A Not-So-Perfect Past

by Beth Andrews

  “Marcus,” Hayley said as she pushed through the kitchen door, her pale hair in two braids tied with pink ribbons that matched her sweater, “Mommy says you have to give me a turn.”

  Dillon couldn’t hear Marcus’s response. Whatever he said didn’t make his sister happy, though, as her little face scrunched up in a fierce frown. “But Mommy said you had to!”

  “You can have it,” Marcus said, not even looking up from his game, “as soon as I finish this level.”

  Hayley’s eyes filled with tears and Dillon’s chest tightened. Man, it was bad enough he had to deal with a pissy teenager and be watched by an overly serious nine-year-old, he didn’t need Nina’s daughter bawling while he worked, too.

  “Can I take a break?” Kyle asked.

  “Sure. I mean, you’ve already worked almost thirty minutes this morning. You must be exhausted.”

  “Cool.” He grabbed his coat and went outside.

  Dillon stared at the door. For someone who spewed sarcasm with every breath, it was funny how Kyle missed it when it was aimed at him.

  He shook his head. Guess he wouldn’t mind a quick break himself. He picked up his Thermos, crossed to the table and sat down. Both kids looked at him, but he ignored the wariness on Marcus’s face, the way Hayley edged closer to her big brother.

  “Marcus won’t let me play,” Hayley said, as if, just because he was an adult, he was somehow an authority.

  Man, was she whining up the wrong tree.

  “Mommy said it was my turn,” she continued, “and I want to play Sonic Rush.”

  He poured coffee into the Thermos’s lid and took a sip. Sonic Rush? Sounded like a grunge rock band. Or maybe a fast food chain.

  “Sorry, kid, can’t help you,” Dillon said, causing her lower lip to stick out. “Guess you’ll just have to wait.”

  Dillon reached over and opened the pastry box in the middle of the table. Donuts. He groaned. Hayley tilted her head at him.

  He cleared his throat as he studied the choices in the box, thankful that Nina always made sure they had plenty to eat. And she kept Kyle happy—and on a caffeine buzz—by making sure he had an endless supply of that yellow soda he drank like it was some sort of magical elixir.

  Dillon chose a donut dusted in powdered sugar, bit into it and grinned as thick, sweet, raspberry jelly filled his mouth. He finished it in three bites, then wiped his mouth with his hand.

  He sipped his coffee and debated whether to go for the plain cake donut or the glazed twist next.

  “We’re helping Mommy today.” Hayley smiled shyly at him. From what he’d seen, she wasn’t half as gregarious as Emma. Maybe he didn’t have to worry about her bringing up any uncomfortable subjects. Like baby making.

  “Oh, yeah? Well, you did a good job with the donuts.”

  She giggled. “We didn’t make those. We help Mommy cook at home but we can’t here ’cause of the health spector.”

  “Health inspector,” Marcus corrected without missing a beat of his game.

  Hayley’s smile widened, showing the gap where her two front teeth should be. “We usually get to go to Gramma and Papa’s house but Mommy’s mad at Papa ’cause Papa told her not to let you be here and Papa’s mad at Mommy ’cause she still let you work for her.”

  “Hayley,” Marcus said.

  “What?” she asked, all blue-eyed innocence.

  Marcus shook his head in disgust. “You can have the game now. You can use the headphones, too.”

  Hayley grabbed it. “Yay! Thanks.”

  “Don’t drop it,” Marcus ordered as Hayley climbed onto a chair.

  “I won’t,” she promised, then hooked up the headphones. Within thirty seconds, her little forehead puckered in concentration as she saved the world from whatever evil Sonic Rush battled.

  Giving him a wide berth, Marcus walked over to where Dillon had his tools lined up out of the way. Dillon picked the glazed twist and sat back. Took a bite, chewed and swallowed before saying, “I’m impressed.”

  Marcus spun to face him. “Huh?”

  “You know, with how you handled your sister.”

  “She’s such a baby. She doesn’t know…”

  “When to keep quiet?”

  Marcus stared at his shoes, shrugged one shoulder.

