Yesterday, she’d changed that. Yesterday hadn’t been a court-assigned day. Hallie had come on her own.
Anxious. The word spurred him into the small rear yard.
For the first time since his divorce, he saw what years could do to a plot of ground. The old pine that had towered above the single-car garage in his day was gone, a two-foot stump in its place. Along the back, the wooden fence tipped and heeled in a patch of fireweed. Once the place had been home—small-scaled, but neat and tidy and wholesome.
The ideal place to raise a little girl.
Dispirited, Seth turned from the deterioration and started for his truck.
The back door squeaked. Melody stepped barefoot onto the cracked cement stoop. She hooked the screen with one hip, then let it whap closed.
Had he caught her in the guise of sleep? Or…in the guise?
A faded red robe matching her dyed hair skimmed the base of her butt. He wondered if she wore underwear. Knowing his ex, he figured not. Where was Roy-Dean, boy wonder? Behind the door? Ready to stumble out, frown matching hers on his Brad Pitt face?
Melody plucked a lighter and cigarette from one big pocket; lit up. Seth’s brows jammed together. Lunn’s influence?
“Well, now.” Her mouth spoke clouds of smoke. “Look what the puppy hauled home. Fixing to leave already?”
“’Lo, Mel.”
She jacked an elbow on her folded arm, gusted a blue ring. His stomach clenched.
“Whaddya want?”
He thought of the Quinlan woman. Gentle, easy on the eyes. Damned easy. A thousand-light-year gap separated her from this woman who’d once been his wife. Tough as a pavement compactor, that was Melody. A toughness, he knew, that in the past few years had begun stifling Hallie. “When’d you start smoking?”
“A while ago. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“What affects my daughter is my business.”
“Don’t worry.” Melody cocked a hip, levered the robe higher. “I don’t smoke inside. Kid won’t let me.” She eyed him. “So. What is it you want?” she repeated.
His pulse kicked hard. Some role models they were for their child. Him a taciturn father who worked 24/7; her a… What had Hallie said? A bar tramp? He wouldn’t go that far, but in this second he half agreed with his daughter.
“Am I making you anxious, Mel?” he asked, vocalizing Hallie’s term.
“You?” She laughed, but her hand shook when she brought the cigarette to her lips. “Why on earth would I be anxious?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Maybe because last winter when you forgot to give Hallie lunch money for a week,” he enunciated forgot, “I meant what I said.”
Melody scoffed. “Right. You’d take me to court and get back those custody rights you signed away ten years ago.”
“Not by choice.” Your old man took me to the cleaners.
“Whatever.”
“It would be a different story this time, Mel. I’m not scraping the bottom of the bucket anymore.”
“No, but you’re still working forever and a day. The judge would put her in foster care before he’d give her to you.”
He let the words settle and brand. Melody was good at branding. Foster care. Where he’d spent three long, lonely years bouncing around, after his mother burned his father to death in the shed behind his family’s home. He’d had enough of foster care and social workers to last ten lifetimes. They’d have to kill him before he’d let one near Hallie or have her humiliated by a court battle that could see her carted off to some unknown pair deemed “caring and responsible” by The System.
“You know damned well,” his ex was saying, “she’s better off with me than in one of those places.”
He did know. That was the crux of this whole situation. Had been for years. But he also knew her words were a lot of hot air. If Hallie moved anywhere, it would be into his house. He’d see to that.
“Anyway, if Hallie’d told me,” Melody went on, “you know I would’ve left her the money.”
His jaw ached from clenching. “Actually I don’t. But I do know this. Leaving our daughter alone overnight is wrong. She’s not all grown-up. If you can’t be there for her, I will.”
“Big talk from a guy who’s never home himself. Least I work a nine to five most days.”
Only because your daddy bought you Cut ’n’ Class hair salon.
He ignored his thumping blood, zeroed in on the reason he’d come to this door. “Hallie wants to go to a movie this afternoon without a chaperone. I don’t see it as a problem.”
“Sure you don’t. You’re a man. Men think—”
“Jeez, Mel, it’s an afternoon movie, not an orgy. What can it hurt?”
Melody flicked ashes into the flower bed beside the stoop. “Orgy. Now there’s a word and a half. For your information, a helluva lot can hurt if that boy starts pawing her.”
“No one’s going to paw her. They’ll go to the movie, watch it and she’ll come home. End of story.”
“Ha. I was fifteen once. I know what goes on in those back rows, in the dark.”
“Don’t judge our daughter by your standards.”
“Oh, aren’t we all righteous? Like you never copped a feel in the back of a theater, you and those bad boy brothers of yours.”
Not at fifteen. He’d been too busy working his ass off after school. Trying to sweeten the B in his hive of marks. As for Jon and Luke, they’d been men in their twenties and gone from home. What they did with women was their business.
He set his hands on his hips, let out a deep breath. “Cut her some slack, Mel. She’s a normal teenage girl, a good girl. She won’t get in trouble at the damn movie.”
Melody tilted her head, squinted against a stream of smoke. “Did she tell you how old this guy is?” She smirked at his silence. “Didn’t think so. He’s a senior. Seventeen. A MacAllister.” As if that said it all.
The MacAllisters of Trailer Trash Park.
Fifteen years ago, Delwood Owens had swept Seth into the same backyard barrel.
Melody went on. “He part-times at the Garage Center. You still want her to go alone?”
Dammit. If he didn’t support Hallie, he’d lose his one skimpy chance of truly bonding with her. If he disagreed with Melody, whatever connection still existed between mother and daughter would be shot.
He said, “Why not let her go, if she promises to be home within half hour of it finishing? That’s roughly three hours, Mel. You can trust her for three hours in the middle of the day in a public place, for Pete’s sake.”
“In a dark public place. With a man. At eighteen, I was—”
Pregnant. And she’d never forgiven him for it. Not for “messing up” her life. For damn sure, not for squashing her big dreams of becoming a model.
Seth pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look. What if I made a point of meeting the boy first?”
“You’d do that?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” If it’ll help my child.
“Fine.” She stuck her head back inside, yelled, “Hallie, get out here.”
The girl had obviously hovered within inches of the door; she appeared at once.
Melody