To Protect Her Son

by Stella MacLean

  Your cynical side is showing.

  His natural reticence stopped him from commenting on how pretty—no, make that beautiful—Gayle Sawyer was this morning. And her beauty wasn’t all that he admired. For just a few moments she’d made him forget about Anna’s appointment. “You’re right. It will be difficult, but there is still more testing to be done, and that always gives us reason to hope that it’s some other neuromuscular disease, one less debilitating...”

  Her eyes searched his face, alight with interest. “You and Sherri are so good to Anna. She’s always been quick to praise both of you. She also told me how difficult it was when your dad died.”

  “Yeah. I was eleven at the time, just a kid, and couldn’t understand why he was never coming home. For months after he died I waited for him. I didn’t tell my mom or Anna what I was doing. I wouldn’t let anyone near my dad’s things in the basement. Thankfully my mother understood how important it was to me to have them around. Then one day, probably a year or so after Dad passed away, I went into my parents’ bedroom to put on a sweatshirt of Dad’s. All his clothes were gone.”

  His gut still hurt at that memory. He tried to meet her caring gaze but couldn’t. He cleared his throat. “Not long after that I started skipping school, and I got away with it for quite a while until my English teacher threatened to tell my mother if I did it again. A day later I skipped the last class, and she reported me to the principal and he called Mom.” He shrugged off the memory. “Mom got busy and convinced a cop friend of the family to take me under his wing.”

  “How did Anna react to your father’s death?”

  “Better than me, but she had Mom. Anna spent a lot of time at Sherri’s house with Aunt Colleen. Somehow it seemed to be easier for her.”

  “So that’s how you got involved helping troubled teens. You understood where they were coming from.”

  “In most cases yes, but I didn’t start out with teens. I was working the beat when I was shot—by a punk kid who shouldn’t have had a gun. The good news is that if he had had any marksmanship training, I wouldn’t be sitting here today.”

  Gayle’s eyes were wide, glistening with tears. “I’m so sorry.”

  Her sudden tears took him by surprise. “Hey! It wasn’t your fault. You had nothing to do with it.” He reached in his pocket for a tissue and offered it to her.

  Dabbing the corner of her eyes, she smiled at him. “Thank you.”

  She took a sip of her coffee and seemed to compose herself. “I was so surprised when the lawyer contacted me about Aunt Susan’s will. But since I’ve moved here, everyone I’ve met has told me what a wonderful person she was. Did you know Aunt Susan well?”

  “She was very kind to me. I remember one Mother’s Day I wanted to get my mother a bouquet of flowers but I didn’t have quite enough money for the ones I wanted. I was really upset as Mom and I had been going through a rough time, and I wanted to make it up to her somehow.”

  “What did she do?” Gayle asked, the look on her face so focused on him he felt something stir deep inside him. She was really listening to him, and she genuinely wanted to understand what he’d experienced.

  He had the urge to kiss her right here in the cafeteria, but with a huge effort on his part, he refused the invitation of her lips, and the dark curl lying so invitingly on her cheek. “Your aunt rang up the exact amount of money I had, added a beautiful red organza ribbon, wrapped the flowers in florist’s paper and sent me on my way. I never forgot that.”

  “You must have been one of her favorite neighborhood kids.” Her smile was warm and inclusive.

  He wanted to hold her attention, to bask in her wonderful smile. “After that, I let her know that if she needed any help with groceries or errands done I’d do it for her. She made the best raisin cookies I’ve ever eaten.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever had a raisin cookie,” she said, a wistful smile turning up the corners of her lips.

  “You haven’t lived until you’ve had one made by the ladies in Eden Harbor. Those cookies are one of the town’s greatest delicacies.”

  She compressed her lips and looked away, leaving him to wonder what he’d said to upset her.

  “If you play your cards right, I just might take you on a tasting expedition to the Cream Puff Bakery. There are several versions of this illustrious cookie,” he said, hoping for the reappearance of her lovely smile.

  Gayle finished her coffee in silence. “I’m sorry, but I really need to get back to work.” She didn’t meet his gaze as she got up from the table.

  “Oh! Of course. I’ll walk with you.”

  As they moved along the corridor, he chose his moment carefully. Touching her arm he pulled her to a halt. “One of the things I planned to say back there was that you and I have to talk about Adam. He needs help, and you and I should talk about that in private.”

  Her eyes darkened with worry. “I know we do.” She sighed, and for half a second he thought she was going to lean into his arms.

  The thought startled him. Deep down he knew that he would have welcomed her. Quelling the impulse to reach out to her, he scrambled to come up with a meeting time. “Why don’t we get together after your shift?”

  She glanced around. “Where? Adam is supposed to be home studying for a test.”

  “Could we meet here in the cafeteria?”

  “Won’t Anna need you?”

  “Oh, yeah, maybe.”

  “Adam usually studies in his room. You’ll want to spend time with Anna when her appointment is over. If you like, we could sit out in my backyard. I’ll be around all evening, so don’t rush.”

