Tall, Dark and Fearless: Frisco's Kid

“Yeah, and I just happen to have some bubble-bath soap,” Mia told her. “You can try it out when we get home—unless you’re absolutely certain you don’t want a second bath today…?”

“No, princesses can only have one mud bath a day,” Tasha told her in complete seriousness. “It’s okay if they have a mud bath and a bubble bath.”

“Good.” Mia smiled as they entered the condo courtyard.

The complex was still pretty quiet. Most of the residents had left for work hours ago. Still, it was summer vacation for the few kids who lived in the building. Mia could hear the distant strains of television sets and stereo systems. Tasha followed her up the stairs to unit 2C.

The door was ajar and Mia knocked on the screen. “Hello?” she called, but there was no answer. She leaned on the bell. Still nothing.

Mia looked at the mud caked on Natasha’s body and clothes. “You better wait out here,” she told the little girl.

Tasha nodded.

“Right here,” Mia said in her best teacher’s voice, pointing to the little spot of concrete directly in front of Frisco’s door. “Sit. And don’t go anywhere, do you understand, miss?”

Tasha nodded again and sat down.

Feeling very much like a trespasser, Mia opened the screen door and went inside. With the curtains closed, the living room was dim. The television was on, but the volume was set to a low, barely discernible murmur. The air was cool, almost cold, as if the air conditioner had been working overtime to compensate for the slightly opened door. Mia turned off the TV as she went past.

“Hello?” Mia called again. “Lieutenant Francisco…?”

The condo was as silent as a tomb.

“He’s gonna be grumpy if you wake him up,” Tasha said, up on her knees with her nose pressed against the screen.

“I’ll take my chances,” Mia said, starting down the hall toward the bedrooms. She was tiptoeing, though. When she reached the end of the hall, she glanced quickly into the bathroom and the smaller of the two bedrooms. Both were empty. The larger bedroom’s door was half-closed, and she crept closer. Taking a deep breath, she pushed it open as she knocked.

The double bed was empty.

In the dimness, she could see that the sheets were twisted into a knot. The blanket had been kicked onto the floor, and the pillows were rumpled, but Alan Francisco was not still lying there.

There was not much furniture in the room—just the bed, a bedside table and a dresser. The setup was Spartan. The top of his dresser held only a small pile of loose change. There were no personal items, no knickknacks, no souvenirs. The sheets on the bed were plain white, the blanket a light beige. The closet door hung open, as did one of the drawers in the modest-size dresser. Several duffel bags sagged nearby on the floor. The whole place had a rather apathetic feel, as if the person living here didn’t care enough to unpack, or to hang pictures on the wall and make the place his own.

There was nothing that gave any sense of personality to the resident of the room, with the exception of an enormous pile of dirty laundry that seemed to glower from one dark corner. That and a nearly empty bottle of whiskey standing on Frisco’s bedside table were the only telling things. And the bottle, at least, certainly told quite a bit. It was similar to the bottle he’d had outside last night—except that bottle had been nearly full.

No wonder Tasha hadn’t been able to wake him.

But eventually he had awakened and found the little girl gone. He was probably out searching for her right now, worried nearly out of his mind.

The best thing they could do was stay put. Eventually, Frisco would come back to see if Natasha had returned.

But the thought of hanging out in Frisco’s condo wasn’t extremely appealing. His belongings may have been impersonal to the point of distastefulness, but she felt as if by being there, she was invading his privacy.

Mia turned to leave when a gleam of reflected light from the closet caught her eye. She switched on the overhead light.

It was amazing. She’d never seen anything like it in her entire life. A naval uniform hung in the closet, bright white and crisply pressed. And on the upper left side of the jacket, were row after row after row after row of colorful medals. And above it—the cause of that reflected light—was a pin in the shape of an eagle, wings outspread, both a gun and a trident clasped in its fierce talons.

Mia couldn’t imagine the things Frisco had done to get all of those medals. But because there were so many of them, there was one thing that she suddenly did see quite clearly. Alan Francisco had a dedication to his job unlike anyone she’d ever met. These medals told her that as absolutely as if they could talk. If he had had one or two medals—sure, that would have told her he was a brave and capable soldier. But there had to be more than ten of these colorful bars pinned to his uniform. She counted them quickly with her finger. Ten…eleven. Eleven medals surely meant that Frisco had gone above and beyond the call of duty time after time.

