“You know how to rock climb?” Seth asked around a piece of pizza crust bigger than his face.
“It’s not polite to talk with food in your mouth,” Mark reminded him.
Seth dropped his crust onto his plate. “Do you, Emily?”
Pulling her paper napkin from her lap, she brushed it across her face, then crumpled it into a ball beside her empty glass. “I do.”
“Wow!”
“Emily can do all sorts of things.” Mark shifted beside her, the brush of his thigh against hers sending a tingle of awareness through her body. “She can pilot a raft through rapids, she can ride a horse through the woods, she can rappel over the side of a mountain and climb huge rocks.”
At the naked awe on Seth’s face, she turned a playful scowl on the child’s father. “You do realize you just made me out to sound like Superwoman, don’t you?”
“Nah. Superwoman is a little taller. And her hair is a lot longer. Besides, you’re much, much better looking.”
Mark’s words, coupled with the huskiness of his tone, brought her up short. Unsure of what to say, she was more than a little grateful when Seth leaned across the table. “Could you teach me how to rock climb?”
With a steadying breath, she nodded, acutely aware of Mark’s hand beside hers. “After you shared such yummy pizza with me, I’d be happy to teach you how to rock climb. If it’s okay with your dad, of course.”
“Daddy?” Seth’s eyebrows rose upward, making both adults laugh out loud. “Please, please? Can Emily teach me how to rock climb?”
A moment of silence had Seth nearly falling out of his seat in anticipation.
“Hmm. If it’s okay with Emily, it’s okay with me—under one condition.”
Bracing herself for the inevitable clean-your-room or put-away-your-toys bribe, she was more than a little surprised—pleasantly surprised, if she was honest with herself—when he revealed his nonnegotiable terms. “I get to learn, too.”
Beaming triumphantly, Seth brought his focus back to Emily. “Daddy has this whole week off and I do, too. So we’re free tomorrow.”
She bit back the laugh Mark was unsuccessful at hiding.
“Oh we are, are we, son?”
“Yupper doodle!”
“Think ten o’clock would work for you?” she asked, with the most serious face she could muster.
Seth hopped down from his seat and consulted his father in a series of back and forth whispers before repositioning himself at the table. “Ten o’clock works great!”
When the last of the tables around them had been cleared for the night, Mark reached for the check, plunking down thirty bucks and declaring their dinner a delicious success. “Well, little man, I think it’s time we walk Emily to her car and give her a big thank-you for rescuing us from the lake and accepting our invitation to dinner.”
The little boy moaned. “Do we have to stop eating?”
“We stopped eating an hour ago, when we finished the pizza.” Mark pushed his chair back and reached for his son’s hand. “Besides, if we want Emily to teach us how to rock climb in the morning, we really should let her go home and get some sleep.”
Sensing the boy’s reluctance, she took hold of his other hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Rock climbing is serious stuff, Seth. You need to be well rested so you can listen extra carefully when I tell you what you need to do.”
“Oh. Okay.”
They walked through the pizza parlor and out into the night, the answering silence of the crickets marred only by the sound of Seth’s flip-flops slapping the pavement. It was a sweet sound, one she’d never really noticed until that moment.
“I had a really nice time tonight, Seth. Thank you for including me—” A shot of pain zipped up her leg, making her drop his hand and reach for the support of a nearby car.
“Emily? Are you okay?”
She smiled through the pain, praying that would wipe the worry from the boy’s face. But it didn’t work.
In an instant, Mark was at her side, his strong arm slipping around her shoulders and drawing her close. “Hey…talk to me.”
As the untimely pain released its grip, she did her best to shrug away the incident. “I’m okay. I just had a quick pain is all.”
“Do you get those often?”
Wiggling out from beneath his arm, she did her best to sound nonchalant as she made her way across the parking lot. “Yeah. Well, sometimes, I guess. It’s no big deal.”
Mark jogged to keep up, her pace quickening as she neared her Jeep. “No big deal? Are you kidding me?” He pointed at the nearest lamppost while studying her face. “Even in this lighting I could see your color drain away.”
She shrugged. “It happens from time to time. And it always stops.”
“If that happens again, maybe you should call your doctor. You know, to get it checked out or something.”
And just like that, the magical spell that had transformed the evening was gone, wiped away by the reality of her life. Turning her back, Emily reached into her purse and pulled out her car keys, her response barely audible to her own ears. “I can’t do that.”
He took hold of her shoulders and spun her around, raising her chin with his hand. “Why not?”
“Because I can’t call him every single time I get a pain. I can’t call him every time my arm goes numb. I can’t call him every time a bout of fatigue decides to rear its ugly head and confine me to bed for three days. I have a disease, Mark. It’s life.”
