Yours to Keep (2 page)

Theo regarded the tagboard foldout critically. “If You’ve Got a Brain in Your Head, Wear a Helmet,” the slogan proclaimed.

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” Theo wore a beat-up Pink Floyd T-shirt and sweatpants, which Ethan had told him more than once were too casual for school. His shaggy black hair shadowed one green eye. He and Ethan shared the eye color but, physically, nothing else—Theo’s fair skin and delicate features were elfin, almost ethereal, where Ethan’s features were rougher, his body brawnier, and his red-brown hair a less dramatic contrast to the green eyes.

The rest of Theo was purely his mother, and even eight years after her death, nothing had the power to reduce Ethan to black grief like catching sight of Theo’s face at an angle that suggested Trish’s.

A student darted close enough to snatch a miniature helmet key chain out of the jar on the table but retreated before Ethan could engage him in conversation.

Theo watched him go, arms crossed. “If you’ve got a brain in your head, come up with a decent slogan.”

Ethan’s blood pressure jerked upward. “Don’t talk to me that way.”

“I wasn’t talking to you in any
way
. I was just making a joke about the slogan.”

People sometimes said that teenagers were like toddlers, only bigger. Ethan thought they were dead wrong. Teenagers were much cleverer and more dangerous than toddlers. They knew how to weasel out of tight semantic spaces. “Just watch your tone.”

“Why did you have to come here? It’s humiliating.”

Ethan took a deep breath. He was trapped behind this table for another half hour, and getting into an all-out battle of wills would be disastrous. “It could have been worse. I could be giving out condoms, like those moms.” He gestured toward the three moms behind the table beside him.

Not a glimmer of humor in Theo’s scowling face. “You’re the only dad here.” An accusation.

When Ethan attended school events, he was almost always the only dad, and it was lonely. Some moms were good about including him in conversation, but many avoided him. He didn’t exactly blame them. It was an awkward thing, being the only man in a roomful of women. Conversations stopped dead when he showed up, which was just as well when the moms were talking about hair-removal strategies, husbandly inattentiveness, or a gathering where they’d sold each other things such as jewelry or bras or sex toys in a modern-day version of the Tupperware party. Not only was he not plagued with sagging breasts or unwanted hair, but he didn’t have a spouse to complain about. It was a double whammy, being a widower in a town of two-parent families.

“Yes. I’m the only dad here.”
And I’m all you’ve got,
thought Ethan, but he didn’t say it out loud. In the mood Theo was in now—a mood he seemed to be in more and more these days—he’d find some way to make it Ethan’s fault that Trish had died.

Ethan wanted to say, “Theo, if it’s so humiliating that I’m here, why are you hanging around my booth?” But then Theo would accuse Ethan of making him feel unwelcome.

There was no winning these days. And it was getting worse. Sometime in the past few weeks, Theo had crossed over from sullen to outright obnoxious, and Ethan was braced, waiting for genuine rebelliousness—rule-breaking, drug-taking, or crime.

“Theo, is this your dad?” The voice belonged to a plump middle-aged woman whose silver hair was pulled back in a bun. “I have some business with him.”

Generally speaking, there were two reasons women wanted to talk to Ethan: either
they wanted to ask his advice, as a pediatrician, about a medical problem or they wanted to flirt. He was guessing, however, that this woman’s business fell into neither of those categories. She looked—angry, he’d have to say. Ferocious.

“You didn’t think it might be worth at least trying to get him a tutor?” she asked.

What?

With a father’s sixth sense—so often absent lately but suddenly at his command—Ethan reached out and grabbed Theo’s scrawny wrist as he began to slink away.

“Hang on.” He turned to the silver-haired woman. “What’s this about?”

“Kids these days,” she harrumphed. “They give up soooo easily. And it’s because their parents let them.”

“What are we talking about?” Ethan asked pleasantly. Theo was twisting in his grasp, but Ethan didn’t loosen his fingers.

“We’re talking about the fact that you allowed Theo to drop Spanish.”

“Theo dropped Spanish?”

Theo had given up the struggle. His wrist lay limply in Ethan’s hand now. Ethan eyed him. Theo looked at the floor, at the ceiling—anywhere but at his father.

“Are you his Spanish teacher?”

