Hot Streak

buzzing of the alarm followed by shock. “Yipes,” she cried. “Carrie's breakfast!”

It was Carey's first startling introduction to fatherhood.

CHAPTER 24

A fter a quick shower, Carey tossed on some clothes and padded barefoot into the kitchen to join Molly and his daughter for breakfast. As he stood just inside the doorway, Molly introduced him.

“Honey, this is Mom's friend Carey Fersten. Carey, this is my daughter. She has pierced ears.”

Carey shifted his glance from his daughter back to Molly, surprised at the small shadow of contention in the last two words. “And you don't,” he quietly said with a smile, the taste of her earlobes sweet recent memory.

Molly had always resisted putting holes in her flesh, and had played guardian over her daughter's earlobes, as well. Or had tried to. And while she'd raised Carrie to be independent, it often disconcerted her when she was. “She's so young,” Molly replied, sounding petulantly youthful herself for a brief moment before her jeunesse dorйe expression altered to one of resigned motherhood. “Carrie tells me pierced ears are de rigueur for eight-year-olds,” Molly added, her voice warm with affection as she looked at her daughter.

“Are you dragging your mother into the twentieth century?” Carey inquired, his glance returning to his pale- haired daughter who was calmly gazing at him.

“Mom's kind of old-fashioned sometimes. She used to live in a small town,” she added, as though that explained her mother's conservative spells. “You came back,” Carrie said in the next breath, changing topics with childlike ingenuousness. “I knew you would.”

“Said I would, didn't I?”

“Yup.” And she shoveled another spoonful of Cheerios into her mouth. “Did you and Mom make up?”

Molly blushed. Carey smiled and said, “Yes, I can never stay mad at your Mom.”

“Gonna be here tonight when I come home from school?”

“Really, Carrie,” Molly interposed, embarrassed by her daughter's forthrightness.

“I'm visiting for a couple of days. Want me to pick you up from school?”

She nodded. “And you can drive me there in two minutes, if you want.” Carrie cast a rebuking glance at her mother. “You overslept, Mom. I'm going to be late, and Theresa's going to wonder why you haven't checked in downstairs.”

“It's my fault,” Carey explained. “I kept your Mom up late last night… talking.” The warm hue on Molly's face was the exact shade of the rosebuds on her bathrobe, and Carey tried to remember the last woman he'd seen blush.

“So?”

His daughter's pointed inquiry brought him back to earth.

“I'll drive. You don't have to drive, Carey,” Molly rapidly declared, disconcerted by her daughter's presumption.

“I'd love to,” he replied. I'd love to, he thought, love to drive “my daughter” to school-a simple, ordinary act he'd considered forever denied him.

With a hesitant, “Are you sure?” to which she received a firm, “Yes,” Molly excused herself to get ready for work.

“Do you really make movies? On location? With big budgets and extras like from… people you know?” His daughter's eager tone reminded him of his own voice when he was asking for his first car, years too early.

“Are you really nine?” he asked, amusement rich in his voice. Even with his limited acquaintance with children, she struck him as wonderfully precocious.

“Eight and seven-eighths.”

Controlling an impulse to smile, he said, “That accounts for it, then.”

“Are you going to drive barefoot?”

“Do you mind?”

“Georgia's boyfriend got a ticket for driving barefoot.”

“Who's Georgia? Your mom's old friend Georgia?” he asked in the next flashing moment. “What boyfriend?” he asked immediately, as though he were guardian to a minor. Had Molly had boyfriends, too, although she'd denied it? Relax, Fersten, he cautioned in the next millisecond. This is not the middle ages. She is not your exclusive property. Oh, yeah? his possessive instincts dissented. Remember, these are liberated, progressive times, the logical voice inside his brain declared. And sense and sensibility lasted another millisecond. “What boyfriend?” he testily repeated.

“Her lifeguard boyfriend.”

“Lifeguard boyfriend-as in beach lifeguard?”

“He's a little young for Georgia, Mom says.”

She had looked at another man; he'd kill him. With Molly he had never been dйgagй; irrationally possessive was closer to the mark. “How old is he? What's his name?” A trial lawyer couldn't have been more decisive.

“His name's Scott. He's eighteen.”

He had to repress the urge to gasp, and immediately reminded himself that equality existed between the sexes, as well as between age groups. And if he was honest with himself, he had been known to escort a starlet or two in that nubile age group. Although he hadn't been sober at the time. “Has your mom dated Scott?”

“Mom?” Incredulity lit her wide eyes.

Immediately Carey's world righted itself. “She didn't date Scott.”

“Mom doesn't date anyone. She's too busy, she says. Georgia says she's too uptight. Mom says Georgia had more leisure time, and when she has more leisure time she'll ask for an introduction to Mark. Mark's cute.”

“Who's Mark?” His voice had that cutting edge to it again.

“Scott's friend.”

“Another lifeguard?”

“I think so; he has a really great tan.”

“I can see I got here just in the nick of time,” he murmured in a tone very close to a growl. For a man who had prided himself on never experiencing jealousy, the green demons had surrounded him and were coming in for the kill.

“What?”

“We have to get out of here or you're going to be late,” he improvised, the unknown Mark assuming a prominent position on his black list.

“You don't have to worry, you're cuter than Mark.” Dressed in her pink denim pinafore, flowered blouse, lace- trimmed anklets, and pink leather hightops, Carrie looked too freshly angelic to be so perceptive. But she'd read the convoluted chaos of his mind, and after his first start of surprise he immediately thought, What a darling child. It wasn't simply that she was his daughter, she was darling in general. And he told her so after he thanked her for the compliment.

He did drive to school barefoot. Carrie asked questions nonstop, and when she paused for breath occasionally, he asked questions of his own. He wanted to know everything about his daughter, everything he'd missed in the years she'd grown up without him. And when she ran up the steps of the school, he watched her until she disappeared into the building, awed that he had a child, a precocious, beautiful, healthy child.

While Molly spent her day downstairs in the office, Carey spent his time on the phone handling some of the editing preliminaries long-distance. But it was awkward and erratic, frustrating for him and for his crew.

“We need you here, Carey,” Allen said. “I can transfer some of the calls, but not all of them. And when you operate the way you do-with no assistant directors-it all grinds to a standstill, boss.”

“Ask me if I'm happy here in this apartment,” Carey replied, immune to the mild censure.

“Don't have to. Bunnies of happiness are bouncing down the wire to me. The fights at the preliminary edits are reaching flash proportions, though. Hope you can make it back soon. Wishing you the greatest, boss, no offense, but when are you coming back?”

“William and Jock are at each other's throats I take it.”