Damn. “Really?”
“Yes. The girl still doesn’t have her head on right.” The man never called her by her preferred name, and he never called her a woman. She would always be a girl in his eyes, which Alex could understand to some extent. Sara Beth’s mother had died when she was a baby, so she was the only family the man had left. But she’d grown up a long time ago.
“Careful, John.” Alex drawled the warning softly.
“Truth, Alex. She says she’s still not pregnant.”
A crick in his neck sent a sharp pain across his shoulders. He and Sara Beth had fallen asleep cuddled together, and by the time he’d woken up, his arm had been numb and his neck was killing him. The sudden tensing of his muscles set it off again. “We haven’t been married that long. Sara Beth has her career. Give it time.”
“She doesn’t need a career; that’s what she has you for. And I have given it time. Six months. That is plenty of time for you two to start on a grandchild. It’s expected. The Keane line must go on.” A heavy sigh sounded through Alex’s Bluetooth. If it weren’t for the hurt John inflicted on Sara Beth on an almost daily basis, Alex would have felt sorry for the man. Someone that rigid had to find life painful, unless they had the ability to make life accommodate them. Which John did, for the most part. Sara Beth had accommodated him as much as she was able, but not in this. “Hell, you even had eighteen damn months of the engagement to get her pregnant. I’d have accepted a little scandal if it meant the line was secure, but here we are and no bun in the oven. You don’t have any problems I should know about, do you, boy?”
Alex counted very slowly to ten before responding. “I’ve told you I won’t discuss this with you, John. It will happen when it happens. When Sara Beth is ready. There is still plenty of time.”
“Like hell there is. I haven’t worked my whole life just to have this company flushed down the tubes because my daughter isn’t ready to do her familial duty. She needs to—”
“Enough!” Fortunately Ian Walker chose that moment to push casually through Alex’s office door, hands full of a laptop and various files and papers seemingly ready to escape at any moment. Sara Beth followed, looking cool and confident despite whatever words she’d had with her father that morning. Alex breathed a silent thank you, Lord and stood to grab Ian’s load before it toppled to the floor. “Here they are now. Let me switch you to the conference line.”
“How are you this morning, John?” Ian greeted his boss as soon as the speakerphone came on. “Good, I hope.”
“Still breathing,” John said.
Ian just chuckled, his easygoing nature front and center as usual. “Well, that’s got to count for something, right? The alternative is much worse.”
“John,” Sara Beth said. She never called him Dad or Father at work. Despite the fact that he didn’t take her seriously, Sara Beth hadn’t trained for years to run this company only to allow her father to undermine her abilities or her authority. Pride swelled in Alex’s chest as he considered the strides she’d made since moving to Atlanta and taking over Ian’s department.
“Sara Elizabeth.” John’s impatience soaked the words. “Thought you had things to do this morning.”
“I do. It’s called work.”
John grunted his opinion of that. “Can we just get on with it, please?”
Ian brought them up to speed on the final stages of the research he was conducting—a project that would ultimately make AR affordably available in every car windshield, phone or camera view screen, pair of glasses, and possibly even contacts for the rapidly growing consumer public. Alex listened impatiently as John fawned over Ian’s progress, then fought Sara Beth’s every comment as they hammered out the details on the presentation of said research at an international consortium in a couple of months. By the time he was ready to reach through the phone and strangle his father-in-law, lunchtime had rolled around. Alex thankfully pushed the button to cut their connection to the LA office. He rubbed his grainy eyes, then turned a jaundiced one on Ian’s trademark chuckle.
“So, was it just me, or was the old man in rare form this morning?” Ian asked with a knowing look.
Sara Beth gave a delicate snort, the sound strangely reminiscent of her father’s own displeasured grunts. “Isn’t he always?”
“Of course,” Ian said. Then, taking advantage of the friendship they’d formed since Alex and Sara Beth had moved to Atlanta, he asked, “Problems on the home front?”