Risky Business (14 page)

“It's not crazy. You've been divorced in your head and heart for a lot longer than four months. If Theo offered you casual sex, would you take it?”

The question caught her off guard. The mere mention of his name gave her butterflies. She looked over her shoulder again, but Theo was gone. A light was on inside his houseboat. “With Theo, nothing is casual.” When it came to the two of them, it was all full-throttle, all the time.

“Still, would you do it with him?”

“He's my employee. And he hates me.”

“Stop with the bullshit answers. Would you do it with him?” Chelsea asked again, exaggerating every word.

This was only Chelsea, her sister and confidant over the years, so what was the big deal about voicing the truth? She swallowed, gathering her courage, then said, “In a heartbeat.”

“There. Doesn't it feel better to get it out in the open?”

“Not really.” Because the words seemed to hang in the air around Allison, heavy with import.

Chelsea smiled at Allison's grouchy reply. “Is your dream still to be a stay-at-home mom?”

She didn't have to contemplate that answer. She'd known her feelings on that had shifted the moment she'd watched Lowell drive away in that police cruiser. “No. I loved that dream, but it doesn't fit me anymore. I don't want a dream that relies on someone else. I don't know if being a boat rental company owner is my dream, but it's all I have. I've been so focused on surviving, clawing my way out from under debt and finding my backbone that I kind of forgot what it meant to have a dream.”

Chelsea played the opening bars of “Moon River.”

Allison had to chuckle. A song about water. Just terrific. “This isn't a river.”

Chelsea just smiled bigger and played a little louder. “Standing tall and strong, whatever that means, is a fine dream. You should go with that for now. Stop feeling like you're falling short. It's not healthy. And don't ever let anybody tell you your dream is stupid or impractical. Just because you don't dream of being a rocket scientist or the president of the United States, doesn't mean you're any less of a feminist or any less important.”

Allison draped her arms around Chelsea's shoulders and planted a kiss on her cheek. “You always know what to say. Thank you.”

She listened to “Moon River,” staring out at the canal, and she couldn't stop smiling, she was so content to have a new place to call home. “Does it bother you, not having a home?” she asked.

“Sometimes. But this is the way it's supposed to be for me, at least for now,” Chelsea said over the music without losing her place in the melody. “Besides, if I had an address, then Janie would know where to send my annual birthday Bible other than Mom and Dad's house. I wouldn't want to make it too easy on her.”

“That's her way of telling you she loves you.”

“I know. I keep them all. I figure once I have a class set I can donate them to a missionary group or something.”

“A little do-gooder spirit?” Allison said.

“Karma, baby.”

“Karma, kismet . . . the world's a magical place to you, isn't it?”

Chelsea's brows knitted. “It's not to you?”

Allison looked out at the canal again, at the diamonds on the water and the shadow of Theo's houseboat and the glow of Locks' lights in the distance. Every time Allison looked at that canal, she thought about Theo. Since when had a man ever got entwined with thoughts of water? This, tonight, with Chelsea, was another memory of water that wasn't all bad. Little by little, she was starting to feel in control, and like she might be able to handle what wasn't in her control.

Chelsea was the drifter that the song lyrics spoke of, a gypsy soul seeing the world. She was the one with the magical outlook on life. But though Allison didn't think about life in terms of magic, like Chelsea, she did think in terms of beauty. There was a lot of beauty in Destiny Falls. There was a lot of beauty in her life right now. Maybe a little magic, too.

One week later

Theo couldn't sleep, as usual. Actually, not as usual, because usually his bouts of insomnia only lasted a few days at a time. But he didn't think he'd gotten a decent night's sleep since Allison came to live at Cloud Nine two weeks earlier. There was something about having her close enough that he could look at her bedroom window from his bedroom window that threw his whole sleep pattern out of whack.

