‘An’ we’re makin’ him a cake. Chocolate,’ Scott said through a smeared grin. ‘ ‘Cause it’s his favourite.’
‘Mine too. How is Jake?’ Torey asked her grandmother who pursed her lips and said,
‘Tired by the look of him.’
‘He was up real late,’ Scott chimed in. ‘We went to get Lola last night.’
Shaken Torey looked at him across the table. ‘You went to get Lola?’ Since Christy had arrived on the scene she had forgotten there was another woman in Jake’s life. Had he needed a woman’s solace last night?
With a stab of jealousy Torey imagined that he might. She certainly hadn’t offered any.
‘Yeah. We jus’ took her home this morning before he went to guard. Usually I don’t get to go pick her up,’ Scott went on. ‘Usually I stay with Addie.’
But not last night. Last night Jake was keeping Scott close. Did he think that Christy might show up again in the evening and try to see Scott if he left him with Addie? ‘Well, you’re here now,’ she said lightly, knowing that there was nothing more to learn about Lola from Scott. ‘What shall we do today?’
‘Go buy Dad a present,’ Scott suggested.
‘Yes, do,’ Addie seconded. ‘There’s an art book I know he wants. Could you get it for him from me?’
‘Sure. We’ll go right after the cake is out,’ Torey said. ‘We can make a day of it, have lunch out if you want,’ she told Scott.
‘Neato!’ Scott bounced off his chair and tossed the spoon he was licking into the sink, dashing out before Addie could collar him and run a damp cloth over his chocolate smeared face. ‘You’re super, Torey!’ he called back.
‘And what if Christy comes while you’re out?’ Addie asked, completely aware of what Torey was doing before Torey even knew it herself.
Torey shrugged. ‘She saw him yesterday. Besides, it won’t be any different than if Jake had him somewhere else,’ she defended herself. She wasn’t entirely comfortable with what she was doing, knowing that it was going to aid Jake in his effort to keep Scott away from his mother. But she couldn’t help, either, how she felt about Jake. He had given five years of his life to caring for and supporting his son. If he felt so strongly that Christy shouldn’t have access to him, even though Torey herself might not understand why, she wanted it the way he did. ‘If she comes tell her we’ll be back shortly after lunch,’ Torey compromised.
She was dressing for their shopping expedition when the phone rang. ‘If it’s for me,’ she called, ‘I’ll be right out.’ But Addie didn’t answer so Torey finished plaiting her hair and slipped her feet into a pair of huaraches.
‘It’s the lifeguard station,’ Addie said, opening her door. ‘They want you to come and get Jake.’
Torey felt a shiver slice down her spine. In her mind she saw Dave Sorenson’s face the afternoon he came to the door, white and drawn, and told her what had happened to Paul. ‘What is it?’
‘He’s been stung.’
‘Stung?’
Addie shrugged. ‘A jelly fish sting, that’s what they said. Or several of them. They seemed in a rush. Just come and get him, they said.’
A jelly fish sting? Torey wanted to laugh with relief. ‘Can’t he drive?’ she asked, incredulous.
‘I don’t know. Call them back and ask, if you want.’ Torey did, stunned at what she heard. ‘He sounds very ill,’ she told her grandmother. ‘Shock, the man said. Lord, where’s my bag?’ Her eyes scanned the room seeing nothing. ‘I’ll call a cab to take me down. I can drive him home in his truck.’
‘What did they say then?’ Addie wanted to know, her expression darkening as she watched her granddaughter scramble for a phone book.
‘Something about multiple stings and allergic reaction. I remember Jake saying that he took a man to the hospital for that. Why didn’t they take him to the hospital?’ She was thumbing through the directory, forgetting the alphabet and beginning again.
‘Hey Addie,’ Scott hollered coming up the back steps. ‘My Mom is here.’
‘Oh swell,’ Torey muttered. ‘Not now, God. Please not now.’
But sure enough Torey looked up to see Scott with Christy and Doug right behind him.
‘We’re going to get Dad a birthday present,’ Scott was telling them.
‘Not right now,’ Torey corrected, her finger finally locating the cabs.
‘Why?’ Scott wailed.
‘Your dad’s been hurt. I have to go get him.’
‘What happened?’ Doug asked.
