Brice disliked the man more than Evan did, which was difficult to top. But Brice allowed his feelings concerning Sesser to color his reasoning when it came to Claire. He’d never approved of Evan’s relationship with her. Brice had been at college when she and Evan dated. Evan needed his brother to understand that Claire was different than Sesser. If there was one thing she wanted, it was to be known for herself, not her association with her dad.
“Claire’s smart. She puts others first. She wants the best for this town because this is where she’s raising her son.” When his brother didn’t speak, Evan added, “Maybe it’s not so bad if she wins.”
“I can’t believe this.” Brice started pacing again. Never a good sign.
“I hate disappointing you. I just—”
Brice speared him with a look of disbelief. “You love her again. It came back.”
Evan couldn’t deny it. He’d realized how he felt the night Alex and Claire had come for dinner. When he’d helped them out to their car he hadn’t wanted to let them go. They belonged at his house. With him.
At least, that’s what kept running through his head.
Not that it mattered. He’d never act on those thoughts. Stepping into Claire’s life would only cause her pain, like before. Her parents didn’t like him. Besides, Claire still refused to talk to him about their past. If she wasn’t even willing to have that conversation, they could never move forward. Hurt didn’t heal by ignoring it.
Evan slumped against the wall. “Was it ever gone? I mean, yeah, I shoved it away and told myself I wasn’t allowed to care. But...” He tossed his hands up and gave an exaggerated shrug. He loved Claire. “Don’t worry. Claire and I...we would never work.”
Brice nodded. “It would be close to impossible, the Danielses and the Atwoods.”
“Water and oil.”
* * *
Claire covered the smile blooming on her face as she watched Evan march up and down the hallway outside the gymnasium. Banks had explained that they were to stay tucked away until he announced them.
She peered through the narrow window in a door. Two sets of bleachers were pulled out and residents filled most of the seats. Alex and his friend Kasey were dancing with a group of other children around someone dressed as the school mascot, Jaws the Gator. Gator Pride, a concession stand built into the side of the gym, had a line of people waiting for drinks and the lukewarm hot dogs they sold. The sweet smells of fresh cotton candy and brewing coffee formed an oddly pleasant aroma when mingled together.
Evan continued to pace.
Claire shook her head. “You’re going to wear a groove into the floor if you don’t stop that.”
He chuckled and rubbed his chin. With a sigh he sagged back against a locker, one foot propped against the metal. And that quickly, he was the teenage boy she’d fallen for, leaning in the same hallway where they’d walked together, flashing a dimpled smile meant only for her.
Despite his happy demeanor, his gaze was faraway, distracted. “Do you read the gossip blog?”
“Like the ones about celebrities?”
“No.” He folded his arms. “The Goose Harbor one.”
Goose Tales. Of course.
“You mean the one my dad is on a tirade about?” If she’d thought her father had overreacted about the photos Jason had taken to announce her and Evan as candidates, he’d almost lost his mind when he’d discovered the updates from the anonymous blog. Last night he’d slammed every door in the house and kept repeating that it had been a mistake for her to come home. How come you couldn’t have married Pierce and been done with all of this? Why couldn’t you have done that one, simple thing?
“Brice, too.”
Evan’s brother and she had formed a tenuous relationship for Kendall’s benefit. Claire would stand in their wedding on Friday, and always encourage Kendall and speak well about the man her friend loved. But Brice hung back from Claire whenever they were in the same room. She couldn’t work out if it was because he was somewhat shy or if it was more personal. It often felt the latter. He didn’t like her father—that was common knowledge—but was there more to it?
“Brice doesn’t like me much, does he?”
“I don’t think that’s the case. Only he’s invested in seeing me win.” Evan straightened and clapped his hands together before stalking to the gym doors. “Why is Banks still talking? I wish he’d call our names and get it over with.”
“Nervous?”
“Back in the day, I used to copy off your exams. Think they’d still let me do that?”
He’d talked his way out of plenty of detentions for that kind of behavior.
Claire shouldn’t encourage him, but she couldn’t help the comfort she found in joking around with Evan. “Mrs. Ottley is still the head of the math block and her eyesight’s even worse than when we were students. You might be able to pull it off.”
He peered through one of the windows. “Too bad about those two hundred people on the bleachers who might notice.”
She followed him. Touched his elbow to get his attention. “Thank you,” she said softly. “For yesterday. You deserved to win.”
She’d only built snowmen—half of which she’d shoved over in frustration when she was contemplating giving up on the competition. But Evan had saved her from collapsing the last three and she’d had enough time to paint murals depicting Goose Harbor all over them. They’d turned out pretty, but Evan had created a huge, beautiful sculpture. Even though it had broken minutes before the judging, he still should have won.
He batted his hand. “Your snow painting was great. You may want to take up the new medium.”
She walked her fingers from his elbow down to his hand and squeezed it. “I wouldn’t have done it without you.”
Evan, her hero, her encourager. The one person who looked at her and saw her, even better than she saw and understood herself.