* * *
MARK TIGHTENED HIS GRIP on the steering wheel and resisted the urge to close his eyes. When he’d picked the multiple sclerosis pamphlet off the floor of Emily’s office that morning, it had never dawned on him that it was she who had MS. She was too beautiful, too energetic, too much of a go-getter to have such a debilitating disease.
Yet now that he knew, so many things made sense. The angst she’d exhibited over accepting his business card wasn’t denial over a loved one’s condition. Her refusal to let him help her with the kayak wasn’t some over-the-top display of feminism. And her insistence at racing Seth from the car to the restaurant, even though Mark had pointed to their unexpected dunk in the lake as a reason to take it slowly wasn’t about some bottomless well of energy.
No, Emily Todd was angry, and she was determined to show anyone within a stone’s throw that she had things under control.
He understood that stage. He’d been there once, too.
“Daddy?”
The sound of his son’s tiny voice from the backseat derailed Mark’s thoughts and forced him to focus on the moment. “What is it, little man?”
“Is Emily gonna die like Mommy did?”
The question was like a punch to his gut, grabbing hold of the arm’s-length thoughts and bringing them much too close for comfort. Sneaking a peek at his son’s worried face peering at him through the rearview mirror, Mark did his best to change the subject.
“You know what? I think it’s time we dust off your bike and start working on getting rid of those training wheels sometime soon. What do you say?”
He released a sigh of relief when the little boy nodded and turned his gaze toward the passing scenery, leaving Mark to his own thoughts once again.
It was still so hard to believe. How could someone who looked like Emily be sick?
The same way Sally was…
Just the thought of his late wife brought a lump to his throat. Sally had been so healthy one minute
and so sick the next, her all too quick downward spiral made even quicker by the way he’d handled everything. Burying his head in work might have made much of what was happening seem more distant, but it had also robbed him of the little time they had left.
Instead, it was Seth who had been by her side day in and day out, watching his mother slip away until she was gone for good. The memory made Mark sick. What kind of father placed a burden like that on a little boy?
A coward, that’s who…
Somehow, some way, Mark was going to make things right. He had to. He owed that much to the boy. And to Sally.
But try as he did to engage Seth in conversation for the remainder of the ride home, the worry he’d seen in his son’s eyes in the rearview mirror was still there when they returned home. It was there when they’d shared a bowl of ice cream at the kitchen counter. And it was still there when he kissed Seth’s forehead and tucked him under the sheets for the night.
Mark had seen that worry in his son’s eyes for far too long. He’d watched it eat away at the pure joy that had been Seth’s existence prior to Sally’s cancer diagnosis. And he’d sat by, virtually paralyzed by his own fear, while that worry had morphed into a steely determination to be what Mark himself seemed incapable of being.
But no more.
Seth had suffered enough for one lifetime.
It didn’t matter how hot Emily Todd was. It didn’t matter that her enthusiasm and boundless energy breathed life into Mark’s stagnant world.
All that mattered was Seth.
All that mattered was keeping his son from ever reliving the kind of grief that had consumed his young life to this point.
Pulling Seth’s bedroom door shut behind him, Mark wandered across the hall and into his own room, where the picture of Sally with Seth on his third birthday brought a familiar mist to his eyes.
With fingers that knew the way, he lifted the frame from his nightstand and slowly traced the contours of his wife’s face. “His heart is safe with me, Sally,” he whispered. “You have my word on that.”
Chapter Four
Emily pressed the intercom button on the side of her phone, working to make her voice sound casual and upbeat. “Trish? Any sign of Mr. Reynolds and his son yet?”
“Still nothing, boss.”
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.” She pulled her finger back, only to shove it forward once again. “Um, Trish?”
“Yeah, boss.”
“My next class is at noon, right?” She glanced at the clock on the wall and noted the rapidly approaching hour.
“Noon it is.”
Her shoulders sank along with the tone of her voice. “Okay. Thanks.”
With her connection to her assistant broken, Emily pushed back her chair and stood, the enthusiasm that had marked the start of her day giving way to a serious case of unease.
Granted, she didn’t know Mark Reynolds all that well. How could she when they’d met just a measly twenty-six hours earlier? But no matter how hard she tried to pin his failure to show up for their first rock-climbing adventure on something as trivial as forgetfulness, she couldn’t.
Especially when it had meant so much to his son.
“Seth,” she whispered. That was it. Something must have come up with the little boy to cancel their outing and prevent Mark from calling to let her know. It was the only explanation that made any sense.
Perhaps the child was in bed with the flu, or a tummy ache from eating too much pizza the night before. Maybe he’d fallen on the way out to the car that morning and broken his arm, or something crazy like that. Or maybe he’d had a rough night without his mom, and Mark felt it was more important for the little guy to get some rest.
