Alex shifted, knowing he was being a pain. The problem was, he felt like his skin wasn’t his own. He felt like he didn’t fit into his own house any longer. “Should I go see my father? Would he welcome a visit?”
“Not right now.” Sinclair’s voice was kind yet matter-of-fact. “He’s revising his will with his attorney.”
“Revising his will!” Alex straightened. “Why?”
Sinclair shrugged. “I am not party to the inner most thoughts of my employer, sir.”
“The hell you’re not! You know all my inner most thoughts, and I’m your employer, too!”
“I helped diaper you. That gives me special rights in your life, I suppose,” Sinclair said good-naturedly. “However, your father and I have always had a different sort of relationship.”
“You’re not the only one.” Alex squinted at the top level of rooms. He thought he could see his father’s shadow move from the dormered window. “He didn’t tell you anything?”
“Not a thing,” Sinclair con firmed. “But I would think any changes he has decided to make have to do with your three new daughters.”
“Daughters. Of course. Father’s probably cutting me out of his will.”
“Could be.” Sinclair’s tone wasn’t encouraging. “Though I felt hopeful when he touched Alex Junior’s head.”
“He did?” He couldn’t help his astonishment.
“When he thought Nelly and I weren’t looking, he actually rubbed one palm over Alex Junior’s head.” Sinclair wore a questioning frown. “Since she lacks even fuzz up there, I was quite shocked.”
“She is the ugliest baby on earth, isn’t she?” Alex’s shoulders drooped. “A runt. That’s what she reminds me of. How could I father a runt?”
Sinclair started laughing. He dropped his chamois onto the gleaming car and turned to lean against it, holding his stomach with laughter.
“What? What’s so funny?” Alex demanded.
His usually reserved butler shook his head, wiping tears from his eyes. Alex stared, astonished. “I’ve never seen you act this way.”
Sinclair bent over double, guffawing in a most un-austere manner.
“Will you please tell me what you’re laughing about?”
Sinclair took out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. “That’s just what your father said when you were born.”
Alex froze. “I see nothing funny about that.” His father had taunted him most of his life about numerous things. He couldn’t remember ever really pleasing him. To be reminded of his short comings right now, when he’d fathered three girls, wasn’t some thing he wanted to hear.
“No, probably not.” Sinclair gave him an ironic look and pulled his wallet from his suit pocket. He unfolded it, then handed it to him. “That’s really what I’m laughing about.”
He stared at the picture underneath the worn plastic. A baby face peered out at him. “You have an ugly baby, too?” It was some thing he didn’t know about Sinclair. He thought the man’s whole life had revolved around Alex since the day he’d been born. But maybe there was a happy ending to the story. Maybe Sinclair’s ugly off spring had grown up to be someone wonderful, a man with intelligence and great abilities—
“That’s you,” Sinclair said with a grin. “Look closer. That little runt is you.” He reached to pull the picture from under the plastic so Alex could see better. “Bald as a baseball bat, despite Nelly rubbing your head with baby oil constantly. Just like rubbing a baking potato with butter,” he said cheerfully.
The baby in the picture seemed happy in his ugliness, sporting a satisfied expression as he lay snuggled into his covers. Alex felt a momentary sting for the baby’s un spoiled happiness. He’d had no idea what he was up against.
“No hair, didn’t open your eyes for days,” Sinclair went on. “Just a happy runt, content to be fed every couple of hours, then you went right back to sleep. Nelly said she’d never seen such a good baby.” He folded the picture away. “Your mother thought you were the most beautiful thing she’d ever laid eyes on,” he said with a meaningful glance at Alex.
“She did?”
“She did, right until the day she died.” Sinclair gave him a swift pat on the back. “Your mother didn’t care two hoots what the old man thought about her baby. She said runts were blessings, too, and if you were a bit small and a lot ugly, that just made you all the more special in her eyes.”
“I’m sure Father had plenty to say about that,” Alex muttered.
“Nothing your mother ever listened to. When he complained because you had a lazy eye that needed surgery, she told him to take a flying leap. She phrased it more ladylike, but that was the gist. And when you needed special shoes because your feet turned different ways, your mother told your father it meant you would always walk a more gifted path.” Sinclair began putting away the can of wax and the rags. “Guess she was right.”
“She sounds like Daphne,” Alex said with sudden realization.
“She does, doesn’t she?”
He sounded surprised, but Alex had the idea that Sinclair had been leading up to his point.
“And your father loved your mother to distraction.”
“He did?” Alex couldn’t imagine his father loving anyone enough to be distracted.
“Yes. ‘Course, he couldn’t show it much. Your father hadn’t experienced enough love in his life to be able to show it to anyone else.” Sinclair finished packing the tools. “It’s a sin of the father I might recommend you not visit on your own marriage,” he said cryptically.
Alex stared at him.
“And as you may have realized from seeing the very picture made the day you were born in the hospital, runts grow up with feelings and needs of their own. Alex Junior will need you to treat her as if she were the most beautiful child in the world, just as your mother did you. Though I daresay Miss Daphne is going to have to come up with better names for those children soon before I lose my wits,” he muttered before nodding briskly and leaving, the only lecture he’d ever given Alex apparently over.
It was a lot to think about. Alex squinted at the dormered window again, his father’s shadow more evident than before. That was how he always saw his father, as an over whelming, disapproving, dark presence that affected his life. He loved his father, knew how to deal with him on most matters. But the old man was an enigma. He had never really expended sentiment on Alex, not with the fond affection Sinclair and Nelly had shown him. They had raised him, of course.
It struck him that he had suggested to Daphne that she do the same by telling her the babies should go to the nursery. That had been an error on his part, one he resolved not to repeat. If his mother hadn’t died when he was so young, he doubted very seriously that Sinclair and Nelly would have had such a great hand in his up bringing, as wonderful as they’d been to him.
But family retainers, close and part of the family as they were, couldn’t replace a father’s and mother’s love to their children. He stared at the shining, polished surface of his sports car and made a sudden decision.
DAPHNE SHOWERED and took a nap, so she was ready when her mother brought the young troop of hungry mouths in to be fed. Eagerly, she reached for Yoda, who was crying the most urgently.
“Oh, sweet thing,” she murmured, taking the baby in her arms. “Are you hungry?”
“They’re all hungry,” Danita said. She sat in a rocker with the other two and held them to her ample bosom. “Flowers look nice,” she said over the wails.
“Yes.”