by Julia London
Cole looked at the mess of tools, sawdust, and drop cloths and moaned, “All of that?”
“All of that. And when you are finished, come upstairs, because I have more.” And then he left the grumbling kid and ascended the curving staircase. When he reached the first landing, he glanced out the portal window and saw Robin in her running clothes, standing, hands on hips, on the greenbelt that ran down the middle of North Boulevard, waiting for traffic to pass. Gazing at her, he felt his anger with Cole growing.
The problem was, he had feelings for Robin that went far beyond the usual lusting, and deep into that dark, musty tunnel of really caring about someone. Like he’d never cared in his life. He cared what she thought, how she felt, who she was. He cared what she thought of him. Cared so much that he was angry with Cole, mortified that she might see how inept he and his mom were at raising him. And panicky that Cole’s troubles might make her shy away. He had enough strikes against him. He didn’t need any more.
When Robin caught a break in the traffic and jogged across the street, he stalked up the stairs, forcing himself to more urgent matters. The demolition was in full swing; Jake made sure the crews were not taking the job too far. Then he went downstairs to check on Cole and say hello to Robin.
Cole had picked up the drop cloths and folded them, and was out front, hosing down the buckets. Jake opened the door, stuck his head out. “How’s it going?”
He received a shrug in response from Cole, but Zaney was much more exuberant. “Great!” he shouted at Jake. “Me and the Colester are having a grrreat time!” Jake gave Cole a glare sufficient to remind him he was still in a world of trouble and shut the door.
He found Robin seated at the dining room table, showered and dressed in a linen skirt that drew attention to her long, shapely legs. She was on the phone, but smiled warmly and waved him over. He came around to where she was sitting, and she mouthed the word Grandma. “Okay, Grandma. Okay. Okay,” she said, and looked up at Jake, her blue eyes laughing. “Grandma . . . Grandma! I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later, okay?” She clicked off the phone. Then she bounced up to her feet. “Good morning.”
An inevitable smile spread. “Morning.”
“Hey, I’m going out for some coffee. Want some?”
Jake looked out the window at Cole. “Yes.”
“Great! I’m dying for a doughnut.”
“I thought doughnuts were off limits.”
“Oh, they are,” she said breezily, ignoring the incongruity in that, and grabbed her purse. They went out the back door, got into Jake’s truck, and pulled up next to the curb where Zaney and Cole were working. “Keep an eye on him,” Jake called out the window to Zaney.
As Jake rolled up the window, Robin asked, “Is school out today?”
“For Cole. He’s been suspended for cutting class, so he’s getting a taste of the real world today.”
“Oh,” she said and looked back at Cole. “I hope everything is okay.”
He feared nothing would ever be okay for Cole. “The kid has problems,” he said flatly.
“Like what?”
“Like you don’t want to know.”
“Yes, I do! I like Cole.”
Jake glanced at her as he turned north, headed for Kirby. “You’re kidding. He’s surly, he’s rude, he’s impossible to reach—”
“All kids are like that. Anyway, he’s not rude to me.”
“I wasn’t like that,” he protested. “Were you?”
“Of course!” Robin laughed. “Rebellious and moody and very uncertain where I fit in this world. Some might argue I still am.”
“Oh, come on,” Jake scoffed. “You lived behind some huge gate in River Oaks. Are you trying to tell me you were uncertain of where you fit?”
“Are you trying to tell me you are one of those who think money can buy happiness?” she demanded with a snort. “Money just makes everything worse!”
“Right,” Jake exclaimed impatiently “I sure would have liked the chance to have money make everything worse when I was a kid. My folks never had two nickels to rub together, and believe me, it was not a happy time. A little money would have gone a long way toward improving the situation.”
“You think so? My parents fought all the time and would fly off and leave us there with some nanny-type person who called Rachel Raquel. Dad never saw me play softball, he hardly knew the asshole Rebecca ended up marrying, and Rachel, well . . . she was in some little dream world with her drama club. Believe me, I was a miserable kid and I can relate to Cole. So what did he do to get suspended? I bet I can top it.”
