Chapter Fourteen

Ford hated Anchorage. Even the airport represented everything he’d wanted to escape by moving to Captivity. Crowds, chain restaurants, piped in Muzak—though, to be fair, the crowds were thin at this time of night. He’d parked Mad at one of the few chain restaurants still open in the terminal and stood off to the side from a sparse group of people waiting at the foot of the escalator to baggage claim for the passengers deplaning from Flight 731 out of Seattle.

He’d told Mad the basics—the daughter he’d essentially given up at birth had recently discovered his existence and run away from troubles at home to meet him. His mission? Intercept her at the airport, put her in a hotel for the night, and escort her onto a six thirty a.m. flight back to Seattle, thus initiating the first leg of her already booked return trip. Jen would pick her up tomorrow night in Pittsburg, ground her for life, and this entire nerve-fraying odyssey would be over. Mad had to fly back to Captivity tonight in order to do his scheduled runs tomorrow, but something between moral support and curiosity had compelled him to “stick around” until “the package” was secure.

The frontrunners from the flight appeared at the top of the escalator. Ford moved a little closer, feeling the rush of adrenalin his central nervous system flooded into his bloodstream. No need for it. He’d studied the photos Jen had texted, as well as the general details. His five-foot, seven-inch, one hundred and twenty pound, dark-haired, hazel-eyed daughter wouldn’t escape his notice. But she also wouldn’t be looking for him, or anyone, to meet here at the airport, so it was on him to spot her.

“See her yet?”

He’d been so deep in his thoughts that Mad’s sudden appearance at his side and innocent question sent another dose of adrenalin surging through his over-jacked system. So much for his well-honed senses and lightning reflexes. “Not yet. What are you doing here? I told you to wait at the fucking Starbucks.”

“Hey now. That’s no way for Daddy to talk.”

He turned to the blond playboy pilot. “Go away. The last thing I need right now is—”

“Holy shit. Is that her?” Mad thwacked him in the chest with the back of his hand. “That’s got to be her.”

He turned, looked up the escalator as a tall, slim girl rolled a hard-sided carry-on bag onto the first step. She wore black Doc Martens, black-and-white striped tights, a short black jean skirt, and a snug red tank top that showed an illicit amount of teenage cleavage under a black leather motorcycle jacket. Inky black bangs swung across her forehead, merging into shoulder length locks on one side. On the other side, the hair was buzzed from part line to ear. Heavily lined eyes peeked out from beneath the bangs and focused on the phone in her hand.

“I think you lost count somewhere along the line,” Mad muttered. “No way is she fourteen.”

“Shut up.”

“Just sayin’.”

“I’m just sayin’ I’m going to punch you if you don’t shut up.” But he wouldn’t. He was too busy drinking her in. Jen was right. She looked like a Langley. Langley height. Langley eyes and chin. She looked like him, only…stunning. And no, she didn’t look fourteen. She sure as hell didn’t look like the tiny baby he carried around in his memory and his wallet.

About halfway down the escalator, she sensed his attention. Her bored gaze drifted from the phone screen to the people waiting below and clicked with his unwavering one. Would she recognize him from Jen’s old picture or whatever she’d found online? He waited, oxygen trapped in his lungs, and watched as awareness crept into her eyes. She straightened, and that little effort at self-presentation released his backed-up breath. Then she smiled. Just the faintest curving of lips, and he felt his lift in the same expression.

No. No smiling. Be a hardass. It’s for her own good.

He firmed his features into a mask of intimidation. Stern eyes. Tight jaw. He lowered muscles in his forehead to put the forbidding double lines between his brows.

Her smile simply kicked higher at one side of her mouth, and then she schooled her face into a scowl that almost perfectly mirrored his.

“Chip off the old block,” Mad muttered.

Okay. It was going to take more than a hard look to scare her into tucking her tail and running home. “Go away.”

“Nuh. I haven’t seen this episode of Dr. Phil. Oughtta be good.”

He allowed himself a silent sigh, then stepped forward as his daughter neared the end of the escalator. Stepped forward, then stopped, unsure of what to say despite the hours of mental rehearsal he’d undertaken from the moment he’d gotten off the call with Jen. Hours spent in preparation for this moment.

