Guilty Pleasures

by Stella Cameron

  “What brought that on?”

  “Forget it.”

  The boy meandered among rows of vegetables in the kitchen garden. He gathered stones and shied them, one by one, high into the air.

  “Nasty?”

  “Here.”

  “I’m gonna get hold of the guy who took care of things when we went to Montana for that weekend. When we went to see Marta after she was born.”

  Bobby wandered from the back of the house to the side closest to Nasty and sat down to take off his tennis shoes. The dog stopped running and padded up to sit beside his boss. “Why do that?” Swinging the shoes by the laces, Bobby got up and set off again, in the direction of a path through scrubby trees to the windmill.

  “You’re really thinking about taking off, aren’t you?”

  Nasty kept the glasses on Bobby and Spike. “I may have to. First I’ve got to figure out how to cover Polly and Bobby. He’s on his way to my location right now.”

  “The boy?”

  “Yeah. I need to pack up before he arrives. No point scaring him more than he’s already scared.”

  “Okay. Just promise me one thing. Don’t make a major move until you hear from me.”

  “Dust—”

  “Let someone else do the thinking for once. Someone whose pants aren’t cutting off his circulation.”

  “Dusty—”

  “Be good to Bobby. He’s a nice kid. You’ll hear from me before dark.”

  Dusty hung up and Nasty knew better than to place the call again. If the bad-news feeling persisted throughout the day— and if he didn’t get some flash from Dusty—he’d figure a way to cover Polly and Bobby and prepare to move on.

  With the precision of long practice, he replaced his glasses and the phone in the lid of the case. He glanced at the disassembled rifle nestled in the bottom. He didn’t have to hold it to sense its exact weight against his shoulder, to feel cool pressure on his cheek as he lined up along the sight. Please God he wouldn’t have to use it at Belle Rose. He straightened and located Bobby immediately below.

  A life without surprises, without the need to live by his wits, hadn’t figured in Nasty’s plans until the Navy had offered him their desk job. Then he’d had to face the future and consider what he would do with the rest of his life.

  His scalp tightened. He hadn’t faced the future. Even now he wasn’t sure what he intended to do. Teaching weekend divers in a heated swimming pool wasn’t going to cut it for much longer.

  Hesitant feet brushed the wooden steps at the entrance to the mill. Set on a knoll, the blue structure had no real purpose other than decoration. Rose’s father had built it because she’d told him she thought windmills were pretty. White flowers and green vines were kept freshly painted on the blades.

  Spike leapt from the stairway. At the sight of Nasty, he skidded to a halt. Tail wagging hard enough to shift his entire rear end, he snuffled at the floor, then came to sniff around Nasty’s legs.

  “Hey, down below!” Nasty called out because he didn’t want Bobby shocked by suddenly finding there was someone in the mill. “That you, Bobby?”

  The footsteps stopped.

  “Come on up. Wait till you see the view from up here.”

  “What’s it for?” Bobby said, taking the steps quickly now. “It’s the windmill Dusty talked about, isn’t it?”

  “Yup.” Nasty watched Bobby’s mussed towhead appear, and the boy himself. All arms and legs, he was a thin boy, but tall as far as Nasty could figure. “This is the place. And it’s not for anything but to look at. Rose had a dad who liked to do things to make her happy.”

  Bobby pulled at the neck of his baggy, striped T-shirt. “She asked for a windmill?” The shirt wanted to slide off one shoulder or the other. “Weird.”

  Nasty smiled. “I guess you could say that’s pretty weird.”

  “Yeah.”

  A seven-year-old shouldn’t be so serious. Unhappy even? “We’re going fishing like Dusty promised.” The feeling was foreign, the inexplicable affinity that made him say something he shouldn’t say because he wanted the child to look carefree. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Mom could come, too?”

  A child should not sound so flat, or look so apprehensive. “Of course your mom will come. She wouldn’t stay behind. You know how she is.”

  “Yeah.”

  Nasty made a careful visual of the area around Belle Rose. If he used the glasses, he’d spook the kid. “Something on your mind?”

