Dynamiting Daddy's Dream House Page 6

  "I want Jill to come with us. She can watch me while you are in the bank." Annie had picked up all of Liz's manipulation skills.

  "I'm certain Jill has more important things to do than go to the bank with us."

  He looked to Jill for support. Big mistake. She should have looked pathetic in her dripping clothes. Instead, she looked ready to fight the world. "Not particularly. Besides, don't you think you should have someone with you for identification?"

  "No."

  "Please, Troy. I want Jill." Annie looked so uncomfortable standing there dripping that Troy couldn't make himself say no.

  "We need to get you out of those wet things. We'll stop by Jill's house and change. Then we can decide who goes where." He could use the time to come up with a suitable bribe to win Annie's agreement.

  Annie seemed satisfied that she'd won her battle. She climbed into the back seat and fumbled for her seatbelt.

  Jill got into the passenger seat and stared straight ahead while he maneuvered his car out of the parking structure. He wondered if he'd hurt her feelings. Probably. He shouldn't have kissed her and then run. For years, he'd taught non-coms to follow up on their advantage, to hold ground when they won it. The only problem was, he had no idea what he'd won and whether he could afford the cost.

  "I'll go in with Jill," Annie announced. "Maybe she can find me something to wear. This pink dress is all right, but it's terrible for water ballet. Besides, I'm tired of it."

  Troy looked more closely at his daughter. She wrapped her skinny arms around her chest against the chill air blowing from his heater, but that couldn't hide the goose-bumps.

  "That's a good idea." The last thing he needed was to spend more time in Jill's trailer.

  Troy's mouth still savored the taste of Jill's kiss and his body continued to demand that he complete what he had begun. Still, even though Annie hadn't been in any real danger this time, he knew better than to allow anything get in the way of his protecting her. Those few moments with Jill had proven that she could magically make him lose track of everything, including the things most important in the world.

  As they drove back to Jill's trailer, Annie entertained Jill with elaborate descriptions of the techniques used in her water ballet class. She explained how water ballet was related to standard ballet, which Troy hadn't even realized Annie had studied, and how hard it is to keep those funny smiles going when you were getting water in your ears and up your nose. Finally, she sketched out her plans to be on the Olympic water ballet team a few years down the road.

  "I'll wait out in the car," Troy offered as he pulled into Jill's parking lot.

  "You might as well change too," Jill suggested. "Right now you look more like a homeless person than someone with a Swiss bank account."

  "Come on, Troy," Annie added. "I'm hungry. I'll bet Jill has good things to eat."

  "Annie. We don't impose on people. Besides, you just ate."

  "Annie isn't an imposition, Troy," Jill argued. "I'm sure we can find a can of soup. It would be good to get something warm into Annie. It wouldn't hurt you and I either."

  He'd done his best to avert his eyes from Jill as they drove. Troy's best hadn't been good enough. He hadn't stared, but Jill certainly had a fair share of whatever attention he could spare from his driving. Occasionally, surges of shivering would overtake her body despite the warmth wafting from the heater.

  "I can help you learn to swim," Annie broke in. "That way you could take me to the beach any time. Troy wouldn't have to go with us."

  "I'm pretty afraid of the water," Jill admitted.

  "You build swimming pools and you're afraid of the water?" Annie giggled.

  Jill and Annie shared a delighted laughter at the irony. "Pretty funny isn't it," Jill admitted.

  "Jill has to work, honey. She'll be too busy for swimming lessons." Troy toyed with the fantasy of teaching Jill to swim himself. Her lean body had just the right curves to look fantastic in a bathing suit. Jill was athletic enough that she'd learn quickly. Watching her cut her way through the water, every muscle of her body working together, would be a sight for sore eyes. Troy shook his head as the fantasy turned to showering off after the swim. What was wrong with him?

  "I want to see more of Jill. I like her."

  ***

  If Annie had said she had climbed Mount Everest, Jill couldn't have been more surprised. Annie liked her? She must be a real terror for people she didn't like.