Despite the ambush, no hesitation showed in her expression or movements. She stepped nimbly off the escalator, walked straight up to him wheeling her bag behind her, and looked him square in the eye.

“Mia,” he managed and realized he wanted to hug her. Hold her. Wrap her up in his arms, bury his face in her hair, and breathe her in. Instead, he held out a hand for her bag.

“Ford,” she replied in a low, calm voice that held notes of her mother’s smooth, self-possessed tone. So self-possessed, she didn’t hand over her bag. “Or should I call you Mr. Langley?”

“Ford’s fine.” The question, with all its inherent awkwardness, drove home a late-breaking epiphany. Her world had sustained a serious rocking a short time ago—a series of them, actually—strong enough to send her across the fucking continent, alone, to try and stabilize it.

Sympathy seeped into the spaces between his full-blown anxiety and deep-seated uncertainty about how the hell he was supposed to handle this situation. He’d been viewing it through the jaded lens of a mother dealing with an escalated episode in a wearying pattern of teen rebellion. He should be viewing it through the eyes of a kid who’d just learned her parents’ marriage was crumbling, the once-secure family environment she’d thrived in was fracturing, and, oh, by the way, the man she’d spent her whole life believing was her father? Not strictly, biologically accurate.

“Ford’s fine,” he repeated, to fill the stretching silence. Then duty kicked in. First things first. “Call your mother. She’s frantic.”

Dark brows rose, followed by a narrow shoulder. “Oh. Is she back from Orlando?”

Sympathy to her circumstances didn’t extend to tolerating disrespect toward her mom. “Cut it out. Obviously she’s back, and obviously she’s been through a living hell worrying about you—as you intended, or you wouldn’t have left a vague note and taken off like you did.”

“Yeah. I must be a real brat.” She turned on her heel and started walking toward the baggage carousels, wheeling her bag behind her. “No wonder nobody loves me anymore.”

The sympathy came flooding back, along with the deep-seated uncertainty. Nothing like going from zero to a million miles per hour on the parenting rollercoaster. “No,” he said, easily keeping up with her. “They don’t love each other anymore. They still love you very much.”

“That’s nice of you to say.” She sent him a sad smile without slowing down. “But you don’t know that. You can’t, because you don’t really know them well, and you don’t know me at all.”

I’d like to know you. The words flew to the tip of his tongue. He had to lock his teeth to keep them back.

Her heartbreakingly bitter laugh filled the silence. “Heck, I don’t even know me.” She stopped at the only carousel with travelers surrounding it and stared hard at the unmoving conveyor. “I thought I knew who I was and where I came from, but it turns out I was wrong.” Hazel eyes flicked to him. “I came from you.”

The baggage carousel beeped to life, visibly startling her and viscerally reminding him that no matter how self-aware, stubborn, and articulate the person in front of him was, she was also fragilely young and reaching what had to be an anti-climactic conclusion to this adventure of discovery she’d set out on. He needed to keep it simple and stay on message. Turning to face the chute where luggage had started to emerge, he said, “We’ll get your bags first, then you’ll call your mom.”

“Ford?”

He turned to find those gray-brown eyes watching him coolly. “Yes?”

“I’m not calling my mom.” She leaned over before he realized her intent and hauled an oversize, wheeled bag off the conveyor. “I’m not calling my dad. I’m not calling anyone,” she said and reached for another bag, but he intercepted and retrieved it for her. She straightened, crossed her arms, and tipped her head to the side. “And you can’t make me.”

A nanosecond before his head exploded, he heard Mad cough to cover a laugh—a motherfucking laugh—and then saw him extend a hand. “Hi, Mia. I’m Maddox. A friend of Ford’s. Everybody calls me Mad. Nice to meet you.”

Mia took his hand, shook it. “Nice to meet you, too.”

Mad was touching his daughter. Shaking her hand. He hadn’t even touched her yet, and she was his flesh and blood.

“Are you hungry?” Mad went on. “Maybe we should sit down in that restaurant over there, take a load off, you know, and get something to eat?” Ford found himself on the receiving end of what amounted to a blue-eyed cattle prod. “I’m sure we could all use a moment to get our bearings.”