  “Nah.”

  Amazing how one very small, very clear word could convey an exactly opposing message. “Want to tell me about it?”

  The T-shirt wouldn’t stay where Bobby put it. Finally he gathered the neck in one hand. “I want my mom to be happy.”

  Nasty stopped in the middle of taking a breath. “You love your mom a lot.” They were the first words that came to him.

  “She worries.”

  “Does she?”

  “You’re her friend.” Bobby looked up at him, squinted against sunlight through an opening. “She likes you.”

  “Think so?” Pumping a kid, he thought ruefully. Pretty low stuff.

  “Mom likes lots of people.”

  You deserved that, Ferrito.

  “But not the way she likes you. She never talks to anyone the way she talks to you.”

  He hoped he looked grown-up, and honored, and a lot calmer than he felt. “I like her, too.”

  “She always took care of everyone. When we lived at the Point, she was the cook and Auntie Fab was the housekeeper. Grandma used to come a lot. But Mom looked after all of us.”

  Nasty thought he could read other meanings behind what the boy said. “Some people are like that. They’re the ones who take care of other people.”

  Bobby had discarded his shoes—probably at the bottom of the steps. He tilted his head. “Do you have any kids?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  Apart from Roman and Phoenix’s two little girls, one of whom was barely more than a baby, Nasty’s experience with children was about zero. “I’ve never been married,” he said. He was going to have to work on his communication skills where kids were concerned.

  “My mom and dad aren’t married.”

  At first Nasty’s mind blanked. Then he got the connection. “Well, I guess I meant I’d like… For myself, I’d like to be married if I was going to have kids.” Oh, great. He was really doing a great job. He might as well tell the child he was a bastard, and that bastards were a bad idea.

  The boy’s pointed chin rose. “I would, too. When I have kids I’m gonna be married.” His dog was beside him again.

  Nasty caught a flash of red on the path to the windmill. He looked more closely and saw Polly coming toward the mill. She held Bobby’s tennis shoes in one hand. Evidently he’d left them not on the steps, but where they’d let someone suspect he’d gone to the mill.

  “You know my dad’s in Kirkland now. He says he wants Mom and me.”

  “Does he?” Nasty gave Bobby his full attention. “Is that what you want?”

  Two thin shoulders rose. “Lots of kids don’t have a mom and dad—not together.”

  “But you wish you did.”

  “Yeah. I guess. My dad didn’t used to want me.”

  In his mind, Nasty saw Sam Dodge’s dissolute face. “Of course he did.” What else could he say? He remembered Polly’s description of the man’s one previous visit to find her.

  “He didn’t,” Bobby said. “I don’t think Mom likes him. She got mad when he came before. I think she wants him to go away again.”

  “She’ll do what’s best.” If he could believe he was best for Polly, he’d feel so good about that statement.

  Bobby made a twisted wreck out of the neck of his shirt. The red cotton dress Polly wore showed in flashes as she came closer.

  Part of Nasty wished she would turn around and go back to the house. An equally insistent part of him longed for her to put an end to this
conversation with her son.

  “Mom told me you’ve got a funny story about your name.”

  “Hmm?” His focus grew sharp on the boy. “Funny? Oh, yeah—real funny. I sort of chose it.”

  “Your own name?” The brightness in Bobby’s eyes was an improvement. “Cool. You got to choose your name. I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “I didn’t really. At least, not the way I make it sound. It was kind of a nickname when I was a kid and it stuck.”

  “You liked it?”

  Two courses presented: truth or a lie. “I wanted to make a point. Dumb really. Some kid heard a man call me… nasty. The kid thought it was cute to call me nasty, too. Kind of, ‘Here comes, Nasty.’ ‘Yuck, Nasty’s here, I can smell him.’ You know the kind of thing.”

  Bobby’s serious frown, the preoccupied way he shifted his feet apart, let Nasty know the boy knew very well how cruel children could be.

  As she arrived at the mill, Polly passed from sight.