“His former Spanish teacher. Elsie Andalucía.”

“Ethan Hansen.” He shook her hand, Theo’s wrist still firmly gripped in his left. “He dropped Spanish?”

“You signed the form.” She crossed her arms.

“Actually, I didn’t.”

They both looked at Theo, whose face had turned red. Elsie crossed her arms. “I guess that explains why you never responded to my note suggesting that you get him a tutor.”

“Theo,” growled Ethan.

With his shoulders up and his hair falling over his face, Theo gave the distinct impression of a pill bug rolling itself up to hide.

“I’m very sorry about this,” Ethan told Elsie. “Let’s start over, shall we? Can we get him back into that class?”

She smiled, and the wrinkled skin on her cheeks softened into folds. “Absolutely. I can make that happen. But he’s going to need a tutor to make up what he missed and get back on
track.”

“And how do I find a tutor?”

“Best way is to go upstairs and talk to the academic-support specialist, Ed Branch.”

“Excellent.” Ethan released Theo.

“Can I go back to class? I’m late.” All Theo’s earlier bluster was absent.

“We’ll talk about this later,” Ethan said sternly.

Theo escaped, his shoulders hunched.

Ethan turned back to Elsie Andalucía. “Thank you so much for bringing this up with me.”

“You’re very welcome. I’ll get him back on that class list—and you let me know how finding a tutor goes.”

They shook hands, and she trotted off.

In the scheme of things, Theo’s forging Ethan’s signature on a class-drop form wasn’t a major crime, but it scared Ethan. He was losing Theo. It was what he’d always feared, from the moment his wife died and left him with the care and feeding of an innocent seven-year-old. He’d hoped the fear would abate with time, as he became more accustomed to being Theo’s sole caretaker, but it had gotten worse, his anxiety rising as Theo grew into a full-fledged teenager. During Ethan’s own high-school years, it had taken all the efforts of both his parents to keep his teenage high jinks from having permanent consequences. There were no checks and balances in single parenting. If he screwed up, if he let Theo slip away—

“Hey!” A petite high-school girl had stuck her hand into the jar of miniature helmet key chains and come away with a handful. “One per customer!”

She tossed a scornful glance at him over her shoulder.

He gave up, looked at his watch. Seventeen more minutes, officially, until his shift was over. But it wasn’t like he was contributing anything. He leaned over toward the wholesome blond mom at the condom booth. “May I ask you a favor?”

She gave him a flirty smile. “Sure,” she cooed.

“I have to run an errand and head back to work. Can you keep an eye on this booth, too? It’s not high-demand.”

She looked disappointed, but she nodded. What had she expected, that he’d ask her if she wanted to help him make use of the jar of condoms? He knew perfectly well she was
married. Most of the women in Beacon were. Which didn’t stop them from flirting; it only stopped him from flirting back.

The non-flirting on his part wasn’t sexual deadness, not by any stretch. He could appreciate the glories of Beacon’s stay-at-home moms just fine from a visual perspective—expensively colored and straightened hair, subtly applied makeup, bodies finely tuned through obsessive, boredom-induced exercise. But he was careful. Careful, above all, not to flirt with married women, but also careful not to dally even with the few single women in town. Beacon was small, talk was loose—especially about financially well-off available men—and Theo had to go on living here no matter what his father did.

But man, he was human and male, and he missed what he’d had with Trish, missed their lively, near-daily lovemaking, the connection of being with someone at a level that went beyond Tab A, Slot B. His hand was ready, willing, and able but a damn poor conversationalist.

After Trish died, there had been no one for a very long time, only paralyzing grief and the unending demands of single fatherhood. When he emerged from the most intense period of that, he began dating again, but though he’d engaged in one or two sessions of frustration-busting, almost antiseptic sex, there’d been nothing that felt meaningful or lasted long enough to justify bringing a woman home to meet Theo. Because there was no way he was going to let Theo get to know, get to
love,
another woman who might leave. One lesson in grief was enough for a child.

Especially a troubled teenager. The last thing Theo needed in his life right now was complications. Uncertainty. His father becoming even marginally less emotionally available.

What Theo needed was—

God, he wished he knew.