She turned, and in the new light of her discovery, his bedroom had an entirely different look to it. Instead of being the room of a someone who didn’t care enough to add any personal touches, it became the room of a man who’d never taken the time to have a life outside of his dangerous career.

Even the whiskey bottle looked different. It looked far more sad and desperate than ever before.

And the room wasn’t entirely devoid of personal items. There was a book on the floor next to the bed. It was a collection of short stories by J. D. Salinger. Salinger. Who would’ve thought…?

“Mia?”

Natasha was calling her from the living room door.

Mia turned off the light on her way out of Frisco’s room. “I’m here, hon, but your uncle’s not,” she said, coming into the living room.

“He’s not?” Tasha scrambled to her feet to get out of the way of the opening screen door.

“What do you say we go next door and see about that bubble-bath soap of mine?” Mia continued, shutting the heavy wooden door to unit 2C tightly behind her. “I’ll write a note for your uncle so that he knows you’re at my place when he gets back.”

She’d call Thomas, too. If he was home, he might be willing to go out looking for the Navy lieutenant, to tell him Natasha was safe.

“Let’s go right into the bathroom,” Mia told Tasha as she opened her screen door and unlocked the dead bolt to her condo. “We’ll pop you directly into the tub, okay?”

Natasha hung back, her eyes very wide in her mud-streaked face. “Is Frisco gonna be mad at me?”

Mia gazed at the little girl. “Would you blame him very much if he was?”

Tasha’s face fell as she shook her head, her lips stretching into that unmistakable shape children’s mouths made when they were about to cry. “He was asleep.”

“Just because he’s sleeping doesn’t mean you can break his rules,” Mia told her.

“I was gonna come home before he woke up….”

Aha. Mia suddenly understood. Natasha’s mother had frequently slept off her alcoholic binges until well past noon, unknowing and perhaps even uncaring of her daughter’s private explorations. It was tantamount to neglect, and obviously Tasha expected the same treatment from Frisco.

Something was going to have to change.

“If I were you,” Mia advised her, “I’d be good and ready to say I’m sorry the moment Frisco gets home.”

FRISCO SAW THE note on his door from down in the courtyard. It was a pink piece of paper taped to the outside of the screen, and it lifted in the first stirrings of a late-morning breeze. He hurried up the stairs, ignoring the pain in his knee, and pulled the note from the door.

“Found Natasha,” it said in clean, bold printing. Thank God. He closed his eyes briefly, grateful beyond belief. He’d searched the beach for nearly an hour, terrified his niece had broken his rule and gone down to the ocean again. Hell, if she would break his rule about leaving the condo, she could just as well have broken his rule about never swimming alone.

He’d run into a lifeguard who’d told him he’d heard a rumor that a kid’s body had washed up on the beach early in the morning. Frisco’s heart had damn near stopped beating. He’d waited for nearly forty-five minutes at a pay phone, trying to get through to the shore patrol, trying to find out if the rumor was true.

It turned out that the body that had washed up in the surf had been that of a baby seal. And with that relief had come the knowledge that he’d wasted precious time. And the search had started again.

Frisco opened his eyes and found he had crumpled the pink paper. He smoothed it out to read the rest. “Found Natasha. We’re at my place. Mia.”

Mia Summerton. Saving the day again.

Leaning on his cane, he went toward Mia’s door, catching his reflection in his living room window. His hair was standing straight up, and he looked as if he were hiding from the sunlight behind his dark sunglasses. His T-shirt looked slept in, and his shorts were slept in. He looked like hell and he felt worse. His head had been pounding from the moment he’d stumbled out into the living room and found that Natasha was gone again. No, strike that. His head had been pounding from the moment he’d opened his eyes. It had risen to a nearly unbearable level when he’d discovered Tash was AWOL. It was still just shy of intolerable.

He rang the doorbell anyway, well aware that in addition to the not-so-pretty picture he made, he didn’t smell too damn good, either. His shirt reeked of a distillery. He hadn’t been too picky when he snatched it off the floor of his room this morning on his way out the door to search for Tash. Just his luck, he’d grabbed the one he’d used to mop up a spilled glass of whiskey last night.

