by Julia London
Asher yawned and blinked up at the ceiling. I need to run. Running cleared his head, helped him focus. He hadn’t run in what, three days? Four? He pressed his hand to his abdomen—he was starting to feel a little soft. What’s that? he wondered, noticing a bulbous thing on the ceiling, marring the pristine white like a wart. Probably some sort of sprinkler head. Once, in a hotel in Hong Kong, he’d been sound asleep when the fire alarms had gone off and the sprinklers had opened up. Not a good way to start the day.
The only really good way for him to start a day was at home, with his kids. Asher wished he was home now, where he knew what all the warts and bumps in the ceiling were, where he had a fancy full body shower, where his kids were waiting for him to make something for breakfast, where he knew all the running trails and how fast he could run them.
Speaking of home . . .
Asher groaned and pushed himself up. He was still fully clothed, and papers and sketches were spread out across his bed. He’d fallen asleep reviewing them. They were the staff work on the BMW America advertising account. He was in Munich to meet his German counterparts, developing a message and look that unified BMW sales around the world. His firm—Green, Sutcliff, Dyer and Price—was on the verge of losing this account if they didn’t come up with some creative advertising, something sexy and fast, something that fit BMW’s desires and the American market. And if they lost BMW . . .
God, don’t think about that now.
Asher shoved the papers aside, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and pressed his fingers to his eyes, trying to wake up. He’d been so busy since he’d arrived in Munich earlier this week that he’d never really caught up on his sleep. He pushed his hand through his hair . . . something smelled. He looked up, his gaze landing on the tray that held what was left of his dinner on the table.
“God.” He stood up, stretched his back, and wandered over to have a closer look. The grease in the meat loaf had congealed. The beets or cabbage—whatever it was, it wasn’t something Asher typically consumed—was limp on the plate. He picked up a cold fry and shoved it in his mouth, then covered the tray and carried it to the door, depositing it outside his room.
He returned to the bed and the bedside table and picked up his phone. It was a quarter to two in the morning. That meant it was almost seven at home in Cedar Springs.
Yawning, Asher glanced at the small, travel-sized dual picture frame he carried with him on all his trips. On one side was a picture of his son, Levi. Levi was grinning in the picture, his smile full of the baby teeth that had started to come out now that he was five. He had a smattering of freckles across his nose, and his dark hair was a mess. Lord, but there was nothing that seemed to tame those cowlicks. Asher had tried everything short of axle grease to get that hair to lie down, and nothing worked. His late wife, Susanna, could do it. If he could see Susanna again, those were the sorts of things he would ask her. How do you make Levi’s hair stay down? Where did you put my Garmin watch? When did you start drinking again?
On the other side was a picture of his daughter, Riley. She was eleven in that picture, but almost thirteen now, and Asher was reminded again that he needed an updated photo of her. Between saving his listing company and getting his kids off to school and then making sure their homework was done, updated pictures landed way down on his priority list.
Riley’s picture was taken shortly before her mother’s death. She was staring calmly into the camera, her gold hair combed straight, her bangs clipped just above her eyes. Those bangs had grown long and now served to cover her face from the world.
Beside the picture frame was a smooth rock, polished and buffed by the waters of Lake Del Lago that lapped the shore just below his house. Levi had found it and given it to Asher as a good luck charm to protect him from evil ninjas. Asher picked up the rock now and ran his thumb over its smooth surface, smiling softly. Levi really liked rocks. Maybe he’d be a geologist some day.
He punched the number to home on his phone. Both of his kids had cell phones so they could reach him anytime, anywhere. But when Asher made his nightly call home, he liked the house phone, because he could be talking to one child and hear the other in the background. It was as close to being there as he could get. He’d tried to do video conferencing with them, but the feed was always bad and the kids couldn’t sit still that long in front of a computer.
“Hi, Daddy!” Levi chirped into the phone after the first ring. “Guess what we’re doing?”
“Hey, buddy,” Asher said, already smiling. Nothing could infuse the slog of his work with sunshine like the sound of his children’s voices. “I can’t guess. What are you doing?”
“We’re making cookies. Carla said we could decorate them.”
“Carla?” he said, squinting at the drab drapery of his hotel room. Carla was his housekeeper and left promptly at five every day to see after her house and husband. “Carla is still there?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Where is Crystal?” he asked, referring to the night nanny he’d hired a month ago when his full-time nanny had decided to go to Los Angeles and pursue an acting career.
“I think she quitted.”
Asher’s belly knotted. Not again. Maybe Levi had it wrong. He would ask Carla, but first he wanted to talk to his son. “So what did you do today?”
“I don’t know,” Levi said.
“Did you go to school?”
“Yes. Brandon had to go to time-out because he hit Jason with a brick. It was cool!”
“Hitting is not cool, Levi, remember? What else did you do?”
“Watched SpongeBob when I got home. Carla said I could. When are you coming home, Daddy?”
That question always slayed him. Unless he was on his way at that moment, there was never a satisfactory answer for it. He gave Levi his stock answer. “I don’t know yet, buddy.” I don’t know, I don’t know. “As soon as I can.”
“Are you coming in a plane?”