She wanted to know? Jake told her. Let the whole, ugly thing come tumbling out. Ross’s troubles, the woman who gave birth to Cole. It was a new and disconcerting experience to talk about things so personal—he’d never been much of a talker to begin with. He had learned with his dad early on that words always came back to wound you. But with Robin, words rolled out of him from somewhere deep inside. Articulate words he didn’t know he had in him, that described his frustration with Cole and his own complete ignorance and ineptitude with a fourteen-year-old brain, in spite of having had one at some point in his life.
But Robin instinctively put him at ease, didn’t interrupt, except to ask thoughtful questions. More important, she didn’t seem to judge him or his family as he had secretly feared. She just seemed genuinely concerned for Cole.
“I can relate,” she said when he told her about going down to the levee to retrieve him.
“You’ve been down there?” he asked, surprised.
“Oh no,” she laughed. “I can relate because I ran away when I was seventeen.” She nodded at his apparent surprise. “Dad was on my case about something—who knows what? And I had this boyfriend, Bo,” she said with a roll of her eves. “He lived down around the Astrodome—you know, on the other side of the loop.”
Oh yeah, Jake knew very well.
“Dad couldn’t stand him,” she continued, “which is why I think I went out with him in the first place.” She laughed at that, and Jake quickly put down the faint little flurry in the pit of his stomach that remark prompted. “So, Bozo had the great idea we could go to Austin to party. I was so stupid, I didn’t even ask with whom. We drove the three or so hours to Austin, went to some house where there was a huge party going on. I didn’t know anyone, of course. Anyway, we had been at this party for a while, and I realized I hadn’t seen Bozo in a while. Like hours. I went looking for him, and couldn’t find him anywhere. He’d left me there. Gone off with a girl, with friends, who knows?”
“Wow, that sucks. So what did you do?”
“Called Dad,” she said, grimacing at the memory. “He said, ‘I’m going to kick your butt from here to Kingdom Come, Robin Elaine! You get your ass back here right now!’” Robin laughed at the memory. “Needless to say, I didn’t rush right home.”
“You did go home, though, right?” Jake asked.
“Oh yeah, Mom got me home—she sent a plane, and I got a cab to the airport. And then, I hid in Rebecca’s room until Dad calmed down.”
“What happened to Bozo?”
“Who knows? He’s probably in the pen now,” she said and immediately caught herself, her eyes going wide with mortification. “Oh, sorry . . .”
Not as sorry as he was. Jake waved a hand at her, dismissed it.
“Well, anyway, I guess I’m not the best judge of character.”
She didn’t seem to hear the irony in her statement, but it slapped Jake square in the face. He looked straight ahead, wondered about a home life in River Oaks that was so bad she would want to run from it. It occurred to him, as they turned into the parking lot of Java the Hut, that perhaps they weren’t so different after all. Perhaps they were more alike than he could have hoped.
Inside, Robin ordered her usual quadruple foo-foo chocoloco skinny steamed nutmeg coffee, waited until he had ordered as close to Folger’s as he could get, straight up, before putting a full-court press on him about accompanying her to Bu
rdette. She laid out all the reasons he should go: (a) she was going, (b) she was going to Burdette alone, and (c) she did not want to go to Burdette alone.
“I don’t know. I’ve got a class I’m trying very hard not to flunk out of.”
“You can study on the plane.”
“The plane? Burdette is a two-hour drive.”
“Two hours you and I don’t have.” She smiled, and a dimple appeared in one cheek.
“And I promised to make baseball practice this week—”
“See? I’m saving you time. Anyway, you don’t need to practice! Sheesh, you practically handed them a win with one hand tied behind your back!”
Jake laughed. “It wasn’t quite like that.”
“Come on, Jake,” she said, and lowered her head, looking up at him through her lashes. “Don’t you want to be a member of the mile-high club?”
