“Alex, please don’t do this. Not now,” Claire pleaded. The high heels she had planned to wear to Brice and Kendall’s rehearsal dinner still dangled in her hands. “I have to head out. I’m already so late.”
“I don’t care.” In one swoop he shoved everything off their coffee table, and one of Claire’s glass art pieces she’d picked up while studying in Hong Kong smashed onto the hardwood floor with a giant crash. Glass exploded and popped all around the room, glittering across the floor, spelling out the warpath of an angry seven-year-old.
A seven-year-old she would never be able to reach. Who wouldn’t accept her love or comfort. Her own son.
“Stay there.” She held up a hand. “I don’t want you to get cut.”
Tears coursed down his cheeks, but he made no sound, no gesture to show he’d heard her other than standing still. Claire set her shoes on the rose fabric of one of the chairs and cautiously tiptoed through the mess to the kitchen in order the fetch the broom and dustpan. It took her ten minutes to sweep a safe path to Alex. How could she get him to see that she was willing to do the same thing in his life—create a path for him to safely navigate?
“Come on.” She held out her hand. She’d deal with the rest of the mess later tonight, after she got home from the dinner. It was already planned that Alex would crash in one of her parents’ guest rooms for the night, seeing as she’d have to be up with the birds the next morning to help with wedding day festivities.
Head down, Alex followed the cleared path, but sidestepped her hand. Without exchanging words they proceeded to the front door of their living area. Alex grabbed his backpack and Claire scooped up her purse, shoes and some other odds and ends. She opened the door and ushered Alex out into a hallway in her parents’ house.
After she broke off her engagement to Auden and returned home, her parents had renovated a part of the east wing of their mansion to accommodate a separate living area for her. That part of the house had consisted of guest suites that no one ever used. It didn’t matter how many times she had asked her parents not to alter the family home, or assured them she’d be able to get a job and find her own living situation. They were determined to lock her away in their house as if she was some shamed spinster. Once Mom and Dad got an idea into their heads, there was no point in trying to reason with them. So she’d relented. Hey, the rent was free.
Claire padded down the plush white carpeting, directing Alex to the part of the house where her mother spent most of her time—a sitting room off the kitchen where she was forever perched on the sofa in her curlers, watching one of the shopping networks. She made weekly outrageous purchases that showed up in box after endless box at their doorstep. Mom often feigned innocence about placing the orders, but her name and credit card were linked to every purchase. Suffice it to say, they would never run out of random kitchen gadgets.
Alex followed Claire down the stairs. His book bag dangled from his hands, so his knees hit it with every step. “I didn’t mean for the art to break.”
Claire gripped the railing and stopped. “I know.”
He took that as his signal to sit on a step midway down the staircase. “Do you have to go tonight?”
He’d been repeating the same question for the last hour as she was getting ready, which made no sense. The entire rest of the day he’d spent locked in his room ignoring her, even when she’d tried to hang out with him. Her invitation to play a board game this morning had been met with a snort.
Claire shifted the bracelets around her wrist. “I’m the maid of honor at the wedding tomorrow. Rehearsal dinners come with the territory.”
He skewed his face. “Territory?”
“I’m sorry, that’s a tough word.” It was easy to forget that English wasn’t his first language and he was still learning. “Um, I should have said it’s part of the responsibility you take on when you agree to stand up in a friend’s wedding. But, hey, you get to come tomorrow. The Holcombs will pick you up and you can sit with them during the ceremony and reception.”
“Not with you?”
“Sorry. I have to stand up front, alone. That’s part of the rules.”
“Not that I want to sit with you.” Alex curved his hand over the railing and pulled himself up again. He slung the backpack over his shoulder and plowed down the rest of the stairs, looking almost like an angst-filled teenager and not the little boy in the picture she’d fallen in love with during the adoption process. The little boy he very much still was underneath all that pain and frustration. Grief and anger aged people.
