“He is part of a family,” she retorted, grabbing the boy’s arm. “He’s part of my family.” Lexie huffed angrily. “I was crazy to let you have him,” she declared. “Let’s go, Jake,” she ordered.
Jake tried to dig in his heels. “But my things—” he protested.
“Your father will send them,” Lexie snapped. Holding on to his arm tightly, she all but dragged the boy to the door.
Anderson wanted to stop her, wanted to grab the boy and pull him away from this woman he regarded as a she-devil, but he refused to turn his son into the living embodiment of a game of tug-of-war.
So all he could do was appeal to her humanity, which was, he knew even as he did it, a completely lost cause. He did it anyway.
“Lexie, please don’t do this.”
“What I shouldn’t have done,” she informed him as she opened the front door, still tightly holding on to Jake, “was go out with you that night twelve years ago. That’s what I shouldn’t have done.”
And with that, Lexie stormed out of the house with Jake in tow, slamming the door so hard behind her, it shook.
Rage ate away at him.
Anderson struggled with the almost overpowering urge to go after the woman and take back his son. But that wouldn’t solve anything and if he knew Lexie, this would wind up with her getting the sheriff to come back with her and haul Jake away. The whole thing would be very traumatic for Jake and that wasn’t something he wanted to do to the boy.
And, though it cost him dearly, he didn’t want Jake hating his mother, either. At least not on his account.
But that still didn’t keep him from wanting to strangle Lexie.
The palms of his hands itched.
* * *
The law offices of Ben Dalton were in a simple, tidy looking one story building near the center of town. The decor was on the masculine side and subtly inspired a feeling of confidence in the average person who walked through the front doors.
As Anderson came through those doors, he found himself hoping that there was something to that.
Nodding at the receptionist who presided over the office’s centrally located front desk, Anderson asked, “Is my father in?”
“He has a meeting scheduled with a client in twenty minutes,” she told him.
“Then I’ll be quick,” Anderson promised as he went past her, heading toward his father’s office.
Knocking once, he walked in before his father could tell him to enter.
Ben Dalton, tall, distinguished-looking, with a hint of gray just beginning at his temples, wore his age well. He was blessed with a poker face, but he looked surprised to see his firstborn. Anderson rarely made an appearance in his world.
“Something wrong on the ranch?” Ben wanted to know, saying the first thing that came to mind.
“Only in a general sense,” Anderson answered. He paused for a second, trying to get his thoughts in order. His brain felt as if it had been haphazardly tossed in the air and he was having trouble thinking. “Technically, this has nothing to do with the ranch. Just with me,” he added before finally making his appeal, “Dad, I need your help.”
The slight crease in his brow was the only indication that Ben Dalton was concerned. Very concerned. “What is it?”
“I know that this isn’t the kind of case you normally handle,” Anderson prefaced, “but I need help in getting custody of my son.”
Ben squared his shoulders just a tad. This was still a sore point between them, Anderson knew. Not that Anderson had a son, but that he had known he had one for a year and hadn’t said anything to his father until the boy had suddenly turned up on the ranch, forcing introductions to be made.
Ben raised his chin. “You mean the grandson I didn’t know about until just recently?”
Anderson pressed his lips together. He didn’t want to get into that squabble right now. This was far more important. “Yes, that one.”
Ben nodded, as if tucking what was being said into its proper corners. “Before we go on, is there anything else you’re keeping from me?”
Anderson sighed. Obviously he wasn’t going to be able to just set this aside until later. “Dad, I didn’t tell you about Jake when I found out because there wasn’t anything I could do to even get Lexie to give me visitation rights. I thought telling you about a grandson you weren’t even allowed to see was cruel, so I decided not to say anything.” He set his mouth hard. “This isn’t the time to make me pay for that.”
“No,” Ben agreed, “You’re right, this isn’t.” He turned his attention to the immediate problem at hand. “It’s going to be an uphill battle,” he warned his son. “You don’t need the extra pressure of my needling you. Let me ask around,” Ben proposed, “and see what I can come up with.” His face softened with understanding, as if speaking as one father to another. “She just appeared out of the blue and took him, huh?”
Anger creased his features. “Like he was a piece of forgotten luggage she swooped in to pick up,” Anderson said in utter disgust.
Ben shook his head. “I certainly hope your taste in women has improved since then.” Before Anderson could respond to that, he held up his hand to silence him. “While I’m looking into this, you might try running the details by your sister,” Ben suggested.
Anderson’s thoughts were still colliding into one another. For a moment, he didn’t follow his father. “Which one?”
“The one who’s a lawyer,” Ben prompted. “Now that she’s graduated, Lindsay’s joined the firm. She’s already got a case,” he said with a measure of fatherly pride. “The parents of that baby who was hospitalized after contracting RSV at Just Us Kids day care are looking into the possibility of filing a lawsuit. Your sister’s investigating whether the day care center followed proper procedures or if that baby getting sick is a direct result of their negligence.”
