Second Time's the Charm

He felt stupid. “I don’t know. Two people becoming friends...” It sounded as though he was hitting on her. Which he wasn’t. At all. Not that he hadn’t noticed how those jeans of hers hugged her long legs and a backside that— No. He was better than that. “Am I a client? I mean, I know you said I don’t have to pay you, but—”

“I’m happy to help you with Abe, Jon. Don’t worry about it.”

He wasn’t worried, exactly. Except when paranoia set in and he thought she might be a spy. “I’m not too sure about protocol for child life specialists.”

His burger was getting cold. He loved burgers. And since becoming a father he only got one a week.

“Are you allowed to be friends with your clients?”

“Not according to the books,” she said, and then shrugged. “And certainly in some situations, life-threatening medical procedures, for instance, I have to keep my professional distance, but in a small town like Shelter Valley it would be impossible not to be friends with my clients. Most of the parents of young children are my age and I wouldn’t have any friends if I couldn’t be friends with them. Or conversely, I wouldn’t have many patients if I couldn’t tend to the children of my friends. I’ve got a skill set, you know, like a plumber or a doctor. If your pipe bursts and your buddy’s a plumber, he comes over to help, right?”

“So you and I—” he gestured toward her with his hamburger-holding hand “—we could be friends. If the idea was mutually satisfying, of course.”

“If the idea was mutually satisfying, yes...” She’d withdrawn a bit. Wasn’t smiling like she had been.

He got nervous again. “Hey, you do understand I’m not hitting on you, right?”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“But you are now.”

“Yes.” She nodded once, slowly.

“Good, because I’d like to offer my services. In exchange for what you’re doing here for me. And Abe.”

“Your services?”

The idea had occurred to him during the hour she’d spent giving him back some semblance of control where his son was concerned. “I’ve got some skills, too. I’d like to offer them to you.” Especially now that he knew she lived alone. “For instance, do you have a sliding glass door?”

“Yes, why?”

“Does it have a security lock on it?”

“It’s got the lock on the door handle. I’m sure it’s secure.”

He shook his head. “There was a theft in town last night.”

“I heard. And I’m sure the thief, if he’s still around, will be caught.”

What was it about the people in this town? Did they have no street smarts at all? They didn’t live behind a locked gate. Shelter Valley was accessible from the highway. All kinds of people took the highway.

“I’d like to install a secure lock on your sliding glass door. If you’re okay with that.”

“Sure. It never hurts to be safe. I’ll pay you for it, of course.”

“You’re missing the point,” Jon said. “This is a trade-off. You help me with Abe and I’ll help you.”

Being in debt gave people control over you.

She eyed the uneaten food in his container. “But...”

Abraham held up a French fry, looked from Jon to Lillie, grinned and nodded.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” Lillie grinned at the toddler.

Abe’s nod encompassed the entire top half of his body. And then, still grinning, he chewed, French fry showing between his teeth. He picked up another and handed it to Lillie.

“You want me to have it?” she asked, when Jon would have just taken the fry.

Abraham, studying her with seriousness now as he held out his gift, nodded again.

She took the potato from his sticky fingers, said, “Thank you,” and popped it into her mouth.

Abe went back to the sections of burger Jon had cut for his son, picking one up and taking a huge bite out of it. He chewed, swallowed and kicked his feet. It occurred to Jon that he looked like a healthy, happy, well-adjusted kid.

One who was communicating.

“Do you want a pickle?” Lillie asked the boy, picking up the discarded vegetable from her take-out container.

“No!” Abraham said emphatically.

Smiling, Jon looked across the booth at their gorgeous companion. “I don’t buy that Bonnie Nielson pays you to spend hours on Saturday with the parents of her clients,” he said. “Being at the day care, to help them adjust, makes sense, but this?” Sitting back against the booth, he motioned at himself and Abe and the food in front of them.

Lillie’s gaze dropped before she once again looked him in the eye. “You’re right. I’m on my own time.”

