by Crowe, Liz
The sob broke through before she could stop it.
“Mommy?” Katie’s small hand touched her face. “Mommy why are you crying? I’m sorry.”
“No, no, baby, it’s not you. Don’t worry.” She kissed her daughter’s flushed cheek.
“Where’s Uncle Jack?” The girl snuggled in closer. Sara shifted, trying to find a comfortable position on the rock hard emergency room bed. She figured she was stuck here for a while anyway.
“He had to go, baby.”
She slept, she thought. Or at least she dozed as much as she could sitting mostly upright and surrounded by a busy emergency department. When a warm hand touched her shoulder, she flinched.
“Jack?” she said, wishing him back. Knowing he wouldn’t be back. Not anymore. And that was one hundred percent her fault.
“Let’s get you guys home,” Blake said.
Chapter Sixteen
“No, Mom, you don’t have to do anything.” Sara had her mind half on the conversation and half on the crisis unfolding with one of her newest agents. The guy had flat out forgotten to sign a buyer’s agency agreement again and had the nerve to sit and moan when they bought from a seller’s agent at an open house.
She read the latest email from him, begging for her help. “I have to go. I’ll see you and Dad tomorrow night, at the party. How long are you staying?” She winced at the answer. “Sure, great. Yeah, Julie and I planned the whole thing. I think we’re good to go.”
Within minutes, the agent in question appeared at her door. Tall, nervous-looking, with an air of resigned desperation, he represented one of her first bad calls when it came to taking on new agents. Handsome, as required of the downtown sales people, but with nothing much behind the pretty face. She sighed and pointed to the seat opposite her desk.
“Okay so unfortunately you don’t have a leg to stand on.” He started to protest but she cut him off. “But don’t worry. I blame myself and bad training.” She leaned her elbows on her desk. “Always sign the buyer’s agency, David. This is your mulligan, okay?” The guy left without a word.
She flopped back in her chair, frustration coursing through her. This had been a hell of a day and it wasn’t about to be over anytime soon. She had Katie’s seven-year-old birthday party to host still. All forty invitees had said yes. There was a giant bouncy castle, a zillion white lights in her trees, a tent, Blake and Rob in charge of food for everyone, and booze for the parents. The weather promised to be brutally hot, just like the day Katie had been born. The added bonus of her parents’ presence promised a new level of stress.
Her father couldn’t get past Jack’s involvement in the girl’s life. The endless arguments she’d had with him for the last seven years and nine months, his harping on her decision to keep both men out of her life for so long, had suddenly shifted. Now that Jack was around, her father couldn’t stand it.
Jesus. She couldn’t win.
Keeping Jack at arm’s length, their only real communication terse and clipped, as if they’d skipped marriage and gone straight to being a grumpy divorced couple, had taken its toll on her, made her jumpy and quick tempered around everyone else.
Julie interrupted her pity party with a call. “I’m headed to your place. The girls are sleeping in the car now, but will undoubtedly be ready to party later. Your brother has the food and stuff sorted right?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s wrong?”
Her friend had a way of divining the slightest change in Sara’s mood. “Sorry. Nothing.”
“He’ll be there?”
“Yes.”
“And you have what you need for later?”
“I suppose.”
“Don’t you dare chicken out now, Sara. I mean it. I got Evan back. Now I am bound and determined that you and Jack sort things. It’s meant to be.”
“Whatever.” Sara turned onto her street, and sighed at the sight of her father’s Caddy in her driveway alongside Jack’s Corvette. “See you in a few.”
She sat in the driveway a minute, letting her mind wander, remembering the moment about a year ago that she and Jack had breached the wall she’d thrown up between them.
* * *
Sara was at work, late, on a summer evening, assuming Katie safely ensconced with her sitter, buried in sales forecasts and the infernal budgeting Jack insisted on from every manager. Her phone rang three times in a row after she ignored it, unwilling to hear any more from Jack about whatever had crawled up his ass regarding her latest budget proposal.
