Cat In A White Tie And Tails

Chapter 56

Rematch

Molina jumped when the doorbell rang. She never jumped. She’d schooled herself to never show surprise.

This wasn’t a surprise. It was something … worse. Even though she’d expected this caller, she’d never expected opening her door to this man for this purpose.

When she unlocked and cracked open the big wooden front door, he was turned away, back to her, studying the street. In the glow from the porch light above the door—a warm, old-fashioned incandescent bulb because she saw too many mean streets under harsh fluorescent lighting in her job—his hair looked Black Irish dark.

What the heck was he doing here? She had to ask herself that for the fortieth time. She liked blond men, even dirty blond like Dirty Larry, the ex-narco undercover guy. Ideally golden in all respects, like Matt Devine.

So who had she gotten involved with? Molina had never wanted to look too closely at the answer to that question. She stared, barring the doorway, until he turned to face her.

“Come in, Rafi,” she said, stepping back.

“Make sure you ask the right one in,” he said, eerily paraphrasing one of Mariah’s stupid fave bloody vampire film titles.

“You’ve been studying Mariah’s Facebook page.”

“And Google-plus too.” Rafi grinned, stepped over the threshold, paused. “You sure, Carmen? I’m your worst nightmare.”

She pulled back, grimaced. “Don’t flatter yourself. You’re just a teensy little bad dream.”

“Diminutives don’t thrill guys. Just a tip on something you may have forgotten after all these years.”

She fought back an embarrassed flush. She hadn’t meant to—No going back on stupid comments.

“Where’s Mariah?” he asked as he followed her into the living room, knowing the way now.

“Where she always is. In her bedroom texting, Googling, Internet-cruising, Facebooking.”

“Singing?” Rafi asked.

Molina turned to let him see the face of her frustration. “That too.”

“Sit down,” he said. “Can I get you a beer?”

She stared at him. “My house. I’m the hostess.”

Rafi pointed his left hand toward his right shoulder. “The fridge is visible right there. I know how to do twist-tops, or find a kitchen church key. Why don’t you sit down, Carmen, breathe deep, and realize I’m here to help. And bring you a cold beer.”

She cleared her throat. Actually, that would help. And her acute law-enforcement summing-up eye had noticed he’d look a lot buffer than Dirty Larry, but safely middle-aged so Mariah couldn’t crush on him, unlike Matt Devine.

God, what am I thinking?

She buried her face in one hand, both rueful and annoyed and about ready to say, No go, get outta here, Nadir, the way she’d dismiss a snitch.

A dewy-cold bottle appeared in her free hand. The sofa in need of replacing shifted as Rafi sat down beside her. “This is about Mariah,” he said. “She’s at the age when her dreams, her path, even her mistakes are forming. Let’s not mire her in ours.”

“Dreams, or mistakes?”

“Either one.”

“Why do you care?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Rafi said. “Did you ever ask yourself that?”

Molina put the cold wet side of the beer bottle against her temple. “No.”

“Why didn’t I see what a crazy, judgmental witch you were?”

That roused her, wanting to defend herself, but he went on too quickly.

“Why didn’t you see what a controlling, manipulative bastard I was. You wanted to be a police detective, didn’t you?”

“We weren’t like that,” she said, finally sitting up and setting the beer bottle on the sofa table.

“No kidding.”

Her deep, frustrated exhalation stirred the hair still hanging forward over her face. “I panicked.” She eyed him through the defense of her veiling hair. “I hadn’t planned on getting pregnant.”

“Like I had?”

“I couldn’t understand. We’d always been careful. I thought. There was a pinhole in my diaphragm.”

“Oh. Evidence of tampering. You want to go to the prosecutor with that today?”

“Circumstantial,” she admitted. “But I’d been so careful—”

“Yeah, I get it. You were the ‘little mama’ to your however many stepbrothers and sisters after your mom remarried when you were a toddler. Enough already on the kids. I get that. And I didn’t want to be tied down either. You do remember that about me?”

“We were being pitted against each other at work. Would the system reward the minority guy or the pushy woman?”

“We had a lot in common. We shouldn’t have let them use it against us.”

“I panicked. Having a kid made me even more vulnerable on the job, not to mention my druthers.”

“Did you consider doing what you accused me of not wanting, ending the pregnancy?”

“None of your business.”

“Carmen, listen to yourself.”

“Yes. Okay? I couldn’t do that, anyway. I wasn’t looking for anything like that. I was probably a hormonal mess by the time I realized what was happening.”

“So you ran. Did you ever think what that might do to me?”

She shook her head. “Try being pregnant. It’s all about you and the baby. I’d decided you’d won the rookie contest and wanted me at home and pregnant, like my stepdad wanted my mom to be, even if it took my child labor to keep the family fairy tale going.”

Rafi didn’t say anything more, just pulled out his smartphone. Molina was thinking if she saw another one of those today, she would scream.

“Okay, we’re caught up on our past. What about Mariah’s future?” he asked.

“You can’t seriously be saying it’s anything more than school and good grades and some career direction in choosing a college.”

“Would that scenario excite you?”

“No, but I had to leave home and put myself through a criminal justice degree on my own. I had no support. Nada. I can afford to provide Mariah with what she needs. If you want to informally help underwrite that and won’t be interfering, I’m okay with it.”

