Enticed Page 15

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so happy,” Drew mused as he watched them bound and play on the grass.

  “Kids and dogs go together like peanut butter and jelly,” I said. “I’m honestly surprised he’s never had one before. A kid like Jonathan has everything to offer to a four-legged friend.”

  “Elise doesn’t like chaos,” he answered. “She didn’t want the mess or the smell or the noise.”

  I couldn’t imagine. Every bit of it was worth it to me, considering all the love I always got in return. The only reason I hadn’t gotten another dog after Jason died was because I didn’t want to risk losing anything else I loved.

  After playing with Yoda, I realized how completely misguided that was. I had missed out on cuddles and kisses and wiggly little furry bodies warming my lap. Yoda was a happy little dog with a permanent smile on his face that made all the yucky stuff in life a little more bearable.

  That night I wrote a check for the remainder of my winnings to fund a Pug rescue in our area. Yoda and the priceless reminder of unconditional friendship had been the real winning bets that day.

  Best of all I got to take that smug smirk off of Alex’s face for once.

  Overall it had been an entire day made of win. I treated myself to a bubble bath and a book, along with a rare glass of wine, before turning in for a blissfully dreamless sleep.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The next few months followed the same kind of pattern. Drew still had to travel extensively as part of his job, so Monday through Friday Jonathan, Yoda and I conquered much of L.A. as a fearsome threesome.

  Weekends, however, were designated “family” time. We went to Disneyland the weekend after the races, which both distracted me from Jason’s birthday as well as reminded me vividly of what I lost. My hosts, however, gave me little time to be depressed, mostly because Jonathan understood the significance of the date. He was attentive and affectionate as he dragged me from ride to ride. A part of me felt somewhat guilty to laugh or have fun, but somehow I knew that this was part of the healing process. It actually connected me more to Jonathan than I already was.

  After that we visited almost every big park from Los Angeles south to San Diego every weekend thereafter. I would have declined, allowing Jonathan and Drew to bond with one-on-one father/son time, but Jonathan always insisted that I come along. One Friday afternoon, when I had gently insisted that I wasn’t, in fact, part of the family and as such it wasn’t entirely inappropriate for me to accompany them everywhere, he simply said, “I know how it feels to be left out.”

  So I swallowed my protests and joined them wherever they happened to go. Saturdays were our beach days. After Jonathan visited with his mom, we would spend the day playing on the sand or frequenting the park. Jonathan finally convinced us to join the trapeze school, which had been frightening as hell the first few lessons. After that, it became the thing we all looked forward to all week.

  The scariest part of my Saturdays included time alone with Drew, who would always insist on driving us to the beach himself. We’d often window shop at the Third Street Promenade outdoor mall across the street from the beach, just to make ourselves scarce while Jonathan visited with his mother.

  Drew was continually surprised at my absolute lack of interest in shopping for the sake of shopping. Designer clothes, shoes and accessories generally held no interest for me. Personally, I thought it was ridiculous to own a purse that cost more than the petty cash I kept in my wallet.

  “You can definitely tell that you are not from Los Angeles,” he would grin.

  Around that time I’d see a housewife powerwalk past me wearing designer workout gear with words across her butt and wryly reply, “One of the many ways.”

  This didn’t stop me from weighing in, when asked, about his own clothes purchases. I had put together more than one suit for him. That was the highlight of our time alone together. I was essentially dressing one of the most influential businessmen in the world, and it certainly didn’t hurt that he was even more handsome than any mannequin that modeled the clothes in the window. Whether I dressed him up or dressed him down, it was my job to study his body and how to make him look even more appealing than he already did.

  It would have been the easiest money I ever made, had I taken any money for my services.

  Though the press had made only a passing footnote about me from that first outing at the racetrack, I really hit their radar once they got wind of our repeated shopping excursions. It was hard to color me in as a simple teacher or nanny when I was spending significant time alone with Drew, doing what girlfriends, wives or lovers typically did. We never once walked out of any of those stores with bags containing anything for me, but the rumors of me being a possible gold-digger rose in tabloid press, growing from a dull hum to a low clamor as the weeks wore on.

  I refused to read the reports. The girl they wrote about didn’t exist; therefore it had nothing whatsoever to do with me. Jonathan was thriving as a result of the hard work I was doing in my actual job, but that wasn’t the kind of thing that sold rag mags.

  And it wasn’t like I could speak openly to the press about my position anyway. Thanks to the non-disclosure agreement, the only arrow in my quiver of defense was silence. One Saturday, as Drew and I ate ice cream cones on the swings, he explained that negative press about the two of us served a positive purpose: it kept his son out of the headlines.

  “I’ve never contradicted anything they had to say, even when they would print outright lies,” he said. “Anytime I showed up with a beautiful woman on my arm other than Elise, I was instantly accused of sleeping around. But the boring old truth is that I never cheated on Elise prior to her first affair. I was the victim of a bad reputation I never challenged.”

  “And it cost you your marriage,” I said.

  He shrugged. “It wasn’t much of a marriage. I worked a lot and she shopped as much as I worked. We grew apart, especially after Jonathan was born.”

  I understood that more than he could know.

