“Daddy? What are you doing here?”
At least she was dressed in jeans and a shirt, though her feet were bare. She’d brushed her hair so she didn’t have that tousled look about her. He kind of missed that tousled look.
“That’s my question for you, young lady. What the hell are you doing here? And why aren’t you with Ben instead of this here interloper?” He jerked a thumb in Chance’s direction.
Interloper? Well, the man could have said a lot worse, he guessed.
“If anyone’s an interloper, Sam, it would be you, since this is my house and you weren’t invited.” Chance kept his voice even as he crossed his arms over his chest. A lot had changed in five years, and it would behoove Sam to realize that. But he wasn’t about to lose his temper either.
“Daddy! You best be civil. Come in the kitchen and I’ll put some coffee on.” Libby sounded more resigned than anxious. She turned on her heel, not waiting to see if Sam would follow. He did.
Last time her father had come knocking, Libby had trembled and shook before Chance had even opened the door. Then when he had flung it open, she’d rushed into her father’s arms, saying she was sorry.
Sorry? The memory still stung.
“Seems at this hour you’d have coffee brewing already,” Sam grumbled as he pulled out a chair and settled his large frame onto it.
Chance ran his hand through his hair, finger combing it. This was surely a sight he never thought he’d see—Libby fussing around his kitchen while Sam Brennan looked on.
“Sit, Chance,” Libby commanded.
Nope, Libby didn’t seem at all fazed by her father’s presence.
“I’ll fix you some eggs while we wait for the coffee. You have anything to eat this morning, Daddy?”
“Course I did. But I’ve been driving since before seven. I’ll take some of those eggs,” Sam said, drumming his fingers on the wood table. “Throw in some bacon, too, if you’ve got it.”
Libby proceeded to fill the coffeemaker with water and ground beans as Chance had shown her, and then she flitted around getting the fixings for breakfast like it was the most normal thing in the world for her father to be sitting in Chance’s house. Nothing to do but help her, Chance figured as he opened the dishwasher and snatched out three clean plates.
After he’d hobbled around setting out the plates, cups, and silverware, Chance slid into a seat across the table from Sam and stretched out his foot, which had begun to throb. Things sure were swinging between real good and real bad these days.
Sam drummed faster on the table. “I spoke to Ben, Libby.”
“I know you did, Daddy. My tongue’s bloody from biting it to keep from jumping on you about it.” Libby cracked the egg on the rim and let the fluid drip in the bowl. That’s about how she felt, cracked and dripping.
“Someone had to tell the poor guy what was going on. He was all broke up.”
Was he trying to make her madder? She whirled around to face her father, bowl and beater in hand, and began to whip the eggs into a scrambled froth, hoping the action would release some of the tension pulling her nerves into a tightrope. Staring into Sam’s defiant eyes, it was clear the man had no regrets about orchestrating the showdown—only about how it turned out.
“And that someone was going to be me, when he got back. But no, you had to jump the gun and take it on yourself to talk to Ben, making a difficult situation nigh impossible.” She beat the eggs faster. “How do you think he felt coming here?”
She whirled back around and dumped the foamy mixture into the fry pan, sending up a satisfying sizzle.
“Not good, but that wasn’t my doing. You’re the one who flew up here and parked yourself in this one’s bed.”
She clamped down on her teeth. Patience. Was. A. Virtue. Too bad she wasn’t feeling virtuous. She stole a glance at Chance. His brows were knit, but more in concentration than in anger, as if he didn’t want to miss a single word.
A day earlier she could have denied her father’s charge, but not after last night. Not after a night of body-thrilling sex. Not after a night of being in the arms of the man she loved.
The eggs were firming up. She swirled the spatula in the mixture, fluffing it.
“That was between Ben and me.”
The microwave beeped, signaling the bacon was done, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Chance rise.
“Sit. I’m supposed to be taking care of you.”
She shut off the stove’s flame and divided the scrambled eggs between the three plates, then retrieved the bacon, which she’d have preferred to fry in a pan, but time hadn’t allowed for it.
One minute her life had been all planned out and moving forward, and the next she wasn’t sure of anything, including what moving forward would even look like. Throw in a father who insisted on inserting himself in the middle of it all, as he’d always done, and her world had gone from straightforward to way too complicated.