by Nora Roberts
“Sorry.” He was a little out of breath, more from excitement than the quick jog around the house. “I tried to call you,” he said, nodding in greeting to his parents. “To head you off. You must’ve been on the road.”
“Said we were coming to pick the boy up at three,” Bob said. “Got here at three.”
“Yeah, well. I had a little change of plans.” He looked at his son who sat with his eyes on his plate and his chin nearly on his chest. “Did you have a good time with Kate, Jack?”
Jack nodded his head, slowly looked up. His eyes were teary again. “I’m sorry I was bad. I’m sorry I hurt your heart.”
Brody crouched down, cupped Jack’s face. “I’m sorry I can’t take you to Disney World. I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
“You’re not mad at me anymore?”
“No, I’m not mad at you.”
The tears dried up. “Kate said you weren’t.”
“Kate was right.” He picked Jack out of the chair for a hug before setting him on his feet.
“Can I go back to work with you? I won’t be bad.”
“Well, you could, except I’m not going back to work today.”
“Man knocks off middle of the afternoon isn’t putting in a good day’s work.”
Brody glanced over at his father, nodded. “True enough. And a man who doesn’t take a few hours now and then to be with his son isn’t working hard enough at being a father.”
“You always had food in your belly,” Bob shot back as he shoved away from the table.
“You’re right. I want Jack to be able to say more than that about me. I’ve got something for you,” he added, cupping Jack’s chin as it had begun to wobble as it always did when Brody and his father exchanged words. “It isn’t Disney World, but I think you’ll like it even better than a ride on Space Mountain.”
“Is it a new action figure?” Thrilled he began tugging at Brody’s pockets.
“Nope.”
“A car? A truck?”
“You are way off, and it’s not in my pocket. It’s outside on the porch.”
“Can I see? Can I?” He was already running for the door, tugging the knob. And when he opened it, looked down, looked up again at his father, Brody had, in that wonderful moment of stupefied delight, everything that mattered.
“A puppy! A puppy!” Jack scooped up the black ball of fur that was trying to climb up his leg. “Is it mine? Can I keep him?”
“Looks like he wants to keep you,” Brody commented as the pup wriggled in ecstasy, yipping and bathing Jack’s face with his tongue.
“Look, Grandma, I got a puppy, and he’s mine. And his name is Mike. Just like I always wanted.”
“He sure is a pretty little thing. Oh, just look at those feet. Why he’ll be bigger than you before long. You have to be real good to him, Jack.”
“I will. I promise. Look, Kate. Look at Mike.”
“He’s great.” Unable to resist, she got down and was treated to some puppy kisses. “So soft. So sweet.” She turned her head, met Brody’s eyes. “Very, very sweet.”
“It’s a good thing for a boy to have a dog.” Still stinging from his son’s comment, Bob gestured. “But who’s going to tend to it when Jack’s in school all day and you’re working? Problem with you is you never think things through, just do what you want at the moment you want it, and don’t consider.”
“Bob.” Mortified, Mary reached up to pat her husband’s arm.
“I have a fenced yard,” Brody said carefully. “And I’ve worked on plenty of jobs where dogs were around. He’ll come with me till he’s old enough to be on his own.”
“You buy that dog for the boy, or to patch up your conscience because you can’t give him a holiday like his friends?”
“I don’t want to go to Disney World,” Jack said in a quavering voice. “I want to stay home with Dad and Mike.”
“Why don’t you take Mike outside, Jack?” Fixing a smile on her face, Kate walked to the door. “Puppies like to run around as much as boys do. And you need to get acquainted. Here, put on your jacket first.”
Brody held it in until Kate nudged the boy out the door.
“It’s none of your business if I get my son a dog, or why. But the fact is I had this one picked out from a litter three weeks ago for him, and was waiting until he was weaned. I was going to pick him up Sunday for Easter, but Jack needed a little cheering up today.”
“You’re not teaching him respect by giving him presents after he’s sassed you.”