  “The press was cruel to her, too, particularly while she was pregnant. She gained over forty pounds with Jonathan, which was pretty traumatizing for her. She’d always been thin thanks to her dancing career, but getting pregnant efficiently ended that dream. That was the first nail in the coffin. She felt like failure and the paparazzi were ruthless in how they portrayed her in the press. They took photos of her when she was least expecting, publishing photos of her in her ‘fat’ clothes when she wasn’t made up, which was devastating for a girl who had been so recognized for being so beautiful and athletic. When I would show up in the tabloids arm in arm with a beautiful woman, it was easy to connect the dots that I no longer found her attractive and had chosen to play the field.”

  “Did you find her attractive?” I asked, although I wasn’t sure why I cared.

  “No,” he answered honestly and directly as he looked me in the eye. I nodded and looked away, so he further explained, “It wasn’t so much her weight, but how she felt about her weight. She no longer felt sexy, so she wanted nothing to do with any kind of intimacy. She wouldn’t even change in front of me anymore, and if she did make love to me, it was in the dark with little to no enthusiasm.”

  It was an intimate conversation that had no real place between an employer and his employee, but I found myself unable to put the brakes on the runaway train. Clearly he wanted, needed, to talk about it.

  “Worse, she continually put herself down. I tried to argue at first but it was pointless. No matter what compliments I gave, she couldn’t see past her own reflection in the mirror. Her critical inner voice was the only one she heard. In the end, she agreed with all those hateful reports from her critics. I thought maybe, once Jonathan was born, she’d lose the weight and regain her self-esteem. By then, she hated herself so much that even when she lost the weight, she had become so accustomed to seeing her flaws she couldn’t properly celebrate any victory. After that she wanted a nose job, then a boob job, or this
new dress or that new pair of shoes. She was filling her holes from the outside in and it became a full-time job just to deal with her. Frankly I was tired of it. I spent more and more time outside the house simply because it was easier to keep company with whole, healthy people.”

  “Easier for you,” I said. “But where was Jonathan in all this?”

  A look of regret crossed his face as he stared out the ocean. “That was the true casualty of our marriage. I didn’t realize how much her own self-loathing prevented her from bonding with her son. Maybe she resented him for the demise of her career or the damage to her body, but her neglect of Jonathan began almost from birth. We had nannies to take care of his immediate needs, so she was able to throw herself into Project Elise from the time she got home from the hospital. She was often too busy to hold him or cuddle him, or really bond with him. Yet she’d grow resentful of anyone who got close to him, and would find any reason to fire them, one after the other, even if she had to make something up.”

  I nodded. This likely contributed to all those rumors of his hooking up with the help, all those lovely young au pairs who had littered Jonathan’s past.

  He went on. “Looking back I can see that it was likely post-partum depression, but I was clueless as to how to manage that then. Father was alive at the time, and his focus was business. He convinced me it was her job to pull herself together, and I guess I just assumed that she would.” He looked at me. “She didn’t.”

  “Maybe she couldn’t,” I suggested.

  “Maybe,” he considered.

  “She obviously loves Jonathan in her own way,” I said. “Otherwise she wouldn’t fight so hard to see him, even with all the complications.”

  He chuckled humorlessly. “Or she finally found the one thing she can do to punish me for ruining her life.” Off my incredulous look he said, “We’ve been hurting each other for a very long time, Rachel. This is just par for the course.”

  “It doesn’t have to be. It only takes one of you to be a hero.”

  “I think you’re that hero,” he replied softly. “I wish we had found you a long time ago.”

  I shook my head. “I’m just an objective observer, often telling you what you already know.”

  “Take the compliment,” he commanded softly. “You’re good at what you do. And you’re a good person, who sees the best in everyone and every situation. That’s actually a breath of fresh air in my world.”

  I could see what he meant the more time I spent at his offices in downtown Los Angeles, around his equally driven staff, his ambitious clientele and his elite board of directors. Their world was cutthroat, and only a certain type of person could really excel among them. Oddly, as time passed, I started to understand why Alex would turn his back on it. It seemed so pointless, an endless rat race where only the most brutal survived.

  I certainly never expected to find myself there in their midst, but since Jonathan was doing so well in the curriculum I had designed for him, Drew suggested that we devote one day a week learning about the company. And since this would be Jonathan’s business one day, I could hardly argue. He could often see what he was learning “in class” put in practice in day-to-day life, which invested him more fully in his studies.

  We even sat in on occasional board meetings, which were more stressful than they had to be considering Alex was always in attendance.

  Thanks to Drew’s presence, I had a bit of a buffer when it came to Drew’s annoying brother. He watched me carefully behind hooded eyes, assessing every single move I made. Even if he couldn’t openly criticize me about the choices I made, I knew from the look on his face he judged me for every single one.

  Apparently he believed all my negative press. I wasn’t completely convinced that he wasn’t behind it. Either way, he no longer felt the need to persuade me over to his point of view, so our contact had been minimal. If Drew was out of town, Alex would come over to see Jonathan, content to play with his nephew and Yoda in the yard than venture into the house to find me wherever I was hiding at the time.

