Christmas On His Ranch. Diana Palmer

eyes, full of fear, fell to the desk again. “I’ve been alone for a long time,” she said quietly. “It’s something…one learns to live with.”

      He didn’t speak. After a minute, she heard his voice, as if from a distance. “Why did you come back?”

      “For my father.”

      “He’s getting better day by day. He didn’t need you.”

      She looked up, searching his face, seeing the young man she’d loved in his dark eyes, his sensuous mouth. “Maybe I needed someone,” she said. She winced and dropped her eyes.

      He laughed. It had an odd sound. “Just don’t turn your attention toward me, Antonia. You may need someone. I don’t. Least of all you.”

      Before she could say a word, he’d gone out the door, as quietly as he’d come in.

      Maggie was waiting at the door when he walked in. He’d taken her home before he had his talk with Antonia.

      “Did you see her? Did you tell her off?” she asked excitedly. “I knew you’d show her who’s boss!”

      His eyes narrowed. She hadn’t shown that much enthusiasm for anything in years. “What about that homework?”

      She shrugged. “It was stupid stuff. She wanted us to write an essay about ourselves and do math problems and make up sentences to go with spelling words.”

      He scowled. “You mean, you didn’t do it—any of it?”

      “You told her I didn’t have to, didn’t you?” she countered.

      He tossed his hat onto the side table in the hall and his eyes flashed at her. “Did you do any of the homework?”

      “Well…no,” she muttered. “It was stupid, I told you.”

      “Damn it! You lied!”

      She backed up. She didn’t like the way he was looking at her. He frightened her when he looked that way. He made her feel guilty. She didn’t lie as a rule, but this was different. Miss Hayes was hurting her, so didn’t she have the right to hurt back?

      “You’ll do that homework, do you hear me?” he demanded. “And the next time you have a test, you won’t sit through it with your arms folded. Is that clear?”

      She compressed her lips. “Yes, Daddy.”

      “My God.” He bit off the words, staring at her furiously. “You’re just like your mother, aren’t you? Well, this is going to stop right now. No more lies—ever!”

      “But, Daddy, I don’t lie…!”

      He didn’t listen. He just turned and walked away. Maggie stared after him with tears burning her eyes, her small fists clenched at her sides. Just like her mother. That’s what Mrs. Bates said when she misbehaved. She knew that her father hadn’t cared about her mother. Her mother had cried because of it, when she drank so much. She’d said that she told a lie and Powell had hated her for it. Did this mean that he hated Maggie, too?

      She followed him out into the hall. “Daddy!” she cried.

      “What?”

      He turned, glaring at her.

      “She doesn’t like me!”

      “Have you tried cooperating with her?” he replied coldly.

      She shrugged, averting her eyes so that he wouldn’t see the tears and the pain in them. She was used to hiding her hurts in this cold house. She went up the staircase to her room without saying anything else.

      He watched her walk away with a sense of hopelessness. His daughter had used him to get back at her teacher, and he’d let her. He’d gone flaming over to the school and made all sorts of accusations and charges, and Antonia had been the innocent party. His daughter had used him to get back at her teacher, and he’d let her. He was furious at having been so gullible. It was because he didn’t really know the child, he imagined. He spent as little time with her as possible, because she was a walking, talking reminder of his failed marriage.

      Next time, he promised himself, he’d get his facts straight before he started attacking teachers. But he wasn’t sorry about what he’d said to Antonia. Let her stew on those charges. Maybe it would intimidate her enough that she wouldn’t deliberately hurt Maggie. He knew how she felt about Sally, he couldn’t help but know. Her resentments were painfully visible in her thin face.

      He wondered why she’d come back to haunt him. He’d almost pushed her to the back of his mind over the years. Almost. He’d gone to see her father finally to get news of her, because the loneliness he felt was eating into him like acid. He’d wondered, for one insane moment, if there was any chance that they might recapture the magic they’d had together when she was eighteen.

      But she’d quickly disabused him of any such fancies. Her attitude was cold and hard and uncaring. She seemed to have frozen over in the years she’d been away.

      How could he blame her? All of Antonia’s misfortunes could be laid at his door, because he was distrustful of people, because he’d jumped to conclusions, because he hadn’t believed in Antonia’s basic innocence and decency. One impulsive decision had cost him everything he held dear. He wondered sometimes how he could have been so stupid.

      Like today when he’d let Maggie stampede him into attacking Antonia for something she hadn’t done. It was just like old times. Sally’s daughter was already a master manipulator, at age nine. And it seemed that he was just as impulsive and dim as he’d ever been. He hadn’t really changed at all. He was just richer.

      Meanwhile, there was Antonia’s reappearance and her disturbing thinness and paleness. She looked unwell. He wondered absently if she’d had some bout with disease. Perhaps that was why she’d come home, and not because of her father at all. But, wouldn’t a warm climate be the prescription for most illnesses that caused problems? Surely no doctor sent her into northern Wyoming in winter.

      He had no answers for those questions, and it would do him well to stop asking them, he thought irritably. It was getting him nowhere. The past was dead. He had to let it go, before it destroyed his life all over again.