Too Hard to Forget (Romancing the Clarksons Book 3) Read online

  Still stuck on the former statement she’d made, it took him a moment to catch up. “You’ve never come before.”

  He counted three breaths from her mouth. “Noticed, did you?”

  Time out. He would’ve called one if they were in the middle of a game and both sides were firing too hot, swinging on the unpredictable vines of momentum. In many ways, this confrontation so far had been a game. A testing of each other’s strengths. Well, they were standing on his field. And on his field, he didn’t deal well with surprises and unknowns. Time to put everything out in the open, even though he could feel acid rising in his throat. “Are you here with your husband?”

  She froze so long, he wondered if she would answer him at all. “Um. No, he—he’s back in California.” A wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows. “I wasn’t sure…I—I didn’t know if you received the wedding invitation. You were moving houses when I left Cincinnati and—”

  “My mail was forwarded,” Elliott said, his voice low. “I got it.”

  Peggy backed away with an uneven nod. The currents running between them had changed so abruptly, but he couldn’t decide on a reason. He’d admit to mentioning her husband as a way to throw up a necessary wall between them, but—

  Elliott’s phone rang.

  He cursed, digging the device from his back pocket, frowning down at his daughter’s name where it flashed on the screen. “Alice,” he said to Peggy, without thinking. “She should be in theater rehearsal.”

  “You should answer it,” Peggy said, still backing away from him. Way too quickly. “Maybe I’ll see you around—”

  “Hold on.” He should have let her go. God knew he should have. But Elliott didn’t walk away from an interaction without a final score on the board. “Just stay right there.”

  She tilted her head. “I’m not one of your players.”

  “Please,” he growled.

  When Peggy shrugged—and stayed put—Elliott answered the phone, teen angst meeting his ear in full stereo. “Dad, I have to change schools. My fucking life is over. You don’t understand—”

  “Watch your language. And you haven’t given me a chance to understand.”

  A closemouthed shriek scraped down the line. One with which he was well acquainted. “Kim Steinberg broke her leg skiing this weekend and I’m the understudy for her character in The Music Man and I don’t have the lines memorized. I faked my way through it because she’s never even missed a day of school. Like, ever. Why would she want to stay home when she looks like that?” The sounds of papers being rustled came through the line. “Oh God, oh God. I took the bus home early so I wouldn’t have to face drama practice. The fucking performance is in five days and I—I don’t even know why I’m telling you this. You don’t give a shit about my life.”

  Elliott watched Peggy’s expression melt into soft sympathy, whether for him or Alice, he didn’t know, but it was too reminiscent of those times he’d confided in her. A rarity for him, to say the least, and something he had no right to miss. “Five days seems more than sufficient to memorize the lines.” He pressed the heel of his hand into his eye socket. “I have a few more hours here watching game film, but when I get home—”

  “I never ask you for anything, Dad.” Her breath snagged on the final word. “I just need help with this. Please. You don’t understand.”

  Guilt battled against the never-ending pressure to win, win at all costs. “Alice,” he said tightly. “We’re playing Temple on Saturday—”

  Peggy laid a hand on his arm. “I can go,” she whispered, looking a little surprised at herself for making the offer. That made two of them.

  “Hold on a second, Alice.” Elliott covered the phone with his hand. Trying not to be obvious, he sucked in the sugar-sweet scent of Peggy. She’d swept it forward on her second approach, and it brought forth memories of her head thrown back on his pillow, her mouth laughing into his neck. “That’s not necessary.”

  “It sounds pretty necessary.” She took back her touch, fingers curling into her palm, and Elliott rejected the impulse to smooth them back out between his hands. “Maybe just tell her I’m from the school…a fellow faculty member.”

  Elliott couldn’t hide his skepticism. “You still look more like a student.”

  She wet her lips in slow motion. “Noticed, did you?” Her low, seductive laugh made his boxer briefs feel two sizes too small. “I’m not meeting with my assigned alumni committee until tomorrow morning. My evening is free.” No longer meeting his eyes, she shrugged. “And I know what it’s like to lose your mother before you’re ready, so I have that in common with Alice. She probably doesn’t even know she needs the girl time.”