Rafi just laughed. “This is sounding like a two-party deal in Congress these days. You get all the authority and time with our daughter, I get to provide underwriting.”

“What do you want, outings with her at the Circus Circus Adventuredome? All you can eat brunches off the Strip? Twice a month, say.”

“Carmen, Carmen, Carmen.” He watched her flinch at every repeat of the name only her intimates dared use, like Detective Morrie Alch on a good day, smiling almost tenderly at her obvious unease. “That would have been fine a few years ago, when Mariah was a kid. Now? No. Mariah is a young adult and she’d run away screaming from those lame, useless outings, and you know it.”

She did, but didn’t admit it.

“Let me help her with her dreams, Carmen, like I did with you those many years ago.”

“Singing? I never went anywhere with that,” Molina said.

“You still could. I was pretty good as your agent-manager, and nowadays, everybody’s their own record mogul.”

She thought, desperately seeking wiggle room.

“You’d keep her away from sleazos like that Crawford Buchanan leech,” he said.

She kept silent.

“And, the real sweetness of the deal is that you don’t have to introduce me as her father, just as the guy from the teen TV reality show house. She almost won that talent show.”

“If that obnoxious Zoe Chloe Ozone hadn’t distracted everybody with such a ridiculous rap number.”

Rafi smiled. “Come to think of it, Temple’s persona had that Lady Gaga freak thing going before Lady Gaga became a household name. What do you say? I’d find Mariah a really good voice coach, help her make some credible YouTube showcases. Drain off some of that incredible energy that could get her into trouble on her own. And,” he added, “she likes me.”

Molina had seen that, and it worried her. “You won’t expect paternal credit.”

“She’s not ready, you’re not ready. I’m not ready.”

“But … if we keep that from her, she’ll be angry at both of us if it should … when it came out.”

Rafi smiled to himself, as if thinking of something else, before meeting her pointed gaze head-on. “Yes, that takes the burden off you being the only liar in the house.”

Bingo! He was right, dammit. “It was a necessary evasion.”

“It was a Big Lie, Carmen, and I could make a Big Stink about it if I wanted to blow up your credibility with Mariah. But that would hurt her more than we could hurt each other. So. I’m not backing down on the bottom line that she knows me as her father. Someday. And maybe I’ll earn a chance from her you never gave me.”

“Below the belt, Nadir.” Lieutenant Molina was back in there, punching.

“Deserved, Officer Molina.”

Amazing. Rafi had offered her a built-in way of fending off Boyfriend Day and ceding his own high moral ground over her own pretty unforgivable fiction of a dead hero father.

And from the steadfast, noncommittal look he was giving her, he knew it.

“Deal?” he asked, extending a hand.

She met his gesture halfway. “Deal.”

It never made it to a shake. They shared a mutual understanding for the first time in many years. Molina felt a burden liberate her chronically clenched shoulders, not ready to explore yet what had changed, and why they were holding hands.

“Guys!” a voice chided.

Hands dropped; heads turned.

“Hey, it’s awfully quiet in here.” Mariah stood in the hall archway, looking perfect ’tween queen with her new bobbed haircut and the leggings and short skirt, cell phone in her hand, frowning as she looked from one to the other. “Am I going to have to insist on a feet-on-the-floor-at-all-times policy around here?”

Rafi laughed his head off, recognizing that she quoted a parental edict for entertaining boyfriends, which Mariah didn’t have quite yet. She was too busy trying to be a media star.

Mariah eyed them suspiciously.

“What are you doing out here?” Molina asked, more flustered than she ever wanted to be.

“I thought,” Mariah said, tossing her Katie Holmes hair, “it’s what you wanted. I’m supposed to quit ‘hiding in my room.’”

“It’s okay when there are people in the front room trying to hold an adult conversation without having it drowned out by Justin Bieber.”

“Yeah. You’re just sitting here. Don’t think I don’t know that something is going on. Embarrassing, dudes.”

Mariah made a face and vanished back down the hall, her bedroom door shutting with a clap a second later.

Molina blinked at their quick dismissal by the resident media princess. “Daughters and mothers,” she told Rafi. “This is a rough stage. She seems to accept you,” she admitted.

“I accept her.” Rafi smiled. “I’m not under the daily pressure with her you are. Say, that’s nice.”

Molina was confused by his apparent change of subject. “What?”

His forefinger made a circling motion near the protective wing of her hair. “Those thin, big hoop earrings you’re wearing nowadays.”

“I did have pierced ears, if you remember. From babyhood. It was a cultural thing.”

“I remember, and you used to wear tiny turquoise stud earrings, your sole concession to femininity off the job.”

“I … they’d closed down, the piercings, so I thought I’d try again. Not for wearing at work nowadays either, of course. That’s … silly.”

“No, not for at work. But not silly.” His eyes squinted at her for too long to be comfortable. She was seeing the hunky young cop again. “If you do any more Carmen gigs,” he said, “throw out the retro silk flower over your ear and go with high-end shoulder-duster earrings.”

She shot him a glance. If? Why … why?

“They’d uplight those electric eyes.” Her manager speaking again, after all these years.

Carmen didn’t know what to say. Any answer would tick off Molina.

Rafi’s lips made a slight moue. “Mariah sure missed out there when she inherited your dark voice and my dark eyes. On the other hand, we get to see yours.”