About eight-thirty, the sky opened up with a rainstorm. Then at ten, her baby had started crying, so loudly he could clearly identify the sound over the rain on his fiberglass and metal roof. The cry had been going on two hours now. It wasn't the same cry as she typically gave. He cocked his good ear toward shore to confirm what he was hearing. No, that wasn't hungry or ticked off; that was a cry of pain.

He looked out the window. All the lights upstairs were on, as was the light in the kitchen. Then he heard another sound, blending with the baby's cry and the rain, and opened his cabin window to listen. The other sound was pitchy and rumbling, but Theo couldn't tell exactly what it was. An engine? Sleep was hopeless now, at least until he investigated and settled in his mind what the sounds were.

He pulled on a pair of jeans, slipped into boat shoes, and grabbed his rain jacket. The rumbling sound and the baby cry were coming from the front of the building, not inside. He skirted the perimeter. Allison's car was idling but he couldn't tell if she was in it. Then she burst through the front door, the baby bundled in her arms and screaming. She looked harried. Theo got his act in gear and jogged up to her.

“Allison?”

She startled at the sight of him and slammed back against the closed landing door. That made him feel like a real jerk. Of course a woman would be scared to see a man coming out of the shadows in the middle of the night. At her reaction, the baby cried harder, which he hadn't thought possible.

“Hey, it's only me,” he said.

She clutched the baby and nodded. Her face was puffy, her makeup running, and she sniffed like she might've been crying. At least she was standing under the eaves, so she wasn't soaking wet, though she'd clearly gotten plenty wet enough starting the car and pulling it to the curb in front of the door.

“What's going on?”

She brushed past him to the car and opened the rear passenger-side door. She wasn't using an umbrella, so he took off his jacket and held it over her while she strapped Katie in.

“Katie has a hundred and two fever. I don't have any medicine.” She shook her head. “Stupidly. It's one of those things you forget about until you need it—and you always only need it in the middle of the night.”

He knew exactly what she meant. “Shampoo.”

“What?”

“I only remember I'm out of shampoo when I'm in the shower.”

“Yeah, like that.” She finished strapping Katie in the car seat and tucked the blanket around her body. Katie, still screaming bloody murder, kicked the cover off. Allison covered her up again.

“Where's Chelsea? Why isn't she running to the store for you?”

Allison stood. Theo raised the jacket to keep her dry. “She had a date tonight and she never came home.”

So this is what it meant, being a single parent on her own. It meant bundling up a sick, miserable baby and braving rain and near-freezing temperatures in the middle of the night.

“Baker's Pharmacy is closed. The grocery store will be, too.” Another asshole thing to say, he realized as soon as the words left his mouth. The way she closed her eyes and went statue-still like she was fighting to stay calm confirmed it. “The nearest place that'll be open is the Walmart in Lockport, which is only a half hour away,” he added.

She swallowed and opened her eyes, which had turned glassy, but instead of crying, she gave a determined nod. “Thank you for letting me know. A half an hour drive isn't too bad.” Despite that determined nod, her voice sounded defeated and so very tired.

“Give me your keys. I'll go. You and Katie go back inside. Just tell me what to buy.”

She squared her shoulders and set her jaw. “No. This is my life, my issue, and I'm going to handle it.”

Regret knifed through him. What had he expected her to say? He was the one who kept getting down on her about handling her own life and being in over her head. She was in over her head right now, too, and she was probably bracing for him to point that out to her. Just like that, he knew he had to stop harping on that because it was clear she'd rather risk driving through the pouring rain searching blindly for an open pharmacy than make the smart choice to go back inside and let him do it for her.

She ducked out from under his jacket and marched around the car to the driver's door. He muttered a French curse, then got in the passenger seat. From the driver's seat, she stared at him solemnly, but didn't protest.

“When you get to Second Street, make a left. That'll be the fastest way to the Walmart in Lockport.”

She nodded and said something, but he couldn't hear her over the baby's wailing.

