer for your client? It’s still on the table.”

  “If you say yes,” she replied, “I’ll ask for five million. After sitting through an anatomy lesson with your daughter, the last thing I want is an anatomy lesson with you.”

  No smile, but she was definitely laughing inside. And, much as he wanted to rake her over the coals in this stupid libel case, he wanted even more to laugh with her. Because of the case, he told himself, but he suspected he was lying.

  “I give a very different kind of anatomy lesson than my daughter does—especially when the class consists of an attractive unmarried woman.”

  “How do you know I’m unmarried?” she asked, her eyes dancing even though she refused to smile.

  “What do you think I do, go into negotiations blind?” He leaned against the edge of his desk, his hips just inches from Barbie. “You’re thirty-one years old. Graduate of Wesleyan University and Yale Law. You’ve been with the Public Defenders office since you finished law school, and you don’t know diddly about libel law. And you’re unmarried.”

  She bristled. “I do so know diddly!”

  “Well, there you have it.” He smiled, enjoying the spectacle of Gail Saunders rattled. He liked the way her eyes flashed and her mouth twitched as she scrambled for a suitable riposte. Her lips—when she wasn’t pursing them—looked very soft.

  “What I know,” she said stiffly, “is that my client has worked long and hard to build a decent life for himself in this country. And the Gazette slandered him, making that decent life all but impossible. Would you like to see him return to a life of crime? How would the Gazette feel if he was forced to start stealing again, because he couldn’t afford to eat? Perhaps you’ve heard of Les Miserables.”