by Bella Andre
She knelt in the driveway. “It’s very hard for little boys to pick up and go like that. You have school on Monday. And your mommy will be very busy with all her designer friends.”
His lip trembled again. “But she was going to take me to the zoo.”
“I know.” A bubble of anger rose up in Ari’s throat, and she had to work to swallow it. She didn’t say that he and his mom would do it next time, because she didn’t believe Irene would actually follow through. For Irene, there would always be something sparkly and new that took precedence over Noah. “We’ll think of something fun to do instead.”
He jerked his hand out of hers. “No!” he shouted, stamping his foot. “It’s not fair. I want to go with her. I want to bounce on the bouncy thing. Daddy isn’t nice to me! And neither are you!” He ran up the steps into the house, slamming the front door behind him.
Ari double-cursed Irene. And by the time she got to the playroom, Noah had blown through, kicking the castle apart. She climbed the stairs to his room to find him curled in a ball on his bed. She sat beside him, but he rolled away, giving her his back.
“Everything’s going to be okay,” she whispered. It was the same thing she’d told his father less than twenty-four hours ago. The same thing she’d told herself this morning, even as her heart continued to ache.
“It’s not.” He sniffled and sobbed, his arm over his face. “Why doesn’t she like me?”
She was close to tears herself. “Oh, sweetheart, of course she likes you. She loves you.” But what excuse was she supposed to give for the way Irene had behaved? “She’s just so busy.” And careless and thoughtless. And downright cruel. “She loves you, sweetheart. As much as your daddy does.” Then she added what was already in her heart. “As much as I do.”
All her words did was make him sob harder, hiccupping with his distress.
Knowing he needed to get it out, she let Noah cry, rubbing his back, until finally he fell asleep. And all the while her heart broke for him, for the mother he wanted and could never have. She knew about wanting your mom to be someone you could count on—wanting it even when you knew it was never going to happen.
Her heart broke for Matt too. She was sure that every time Irene visited Noah, it ended like this—in tantrums, stamping feet, and tears. How helpless and powerless Matt must feel.
Just as helpless and powerless as Ari felt against her growing feelings for Noah’s father, who had made all of her dreams come true for a few precious hours in the dark.
Chapter Twelve
Matt went straight to the playroom when he got home from the lab. He tried to spend weekends at home with Noah, but with the new product Trebotics International was releasing at the end of the month, the quality inspection this morning couldn’t wait. He’d hoped his absence would make things easier with Ari too, giving them both a few hours to think straight about what they’d done last night and accept that it could never happen again.
Only, he hadn’t been able to push her into a corner of his mind any more than he’d been able to keep from taking her to his bed last night. Every other thought was of how beautiful, how soft, how sweet—and how sexy—she’d been.
You can’t have her, he reminded himself. Last night can never happen again.
But all it took was one smile from Ari, seated beside Noah on the playroom floor, for Matt’s heart to stutter in his chest. In the sunlight through the window, her hair a fiery gold, she was the angel he’d seen by the fountain during the unveiling of Charlie’s sculpture.
He’d used the excuse of work to walk away from her this morning, but now he was all out of excuses. He knelt on the carpet beside them and a gazillion Lego pieces, finally noting that Noah hadn’t looked up, not even to say hi. “What are you working on, buddy?”
“Nothing.” His son’s voice was sullen.
Matt’s gut twisted again with fear as well as guilt. “Is everything all right after yesterday?” he asked Ari, his pulse racing. Could a concussion bring on mood swings? Had the doctor diagnosed his injury correctly?
“He just woke up from a nap. He’s still sleepy. Right, Noah?” She reached out a hand, and Noah flinched. The movement was slight, but Matt was hyperaware after yesterday’s fall.
“You don’t usually take naps anymore,” he said to his son.
Noah shrugged and kept robotically plugging parts into his latest creation. Matt frowned. Something was definitely off. But if it wasn’t yesterday’s fall, then what?
