by Pamela Aares
When sleep finally came, it brought fitful dreams.
Always the dream of her mother’s voice, calling her to bet on the number seventeen. She never refused her mother’s summons. She always made the bet. But the dream had changed. Instead of just a voice, she saw her mother surrounded by a white ethereal light and smiling at her. Natasha reached out to touch her, and she disappeared. The dream morphed, and a man whose face she couldn’t see rained stacks of papers down onto her. Adrian appeared beside her, and soon he too was covered by the endless float of papers until he disappeared completely. She called out his name.
A pounding knock answered her. It shook the bed she saw herself in, shook the apartment. She called out, but the sound continued so loudly that it had her bolting up in her bed.
She glanced at the clock. Squinted and then focused. Nine fifteen! She’d overslept. The first day of her new job, and she’d overslept.
The knocking continued. It wasn’t her dream.
She grabbed her robe and ran to Tyler’s room. His bed was empty. She ran down the hall, pulled the scribbled note from the dining room table and headed for the front door. She glanced at the note. A smiley face and the word school was scrawled in his confident handwriting. When had he grown up so much that he could make breakfast on his own and catch the bus to school? With a lighter heart, she opened the door.
And came face-to-face with Tyler’s father.
If she hadn’t been holding tight to the door frame, she might’ve fainted.
“I would’ve called first, but your phone number’s unlisted,” Eddie said with a palms-up shrug.
He didn’t move toward her. But he loomed over her as tall and broad as he had in her memories and nightmares.
“Why are you here?” Natasha hated the waver in her voice. Hated the fear that shot adrenaline through her, making it hard to think.
To her surprise, Eddie stepped back. Still, the distance between them didn’t make her feel any safer.
“Look, I’m sorry to show up like this. But I didn’t want to wait for you outside Tyler’s school. I thought that would be creepy.”
His words slammed into her. Tyler. He knew about Tyler.
“Why are you here?” she repeated, as if feigning ignorance about Tyler would make any difference.
Eddie glanced around at the street. “Could I come in? What I have to say is going to take more than a few minutes.”
He must’ve seen the fear flash in her eyes, because he waved his palms the way men did in old westerns to show that they were unarmed. “I mean no harm, Natasha. But I understand if you don’t trust me. Maybe we could go somewhere and talk.”
“I’m late for work.” But then she considered that a villain you knew was better than one you didn’t. She didn’t want him inside her home. She didn’t want him in her life. But now that he’d discovered Tyler, she had to know what he wanted. Had to be armed to counter any plan he had cooked up.
“Okay. But fifteen minutes.” She nodded toward a bench at the edge of the field. “We can talk over there. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”
After throwing on a pair of jeans and a work shirt, Natasha glanced in the mirror in the small bathroom she shared with Tyler. Fear smiled back. She had to squelch the rising anxiety, had to keep her head about her if she was going to keep negative forces at bay. To keep Eddie at bay. She stuck out her tongue. “Not this time,” she said, squaring her shoulders.
But fear jabbed under her ribs as she locked her door and headed to where Eddie sat on the bench. Waiting for her and God knew what else.
He stood as she approached.
“Thank you, Natasha.”
He looked as nervous as she felt. She’d forgotten how handsome he was. And now, face to face with him after all the years, she did recognize aspects of him in Tyler. Something she wished she’d never seen.
She didn’t sit. He looked down at his feet, then met her gaze.
“I can’t expect you to forgive me,” he said. “Not for what I did to you that night. I lost it. I got help. Three years of help, to be precise. I’m still in a program. Sort of a twelve-step for vets with PTSD and drug issues. I’m clean, Natasha. Eight years sober. And the program requires that I make amends to anyone I wronged.” He gestured open-palmed toward her. “I’m here to make amends. To move forward. To make up for what I didn’t do right.” He looked away quickly, but then turned back. He took a deep breath and added, “For what I did wrong.”