The door swung open, and Mia Summerton stood there, looking like something out of a sailor’s fantasy. She was wearing running shorts that redefined the word short, and a midriff-baring athletic top that redefined the word lust. Her hair was back in a single braid, and still damp from perspiration.

“She’s here, she’s safe,” Mia said in way of greeting. “She’s in the tub, getting cleaned up.”

“Where did you find her?” His throat felt dry and his voice came out raspy and harsh.

Mia looked back into her condo unit and raised her voice. “How you doing in there, Tasha?”

“Fine,” came a cheery reply.

She opened the screen door and stepped outside. “Harris Avenue,” she told Frisco. “She was over on Harris Avenue, playing in the dirt at that construction site—”

“Dammit! What the hell does she think she’s doing? She’s five years old! She shouldn’t be walking around by herself or—God!—playing on a construction site!” Frisco ran one hand down his face, fighting to control his flare of anger. “I know that yelling at the kid’s not going to help….” He forced himself to lower his voice, to take a deep breath and try to release all of the frustration and anger and worry of the past several hours. “I don’t know what to do,” he admitted. “She blatantly disobeyed my orders.”

“That’s not the way she sees it,” Mia told him.

“The rule was for her to tell me when she went outside. The rule was to stay in the courtyard.”

“In her opinion, all bets are off if Mom—or Uncle Frisco—can’t drag themselves out of bed in the morning.” Mia fixed him with her level gaze. Her eyes were more green than brown in the bright morning sun. “She told me she thought she’d be back before you even woke up.”

“A rule is a rule,” Frisco started.

“Yeah, and her rule,” Mia interrupted, “is that if you climb into a bottle, she’s on her own.”

Frisco’s headache intensified. He looked away, unable to meet her gaze. It wasn’t that she was looking at him accusingly. There was nothing even remotely accusative in her eyes. In fact, her eyes were remarkably gentle, softening the harshness of her words.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured. “That was uncalled for.”

He shook his head, uncertain as to whether he was agreeing with her or disagreeing with her.

“Why don’t you come inside?” Mia said, holding open the screen door for him.

Mia’s condo might as well have been from a different planet than his. It was spacious and open, with unspotted, light brown carpeting and white painted bamboo-framed furniture. The walls were freshly painted and clean, and potted plants were everywhere, their vines lacing across the ceiling on a system of hooks. Music played softly on the stereo. Frisco recognized the smoky Texas-blues-influenced vocals of Lee Roy Parnell.

Pictures hung on the wall—gorgeous blue and green watercolors of the ocean, and funky, quirkily colorful figures of people walking along the beach.

“My mother’s an artist,” Mia said, following his gaze. “Most of this is her work.”

Another picture was that of the beach before a storm. It conveyed all of the dangerous power of the wind and the water, the ominous, darkening sky, the rising surf, the palm trees whipped and tossed—nature at her most deadly.

“She’s good,” Frisco said.

Mia smiled. “I know.” She raised her voice. “How’s it going in bubbleland, Natasha?”

“Okay.”

“While she was out playing in the dirt, she gave herself a Russian princess mud bath.” With a wry smile, she led Frisco into the tiny kitchen. It was exactly like his—and nothing like his. Magnets of all shapes and sizes covered the refrigerator, holding up photos of smiling people, and notes and coupons and theater schedules. Fresh fruit hung in wire baskets that were suspended from hooks on the ceiling. A coffee mug in the shape of a cow wearing a graduate’s cap sat on the counter next to the telephone, holding pencils and pens. The entire room was filled with little bits and pieces of Mia. “I managed to convince her that true royalty always followed a mud bath with a bubble bath.”

“Bless you,” Frisco said. “And thank you for bringing her home.”

“It was lucky I ran that way.” Mia opened the refrigerator door. “I usually take a longer route, but I was feeling the heat this morning.” She looked up at Frisco. “Ice tea, lemonade or soda?”

“Something with caffeine, please,” Frisco told her.

“Hmm,” Mia said, reaching into the back of the fridge and pulling out a can of cola. She handed it to him. “And would you like that with two aspirin or three?”