Emily knew it was silly to be so worried about a child she’d just met, but she couldn’t help herself. There was something special about Seth, something innocent and pure that spoke to her heart as nothing else had in years.
The fact that he’d been through so much in such a short period of time only served to bolster her gut feeling that Mark wouldn’t deny Seth an opportunity to make a new memory unless something fairly serious had intervened.
Her worry at an all-time high, Emily sank back into her desk chair and opened the top drawer. There, where she’d left it, was the card she couldn’t get out of her hands fast enough the day before.
Mark Reynolds
Field Worker
Folks Helping Folks Foundation
555-555-5555
Inhaling deeply, she reached for the phone and punched in the number, the final digit quickly followed by a ring that led straight to a nondescript voice mail. When the recording completed its request for her name, number and reason for calling, she obliged, her voice a poor disguise for the worry she wasn’t terribly adept at hiding.
“Um…hi. Uh, it’s Emily. Emily Todd. From yesterday? At Bucket List 101…and, um, the pizza place?” Realizing she sounded like an idiot, she got to the point, the disappointment she felt over having to wait for a response undeniable. “I got your number from your business card. Could you please give me a call when you get this? Thanks.”
She reeled off her phone number, returned the handset to its cradle and then dropped her head into her hands. She’d done everything she could, short of driving back and forth across town trying to guess where Mark and Seth Reynolds lived. All she could do now was wait.
And pray that the images continuing to loop through her thoughts were the by-product of an overactive imagination rather than a spot-on radar that made absolutely no sense where a virtual stranger and his son were concerned.
* * *
MARK CROUCHED DOWN beside Laurie’s desk and placed a gentle yet firm hand on his son’s shoulder. “Now remember what I told you, little man. Miss Laurie has work to do. So it’s super important that you sit in this nice seat right here and keep yourself busy, okay?”
Seth nodded.
“And as for me? I’ll be in that conference room right there—” he pointed toward the open door just beyond the secretary’s desk “—if you have an emergency. But since I just took you to the bathroom, and I’ll only be in my meeting for about a half hour, you should be good on that front, right?”
“I’ll be good,” Seth whispered. “I promise.”
Mark reached for the backpack he’d placed beside the chair and unzipped the center compartment to reveal a plethora of activities designed to make the wait as easy on his son—and Laurie—as possible. “I packed your favorite picture books, along with a Mr. Spaceman coloring book I managed to score while you were napping at Gam’s this afternoon.”
At Seth’s silence, he reached inside and extracted the new book, flipping it open to reveal page after page of all things space related. “Isn’t this the coolest coloring book ever?”
A search of his son’s face failed to net the enthusiasm Mark was hoping to see. Disappointed, he tried a different tactic. “If you get hungry, there’s an extra yummy cherry lollipop in the front pocket of your backpack that’s got your name all over it. Sound good?”
Seth’s automatic nod stopped midway as his unusually dull eyes locked on Mark’s. “Daddy? I really would’ve been a good listener for Emily.”
Mark raked a hand down his face before clasping his son’s shoulder. “My decision against taking you rock climbing this morning wasn’t about listening, little man. It was about keeping you safe.”
It was a decision he still felt was right even now, some seven hours later. Any residu
al angst over the whole thing had more to do with his failure to call and cancel their private lesson than anything else.
“Mark? They’re ready to start.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the woman in her sixties situated behind the gray metal desk. “Thanks, Laurie.” Then, turning back to his son, he offered what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “Maybe we can get some ice cream when this is over. How’s that sound?”
Seth shrugged. “We have to eat dinner first, Daddy.”
Mark didn’t know if he should laugh or cry at the solemn response more befitting an adult than a four-and-a-half-year-old boy. It made sense, considering everything Seth had been through the past year, but it made Mark all the more protective of his son’s childhood.
“Maybe we can make an exception this one time.” He brushed a kiss across Seth’s head and then stood, his trip to the conference room requiring little more than a stride or two. When he reached the door, he took one last peek at his son, who was still standing in the middle of the foundation’s reception area.
“We’ll be fine,” Laurie assured him. “Now go. The sooner you get in, the sooner you’ll be out.”
“Thanks, Laurie.”
“My pleasure.” She swiveled her chair to her computer screen, only to turn back just before he disappeared completely. “Oh, and Mark? A call from a potential client came in for you today. I gave the details to Stan.”
“I’ll make sure to ask him about it after the meeting.” He stepped inside the room and took the empty chair indicated by Stan Wiley, board president of the Folks Helping Folks Foundation. An all-around good guy, Stan made volunteering with the organization a pleasant experience. Stan had gotten involved with the foundation for reasons not dissimilar from Mark’s. Regret was a powerful motivator.
Storybook Dad (Harlequin American Romance) Page 4