  "Jill has been helping us because she feels bad about blowing up our house," Troy explained. "She has her own life. In fact, I'll bet she has a boyfriend who just might be a little perturbed about having a strange man spending the night in her house."

  "I did not blow your house up and I don't feel guilty about it." Jill knew she was lying about the guilt part, but she didn't want anything she said sound like an admission of wrong-doing that would come back and bite her at a trial.

  "I suppose you would have taken us in if you hadn't blown up our house?"

  "Don't get sarcastic with me. I wouldn't have needed to let you stay with me. You had your own house." She snapped her mouth shut. She had just handed his argument back to him. After all, she had set those charges. Could she have mis-read the engineering report? Could it really be her fault?

  To her surprise, Troy's smile was friendly, not at all the superior smirk she expected. "Sorry about the sarcasm. In my line of work, it's par for the course."

  It was in hers as well. She wondered about the similarities between the construction work and being a mercenary. Of course, construction workers are building things and warriors tear things down. Still, both jobs were likely to share that male camaraderie and surplus of testosterone. Troy would be a good construction manager, she realized. Not that he'd consider a job like that.

  He popped the electric locks and got out to open the door for Annie. He might have intended to walk around and open Jill's door next but Jill beat him to that. She wasn't ready for any type of closeness after what they'd so recently shared.

  She fished around in her pockets until it became hopeless. "Troy?"

  "Hum?"

  "We seem to have a problem."

  Troy seemed to swell up. His eyes went hard and flinty as he scanned her trailer and nearby shrubbery for some enemy. He looked very much the caveman, preparing to protect his family from a hostile invader.

  Troy's reaction shouldn't have surprised Jill, but it did. What surprised her even more, though, was her instinctual response to it. She felt warm and protected, sheltered under Troy's powerful aid. All this because she couldn't find her house keys.

  "I think I left my keys somewhere at the bottom of the Pacific.

  "Do you have an extra set?"

  She gestured. "Inside somewhere."

  "No problem." He stepped toward her house with that aggressive certainty she'd noticed he attacked everything with, even childrearing.

  "Are you going to knock down Jill's door?" Annie asked helpfully. "Or maybe blow it up?"

  "Troy, don't worry about it. I'll call a locksmith."

  "I don't think this door will cause any problems."

  Jill wasn't certain who Troy was answering. "I'm serious. They'll come out and get it open in no time."

  This time Troy definitely answered her. "By the time the locksmith gets out her and gets your house open, it'll be too late to make it to the bank. We'll be stuck spending another night with you."

  Would that be so terrible? She'd always been a tomboy, but that didn't mean Jill thought she was any sort of Medusa. Whatever had passed through Troy's mind when he'd kissed her there on the beach, apparently it hadn't stuck. Or, quite possibly, she had thrown herself on him and he'd simply gone along to avoid hurting her feelings. One thing for sure, she'd never felt so strong an attraction before in her life. At the time, Troy seemed to share that reaction. In retrospect, it seemed she’d deluded herself about that. Then again, Troy dated supermodels. What possible use would he have for a female construction worker with ug
ly hands?

  "Can you look in your purse for me, Annie?" Troy asked.

  "Yes.” Annie giggled. “Okay, I looked. You're not in here."

  "Very funny. Can you find me a bobby pin?"

  After a struggle during which Annie protected the contents of her handbag from either of their sights, she emerged with a rusty bobby pin and a victorious smile. "Don't mess it up. I need this for my hair."

  "I'll buy you more," Troy promised.

  "I don't want more. I want this one."

  "I'm going to have to bend it."

  Annie's face contorted in thought.

  Jill thought she would break into tears. Troy couldn't understand how important it was for a little girl to have a few things to call her own. A bobby pin couldn’t seem like anything to a man like him, but it could be something huge for his daughter.

  To Jill's surprise, though, Troy crouched next to his daughter, holding onto the, so far unbent, bobbie pin. "What do you think, honey."

  "Can you show me how to bend it?"

  Troy's face showed conflict. "This isn't for playing around. You can get in serious trouble if you break into someone's house."