Frisco smiled. It was crooked but it was a smile. “Three. Thanks.”

She motioned to the small table that was in the dining area at the end of the kitchen, and Frisco lowered himself into one of a pair of chairs. She had a napkin holder in the shape of a pig and tiny airplanes for salt and pepper shakers. There were plants everywhere in here, too, and a fragile wind chime directly over his head, in front of a window that looked out over the parking lot. He reached up and brushed the wind chime with one finger. It sounded as delicate and ghostly as it looked.

The doors to her kitchen cabinets had recently been replaced with light, blond wood. The gleaming white countertop looked new, too. But he only spared it half a glance, instead watching Mia as she stood on tiptoes to reach up into one of the cabinets for her bottle of aspirin. She was a blinding mixture of muscles and curves. He couldn’t look away, even when she turned around. Great, just what she needed. Some loser leering at her in her own kitchen. He could see her apprehension and discomfort in her eyes.

She set the bottle of aspirin down in front of him on the table and disappeared, murmuring some excuse about checking on Natasha.

Frisco pressed the cold soda can against his forehead. When Mia returned, she was wearing a T-shirt over her running gear. It helped, but not a lot.

He cleared his throat. A million years ago, he had been so good at small talk. “So…how far do you run?” Cripes, he sounded like some kind of idiot.

“Usually three miles,” she answered, opening the refrigerator again and taking out a pitcher of ice tea. She poured herself a glass. “But today I only went about two and a half.”

“You gotta be careful when it’s hot like this.” Man, could he sound any more lame? Lame? Yeah, that was the perfect word to describe him, in more ways than one.

She nodded, turning to look at him as she leaned back against the kitchen counter and took a sip of her tea.

“So…your mother’s an artist.”

Mia smiled. Damn, she had a beautiful smile. Had he really thought that it was goofy-looking just two days ago?

“Yeah,” she said. “She has a studio near Malibu. That’s where I grew up.”

Frisco nodded. This was where he was supposed to counter by telling her where he came from. “I grew up right here in San Felipe, the armpit of California.”

Her smile deepened. “Armpits have their purpose—not that I agree with you and think that San Felipe is one.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion,” he said with a shrug. “To me, San Felipe will always be an armpit.”

“So sell your condo and move to Hawaii.”

“Is that where your family’s from?” he asked.

She looked down into her glass. “To tell you the truth, I’m not really sure. I think I must have some Hawaiian or Polynesian blood, but I’m not certain.”

“Your parents don’t know?”

“I was adopted from an overseas agency. The records were extremely sketchy.” She looked up at him. “I went through a phase, you know, when I tried to find my birth parents.”

“Birth parents aren’t always worth finding. I would’ve been better off without knowing mine.”

“I’m sorry,” Mia said quietly. “There was a time when I might’ve said that you can’t possibly mean that, or that that couldn’t possibly be true. But I’ve been teaching at an urban high school for over five years, and I’m well aware that most people didn’t have the kind of childhood or the kind of parents that I did.” Her eyes were a beautiful mixture of brown and green and compassion. “I don’t know what you might have gone through, but…I am sorry.”

“I’ve heard that teaching high school is a pretty dangerous job these days, what with guns and drugs and violence,” Frisco said, trying desperately to bring the conversation out of this dark and ultrapersonal area. “Did they give you any special kind of commando training when you took the job?”

Mia laughed. “No, we’re on our own. Thrown to the wolves naked, so to speak. Some of the teachers have compensated by becoming real drill sergeants. I’ve found that positive reinforcement works far better than punishment.” She took another sip of her ice tea, gazing at him speculatively over the top of her glass. “In fact, you might want to consider that when you’re dealing with Natasha.”

Frisco shook his head. “What? Give her a cookie for running away? I don’t think so.”

“But what kind of punishment will possibly get through to her?” Mia persisted. “Think about it. The poor kid’s already been given the ultimate punishment for a five-year-old—her mommy’s gone. There’s probably nothing else that you can take away from her that will matter. You can yell at her and make her cry. You can even frighten her and make her afraid of you, and maybe even give her worse nightmares. But if you reward her when she does follow your rules, if you make a really big deal about it and make her feel as if she’s worth a million bucks, well, she’ll catch on much more quickly.”

