“Yeah,” he grumbled. “That’s me, the wisdom of Solomon. We’d better run. Dennis is probably ready to bite my head off for keeping him after hours.”
Neither of them spoke until they were safely enclosed in the elevator leading up from the garage into the building. “Is this lawyer good?” Allison asked.
“He was great when some clown brought a slander suit against me last year. The jerk was positive that a column I wrote was about him, even though I’d never met him. I had no idea who he was, and suddenly he brought a suit claiming that his wife recognized him in my column and walked out on him. Dennis not only got the suit thrown out, but he got the court to make the plaintiff pay my court costs. When you reach a level of renown, you become a target. The chump thought I’d settle quietly and he could take me for a few grand. Thanks to Dennis, that didn’t happen.”
“Can a lawyer who handles nuisance suits also handle custody battles?”
“We’ll find out, won’t we.” The elevator door opened on the third floor, and they stepped out into the foyer. Across from the elevator, a glass-enclosed entry welcomed them to Schenker, Murphy, Lopes and Associates, Attorneys-at-Law. On the other side of the glass stood an unoccupied reception area. The place looked empty, but the lights were on.
Jamie took a deep breath. He’d never had to fight for anything in his life. Either he’d gotten what he wanted without much struggle or he’d concluded that what he’d wanted wasn’t worth the effort. All of a sudden, though, he’d discovered that some things were worth fighting for. He had learned that there were things—people, relationships—he wanted so much that he would fight with all his strength, fight until he fell, fight until there was no life left in him. He would willingly die fighting for them.
One of those people was Samantha.
The other was Allison.
She started toward the doors, but he clasped her hands and pulled her back, turning her to face him. “Allison,” he whispered, gazing into her eyes. So earnest. So resolute. So unspeakably beautiful.
He yearned to kiss her, but even more, he yearned to make her understand, to find out where he stood with her, to prove to her that even though she might flunk him for missing her class, even though he looked like hell, even though he hadn’t talked to her since that spectacular weekend when they’d made love, he was worth her attention. He was a good man, and he was doing everything in his power to become a better one.
“I wanted to call you,” he said.
She lowered her eyes, waiting for him to explain.
“I kept thinking, this is my problem, not yours. I’ve got to work it out myself. I had no business dragging you into it. And I was so unsure of myself, I thought I’d better steer clear of you until I knew what I was doing.”
She lifted her gaze to his again. He studied her face, looking for a sign that she comprehended why he’d kept his distance from her.
“I thought if I went running to you for guidance, you would either tell me to grow up and take care of my problems myself or you’d give me your opinion. And then, if you were right, I’d always think it was you who’d solved this problem for me. And if you were wrong, I’d blame you. I had to deal with it myself. Can you see that?”
“Oh, yes,” she said fervently. “Yes, Jamie.”
“Unfortunately, I came up with the wrong solution. All by myself.”
“Are you sure it’s wrong?” she asked.
If he weren’t so upset, he would have laughed. “Am I sure? The minute I turned Sammy over to them, I went home, walked into her room and fell apart. It wasn’t a pretty sight, Allison. I just stared at that mobile—you know the one I got her, with the helicopters? I stared at it, and a breeze came in through the window. All the little rotors started spinning, and I went berserk. If I could have just kept reminding myself about how she kept me up all night, how she was always puking on my shirts and how she was constantly pooping in her diapers…” He was about to fall apart again, just thinking of it. “The thing is…she liked professional wrestling.”
Allison’s eyes grew round and her eyebrows arched like two horizontal parentheses. “Professional wrestling?”
“I explained it to her, and she was getting into it. Those people, the Piersons…they aren’t going to explain Pit-Bull Howland’s technique to her. She learned to count to three watching professional wrestling.”
“She can count to three?” Allison appeared stunned.
”I want her back. If there’s any way, if I’ve got any chance, I want her back.”