  Was that true? Before his wife’s death, he and Alice had a relationship similar to the one he’d had with his parents. Functional. He’d been responsible, showing up to school events and teacher meetings when it counted, but never mastering the elusive closeness other fathers and daughters seemed to have. When he’d been with Peggy, right after Judith’s passing, there’d been some progress. Peggy had forced him to open his eyes and see that Alice needed her father. He’d tried to maintain that uphill climb, but over time, they’d slipped back into how they’d been before. Functioning. If she needed something—especially girl time—he’d probably be the last to know.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know about your mother.” He itched to reach out, run a thumb over the curve of her cheekbone. “I appreciate your offer, but I think we both know any kind of involvement with one another is a bad idea.”

  “Involvement is a pretty strong word.” A smile teased her lips, but didn’t reach her eyes. “You’re worried for nothing.”

  “It’s never nothing with you.”

  She held his gaze a long moment, before turning away. “Text me your address, Elliott. My number hasn’t changed.”

  Chapter Three

  Peggy had spent three years working in retail as a personal shopper so she’d dealt with an abundance of attitudes, which she’d divided into three neat categories.

  Number one: the tourist. The women who came in without a hot cent to spend, but couldn’t quite hide their guilt over wasting her time. They did that upside-down smile, shoulder scrunch as they sent her running out into the store to pick up designer labels that would never make the cash register ding. But although they didn’t help Peggy out in the commission department, they were her favorite, because they treated her like an equal and tried to set her up with their sons. Which Peggy never took them up on. Except for those five times.

  Number two: the professionals. These women knew exactly what they wanted and didn’t bother looking up from their phones while rattling off sizes and label preferences. Not fun appointments by any stretch of spandex, but the easiest, by far.

  And then there was number three: the hell creatures. A retail worker’s worst nightmare, these women took great satisfaction in making others bust their asses. They had no idea what they wanted, but they knew it wasn’t that ugly thing. Peggy had spent many hours attempting to appease hell creatures, wondering why she was wasting her college degree fitting women for outfits in which to kill everyone’s buzz at a party. Oh, she could guess the reason—if she were into psychological self-diagnosis. Which she was not.

  Especially as she stood on Elliott’s porch, still reeling over his assumption she’d spent the last three years married. And how she’d done nothing to correct him.

  Not only had he sent her packing, but he’d lived through her wedding day without giving it a second thought. He really hadn’t wanted something serious with her. The dreaded confirmation should have been enough to send her diving back into the Suburban and leaving Ohio in the dust, but instead, Elliott’s lack of action had the opposite effect. Before she left this town, he was going to question his indifference. Regret it. That’s why she was there. No getting caught in emotional rat traps.

  Closing her eyes on a calming breath, she reached out to ring the doorbell. Noticing the black spot glaring back from b
eneath her fingernail, she tucked it into her fist and knocked instead.

  When Alice Brooks opened the front door to Elliott’s new house, it took Peggy less than ten seconds to categorize the preteen. However, Alice was in no way typical or expected; the Plinko disk, bouncing back and forth between two options, neither of which felt right. Huh. A tourist disguised as a hell creature. Peggy hadn’t even been aware those existed.

  Alice looked Peggy over from top to bottom, then hid half her body behind the door frame. The move was self-conscious, especially when paired with a fifty-watt glare. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Peggy. Didn’t you father tell you I was coming?”

  “Yes.” She stared down at Peggy’s boots. “You don’t look like a teacher.”

  Peggy fluffed her hair. “Maybe my students just got lucky.”

  While the redhead examined her a second and third time, Peggy tried not to be obvious about doing the same. During the whirlwind of senior year, she’d only been to Elliott’s home on two occasions. Both of those times, Alice had been staying with her aunt, so Peggy had only ever seen the young girl in pictures. Photographs on the fireplace mantle she’d managed to snatch a glance at while Elliott was in the bathroom or getting them drink refills in the kitchen.

