Gary said, “I’ll ask the team’s sponsors if they’ll help, Layne. They’re responsible, after all.”
“But they aren’t, Gary.”
“I bet they’ll help anyway. And we’ll have a fund-raiser to help pay Robbie’s bills. The boys will probably like it. It could have happened to any of them.”
“Thanks, Gary.” Layne glanced at her watch and stood up. “I’d better get supper started. I doubt Robbie is any hungrier than I am, but I suppose we have to eat.”
“Let me take you out, Layne.”
“I wouldn’t be very good company.”
“I don’t care about that. You deserve a break. Sorry — bad choice of words.”
Layne smiled reluctantly. “I don’t know about Robbie, though. He may not be at his most pleasant. He was moody all the way home.”
“Of course. The poor child is scared.” Gary searched through Clare’s box of caramels till he found one with a chocolate center. He offered the box to Layne.
She shook her head. “It’s no wonder that he’s scared, I suppose. He’s never even been
admitted to a hospital before.”
“Why don’t you leave him with me tonight, honey,” Clare suggested. “We’re having
lasagna. It’s no trouble to put an extra plate on the table. And I think you need to get out, and away from Robbie.”
“It might be a good idea for him to get away from me, too,” Layne mused. “All right, Gary.
Let me change my clothes.”
“You don’t need to. I’m not very elegant,” Gary said and waved a hand at his Angels
uniform and running shoes. “I’m not going to take you to any fancy place.”
“1 thought for certain that you had reservations at Felicity’s,” Layne teased. “I want to change, Gary; I’m hot and sticky. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Robbie was lying on his stomach in front of the television set, the cast propped up on a pillow. He shot a look up at Layne as she came through the room, then turned his attention back to the cartoon.
He looks guilty, Layne thought, and a sudden rush of love came over her. He was only eight. This was an awful burden for him. He’s afraid to talk to me. He’s afraid to tell me even how scared he must be of having surgery, because all I’ve been talking about is the money.
She sank down on her knees beside him and held out her arms. Robbie uttered a half-sob, half-groan, and flung himself against her, nearly knocking her over. They sat there together on the floor for a long time.
Finally, she hugged him again and said, “You’re invited to have lasagna over at Clare’s tonight.”
“What are you doing?”
“Gary’s taking me out.”
“He takes you out a lot lately,” Robbie mused as he followed her down the hall to her
bedroom.
Layne was startled by the note of unhappiness in his voice. “I thought you liked Gary.”
“I do — for a coach. But he thinks he’s going to be my dad. He isn’t, is he?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” Layne said warily. “Has he told you that?”
“Oh, not right out. But I can tell. He’s trying to make me think that he’d be an okay
stepfather.”
Layne started to brush her hair. “And you’re not convinced?”
“Heck, no. Nobody’s ever going to take the place of my real dad.” Robbie’s voice was
definite.
Layne winced. What place was that, she wondered. Just what place in a small boy’s life did he reserve for the father he had never met?
“You’re always going out with Gary,” Robbie pointed out. “And you don’t go out with
anybody else.”
“I like him. He’s fun to be with, Robbie. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to marry him.”
“Well, you’d better not,” Robbie announced fiercely.
“Do you feel abandoned when I go out with Gary?”
“No. But Clare doesn’t have to babysit, you know. I can take care of myself.”
Layne dropped a kiss on the top of his head. “I know. But I’m not sure I could handle
leaving you alone. So why don’t we just agree that the babysitting is for my benefit, and not for yours?”
Robbie thought it over. Then he grinned and flung his arms around her. “All right, Mom.
That means I’ve got the only mother on the block who needs a babysitter!”
*****
Sunshine poured in through the big kitchen window and played around Layne’s head. An
observer with a bent for poetry might have said that it looked like a halo above the glossy brown hair; Layne would have laughed. But there was no such observer. Robbie sat across the table from her, but he was too deeply absorbed in his corn flakes to pay any attention to poetic imagery this morning. Even Beast was more interested in his breakfast than in Layne.
She held her coffee mug in both hands, elbows propped on the table, and watched her son.
Robbie seemed to be back to normal, last night’s fears forgotten. Layne knew it couldn’t be quite that easy, but she nevertheless envied his attitude. He was certain that somehow, things would work out. She wished she could be as calm.
She studied him, his head bent so far over the cereal bowl that the black eyelashes seemed to lie on his cheeks. One well-shaped hand busily spooned cornflakes, the other turned the pages of a book now and then. It was computers again this morning, she concluded. Robbie was trying to teach himself to program a computer to play games. He’d really like to have a computer, but he had stopped reminding her of how much he wanted one about the time she had lost her job.
He was so fearfully handsome, this son of hers, Layne thought, and longed to reach out to stroke his hair, warm in the sunlight that brought out blue highlights in the black. The stunning good looks of the Black Irish, she thought, rarely found these days in such pure form. Kyle’s good looks, she reminded herself. It was as if she herself had nothing to do with the formation of this child; he might as well have been a carbon copy of his father No wonder Robbie had been so certain, when he saw Kyle on the television screen that day, who he was.
