Tree Climbing For Beginners

by Joyia Marie

  “Hello,” Helen said again, laughter clear in her voice. She also sounded a little blurry as if she had had a drink or three. Aiden raised a brow; he didn’t see Helen as the partying kind. He frowned. She was in the beginning stages of a divorce and she was already at the clubs?

  “ Hello?” Aiden said, unsure if he should try to talk to her or let her go.

  The music was loud there and she kept shushing someone in the background. Aiden felt a flare of anger, picturing some mystery man harassing on the recently separated woman. Aiden didn’t know how long Helen was married, but he hoped she remembered her single moves.

  She struck him as a little naïve and he wondered if he could figure out where she was so he could drop by. His night of little sleep and a long day of work dropped away as he pictured Helen out there alone in some club.

  “Hey, Aiden,” Helen giggled into the phone after another ‘hush’ to someone in the background. “Wait, let me step outside I can barely hear you.”

  Aiden waited impatiently as Helen excused herself from her companion, then went outside, he presumed. The background noise dropped considerably.

  “Okay, that’s better,” Helen said with another breathy giggle. ‘I’ve forgotten what these places are like. Is everything okay? I signed the contract, left a check, and key with your assistant. Did I need to do something else?”

  “ No,” Aiden said suddenly embarrassed about the call.

  What was he doing calling her on a Friday night? This could have waited until Monday. “I was just wondering if the trade was a no go,” he said desperately for something to say other than the questions he wanted to ask. Like where are you? Who are you with? Can I come be with you instead of him?

  “Oh,” Helen said softly, “were you serious about that? ” she asked almost tenderly. “That is so sweet. I love the fact you get my grandma’s work like that. Harold didn’t you know,” she said conspiratorially.

  Aiden didn’t know, he could figure out that Harold must be the soon to be ex husband, but how could he marry a writer with a grandmother who painted without having some kind of appreciation for creativity. He shook his head and tried to think of a graceful way to get off the phone. Helen was clearly inebriated, and would hate spilling family secrets to a relative stranger when she sobered up.

  “Helen, look, we can talk about this another time, you have my number,” Aiden said firmly.

  “No, Aiden, don’t go,” Helen moaned into the phone causing Aiden to bite back a moan of his own, he could just imagine that moan in another situation. “I’m so glad you called. I think about you all the time,” Helen said. Aiden raised a brow. ‘Well, maybe I can chat for a minute’, he thought ignoring the stab his conscious gave him.

  “Think about me how?” he probed slyly. This he wanted to hear. He knew he was taking advantage, but he was a big believer in ‘in vino veritas’, which meant ‘in wine, there is truth. He wanted Helen’s truth, badly.

  “Oh, just how nice you are. How sweet you are. How much I want to climb you like a tree,” Helen volunteered.

  Aiden looked at the phone. The nice and sweet comments were a little disappointing. That could be said about a favorite uncle, but the tree comment sounded promising. He opened his mouth to pursue that when he heard a deep male voice demanding she come back inside.

  “Oops, I guess I need to go,” Helen said with another giggle. “Talk to you later, bye.” Before Aiden could ask the name of the mystery man, the phone hung up.

  Aiden stared at the phone tempted to call back and demand some answers, like where she was, who she was with and what was that tree thing. Aiden started to dial, then Helen’s marital status crept back into his mind. He knew she wasn’t Alicia but the fact she was in a club before her divorce was final, gave him pause.

  Aiden put the phone down, then shut the TV and the downstairs lights off, then went up to his bed. He will have a busy day tomorrow unlike Helen, . He was starting demolition after his niece’s soccer game.

  Aiden was glad he had made plans to work with the crew. Right now, he was really feeling like destroying something. He gave his pillows a couple of pounds to work out some of his frustration then laid down. He tried to force himself to sleep, but thoughts of Helen kept him awake long into the night.