  “I bet you were a big kid,” Bobby said.

  “Pretty big.”

  “You could have made the other kids call you whatever you wanted.”

  Nasty thought about that and smiled slightly. “Yes. In a way I did.” He could almost see Polly standing at the bottom of the short flight of steps, listening. “If I had it over, I’d do it differently.”

  “I think Nasty’s a great name.”

  He ruffled the boy’s hair. “I think you’re a great kid.” A kid who’d done his share of hurting, and learned not to want the same for others.

  “Why did someone call you nasty?”

  “Because he thought I was, I guess.”

  “Why did you want to keep the name?”

  Nasty glanced toward the stairway. Polly was down there, hearing every word… He ran a hand through his hair. This was a test. Polly was finding out how he related to her boy. “I didn’t think too much of myself then. I was kind of hovering. Trying to be something, I guess. The nasty thing gave me something to be. They called me nasty, so I was. You said I was big—that I must have been a big kid. You’re right. It took a while because it happened when I was pretty small. Maybe no older than you. But first I lived through what they called me. Then I grew into it.” He wouldn’t turn back now. “I earned my name. I was one mean son of a gun. No one got in Nasty’s way.”

  “Didn’t your mom get mad at you?”

  Stopping this was a word away—maybe two or three. “I don’t know what my mom thought. She worked and she slept. When she wasn’t doing either of those things, she spent time with old friends.” Men and booze—real old friends.

  The boy’s nose wrinkled. “That was tough, huh?”

  “Yeah.” A first. He’d never admitted to any feelings about his mother before today. “Not every kid gets a mom like you’ve got.”

  “My mom would have gotten real mad at the boy who called you names.”

  “It wasn’t a boy. It was my father.”

  He and Bobby looked at each other. Nasty slid his gum into a cheek.

  “You did something to make him real mad.” A matter-of- fact statement from a child. Too bad the world wasn’t filled with logical people like Bobby Crow. “He probably wouldn’t have said it if he thought someone would hear.”

  “I made him real mad because I was born.” Nasty laughed and the sound turned cold in his ears. “My father… Oh, it’s history.”

  The boy kept right on watching his face. “He didn’t want you?”

  “He took off before I was born. He didn’t know I’d been born till he showed up years later looking for my mom. We’d left the ranch where I was born. I was playing on the sidewalk with some kids when he came. I heard a lot of shouting in the apartment. Then he came out and looked right at me. He said… well, good old Dad said a lot of things we don’t have to repeat here. But he could look at me and pick me out of a bunch of kids.”

  “How?” Bobby gave up on the shirt and pulled it over his head. He tied it around his waist. “How could he pick you out?”

  “Unfortunately I look just like him.” Not wanting to, unable to stop himself, he saw the man his father had been through the eyes of the boy Nasty Ferrito had been that day. “He hated me. On sight. He asked me what my name was.”

  Disbelief rearranged Bobby’s expression. “He didn’t know your name.”

  “No. And when I told him, he said, ‘Xavier’? and laughed. Then he said, ‘What kind of fancy name is that for a nasty little bastard?’ I went through a phase when I wished—” Geez, he’d been about to tell a seven-year-old that the man he was talking to had once been ornery enough to think it would be just fine if the world came right out and called him bastard on a regular basis.

  “We’re both bastards,” Bobby said, and pressed his lips tightly together. “I know what that means.”

  For a few desperately intense moments Nasty had forgotten Polly. He studied the sky outside. “We’re both important,” he said. “You’re very important. Your mom thinks you’re the most important guy in the world. I know because she told me. But I know how you feel sometimes. I’ve been there. You can talk to me about it, and whatever you tell me, I’ll understand.” This time with the child hadn’t been planned, but it had been inevitable. If there was any hope for bonding between the two of them—among the three of them—it could only happen with truth as a foundation.

  In the silence that followed, Bobby wrapped his arms around his ribs and screwed up his face.

  “Something else on your mind?” Nasty asked. He expected to see Polly tiptoeing away again. He didn’t.

