The First Move Read online

  Renia smiled at Sarah’s echoing of her own impression.

  “I’m right then? He was too much of a dork for you to notice him.”

  “Your dad may have been a dork, but he at least had friends.” Renia no longer counted the girls she’d partied with in high school as friends. None of them had sent her so much as a postcard when she’d been shipped off to Cincinnati.

  “I guess I thought you had been popular. Going to parties and everything.”

  Renia shifted in her seat and sipped her coffee to give her time to think. This conversation wasn’t headed anywhere good. “Being popular doesn’t necessarily go hand in hand with going to parties. And being popular isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” Drugs, drinking and sex had taken her mind off her dead brother, but they had also given her other problems. “No one cares about popularity after high school, anyway.”

  Sarah rolled her eyes. “But I’m in high school now, so I care.”

  “Are you doing anything your mother and father would disapprove of?”

  “No.” Sarah looked her in the eyes so Renia knew she was telling the truth, but she also shifted in her seat, and Renia doubted Sarah would be able to answer that question honestly much longer.

  She tried another tack. “Is there someone asking you to do something your mother or father would disapprove of?” Sarah looked away, and Renia knew she had the answer. “Do you want to talk with me about it?”

  “Will you tell my dad?”

  The question settled heavily on her shoulders. She wanted Sarah to share information with her, especially if the girl was about to do something harmful, but Sarah was asking her, not Miles or Cathy, because she didn’t want her parents to know. Renia was wedged between a stranger and a trusted adult, who must seem both a safe source of advice and a repository of her secret.

  “I can’t promise not to tell your dad. If you’re going to do something dangerous or illegal, I’m going to tell him. God—” she breathed the fear of such a thing out of her body “—if something bad were to happen to you and your father could have stopped it, he would never forgive me for not telling him. He’s not trying to stifle you. He’s looking out for your well-being.”

  Sarah blinked and the openness in her eyes disappeared. Renia had lost the moment for confidence and she might not get it back. I have nothing in my background to help me talk to her other than my own experience.

  “Do you know what happened when your father came to ask me for a date?”

  “No.” Sarah shrugged. “Dad just told me you said yes.”

  I’ve already started telling people, so what’s one more person? Besides, nothing about her story made teen motherhood or other poor decisions look sexy. Renia’s teen years had been a lesson in what not to do.

  “I had been waiting for a phone call from my daughter. She’s eighteen years old now and I gave her up for adoption when I was sixteen. Giving birth ended my popularity, such as it was. I moved to Cincinnati and didn’t make any friends. I was afraid friends would talk me back into alcohol. Before I got pregnant, I was pretty willing to try anything offered to me. I don’t have anything positive to say about doing things you don’t want to do simply because you think it will make you popular. Being tempted is one thing—giving in to temptation is a different level of problem.”

  Of course, Renia had done those things because she wanted to, not because anyone forced her. And pregnancy had saved her from a road to disaster. The road not taken was a quicksand land where she hadn’t gotten pregnant, but had continued drinking, sleeping around and experimenting with questionable chemistry. Pregnancy may have saved her from a whole other world of after-school-special problems.

  She was never sure how to think about her pregnancy and daughter. Some days, she was certain she was a terrible person for abandoning her baby. Other days, adoption had given her daughter a better life, one she couldn’t have provided. Then there were the days she wondered if she should’ve had an abortion.

  Those were the bad days, when she was wallowing in her poor relationship with her mother, missing her brother and wishing she had a father.

  “Ya know, I’ve heard these warning stories before. I’m a teenager.”

  And now the defining conflict of her life was reduced to a morality tale by a cranky teenager.

  “People tell them to me all the time. All the books adults want me to read have a warning in them. ‘Do this bad thing and doom will fall upon you.’” Sarah had blinked and nice, good teenager had been taken over by irritated-at-adults teenager. “I’m not stupid.”

  A gulp of coffee washed down Renia’s own irritation. “I don’t think I was stupid, either, but I was confused and angry. And I wanted those feelings to disappear. What I got was those feelings and pregnant. But you’re not looking for an escape, like I was. I think you’re looking to experiment because your friends are experimenting. Your dad has little experience with that because, from what little I know, the friends he had in high school only experimented in science class. I don’t know about your mom.”

  “She’s only ever done one bad thing in her life,” Sarah grumbled.

  “Ah.” Realization dinged in Renia’s head. “And the bad thing doesn’t seem so bad when it resulted in you.”

  “What? How did my mom’s relationship with Richard result in me?”

  Renia coughed to hide her surprise. It was possible Sarah didn’t consider pregnancy at eighteen a bad thing. Or that she’d never done the math to figure out when Cathy had gotten pregnant. The bigger surprise was learning Cathy might have other skeletons in her closet—which made Renia like her all the more.

  “I don’t know anything about your mom’s relationship with Richard, other than details of their wedding.”

  “Oh. I guess I thought my dad had told you.”

