“Ah, so we’re no longer on a first name basis.” Michael gave a hollow laugh. “Well, it appears Mrs. Murdoch agrees with you, Mr. Grace. Boy, that woman is an unpredictable one. She offered me a job with the theater. Artistic Director, if you can believe it.”
She shot Hudson a covert glance to gauge his reaction. Nothing. He was staring at the ceiling. Maybe he wasn’t quite awake. “The job pays—well, nowhere near what I make on Tomorrow Never Comes but enough—”
Hudson bolted upright. “Oh shit—what time is it?” Simon shifted sleepily in his arms. “Your agent needs you to call her as soon as you get in. Something about a Cinderella deal.” He reached for a rumpled piece of paper from the stack on the phone table and handed it to her.
Michael stared at the familiar numbers, hesitating. A Cinderella deal meant exactly that; she was the belle of the ball now but come midnight if she didn’t take the deal, she’d turn back into a pumpkin. Or would she? It all depended on one’s definition of a pumpkin and Michael found that hers had changed over the past few hours.
Hudson extricated himself from the chair, awkwardly lifting Simon in his arms. “I’ll put him to bed and leave you alone to make your call. By the way, your agent lawyered up and got the remaining time on your sentence commuted to a soup kitchen in Manhattan.”
Michael was surprised but then she didn’t know why she should be. Barbara was bound to have everything worked out. She probably already had the soup kitchen lined up, complete with homeless people and photo-ops. “I think I’m more useful in a forest than in a kitchen,” Michael said doubtfully.
Hudson grinned. “I wouldn’t go that far.”
Michael returned his smile, amazed that his smile could make her feel so good.
“I think she’s waiting to hear from you,” he added. “They’re all waiting apparently.”
Now that the moment of decision was upon her, Michael stalled for a sign, a clue—a hint that Hudson would be at least a little happy if she stuck around. “Hudson, just a minute, please, can we talk? Put Simon down on the couch. Please. Stay for a minute and talk to me.”
To her relief, Hudson did as she asked. Simon was fast asleep, tucked in the comforter. Hudson straightened and turned to her. “What is it?”
“Last night, when you said you were falling in love with me ... well ... I know we both have history with that word....”
His voice grew husky. “I said some things last night I probably shouldn’t have. Right now, I’d give anything to take them back. Taking you to bed wasn’t a mistake but it made things less clear for me.” His mouth twisted with sardonic mirth. “You were right about one thing—you aren’t the kind of woman a man sleeps with and forgets the next day.” He hesitated, taking a breath. “But you aren’t the kind of woman I can let into my life, either.”
Michael stared at him, held in suspended animation, as his words struck her.
He reached out to stroke her cheek and his voice softened. His eyes glittered. “I want you, Mike, you know that. I know you can feel it. But I can’t live the way you live. I don’t want it for myself or for Simon. I knew it the moment I saw you sitting with those reporters. I don’t want Simon’s life or mine to become a sound bite on the six o’clock news. Last night I said I was falling in love with you. The good thing about falling in love is there’s still time to stop the fall.”
Her breath flattened in her chest. “Oh, I see.”
“That sounds harsh and I don’t mean it to be.”
Her voice softened as she struggled for the words. “No, it’s okay. I understand and you’re right. I’m sorry that whole thing happened. It’s become almost a reflex of mine to give the media what they want. I guess the difference between you and me is that last night clarified things for me. I’m not confused.”
“No, the difference between us,” Hudson said, his voice edged with impatience, “is you have about six million people waiting for you. I can’t compete with that and I don’t want to.”
“What if you didn’t have to?” she blurted out.
“What do you mean?”
Michael was rapidly running out of time. Barbara was waiting for an answer. Until this moment she didn’t realize how much her final decision depended on Hudson’s reaction to Murdoch’s offer. What she needed now was boundless enthusiasm. “I mean what if I was no longer newsworthy?”
“You can’t control the press, Michael. They go with the territory.”