Ari moved gracefully to her feet. “I’ll get your dad some coffee, okay, Noah? We’ll be right back.” She gave Matt a penetrating stare and gestured for him to join her.
By the time he met her in the kitchen, Matt had finally guessed the problem. “Irene was here, wasn’t she?” He recognized the signs, and they tore him up inside, knowing exactly what Noah was feeling.
Ari pursed her lips. “Yes. I didn’t want to talk about it in front of Noah.”
He swore under his breath. “Tell me what happened.” Every beat of his heart felt like a nail driving deeper.
Closing her eyes briefly, she shook her head. It was the kind of gesture everyone made after Irene descended on them like an atomic bomb. “She brought him Legos, firecrackers, and a trampoline.”
“Firecrackers?” Even for Irene, that was crazy.
“The trampoline is outside. I wouldn’t let him use it, and he’s upset. It’s not child-size, and there’s no net.” She sighed. “But we were getting over that. Until Noah’s mother got a call inviting her to Paris for a fashion show right after they’d made plans to go to the zoo together this afternoon. She had to leave right away to catch her plane, so no zoo.”
Between Noah’s accident yesterday and the huge mistake he’d made with Ari, Matt had already been on edge. If Irene had been standing in front of him, he would have yelled until she was reduced to tears, no matter how many times he swore he’d never do that. She flitted in, created an uproar, then flitted out again, leaving him to pick up the pieces.
Leaving was the only thing about her that he could count on.
And Noah was like Humpty-Dumpty, who couldn’t be put back together again.
“I’m sorry,” Ari said. “I didn’t realize how upset he’d be. Poor guy cried himself to sleep. He thinks she doesn’t love him.”
Jesus, it killed him that he couldn’t figure out how to protect Noah from his own mother. Matt had never wanted his child to feel unloved or unwanted the way he had. But Irene never stuck around to see the aftermath of what she’d done, and when he told her, she simply rolled her eyes and said Noah seemed perfectly happy.
“Don’t apologize,” he told Ari, his voice gruff as he worked to contain his fury at his ex. “It’s not your fault. I should have warned you about Irene.” But he barely wanted to admit his terrible choice in girlfriends to himself, let alone tell his new nanny. Especially when he’d been lusting after Ari despite knowing better.
Yet she had clearly handled the whole situation well, calming Noah down enough to play with his Legos. Sometimes it took days for what he’d dubbed The Irene Effect to wear off.
“Actually, that’s not all.” He braced himself as she said, “She told Noah the reason she couldn’t take him to Paris was because you wouldn’t let him go with her.”
Damn Irene. “I need to mend fences with Noah.” He ran his hand through his hair. Because while he needed to deal with the mess Irene had left, that didn’t mean he could use it as an excuse to avoid Ari. She deserved better than that. “We need to talk about Irene after Noah’s in bed. About last night too.” He paused, trying to read her expression, but couldn’t get a better handle on what she was feeling than he had that morning. “Is that okay?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “I’ll leave you two alone for now.”
The last time he’d talked with her after Noah had gone to bed, he’d lost control. Ari was pure temptation. But tonight he vowed not to touch her. He wouldn’t beg to kiss her. He wouldn’t remember the softness o
f her skin or how sweet she tasted.
No matter what.
Not even if he lost his mind trying.
* * *
Thankfully, Noah settled down by dinner, and at story time Ari was hugely relieved to see him reading with his father as though nothing had ever happened. She marveled at how quickly—and deeply—the little boy had burrowed into her heart. His happiness mattered to her big-time.
It was unimaginable that Irene had chosen to give up Matt and her beautiful son for the freedom to hop private planes and attend fashion shows in Paris. Ari would have done anything to have a family like them.
Once Noah had fallen asleep, Matt and Ari headed downstairs together to talk. In the living room, he gestured to the sofa while he went to the sideboard. “Would you like something to drink? A glass of wine?” he asked as he poured himself a finger of scotch.
