by Arlene James
Lawton squeezed his son’s shoulders. Calvin’s father was deceased, and his plump, graying mother was worn out from raising three older daughters and Calvin on her own. She obviously welcomed even a single morning’s respite and any male influence she could find for her son.
“We’ll have to hurry home from church,” Charly announced, “but Ponce will be ready.” Though the expression on her son’s face didn’t change by so much as a flicker, she knew that he was very pleased.
“See you guys tomorrow, then,” Darren said, dancing away.
Ponce slipped his hand into hers and asked softly, “What’ll you do?”
Charly smiled. “Paint my toenails,” she decided suddenly. “Soak in a hot tub, give myself a facial, read a good book.”
He wrinkled his nose in an expression of mild distaste, then sighed as if to say she could surely come up with something more fun. Charly laughed. Ponce smiled, and she knew he was already planning his afternoon in the park with “the guys.”
Money was a fine thing, but Darren quickly learned that the fun a couple guys could have with three kids, a ball of twine and a handful of dollar kite kits was priceless. Lawton brought the kites along, five of them. As he slid into the front seat of the sedan, he grinned at Darren and said, “For after that special practice.”
“Aw, we can practice soccer anytime,” Darren replied flippantly.
Lawton chuckled. “I didn’t think you were serious about that.”
Kental had definitely inherited his tall, athletic build from his father, but not his ebullient, chatty personality. Lawton was a quiet, deep man who seemed comfortable with himself and everyone around him. Darren liked him immensely but had been surprised when he’d invited himself along on this outing.
The park was crowded, the weather being fine if a bit chilly, and the boys joined the throng on the playground while Lawton and Darren snapped together the kites. “The slats were made of wood when I was a boy,” Lawton commented idly, holding up a thin, square, plastic tube.
“My sister and I made sails out of painted newspaper,” Darren said, pulling the plastic sheeting into place over the plastic frame.
“You weren’t always rich, then,” Lawton said evenly.
“Nope.”
Lawton tied on a plastic tail and asked bluntly, “So how’d you do it? I mean, you’re not smug about it, but it’s obvious you’re the man with the money.”
Darren sent him a level look. “Want the truth?” Lawton nodded. “Luck. Pure luck. Right place, right product field, right time.”
“Maybe luck started it,” Lawton said doubtfully, “but you must’ve made the right decisions and worked real hard to get where you are.”
“Yeah, I have,” Darren admitted unabashedly.
“Me,” Lawton said with a sigh, “I made all the wrong decisions. Dropped out of high school to get married when Shemetra got pregnant with our oldest girl. Not that I don’t love my wife and kids, you understand, but the only way to make money in construction, which is all I know, is to own the business, and that takes money.”
“Maybe you should consider a start-up loan.”
Lawton snorted. “Yeah, right. What bank is gonna take a chance on me? I don’t even own the house I live in, got no credit—though no debt, either, I’m glad to say—and Yolanda is talking about college.” He shook his head regretfully. “She’s smart as a whip, that girl, tenth in her class, but tenth doesn’t translate into much scholarship money.”
Darren studied Lawton intently. Everything he knew about the man told him that Lawton was a caring, concerned father doing the best he could in his circumstances, and Darren knew that he had the power to change those circumstances. “Tell you what you do,” Darren said carefully, “you put together a plan, what kind of jobs you expect to find and where you’ll find them, how many employees you’ll need, what equipment, how much money it will take to get through the first six months or so, and if it’s reasonable, workable, I’ll back you for a percentage of the profits.”
Lawton sat there for several seconds just staring at him, but Darren could see the wheels spinning behind his dark eyes, the plans forming. Finally Lawton grinned. “Looks like my lucky day finally came.”
Darren smiled, and they each went back to kite building.