“Not if I don’t go back.” She sucked in a breath and let the words fly. “What if I stayed in Mandrake Falls and took the job Mrs. Murdoch offered? I could be a sort-of mom to Simon. How would you feel about that?”
Hudson hesitated, and in his hesitation, Michael could almost see the walls grinding up between them. Boundless enthusiasm, this wasn’t. “It’s a simple question,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. “Should I stay? Yes or no.”
Hudson stared at her for a long tension-filled moment.”No,” he said quietly.
Michael stared at him in confusion. Maybe he didn’t understand the question. “Hudson, I’m saying I could stay here and be like a mother to Simon for real.”
“I heard you. The answer is no. I don’t want you to stay in Mandrake Falls just to give Simon a mother.”
“Why not?” she demanded.
“I don’t know a hell of a lot about commitment but I know that seventy-two hours is not enough time to make one. Your heart is in the right place but little boys grow up and then what? You’ll have given up your career to become a stand-in mom and you’ll regret it five years from now. That’s a burden I don’t want placed on Simon’s shoulders.”
Michael pushed at the hollow sickness congealing in the pit of her stomach. “He isn’t the only reason I’d stay. I thought that was obvious when I asked you the question.”
There was a pause. “I can’t be your reason either.”
He made a move to touch her but Michael cut him off with a glance at her watch. Being in love with Hudson was having an inverse effect on her: she could hardly bear to be touched by him now. She stared at the illuminated face of her wristwatch like it was a beacon. This was not the time to fall apart. She had all the lonely hours ahead to do that.
“Ten to eleven. Barbara will be climbing the walls.”
Hudson nodded. “I better leave you to it.”
She flashed him a smile, hoping to convey that there were no hard feelings but Hudson turned away, awkward and distant, and walked down the hall. Michael watched him go, finding it hard to believe this was the same man who had touched her so intimately the night before.
I can’t be your reason.
Michael paced in front of the phone. For all her bravado, the idea of starting over in a new career terrified her. Maybe she was too old. She didn’t have the guts to go it alone anymore. If Hudson had been just a little bit encouraging, this would have been an easy call to make.
“What is best for me?” she demanded of the dark.
The answer sounded inside of her: Hudson Grace. He was best for her. Being with him and Simon had expanded her world. She was a better person; more like the woman she remembered being before the soap opera and fame.
Except the man who was best for her wasn’t offering any clues the feeling was mutual. You’ve got to be pretty commitment phobic to fall for a guy who is even more of a phobic than you are, Michael thought wryly. That’s what her shrink would tell her, anyway. She used to have a boyfriend, a great job and a fabulous townhouse. Since meeting Hudson, she’d been dumped twice, was in danger of losing her job and currently homeless. As far as Michael was concerned, all those books and magazines she’d read on the joys of falling in love were written by con artists. Love was a joke. And she felt like the punchline.
Michael balled her hand into a fist and thrust it at the ceiling. “Michael Shannon, you’ve never made a decision for your life based on what a man wanted for his life and you are not going to start now. First you were going to take the job and stay in Mandrake F
alls for a man—and now you’re thinking of leaving Mandrake Falls because of a man? This is your career and your future. Now, what are you going to do?”
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and listened.
Minutes later, Michael picked up the receiver and punched in the first number Hudson had written down. She pitched her voice low when Joanie picked up at the other end. “Hi Joanie, Michael here. Are they still there?”
Thirty minutes and two phone calls later, Michael sat in the dark wondering what she had just done.
~
“IS HE HERE?”
Michael turned an icy gaze on Hudson. “I beg your pardon?” She packed a folded red sweater into her suitcase on top of the jeans and slacks. After she had got off the phone with Barbara, she made a few more calls before returning to her room to pack. She was almost finished when Hudson appeared in the doorway, looking disheveled and handsome and out-of-sorts.
He should be, she thought. He’s an idiot. “What do you want?”
“Simon isn’t on the couch and he isn’t in his bed. I thought he might be in here with you.”
Michael’s determination to distance herself from Hudson flew out of her head. Fear rose in her chest. “He isn’t here. He was still asleep on the couch when I left the living room to go pack. That was about ten minutes ago. Where could he have gone?”