“White, please.”
“I should have explained about Irene.” He was obviously more ready to tackle the subject of his ex than what they’d done last night. “But she hasn’t been here for months. I wasn’t even sure she’d show up again.”
Ari hated how carefully he avoided brushing her fingertips as he handed her the glass.
“You deserve to know what happened so you understand how it affects Noah when she drops in.”
“He was so sad it broke my heart,” she said softly.
“That’s what I hate.” He rolled the glass in his hand, and despite knowing better, she couldn’t help but want to be the glass, his hands all over her, heating her. “Nothing I say makes it better. You really helped today, Ari. He doesn’t normally recover so quickly.”
“A five-year-old shouldn’t need to recover from his mother’s visit.” Maybe she was speaking out of turn, but she understood only too well how hard it was when a parent acted carelessly with your feelings.
He set his glass on the side table, elbows on the arms of the wingback chair, and steepled his fingers. “When she found out she was pregnant, she thought it was a ‘total gas.’” He laughed without an ounce of humor. “I would have married her for the baby’s sake, but Irene wanted to wait and see how things went.”
Ari curled her feet up under her, propped her chin on her hand, and sipped her wine. She wanted to put her arms around him, to erase the pain that laced every word of his story. But after this morning, when he’d made it perfectly clear what a huge mistake their lovemaking had been, she didn’t dare touch him.
All she could do was ache.
* * *
Matt didn’t say that Irene had initially wanted to terminate the pregnancy and he’d talked her out of it. He only said, “She was pretty cavalier about the whole thing.” He stared at his glass on the table beside him. “She did have some fun with the attention the pregnancy brought.”
“Until she had the baby shower and all the presents were for Noah instead of her.”
He snorted an abrupt laugh. “That’s Irene. Admitting things like that doesn’t even bother her.”
“At least she’s honest about who she is, I suppose.”
He was impressed at how much Ari had already figured out. “She told me right up front that she’d make a crappy mother. She bitched and moaned when I said she couldn’t drink or have the occasional cigarette. But she gave them up for the duration.”
Maybe he’d told Ari enough already, but he’d never really talked about this with anyone before. Not even the Mavericks—at least, not beyond the basics. Susan and Bob knew more, but they were worriers, so he was careful to edit with them too. Ari, though… Ari was different. He got the feeling she understood in a way no one else ever had.
“We met at a Silicon Valley party. I’d started Trebotics.” He’d made his first few million, and he’d reshaped himself physically and mentally from the weakling his father had believed him to be. “She was young, only twenty-three. And she made me feel young too.” He’d had women before Irene, but she was so fun-loving that she made him want to be fun-loving too. “She never took anything seriously, and for someone like me who took everything seriously, it was…different.”
Irene was a slap in the face to everything his parents had taught him—which in retrospect was probably a big part of her allure. His father would have said she was worthless and flighty and Matt was ruining himself by taking up with her. Though his father was gone by then, dead of a massive coronary during Matt’s first year in college, being with her still felt like he was getting one up on his dad.
But the Irene he’d thought he wanted turned out to be an illusion. She loved her fun to the point that she had no sense of responsibility. She was caring until she forgot about a friend and snubbed her for another. She lived on the surface of life without any deep thoughts or deep feelings.
“When she found out she was pregnant, I realized I wanted my son more than anything. So I was willing to take her too. But when the baby came along, she decided he wasn’t any fun—crying, needy, wanting to be held all the time. Noah was a month old when she handed him over to me.” He should have known Irene would never last, but he’d actually been shell-shocked—partly because he had no clue how to take care of a baby either. He’d asked when she’d be back and her answer was simply, I don’t know, accompanied by a careless shrug of her shoulders. Whatever trust there’d been between them had died in that moment. Because it wasn’t just his son who wasn’t enough for Irene. It was Matt. And that destroyed his final thread of hope that he’d one day have a real love like Bob and Susan had.