Evan glanced at their hands together. He traced his thumb over her knuckles. “We make a pretty good team, don’t we?”
Mr. Banks called their names over the loudspeaker. Their cue.
There was a sadness in his sigh. “Too bad we’re running against each other.”
Chapter Nine
“Alex, please don’t do this. Not now,” Claire pleaded. The high heels she had planned to wear to Brice and Kendall’s rehearsal dinner still dangled in her hands. “I have to head out. I’m already so late.”
“I don’t care.” In one swoop he shoved everything off their coffee table, and one of Claire’s glass art pieces she’d picked up while studying in Hong Kong smashed onto the hardwood floor with a giant crash. Glass exploded and popped all around the room, glittering across the floor, spelling out the warpath of an angry seven-year-old.
A seven-year-old she would never be able to reach. Who wouldn’t accept her love or comfort. Her own son.
“Stay there.” She held up a hand. “I don’t want you to get cut.”
Tears coursed down his cheeks, but he made no sound, no gesture to show he’d heard her other than standing still. Claire set her shoes on the rose fabric of one of the chairs and cautiously tiptoed through the mess to the kitchen in order the fetch the broom and dustpan. It took her ten minutes to sweep a safe path to Alex. How could she get him to see that she was willing to do the same thing in his life—create a path for him to safely navigate?
“Come on.” She held out her hand. She’d deal with the rest of the mess later tonight, after she got home from the dinner. It was already planned that Alex would crash in one of her parents’ guest rooms for the night, seeing as she’d have to be up with the birds the next morning to help with wedding day festivities.
Head down, Alex followed the cleared path, but sidestepped her hand. Without exchanging words they proceeded to the front door of their living area. Alex g
rabbed his backpack and Claire scooped up her purse, shoes and some other odds and ends. She opened the door and ushered Alex out into a hallway in her parents’ house.
After she broke off her engagement to Auden and returned home, her parents had renovated a part of the east wing of their mansion to accommodate a separate living area for her. That part of the house had consisted of guest suites that no one ever used. It didn’t matter how many times she had asked her parents not to alter the family home, or assured them she’d be able to get a job and find her own living situation. They were determined to lock her away in their house as if she was some shamed spinster. Once Mom and Dad got an idea into their heads, there was no point in trying to reason with them. So she’d relented. Hey, the rent was free.
Claire padded down the plush white carpeting, directing Alex to the part of the house where her mother spent most of her time—a sitting room off the kitchen where she was forever perched on the sofa in her curlers, watching one of the shopping networks. She made weekly outrageous purchases that showed up in box after endless box at their doorstep. Mom often feigned innocence about placing the orders, but her name and credit card were linked to every purchase. Suffice it to say, they would never run out of random kitchen gadgets.
Alex followed Claire down the stairs. His book bag dangled from his hands, so his knees hit it with every step. “I didn’t mean for the art to break.”
Claire gripped the railing and stopped. “I know.”
He took that as his signal to sit on a step midway down the staircase. “Do you have to go tonight?”
He’d been repeating the same question for the last hour as she was getting ready, which made no sense. The entire rest of the day he’d spent locked in his room ignoring her, even when she’d tried to hang out with him. Her invitation to play a board game this morning had been met with a snort.
Claire shifted the bracelets around her wrist. “I’m the maid of honor at the wedding tomorrow. Rehearsal dinners come with the territory.”
He skewed his face. “Territory?”
“I’m sorry, that’s a tough word.” It was easy to forget that English wasn’t his first language and he was still learning. “Um, I should have said it’s part of the responsibility you take on when you agree to stand up in a friend’s wedding. But, hey, you get to come tomorrow. The Holcombs will pick you up and you can sit with them during the ceremony and reception.”
“Not with you?”
“Sorry. I have to stand up front, alone. That’s part of the rules.”
“Not that I want to sit with you.” Alex curved his hand over the railing and pulled himself up again. He slung the backpack over his shoulder and plowed down the rest of the stairs, looking almost like an angst-filled teenager and not the little boy in the picture she’d fallen in love with during the adoption process. The little boy he very much still was underneath all that pain and frustration. Grief and anger aged people.
She caught up to him. “Will you be okay with my mom tonight?” Now wasn’t the time to push the word grandma on him.
“She let me play with the Slicetasic last time. She gives me guacamole and chips. They’re delicious.”
While Claire wanted to focus on why her seven-year-old was playing with one of Mom’s kitchen gadgets, she had bigger issues to deal with at the moment. Besides, she knew her mother would never do that without supervising him. More than likely, Alex was exaggerating to solicit a reaction.
Claire got in front of him and blocked his progress into the kitchen. “Then I’d like to talk about what happened back in our apartment.”
His dark hair fell so it shadowed his soulful eyes. “I don’t want to.”
“Alex.” She took a half step closer and reached out to him. He flinched and her stomach performed a nosedive. Claire let her hand fall to her side. “I love you.” Emotion thickened her voice. “You’re my son for life, no matter what. You understand that, don’t you?”