She drove slowly. The roads were icy and the conditions deteriorating. Theo wished he was the one driving, but there was nothing to do but brace himself and point out slick spots in the road when he saw them.

By the time they could see the Walmart sign, Katie had stopped crying and seemed to be falling asleep from what Theo could tell. Allison pulled into a space in the parking lot and idled the engine.

“Stay in the car,” Theo said. “Tell me what you need.”

“Let me write it down so you don't forget.” He didn't have the guts to tell her that there was a greater likelihood of him forgetting it if she wrote it down than if she told him. One of these days, he was going to need to come clean to her that the same I.E.D. explosion that had turned him partially deaf had also robbed him of his ability to read.

She rummaged through her purse, then shook her head. “No paper. Give me your hand.”

He did, too stubborn to confess tonight. She wrote on his palm. Her hand was cold, despite the fact that the car heater was on. He cupped her hand with his other one, warming it.

When she finished writing, she looked up, unshed tears in her eyes. “I know you hate gratitude, but this . . . this means a lot to me.”

He almost said, “It's no big deal,” except that it felt like a big deal, sitting in her car in the dark, holding her hand, a sick baby in the backseat. It was a big deal that he was fighting the urge to comfort her with a hug or words or any number of intimacies he wasn't personally equipped to give.

“I'll be right back. Lock the doors.”

She held out a twenty-dollar bill. Call him a chauvinist or anti-feminist or whatever, but he didn't take money from women, even infuriatingly stubborn women with cranky babies, leopard print underwear, and fast tempers who'd swept into his life like a tornado and messed everything up.

He didn't bother to verbalize his rejection of her offer, knowing it'd start a quarrel, but he ignored her outstretched hand as he grabbed his jacket and unfolded out of the car.

In the store, the fluorescent lights buzzed in the quiet. It smelled like cleaning products. He passed a man mopping the cosmetics aisle and looked at the scrawled writing on his palm. He didn't have his glasses with him, but even if he had, it probably wouldn't have done any good because he couldn't hold written words in his head to save his life, or anyone else's, for that matter. It was a miserable truth that pissed him off every time he dwelled on it, but he didn't have time to dwell tonight. The outside temperature hovered near freezing and Allison and Katie were waiting.

He didn't want to ask the clerk where to look and he wasn't sure why. Maybe because verbalizing his reason for being there would make it real, what he was doing, what this midnight medicine run meant. Saying it aloud would turn it into something. A kind deed, a selfless act.

The clerk would think Theo was a father. And not just any father—a good dad who braved the storm to help his child. The idea hurt in a way Theo hadn't experienced in a long, long time. Not since he was eighteen and had made a conscious and irreversible choice against being a parent. This, with Katie, was the closest he'd come to the act of fatherhood since that terrible month more than seventeen years ago. Even now, he could see in his mind's eye the panic and fear in Noelle's expression. He shook the memory away.

He looked at the words again, but couldn't get his brain to settle on what they were. With a curse, he headed back toward the man he'd seen mopping.

“Excuse me, sir. I forgot my glasses. Can you read what my friend wrote?”

The elderly man peered over the top of his glasses. “Children's Tylenol. Aisle eleven.”

With a muttered thanks, he performed a quick scan of the place. Every aisle was signed, but that didn't do him any good, either, because numbers were just as impossible to decipher as letters. He spotted diapers on an endcap and headed that way. It made sense that baby medicine would be with the other baby stuff, but as far as he could tell after a thorough search, it wasn't there.

He could think of only one other logical place for Children's Tylenol to be. Head down as he passed the still-mopping clerk, he walked a swift path to the medicine aisle, scanning the packages for photographs and images denoting pain and cold medicine, trying not to care if the man was wondering how he'd gotten lost when he'd been so clear about the aisle number.

Dieu merci
. There it was, a special section of baby medicine. The first letter of Children's Tylenol was a
C
. He scanned for a product starting with
C
using one of the many tricks the occupational therapist had helped him develop. He picked up one that had a
C
word on the package, as well as a cartoon image of grapes in the corner and a goofy looking kid in the middle of the box.

