Just Another Day in Paradise

by Justine Davis

  “Once he brought me back something, too. A model of the Eiffel Tower, from Paris.”

  Odd, Rider thought. The boy spoke as if he’d had the perfect father, with nothing but love and sadness at his loss in his young voice. As if it didn’t matter why his father had been on that plane when he died.

  And you’d think a traveling father would bring something back for his only son more than once.

  On impulse he said, “You’re welcome to join us for dinner, if you want. You have to eat, anyway, and Rudy always has some good stories to tell when he’s got a captive audience.”

  The boy hesitated, and suddenly Rider was anxious for him to come. “Of course, it’ll be kind of adult discussion, so if you’ll be bored…”

  “I won’t,” Kyle said instantly, as Rider had thought he might.

  And so he had company when he walked into what would be the main restaurant at the resort. Rudy had only been expecting the two of them, but a single extra body, even with a teenage boy’s appetite, was but a minor obstacle for someone with Rudy’s experience.

  Paige was already seated at the table when they arrived. She was toying with her silverware, as if too nervous to simply sit still. Rider noticed she had a stack of folders on the seat beside her. They looked like the same ones she’d had at the meeting the day he’d arrived.

  “I invited a friend,” he said as they got to the table. She looked up quickly, apparently so intent on the fork that she hadn’t realized they were there. “Hope you don’t mind.”

  “No, of course not…”

  Her voice trailed away and her eyes widened when she saw her son beside him. “Kyle?”

  “He invited me,” he said almost angrily, his chin jutting out slightly.

  Rider wondered if Kyle remembered that they hadn’t really settled the question of whether he would tell Paige he’d caught her son sneaking a smoke. If he did, it didn’t show in his attitude, and Rider suddenly wondered why on earth he’d done this, invited the kid. He was clearly furious with his mother, and Rider doubted he himself would be able to stay out of it if Kyle continued to talk to her in that tone.

  “Then sit down,” was all Paige said.

  Kyle did, glancing at the folders on the chair. He rolled his eyes. “You even brought school stuff here?”

  To Rider’s surprise, Paige blushed. “I thought Mr. Rider might want to see how things are going.”

  Rider was puzzled as he took a seat across from her, and then it struck him. The school papers were protection, so she could make this seem like a business dinner, not a personal one. He felt oddly disappointed by the realization.

  It wasn’t until Rudy arrived and muttered something in his ear about bringing your own buffer, that he realized he’d done the same thing. Inviting Kyle hadn’t been for the boy’s sake, it had been for his. Nothing could get too personal with Paige’s fifteen-year-old son at the table with them.

  He almost laughed aloud at the absurdity of it, both of them so busy protecting themselves from the possibilities.

  He wondered if that meant she was as tempted by them as he was.

  Paige got over her nervousness rather quickly, if only because she was wondering who this kid was sitting at the table. The sullen, snippy teenager she’d almost grown used to was nowhere in sight. This Kyle wasn’t the outgoing, friendly boy he’d once been, but he was considerably more civil and sociable than he’d been with her for longer than she cared to remember.

  He seemed more than willing to talk to Noah, and listened to what he said with every appearance of rapt interest. When their food came, he even ate like a normal person, instead of shoveling it in as fast as he could in order to escape. And when Rudy sat down for a few minutes, to get their reviews of his experiment—fresh mahi grilled with his personal choice of spices that had given it a wild combination of flavors that somehow worked—Kyle was downright friendly to him, as well.

  Paige was aware she wasn’t sharing in the conversation very much, but it had been so long since she’d seen her son act like a human being she didn’t want to waste it. Even though she realized that to Noah he probably seemed like a normal, even likable kid.

  Eventually Kyle asked Noah what time it was, and when he said nearly eight, the boy stood up.

  “I gotta go. Thanks, Mr. Rider.”

  More courtesy than I get, Paige thought. She was curious about where he was going, but knew if she asked she would only get that pained look he did so well, accusing her of treating him like a child.

  “Be home by ten. School tomorrow.”

  He glared at her. “This isn’t—” He stopped himself, as if aware that what he was going to say—This isn’t my home—might insult his new friend. “Later,” he muttered, and left.

  Paige smothered a sigh.

  “How long has the attitude been going on?”

  Paige looked at him in surprise. “I thought he was perfectly nice to you.”

  “He was. It was you he was treating like a pariah. When he bothered to acknowledge you exist at all.”

  She was surprised again—this time that he’d noticed and had bothered to mention it.

  She tried to shrug as if it didn’t matter. It did. And she knew there would come a time when she was going to have to start demanding respect from Kyle. But tonight had made it clear that that time was here and now. She didn’t like being humiliated ever, but in front of this man it was unbearable.

  “He’s still hurting,” she said. “I know it’s been five years, but they’re very tough years for a boy.”

  For a long moment the silence spun out. Noah seemed about to speak twice, but stopped. Then finally, slowly, words began to come.

  “After my mom was killed in a car accident when I was Kyle’s age, my dad came down on me hard. He was tough on my sister, Michelle, too, but he really caged me. Stopped me from doing everything except going to school.”

