Laurie Paige – Wanted: One Son (страница 3)
She fell back against him, and he realized he’d taken her by surprise. Strength flowed into him in a tidal wave of adrenaline and hunger. She wasn’t a featherweight, but neither did she feel heavy. In fact, she felt wonderful in his arms, but then, she’d always felt perfect to him during those long-ago days.
“You can put me down now.”
Her voice came from far away, barely audible over the roar of the blood pulsing through his ears.
“Nick! Nicholas! Put me down.”
The sharp panic that underlined the command jerked him back from the edge of control. He released her and slammed the door.
Stalking behind the truck, he paused and swiped a hand over his forehead where sweat had gathered in a fine-beaded sheen. He caught sight of himself in the tinted rear window.
Picture of a haunted man.
He yanked his sunglasses from his shirt pocket and jammed them on his nose. There, he thought, that at least hid the treachery of raging lust from her view. The anger surged anew. He didn’t want to be susceptible to Stephanie. He forced himself to calmly walk to the driver’s door and climb in.
When the engine was purring, he flicked the fan to high. Cool air swirled around them, drowning out the need to talk as he eased into gear and headed for the heart of the. town nestled in the foothills of the Rockies, an hour out from Denver.
Stephanie hopped out of the truck before Nick had a chance to come around and lift her down. His eyes, dark as bitter chocolate when he removed his sunglasses, bored into hers.
“Thanks for the ride. And for taking care of Doogie.”
“It was nothing.”
She nodded, closed the door and dashed across the parking lot to the boutique before he could say more. One thing she didn’t need was advice from a thirty-four-year-old bachelor on how to raise her son. She was only three months younger than Nick Dorelli. She and Doogie were doing fine, just fine.
Anxiety belied her shaky confidence as she walked into the cool, pleasant interior of the shop. “Doogie?” she said.
“In your office,” Pat, the assistant manager, told her.
Stephanie hurried toward the back. No surge of satisfaction filled her as it usually did when she walked through her little kingdom, as Clay had once called it.
Passing the curtained dressing rooms, she entered the back hallway and went into the office, which was piled high with catalogs and samples. Her son sat in a wing chair, one leg thrown over the arm in a careless position. She noticed his sneakers were wearing thin. He’d soon have a hole under the ball of his big toe. She sighed. Twelve-year-olds went through everything—clothes, shoes and food—so fast.
“I just spoke to Officer Dorelli,” she said, slipping into her chair behind the desk. She hooked a strand of hair behind her ear and looked at her son. Really looked at him.
He was more than cute. He already showed the lanky form of her family and the stunning good looks of his father. His hair was dark, almost black, and he had brilliant blue eyes, a true blue, unlike hers that had a dusky gray tint.
Doogie swallowed, but he said nothing.
“Well?” she demanded, suppressing an urge to bawl like a baby rather than act the reasonable parent
.
She didn’t want to deal with this on top of worrying about money, mortgage payments and keeping the store profits up in face of each downward turn in the economy. She didn’t need the constant reminder of her youth and its romantic, idealistic dreams, as personified by Nick Dorelli, invading her peace of mind. Life could be cruel….
“What have you got to say for yourself?” she asked her son.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? You’re caught shoplifting and you have nothing to say?” The silence stretched between them. “Why?”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t gonna keep it It was…well, like I just wanted to watch it, then I’d have brought it back.”
“You could have rented it. You got your allowance this morning. Why didn’t you do that?”
He squinched his face up as if thinking about it was really hard. She noticed the smoothness of his skin, how tan he was already this year, except for a scar running from the edge of his chin down under the line of jawbone. He’d fallen and split his chin open on a skateboard last year.
When he’d walked in the door of the shop, blood running down the front of his T-shirt like a river, her heart had stopped. She’d taken him to the emergency clinic where they’d put eight stitches in to close the cut. Had anyone ever remarked on the difficulties of raising a child alone?
The sardonic humor helped keep the despair at bay. She had a million things to do to get the store ready for the Summer Madness sale coming up next week. Time was a pit bull, always snapping at her heels.
