On The Edge

"WHERE IS SHE?" Adam Drake asked the minute Rebecca opened her front door. She'd been expecting him for the past half hour. Heck, Becca had even raced to meet him at the front door of her home when she'd heard his car pull into the driveway. What she wasn't expect-ing--oh, no, what she absolutely did not expect--was what he looked like. Holy crawdad, she thought, using Lindsey Drake's favorite expression, one she'd heard time and time again since the moment she'd offered to bring the little girl to her home rather than have the police take her to a shelter when they couldn't reach her father right away. She'd been expecting someone pudgy, maybe even short a few strands of hair. Someone who spent the weekends stroking his ego by lording it over other drivers whenever he won a race, maybe even someone who made a play for the trophy girls. But this man...this man looked like someone the trophy girls made a play for. "Mr. Drake. Hi. I'm Rebecca--" "Where is she?" he asked again, looking like he just might push past her if she didn't invite him in soon. Good heavens, her head didn't even reach his shoulders. He was the Incredible Hulk, Mr. Clean come to life (but with a full head of hair), his small, flat nose set between brilliant green eyes. Rebecca, really! He was staring. No, waiting. Impatiently. "She's, ah, she's in the back," she said. "Swimming," she added when he brushed by her the moment she stepped back from the door. "Lindsey," his big voice boomed, echoing off her twelve-foot ceiling. "Lindsey Samantha Drake, answer me right now!" "Lindsey Samantha Drake can't hear you," Rebecca said, tapping him on the shoulder. "Insulated glass," she offered by way of explanation. And there he went staring at her again. "She's through here," she said. He followed her, Rebecca feeling--what?--as she walked in front of him. Maybe self-conscious, she thought as she led him past the living room and through a double-wide arch that led to the kitchen and ultimately the back patio.Yeah. That was it, she admitted. Self-conscious. She felt awkward in a way that reminded her of when she was a teenager and the local hunk had come into the McDonald's where she'd worked. She'd been so flummoxed she'd put his food in a Happy Meal box. "Daddy," Lindsey called out the minute she spotted her father standing beneath the veranda, the two-by-two planks above their heads painting shadowy prison stripes on his light blue shirt. "Lindsey Samantha Drake, get out of that pool now." Rebecca jumped. The word now sounded like the crack of an uncorked motor. Lindsey, who'd been in the midst of pushing herself out of the water, paused, droplets dripping down her face and arms and onto the faux stones that surrounded the kidney-shaped pool, the look in her eyes reminiscent of a squirrel caught in the KC lights of a truck. "Now," he yelled again when she sunk back down in the pool. "Mr. Drake," Rebecca said. "Is it really necessary to yell?" "Is it necessary?" he asked, turning back to her. "Is it necessary?" he repeated and Rebecca thought for a second that his eyes might start bulging like a Chihuahua's. "Perhaps it's not necessary to you, but I just spent a full day scared out of my wits that someone had kidnapped my daughter, and so she ought to be grateful I'm just yelling instead of hauling her sorry butt out of the pool and paddling it with that pool net over there." "You were supposed to think I was going to Brandy's house after school," Lindsey offered in a tiny little voice. "Just like I always do when it's an early release day." Adam turned back to the pool. "Maybe," he said in a dead-calm voice, "you should have told Brandy that." "I left a message on her cell." Mr. Drake smacked his head. "Oh, well, that was good thinking, especially since BrandBritton, Pamela is the author of 'On The Edge', published 2006 under ISBN 9780373771035 and ISBN 0373771037.