“The subject is closed,” Mitch said over his shoulder.
“Dad. Can I buy a weight-lifting set? One of those real neat ones with a bench and everything?”
“What brought this on?” Mitch asked, hunkering down to eye level with his son.
“I know I could make the Mini-Rivermen basketball team if I lift weights before tryouts. Me and Tyler figured it out.”
“There’s only a couple of weeks left until tryouts. I don’t think—”
“I want one,” Sam said, eyes narrowed and hands balled into fists. “I want one right now. I don’t want to wait. I’m going to the bank and get my money and buy one.”
“No you are not,” Mitch said firmly. He reached out and put his hands on Sam’s shoulders. “Weightlifting equipment is too expensive to buy without doing some research—”
“It’ll be too late if we wait. You never let me have anything. You don’t want me to be on the team.”
“That’s not true,” Mitch said.
Sam jerked away. He swung his arm and sent the piles of stovepipe joints crashing to the floor. Tessa jumped back as they scattered at her feet with a deafening clatter. Even Sam heard it. He flinched. His eyes flew to her face. She saw anger and humiliation, and something more, a need and a desire to belong. And deep in her heart a lonely little girl who had never truly belonged, either, felt those same hurts.
There were so many things Sam couldn’t do. Playing basketball didn’t need to be one of them.
“Samuel, apologize to Tessa for that behavior.”
“No.” Sam folded his arms over his chest and closed his eyes. His face was red with both anger and embarrassment.
Tessa’s heart squeezed. Other children would put their hands over their ears if they wanted to block words they didn’t want to hear. Sam closed his eyes.
Mitch tapped Sam on the shoulder. “Sam, open your eyes and listen to me.”
“Mom would let me have it,” Sam said, his eyes still closed.
Mitch’s shoulders sagged. He dropped his head for a moment, but when he spoke again his voice was firm and steady, even though Sam couldn’t hear it. Tessa’s heart ached for both of them, the isolated little boy and the man who was trying so hard to raise him.
Mitch angled his face close to his son’s. “Sam,” he said loudly enough for his son to hear.
Sam opened his eyes. “Mom would let me have it,” he said again. There was no mistaking the longing in his words, and Tessa found herself actively disliking a woman she’d never met. A woman who was selfish enough to leave her husband and child without looking back.
“Maybe she would,” Mitch agreed. “But we’ve discussed this before. Your money from Mr. Steele is not to be spent on just anything that comes along.”
“I know.” Sam’s lower lip stuck out in a mutinous pout.
“It’s invested. We’ll have to pay a penalty to take it out of the bank.”
“How much?”
“As much as your weight bench would cost. Probably a lot more.”
“I still want it.” He signed the words for emphasis.
“You can put it on your Christmas list.”
“Christmas is too late. I want it now.”
“We can’t always have what we want, Sam. Now, apologize to Tessa for shoving those stovepipes off the shelf. You could have hurt her.”
“I won’t.” Sam broke free and bolted for the door.
“Samuel, come back here.”
“No, no, no,” he repeated, running faster.
Mitch stood up and took a step after him. “Wait.” Tessa put a hand on his arm and felt the corded muscles tight with tension. “Maybe you should both cool down a minute.”
“He can’t be allowed to throw tantrums like that. He’s too old.”
“He’s only ten.”
“Life isn’t going to be easy for him. He has to understand—”
“When you’re ten waiting until Christmas seems like forever,” she reminded him gently.
Mitch sighed. “Maybe I was too quick to say no. But you realize that even if I bought him a weight bench, he’d be bored with it in a week. And it isn’t going to help him make the team.”
“I’m sure he’ll realize that on his own—if you give him a chance to think about it.”
Mitch raked his hand through his hair. “You’re probably right. He’s just so fixated on this tryout. He’s a remarkably levelheaded kid most of the time. But making the starting lineup is his dream.”
Linda Christman’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “Mitch, come to the office please. The tool salesman is here to see you.”
“Damn. I forgot he was coming.”
“Go ahead and talk to him. I’ll keep an eye on Sam.” The top half of the big double doors leading to the lumberyard were wire-mesh-reinforced glass. Tessa could see Sam sitting on the picnic table where the employees ate lunch in nice weather, and where those who smoked were banished no matter what the weather.
“He’s going to apologize.”
Tessa nodded her head. “But don’t force him. I…I want him to like me.”
“Tessa, that’s not—”
“I know it’s not good parenting. I’m not talking as a parent. Yet. Let’s just say I know how it feels to be ten and an outsider. Something I imagine you never experienced—you and your River Rat friends.”
“Mitch, you have a call on line two.” Linda’s voice sounded through the store once more.
He looked over his shoulder toward the office level, then back at Sam. “Okay. I won’t talk to him again until we’ve both cooled off.”
“Thanks.” She’d already said too much. She should never have let him know that Sam’s friendship was important to her.
Tessa pushed open the heavy metal doors and went outside into the chill of the October afternoon. She walked over and stood directly in front of Sam. He had found the basketball Bill Webber and some of the other employees used to shoot hoops on their lunch hour. Head bowed, he was sitting on the picnic table, feet spread on the seat, bouncing the ball between his knees. He ignored her. She put her hand out and stopped the ball. He looked up at her, his face still mutinous and wary. “Want to shoot some hoops?” she asked.