“Doogie?”
“There was a line. It was too much hassle.” He shrugged, defiant as only an adolescent can be.
“Hassle,” she repeated. She tried to be calm, to speak without accusation in her voice. They had to get to the bottom of this. “Shoplifting isn’t a minor infraction or a fight with a friend. It’s stealing.”
“I wasn’t stealing. I’d have brought it back tomorrow.”
“Taking something without permission is wrong, no matter what your intentions might be.” Nausea gripped her as she tried to speak reasonably and appeal to his finer qualities. “Think how you would feel if Clyde took your baseball mitt without asking you first. You’d think someone had stolen it.”
“Clyde’s a dork.”
She remembered the two boys were no longer friends. “But think how you’d feel,” she persisted. She had to get through to him somehow. “You’d be hurt. And angry. That’s how I feel.”
He kept his gaze fixed on the floor at his feet, looking very much like his father when she’d tried to talk to him about the problems in their marriage. Men. They never wanted to hear the bad stuff, only the good.
“Think about how you would have felt if it had been your father who had answered the call and found his son was accused of shoplifting. Think about how he would have felt.”
Two circles of shame formed in the boy’s cheeks. Good. Maybe her words were getting through to him. His father had been one of the best deputies in the county. He’d died a hero, leaping in front of a bullet which would have hit a woman holding a child. His bullet-proof vest deflected the first shot, but not the second that went in his neck. He’d bled to death before the paramedics arrived.
Doogie didn’t stir from his sullen position. She felt an upsurge of fear and helplessness. “Well?” she demanded. “What have you got to say for yourself?”
He stared at the floor.
“You will return to Mrs. Withers tomorrow,” she decided.
He blinked at that. “I don’t need a baby-sitter.”
“A person who can’t be trusted out on his own does.” She caught sight of her face in the decorative mirror on a highboy beside the door. She saw desperation in her eyes and willed it away with an effort. “This was a trial period, remember? You said you wouldn’t be bored here at the office.”
“I’m not bored.” His mouth pulled down at the corners while his bottom lip puckered stubbornly.
She took a breath and spoke firmly. “What happened this morning tells me I was wrong to listen to your arguments.”
“It was just a dumb video. It didn’t mean anything. I’ll never do it again.” His voice, deeper of late, segued into a treble. He gestured with his hand, a quick, angry flick as if to throw out her statement.
His hands were large, more those of a man than a child. He was growing up. Twelve years old and he was only three inches shorter than she was. In another couple of years, he’d be as tall…and much stronger.
If she couldn’t use words and reasoning to control him now, what would she do then?
“You’ll go back to Mrs. Withers for the rest of the month. And you’re grounded for that time.”
His mouth opened in protest.
She continued. “You’ll also apologize to the store owner—”
“I already did. Nick…Deputy Dorelli…made me before he brought me over here.”
Stephanie frowned at this news. She wished Nick hadn’t been the one to answer the call on her son. It was embarrassing. However, she could handle it and anything else that came up. Being married to a policeman, she’d had to.
Her husband had loved his job. He’d loved the uniform and the camaraderie with his deputy buddies. He’d worked a lot of overtime so they could save up enough money for repairs, then he’d used every spare minute to fix up the small ranch she’d inherited. Those early years had been the best part of their marriage. She tried not to think of the later years.
“Can I go now?”
“No. You’ll stay here until the store closes at six. You should have brought something to read.” She hesitated. “Trust is a funny thing. It’s given automatically to those we love, but when it’s breached, you have to earn it. Your father would have been very disappointed—”
“I don’t care,” he muttered. He stood, shoving the chair back with his legs. “I don’t care what he would have thought. He wasn’t…he wasn’t…I don’t care.”
The
Stephanie, leaning across her desk, stared as the red imprint formed on her son’s face. Tears welled in his shocked, disbelieving eyes. He’d never been struck in his life, other than his fight with Clyde. She couldn’t believe it herself. She’d never hit another person.