“Where the hell is Kate?” He yelled into her ear. He had adopted a shortened version of her already short nickname. “Uncle Jack” called her Kate. No one else did. Sara was speechless, her brain attempting to process that he had reason to ask that question.
“What…”
Jack cut her off. “She just called me Sara, from inside the track at Pioneer.” He named the high school that lay a solid ten blocks from her house. “She rode her bike, climbed the fence and now can’t get out. Goddamn it, I told you I didn’t trust that sitter. Has she even noticed? Fuck! Never mind, I’m on my way there now.”
“We had a fight this morning.” Sara slumped into her chair. “She…she told me she wanted to live with you, all the time.” The parallels to the moment they’d discovered that the girl had marched herself nearly three miles from her home to try and find his house thrummed in her ears.
That moment had been a turning point. One that had made Sara realize that perhaps being with Jack was not the answer. He was too hair-trigger, too quick to blame and yell and cause pain.
Or maybe she would never be able to admit how she felt about him, regardless of his flaws.
“I never suggested that to her. You know I don’t spoil her. She eats healthy, gets plenty of sleep, I…”
Sara ran a hand down her face. “I know Jack.” She did know. Katie told her as much.
Her daughter’s infernal ability to provoke her had escalated, and the last words out of the girl’s mouth as Sara shut the door were, “You’re a terrible mom! You’re mean and I hate you!”
“You should go,” Jack said, his voice quiet. “If it’s an issue between you two, I shouldn’t get in the middle. I don’t want her to consider me her rescue option with regard to her mother.”
“Why are you so fucking, infernally, logical?”
He laughed, and the iceberg around her heart cracked, ever so slightly. She spoke without thinking.
“I miss you.”
The silence on his end stretched out. She grabbed her keys and headed to the door.
“Let’s talk more after you get her. Tell her next time Uncle Jack says if she can climb over the fence to get in, she can climb over and get out.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“No problem.”
* * *
After that, they eased into a wary friendship-slash-truce and the entire Stewart Real Estate Company breathed a collective sigh of relief. Mainly because it meant fewer fraught upper management meetings. Jack Gordon was a hard-ass leader, tough, firm, driven and with high expectations of everyone around him. He had turned the brokerage around. But for the past year and a half he’d been impossible to work with – antsy, quick tempered, never seeming to leave the office even to sleep or eat except on Tuesdays and Thursdays – the days he had Kate at his house.
They’d returned to nighttime phone conversations that lasted long into the night nearly three or four times a week and between sorting through work issues and discussing theories of raising a successful future woman. Recently, they’d drifted into more personal details.
“So…” she’d asked at one point, needing to know but dreading the answer at the same time. “Have you, um, moved on, like I told you to?”
“Since when do I do what you tell me?”
She’d shivered at the sound of his voice. It had compelled her in so many ways, for good and bad. She needed to hear it, like she needed to drink water.
“Never mind.”
“Yeah, in all my spare time, I’m out clubbing, picking up randoms.”
“Well, there is the internet.”
“That’s sick. You gonna answer me?”
He sighed. “I’ve been out on a few dates.”
“Well, that’s good. Because you really—”
“Oh shut up. You’re jealous and you know it.”
“Yeah, I am.” She sighed. “We sure are good at bad timing, aren’t we?”
“Uh huh. You, my dear, are the queen of overreaction. But I still love you.”
Her scalp had tingled and she snuggled down in the covers. “Don’t know why. I’m a real bitch, I hear.”
He chuckled and her thighs tightened at the sound. “You horny, baby? That what this is about?”
She’d bitten her lip. “You psychic?”
“Only as relates to you.”
“Good night Jack. See you tomorrow.”
“Wait – let’s have phone sex. It’ll be fun.”
It had been her turn to chuckle. “You are so…”
“Blue-balled? Seriously Sara. I may be going out to keep myself from going crazy, but…I can’t…oh hell why am I telling you anyway. You’ll just gloat.”
