For the Children

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  She looked him in the eye, her blond hair framing her face and shoulders, giving her an illusion of fragility. “Do you think Brian’s ready for the team?”

  “I made a deal with him.” He told her the truth. “I told him he has to gain a pound to play.”

  Her mouth opened in surprise. “The boys didn’t tell me that.”

  Kirk couldn’t help it. He felt sorry for her. “It was a guy thing,” he said inanely.

  “Okay.” She tapped the table. “I’m going to fill him up with every fattening thing I can think of for the next couple of days. Butterfinger bars, Oreo ice cream, chocolate sheet cake, French fries, all the things I don’t normally let them eat until they’ve had something healthy. I can probably bribe him to eat enough to gain one pound. Then he’s abided by your rules and earned his place on the team.”

  Her solution was a good one. Blake would win. And Brian, too; he would’ve met a standard he’d agreed to—albeit with help and not in the way Kirk had intended. But there would be time after Brian made the team to work more with the boy.

  “If he’s on the team, it’ll be with the proviso that I monitor his lunch every day,” Kirk told her. “Obviously, keeping a list of what he’s eating wasn’t enough.”

  Valerie’s smile was shaky. “Thank you.”

  He shrugged off her gratitude. Told her it was nothing.

  But it wasn’t.

  AN HOUR LATER, he was walking her to her car, basking in the admiration shining in her eyes as she laughed up at him. He didn’t bask long. If Valerie Simms learned anything about the man Kirk Chandler had been all his life, her admiration would quickly fade. She was a judge. A woman who heard the facts and passed judgment every day of her working life. He wouldn’t have a hope in hell.

  Not that he cared. His life plan no longer included self-gratification. He’d already had more than his share of that. And he’d taken far too much from too many people.

  “So,” she said, climbing into her car, “we never decided for sure. Are we friends?”

  Could the woman read his mind?

  “Sure,” he told her. Because he would be a good friend to her, watch over her sons.

  She nodded. And then her eyes grew shadowed. “But just friends, and the boys can’t know.”

  “I agree.”

  “And not just because you’re their coach.”

  “Because you don’t want them thinking their mother’s friends with a mere crossing guard?” he asked, intending the question to sound light and teasing.

  He was surprised it didn’t come out that way.

  Valerie glanced through the front glass, shielding her expression. “They’ve already lost one father, Kirk. And obviously they have a lot of unresolved issues with that. They’re my first priority and I can’t risk letting them think they might have another father, because I don’t know how it would affect them if it didn’t work out. So I just can’t get involved right now.”

  “Hey.” He reached in the open door, laid a palm on her shoulder, ignoring her softness. “It’s okay,” he told her. “I understand.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes clouded with an uncertainty he wasn’t used to seeing.

  “Honestly,” he added. “I don’t want to make any of the other boys feel any less special, and if it got around that I was friends with the Smith boys’ beautiful mother…”

  She smiled, as he’d hoped she would.

  Good. That was settled.

  They’d be friends. On a joint mission to save the children of the world.

  Friends.

  And nothing more.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE WEEK AFTER Thanksgiving, the Menlo Ranch Rangers won all three of the games they played, landing them a chance to make the play-offs. With Abraham Billings’s skill, Blake Smith’s footwork and Brian Smith’s heart, the team appeared unstoppable.

  Abraham, Blake and Brian had become quite a team off court, as well. Valerie didn’t know this just because Kirk had told her so on the two occasions they’d met that week, but because if her boys weren’t talking about basketball, they were talking about their new friend, Abraham.

  “They invited him over to spend the night,” Valerie told Kirk late Friday night. He’d called to talk her into a late-night walk, but she’d already been in bed—reading. They’d been on the phone for the past hour, instead.

  “He’s there?” Kirk sounded surprised.

  “No.” Valerie frowned. “He said he was busy to night.”

  Just as he’d been busy the other three times the boys had invited him during the past week. Just as he’d be busy the next hundred times they asked—if they asked. Valerie was fairly certain Abraham Billings would rather die than be a visitor in the home of his judge.

  Not that he’d tell her boys or, if her guess was correct, anyone else about that.

  And, ethically, Valerie couldn’t say a word, either.

  She was sitting on the floor of her room, leaning against the far wall under the windows. As far from the bed as she could get.

  And she’d put on a pair of sweats with her sleep shirt, too.

  “I don’t think he was busy,” Kirk was saying.

  “Why?” Senses honed, Valerie sat forward, her arms on her upraised knees. She shouldn’t have asked. And she shouldn’t be paying such careful attention to anything and everything her sons told her about Abraham Billings. It wasn’t right.

  And yet, with a boy’s life possibly at stake, how could she not? Would it be right for her not to do everything she could to protect a boy under her care?

