A Son's Tale
“Why couldn’t you take a chance? What would have happened?”
Her nipples were hard.
“I don’t know and I was afraid to find out.”
“I like the sound of that.” Even his voice was sexy. This wasn’t fair.
“You are still my teacher, Cal. And I have a custody hearing to worry about. I can’t start a relationship right before the judge makes his decision, no matter who it’s with. It would just feed the image of me that my parents have given him.” She’d thought a lot about this. “And even if it didn’t, being with you, in any capacity, would take my focus away from Sammie right now. I can’t afford that. Not with my father as the adversary.”
“Did your mother talk to him like she promised she would?”
“I have no idea. I haven’t heard from either one of them. If Mom had something to report, she’d have called either way. The silence is actually making me nervous. I’m sure my father’s plotting something again.”
“Or maybe he’s just taking some time to cool down and think and will do the right thing by you.”
She’d like to hope so, even though experience told her differently. Still, Cal had met her father. He knew what she was up against. And Cal was a smart man. If he thought her father might bend, then maybe he was right.
“Maybe I’m just too close to the situation to read him clearly after all these years.”
“Or maybe you do read him clearly, but this is an entirely new situation for both of you. Your father is wrong, Morgan. Apparently that’s not something he’s had a lot of practice with. But as you’ve said, he’s not a bad man.”
“No, just an emotionless one.” Her father would do what he thought was right. But he acted with his head, not his heart.
* * *
THINGS HAPPENED IN THEIR own time and sometimes at exactly the right time, Morgan thought as she answered the phone the next morning.
“Hello?” She’d dropped Sammie off and had just pulled into the day-care parking lot.
“Morgan? It’s your father.”
She knew that from the number that appeared on the display. “Hi, Daddy.”
“I’m calling to arrange a meeting with you today during the lunch hour,” he said. “I have something to discuss with you.”
“You want to meet at the restaurant?”
“I’d like you to come to my office.”
He wasn’t planning to just railroad her into his way of thinking, then. He could do that at the restaurant.
With a smile on her face, Morgan agreed to the meeting and went into the day care to greet her preschoolers.
There was no mistake about the timing of her father’s request.
* * *
“COME IN.” GEORGE LOWEN buttoned the jacket of his black suit as he opened the door of his inner sanctum to Morgan a couple of minutes before noon.
“Where’s Nancy?” she asked, referring to the woman who’d been her father’s personal secretary since Morgan was little.
“Early lunch.” George closed the door behind them.
Ordinarily she’d have been intimidated by that closed door, by being alone with her father in his office. Ordinarily she’d have felt self-conscious about the casualness of her calf-length colorful cotton skirt and yellow peasant blouse, but today she had an entirely different feeling about meeting with her father.
She’d still pulled her blond hair up into a chignon, though. Some things just set her father off. Morgan’s hair down, unkempt as he called it, was one of them.
She went straight toward the armchair she usually occupied.