Enticed Page 10

  He held up the flag he had drawn on a blank piece of paper. He had nearly completed it while I had been away; all that was missing was the wording inside the banner. I rolled my chair to his desk and we finished the task together.

  I was tempted to order lunch to be brought to my office, just so we wouldn’t risk seeing Alex should we venture too far outside the sanctity of my new ‘classroom,’ but it violated my strict rule of never eating where I did other tasks. Rule #12: Eat dinner at a table and work at a desk. This kept me from grazing absently while I worked… a necessary precaution after I gained the last twenty pounds a few years ago.

  I solved this problem by packing up the lovely lunch prepared by Cleo into a picnic basket. I had Harrison drive us to a city park on Sunset Boulevard, where we could eat lunch in a beautiful outdoor setting Alex Fullerton was not likely to find us.

  The trip outside revitalized both Jonathan and me, making our afternoon quite productive indeed. We only spent a couple more hours on my lesson plan before I finally let Jonathan rip through his energy with a brisk walk to survey our surroundings. While I marveled over the picture perfect fountain and the majestic palm trees, he was on his knee to make friends with every four-legged friend that crossed our path.

  We even opted to walk home since it wasn’t that far away, freeing up Harrison’s afternoon to run his errands and complete his own chores.

  “Why don’t you have a dog, Jonathan?”

  He shrugged as he kicked a stray pebble from his path. “Dad says I’m not responsible enough. Since he’s not home enough to supervise me, he said it would put an ‘unfair strain’ on the house staff to ensure its safety and wellbeing.”

  I imagined those words came straight from his father’s lips verbatim. It was out of my mouth before I could stop it. “Harsh.”

  Again Jonathan shrugged. This was his life and he was used to it, though I personally couldn’t imagine a childhood without a pet, especially when Drew had the resources to properly care for one. I had grown up on a farm with home-sewn clothes, but I still had a dog. It was one of the very things that taught me responsibility, wrapped up in a cuddly, furry package of unconditional love.

  I put it on my mental notepad to bring up to Drew the next time we spoke. Now that I was a permanent fixture in the household for at least another year, I virtually invalidated his major argument against Jonathan’s having a pet of his own.

  Since I drove Jonathan to his Kung Fu class later that afternoon, I decided to make it a night on the town. We went to an open-air shopping center in Century City, where we took in a movie at the Cineplex after some serious window shopping and a brief stop at a yogurt shop. For dinner we opted for a noisy, trendy taco joint, eating on the patio so that we could hear each other talk.

  “You don’t shop like my mom,” he pointed out before he tore into his second chicken taco. “I came here with her a few times and she never made it out of Bloomingdales.”

  I laughed. “Yeah, well, I’m not a Bloomingdales kind of girl,” I said. The only bag that sat beside me was full of boxed chocolates from a candy maker we didn’t have back in Texas, gifts for several of my friends back home.

  “What kind of girl are you?” Jonathan asked.

  I sat back in my chair to ponder the question. “A simple one, I guess. I believe in the Golden Rule. I work hard. I read a lot. I have a small but dedicated circle of friends. I don’t care to live my life to impress anyone else. I just do what I think is right because that’s all any of us can do. I guess that makes me fairly low maintenance.”

  “So why are you alone?” he asked so directly it took my breath away.

  My eyes met his for a long moment. “I wasn’t always,” I confessed. “It’s just easier to be single.”

  He nodded, wise beyond his nine years. “You don’t want to get hurt.”

  That was how this little boy looked at love. It hurt, period. And here I was telling him it wasn’t worth the risk. I couldn’t be responsible for that. “No one wants to get hurt, Jonathan. Some people just brave the risk better than others. For some, it’s worth it. When you start out and you’re in love, you feel invincible. Like there’s nothing in the world you can’t handle. That’s usually around the time life throws everything at you to test you. Sometimes you make it, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes the ride is worth it, and sometimes you just want to get back on solid ground again. I guess I belong to the latter group. All that other stuff generally isn’t worth it to me. I’d rather go home to a good book and let all the angst happen to other people. But that doesn’t mean that love itself isn’t worth it. It can be wonderful, even if it ends.”