He was laying open his secrets, his darkness. Telling the truth, from what she could see. But something in his eyes shouted a warning.
“That’s quite an accomplishment. Congratulations.” In her heart she regretted the terseness of her tone. But it set her boundary. She had more than herself to protect now. She had to protect Tyler.
“I’ve changed, Natasha. When I saw you—when I saw our boy at the ballpark—I had to find you. I didn’t even have to do the math; the sight of him was enough. He looks like me.” He gestured toward her again. “I want in. I want us to be a family.”
Her heart thudded. She crossed her arms, wishing they were a steel shield. She wasn’t going to admit that Tyler was his son.
“He’s not your boy.”
“Natasha, don’t make this hard. It can go well if you work with me rather than against me. And besides, you probably know that a cheek swab is all it’ll take to prove to the courts that he’s my boy. That I’m his father. Besides, he obviously inherited my love of baseball. If I hadn’t gone to the game, used the season tickets I inherited from my father, I’d never have found you. It’s destiny, Natasha. You can’t fight destiny.”
Courts. He’d said courts. In the face of his indirect threat, she swallowed her fear, tried to control her anger. And she didn’t give a lick about destiny. In fact, she was beginning to hate the word itself.
“I can give you both a very good life down in the South Bay,” Eddie went on. “I inherited my parents’ estate. I’ll give Tyler the life he deserves. You too.”
He said it in the same tone that Adrian had used when he told her about making her the head of the native garden business. The same assuming, matter-of-fact tone that screamed fait accompli. But Adrian had only the best of intentions—that she was convinced of. From Eddie’s tone she knew there was more to his interest in Tyler—and in her—than good intentions.
“I’m giving him the life he deserves,” she bit out, unable to control her anger any longer.
Eddie smiled. “You’re still the girl I fell for,” he said. “All spunk and beauty.” He didn’t reach for her, but he might as well have thrown a net around her.
“I’m not,” she said, scrambling. “Not in any way.”
“People don’t change that much.”
“You just told me you have,” she countered, her wariness growing with every word he uttered.
“Only the negative parts change. The good stays the same, maybe gets better.” He lifted his hand. She flinched. But he only lifted it to scrape it across his face and push back a lock of golden-blond hair that had fallen onto his forehead. “Give me a chance, Natasha.”
Chapter Nineteen
RUN. FLEE. HIDE.
Natasha hadn’t been prepared for Eddie to be apologetic. Even though she’d feared the day he might discover he had a son, she hadn’t been prepared for Eddie at all.
She’d bought some time. Told him she needed to think. He’d pressed her hard but when she’d asked him to leave, he’d gone without an argument.
His offer was genuine, she felt the truth of it. She believed that he could provide a home, be a father for their son. Their son. Just thinking the words speared fear into her heart.
But that night, after a nearly impossible day at work, she tossed restlessly, once again unable to sleep. Something about Eddie’s demeanor scratched at her brain, something about the urgency he’d pressed on her. She knew the energy of deception, of skirting the truth. Knew it too well. There was something he wasn’t telling her.
/> And that was what had her nervous.
The next morning she drove Tyler to school and made sure to see him safely inside his school building. She scanned the parking lot and the grounds and breathed easier. No sign of Eddie.
But as she drove toward work, her hands shook on the steering wheel. She pulled off the road before turning in to the drive that led to Casa del Sole and called Mary.
“Natasha. What a nice surprise. How is your new place suiting you?”
“It’s wonderful. Tyler has already made friends,” she said, failing to brighten the flatness of her tone.
“What’s wrong?”
Evidently Mary heard her apprehension.
She told Mary about Eddie. About how he’d just laid out his offer—marriage and a good home for Tyler. About how he’d practically begged.
“At least he agreed not to contact Tyler. And he agreed not to come back to our home until I call him. Oh, Mary, this is my worst nightmare. What if he—”
“He’s not a stupid man. He knows better than to frighten you or do anything that could be used against him if he does take you to court.”
