Cut To The Chase

Hunger gnawed at Abra

But it had nothing to do with the pizza she’d craved earlier. Sean was standing on her doorstep. His presence was tangible, so hard and male and tantalizing. He looked like sex on a stick dangled right in front of her.

She wanted this man. She wanted to grab him by the shirt and pull him into the bedroom.

Oh Lord, this was so not the time. Her new habit of popping into a state of instant arousal around him was so bizarre. Was it just the pregnancy that made her melt with need the minute she spotted a man with all the pieces in the right place? Or something else?

I have to get rid of him before it gets any worse, she thought wildly. But he knows who I am.

“I think you should leave,” she said.

All he said gently was “We need to talk, Abra.”

“Why? Looking for some more details for the tabloids?” she asked derisively, hoping that acting all mean would cool her sex drive.

Sean stood very still. There was an economy of motion around him she found appealing. Too appealing. And the way his hands jammed in his pockets pulled his jeans tighter across the front… Oh, my god, don’t stare at his uh—

So much for self-control.

Dear Reader,

It’s Harlequin Temptation’s twentieth birthday and we’re ready to do some celebrating. After all, we’re young, we’re legal (well, almost) and we’re old enough to get into trouble! Who could resist?

We’ve been publishing outstanding novels for the past twenty years, and there are many more where those came from. Don’t miss upcoming books by your favorite authors: Vicki Lewis Thompson, Kate Hoffmann, Kristine Rolofson, Jill Shalvis and Leslie Kelly. And Harlequin Temptation has always offered talented new authors to add to your collection. In the next few months look for stories from some of these exciting new finds: Emily McKay, Tanya Michaels, Cami Dalton and Mara Fox.

To celebrate our birthday, we’re bringing back one of our most popular miniseries, Editor’s Choice. Whenever we have a book that’s new, innovative, extraordinary, look for the Editor’s Choice flash. And the first one’s out this month! In Cover Me, talented Stephanie Bond tells the hilarious tale of a native New Yorker who finds herself out of her element and loving it. Written totally in the first person, Cover Me is a real treat. And don’t miss the rest of this month’s irresistible offerings—a naughty Wrong Bed book by Jill Shalvis, another installment of the True Blue Calhouns by Julie Kistler and a delightful Valentine tale by Kate Hoffmann.

So, come be a part of the next generation of Harlequin Temptation. We might be a little wild, but we’re having a whole lot of fun. And who knows—some of the thrill might rub off….

Enjoy,

Brenda Chin

Associate Senior Editor

Harlequin Temptation

Cut to the Chase

Julie Kistler

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR…

If you read Hot Prospect, the first book in THE TRUE BLUE CALHOUNS trilogy, you already know that a stand-up guy with a badge can be a pretty sexy thing, in or out of uniform. Jake Calhoun, the oldest brother, stole my heart with his steady, stalwart ways. But when it came to Sean, the second brother… Whoa. Creating Cut to the Chase for Sean made the temperature rise around here!

Sean is more of a rebel, but he, too, knows when it’s the right time to stand up and be counted. And that time turns out to be when he runs into Abra Holloway, a lifestyle expert and general “Miss Know-It-All” who’s having trouble knowing anything for sure these days. On the run, in a whole lot of trouble, Abra needs a guy like Sean. And she certainly wants a guy like Sean. In fact, she can’t stop wanting him. The two of them together turned out to be pretty combustible. I hope you agree!

And next month don’t forget to look for little brother Cooper, who is Packing Heat as he continues the brothers’ mission to look for the mysterious con woman who may be a) their illegitimate sister b) their father’s mistress, or c) none of the above. Will reckless, good-time Cooper be the True Blue Calhoun to find the quarry?

I hope you’re reading along to find out!

All the best,

Julie Kistler

Books by Julie Kistler

HARLEQUIN TEMPTATION

808—JUST A LITTLE FLING

907—MORE NAUGHTY THAN NICE

957—HOT PROSPECT

Dedicated to Birgit, for so many things, including grace under pressure and many kindnesses

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Prologue

ABRA SANK INTO A seat in the waiting area near her gate. She was ages early for her flight, and the place was deserted, with not even an agent behind the counter yet. Good. She could relax.