  “I don’t think my mom and dad thought it was worth it, either,” he confessed. “She keeps trying, though. I doubt my dad ever will.”

  I nodded. “Your dad has a lot at stake. It’s not just him anymore. He has you to consider. Parenthood is the only love affair more passionate than romantic love. When you have a piece of you walking around outside your body, it makes you way more cautious.”

  He examined me quietly. Finally he asked the question I had been dreading. “Do you have kids, Rachel?”

  I swallowed back some of my iced tea, wishing I had gotten something a lot stronger. If I hadn’t been driving, I might have ordered a margarita. Or ten. I knew I had two choices here. I could maintain the honesty and build upon his trust, or I could take the easy way out and lie my ass off – like I had done for the last three years.

  I looked into those light blue eyes framed by thick dark lashes and did what anyone would do.

  I told the truth.

  “I did,” I said softly.

  “Did?” he echoed.

  I nodded. “I met my ex-husband my first year in college. His name was Zach and he was a football star. That is as close as you get to a celebrity in Texas,” I added with a wry smile. “For some reason he liked me. He was romantic and thoughtful and when he asked me to marry him after that first amazing month together, I said yes. My best friend warned me it was too soon, but I was too far gone to hear her. I was married within six weeks, and pregnant six weeks after that. I gave birth to my son, Jason, in 2003. June,” I added quietly, once again reminded that his birthday was coming up.

  Jonathan must have watched every painful memory march across my face as I edited what I could in order to tell this young boy about the trauma I had endured. I wanted to be honest, but the last thing he needed was more adult drama. “What happened to him?” Jonathan finally asked.

  I took a deep breath and blinked away the inevitable tears. “Zach and I had just moved into a new house. It had a pool. Generally the gate was always locked, but on this day it wasn’t. Jason ended up in the hot tub, and his hair had tangled in one of the jets. They think,” I managed to croak, “that he was bobbing for one of his toys and he simply wasn’t able to resurface. I found him,” I confessed in a broken whisper. “And I dove into the water to pull him free.”

  Jonathan’s own eyes welled with tears as he listened. “He was barely five at the time,” I continued as I used the corner of the napkin to wipe around my eyes. “He was unconscious when the paramedics got there. He stayed in a coma for a week before we made peace with the fact that there was no hope. So we took him off of life support.”

  I had to stop speaking or I would have lost it right there in the middle of that crowded restaurant patio. Jonathan eased out of his chair and walked to where I sat. He opened up his tiny arms and held me close. I couldn’t stop the sob even if I wanted to. “I’m sorry, Rachel,” he said as he stroked my hair. I held him tighter, this amazing little boy who had filled a hole in me I had long tried to deny.

  This was the real reason that I had come to Los Angeles. It had dick to do with Drew’s looks or money. I had never cared about those things. If anything, I came in spite of Drew. The dream had thrown me temporarily, but I knew down deep that I couldn’t lose another child. And Jonathan Fullerton had stolen my carefully rebuilt heart when I wasn’t looking. It m
ade every risk worth taking. I needed him as much as he needed me.

  “Is everything all right over here?” asked our friendly waitress, who had come to fill our glasses. We broke apart and I nodded with a fake smile I had perfected over the years.

  Jonathan returned to his seat and we dug back into our dinner, though neither one of us felt much like eating. I gave up after two bites that tasted just like cardboard.

  “What happened to Zach?” Jonathan finally asked after I signaled for the check.

  “We divorced,” I clipped. “There are just some things that a marriage cannot withstand.”

  He nodded. He had learned that lesson already. We were both quiet as we returned to the house. We tried to watch a TV program together, but I really itched to be alone so I could lick my wounds in private. By the time he headed to bed at nine o’clock, I was emotionally and physically exhausted.