Natasha swallowed and then asked Mary the question whose answer she dreaded most of all.
“Can he claim Tyler? Can he take him from me? I haven’t been a stellar mother.”
“You’re a perfect mother,” Mary said immediately. “You love Tyler, that’s what counts. Though this man could get a court order, require a DNA test, he can’t just take Tyler away from you. You get yourself over here this evening; we’ll sort this out.”
“I haven’t been perfect, Mary. The courts will see that I was on welfare, that I was at Inspire. Maybe even find out about my stupid, stupid gamble.”
“I doubt that. Where are you?”
“On my way to work.” She drummed her fingers against the steering wheel. Might as well cut to the chase. “Mary, there’s more bad news. Adrian promoted me. He didn’t ask, he just did it. I’m to manage the new native plant nursery.”
“That’s great news!”
“It’s terrible news. He thinks with just a tweak here and a move there, the world will be a perfect place. He moves people around like they were pieces on a game board. I’ll have to make orders, use the computer, keep accounts—do marketing. I’ll get fired when they find out I can’t do it. And if I get fired, then Eddie can use that against me.” She couldn’t hold back her sobs. “I dreaded this day.”
“You just do the best you can today and then get your butt over here tonight. It’s pizza night. Tyler can do his homework while we sort this out.”
Maybe they could sort it out. But as Natasha parked in her spot near the back garden, the fear she’d fought back for so long had her throat closing up and tears streaming down her face. She couldn’t lose Tyler. She had to make the job work. She had to find a way.
And she should never, ever have let her heart get the best of her. Adrian had swept in and unbalanced everything.
Two weeks later Natasha sat, staring at the hulking computer monitor on her desk. The machine whirred and then flashed a screen requesting a password. She opened her desk drawer and drew out a slip of paper and concentrated as she slowly typed in each letter and symbol. The password box jiggled, letting her know she hadn’t been successful. She typed in the password again and nearly yelped with joy when the screen brought up the Casa’s order list.
“Hey!” Tammy called from the doorway of Natasha’s office at the back end of the new greenhouse. “I came to see how the new boss is doing.” She glanced around the small space. “Jeez, you need a bigger office than this,” she said with a light laugh.
“It’ll do fine.”
Natasha swiveled her chair around to face Tammy. Swiveling chairs, sitting in an office, answering phones, dealing with the press—no one knew how hard each new experience was for her. And if she had her way, no one would.
She’d managed to stall Eddie. Mary had told her that as long as she had a good job and Tyler was doing well, Eddie couldn’t seek primary custody. But she had to keep her job. Working at Casa meant more to her than a career and a paycheck. It meant protection for her and Tyler against a force she hadn’t yet been able to assess.
“Hardly fine,” Tammy huffed. “The gift shop already has orders for a hundred salvia starts—a hundred! Seems the old-guard vineyard growers are climbing on board with the idea of pollinator gardens faster than Adrian or any of us expected. You’ll need two offices before the end of the month if sales keep mushrooming like they have in the past two weeks.”
It was true. Coco had posted photos of the plants they were growing to the Casa’s Facebook page, and the local paper had interviewed Natasha on the second day she’d been in charge. She’d blustered through the reporter’s questions, and the article took up a full front page in the paper’s community section. The phone had rung steadily all that afternoon. Apparently bees and butterflies and the plants that supported them were more in vogue than she’d imagined.
Tammy plunked a bottle of iced tea and a brown paper bag down on Natasha’s desk. “Sweet tea and a grilled eggplant sandwich.”
“Thank you. How’d you know I needed caffeine?”
“I thought about bringing you one of my triple espressos, but after seeing how jumpy you were yesterday, I thought better of it.” Her smile faded. “How are you doing?”
“Okay. Decent.”
Tammy raised a brow.
“Okay, stressed to the max,” Natasha admitted.