He blinked at the writing on the box. “Children's Tylenol,” he said, though he couldn't decide if those were the words or if he was projecting.

It fucking sucked to be so mentally crippled, but that was nothing new. At least Allison wasn't there to witness it.

A young woman's flirty giggle sounded. Brandon turned into the next aisle over, a leggy blonde clinging to his side, whispering in his ear, as they walked toward a condom display farther down on the aisle. Such a typical Brandon move, needing to make a middle-of-the-night run for protection, like his giant ego didn't leave enough room in his head for advanced planning. Or maybe he just couldn't be bothered.

The blonde giggled again. Theo took another look at her, then realized why she looked familiar. Chelsea. This was why Allison had been alone with a sick baby tonight? Because Chelsea was off messing around with Brandon? Unbelievable.

They didn't notice Theo, so he lifted the box of medicine and took quiet steps in the opposite direction to escape what was bound to be an awkward confrontation. He didn't exhale until he was safely around the corner, out of view.

It seemed that the clerk who was mopping was the only employee present. By the time he'd noticed Theo, set aside his cleaning supplies, and shuffled to the register, Chelsea and Brandon's voices grew louder. They'd made their condom selection and were now checking out.

There was no escape this time. He eyed the box of medicine sitting on the conveyor. “This is Children's Tylenol, right?” he asked the clerk in a low voice.

“Yes, sir. You found it. Do you have a sick baby at home?”

“Yo, Theo!”

He clamped his jaw together, then turned to look as Chelsea and Brandon got into line behind him.

“Oh, my God. Theo, is that you?” Chelsea sounded as drunk as she looked. “My sister will be jealous that I get to see you in the middle of the night and not her.”

She reached out and stroked the front of Theo's rain jacket.

Keeping his jaw clamped tightly shut, he took a step away from her reach. She pouted, then latched back on to Brandon's side.

“Theo, what the hell are you doing here?” Brandon said it in a slur, drawing out the ‘h' in hell.

Theo's irritation over Chelsea flirting with him and Brandon disrespecting Allison by sleeping with her sister morphed into concern. From too many late nights together at Locks to count, Theo knew Brandon didn't drive drunk, but that didn't mean one of these days his need to show off for pretty girls would overrule his good sense.

Theo handed the clerk a twenty, then looked again at Brandon, whose half-lidded eyes had settled on the medicine. “Have you been driving in this condition?”

That got Brandon's attention. His focus snapped to Theo's face, his eyes sharpening in a hurry. “No.”

So it was an act for Chelsea, then. Seemed ridiculous to Theo, but whatever.

Chelsea hooked her thumb behind Brandon's belt and twirled a finger in his hair. “Brandon and I are going to have some fun. You want to join us?”

Not if they were the last three people left on Earth, but he pretended to consider the offer. Brandon clearly felt the same way as Theo because behind Chelsea's back, he gave a desperate shake of his head. Theo ignored him and smiled indulgently at the woman as he accepted change and the bagged medicine from the clerk.

He'd rather sell his vital organs on the black market than get in bed naked with another man, or Allison's sister, for that matter, but it'd almost be worth saying yes just to see the reaction on Brandon's face. If Allison and Katie hadn't been waiting on him, if it'd been anyone but Chelsea, who might have taken word back to Allison what he'd said, he would've relished the opportunity.

“Thanks for the offer, but I'll have to pass.”

Brandon's shoulders relaxed. He nodded toward the bag in Theo's hand. “You're running middle-of-the-night errands for Allison now?”

He sounded impressed—like Theo was finally making life choices Brandon approved of. It was fucking annoying. And it made him wish he'd told Chelsea yes,
because who the hell was Brandon to pass judgment on Theo when he was the one partying with a kinky, drunk girl and buying condoms in the middle of the night like a twenty-year-old?