  I opened my stately walk-in closet and pulled out the bin of photo albums and Jason’s belongings, including a fluffy brown bear with a yellow bow tie. This was Monty, Jason’s best and truest friend from the time he turned two.

  I wept as I sat cross-legged on the floor, rocking back and forth as I clutched what remained of my beautiful baby boy to my chest, staring at the photos of the most important five years of my life.

  When the phone rang, I didn’t bother answering it. I couldn’t bear to speak to Drew in the state I was in. He would hear the devastation in my voice and ask questions I didn’t want to answer. I knew I couldn’t tell this story twice in one night.

  I unplugged the phone and curled into bed. I didn’t even bother to get undressed.

  I just held onto Monty and waited for the wave of devastation to pass once more.

  Nancy Gilbert had found me in such a state more than three years before. She was the one who pulled me back over to the land of the living, with a new job and a new apartment. But she had never been able to give me a new heart to replace the one Jason took with him to the grave.

  Only Jonathan had been able to do that.

  And I knew I would risk anything – again – to protect him.

  Chapter Eleven

  Surprisingly, Alex Fullerton did not come back to the house until the weekend, right around Elise’s court-appointed, supervised visit. Of course, I didn’t really stay at the house waiting for him to show up, either. Jonathan and I expanded our studies to museums and parks just so we could have somewhere to go. We explored the La Brea Tar Pits and attended a show at the Griffith Observatory, which was tucked high in a hill a little north of Hollywood, in the massive oasis also known as Griffith Park.

  If I could get us out of the house, I generally did. I took full advantage of the idea that the world was our classroom. Los Angeles provided many alternatives, and I was excited to see places in real life I had only read about before.

  The added benefit to that was that I didn’t have to tolerate Alex’s damnable smirk as he misread my intentions to cast me as the bad guy in their family drama. I was easy to hate since I was a virtual stranger. Intellectually I knew this. Emotionally it pissed me off to no end. I found his lazy assumption about my motives highly offensive, which may have been the point.

  Alex should have known by now that I was nowhere near Drew’s “type,” if he even had a type anymore. He hadn’t been linked with anyone in the press for a very long time, which I assumed was part of his image overhaul in order to secure full custody. He needed to establish stability, which – contrasted to Elise shacking up with her boy toy – hadn’t been that difficult to do.

  All he really needed was a constant feminine influence to fill in the blanks, and I supposed I fit that bill better than any booty call. This would explain why both Alex and Elise despised me so, and insisted upon casting me in that light.

  I was just another pawn in their endless game.

  It was frustrating, and offensive, but it wasn’t my baggage to carry. It was theirs. I had one job to do – take care of Jonathan – and I was going to do it, regardless of their shenanigans.

  Jonathan’s mood plummeted the closer we got to his Saturday visitation with his mother. By Friday he was particularly cloying. He wanted to stay up late, and then found every reason under the sun to knock on my door throughout the night.

  By eleven o’clock, I tucked him into bed myself. It wasn’t in my job description to be his nanny, but his need was much too pressing to ignore. I lay on top of his covers and we cuddled together, talking about anything and everything under the sun except what he really wanted to talk about. As I sat up to turn off his bedside light, he finally came out with it.

  “Can you take me tomorrow, Rachel?”

  “Don’t you think that will complicate things, Jonathan?”

  “It’s already complicated,” he insisted, and I could hardly argue. “It’s just harder when Dad’s not home. She can’t ask me to stay with her, but she’ll cry and I’ll know that’s what she’s thinking. Then I’ll feel guilty for not wanting to go.”

  I knelt by the bed. “You don’t have to feel guilty for what you feel, Jonathan. It’s okay to feel mad, or sad, or disappointed. So does she, really. That doesn’t have to be your fault.”

  “Then why does it feel like it is?” he asked softly.

