Irresistible Forces by Danielle Steel Page B

towels. And there was a nice-looking woman in her midthirties watching them, while a golden retriever stood next to a little boy and then ran after a ball he'd just thrown him. It was an idyllic scene, and in total contrast to his high-tech business life. This was the world he loved to come home to. Several of the kids waved as he drove in, and parked the car, and Meredith could see one of the girls watching her with interest.
    “Hi, kids,” he shouted in their general direction, and walked across the lawn toward them. There were at least ten children there, and Meredith realized that some of them had to be friends, but as soon as they approached, it was easy to see which ones were Callan's. The two girls he had described to her, Mary Ellen and Julie, looked exactly like him, so much so that it was almost funny. And Andy looked like a miniature of his father. All three of them stared at her as though she had just arrived from another planet, as he introduced her.
    “We've just been on the due diligence tour together. In Chicago and Minneapolis and L.A. And next week we're going to Europe,” he explained as Andy eyed her with suspicion.
    “Are you my dad's new girlfriend?” Meredith smiled at the question, and Cal was quick to reprimand him.
    “Andy! That's a rude thing to say, and you know it.”
    “Well, is she?” he persisted, as the dog brought the ball back and dropped it at the boy's feet, but Andy ignored him. Interrogating Meredith was more interesting than playing fetch with the retriever. And his sisters seemed to be listening with interest.
    “Actually, I'm married. Your dad and I are just working together. My husband is a doctor,” she said, hoping to gain safe passage from them. Their friends were circling nearby, and the two girls seemed anxious to rejoin them.
    “What kind of doctor?” Andy asked her. “Does he take care of kids?”
    “Sometimes. He takes care of people who have terrible accidents, he's a trauma doctor.”
    “I fell off my bike and broke my arm once,” he said, smiling at her. He had decided that she was pretty, and not necessarily after his father.
    “That must have hurt,” Meredith sympathized.
    “It did. Do you have children?”
    “No, I don't,” she said, wondering if she should apologize for it. The two girls were still watching her, but neither of them had said more than hello when their father introduced them. But they didn't make any move to step away either. They were listening to her answers to their brother's questions, and seemed satisfied by them. “I'm going back to New York in a few hours,” she said, as though to reassure them. She somehow sensed that they thought she was a threat, even if she was married, and she wanted to assure them that she would be gone soon.
    Cal offered her a glass of wine, and the children went back to their friends then. And half an hour later, as he and Meredith sat on the patio, drinking wine and chatting, the last of the friends left, and his kids went upstairs to change for dinner.
    “Your children are beautiful,” she said after they'd gone in, “and they all look just like you.”
    “Charlotte always said that Andy looked like my clone, even as a baby. And both of the girls look just like my mother. I think it was actually part of why Charlotte never bonded with them.” But from everything else he had said to her by then, Meredith suspected that there were more severe reasons for her not bonding with them, mostly her long-term affair with another man, and the fact that she had never wanted children. “They're not used to seeing anyone come home with me. They've only met one or two of the women I've gone out with.”
    “Why is that?” She was startled by what he said, and it explained why they had seemed so suspicious of her.
    “I don't think that part of my life is any of their business,” he said bluntly. “There hasn't been anyone serious enough in my life to warrant introducing them to the children.” It was