  Bobby blew up his cheeks and let the air out in a puff. “I’m scared.”

  Nasty hadn’t expected that. He gave a big, phony grin. “Why would you be scared? You’re on a trip. We’re going to have a lot of fun—”

  “I’m not a little kid. I know when people aren’t saying stuff. Something’s happening, isn’t it?”

  In this instance, Bobby was a little kid. “Nothing you have to worry about.”

  “But you and Dusty took Mom and me away because of something. You wouldn’t just bring us here for a vacation. My mom should be doing the show. She never said anything about taking a vacation—not till I woke up this morning.”

  If Polly wanted to contradict him, she would. “Your mom’s real tired. She works hard, and this chance to get away came up. So she said she’d like to come with me and meet Rose.”

  The anxiety didn’t leave Bobby’s face. “Why didn’t you and Mom let me drive with you?”

  He’d never underestimate this young man again. He pointed at Spike. “The backseat of the Porsche’s not big enough for you and him—not comfortably. And Dusty wanted to come up and visit Rose. They’re old friends.”

  “He hardly stayed at all.”

  “Yeah.” Had he been this sharp? “But he wanted to do it just the same. And he’ll be back when he can get someone to look after the shop.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Like mother, like son. They both had a thing about being talked down to. “With you gone, Dusty has to do everything himself. But we’ve got a man who can come in.”

  “Dusty said you’re a lousy shopkeeper.”

  He controlled a grin. “I know. I just can’t seem to learn. We’d better get back before your mom misses you.”

  “Because she’s scared something could happen to me?”

  Nasty gave him a thoughtful stare. “Your imagination’s running away with you. Come on, Spike. How about a walk, fella?”

  One of those words brought a giant bark. The dog rushed ahead and downstairs. When Nasty and Bobby arrived outside, Polly stood a little distance away with her son’s tennis shoes in her hands.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hi, Bobby.” She didn’t smile. “I found your shoes.” She held them out, and he took them.

  “We were admiring the view.” Nasty looked into her eyes. He swung his case. “I was going to take some pictures. The light’s wrong. Bobby can hardly wait
to go fishing tomorrow.”

  “Can’t he?” To Bobby she said, “Nellie and Rose are waiting for you. They’ve got a surprise.”

  “Oh, sure,” Bobby said, not quite pulling off bored disinterest. “You want me to go so you can talk to Nasty on your own.”

  “Bobby,” Polly said—with a note of warning.

  Her boy muttered, “Okay,” and took off toward the house, his dog beside him.

  “He’s a great kid.”

  Tears gathered in her eyes. “The best. I heard what the two of you said.”

  “I thought you had.”

  “You told him all that to make him feel better.”

  “He asked questions. I told him the truth. At first I couldn’t figure out why it seems so important to me for him to be happy.”

  She tilted up her face and sniffed. “It’s because you’re trying to make the child in you happy. The child you used to be.”

  “I’m not into psychobabble.” But he was a careless fool with his mouth sometimes. “Don’t cry, Polly.”

  “I ought to cry. My son isn’t happy, and it’s my fault. Parents should be able to make their children happy.”

  He took her tense, trembling body in his arms. She tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let her. “When you said he was the best thing that ever happened to you, you meant it. And you were right.”

  “Uh-huh. But I wasn’t the best thing that happened to him. I gave him half of what he deserves to have.”

  Nasty tipped her against him and cradled her head. He rocked her gently. “He deserves the best, and he’s got it. You’re under a lot of pressure, or you wouldn’t be doing this to yourself. One great parent is a whole lot better than two parents who don’t get along—or one parent who wants you and one who tries to pretend they do. Hell, Polly, these are some of the things you people spend whole shows getting across to kids.”

  “So why don’t I have it all straight myself?”

  “You’re doing fine. We’d better get going before Bobby forgets his surprise and decides to come back for us.”

  Polly looked up at him her eyes washed clean and bright, bright blue by the tears that were on her cheeks. He kissed the space between her brows. When he raised his face, her eyes were closed.