Page 20 of Loup Garou

“Harly, go pester Myra about settling down.” I wanted to be off the subject of having a family and Harly seemed dead set on it.

He shook his head. “No, honey, it’s not Myra I see down at the park laughing and hanging around with the children. I know how you are, Lindsay. Those mothers down there are not your type of people. You go down to be by the little ones. It’s not Myra who drags me to the hospital once a month to hold premature babies who need the stimulation and whose parents need a little break. It’s you. It’s not Myra who opened a rec center to keep kids out of trouble and to provide daycare for women who couldn’t normally afford it.”

Glancing down at the table, I tried towillmyself away. It didn’t work. “Umm…”

“I like your place here, Harly. It’s like a step back in time.” Exavier held up a fry and tipped his head a bit. “And the food is delicious.”

Harly looked at me and beamed. “Oh, he’s a keeper, Lindsay. Don’t toss this one back, honey.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“Do better than your best, Lindsay.”

I waited for Harly to go into the kitchen before I sighed. My cell phone rang. I dug in my handbag and pulled it out. “Hello?”

“Ah, there you are. I have been trying to reach you at home all morning.”

I smacked my forehead as punishment for not checking the caller ID on my phone before answering. “Hi, Dad. I was at work all morning.”

“Lindsay, the recreational center is far from work. Stop dumping money into a section of the city that will never get better.”

“Dad, I made more money than I could ever dream of spending in my first year of choreographing alone. You invested it for me and I kept earning beyond that. Am I in danger of going broke any time in my lifetime?”

He snorted. “No.”

“Am I spending your money?”

“No, but that is not the point.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m sorry. There’s a point to this lecture? Continue on.” I knew he was seething mad and it only made me smile more.

“Lindsay, there are better ways you could be…”

I put my hand up then realized he couldn’t see me. “Hold on. If you’re going to launch into the spiel about me dumping money into other programs and freeing myself of theburdenof the center again then I’m going to hang up and change my number. Those kids and those people mean the world to me. And, to be honest, I can’t see how it’s any of your business what I do with my time or my money.”

“You studied dance, not how to swing around a pole, Lindsay.”

“I know I studied dance, not how to swing on a pole.” I wanted to strangle him. I held back doing it over the phone. “Daddy, it’s not nice to have hired eyes everywhere. We’ve talked about this.”

“Someone needs to watch over you. You are reckless and—”

“Oh, hey, you called just in time for the lunchtime toss-myself-in-front-of-a-bus meeting. Thank gawd you got your digs in before I leapt in front of the mother-load of horseshit.”

He snarled. I guess he didn’t like me offering to toss myself in front of a moving vehicle just to avoid taking anymore shit about my life. I smiled. “Lindsay, we will be meeting at eight tomorrow evening.”

I hissed. “Darn it. Eight tomorrow just won’t work for me, Dad. I’ll have to take a rain check. See, that’s the time I do table dances and give men four times my age lap dances. I make a hell of a killing in tips. Granted, I have to pull the money out of my thong, but still…”

He didn’t find it as amusing as I did. “You are attending. There is someone special in town that I wish for you to see. I will discuss the matter no more with you.”

“Psst, you aren’t sounding as young as you should. Use contractions, Dad, they’re all the rage. Ooo, better yet, start using one of the, like, hundred languages you speak. How many of them are obsolete now? Your French accent is all but gone, Daddy. Come on, pull out the big guns.”

He chuckled slightly. “So, I will see you tomorrow evening?”

“I don’t know. This isn’t another one of Mom’s attempts to fix me up with one of her friends’ sons, is it?”

His silence spoke volumes.

“Uhh, Dad, I thought you agreed with me that the men she picks are about as lively as a brick wall. Half of them are as thick as one too. Please mesmerize her and make her think I came, it was great and we all went home happy.”

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