Yours to Keep (19 page)

He was about to carry breakfast up to her on a tray when she appeared in the kitchen, dressed in yesterday’s clothes.

“You cooked for me!” she whispered.

She came to him, laid her body against the length of his. He buried his face in her neck and whispered her name. Then he asked quietly, “What made you change your mind?”

She looked up at him, startled.

“About being with me.”

“Oh.”

For a moment, he thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then she said, “I guess it just got to the point where I opened my mouth to say no and yes came out.”

He laughed. “I was irresistible, you mean.”

“You were irresistible, yes.”

“Here.” He disentangled himself from her. “Sit. Eat.” He set the plate down in front of her.

“Mmm,” she said, tucking in.

“Do me a favor? Don’t skip meals.”

She laughed through a forkful of pancake. “Why? Are you afraid I’ll waste away to nothing?” She wiggled her butt in the chair, and he felt himself respond, even though she was joking around.

“I want you to take care of yourself. I want to take care of you.”

She crunched down on a strip of bacon. “You’re doing a good job.”

He sat down next to her with his own plate. “Can I see you again tonight?” He cut into a stack of pancakes with the side of his fork.

She smiled at him.

“Would that be totally crazy?”

“I know you didn’t sleep at all last night,” she said. “Every time I stirred, there you were, watching me.”

“I didn’t,” he admitted.

“Can you be a pediatrician on multiple nights of no sleep? Because do you really think we’d get a lot more sleep tonight?”

He laughed. “I’d kind of hope not.” He leaned over and kissed her. Her mouth was salty, smoky, and sweet. He could have kissed her for an hour, especially when her tongue began teasing its way along his lower lip.

She pulled away, and the quickness of her breath jacked up his own restless reaction to the kiss. “Not likely we’ll be sleeping much anytime soon. So—maybe a night when I don’t have to teach? I’m off Friday and Saturday nights.”

“Friday night, then?”

She hesitated. “I should probably have dinner at least one night with my family. Maybe I’ll have dinner with them Friday night and meet you afterward? I know it’s late—”

He didn’t give a crap how late it was. “I don’t mind. You could call me when you’re done with dinner, and I can pick you up”—as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he knew what she was going to say, and he preempted her—“at the school.”

She smiled.

“Speaking of which—we should get going. You have to start teaching at six, right?”

She stuffed the last bite of pancakes into her mouth, followed it up with the last of the
bacon, and drowned it with orange juice.

He loved that she’d eaten like a starving woman. He loved feeding her.

She cleared her place. “Can I do the dishes?”

“Nah. I want to get you to work on time. Let me just leave a note for Theo in case he wakes up before I’m back.”

“I could get used to this,” she said.

He grabbed her around the waist and tugged her close, burying his face in her hair. “I want you to.”

By Thursday, Ethan was an agony of remembered images and sensations: the moment he’d first seen Ana naked, the pale brown of her breasts with their dark, beaded nipples, the triangular crinkle of black hair below, her long waist, curvy hips, smooth buttocks, supple limbs, her laughing expression when he told her they’d lost momentum, the look of abandon on her face as she came, her hair spread out around her on the pillow. He wanted to do it again, only with infinitely more care than any of the times before, withdrawing, sliding in, slowly, slowly so he could watch the effect of every individual stroke, the subtle changes in angle and pressure and depth, play over her face.

Waiting until Friday had made some sense at 5:45
A.M.
on Tuesday, but it was making less and less sense as the week passed. Thursday afternoon, Ethan decided that he’d get home early and drive her to work again. At least that way he could kiss her, and hold her, and—he admitted to himself, grope her and manhandle her and talk dirty to her.

It was theoretically possible. His last appointment of the day was at five, more than early enough to get him home by six.

All afternoon, he saw kids with sore throats and fevers, kids with ear pain, kids with stomachaches. He saw them and sent them away, most with electronic prescriptions for antibiotics or admonitions to use honey and lemon instead of cough medicine.

All the while, though, he dreaded that four-forty-five appointment.

It was Mary Freyer. He was afraid he was going to have to lecture Nicole Freyer about misusing medical resources—misusing him—to further her personal aims.

