Private Lives

by Karen Young

  He watched her dissolve again into noisy sobs and resisted an impulse to reassure her. He’d done a few dumb things as a teenager himself. He could tell her that one mistake—albeit a doozy—didn’t mean her life was over. She could make amends to the kid she’d hit. Looking at her, his features softened. Baby-fine hair curled sweetly at the nape of her neck. He remembered looking at her the day she was born, marveling at the perfection of her tiny body. He had a fatherly urge to hug her, to tell her that he and Diane both loved her. But instinctively, he knew she needed to suffer more severe consequences for what she’d done.

  He waited for her tears to subside somewhat. “Fortunately for you, Rick sees it that way, too.”

  She turned to look at him, her face wet and bewildered, big blue eyes watery and red. “Who?”

  “Rick, the kid you nearly creamed on the bike.”

  “You’ve talked to him?” She blinked, wiped her cheeks with both hands.

  “Yeah, I’ve talked to him.” Ryan went to the French doors and motioned for Diane to come inside. She took a long drag from a half-smoked cigarette and crammed it deep into the soil of a potted sago palm, then crossed the patio.

  “You need to hear this, too, Diane.” Dipping his fingers into his shirt pocket, he removed a business card he’d used to scribble on earlier. It had taken some sleuthing, but Ryan had finally located a couple of students who’d been jogging in the vicinity when it happened. They knew the biker and had come to his aid when Jennifer drove off. They’d been glad to identify him to Ryan, who’d driven straight to the kid’s house. Rick Sanchez, sixteen years old, had not been seriously hurt, but he was banged up and bruised. He had been traveling in the biking lane and admitted to Ryan that he had swerved to avoid a pothole in the asphalt just as Jennifer sped by in the Manesses’ SUV. None of which excused Jennifer’s fleeing the scene.

  “He was damned decent about it,” Ryan ended. “You owe him an apology and you’re paying for his bike out of your own money. It’s totaled.”

  “Okay,” she said meekly, chewing on her inner lip.

  Diane sat on the edge of the couch, shapely legs crossed, fingers clasped around one knee. “Mr. Maness came by a couple of hours ago to pick up his car,” she said.

  “Yeah, we talked earlier. He could have complicated things.”

  “By pressing charges?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Melissa and Jody went home with him,” Jennifer told Ryan. Color had returned to her cheeks now. She no longer looked as scared, but she kept darting little glances between her parents. Clearly, she was waiting for the other shoe to fall.

  “Now…” Ryan went to the bar on the other side of the room and took down a tumbler from the glass-front cabinet. The Scotch was a rich, warm brown. He took a satisfying swallow, then wiped his mouth with his hand. “Here’s the deal. You’re moving in with me, Jen.” He frowned when her face brightened. “And before you begin celebrating, I want you to know that it won’t be a walk in the park living with me instead of your mother. I’ve been in Family Court often enough to know that kids tend to think the grass is greener at the house of the parent they don’t live with. I’m taking on this responsibility not because I think your mother has failed, but because you’ve behaved badly. I’ll be running a tight ship, I just want to warn you, Jen.”

  “What about school?” She was trying, but not quite succeeding in putting on a sober face when Ryan guessed that inside she was jubilant.

  “I would expect you to buckle down and prove to me that you’ve turned over a new leaf.”

  “My grades were okay in Dallas,” she said, her mouth turned down in protest.

  “Okay won’t be good enough here,” he told her.

  She glanced at Diane. “When does this start?”

  “I think this is the best thing,” Diane said, scooping up her purse as if Ryan might change his mind if she delayed. “I’ll have her things shipped tomorrow,” she told him. “And good luck.”

  He watched color flare in Jennifer’s cheeks. Although she’d been begging to come live with him for a year or so, it must hurt to see Diane so eager to get rid of her. He wondered if their inability to get along meant they were too much alike. He’d never believed that, but what did he know about mothers and daughters? For that matter, what did he know about fathers and daughters? Since divorcing Diane, he’d been a very spotty parent to Jen. She’d been only nine years old at the time. More than once today, he’d wondered what he was getting himself into by taking on the full-time parenting of a fifteen-year-old girl.

