Head Over Heels

by Crystal B. Bright

  “Florida, right? Spring training. I would think—”

  He cut her off. “Look at what I sent you. I’ll give you a couple of weeks to work your magic.”

  “What? You don’t trust I can do this in a day?” She cocked a smile at the corner of her mouth.

  “I trust you can do anything. I wanted to give you time because of your son.”

  Hearing Frank bring up her child sent a nervous, creeping feeling to her stomach. She never brought up her personal life at work, fearing her colleagues would hold it against her.

  “I’ll be fine.” She turned to leave.

  “I’m sure you will be. I know basketball season hasn’t started yet. Maybe you can let his father—”

  This time Kari cut off Frank. “I’ll report back with any news.” She stepped up her pace. “Don’t let anyone get that office space.”

  “You ready?” Chelsi held up her purse. “There’s a new place they say is a hot spot for Redskins players.”

  “Rain check.”

  Too wound up to get in an elevator, she took the ten flights of stairs down to the basement garage and burst through the door. She hurried to her car. The entire ride she thought about several things—her job, the promotion, the money, Thane, her child.

  By the time she got home, Kari felt like electricity pulsed through her body.

  “You’re home earlier than I thought.” Reagan stood from the dining room table.

  The affable Filipino woman who had been working for Kari for three years picked up her cup and plate. She carried them into the kitchen.

  “You’re home.” Michael held up his hands.

  “Hi, baby.” She embraced her son, a great reason to skip the drink and rush home.

  He smelled like cookies, milk, and grass.

  “Been playing outside today?” She rubbed her hand over his head. She’d allowed him to grow his hair out a little.

  Small, tight curls covered his head. Kari had convinced herself she’d let him grow his hair to a small Afro because of the cooler temperatures, not so he wouldn’t look like his father. Too bad his hair couldn’t cover up the similarities. Besides the same golden-brown skin tone, Michael’s wide brown eyes held the same shape as his dad’s, along with his button nose and full lips. Kari had to admit it. She’d birthed a miniature version of Jarrod Townsend.

  “How did you know what I did?” The child glared at Reagan, who raised her hands in the air.

  “I haven’t talked to your mother today.” Reagan shook her head.

  “I can smell it on you, sweetie. You smell like grass and dirt and earthworms.” Kari sniffed against his ear, which sent the child into a laughing fit.

  “You can’t smell worms.” Michael giggled and tucked his chin down toward his tiny chest. When she stopped smelling him, he continued. “I was practicing.”

  “Practicing what?” Kari took off her jacket and hung it in the closet next to the front door.

  “Basketball.” He picked up a cookie from his plate and nibbled on it. “You think I could be as good as Daddy?”

  Kari had to choose her words carefully. She never wanted to be the kind of bitter mother to talk ill about her child’s father. At the time she’d conceived Michael, Kari had been in love with Jarrod—or what she’d thought had been love. What the hell did she know at sixteen? She knew that Jarrod had the best hook shot in their high school. She’d recognized back then he would go places. When he promised to marry her and take her with him when he made pro, she believed him.

  Kari should have seen the writing on the wall. As soon as she told him she’d missed her period, he started distancing himself from her. When she confirmed her pregnancy on his eighteenth birthday, he questioned if the child could be some other man’s, as though at sixteen she could be that free and loose with her body. By the time she gave birth to Michael, Jarrod had signed a contract with the Lakers and left her high and dry.

  “Honey, I believe you can be anything you want to be.” She smiled to mask her pain. When she glanced up at Reagan, she saw her shaking her head. “Did you finish your homework?”

  “Yep.” He held up his paper.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I mean, yes, ma’am.” He turned to Reagan. “I hardly needed any help, right?”

  Reagan nodded. “That’s right. And they’re teaching them a lot of stuff now. He had algebra. What teacher gives a ten-year-old algebra?”