He fled the cafeteria, a man on a mission. He’d go upstairs, find Ed Branch, and get his juvenile-delinquent, signature-forging son a Spanish tutor.

Chapter 2

Ana had had enough. “Get your hands off me,” she told Ed.

“We can have an informal arrangement.” His fingertips slid to her ribs.

“Stop it!” A shout this time.

The door behind her flew open, and she took advantage of the distraction to remove herself from his pawing.

“Is there a problem?” a deep voice inquired.

A man stood in the doorway, his arms crossed. He was tall—at least six feet—and ruggedly handsome, with rumpled red-brown hair and decisive lines to his face. His broad shoulders nearly filled the door frame. He looked pissed.

“Don’t you knock?” Ed demanded.

The man’s green eyes narrowed. “Not when I hear a woman yelling ‘Get your hands off me’ and ‘Stop it.’ ” His voice was so mild that he might have been discussing the weather.

Ed shrugged. “Thick door. Easy to think you heard something you didn’t.”

Ana filled her lungs for the first time in several minutes. Her heart beat hard against her ribs.

“Excuse me.” She picked up her backpack and tried to slip out the door, but the man hadn’t moved, and she stopped short of bodychecking him. He smelled like hand soap and something cleanly musky that she could identify only as big, sexy guy.

“Can I help?” he murmured.

Grateful tears pricked her eyes, but she shook her head. Her face was level with the topmost closed button of his olive-green oxford dress shirt, and she had to drop her gaze to his shoes—two-tone Keds with brown suede fronts. “Just let me out.”

For a moment, she was afraid he wouldn’t comply, that he’d try to make a big deal of what he’d heard, but then he stepped aside, and she took off at a brisk walk.

She was halfway down the school’s broad central staircase when she heard footfalls behind her.

“Hey,” her rescuer called. “Wait up.”

She was tempted to pretend she didn’t hear him, but instead she slowed. She was shaking all over, the aftereffects of adrenaline.

He caught up with her as she reached the wide, sunny lobby at the bottom of the staircase. It was quiet there, the students in class or at lunch.

“Are you okay?” There was genuine concern in his eyes.

“Yeah.” She absorbed details she’d been unable to process earlier: long lashes, killer cheekbones; clean-shaven, well groomed, neatly dressed. His hair was soft and wavy, but still precisely edged.

She’d sworn off
yanquis.
So any attraction she was feeling now was only because he’d rescued her. Because she wasn’t quite in her right mind. She could still taste the coppery edge of fear.

“If you want to report him, I’ll vouch for your side of the story.”

“No.” She could manage Ed, but if other people got involved they might start asking their own questions about her status.

“Are you sure? That was sexual harassment, what he was doing to you. It’s illegal. He might be doing it to other people.”

She didn’t need this, didn’t want it. “I think it’s particular to me,” she said dryly. “I’ll just stay away from him.”
Heem.
Her fear-induced accent was still in force.

“Can you
do
that?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Yeah. I can avoid him.” That was more like it, a solidly Anglo
him
.

She suspected Ed wasn’t in a hurry to rat her out, because that would shut down the possibility that he could coerce her into sex. He’d probably wait awhile, try to get her back into his office. So she’d avoid him as long as she could, and meanwhile she’d start looking for other tutoring jobs. Preferably ones unconnected to her current network of referrals.

“Is he your boss?”

She wanted him to stop asking questions and let her go. She thought of her brother, Ricky, coaching her, as a kid, to walk away from people who were too curious. But she couldn’t bring herself to be outright rude. This guy had
rescued
her. “I’m a tutor. He does the tutoring referrals. So he gives me work, but he’s not in charge of me.”

“Well, that’s something. And if you have to go in there? Keep the door open.”

She laughed without humor. “Yeah, got that. Hey. Thank you. Thanks for rescuing
me. Not everyone would’ve done that. Opened the door like that.”

He shifted uncomfortably. “Naw. Anyone halfway decent would have.”

She knew plenty of decent people who wouldn’t have. In her world, sometimes it was almost impossible to do the right thing without setting yourself up as a sacrifice.

“Well, thanks again. I’d better be on my way.” She started toward the door.

He dashed ahead of her to push it open.

When was the last time anyone held a door for her? She couldn’t remember.