In This Together

by Kara Lennox

  “Travis, it’s fine.” Elena squeezed his hand. “You know the social worker, right?”

  “Yeah. She’s nice.”

  “There you have it. She’s not going to be looking for an excuse to turn you down. Good foster homes are hard to find.”

  “Yeah, but I’m a single guy.”

  “You’re MacKenzie’s uncle. You’re a shoo-in. I remember when my parents applied to be foster parents. The social worker spent about five minutes at our house, asked a few questions. That was it.”

  “Your parents fostered kids?”

  “Just for a short time. Marietta—you met her at Thanksgiving? When she first came to this country, her parents had nothing but the clothes on their backs. Marietta and her sister stayed with us until their parents could get back on their feet. Our Cuban extended ‘family’ does that for each other. When we arrived in this country, strangers took us in. We return the favor.”

  “Well, that’s nice and all, but your father is a doctor. He lives in a really nice house, and he has a stay-at-home wife. They had you to prove they knew how to raise kids.”

  “You have everything you need, Travis. Trust me.”

  He wanted to believe her. But life had kicked him in the teeth too many times—he was afraid to hope that this time could be different.

  Upstairs, Travis and Elena went to work making the bed. Given how severely they’d disrupted the covers last night, it wasn’t a simple job.

  “You’re the most restless sleeper I’ve ever known,” Travis said as they smoothed the bedspread over the sheets. “Makes me wonder what you’re doing in your dreams.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember my dreams. I’m sorry if I kept you awake.”

  “No worries.” She’d have to kick him continuously in the head while singing the “Hallelujah Chorus” in her sleep all night long before he’d even think about complaining about having her in his bed. “Where are those condoms? We need to hide them good.”

  “The social worker isn’t going to snoop in your nightstand.”

  “You never know.” He folded up the three remaining condoms from the string Elena had stashed in his bedroom and tucked them inside a box of bandages in the bathroom.

  “Travis,” Elena said from the bedroom, “do you hear that?”

  “Hear what? Is she here?” It was a quarter to ten. Missy could arrive any minute. He stepped back into the bedroom to find Elena standing near the foot of the bed, her head cocked and brow furrowed, listening.

  “I hear water dripping.”

  Oh, God. Not another plumbing disaster. What were the odds? Then another possibility occurred to me, one much more likely given the fact it was raining like Niagara Falls out there.

  They followed the sound of trickling water down the hall, checking Elena’s room first. Nothing appeared amiss. Likewise, the bathroom seemed in good working order, no leaks.

  When they entered MacKenzie’s room, the problem became evident. Water was pouring through the ceiling onto the hardwood floor. Apparently the roof leaked.

  Why today? Why did it have to rain today?

  “Oh, Dios mío, it’s like a shower coming out of the ceiling!”

  Travis didn’t stop to admire his new fountain. He rushed down to the garage to find a bucket. “Grab some towels!” he yelled over his shoulder.

  “I’m on it,” she yelled back.

  By the time he returned with a mop and bucket, Elena was on her hands and knees sopping up the lake with a stack of the brand-new towels he’d just bought. He set the bucket under the leak, but at the rate the water was pouring in, it would overflow the container in no time.

  “We need a second bucket,” he said. “Can you find something? Maybe a big pot or a plastic wastebasket? I’m going up on the roof to see if I can’t stop the water from coming in.”

  “Travis, you can’t go up on the roof in weather like this! It’s the middle of a thunderstorm. You’ll get struck by lightning and nothing will be left of you but a piece of ash.”

  “I have to. Missy will be here any minute. If she sees this, I doubt she’ll be impressed if we tell her MacKenzie can take a shower without going down the hall to the bathroom.”

  “She’ll understand. Roof leaks happen.”

  “I can’t take the risk.” He didn’t have time to debate.

  In the garage he found a tarp and some bricks; if he could find where the rain was coming in, perhaps he could at least slow down the amount of water getting through.

  As he raised his extension ladder and leaned it up against the edge of the roof, rain pelted him, invading his ears and eyes and instantly soaking his clothes. It was cold rain, too. What a bummer if he fixed the leak only to catch a cold and die of pneumonia.

  He hauled the tarp and the bricks up, making three trips. Once he was up on the roof, he kept low; the roof’s pitch was steep and the shingles were slippery. Falling off the roof and breaking his leg wouldn’t help his chances of fostering MacKenzie, either.

  It didn’t take him long to find the problem. The flashing around the dormer was all bent up. Since it was raining almost sideways, the water was hitting the exterior wall of the dormer and leaking right under the warped edge of the flashing.

  The wind was blowing pretty hard, but maybe the tarp would stay put if he nailed the corners down and then used plenty of bricks around the edges.

  He draped the tarp over half the dormer, fighting the wind the entire time. One gust filled up the tarp and damn near had him airborne with the tarp as a parasail. But eventually he wrestled the thing into submission.

  He suspected this problem wasn’t new. In fact, he’d noticed a slight water stain in that corner of MacKenzie’s room, and he’d painted it over with Kilz, making a mental note to inspect the roof when he had more time.

  Guess he should have made time.

