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CHAPTER SIX
“I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS!”
Chase sighed, tilted back his seat and closed his eyes. Little men with hammers were dancing around inside his head, trying to beat their way out.
“I absolutely, positively cannot believe this!”
“So you’ve said, a hundred times this morning. Or maybe it was last night. I can’t imagine why, but I seem to have lost track of time.”
“To think I let you get me into this incredible mess—”
“Annie. Do us both a favor, will you? Lay off.”
“—this impossible mess! And there you are, lying back with your eyes closed, relaxing, taking it easy, acting as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening!”
Chase’s fingers tightened around the arms of his seat. Okay, she was upset. Upset enough so he could damn near feel her quivering with anger and indignation beside him but hell, he was upset, too.
He’d made a monumental screwup, lying to his daughter in the first place and now, as with most lies, he was getting in deeper and deeper. It didn’t thrill him to know that, probably sooner than later, he was going to have to let his little girl down.
“Do you care? No. Uh-uh. You do not. No, sir, not Mr. Chase Cooper. He’s as cool as a cucumber. He just sits there, as calm as he pleases!”
But first he was going to have to listen to Annie telling him what he already knew, that he was an idiot for having gotten them into this mess in the first place.
“—just drives me crazy! I’m sitting here, wound up like a spring, thinking about what a hideous mess we’re in, but do you worry about it?”
“Annie, trust me. I’m worrying.”
“You are not,” Annie said coldly. “If you were worrying, you couldn’t eat a mouthful. But you tore into your meal like a starving man at a banquet table.”
“You’re damned right I did. I was hungry. I haven’t eaten a thing since the caterer fed me that tenderized shoe leather and slippery toadstool concoction at the wedding.”
“Shoe leather? Toadstool?” Annie quivered with indignation. “That just shows what you know.”
Chase looked at Annie. He thought of replying, then thought better of it. Hell, he thought wearily, she was right. What did he know?
Enough to have built Cooper Construction into what it was today—but not enough to have saved his own marriage. And now he, of all people, was trying to save his daughter’s. There was a joke in there someplace, if only he could manage to see it.
He put his head back and let Annie’s angry tirade wash over him. He was too tired to argue, or even to answer. He hadn’t felt this exhausted since the early years of their marriage, when he’d spent his days working and his evenings taking courses in finance and administration and whatever else he’d figured might help him grow his business into something he and Annie could be proud of.
He could still remember coming home late at night, too tired to see straight—but not too tired to go into Annie’s arms, or to sit across the kitchen table from her and talk about everything under the sun, from some problem at a job site to politics to Annie’s day flipping burgers at the King.
When had it all started to go wrong? He’d tried and tried to figure it out, but there hadn’t been any one day or any one event. Things had changed, that was all, little by little, and so subtly that even now, after all this time, he couldn’t put his finger on it. He only knew that at some point, Annie had stopped waiting up for him.
Not while he was still in school. No, it was after that. When he was scrambling for jobs, taking on work two, three hours from home; he’d drive back at night, so worn-out he could barely make it, because he didn’t want to be away from Annie...until he’d figured out that there wasn’t any point because the only thing she’d say when she heard his key in the lock was “Don’t track mud on the floor, Chase,” and then she’d tell him his meal was in the microwave and she’d go off to bed.
Hours later, after he’d eaten his dried-out dinner and pored over plans and specs for the next day, he’d trudge upstairs and find her asleep or pretending to be, lying far over on her side of the mattress, her back to him, her spine so rigid he couldn’t bring himself to touch her.
He’d thought things might improve when the money finally started coming in. He bought Annie extravagant gifts, things he’d always longed to give her, and sent her chocolates and huge bouquets of roses.
“Thank you,” she’d say politely, and he’d feel as if he’d somehow failed her.
He’d still spent long hours on job sites—he was a hands-on kind of man, not the sort to sit behind a desk and anyway, if you wanted to stay on top of things, you had to be there, in the flesh. He knew he’d arrived when he began getting invited to all kinds of functions. Chamber of Commerce dinners. Charity affairs. Things he couldn’t afford to turn down, because if you didn’t network, some other guy would and then you’d lose the jobs you’d worked so hard to get—the jobs that bought the things he wanted Annie and Dawn to have. The things Annie had done without, for so long.