“No, I won’t. Tell me.”
“Another time. When you’re on your knees, begging me.”
“Dream on.”
“No, you will be.”
She’d shuddered, her whole body on fire now with need for his hands, his lips, his voice. “Stop it.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
She’d sighed, realizing the hopelessness of her whole relationship with him.
* * *
By the time Sara got home on party day, Katie was a whirling dervish of excitement. The sitter looked harried as she relayed the afternoon’s events.
“She’s changed outfits three times and was obsessing over how to keep two of her favorite men – Uncle Jack and Grandpa – from ruining her party with arguments.” The young woman grabbed her bag, eager to escape.
“Just make sure he has his whiskey. Mama,” the girl sagely advised as she sat up on the counter and watched Sara making coffee. “He’ll be okay then.”
Sara laughed and patted the girl’s knee. “You’re almost too big to sit there. And who gets the whiskey? Grandpa or Uncle Jack?”
“Grandpa. Definitely. Uncle Jack doesn’t drink that much anymore.” She raised an eyebrow at her mother, making Sara bite down on the urge to remind Katie she’d known her Uncle Jack a lot longer. But gave up, realizing it was petty and would only lead to a fight. The girl ran for the door to meet her Uncle Rob with a huge hug.
“Princess!” Rob hauled her up onto his shoulders. Sara tried not to make the mental observation at how tightly she had all the men in her life wrapped around her grubby little finger. Since if she were honest with herself, she admired the kid even more for it. “I have your birthday feast, exactly as you requested. Want to help me set it up?’
“Yes! Yes! I’ll help.”
He winked at Sara and took the chattering, over stimulated girl outside.
Sara sipped her coffee and watched the as the bouncy castle inflated. The tent was already up, tables, plates, utensils set out by Blake and Rob’s catering staff.
Katie danced around from person to person, running her mouth. Every adult in the place was in the palm of her hand within minutes. The girl knew no strangers. She wore her heart on her sleeve, twenty-four seven. You never had to wonder what she had on her mind. Sara marveled at it, remembering her own guarded personality, even as a child.
Sara smiled, watching her. Katie’s hair had darkened to a deep chestnut brown. Her long, strong legs flashed under the crazy purple skirt she’d chosen. Sara’s eyes skipped over the carefully laid out backyard. Julie sat holding one of her baby girls, Evan the other. The twins had been a real surprise. But the man seemed utterly taken by his new role as dad. Her friend smiled at her.
Katie tugged at her sleeve. “Mommy! Can I go to Jason’s next week? He wants me over for a play date.”
“Only on Fridays, remember?”
The girl’s week had a regimen born of busy parents and her own commitments. Sara had made Jack promise to handle all aspects of the new soccer thing he’d gotten her into, and he had so far. But she wasn’t oblivious to the potential the coaches already saw in her daughter and figured she’d be in for some bleacher time soon enough.
Sara finished her coffee and wandered out onto the patio. The bar had been set up. Everything was ready to go. The doorbell rang.
It starts.
Wishing she’d reached for alcohol instead of caffeine, Sara squared her shoulders and opened the door to find a man she hadn’t seen in over a year standing there, lopsided grin and all. His deep brown eyes and still too-long blonde hair had not changed a bit but a surprisingly attractive light red beard covered his jaw.
She put a hand over her mouth.
Craig gathered her in his arms and held her close. She closed her eyes and melted into his embrace.
Craig had forgotten how much he loved having Sara in his arms.
“You’re here.” Sara’s voice muffled in his chest.
“Uncle Craig!” The squeal of delight made him release Sara and look across the yard. The girl ran straight for him. He frowned and glanced up at Sara. She smiled at him while accepting a beer from Blake. Katie launched into his arms, and he spun her around, thrilled, and shocked at how much she’d changed in a year.