  “I don’t think he’s ever busy,” Kirk said. “He sits at home with headphones on and plays video games.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Listening to him talking with the team, mostly. He has a tendency to quote alternative-rock lyrics, and when some of the guys asked him why he’s so good at it, he said he listens to them every night. Twelve years old and he spends his nights listening to alternative rock.” Kirk sighed. Valerie knew he was worried about Abraham. She wished she could discuss the case with him. Fill in some of the blanks. Ask for his opinion. “And when he’s discussing strategy or explaining a move on the court, he’ll often preface it with ‘It’s like the video game I was playing last night…”’

  “That doesn’t mean he spends his nights—”

  “I ask him,” Kirk told her. “Every day I ask what he did the night before.”

  She hadn’t realized he was that involved. But she should’ve known. It didn’t surprise her.

  “So maybe he’s just giving a pat answer to avoid your question,” she said now, running her fingers through the curls hanging over her shoulder. Hoping the boy wasn’t shut off in his room at one end of the trailer every night while his mother conducted business at the other end.

  “He’s been working all week to beat the Fire Wizard on ‘Earth Invasion.’ I get a report at every practice.”

  Oh.

  “And I’ve tried to call him a couple of times this week, just like I’ve called the other boys, to remind them to tell their parents what time the bus will get back to school after the games. He never picks up. Because he’s constantly wearing headphones.”

  “What about his mother?” Valerie asked, curling her bare toes into the carpet. “She’s never home to answer the phone?”

  “He says she’s home, but working. I guess she’s some kind of bookkeeper or something.”

  Yeah, that was what they’d heard, too. Except that she could never produce a firm for whom she worked, or a pay stub, or any evidence of a license or college degree…

  God, this was hard. Being two people at once. Both of whom wanted to do what was right for this child.

  “That’s not the worst of it,” Kirk said. “Tonight he hung around school for a long time after practice.” His voice was hesitant, as though he was choosing his words carefully. Or maybe he just wasn’t sure he should be speaking to a parent about someone else’s child.

  Valerie
wasn’t sure he should be, either. And couldn’t stop him if her life depended on it.

  “Was he waiting for a ride?” she asked, pretending she knew nothing more about the boy than what Kirk was telling her.

  “That’s what he said, but I left shortly after he did—and saw him walking home.”

  “Does he know you saw him?”

  “No.”

  “So why do you think he was hanging around?”

  “I don’t know,” Kirk said, and Valerie could hear a note of worry. “But what I think I saw was fear. Which makes no sense at all.”

  Heart pounding in her chest, Valerie held the phone with a sweaty palm. “Afraid of something at home?”

  “I hope not,” Kirk said, his voice grim. “I was hoping it was more like someone waiting to mess with him on the way home. You know, older guys. That’s why I followed him home—from enough of a distance that he didn’t know I was there, of course.”

  Valerie smiled. Kirk Chandler was a good guy.

  “I take it there was no problem.”

  “None.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “If the problem wasn’t on the way home, where was it?”

  “Unless waiting made the route safe.” Valerie hoped so.

  She could make a phone call. Sign an order, even though she wasn’t the judge on call that weekend. Have the boy removed from his home.

  She had the smoking thing to back her up.

  Sort of.

  Official channels had not brought her that piece of information.

  “What are you doing this weekend?” she asked, needing to think about something else. She just couldn’t get a clear read on the Billings case. Couldn’t quite find the detachment that came so naturally in the courtroom.

  Perhaps because she wasn’t in the courtroom.

  And that was the only place she should be dealing with the Billings case.

  “Not much,” Kirk said. “Studying films for our games next week. Working on plays.”

  “You aren’t Coach Chandler all the time,” she told him. Didn’t the man do anything outside his school functions? They simply weren’t consuming enough to fill a lifetime. Especially not the lifetime of a man as dynamic as he obviously was.

  “These boys actually have a chance to make the play-offs,” he said. His voice didn’t sound quite as…excited, as engaged, as she had a feeling it should be. Could be. He always seemed to be holding something back. “It’ll be a first for Menlo Ranch. And I’m going to do everything I can to help them get there.”

  “Surely watching films isn’t going to take all weekend.”

  “You hinting for a date, Judge Simms?” The lazy tone took on a hint of sensuality. Valerie lowered her legs to the carpet. Crossed them.

  “Of course not. I promised the boys a trip to the science museum. And there’s a movie they want to see.

  They spent the next few minutes discussing movies—most of which he hadn’t seen.

  “You did it again,” she said, breaking into his commentary on sequel films and the capital they generated—a commentary that could have been given by a financial analyst.

  “Did what?”

  “Sidetracked me from gaining any insight whatsoever into the real life of Kirk Chandler.”

  “You know what you need to know.”

  “I thought we were friends.”

  “We are.”

  “Friends get to know each other.”

  “What do you want to know?” He didn’t sound irritated exactly, but he wasn’t nearly as relaxed as he’d been seconds before.

  “Your hobbies,” she told him, surprised to find just how much she did want to know. That and everything else about him.

  It had been a while since she’d had a close friend. She could be forgiven for finding the experience addictive.

  “I don’t have any.”

  Other than tennis. Which he’d already told her he hadn’t played in years until she came along. And now he only played it with her.

  “None?” What kind of person had no hobbies?

