“Didn’t you just witness Hamilton’s reaction to Marcus?”
“And that surprises you?” he countered accusingly. “Did you really think Hamilton would love you showing up here with another man? I didn’t expect you to be so irresponsible, Barbara.”
“Irresponsible?” She all but spat the word out.
James could already see how they’d become the main topic at all the social events in the coming weeks, so he pulled her behind a large tree. Keeping his voice low, he fixed his gaze on her but was unable to hide his anger. “You’re dating again—fine! That’s your right—”
“How generous of you,” she cut him off scornfully. “Thank you for giving me your blessing!”
James scowled at her. “You know how sensitive Hamilton is! You can’t just show up with a random man without talking to him about it. It’ll only confuse and frighten him, as we’ve just seen.”
“All I saw was Hamilton being horribly impolite—which has never been a problem before. So what did you tell him?”
“I didn’t tell him anything,” he snapped. “Can’t you see he just feels insecure? Scared?”
Her green eyes burned with anger. “Damn it, James! Do you really believe I’d just bring some man to meet the boys without warning? That I’d just say, ‘Hey, boys, I’m dating again!’”
James swallowed hard. “Well, that sounds remarkably like what just—”
“No, I wouldn’t do that!” Barbara interrupted his sarcastic reply. “You know they’re always my first priority!”
James nodded in Lindsay’s direction. “Then what’s he doing here?”
Barbara rolled her eyes. “Marcus called me this morning. He wants to talk to me and Cynthia about our next project. He’s going to sponsor it. And since Cynthia is here today, too …”
James snorted disdainfully. “You don’t expect me to buy that convenient excuse, do you?”
Suddenly, she stuck out her chin and took a step toward him, poking him in the chest with her forefinger. “You can buy whatever you want—I don’t care! I’m telling you what he’s doing here—even though, once again, it’s none of your damn business!”
“Oh, I believe it is my business that my sons—”
“Is that so?” she snarled at him. “Who are you to berate me, considering I’ve had several people tell me you’re going out with our son’s teacher?”
“What?” He shook his head. “Are you talking about Maggie Fraser?”
“Obviously!” James watched her throw back her head and gasp for air, bubbling with outrage. “Don’t you think you’ve taken it too far? Going out with your own son’s teacher? You’re doing this on purpose, James! Trying to make me feel guilty about moving on! So you’ve resorted to flirting with a woman our son sees at school on a daily basis.”
“Are you jealous?”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” she hissed disdainfully. “I only care about the boys!”
“So do I,” he replied. “What would you have said if I’d brought a woman here today and introduced her as my new girlfriend?”
Barbara seemed ready to strangle him. “I did not introduce anyone as my new boyfriend, James! For Hamilton and Scott, Marcus is merely an acquaintance who’s helping me with the our next fundraiser.”
“Our sons are not dumb,” James said coldly.
“Exactly! So instead of hurling accusations at me, you better think about how Scott will react to his dad dating his teacher!”
James shook his head. “First of all, Maggie hasn’t been his teacher for over a year. And second of all, I just happened to run into her when I was out to eat. So it’s a bit rich to construe a date from that.” He added in an angry growl, “And even if I do go out with her—”
“Even if you do?” Barbara’s eyes widened. “Of course you’re not going out with that woman!”
He shook his head in disbelief. “Do you really think you can tell me who I can and cannot date? Weren’t you the one who told me I can’t meddle in your life? That should mean you can’t meddle in mine either, don’t you think?”
She gave him a look that was almost haughty. “This is a completely different issue!”
“Is it? Why?”
“Because … Because it will have an impact on our children if you go out with Scott’s teacher!”
James felt tired all of a sudden. It wasn’t doing them any good to argue when they were both this incensed. So he took a deep breath, trying to rein in his anger. “It doesn’t matter who we go out with,” he said calmly, “because it will have an impact on our kids either way. Why do you think Hamilton was so rude and defiant just now? He’s scared he’ll have a new father and won’t be allowed to see me anymore.”
Barbara flinched. Almost immediately, she straightened, as if to cover it. “That’s not true.”
“Yes, it is.” James raised both hands. “He told me that two weeks ago.”
Barbara sighed, defeated. “But … What on earth makes him think we would let it come to that?” Bewildered, she rubbed her forehead, her ire forgotten. Finally, she looked up, a worried expression on her face. “James, that’s not what I want to happen.”
His anger had evaporated as well. “I know,” he murmured, a familiar hopelessness suffusing him. There’d been a time when he’d have pulled her into an embrace in a situation like this, but that wasn’t an option anymore.
“We should talk to him.”
He shrugged a heavy shoulder. “I already did.”
“What did you tell him?”
James looked at her gravely. “I told him that, despite everything, we’re still a family and always will be,” he murmured hoarsely. “And that you have every right to go out with other men, and that we should be happy for you, because you deserve to be happy.”
She made a choking sound, gasping for air, but before he got a chance to find out what was causing her stricken face, she’d turned on her heel and disappeared.