Robbie looked up suddenly and she was startled, as she always was, by the improbably
deep blue of his eyes. Never had she expected her child to be blue-eyed. Didn’t a brown-eyed parent always have brown-eyed children? But she must have a blue-eyed gene somewhere, and so Robbie had inherited Kyle’s eyes, too. Some days it almost made her angry, that nowhere in Robbie could she see a single physical feature of hers.
But he has inherited your gentleness, she told herself firmly. That could not have come from Kyle, who didn’t know what compassion meant. Kyle could never have cried over a baby robin who fell from the nest. Robbie had, yesterday, and then had carefully buried the broken little body.
“Why are you staring at me?” Robbie asked.
“Was I? I’m sorry.” Layne reached for the coffeepot and refilled her mug. It would be the last pound of coffee she could afford to buy, she reminded herself as she sniffed the aromatic brew. Gourmet coffee was not a necessity, and so she would do without it. Each dollar she could save would make it easier to get through the summer.
“You always tell me it isn’t polite to stare,” Robbie pointed out.
“I know. It must have been that you look exceptionally handsome this morning.”
Robbie considered that, and then went straight to the heart of the matter. “You’re still worried, aren’t you?”
Layne stirred her coffee. “Of course I am.”
“Wouldn’t Dad help us? With the money, I mean?”
“He might. But I’m not going to ask him, and that’s the last time I want to hear the subject mentioned. All right, Rob?”
“All right,” Robbie said reluctantly, and instantly Layne felt a pang of guilt. Robbie didn’t understand why she never wanted to talk about Kyle. It hadn’t been necessary to be quite so abrupt with him.
Beast licked the bottom of his dish, took a long slurp from his water bowl, and returned hopefully to the food dish, half-expecting that someone might have refilled it while his back was turned. When his nose encountered only emptiness, he lumbered across the kitchen and nudged Layne’s hand, spilling her coffee. She set the cup down with an exclamation.
“Darn it, Beast! Robbie, can’t you do something with this dog? All he does is eat and
aggravate me these days.”
“I can’t walk him, Mom. I tried, but he pulls me off my feet.”
“Well, see if Tony will. He’s eating like a horse and getting as big as one too, with no exercise.”
Beast took her words as encouragement. He reared up to grin in her face, and Layne
recoiled. “And he never got his promised bath either,” she reminded.
“I’d do it, Mom, but he’ll get my cast all wet.”
“Then you may do the breakfast dishes instead, Robbie, and I’ll bathe the dog. Because we aren’t both staying in this house in this condition,” she told Beast, who grinned again and tried to wash her face with his tongue.
“I’ll do dishes if we can bake a cake later,” Robbie bargained. “Chocolate, maybe?”
“Maybe. But I have to get to work on Mr. Hamburg’s life story. I’ve been putting it off, and he’s going to be bringing another installment any day now.”
“He’s a pain. Why do you work for him?”
“Because no matter how much he complains, he eventually pays my price. And quit
postponing the dishes. I’m not going to forget about them.”
Robbie started to run dishwater, then turned the faucet off. “Here comes Gary,” he
announced. “Can I wait till after he goes home? How was your date last night?”
Layne groaned. “You entertain Gary,” she suggested. “And tell him that I have already
started Beast’s bath, and I cannot be interrupted.”
“The date wasn’t so good, huh?” Robbie concluded.
Layne didn’t answer. She grabbed the dog by the collar and dragged him into the
bathroom.
“Darn Gary anyhow,” she muttered as she started the hot water running in the bathtub. And darn Robbie. If he hadn’t told her that Gary was acting like a stepfather, she probably would never have noticed. But Robbie had said it, and Layne had found herself looking for hidden meaning in everything Gary had talked about last night.
And she had found it. Gary’s tone when he talked about Robbie was just a little too
conciliating, a little too favorable, to be that of a mere friend.
She had always enjoyed Gary’s company, since the day he first showed up at her desk at the high school. He taught social studies and coached wrestling and baseball, and since the day he first saw Layne he had always seemed to have an errand in the office. When he discovered she had a son, he hadn’t rested until he had diagnosed Robbie’s potential as a Little Leaguer. He had been exactly what Layne needed—a friend who was always there to listen, a man who
helped her understand that all men were not like Kyle, and a male who made himself an uncle to Robbie.
But she had never considered him as a possible husband. Gary was a survivor of a bad
marriage, too, and Layne had assumed that he was as unwilling as she to try again. But he had made it clear last night that he expected it to be only a matter of time before they were married. It was all in the nicest possible way, of course. No pressure, just confidence that she agreed with him.
And now Layne was faced with a dilemma. It was natural that he thought that; she had not dated anyone else in the year that she had known him. But marriage to Gary—or, indeed, marriage to anyone—had never crossed her mind, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to think about it now. She had tried to tell him that last night, but Gary had just smiled.
The water steamed gently in the bath, and she looked from it to Beast, who was huddled in the corner of the bathroom trying to make himself invisible. His head was hunched and his eyes were hidden behind the long hair. He apparently thought that if he couldn’t see Layne, she couldn’t see him, either.