  “Do you need a bed for tonight?” he asked Diane. He had only one extra bedroom, which would now be occupied by Jennifer, but she could share with her mother this once.

  “No, I’m heading back.”

  “She has a new boyfriend,” Jennifer said with spite, getting in a hurtful jab of her own. Diane rolled her eyes and said nothing.

  “Get your jacket, Jen,” Ryan ordered, thinking to separate them before he had to referee a catfight. If they acted like this often when they were together, it was no wonder Jen was desperate to get away.

  “Why do I need my jacket?” Jennifer paused in the act of dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. With her mascara smudged from tears, she looked like a little raccoon.

  “It’s turned chilly outside,” he said, picking up his own jacket. “We’ve got a date with Rick Sanchez. Or rather, you have.”

  “Daddy!” she wailed, looking as if he planned a walk over red-hot coals for her.

  “It’s called taking responsibility for what you’ve done, baby.” He went to the front door, giving her a stern look. “Get your jacket and that’s the last time I’m asking nicely.”

  “It’s so late!” She shoved her arms in the denim sleeves.

  “It’s never too late to do the right thing,” he said, thinking he sounded pretty pompous, but hell, he was doing his fatherly best. “Besides, Rick’s expecting us.”

  Outside, Diane was pulling away from the house in her car. He hadn’t put his own car in the garage, so they headed to the drive where he’d parked. Jennifer’s pace lagged a little, but Ryan urged her forward, unlocked the SUV with a chirp of his remote and opened the passenger door for her to get inside. As he stepped back, a car arrived, skidding to a stop behind them.

  It was late and no part of Houston was entirely safe, especially after dark, including this neighborhood even though it was gated and a guard challenged most unfamiliar vehicles. Ryan quickly closed and locked Jennifer inside the SUV before turning to face the driver. As he stood there, Austin Leggett got out of the car and headed around it toward Ryan. “Hey, man, glad to see you’re still up,” Austin said, giving a jaunty wave to Jennifer. Sidling up to Ryan, he caught him by the sleeve and tugged him off to the side, out of earshot of the teenager.

  “What are you doing here, Austin?” Ryan demanded, freeing himself. “I was just leaving with—”

  “Yeah and I’m sorry to put you out, but this couldn’t wait and it won’t take long.” He glanced up and down the street as if checking to see no one was listening. “It’s about Gina.”

  Ryan instantly thought of Elizabeth’s concern for Gina, which he’d dismissed as exaggerated bias. “What about her?”

  Austin shifted his weight from one hip to the other, scratched his head and looked as if he bore the weight of the world on his shoulders. “She’s not gonna cooperate, man. I thought if I could spend a little time with her today, or rather tonight, she’d roll over on this deal, see reason. You know we need to talk her out of dragging that she-devil lawyer and her buddy Liz into the negotiations, but—”

  “Whoa, whoa…” Ryan put up a hand. “I’m out of this, Austin. You fired me today, remember? You’re strictly on your own with Gina and her lawyer now, buddy.”

  “Aw, hell, Ryan, you know I didn’t mean what I said then. I was hot because the goddamn judge went off the deep end like that. Who’d ever think he’d double the freakin’ child support? But it’s water unde
r the bridge now, my man. We’ve got to put together a plan, otherwise she’s going to hurt me. Four thousand a month, shit! Add that up over a year and pretty soon we’re talkin’ real money here.” He was walking in tight little circles now, throwing his hands out, gesturing wildly to the streetlight, the moon, the night. He stopped suddenly with a look of desperation at Ryan. “I’m gonna need your help.”

  “Look, Austin—”

  “I know, I know, you don’t generally do this type of case, but—”

  “It’s not that. I just don’t think I want to get involved again. The case is going to get sticky. It didn’t look good for you in the courtroom today. You saw for yourself that Maude presented a solid case for Gina. And Elizabeth sounded honest and sincere. The judge believed her, I think.”

  “Even though there was no evidence that I’d ever—” he looked away briefly “—been…you know…physical?”