  Dillon polished off his donut. “I know what you’re going through. I had to watch out for my baby sister, too. She didn’t know when to keep quiet, either. Still doesn’t, if you want to know the truth. Careful,” he said mildly when Marcus ran a finger over Dillon’s nail gun.

  Marcus jumped back and shoved his hands behind him. “Sorry,” he blurted, his round cheeks red.

  “Hey, it’s no big deal.” Dillon narrowed his eyes at the kid’s reaction. Kelsey used to behave in the same way when she was young and had done something wrong. Of course, that was because she’d learned that disobeying their stepfather in any way meant a few bruises. Like the time Kelsey had been about Marcus’s age and had taken Glenn’s badge to school for Show and Tell without his permission. She’d ended up with a split lip.

  Dillon pushed the memories—and the never ending anger that went with those memories—aside. “I just didn’t want you to get hurt. You know, that whole ‘you’ll shoot your eye out’ thing.”

  “Oh.” Marcus backed up a step. Then another. “Okay.”

  “Since you’re stuck here all day,” Dillon heard himself say before he could think better of it, “you want to help me out?”

  “How?” Marcus asked.

  “I could use another set of hands tearing up this carpet and hauling it to the Dumpster. That is, if you’re interested.”

  The kid’s expression told Dillon he was more than interested. But then he glanced at the closed kitchen door. “My mom probably won’t let me. She told me and Hayley not to bug you.”

  Dillon stood. “You’re not bugging me if I ask for your help, are you?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I guess not. But she’ll probably still say no.”

  “Why don’t you let me worry about your mom?” Dillon asked, as if he didn’t already worry enough about Nina and the way he’d obviously scared her the other day.

  He’d wanted to prove to her that he was dangerous, that she should be frightened of someone like him. And he’d succeeded. A little too well. To make amends, and for his own peace of mind, he’d kept his distance from her ever since.

  The door opened and Kyle came back inside, reeking of cigarette smoke. “What’s going on?” he asked as he nudged his way between Dillon and Marcus to grab a donut.

  “I hired Marcus to work with us today,” Dillon said. “Seeing as how you could only handle one chair at a time, I figured we could use someone with a bit of muscle.”

  Kyle smirked but surprisingly kept his wisecracks to himself. “That’s cool,” he said around a huge bite of donut. “This guy—” he jerked his head in Dillon’s direction “—can use all the help he can get.”

  Cool? Dillon wouldn’t have put it quite that way.

  But Marcus had puffed up with pleasure to have some positive attention from Kyle, which was good, right? It meant Kyle could act like a human being. What wasn’t so cool was that Dillon now had to convince Nina to let her kid work alongside a juvenile delinquent and a convicted murderer.

  He would’ve been so much better off if he’d just stayed in bed today.

  THERE WERE TIMES in a woman’s life when she had to just suck it up and admit defeat.

  Nina knew all about those times. Trying times like when a three-year-old Hayley threw the mother of all tantrums in the middle of the grocery store because Nina wouldn’t buy her an ugly rubber frog she’d wanted.

  Depressing times such as when she’d subsisted on nothing but cabbage soup, water and the occasional piece of fruit only to gain three pounds.

  Hard times like after her divorce, when she’d had to ask her parents to loan her money so she could buy her kids school clothes.

  So yes, Nina was smart enough—and secur
e enough and sometimes desperate enough—to know when to quit.

  This wasn’t one of those times.

  But she really wished it was.

  Because she had a better chance of making a flourless, low-fat chocolate cake that didn’t taste like crap than she did of catching up with her increasing workload. And because she was already two hours behind schedule—and was going to be even further behind since Lacy, her assistant, called in sick with the flu.

  Nina rolled out the dough for her cinnamon rolls, grunting with the effort. If she ended up getting sick, she was going to be mighty ticked off.

  She used the underside of her wrist to rub at an itch on her cheek. Not even the Christmas CD could cheer her up. But that didn’t stop her from singing along loudly—and, okay, badly—to “Deck the Halls.”

  “Do you have a minute?”

  She jumped, lifting the heavy wooden rolling pin like a club even as her cheeks heated at being caught fa la la la la-ing. Dillon entered the room, scowl firmly in place, which did little to slow her racing heart.