***
Barbara got into Marcus’s car though she’d much rather have gone for pizza with her sons.
She’d rather have left the soccer field with her excited sons and headed for another messy pizza feast, but instead, she’d climbed into a virtual stranger’s car as she watched her ex-husband corral the boys into his own car and close the trunk with a proud laugh. For Scott was today’s top scorer. The boisterous mood that united the three blond boys was palpable, but here Barbara was, sitting in a different car, watching James leave with their boys.
Though James had claimed they were still a family, she realized once again that they weren’t. If they were, she wouldn’t be sitting in Marcus’s car. Instead, she’d be riding in the passenger seat of James’s car, laughing as loudly as their sons as they drove to the closest Italian place they could find with pizza on the menu. Together.
Sitting here instead felt completely wrong.
Her first date hadn’t felt right, and this didn’t feel right either. It felt foreign, alienating—she felt alienated. Sitting in a car with someone who wasn’t James, going to a restaurant with someone who wasn’t James, having them escort her to her front door … all of that was somehow wrong, though Barbara couldn’t have explained why exactly. She just didn’t feel like herself, however paranoid that might sound.
She’d always been herself with James, grounded, at peace with who she was.
It felt completely different with Marcus.
Although she kept telling herself she needed to give herself some time, wait and see how things developed with Marcus, Barbara already knew she would never be able to experience the same trust and intimacy she’d felt with James.
What kind of awful dilemma was that?
After everything that had happened, she could no longer be with James, but she just didn’t want to be with Marcus. She actually couldn’t imagine ever being in a relationship with a man who wasn’t James. Did that mean she was doomed to spend the rest of her life alone? And would James stay alone as well? Or would he find someone new while s
he grew old by herself?
For the last two years, they’d both been alone. Barbara had gotten used to the fact that she and her ex-husband were living separate lives; it seemed normal to her now. But neither of them had taken steps to find someone new. She hadn’t even wasted a thought on what it might be like if James suddenly met someone new, because it had been a matter of course that he wouldn’t go out with another woman.
The thought that that might change now, or might already have changed, hit Barbara like the stab of a knife.
How was it possible that you despised a person and at the same time yearned for them?
“Want to get a bite to eat? There’s a Thai place down the coast that’s supposed to be really good.”
Barbara turned to Marcus and shook her head, a weak smile on her lips. “No, I’m not hungry. Could you please just take me home?”
Surprised, he raised his eyebrows. “Are you tired? I actually thought we’d spend the rest of the afternoon together, now that it’s only the two of us. To be honest, I’ve been looking forward to finally spending some alone time with you, Barbara.”
She was so despondent that she couldn’t even take offense at his presumptuous plans. With a shrug, she filed him away as an idiot, after all. He took his role in her life too seriously for a man who’d barely kissed her on the cheek. He should’ve known she was only available as a pack of three.
And a man who whined about alone time after one harmless soccer tournament with a bunch of noisy kids simply wasn’t good enough for her sons. Simple as that.
She didn’t even have a hard time finding the words or her resolute tone as she declared, “I want to go home. Alone.”
He exhaled. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No.” Barbara let out a melancholy sigh. “You didn’t.”
“Then what’s the matter?”
She studied his disappointed face. “Would you run away with me to clown college?”
Marcus knit his brows in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
Barbara nodded bleakly. “I know.”
Chapter 8
James was sitting in his office, on the phone, casting a despairing glance at his desk, where paperwork was stacked in a mountainous landscape. He hadn’t slept very much in the past several days. Every time he thought he might get ahead of this chaos, his assistant came in with the next batch of files he had to take care of. Although he was already doing overtime, there weren’t enough hours in the day to get it all done.
There was just too much going on at the moment, and James was fighting on several fronts at the same time. The paperwork wasn’t the only thing driving him to distraction. There were also the phone calls that came at any time of day or night. Only last night, he’d spent ninety minutes on the phone with a business partner in Hong Kong, only to get up and drive to the office a few hours later.
So it wasn’t surprising that he was feeling like he’d been hit by a Mack truck today. In fact, he was only half-listening to the head of HR, simultaneously scanning his inbox and yawning without inhibition. He was extremely grateful when the door opened and his amazing assistant brought in a steaming cup of coffee. She knew when he was running on fumes. Mrs. Buchanan had been married for at least thirty years, but when she set the cup down on his desk and he smelled the delicious aroma, he could have kissed her. A coffee was exactly what he needed right now.
As soon as he’d wrapped up the call, he pounced on the coffee and rummaged through his bottom desk drawer, where he always kept an emergency candy bar. He devoured it with a ravenous appetite and was chewing the last piece when his phone rang yet again.
He sent a desperate glance at the ceiling, suddenly tempted to throw the damn phone out the window. But when he checked the number on the display, he did a double take. It was Barbara’s number.
After their most recent clash at Scott’s soccer tournament, there’d been radio silence. James had hardly been able to bear watching her get into another man’s car, and he still felt a lump in his throat at the thought that it probably wouldn’t be the last time he’d be forced to watch her leave with someone else. Even so, he’d never called Maggie Fraser after they’d eaten together at the Italian place and she’d given him her number. It simply hadn’t felt right. How could he have gone out with another woman when it made him feel like he was deceiving the woman he still loved?