“I don’t accept charity.”

“I understand.” She gathered her trash together and Jon thought she might be about to walk out on them.

“But if you’d allow me to return the favor—professional skills in exchange for professional skills...”

Her hands stilling, Lillie studied him and his son. “I have to be honest with you, Jon. I’m not sure why I’ve been so persistent where the two of you are concerned. It’s not my usual way.”

So he hadn’t been completely paranoid in thinking she’d singled him out. Just erroneous—okay, paranoid, maybe—in his conclusions that she was out to get him.

Maybe. Clara Abrams could afford to hire people who were highly skilled at acting.

“Tell me this,” he said, “are you here because you’re genuinely interested in helping me help my son?”

“Absolutely.”

She hadn’t blinked. Hadn’t looked away. “Then that’s enough for me,” he said. “Assuming you’ll allow me to reciprocate in kind. Service for—”

“I know, professional service for professional service,” she finished, a small smile on her beautiful face. “I agree to your terms.”

“Good.” He smiled. Her grin grew wider.

Something was going on here. He wasn’t sure what. And he was fairly certain he didn’t want to know.

“Good,” she said.

“Dada?” Abe’s voice sounded between them.

He’d forgotten that his son was still eating. He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten to watch Abe right next to him.

“Yes, son?” he said, wrapping an arm around Abe’s tiny, fragile shoulders as he surveyed the ketchup-smeared table. Abe had pushed what was left of his food-filled paper across to the other side of the table.

“Uh,” the boy grunted, bobbing up and down in his chair and pointing toward the door.

“He’s ready to go.” Jon gathered up the debris from their meal and retrieved a couple of packets from the back pocket of his jeans. The individually sealed antibacterial wipes he’d learned never to leave home without.

“Use your words, Abraham,” Lillie said softly from across the table as Jon tended to his son’s chubby little fingers and face first before starting on the table.

“Tell us what you want.” Lillie’s attention was intent on the boy. “Tell us you want to go,” she said.

With a small frown marring his brow, Abe’s big brown eyes studied the woman.

Jon wiped the table. He knew what Abraham wanted without needing to be told.

“Tell us you want to go,” she said again. “Go.”

“Gah,” Abe responded, bobbing up and down some more. “Gah.”

Jon grinned. A new word. Gah. It meant go.

“Gooo,” Lillie said, drawing out the long O sound. “Gooo.”

“Gah,” Abe repeated, grinning. “Gah.” The boy stood up on the bench and almost fell backward as his booster seat got in the way.

Jon reached out and steadied his son, feeling as though he’d just been given a new lease on life. He picked Abe up and set him on the ground.

“I was making it easy for him not to learn to talk,” Jon said to Lillie as they made their way through the restaurant. “He didn’t have to speak to get what he wanted.”

“That’s probably part of it. And he’s just turned two.”

“I do try to teach him words.” With Abe holding on to one hand, he held the door open for her.

“I don’t doubt that, Jon.” Lillie’s voice was soft. Tender. And, inside, he softened toward her.

“We’re working on potty training, too,” he added, still proving himself, just in case.

“Not too vigorously, I hope,” she said. “Boys generally train later than girls, closer to three than two. It takes that long for them to feel the sensation that they have to go. And trying to get him to understand what you want when he can’t recognize the feeling inside his body yet will only lead to frustration. For both of you.”

He’d read all of that.

“But sometimes they’re ready early,” he said. “I just wanted to give him the chance to move forward if he was ready. It’s not an everyday thing. Just an occasional invitation.”

He was talking about peeing with a woman he was attracted to.

“So—” Jon cleared his throat “—make a list of things you’d like done around your house,” he said, getting back on track. “Tomorrow is Sunday. I have the day off.” Except for cleaning the bathroom, washing the sheets, picking up groceries and studying. “I could come over and fix that door for you.”

They’d reached their vehicles, sitting side by side in the parking lot. Her newish dark blue Malibu next to his quite a bit older, four-door Ranger.