  “One who has a mother who insisted on it.” She winked at Reagan. She returned her attention to her child. “Will you go into your room while Reagan and I have a chat?”

  He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.” Before leaving, he picked up another cookie from his plate then ran off, giving Kari and Reagan some privacy.

  “What’s up?” Reagan asked as soon as Michael ducked into his room.

  “I need to go out of town for a while. I’m trying to secure a new client.” Kari removed her gold hoop earrings from her lobes but left the small diamond studs in her second piercing.

  “Really? Who?” Reagan gripped the back of one of the dining room chairs and stared at her with a look of childlike anticipation, complete with wide eyes.

  Kari delighted in Reagan’s excitement. Kari knew the day she interviewed Reagan to be Michael’s nanny that she would get along with her. Reagan had answered almost every question with a sports reference.

  “Thane Wells.” Kari stared at Reagan for her reaction.

  Reagan blinked. “Whoa. You swing for the fences, don’t you?”

  Kari smiled. “More like my boss does. He made the suggestion.” She stepped out of her shoes and carried them. “I’d like to meet the man.” This time she wanted to be face-to-face with him and not look at him from across the room and hope for more.

  “I’m sure you would.” Reagan winked.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “You talked about him when he was still in the minor leagues. You knew even then that he was going to do something great.”

  Kari remembered her business infatuation with him years ago. She remembered thinking how great it would be to watch him train…among other things. Learning his brothers also excelled in sports had intrigued her even more. A family of athletes. The women in their town never had a chance.

  “I’ll need that enthusiasm when I try to convince him to switch to a new agent.” She leaned against the wall.

  “Not a problem. Wear something low cut with a high slit.”

  Kari sighed.

  Reagan held up her hand. “Hey, I know you don’t do business that way. But if the gossip magazines are right, he’s a regular Casanova.”

  “I could care less who he beds each night as long as he wants me representing his interests.” Kari swallowed hard to choke back the lie she told.

  Curiosity plagued her like a lot of straight women and gay men when they looked at Thane Wells. She wanted to see what kind of game he had. She couldn’t be selfish anymore. She had a child to think about now.

  “Tell me what you would like me to do.” Reagan wiped down the table where Michael had sat.

  “Looks like he’s in Virginia Beach right now.” Kari still couldn’t figure out why Thane wouldn’t be down in Florida for spring training. Maybe he decided he didn’t need to train. Her stomach lurched at the thought of him being that arrogant.

  “That’s good for you. Short drive instead of flying.” Reagan nodded and headed back into the kitchen.

  “You think you can stay here with Michael for a week? I’m hoping it won’t take that long.”

  Reagan screwed up her face before she answered. “Can you give me a couple of days? I need to corral the home team to let them know what I’ll be doing.”

  Kari nodded. “Of course. I need to break the news to Michael.”

  She hated spending so much time away from home. She didn’t want to be so distant from her baby too long.

  “And what if it takes longer than a week?” Reagan asked
.

  “Spring break is coming up. I’ll bring Michael down to Virginia Beach with me. If I don’t sign Thane, we’ll make it a vacation.” Kari would make sure to make every moment special for Michael.

  “Does that vacation include me?” Reagan laughed.

  “Of course. Someone has to watch Michael while Thane and I run around on the beach.”

  “I know you’re joking now.”

  Kari padded over the hardwood floors to get to her room. Before she got there, she stopped at Michael’s room. With his door partially shut, she peeked through to watch him at his desk on his computer. He had his back to her, and she hoped he wouldn’t catch her spying on him. He usually did.

  “Mom, what are you doing?” Michael didn’t turn around in his chair.

  She pushed the door open all the way. “Making sure you’re not looking at anything dirty on the Internet, like anything to do with the Dallas Cowboys or the New York Yankees.” She covered her mouth to suppress a laugh.

  “Eww! Never.” He pushed his chair back. “But look at this.”