  At the beginning of her relationship with Elliott, the topic of Judith Brooks—Elliott’s deceased wife—had been broached carefully. Over time, he confided just enough about their marriage for Peggy to understand they hadn’t been close. The specifics of Judith’s death, however, were as public as possible. One afternoon in winter, while Elliott was coaching football practice, Judith had slipped on a patch of ice on the driveway, hit her head, and gone into a deep coma. It lasted six months, the woman’s health deteriorating, before Elliott had been forced to make the painful decision to take her off life support.

  On the drive over, Peggy hadn’t known what to expect, finally coming face-to-face with such a huge part of her ex-lover’s life. As a college senior, she’d feared the possibility of being jealous over a child created with another woman. But Peggy was relieved as hell to feel nothing but sympathy for this young girl who’d spent the last four years without a mother. At least when Miriam passed, Peggy had been a self-sufficient adult (well, mostly) with siblings to lean on for support (just kidding).

  Peggy put a warm smile on her face. “Are you going to ask me in, or should we run lines out here on the porch?”

  Alice rolled her lips inward and stepped back, giving just enough room for Peggy to enter. Against her chest, she clutched a stapled bunch of papers, the words The Music Man in a bold, heavy font on the front. “Do you even know anything about this play?”

  “Negative, Captain.” Peggy set down her purse on the entry table with a flourish. “I am, however, quite an actress.”

  “You look like one. You look like Kim Steinberg,” Alice grumbled, stomping farther into the house and giving Peggy no choice but to follow, trying as hard as possible not to stop and peruse family photographs along the way. No, she was too busy realizing she’d been categorized, same as she’d done to Alice.

  Peggy took in the homey living room. It was huge, with oversized pieces of furniture to match. A low, square coffee table covered in the contents of a spilled Jansport backpack. Old wooden floors that probably creaked in the same pattern every time someone walked across them. The only thing missing was actual décor. No trinkets. No clutter. Clean and organized in a way that called to mind the man of the house. Putting those thoughts aside, Peggy focused on the forlorn-looking girl who continued to send her covert looks. “Who is Kim Steinberg?”

  Alice flopped down onto the dark green leather couch. “She’s a bitch,” she said on a rush of air, then covered her face with both hands. “I don’t know why I said that. She’s actually nice to me, most of the time. It’s just really hard to be nice back when she’s so good at everything.”

  “I can see how that would be annoying.”

  “No, you can’t,” Alice spat, her soft nature from a moment earlier gone the way of the dodo. “I can’t believe my dad sent you here. You’re like a Barbie doll. It’s like he wants me to feel shitty about myself.”

  “Look, I’m—” Way, way out of my depth. What had she been thinking? Offering to sweep in like a hero when she had no experience with young people, apart from the kids who sat in the waiting room coloring while she shopped for their mothers. Hoping for inspiration, Peggy scanned the room, landing on a copy of Seventeen Magazine, still halfway inside the backpack. On the cover, an overly tanned teenager who she didn’t recognize smirked back. Bingo. If there was one thing Peggy knew, it was men. Around her neck, the foursome of engagement rings seemed to grow heavier. “Okay, so this bitch Kim is the female lead. Who’s the guy?”

  Alice was obviously trying to hide her smile over Peggy’s use of the word bitch and failing. “What guy?”

  “Come on. There’s always a guy.” She perched on the couch’s arm. “You didn’t memorize your lines, so—forgive me—I doubt you have a passion for acting. So. It’s a dude.”

  “Justice Frick. He’s the other lead, who I don’t exactly have to kiss, but…there’s like a nuzzle in the second act.”

  “Frick?” Peggy slipped down fully onto the couch. “That’s his last name?”

  “Yeah.” Alice shook her head. “Slick Frick.”

  Peggy sucked in a breath through her nose. “Oh my God, that’s awful.”

