The Good Father

Ella watched every move. Cataloged them all. Putting every ounce of energy she had into collecting her thoughts, which would help enforce her emotional barriers against this man, and get on with the life she was currently living.

Brett was given a sip of wine to taste. He approved it. And Ella’s glass was filled to the halfway mark. Without waiting for him, waiting for the toast that had been a tradition with them, she took an unladylike gulp. Stopping short of chugging the remaining liquid in her glass.

Another staff person arrived with a variety of house-made breads and gourmet cheeses arranged on a silver platter. He moved the salt and pepper, and an unlit candle on the white tablecloth, and set the platter down. A small white china plate appeared in front of her.

Then another in front of Brett. Her Brett. Sitting right across from her again. As he had for several precious years.

And it was all too much for her. The romantic restaurant. The wine. The town and new job and new life. A woman sitting in a shelter because the man she loved had beaten her...

Feeling the sting of tears behind her eyes, Ella clasped her hands in her lap, stared out at a ship on the ocean and told herself to breathe.

CHAPTER FIVE

RATHER THAN HELPING, the glass of wine only made things worse. So Brett helped himself to a little more. Two was his limit whether he was driving or not, so the second was going to have to do the trick.

Deaden the parts of him that had once been in love with this woman. At least long enough to get rid of her.

Before she settled in.

She was going to have to move back to wherever she’d come from. Or somewhere else. He’d pay whatever it took.

There was no way the two of them could live in the same town without her getting hurt. He cared about her. She’d feel that. Start to expect things. Or, at the very least, want them. And he wouldn’t give them to her. Their pattern was clear.

She wanted happily-ever-after.

He wanted to be left alone.

Because alone was better than doing to others as his father had done to their family. Brett wasn’t going to make the mistake his parents had made. They’d both grown up in abusive homes. They’d promised each other they wouldn’t carry the pattern with them. That promise had destroyed lives.

He wasn’t going to pretend to himself, or to Ella, that he wasn’t damaged goods.

Thoughts sped through his mind as he watched Ella pick up a piece of white Italian bread, dab a bit of grape jelly on it and top it with a piece of cheese. She liked jelly on crackers with apples, too.

“How’s your mother?” Her gaze met his directly for the first time.

And the impact nearly killed him. His heart slammed against his chest, and his mind went blank.

“Same.” The one word was all he could give her.

“She’s still handling all of your personal business? Including the house?”

“Yes.”

“And you still haven’t seen her?”

“No.” He had a phantom personal assistant. She handled his mail, his charity work and the various individuals who helped take care of his home. Landscaper, cleaning service, pool service. She even had access to his personal calendar via Google. She left curt messages or sent two-and three-word emails.

“Do you at least talk? Actually converse, I mean.”

“No.”

She glanced away.

“She left a key to her place on my desk a couple years ago. I go in once a week to take care of anything that needs to be done.” She let him get her Christmas decorations out of the small attic in her garage. And he’d changed some lightbulbs in the cathedral ceiling once. Mostly he just visited with her phantom ghost. Sat on her couch and felt her presence.

Ella’s shocked glance in his direction pierced him. “That’s great, Brett.” Her smile burned into him. “She’s softening!”

“Not really. I threatened to hire someone to take her place.”

He sipped his wine, frowning at his ex-wife. He didn’t blame Ella for scrambling for conversation. He blamed her for moving to Santa Raquel.

And filled his mouth with bread before he actually blurted out his frustration.

“I need your help, Brett.”

“Why did you move here?” His gaze was piercing. It had to be.

“I’m a pediatric nurse, and Santa Raquel Children’s Hospital is slated to be the best in the state. With all of the new positions to fill, I was offered the chance to be a charge nurse...”

In another lifetime that would have been reason enough to move.

He held her captive with a look and didn’t relent.

“I have to prove to myself that I’m completely over you. That living near you doesn’t matter to me. Personally.”

He sat back. Took another sip of wine. Thought about the hard alcohol he refused to touch. About how his father had used it to numb his pain. And then brought pain to his loved ones.