That idea kicked his testosterone levels up a notch or two. “Okay,” he said instantly, felt his heart melt with Robin’s smile, and was painfully aware that the more he was with her, the more impossible it was to be without her. Damn. He was in for a fall.
Later that afternoon, when Jake went looking for Cole, he had a moment of panic when he couldn’t find him anywhere. His first thought was that Cole had run off again—he’d been sour and resentful all day. And the kid’s mood had not improved with the double whamoburger Jake brought him. If he’d run off and was wandering around this neighborhood, someone had probably already called the cops.
When Jake couldn’t find him upstairs, he searched the bottom floor, then went out onto the front lawn. No Cole.
Now the panic was beginning to swell in him. He walked around the east lawn and saw no one. He proceeded to the back, certain now that Cole had taken off, but what he saw on the back lawn drew him up short. It wasn’t that Cole was with Robin, or that they were busily rearranging the pink flamingos like maniacal little beavers. What shocked him was that Cole was talking, and from where he stood, it looked like a blue streak. Robin seemed to be adding a comment here and there, but for the most part, Cole talked while she made a herd of flamingos in the corner of her lawn.
Jake watched for several minutes, then backed up, turned around, and went back the way he had come He was awestruck. No one had been able to connect to Cole, not his teachers, not Mom, and certainly not Jake. But there he was with Robin, talking like they had known each other a lifetime. She had that effect on people, could breathe life into the world again, make you want to open up and let her in. It was an effect that he really adored, so much so that it sort of frightened him.
He wondered if it frightened Cole, too.
That night, before class, Jake ran into Lindy. She politely asked after him, but Jake felt like an ass. She smiled, but he could see that wounded look in her eye, and Jake wondered for the thousandth time—was he really going to pass up a woman like Lindy for this fling with Robin? The question ate at him; he could hardly focus on the calculations the instructor was reviewing on the board. He finally realized what was bubbling inside him was fear—fear that he was out of his freaking mind, that he was playing with fire that could destroy him, and his business, too.
Come Saturday morning, it was the stark evidence of the Lear family wealth that frightened him.
He should have suspected what he was in for when Robin answered her door wearing a cool, milk-chocolate pantsuit and turquoise blouse and jewelry that made the color of her eyes radiate. “Wow,” she said, eyeing the one decent pair of tan trousers he had, a white button-down he had had for God only knew how long, and a navy sports coat. “You look great!”
That was nice, but he was totally inadequate next to her. What he knew about women’s clothing could be put on the head of a pin, but he knew expensive clothing and accoutrements when he saw it. Expensive clothes, expensive woman.
And still he was not prepared for what greeted him at Hobby airport.
Robin couldn’t help but laugh, because he was, like any mere mortal, blown away by the so-called company plane. It was a Lear family jet, the implication being, of course, that there was more than one. It came complete with a small kitchen and eating area, a sleeping bunk, and four thickly padded leather seats that faced each other for cozy tête-à-têtes in the sky. Even the pilot—Pete, Robin called him—was wearing a uniform that reminded Jake of the air force.
“Help yourself to any chair,” she said as they entered the cabin. “I’m going to put some coffee on.”
Jake lowered himself carefully into one of the Corinthian leather seats and looked around. There were fresh roses in a secured vase on the dining table; he could see into the compact bathroom in the back where towels monogrammed with an L were hanging over the basin. The finishings around the windows and trays were brass and mahogany. This was something he had only seen at the movies, never in real life. At least not his real life.
Robin returned from making the coffee and settled into the seat directly across from him. “Have you been on one of these before?”
She asked in all seriousness, and sometimes Jake wondered if she wasn’t just flat-out nuts. He’d only flown a few times in his life to begin with. “No,” he said simply.
“Dad has two of them. He started flying lessons a year or so ago—”
“Miss Lear, we’re ready for taxi, so if you and your guest would please fasten your seat belts,” a voice boomed above them.
Robin instantly fastened her seat belt, then leaned across to help Jake when he couldn’t find his. It was rolled up and tucked away in a little pocket.