No, he would never again do such a thing when it didn’t feel right.
That was what he’d done that cursed night in Toronto, and he’d paid dearly.
Swallowing the last bit of candy bar, he reluctantly reached for the receiver, and his gaze snagged on the three picture frames positioned on his desk to cheer him up when a day promised to be an utter disaster. One photograph showed Hamilton at six, on the day he’d started first grade. His wide grin showed a prominent gap between his front teeth that was so cute James started to grin every time he gave it even a passing glance. The next photo showed Scott at five, playing a turkey in a Thanksgiving play in kindergarten. It made James smile softly, remembering how his youngest had come away from his acting experience determined never to eat turkey again. And he hadn’t, to this very day.
The third photo, however, touched his heart every single day. It showed Hamilton, Scott, Barbara, and himself.
He should have put it away a long time ago but couldn’t bring himself to do so. He loved the perfect snapshot too dearly to banish it from his desk. The photo had been taken in the garden at Barbara’s parents’ house when Scott was only a few weeks old. They’d been sitting on a picnic blanket in the shade of a tree, Barbara holding tiny Scott in her arms, Hamilton nestling in James’s lap. The camera had caught the exact moment when little Hamilton pressed a kiss to his newborn brother’s small head. The warm smile on Barbara’s face, as well as his own, gave him a pang of despair. At the time, he was probably the happiest man in the whole wide world.
He cleared his throat and picked up the phone. “Hello, Barbara.”
“James.” She sounded hesitant. “Is this a bad time?”
Although his other lines had started to blink, he replied without a pang of guilt: “Not at all. What’s up?”
“The boys’ Boy Scout troop leader just called me.” She sighed softly. “Apparently, they’re trying to put together a camping trip over the school break. Friday to Sunday evening. I wanted to talk to you about it if you have a minute.”
“Of course.” James leaned back in his chair and dragged his gaze away from the picture. “What do the boys say about the idea?”
“What do you think?” She laughed briefly. “They’re both utterly thrilled. I wouldn’t be surprised if Scott asks for a tent for his next birthday so he can move out into the backyard.”
James chuckled. He wouldn’t put it past his youngest to actually dream of a thing like that. “Yep, that sounds like Scott,” he mumbled cheerfully. “The whole thing sounds wonderful to me. I’d let the boys go, as long as it’s okay with you, too, and they want to.”
“Alright, then I’ll sign them up,” Barbara said calmly. “I’m sure it’ll do them good to have some adventures before school starts again.”
“To be honest, it’s probably the troop leader who’ll be having all the adventures, trying to camp with that gang for an entire weekend,” James said, amused.
“Oh, yes,” Barbara replied with a giggle. “I wouldn’t trade places with him for anything.”
James chuckled. “Me neither.”
“It was bad enough that time we took our two to that log cabin on Lake Patoha.”
“Lake Patoka,” he corrected her. “And I don’t know what you mean, that was a fabulous vacation.”
“Ha!” she shot back playfully. “Your bonfire almost burned down the entire cabin! And the mosquitoes were so bloodthirsty we had to stay inside most of the weekend.”
“Plus, you got that terrible rash after your surprise encounter with poison oak.”
Her groan was music to his ears. “Don’t remind me
! It was the first—and the last—time I peed in the wild.”
James choked on his own laughter as he distinctly remembered his dear wife disappearing into a grove of trees during the long drive, because she couldn’t hold it in until the next town. She reappeared with a horrible, quickly spreading rash on her backside. He also remembered how he’d scoured the loneliest part of Indiana for a late-night pharmacy, to get her something for the terrible itch. He quickly suppressed the thought of how he’d brought back just such an ointment and applied it to the offending parts of her body with his own hands.
Apparently, Barbara was thinking about the same thing. It was one of their last vacations together.
“Do you have the date of the camping trip?” James asked, breaking the awkward silence.
“Yes,” she said quickly, audibly glad he’d changed the subject. “Not this weekend but the next.”
James glanced at his desk calendar and froze. His gaze traveled automatically to the photo on his desk in which they’d still been a happy family.
He swallowed the hard lump in his throat. “Barbara,” he said shakily, “are you sure you don’t want the boys with you that weekend?”
Her voice sounded brittle when she answered. “Of course I’m sure.”
“But … But …” He took a deep breath. “That Saturday is three years—”
“I know what happened on that date three years ago, James,” she cut him off with a snarl. “I was there, remember?”
“Barbara,” he groaned. “Don’t be like that. Please.”
Her voice shook with rage, but James knew that was a front, for she sounded choked at the same time. “Why do you have to bring that up now? It’s been three years, and I’ve long since forgotten all about it.”
That was a lie—and they both knew it.
Neither of them would ever forget that day.
“I just don’t think you should be alone that weekend,” he said in a deliberately calm voice. “The boys should stay with you.”
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