Hidden Hills (2 page)

The mischievous glance, passing between the older boys, made him uneasy. He'd gone through a string of housekeepers and sitters, hoping the right woman might have a calming influence, but none had lasted long enough to find out. They'd been on their own for the last three weeks and they'd survived.

“Mr. Parker was fun.” Bruce rocked his chair back on two legs in an imitation of their former neighbor. “Remember the time his teeth fell in the toilet? It sucked ‘em down so fast he couldn't get 'em out.”

“And whose fault was it he dropped them in the first place?” Jake said, wiping the smirks from their faces. “The next dentures I buy had better be for myself.”

He filled the bowls and passed them around the table before sitting down. Andy frowned, shoving his away.

“Stinks!”

“No, it doesn't.” He slid the bowl back to the pouting toddler. “Now eat your soup.”

Andy stared at the bowl, his lips quivering, and huge tears welled up in his blue eyes. “At least try it, son.”

The dreaded spoon passed the pouting lips, and tomatoes spewed in all directions. The older boys shoved their chairs back, exaggerating the situation. Defeat was something he'd faced several times over the past few years.

“All right, calm down,” he said, taking charge again. “Wash your faces and get clean shirts. We'll go to the Pizza Plate.”

He waited until the boys left the table before tasting his soup. “Soap!”

The local hangout was usually packed, but he didn't have a choice if they were going to have a hot meal. Smelling the warm, garlic-filled air starved him, and after forty-five minutes of standing in line, his stomach introduced itself to his backbone. They were seated at their table, waiting for the pizza to arrive, when he noticed a little girl with red hair. He instantly thought of Maggie.

“Give it back!” Andy cried.

Bruce held the pizza-shaped placemat out of his brother's reach. “You're such a baby. I'm just looking at it.”

“Am not! Daddy, make him give it back.”

“Cry baby!”

“Daddy!”

“That's enough.” Jake retrieved the paper from the older boy. He felt a slight tug on his sleeve and for the second time since lunch, found himself gazing into cool green eyes. “Hello, Maggie. What a nice surprise.”

The girl's eyes traveled from one boy to the next, clearly unimpressed. “That your boys?”

He beamed with pride in spite of the way they'd just behaved. “This is Andy, Bruce, and Jeremy. Boys, say hello to Maggie.”

Andy stared, Bruce nodded, and Jeremy winked, causing Maggie to blush until her face matched the red hair. To his surprise, the girl ducked her head and ran.

Bruce jabbed an elbow into his older brother's ribs. “Idiot. You embarrassed the poor kid!”

“All I did was wink,” he said, craning his neck to see where she‘d gone. “Can I help it if I'm cool?”

“Cool?” Bruce replied. “Geek's more like it.”

“Moron.”

Jake's sigh was one of despair. Puberty — the awkward age where testosterone runs rampant, and boys think with their bodies instead of their brains. With a five-year age difference between the three, the next fifteen years would pass before he could relax. A wiry grin twisted his lips. He sympathized with them.

“I don't think four-year-old girls count.”

“You tell him, Dad,” Bruce said. “She's no babe — just a baby. Jeremy can't get a real girl.”

“I get plenty of girls, you snot-nosed jerk!”

“You take it back!” Bruce shoved Jeremy against the wall. The older boy came back with his fist aimed at the eight-year-old. Jake's hand shot out to intercept the lick.

Reaching across the table, he clamped his hands on the boys' shoulders to get their attention, and continued in a tone they knew all too well. “That's enough. Now finish your meal and get to the truck — pronto!”

“But, Dad…”

“What?”

“Our pizza's not here yet.”

He rubbed his face, the five o'clock shadow reminding him of the time. “All right — we'll wait. But if either of you give me another ounce of trouble, you'll get a pound of cure you'll never forget. Are we straight?”

They eyed each other and slumped in the booth. “Yes, sir.”

Jake found it hard to recall the peaceful calm he'd felt earlier. It got even worse when the afternoon crowd began to leave, and the room packed with loud, boisterous teens. The music and laughter echoed from the rafters, while the urge for his sweats and a recliner became too much to ignore. Had kids always been this bad?