But the instant he saw Mary Freyer he knew that Nicole Freyer wasn’t inventing her daughter’s woes.

Mary sat in her mother’s lap with her head resting against Nicole’s chest. Her eyes were dull and dry, her cheeks flushed, her lips cracked.

“You’re not feeling so well, huh?” he asked the little girl. “What’s wrong?”

“Hot and cold,” said Mary.

“What else?”

“That’s it,” Nicole said. “Just the fever.”

Warning bells. Unexplained fever, no other symptoms. “How long has this been going on?”

“Only a couple of days this time,” she said. “But it’s happened before. Now that I think about it, it’s been happening on and off for a long time, maybe even since before the preschool teacher told us to come see you. But there were breaks. So I just thought it was a new cold coming on. You know how it is. They go straight from one sickness to another.”

That often happened with intermittent fever. The first time the fever came and went, parents thought the child had recovered. The second time, they assumed the child had just had two illnesses in a row. It took three or four cycles before the pattern became clear enough to raise the alarm.

He looked surreptitiously at his watch, but he already knew. He wasn’t going to make it. He sighed. Sliding his hands up and down Ana’s curvy, lithe body would have to wait for tomorrow. He owed Mary and Nicole that much—particularly since he’d let an exaggerated sense of his own sexual appeal get in the way of his good judgment. He should have had them in here the moment the developmental specialist said there was nothing wrong with Mary. No matter how serious his own fever felt, this one deserved his attention first.

Ethan examined Mary, but the answer was no more obvious than it had been the last time he looked at the little girl. He asked all the questions he could think of, going over the same territory they’d covered in the last exam. The trouble was that three-year-olds were terrible interviewees. They had short memories and poor vocabularies, and were notoriously bad at distinguishing fantasy from reality. Even with Nicole’s help, Ethan wasn’t really able to get a lot of information out of Mary. Yes, her head hurt. Yes, her throat. And her knees. And her fingers. And her freckles. Also her hair. Yes, she was tired. All the time. Morning, night, and also when she visited Elmo’s World. Especially when she visited Elmo’s World, because
there was a lot of flying involved. Ethan reassured Nicole as best he could (which was difficult, because unexplained fever was bad news) and sent the Freyers up to the lab for hundreds of dollars’ worth of blood tests, which he prayed would give them some answers.

By the time he got home, it was six-twenty. He knew he’d missed her.

As he pulled into the garage, his headlights illuminated Theo, leaning against the door to the house. Waiting for him.

His pulse sped up. “Everything okay?” he asked as he climbed out of the car.

Theo’s face was flushed. “Can you drive me and Leah Abrams to the movies tomorrow night?”

Ethan was startled. “Sure.” It was kind of nice, Theo admitting to needing him for something. Then he registered what Theo was asking. He wanted Ethan to chauffeur him—on a date. Did Ethan know who this girl was? He tried to call an image of Leah Abrams to mind. Nothing. “Do I know her?”

“She goes on my bus. She lives in the neighborhood. She’s—” Theo appeared to be trying hard to control his expression, but a smile broke through anyway. “She’s cool. Pretty. Really pretty. Dad, she’s got, like, long blond hair and blue eyes and perfect skin and—”

Ethan’s mouth twitched in sympathy and amusement.

“She’s smart, too,” Theo said quickly. “Ana says she’s smart. Ana tutors her, too. I told Ana we were going out, and she said Leah’s a nice girl.”

He felt again that sweep of relief that he was no longer alone. No longer the only one in charge of this teenager’s feelings, of his safety. He had a partner, someone to help him make sense of things. A part of him unknotted, as if she’d walked in and reassured him. With her voice, creamy calm and cool, containing only the slightest trace of her native island, the slightest hint that English was not the only language she’d ever known. She was what had been missing, and he was determined, absolutely determined, that he wouldn’t let her go again.

“What movie?” he asked. He stepped into the basement, and Theo followed, closing the door behind them.

“Easy A,”
Theo said.

“What’s that one about?”

He started up the stairs, and Theo trailed behind him. “The girl who pretends to sleep
with guys—remember? We saw the preview?”