Hudson moved down the hall and through each room in the cabin with long, decisive strides. “He’s not here. He must have gone outside. He did this once before in the spring—took it in his head to walk to town. I was in the kitchen. I didn’t even know he was gone.”
“But it’s cold outside—and dark. There’s three feet of snow on the ground. He wouldn’t go out in the snow, would he?”
Hudson pawed through the coats hanging on the pegs at the front door. “His coat’s not here. And his boots are missing. It’s been ten minutes you said? He couldn’t have got far.” Hudson was shoving his arms into his parka as he spoke. “I’ll find him. He’ll be fine. It’ll be fine.” He pulled on his boots and grabbed a flashlight from the hook on the wall.
From the look on his face, the situation was anything but fine. Michael didn’t have to be told why—she snatched up her black parka. “I’m coming with you.”
He was already out the door leaving a gust of cold air in his wake. Michael shoved her feet into the dreaded boots, wincing when her blister rubbed against the stiff leather. She bolted from the cabin, slamming the door behind her and ran to catch up with Hudson. He had reached the pickup truck and was searching the cab. Hudson handed her an extra flashlight. “Sometimes he likes to hide in the truck,” he explained. “I thought maybe....”
She flicked on the flashlight and swung the beam over the surrounding darkness. The night sky was icy cold with stars. The new moon cast a flimsy sheen over the snow. God, it was cold. A little boy wearing a tee-shirt and underwear couldn’t survive long in this even with a jacket. Toby Dart almost lost his feet and he was dressed for the weather.
“Simon!” she screamed uncontrollably.
Hudson’s hands clamped her shoulders and he faced her squarely. “You cannot panic. Simon needs us to stay calm to find him as quickly as possible. Remember he’s depending on us to solve the problem. And we’re going to, right?”
She nodded rapidly. The muscles in her face were numb. She thought of Simon needing her and it did help focus her mind and the panic ebbed. “What do we do?”
“We have to think like a three-year-old. He’s gone outside for a reason; to go to the store for pajamas, to see Santa—wait. He wanted to go to Kikel’s house.” Hudson slowly turned and met her eyes. “He’s gone to see you. He thinks you left for New York already because he was asleep when you came home. He’s gone to visit you.”
The two beams of their flashlights swung and joined in the direction of the plowed road that led to the main highway. There were no streetlights and the snow was banked high on either side of the road after the storm. No sign of a little boy.
“You take the left bank, I’ll take the right. Don’t rush. He’ll be hard to see in the dark even with your flashlight.”
“And if we don’t find him?”
“We call 911.”
Michael took a breath to steady her pulse. She did as she was instructed, calling and listening for a response and watching the roadside for any sign of movement. With each passing second, she told herself he must have got tired and laid down. She reasoned he’d fallen asleep in the snow and couldn’t hear them. Where was he?
Bitter anger rose up in her. Why didn’t Hudson reassure the boy Michael would see him in the morning? What harm could it have done to tell Simon that she hadn’t gone out of his life like every other woman Hudson had brought home? Was Hudson so dead set against loving her that he couldn’t bear to let his nephew get attached to her either?
Hudson had disappeared in the dark ahead on the opposite side of the road. The beam of his flashlight bobbed over the high bank of snow. Ten minutes had crawled by since they left the cabin. The three-year-old had been exposed to the frigid night air for at least twenty minutes. Bare legged. No hat or mittens. How long did he have before—
Frostbite. Hypothermia. Death.
Panicked, Michael forgot all about moving slowly and charged up the snow bank in her search area. She instantly sank to her calves in the high drift. Michael flailed and struggled to get free, screaming into the dark abyss. “Simon! Simon! I’m here! It’s Michael! I haven’t left you! Please answer me. Please.”
Every second that passed and he didn’t answer felt like a lifetime and her fear rose until she was almost sobbing with it. “Simon! Simon!”