Realizing that he’d digressed, Ben changed direction. “She’s set up her office down the hall and is already hunting for more clients,” he told his son. “In the meantime, I’ll make some calls about your options and get back to you with what I come up with.”
Anderson was already heading out the door to see his sister. “Thanks, Dad.”
“Thank me after I come up with something,” Ben advised as he picked up his phone.
As he headed down the hall, Anderson discovered that Lindsay’s door was open. Looking in, he saw that the inside of the small office looked as if it had been hit by a hurricane.
Hurricane Lindsay, he thought with a smile.
Knocking on the door frame, Anderson walked in as his sister looked over her shoulder in his direction. “Dad said I should look in on you.”
Lindsay froze. At twenty-five, the five-foot-five young woman with her long brown hair and penetrating blue eyes was the baby of the family. The position came with perks as well as with a stigma.
“What did I do now?” she questioned wearily.
Anderson shrugged. “Nothing that I know of,” he told her honestly. “Dad thought that you might be able to help me.”
She was no more enlightened than she’d been a minute ago. “Help you how?”
“Lexie took Jake back home yesterday.” No matter how casual he tried to sound about it, saying the words still hurt.
Lindsay stopped putting leather-bound books on her bookshelves and immediately made her way over to her big brother. She threw her arms around him to embrace him in a heartfelt hug.
“Oh, Anderson, I’m so sorry,” she said, releasing him and stepping back to look at him as she spoke. “I really liked the little guy.”
“Yeah, me, too,” Anderson said heavily. “He didn’t want to go, Lindsay. Lexie practically dragged him out of the house.”
Apparently unable to imagine something so heartless, Lindsay shook her head. “You have lousy taste in w
omen, big brother.”
“So I keep being told,” Anderson responded with a sigh. And then, desperate, he got down to business. “That’s not the point, Linds. I need help in getting custody of Jake.”
Far more familiar with the prospect than her father, Lindsay shook her head.
“It’s not going to be easy,” she told her brother, then got down to the specifics he would be battling. “You’re a single dad who works long hours on his ranch and has zero experience with kids,” she told him, pointing out all the things that she knew Lexie’s lawyer would ultimately cite.
“Lexie’s a single mother,” Anderson protested. From his point of view, they were both facing the same handicap.
“The key word here is not single,” Lindsay pointed out, “but mother. I don’t like it,” she admitted, “but unless Lexie has done something really awful that can be held against her, the judge will be inclined to award custody to her if that’s what she’s asking for.
“But let me look into this,” she told Anderson once she saw her brother’s dejected expression. “Maybe I can come up with some last-ditch plan. Give me a little bit,” she asked.
What choice did he have, Anderson thought. Shrugging, he said, “Sure.”
What else could he do?
* * *
When Anderson heard the knock on his door later that day, his first thought was to pretend he wasn’t home. He wasn’t up to seeing anyone, or pretending that he felt like talking.
But then he thought that maybe it was either his father or Lindsay—or both—here to see him about a possible custody strategy. Doing his best to raise his spirits in order to be able to face company—even his family—he went to answer the door.
It occurred to him just a beat before he opened the door that his father or Lindsay were far more likely to call than to just show up on the doorstep even though this was the family ranch, but by then it was too late. He was already opening the door.
And looking at Marina.
He did not feel like talking to the woman. Being polite, much less friendly, required far more effort than he had to give.
“If you’re here to find out why Jake wasn’t in school today, you’re too late,” he informed her coldly. “He’s gone. His mother took him home to Chicago.”
She was here for another reason, but Anderson’s statement caught her off guard. Her heart ached for the boy. How could the woman have just dragged him away like that?
“I thought she wasn’t supposed to be doing that until the weekend.”
“Yeah, we all thought that,” Anderson responded, making no effort to hide his bitterness. “But apparently she had other ideas. So, if there’s nothing else,” he began, ready to close the door again.
But Marina deftly slipped across the threshold and into his living room. Turning to look at him, she observed, “You look awful.”
He didn’t need to be told that, he knew. “Not exactly my finest hour,” he told her crisply, then added in a voice that sounded far more forlorn, “I feel like a fool.”
“Because she took him from you?” Marina questioned. That didn’t make any sense to her. Jake’s mother coming to take the boy back to Chicago with her certainly wasn’t Anderson’s fault.
“Because I actually thought she’d had a change of heart,” he corrected. “Turns out she just needed someplace to dump Jake while she went off with her new lover. But apparently that relationship went sour pretty quickly—like so many of her other relationships—so she wanted Jake back. And she got him,” he concluded with no small bitterness.
“Just like that?” Marina questioned. It took her breath away to think about it. Didn’t the woman have any decency? She was traumatizing her own son. “How could she be so insensitive not to see that Jake was actually beginning to adjust to living here? To being happy here?” Marina protested.
Bitterness curved the corners of Anderson’s mouth downward. “Lexie only sees what she wants to see. The rest she just blocks out at will,” he recalled.
“That certainly doesn’t sound like she’d be a candidate for the world’s greatest mother,” Marina told him. There was only one important point here. “You have to get Jake back.”