  Chapter Thirty-Three: Harold

  Harold looked around the silent table. The restaurant was busy on a Friday night, but this table sat in a pool of silence. Tonya was looking at Jillian as if she was wondering what her head would look like mounted on a wall. Tony, he couldn’t tell what Tony was doing behind his veil of hair, but he did know he wasn’t talking. Jillian was giving him increasingly frantic looks the longer Tonya silently stared at her.

  Tonya had started staring the second they got to the restaurant and she saw Jillian. She stared during the tense introduction. She stared while they had gotten a table. She stared while they ordered, barely giving the menu a glance before she ordered for herself and her twin.

  Harold started to protest, thinking Tony should order for himself, but a look at Tonya’s face made him shut his mouth. He had bigger fish to fry and surely, if Tony wanted something other than what Tonya had ordered, he would have made it known… somehow.

  Harold shuddered as he thought about the way the twins seemed to communicate without words sometimes. That and the ‘twin talk’ were more reasons he thought twins, even his twins sometimes, were creepy. No two people should be that close, in his opinion. It wasn’t right.

  Harold opened his mouth to try another conversational gambit. He didn’t know why he thought this one would work, none of the others had, but he kept trying. If he was to be with Jillian, she and the twins had to get along, even if Helen did come back and take over with them.

  “Is that your natural hair color?” Tonya said, causing Harold to choke on his words. He looked at Jillian then Tonya and then noticed Tonya hadn’t been staring at Jillian or at least not all of Jillian. She was staring at Jillian’s hair.

  “It is,” Jillian said, patting her hair with a nervous hand.

  Harold noticed a chip in one of her nails and wondered why she hadn’t gotten it fixed. One of the things he liked about Jillian was that she kept herself up so well. Helen went to the salon, but Harold thought it was more to see Raphael than to get treatments. She usually kept her nails short with maybe a coat of clear polish. Harold liked a woman who did all that girly stuff. Somehow, it made him feel manlier.

  “My uncle Raffie says you can always tell when a woman colors her hair by looking at the roots. The real color shows at the roots,” Tonya said, looking pointedly at Jillian’s scalp.

  Harold followed her stare and noticed a slight brown line at the roots of Jillian’s hair. Her hair was styled differently, but he thought it was just because she was trying to make a good impression on the kids. He frowned, wondering why he hadn’t noticed Jillian was a brunette.

  Then he thought about it. The only hair on Jillian’s body other than the hair on her head was her eyebrows and lashes. Down below, as his mother referred to a woman’s private parts, Jillian maintained ‘hardwood floors’ as the boys back in the locker room liked to say.

  “Well, I don’t know who your uncle Raffie is or why he thinks he knows so much, but I’m sure I know my own hair color,” Jillian said with a snap. She glared at Tonya and Tonya just gave her a bland smile.

  Harold moaned inwardly at the lie. It wasn’t exactly a lie so he didn’t know how it would tally in Tonya’s book. She should have just admitted she wasn’t a natural blonde. Did he think he would care? Harold liked to think he wasn’t as shallow as that. Now in the beginning, he was attracted to Jillian’s blond haired, blue-eyed beauty but now, he loved her for herself.

  He gave Jillian’s hand a comforting pat and Jillian snatched her hand away, giving him an angry look. Harold was confused. All in all, things were going pretty well. At least Tonya was talking.

  “Oh, uncle Raffie knows a lot about hair,” Tonya said calmly a direct contra
st to Jillian’s rising anger. “He does hair, he has a big salon where my mom goes. She only gets her hair trimmed,” Tonya said with another pointed look at Jillian’s roots.

  “ Good for your mother,” Jillian muttered with another pat to her hair. Then her eyes bugged, “wait a minute. Uncle Raffie? You mean Raphael of Raphael’s?” Jillian asked in horror.

  Tonya gave Jillian a smug nod before digging into her dinner. Tony watched the two females’ conversation like it was a tennis match. He had eaten his salad, then dug into his dinner during this exchange. Harold was used to his son’s silence, but Jillian seemed to be as intimidated by Tony’s not talking as she was by Tonya’s talking.

