by Brenda Novak
Brandon put on his begging face. “But I want to see him now. I don’t want to go to karate. What’s one time? I go every week.”
“Exactly. That’s how you learn and improve.”
“Aunt Lauren, I can’t wait to see my dad.”
“Brandon…”
The warning in Lauren’s voice was enough to make him back off. “Okay,” he grumbled. “He’s on the phone. You want to talk to him?”
As Lauren accepted the handset, she rubbed her stomach again, just to be sure. No baby. She hadn’t even kissed Harley. She’d only wanted to kiss him. And dreamed about kissing him. And still felt a certain flutter in her chest at the mere thought of kissing him…
Those were thoughts that would only lead her into trouble, she reminded herself and tried to say hello, but her voice caught and she had to clear her throat instead.
“Lauren?”
For some reason, hearing Harley on the other end of the line made her clutch the telephone closer to her ear. “Brandon says you want to have a picnic today.”
“I thought we could go to the park and barbecue some chicken, maybe throw a football around or get a volleyball game going.” He sounded almost as eager as Brandon. “What do you think?”
“Volleyball takes more than three people,” she pointed out.
“Tank has his little girl today. He’s divorced and only gets her on weekends. She just turned four, so she’s pretty little, but I thought they could join us. Maybe your friend Kimberly would like to come, too.”
A group activity? What a brilliant idea. There was safety in numbers. Surely she’d forget all about kissing Harley if Kimberly was along to remind her that he was the one man she could never kiss. “Sure. I’ll check with her. What time?”
“Noon?”
“Noon’s good.”
There was a brief hesitation, then, “I heard you say something to Brandon about karate lessons.”
“Brandon takes karate. He’s a blue belt. We usually go in the afternoon, but they have a few morning sessions, too, so we’ll go early today and get it over with.”
Another pause, then, “Would you mind if I tagged along?”
“To karate?” Lauren imagined the interest of the other mothers, especially that of Kara Fletcher, and decided she’d rather Harley didn’t come. Quentin and Marilee traveled in a pretty tight circle; she didn’t want everyone gossiping about Brandon’s dad and what was going on at the Worthingtons’, especially before she had a chance to work things out with her father.
“Actually, it’s really…” she was going to say “boring, nothing you’d want to bother with,” but she couldn’t offend her nephew, who was still standing by the edge of her bed, hanging on every word, “…not that big a deal,” she finished lamely.
“Sometimes it’s the little things that matter most,” he said.
Great.
“Is he going to come?” Brandon asked, easily catching the drift of the conversation.
Lauren groped for something else she could say that might put Harley off, but she couldn’t think of anything with Brandon jumping up and down and pleading, “Please, Aunt Lauren, pleeeease?”
“I guess that’ll be okay,” she said at last, then she told Harley the class started at ten-thirty and gave him directions, hung up and immediately dialed her parents in London to see if they were on their way home. Now that she and Brandon were going to be spending the entire day with Harley, she had to know what to expect.
“Quentin and Marilee Worthington, please,” she told the hotel operator when he picked up. “I think they’re in Room 311.”
There was a pause while he checked. “Just a moment, please.”
The telephone rang in short bursts, again and again, then Lauren was transferred to her parents’ voicemail. “This is Quentin and Marilee,” her mother’s voice lightly intoned. “We’re off seeing something wonderful and historic, so leave a message and we’ll call you back as soon as we get in.”
Lauren breathed a sigh of relief and hung up without leaving a message. She had a reprieve. Her parents hadn’t called her, but they weren’t on their way home, either. Maybe they hadn’t been able to get a plane out.
Telling Brandon to put on his karate uniform, she dialed Kimberly.
“Don’t tell me. Your father’s home,” her friend said, omitting the usual hello.
“No, not yet. They haven’t even checked out of their hotel. I just called to see.”
“Thank God. Are you relieved, or what?”
“I’m relieved. Any chance you’d be interested in a picnic today?”
“What kind of picnic?”
“The kind that includes Harley, Tank, Tank’s little girl, me and Brandon.”
“Tank has a little girl? Is he married, then?”
“Divorced.”
“Boy, that makes me feel really bad,” Kimberly said. “Even Tank has more to show for his marriage than I do.”
“You hooked up with a guy who was raised on steroids, shaved his entire body twice a day and insisted on three different forms of birth control every time you made love. What did you expect?”