  “You seem to think your dad and I have more of a relationship than we do.”

  Sarah shrugged. “He talks about you a lot.”

  Renia didn’t know where to take this conversation. She wanted to know more about what Sarah’s friends were asking her to do, but she didn’t want to push, wasn’t sure if pushing the conversation would help or hurt. Is my daughter close enough to her mother to have had this conversation with her? Did my daughter experiment? Was she looking to escape anything?

  “I can’t promise not to tell your dad everything you tell me, but if you want someone to talk to, someone who actually did bad things when they were younger, I’ll talk with you. I won’t lie and I won’t exaggerate, but I won’t sugarcoat it, either.” Renia made a mental note to get a book from the library on how to talk with a teenager about drugs and sex. Lord knows no one had talked to her.

  “It’s not that big of a deal.” Sarah grabbed a photo album off a shelf and started absently flipping through the pages. Renia didn’t know a lot about teenagers, but she knew how to tell when someone was done confessing. Sarah might as well have taped her mouth shut.

  “I don’t have any other clients scheduled today. Do you want to do a photo session?”

  “Not with these clothes.” Sarah lazily turned a page in the album. She could not have projected disinterest better with a flashing neon sign.

  “Just for fun. I have some other clothes in the storage closet.” Renia shrugged, not sure why she was still trying to engage the now aloof teenager. She liked the curious, friendly Sarah better, but she was a teenage girl and shifting moods were part of the package. “Or not. You can sit here an
d flip through the albums. Or go home. I have plenty of work to do.”

  “I’m done. These are boring, anyway.”

  Renia rolled her eyes. “Thank you for insulting my life’s work. Does that mean you don’t want to have your picture taken?”

  Sarah had enough smarts to look sheepish. “No, taking pictures sounds okay. Can I take pictures of you?”

  “Sure, but my camera is worth as much as my car. And it’s heavy, so please, please be careful.”

  “Do you have an old camera? Like with film?”

  Old? “Yes. I also have the equipment and chemicals to develop the film and make prints.”

  “Can we use that instead? I want to see how they work.”

  “We won’t have time to do the developing today, but I can show you how to use the camera and we can develop the film next week. Let me lock the door and put out the closed sign. Also, I should text your father and let him know he’ll need to call when he gets here to be let in.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  MILES WAITED OUTSIDE for Rey or Sarah to open the door. He was not prepared for what he walked into. Alanis Morissette blasted out of the back room and the closet of an ’80s rock star had erupted over his daughter.

  She no longer had a ponytail. Her hair exploded in a ratty mess around a black-and-white polka-dotted scarf tied in a floppy bow. She was still wearing her T-shirt and jeans, but silver high heels had replaced the sneakers and her black “love” T-shirt didn’t look quite as innocent with its neck cut open and fringed fabric around her stomach. Heavy, black eye makeup and cherry-red lipstick made her look both five years older and still too young to be wearing trashy heels. And to be showing her stomach like that...

  “What did you do to your shirt? You are not walking home like that.”

  Sarah clicked her tongue in teen disgust, but was interrupted before she could speak. “It’s my fault,” Rey said. “I didn’t have a good rocker shirt for Sarah and she didn’t think you’d mind about the T-shirt. I have other clothes for her to wear home.”

  If Sarah looked five years older, Rey looked like the teenager he remembered.

  Freed from her normal bun, her hair hung long about her bare shoulders and curled around her breasts. Was she wearing a corset? He looked closer—just to see what kind of top it was, he told himself, not to stare at her breasts framed for his enjoyment. It wasn’t a corset, just a black tank top with black lace and buttons. The black skirt was leather and made her legs look five miles long. She wasn’t wearing heels, though. Rey had on unlaced black combat boots with slouchy camo socks, completely at odds with the sexy top, skirt and black lace gloves. He couldn’t see her eye makeup under mirrored aviator sunglasses, but her lipstick was the same cherry-red.

  He was in a nightmare. A horrible, loud, weird nightmare where his teen daughter and his teen fantasy were in the same room, both dressed for a concert at some smoky club.

  “Hand in My Pocket” faded out and Alanis’s scratchy voice started in with “Right Through You.” Not a nightmare. Even in a nightmare, he would never subject himself to Alanis Morissette.

  “Um, what were you doing?” he asked.

  “Sarah wanted to learn how to use the film camera. Picture taking is fun, but picture taking in costumes is more fun.”

  Okay. That kind of made sense, but his daughter was still in trashy high heels and red lipstick. “Couldn’t you have dressed up like—” nuns seemed a bit too far in the other direction “—female politicians with suits or something?”

  “Dad, don’t be such a prude,” Sarah said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes.

  Rey laughed. “You and I can clean up the props while Sarah changes. The pictures won’t be so bad, I promise.”

  “Yeah, Dad. You should trust me more,” Sarah said over her shoulder as she walked into the back room.