She caught up to him. “Will you be okay with my mom tonight?” Now wasn’t the time to push the word grandma on him.
“She let me play with the Slicetasic last time. She gives me guacamole and chips. They’re delicious.”
While Claire wanted to focus on why her seven-year-old was playing with one of Mom’s kitchen gadgets, she had bigger issues to deal with at the moment. Besides, she knew her mother would never do that without supervising him. More than likely, Alex was exaggerating to solicit a reaction.
Claire got in front of him and blocked his progress into the kitchen. “Then I’d like to talk about what happened back in our apartment.”
His dark hair fell so it shadowed his soulful eyes. “I don’t want to.”
“Alex.” She took a half step closer and reached out to him. He flinched and her stomach performed a nosedive. Claire let her hand fall to her side. “I love you.” Emotion thickened her voice. “You’re my son for life, no matter what. You understand that, don’t you?”
He kept his gaze glued to the floor. “Can I go find your mom?”
“Why were you so angry?”
“Dunno.” He scuffed his shoe along a color variation in the travertine tiles. “Sometimes I just am.”
She fought the urge to put her hands on his shoulders and give him a gentle shake. The contact wouldn’t help. He wasn’t receptive at the moment. “I couldn’t even reason with you.”
He tapped his temple. “In my head, I cannot reason with me, either.”
“Okay, go on in there.” Claire jerked her chin toward the door that separated the dining room from the kitchen. She wanted to hug him, kiss him on the forehead, but Alex wouldn’t want that right now, so she held back. “I know she’s waiting for you.”
Alex pressed through the door without so much as a goodbye.
Claire swallowed hard as she leaned against one of the formal dining chairs and ran her fingers under her eyes in an attempt to clear any makeup smudges. Kendall and Brice were probably wondering where she was by now. More than likely she’d have missed calls on her cell. But she needed a moment to gain her composure. What were a few more minutes when she was already so late?
The sweet hints of cigar smoke hit her a second before her dad entered the room. He shook his head. “When are you going to get that child under control? How do you figure you can run a town if you can’t even manage him?”
Awesome. So he’d overheard her failed talk with Alex.
She fiddled with her bracelets. Straightened them and then bunched them together again. “It’s not as easy as that.”
He stayed in the doorway. The house behind him was pure darkness. “I say it is.”
She geared up to try and explain attachment disorder to him again, not that it would get him to finally grasp the concept that some people couldn’t handle and control themselves at all times. “With what he—”
“Don’t talk to me like I don’t know anything about raising children. I raised you, didn’t I?”
Technically, Mom had done the lion’s share of the child rearing in the Atwood home. For most of Claire’s childhood her dad had been gone, traveling or locked away in his office until past midnight for days on end. As a child, Claire had lived to make him happy—to gain a glance, an ounce of his attention, if only momentarily. Dad had been good at giving the occasional head pat while he passed by, and that was about it.
Until the Evan situation. In that, her father had been nothing short of her hero. He’d arrived in time to pick up her broken pieces, set her on her feet again and guide her in the right direction. Without him, she probably would have tracked Evan down and pitifully thrown herself at his feet, begging him to love her. Thankfully, Dad had saved her from making a total fool out of herself. He had earned her respect that day and every day after with his patience when it came to her constantly going for another degree while dodging her parents’ relentless urging for her to find someone worthwhile to marry.
He covered a phlegmy cough. “Well, didn’t I?”
“Alex is different. His circumstances are different.”
“Don’t try to pawn off those lies the psychologist came up with. Quack doctors!” He spit the words as if they were curses. “They spin a garbage load of hogwash so that weak people can feel better about themselves. My pa tossed me out of the house when I was fourteen. He got remarried after my ma died, and his new wife wanted the kids out.” He thumped his chest. “I don’t have one of those fancy attachment disorders from that, now do I? I went out and made something of myself. Had my first million before my twenty-first birthday.”
“I know your story, Daddy.”
“Then tell that boy to shape up.” He pointed at the door to the kitchen.
