Sherryl Woods - Midnight Promises

“Where’s Mama?”

“She went out, thank goodness. She was asking too many questions.” She said it with a pointed look at him.

“Ah, so no one’s supposed to notice that you look as if you just lost your best friend?” he suggested.

“Exactly.”

“That might go better for you if you managed to put a smile on your face,” he said lightly.

“Bite me,” she retorted. “Now that you’re here, I’ll take my kids and go.”

Frowning, he reached out and caught her hand. “Adelia, what’s wrong? Seriously.”

“Everything,” she retorted bitterly. “Seriously.”

Before he could pursue that, though, she called out to her children, loaded them into the car and drove away. Elliott stared after her. It wasn’t like Adelia to bite his head off. His other sisters might be moody from time to time, downright impossible at times, but Adelia had always had it together. She’d married Ernesto Hernandez right out of college, had their first child seven months later. The other three had come with barely ten months between them. He’d expected her to be worn out, but she seemed to glow with motherhood, at least until recently. Now she was starting to look every one of her forty-two years.

“Are we going home now?” Mack asked, sitting down beside him and interrupting his thoughts.

“We are,” Elliott said, getting to his feet, scooping up the seven-year-old and tossing him in the air until he giggled.

“Me, too,” Daisy pleaded, looking up at him with eyes as big as saucers and so much like her mother’s that it made him smile.

He grinned at her. “Young ladies don’t get tossed in the air,” he teased. “They’re sedate and quiet.”

“Not me,” she said impudently. “I’m going to be just like Selena.”

The reference to his oldest niece had him shuddering just a little. Selena, at twelve, was not only a tomboy on the verge of adolescence, but already showing a wild streak that was going to keep Adelia and Ernesto on their toes for some time to come.

“No,” he corrected. “You are going to be Daisy, your own unique, special person, little one. You do not need to copy anyone else.”

“But Selena’s really awesome,” Daisy protested. “She’s already got her first bra.”

Elliott might be able to handle the self-described cougars at the spa and their outrageous comments in relative stride, but he was pretty sure Daisy’s outspoken ways were going to be the death of him. “It’ll be a few years before you need to be thinking about bras, young lady.”

“But Selena says boys only like girls with big boobs,” she parroted, then regarded him with a perplexed expression. “What’s that mean, Elliott? Do you think she’s right?”

“It means Selena needs to get her priorities straight,” he said, resolving to mention just that to his sister. At the very least his niece needed to be more discreet in her conversations with Daisy, who was only nine, for heaven’s sake. She ought to be thinking about dolls, not boys and bras. He had a feeling that was only wishful thinking, unfortunately.

“Can we drive out to McDonald’s again tonight?” Mack pleaded, always eager to head for the fast-food place that had sprung up in the next town a few years back.

Elliott winced. He’d gotten into the bad habit of taking the kids there because it was easier than making a meal they both liked, even though he knew Karen hated them having fast food. It went against his code, as well, but sometimes best intentions got lost to expediency.

“Not tonight, buddy. We’re having spaghetti and salad.”

“But I hate salad,” Mack whined.

“And spaghetti will make me fat,” Daisy said. “Selena said so.”

“Selena doesn’t know what she’s talking about,” Elliott said. “And you’ll like this salad, Mack. Your mom made it.”

Mack still didn’t look impressed, but he didn’t argue. And once they were home, he ate both the salad and the spaghetti as if he were starving. Daisy picked at both.

“May I be excused?” she asked eventually. “I have homework.”

“You can be excused, when you’ve finished your dinner,” Elliott said firmly.

“But—”

“You know the rules,” he said. “Mack, do you have homework?”

“Just spelling and math. I did it at Grandma Cruz’s house.”

Elliott had his doubts. “Could I see it, please?”

To his surprise, the math problems were completed and correct. He ran through the spelling words with Mack, who got every one of them right.

“Those were easy,” Daisy said snidely.

“Were not,” Mack said, clearly ready for a fight.

“Enough,” Elliott said, interceding. “Mack, go grab a shower and then you can watch TV for an hour before bed.” He looked at Daisy’s plate, then nodded. “Good job. Finish your homework and then you can take your bath and head for bed.”

“I want to wait up for Mom,” she protested.

“We’ll see,” Elliott told her. “Now, scoot.”

Only after they were both gone did he breathe a sigh of relief. He’d adored Daisy and Mack from the moment he’d gotten involved with Karen, but being a stepfather was still a challenge. Their personalities had already been well-formed when he’d come into their lives, and he still wavered between stern disciplinarian and outsider.

He’d mentioned adopting them early on, but Karen had seemed oddly resistant to the idea, so he’d let it go. He supposed it didn’t really matter, as long as both children knew he loved them as if they were his own. And after some initial hesitation, his mother had welcomed them into her life as full-fledged grandchildren to be enveloped in hugs and fed an endless supply of chocolate chip cookies. His nieces and nephews treated them as cousins. It sometimes seemed he was the only one who felt uncertain about his role in their lives.

Just when he was starting to fret about that yet again, Daisy emerged from her room, walked into the kitchen and threw her arms around him in the kind of impulsive gesture that was increasingly rare now that she was growing up.

“I love you,” she whispered against his chest. “I wish you were my dad.”

Holding her close, Elliott felt his eyes sting with tears. “I am your dad in every way that matters, little one. You can always count on me.”

She gazed up at him with those big eyes of hers. “Will you come to the father-daughter dance at school with me? I wasn’t going to go, because I don’t even know where my dad is, but if you’d come, it would be okay.”

He saw the surprising hint of fear in her eyes and knew she’d wondered if she was overstepping somehow, yet more evidence that even after all this time, their roles weren’t so clearly defined.

“I’d be honored,” he assured her, deeply touched by the invitation.

“Do you think it will be okay with Mom?”

The question gave him pause. He could only assume Karen would be fine with it. Surely she wouldn’t want Daisy to feel left out on such an important occasion.

“I’ll talk it over with her,” he promised. “When is this dance?”

“Next Friday,” Daisy told him. “I have to get a ticket tomorrow.”

“How much do you need?”

“Just ten dollars.”

Elliott gave her the money, then promised, “I’ll speak to your mother tonight.” He studied her expression. “Is that why you wanted to wait up? Did you want to speak to her about this first?”

She nodded. “Sometime she gets sad when I ask about things like this, like she feels bad that she’s disappointed me.” She regarded him earnestly. “But she didn’t. It’s not her fault Daddy went away. And besides, she found you.”

“The next best thing, huh?” he said, a wry note in his voice she probably didn’t understand.