“If you’re trying to disappear, Beast, you’re going to have to find a bigger room to do it in,” she recommended. But if the dog didn’t want to get in the tub, what was she going to do about it? Beast must weigh a hundred and fifty pounds.
She opened the door a crack. “Rob! How do you get Beast into the tub?”
“Just tell him,” Robbie advised from the kitchen. “But you have to be firm.”
“Terrific,” Layne muttered. “Firm is not my best thing.” But she put her hands on her hips and ordered, “Get in the tub, Beast.”
Beast cowered.
“You look like an abused dog to me, all right. And if you don’t get in, I may just beat you,”
Layne told him. She tugged on his collar, exerting all her strength, and succeeded in getting him six inches closer to the water.
Robbie’s head came around the bathroom door. “Beast, get in the tub,” he ordered, and
Beast rolled his eyes and held out an appealing paw. “Nope,” Robbie said, and Beast crawled across the bathroom floor in slow motion and clambered up on to the edge of the bath. He stopped there to give his small master another chance to change his mind.
“Get in,” Robbie ordered, and the dog, his tail tucked, splashed awkwardly into the water.
“Thanks, Robbie,” Layne said. She hardly believed her eyes.
“You just have to make him believe that you mean it. The shower is the easiest way to get him wet all over, by the way.”
“Now you tell me.”
“Tony’s here. Can we watch TV?”
“If the dishes are done. Is Gary still here?”
“Yeah. He said he’d drink coffee and wait for you to finish with the mutt.”
“Marvelous.” Layne turned on the shower. The plumbing was balky today, and the shower, always slow to start, seemed to be on strike.
“Why does he always call Beast a mutt? Hey, don’t forget to take off his flea collar. It’s still good for a couple of months if it doesn’t get wet.”
“I couldn’t see it under all the hair. Thanks, Robbie. I think we just saved a few dollars.”
Layne reached for the collar and the shower spit into action, catching her with a full stream of cold water. She fell back, sputtering, and Beast tried to get out of the bath.
After that, the bath was downhill all the way. By the time Beast’s coat was lathered, Layne had nearly as much shampoo on her as on the dog, and she kept having to mop water off her face with a towel so she could see. Finally she just turned the shower on and held Beast under the stream, her hands twisted into his long hair to keep him still. He might not have had a complete bath, but it would hold him till Robbie was out of a cast and could do a better job. Besides, she couldn’t possibly get any wetter; what difference could it make?
She heard a sudden sharp yell from the living room and jumped, startled. Beast tried to pull away, but when he saw the look in Layne’s eyes he subsided under the shower again.
Gary said, from the far side of the bathroom door, “Layne, who do you know who drives a Mercedes?”
“What? I can’t hear over the water.”
He pushed the door open. “Somebody just pulled into the driveway in a white Mercedes,
and Robbie took off like a shot.”
“A Mercedes?”
“That’s what I said.”
Beast took advantage of her slackened attention and pulled out of her grip. One leap and he was out of the bath; another and he had brushed past Gary, whose coffee cup went flying, and was down the hall, trailing soapy water. Layne was right behind him.
She turned the corner from hallway into living room less than a yard behind the dog and stopped dead when she saw Robbie at the front door. For standing beside him, one hand on the child’s shoulder, was a tall, black-haired man whose blue eyes were dark with cynicism.
“Kyle,” she breathed.
He was wearing a light gray suit; his skin, tanned by the summers he had spent on the job sites, was dark against the blindingly-white collar of his shirt. The tailored suit showed that he was as slim as he had been that day almost ten years ago when Layne had first laid eyes on him.
There were changes, of course, even if they hadn’t showed up in the newspaper photograph.
There were some new lines in his forehead, as if he found a lot to frown about, and she’d been right about the fleck of white hair at each temple.
But he was just as compellingly attractive as he had ever been. He looked marvelous.
Too bad, Layne thought, that she couldn’t say the same for herself. Her hand went
automatically to her hair, and encountered a clump of shampoo suds—one of several places Beast had left his mark. One wet brown strand of hair hung in her eyes. Her low-necked knit shirt was soaked. Her sandals squeaked with every movement. She was probably standing in a puddle.
And she remembered the first time she had ever seen Kyle Emerson, the day he had
stopped to deliver a message from his father to hers and caught her in her favorite ancient bathrobe recovering from flu. That day he had been fresh from the construction site and had been wearing jeans and a blue work shirt unbuttoned to the waist to bare a darkly tanned chest covered with curly hair. Even hot and undeniably sweaty, he had exuded a sexuality so strong that Layne, innocent as she had been at seventeen, had been rocked nearly off her feet.
Now Kyle was thirty-five, an executive instead of a manual laborer, and driving a
Mercedes instead of the Jeep that had been their transportation in the old days.
Facing him today in that elegant suit was nothing like the day of their first meeting. It was infinitely more difficult, Layne thought. And she realized, with her second thought, that the sexuality that had such an effect on her at seventeen was still there, and it was just as strong today.
Kyle raised a hand to stroke his tie, and his eyes traveled from her head to her toes, which were wriggling self-consciously in the wet sandals. “Well, Layne...”
What was going to come next, she wondered. I’ve missed you? How you’ve grown up?
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