Heaven Sent by Alice Duncan Read Free Book Online Page B

and receded into an icy lump. He’d heard those same words
often in the past, but he’d never expected to hear them again.
Hearing them now, read by Miss Callida Prophet, made him want to
hit something.
    When he entered the room and saw
Callie, sunlight streaming through the window and glinting off her
strawberry-blond hair, and Becky curled up cozily in her lap, he
felt as if he’d been struck by lightning.
    The feeling lasted approximately
fifteen seconds, after which rage engulfed him again, much as if
he’d been the victim of spontaneous combustion. “What the devil are
you doing?”
    Callie and Becky had both been
engrossed in the story of the Pilgrims in Plymouth, and jumped as
if the same bolt of lightning that had recently struck Aubrey had
then changed direction and struck them.
    “ Papal” Becky exclaimed, her
blue eyes huge.
    “ Mr. Lockhart!”
    Callie looked thunderstruck for about
a tenth of a second, before fury overtook her alarm. Her arm went
around Becky, and she gave the little girl a comforting
hug.
    Aubrey was too shaken to care that
he’d frightened his daughter. He resented Callie daring to usurp a
position as comforter to Becky. He resented everything about her.
He wanted her to go away. When he’d heard Callie reading the same
book Anne used to read, and had then seen her in the same chair
Anne used to sit in, holding Becky in exactly the same way Anne
used to do, all of his common sense had fled. The only thing he
wanted from Callie was that she leave his room and his
life.
    “ Get out of here.” His voice
shook with rage. He couldn’t help it.
    “ Well!” Callie closed the
book with a snap and, lifting Becky in her arms, stood up. “I guess
we’d best take our reading elsewhere, sweetheart.”
    “ Papa?”
    Becky looked scared. As well she
might, Aubrey thought with a sudden jolt of pain. He passed a hand
over his face, beginning to understand how irrational his reaction
had been, even if it had been unintentional.
    “ Becky,” he said, and his
voice trembled slightly. “I—I’m sorry, Becky. I—I—”
    “ Never mind.” Callie’s smile
was as stiff and cold as an icicle. “We’ll find more congenial
surroundings, Mr. Lockhart. I’m so sorry we disturbed
you.”
    The sarcasm in her voice and manner
annoyed Aubrey. He wanted to say something, to further apologize to
his daughter, but feared that, if he tried to, he’d shout. He’d
already shouted. Shouting wasn’t fair to Becky. He’d really like to
shout at Miss Prophet. He’d like to tell her to get the hell out of
his house and his life and never come back.
    He was shaking when Callie marched
herself and Becky out of his library and closed the door with a
hint of a slam behind her. As soon as the room was clear of
extraneous females, Aubrey lowered himself into his desk chair,
folded his arms on his desk, buried his head in them, and proceeded
to call himself as many foul names as he could come up
with.
    *****
    Never, in all her born days, had
Callie met a more selfish, overbearing, crabby, and touchy specimen
of humankind as Mr. Aubrey Lockhart.
    It had taken her a good forty-five
minutes to calm Becky down after Aubrey’s tantrum in the library.
Whatever had caused him to roar at them like that? Not that it
mattered. He had no right—no right at all—to act like that in front
of his daughter.
    Callie and Becky had discussed the
incident, although Callie’d had to do some prodding to get the
little girl to open up. But, blast it all, the child needed to
unburden herself.
    The conclusion Becky and she had
eventually come to was that Becky’s papa didn’t feel
well.
    “ ‘ Cause he never yells at
me,” Becky said in a tiny, worried voice. “Maybe he’s
sick.”
    He’s sick, all
right , Callie thought indignantly. She
said, “I suppose that’s the answer. Sometimes when people don’t
feel well, they get grumpy. I know I do.”
    Becky looked up at her, alarmed. “Do
you?”
    With a laugh, Callie