“I’m happy, Brett,” she said. “I’ve built a good life for myself, and I like where I am.”

Brett nodded, wanting to tell her how glad he was to hear those words. But he wasn’t sure he believed them.

“But Chloe, you remember her?”

As if he’d forget being the best man in her brother’s wedding. Or forget the woman who’d once been like a sister to him. Clenching his fingers around the stem of his wineglass, he acknowledged her remark with a small nod.

“Well, Chloe has been getting on me to start dating again. I keep telling her I’m happy being single, but she keeps trying to hook me up.”

Was she trying to make him jealous? Because it wasn’t working. He would have loved nothing more than to see Ella happily married.

Safely obliterating any temptation he might ever have to attempt to avail himself of her sweetness in the future.

Ella took a sip of her wine. He watched the glass touch her lips. Imagined how they’d feel to that glass if it could only have a second of humanity. Felt sorry for it that it could not...

“Then one day about a year ago she suggested to me that I wasn’t as over you as I thought I was. She claims that I’m a victim of our broken marriage and that until I face that fact, until I can see you and know for certain that I’m over you, I’ll never have a completely joyful life of my own.”

Chloe needed to mind her own damned business.

“A move’s a little drastic, don’t you think? You could have just called. I’d have stopped by so you could see for yourself that it’s done.”

Done. It had to be done. He’d known that. Acted on it. Still believed. Without even a smidgeon of doubt.

“My therapist told me that I can hide and pretend forever, but to really take charge of my life, I’d need to come out into the open, take the air into my lungs and start moving forward.”

“Your therapist told you to move to Santa Raquel?”

Ella’s smile gave him an ache in the groin. “No, I came up with the idea all on my own. And only after my supervisor suggested to me that I apply for the position in the Santa Raquel NICU.”

Her work with seriously ill babies interested him. Immensely. In terms of how she was handling it. How she felt when she got home at night.

He had questions he’d never ask. Needed answers he wouldn’t seek.

Because they’d open a box, let out topics they were never going to discuss. Not ever again.

After years of fertility treatments, of humiliating procedures, Ella had finally been able to get pregnant. And Brett had killed her dream.

He’d thought he could handle being a father. Had been sure he’d be different from his own father. Until he’d found out Ella was really pregnant.

And had to accept the fact that there was no going back.

He’d grown more and more withdrawn. Irritable. Terse. Until one night, when terrors had driven him from their bed, she’d come to find him. She’d known something was wrong. She’d pushed him to be honest with her. And he’d turned on her. Raising his voice. Telling her he didn’t want to be a father. That he didn’t want their baby.

When she’d asked him, with a horrified expression he would never forget, what he wanted to do about it, he’d told her he’d seen a divorce lawyer. That she didn’t ever have to worry. She and the baby would be well taken care of.

It was only then he’d realized that she’d been thinking more in terms of counseling. Maybe feared he wanted an abortion.

She’d never considered that he’d leave her.

And he hadn’t been seriously thinking about it, really. He’d just been gathering information. In case.

But the damage had been done. He’d split her heart in two.

And when, the next week, she’d lost the baby, she’d turned to Chloe, not him, for support.

He’d wanted to stay with her. And he’d seen his father in himself then most of all. Brett’s dad, once he’d known he had a problem, had been too weak to leave his family in peace. He’d needed them too much. And so he’d continued to hurt them.

Brett was not going to be that man.

So he and Ella weren’t going to talk about any of it. Not now. Not ever.

Ella took another sip of wine. Leaning forward, he topped up her glass. The sun had set, and the ocean was darkening. Soon there would be nothing but blackness beyond the window.

“I didn’t mean to bring up the past,” Ella said with a grin that made him sad. “I just need you to know that I have absolutely no interest in you personally, Brett.”

Was this the part where one doth protest too much?

“I don’t want you to think I’m here out of some pathetic hope that you might change your mind about me. Or to think that I’m stalking you or something.”

Protesting too much yet?

“The job is a big part of my decision to move here. And I always loved Santa Raquel. You know that.”

They’d visited his hometown. More than once. Each time she’d said she wanted them to settle there. To raise their children there.