  She turned the music down and looked over her shoulder at the empty kitchen before meeting his eyes. “You talking to me?”

  He stopped at the other side of the wide work counter. “Yeah, De Niro, I’m talking to you. You see anyone else here?”

  She poured brown sugar into a large, ceramic bowl. “Considering you haven’t done more than grunt a word or two at me since…”

  She pressed her lips together and kept her gaze on the cinnamon she was adding to the bowl. The book she read last night said she needed to be assertive. And if she couldn’t be assertive, it recommended taking the old fake-it-until-you-make-it approach.

  So she’d fake being in control.

  She inhaled and forced herself to look up at him. “You’ve been avoiding me since the other day. I’m just wondering what makes today so different?”

  He studied her as if he was trying to see her thoughts. “Do you have a minute or not?”

  “Sure. If you don’t mind if I keep working.” She went to the stove and added butter to a small saucepan. Flipped the burner on to low. “I’m behind.”

  She didn’t think it was possible but his frown deepened. “Where’s Little Mary Sunshine?”

  “Who?”

  “Your assistant. The redhead.”

  “Lacy?” She smiled at his description of her bubbly young assistant. “I guess she is a bit…sunny.”

  “She’s like a damn supernova.”

  “Well, not everyone can be blessed with your unenthusiastic disposition.”

  He tugged on his earlobe. “If you’re done zapping me with your clever one-liners, I’d like talk to you about your kids—”

  “Are they bothering you? I’ll get them,” she promised, wiping her hands on her apron as she walked past him, “I’m sor—”

  He stopped her with a hand to her wrist and then just as quickly let go. “They’re not bothering me. They’re good kids.”

  “Then what do you want to talk to me about?”

  “Is it okay if I give Marcus—and Hayley, if she’s bored—a few bucks to help me out? Just carrying scraps and stuff,” he said when she began to protest. “Nothing dangerous.”

  “Yeah, he leaves the dangerous stuff to me,” Kyle said as he walked in and headed straight for the soda machine. He filled a plastic cup, sneered at them, then walked out.

  Nina raised her eyebrows at Dillon. “He’s such a delight.” She crossed to the stove, turned off the burner and carried the saucepan back to her work counter. “It must be exhausting being that angry all the time.” She paused, looked pointedly at Dillon. “Well, you’d know all about that, right?”

  “I’m not angry,” he grumbled.

  “No? Then what do you call it when you stomp around here all day, scowling, only grunting at me when absolutely necessary?”

  He held her gaze. “My usual unenthusiastic disposition, remember?”

  She blushed and averted her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m just a bit…stressed.”

  Dillon ignored that. “So what do you say about the kids helping me out? Marcus seems to want to.”

  She paused in the act of rolling her dough. “You already mentioned it to him?”

  He picked up a star cookie cutter, frowned at it. “It came up.”

  “It came up or you’ve already asked him if he wanted to work for you?”

  He dropped the cookie cutter. “I asked him.”

  “I wish you hadn’t done that,” she said irritably as she wiped her hands on her apron. “If he wants to and I say no, then I have to deal with his disappointment.”

  “You afraid of being the bad guy with your kids?”

  “It’s not a matter of being the bad guy.” She covered the dough with a clean towel and grabbed a bag of pecans. Ripping it open, she sprinkled a generous amount into a baking pan. “It’s that you had no right to offer him a job—you had no right to offer him anything—without consulting me first. I have enough people in my life who either ignore what I want or run over me. And to be honest, I don’t have time to deal with adding you to that list.”

  “So you’re saying you don’t want Marcus to work for me.”

  His question was innocent enough, but for some reason, the nape of her neck tingled. “It was really…nice of you to offer, but it’s not necessary.” She grabbed a stick of butter, waved it as she spoke. “Marcus will find some way to occupy his time—he brought his video game and I have a portable DVD player and DVDs. Beside, I’m sure you have better things to—”

  “You worried about having your kid around me?”

  Her head snapped up at his sharpness. His face was expressionless, his hands relaxed by his sides but she knew he was angry—and hurt. “Of course not.”

  What worried her was Trey’s reaction to their kids being around Dillon.