‘Jelly fish sting,’ Torey told him, beginning to dial. ‘I’m calling a cab to go get him.’
‘I’ll take you,’ Doug offered.
Torey stopped dialling and looked at Doug indecisively. Jake would want her to take a cab. But who knew how long it would take a cab to get here. ‘All right,’ she decided.
‘But we gotta get him his present,’ Scott insisted.
‘Your dad won’t care about a present,’ Torey said, but Christy cut in,
‘We’ll drop Torey off and take you out to get the present, Scott.’
‘Yeah!’ Scott beamed, threatened tears vanishing.
‘But...’ Torey fumbled knowing what Jake would think.
‘We won’t be gone long,’ Doug assured her, obviously sensing her fears. ‘Just shopping, lunch and home. Three hours at most.’
‘Well...’ Torey looked at Addie but her grandmother was impassive. No help there.
‘For God’s sake,’ Doug said impatiently. ‘We’re not kidnapping the boy if that’s what you’re worried about. Christy’s his mother!’
Torey saw the very thing she had warned Jake about building up inside Doug right now. There was a hint of resolve, a hardening. He would not hesitate to challenge Jake’s right to Scott, she knew it. There was going to have to be some giving done, and she would have to do it. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Thanks. I appreciate the offer of a lift.’ She didn’t know what she would tell Jake. There would be time enough later to think about that.
In fact all thought of explanation fled the moment she saw Jake. He was lying on a harrow cot, his eyes shut, his face ashen. She didn’t hear a word the lifeguard lieutenant was saying to her, instead rushing across the room to kneel beside Jake. Her voice shook as she called his name. ‘Jake! Jake!’
Jake’s eyelids flickered open. At first he didn’t seem to focus on her, his eyes a blue haze of pain and disorientation. Then, when he did, he managed a grimace more aching than wry for once. Then his eyes closed again.
Torey looked up at the tall man in navy blue pants and shirt who was hovering over them. ‘What’s wrong with him? Why is he like this?’
‘He was rescuing a man who had been stung. Getting him out wasn’t easy, and the jelly fish had a heyday. Jake has welts all over his thighs and chest.’ The man shook his head in disbelief.
‘Shouldn’t he go to a hospital?’
‘I suggested it. Jake didn’t want to. We did have a doctor here to check him over. He gave me a prescription you can have filled.’ He handed it to her. ‘Not much else we can do now. He’ll be all right. Just take him home and put him to bed.’
Easier said than done, Torey thought as she and the lieutenant wrestled Jake out to the truck. His teeth were chattering and his breathing was shallow. She wasn’t at all sure that she ought to accept charge of him. What if he died? The lieutenant didn’t seem to have any such qualms. He shut the door to the truck saying cheerfully, ‘See you next week,’ as though ashen-faced, teeth-rattling lifeguards were the norm in his life. Jake didn’t answer.
Torey couldn’t blame him. He looked barely conscious, his head resting on the glass of the door window as she hastily extricated the truck from its parking place and began the trek homeward.
He groaned once and she shot him a swift glance. ‘Do you hurt a lot?’
‘Yes.’ The answer was barely audible. Torey stepped on the accelerator. She didn’t think about Scott again until she pulled into the garage and had to make t
he decision of whether to take Jake to his own apartment or bring him to Addie’s. His own place won. The chance of him discovering that Christy had taken Scott out were much greater if he went to Addie, and far more than she imagined he could take at the moment.
With minimal help from Jake she dragged him up the stairs, overwhelmingly conscious of his virile length pressed against her own, his arm slung heavily over her shoulders, his hair brushing against her ear as they climbed. Thank God for her training as a physiotherapist. Being used to bodies in all states carried her through. She set her mind on automatic pilot as she helped him into the bedroom, removed the thin blanket that he had wrapped around his shoulders and, laying him down on the bed, stripped off his still damp swim trunks. It was more of Jake Brosnan than she had ever seen, and even automatic pilot couldn’t stop her pulse racing and the lump growing in her throat as she tugged the trunks down over his hips and thighs, being careful to keep the fabric away from the reddish purple welts that were his souvenirs of the jelly fish stings.
‘Not exactly the scenario I had in mind,’ Jake whispered, a ghost of a grin flickering across his face.