“Is Enrique helping out?”
“I know you must miss him, but I couldn’t do this without his help.”
Tammy couldn’t know how much she needed Enrique. He hadn’t asked any questions when Natasha had asked him to enter the orders into the database. But three days later, when she was still asking him to reconcile the accounts, she could tell by the look in his eyes that he knew something wasn’t quite right.
Too many things weren’t quite right.
The learning curve of her new position was slaying her. Without Enrique’s constant help with the computer and the numbers, nothing would have gone well. She’d deputized him to do the accounting and orders, a task he’d taken on with an eagerness that surprised her.
Thank God the two classes she’d attended at the community college last week had taught her enough to be able to focus and to read the familiar names of the plants, to compare the order screen with the inventory screen and to plan their work for the day—a small task for almost anyone, but a huge triumph for Natasha. But with each passing day, she knew her learning curve was far too slow for the already popular and rapidly expanding business.
“Hey—only the brass get lunch deliveries?” Enrique flashed his bright smile as he sailed into the office.
“Only loyal workers who don’t leave their coworkers short-handed,” Tammy said. “But I might make an exception for you.”
Was Tammy flirting with Enrique? Natasha couldn’t tell. She’d thought she’d noticed a blossoming romance, but she’d been so buried in work that she’d forgotten all about the languorous glances Tammy had sent when Enrique first started work at Casa del Sole.
“No stealing any more of my peeps,” Tammy said with a mock glare to Natasha. “We’re hiring a new guy to do the heavy lifting in the kitchen garden—he’s very, very strong.” She aimed a pointed smile at Enrique.
“I didn’t steal him,” Natasha said, still putting the pieces together. They were an item, Tammy and Enrique. How had she missed it? She’d been distracted by her frantic effort to find an attorney to help her face Eddie—an attorney she couldn’t afford—and by the demands of a job she wasn’t in any way qualified to perform. More distracting were her incessant, unstoppable thoughts about Adrian. What else had slipped under her guard?
Tammy leaned a hip on Natasha’s desk. “By the way, Marcos is already complaining that you worked wonders for the kitchen garden plants and our sweet garden hasn’t been the same since you got promoted. I’m trying not to take it pers
onally,” she said with a laugh. “But I assure you, he’s blaming any menu failures on Adrian’s meddling ways.”
Tammy tore open a bag of potato chips and offered the bag to Natasha. “I just heard that Adrian’s coming back today.” She grinned. “Guess Rome doesn’t have the attraction it once did. We’ll probably see him around this afternoon.”
Natasha took a chip, but it turned to dust in her mouth.
Adrian had left two phone messages, brief but to the point. He missed her and had asked her to clear her schedule for Monday night. But if she got together with him and he questioned her closely about the business accounts, the jig would be up. She’d already made two lists of plausible excuses why she couldn’t see him.
But not one of her carefully crafted excuses stood up to her desire to hear Adrian’s voice, feel his touch, be with him. She’d tried damned hard not to miss him, not to miss the joy and optimism she’d discovered, the sense of wholeness she felt when making love with him. Why did she have to go and fall for him? It would’ve been so much simpler to ignore the world and just enjoy the time they had, even if she knew it would have to end.
“You coming to the Fandango?” Tammy asked Enrique.
The air between Tammy and Enrique was so charged they could’ve lit the office with just a spark. Natasha knew the feel of just such a sparking. Missed the feeling and dreaded it at the same time.
The Fandango was a party the Casa held every year, even before the Tavonesis had bought the vineyard. Tammy had told her that the celebration started in the late afternoon and the music and dancing lasted past midnight. Under normal circumstances she’d be looking forward to such a festive evening. Though she’d tried not to, she’d even fantasized dancing with Adrian. More than dancing. A blush crept into her cheeks as she remembered them entwined, naked and hot with passion. Even in her fantasies, her eyes were lit with love. That was the dangerous part. The part she had no clever energy to counter.