“All you taught me was respect, and look where that got us.”
“Please.” Mary all but wrung her hands. “This isn’t the place.”
“Don’t you tell me where I can speak my mind,” Bob snapped. “My mistake was in not slapping you back harder and more often. You always did run your own way, as you pleased. Nothing but trouble, causing it and finding it and giving your mother heartache. Run off to the city before you’re dry behind the ears, and pissing your life away.”
“I didn’t run off to the city. I ran away from you.”
Bob’s head jerked back at that, as if he’d been slapped. He went pale. “Now you’re back, aren’t you? Scrambling to make do, shuffling the boy off to neighbors so you can make a living. Stirring up gossip ’cause you’re fooling around with women down the hall from where that boy sleeps, and teaching him to run wild as you did, and end up the same way.”
“Just one minute.” If her own temper hadn’t hazed her vision, Kate would have realized she was stepping between two men very near to coming to blows. “It so happens Brody isn’t fooling around with women, he’s fooling around with me. And though that is none of your business, the fooling around has never gone on when Jack’s asleep down the hall.
“And if you don’t know that Brody would cut his own arm off rather than do anything, anything to hurt that child, then you’re blind as well as stupid. You should be ashamed to speak to him as you did, to not have the guts to tell him you’re proud of what he’s making out of his life, and of the life he’s making for his son.”
“You’re wasting your breath,” Brody began, and she rounded on him.
“You shut up. You’ve plenty to answer for, too. You have no right to speak to your father as you did. No right whatsoever to show him disrespect. And in front of your own child. Don’t you see that it frightens and hurts Jack to watch the two of you claw at each other this way?”
She spun back, searing both of them with one hot look. “The pair of you haven’t got enough sense put together to equal the brains of a monkey. I’m going outside with Jack. As far as I’m concerned the two of you can pound each other into mush and be done with it.”
She wrenched open the door and sailed outside.
She was still simmering when Brody joined her a few minutes later. Saying nothing he watched Jack wrestle with the puppy and try to get Mike to chase a small red ball.
“I want to apologize for bringing that into your house.”
“My house has heard family arguments before, and I expect it will hear them again.”
“You were right about it being wrong for us to start on each other in front of Jack.” When she said nothing, he jammed his hands into his pockets. “Kate, that’s just the way it is between me and my father. The way it’s always been.”
“And because it’s been that way, it has to continue to be? If you can change one aspect of your life, Brody, you can change others. You just have to try harder.”
“We grate each other, that’s all. We’re better when we keep our distance. I don’t want Jack to feel that way about me. Maybe I overcompensate.”
“Stop it.” Impatient again, she turned to him. “Is that a happy, well-adjusted, healthy boy?”
“Yeah.” Brody had to smile as Jack filled the air with belly laughs as he rolled over the grass with the puppy climbing all over him.
“You know you’re a good father. It’s taken work, and effort, but for the most part it’s easy for you. Because you love him unconditiona
lly. It’s a lot more work, a lot more effort, Brody, for you to be a good son. Because there are a lot of conditions on the love you have for your father, and his for you.”
“We don’t love each other.”
“Oh, you’re wrong. If you didn’t, you couldn’t hurt each other.”
Brody shrugged that off. She didn’t understand, he thought. How could she? “First time I’ve ever seen him shocked speechless. I don’t believe he’s ever had a woman rip into him that way. Me, I’m getting used to it.”
“Good. Now if you don’t want me ripping into you again anytime soon, you’ll apologize to your mother at the first opportunity. You embarrassed her.”
“Man, you’re strict. Mind if I play with my dog first?”
She arched a brow. “Whose dog?”
“Jack’s. But Jack and I, we’re—”
“A team,” she finished. “Yes, I know.”
Chapter Ten
Kate made her plans, bided her time. And chose her moment.