  When he returned to the bedroom, Elena had the water under control.

  “The waterfall has slowed to only a few drops.” She sounded relieved. “Were you able to fix it?”

  “Only temporarily. It looks like hell, but Missy won’t be able to see it from the street. With any luck, she won’t want to go out into the backyard.”

  “The ceiling is bulging a little bit, but it doesn’t look too bad.”

  “Let’s just hope Missy doesn’t notice.”

  Finally she looked at him, and her eyes widened. “You’re soaked through!”

  “That’s what happens to people who aren’t smart enough to come in out of the rain.” He went to his own bedroom to change clothes and towel-dry his hair. He should have gotten a haircut, he realized, as he attempted to comb the wavy mess into some kind of order.

  Then he thought about the way Elena ran her fingers through it, the way she grabbed handfuls of it when she was in the throes of passion, and he decided his hair was just fine.

  “She’s here!” Elena called from downstairs. “Her car is pulling up now.”

  Travis tossed his wet towel into the hamper, checked MacKenzie’s bedroom to be sure there was no more water leaking from the ceiling and trotted downstairs as the doorbell chimed. He opened the door while Elena stood deferentially in the background, as would be appropriate for an employee.

  Frankly, in all the panic, he’d all but forgotten she was supposed to be his employee. He’d begun to think of her as a partner.

  No, even worse than that: he’d started to think of her as a foster mother to his foster father. Those were dangerous thoughts.

  “Travis, good morning,” Missy said as she shook out her umbrella on the front porch. “What a day, huh?”

  “Yeah, what a day.” He let her in and took her umbrella and her raincoat. He didn’t have a coat tree or umbrella stand. He’d been doing good to furnish the living room with a sofa and coffee table. So he dra
ped the coat over a dining room chair and set the umbrella next to it.

  He quickly introduced Elena, who was all demure politeness. Missy smiled broadly, though she asked some pointed questions. “Travis said you managed...a day care?”

  “Yes, for two years, at the Logan Oil corporate headquarters,” Elena answered smoothly.

  “Okay. That works.” Missy looked around. “Travis, this place is just adorable. I can’t believe you found it and moved in so quickly.”

  “I was motivated. There’s still a lot of work to do, but I think I covered everything important—the safety issues,” he clarified.

  Missy looked everything over carefully. She didn’t hesitate to open drawers, cupboards and closets. As he’d predicted, she didn’t venture into the backyard, but she did stand on the screened-in porch and look around. She couldn’t hide her smile when she saw the tire swing Travis had hung.

  “I think she’ll love that,” Missy murmured, more to herself than Travis.

  As she took a tour of the upstairs, the expression on her face told Travis everything—she was pleased with what she saw. They ended up in MacKenzie’s room, and Missy clapped her hands together gleefully.

  “This is adorable! Who did all this? Ms. Marquez?”

  “Travis did every bit of it himself,” Elena said.

  Missy crossed the room to look out the window, which had a view of the backyard. “Well, it’s just charming—”

  At that moment, a large hunk of plaster chose to dislodge itself from the ceiling and plummet to the floor with a deafening bang, missing Missy’s head by inches.

  For a few heart-stopping moments, they all just stood there. Missy looked down at the plaster on the floor, then up at the gaping hole in the ceiling, which revealed a patch of rotting roof decking through which daylight was visible.

  Finally she looked at Travis. “Oh, dear.”

  Talk about an understatement. “There was a leak,” Travis said. “I only found out about it this morning, when it started raining. I did a temporary repair—”

  “He went up on the roof in the pouring rain,” Elena added.

  “And I cleaned up in here. I had no idea the damage was this extensive. The moment the rain stops, I’ll have a crew up on that roof. I’ll fix it. It’ll be good as new.”

  He brushed some plaster dust off Missy’s shoulder. She looked at his hand as if it was offensive, and he stopped.

  “I just don’t know, Travis. MacKenzie clearly can’t sleep in this room until the roof and ceiling are repaired.”

  “She can sleep in my room,” Elena said. “I’ll sleep in here, or on the couch, until it’s fixed.”

  Missy looked around thoughtfully. “It makes me wonder what other defects might be hidden....”

  “Frankly, Missy,” Travis said, “this is an old house. Things go wrong in old houses. What I do know is that it doesn’t have lead pipes or asbestos or bad wiring. All of that has been checked. Anything else that goes wrong, I can fix—probably better than most any foster parent you could find.”

  After a few moments, Missy smiled. “You’re right, of course. It’s my job to think of worst-case scenarios. Everyone has home-repair disasters and you’re better equipped than most to deal with them. You’ve accomplished a lot in a very short time, and I applaud you. I can finish up the paperwork today and bring MacKenzie over this afternoon.”

  Travis had to resist the urge to grab Missy and hug her. He’d done it! They’d done it. Without Elena’s help, this never would have happened. This was only the first of many hurdles, of course. The adoption process would be messy and expensive. But he’d do whatever it took to keep MacKenzie in Eric’s life. As her foster father, he could keep Eric’s picture in MacKenzie’s room. He could talk to her every night about her father, read her her father’s letters, let the two of them talk on the phone.