His eyes scanned the crowd in search of Maggie's red hair before finding her at the other end of the large room near the plate glass window. An older girl with long brown ponytails sat across the table. The smeared window blurred the woman's reflection, but her backside was nice and trim. He liked the way the navy blouse narrowed at the waist, not to mention the sleek shoulder-length, classy auburn hair.

“Nice butt, huh, Dad?” Bruce mumbled around a mouthful of pizza.

“What?”

“Her butt. It's round like those girls in the magazine.”

Jake choked on a breadstick. “What are you talking about?”

“Maggie's mom. She's stacked.”

Jake hid behind a napkin to clear his throat. “Don't say that — someone might hear you.”

His eight-year-old seemed confused. “I didn't mean it ugly. She has as many curves as the centerfold.”

Jake's mind reeled. “Centerfold? What do you know about centerfolds?”

“Jeremy's mag — uh, I don't remember,” he lied, amnesia coming from a swift kick to his shin.

“Jeremy?”

“I didn't waste money on it, Dad. Honest! It's worth every cent.”

Jake shook his head. “What are you guys up to?”

They swallowed hard, shoving more pizza into their mouths. Forget the age difference, these two were shooting through puberty at the speed of light. Why had he taught them basic economics but failed miserably in the more important things? He realized his mistake of depending on others for their moral raising, but it was going to change.

“There's more to a woman than a pretty face and the way she's built.”

The pizza was forgotten. “There is?”

Jake watched his boys, while loosening his already-unbuttoned collar. How had he gotten himself into this mess? He'd covered the basics with Jeremy when the boy had been ten or eleven, but from the look of things, something hadn't registered. There was only himself to blame. The women he'd dated since Betty's death had been someone to talk to and nothing more. He searched his mind, hoping the right words would fall from heaven. They didn't.

“Women are…”

“Hot!”

“No, I meant…”

“Dad, was Mom hot?”

Finally, something he could talk about. His boys only knew Betty as “Mom,” and now they wanted to know her as a person. Their mischievous eyes glowed and it dawned on him, they were waiting for intimate details he had no intentions of spilling. Some things were too special to share with anyone, even his precocious sons.

“Your mom was the hottest woman I've ever known.”

“Wow!”

He leaned his elbows on the table, basking in their attention. “What do you remember about your mother?”

Jeremy smiled. “She smelled good — like flowers, and she always laughed at my jokes.”

“And she was soft,” Bruce added. “She gave big hugs and lots of kisses.”

Jake remembered Betty's last night, when she'd had the boys in her bed. It was a good memory. “Your mom was that and so much more. She was the most caring person I've ever known and she loved you boys, all three of you.”

“Was she stacked?”

“Yes, Bruce,” he said, to satisfy his curiosity. “But it wasn't what made her a woman. Now finish your pizza so we can leave.”

The rest of the meal passed without incident. When it came to eating pizza, his boys left only a handful of crust. He put his usual tip on the table and started for the door with Andy in his arms. Glancing back to make sure the other boys followed, he saw Bruce pick up the money.

“What are you doing, son?”

“Ah… you forgot this?”

“No I didn't,” Jake replied. “The money's for the waitress who took care of us. It's a tip.”

“But she didn't do nothing.”

“How many glasses of tea did you drink?”

“Four.”

He took the money from the boy's hand and put it under an empty glass. “Our placemats were on a clean table. The waitress brought our pizzas and refilled our glasses several times, and now she'll come back and get the table ready for the next customer. I'd say she deserves the tip, wouldn't you?”

“Well,” Bruce said, hooking his thumbs in his front pockets. “Since you put it that way, then I guess she does.”

“I'm glad you agree.” He placed his hand on the boy's shoulder, removing the temptation of taking the tip by walking him outside.

The crowded parking lot held mostly sports cars and four-wheel drives, the only exception being an old blue hatchback parked next to his truck. All of a sudden he felt as dated as the car.