  Paige frowned. “That must have been hard.”

  “It was. We’d always been close, hunting, fishing together, that kind of thing, so it hurt.”

  “He even stopped that? Why?”

  “For a long time, I didn’t know. I heard people tell him he should cut me some slack, I’d just lost my mother. He ignored them.”

  That one hit close to home; she’d been giving Kyle slack for five years, and look where it had gotten her.

  “Finally one day, when I wanted to get my driver’s license and he wouldn’t let me, we had a huge fight. I yelled at him, he yelled back at me, it escalated, and I…put my fist through a wall.” He flexed his right hand as if at the memory.

  “And is that when you found out?”

  He let out a compressed breath, as if for that moment he truly had been back in that painful time.

  “Yeah. He finally said something that made sense out of it. I realized he was scared to death of losing me, too, and the only way he could think of to keep that from happening was to keep me where he could look out for me. Michelle was less trouble, she was younger and still home most of the time, anyway. But he wanted me in sight all the time. If I wasn’t, he got scared.”

  Paige felt the sting of moisture in her eyes. “I know the feeling,” she said, her voice tight. “I wanted to do the same thing with Kyle.”

  “I guess my point is…once I understood that, I didn’t mind so much. In a way it was my dad showing me how much he loved me.”

  If she’d needed any encouragement to do what she’d been putting off, it had just been given to her. “Thank you,” she said. “That helps me…know what to do.”

  Noah shrugged then, leaning back, looking at his glass, his empty plate, anywhere but at her face, as if he was now sorry he’d opened up quite that much.

  “Did you and your dad make up?” she asked.

  He nodded. “We’re fine now. I get back to see him two or three times a year.” Given his traveling schedule, Paige guessed that was more difficult than he made it sound. “He does most of his hunting with a camera now, but we still head o
ut into the backcountry at least once a year.”

  “Did he ever…remarry?”

  “Not yet.” Noah grinned. “But there’s a woman down the street who’s got her eye on him, and she’s a pretty smart lady. I may get a stepmother yet.”

  Paige smiled, took a sip of the excellent wine Rudy had recommended, then stopped with the glass still to her lips when Noah asked, “What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “You haven’t remarried.”

  “No.”

  “Must be some likely candidates.”

  “No.”

  “I find that hard to believe. Are the guys in L.A. blind or just stupid?”

  She told herself it was the alcohol causing her flush, but she knew better. “Maybe I’m just not in the market to get married again. What about you?” she asked, hoping to divert the conversation.

  For a moment he looked as if he were sorry he’d started this, but he did answer. “Married once and almost a second time. Both of them bailed for the same reason.”

  “Your work?” Paige guessed.

  His mouth quirked. “Am I wearing a sign? Something only women can see?”

  “Maybe only women worry about whether the man in their life will put them first or not.”

  “I do remember the phrase second fiddle being tossed around.” His tone was wry, but Paige sensed there was genuine regret behind the words.

  Paige grimaced. “I would have settled for second. Fourth or fifth was a little tougher to take.”

  Noah’s gaze fastened on her, his eyes full of some emotion she wasn’t sure she could name, and she had the oddest feeling that he knew more than he could possibly have guessed about her marriage.

  “You should never have to settle,” he said.

  The intensity of his look rattled her, as if they had turned some corner she’d known was there but hadn’t expected to reach just yet.

  “Doesn’t everyone settle in one way or another?” She said it lightly, trying to move this back to safer ground.

  “It shouldn’t be that way,” he said flatly. “I understand now why Carrie left, and Linda practically ran from the altar.”

  A vivid image of Noah Rider waiting at a flower-bedecked church for a woman he loved enough to ask to marry him flashed through her mind. And for that instant none of the reasons she’d believed so strongly for so long seemed important enough that she would run. Not if he was the one waiting for her.

  Chapter 5

  She’d known. He’d tried to get there before she heard on the radio or saw it on TV, but he’d been too late. The woman who’d answered the door when he rang the bell had that hollow-eyed look people got when death has struck close.

  He’d only had to do this a couple of times—Josh spread it out so that nobody got the unpleasant duty too often—but that didn’t make it any easier.

  “Mrs. Cooper, I’m Noah Rider, from Redstone. We met last year, briefly. I’m here to help,” he’d said. The standard, simple opening, a truth that did nothing to change what had happened or what was to come.

  Rider awoke with a start. It had been a long time since he’d had that dream. But this time was no different from all the others—the memories flooded him. That night was so vividly etched in his mind. He remembered thinking about the last time he’d seen her, at the dinner given when the deal between her husband’s company and Redstone had been finalized. That woman, dressed sleekly in a deep-blue gown that had turned her red hair to fire, bore little resemblance to the woman who had opened the door of the home whose family had just been forever changed.

  He’d been seated next to her at dinner that night, and he’d thought she was lovely. They’d talked, and he’d found he was enjoying himself more than he ever did at those things, even laughing out loud more than once at her easy wit.

  And then he’d been given this awful job, simply because he’d had the misfortune to be in Portugal three weeks before Flight 78 went down.

