“Not good! Mom’s being so unfair!”
He rolled his eyes at the familiar refrain. “What’s going on?”
“My friends are going to the Seaport and
Riley didn’t have to see the pout to know it was on his daughter’s face. He hated her being unhappy and wanted to fix whatever went wrong. Sometimes Lisa drove him crazy with her rules. In this case he didn’t see what was wrong with shopping with friends.
“When’s the day?” he asked.
“Next week. We have school vacation, remember?”
He lowered himself onto the bed. “Of course I remember. We’re going to Playland sometime next week, right?”
“Yeah. Right. But I really want to go to the Seaport and Mom says I can’t go unchaperoned at night.”
“Night?” he asked, his ears perking up.
Happy hour, he thought. “Who would be there?”
“Dad!”
He chuckled at her outrage. “I have to ask. Now spill. Something has your mother upset enough to say no.” Aside from the hour, which would inevitably turn into eight or nine o’clock.
“Miranda and Ashley,” she said, naming her two best friends. “And their parents already said yes.”
Riley reserved judgment on that bit of news. These kids were notorious for telling each set of parents that the others had already agreed, hoping to sway things their way.
“Who else?” he asked.
“Mmmadjkr,” she mumbled.
He couldn’t help but grin. “Say it again clearly this time.”
“Mike and Joey and Rick and Frank,” she said on an indignant huff, clearly annoyed at being forced to reveal all.
“I’d say the boys are your mother’s problem. That and the hour.”
“But…but…you don’t trust me?”
He shook his head. “It’s not you we don’t trust.”
“It’s everyone else out there.” She parroted the words he and Lisa had used with her before. “Dad, this is so unfair! I just want to hang out with my friends at the Seaport. I don’t see what’s so bad about that. Everyone’s going to go and I’ll be left out, and then they’ll talk about it at school and I’ll be the only one who’s not part of things!” Her voice trembled, tugging at his heart.
“I’ll talk to your mother.”
“She’ll never agree. Can’t I just sleep at your house so I can go and we won’t tell her? Please, Daddy, please.”
He groaned, hating the pleading tone in her voice. “We’ll talk when I get home tomorrow.”
“You’re the best!” she squealed into the phone.
“Lizzie, I didn’t promise anything,” he reminded her.
She laughed. “But I know you and I love you.” She blew a kiss into the phone. “Gotta go now! Bye!”
The phone clicked on her end. Lizzie, he realized, had twisted his words into what she wanted to hear. If he didn’t agree, she’d blame him even more than she already blamed her mother.
“Teenagers should come with an instruction manual,” he muttered.
“Nobody ever said it would be easy.”
He turned, startled at the sound of Sophie’s voice. Wrapped up in Lizzie’s drama, he’d forgotten she sat patiently by his side. “It amazes me how easy it is for someone who’s never been a parent to offer platitudes.”
She inclined her head. “Good point.”
At least she didn’t seem insulted.
“I take it she wanted to go somewhere and her mother said no?” Sophie asked.
He nodded. “South Street Seaport during happy hour.”
“And you agreed with…” Sophie trailed off.
“Lisa,” he said, helping her out with his ex’s name. “I didn’t agree and you know it. You heard my side of the conversation. I said we’d talk about it when I got home.”
Sophie curled a leg beneath her and studied him. “Lisa,” she said. “The woman you married because you were young and in love? Or she was young and pregnant?” she asked.
He liked that she didn’t pull punches. “Too young to know what love was, too young to have kids, too stupid to know we didn’t know any better.” He shook his head and laughed. “But we did get Lizzie out of the deal. Lisa’s married to a stuffed-shirt accountant now and they tend to follow the rules.”
“Aha,” Sophie said, nodding. “You, the nonconformist, don’t want to follow those rules.” A gleam of certainty sparkled in her eyes.
He shifted uncomfortably. “It isn’t that simple.”
“So explain.” She leaned forward, waiting.
He felt certain, once he revealed his motives, she’d come down firmly on his side; after all, she’d already shown she understood him when it came to Spencer. Her insight had provided him with much-needed support this trip.
He’d never shared his feelings about Lizzie with anyone in his life, but he wasn’t surprised he now wanted Sophie to be the first. The notion that he was seeking her understanding, or worse, her approval, was a threat to his style of doing things his own way in his own time.
“There’s a reason I don’t like to do what others expect.” He paused and she remained silent, giving him whatever time he needed to gather his thoughts. “I spent the better part of my life, my youth, trying to get Spencer to notice me.”
Unable to sit still, and finding it even more difficult to look into Sophie’s solemn eyes, he rose and paced the carpeted room. “By the time I won the Heisman and was represented by Yank, with no word from my father, I decided I was no longer going to please anyone but myself.”
Sophie swallowed over the lump in her throat. Imagining Riley as a little boy seeking his father’s elusive approval broke her heart. That it was Spencer, a man who’d given
“When Lizzie was born, I held this little bundle in my arms. She was smaller, and a hell of a lot more delicate, than a football.” He grinned, but in his face she saw love and emotion, something so deep it took her breath away.
She started to reach for him then changed her mind. What he felt for his daughter had nothing to do with her and she had no right to intrude on it. “Go on,” she said softly.
“Right then, I promised myself-and I promised her-she’d never wonder if her father loved her. She’d never look around and question why her father wasn’t a part of her life. And she’d never ever resent me.” He set his jaw tight.
Sophie glanced down, knowing she had to phrase this exactly right. “Just be her father.”
“It’s not that simple. I’m not there when she goes to sleep at night or when she wakes up in the morning.”
“So you want to give her what she wants to make up for it.”
He shrugged. “That’s my job as her father.”
“Your job is to make sure she grows up safe and sound and loved. The best way to do that is to set rules-”
“To hell with that,” he muttered, rising from the bed. “Control and rules are your thing, not mine. But because of everything you’ve seen down here, I thought you’d understand my relationship with my daughter. Apparently I was wrong,” he said in a suddenly frosty voice.
She blinked, startled by his change in tone. “Of course I understand.” But that didn’t mean she totally agreed.
Because Sophie and her sisters had been raised by their bachelor uncle, she’d always worried about him getting it right. To his credit-and in no small part thanks to Lola-he had. Partially because they’d known the importance of