Looking back, he saw that even then, he hadn’t ever really believed her fairy tale could happen. He’d just wanted it so badly he’d been a selfish ass, just like his old man, grasping at her hope and hanging on.

Until he couldn’t anymore.

Brett sat forward. Set his glass on the table and folded his hands in front of him.

“It’s a great job, a great place to live, but there are other great opportunities. I know you, Ella. There has to be more going on.”

“I made the final decision to accept the job offer because of The Lemonade Stand.”

He frowned, honestly confused. “I offered you a position on the board. You didn’t have to join the High Risk team to be involved.” She’d supported the idea of the Stand from the very first time he’d mentioned that if he ever won the lottery he’d open such a place. She’d been a sophomore in college at the time. He’d been a junior. They hadn’t even talked about marriage yet.

Her fingers, blunt tipped and slender, able to handle crises on a daily basis, climbed up and down the stem of her glass. She traced a pile of crumbs around the white linen tablecloth. I moved here because of The Lemonade Stand.

His throat dried out like burned timber.

“Ella?” He needed her to quit studying the damned table and look at him.

Had someone hurt her? On one of those blind dates Chloe had arranged? Or someone else? Were the police involved?

Why hadn’t he known? Jeff had sworn to him that if Ella were ever in trouble, if she ever needed anything, he’d let Brett know...

He couldn’t just sit there...couldn’t stand the thought of his Ella being...

Sweet God, that was why he’d left her. To save her from loving a man who had the pattern of abuse lurking inside him. He knew the statistics. More than half of abusers had grown up with abuse. It was a pattern that repeated itself. And he’d faced the beast of his father inside himself when he’d lain in bed after finding out Ella was pregnant, when he’d closed his eyes and slept. Night after night. He’d seen his father. The raised hand. Heard the anger. And then his own face had been there...

I moved here because of The Lemonade Stand.

His palm settled on the back of her hand, holding it still against the table. “Talk to me, El.”

She looked at their hands. Then up at him. A sheen of tears glistened in her eyes. Panic surged inside him.

“Did someone hurt you?” The words forced themselves out.

She shook her head. But didn’t speak.

Every nerve in his body was tense. He couldn’t get them to release their grip on him. It was a feeling he knew well.

Bracing for a blow.

Only this one wouldn’t be as simple as a fist in the face. Or a belt to the back.

“It’s not me, it’s Chloe.” He heard her, but the words only confused him more. What did her sister-in-law, living in Palm Desert with Jeff, have to do with The Lemonade Stand?

Oh, God. The idea hit him, accompanied by a maelstrom of rejection.

Ella’s gaze was steady now. Steady and needy.

“Chloe’s hitting Cody?” The godson he knew only through pictures. He’d told Jeff, when his friend had called to tell him about the boy’s birth, that, with him being divorced from Ella, he couldn’t possibly be anything to the boy, but Jeff had insisted. It didn’t mean anything. It was just a title.

The shake of Ella’s head caused a new wave of foreboding.

“Chloe’s with me,” Ella said. “Her and Cody.”

“Visiting?”

Another small shake of Ella’s head. Brett realized he was still covering her hand with his own, but he didn’t let go.

“They’re living with me.”

“Where’s Jeff?”

“Palm Desert.”

He sat back, letting his hands fall into his lap. Then reached for his wineglass. “They’re divorced?”

He’d never, in a million years, have figured that one. If anyone was the perfect couple it was Jeff and Chloe. They were crazy about each other. In a way that couldn’t be faked. Even Brett, who’d never personally witnessed a healthy relationship in his life, could feel the bond between Ella’s brother and his wife.

“No!” Ella’s shock righted a world that was quickly spinning out into space. “Of course not.”

Until he considered that she’d just told him that Jeff’s wife and son were living with her, not him.

Not him.

Ella watched him.

Jeff. Jeff?