Helpless, Anderson shrugged. Tell me something I don’t know, he thought darkly.
Out loud he told her, “I don’t know what else I can do. Supposedly, I have visitation rights. But if I try to get custody of Jake away from her, Lexie is threatening to revoke those visitation rights and I’ll be back to where I was a year ago. Nowhere,” he underscored angrily. “Besides,” he told her, already resigned to his fate—and hating it, “it wouldn’t be fair keeping Jake away from his mother just because I have an ax to grind with the woman.”
Was he serious? Jake’s mother sounded like she was some kind of a monster. Jake would do well to be rid of her. But Marina knew she couldn’t come out and say that, at least not yet.
“Why don’t you try to get joint custody?” she wanted to know. To her, that was the first thing she would have thought of.
“My father and sister are already looking into it for me, but to be honest, I really doubt anything will come of that. Let’s face it, with my background, if Lexie fights me on this, the court will side with her and, like I said, if she gets angry enough, she’ll pull the rug right out from under me and I won’t be able to see Jake at all. This is a case of something being better than nothing,” he told her, resigned.
Marina thought for a moment, debating saying what was on her mind out loud. Then she decided to go for it. A boy’s happiness was at stake.
Choosing her words carefully, she instantly piqued Anderson’s attention when she asked him, “What if, when you applied for joint custody of your son, your situation changed?”
Chapter Fifteen
Anderson looked at his son’s teacher, confusion, not to mention frustration over the situation he found himself in, claiming his ability to think straight.
“Exactly what do you mean by ‘changed’?” he wanted to know.
Marina spoke slowly, weighing each word as she attempted to decide if what she was about to suggest to Anderson would be welcomed—or rejected—by him. “Well, according to what you just said, it sounds like your chances of getting at least joint custody would be much better if the judge thought that you were a family man.”
By some people’s definition, just having Jake made him a family man. But he had a feeling that Marina wasn’t talking about that.
“And by family man you mean...?”
Anderson still wasn’t getting it because he was certain that she couldn’t possibly be saying what he thought she was saying.
“I mean the usual thing,” Marina replied. She was going to have to spell it out for him, wasn’t she? Okay, she thought, resigned, here goes nothing. She hit the ground running. “A two-parent household with a schoolteacher mom—”
Maybe it shouldn’t have, but the description hit him with the force of a two-by-four. He was stunned to say the least.
“Meaning you?”
“Meaning me,” she confirmed almost as an aside, and then continued laying out the scenario. “It would certainly hold some sway with a judge and give you the leverage you need to be able to get cust—”
“Wait,” he ordered, still looking at her in complete disbelief. “Are you actually saying that you would be willing to make this sacrifice for Jake? That you’d be willing to marry me so that I could get joint custody of my son?”
Yes, you idiot, that’s what I’m saying. What did you think I was saying?
But she couldn’t say the words out loud. She was afraid that Anderson would turn her down after she’d put herself on the line like this for him, or that he would accuse her of having some sort of ulterior motive. Instead, Marina asked him a question of her own.
“How would
you feel about that?” She carefully watched his expression to gauge what Anderson was thinking.
“How would I feel?” Anderson echoed incredulously.
“Yes,” she replied patiently, “That’s what I just asked.”
“How would I feel?” Anderson repeated again, stunned as well as overjoyed by the very magnitude of the sacrifice she was offering to make. “I’ll show you how I feel,” he cried.
Overwhelmed and thrilled by her offer and what it would ultimately mean for Jake, Anderson abruptly dropped his guard as well as his very controlled behavior. He literally grabbed Marina, pulled her to him and kissed her. Kissed her long and hard.
Kissed her with every fiber of the immense gratitude that throbbed within him.
“Lord, I don’t know how to thank you,” he cried, breathless.
Shaken down to her very core, Marina struggled to sound flippant and blasé rather than like someone who was very close to dissolving like hot candle wax.
“I think you just did,” she heard herself murmur.
It was a complete mystery to Marina how she could remain standing upright when it felt as if her kneecaps had been completely melted away in the heat that was generated by Anderson’s kiss.
And then, as she watched, she saw Anderson’s expression sobering, going from pure joy to solemnity. Instantly, she felt her heart sinking.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him.
All sorts of roadblocks were beginning to pop up in his head. “There’s still the problem of the no-fraternizing rule at school,” he told her.
Was that all? she thought, almost laughing out loud. “Well, that’s easy enough to solve,” she assured him.
The woman obviously had clearer insight into things than he had, Anderson thought. The tiniest spark of hope began to burn again even as he admitted, “I don’t see how.”
Anderson was too close to it, she thought. And too consumed with worry to see the actual picture. She did what she could to clear it up for him.
“If Jake’s back in Chicago, then I’m not his teacher anymore. And if I’m not his teacher, then I’m not fraternizing with the parent of one of my students, am I?” she asked, spreading her hands as if to bring her point home. “Problem solved,” she announced.
A Maverick and a Half Page 14