  “You know what?” he said, sounding almost as snide as Kyle. “Just forget I mentioned it.”

  “Dillon, wait. I didn’t—” But it was too late. He’d already strode out of the room. Nina clenched her hands, smooshing the stick of butter. With a curse, she tossed it on the table and hurried after him.

  And walked into the room just as Dillon told Marcus, “Sorry, buddy. I’m not going to have much for you to do today after all. Maybe another time?”

  “That’s okay,” Marcus said, and even from across the room, Nina could clearly see her son’s disappointment. It seemed she was constantly letting people down.

  Especially her kids.

  And why hadn’t Dillon told Marcus the truth? Why had he accepted the blame for disappointing her son?

  Trey never had any problem placing any and all blame squarely on her shoulders. Hadn’t he let everyone know that their failed marriage was all Nina’s fault? And when Marcus or Hayley misbehaved or, God forbid, got below a B average in school, he made it clear she’d failed as a mother. Because she wasn’t disciplining them properly. Or gave in to them too often.

  Yeah, he’d been a real prince. And yet she refused to let her son do something he wanted because she was afraid of Trey’s reaction.

  He wasn’t even there and he was still controlling her.

  No more.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  MARCUS’S SHOULDERS drooped as he shuffled back to the table and took a seat next to his sister. Hayley, spellbound by the tiny video game in her hands, hadn’t looked up since Dillon had come back into the room. Out of the corner of his eye, Dillon noticed Nina approach the table, her expression determined.

  He crossed to the far corner. He wasn’t running away from Nina. Why would he? Her views of him didn’t matter. And though Marcus had been disappointed, it wasn’t his problem or his responsibility. Hell, he wasn’t responsible for anyone other than himself. Which was just how he wanted things. No ties. No commitments.

  No chance of being disappointed by people. Marcus needed to take a lesson from him.

  “Break’s over, Kyle,” he called. “Let’s get this done.”
>
  Kyle stopped beside him. “Yeah?”

  “The baseboards of these two walls need to be torn out.”

  “No problem. I’ll just yank them out with my teeth.”

  Dillon pinched the bridge of his nose. Times like this, he wished he was the praying type.

  “Or,” Dillon said, proud of his even tone, “I could show you how to use this pry bar. Your choice.”

  Kyle shrugged, which Dillon took as an affirmation. He shimmied the pry bar behind the baseboard, tapped it in with his hammer and then placed a scrap piece of plywood behind the bar to protect the wall and give the bar stability. One swift, hard tug and the baseboard popped loose.

  “Think you can handle it?” he asked.

  “Duh.” Kyle knelt down and took the pry bar from Dillon.

  “Great.” Dillon stood as Kyle struggled to tap the pry bar in place without smashing himself. Not an easy task, considering the cast on his left hand. “When you’re done, just take all the boards out to the Dumpster.”

  Luckily, Dillon couldn’t make out Kyle’s muttered response.

  He picked up his razor knife, crouched and sliced through the carpet so they could tear out manageable sections. He shifted to his left to repeat the process.

  But Nina stood next to him, blocking his progress. “Dillon, I—”

  “Apology accepted,” he grunted, using more pressure than necessary to cut through the layer of carpet and glue.

  “What makes you think I want to apologize?” she asked.

  He glanced up at her. “Don’t you?”

  She blushed and shifted her weight. “Yes.” She sighed. “I’m—”

  “Save it.” He stood and moved again, forcing her to step out of his way. Back on his knees, he cut more carpet. Her apology was part of her I’m-just-a-nice-girl-trying-to-do-the-right-thing act. “I’ve already absolved you. So why don’t we forget the whole thing?”

  But instead of taking the out he’d given her, she crouched next to him. “I know you’re angry—”

  “I’m not.”

  “Okay,” she said slowly, “hurt, then.”

  He stabbed the knifepoint through the carpet and into the wooden floor beneath. Swearing under his breath, he wrenched it loose. “To be hurt, I’d have to care what you think about me. Now, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m trying to work. And,” he continued, unable to hide his bitterness, “you wouldn’t want to get me angry would you? Who knows what someone like me is capable of.”