  And then Project Justice would do their thing, and pretty soon father and daughter would be reunited....

  “Travis?” Missy looked at him with concern.

  “What? Oh, sorry. I was just imagining how nice it would be to have a child in this house.”

  “Missy was just asking if you’ll be home this afternoon.”

  “You tell me what time to be here and I’ll be here.”

  They all walked down the stairs. Travis felt lighter somehow. Like his feet were barely touching the steps. He retrieved Missy’s raincoat and helped her put it on. The rain had let up, but it was still cool outside.

  She took her umbrella. “I’ll call when I have a better idea of when—”

  Just then someone honked their car horn—loudly, repeatedly.

  “What in the world...?” Elena went to the front door and opened it. Her lips formed a surprised O and her face went white.

  “Elena, what is it?”

  Then someone started screaming outside. “Elena, you come out here right now!”

  Travis knew that voice, except when he’d heard it last, it had been in a much friendlier tone.

  “Papa, what are you doing here?”

  Sure enough, Elmer Marquez had gotten out of his SUV and was striding up the walkway toward Travis’s front door, the storm on his face far worse than anything they’d experienced from the sky that morning. “Elena, I want you out of that criminal’s house right now. What do you think you’re doing, living in sin with that...that felon?”

  “Don’t call him that!” Elena stepped out onto the front porch, effectively barring the door from Elmer. “And what makes you think I’m living in sin? I’m a live-in nanny with my own bedroom. There is a difference.”

  Why now? Why couldn’t Elmer have waited another two minutes, and Missy would have missed the whole show?

  Missy looked decidedly scandalized. “Who is that man? Do you know him?”

  “He’s Elena’s father. And I take it he’s slightly overprotective. I guess he doesn’t like it that his little girl is working for an ex-con.” At least, he thought that was what Elmer referred to. Unless...

  “This man kidnapped you! He threw you into the back of his truck and held you prisoner. You don’t call that a felon? And he has a criminal record besides that!”

  “Papa, please, can we discuss this some other time?”

  “No, we cannot. There is nothing to discuss. Get your things. You are coming home with me.”

  “No, I am not! I am not a child and you can’t order me around.”

  “You brought this man into our home. You endangered our family.”

  “He is not dangerous!”

  “He kidnapped you!”

  “It was a misunderstanding!”

  “Are you coming with me? Or will you force me to teach this Travis Riggs a lesson, make sure he never comes near my family again?” Elmer tried to move Elena to the side, but she refused to let him pass.

  “Wait, wait, I’ll come with you, okay? Give me a second to get my things.”

  Elmer grabbed on to Elena’s arm. “You are not going back inside that house! I forbid it.”

  “Fine, I’ll go with you.” She threw a look over her shoulder at Travis—pleading with him to understand? To forgive her?

  He wanted to stop her. He wanted to insist that any beef her father had with him, they should deal with it face to face, man to man. On the other hand, he didn’t want to drag out this hideous confrontation any longer than necessary. Missy was already horrified.

  With a sinking feeling, he watched Elena practically drag her father away from the house.

  “Mr. Riggs,” Missy said in a stern, schoolmarm voice. “Did you or did you not kidnap that woman?”

  He really, really wanted to lie. But she wouldn’t take his word for it. She might check with the police and find out the truth. “Yes. But the next morning, I released her. It was an impulsive gesture.�
��

  “It was an impulsive felony.”

  “No charges were filed. Elena understood why I did it. She forgave me.”

  “Well, clearly her father didn’t. That man sounds dangerous.”

  “He’s not dangerous. He’s a doctor.”

  Missy’s lips pressed together in a hard line. “My ex-husband was a doctor. Didn’t stop him from being dangerous.”

  Great. Could he think of anything to say that might make things worse?

  “I’m sorry, Travis. I’ve overlooked a lot of things—your criminal record, the fact that you’re a single working man. I’ve tried to make allowances because you are MacKenzie’s blood relative and because I’m sympathetic to your wish not to have MacKenzie forever separated from her father. But I can’t in good conscience—”

  “No, Missy, please don’t say it. I can fix this. Elena will calm her father down—”

  “You said it yourself—you committed a crime on an impulse. A lack of impulse control is not a desirable trait for a potential foster father to exhibit.”

  “I guess it isn’t.” It wasn’t as if he could argue the point. “Is that it, then? The decision is made?”

  “You can always appeal. Maybe my supervisor will feel differently than I do.”

  But Travis guessed not.

  He watched as Missy walked to her car. She gave him one last sad look before climbing behind the wheel.

  Travis should have known it was too good to be true. Ten minutes ago he’d had a beautiful house and a beautiful lover and he’d been about to get custody of his beautiful niece. Now he had a house with a big hole in the roof, with a higher mortgage than he really wanted to pay, and two empty bedrooms.

  Without MacKenzie, there was no reason for Elena to come back. No job to come back to. He doubted she would want to live there—they weren’t exactly candidates for living together, not when he’d never even taken her out on a proper date.

  Hell, why was he standing in the rain feeling sorry for himself? He wasn’t the one who was about to lose his daughter. He’d really let Eric down.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN