by Lauren Dane
“I’d like to talk with you about Miles staying with me on some weekends here and there. Obviously you too. As the holidays approach there’ll be a lot of family events and we want him to take part.”
She knew to expect this, but it was still hard to let go. “As long as his schedule is accommodating, I’m fine if he is. I don’t know if he’s ready for solo time yet. He might be. I can talk with him about it.”
“I want you to be there too.” He put his tea down and faced her fully, which only distracted her because his upper body was still naked and he looked yummy. “I like being with you. You’re Miles’s mom and my . . . god . . . my girlfriend. Adult words for this stuff are weird.”
She was? Stunned and wildly flattered, she sought words. “Just give me the dates and we can work it out.”
“And I want to give him some money.”
He put his hands up defensively when she glared at him.
“Like an allowance. Or a bank account. I’d—I’d like to set up a bank account for him so he has walking-around money. He needs new strings, for instance.”
“I bought him new strings yesterday.”
“You have no idea what it feels like to grow up with nothing.”
“Okay, first of all, are you insinuating that Miles has nothing? And that I have no idea? Fuck off!” She pushed from the couch, pissed off all over again. “Can you possibly imagine I don’t know what it means to be poor?”
“No. Damn it, Gillian, stop trying to pick a fight. The words came out wrong. Okay? Obviously you’ve provided him with a great life. But if a guy can’t get new strings, what possible harm can it do to be able to go to the ATM and grab some cash? Or if he wants to order something online? And as far as what I imagine, that’s pretty much what I have to do since today is the first time you’ve really told me anything about yourself that had nothing to do with Miles.”
Even in his T-shirt, she looked murderous as she glared his way. He exhaled hard, not meaning to have said things that way. “I appreciate that you shared with me. It means something to me that you did. I’m altogether new at this relationship thing. I don’t do them, really. But this isn’t just a romantic relationship. We’re parents too, and I’m new at that and you’re not, and I just want to do something and you keep stopping me. I missed thirteen years of his life.”
“I am not angry at you for doing for Miles.” She paused a moment, thinking better of it. “All right, so I was angry about the bike for a little while. Silly and petty, I know. I’d been saving to give him a bike myself. But I don’t think you did it deliberately to mess with my Christmas plans. It’s a nicer bike than he’d have gotten from me anyway. You wanted to make him feel at home in your house. To have the things his cousins have. I appreciate that.”
“I always get all prepared to be mad and stay on my high horse and then you go and disarm me with your honesty. We can do this, you know.”
“Adrian, you and I are going to fight. You know that, right? Oh, I made a rhyme.” She snorted and he couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m not staff. I’m not a fan. I’m a real person in your life because of the man, not because of the star.”
Nothing else she could have said would have disarmed him the same way. “C’mere.”
She eyed him warily. “Why?”
“I want to grope you and it’s much easier to do here on the couch than with you across the room scowling at me.”
She sighed theatrically and moved back to him, allowing him to pull her into his lap.
“That’s better.”
“You can set up an account for him. I give him twenty dollars a week for his chores and keeping his grades up. I’d ask you not to go wild. I use that to be sure he doesn’t muck about and gets his work turned in.”
He nuzzled her neck, where he liked it best, and by the way she hummed softly, she liked it too.
“You’re pretty fierce when you’re protecting our son. That makes me hot.”
“Everything makes you hot.”
He laughed, nipping her shoulder. “When it comes to you. How about I add thirty dollars a week to your twenty?”
“You want to give a thirteen-year-old boy fifty dollars a week?”
Christ, she was not going to give him an inch.
“He wants a new bass. Now, I could give him one. God knows I have plenty of connections to give him something really amazing. Or, he could save for it with that extra thirty bucks and buy one himself.”
“And Erin will give him one for Christmas anyway.”
He sighed. “Well, probably. They share that. It makes her happy. Anyway, a kid his age has expenses. Dances, school trips, guitar strings, pizza for his friends.”
“Adrian, precious, I want you to think back to the beginning of this discussion about the strings. Now, he makes eighty dollars a month already for his allowance. Does this not indicate to you the boy has some instant-gratification issues rather than a lack of money to spend?”
He was quiet because she brought up a good point.
“I think it’s lovely that you want to believe Miles is so perfect.” She laughed and then stopped herself. “I do. And he’s a good kid, no doubt about that. He does spend his allowance on things like feed for the birds, the big softie he is. But he also fritters his money away on crap and wonders where it’s all gone. Making him wait for new strings because he’d burned through all twenty dollars in less than a day and a half is supposed to teach him a lesson. Don’t know if it will, but it makes me feel better.”
“How about I match you? Forty dollars a week.”
She tsked and then sighed. He was as hard to say no to as their son was, damn it.
“You have to give him chores for it. He has to do chores here, give him some at your house.”
“Oh.” He nodded. “That would be awesome. So you think it’d be all right?”