Vaguely. He vaguely remembered, and it had seemed reasonably harmless. “I suppose you probably don’t want me to watch the movie with you guys, huh?” Ethan asked, dropping his coat on a kitchen chair and turning to look at his son.

Theo shook his head, not meeting his father’s eye.

“Understandable,” Ethan said wryly.

Theo’s smile appeared, flashing his gratitude, and vanished again.

Ethan surveyed the kitchen. You’d never know that the cleaning service had been there on Tuesday. The tumult in his brain seemed to have manifested itself all over the house. And maybe—now that he knew about this Leah thing—there was a similar disorder in Theo’s brain. They were two guys preoccupied with …

Ugh. He did not actually want to think about his son’s sex life. Was it time to give Theo a reinforcement chat about safe sex and pregnancy? Should he make sure Theo had condoms in his possession or urge caution and abstinence—or both?

And, more to the immediate point, how the heck was he going to explain that Ana might be spending the night in the very near future, without implying to Theo that it would be okay for him to …

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

“Theo.”

His son’s head popped up, and a wary look came over his face.

“You know how I went out with Ana.”

Theo nodded. “But she said you guys weren’t. Anymore.”

“When did she say that?”

He shrugged. “Monday, I think. When she was tutoring.”

After she’d broken things off and before— No, he wasn’t going to think about that right now. Mind on the task at hand. He had absolutely no idea how Theo was going to react to the news ahead. “Yeah, well, now we are again.”

Theo nodded. “Okay.”

No protest, no tantrum, no third degree. He was surprised at the depth of his relief. “She might stay over from time to time. I just wanted you to know. So you wouldn’t be too surprised.”

Theo didn’t look surprised. He nodded, slowly, as if he was thinking about that. “Okay.”

Ethan thought he should say some wise, fatherly things. He should point out to Theo that Ana would be the first woman to sleep in their house since Trish, that he wouldn’t invite just anyone to stay over. He should explain that his feelings for Ana were something special, that even though Ethan was having special happy sleepovers, it didn’t mean Theo should, too.

“Ana’s cool,” Theo said thoughtfully, and he picked up his backpack.

Or I could leave well enough alone,
Ethan thought, and he watched his son shoulder his backpack and head upstairs.

Chapter 18

The smell of Leah’s shampoo, distinctly apple, filled the car and made Ethan sneeze. Theo had been right. She was very pretty and very wholesome. And she talked a lot. Ethan wondered if she was nervous. She told them both about all the classes she was taking, all the sports she played, all the music, books, and movies she liked. She told them about her friends and her cousins and her aunt. Then she seemed to run out of steam. There was a long moment of silence. Ethan tried to think of a question to ask her to get her going again, but before he could Leah said, “How’s it going with Ana?”

Ethan panicked. Then Theo said, “Fine,” and he realized that she wasn’t asking him.

Theo must have been tongue-tied, because the silence stretched uncomfortably. Ethan glanced in the rearview mirror. There was enough light from passing streetlights to reveal that the two of them had matching agonized expressions on their faces. He hoped for Theo’s sake that their conversation got easier during the course of the evening.

“They have big families where she’s from,” Leah said. “Family is very important to them. She lives with her niece and nephews. And sister and brother.”

It took Ethan a moment to realize that she was still talking about Ana.

“My mom is trying to help her,” Leah said.

“Help her with what?” Theo asked.

“You know she’s illegal, right?”

“What?” Theo cried.

“Yeah,” Leah said proudly.

Ethan felt her revelation in his gut, slightly above the place where the sight and smell of Ana, the sound of her moans, caught him. It hit, it hurt, it knocked him back, breathless, and yet it was not, in the ways that counted, a surprise.

“Maybe she’s illegal?”
James’s words to him the other night. He’d pushed them away without giving them any time to sink in. Because he hadn’t wanted to even think it.

Some part of him, some deep, nearly inaccessible part of him, had always known why she’d held him off, why she’d fled, why she’d cried. James had guessed, had tried to tell him,
and he’d—he’d denied the possibility. What an idiot he’d been. What a fucking idiot.

He glanced in the rearview mirror. Theo looked shell-shocked.