  Kari walked into her son’s room. It still looked like a child’s room despite his rapidly advancing age. His racecar bed had been made as she instructed him to do each day. She knew when she turned off the lights, glow-in-the-dark stars and moons would radiate from his ceiling and walls. She couldn’t bring herself to look at the posters of Jarrod Townsend covering her son’s walls—their son’s walls.

  Michael looked up to the man who rarely visited him. When he did, Jarrod made a production out of it, offering expensive gifts and taking Michael to places she could only dream to take him one day. One iconic poster had Jarrod making a radical jump shot from what seemed like the half-court line and flying through the air to the basket. No doubt about it. Jarrod had become a legend…to fans and his son. Kari would never look at him as the man she thought she saw as a teenager.

  “What is it, baby?” Kari stood behind Michael’s chair and looked over his head to his computer screen.

  When she saw Jarrod’s image, she choked down her instant response to gag.

  “Dad is going to be doing an exhibition show in New York in a couple of weeks.” Michael pointed to the screen.

  “Really? Did your father send that to you?” Kari stroked Michael’s hair.

  “No. I did a search on him and saw it.”

  She nodded. She wouldn’t fill in the blanks for her child.

  “He’ll be here on the East Coast near us.” He clasped his little hands together, almost in prayer form.

  “He’ll be working.” Kari didn’t want him getting his hopes up, especially if Jarrod had no plans of seeing him.

  “Do you think he’ll come by to see me?” His brown eyes held so much hope and innocence.

  “I don’t know, sweetie.” She crouched down and placed her earrings in her shoes for a moment. She held her son’s hands in hers. “Listen. I have to go away for work in a few days, so you’ll be here with Reagan. I should be gone for about a week, maybe less. Is that going to be okay?”

  Michael shrugged. “Sure. Where are you going this time?”

  “Virginia Beach.” She watched the excitement cover his face. “If I’m there longer than a week, I’ll bring you down with me and we can make a vacation out of it. What do you think of that?”

  “That would be so cool. You think Dad will come down with us?”

  Kari’s smile slipped down her face. “I’ll ask, but you know how busy your dad is with the team and all.” And his other children and other women.

  Had Kari really been that blind and stupid not to see the snake she’d allowed to use her? She’d believed every one of his tired lines. Only half of them came true. He had become a basketball player for a professional team. He had become a millionaire from the sport. He hadn’t married her and taken her and their son with him like he’d promised.

  “But you’ll ask him, right?” The expectation in Michael’s eyes couldn’t be broken.

  She picked up her items. “Yes. I promise.” Then she kissed the top of his head. “An hour on the computer and that’s it.”

  “Aw, Mom.” His little shoulders slumped down like his whole world had crumbled.

  “I know. Your life is so hard.” She got to the door and turned to him. “I love you, little slugger.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know.” He went back to the computer and fixed his stare on Jarrod’s picture.

  Yes, Kari would need to secure this deal with Thane. How else could she compete with Jarrod and his fame without bringing in his kind of money? She would have to convince Thane he needed change in his life. Kari would have to prove that he needed her. Time to get to work.

  Chapter 4

  Numb. For the last couple of days since Gunnar had flown down to Florida to break the news to Thane about their mother, Thane felt empty. He had immediately packed up all his belongings that he brought to the hotel and hopped on a plane with Gunnar. He waited a day to call the team’s coaches and manager. In his conversation, he couldn’t choke out the word dead.

  The morning of her funeral, Thane stood off on his own. He didn’t want to be there. Being there meant accepting the fact that Queen Elizabeth Sommerville, matriarch of the family, pillar of the community, and the best chocolate chip cookie maker ever would never talk to him again, would never give him sage advice to follow, would never embarrass him with questions about his personal life. As he felt his throat tightening, he lowered his head and leaned against a back wall.

  When he did manage to look up, he caught sight of his brothers, both with their fiancées. Thane remembered Eboni Danielson. He didn’t know she’d cut her hair short. It made him wonder if she’d done it because Gunnar had shaved his head, or had Gunnar copied her?