“At some point, you’re going to have to be upset with him, you know. You’ll have to hold him to a standard and he won’t make it either from sheer laziness or he’ll have a reason you’ll find flimsy. If you give him an allowance, you have to make him earn it and you’re going to have to steel yourself to be the bad guy sometimes.”
He frowned and he looked so adorable she kissed the furrow between his brows. “It comes with the territory. But for now, you know, have him take the garbage out. Let him do laundry. Make him learn something for it. It’ll create a new bond between you both.”
“You’re a lot of help, you know. Just being able to pick up the phone and ask you a question or get your advice is so big.”
“Hm.”
He grinned. “All right, I’ll come up with chores. Which means he, and you too, need to be at my house more often. Like this coming weekend? We do a Halloween party at Brody’s place for the kids. Miles should be there.”
“He’s got a party on Friday night. But after that he’s free.”
Adrian nodded. “All right. And for Thanksgiving, will you and Miles be with me? And my family of course. This year it’s at my house because we’re such a big group now. It’s also Alexander’s first birthday so there’ll be cake. We moved the annual grudge match football game from October to Thanksgiving Day this year. Maybe Miles would like to play.”
She got up to make some tea and he followed her into the kitchen. “Normally we do Thanksgiving with Mary at her house.”
“Holidays are going to be tough sometimes, I suppose.”
“I want him to build traditions with your family but not at the expense of what he has now.” Though the last bit about Alexander had been a very powerful lure. That little boy was very dear to her and he followed Miles around calling him Boo, for Blue, which Erin had started much to Miles’s shy delight.
At the same time, structure had been what kept both she and Miles on track. He was the kind of kid who needed it and she was the kind of parent who gave it.
This storm between them began to build again. Their energy changing, intensifying. It dizzied her, tempted her to let herself fall into that supercharg
ed thing between them.
His gaze roved over her features with such longing, such aching need, that she felt it to her core. To be looked at that way by a man like Adrian Brown had been a far-off fantasy only a short time before, and now her reality had turned inside out and he’d filled everything she didn’t know needed filling until he was there.
“Look, I know it’s hard to allow me in. I know you had a life before I came along. I upset the order of things and you love order so fucking much you’re torn between me and it.”
“Is that what you think?” She turned to look at him, trying not to allow that gorgeous face to steal her wits. She was weak, damn it all. Weak for him.
“How can I know what to think, Gillian? You keep your past locked up in a vault so all I can do is guess. Tell me something. Let me in. I won’t judge you. I just want to know you.”
Wretched, sweet man.
“You’re an amazing mother. I mean that. I watch you with Miles and I know that despite the fact that I wasn’t around for his early years, he had you and that helps. A lot.”
She exhaled, charmed no matter how hard she tried not to be.
“What was your mother like? Was she a good example?”
Well now, he just went from zero to fifty in a second, didn’t he? But he was right, she did need to share more, even if little by little.
“My mother was beautiful when she was a young woman. Talented. She wanted to be a dancer but she just didn’t have the training.” And she’d let that limit her until she died.
Adrian watched her, not speaking, but listening.
“So when my sister and I were growing up she always found a few quid extra here and there to pay for lessons for us. Tina had dance and singing lessons. She had a right lovely voice, she did.” But no real discipline.
“And you? Piano?”
Gillian nodded. “Yes.” She smiled. Those hours had been the best of her week, every week. Once her fingers brushed the keys it hadn’t mattered where she lived or what idiot her mother had gotten mixed up with this time.
“Was she a good mom then?”
Startled out of her memories, Gillian opted for honesty. “No. No, she wasn’t. She never should have had children.”
He paled a little. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “It happened a long time ago.”
“And your dad? Was he around?”
“No. And that was a good thing. My mother was a drunk.” Gillian’s laugh was without humor. “She also loved pills, and when we moved here, found crack cocaine to her liking as well. She also loved men who were easy to anger, hard to rouse when it came to work or any positive activity like cleaning up.”
“Christ. Did they hurt you too?”
“Here and there. I got good at staying out as much as I could. Got quick and nimble.” One of them had tried to break her fingers for fun. Because he’d known she loved the piano and he wanted to steal it from her.
Candace had hit him over the head with a bottle and they’d shoved him out the door. Mother-daughter bonding in Candace’s book.
“There’s not much worse in the world than a man who brutalizes women and children.”
“True. But to my mother, those were the best kinds of men. I used to think she wanted to fix them. But I don’t know if that’s the case anymore. I think perhaps it just got her off. The danger. The drama. Candace loved drama and with the men she chose, she got plenty.”
“Your sister . . .” He shook his head, she knew, probably uncomfortable.
“It’s all right. To be curious about her.” Gillian shrugged.
“It’s just . . . I feel like an asshole for not remembering her, even after you showed me pictures. And then I feel like an asshole for feeling like an asshole because I’d never in a million years forget you. Your voice, the way your skin feels, the way your hair smells. You’re indelible.”
She swallowed back a knot of emotion at his words. At the way he gave her compliments that seemed to burrow deep and barb in her heart.
“You befuddle me.”
His grin was sideways. A little crooked. A lot sexy.