  Boundaries had been established for better or worse, and I was prepared to enforce them… even if it meant that Alex would misconstrue every move I made.

  He was going to do that anyway.

  As summer gave way to fall, we had all fallen into a comfortable routine. Though I was technically an employee, I finally felt more comfortable in the palatial home. I cooked quite a bit, which allowed Cleo to carve out a little more time to herself. She passed on the positive mojo by helping Harrison in his tasks, which blurred the lines considerably on whose job was whose. It taught Jonathan to pitch in, adapting to different tasks, taking responsibility for things that needed to be done, rather than waiting around for someone else to do it. We all maintained a happy balance that an outsider might mistake for the traditional family unit that Jonathan so coveted.

  By late September, the family court reviewed Jonathan’s impressive progress. Elise kept pushing for joint custody, but the judge budged only enough to give her unsupervised day visits, effectively ending our Saturday routine. Jonathan cried that whole night when he and Drew returned from the hearing, which angered Drew to the point of slamming into his study to drown his own frustration in alcohol.

  After giving him a little time to work it through on his own, I knocked gently on Jonathan’s door. He opened it and threw himself into my arms. “It’s going to ruin everything!” he wailed into my chest.

  “Oh, Jonathan,” I said as I cuddled him close. “It’s just a change. Progress into new territory can be scary but it’s generally never as bad as we fear.”

  He shook his head. “She’s going to try to poison me against Dad. She’s done it before.” His arms tightened around me. “And she’s going to go after you, too. I just know it.”

  I disentangled the distraught boy. “Sweetie, it doesn’t matter what anyone says. That can’t change the way you feel unless you choose to let it.”

  He shook his head. “She won’t be happy until she wins.”

  I pulled him to his bed and sat him down. “Jonathan, I know this is confusing. These are adult matters and they don’t make sense no matter how old you are. But she’s your mom. She loves you, I know she does.”

  Again he shook his head. “She hates me, Rachel. The only reason she wants me is because Dad does.”

  I pulled him into the crook of my arm. “I don’t believe that for a second. Giving birth rewires a woman. I don’t care who she is or what she does.”

  He hugged me tight around the middle. “I wish you were my mom.”

  I definitely didn’t feel comfortable entertaining that train of thought. “Jonathan…” I started.

  “I know it’s mean,” he acknowledged with a loud sniffle. “But that’s how I feel.”

  I sighed as I kissed the top of his head. “There’s no shame in feeling. Even the bad stuff. It’s all part of being human. But you want to know what the best part of being human is?” He nodded as he looked up at me. “We can change. We can adapt. We evolve. We can take all those negative feelings and turn them into positive action.”

  He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “How do we do that?”

  I brushed his hair from his face. “I think it starts with giving your mom a chance.”

  He sighed. I could tell he wasn’t completely won over to my point of view, but he trusted me enough to consider it. “Okay.”

  I slipped from his room after he calmed down enough to cuddle up with Yoda and a book. I was surprised to find Drew listening in from the top step of the staircase. I shut Jonathan’s door. “How long have you been standing here?”

  “Since ‘it’s going to ruin everything,’” he admitted.

  “That’s what happens when kids feel compelled to take sides,” I said as I led him away from the door and down the stairs. “Poor kid is torn in two.”

  “Don’t you mean in three?” he asked softly once we reached the bottom of the stairs.

  “What do you mean?”<
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  “He’s obviously transferred the love he would give to Elise onto you.” I could smell the whiskey on his breath as he scowled. “I mean, who can blame him? You’ve obviously cared more for the boy than his mother ever did.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t believe that. Deep down under all that hurt, she’s still a mother.”

  He chuckled as he shook his head. “You are something else, Rachel Dennehy. You see the world like no one I have ever met.”

  “That makes me sad for you,” I said.

  He reached up to touch my face with the light touch of his fingers. “Me, too.”

  I stepped back. “Drew,” I cautioned with a slight shake of my head.

  “Like that,” he said as he took a step forward to close the gap I had created. “Any other woman would have jumped in my bed three months ago. They would see the cars, the house, the money and the power. You only see Jonathan.”

  “He’s the only thing worth seeing,” I said.

  He nodded absently as he studied my face. “I wish I met you ten years ago,” he murmured softly.

  I arched an eyebrow. “You wouldn’t have looked twice.”

  He bent down, and for a heart-stopping moment I thought he might actually kiss me. Instead he said quietly, “Then I am a fool.”

  I was shocked speechless by his comment, unable to move away as his eyes chased after every single emotion crossing my face. Without another word he stepped past me and stalked back to the sanctuary of his office.

  I walked on shaking legs toward the backyard, where I could gulp down some fresh air. I tried my best not to read anything into Drew’s behavior. He was obviously emotional and intoxicated. He was reacting to this new change much like his son. This new complication had sent them both reeling, especially since things had finally leveled out in the past few months. I was the symbol of that stability, nothing more. Like a lighthouse in murky fog, I represented direction and safety. If Jonathan could transfer the feelings he should have for his mother onto me, then it only stood to reason that Drew might attempt to rewire any disappointment he had in his failed marriage, especially onto someone who was the complete opposite of his ex-wife.