  “The word is violent, Austin. Both those women painted a vivid picture of an abusive relationship between you and Gina. I’m not surprised that Liz managed to talk her out of going along with any pitch you made after separating her from Maude.”

  “It wasn’t Liz,” he said petulantly. “She turned on me at the restaurant. You believe that? I thought I’d talked her into us handling this stuff on our own, but she got a wild hair midway through the meal. Then on the way home—” He was shaking his head. “I’ve never known her to…well, just say this, she’s got a bug up her rear. She’s gonna go with the judge’s ruling unless we can talk her out of it.”

  “Like I said, Austin, that’ll be your job. I’m out of the picture.”

  “Hey, I apologize for shooting off my mouth today, okay? I need you to fix this. Tell you what, Ryan. I didn’t mention it before, but I’m pretty strapped for disposable income right now. I lost a lot of my net worth in the market and I just don’t have four K to toss to the winds. Every month! Ad infinitum! I’m serious, man.”

  “You can present that argument to the judge through any attorney,” Ryan said, jangling his keys in his hand. “You don’t need me.”

  “Look—” Austin hung his head, shuffled from one foot to the other, then drew a fortifying breath before looking directly at Ryan. “I don’t want this to get back to the old man. He’ll be royally pissed that I’ve got myself involved in something with the potential to bring unsavory attention to the firm. I’m not asking much, just this. Gina thinks anything that Liz says is chiseled in marble and right up there with Moses on the mount. It looked to me like the two of you were hitting it off pretty good today, you and Liz. How about you just taking one more shot for me, huh? See if you can persuade Liz to talk Gina into something less…less solid, you know what I mean? They—Gina and Maude—get this agreement in writing, man, I’m in it for life, you see?” He glanced at the car where Jennifer sat staring at them. “You understand how it is, Ryan. You’ve got a kid. And an ex-wife. They’re expensive, right?”

  “I don’t think of Jennifer as an expense, Austin. Anything I provide for her, I do because I’m her father. I love her. In fact, just tonight I was thinking—” He stopped. What was he doing speaking of his concern over Jennifer to this cretin? It was Jesse, not Jennifer, whose future was at stake here. On the other hand, with Liz in the picture and having some influence, maybe it was possible to keep the situation from deteriorating into just another bitter custody battle where the kid was the ultimate victim. Maybe he should do it for Jesse’s sake.

  “What d’you say, Ryan?”

  He nodded, but with reluctance. “I’ll talk to Liz.”

  “What was that all about, Daddy?” Jennifer turned in her seat and watched as Austin screeched away in his Porsche, the powerful engine roaring as he exited the gates of the complex. “He looked sorta crazy, the way he was pacing and waving his arms and all. Who is he?”

  “A client,” Ryan muttered, adding, “a soon to be ex-client.”

  “Whatever he was excited about, it must have been something else.”

  “It was his daughter.”

  “Huh?” Startled, she turned to look at him.

  “Not your concern, baby,” he said, patting her skinny little knee. “We’ve got our own problems, you and me. And we’re taking the first step to getting things all straightened out right now. The Sanchezes live about ten minutes from here, nice neighborhood, nice young man. Let’s see how nice you can be when expressing your extreme regret for leaving him lying in a ditch after knocking him off his bike.”

  “Daddy!” Another wailing protest. “It wasn’t like that. And there was no ditch.”

  “Whatever,” Ryan muttered. “Let’s see if we can fix it.”

  The ride to Rick Sanchez’s house seemed all too brief to Jennifer. She thought it was going a little too far for her dad to make her go over and apologize in person. She could just as well have done it on the phone. It was probably going to be a bad scene. She knew how she’d feel if someone ran her over and then just drove off, leaving her for dead. What if he was really mean or something? But he couldn’t be that bad if he wasn’t going to tell the cops. That would have gotten her in big trouble. Not that she wasn’t in big trouble anyway. It was the last straw for her mom, and her dad was only letting her come live with him because there was nowhere else for her to go. If she had grandparents or anything, she’d be dumped on them, she bet. Nobody wanted her. Nobody really cared about her, and that was the truth. Her mom and her dad had their lives and there wasn’t room in it for her. She turned her face and looked at the houses, obscured by lush landscaping and the wan light of a sliver-thin moon. Why did people have kids and then divorce and leave them just hung out to dry? It was like getting a puppy and then finding him too much trouble, so you took him to the pound and everybody knew what happened to pets then. Which is exactly what would happen to throw-away kids if there wasn’t a law against it.

