Adam's Daughter by Kristy Daniels Page A

shouldn’t have drunk so much last night. You can’t handle it.”
    Lilith sighed. “If you’re going to start lecturing me again, can’t you have the decency to wait until after I’ve had some coffee?”
    Adam reached for the carafe, poured out a cup of coffee and slid it across the table. He retreated behind the newspaper. For a long time, the room was silent. Then he folded the paper and rose.
    “Where are you going?” Lilith asked.
    “I have to go out.”
    “It’s seven in the morning on New Year’s Day. Where in the hell are you —-” She paused. “Oh, God, not that stupid club thing again, Adam.”
    “I have to go. I’m picking up your father on the way.”
    Lilith laughed. “But Adam, it’s so ridiculous! Every year, grown men getting together to act like children. You and my father, you’d think this was some big family tradition or something.”
    Adam paused, an idea forming in his head. Family tradition . Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He called for the maid.
    “ Jenny,” he said when the girl appeared. “Get the baby ready. I’m taking him out.”
    Lilith almost dropped her coffee cup. “What ?”
    “You’re right,” he said . “It is a family tradition, and Ian is going to become a part of it.”
    Lilith shot to her feet. “You’re not taking that baby to this idiotic ritual! I won’t allow it!”
    “He’s my son,” Adam said.
    Jenny returned holding a wicker carrier. Adam took it and started toward the door. Lilith ran after him. “For God’s sake, Adam,” she said. “He’s only two months old!”
    Adam smiled. “I’ll take care of him.”
    He hurried down to the car, ignoring Lilith as he put the basket in the backseat. As he drove off, he watched Lilith in the rearview mirror, standing on the porch. God, drinking always left her so foul tempered. Thankfully, she didn’t drink often. In the two and a half years they had been married, in fact, he seldom had found her truly disagreeable to live with. Her moods and her social climbing schemes sometimes irritated him, but living with Lilith was generally an untroubled existence. He had his work. She had her home and clubs. Now there was the baby. It was a comfortable life.
    Robert Bickford was waiting outside his own home when Adam pulled up. Bickford jumped into the car with an eagerness that belied his age and weight.
    "Ready for the old Hike ’n’ Dip?” Bickford asked. He was smiling. The man truly savored this annual event, even more so in recent years when Adam had joined him.
    Adam glanced at Bickford. A heart attack last year had left him in weakened health. “You sure you’re feeling up to this, Bick?”
    “Sure. Haven’t missed one in thirty-one years!”
    “We’ve got a new member to initiate today,” Adam said with a smile, and cocked his head toward the basket in the back.
    Bickford’s face lit up when he saw the baby. “What a grand idea, Adam . Three generations sharing the tradition!” Bickford was beaming. He loved having a grandson. “You know,” he said, “with you running the paper now it’s almost like you’re my son, Adam.”
    Over the years, Adam’s feelings toward Bick had softened. It wasn’t affection he felt toward him so much as charity. Bickford had struggled all his life in the shadow of his brilliant father and he had been unable to move the Times ahead. Bickford’s wife Catherine had died last year, ending their joyless marriage. His health was failing him. He had no sons. He was living out the remainder of his life finding little comforts wherever he could. And if Adam —- and now Ian —- were his comforts, who was Adam to take that away?
    “I’m a happy man, Adam,” Bick ford said softly.
    “Me, too, Bick,” Adam said.
    Adam steered the car down the coast road toward the country club, thinking about Lilith. Thinking, too, of Elizabeth.
    It was almost impossible to think of one without the other, to think about what his life could have been with Elizabeth.