Arguing with Dad was as pointless as yelling into the wind. But his attitude had the potential of being damaging to Alex, so she tried to keep their contact to a minimum when she could. Most of the time Dad was busy working, so it wasn’t all that hard to keep them separated.
Still, she liked to be aware of what Alex might have to face. “Are you planning on hanging out with them tonight?”
“Can’t. I have work. A business doesn’t run itself. Not a successful one.”
“I know.”
He took in her outfit as if for the first time. “You look too nice to go spend time with the likes of the Daniels gang. They’ll all be there, the whole pitiful lot of them.”
“I’m not going for the benefit of the Danielses. I’m going for Kendall. She’s my friend. You know that. I’ll support her no matter who she chooses to marry.” And really, Evan’s brother Brice seemed like the perfect fit for Claire’s energetic and constantly optimistic friend. Brice’s calm and steady demeanor balanced Kendall out, whereas she coaxed smile after smile from a man who not that long ago had been known as the town’s grumpy hermit.
Claire had memories dating back to grade school of overhearing her father rail about the Daniels family. Mom always shrugged it off, saying there was bad blood between the families that Claire wouldn’t be able to understand. True, because she was thirty now and she still didn’t get it. Well, she understood why he wouldn’t like Evan, but Brice had proved himself kind and devoted to Kendall. And that’s really all she cared about where her friend’s happiness was concerned.
Her father braced his hand on the door frame. “Kendall was an excellent business partner. I almost wished she would have stayed with me longer before paying back her loan so quickly.”
Claire twisted the straps of her tote in her hands. “I really need to leave.”
“I’d say have fun, but I don’t think that’s possible where you’re going.”
She slipped her heels on, gathered her bags and headed out. As she drove away from the gated Marina Lights subdivision she tried to lock away all thoughts of Alex’s troubles and her father’s less than kind attitude toward mental and emotional issues. But even when she was successful at doing that another worry roared like a caged cougar.
Evan would be at the dinner and at the wedding, filling the spot of best man. How could she manage her conflicting emotions about him when they had to walk down an aisle together? Under normal circumstances the situation would have been difficult for her, but this weekend marked what would have been the one-year anniversary of her and Auden’s wedding.
Most of the time she was confident that breaking off her engagement had been the right decision, but sometimes...sometimes she wondered if she had blown her last shot at a future. Being so close to Evan—to the love she’d felt in the past, the one that had made her realize she wouldn’t ever feel that way about Auden—hurt. It made the failure that marked her life fresh, tossing it in her face again and again. This would have been your life. Except you weren’t enough for him. In the end, Evan didn’t want you.
She would smile and laugh and pretend that proximity to him had no effect on her whatsoever. A total lie. Between Evan pulling her into his arms last weekend, his encouragement at the snow festival, the dependability he’d displayed while planning the Valentine’s Day Shuffle and the way she kept catching him staring at her with his full-on intensity, her heart was in trouble. Despite knowing better—despite knowing that he was someone who had used her and abandoned her—she had instantly reacted to the shelter of his embrace. She’d have to work double time on almost depleted emotional reserves in order to protect her heart.
Evan Daniels was just as dangerous as ever.
* * *
Claire was running late.
The rest of the wedding party, along with Laura, Kendall’s father, stepmother and half siblings, was gathered around a table at Agostini’s Italian Restaurant. Kendall’s siblings were as loud and outgoing as she was, and their conversation filled the private room to bursting. While everyone else wolfed down chicken Alfredo and made jokes about the amount of garlic Brice and Kendall were consuming, Evan kept his arm slung over the empty chair beside him, saving it for Claire.
Worry etched a deeper mark into Evan’s usual calm each time Kendall tried to call her maid of honor and got only voice mail. Where could she be? What was the holdup?
She’d mentioned the rehearsal yesterday after her landslide win at the math contest. So it wasn’t as if she’d forgotten. Something was keeping her away.