“Some women like body-builders,” Kimberly said. “The thing that really hurt was the way Jim kept staying up all night looking at porno on the Internet, instead of coming to bed with me.”
“You mean his growing obsession didn’t inspire fidelity, trust and love?”
Kimberly laughed. “Try going to your father and telling him you need to borrow money because your husband’s spending a thousand dollars a month at a site called ‘Wet and Wild with Candy.’”
“I think splitting up was a better idea.”
“I did the right thing, but it isn’t easy trying to live the single life again. There are actually days I’m tempted to go back to him.”
“You’ve got to be kidding! He pinned up Playboy Playmates on your kitchen calendar.”
“You never liked him because he hated that we were such good friends. You thought that’s why he decided we should move away.”
“That is why.”
“I know, but it wasn’t just you. He wanted to cut me off from my family, too.”
“Such a great guy. Well, I can’t promise Tank will prove to be a pillar of the community. But we could spend the afternoon together for old times’ sake.”
“Old times’ sake? In high school, Tank and Harley didn’t even know we existed.” She paused. “At least Harley didn’t. Tank might’ve realized it the day he threw up on me.”
“Harley knows we exist now,” Lauren said.
“He knows you exist,” Kimberly corrected. “But I’m not so sure that’s good.”
Lauren thought about it for a moment. “Neither am I,” she admitted, her mind conjuring up Harley as he’d been last night, his breath gently fanning her face as she’d tilted her head back and closed her eyes in anticipation. She had to put some distance between them, had to take a step back or things could easily get out of control. And it didn’t help that, even though she was reluctant to be seen with him in front of people who would most certainly say something to her father, she was excited about the prospect of Harley’s company. Excited enough to be planning what she was going to wear.
Distance, she told herself sternly. She had to treat Harley as indifferently as possible. It was the only way to foster his relationship with Brandon while keeping herself—and her family—safe from further emotional turmoil.
“Don’t worry. I think I have a plan that might make everything work out. Just meet me here at eleven-fifty,” she told Kimberly.
After hanging up, Lauren put on something quite different from the flattering shorts and sleeveless sweater she wanted to wear. Then she scrounged around for her old glasses and pulled her hair into a simple ponytail. After all, she’d been invisible to Harley in high school. Maybe she could be invisible to him now.
THERE WAS A WOMAN wearing skin-tight satin pants, six-inch heels and a halter-top sitting next to Lauren. Her bleached blond ha
ir was teased high on top of her head, and she kept leaning over and pointing a long, red-lacquered nail toward the class of ten or twelve children who were following the karate instructor in front of the mirrors. Like most of the other mothers in the place, the woman looked as though she had money. But not “old” money. She was too garish and bold to fit in with the conservative Worthington crowd.
Lauren glanced back and saw him, and Harley moved eagerly toward the empty seat on the other side of her. He’d spent the past twelve hours being amazed at how badly he’d wanted to kiss her last night. And was still absolutely shocked that she’d acted as though she might let him. Yet the same crazy desire hit him now, the moment he laid eyes on her, even though she wasn’t wearing any makeup, had donned glasses that were obviously years out of date and hadn’t bothered to fix her hair.
“There you are,” she said when he approached, but a self-conscious glance at the woman beside her gave him the impression she didn’t really want to claim him.
Harley hesitated, suddenly wondering if he should have stayed in the back. He’d assumed she’d saved him a seat, but maybe he was wrong.
“Is this chair for me?” he asked.
She shrugged. “It’s free, if you’d like to take it.”
If he’d like to take it? What had happened to the friendly Lauren he’d known last night? She’d been replaced by a woman dressed in a pair of black slacks and a flowery, button-up shirt that resembled something an old lady might wear, and she was acting as though…as though she didn’t want to be seen with him.
Suspicion tightened Harley’s chest, leaving a dull, solid ache. Lauren was just reacting to yesterday’s near kiss, he tried to tell himself. It was his fault for what he’d almost done.
But the memories of her father’s sneering comments—“You little bastard, you aren’t worth the time of day,”—made him think it might be more than that.
“Is everything okay?” she asked, her eyes searching his face.
Harley removed the scowl he hadn’t realized he was wearing until that moment and forced a smile that was halfhearted at best. “Fine. Great. Slept like a baby last night. You?”
She nodded a little too vigorously and turned back to the karate class. “Me, too.”