If she wanted him to think that Jeff Wales had done something that would make his wife need a women’s shelter then she was just plain—

“It’s Jeff, Brett,” she was saying. “He has...bouts. They’ve escalated over the past few years. This last time...Chloe asked me to come get her, and I did. Jeff doesn’t know. That she’s with me, I mean. He has no idea where she’s staying. They communicate by cell phone, and she has a pay-as-you-go one so he won’t be able to get any details from their bill.”

She’d thrown him for a loop. “Have you talked to him? Does he know you know she’s gone?”

“He called me, I think trying to figure out if she was with me, but I went on and on about the new job and how I was in the middle of moving into my new apartment and it was only at the end, when I asked him why he’d called, that he told me she’d left.”

Brett felt as though he had rocks in his gut. He could just imagine how Jeff must be feeling.

“Your brother is the kindest man I’ve ever known.” The only person who’d ever seen Brett cry.

Ella’s older brother had held an eighteen-year-old college-freshman Brett as he’d sobbed out his anguish over his parents. Helped him treat the raw strap marks on his back, left by his father’s belt, so that he didn’t have to report them to anyone. He’d spent many a night sitting with him that first year they were roommates, listening to him talk, or more often, allowing him complete silence without the aloneness that usually accompanied it, and had never told another soul about any of it.

“I know he is.” She was blinking back tears.

“He puts bugs outside rather than killing them.”

“I know.”

Memories glided through his mind like a picture show. One after another. “And...what about Missy’s little sister?” They’d all been juniors in college the year a friend of theirs had brought her three-year-old sister to school for a family weekend visit. The little girl had been afraid of all the guys in their crowd, throwing a tantrum that threatened to ruin the entire weekend, until Jeff had knelt down and very seriously explained something to her, a secret, she’d said. She’d been his adoring fan the rest of the visit. To the point that years later, at Jeff’s wedding, one of the guys had given a toast to the guy they’d all deemed the world’s greatest future dad.

“Jeff slammed Cody into a chair, Brett.”

“Slammed, as in set him down strongly, or as in breaking something?”

“He didn’t break anything.”

“Has he ever broken anything? Or left bruises?”

“Not on Cody.”

“What about Chloe?”

Chin jutting forward, Ella nodded.

And, emotionally, Brett shut down.

His ex-wife wouldn’t lie to him. He didn’t doubt her word for a second. But neither could he believe Jeff Wales would raise a hand to his wife.

“I need your help, Brett. Jeff needs your help.”

He nodded. His buddy sure as hell did need him if someone was trying to pin a DV rap on him. Someone who’d been persuasive enough to convince Ella.

Brett cared about Chloe. A lot.

If he thought for one second anyone was hurting her, he’d hunt whoever it was down himself and have him prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

But he wasn’t going to stand by and see Jeff hurt.

“Has Chloe had medical treatment?” Records were a way to establish truth. Maybe Jeff’s wife had met someone. Had a lover on the side who’d hurt her.

Maybe Chloe had asked to leave Palm Desert to get away from the guy. Maybe she cared enough about her marriage to Jeff to try to salvage it.

People made mistakes.

And deserved second chances.

“No, she’s never had medical treatment due to Jeff’s anger issues.”

Anger issues. Sure, Jeff got mad—who didn’t? But he’d never known a more easygoing, laid-back man in his life. Jeff took it on the chin when most guys, Brett included, would have been swinging.

“Have you ever seen Jeff be abusive to her?”

“No.”

“You’ve never seen any of Jeff’s outbursts firsthand?”

“No. But I’ve seen the bruises, Brett.”

Okay. So, something was going on with his friends. Something bad. Maybe Chloe was sick or something. Or suspected Jeff of having an affair and was trying to get back at him.

Brett knew full well that no one knew what went on behind closed doors. That a man could appear one way in public or in small gatherings with friends, and another way entirely at home with his family. His father had taught him that, too, before he’d learned it in counseling. And with the research he’d done before opening The Lemonade Stand.

But he’d lived with Jeff. For four years. He’d seen him at his best and at his worst. He couldn’t see the man raising a hand to his wife.

The very real concern, the fear, he read in Ella’s expression brought him up short. There was a problem.

She’d come to him for help.

“I’ll talk to him.”