“You’re going to have a baby.”
“I can still shoot hoops.”
He looked at her stomach. “You can run like that?” he asked after a moment.
Tessa laughed. She couldn’t help it. “Well, not very far or very fast. But I can still play H-O-R-S-E.” It had been years since she’d played the old schoolyard game of assigning letters to missed shots, but she’d been pretty good at it.
She took the ball from Sam’s hands and began to dribble in place. It was a little awkward, but she managed, even when the baby decided it was time to kick.
“Are you going to yell at me for what I did in there?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m not your mother.”
“My mom left us.”
“So did my dad.”
“He did?”
“When I was five. I don’t remember him.”
“My mom sent me a picture of her and her new dog last summer.” Mitch said his ex-wife hadn’t seen Sam in more than a year, but she had time to have her picture taken with a dog. “My dad’s pretty cool. Most of the time.” Sam scratched a line in the dust that coated the blacktop paving. He looked up at her. “You didn’t rat on me the other night, either.”
“I try not to rat on my friends,” Tessa said.
“I’m sorry I was a butt-head in there.”
“It’s not me you have to apologize to.” She had told Mitch it was important to her that Sam like her. It was. But she also realized it was important for him to learn to control his emotions and his frustration with his handicap.
“My dad never listens to what I want.”
“Buying a weight-training bench is a big investment. You need to think it over.”
“I want one. And I have the money old Mr. Steele left me.”
“The money is for college.”
“What if I don’t go to college?”
She didn’t have an answer for that one. Tessa decided to change the subject. She offered him the basketball. “You go first,” she said.
Sam took the ball and dribbled a little, set his feet and shot. His technique was pretty good, but his throw was short.
“H,” he said, his face turning beet-red when Tessa sank her first shot.
He threw himself into his next attempt and the ball hit the backboard six inches above the basket. “Damn,” he said, and stalked over to the picnic table.
Tessa pretended not to hear him, set her feet, and her second shot swished through the net without touching the rim. “Your turn,” she said, offering Sam the ball.
“You win. I don’t want to play.”
“Is that what you’re going to tell the coach when he wants to put you in the game?”
Sam gave her a dark stare. “He won’t put me in the game. I’ll only get to play with the losers and the nerds. I wouldn’t if I had a weight-lifting bench.”
“Yes, you would,” Tessa said. She was going where she’d never been before. She’d never tried to reason with, or discipline, a child Sam’s age. “Not because you don’t have a bench, but because you’re a quitter.”
“I am not.” His shoulders came back.
Her throat contracted painfully. Of course he wasn’t a quitter. He tried hard at everything he did. She felt like the meanest woman in the world, but she had a point to make. She held out the basketball. “Prove it.”
He took the ball and dribbled for a long moment, then he moved down the court and under the basket, heaving in a layup that rolled around the rim and slipped off the edge. He took the rebound and set himself for a second shot. This one hit the backboard just right and dropped in. “There,” he said, breathing a little heavily. “I am not a quitter.”
Tessa nodded. “Of course you’re not. You just proved that. That’s not a bad layup by the way. You just need a little more height and a little more muscle behind the shot.”
“I need a weight bench,” Sam said, sensing victory and snatching at it.
Tessa hid a smile. “You may be right. But I don’t think you’re going to talk your father into one before tryouts.”
“He’s too damned stubborn.”
“I bet you don’t use that word around him.”
Sam colored to the tips of his ears. “I’m sorry. Sometimes I forget.”
“I won’t tell.” It was Tessa’s turn. She missed her shot, but not by much.
“H,” Sam said.
“I think I know a way you could get some weight training in and help me out, too,” she said with deliberate casualness. Sam might not be able to hear the inflection in her voice, but he was very good at reading body language.
Sam turned to face her head-on, an indication his interest was piqued.
“I want to inventory the paint supply in the store, but your dad doesn’t think I should be lifting those cans. I could use your help moving them around.”
“That’s not lifting weights,” Sam sneered. Disappointment darkened his blue eyes.
“Oh, yes it is. It’s like lifting eight-pound weights.”
“Eight-pound weights? How heavy is that?”
Tessa laughed. “As heavy as a can of paint.”
Sam looked as if he was going to take offense for a moment, then he laughed, too.
“I could try it,” he said, obviously not wanting to give in too easily.
“If your dad sees you’re serious…” Tessa let her words trail off and took another shot. She missed.
“Okay. I get it. You don’t have to try and trick me into doing it like I was a little kid.” Sam caught the ball on the rebound and put it back in the storage basket beside the picnic table where it was kept.
Tessa just nodded, not wanting to press her luck.
“I’ll help you with the paint cans. I’m going to have to do some kind of punishment for mouthing off at Dad and knocking those pieces of pipe on the floor, anyway. Maybe if I do this, he won’t ground my e-mail,” he suggested hopefully. “I just started getting stuff from this kid in Ireland that Pastor Lynn’s boyfriend hooked me up with.”
“Maybe,” Tessa said.