By the end of the afternoon, Darren felt happy and relaxed. Calvin had lost two kites, even though the second had been tied to his wrist. The boys had giggled and tussled and generally run themselves ragged. Their clothing was stained with powdered sugar and brightly colored syrup from the funnel cakes and drinks with which they’d stuffed themselves. Ponce had stood on Darren’s shoulders to extract his own errant kite from the clutches of a tree and accepted a boost at a water fountain. Later, too exhausted to move, he’d leaned against Darren as they sat on a bench gathering their strength, then he’d allowed Darren to pull him onto his lap to make room for Calvin.
On the way home, Darren dropped off Calvin first. Before leaving Lawton and Kental in front of their rented house not far from the practice field, he made an appointment with Lawton on an evening at the end of the coming week. He drove Ponce across town in silence, thinking that the boy had fallen asleep in the back seat. He was very surprised, then, when Ponce suddenly said, “You don’t have to take me places just ’cause you like my mom.”
Darren glanced into the rearview mirror, saw nothing and pulled over to the side of the street. Sliding the transmission into park, he turned in his seat to look over his shoulder at Ponce. “You seem to be saying that you think I don’t like you.”
Ponce looked away. “You like my mom,” he repeated accusingly.
“I’m wild about your mom,” Darren admitted bluntly. “But what makes you think I don’t like you?”
Ponce shrugged. “You wouldn’t take me to the park if you didn’t like my mom.”
“I wouldn’t have even met you if I didn’t like your mom,” Darren pointed out. “I got involved in this whole soccer thing just so I could get to know your mom, and because of that I met you and Calvin and Lawton and Kental and all the rest of the kids. And now I have a lot of new friends, and I like your mom even more than I did before. So now tell me why you think I don’t like you.”
“’Cause I’m in the way!” Ponce yelled. “I’m always in the way!”
“If you think that,” Darren told him evenly, managing to keep his voice level despite the emotion wringing his heart, “you don’t really know anything about Charly or me. She loves you. She wants you. She’s doing her best to adopt you so you’ll always be part of her life. And because I care so much for her, I want that, too. You’re not in anyone’s way, Ponce. You are the way. You are the way to happiness for Charly and me.”
Ponce considered that, his round eyes growing so large that they seemed to engulf his whole face. “That don’t mean you got to take me places,” he finally mumbled.
“Well, it means I have to do something,” Darren said, letting the boy see his frustration and need. “I want Charly. You’re part of her. She needs you, and you need her. She won’t see me, even though she does like me, because it makes you uncomfortable. All I know to do, Ponce, is to help you get to know me, so you’re not afraid I’ll take your mom away from you and do bad things to you. If you can trust me, if you can like me as much as I like you, we can all be happy. But without you, nobody around here gets to be really happy.”
The boy’s high brow wrinkled. He turned his head, obviously thinking about all Darren had said. Suddenly his head snapped around and he said, “You got a lotta money, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do,” Darren admitted flatly. “And you know something, it’s good, having money. You can do a lot of good things with money, and you can have a lot of fun, but money by itself isn’t enough, Ponce. When you have a lot of money, people treat you differently. They want to be your friends for the wrong reasons, not because they know you or like you. That’s when money gets in the way, because you need someone to share it with, to use it for,
or it’s meaningless. I’m hoping that you and Charly will let me share myself with you. I need you to give me a chance, Ponce.”
The boy just stared at him. After a moment, Darren turned around and drove Ponce home.
He walked Ponce to the door, uncertain whether he’d made headway or not. Charly greeted them with nervous smiles. Suddenly animated, Ponce threw himself into his mother’s waiting arms. “We flew kites! And had funny cakes and cherry coolers, and I stood up in a tree on top of Darren.”
Charly’s brows rose at that. “What he means,” Darren explained, “is that he stood on my shoulders to get his kite out of a tree.”
“Yeah,” Ponce agreed, nodding. “It was fun! But Calvin let go two kites that went way, way up till you couldn’t even see ’em no more. Kental’s dad said they got lost in the sun.”
Darren smiled at that. Merriment twinkled in Charly’s eyes. “What about practice?”
Darren cleared his throat. “Uh, we didn’t exactly get to that.”
“I see.”
“It was all Lawton’s fault,” Darren said, chuckling. “He brought the kites.”