Allison raised her eyes to his, and their glow was like sunlight streaming into him, warming him. She cupped one hand against his cheek and rose on tiptoe. She pressed a light kiss on his other cheek. “Let’s go get her back,” she murmured.
DENNIS MURPHY WAS a lanky fellow nearing his fortieth birthday, with dark blond hair and surprisingly kind gray eyes. He was wearing a summer-weight suit of beige linen, and his tie hung loose around his neck. He didn’t look like a cutthroat lawyer, and that troubled Allison. Right now, Jamie needed the sharpest, smartest lawyer in New England.
But the way Murphy smiled, all white teeth and dimples, reassured her. “What can I say, Jamie?” he began. “You really put your foot in it this time. But I think I can save your shoe.”
Step by step, he reviewed Jamie’s predicament. Allison alternated between listening to him and watching Jamie. If he’d looked exhausted during the weeks he was taking care of Samantha, he looked harried now, drained and grim, with dark circles ringing his eyes and a permanent crease etched into his brow. He looked like a man who had been deprived not only of sleep but of laughter. He looked like a man who had tried to go it alone and considered himself a failure—even though, in Allison’s view, he had done the most fatherly thing he could do. He’d proven his love for Samantha by yielding her to a nuclear family, and without even realizing it, he’d earned Allison’s love by tackling his problems alone instead of pressuring her to make things right for him.
She’d been bewildered and hurt when he’d failed to show up at her Monday-night class. She shouldn’t have taken it personally, but of course she did, because she and Jamie were no longer just teacher and student. A part of her wondered whether his behind-the-scenes arrangement of money for the Daddy School was a payback for the fun weekend they’d had.
She had fallen in love with him, and he’d raised some money for her. It had made her feel cheap and used and…what was his word? Idiotic.
But now she felt only sorrow for him, and sympathy, and support. He was in the battle of his life. That he wanted her to stand by him was an honor.
He had obviously filled Dennis Murphy in on the hearing he and the Piersons had participated in at the Department of Youth Services. A social worker had mediated, and Detective John Russo of the Arlington Police Department had sat in as well. Jamie’s lawyer seemed to be in possession of every note and document from that meeting. He thumbed through the folder before him, skimming and speaking simultaneously.
Yes, he conceded, the Piersons’ attorney had made a strong case to the Social Services department about Luanne’s mental state upon having given birth to the child. Yes, she and her husband had legally separated just before she’d fled to Eleuthera and met Jamie. Yes, they’d been separated throughout her pregnancy and hadn’t reconciled until after she’d given birth to the baby and left it with Jamie. Yes, a compassionate judge might choose to award permanent custody to this poor, confused woman under the influence of raging postpartum hormones.
“Sexist tripe if you ask me,” Murphy remarked. “Women want equality until they think that acting hysterical can give them an edge. Then suddenly they’re the victim of their hormones.”
Allison bristled at his accusation. Jamie squeezed her hand gently, and she subsided without telling Murphy what she thought of his comment.
“All that notwithstanding,” Murphy went on, “the woman did abandon her child. The criminal charges are there if Detective Russo decides to file them.
We could push for that if you’d like.”
“I don’t want Luanne in jail,” Jamie explained. “I just want Samantha back.”
Murphy shrugged. “Actually, if Luanne went to jail, it might put you at a terrible disadvantage. Hugh Pierson could take the kid and disappear, and then where would you be?”
A muscle ticked in Jamie’s jaw. Obviously he didn’t want to think about where he’d be if Pierson spirited Samantha away.
“You’re going to have to donate some DNA,” Murphy told him. “I don’t see how you can fight Pierson unless you first establish paternity.”
“I’ll donate whatever I have to,” Jamie vowed.
Murphy smiled, another impish, dimpled grin. “Wait till you see my bill,” he warned. “You’ll learn how much you’ve got to donate. Get the test done. You can go to the police lab. Or maybe the hospital can do the test. Permanent custody hasn’t been awarded yet, and it won’t be until Luanne Pierson proves she’s up to snuff, which maybe she won’t be able to do. So far, her performance as a mother is less than stellar.”