“C’mon, let’s bounce!” She took his hand and let her lead him to the castle, already starting to teem with small bodies.
“You go ahead, honey, I’ll watch.”
Katie shrugged and climbed in, joining the fray and quickly becoming just another squealing participant.
“Craig.”
He turned, and shook Jack’s hand. The man had gone a bit grey at the temples but otherwise looked the same, tall, handsome, confident, and comfortable in a pair of dark jeans and a polo shirt. “Good to see you. In for a few days?”
“Ah, no actually. Moving back and joining a practice.”
Jack narrowed his eyes but slapped him on the shoulder. “Of course you are. Can’t keep things simple around here too long can we?” The two men smiled at each other and walked towards Sara and her parents, still standing up on the patio.
Chapter Seventeen
After a couple of hours, Sara thought her head would explode from noise and stress. She and Julie had planned it all out, but the actual implementation took a ton of energy.
“He’s quite the success, isn’t he?” Her father walked up to her as she took a breather from the kids.
“Who?”
Matthew pointed over to Craig, who stood admiring Julie’s twin girls.
“Sure. I guess.”
“Would be quite a catch I’d say.”
Sara turned to her mother. “Keep him away from me or I’m gonna kick him out.”
Blake walked up holding a plateful of food. “How in the hell did all that get eaten? My god we brought enough food to feed an adult army battalion.”
She glanced at him then dashed over to defuse some kind of seven-year-old ruckus near the water balloons. “Do me a solid? The next time I use ‘water balloons’ and ‘birthday party’ in the same sentence, slap duct tape over my mouth,” she tossed over her shoulder.
She saw Jack emerge from the bouncy castle, a little green around the gills. The few parents who hadn’t stuck around for the free food and booze started showing up, took one look at the chaos and started eyeballing Sara as if she were an evil stepmother, at best.
Katie sat nestled in a group of her soccer and school friends ripping paper from gifts without even noticing what they were. Sara caught Jack’s eye over the heads of the crowd hoping like hell he got the message to shut the thing down.
He did. Plucking Katie up and perching her on his shoulders, he let a few kids latch onto his legs and he walked t
he whole crowd over the patio like a tall, handsome Pied Piper. Sara smiled and turned to some mom who’d just appeared at her elbow, bitching about gluten-free cake and tree nut allergies.
It took a grand total of twenty minutes to divest her backyard of thirty-eight small, over-stimulated kids. Which left her immediate family, and close friends. She headed toward Jack. “A little over the top wouldn’t you say Gordon? The girl is only seven after all,” her father was saying.
Katie had climbed up into Jack’s lap and fallen asleep, draped over his shoulder. He kept a hand on her back. The other gripped a glass of bourbon. Sara shot him a look from behind Matthew’s, with what she hoped was a clear, “Don’t engage. It’s not worth it,” message.
He grinned and winked at her. “Yeah, maybe. But a damn good time. Glad you could make it Matt.” Sara blew him a kiss.
Julie’s question ghosted through her brain. She’d confided in her friend last week. When told she’d been determined to win him back, to convince him she was serious about them as a couple, the three of them as a family, Julie had said that now, it would be up to her. That she had to open up and admit it to him. To make herself as vulnerable as he had, the two times he’d asked her to marry him. Sara gulped, thinking of the small package she had hidden in her bedside table for later. But the surprise arrival of Craig had thrown her off. Just as she was thinking of him, he put an arm around her waist and kissed her cheek.
She smiled and turned to him. “You look great. I like this.” She ran her finger down his bearded jaw. “Sexy and rugged. Congrats on the ER thing.”
“I always planned to come back here. I hadn’t figured out how but…” He shrugged and took a drink of his beer. They stood, watching Blake and Rob relax together in her hammock. “Those two okay?”
She leaned into him. “Yeah, thank God. They’re talking about adopting, but Blake doesn’t want to.” Sara relished Craig’s way of putting her at ease no matter what.