  Annie shrugged. "Cool, Troy. Show me."

  Troy straightened the pin, then added a kink about a third of the way from the end.

  "Can I pick the lock?" Annie had forgotten the cold. She seemed fascinated by Troy's terrible example.

  "Why don't you ask Jill? It is her house, after all."

  "I already told you I'd call a . . ."

  "Jill, would it be all right if I pick your lock?" Annie looked her straight in the eye looking, for all the world, like a school child asking permission to go to her next class.

  "Don't interrupt, Annie," Troy said. "Jill wants to tell you something."

  Jill threw up her hands. "I'm cold and wet. If you can get us into the house, let's go it."

  Troy explained to Jill how to keep up pressure on the cylinder while sliding the bobby-pin along the lock's tumblers.

  It took Annie about a minute, but at the end of that time, her father patiently offering suggestions and advice, Jill's door popped open.

  Jill gasped. "That's all there is to it?" She'd never feel safe behind that lock again.

  "It isn't a very good lock," Troy explained.

  "I'd like to try a dead-bolt next." Annie's voice held as much enthusiasm as Jill had ever heard in it. “Those are supposed to be hard.”

  "I'll buy you a couple of locks and you can practice on them," Troy said. "Now, let's get you dressed."

  "I'll put on the soup," Annie said.

  "Why don't you get changed first," Troy said. "I can go through your counters and find the soup."

  Jill didn't keep anything especially private in her cabinets, but that didn't mean she wanted Troy fishing around in them. "I'll do it."

  She bent over and dragged her trusty Revere Ware saucepan out from under the sink then turned to put it on the stove.

  Troy's eyes burned into hers. He'd obviously been watching her. She could almost feel the way his eyes had scoped her bottom when she bent over.

  Her body instantly responded, her breasts growing sensitive, their tips springing to attention and forcing themselves against the thin fabric of her top.

  It didn't make sense. Troy might find her sexually attractive, but he'd also made it perfectly clear that he had no interest in ever seeing her again.

  "Can I do anything?"

  "Yeah. Go change." She grabbed a can of soup from off the shelf and attacked it with her can opener.

  Troy nodded abruptly and turned, heading into her living room.

  The second he walked out of her kitchen, she realized she'd made a mistake. She would have to walk through the living room to go to her bedroom.

  Troy's clothing made soft noises-the scrape of a zipper, the wet slurp of his pants hitting the ground, and the hiss of undergarments being drawn against his skin.

  Jill turned up the heat under her saucepan and inhaled the scent of chicken noodle soup. She had to stop thinking about Troy. He was going to leave and she'd be on her own again, as always. Never before had being alone sounded so, well, lonely.

  She gritted her teeth. Of course she could manage.

  An explosion of energy emerged from the bathroom, consolidating itself into Annie. "Is that soup? Our maid used to make soup from scratch. Did you make that from scratch? Is scratch a kind of meat. Why are you going away and leaving me?"

  It didn't take a child psychologist to figure out which of those questions were camouflage and which dealt with Annie's real fears. Jill got down on one knee so she'd be level with Annie. "I'm not going anywhere. Maybe when you're settled into your new house, you can come and visit me."

  "Troy says your house has wheels so you can pick it up and move it whenever you want."

  Annie had been abandoned by her mother, then swept into a new world that frightened her by a father who had been little more than a stranger to her. A stranger with a bad reputation, for that matter. It might be tempting to see the little girl as a brat spoiled by an indulgent but not especially caring mother and clearly looking for trouble. Jill didn’t think, though, that superficial understanding did Annie merit. She was a young girl who feared being abandoned with so much force she might prefer to frighten people away first, rather than let them trick her into accepting them, bring them into her heart, and then have them leave.

  "It's true that my house is a trailer. I move where the work is. Most of the time I'm here in Los Angeles. Last year, though, I spent three months in Washington.

  Annie considered that. "Is it scary?"

  "Scary? Not really." Jill didn't know how to explain how scared she had been when she'd started her business and waited for the phone to ring for the first time.