When she left the city, she’d rented a car and just driven blindly away, anywhere, finally dropping it in New Jersey. After that, she’d taken a train to Philly and a bus to Baltimore, and now she was flying to Chicago from there. It wasn’t as if it would be hard to follow her trail, even though her hair was now a different color and cut, she had no makeup on, and she was wearing a baseball cap she’d just purchased in the concourse. No one in the world would expect Abra Holloway to have brown hair, let alone an Orioles baseball cap.

But to trail her, someone would have to want to. And who would want to?

She leaned back into her uncomfortable seat, clutching her boarding pass. Gone were the days when she flew first class and flight attendants brought her extra drinks and other passengers sneaked up from coach to ask for her autograph.

“Better get used to it. You’re flying coach from now on,” she told herself sternly, sticking the ticket back in her bag and pulling out a book to read till her flight. But the book was about a dazzling television star with a terrible secret, and she couldn’t imagine why she’d bought it. Who wanted to read about that?

She glanced up at the TV mounted above the seats, almost afraid to look. Phew. Just a piece about a teapot exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Cute and wacky teapots. Nothing scary. But then the perky anchorwoman seemed to stare right out of the TV, straight at Abra, when she announced, “Sources in New York City report that media darling and lifestyle expert Abra Holloway has disappeared.”

Abra gulped. She looked around. Except for a man with a rolling garbage can headed to clean the ladies’ room, there was no one around. No one looking at her or noticing that her face was reflected on the monitor over her head.

“Although she was scheduled to appear on The Shelby Show last week as she has every Thursday for the past two years,” the anchorwoman continued, “host Shelby Marino revealed that ‘Abra Cadabra,’ as fans call her, would not be dispensing advice that day. Today, when another Thursday came and went without Holloway, and no explanation was offered for her failure to appear, reporters from several major news outlets began to make efforts to contact her. Shelby Marino and producers on The Shelby Show had no comment, but sources close to Holloway have indicated that she has apparently left the show and the city without a trace.”

What sources “close to Holloway”? Abra couldn’t think of one person besides Shelby she would call remotely close. There was Julian, of course. The world thought he was close, given the carefully crafted image they had portrayed. But Abra knew better.

Breaking into her thoughts, the woman on the television added, “There is no evidence of foul play. In fact, there is very little evidence at all. Her fiancé, millionaire businessman and philanthropist Julian Wheelwright, spoke to the press earlier today.”

Abra’s heart beat faster, but her eyes were riveted to the TV. Oh, lord, lord, lord. Not Julian. He looked as smoothly handsome as ever, with his blond hair perfectly styled, as always, and his blue eyes so very sincere.

Damn him and his blue eyes both. “Never trust a man with blue eyes,” she muttered. She’d had long-term relationships with a total of two men in her entire life, and they’d both had gorgeous blue eyes. They’d also both turned out to be beyond redemption, beneath contempt. Never trust a man with blue eyes. She promised to cross-stitch that motto onto a sampler and take it everywhere she went. As soon as she got somewhere she could find cross-stitch supplies and safely sit around and stitch without anyone bothering her.

She felt like bursting into tears. Oh, jeez. If brown hair and baseball caps were weird for Abra Holloway, weeping in public was really beyond the pale. She gazed, transfixed, at the TV. She didn’t want to see Julian, and yet she couldn’t look away. What would he say? Why did he give a press conference? Why couldn’t he just keep his damn mouth shut?

“I understand that Abra’s many fans are surprised and worried, but there’s no need,” Julian offered, sending the viewing public a serene smile. “Yes, of course we’re still engaged, and no, nothing is wrong.”

Nothing wrong? Julian’s pants ought to be on fire for that one.

“She simply felt a little stressed,” he went on, “a little overwhelmed because of mounting duties on The Shelby Show and discussions of her own daily syndicated series. She decided to take a break to get her plans in order.”

Her mouth fell open at the boldness of his lies. Still engaged? After she’d thrown his ring at his brilliant, lying white teeth? Stressed and overwhelmed because of The Shelby Show? As if. That show was a walk in the park.

And now he was saying that she’d left him a note and told him not to worry, that she loved him and would be back soon. All a pack of lies!

