“Great,” Luke muttered. “I haven’t seen your personal assistant for a long time. I assume he’ll be there in your place again?” It was impossible to miss that eye roll. Or the sarcasm. William seemed to be ignoring both.
Finding it hard to enjoy romance when one’s pretend fiancé was acting the ass, Dani looked out the passenger window in the back of the car. They were too crowded, the three of them in the back, despite it being a luxury car. They might as well have been facing each other, the way they had been in the limo. This was an old argument, a face-off between estranged father and son, and the air in the car was charged with the tension.
“Look,” Dani said, not sure where she was going, but feeling the need to defuse things.
“Again?” William asked Luke, ignoring her, looking up finally, rolling his own eyes in exact imitation of his son a moment ago though he hadn’t seen it. “You do realize that I was there in every capacity I could be.”
“Good. Well, you’re here now, so let’s start over, shall we?”
“If you think it would help, certainly. We seem to have some time to kill.” William gestured at the parking lot in front of them, a back-up of vehicles that stretched to the horizon and likely beyond. At this point they could have walked faster.
Luke snorted. “You didn’t insist that the city empty out for you? You know, leave a table for six and some sycophants to serve you?”
“What are you on about?” William snapped. “You have no idea what...” He stopped and looked from his son to Dani and back. “You have no idea...” he said, and faltered, unable to finish the words. The blood drained from his face, leaving him looking old and grey, his shoulders slumping as if he’d suddenly become a very old man.
It was a startling transformation, from the vivacious energetic dynamo that he’d been since he came into their lives. Dani touched Luke’s arm, warning him to back off. To let this go.
“Your mother,” William said quietly, turning his head to look out the window as though afraid to see what he might discover in his son’s eyes. “Did she ever talk about me?”
“Only when she was swearing,” Luke said, looking past Dani, out the other window.
It was ridiculous. This battle of wills. This absolute denial of the father/son bond.
But, then, she hadn’t exactly been batting a thousand with her own father, so who was she to judge. Dani stared at the floor, focusing on her shoes, wishing she were anywhere but in the back of this car right now. They needed to talk this out, but not with her present.
Not that either of them seemed to remember that she was there.
William turned and sat forward again, staring through the windshield without seeing the traffic. He checked his watch and looked pointedly at the driver in the rearview mirror, who only shrugged. There was little else he could do. Nothing was moving. The driver in the car next to them was just sitting there, reading a book.
“When you graduated high school, you decided to join the Marines,” William said suddenly, to the back of the front seat.
“Was that in my file? I stand corrected; you really do know all the intimate parts of my soul.”
Dani had never heard Luke sound so bitter. She actually cringed a little.
“Your mother was opposed to it; she wanted you to pursue medicine or sports or skydiving. Something safe. But you joined up. And washed out.”
Luke’s eyes had gone cold. It was like he wasn’t even in his own head anymore. “I didn’t wash out.”
“That sucker-punch you landed on the lieutenant would have gotten you kicked out before you even finished boot camp.”
“You know about that?”
Dani looked between the men, listening. She knew how serious that charge would be. If it were true, Luke would have ended up in the brig, dishonorable discharge, everything the government could throw at a young man that would bury him.
“Doesn’t matter,” Luke grumbled, sticking his chin out and crossing his arms. “The little prick had it coming.”
“No doubt,” William said, still not looking at his son. “And yet, you finished boot camp.”
Luke sat in silence for a moment. It stretched into two. “There was a paperwork problem,” he said quietly, but he didn’t sound too convinced. “It was dropped.”
William nodded. “Dropped. In fact, you were offered a post in Special Forces. Operations so black even I don’t know what they were. Quite a coup for a disciplinary case.”
Luke’s face froze. Dani stopped breathing.
“You?” Luke asked in a voice that cracked under a dry mouth and closed throat.
William nodded.
“And after?”
Apparently, William knew what he meant. He shrugged. “You were looking bored. Even considered re-enlisting, even mercenary work.” William glanced over at Dani. “With apologies, of course,” he said to her and looked back at his son. “I couldn’t have that.”
“YOU couldn’t...” Luke choked. If the car hadn’t started moving again, Dani wondered if he would have climbed over her to get out. She still wouldn’t put it past him. They were only going about 25 mph.
“How many people are actively recruited by the FBI?” William asked, giving his son a hard look. “None. They don’t go looking for new people, they don’t have to. You skipped over a lot of more experienced men when you ended up working for Ray.”
“Why?”
“Why? Really? You would ask that?”
“I’ll stand by it,” Luke said, sticking out his chin. “Why?”
“Because,” William sighed, “you’re my son.”
“And you were suspicious of Ray,” Luke guessed after a moment. “You needed a man on the inside to watch him.”
“And who better than my son?”
There was another long pause. Dani held her breath, and watched Luke clench and unclench the hand nearest her. When it balled into a fist she placed her fingers over him, letting him know it was okay. In fact, right about now, she was not so pleased with William either.
What if my father had done that to me? How would I be feeling right now?
“Tell me something,” Luke said, his hand refusing to relax under hers. “Did I ever make my own decisions?”
William turned in his seat to look at him. He glanced at Dani. “The good ones were all you,” he said, giving her a rather pointed look. Dani blushed.
William turned and faced the front again, keeping his eyes fixed on the heavy traffic.
It took a long time before Luke’s hand relaxed against his thigh.
It took nearly two hours to get from the airport to the home of Mrs. Pinal’s daughter. No one spoke until they left the highway, when Luke suddenly grumbled. “Am I supposed to thank you?”
William sighed, and shook his head. “Doesn’t look like it.”
This time it was Dani’s turn to raise their entwined fingers and kiss his knuckles. He looked at her, and somehow managed to smile, even if he looked a little pale and wan.
Dani’s heart broke, and when she leaned forward to kiss him again it was his lips she captured with her own, having gone long beyond being embarrassed to give a PDA in front of Luke’s father.