  Eboni gripped Gunnar’s hand and stood by his side. She’d even picked them up from the airport. After giving Thane a polite greeting, Eboni had turned her full attention and love—evident from the way she looked at him—to Gunnar. In turn, his strong, pigheaded, older brother had felt comfortable enough later that day to cry on her shoulder, and she’d wept on his. Gunnar probably thought Thane hadn’t seen him expressing his grief. His tough brother had gone out to the backyard at their mother’s home to let loose his emotions. It didn’t look like Eboni had said anything to him. She held him. Thane had wrapped his arms around his body, craving that same attention.

  His gaze fell on Gideon. As usual, Gideon had tried playing peacemaker by offering Thane a bed in his home. Thane had turned down the offer, especially after hearing that Elizabeth had been at his house when she collapsed. He didn’t want to see the place where his mother had been before her final trip to the hospital. It had been hard enough returning to her home. He only did that because Eboni had taken him and Gunnar there. As soon as he could, he called for a cab to take him to a hotel.

  At a time like this, he would have thought being around family would help him. Instead, constant reminders of how they became a family hit him over the head. Elizabeth had loved them unconditionally. Thane didn’t know if he could feel love of any kind again.

  Thane could barely take in the church surroundings. His gaze returned to Gideon and his significant other. Like Gunnar and Eboni, Gideon and Janelle stayed by each other’s sides. Considering his middle brother walked with a cane thanks to his recent knee surgery, he really needed the support. Janelle kept him propped up especially when Gideon broke down emotionally.

  Elizabeth lay in an all-gold casket. She would have wanted it that way. Gunnar asked Thane to pick out her final outfit. Thane had stood in front of his mother’s closet, looking through her extensive wardrobe and not being able to find suitable attire to bury his mother. How the hell could anyone do that?

  Thane found a dress that their mother had made. Gunnar said she’d told him she planned on wearing it to an upcoming event. It seemed appropriate she be buried in the final garment she created.

  Gideon had outfitted the entire church cathedral
area with flowers. Calla lilies and roses surrounded Queen. The whole scene looked good enough for royalty. Janelle had helped him the entire time. She’d arranged a lot of the bouquets and carried many of them in from the delivery vans. Each time Gideon had tried helping her, she stopped him, no doubt afraid he would injure himself even more.

  Thane wanted someone like that in his life, someone who would look out for him, someone who would be his partner.

  Gideon hobbled over to Thane at the back of the church. Thane wiped his face and kept his arms crossed over his chest.

  “How are you holding up, man?” Gideon raised his hand like he wanted to put it on Thane’s shoulder.

  No. Thane didn’t want to feel anything from anyone right now. He moved away from his brother. The stabbing pain he felt in his stomach reminded him that this stress didn’t help his condition. As much as he wanted to down some antacid to help calm it, he didn’t need to do anything to alert his brother of his ongoing issue.

  “Maintaining. You?” Thane nodded toward Gideon’s leg. “Shouldn’t you sit down?”

  Gideon almost smiled. “Now you sound like Mom.”

  Thane swiped the back of his thumb under his nose. If he continued talking to Gideon, he wouldn’t be able to stop the tears that threatened to erupt.

  “Before they open the doors to let people in, the funeral director wanted to know if you want some time alone with Mom.” Gideon nodded toward the front of the chapel.

  Thane looked toward the area. It seemed so far away from them, like her body sat in another building, like it would take him an hour to walk to her and see her face one last time.

  Thane hadn’t shared with his brothers that last night he’d spent some time with their mother at the funeral home, talking to her still, lifeless body like she could hear him and respond. He talked to her like old times. He missed hearing her quick, witty responses, and her touching his hand.

  During his visit, Thane noticed how the funeral home managed to give Elizabeth her trademark smile. He’d made sure to perfectly press the outfit he brought for her. He’d written a letter and managed to tuck it into her pocket.