“I know and trust Abra completely,” he finished, in a firm and certain tone, “and if she says this is the right thing for her at this moment, then it is. As her fans will tell you, Abra is very focused and she always knows what’s right.”

Abra didn’t know what to think. Well, at least this way maybe no one would be looking for her. Maybe she should be thanking him for trying to take the heat out of her vanishing act.

“He probably just wants to clear himself.” She glared at his handsome image. “I hope the police think he murdered me. It would serve him right.”

But his face on the screen had been replaced by hers again. She saw footage of herself on The Shelby Show, with her beautifully styled honey-blond hair brushing her shoulders, her skin flawless, her posture perfect. She looked so confident and assured, smiling sympathetically at a guest who wanted help with a husband hooked on outdoor sex. The woman’s description of her husband’s desire to make love up against the Washington Monument elicited giggles from the audience, but didn’t faze the amazingly cool and composed Abra Holloway one bit.

Had that only been a few months ago? Could things possibly have been as simple then as they looked on TV?

“Holloway first came to prominence with her weekly visits to The Shelby Show,” the newswoman went on, “as she offered advice and counsel on everything from how to bring order to messy closets to how to acquire better self-esteem and find the love of your life. She acquired the nickname Abra Cadabra because of her apparent magic touch when it came to helping people sort through their problems.”

Abra frowned. She hated that nickname. But it only got weirder after that. Someone she had never seen, someone who was identified as her biggest fan, popped up on the TV.

“I am very worried,” this stranger confided. “This isn’t like the Abra I know. Why would she run away?”

“Who are you? You don’t know me,” Abra argued back at the television.

But the unknown woman wasn’t finished. “Abra has always been so together,” she said with conviction. “Her life is perfect. Wouldn’t she just use the Ten Steps to Personal Growth, which, you know, she invented, to work through whatever it is?”

And then this alleged biggest fan held up a copy of a New York tabloid with the screaming headline Where’s Our Abra?

“We need to know she’s okay,” the woman declared, starting to choke up. “We need our Abra Cadabra to come home, wherever she is, whatever the problem is. Abra, if you’re out there listening—please come home. We need you. Please?”

“So there you have it.” The polished anchorwoman folded her hands on her desk. “A real mystery surrounding Abra Holloway. The question of the day has become, ‘Where’s our Abra?’ But no one seems to know the answer.”

In an airport in Baltimore, Abra Holloway ducked under her baseball cap, picked up her bags and moved farther away from the TV.

1

DETECTIVE SEAN CALHOUN was running late. And if his cell phone didn’t stop ringing, he swore he was going to throw the thing in Lake Michigan.

“Damn it.” When he pulled it out of his jacket pocket, he saw he’d missed a call, too, somewhere between cleaning the paperwork off his desk and his last meeting with the supervisor of detectives to brief him on a couple of things before Sean left on vacation.

So first he looked at the number from the other call, noted it was his older brother, Jake, the person he was supposed to meet a half hour ago, cursed again, and then answered the new call, only to immediately wish he hadn’t.

“Sean, you gotta come over right away,” his mother’s voice ordered.

“Ma, I don’t have time for any more fix-ups, I don’t care who they are,” he returned.

“You still haven’t called my friend Bebe’s niece, have you?” she asked smartly. “Or Aunt Ruthie’s neighbor, the girl who makes such good meat loaf? She brought Aunt Ruthie cookies yesterday, just to be nice. Can you believe it? Such a sweetheart. She would make a wonderful mother.”

Yeah, like that was a real bonus. The last thing he wanted was a wife and kids. He’d been trying to get out from under his family’s thumb as long as he could remember. Why create a new generation of Calhouns and prolong the misery?

“Why don’t you try Jake?” he suggested, trying not to sound too annoyed, which would only make his mother dig in her heels harder. “He’s hitting thirty in a couple of months. I’ve got a few good years left. So why don’t you work on Jake instead of me?”

“Jake, ha!” she said dismissively. “He is so much like your father it’s not funny. Why would I waste a good woman on that?”

“Yeah, well, don’t waste them on me, either,” Sean said flatly. “No fix-ups.”

“That’s not even why I called in the first place. Sean, you got such a chip on your shoulder, I swear.”

“So why did you call?”