“I’ve been trying to understand her,” Ari said, with a frown that indicated she wasn’t getting very far. “Thank God Noah had you. A lot of kids have no one.”
“I wish I could be enough for him,” he said in a low tone. “But every time she flits in for an hour or two, then suddenly discovers something more ‘important’ to do, he ends up feeling like he doesn’t matter. Sometimes I think he’d be better off if she were gone forever.” He could feel his teeth grinding. He always kept his emotions under control and lost his cool only when his son was threatened, by a nanny or a bully or a bully’s mother. But Irene made him want to break his vow to keep his cool in every situation. “She comes back just often enough to keep Noah on her hook.”
Ari reached out, then just as quickly retreated, dropping her gaze. It was obvious she wanted to offer comfort.
She couldn’t know how badly Matt needed that comfort, how much he wanted to wrap himself around her and breathe in her scent like a calm breeze washing over him.
* * *
The room had grown darker and more intimate the longer they talked. Matt was only a touch away. But no matter how badly she wanted to, Ari couldn’t touch, not even when his pain for Noah was like a physical wound in her own body. She hurt for Matt as well, for the hopes he’d had five years ago and the dreams that had died.
“I can’t believe she actually brought him firecrackers and a trampoline,” he said. “But the Superman parachute is still the ultimate. All I can think is that she wants him to be a daredevil like she is.”
Ari could almost see him shudder at the thought. Matt’s biggest fear was that something bad would happen to his son, but while she obviously wanted Noah to be safe, little kids still needed to run free and try new things. Which meant they were going to get hurt sometimes.
“Maybe a little daredevil isn’t so bad,” she said gently. Before Matt could object, she explained, “I don’t mean jumping out of planes and lighting firecrackers in the backyard. Just small things like learning some tricks on a scooter. Or a pogo stick.” She thought about the water wings that hampered Noah when he was swimming, but decided this still wasn’t the right time to bring that up. Not tonight.
Picking up his tumbler, Matt swirled the liquid. “He begged to see Jurassic World, but I should have known he’d be terrified of the dinosaurs. The only reason he wants to try the daredevil stuff is to impress Irene. He wants her to love him so badly that he’ll do anything, and I want so badly to protect him from turning himself i
nside out for her.”
Matt was so kind, so loving, and such a great dad—even if he was sometimes as overprotective as Irene was careless. Ari wanted to climb onto his lap and wrap her arms around him, feel him close and warm and solid against her.
Instead, all she could say was, “Being scared of roaring dinosaurs gobbling up people isn’t the same as wanting to try things like the trampoline.” Though Noah could probably do more than his dad would let him. “I was terrified of the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz when I was a kid.”
“You were afraid of the monkeys, not the witch?”
“They had big, awful grins.”
“For me it was Natural Born Killers.”
She gaped. “Your parents let you watch Natural Born Killers?”
He shrugged. “My dad said you had to be tough to get along in this world. My mom agreed with him.”
“That’s crazy. How old were you?”
“I was twelve.” He grimaced. “In reality, it’s probably not any worse than a lot of video games. It was just seeing it up there on the big screen.”
She could see that he was trying to move them beyond the specter of Natural Born Killers, but Ari still thought it was crazy to take a kid, even a twelve-year-old, to see a couple cut a bloody swath across middle America.
She might not be able to wrap her arms around him, but she could make sure he heard the truth. “You’re doing a great job, Matt. No matter what else happens, Noah will always know how much you love him.”
He stared at her for long moments before he finally said, “Thank you for being so good with him under difficult circumstances.”
She blushed at his praise. And the way he looked at her. As if there was more he needed to say. More he wanted to do.
God, how she longed to be in his arms, where nothing else mattered but how much pleasure they could give each other. And where she’d finally felt like she mattered.