Allison bristled but once again held her tongue. If she pointed out that perhaps everything Luanne Pierson had said was true, that she’d actually suffered from a severe postpartum psychosis and that Hugh Pierson had in fact fathered the child, Jamie was going to lose his case.
Jamie looked less than confident when he and Allison left Murphy’s office a few minutes later, escorted down to the garage by the lawyer himself. “I wouldn’t work this late for just anyone,” Murphy remarked to Allison. “But Jamie gives me my best laugh of the week, every week. His column is a hoot.”
“I haven’t had a laugh this week,” Jamie muttered. “This week’s column sucks eggs.”
“Cheer the boy up, would you?” Murphy instructed, shooting Allison a smile before he veered off to his own car in the garage.
“You do need cheering,” she said as they settled into Jamie’s car.
“I need a blood test” was all he said. He started the engine, tapped the gas pedal and eased out of the parking space. No wild driving now, no race against the clock, no race against fate. Fate would be determined by the DNA profile his blood produced. If Samantha was a Pierson, science would determine it. If she was a McCoy, Jamie’s blood would prove it.
And then he’d still have to fight to get her back.
“Let’s go get you that test, then,” she said.
SEVERAL HOURS LATER, Allison settled into one of the chairs on Jamie’s screened porch, a glass of wine in her hand, the song of the night’s crickets filling the darkness. Jamie sat on the opposite side of the porch, drinking Scotch. He had removed his tie and rolled up his sleeves. An inch of beige adhesive tape showed from the inside of his left elbow where his blood had been taken.
“So,” he said, “do you hate me? Or do you just think I’m crazy?”
“Are those my only two choices?” she asked.
Even in the gloom, she could see a hint of his smile. “Go ahead, fill in your own answer.”
“I don’t hate you. I don’t think you’re crazy. I want you happy, and if getting Samantha back will make you happy, then that’s what I want for you.”
“She’s my daughter,” he said. “I took her in. I took care of her. I fed her, I rocked her, I supported her head when I held her. I carried her around, I washed her clothes. I sat up at night with her. What does it mean to be a parent, Allison? It isn’t about contributing a sperm or an egg.”
“I know.”
“I’m her father,” he said with such conviction, she couldn’t help but believe the blood test would bear out his certainty. He sipped his Scotch, and she felt his gaze boring into her through the darkness. “So you don’t hate me. You’re just immeasurably ticked off.”
She took a deep breath. “Yes, I am. After last weekend, Jamie, I thought—Well, I thought we had reached a certain level of candor. I thought that after that—that weekend…” She couldn’t begin to talk about the astonishing intimacy they’d shared, the wild passion. “I was pretty upset to find out you’d been doing things behind my back.”
“I explained why I didn’t involve you in the situation with Sam,” he said defensively.
“That’s not what I’m talking about.” She sipped her wine and studied his silhouette against the textured gray of the porch screen. “I know it seems kind of petty after what you’ve been through, but, Jamie, I asked you not to raise money for the Daddy School, and you did. You badgered your friends at the Gazette, didn’t you?”
He hesitated before responding. “I didn’t badger anyone,” he said.
“You hit them up for money, though. Didn’t you?”
“I asked someone I knew there if they thought this was something they might want to contribute to. That was all.”
“I asked you not to do that.”
“And I thought you were being stubborn. I thought the Daddy School is so useful you ought to put your ego aside and take whatever money you can get.”
“Oh, my ego,” she snapped. It was late, they’d endured an intense few hours and this wasn’t a good time to fight about her project. But she’d had a lousy, miserable, heartbreaking week, too, and Jamie was the reason. “Do you think I have a problem with my ego?”
“In this case, yeah, I do. You’re too damned proud, and you’re hung up about accepting help. The money’s there and you can do good things with it. And if it bothers you to think you owe me for this, well, you don’t. All right? I don’t want anything from you in return.”