“I need you to come over as soon as you can get here,” she whispered, hissing into the phone. “I think your father is having an affair.”

“Oh, man.” This was even worse than another fix-up. “Ma, you know there’s no way Dad is having an affair.”

Michael Calhoun, one of five deputy superintendents of police for the city of Chicago, was as straight an arrow as they came. An affair? Yeah, right. That would be way too interesting for his by-the-book old man.

“I got evidence,” his mother contended.

“Yeah, okay, well, I’m already late to meet Jake,” he explained, trying to be patient. This affair thing was a new one for his mother, but not entirely surprising. She had a tendency to be jealous and to keep her husband and her sons, especially Sean, on a short leash. “Jake and I are supposed to pick up Cooper and head to Wisconsin, to the fishing cabin, remember? So it’s not a good time.”

“Your brothers will just have to wait. This is important.”

“Listen, I have a message from Jake here. Let me see what that is and call you right back, okay?” Without giving her a chance to object, he disconnected her and punched in the code to hear his message.

“Something’s come up, Sean,” Jake’s voice growled in his ear. “Sorry. Dad’s sending me on this weird errand and I’m not going to make it to Wisconsin. You and Coop go ahead without me, okay? Have a great time.”

“Damn it, Jake.” Sean clenched his jaw. First Mom and the craziness about Dad having an affair, and now Jake was bailing on him, leaving him with custody of their flaky younger brother Cooper. At times like this, he was really sorry he was a Calhoun.

And his phone was ringing again.

“Sean?” his mother asked. “You didn’t call me right back.”

“I didn’t get a chance.”

She made a harrumphing noise. “I’m expecting you within the next ten minutes. Get over here.” She hung up on him this time.

Funny that Jake had said their dad was sending him on some kind of errand he couldn’t get out of. When Dad called, Jake jumped. But when their mother needed something, it was always Sean who got the call, whether he wanted to or not.

His father constantly got on his case about being the family rebel. Some rebel. Hadn’t he ended up on the police force like all the rest of them? Wasn’t he constantly at his mother’s beck and call?

Frowning, wondering if it was too late to become an only child or an orphan, he quickly dialed Cooper, the only member of the family still unaccounted for, but got voice mail. “Hey, Coop, it’s Sean. I’m tied up. Jake says he’s off on a mission for Dad and Mom is giving me grief about something else. You can go ahead to the cabin if you want, and I’ll try to meet you there later.”

He dropped his phone in his pocket, shrugged into his jacket, and made tracks to his car. Might as well see what bee Mom had in her bonnet.

He laughed. Dad having an affair. Yeah, right.

“I THOUGHT YOU’D NEVER get here,” Yvonne Calhoun declared, swinging open the door before he had an opportunity to knock. He noticed immediately that her face was red, her eye makeup was smudged, and she had chewed off her lipstick, all of which was very unusual.

So she was very upset. It didn’t take a detective to figure that out.

“Mom, you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. Just come in already, will you?”

Sean ducked in the door, feeling eighteen and surly, like he did every time he came back to the Calhoun family house. It was impossible not to revert to a teenage attitude under that roof. Wipe your feet, say please and thank-you, don’t eat or drink in the living room… Remembering all the rules made him want to do every single thing he wasn’t supposed to do.

Jamming his hands into his pockets, Sean ambled into the immaculate living room, avoiding looking at the stern pictures of his mother’s parents, Grandma and Grandpa Bergner, on the piano. Next to that were framed pictures of three generations of Calhoun men in their Chicago Police Department uniforms. The True Blue Calhouns. Sean curled his lip. Yeah. Whatever.

“Okay,” he began. “I’m here now. So what’s this junk about Dad having an affair?”

“It’s not junk. He is having an affair,” his mother said quickly. “Bebe saw him.”

“Your friend Bebe saw Dad having an affair?” That was a nasty image. Not that he believed it for a minute. “With who?”

“Well, I don’t know who she is. A bimbo.” His mom scurried off to the kitchen, but she stopped in the doorway. “Do you want something to drink? A cookie?”

“No, Ma. I want to know what this is all about.”

“Sit down. Bebe is here. She’ll tell you,” she called out from the kitchen. “Bebe, go into the living room and talk to Sean while I get the coffee. And take the pictures with you.”