He wasn’t ready to leave her.

And he’d promised Mark that he and Abe would sit with Nonnie so Mark and Addy could have a night out.

“Tomorrow would be great.” Lillie leaned into him and, for a second, Jon thought she was going to kiss him.

And knew he’d kiss her back.

She kissed Abe on the cheek. “Anytime after noon would be fine,” she said.

What was she doing before noon?

He told himself it was none of his business as he watched her drive off.

Alone with Abe once more, Jon opened the back door of his truck, fastened the toddler securely in his car seat and settled himself in for the drive to Mark’s.

All in all they’d had a good day. Fun in the park. Good food.

And Abe had five words now instead of four.

Jon turned the truck toward Mark’s house, looking forward to a couple of hours of sparring with Mark Heber’s recalcitrant grandmother.

Hopefully Abe would fall asleep soon and Jon and Nonnie could get in a game of penny poker. The old bat had five dollars of his money.

CHAPTER SIX

JON HAD ASKED her to make a list of things she’d like done around her house. She did so, mentally, as she drove to Phoenix on Sunday morning. Overall, she loved the little house she’d bought close to the center of town, but a few of the rooms needed ceiling fans.

He’d have to bring Abe along when he installed them. It wasn’t like he could leave the toddler home alone.

She really wanted to have new faucets in the master bathroom. And one in the kitchen, too, with a pull out sprayer....

She’d need to baby-proof her home. She still had the cupboard safety catches she’d purchased when...

Maybe Jon could undermount her kitchen sink—a style of mounting that put the counter on top of the edge of the sink. She had granite countertops, which she’d had in her home in Phoenix and loved, but the sink was traditionally mounted. She’d grown used to undermounting. Preferred not to have to worry about water and other debris spilling over, wetting her outfit as she leaned against the edge of the counter as she worked.

A little boy in her home. Wandering from room to room...

The electrical outlet in her living room, the one behind the couch, didn’t work. Could Jon do electric?

She had brand-new sippy cups, still in their plastic. Was Abe too old for those?

There was the sticky latch on the window in the office. And she’d been meaning to get quotes on having a front porch put on....

Wait.

Taking the 202 to the 101, Lillie headed north toward Scottsdale and the little café that made breakfasts good enough to compel rich and famous people to wait for a table.

This thing with Jon. And Abraham. She wanted to help them because she knew she could. Because something about Abraham, the serious way he looked at her, as though he was trying to tell her something, haunted her.

But the time she was spending with them was nowhere near equal to the time that would be required to complete the list of jobs she was compiling.

She had to scale herself back. Way back.

Maybe just the ceiling fans. And the faucets.

Or just the ceiling fans.

And they could see about the faucets....

* * *

ABE WOKE JON up at six. Laundry was done by seven. Two loads was all it took. One with jeans and pants, the other with the rest of their clothes.

Sitting down with his son for a bowl of nonsugared cereal with fresh bananas and a piece of toast at the little four-seater, faux butcher-block table that had come with the furnished, two-bedroom apartment he’d found for them, Jon checked the strap on Abe’s booster seat one more time and, reaching under the table, pulled it more firmly up to the table before placing Abe’s plastic bowl within sight, but not reach.

“Eat,” he said clearly, holding the big handled little spoon. “You’re hungry,” he said, leaning down just a bit so that his lips were right in Abe’s line of vision. “You want to eat,” he said, keeping his voice steady, kind. But firm, too. “Tell Daddy you want to eat.”

Abe grunted, looking at the bowl of cereal, and kicked Jon’s knee under the table. Repositioning himself so that his legs were together and angled away from the little boy, he leaned forward a little more. “You’re hungry,” he said again. “Tell Daddy you want eat.” And when Abe grunted again, he repeated the process a third time, putting more emphasis on the word eat each time.