  I brushed his hair from his face. “Because you’re an amazing little boy who is far more capable of empathy than most adults I know. Feeling empathy isn’t the problem, sweetie. It’s good that you want to help others. You just have to learn that delicate balance of not hurting yourself in the process.” I tried a different tactic. “You’ve been on a plane, right?” He nodded. “You know how they give you all those safety instructions prior to takeoff?” Again, he nodded. “And they always say you have to secure your own mask before they help everyone else” Another nod. “That’s kind of like life. You can’t take care of anyone else as long as you’re suffocating. Your mom and your dad are grownups. They get to make their own mistakes and deal with the fallout. It’s not your job to save them.”

  He nodded but I could tell he was merely placating me. For all his insight, he was still just a nine-year-old boy. I sighed as I rested on my arms on the bed. “I’ll go,” I finally agreed. “But not as a substitute for your mom. I’m just there in case you need help getting your oxygen mask on. Okay?”

  He nodded again, this time with a happy smile.

  For once he wasn’t going into battle alone.

  He was still pensive as we drove to the Santa Monica Pier. I took my own car, giving both Harrison and Cleo the day to themselves, though neither of them knew what to do with it. They were both dedicated to the needs of the Fullerton family, as fiercely as if they had been relatives themselves.

  After I parked, we met up with the social worker, Mrs. Ilka Johannson, a kindly middle-aged woman whose shape was squat and round. She took Jonathan’s hand in hers and they headed off toward the carousel, where Elise waited. They would ride, grab a bite of lunch and then chat as they sat on the pier overlooking the blue swell of the Pacific Ocean, which sparkled under the blazing sun like a field of diamonds.

  I pocketed my phone, so they could buzz me when they finished, and then I headed along the concrete walkway toward the Santa Monica State Beach. Though I was 28 years old, the swings beckoned to me that beautiful summer afternoon. I loved to swing as a kid, in an old tire bound with rope to the tree just outside our farmhouse. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined being a full grown adult, swinging on a massive swing set, mere steps away from the ocean. The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed. I was giggling to myself as I kicked my legs in the sand to get even higher.

  I felt like I was flying.

  “Having fun?”

  And just like that, my good mood ground to a halt just like my swinging did. I dragged my feet in the sand until I came to a complete stop, then I turned to Alex Fullerton, who stood nearby. “I was,” I said pointedly.

  He didn’t take the hint. Instead he walked to the swing next to me
and sat down. “I guess I win the bet,” he said as he started to swing.

  My teeth ground together as my jaw clenched. “What bet is that?” I finally asked as I resumed my swinging as well.

  “I knew you’d take over the visitations. Elise said that you would never be so presumptuous. But she doesn’t know you like I do.”

  I kicked harder as I swung higher. “Funny. Considering you don’t know me at all,” I said.

  We passed each other as our swings crossed, his going up as I was coming back down again. “I knew you’d be here,” he smirked.

  “I’m here because Jonathan asked me to be,” I clarified. “These meetings upset him. But I assume you already know that since you know everything.”

  It came out much snarkier than I had intended. He chuckled in response. “At least we agree on one thing,” he said as he swung even higher.

  “Is there a point to your pestering me? Or are you just bored?”

  “I don’t get bored,” he said as he passed me again. I slowed my own swing considerably at his surprising revelation, which so closely mirrored my own thoughts on boredom. I couldn’t help but wonder exactly how much Jonathan had told him about me. Had he unintentionally armed this man with things he could use against me? Before I could ask, Alex went on. “I saw you swinging. You looked like you were having fun. So I joined you. Simple as that.”

  “Simple, huh?” I questioned. “This has nothing whatsoever to do with your isolating me away from everyone so that you can convince me to let Elise have more access to Jonathan?”

  This caused Alex to laugh harder. “Sounds like my brother already got into your head, Miss Dennehy. It’s not as nefarious as you make it sound. I just wanted to swing next to a pretty girl. No harm in that, is there?”

  I made a face as I stopped the swing. He really had gone too far. “Good day, Mr. Fullerton,” I said as I rose from the swing and pointed myself back to the pier.