Fool Me Once. Fern Michaels
have to deal with it. Like it or not, she was your mother. I hate to say this but…a person’s last wishes should…be honored.”
Hands on her slim hips, eyes dark with rage, Olivia glared at her father. “Okay, you do it! You were the one who was stupid enough to marry her! Oh, God, Dad, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. Well, I did sort of mean it. How in the hell did she get away with robbing a bank? Think, Dad.”
The phone took that moment to ring, saving Dennis from a reply. He turned around to pick it up and growled a greeting. “Lea!” Dennis listened, a frown building on his face. “Let me talk to Ollie, and I’ll call you back. Oh, yes, it’s cold here. There’s a good bit of snow on the ground. It might snow again before the day is out. Give me an hour or so, and I’ll call you back.”
“Is something wrong?” Olivia asked after her dad hung up the phone.
“Not really. My fishing party is arriving early. They want to add a couple of extra days to their itinerary. If I want the charter, I’ll have to leave tonight. Otherwise, I’ll have Lea turn it over to Daimon.”
Olivia felt her eyes well up. “It’s okay, Dad. Since I’m not going to do anything, it won’t make any difference if you’re here or not. Go on back to Lea and your charter, and don’t worry about me. I’ll just…you know, roll with it.”
Dennis looked like he was torn as he gazed at his daughter. “Are you sure, honey?”
No, she wasn’t sure, but she sensed her father wanted to get as far away as he could from the memories of his ex-wife. “I’m sure,” she fibbed.
“Well, all right. But if you change your mind, call Lea, and she can get me on the ship-to-shore. I can always come back if you need me.” His demeanor made it clear he hoped that wouldn’t be necessary. “Do you mind if I use the office?”
Olivia poured two cups of coffee. It looked blacker than coal. Dennis looked at it and grimaced. “I’d say this is strong enough to grow hair on my chest.” Olivia managed a sickly smile in response.
“I printed out some things from your wife’s Web site. I left them on my desk. You might want to take a look before I burn them.”
Olivia glared at the ugly-looking coffee in her cup. She couldn’t drink it. She tossed it and made a fresh pot. While she waited for the water to drip down, she squatted on the floor with the dogs. They ran to her to be cuddled. At that precise moment, as she stared at Loopy and Cecil, she panicked. Where was Loopy’s collar? Which one was Cecil? She couldn’t tell. She tried calling them by name, but they both responded. Markings? They were the same. Teeth? She pried open their respective mouths. Teeth were teeth. Her heart started to thunder in her chest. “Alice, which one is Cecil?” Olivia asked in a jittery voice. Alice looked up at her, then at the two Yorkies in her arms. She barked playfully. Panic-stricken, Olivia upended both dogs. Two pink bellies. Boys, obviously. Both neutered. “Do I need this? No, I do not need this. Absolutely I do not need this,” she mumbled as she continued to search for a difference in markings on the dogs. She drew a blank.
“What’s wrong, honey?” Dennis asked as he set his cup on the counter. It was still full of the horrible-looking coffee.
“Loopy’s collar is gone. One of the other dogs must have loosened it. Now I can’t tell them apart, Dad. Can you?”
Dennis squatted next to his daughter. He eyed both Yorkies. He did everything Olivia had done, with exactly the same results. He finally threw his hands in the air. “I don’t know, Ollie. I can’t tell. Which ones am I taking with me?”
“None, Dad. I can’t do that. I have to give Cecil back. I’m going to try to talk to Jeff, or maybe the trustees. I don’t know, maybe we can work something out.”
“So now you have four dogs!”
Olivia managed a rueful laugh. “Looks that way. I…I suddenly have no desire to break the law. So, did you manage to change your flight?”
“Yep, leaves at eight this evening. I’ll take a cab. I don’t like leaving you like this, Ollie. But the charter is important to me—it will take care of the lean months. I hate reducing it to dollars and cents, yet I really don’t have much of a choice. Ah, fresh coffee. I’ll have a cup after I pack. I called a cab. It’ll be here in an hour. With all the security at Reagan National, I have to be there extra early. Are you sure you don’t want me to take the dogs?”
“I’m sure. I must have had a brain freeze even to suggest it. That would put me in the same category as your ex-wife if I went through with it.” She looked up at her father from her position on the floor. He was somewhere else. Probably planning his charter. She’d never felt more alone in her life. A second later she was on her feet and handing out dog chews. The dogs accepted them and trotted into the great room, where they lay down by the fire and chewed contentedly.
With nothing else to do, Olivia made her way to the studio, where she reached for her appointment book. “I must be crazy,” she muttered over and over to herself as she called to cancel a month’s worth of appointments. She made the last call just as her father called her from the kitchen.
Dennis poured coffee for them both. “Now, let’s talk seriously, Ollie. I can only imagine how you feel. I see the bitterness and sense of betrayal in your eyes. You have to leave that behind you—otherwise, it will fester like a bad sore. I want you to do whatever feels right to you, but be sure that whatever that turns out to be, you can live with it. When you hit a rough patch, you have to slow down and think it through. Whether you know it or not, you’re a very strong, capable person. You can deal with all this. You really can, Ollie. Plot out a course of action and go on from there. Do it the same way you plan a photo shoot. Set it up. You’re the one in control, and don’t ever forget it.” Then he started to laugh and couldn’t stop. “The first thing you have to do before you do anything else is figure out which dog is Cecil.”
Olivia groaned, but she, too, started to laugh. “Hey, I hear a horn. I guess your taxi is here.” She ran to the window. “Yep, it’s here. He’s gonna love you—a trip to Reagan. Big fare, big tip.”
Dennis zipped up his jacket, then hugged his daughter. “I love you, Ollie, and I’m sorry you have to go through this. Call me if you need me. If you want someone to come and stay with you, I’m sure Lea wouldn’t mind.” He squeezed her so hard she squealed for mercy. The horn blew again.
And then he was gone, and Olivia was alone.
Again.
So much for good intentions, Olivia thought as she tossed the pictures from Adrian Ames’s Web site onto the coffee table. The letter followed, the one she knew by heart. She’d planned on burning the lot, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to drop the pages into the fire. She wondered why that was. There should be somebody she could ask, but there wasn’t. Her father would say the letter was the only thing she had of her mother’s, which was pretty damn sad if you considered that she was thirty-four years old. No, no, that was wrong. She had the bracelet. In the blink of an eye she ran down the hall to the desk where she’d thrown it. She reached for it and clutched it in her hand. Now she had two things. A letter and a bracelet. But the bracelet was hers. Some kindly, smiling nurse had probably put it on her wrist within minutes of being born. Such tiny beads. Today they put little plastic strips that passed for bracelets on babies. Today they put them on the baby’s ankle instead of the wrist. She’d read that in some dentist’s office.
Olivia frowned. Didn’t her father tell her that Allison had never seen her, refused to see her after she’d given birth? Of course he’d said that. So how did she get my baby bracelet? And why did she keep it all these years? Her father had never shown it to her. He was sentimental and would have kept it if he’d had it. He’d kept her first baby booties and her pink blanket. Why wouldn’t he have kept the baby bracelet? She made a mental note to ask him the next time she spoke to him.
Everything came back to one thing, the letter. Since she knew it by heart, Olivia folded it up and shoved it into the drawer of the coffee table. The pictures