  He’d handled the calls, both incoming and outgoing, so she didn’t have to go through it over and over. He’d fought through the red tape of bringing Phil home from a foreign country. He’d handled every detail, down to providing catered food for the inevitable stream of visitors offering condolences. He’d helped wherever he could, including with the heartbroken Kyle.

  And when she’d finally broken down late one night, he’d held her. He’d let her cry, she’d thanked him, and pulled herself together with a strength that made a mockery of the idea of women as the weaker sex.

  She’d gotten through the funeral, and the gathering after, with that same strength. But early that evening, as he’d been preparing to leave, his job finished, something changed. He didn’t know what, but thought it might be some kind of post-traumatic stress. She’d had a fight with Kyle earlier, the boy had stomped out of the house to a friend’s, and he was worried about her being alone. She seemed dazed at first, then wobbled back and forth between anger and tears. He supposed it was part of the natural process, and wondered if he should stay.

  He had tried to ask her. When she whispered, “Stay,” he thought she’d wanted his shoulder again. But she’d made it clear in the next few minutes that she wanted much, much more.

  As vividly as if it had just happened he remembered the heat of her kiss, remembered the hot, surging response of his body, remembered the soft, luscious feel of her clinging to him, remembered the feel of her breast against his palm. She’d begun it, and he’d lost all sight of reality in the fire she kindled. Only the noise Kyle made, returning unexpectedly, snapped him out of it. And only then did it really hit home what he was doing.

  And the image of himself, his hands roving over her body, his mouth dancing against hers, of himself allowing that to happen, had haunted him ever since. It had both taunted him and berated him, adding to his utter confusion; up until that night, he’d been seriously considering trying to mend the breach with Linda. The only thing that saved him was the thought that he’d likely never see Paige again.

  And now here he was.

  He sat up, rubbing at his eyes. He’d left the slider open, and the night breeze brought him the scent of the sweet, warm tropical air. He tossed off the sheet that was all he needed in this balmy locale, and stood up. He didn’t bother to dress—it was night and he wasn’t going to go beyond his own lanai, which was in shadow anyway.

  He stood there in those shadows, letting the breeze wash over him.

  All he had to do was get through ten days. He should be glad he’d had the chance to apologize and that she’d not only accepted it but had insisted on lifting some of the blame from him. That should have changed everything, should have freed him from the dream.

  It hadn’t. He was glad, but it hadn’t helped a bit.

  She had tried to start this reasonably, to talk to Kyle in a sane, courteous manner. But when she broached the subject in the morning at their small kitchen table, he shut down immediately.

  “I hate you for bringing me here. I’ll always hate you.”

  All right, she thought. If he truly hated her for removing him from all that—including his precious video games—then so be it. Even if it meant she sometimes felt even more alone than she had after Phil’s plane had gone down, leaving her with a ten-year-old boy, no job and the devastating knowledge that they were nearly broke because the husband who had promised he would take care of everything had in fact taken care of nothing. If it hadn’t been for Joshua Redstone…

  She drew in a deep breath. She stood up, needing the tiny extra edge of looking down at him.

  “All right. You hate me. That’s a distinct change in our relationship, and therefore the rules will now change.”

  She saw the word rules had caught his attention, but he still refused to look at her.

  “Obviously it’s impossible for you to be pleasant to me, but as of now you will no longer show me disrespect. You don’t have to love me or even like me, but you will show me the same courtesy you show any other adult.”

&n
bsp; “That’s—”

  “Be quiet.”

  Kyle blinked, startled.

  “You will do your schoolwork without protest and on time. If it is not done, you will remain after school until it is. You now have half an hour to socialize after school, then you will be home until your homework is completed. If you leave the house after that you will either tell me or leave a note about where you’re going, with whom and when you’ll be back. If you want to go somewhere outside of the resort itself, you will ask permission first, and you will tell me where you’re going and who you will be with and when you’ll be back. And you will do it without being rude and without dramatics.”

  Kyle stared, his eyes widening. “That’s not fair!”

  “Neither is how you’ve been treating me. Now, the consequences of violating these rules will be immediate. First, you will return here and complete the work you’ve not done, or think about what you have done that landed you here—for the remainder of that day. And for the next week you will be limited to the grounds of the resort, not including the beach.”

  “But—”

  “Quiet. You have no say in this. A second violation will result in grounding to this bungalow until I say different. Got that?”

  Kyle scrambled to his feet. She could see he was ready to bolt.

  “And if you run away now, you will be very, very sorry. I am legally in charge of you for three more years. If you would like to see how awful I can make them for you, just keep pushing.”

  Slowly, gaping in shocked disbelief, Kyle sank back down into his chair.

  “One last thing,” she said. “You say you hate me. Fine, that’s your choice. But know this. Somehow, some way, you’re going to become the best person you can be, no matter what I have to do.”

  She leaned forward, hands on the table, and it was a measure of Kyle’s stunned state that he didn’t pull back from her.

  “And remember this. I love you. And nothing you can ever do will change that. I will never, ever give up on you.”