“He’s going to deny it, Brett.”

He nodded. Was pretty much counting on Jeff’s innocence. And then maybe the two of them would be able to figure out what was really going on.

CHAPTER SIX

CHLOE WAS WATCHING a British arts show on cable when Ella got home just after eight on Friday night. It had been a long day and since she had to work in the morning, she excused herself to bed before her sister-in-law got close enough to smell the wine on her breath.

To ask any questions about where she’d been.

She wouldn’t keep her having seen Brett a secret from Chloe. Chloe knew that Ella’s contacting her ex-husband, Jeff’s best friend, was part of the plan to help save her marriage. The main part, since nothing was going to change if Jeff didn’t get help and, so far, Jeff was still unable to admit that he needed it. Which was where Brett came in.

If anyone could help Jeff see the truth, it would be Brett.

And he’d agreed to speak with Jeff.

Their plan was on track.

The future looked hopeful.

All of which she’d share with Chloe in the morning.

Tonight Ella needed the privacy of her locked bedroom door and pillows to muffle her sobs as she lay herself down to sleep. She was weepy from the wine. From the emotional roller coaster that day had been—first the situation with Nora and then seeing Brett for the first time in more than four years.

In the morning she’d be her usual cheery self. Or so she told herself as ten o’clock rolled around and she was still lying there, mind racing with memories, a nuance in a voice, a look in the eye, the warmth of a hand.

She told herself again at one. And around two she dozed. To dream of Brett. And jerk herself awake before she could fall into a deep sleep that would only leave her disoriented when she woke. She dozed on and off for the rest of the night. And was up twenty minutes before her alarm was due to go off.

Up, focused and fully in control.

An uncomfortable night filled with distressing images, useless longings and long-forgotten feelings was to be expected after a first meeting in four years. Nothing more than a throwback to what had been. It wasn’t permanent. Or even part of present-day reality.

She’d let it go. And Brett’s hold on her would let go, too.

Each step she took forward took her further away from him. From a pain she’d never escape if she tried to hold on to even a small vestige of what she’d thought they had.

She was wearing cartoon-character scrubs with a matching scrunchie around her ponytail, volley clogs, and a shield of calm when she walked into the kitchen to the smell of broccoli quiche at half past six.

“Is Cody up this early?”

Chloe’s schedule had been mirroring her son’s since they’d moved in with Ella.

“No, and if we’re quiet, he won’t be until after you’re gone. You looked beat last night, and I wanted you to have a good breakfast and a little peace before you have to get back at it this morning.”

That shield Ella had erected slipped. People who lived alone weren’t used to being noticed. Or spoiled.

But she was glad she had a minute with Chloe.

“Sit with me?” she asked as her sister-in-law dished up a divine-smelling egg-and-vegetable mixture that stimulated an appetite that had been nonexistent when Ella had left her room seconds before.

Pouring two cups of coffee, Chloe placed one in front of Ella and sat with the other still in her hand, taking a sip.

She had to tell Chloe about Brett. But first, “I was at The Lemonade Stand again yesterday.”

“With a patient?”

She couldn’t say much. And didn’t. Telling Chloe only that her visit had to do with the High Risk team, she said, “I talked to Lila while I was there. Lila McDaniels. She’s the managing director.”

“I remember. You read me her résumé when Brett first started interviewing for positions...”

She’d been in on the beginning stages—the dreaming. Then the dream coming true. The search for a site. The legalities and architectural plans. Even the initial weeding through of potential applicants.

And then her world had fallen apart. Brett had filed for divorce. He’d moved out before they broke ground.

“You remember that?”

“Yeah. Because she had such high credentials, work history that sounded like she was an incredibly well-rounded person and no personal background at all. She had no family or anything that would interfere with the long hours, she didn’t mind spending nights at the Stand when needed, and she had the same last name as my best friend from grade school.” Chloe grinned.

Ella had had reservations about the woman. About her lack of a three-dimensional life. She’d expressed her apprehensions to Brett. He’d obviously found her suitable in spite of Ella’s fears, and his decision to hire her had clearly turned out to be the right one.