Page 44
He must have been sitting by the phone, because he answered even before the first ring was finished.
“Charles, hello,” she said happily. “Dad said you came by.”
“Yes, I did.”
His voice was cool, and Steffie paused as the dread took hold inside her. “Is something wrong?”
“Not wrong, exactly. I guess you could say I’m disappointed. I thought you’d changed, Steffie. I thought you’d grown up and stopped your naive tricks. But I was wrong, wasn’t I?”
CHAPTER NINE
“Dad!” Steffie struggled to keep the anger and distress from her voice. She hurried to the porch, her fists clenched against her sides. “You told me…you promised…” She hesitated. “What exactly did you say to Charles?”
Her father glanced upward momentarily, clearly puzzled. “Nothing drastic, I assure you. Is it important?”
“Yes, it’s important! I need to know.” She had to call on every ounce of self-control not to shout at him and demand an explanation. She longed to chastise him for doing the very thing she’d begged him not to.
“You look upset, Princess.”
“I am upset and I’m sure you know why… Just tell me what you said to Charles.”
“Sit down a bit and we’ll talk.”
Steffie did as her father requested, sitting on the top porch step near his chair and leaning back against the white pillar. “Charles stopped in this afternoon, right?”
“Yes, and we had a nice chat. He tried to make me think he was here to visit me, but I saw through that.” Her father’s smile told Steffie all she needed to know. For one angry second, she thought he resembled a spider, waiting patiently for someone to step into his web.
“Obviously I was the subject under discussion, wasn’t I?” She forced herself not to yell, not to rant and rave at a man so recently released from the hospital.
Her father rocked back and forth a few times, then nodded. “We talked about you.”
Steffie closed her eyes, her frustration mounting. “I see. And what did the two of you come up with?”
“Let me tell you what Charles said first.”
She balled her hands into fists again, praying for patience. “What did he say?”
“Well, Charles stopped by, as I said, pretending it was me he was here to visit, when we both knew he was coming to see you. I went along with it for a while, then asked him flat out what his intentions were toward you. I fully expected you to be wearing an engagement ring by now, and I let him know it.”
“Dad!” Without meaning to, Steffie sprang to her feet. “You breached a trust! I trusted you to keep your word, not to talk to Charles about this. And now you pass it off as…as nothing. Don’t you realize what you’ve done?”
For the first time he looked chagrined. “I did it because I love you, Princess.”
“Oh, Dad…you’ve made everything so much more difficult.”
“Aren’t you interested in what he had to say?” His smile was bright and cocky again. “Well, aren’t you? Now sit back down and I’ll tell you.”
“Oh, all right.” She sighed, lowering herself onto the porch step, her legs barely able to support her. She was shaking with trepidation.
“Charles seemed more concerned with the fact that I’d asked than with answering the question. To be perfectly honest, Princess, he wasn’t overly pleased with me.”
“I can’t believe he even answered you.”
“Of course he did. He said if the subject of marriage did come up, then it was between the two of you, and not the three of us. It was a good response.”
“You never should’ve said anything about us marrying.”
“Well, Princess, the way I figured it, he was going to pop the question, anyway. Besides, I don’t want Charles leading you on, or hurting you again.”