  “Yeah.” Rey winked, and turned to follow his daughter. Miles cocked his head and watched his high school crush clomp away from him. The combat boots didn’t distract from the wiggle of her butt in the short leather skirt. He could be mad about his daughter’s clothing later. Until then, he would just enjoy his view of Rey.

  Looking around the studio, the shooting area took up most of the space, while the rest consisted of an office, bathroom and dressing room. The windows were covered with heavy blackout blinds. A black backdrop hung from the ceiling and trailed along the floor, sucking out the small amount of light in the room. The only relief from the blackness came from two lights on the backdrop and a sliver of light from the open door leading to the dressing room area. Between the two photography lights stood a microphone.

  “Here.” Rey handed the microphone to him. “This goes over in the closet with the other large props. I’ll get the rest of the stuff.”

  “So, you were rockers?” His image of his good-girl daughter and Rey from the wedding in her gray suit and bun didn’t include them dressing up as female rockers for fun.

  “Jagged Little Pill was my choice. When I was photographing Sarah, we were listening to Kelly Clarkson.”

  “Is she an artist my daughter should be listening to?”

  “I didn’t have you pegged as an ignorant, overprotective father.”

  Rey leaned over to close the wooden folding chair. The leather skirt had been polished and her butt shined in the little bit of light, distracting him from his assigned chore.

  “I’m not.” At least, he didn’t think he was ignorant, but he hadn’t seen Sarah much over the past year while he was transitioning from Atlanta to Chicago. Overprotective...well, being underprotective got girls pregnant at fifteen.

  “Kelly Clarkson was an American Idol, for Pete’s sake.” Rey straightened for a moment and lifted her sunglasses to balance on her head. She wasn’t wearing heavy eye makeup, but her expression was dark with irritation. “Her songs are about self-empowerment and independence. The lyrics aren’t suggestive and she doesn’t wear sexy clothes. Why wouldn’t she be good for a teen girl?”

  “Um...” Even before divorce, Cathy had been the one who watched American Idol with Sarah. “Because of her lifestyle?” Why couldn’t he have kept his mouth shut so she stayed bent over and he stayed holding a microphone, checking out her round ass? Next time she bent over like that, he was going to keep his mouth shut and just appreciate the view.

  “You have a problem with a woman who keeps a ranch for unwanted animals?”

  He needed to stop talking before he said something else stupid.

  “Honestly, do you expect her to listen only to Georgian chants and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir?”

  “Well—” The strap of Rey’s top slipped, leaving a shoulder fully exposed. She didn’t make any move to adjust her top and he wanted to kiss her collarbone.

  “Look,” he said, peeved because his daughter was in the next room and Sarah was more important than any lusty urges he might be feeling, “given the problems you’ve had in your past, I’m just trying to be careful what Sarah is exposed to, especially with the two of you all tarted up.”

  Closing his eyes didn’t pull that sentence back into his mouth and it sure didn’t improve the taste of foot.

  “Says the man who couldn’t take his eyes of my ass in this leather skirt.” Rey put down the chair she had been carrying and marched over to him, kissable collarbone still exposed. “If you’re going to be a hypocrite or base any argument on the person I was eighteen years ago, you can just leave.” He followed the creamy skin of her shoulder, down her arm
to a finger pointing him out of the studio. “If you don’t trust me to see Sarah home, you can wait for her on the sidewalk.”

  His eyes trailed back along her arm and were momentarily distracted by the expanse of skin above the cups of her shirt before reaching her eyes. The disgust he saw was worse than the intangible discomfort he felt at seeing his daughter impersonating a rock star. He didn’t even know what had upset him, and that wasn’t fair to Rey. “Ignore me. I just didn’t expect to see Sarah look so...”

  “Mature?”

  “Maybe.” He’d thought she’d looked grown-up at Cathy’s wedding in her fancy dress, but she had looked more like a girl playing dress-up than a woman. Today, she had a confidence that came from within, rather than from her parents’ approval. “I just wished she looked mature without the shoes and belly-baring shirt and eye makeup.”

  “It’s not the shoes, shirt or makeup you’re seeing—it’s her confidence. She learned something new today and she liked it. When we develop the film, we might even learn she’s good at photography. If you don’t trust me, Sarah can stay home and you can find a photography class somewhere else.”

  “I trust you,” he said, surprised to find he meant it. Sarah was sixteen, not twelve, and Rey was a well-respected professional showing interest in his daughter, not some recruiter for a modeling agency in Dubai that was really a harem. Any shock he felt at realizing Sarah would soon be an adult was not Rey’s fault.

  Rey cocked her head, and her eyes and voice softened. “When she comes out of the back room, are you going to say nice things to her?”

  “Yes.” The breath he exhaled was somewhere between a sigh and a snort. “Sarah’s always been a Goody Two-shoes and I wasn’t prepared to see her play the bad girl.”

  “It’s just a costume. Dress-up, like when she was a little girl putting on Cathy’s clothes. She’s still a good girl underneath.” He must still have looked skeptical, because she added, “Look at her now.”