Abe’s face puckered and Jon could see a bout of tears on the horizon. “I’m not giving in, Abraham.” He almost smiled. But this wasn’t a game. “It’s just you and me, buddy, and if you want to scream to he―Hades and back, you go ahead.” In his former life he’d used more colorful vocabulary. It came naturally to him. But he was working on not slipping up. “You want to eat. I understand that. I just need you to tell me.”

Slamming his hands on the table, Abraham started to cry. Jon moved the boy’s cereal bowl a little farther out of reach. He’d cleaned up enough spilled milk.

And he took hold of his son’s little hand, rubbing it lightly.

Abe stared at him.

“Your breakfast is here, son,” he explained slowly. “So is mine. And I’m hungry, too. I just need you to use your words. Tell Daddy you want to eat.”

With drops of tears wetting his lashes, Abe stared.

“Eeeeaaat,” Jon said again. Slowly.

“Eeeeeuh!” The word wasn’t offered gently at all.

Jon didn’t give a damn about that. He almost spilled the cereal himself in his haste to reward Abe’s milestone.

The boy was not stupid. He’d just had a father who’d been too good at reading his mind and not good enough at forcing him to do for himself.

* * *

“SO...WHAT DO you think?” Lillie stared back and forth between the two people she loved more than anything in the world—her stand-in parents, Jerry and Gayle Henderson, who’d taken her into their hearts long before they’d become her in-laws, and kept her there in spite of the divorce.

“I think you look happier than you have in a long time.” Gayle’s soft-spoken words settled a bit of the unease deep inside of Lillie.

She turned to Jerry. “What about you, Papa?” Not Dad. Or Daddy. Lillie couldn’t give another man that name. But neither could she call Jerry anything but a variation of it.

“I trust you, Lil. You’ll do the right thing.”

She’d told them about Jon and Abraham. Every Sunday morning over breakfast, she gave them a rundown of her week and they did the same. They were her family.

The only close family she had.

“What does that mean?” she asked, shaking her head. “I’m asking for your opinion, Papa. That’s when you tell me what you think even if I’m not going to like it.” They’d been over this point before. She needed Jerry’s honesty. She wasn’t going anywhere, no matter what he said to her.

“I think that you obviously feel something for this little boy. And it could be a bit personal. Frankly, I can’t imagine that your personal experience doesn’t play some part in the work you do. How could it not? What happens to you becomes a part of you. You can’t just leave it behind. No matter how badly you want to.”

There was a message in there for her. Unrelated to Jon and Abraham Swartz.

“You think I’m trying to leave my past behind? I thought you approved of my move to Shelter Valley. You encouraged me to branch out on my own.”

Gayle’s blue eyes were filled with concern. “We did,” she said. “We do.”

“Papa?”

“Gayle and I fully support your move—and your career choice,” he said, his words coming slowly, as if he was choosing them carefully.

Gayle. It was what Kirk had called his father’s third wife. So that was what Lillie called her, too, although she’d always been closer to Gayle than to Kirk’s biological mother—Jerry’s first wife, who’d left him for a man richer than he was back when Jerry had been fresh out of college and starting his own PR firm.

“We thought you’d have found...someone...by now,” Gayle’s gaze was direct. And filled with love.

Shaking her head, Lillie looked between the two of them, her broccoli quiche and fruit untouched on her plate. “I don’t understand.” Either they thought the move to Shelter Valley had been a good decision, or they thought she was running away. It couldn’t be both.

Taking a deep breath, she reminded herself that she’d asked for this conversation. That she wanted—no, needed—their insight and perspective.

Everyone needed a sounding board.

“Your career choice, your location, isn’t the problem, Lil,” Jerry said. “It’s your lack of close relationships that concerns us.”

“You want me to take a lover?”

What did this have to do with Jon and Abraham? She’d asked them if they thought she was crossing a line getting involved with the Swartzes.

During the final months of her pregnancy, Lillie and the Hendersons had had many frank conversations. Gayle had been present during the birth.