“Yes, you do,” she argued. “You want me to get you through this trauma with Samantha.”
His voice rose to a bellow of rage. “I don’t want your help because I asked an old buddy at the paper to get you funding! I want your help because I love you, and I need you, and I don’t think I can survive this without you!”
The crickets chose that moment to fall silent. Allison could hear herself breathe. She could hear the air vibrating in the wake of his angry confession. Her eyes filled up, spilled over, and she had to put down her glass before it slipped from her trembling fingers. “Oh, Jamie,” she whispered.
“What?” He still sounded tense and bitter.
“You’re right. I do have a hang-up about accepting help.”
“So take the damned money and run your damned school.”
“I will.”
“And learn that sometimes people get as much pleasure from helping you as you get from helping them.”
“Okay.” Her cheeks were wet. Her lip was quivering. The crickets began to chirp again, and she sniffled and wiped her eyes with her hands. “Jamie?” She sounded weak and watery.
“What?”
“I love you, too.”
Only the crickets responded to her announcement, shrill and persistent. And then she saw him rise, saw his silhouetted form approach her chair, saw his arms reach for her. In an instant she was in them; in an instant she and Jamie were kissing, holding each other, clinging to each other. Her tears dampened his face, which in turn dampened her cheeks. Or maybe it was his tears she felt against her skin as he kissed her.
“We’ll get Samantha back,” she whispered. “I know we will.”
“I’ve already got more than I dared hope for,” he said, closing his arms so tightly around her, she knew he would never let her go.
THE DAY JAMIE’S LAWYER sent word of the bloodtest results to the Piersons was the day the hotshot Boston lawyer informed Dennis Murphy that the Piersons had changed their minds about custody. Their marriage was falling apart once more. Hugh couldn’t trust Luanne after she’d had an affair and gone through a pregnancy without informing him. They were going to get divorced, she didn’t want the baby, and now that he knew for a scientific fact that Samantha wasn’t his, Hugh didn’t want the baby, either.
Jamie couldn’t have been happier.
Allison drove with him to Boston to pick up Samantha. They drove home together. Home, to Arlington, to Jamie’s house, to the place where they could be
a family.
There was still a great deal to work out. Allison worried about her grandmother living all alone in the house across town, and Jamie, to his sheer amazement, heard himself say that if she wanted to move her grandmother into his house, she could. The very idea was shocking: him and three women coexisting in one house. Jamie, the Ultimate Guy, forming a household with three generations of females, each one more opinionated and mouthy than the next.
Allison’s grandmother said no. She wasn’t going to live with that bum even if he was cute and successful and really quite handsome when he didn’t look like hell. If Allison insisted, her grandmother would tolerate having a paid companion in the house during the evenings, but honestly, she wasn’t an invalid. She just had a funky knee.
So Allison agreed to move in with Jamie. And she agreed, after very little discussion and a great deal of hot and steamy sex, to marry him. She asked how he would feel about her adopting Samantha. He showed her how he would feel by kissing her ecstatically and then progressing to more hot and steamy sex.
He only had one real problem—other than the minor challenges of trying to sleep when Sammy was throwing a hissy fit at 2:00 a.m. or maintaining an adequate supply of diapers in the house at all times or buying Sammy a new wardrobe every week or so because she was eating constantly and spitting up less and growing like a weed.
His problem was that he earned his living writing a column about being a guy. And suddenly he wasn’t the guy he used to be. He had turned into a man—a man who happened to be madly in love with two women.
The morning after Allison agreed to marry him, he sat down at his computer and started to type.
GUY STUFF by James McCoy—
This is a tough column for me to write. Here I am, just barely thirty years old, and suddenly I seem to have moved on to a whole other stage of guyhood. My lady says what this means is, I’ve grown up. Which, I’ve got to tell you, is pretty darned scary.
Father Found Page 24