She laughed. “Well, boys will be boys, I guess.”
“I won’t even bother to deny it,” he said with mock solemnity. She laughed again, and he couldn’t help grinning, pleased with himself. The moment would never be better. Here goes, he thought, marveling at how nervous he felt, and plunged in. “I’m not boy enough to go alone to an animated movie, though, so maybe you guys will go with me? I want to see the movie, so I really need Ponce as an excuse.”
To his surprise and satisfaction, Ponce begged to go. “Can we, Mom? Can we? Please?”
Charly split a look between Darren and her son. “Oh, uh, I don’t think you need me. You two go.”
“No, you come, too, Mama,” Ponce pleaded. “Please. It’ll be fun!”
Darren sent the boy a grateful look, which was studiously ignored, before saying gently to Charly, “Please.”
She seemed confused, suspicious, and he was certain that she was going to refuse, but then she nodded. Relief coursed through him, making him almost giddy. He wanted desperately to reach for her, to pull her against him. Instead, he turned Ponce to him, crouched and told that boy with his eyes how grateful he was, before ruffling his hair and looping his arms about him in a loose hug.
Some of the old wariness slipped back in as Ponce stiffened slightly. Darren released him immediately and rose to his full height. With a wave and a smile, he left them there, absolutely delighted to be looking forward to an animated movie with a five-year-old and his mother. What would the society and gossip columns make of that? He could almost see the headline.
Playboy Playing Dad at Local Movie Theater.
Darren was beginning to think that it was a role at which he could excel, given half a chance. It was a chance he found that he wanted very much.
Charly couldn’t imagine why she’d done it. Just days ago she’d told him to back off, and today she’d agreed to a movie date with him and her son. What was it about Darren Rudd that she just couldn’t seem to resist? And what had happened to change Ponce’s attitude? She should be wary, and she was. Still, excitement coursed through her veins because suddenly she felt…hope.
Oh, this was foolish in the extreme. She was just looking for a broken heart, and yet she was going to that movie. She and her son were going to that movie with Darren Rudd. God help her.
Chapter Eight
They went to the movies, not just the one movie but every kid movie out there. They ate dinner in fast-food restaurants, eating amidst the chaos of playgrounds teeming with screaming children. The food was horrendous. Darren enjoyed every moment of it. He felt, oddly, as if he was really living for the first time, living not playing, and he believed he was making progress toward his goal.
As Ponce grew more comfortable with him, Charly seemed more at ease, more accepting. They shared private, adult smiles over Ponce’s childish antics, tastes and manner of speaking. She didn’t move away when Darren casually slipped his arm about her shoulders during the movie. Once or twice she took his arm as they walked.
They talked, they laughed, all three of them. Ponce fell once and hit his head. Darren was the first to reach him, and Ponce let him soothe the hurt before putting on a brave face for Charly, who just stood there, smiling and letting Darren take care of it. Darren came to believe that the boy would do anything for Charly, even accept him. That alone made Darren extremely fond of Ponce.
For Charly he felt great respect, a surprising affinity and shocking lust, even by his standards. The sight of a loose bra strap that kept slipping from beneath the sleeveless shoulder of her blouse had him painfully aroused for an entire evening. A bra strap! A very sensible, unadorned—not even a scrap of lace!—bra strap. The curve of her neck intrigued him for hours. He couldn’t keep his hands out of her hair. Her mouth mesmerized him. When she spoke, he’d get lost in the shape and movement of those rosy lips, the curl of that pink tongue, the straight, even edges of her white teeth. She was the smartest, sexiest, most endearing and utterly innocent creature he’d every met. He supposed that altogether it could comprise nothing less than love, and he had to bite his tongue from time to time to keep from blurting words she wouldn’t want to hear. Yet.
He believed in yet. He had no choice. For to believe that she would not eventually come to care for him was impossible, unbearable. He forgot that she didn’t know his real name. It hardly seemed to matter, since she knew the real him, the person he was inside and had only a nodding acquaintance with himself. She knew he was wealthy, and more than the minor executive he had seemed in the beginning. What difference did a last name make? What did it matter who he had been before, how he had played at living? All that mattered was Charly and Ponce, nothing else.