She knew it was calculated. But really, what was wrong with that? Timing, approach, method—they were essential to any plan. So if she’d waited for that particular moment on a Friday night when Jack was enjoying a night over at his grandparents and Brody was relaxed after a particularly intense bout of lovemaking, it was simply rational planning.
“I’ve got something for you.”
“Something else?” He was, as Jerry would have said, in the zone. “I get dinner, a bottle of wine and a night with a beautiful woman. I don’t think there is anything else.”
With a quiet laugh she slipped out of bed. “Oh, but there is.”
He watched her—always he enjoyed watching the way she moved. He’d come to the conclusion there was more to this ballet business than he’d once thought.
It gave him a great deal of pleasure to see her here, in his room. The room, he thought, he’d been squeezing in hours late at night to finish. He was doing, thank you God, a lot more than sleeping there now.
The walls were finished and painted a strong, deep blue. Kate favored strong colors. The woodwork, stripped down to its natural tone and glossily sealed, was a good accent.
He hoped to get to the floors soon. Curtains and that kind of thing would be dealt with eventually.
But for now he just liked seeing her in here. The dusky skin against the smooth blue walls, and the way the shimmer of light from the low fire danced in shadows.
She’d left her earrings on his dresser once. It had given him a hell of a jolt to see them there the next morning. They’d looked so…female, he remembered.
Yet he’d been foolishly disappointed when she’d removed them.
What that had to say about him, about things, he’d just have to figure out.
She put on his shirt against the light chill of the room and walked over to her purse.
“I’m going to buy you a half dozen flannel shirts,” Brody decided. “Just so I can see you walking around naked under them.”
“I’ll take them.” She sat back on the bed, and dropped an envelope on his bare chest. “And these are for you.”
“What?” Baffled, he sat up, tapped out the contents. The two airline tickets only increased his confusion. “What’s this?”
“Two tickets on the shuttle to New York. Next Friday. One for you, one for Jack.”
He eyed them, then eyed her. Cautiously. “Because?”
“Because I really want both of you to come. Have you ever been to New York?”
“No, but—”
“Even better. I get to introduce it to both of you. The director of my former company called me earlier in the week,” she explained. “They’re putting on a special performance—one show only, next Saturday night. It’s for charity. There’ll be several selections from several ballets performed by different artists. He’d asked me to participate some time ago, but I passed. So much going on, and it’s all but running into the opening of my school.”
“But now you decided not to pass.”
“The dancer who was to perform the pas de deux from The Red Rose—that’s a ballet Davidov first performed with his wife when they were partners—is out with an injury. It’s not career-ending, thank God, but she can’t dance for at least two weeks. That’s put her out. He’s asked me to fill in.”
Simple, she thought. It was all very simple. And she wasn’t going to give Brody any wiggle room.
“I’ve danced this part several times. Fact is, it’s what he asked me to perform originally. So when he called, I didn’t want to say no. Then, of course, he talked me into doing another segment from Don Quixote. I should leave Monday to get in shape for it, but I couldn’t shuffle everything, so I’m leaving Tuesday.”
He felt a little twinge in the gut at the thought of her leaving again. “You’ll be great. But listen, Kate, I appreciate the gesture, but I just can’t grab Jack and take off to New York like that.”
“Why not?”
“Well, work, school, for starters. A new puppy for another. Your basics.”
“You can leave after school on Friday, and be in New York before dinner. We can stay at my sister’s. Saturday you can see some of the city, maybe take Jack to the top of the Empire State Building. Saturday night, you come to the ballet. Sunday, we see a little more of the city, go have dinner at my grandparents, catch the late shuttle back. Everyone’s at school or work Monday.”
She moved her shoulders. “Oh, and as for Mike, you bring him, of course.”
“Bring a dog to New York?”
“Sure, my sister’s kids will love it.”
He felt as though he were sitting in a box and she was slowly closing the lid. “Kate, it’s just not the kind of thing people like me do. Flying off to New York for the weekend.”