  “I know.” Alice’s smile was grudging, but she no longer appeared determined to disappear into the couch cushions. While the girl formulated her next move—her choices narrowed down to either letting Peggy help or kicking her ass out—Peggy studied Elliott’s daughter through fresh eyes. Her shoulders were hunched, as if trying to hide herself, fingers picking at the hole in her jeans. A pang sharpened in her throat when an image of her sister popped up. The similarities between Alice and Rita were too there to ignore, and not for the first time since leaving her sister in New Mexico, the loss hit Peggy like a bus.

  “Are you, like, crying, or what?” Alice squawked, surging to her feet.

  “No.” Peggy was horrified when her voice hitched. “Maybe a little.”

  “Why?”

  “Everyone is just leaving me. You know?” The words burst out, like bees leaving a hive that had been smacked by a baseball bat. “Rita, Aaron. Miriam.” Elliott. “They don’t think I’m smart enough to have hurt feelings, because they’re a bunch of assholes.” She used the back of her hand to swipe away the annoying moisture leaking from her eyes. “They’re not assholes. I don’t know why I said that.”

  They both smiled at having issued nearly identical sentiments only moments apart. Alice left the room briefly and returned with a box of tissues, which she set down beside Peggy’s thigh, before stepping back, dragging nervous hands over the sides of her jeans. “So. You really know how to make a situation about you, huh?”

  Peggy’s burst of laughter felt like a balloon popping inside her ribcage. “You’re pretty funny, Alice.” She gestured to the script, laying haphazardly on the coffee table. “Are we going to learn these lines or what? The clock is ticking.”

  Alice snapped the elastic hair band circling her wrist. “I hope you’re a miracle worker.”

  “Miracle worker, I am not.” Peggy stood and squared her shoulders. “But if you’re after a nuzzle from Slick Frick, we can get you there.”

  Alice’s lips twitched. “Where did you come from?”

  Again, the rings hanging against her collarbone seemed to heat.

  Some say heaven, some say hell.

  Peggy’s smile faded when she remembered that by the time she left, Elliott would be firmly in one camp.

  * * *

  Elliott idled his truck to a stop in the garage, focusing on the green tennis ball that hung from the ceiling so he could pull in precisely two feet from the wall. Just enough space to walk from the driver’s side to the kitchen entrance, but not so much that the automatic garage door wouldn’
t shut.

  Once he’d switched off the ignition, he forced himself to wait, before climbing out of the driver’s side. Maybe if he hesitated to go in the house, he would finally convince himself he hadn’t rushed through the game films to get home. But the goddamn tug of anticipation in his gut at seeing the strange Suburban parked out front was undeniable. It was also manageable. Everything was.

  Taking his ancient, beat-up leather satchel from the passenger side, Elliott climbed out of the truck and entered the house, wary over what he might find. God knew Alice was difficult in most situations, but over the course of watching the game film with the assistant coaches, he’d conceded to himself that sending over flawless and confident Peggy might not have been the wisest course of action. Alice was his daughter and he didn’t give a damn what she looked like. To him, she was beautiful. He suspected she didn’t share his opinion, however, and he didn’t have a clue how to convince her.

  Voices from the living room brought Elliott to a stop, just inside the door. Peggy was encouraging Alice. One more time. Better. Once more through. He of all people knew Peggy could be persistent as hell when her mind was set on something, and he swallowed hard at the reminder of exactly how easily Peggy used to wear him down. Back when his life had taken an unexpected turn and she’d been his only sanctuary. Not anymore, though. His sanctuary was either an actual sanctuary or the field. There would be no deviating. Routine. Routine.

  Elliott cleared his throat and listened to the voices cut off.

  “Dad?”

  He started to set down his satchel, pausing when he noticed a purse sitting in his usual spot, outlined by the familiar brick wall. With an unsettled kick in the stomach, he eased his own bag down beside it, staring at them side by side for a breath. “Yeah, it’s me.”

  No sooner had he entered the living room than Peggy breezed past him, back the way he’d come. “I was just heading out.” She turned at the mouth of the hallway and sent Alice what looked like a heartfelt smile. “You got that first scene down. The rest will be easier now that you’re in character.”