  She kept giving Tony puzzled looks as if she couldn’t figure out why the boy wasn’t falling under her spell like every other man. He might be a little young, but not too young to see that Jillian was every straight man’s dream come true. Harold wondered if he should be worried about that then put the thought aside. Whatever his sexuality, he’d love his son as much as he ever.

  Harold wondered about Jillian’s reaction about Raphael. Did she know Raphael? He hoped not, one of the things he wouldn’t miss from his life with Helen was the burly hairdresser slash Marine. He knew better than to call Raphael an ex-Marine.

  “No such animal,” Raphael had informed him the one and only time he made that mistake. The look in Raphael’s eyes promised something other than a bad hair cut if Harold made that mistake again.

  Harold got his hair cut at a barbershop, just like his father. He had tried to take Tony once, but as they didn’t do girls and the twins refused to separate, he had let it go. Raphael did a fine job on Tony’s hair, until lately. What was the deal on Tony’s bangs, he wondered again.

  “Mom takes Tony and I,” Tonya said after a couple of bites. Harold winced, he had actually started enjoying the silence. What made him think they needed to talk? Talking was bad for the digestion. Silence was good for the digestion as well as a whole bunch of the other things.

  “It makes my friend Kelli mad. Uncle Raffie only lets me and Tony come. No other kids,” Tonya said her dark eyes drifting back to Jillian’s roots.

  Jillian raised a hand as if to protect her brown roots from Tonya’s gaze then lowered it defiantly. Harold silently applauded her. The cat was out of the bag now. He made a mental note to talk to Jillian about this later.

  He wanted to assure her he didn’t care what color her hair was. Now, if she wanted to keep being blonde, he was on board with that. It was how she looked when he fell in love with her.

  He thought one of the biggest mistakes he made with Helen was encouraging her to grow out her hair. He had no idea growing her hair would eliminate the curls. He had loved Helen’s curls.

  Harold allowed himself to reminisce about Helen’s curls when Tonya’s words penetrated his thoughts. Kelli? Wasn’t she the one whose mother had supposedly seen him and Jillian in the park?

  As if she was reading his mind, the next words out of Tonya’s mouth were, “my friend Kelli heard her mom telling Mrs. Johnson…”

  “Tonya, that’s enough,” Harold interrupted her before could ask Jillian about that day in the park. “Let’s just eat and enjoy our food.”

  “Okay, Daddy,” Tonya said with a bright smile.

  Harold sighed, not fooled by the easy acquiescence. His daughter was clever and she was just marshaling her next line of attack.

  Nothing was going according to plan. He had expected some resistance from Tonya but not this full frontal attack. He had expected a little support from Tony but Tony was looking as unimpressed with Jillian as his sister was. He sighed and wondered how he was going to make this work.

  Maybe with some time, he thought doubtfully as he ate. Tonya was eating as well, but her eyes stayed on Jillian’s hair. Tony was eating and peeking at the other members of the party from behind his hair veil. Jillian was giving Tonya poisonous looks and Harold angry ones that all but screamed, ‘do something about your daughter’.

  He sighed and avoided her eyes. What did she think he could do? His daughter had puzzled him since the first second he held her.

  Less than an hour old and she had looked up at him with this vaguely disappointed look like he had already let her down. Harold had handed her to her mother and picked up his son. Tony didn’t look disappointed, but his eyes did roll around as if he was looking for his sister.

  Harold ate and contentedly let silence reign. This would work itself out. It had to, he thought again. Again, he wasn’t quite sure how.

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Jillian

  Jillian drove through the quiet of early Saturday morning. She kept glancing at the GPS hoping the address she had gotten from her friend at the phone company was the right one for Helen. After last night, Jillian was on a mission. Helen had to go home to her brats.

  She shivered as she recalled Tonya’s cool, dark gaze, studying her as if to figure out the best way to take her apart. The sight of those dark eyes in the midst of the pale skin and blond hair was disconcerting, but not nearly as disconcerting as the calm consideration in the girl’s eyes.

