Read The Girl Who Ran Off With Daddy for Free Online

padded on both sides.”
    “Why, Mr. Hoagy, are you being meowish?”
    “Who, me? Never.”
    “So what’s she like?” Merilee inquired, trying to sound casual about it. And failing.
    “I gave them the down comforter from the guest room.”
    “Is she awful?”
    “And Sadie to fend off the mice.”
    “You don’t like her, do you?” She seemed mildly amused by this.
    “Thor asked me to give her a chance.”
    “You detest her.” She seemed greatly amused by this.
    “Possibly,” I offered, “she’s just in need of a positive female role model. After all, she and Ruth aren’t exactly on good terms anymore.”
    “And I wonder why.” Merilee took a bite of her toast, which was topped with her very own apple butter. She shook her head. “He’s a dirty old man, Hoagy. And she’s cruel and stupid.”
    “I guess that means you don’t want them staying here for the winter.”
    Her eyes widened. “Staying here? Explain yourself this instant, sir.”
    I did. And to her credit, Merilee listened patiently and calmly before she responded, “I want peace and quiet right now, not Hard Copy camped out at the foot of our drive. That’s exactly what I don’t want.”
    “I don’t want that either, Merilee. Nor do they.”
    She studied me over her mug. “You want to do this book with her, Hoagy? Is that what you’re saying?”
    “Not even maybe.” I sat down at the foot of the bed. “But I do owe the man. And he is in trouble.”
    She sipped her milk, considering it long and hard. “Okay,” she concluded, much to my surprise. “But only because of a certain person who I happen to care deeply for.”
    “Ruth?”
    She shook her head.
    “Arvin?”
    “You.”
    “Me?”
    “You haven’t been very good company lately, darling. You’ve been pointy and distant and about as much fun as a dose of poison ivy in one’s pink places.”
    “I know that, Merilee. Just one of those phases a guy goes through. Shouldn’t last for more than another decade.”
    “Is this you being new-fatherish?”
    “This is me being I-don’t-knowish.”
    Tracy watched me intently from the bed. I watched her back.
    Merilee watched us watching each other. “I wish you two would make up your minds about one another.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “I mean you keep measuring each other like potential enemies.”
    “We’re just getting ready for when she’s a teenager.”
    Merilee hesitated, biting her lower lip. “Know what I keep thinking you ought to do, darling?”
    “Oh, God, Merilee. You’re not going to send me off in search of my smile, are you?”
    “Hoagy, you never had a smile.”
    “Did so. It so happens I was a buoyant, fun-loving child.”
    Lulu started coughing. It’s what she does instead of laughing.
    Merilee’s eyes were on the windows. “I keep thinking … What I mean is, if only you’d sit down with your father and—”
    “I don’t want to talk about him, Merilee,” I said gruffly. “You know I don’t want to talk about him.”
    “I know, I know,” she conceded, coloring. “It’s just that your mother and I were—”
    “My mother and you were what?” I snapped.
    “Don’t yell at me!”
    I stood and went over to the windows, gazing out at the cove. A hawk was circling over the marsh, slowly, in search of breakfast. “Merilee, I don’t know what it is.”
    “Then maybe Thor can help you find out. He’s always had some mysterious power over you, God knows why. And God knows why I’m agreeing to this. The two of you will probably end up facedown together in a brothel somewhere in Mexicali.” She sighed grandly, tragically. “All right, they may stay—for your sake. And because I care about Ruth. Although if she ever finds out I’m harboring those two moral fugitives—”
    “Let’s try not to judge them, okay?”
    “I’m trying,” she insisted. “I’m just not having much success.”
    “Neither am I.” I took her gloved hand, getting lost in her green eyes. “That’s a rather