Evan pushed back from the table. “I’ll run to her house. See if something’s wrong.”
Brice caught his eye. “You think that’s a good idea?” He knew that Sesser had warned Evan to keep his distance from his property years ago.
“She’s not answering my texts.” Evan stood, slipping his phone into his back pocket.
Beside him, Laura gripped his wrist. “If something was wrong, she would have told you.” She tugged, trying to get him to sit. “You’re the first person she would have sent a message to.”
“The roads are covered in black ice. Her car could be in a ditch. Who knows—”
Kendall untangled herself from Brice’s side. “She’s here!” The bride-to-be launched herself at Claire, pulling the slender woman into a bear hug.
Palpable relief seeped through Evan’s shoulders and the muscles that crisscrossed his rib cage. A breath shuddered out. How was it that he’d gone years without worrying about her, but after a few weeks of contact he was a wreck over her well-being? Claire had mastered life in New York just fine. She was no longer the high school girl who’d asked him to put his hand at the small of her back when they entered a room. She was strong and capable and didn’t need him anymore.
In truth, she never had.
Claire offered an apology to the group and flashed a smile to the room. Her gaze skirted over Evan before he could meet it. In the glow of the flickering candles that lined the tables, Claire looked flawless in a fitted, blue knee-length dress and heels. She and he were usually the same height, but whenever she put on heels she won by a couple inches. Stuff like that bothered some men, but it had never been an issue for Evan. She had a coat draped over her arm and a sparkling clip arranged in her hair. More important than all that, though, was the fact that her eyes were red and puffy.
Back when they were dating she’d had trouble making friends. Evan was glad that she and Kendall had bonded so quickly, but did Claire have anyone else to talk to? Despite all the years and tarnished memories between them, his heart went out to her. Besides, they’d come to a peaceful truce for the mayoral race.
It was okay to be concerned about a friend.
Especially one he was in love with.
As the rest of the group reclaimed their seats and dived into eating again, Evan pulled out the chair next to him and offered it to Claire. “Looks like you’re stuck by me.”
She laid her coat over the back of the chair and claimed her seat. A waiter rushed in with a hot plate and set it in front of her. Steam wafted over her. She picked up a fork, poked at the linguini and sighed.
Evan bumped his knee into hers and found her hand under the table, capturing it in his. “Why were you crying?”
Her eyes went wide. “How do you know—”
“I can tell.” He kept his voice low and bent close so no one could overhear them.
She shook her head and a small, sad smile came onto her face. “You always could.”
“You okay?” He pressed his knee into hers again; she pressed back.
“It’s Alex. He had another outburst.”
Evan’s thumb traced a lazy circle over her palm. “Everyone okay?”
“Physically? Yes.”
“I’m sorry it’s difficult. He’s worth it, though.”
“Oh, I know. I love him.” She closed her fingers around Evan’s, her grip firm and determined. “He’s my son, Ev. I just... I wish I could get through to him. I wish he understood that I will love him no matter what—that he doesn’t have to do or be or become anything to keep my love. He doesn’t comprehend that.”
He doesn’t have to do or be or become anything to keep my love.
The words were meant for Alex, but they pierced Evan’s heart. How long had he striven to become someone worthy of the sacrifices Brice had made in order to protect him? He tried to make Brice happy—to do whatever he could so his brother would be proud. God, too, if Evan was being honest. He was involved in three different ministries in church and still felt as if he wasn’t doing enough. There was a story in the Bible about someone dying and Jesus saying, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” It troubled Evan. He often thought that if he was standing in front of God he would be told, “You could have been so much more.”
Evan cleared his throat. They were talking about Alex, not him. The focus should be on Claire’s son and what could be done to help him. Evan was a grown man. If he couldn’t figure out his life and if he still struggled to accept God’s love, that was no one’s problem but his.
“Give him time.” He patted Claire’s hand and finally released it. “I think there’s a lot of adults who don’t grasp that concept, either.”