  He wanted to spend time with her very much. Just being around her made him feel...excited about life. The idea unnerved him. As caring and kind as she was, Gayle was not his type of woman—the kind of woman who might want to get close, or worse still, have him wanting her in a real way, not simply as a casual relationship.

  “You feel you can’t leave Adam alone right now because of those teenagers the other night?”

  She lowered her head in defeat.

  “I understand. I’ll meet you at your place around seven this evening?”

  “Yes,” she said before turning away from him, and striding down the corridor.

  * * *

  GAYLE DID HER best to concentrate on her clinic duties for the rest of the day, but her worry over Anna, and Nate’s presence in the clinic, made it difficult to maintain her outward calm. She had really enjoyed coffee with him. When he’d followed her back into the clinic she’d found herself wondering what it would be like to have dinner with him. A real date. Having a wonderful evening with him during which they focused only on each other would be a life-changing event for her.

  She had been out to a real dining room with a real date only once, and it had ended badly. The man had insisted that, since he’d bought dinner and drinks, she owed him. Regardless of how much she’d like to go out with Nate, his interest in talking about Adam really worried her. She remembered Ted Marston’s remark that mentoring included getting to know Adam’s family background, which would mean questions about his father. Nate’s history as a police officer would suggest that he’d know how to question her, to get answers she didn’t want to offer. Because she had to protect her past, she couldn’t accept a real date with Nate, even if he asked.

  After what Peggy had told her and Adam’s recent behavior, she was seriously concerned about her son’s willingness to lie to her. Sure, teenagers often hid the truth, but this was more serious, or at least she felt it was. The root cause of her worry came from her fear that Adam might turn out to be like his father.

  She glanced around the waiting room as if in a daze. Had Anna already been taken to an exam room? And if so, how had she missed it?

  “I just put Anna Barker in exam five,” Carolyn Sinclair s
aid as she approached Gayle’s desk. “She’s the last patient.”

  The waiting dragged on. Finally the clinic came to an end. Anna, Nate and Sherri hadn’t stopped by the desk when they left, leaving Gayle to worry about what the neurologist had told them.

  She finished filing and was getting up to leave when she got a call from Adam. He wanted her to bring home a pizza for dinner. She had planned to cook chicken curry tonight, but pizza was easier, and since Adam had called and asked, she felt it might prove helpful in restarting their conversation. Besides, pleasing Adam somehow made her feel better about everything.

  When she reached the house with the pizza, Adam was waiting.

  “I’ve got a science project I’m working on.” He brushed his hands through his hair. “I gotta get a decent mark on this.”

  She was relieved to hear him talk about doing well on the assignment, a positive thing in her mind. “Why don’t you take your pizza and soda up to your room and work there? Nate is coming over later this evening to see me.” She placed the pizza on the counter, opened the box and took a pizza cutter out of the drawer.

  “What does he want?”

  She looked up and met Adam’s intense gaze. Her first impulse was to make up an excuse for Nate’s visit, but she wanted her son to be honest with her, which meant she had to be honest with him. She had to tell him the truth. “He’s coming here to talk about you. I have no idea what he wants to tell me, but whatever it is...” She touched his arm, wishing she could hug him close the way she used to do. “I know this whole thing with Nate is going to work out for you. I have faith in him. Don’t you?”

  Adam pulled away and went to the cupboard for plates. “Yeah, he’s cool,” he said, but his voice lacked enthusiasm.

  She watched helplessly as her son gathered up his supper and went to his room without saying another word. Where had her sweet little boy—the one she’d dedicated her life to all these years—gone? She longed for the days when Adam would come racing home from school, excited about something he was planning with his friends, or a subject the teacher had talked about in class.

  She remembered one day when Adam had fallen at the school playground and the teacher had called her. She’d raced to the school, her heart pounding, and the look of relief and love shining from her son’s eyes had made that moment unforgettable.

  She was still thinking about Adam when the doorbell rang.

  Shaken from her reverie, she went to answer it.

  “Is that for me?” Adam called from his room.

  She glanced through the side panes, immediately aware of a set of broad shoulders.

  A man outside her door. A nice man who wanted to help her, not get her into bed.

  “No. It’s Nate.”

  “Oh” was all Adam said, but his tone told her he’d hoped that some of his friends were stopping by to see him.

  She opened the door.

  “You remembered I was coming over tonight, right?” Nate asked, a look of mild surprise on his face.

  “Oh! Yes, come in. I was just out in the kitchen.”

  He followed her. Spotting the open box on the counter, he said, “How much do you want for a slice?”

  “You haven’t eaten, either.” She felt so happy to have him standing across from her with that engaging grin on his face.

  “You got that right.”

  “Why don’t we take the pizza and something to drink outside? I’m sure I have a bottle of red wine somewhere around here,” she said, glancing at the wine rack built onto the end of the wooden counter.

  “I’ll get the glasses,” he offered, and they gathered up what would be dinner for both of them and headed outside.

  The backyard was illuminated by the light from the street behind her house and the neighbors’ windows next door. She led him to the table and chairs that sat on a patch of patio she’d built near the back of the lot.

