Intentions - SF9 (38 page)

He had to strain a bit to finally focus on the sound, but he could just make out his daughter's small body being hoisted from the spa by her much larger partner.
Oh, Jesus!
he moaned,
just what I wanted to see. That should make me sleep better!

He averted his eyes and went to the ice machine to fill his glass. He was just about to go back upstairs when he heard Jamie's voice rise...sounding like she was being hurt.
What in the hell is she doing to her?
he screamed to himself in outrage as he went back to the window to see Ryan carrying his daughter towards the pool house, Jamie's legs kicking in the air as she beat on Ryan's back.
She's forcing her!
he cried.
She doesn't want to go with her! I'll kill her
, he vowed as he gripped his glass so firmly that it shattered in his hand. He bit his lip to keep from screaming, not wanting all of the servants hovering about him if they heard him. Sparing a glance at his hand, he watched as the blood gushed from the sizeable gash, the pain not really registering because of the adrenaline that flowed through his body. When he looked up again, Ryan had lowered the smaller woman a bit, rendering Jamie even more helpless as she struggled valiantly.

He opened the back door, unable to hear every word, but he caught his daughter calling the large woman a brute and Ryan ordering her to be quiet. He padded across the pool deck while wrapping a kitchen towel around his hand, the blood coloring the white cloth immediately. His pace grew quicker until he was running across the slate surface, finally catching up with the pair. Before either woman knew what was happening, Jim grabbed Ryan by the back of her suit and yanked her to a halt. "Put her down...now!" he cried, his face so red with anger that it looked like it would explode. "PUT HER DOWN!"

Ryan blinked at him, unable to form a single word. She crouched down and gently set Jamie onto the ground, staring at the man as Jamie said, "Daddy, we were just playing. Really!" She was blushing wildly, her face nearly as red as his.

Trying to make the reality fit his perceptions he said, "But you were fighting, Jamie. I saw you struggling! You don't have to defend her!"

His last sentence pissed Jamie off, and she heard herself say, "I was seducing her, Daddy! We like to do that sometimes. She was not hurting me...we were on our way to the pool house to make love." She gave him a withering gaze as she stated unequivocally, "I wanted to make love. Neither Ryan nor anyone else has ever forced me to do that."

He felt sick to his stomach and a little faint, and he remembered about his hand. His eyes went to the bloody towel just as Jamie and Ryan's eyes tracked to the same spot. "What did you do?" Jamie cried, trying to grab his hand to assess the damage.

"Nothing," he growled, his embarrassment over spying on them merging with his reaction to Jamie's words to make him start to run in the direction of the house. He grabbed another towel and ran back upstairs, sticking his bare feet into his loafers before running back downstairs. He grabbed his keys and ran for the door, not bothering to turn off the alarm before he jumped in the car to drive himself to the emergency room.

Within seconds, the entire household was awake, most of them gathered near the kitchen. The servants reacted quickly, getting the alarm turned off while Catherine ran across the living room to find Jamie and Ryan in the kitchen, a vivid trail of blood smeared across the kitchen floor. "My God! What happened?" she gasped, grabbing Jamie by the shoulders as she anxiously surveyed her from head to toe, looking for the source of the blood.

"It's Daddy," Jamie said, feeling sick to her stomach as she focused on the blood. "He cut his hand somehow."

Jordan and Mia poked their heads in the kitchen, both looking wide-awake but very haphazardly put together. "Are you okay?" Mia asked, looking at the two women.

"Yeah. Fine," Ryan said. "Sorry guys, you can go back to bed."

Jordan gave Ryan a doubtful glance, but did as her friend asked, tugging Mia along with her.

Helena went to the supply cabinet and took out some cleaning cloths, then set to work on the sink and the floor, trying to get the blood out before it soaked into the stone.

Catherine exchanged meaningful glances with her daughter and twitched her head towards the stairs, leading the way to the second floor. Both women followed her into her room, where Jamie immediately began to explain. "We were in the spa," she said, already embarrassed, "and we started playing with each other."

Catherine furrowed her brow a little, but didn't comment.

"I don't know why, but all of a sudden we were playing that, 'you can't make me' game," she said weakly, looking a little ill.

Catherine smiled and nodded as she said, "I'm familiar with that one, girls. Everybody does that at some point."

Ryan interrupted, not seeing the need to go into details. "We were going into the pool house...I was carrying Jamie over my shoulder...and Jim showed up."

Catherine's eyes bugged out as Ryan continued.

"He grabbed me by my suit and demanded that I put Jamie down. He apparently thought I was trying to force her to..."

"I get the picture," Catherine said, holding up a hand. "But where did the blood come from?"

"He cut himself in the kitchen," Jamie said. "There was broken glass all over the sink. I guess that's where he was when he heard us."

"Well," Catherine said, running her hands through her disordered hair, "I suppose the excitement is over now. I hope he wasn't hurt too badly," she said worriedly. "There was an awful lot of blood."

"It didn't look good," Ryan agreed. "What hospital would he have gone to?"

"Probably San Mateo," Catherine mused. "Should we call?"

"Yeah. If he's not there, I'll go look for him."

"Oh, Honey, I don't want you to go out driving around here. You don't even know the neighborhood."

Ryan didn't want to worry her unnecessarily, but she was honestly quite worried about the cut. She thought it entirely possible that he could have lost enough blood to render himself unconscious...or worse.

Catherine got on the phone to the hospital, and after wasting ten minutes trying to get an answer, was finally satisfied that he had not gone there. In the interim, Jamie had pulled out the phone book and was dialing all of the urgent care facilities that were reasonably close by-with no luck.

Ryan knew that her partner was correct and that she should not be driving around aimlessly. She didn't want Jamie to go with her, since she didn't know how long she would be gone and Jamie needed some rest to be able to play golf in a few hours.

Her musings were interrupted by the ringing doorbell, and all three women shared a puzzled look as Jamie ran to answer it. She opened the door to a Hillsboro police officer who asked, "Is everything all right here? We were notified that your alarm went off."

Jesus, you could have a four-alarm fire in my neighborhood with a slower response time!
Ryan thought.

"Yes," Jamie said, but Catherine came up behind her and said, "Actually, officer, we have a little problem."

She explained the entire situation to the man, and he asked for the information about the car. Jamie found the paperwork from the rental car company. The officer went to his car and got on the radio, notifying the station to be on the lookout for the car that Jim was driving, and promised to call the house with any news.

After the officer left, all they could do was sit and wait, and they decided to do so together.

After going upstairs to put on some sweats, they went into the living room, and within a few minutes Jamie was curled up on the couch, her head on Ryan's lap as the indulgent woman gently trailed her fingers through her hair. Seconds after the tender touch began, Jamie was sound asleep, much to Catherine's amusement. "She has the most uncanny ability to sleep anywhere, at any time. I envy her."

"Yeah, I do too, a little," Ryan agreed. "I tend to lie awake and worry."

"I tend to sit in the living room and drink myself into a stupor," Catherine said wryly, getting up to fix the first of what she assumed would be many.

"Catherine?" Ryan asked, looking up at her intently.

"Yes, Dear?"

"Why don't you try Jamie's tactic, instead?" She picked up her lover's head and laid it back down on a soft pillow, taking a moment to cover her with a throw. Moving to the other couch, Ryan sat on the end and patted her lap, smiling at her mother-in-law as she issued the invitation.

"This works very well, thank you," Catherine said, holding her glass up.

"Humor me," Ryan insisted. "Come on. You might need to have your wits about you later on." She didn't want to sound like such a pessimist, but she thought there was a chance that they would, at the least, have to go to the hospital, and she didn't want Catherine to be looped if they did.

"All right," she said, understanding Ryan's unspoken worry. She lay down and placed her head gingerly upon Ryan's lap, moving her head around a little to get comfortable. Ryan pulled the chenille throw from the back of the couch and covered Catherine with it as she began to run her fingers through her soft blonde hair.

"Your hair feels very much like Jamie's," Ryan said, as she continued to trail her hand through the tresses. "I'd love for one of our kids to have hair like this." She laughed softly and said, "I guess that precludes using one of my brothers as a sperm donor."

"Don't forget Caitlin," Catherine reminded her. "There must be some gene for blonde hair in your mix."

"No. Don't think so. Tommy's dad was very fair. I think that's a Driscoll thing. The O'Flahertys go from dark to darker." She sighed and said, "Eh...less chance of sunburn. No big deal."

"It must feel odd to know that you can't create a child together," Catherine said, her voice growing soft and a little sleepy.

"Mmm, probably odder for Jamie," Ryan decided. "I never had the fantasy of being able to do that. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be able to merge with her and create new life from our love. I've just never assumed I would do it, so it doesn't seem odd now."

"That makes sense," Catherine agreed. "I suppose you have a different way of looking at the world than I do, Ryan."

"I think everyone has their own view, Catherine. It's only when we think our way is
the way
that we get into trouble." Her thoughts drifted to Jim as she considered that was his main problem.

"True," the older woman said, a yawn escaping. She cuddled up a little tighter and slowly fell asleep, her face losing the few lines of tension that it carried when she was awake.

Ryan leaned back and regarded the two women, so similar and yet so different.
Some day I'll sit back and watch Jamie and our daughter and think the same thing,
she mused, smiling to herself as she also drifted off.

The young clerk looked up as a man walked quickly down the hallway, heading for the exit doors. "Oh...Mr. Jones?" she asked, certain that she had identified the correct patient. The tall, sophisticated man stood out from the crowd, not just because he wore only a pair of slacks and shoes. There was something that was vaguely familiar about him, but she just could not place him.

She turned to the woman at the next desk and asked, "That last patient left without his receipt. Did he remind you of anyone?"

The other woman looked at the receipt and said, "Oh yes, he reminded me of the fifty other John Joneses we've had in here in the last year. Can't these guys think of something more original?!"

As he pulled up to the house, Jim surveyed the place and pondered why the lights were on in the living room.
Well, time to face the music,
he decided. He had a notion to just head over to his apartment, but his briefcase was in the house and he couldn't leave without it, much as he wanted to.

He entered through the kitchen, noticing that the alarm had been turned off.
Could I have screwed up any worse tonight?
he grumbled as he walked towards the living room. Coming up to the room at an angle he saw bodies lying on both couches, with Ryan sitting up, sound asleep.
They probably stayed up so they could all watch when Jamie tells me to go to hell,
he mused. Walking a little closer he saw his daughter sleeping on Ryan's lap and begrudgingly thought,
Well, she does look very content lying there with her.
As he crept closer still, he gasped when he saw that it was not Jamie but Catherine who lay so contentedly in the dark woman's loose embrace.

Jesus Christ!
he cried, feeling irrationally angry at witnessing the tableaux.
She's taken my daughter, now she's got my wife! Thank God we don't have a dog!
He shook his head slowly, carefully observing the woman as she slept.
I don't understand the attraction,
he decided.
Yes, she's pretty, but I don't think that's it. It's something more than that,
he knew, although he couldn't get a handle on it.
She has potential, but no track record. Jack was a much surer bet. He's definitely going somewhere. Ryan might be content to just run around playing sports; she might turn into another freeloader like Catherine's cousins.
But even as he thought this, he knew it wasn't true. His investigation had showed a very determined, very focused young woman about whom very few people had a bad word.