  Except maybe her ex-husband. Work, getting ahead at any cost to anyone, had been Thomas’s all-consuming pastime.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Seemed like a waste of energy.”

  Turning off the light in her room, she returned to the floor, watching the moonbeam that pierced her wall of windows and landed on the navy carpet. An Enya CD was playing softly in the background, partly as a camouflage for her voice if the boys awoke, mostly to soothe the tension that had caused several restless nights in a row.

  “What do you do for fun?” she asked in spite of his obvious desire to talk about something else.

  “Spend my days with kids.”

  Great answer. And no answer at all.

  “You don’t watch movies, you don’t have a hobby. What happens on weekends when you don’t have basketball films to watch?” She had no idea why she was pushing this. Except that the darkness and the privacy of the telephone—where she was just a voice talking to another voice—gave her a sense of protection. Enough to take the chance.

  “I wait for Monday.”

  He didn’t sound the least bit sad about that. But his response brought tears to her eyes.

  THE REPORT WAS WAITING for her when she got off the bench Monday afternoon. Abraham hadn’t shown up for school, and the principal’s office, upon receiving no answer at home, had called Diane Moore. The probation officer had called Abraham’s caseworker from Child Protective Services. When they’d arrived at the home, Abraham was there, as was his mother. The boy had been in bed, the covers up to his neck, apparently suffering from flu.

  But when Abraham moved, the C.P.S. officer had seen bruises.

  Carla Billings had been questioned about her order to call the school anytime Abraham was absent. She said she’d meant to. Asked why she hadn’t answered the phone, the response had been that she hadn’t heard it ring.

  Her son was on probation, in danger of being removed from her home, and she hadn’t been able to do any better than she’d “meant to.”

  “I want them both in my courtroom first thing tomorrow morning,” Valerie told Leah.

  Abraham’s probation officer would make the call, ordering Carla to bring her son to court. There would be no reason given—a status hearing, under the circumstances, was not unheard of—because Valerie wasn’t going to risk giving Carla a chance to take the boy and run.

  In the morning, the woman would no longer have the chance.

  As of tomorrow, Valerie—the Arizona court—was going to be Abraham’s guardian. The thought left her feeling slightly sick.

  And Kirk Chandler would never understand.

  KIRK TRIED SEVERAL TIMES to call Valerie on Monday night. He couldn’t leave a message at home in case her boys picked up. And although he’d left a message on her cell phone, he knew she rarely had it on when she was with her sons.

  “Damn.” He slammed his fist against the pantry door in his sinfully large kitchen. Frustrated. Concerned. And uncharacteristically helpless. Kirk Chandler had a contact list long enough to fill a book. And no one to call.

  Worse, he had no knowledge upon which to draw.

  Grabbing his cell phone from the built-in counter desk next to the pantry, he punched the automatic dial.

  “This better be good, buddy. It’s after midnight here.”

  He’d forgotten Troy was on the East Coast for the next couple of days.

  “I need some advice.”

  “Now, there’s a surprise.”

  Kirk let his attorney’s derision slide. “I got a kid on my team I think was roughed up over the weekend.”

  When Abraham hadn’t shown up for practice that afternoon, he’d gone looking for the boy. And found him right where he’d expected to. Along the back wall outside the cemetery. Apparently it was a favorite place of his.

  “So call the cops.”

  “And say what? That a kid has some bruis
es?”

  “Yeah, why not?” Troy asked. It was then that Kirk heard the slur in his voice. Troy must be entertaining a woman. It was the only time his friend drank.

  “He said he fell out of a tree.”

  “So don’t call the cops.”

  “There aren’t a hell of a lot of trees here for climbing.”

  “So call the cops.”

  “What are they going to do?”

  “Listen, Chandler, I’m in acquisitions. I do mergers. Remember? The kind that make billions of dollars? I don’t know a damn thing about juvenile law.”

  “You had to learn something about it in law school,” Kirk reminded his friend. They’d been in college together. Kirk knew that Troy had had a pretty thorough overview of his profession.

  Troy sighed, sobering. “They’ll probably call Child Protective Services, who’ll most likely visit the kid in the morning,” he said.

  Kirk heard a whisper in the background. Followed by what sounded like a female whine. Or maybe a cat that wanted to eat?

  Troy didn’t have any cats. And he wasn’t even at home.

  Thanking the only man still left on his payroll, Kirk rung off.

  If nothing was going to be done until morning anyway, he’d wait and call Valerie at work. He had no idea what she’d be able to do, but he couldn’t just turn Abraham over to the police. He’d been on the receiving end of their compassion a time or two himself. And found it nonexistent.

  At least Valerie cared about her kids. Maybe she’d know a sympathetic cop to call.

  In the meantime, he was going to break open that scotch he’d been saving, sit out by the pool, slowly emptying the bottle, and pray that Abraham would be safe until morning.

  “ABIE?”

  He turned his head slowly, searching out his mother’s shadow in the darkness.

  “Yeah?”

  He almost flinched when she sat down on the edge of his bed, but not quite. He couldn’t make things any worse for her.

  “I’m sorry, baby.”