Shaken, Michael slumped over sobbing—useless, utterly useless. She couldn’t keep her cool. She couldn’t protect him. The boy was in danger and she didn’t have the courage to deal with it. This is what Hudson was talking about. He knew soon as it got too hard, she’d bail. Living things couldn’t be entrusted to her care. Look at what happened to those goldfish she got for her thirtieth birthday. The guy at the pet store said he’d never seen anything like it.
She raised her eyes to the star-studded sky.
It was too late to walk away. Simon was in her heart and if anything happened to him, she’d never know joy again. That was the truth and it scared the hell out of her. She pulled her legs one at a time out of the snow bank, fuelled by a power she didn’t know she had and crawled down the bank to the other side. If Simon had climbed the bank, he’d be hidden from the road by the high drift and maybe that’s why they couldn’t see him. Michael could hear Hudson calling Simon’s name. He had the same edge to his voice that she had heard in hers. He was starting to panic too.
She swung her flashlight across the dark expanse of snow that marked the beginning of the field. In the summertime, this wasteland would be filled with flowers and butterflies. On this winter night, it was filled with glittering snowflakes that caught the blue beam of her flashlight and twinkled with icy charm. There was no sign of the little boy.
Michael was about to turn back when a scrap of yellow cloth fluttered in her peripheral vision, just long enough to strike her as odd. In what felt like a slow motion sequence, she turned to examine the phenomenon head-on.
A child’s snow jacket.
She had put it on him before taking him to daycare this morning. It seemed an age ago, Simon’s lifetime and hers. Michael almost threw up the fear that knotted in her stomach as she drew closer to the fluttering yellow blob. It was Simon. Curled in a ball, his thumb stuck in his mouth. The three-year-old was unconscious. Michael broke down sobbing, pushing through the snow to reach him.
“Hudson! He’s here! Come quickly! Oh god, oh Simon, wake up. Please wake up, sweetie.” Get him close, against your skin. He needs body warmth. She clawed open the zipper on her parka and pulled him up against her chest, taking care to cover his legs but not rub or chafe his frostbitten skin. She hoisted him up under his rump like a baby kangaroo in a pouch. The boy was a dea
d weight in her arms.
Michael fought for a foothold in the snow and began scaling the bank to the top. The hard physical labor made her feel better. Just the sheer discomfort of the cold and the effort soothed something raw inside her. Her heart was hammering in her chest; her skin was slick with sweat. Simon was silent inside the parka but her body would bring up his core temperature, wouldn’t it? There was still hope. How long did it take for hypothermia to kill a person? She stumbled and quickly righted herself, dangerously close to tumbling down the drift. Michael dug in, clawing the bank to reach the top.
She reached the crest and sat down before she could sink in the drift, spreading her weight over the fragile crust of snow that was just sturdy enough to hold her. Gingerly balancing Simon in her arms, Michael pushed off with one hand and slid down the bank on her rear to the road.
The road was dark, cold and lonely. She had lost her flashlight when she’d picked up Simon. “Hudson!” she gasped. “Hudson, we’re here. I can’t do this alone ... oh god, where are you?” Michael broke down sobbing, clutching the lifeless boy to her chest.
A small icy hand poked out from under the parka and patted her cheek comfortingly. “I be good boy, Kikel.”
She peered through her tears and the dark to see Simon blinking up at her. His thumb was stuck in his mouth.
Michael threw her head back and wailed, loud howling sobs of relief that carried over the fields and forest. She rocked and hugged his small body to her. “You are a good boy, Simon. You’re the best boy I know.”
Nodding, Simon closed his eyes, falling into another sleep while his body was wracked with violent shudders. His core body temperature was rising but she needed to get him back to the cabin as fast as possible. The boots had protected his feet but she was extremely worried about the exposure to his legs. She’d become a veritable encyclopedia on frostbite and hypothermia since the Toby Dart rescue.
“Hang on to me, sweetie.” She struggled to her feet, lifting him with her.
Hudson’s flashlight swung into view. He was running toward them with a speed that stuck Michael as dangerous given how icy the road was.
The Way Home: Winter (Mandrake Falls Series Romance Book 3) Page 16
