Daddy's Home. Pamela Bauer

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СКАЧАТЬ swim!” she cried as water rose around them.

      Tyler reached for her. “Just hang on to my back,” he instructed.

      He felt two arms around his neck, but they soon lost their hold. He tried to reach her hands, but she was swept away by the strong current.

      “Help me! Please, help me!”

      He swam after her, but every time he thought he’d reached her, she slipped from his grasp. Over and over he tried to grab her hand until she was finally sucked under.

      Gasping for breath, Tyler awoke with a start to find Brittany at his bedside.

      “Daddy?”

      He gulped in deep breaths, trying to calm his unsteady limbs as he swung his legs over the side.

      “Daddy, will you help me find Tudie?”

      For a moment, he was too shaken to speak. Finally, he asked, “Is he lost?” relieved that the cries for help were over a teddy bear and not a human being.

      “I had him when I went to bed, but he’s not there now,” Brittany said in a tiny voice. “And I get scared when Tudie isn’t sleeping with me.”

      “There’s no need to be scared,” Tyler said reassuringly, pulling her into his arms. “Daddy will help you find him, then I’ll tuck you both in real tight so he doesn’t get lost again, okay?”

      Tyler thought how ironic it was that he was telling her not to be scared when he was the one who was trembling. He carried Brittany back to her room, turned on the light and set her down beside the bed.

      “Sweetheart, it’s no wonder Tudie disappeared. There’s no room for him here,” he told her as he pushed aside a collection of stuffed animals and dolls.

      A quick look behind the bed proved his suspicions were correct. Tudie lay suspended between the mattress and the wall. Tyler fished him up over the brass headboard to the delight of his daughter.

      “Thank you, Daddy.” She welcomed the bear with open arms, kissed her father on the cheek and climbed back up onto the bed.

      Tyler tucked her in, kissed her forehead, then turned out the light. As he crawled back into his own bed, he smiled to himself as he thought about his daughter and her beloved bear.

      However, it wasn’t Brittany occupying his thoughts as he fell back to sleep. It was the beautiful but bleeding face of the news anchor. Dark lashes framed frightened blue eyes, the once flawless skin now badly lacerated. He had tried to stop the bleeding, but pieces of glass and metal were embedded in her skin. He still shuddered when he thought about it.

      He had done his best to forget that face. Done his best to put the plane crash behind him. He had put it behind him. It was others who wouldn’t let him forget. His mother. Kristen Kellar. If she hadn’t sent him the letter, he wouldn’t have had her image haunting him tonight.

      Well, he would tuck the memories away in a remote corner of his mind again. The crash was in the past. He had survived. She had survived. End of story.

      He was not a hero. Not even close to being one.

      THE DOORBELL RANG and for one brief moment Kristen Kellar wished she had the time to wash her hair, change out of her sweats and apply some makeup before answering it. Then the moment passed.

      She had spent too much of her life fussing about her appearance. In the past three weeks, she’d discovered that it was hard to worry about her outward appearance when she felt so awful.

      She struggled to her feet, reaching for the crutches propped against the sofa, and hobbled over to the intercom to hear her fiancé’s voice say, “It’s me.”

      Good grief! What was Keith doing at her apartment in the middle of the day? She should have washed her hair. Or at least changed her clothes. Keith always looked as if he’d stepped off the pages of GQ.

      “Kristen, are you there?”

      “Yes.” She buzzed the lobby door open, then smoothed her hand down the front of her gray sweatshirt. When she heard a knock at the door, she checked through the peephole before releasing the dead bolt.

      Standing on the other side with not a hair out of place, looking every bit as polished as he did on television each night, was the man voted the Twin Cities’ number-one news anchor, Keith Jaxson. In his arms were flowers, lots of flowers.

      Ever since the crash, he’d seemed distant and a bit impatient with what he considered her slow recovery. She knew he’d been disappointed by her request for a leave of absence from work. But now here he was bearing flowers, and she pushed such thoughts aside.

      Her smile faded, however, the moment he spoke. The flowers weren’t from him.

      “Mailman.” He grinned as if he’d said something witty. “Bob was going to have a messenger bring these over, but I said I was coming to see you and I might as well take them. I thought that the gifts and flowers would have stopped after a couple of weeks, but they just keep coming.”

      He didn’t drop a kiss on her mouth as he stepped into the apartment but simply marched past her and headed for the dining-room table. Actually, he hadn’t kissed her since before the crash... unless one counted the light brushing of his lips across her forehead he had given her in the hospital.

      “Bob says he’s never seen anyone get so many get-well wishes. You are one popular lady.” He set the flowers and a large shopping bag filled with cards and packages on the table. “It’s a good thing my ego’s healthy, isn’t it?”

      “Isn’t it, though,” she murmured, wondering how she had never noticed just how self-centered he was. As he passed the mirror in the dining room, he smoothed his perfect hair.

      “There are two more bags in my car. I can get them now or when I leave. Which do you prefer?” He didn’t look at her, but rather past her, as if there were a roomful of people behind her.

      “It doesn’t matter,” she answered as she hobbled toward the sofa.

      “Then I’ll get them later.”

      “Fine.” She eased herself down onto the sofa.

      Instead of coming to sit beside her, he stood at the edge of the glass-topped table, his hands in his pockets. “So how are you feeling?”

      “Okay.”

      “Good.” There was an awkward silence, then he tugged on his ear, saying, “I suppose the leg’s starting to itch under that cast.”

      She ignored his comment. “Aren’t you going to sit down?”

      He shifted from foot to foot before finally settling on the chair across from her. He unzipped his black suede jacket but didn’t take it off.

      “I’m supposed to say hi from everyone at the station and tell you they miss you,” he said with the same smile he used during his newscasts. The one that made women’s hearts skip a beat. Kristen knew how easily that smile came to his lips and didn’t return it.

      “I’m sure Janey doesn’t miss me. She’s СКАЧАТЬ