Pictures? Could this get any worse? He had the fleeting thought that maybe it was just pictures of more prospective dates. Maybe this was all subterfuge. But Mom seemed awfully hopped up for just another scheme to marry him off.

“Hiya, Sean,” Bebe offered, patting her hair with one manicured nail as she waltzed into the living room. Bebe was not just his mother’s best friend, but also her hairdresser, and her hair had been every color in the rainbow in the short time Sean had known her. Today it was kind of a deep maroon and flipped up on the ends.

“Hi,” he returned. “What’s this all about?”

“Your mom needs you, honey,” she said soothingly. She handed over a stack of photos and then took a seat next to him on the sofa. “I’m real sorry and all, but I saw what I saw. What can I say?”

Sean glanced down at the top picture. “Dad sitting on a park bench wearing a trench coat, with a woman next to him and about three feet in between them. So?”

Bebe tapped the photo with one purple fingernail. “I was at the park, just minding my own business walking my sister’s dog—I was dog-sitting, just in case you wondered what I was doing up there, because that is not my part of town—and who do I see but Michael Calhoun, schmoozing with this chickie who is half his age and has a terrible dye job.” She rolled her eyes. “The roots!”

“And you just happened to have a camera?”

“No, that was the second time,” she told him.

“A second time!” his mother chorused grimly, coming back carrying a mug of coffee and a plate of cookies. “Have a cookie.”

“I don’t want a cookie. And since when do you let people eat or drink in the living room?”

She waved away his objection. “Everything has fallen apart. Your father is cheating on me. What do I care about a little spill in the living room? Bebe saw the schmuck twice with his tootsie. I told you I had evidence.” She sat next to him on the couch, pushing him over from the other side, so that he was squashed between the two women.

“Mom, I really think you’re making a whole mountain range out of a molehill here,” he tried, setting the photos down in his lap. “So he went to the park and some woman sat next to him? So what? Have you found lipstick on his collar? Receipts from crummy motels? Or from jewelry or gifts that weren’t for you?”

“No, of course not,” she said indignantly. “He’s a cop, Sean. How stupid do you think he’s going to be?”

“I have no idea. But I’m not willing to make a case of adultery out of a chat on a park bench.”

She jumped off the couch and started pacing back and forth. “But he lied to me about where he was. Okay, so Bebe saw him in the park and thought it was odd, just the way he was dressed and the way he was kind of talking to this woman out of the corner of his mouth, all strange.”

“I just knew something was weird with him the minute I saw him,” Bebe agreed. “It looked very suspicious, you know? So I didn’t go over, didn’t say hello, nothing, just got the dog and got out of there.”

“And she said to me, why was Michael up at Humboldt Park the other day? And I’m wondering about this, because I don’t know any reason. The man has a desk job. He doesn’t go out in the field anymore. I mean, maybe to a luncheon or something, but the middle of a park? Meeting some young slutty-looking girl? I don’t think so.” Picking up steam as she continued the story, his mother perched next to him again on the couch, nudging him to look at the photos again. “So I ask him where he was that day, and he shrugs and says he was at work. All day. He remembers because it was such a busy day. And, of course, I know he’s lying. So I tell his secretary, who is a doll, to let me know the next time he’s out of the office and doesn’t have an appointment in the book.”

“Oh, Ma…” Sean stared into space. His mother playing amateur detective and checking up on his dad and conspiring with his secretary? And right when the old man was up for a major promotion? He’d never forgive her.

Sean looked up. On the other hand, what was Michael Calhoun doing on that park bench with that woman? He narrowed his eyes at the photos. Ever since he’d cracked a couple of hard cases, people had been teasing him about his “uncanny knack for seeing the truth.” It was a quote from a newspaper account of his career, and the other detectives—and his brothers—thought it was pretty funny to ride him about it. It was a bunch of baloney, but still… If he stared at the photo of his father and the curvy blonde long enough, would he see the real deal behind this shadowy meeting in the park?

“So the next time your father wasn’t where he was supposed to be, I sent Bebe back to Humboldt Park again, you know, disguised, so she could get closer this time. She wore a headscarf and sunglasses and pushed a baby carriage. Your father never suspected a thing,” his mom said with fierce satisfaction.