He kept his gaze glued to the floor. “Can I go find your mom?”
“Why were you so angry?”
“Dunno.” He scuffed his shoe along a color variation in the travertine tiles. “Sometimes I just am.”
She fought the urge to put her hands on his shoulders and give him a gentle shake. The contact wouldn’t help. He wasn’t receptive at the moment. “I couldn’t even reason with you.”
He tapped his temple. “In my head, I cannot reason with me, either.”
“Okay, go on in there.” Claire jerked her chin toward the door that separated the dining room from the kitchen. She wanted to hug him, kiss him on the forehead, but Alex wouldn’t want that right now, so she held back. “I know she’s waiting for you.”
Alex pressed through the door without so much as a goodbye.
Claire swallowed hard as she leaned against one of the formal dining chairs and ran her fingers under her eyes in an attempt to clear any makeup smudges. Kendall and Brice were probably wondering where she was by now. More than likely she’d have missed calls on her cell. But she needed a moment to gain her composure. What were a few more minutes when she was already so late?
The sweet hints of cigar smoke hit her a second before her dad entered the room. He shook his head. “When are you going to get that child under control? How do you figure you can run a town if you can’t even manage him?”
Awesome. So he’d overheard her failed talk with Alex.
She fiddled with her bracelets. Straightened them and then bunched them together again. “It’s not as easy as that.”
He stayed in the doorway. The house behind him was pure darkness. “I say it is.”
She geared up to try and explain attachment disorder to him again, not that it would get him to finally grasp the concept that some people couldn’t handle and control themselves at all times. “With what he—”
“Don’t talk to me like I don’t know anything about raising children. I raised you, didn’t I?”
Technically, Mom had done the lion’s share of the child rearing in the Atwood home. For most of Claire’s childhood her dad had been gone, traveling or locked away in his office until past midnight for days on end. As a child, Claire had lived to make him happy—to gain a glance, an ounce of his attention, if only momentarily. Dad had been good at giving the occasional head pat while he passed by, and that was about it.
Until the Evan situation. In that, her father had been nothing short of her hero. He’d arrived in time to pick up her broken pieces, set her on her feet again and guide her in the right direction. Without him, she probably would have tracked Evan down and pitifully thrown herself at his feet, begging him to love her. Thankfully, Dad had saved her from making a total fool out of herself. He had earned her respect that day and every day after with his patience when it came to her constantly going for another degree while dodging her parents’ relentless urging for her to find someone worthwhile to marry.
He covered a phlegmy cough. “Well, didn’t I?”
“Alex is different. His circumstances are different.”
“Don’t try to pawn off those lies the psychologist came up with. Quack doctors!” He spit the words as if they were curses. “They spin a garbage load of hogwash so that weak people can feel better about themselves. My pa tossed me out of the house when I was fourteen. He got remarried after my ma died, and his new wife wanted the kids out.” He thumped his chest. “I don’t have one of those fancy attachment disorders from that, now do I? I went out and made something of myself. Had my first million before my twenty-first birthday.”
“I know your story, Daddy.”
“Then tell that boy to shape up.” He pointed at the door to the kitchen.
Arguing with Dad was as pointless as yelling into the wind. But his attitude had the potential of being damaging to Alex, so she tried to keep their contact to a minimum when she could. Most of th
e time Dad was busy working, so it wasn’t all that hard to keep them separated.
Still, she liked to be aware of what Alex might have to face. “Are you planning on hanging out with them tonight?”
“Can’t. I have work. A business doesn’t run itself. Not a successful one.”
“I know.”
He took in her outfit as if for the first time. “You look too nice to go spend time with the likes of the Daniels gang. They’ll all be there, the whole pitiful lot of them.”
“I’m not going for the benefit of the Danielses. I’m going for Kendall. She’s my friend. You know that. I’ll support her no matter who she chooses to marry.” And really, Evan’s brother Brice seemed like the perfect fit for Claire’s energetic and constantly optimistic friend. Brice’s calm and steady demeanor balanced Kendall out, whereas she coaxed smile after smile from a man who not that long ago had been known as the town’s grumpy hermit.
Claire had memories dating back to grade school of overhearing her father rail about the Daniels family. Mom always shrugged it off, saying there was bad blood between the families that Claire wouldn’t be able to understand. True, because she was thirty now and she still didn’t get it. Well, she understood why he wouldn’t like Evan, but Brice had proved himself kind and devoted to Kendall. And that’s really all she cared about where her friend’s happiness was concerned.
Her father braced his hand on the door frame. “Kendall was an excellent business partner. I almost wished she would have stayed with me longer before paying back her loan so quickly.”
Claire twisted the straps of her tote in her hands. “I really need to leave.”
“I’d say have fun, but I don’t think that’s possible where you’re going.”
She slipped her heels on, gathered her bags and headed out. As she drove away from the gated Marina Lights subdivision she tried to lock away all thoughts of Alex’s troubles and her father’s less than kind attitude toward mental and emotional issues. But even when she was successful at doing that another worry roared like a caged cougar.
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