“I do? How so?” He underlined this with a little head toss, artfully tousling his hair around his face, totally aware of his effect.
“Stop it.” She blushed, shaking her head. “You’re incorrigible, you know that?”
“I do. Erin told me once it was one of my best qualities. Take a compliment, Gillian. God knows you need a few, and I certainly don’t have to lie because you’re one of the most amazing people I’ve ever known.”
“Thank you. I feel very much the same way about you.”
The cockeyed grin changed a little. For a moment he looked like a sweet little boy.
“I like to hear that. A lot.”
“My sister was a lot like my mother. They wanted to be loved so much they forgot themselves. The same love of addictions and shitty men. Present company excluded.”
“Why do you think she never told me or tried to get money from me? I mean, you say she was like your mom. And how come you didn’t call her Mum?”
“I did when I was little. She wanted me to call her Candace. And then when we moved here she wanted to be Mommy or Candy.” She withheld her shudder. “My gran was a mum. I’m a mum. Once I was ten or so, I knew she wasn’t a mum. She sure as hell wasn’t a mommy, though Tina called her Mommy. They were close. Ran together.”
“Was that hard for you?”
“You’re going to think me a monster, but I was just glad not to be part of it. I always hoped they’d find in each other what neither found from anyone else.” She shrugged. “I wasn’t what my mother wanted or expected. I’d say something like how she did all she could with what she had, but that’s a lie. She was lazy and self-centered and she had a great, gaping hole inside that she never filled. It made being around her painful. I preferred my books and my music and later, once we moved to the States, my gran.”
Gillian looked to where her hand lay in Adrian’s. He’d filled something inside her. His gaze met hers and she was glad she’d shared. Felt better for it. He made her want to let him in. Which scared her even as it thrilled her.
“As for why she never used Miles to blackmail you? I don’t know for sure. Using him to manipulate you would have not been out of her behavioral patterns. She was manipulative, and when you were with her she still had her looks and she wasn’t afraid to use them to get what she wanted. But she never did that where he was concerned. I like to think that she loved Miles in her own way. And that he was the one thing she felt like she’d done right. She signed the papers and left me alone to raise him. I’d have given her money, she knew that. I’d have done anything for him. But instead of using it, she respected it.”
He couldn’t know what that meant.
“The way we grew up . . . skint, we call it. You grow up with nothing like we did and it shapes you. For good or for ill, it frames everything in some way or other. My sister was a mess. I can’t deny it. But she wasn’t all bad. How we came up sent me one way and her another. Miles is my anchor in a way my piano never could have been. I weathered a storm and survived it. She just sort of got battered over and over until she couldn’t anymore. She never stopped being a victim.
“Our mother didn’t have those scruples. I paid her many times to keep away from Miles and out of our lives. I’d do it again.” Hated tears fell and she brushed her hands over her face.
Most men would have changed the subject or made quick assurances to a woman as she sort of fell apart. Instead, he did exactly what she needed. He listened to her, his gaze on her steady and filled with more emotion than she could process just then.
He let her get herself together and then continued to listen as she spoke again.
“So, I choose to believe that my sister did not use Miles because she loved him and it was what she could give him. And for that, I’ll love her until the day I die.”
Adrian got her then. Understood the steadfast determination of hers t
o be independent and make her own way. Each word had come from her because she’d chosen to share herself with him. And what she’d revealed only dragged him under deeper.
Gillian Forrester was the perfect woman. So much control and discipline. She’d risen above a shitty childhood and built something not only for herself but their son too.
She understood family in the same way he did. When she said family was important, it was through the way she mothered, the way she’d stayed close with her grandmother, even the way she’d described her sister.
He’d liked a lot of women. Maybe even could have loved a few. And none of them had been what this one was.
He leaned closer, brushing his lips over hers with aching tenderness. The soft sigh she gave him in response undid him to his foundations.
“You’re a mum, all right. Thank you for loving our son so much.”
“Stop it now!” Flustered but affectionate, she glared his way. “As for loving him, well, of course. How could you do anything but?”
Easy, he leaned in and kissed each corner of her mouth before sitting back. “Yes. And thank you for that too.”
“What about your parents?”
He drew in a deep breath, as if measuring his words. “It wasn’t anything like your situation. They just weren’t around much. My mother loved my father powerfully. So much that she sort of forgot anyone else existed. He liked that. Being the center of her world.
“We weren’t abused or anything. It was just that they had not much left for us. He was busy. On the road a lot for his job. I’ve told you how much more Brody was a father to me than the one I had. I worry that I’ll be a shitty father. I travel a lot too. Less now than I did even a year ago. But I don’t want to be an absentee dad any more than I was already.”
“Oh no.” She shook her head. “Don’t. Please. You’re brilliant with Miles. You listen to him. You care about him. You want to ensure his well-being. You see him as much as you can. The best thing is that he knows it. Brody was your example and he’s an amazing father. As for your travel, Miles is getting older; perhaps you can take him with you when you go from time to time. He’d love that.”