“Are you hungry?” Ford asked her, feeling like the most negligent parent in the history of humanity. He ran a bar and grill, for God’s sake. He fed people for a living.

She shrugged. “Sure. Whatever.”

He couldn’t eat. A tangle of knots occupied the place in his gut where his stomach should be. Mad, however, suffered no such troubles. He smiled wide, grabbed a bag, extended the handle, and led the way to Grizzly Pizza and Wings. Once they were seated in the nearly empty dining area, Mia excused herself to use the restroom.

“You lost round one,” Mad observed when they were alone.

“What are you talking about?”

“Parenting 101. Don’t demand what you can’t enforce.”

“Since when are you a parent?”

He leaned back in his chair and smiled his pretty-boy smile. “I have parents. Good ones. And I understand the female mind. You say, ‘Call your mom.’ She says, ‘You can’t make me.’ Game over, man, ’cause she’s right. You can’t make her.”

“Watch me.”

Mad shook his head. “Don’t re-fight a battle you’ve already lost. All you do is reinforce the fact that you’re on opposing sides, right before you lose again. Your goal isn’t to get her to do what you want, anyway. It’s to reassure the mother that her kid made it to you in one piece. Just text her right now and get that done. Goal accomplished, and you can let the point of conflict die a graceful death.”

It made sense. It felt wrong, allowing a teenager to dictate what she would and wouldn’t do, but it made sense. The higher priority for him wasn’t re-opening the lines of communication between Mia and Jen. It was notifying Jen that Mia was safe. So he whipped off the text and put his phone away.

“Also,” Mad added, “kids that age can’t be sent to their rooms. With few exceptions, they can’t be sent anywhere they don’t want to go.”

“What are you trying to tell me?”

“You have to find a way to make her want what you want,” came the cryptic answer. “Find leverage.”

Mia returned before he could ask for clarification. She sat and then shrugged out of her jacket at the same time a baby-faced waiter came over to drop off menus and take drink orders, and—Jesus Christ—eye-fuck his fourteen-year-old daughter. He opened his mouth to tell Mia to put some clothes on and the pervert to back off and send the manager over when Mad caught his eye and very subtly shook his head.

What the fuck? He was three seconds from losing his shit completely when Mad turned to Mia and shot her an easy smile. “I like your jacket.”

She returned his smile and lifted the jacket from the back of her chair. “Thanks. It’s vintage.”

“It looks good on you.”

“You think?” She slipped it on, putting a layer of aged leather between roving eyes and underaged curves displayed too well in the tight red tank top. Ford felt his blood pressure level out. “It’s one of my favorites. My mom and I found it last fall in this cool little shop in Manhattan…” She trailed off and her smile faded. “That was a while ago.”

Mad complimented the jacket again—fucker did know the female mind—and then steered the conversation to Mia’s favorite things to do in New York. After the pervert took their orders, Mad turned the conversation to other places Mia had visited. Ford found himself in a painful thrall, watching expressions dance across her face, listening to her voice rise and fall, wishing he’d been there to see her take a surf lesson in Waikiki two summers ago, or ski her first black diamond run in Breckenridge when she was ten. These had probably been family vacations, but she avoided that aspect like a hiker avoiding boggy parts of a trail.

If he wasn’t functioning on five hours of sleep, fresh off serving as Lilah’s unscheduled labor coach, and the emotional wringer of…every fucking thing…he might have actually attempted to participate in the conversation, but his mind couldn’t seem to latch onto a viable entry point.

He got an opening during a lull just after the pervert cleared their plates and took his credit card. She looked over at him, rested her chin on her hands, and said, “Thanks for dinner.”

“You’re welcome. So, Mad’s going to take off now. I’ve reserved us a couple rooms at the Holiday Inn Express tonight, and I’ll bring you back here tomorrow morning.”

She offered him the faint smile again. “Why would we do that?”

His gut clenched, not a good sign, and Mad sent him a look full of warning, but he forged ahead, because, dammit, this was the only acceptable option. “Because you’re catching the six thirty flight to Seattle, connecting through Chicago, and then straight into Pittsburg. I’ll forward the e-tickets to your phone. Your mom will pick you up at the other end.”

“Sorry. No.”