“We should have invited Cole. He’d like this,” she said as they settled in and the plane started to move.
Yeah, he’d like it all right. Any mere mortal would like it. “You and Cole seemed to be getting along pretty well yesterday,” he observed.
Robin nodded. “He’s really a cool kid!”
Which just went to show, Jake thought, how clueless she really was. “Hard to see it.”
“No, really! When he talks about something he likes, he’s very animated. It’s kind of funny, actually. His voice gets really high.”
Jake had never heard Cole’s voice get really high. And he’d certainly never heard Cole say he liked anything. “So . . . what does he like?”
“Well, a girl named Tara, for one.”
Bowl him over with a feather—a girl? Cole showed no interest in the opposite sex; he showed no interest in anything. “You’re kidding,” he said flatly.
Robin shook her head.
“Since when?”
“Since the third grade. But he didn’t think she liked him until she sat with him at lunch one day. That apparently put a spring in his step. Unfortunately, the very next day, she sat with Randy Somebody, and Cole didn’t know what that meant. So he cut class.”
“Are you telling me that he cut class because some girl didn’t sit with him at lunch? That’s it? That’s the whole stupid reason his world collapsed?”
“That’s it!” Robin said cheerfully. “He’s really sensitive, you know.”
Oh God, it was worse than he thought. He had a sensitive nephew. Nooo, nooo . . . not good. Sensitive boys made for very strange men.
“What’s that?” Robin asked.
“What’s what?”
“That. That sort of grunting sound you’re making.”
“I’m not making any grunting sound.”
“See there? You did it again. What’s the matter, haven’t you ever had a devastating crush on a girl before?”
Actually, he had one so devastating at the moment he thought he might just crash and burn with it, thank you very much. But Jake snorted at her question, leaned back, looked out the window as they taxied down the runway. That idiot kid—so what if his girl sat with another guy? It didn’t mean anything. And he’d remind himself of that the next time Mr. Pompous Ass showed up at Robin’s, instead of thinking how to rub the smirk off his face.
The plane lifted, the sharp ascent pushing his stomach back to his spine
.
“So?” Robin asked, oblivious to the plane’s laboring up the incline. “Have you?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I have had a crush on a girl. But tell me something—were you able to get all of this out of him in one afternoon?”
“Yep. And the thing about how you don’t listen to him.”
Great. Fantastic. Not only did they have time to discuss all of Cole’s insecurities, they had time to discuss Uncle Jake’s shortcomings, too. “I probably don’t,” he admitted curtly. “Because he whines all the damn time.”
Robin clucked at him. “He’s fourteen. Fourteen-year-olds whine.”
“Okay, you want to know the truth?” he asked, irked that she could have divined so much information from Cole when he could barely get him to respond. “I don’t like Cole. Don’t get me wrong—I love him. He’s my nephew. And I would give my right arm to see him happy and to escape the life we had growing up. But I don’t like him.”
Instead of gasping with shock and indignation for saying such a horrid thing about his own nephew, Robin chuckled and shook her head. “Jake, you’re so funny! He’s fourteen. Everyone knows that fourteen-year-olds are very hard to like. Believe me, I had two sisters who were fourteen after me and they were impossible to like. But the difference is, I think, that they were so full of themselves they were in danger of bursting. Cole doesn’t seem to know where he fits in and doesn’t feel like he belongs anywhere or to anyone. I think he’s kind of lost. Which is understandable—he said you and your mom argue about who has to take him.”
“No, we argue about who wants to take him,” Jake angrily clarified.
“See? He doesn’t like himself, so he sees it all upside down. It’s tough for anyone to feel unwanted, but especially for a teenager, you know.”
He knew. He looked at her in wonder. “How’d you get so smart?”
Robin shrugged, flicked an imaginary piece of lint off her jacket. “I don’t know . . . I guess I’m just extra brilliant. Or maybe because twenty years later, I still feel that way. I really do relate to him,” she said and glanced up at Jake. “Do you think that’s strange?”