Sam slung his book bag over his shoulder. “Yeah. When pigs fly.”
It was such an old-fashioned grown-up expression—probably gleaned from Caleb—that Tessa had to hide another smile. Sam really was a great kid. She would miss him when she left town.
As always, the strength of the longing to stay right where she was caught her unawares. She might be building a relationship with Sam, but by necessity it would be a short-lived one. It was unwise, and unfair to take it any farther than it had already gone.
If she had been smart, she would have gone back to her work and let Mitch handle the aftermath of his confrontation with his son. But she wasn’t smart when she thought with her heart, instead of her brain. Instinctively she put her hand on her swollen stomach, felt the fluttering movements as the baby settled back to sleep. She made terrible mistakes when she let her emotions get the better of her. This time it had turned out okay. But she couldn’t take the chance on being that lucky a second time.
Sam wasn’t her child. She had no real place in his life.
“You’ll try and see your dad’s side of it, okay?” she said as she reached for the handle of one of the big double doors.
Sam got there first and pulled it open, stepping sideways so she could enter first. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll try. But I really want a weight bench.”
“Then tell him so. In a nice way.”
“He’ll say no.”
“Then we’ll move paint cans every day until you look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
Sam laughed. “I don’t think there’s that much paint in the whole world.”
MITCH HADN’T EXPECTED to see Sam laughing again for a long time. But he was. He was also putting the scattered stovepipe joints back on the shelf and evidently having a good time doing it.
Somehow Tessa had defused the situation and coaxed Sam into a better mood. It had been difficult enough being mother and father to his son for the past four years; Mitch knew it would be even harder raising a volatile teenager alone. Today had been just a small ripple on the water compared to the battle of wills he’d face in the next few years.
He didn’t want to raise Sam alone. He needed a female partner. But until Tessa had walked into his life, he hadn’t actually focused those longings on any one woman.
Now he couldn’t keep her out of his thoughts day or night.
“How is everything going?” he asked, coming up on them while Sam’s back was turned.
“Fine.” She smiled at him and the force of it hit him right in the gut the way it always did. “Sam wants to apologize.” She touched Sam’s hand and motioned that Mitch had arrived. Sam turned to face him, but he wasn’t smiling any longer.
“I’m glad to see you’re putting the shelves back to rights,” Mitch said because he didn’t know where else to start.
“I’m sorry, Dad.” Sam was holding a big silver-colored elbow joint so tightly his knuckles were white. “I acted like a real butt-head.”
“Lashing out the way you did doesn’t solve problems.”
“I know. I’m cleaning up the mess I made. You can ground my e-mail if you want, but I’m still going to help Tessa with the paint.”
“I’ll have to think about your e-mail privileges.” Sam couldn’t be allowed to think he could get out of this without some consequences. “What’s this about helping Tessa with the paint?” Mitch looked over at Tessa. Her cheeks were pink and she didn’t meet his eye.
“I’m going to move all the heavy paint cans,” Sam said. “She says it will be like lifting weights. Is she right, Dad?”
“Close enough.”
“You’ll see. By the time we’re done, I’ll have big muscles. I’ll be Arnold Schwarzenegger.”
Sam struck a bodybuilder’s pose and Mitch grinned. He reached out and ruffled Sam’s hair.
“If you look like Arnold by this time next week, we’ll patent the paint-can bodybuilding method and make enough money that you can buy yourself a whole gym.”
“It’s a deal,” Sam said confidently, as if he could do just that.
“I’ll practice shots with you every day for an hour after school.”
“You can get off work for that long?”
“We’ll do it here, but I promise I won’t come back inside the store unless it’s a real emergency. And I’ll ask Aaron Mazerik if there’s any way he can free up some time at the school weight room for you little guys.”
“Cool. But don’t worry—I’m not going to be little for long,” Sam vowed.
Mitch knew that better than Sam, and it was bittersweet knowledge. He’d always wanted a big family, lots of kids. Now it looked as if Sam would be an only child, just as he had been. “You’re growing up way too fast. I guess we can skip the e-mail grounding this time—if you do a real good job for Tessa.”
“I’ll do the best job you’ve ever seen.”
He gave the stovepipe such an enthusiastic boost back onto the shelf that two more fell off the other end.
“Oops,” he said. “See? I’m stronger already.” He jogged down the row of shelving.
Mitch took advantage of his absence. “Thanks, Tessa. I was about to come down too hard on him until you stepped in.”
“Sometimes an outsider can see that more easily.” She wasn’t smiling any longer. Her eyes had darkened with some emotion he couldn’t read.
“I suppose that’s true.”
“I needed the practice.” The brittleness in her voice surprised him.
“Tessa, you’re going to be a good mother.” He wasn’t just saying that. He could see many qualities in her that Kara had lacked. She was dependable, steady, caring of others. She was grounded in reality, the here and now. Not very sexy attributes, but she still made the blood boil in his veins.
“I don’t have any choice.” Her hands had balled into fists at her sides. He saw her deliberately relax them, then shove them into the pockets of her sweater. She stood a little taller, and the look in her eyes became a shade more determined. “I’m in this all alone now.”
Last-Minute Marriage Page 11