“Did we get any mail today?” he asked, unlocking the doors and waiting for his boys to get in. “Maybe a brown envelope?”

Bruce jumped into the front seat, beating Jeremy by a good six seconds. “Not a thing.”

“Except a letter from Principal Ruff,” Jeremy added to get back at his brother.

“I'm gonna kill—”

“Hold it! Nobody's killing anyone,” he said, defusing the fight before it got started. He rubbed the sharp pain forming in his temple, then adjusted Andy's seatbelt before latching his own. Just once, he'd like to start the school year without the principal in an uproar. It didn't take a genius to know which kid was in trouble. “You didn't hack into the school's computer system again, did you?”

Jeremy reached across the seat to shove his brother's head against the window. “Yeah, dimwit. Did you delete the test scores again?”

Bruce slapped back. “I told you it wasn't me!”

“Stop it!” Jake wasn't sure if sitters had been the right approach. What they'd needed was a referee.

“Why me, Dad?” he cried. “You always think it's me.”

“No, I don't.”

The boy's sullen expression was barely visible in the dim interior of the truck. “Andy and Jeremy are so-o-o precious. They never do nothing wrong. It's always me.”

“Boo-hoo,” chirped the backseat agitator. “Are you gonna cry me a river?”

He slowed for the caution light on Birch Street, tension tightening the nerves in the back of his neck. His head pounded as war raged on between the boys. “That's enough, Jeremy.”

“Andy's climbing out of his harness, Dad.”

His teeth clenched. “You're bigger than he is, Jeremy, so put him back in!”

“Well, shucks — whatcha yelling at me for? I didn't do nothing wrong.”

“I wasn't yelling,” he replied, lowering his voice to a more moderate level. He'd give a lot for a nerve pill the size of a watermelon. Thank goodness it was almost bedtime. “You guys think you can tone it down a bit?”

“It's not always me,” Bruce muttered.

“I know it's not, son.”

“Jeremy called that woman,” he said, the confession coming a month late.

“Well, you gave me the number,” Jeremy reminded him, spreading the blame. “How was I to know it came from the wall in the john? You're not supposed to be at Al's Garage anyway.”

Jake stood his ground, trying to avert another full-blown argument. “It's okay, guys, just water under the bridge.”

Jeremy refused to let it die. “How was I supposed to know what she was?”

“You weren't.” Jake remembered the voluptuous blond in red spandex at his front door. So much for his mother's idea of him hiring a cleaning woman. The boys had taken it upon themselves to find one.

Bruce's foot landed on the dash in an attempt to retie his sneaker in the dark. He gave up, shoving the strings inside the shoe. “Dad, why did the woman say you owed her money when she didn't do nothing? She didn't even wash dishes. Is that why you told her to leave, ‘cause she wouldn't wash dishes?”

“No, you termite.” The thirteen-year-old laughed. “It's ‘cause she's a hooker!”

Jake glanced at his middle son, hoping the remark had flown over his head. Innocence was a wonderful thing, and he hated to see his kids lose it.

Robins Lane was quiet as he slowed to enter his drive, the only racket riding in the truck with him. Floating through his mind was the plan to let the boys unwind for a few minutes while he shredded Jeremy's girlie magazine, and then it was baths, bed, and peace at last.

He slid the key into the deadbolt and stepped aside while Jeremy and Andy shoved their way in. He'd yet to figure out why being first in the house was so important. Bruce hung back, deep in thought.

“Dad,” the boy said, cocking his head to one side. “What's a hooker?”

He'd known it was coming. “Well, son,” he replied, not wanting to say too much. “It's a bad woman who sells her body.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, so just stay away from anyone like her.”

Bruce frowned. “I thought they just hung up coats.”

“Who?”

“You know — hookers. Ain't it what they call the girls hanging up coats in fancy restaurants? Not here, but I watched them do it in an old movie. And hats, they hung up those too.”

Jake grinned. He'd been worried about confusing the boy. “Uh — yeah. That's what I meant.”