“It’s not a flight to Mars, O’Connell.” Laughing she leaned over and kissed him. “It’s a little adventure. Jack’ll love it—and…” She’d saved the coup de grâce, as any good general. “He’ll be able to give his pal Rod a little back for all the bragging about Disney World. Jack’ll see where King Kong fell to his tragic death.”
It hit the mark and had Brody struggling not to squirm. Forget the box, he thought. Now he felt like a fish with a hook firmly lodged in his mouth. “Don’t take this the wrong way, okay? But I’m really not into ballet.”
“Oh.” She smiled, fluttered her lashes. “Which ones have you seen?”
“I haven’t seen a public hanging, either, but I don’t think I’d get much of a charge out of it.”
“Think of it this way. You’ll be able to give Jack his first look at New York. You’ll have two days to enjoy yourself and only about two hours to be bored senseless. Not a bad deal. You’ve never seen me dance,” she added, linking her fingers with his. “I’d like you to.”
He frowned at the tickets, shook his head. “Hit all the angles, didn’t you?”
“I don’t think I missed any. Is it a deal?”
“Wait till Jack hears he’s going to take his first plane trip. He’ll flip.”
He did more than flip. By the time they were shuffling onto the plane on Friday afternoon, he was all but turning himself inside out.
“Dad? Can’t you ask if Mike can ride up with us? He’s going to be scared in that box.”
“Jack, I told you it’s not allowed. He’ll be fine, I promise. Remember he’s got his toys, and now those other two dogs are riding in the dog seats with him.”
“Yeah. I guess.” Jack’s eyes were huge with wonder, excitement and trepidation as they stepped through the doorway and onto the plane. “Look,” he said in a desperate whisper. “There’s the pilot guys.”
The flight attendant clued in instantly. Jack was treated to a tour of the cockpit and given a pair of plastic wings. By the time they were preparing for takeoff, he’d decided to be an airline pilot.
For the next fifty minutes, he peppered his father with questions, often with his face pressed up to the window. Brody’s ears were ringing by the time they touched do
wn, but he had to admit, Jack was having the time of his life.
Now all he had to do was get through the next couple of days—outnumbered by Kate’s family. If that wasn’t enough to give a guy a headache, there was always the ballet.
What the hell are you doing here, O’Connell? he asked himself with a quick twinge of panic. A weekend in New York. The ballet. For God’s sake, why aren’t you home sanding drywall and thinking about making a Friday night pizza?
Because of Kate, he admitted, and the panic bumped up into his throat. Somehow she’d changed everything.
With the carry-on in one hand, and Jack’s hand gripped firmly in the other, Brody came through the gate. He ordered himself to be calm—it was only a couple of days, after all—and looked for Kate. When a tall blond man waved, Brody flipped through his memory files and tried to put a name to Kate’s brother-in-law.
“Nick LeBeck.” Nick tugged Brody’s bag free to take it himself. “You guys are bunking at our place. Kate wanted to pick you up herself, but she got hung up at rehearsal.”
“We appreciate you coming out. We could’ve taken a cab.”
“No problem. Any more luggage?”
“Just Mike.”
“Right.” Grinning, Nick leaned down to shake Jack’s hand. “Good to see you. Max is pretty excited about you coming to visit. You met him on New Year’s.”
“Uh-huh, and Kate said we can have, like, a sleep-over for two nights.”
“Yeah. We’re having a big celebration dinner, too. You like fish-head soup?”
Jack’s eyes went huge. Slowly he shook his head.
“Good, because we’re not having any. Let’s go spring Mike.”
It wasn’t as awkward as he’d expected it to be to find himself dumped in a strange city, in a strange house with people he barely knew. Jack dived right in, picking up his fledgling friendship with Max as if they’d just parted the day before. Mike was a huge hit, and in a buzz of excitement at the attention, peed on the rug.
“I’m really sorry. He’s almost housebroken.”
“So are my kids,” Freddie told Brody, and handed him a damp rag. “We’re used to spills around here—of all natures—so relax.”