“You bet—in the biggest one they make.”
“Cool! I have to go now. The cookies are ready.”
“Levi, listen,” Asher said, catching him before he ran off. “You know I love you, right? I love you all the way to the moon and back.”
“I know, Daddy!”
“Listen, I’ll call tomorrow. Let me talk to Carla, will you?”
“Carla!” Levi shouted, dropping the phone.
Asher stood up and walked to the window. He pushed aside the drapes, stared out at lights blinking sleepily against a dark Munich night.
“Hello, Mr. P,” Carla said into the phone a moment later.
“Carla, how are you?”
“Oh, pretty good.”
“What’s going on? What happened to Crystal?”
“I don’t really know,” Carla said. “She just quit. Gathered up all her stuff and left, just like that. I’ll tell you what, Mr. P, in my day, people were thankful for jobs. You’d think she’d be pretty thankful, too, given this economy.”
“I hear you,” Asher said absently. He wondered briefly if Riley had anything to do with her abrupt departure. “I’ll call Tara and see if she can’t come out—”
“What, tonight? No, that’s all right, Mr. P. I called Don and told him I was going to stay the night. Surely the man can warm something up in the microwave one night of his blessed life. And your mother said she’d come get the kids tomorrow. She couldn’t get them tonight because she has her bridge club and said she missed it last month.”
“Right,” Asher said. He let the drapes drop. “I am really sorry, Carla.” He meant it, too, and deeply. Carla had been with him for years, through the worst of Susanna’s troubles before she died. He couldn’t risk losing her—hell, he’d be lost without her.
“It’s okay, Mr. P,” Carla assured him. “I know you’re really busy right now.”
Busy seemed like a lame word for it. He and his partners at GSD&P were fighting to hold on to the business in an uncertain economic time. And when Ron Sutcliff, the managin
g partner, had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, everything had begun to nosedive. Asher had been made chief executive officer, effectively doubling his workload. His life, always chaotic, had been turned on its head, and he could hardly keep up with whether he was coming or going. He just knew that he seemed to be halfway around the world from his children more often than he liked, and all he wanted was to see them, to kiss them, to hold them, and make sure everything was all right.
Since Susanna had died suddenly a year and a half ago, the need to protect his children had ballooned in Asher, like some gear kicked into overdrive.
It didn’t help that he couldn’t find good, reliable help.
“I’ll get with Tara tonight, Carla,” Asher assured her. “We’ll get someone in there as soon as possible.” He glanced at his watch. “I very much appreciate you staying.”
“It’s no problem.”
It was a problem, and they both knew it. Carla had her own life. “Is Riley around?” he asked.
“Ah . . . yes, there she is, lurking in the door. Just a moment.”
“Hey, Dad,” Riley said a moment later.
“Hey, baby girl,” Asher said softly. “What’s up?”
“Crystal quit. I texted you.”
He hadn’t received the texts because he had fallen asleep. He winced with a slight pang of guilt. “So what happened, Ri?”
“Don’t ask me,” Riley said defensively. “I think her boyfriend didn’t like her spending the night out here.”
Asher pondered that a moment. “Did you say anything?” he asked carefully. Riley was not adjusting to his frequent absences very well. The last nanny had complained that Riley wouldn’t do anything she asked.
“Dad! No, I didn’t say anything. She had a meltdown all on her own. Anyway, you don’t have to worry, because Grandma Cheryl is coming to get us tomorrow. When are you going to be home?”
“I don’t know. But as soon as I can. I promise.”
“I just wish you’d come home,” Riley said softly. “School is out for summer soon, and I don’t want to live with Grandma Cheryl. Her house smells weird.”
Her house did have a weird, antiseptic smell. “You’re not going to live with Grandma. You’re not going to live with anyone but me. Don’t even think about that. Tell me, how was school today?”
“The same as always,” Riley said, not unhappily. “I got a B on my science test.”
“A B!” Asher said, sinking back onto the bed. The news elated him in a way nothing in his own life could do any longer. Riley had so much promise, so much talent—but her talent was not math or science, and Asher worried about her grades. “Riley, I am so proud of you! That’s excellent news! All that studying paid off after all, huh?”
She giggled. “Calm down, Dad.”
The sound of her laugh ran down his spine and warmed him. “Way to go, kiddo. Anything else going on today?”
“No. Oh, I saw this great book in the library, Dad. It’s about a wishing well in Spain. People go there and throw some money in, and then whatever they have is cured.”
Asher listened to his daughter. She was such a quirky kid. Things like wishing wells in Spain interested her, but not bikes or friends. Riley was a loner. Susanna used to say that Riley was artistic and creative and had a hard time fitting in with the run of the mill. Asher had believed Susanna, but now there were times he believed something a little deeper than that was going on. Something he damn sure couldn’t figure out halfway around the world.
Asher glanced at the pile of papers on his bed. He had a meeting in six hours and he still didn’t have a clear vision of where they were going. “Maybe one day we’ll get to Spain so you can check them out,” he suggested when Riley had finished telling him about the wells.
“Yeah, right,” Riley scoffed.