  He opened the wine and poured them each a glass. They ate in silence, both hungrier than they’d realized. When they finished, she said, “I have some homemade gingerbread if you’d like a slice.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “Why don’t we enjoy our wine while I tell you about Adam? When we’re finished, we can have dessert.”

  “Okay.”

  She waited, the night air chilling her arms. He topped up their wine. She reached for her glass before settling as far back in the chair as she possibly could, the feel of the wood a comfort.

  * * *

  NATE NOTED THE anxious lift of her shoulders, the way she pulled her pink turtleneck closer to her chin as she watched him. His eyes followed her hand, the tentative touch of her fingers to her throat. He forced his own hands into his lap in order not to reach for her. In that moment he knew that he would like the chance to get to know her better. But that had to be in the future, once he’d done what he could for her son.

  Meanwhile, he had to be careful what he said. He had to make a convincing argument if he was going to get her to cooperate with his plan for Adam. “Thank you for dinner.”

  A ghost of a smile flitted across her face. “It was only pizza.”

  “Dinner for a starving man was what it was,” he said gently, waiting for her eyes to meet his. When they didn’t, he decided to use the direct approach.

  “Adam is a smart young man who wants to do well in school. But that’s not easy for him because the friends he has right now think that doing well in school is stupid. He’s afraid that if he gets good marks, they’ll drop him. Or worse, they’ll spread the word that he’s a complete nerd, someone to be avoided. At his age, it’s really easy to get taken in by other, seemingly more adult, members of the class. No one wants to be seen as inept socially or unable to make friends, especially not a teenager looking for acceptance in a new place.”

  “I can identify with that,” Gayle said, taking another sip of her wine.

  He forced his eyes away from her lips as they touched the glass. “He’s not comfortable enough in his own skin right now to see that he is capable of finding new friends. And it didn’t help that he missed out on making the basketball team.”

  Gayle put her glass on the table with a thud. “I don’t understand why he didn’t. He’s good. I went to a couple of practices and he seemed to be doing fine. I never played basketball, so I have no idea about his skill level or anything like that. All I know is that he was devastated when he didn’t make the team, and so was I. I had hoped that he’d find new friends there.”

  “I spoke to Coach Cassidy, and he says that Adam is not a team player, that he’s a loner.”

  Her eyes were angry when she looked at him. “But wouldn’t you be that way if you were the new kid and all the others had played together before?”

  How quickly she’d come to his defense. She clearly had not lost faith in her son. “Yeah, you might be right. Since I grew up and played basketball here, I didn’t take into consideration how much of an outsider he must feel like. Basketball is a team sport. Playing and practicing together is what makes a team cohesive and therefore successful on the court.”

  “And what looked like being a loner, not a team player, might simply be the fact that he hadn’t really found his place on the team. He played basketball in Anaheim and did well. It was the whole focus of his life until he got mixed up with one of the kids up the block from us...”

  Her voice trailed off, and even in the low light of the yard he could see the anxious expression on her face.

  “I had hoped I could help Adam with this. I tried to convince Coach Cassidy to give him another chance, but he said he already had more than enough players. He’d had to turn down several other talented kids, not just Adam. But maybe next year he’ll make the cut.”

  Gayle cupped her wineglass in her hands and took a sip. “Thanks for trying.”

  “You’re welco
me,” he said, waiting for her to respond in some way. He’d never had to wait for a woman to talk to him in his entire life. Women were always anxious to talk, to flirt or gain his attention in some way.

  What he wouldn’t give to simply sit here in the quiet of the evening and enjoy this woman’s company, to discuss anything other than her son. After what his sister had experienced this afternoon, and what he knew he had to discuss with Gayle, he wanted to forget his responsibilities and just be with her. To spend time with her, watching her smile, inhaling her scent...touching her.

  Hey, go careful here.

  He sighed. Not tonight. Tonight he had to do his job. “But that’s not all I need to talk to you about.”

  * * *

  “I’M AWARE OF THAT,” she said, feeling the air around her turn cooler. Or was it her fear making her feel chilled? Just a few moments ago she was so sure he wanted to touch her. Or was it her own need to be touched by him that had made her believe that?

  “What Adam really needs is to feel connected to people, to family. To feel valued by those he loves and who love him.”

  “I love Adam. I wasn’t aware that I didn’t make him feel valued,” she said a little defensively.

  “He has expressed an interest in connecting to family, and I was wondering if there might be a relative on his father’s side that he was close to in Anaheim.”

  She had to stick to her lie about Adam’s father, but at least she could tell the truth about her only remaining family member—if you could call him that. “There was no one. I have a half brother, Alfred McGuire, but we’ve never been close. I think he’s living somewhere in Hawaii.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  His words were so gentle she wanted to reach for him, feel his arms around her, admit the truth to him.

  “Adam never had an opportunity to know him.” She waited for Nate to ask her more questions about her brother, prepared to steer the conversation to a safer topic if need be.

  “Adam told me about the incident with Peggy Anderson.”

  A sigh of relief slid past her lips. He must have decided to drop the subject of her family. “He did?”