He ran his fingers through his hair. “But I can’t just ignore what she did this morning.”

“It’s difficult,” Mia admitted. “You have to achieve a balance between letting a child know her behavior is unacceptable, and not wanting to reward the child’s bad behavior by giving her too much attention. Kids who crave attention often misbehave. It’s the easiest way to get a parent or teacher to notice them.”

Frisco pushed his mouth up into another smile. “I know some so-called grown-ups who operate on the same principle.”

Mia gazed at the man sitting at her kitchen table. It was amazing. He looked as if he’d been rolled from a park bench, yet she still found him attractive. What would he look like, she wondered, shiny clean and dressed in that uniform she’d found in his closet?

He’d probably look like someone she’d go out of her way to avoid. She’d never been impressed by men in uniform. It wasn’t likely that she’d be impressed now.

Still, all those medals…

Mia set her empty glass down and pushed herself off the counter. “I’ll get Tasha out of the tub,” she told Frisco. “You probably have things to do—she told me you promised to take her shopping for furniture for her bedroom.”

“Yeah.” Frisco nodded and pulled himself clumsily to his feet. “Thanks again for bringing her home.”

Mia smiled and slipped down the hall toward the bathroom. Considering their rocky start, they’d actually achieved quite a nice, neighborly relationship.

Nice and neighborly—that’s exactly where they were going to leave it, too. Despite the fact that this man had the ability to make her blood heat with a single look, despite the fact that she genuinely liked him more and more each time they met, she was going to be careful to keep her distance.

Because the more Mia found out about her neighbor, the more she was convinced that they were absolute polar opposites.

CHAPTER SEVEN

IT WAS PINK. It was definitely, undeniably pink. Its back was reminiscent of a scallop shell, and its arms were scrolled. Its cushions were decorated with shiny silver buttons that absolutely, positively could not have been comfortable to sit upon.

It was far too fancy to be called a couch or even a sofa. It was advertised as a “settee.”

For Natasha, it was love at first sight.

Fortunately for Frisco, she didn’t spot it until they were on their way out of the furniture store.

She sat down on it and went into Russian princess mode. Frisco was so tired, and his knee and head ached so badly, he sat down, too.

“Kneel in front of the Russian princess,” Tash commanded him sternly.

Frisco put his head back and closed his eyes. “Not a chance, babe,” he mumbled.

After Tash’s bath at Mia’s place, he’d taken her home, then they’d both suited up and headed to the beach for the kid’s first swimming lesson. The current had still been quite strong, and he’d kept his fingers solidly locked on Tash’s bathing suit the entire time.

The kid was fearless. Considering that she hadn’t even seen the ocean before yesterday, she was entirely enthusiastic about the water. At the end of the week, she’d be well on her way to swimming like a fish.

Frisco shook his head. How on earth had Sharon’s kid managed to live to the ripe old age of five without having even seen the ocean? Historically, the Franciscos were coastline people. His old man had worked on a fishing boat for years. Vacations were spent at the water. Frisco and his two older brothers had loved the beach. But not Sharon, he remembered suddenly. Sharon had damn near drowned when she was hardly any older than Natasha was now. As an adult, Sharon moved inland, spending much of her time in Las Vegas and Reno. Tash had been born in Tucson, Arizona. Not much beachfront property there.

After the swimming lesson and a forty-five-minute lecture on why Tash had to follow Frisco’s rules, they’d dragged themselves home, had lunch, changed and gone shopping for furniture for Frisco’s second bedroom.

They’d found this particular store in the Yellow Pages. It was right around the corner, and—the advertisement boasted—it had free, same-day delivery. Frisco had picked out a simple mattress, box spring and metal-framed bed, and Tash had chosen a pint-size bright yellow chest of drawers. Together, they’d found a small desk and chair and a petite bookshelf.

“Can we get this, Frisco?” Tash now asked hopefully.

He snorted as he opened his eyes. “A pink couch? Man, are you kidding?”

As usual, she answered his rhetorical question as if he’d asked it seriously. “No.”

“Where the hell would we put it?” He glanced at the price tag. It was supposedly on sale, marked down to a mere small fortune.