An Act of Persuasion(70)

“I thought we could... Well, it seems kind of stupid now.” Mark shrugged. “I thought maybe we could bet.”

“Bet? On what?”

“First man to find Anna’s parents.”

Ben actually laughed but it wasn’t a very funny sound. “You are unbelievable, Sharpe. You’re that desperate to prove you’re the better spy that you think we could race against each other to uncover Anna’s past?”

Was that what Mark was doing? Was he trying to prove something to himself? To Sophie?

“Look, it was a bad idea. I just thought— I need something. Something I can...win.”

“Still not getting along with your daughter?”

“You met her. You heard her.”

“She’s a teenager.” Ben offered the words as if they were explanation enough.

“She is and she isn’t.”

Mark thought about the performance he’d attended a few nights ago. The mayor of Philadelphia had hosted a fund-raiser and had asked Sophie to perform along with a few singers and dancers. Mark had insisted on accompanying her as a way to better understand the life she was living.

He had sat with Marie backstage and watched as, once again, Sophie did something to the piano he’d never seen another performer do. She didn’t play the instrument. She brought it to life. She didn’t make music. She told amazing, complex and wonderful stories.

When it was over, she’d graciously greeted the mayor and many of his guests. Answering the questions about her gift, her age and how she kept up with her schooling and her plans for the future. She behaved like...a professional.

A grown-up woman in a girl’s body. When he’d driven them home, he’d tried to pay her compliments to that effect. It seemed ridiculous to say, since he’d had nothing to do with raising her, but he’d been proud of her. Not only her talent, but her poise, as well.

She hadn’t responded to any of his comments and Mark was starting to feel as if he would never get through to her.

“I heard her play once,” Ben said now. “She has a spectacular gift. You didn’t say anything about that when you mentioned you came back for her.”

“I’m still coming to grips with simply being a father, let alone the whole prodigy thing.”

“You understand you need to give it time. A father-daughter relationship can’t happen instantly. At least, I would imagine that it can’t. I might have better advice for you if the baby is a girl.”

Mark nodded. It didn’t matter that Ben didn’t have a child yet, his advice made sense. Of course Mark needed to give it time. That’s what he was doing. Inch by inch. He accepted every invitation the Warrens offered for dinner or lunch. He took every opportunity to be with Sophie alone when her grandparents didn’t give her a choice to refuse his company.

He tried to be funny, he tried to be open-minded. He tried to be a cool dad. What teenager didn’t want the cool dad?

His apparently.

“Of course, if you push her too fast, it will only make her dig her heels in harder.”

Mark listened to the words he’d said to Ben only a few weeks ago and knew Ben repeated them intentionally. “You think you’re being funny, don’t you?”

“I’m not attempting to be humorous...although I won’t lie and say it didn’t feel damn good to give you some of your own medicine. Because while you weren’t wrong, now you know how I felt.” Ben seemed to lose the icelike facade he’d always maintained around Mark. It was as if he acknowledged their common bond. And they were finally talking to each other, man-to-man. “Patience used to be our strong point, you know.”

“Tell me about it. I could sit for hours in an unventilated room with temperatures outside spiking over a hundred degrees and simply watch a window across an alleyway on the off chance someone would show up for a meeting. Now I feel like I can’t stand being in my own skin for five minutes at a time. When I’m with Sophie I have this ridiculous urge to pick her up and start running without having any idea where we’re going. God, I can’t believe I said that out loud.”

And that he’d told Ben, of all people, how crazy he was feeling was the total kicker. Mark could only imagine how uncomfortable his former superior was right now with what had been a healthy dump of too much information.

Except when Mark looked at him, Ben didn’t look uncomfortable. Instead he looked...sympathetic.