  "Can you move it now?" Annie's mood seemed to swing from fear to excitement.

  "I don't think so. Once you hook up the water and plumbing, it's sort of a mess to move it."

  "You moved our house. And it was all hooked up."

  Jill took a deep breath. "I think you've been listening to your dad too much."

  "Troy never lies."

  Jill wondered if she'd ever been so sure about anything. "That doesn't mean he can't be wrong."

  Annie stopped to ponder that one.

  The topic of their conversation strode into the kitchen looking like a million dollars in a cable-knit sweater and jeans that left little to Jill's all too active imagination. He sniffed the air. "Something smells good."

  "I made some soup."

  "Do I have to eat it," Annie pleaded. "I hate soup."

  ***

  Troy looked at Annie, then glanced back at Jill. She hadn't changed and her damp blouse still clung to her body. "What sort of soup did you make."

  "Uh, chicken-noodle." Jill spooned it out into a couple of bowls.

  "Jill made it from scratch," Annie pronounced forcefully, completely abandoning her statement of a few seconds earlier. "I want two bowls."

  "All right." Troy decided not to mention the empty can perched on the edge of the counter. He'd been forced to abandon his own childhood far too early and Annie's mother had made a fast start in pushing Annie into premature adulthood with her child beauty pageants and modeling. If Annie wanted to fantasize that Jill made soup from scratch, he wouldn't argue.

  “Start with one.” Jill dished up a bowl.

  "Um. This looks sooo good." Annie smacked her lips and patted her stomach. She'd definitely been watching too much television.

  Jill offered the first bowl to Annie, and Troy took the second when Jill offered it to him. He swallowed a mouthful of the hot broth.

  It did taste good. While he generated a fair amount of heat from standing so near Jill, a part of him was still chilled from their ocean dip. The icy Pacific water had drained his internal heat like a minnie-gun drains shells. "I guess I needed that more than I thought."

  "It isn't really made from scratch," Jill admitted.

  Annie
frowned at Jill. Clearly she wasn't playing to Annie's script, whatever that might be.

  "I sort of figured that from the can. It's still good."

  "I'm feeling really sleepy," Annie announced. She opened her mouth in a fairly convincing imitation of a yawn.

  "I'll tell you what," Troy offered. "You can sleep in the car."

  "But I'll have to wake up when you go into the bank. I couldn’t stay out there alone while you went inside. Unless Jill comes with us. She can stay with me and guard me."

  Troy shook his head. "We've asked far too many favors of Jill already. Do you want any more of the soup, or can we go."

  Annie looked at Jill as if seeking inspiration. "It won't take Jill long to change. She's not like some people who take forever to get dressed."

  Troy knew where that one was aimed. Annie's mother had never been able to leave a closet without trying on at least three outfits. The only time he'd tried to hurry her, she had sulked and tried on even more. Once she'd cost him a contract by delaying so long the general had gotten frustrated and given up on them. That was the last time he'd tried to mix business and pleasure.

  "I'm sure Jill is extremely fast," Troy agreed. "On the other hand, we've been keeping her out of her own bedroom by being here. The sooner we get out of her hair, the quicker she can get comfortable and warm up. I know neither of us want her to be cold and miserable.”

  Before Annie could answer, he scooped her up and strode toward the door.

  Jill took a hesitating step in his direction. "I. . ."

  "I'll send you a check to help cover your expenses for our stay here," he offered.

  Jill looked as if he'd slapped her. "Keep your damned money, Troy Garrett," she practically spat. "I got along fine before you came along and I can do even better now that you're going."

  Troy shrugged his shoulders. Jill clearly didn't share his nearly overpowering urge to forget about everything and kiss her.

  "I can walk," Annie protested.

  "I know." He set Annie down on Jill's stoop but kept a firm grasp on her hand. "See you around, Jill."

  "Whatever." Apparently Jill wasn't very happy with him right then. Possibly he shouldn't have offered her the money. On the other hand, Jill lived in a trailer. It wasn't as if she could just afford to take in strangers without any thought of payment.