  Her natural blond hair, Jillian reminded herself. She couldn’t believe that little brat had asked her about her hair, just like that. Didn’t she have any home training? Helen’s manners were impeccable from what Jillian remembered of the mousy woman but she hadn’t passed down to her demon daughter.

  The Raphael connection was an unpleasant surprise. Suddenly her inability to get an appointment, yesterday, looked ominous. Raphael’s was the best salon in town and, Raphael and Helen were bosom friends if the temperamental stylist bent the rules for her kids. Uncle Raffie, she thought grimly, might not like the fact, Jillian was breaking up his niece and nephew’s happy home.

  Jillian put the salon out of her mind as she pulled up in front of the warehouse turned lofts. They didn’t look like much from the outside and she couldn’t believe Harold was spending his money on this. She still hadn’t put a bug in his ear about that, but she hadn’t had time to talk to him this week.

  Thinking of her week on the road made Jillian look at her gas gauge and moan. She was almost out of gas… again. She had already filled up once this week and looked like she needed to again before going to the twins’ soccer game.

  She had tried to beg off, but Harold insisted the only way the twins were going to get used to her was being around her so she was off to the soccer game. She was glad the middle of the road outfit she had bought at Wal-mart for dinner was also suitable for the great outdoors or she’d be back off to the big box store instead of dropping by Helen’s hidey-hole.

  Jillian got out of the car and knocked on the loft door. She could hear pounding inside and some loud music. She wondered if she had the right place. This didn’t fit her vision of Helen. Finally, when her knocks were unanswered, she turned the knob and stepped in.

  Jillian gave a frustrated moan at the obvious mistake. This place was under construction and she couldn’t see the fastidious hausfrau living here with the dust and dirt. Harold took great pride in how well Helen kept the house.

  Jillian smirked. She had seen the housekeeper the day she drove by and knew how Helen kept such a nice house. She’d keep one too, with a full-time housekeeper. It would be a nice step up from the once a week maid service she could currently afford.

  “Can I help you?” a deep voice asked from the second floor.

  Jillian sucked in a breath at the magnificence before her. Oh my yes, she thought breathlessly. She might not have found Helen but this would do just fine. She gave the man a alluring smile that faded as he merely looked at her expectantly.

  Jillian wished for a mirror. She had left the house toned down for the soccer game, but she still looked good. Between Tony’s indifference last night and this hunka hunka burning love’s dismissal, she was beginning to doubt herself.

  “Uh, no, I don’t think so,” Jillian said with a breathy voice. She thrust her chest out and looked at the man from under her lashes.
“I think I have the wrong address.”

  “Who were you looking for?” the man asked impatiently, ready to get back to work.

  His copper skin was dusted with whatever he was demolishing with that big heavy hammer of his. Jillian let her eyes drop, she’d bet he had more than one big heavy hammer, she thought looking at his baggy jeans.

  “Miss?” he said impatiently.

  “Oh, Helen Dudley,” Jillian said with a start, giving the name her friend at the phone company had given her. What was wrong with her? Yeah, the man in front of her made Harold look like a eunuch, but he was a construction worker. He could never afford her.

  “Yes, this is her place, but she’s not here right now,” he said dismissively before disappearing back over the edge of the loft.

  She heard the pounding start again. She pouted, she hadn’t even had a chance to see if he knew where she was. She started to call out, then stopped herself. He was just a worker, what would he know. She wished the contractor were here. She was sure she could weasel the answers out of him.

  She turned around to leave when she saw a jump drive hanging on a nail next to the door. She took a quick peek over her shoulder to make sure the worker was out of sight before she pocketed it. She wasn’t sure why she was taking it, but something told her to. Knowledge was power in the gold digging game and she needed some on Helen.

  It might not even be Helen’s she thought as she tucked the tiny drive into her pocket. But it might be she thought hopefully. It might have something on there she could use as leverage on Helen.

  If guilt didn’t work, maybe blackmail would. Something had to work. She couldn’t deal with Harold’s kids. One twin talks too much and says all the wrong things. The other twin doesn’t talk and looks at her as if she’s a twelve-year-old boy.