‘Me neither,’ Torey said, busying herself by taking his trunks into the bathroom and tossing them in the shower. She’d had plenty of wild fantasies about Jake, but none came close to this. ‘Is that ammonia I smell?’ she asked him when she came back, her eyes avoiding his lean torso.
‘Yeah. Ross said sometimes baking powder or flour helps too,’ he told her, quoting the unconcerned lieutenant. ‘Something about changing the pH of the skin.’
‘Want some?’ she asked, wondering what she would do if he did.
‘I guess. Hurts like sin right now.’ One hand came up and brushed lightly over his chest and he gritted his teeth as it did so. ‘Boy, I sure don’t remember any stings quite like this one before.’
‘You’ve got so many. That must be why.’ She wiped damp palms on her jeans and went to find the baking powder. There was none. Not surprising, she thought, you didn’t need that to make bread. But there was a ten-pound sack of flour in the cupboard so she scooped some out into a bowl and came back, struggling to make herself feel detached and professional while she dusted the white powder all over the welts on his body. Jake lay still under her ministrations, fingers clenching the sheet. His eyes followed her every move, boring into her, hot and steady, so that her hand trembled and she spilled flour on the sheet. ‘Damn,’ she muttered. Then, finishing, ‘Now what?’
Jake shrugged. ‘Some say scrape it off, some leave it on.’
‘We’ll leave it on,’ Torey decided. There was no way she was going to run her hands over him one more time with impunity. Not and keep up any pretence of indifference!
‘Is Scott with Addie?’ he asked as she moved to carry the bowl back to the kitchen.
‘Um,’ she mumbled, crossing her fingers and hoping she was telling the truth. ‘I’ll keep an eye on him. You sleep now.’ She set the bowl on the bar and went back to draw a sheet over him, taking as she did so her first real look around his bedroom. It was a far cry from the playboy’s seduction parlour of her imaginings. The bed was a double one to be sure, but chances were it was left over from the days of his marriage to Christy. It was made up in serviceable white muslin sheets with a thin brown cotton spread identical to the one in Scott’s room flung over a nearby chair. The books, far from being the erotic literature she had once supposed, tended towards art books, architecture digests, marine biology and mystery fiction. Not a Playboy or Penthouse in sight. The room was overrun with sketching materials, bottles of ink, artist’s separations and dirty laundry. If he entertained Lola or any other woman in this room it would be less to seduce them, she decided, than to coerce them into cleaning it up and doing his washing. Absently, almost the way she had picked up after Paul, she scooped up a pile of grimy T-shirts and a pair of paint-spattered jeans and tucked them under her arm.
‘I’ll be back shortly,’ she told Jake. But Jake hadn’t heard. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow but even, his hands relaxed on top of the sheet.
She took his laundry down and put it in Addie’s washer. ‘Is Scott back?’
‘Not yet. How’s Jake?’
‘They say he’ll be fine.’ Torey poured in soap and bleach, considered the greyish shirts and added a dollop more. ‘But you couldn’t prove it by me. I think he looks awful. He’s asleep now. I just came down to do this laundry.’
‘I’ll finish it,’ Addie said. ‘You go on back up with Jake.’
Since this was exactly what Torey wanted to do, she didn’t offer any protest, only said, ‘Let me know when Scott gets back will you. I want to head him off at the pass. Poor Jake, what a birthday!’
If there were any way it could be more miserable, Torey couldn’t imagine it. When she got back he was still asleep, but not the peaceful sleep she would have hoped for. He twisted on the bed, tangling in the sheet, his fingers clenching and unclenching, then rubbing at his chest and legs. His dark hair clung damply to his forehead, and Torey ran her hand under it, lifting it off and feeling the heat of his body against her hand. He muttered something, but didn’t wake so she crept quietly back to the living room and made herself a cup of coffee. Then she read a mystery while she waited for him to wake.
It could have been an hour or even two, she was dozing on the sofa when she heard the ‘phone ring and feet pounding on the stairs at the same moment. Torn, she opted for the ‘phone and heard Addie say, ‘Scott’s on his way. I’m not fast enough on my feet any more.’ The front door burst open and Scott ran into the room waving a package in Torey’s face.
‘Scott?’ Jake’s weak voice came from the bedroom.