Bebe in disguise, pushing a baby carriage. It might’ve been funny if it weren’t so horrifying. “Let me get this straight. You had Bebe shadowing Dad at the park?”

“So? She got some very good pictures, didn’t she?” His mother shook her head. “Same woman, same park bench. Meeting her again. And look at her, Sean. Cheap Christmas trash.”

Well, he couldn’t disagree. Bebe’s clear, sharp photographs showed a dyed-blonde with obvious roots and a frizzy ponytail, big sunglasses, and a dark raincoat over her clothes. She had a good jawline, a determined little chin, and what appeared to be a nicely shaped mouth exaggerated by a load of shiny, dark pink lipstick. The raincoat was open far enough in several of the pictures to reveal a low-cut top, very tight jeans, and the most god-awful pair of shoes he’d ever seen. They were clear plastic sandals with very high heels and glitter and stars plastered all over them. He didn’t have to be a detective to recognize hooker shoes when he saw them.

So which was worse? The assumption that his dad was having an affair? Or that he was somehow involved with a prostitute?

“All right,” he said grimly. “You’ve got photos of him with a suspicious woman. Is there more?”

“That’s the thing, Sean. I was waiting for him to have, you know, another unexplained absence. But he hasn’t. Well, until today, but his secretary heard him on the phone arranging to meet Jake, so I think that was okay.”

“Yeah,” Sean put in. “I got a message from Jake canceling the fishing trip. He said Dad had an errand for him. So that checks out.”

“So since the meeting where Bebe got the pictures, he’s been clean. But now…” Her voice was positively triumphant as she made a flourish Bebe’s way.

“I saw her again,” Bebe whispered.

“At the park?”

“Oh, no. At the airport.” Bebe leaned forward, her eyes wide. “I had to go pick up my niece, who is such a nice girl. And so smart. She had a scholarship to Johns Hopkins. You should meet her, Sean. She’d be perfect for you.”

“Uh huh. How about the rest of the story?”

“Well, I went to pick up my niece, and who do I see? That same woman from the park! Oh, she was trying to look different all right—her hair was a different color and she had a headscarf, a bandanna kind of thing, but that did not fool me.” Bebe, now the queen of scarf disguises, nodded sagely. “I recognized that trick, I’ll tell you.”

“You saw her at the airport,” Sean said patiently. “So she was leaving town. Which is good, right? If Dad was somehow mixed up with this woman, he’s not now, because she left town.”

“Oh, no, that’s the thing,” Bebe interrupted. “She wasn’t leaving. She was arriving.”

“I don’t get it. If she was already in Chicago, why was she arriving?”

“We don’t get it, either,” his mother said, patting his arm. “But that’s where you come in.”

He had a very bad feeling about this. And since Jake had just canceled out on the fishing trip, Sean didn’t really have a good excuse to duck and run, either.

“Sean, my sweet, adorable son,” Yvonne Calhoun murmured, putting her head on his shoulder, “we all know you have this…”

He knew what would be next.

“You have an uncanny knack for seeing the truth,” she finished. “Sean, you are practically psychic when it comes to these criminals and figuring them out. Disguises, deceptions, it’s nothing to you. You just see right through.”

Already feeling trapped, he asked, “What do you want me to do?”

His mother sat up straight, laying it out for him without mincing words. “Here’s the deal. Bebe saw her at the baggage pickup, she thought it was her so she followed her, she lost her again, but then she picked her out at the Help desk.”

“I spotted the headscarf,” Bebe said helpfully.

“So she got right in behind her at the Help desk and eavesdropped.”

“Wow, Bebe, maybe you should join the force,” Sean suggested, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. Keystone Kops on a stakeout.

“I know,” Bebe said with a smile. “I was pretty good, I’ll tell you.”

“And what did you hear when you eavesdropped?” he asked tersely, knowing he didn’t really want to know.

“She wanted to know how to get to…”

Sean bent closer, waiting for the word that would come at the end of the dramatic pause. “Where?”

“Champaign,” both women said at once.

“Downstate Champaign?” he asked doubtfully. “University of Illinois?”

“Exactly.” His mother sat back. “She caught a bus to go downstate to Champaign. So I want you to go there, too, and find this tart and figure out what she wants with your father.”