Gayle’s smile was too knowing, but Lillie wasn’t sure what the older woman thought she knew.

“No, Lil, we don’t mean you should take a lover,” she said. “Unless you meet a man you’re in love with and want to sleep with, of course,” she added.

“We just want you to open your heart and let people in again,” Jerry said.

Oh.

As far as she was concerned, the conversation was over. “Hearts break.”

“When you first came to us, your parents had only been gone for a year,” Jerry said. “You had a broken heart then.”

She remembered spending nights alone in her dorm room when she’d been so filled with pain that she’d been afraid she wouldn’t be able to pull enough air into her lungs to sustain her until morning.

“But you were still you, Lil. A woman with a generous heart who has a special awareness of people and their needs. You’re very perceptive to other people’s feelings,” he added.

“Are you saying I’m no longer generous?”

Reaching across the table, Gayle covered Lillie’s hand. “We’re saying that while you’re busy giving every hour of your life to other people, you aren’t allowing yourself to get close to anyone,” she said.

“We were talking about Jon and Abraham Swartz. About whether or not I’d overstepped a professional boundary by making that absurd agreement with him—trading skill set for skill set. Letting him in my home...”

“And we’re telling you that isn’t even an issue, Lil,” Jerry said, more serious than she’d heard him in a long time. “What you’re doing for that man and his little boy is marvelous. Generous. It’s classic you, understanding that in order for him to accept your help he had to be able to give in kind. My worry is that you had to ask if you were overstepping. Are you really that afraid of letting anyone into your heart?”

“Jerry and I have been worried about you for a while,” Gayle said. “You’ve got a town full of friends, but you don’t let any of them into your heart. At least, not that you tell us about.”

“You two are in there.”

Jerry’s gaze softened, moistened, as he added his hand atop Gayle’s and hers on the table. “And you are first in ours, Lil. Don’t ever doubt that. But you need more than two old folks in your life. You need a partner who is worthy of you. Who will look out for you as much as you look out for him. I’m just worried that if he comes along, you won’t be able or ready to open your heart and let him in.”

Kirk had bolted her heart shut and thrown away the key.

But Papa and Gayle knew that. Lillie was at a loss for words. She’d accepted her lot in life. Had found a way to be happy.

And she didn’t want to screw it up by making a professional mistake from which it would be impossible to recover in a town as small and close-knit as Shelter Valley.

“Have you heard from that damned son of mine?” Jerry asked.

Kirk still worked for his father. But they didn’t socialize.

Or even chat much beyond clients and accounts. And Kirk dropping his son off to spend an occasional day with them.

“No,” Lillie assured him. She didn’t need Papa thinking he had to rake Kirk across the coals another time. It hurt Papa and served no purpose. “Of course not.”

A couple of years before, when Kirk had come to Lillie pressuring her for a change to their divorce decree that would give him more money, Jerry had given his son an ultimatum. If Kirk bothered Lillie again he would be cut off. Period. From the firm and from his inheritance.

“He left Leah,” Gayle said softly.

“I thought they were getting married.” Their son was five now—not that Kirk spent much quality time with the boy, according to Papa and Gayle.

Papa and Gayle did more with him the couple of times a month they saw him then Kirk appeared to.

“He said he didn’t love her enough to marry her.”

Kind of late to be figuring that out. Lillie counted her lucky stars that she’d gotten out before wasting all of the best years of her life with him.

She had to admit, she felt a small thrill of satisfaction, too. Did that mean Kirk really had loved her as much as he’d said he did? He had, after all, married her.

“Maybe if Leah hadn’t let him move in with her, if she hadn’t had his child without expecting anything in return, he would have married her,” she said, just to show Jerry and Gayle that she could speak rationally, unemotionally, about the man who’d ripped her apart at the seams during the darkest hours of her life. To show them that it didn’t matter to her a whit whether Kirk was with Leah, or Kayla or Marcie or anyone.

Jerry and Gayle were like parents to her.

Their son meant nothing.

Period.

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