Okay, he deserved that. “Never say never,” he said as cheerfully as he could. “Okay, Ri, I’ve gotta go. I’ll call you tomorrow, same time, okay?”
“Okay.”
“I love you, Ri. I love you and I miss you.” More than he could possibly express to a twelve-year-old. More than a grown, educated man could express with mere words.
“I know, I know, all the way to the moon,” Riley said. “I love you, too. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
Asher said good night and waited until the line went dead.
All the way to the moon.
He tossed the phone onto the bed and opened the mini-bar. He fished out a beer and some peanuts. He chased the peanuts with the beer, then picked up his phone again and dialed Tara.
Tara, his assistant for more than ten years, answered on the second ring. “Hey!” she said brightly. “How’s Germany?”
“I wouldn’t know, I haven’t seen the outside of an office or a hotel room in days,” Asher said. “Listen, I hate to bother you at home.”
“Not to worry. Chris is out. What can I do for you?”
“The night nanny quit,” Asher said. “Tara, you have got to find me a nanny. I don’t know how long I am going to be here—a week, two weeks—but my kids need some stability. I need someone who is there for them and can handle them, but someone I can trust not to take off or get in a huff over anything they say and walk out. You know what I mean?”
“I do.”
“I know this is a huge thing to put on you, but I am at the end of my rope here, and I have no one else to turn to.”
“I’m already on it,” she said confidently. “We haven’t had much luck with that service in Austin, so I found one in Cedar Springs. I figure there are some pretty nice resorts out that way, so surely there is a need for nannies, right? At least a part-time nanny until we find a permanent one.”
“You found a service?” Asher asked disbelievingly.
“I’ve already got a call in to them,” Tara said confidently. “Listen, Asher, I will find someone. I promise you I will, and if you need me to go out and hang out for a couple of days, I will. I don’t think Chris will even notice I am gone. But the most important thing is to get BMW on track.”
That was Tara—she was indispensable to him and obviously as worried about the future of the firm as he was. Guilt and regret began to pound at his temples. It was a bizarre thing to ask anyone, to find a nanny for his kids. He tried so hard to be there for them, especially when it mattered, but he also had a business and a livelihood to maintain for their sake and he felt like he’d been split right down the middle. He could not be everything he needed to be, but he’d be damned if he could figure out where to draw any lines.
At least he could trust Tara. He knew that if he couldn’t find someone—which he couldn’t, not from Germany—she would. “Please call me as soon as you have something,” he said.
“Of course.”
“Thanks, Tara. I’ll talk to you soon.” He hung up and looked at the clock. It was now a quarter after two. He couldn’t sleep, not with this on his mind. He had to be at the BMW offices at eight in the morning. Asher pulled his shirt from his trousers, picked up a pen and a file, and started reading.
Focus, he told himself. Just focus, get the message down and get the hell out of here. Get home before all the wheels fall off the wagon of his life.
3
The road from Houston to Austin was a long stretch of horse farms and cattle ranches. Jane wondered about each and every ranch house she passed—did they have kids? Were they happily married? Had they ever given a child away? Adopted a child? Were their children happy?
Jane could not remember a time when she didn’t know she was adopted. In fact, one of her earliest memories was standing on a stool in the kitchen, her head barely above the counter, watching her mother mix cake batter, hoping she would get to lick the bowl clean. “God brought you to us, Janey,” her mother said to her, and playfully tweaked her nose. “He made a special delivery to us and gave us an angel.”
She’d been more interested in the cake batter.
Her parents had never treated her adoption as anything other than normal. On
ce, when Jane had been a little older, she’d asked her mother why they’d adopted, and her mother had looked surprised by the question. “Because we really wanted a baby,” she said, as if it had been perfectly natural to adopt another person’s child when one wanted a baby. Jane was too young then to wonder why they hadn’t given birth to her like they had the two sons after her, but Mona had told Jane years later that Terri and Jim hadn’t believed they could have children naturally before Eric was born—he’d been a big surprise.
Nevertheless, Jane couldn’t remember spending as much as a day of her childhood thinking about being the adopted one. That’s not to say she didn’t wonder about her biological parents from time to time. She had a healthy imagination and would envision what her life might have been like if her real parents had kept her. In grade school, she’d made a game of pretending she’d really been someone else, like Christie Heatherton, the cutest girl in school. She’d imagined walking around in Christie’s skin, seeing everyone through Christie’s eyes.
And there were times Jane wondered why her real parents gave her away. Was something wrong with her? Had she cried too much as a baby? Her mom said she was special, but Jane wondered what if she just said that, and the real reason her birth mother gave her away was because she wasn’t special at all?
And sometimes, Jane would invent acceptable reasons her birth parents couldn’t keep her. She pretended they lived on an island by themselves and there were no schools. Or they were very important—her father was the president’s right-hand man, her mother on tour with the ballet. They were rich.
She’d once made the mistake of telling Michelle, whose last name now escaped her. She’d been a summer friend before her family had moved away. Jane had told Michelle about her real, rich parents, and Michelle had looked at her curiously. “But . . . if they’re rich, why didn’t they keep you?”
Suffice it to say that Jane hadn’t thought through the logistics of giving herself extraordinary parents.