‘Never mind,’ Torey said to her grandmother, trying to put herself between Scott and the bedroom. ‘Too late now. See you later.’ She hung up.
‘Hey, Dad! Happy birthday! I got you the neatest present ever!’ There was no slowing down a five-year-old tornado, Torey decided. All she could do was cross her fingers and pray that he concentrated on the present and not on how Scott got it.
Jake was up on his elbows in bed, the sheet down around his waist leaving exposed the flour smudged chest and bronzed shoulders. ‘Birthday present?’ he echoed dumbly, as though he wasn’t quite with it yet.
‘Are you all right now?’ Torey looped her arms around Scott and held him captive so that he couldn’t fling himself on to his father in his excitement.
‘I think so,’ Jake stretched his torso, arching his back. The sheet slipped further and Torey caught her breath. ‘Doesn’t hurt so much. No more muscle cramps either. I guess I’ll live.’
Torey smiled, her heart beating faster. ‘Good.’
‘Here, Dad,’ Scott said, wiggling out of her arms to run to his father and thrust a package in his face. ‘Open it.’ Jake sat up, shooting an oblique look at Torey as he did so and making an obvious effort to keep the sheet anchored modestly around his hips. He set the package on his lap and began to remove the cellophane tape. ‘When did you go shopping?’ he asked now, his eyes still on Torey.
‘Oh, um, well...’ She should have known her sins would find her out.
‘Torey was gonna take me when you got stung,’ Scott told him. ‘She couldn’t go, so my mom and my new dad did instead.’
Jake’s face went chalk white, his throat working so convulsively that Torey thought he might gag. ‘New dad?’ He sounded wretched.
‘My mom is marrying him so he’s a sort of a dad,’ Scott explained as though Jake needed it spelled out. ‘Isn’t he?’ he looked confused. ‘A stairdad?’
‘Stepdad,’ Torey corrected gently. Her eyes were on Jake, she wanted to touch him, hold him, protect him from the anguish Scott’s words were causing him. He looked as though he had been slapped.
‘They took him?’ His eyes levelled on Torey accusingly, the pain harsh in his face.
‘Yes.’ There was no way to lie about it or soften it. ‘I had to come and get you or I would have taken him. Scott
was terribly disappointed. Christy and Doug came by just then and volunteered. They even dropped me off at the station to pick you up.’ Her eyes locked with his, half duelling, half imploring. She knew he was devastated, but she also knew that Scott needed some reassurance just now that he hadn’t completely let Jake down. He was hanging on the edge of the dresser looking from one to the other of them, his eyes wide and worried. ‘Come on, Jake,’ she wanted to say. Scream at me later if you must, but don’t take it out on your son.
‘Open the present, Jake,’ she urged. ‘Let’s see your neat gift.’
Jake seemed to have to will his fingers to move. With excruciating slowness he stripped the remaining paper off the box and prised off the lid. Inside were three tissue wrapped smaller packages. Scott hopped from one foot to the other, his eyes shining and apprehensive.
Jake took the smallest package and unwrapped it. There, in his hand, lay a tiny green ceramic dragon with a long tail that looked real enough to begin twitching and a broad grin on its face. Torey saw Jake blink and draw a deep breath before saying shakily, ‘You found me a dragon.’
‘Yup.’ Scott was practically dancing with excitement now. ‘Open the rest, Dad!’
With hands that trembled just the slightest bit, Jake did. When he had finished there were three dragons sitting in the tissue paper nest in his lap. He didn’t say a word. Couldn’t, Torey would have guessed. His fingers stroked each of them almost absently as though his mind were far away.
‘See. There’s three of ‘em.’ Scott beamed at’ him. ‘Like for your book. A father, a mother and a kid. A family.’
‘A family.’ Jake’s voice was dull and aching. It pained Torey just to hear it. Tears pricked behind her eyes as she stared at the little dragon family and remembered how Jake had drawn her as a dragon. The mother dragon? ‘Thanks,’ he said. It sounded as though he had dragged the words up from his toes. Scott, fortunately, heard only the word, not the emotions crowded into it.
‘That’s why I had to go with Mom and Doug,’ he told Jake. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to get you such a great present otherwise.’ He reached out and touched the middle sized dragon on Jake’s knee. ‘Can I take ‘em down and show ‘em to Addie?’
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