“There’s no ‘no-ing’ this.” Because a headache took a hammer to his frontal lobe, he breathed deep, scrubbed the heels of his hands over his eyes, and then refocused on her. “Look, Mia, I don’t know what your plan was, but—”

“My plan,” she interrupted, utterly cool, “is to spend the summer in Captivity. I have a seat on Captivity Air flight 291 tomorrow at ten a.m. I’m booked at the campground. I have my own money. I’m all set.”

“No. No. No. You’re caught, okay? You ran away, you got caught, and now you have to go home. An unaccompanied minor can’t spend the summer in Captivity.”

“I’m not unaccompanied.” She pointed at him. “My birth father lives there.”

“Your family—the one you ran away from—lives in Pittsburg. You made your point with this stunt, I promise you. Now you have to go back. End of story. I’m the only reason your mom hasn’t already called the cops.”

She continued looking at him, an unreadable expression on her face. “My ‘point’ in coming here was to meet you. Get to know you. Maybe get to know me at the same time.”

“Your point was to send a fuck-you to your mom and dad. Not an entirely unearned fuck-you, I’m sure, but a fuck-you nonetheless.” He probably shouldn’t be saying fuck so much.

“No, that wasn’t my point.” She looked down at the table and smiled. “The fuck-you was just a little side benie. I’m sorry you’re not thrilled with the plan, but if you really expect to put me on a plane tomorrow, you’re going to have to fly all the way back to Pennsylvania with me. Otherwise, I’ll just change my ticket in Seattle and land right back on your doorstep.”

Mad’s I-told-you-so look was loud enough to shatter glass.

“That’s reckless and dangerous, and the fact that you don’t understand why it’s reckless and dangerous only underscores how reckless and dangerous it is. You, little girl, have a target on your back that you don’t even understand. What if some maniac—”

“Heyyy,” Mad interrupted his wild gesturing, “she’s come this far. Seems a shame not to visit the jewel of the Inner Passage before she goes home. You know”—he turned his smile on Mia—“as long as you square it with your mom, why not take some time to explore Captivity?” He turned back to Ford. “It’s small. Peaceful. Beautiful scenery, and trees, and whatnot. True, the wifi can be spotty. There are no IMAX theaters, or cute little shops like you find in SoHo, or fancy hotels like in Waikiki or Breckenridge, but at night you can stare up at our big ole sky and watch the stars. It’s so quiet, you can hear your own thoughts echoing in your head.”

All right. He got it. No need to hit him with a brick. Take Mia to Captivity and bore her to death. After a few days spent splitting her time between his place and The Goose, she’d be begging to fly home to civilization. Plus, if she wanted to take him up on Mad’s offer, that fucking genius had positioned it so she’d have to clear it with Jen, which gave him the ultimate win in the call-your-mom battle.

And yeah, even though he was already sort of terrified of her stubborn streak, that part of him that ached with the pain of missed opportunities every time the calendar turned to May jumped at the chance to spend time with her. Even a lousy week. It could be the start of something. Something that ended with him having a meaningful place in her life, or at least an avenue to provide open support.

Why should he have to forfeit that again? At seventeen, maybe the forfeit had made sense. At thirty-one, he ought to have more of say, and so should she. Especially since the whole “one family would be best for Mia” argument hadn’t held up, long-term. Feeling like nobody loved her enough to put her first—regardless of the unfortunate circumstances—was not best for Mia.

He looked across the table at her and nodded. “If it’s okay with your mom, it’s okay with me.”

Her smile dazzled like a thousand suns. She stood and pulled her phone out of her pocket. “I’ll call my mom.”

He watched her as she stepped out of the restaurant and into the bright lights of the terminal to make her call, his heart thudding in his chest. Jesus, he was going to be a daddy after all this time. Responsible for a young life. Maybe just for a week. Hell, maybe less. Based on how he’d done so far, the idea scared him down to the bones.

A memory of Lilah staring into her newborn’s face that afternoon floated into his mind. She’d looked awed, maybe a little overwhelmed by the beauty of her accomplishment, but scared? Not at all. She hadn’t looked the least bit scared. Maybe she’d share her secret with him, so he had half a chance of surviving this temporary parenthood.