Darren was so wrapped up in the two of them that when he realized Tawny had not moved out within the time limit, he merely sighed and made a mental note to call his personal lawyer, but he couldn’t seem to be outraged or troubled. Tawny was the past. Charly and Ponce were the future. He couldn’t see anyone else or any outcome but the one he so wanted. All his creative energy, all his deepest thoughts, all his dearest plans were anchored in the two of them. Tawny was so far from his mind that he didn’t even bother to avoid her, and since she didn’t put herself in his way, he had no reason to spare her any but the most cursory thought.
He was much too happy, much too hopeful to worry about anything more than whether or not Charly would keep him at arm’s length until after the adoption was finalized, and his own patience both surprised and entertained him. The playboy had been domesticated by a bleeding-heart attorney with a loose bra strap and a too-wise adoptive son. Life was just damned good.
She was playing with fire, and she knew it, but no matter how Charly scolded herself in private, when Darren showed up, when he called, when he smiled down at Ponce and rubbed his hand over the boy’s head, all her resolve evaporated. It was so easy to be with Darren, even for Ponce. She asked him one evening if he liked Darren now, and he glanced at her, shrugged and said, “Yeah, sure. He’s a good guy.”
“It doesn’t bother you that he comes around all the time?”
Ponce shook his head. His eyes narrowed slightly, and he grinned, waggling a finger at her. “You like him.”
“Does that bother you?”
He bit his lip and admitted, “A little bit. But it’s all right ’cause I’m not in the way.”
“Of course you’re not in the way! You could never be in the way.”
“I know.”
“I love you.”
“I know.” She put her arms around him. He snuggled into the crook of her arm and looked up at her. “You need me,” he said matter-of-factly.
She tapped the end of his nose. “That’s right. How did you know?”
“Darren told me.”
Her heart stopped. “Darren?”
Ponce nodded nonchalantly and turned back to the television pr
ogram he had been watching. She didn’t have to think very long to realize that Darren had made Ponce see that he would not be shunted aside, that he was accepted, an integral part of all that went on around her. Maybe the future held more than wishful thinking for them, after all. Maybe they had more to look forward to than soccer and movies and hamburgers.
She agreed to go out with him, real dates, just the two of them. They interspersed those evenings with time spent with Ponce, and Charly had to admit, albeit privately, that Darren Rudd fitted perfectly into the scheme of their lives, especially her own.
One evening when she’d made a date to go out to dinner and a play with Darren, Ponce wanted to spend the night with Kental, but Charly felt better knowing that he and Kental would be at her house with her grandmother. Besides, it would give Darren a chance to actually meet Delphina—and Delphina a chance to meet Darren.
He arrived with flowers, dressed in a pair of fluid, dark-gray slacks and a light-gray silk sweater with short sleeves and a banded neck. Charly had chosen a simple sleeveless sheath in bright orange and a short, soft, dark-red cardigan sweater with long sleeves and a single pearl button closure. The heat in his gaze told her that she looked good.
“Granna, this is Darren Rudd. Darren, my grandmother, Delphina Michman.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am. I’ve heard so much about you.”
“Oh, and I’ve heard so much about you,” Delphina returned, glancing meaningfully at Ponce.
Darren grinned and waggled his eyebrows. “Yeah? Maybe we should compare notes sometime.”
Delphina chuckled. “Sometime.”
Charly sent her grandmother a warning glare and excused herself to hurry into the kitchen to hunt up a vase large enough to accommodate the big bouquet of tulips he’d brought. When she returned after several minutes of frantic searching with the tulips hastily arranged in a chipped vase, she found Darren crouched down with Ponce on the floor, carefully bending the axle of a tiny car so that the front wheels would turn freely.
“That’ll work as long as you don’t crash it,” he said, giving the car a shove with his index finger.