  She stirred as her dad slowed to make a turn. “I think it’s here,” he murmured. “Broken Bough’s the street.”

  The neighborhood was nice. So were the houses. They were sort of dated, like they were built a while ago, but they had a look of…well, like they were there for all time. Permanent. And meant for families where kids grew up in the same room and didn’t leave until they went to college. As they cruised and her dad searched for the address, she saw bikes and sports stuff in the garages. Some teenage boys were shooting baskets in the driveways. No little kids, ’cause it was night. But if it was daylight, she thought somewhat wistfully, there would be little kids playing outside. She had never lived in a neighborhood like this.

  “Here we are.” Before shutting off the engine, Ryan looked at her. “Have you been rehearsing what you’ll say?”

  She shrugged. “What’s to say besides I’m sorry?”

  “You might inquire about his injuries.”

  “Well, sure. I guess.”

  “You might mention that you plan to pay for his bike.”

  She shrugged again. “Whatever.”

  “And you might lose the attitude. In fact, I’m ordering you to lose the attitude. You owe this boy, Jennifer. And if you screw up this opportunity to make amends, you’re going to wish you’d stayed with Diane.”

  She crossed her arms in a huff. “I don’t know why you’re acting like this, Dad. I didn’t have to tell anybody anything, you know. I could have just driven back to Dallas with Jody and Melissa and nobody would ever have known anything.”

  “Except for the fact that you’d swiped the Manesses’ car.”

  “So they’d ground us for a week or something.”

  He sat looking at her in silence, making her feel like a worm. Inside she was miserable. Why was she arguing with her dad like this? She was in the wrong and she knew it, but why did everybody just want to rub her nose in it more and more? She was going to do the right thing. He’d dragged her here, hadn’t he? She didn’t have any choice.

  “Get out of the car,” he ordered with a look of disgust and pushed his door open. “Go up there, ring
the doorbell and make it good, Jennifer.”

  Her insides were shaking and so were her hands when she rang the doorbell. This was worse than getting stopped at Blockbuster when Deanna Rivers tried to swipe a movie. Even worse than the time last month when she had come home at two o’clock in the morning, three hours late on her curfew after having a few beers at Jody’s house. The Reinharts were never home and it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Just as taking the car last night had seemed cool. At the time.

  The door was answered instantly by a guy she assumed to be Rick Sanchez. He was really tall, she saw now, but she hadn’t had time to notice that when he was down on his butt on the street. And he had coal-black hair and gorgeous gray eyes. Even with that horrible bruise on his cheek, he was really hot. Wow, wait’ll she told Jody and Melissa!

  “I thought you might have decided not to come, Mr. Paxton.”

  Okay, he was looking right through her, speaking to her dad and ignoring her existence. Fine, she thought. Just because he was hot didn’t mean she wanted him to…well, see her.

  “Hello again, Rick.” Ryan extended his hand and they exchanged a handshake. “This is my daughter, Jennifer.”

  “Hi,” Jennifer squeaked, sounding to herself like a sick mouse.

  “Hi,” Rick said. “Come in. My parents are in the den. They’ll join us if you want, Mr. Paxton.”

  “Up to you, Rick.”

  “Okay, it’s just us.”

  “And please, call me Ryan.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And drop the sir.”

  “Right.”

  Jennifer watched Rick grin, a beautiful transformation of his features that made him even more fabulous-looking. Maybe this wasn’t going to be as bad as she thought. Even if she remained invisible. She followed him as he turned to lead them into an area that they probably called the living room. That was when she noticed he was limping. Also, he had an Ace bandage around his wrist and two fingers were wrapped. Oh, Lord, had she broken his fingers?