“How’s Brandon doing?” he asked, pulling the chair slightly away from her before he sat down. Fortunately, his son was more excited about his arrival than Lauren was. Brandon’s smile stretched from ear to ear, and he kept turning to wave—until the instructor said something to him about paying attention.
“He’s doing pretty well,” Lauren said. “He just has to learn a few more moves, and then he’ll get his green belt. I think he’ll be testing for it next week.”
Harley’s court hearing for his unpaid speeding ticket was on Tuesday of the following week, so he knew he’d be in town. But he didn’t ask to come and watch. He almost wished he hadn’t come today.
“Is this your new boyfriend, Lauren?” the woman in the tight pants cooed when neither of them acknowledged her even after she’d craned her head around several times to stare at Harley.
“Oh, no,” Lauren said, and something about the quickness of her answer made the throbbing in Harley’s chest grow stronger. He raised a hand and tried to smooth it away, but it was no use.
“We sort of knew each other in high school,” she explained, fiddling nervously with her nails.
“Really? You go back that far? I just returned from my fifteen-year reunion, and boy, was it a lot of fun. We visited Washington D.C. on the way—I grew up in Virginia,” she added as an aside for Harley. “I’m Kara Fletcher.”
Lauren hesitated, but finally introduced him. “This is Harley Nelson,” she said. “A…a friend.”
Harley mumbled something polite, but Kara Fletcher had already charged past “nice to meet you” and was back on the subject of her trip to Virginia.
“I got to see all my cousins and other relatives while I was there,” she was saying. “I have twenty nieces and nephews now. Mallory, my sister’s oldest daughter, is just starting law school at McGeorge. I can’t believe she got in. When she was growing up, she was so absentminded.” Kara shook her head.
“My sister has a lot of kids, but Richard and I got started late,” she told Harley. “That’s our little guy over there, with the blond hair. He’s our only child. I don’t know how my sister does it. Besides Mallory and Tommy, she’s got three more who are younger. Kids are such a handful. Honestly, there are days I don’t think I’m going to fit it all in, what with homework and baseball and…”
Though Lauren nodded and punctuated the conversation with an occasional, “oh, really?” and “that’s nice,” Harley thought he saw her eyes glaze over as Kara rambled on for another five minutes. But when she returned to her original subject—him—Lauren sat up straighter, still fidgeting with her nails.
“So you and Harley knew each other in high school?” Kara asked.
“Sort of,” Lauren replied.
Kara grinned and nudged her knowingly. “Did you two ever date?”
“No, never,” Lauren said, her words once again brisk enough to make Harley rub his chest. Was Lauren really that afraid her friend might think her romantically interested in someone like him? A man who’d been born on the other side of the tracks, still worked on his own cars and, heaven forbid, had no college degree and only one suit? If she was as much like her father as Harley had once thought, it was certainly a possibility. But yesterday in the pool, and last night at the restaurant, and then at her doorstep later, he’d been so sure she was different…
“Too bad,” the woman was saying. “You’d make a good-looking couple. Don’t you want to marry and settle down, Lauren?”
“I’m not in any hurry,” Lauren said, but Harley detected a slight blush.
So Lauren was in the market for a man, only she was making it quite clear that someone like him didn’t appeal to her. That he didn’t want her to be interested in him suddenly seemed beside the point.
“Harley, do you have a wife?” Kara asked.
“No,” he said shortly.
“Well, it won’t take you long, I bet. I like a man in leather. There’s something so titillating about the Hells Angels look, you know? Last night Richard and I dressed up in our biking clothes—I got them out of the attic after we talked about it last week, Lauren—and just wearing them made us want to head down to the dealership to buy another bike. But we didn’t make it out of the house, if you know what I mean.” She giggled, then added in a conspiratorial tone to Lauren but loud enough for Harley to hear, “Doesn’t a man in leather turn you on?”
“Not particularly,” she murmured, sitting ramrod straight and blushing again, but Harley didn’t remember her being so opposed to a man in leather last night. Granted, he’d made the first move, but she hadn’t exactly pulled away in disgust.
“Dad, watch me do the Kimono Grab,” Brandon sang out, interrupting the conversation.
Harley turned his attention to his son, who proceeded to demonstrate a series of memorized movements that, evidently, constituted something called a Kimono Grab. “Good job, buddy,” he said.
“Want to see the kata I made up on my own?”
“Sure.”
Harley kept his eyes on his son’s performance, even though Kara was staring at him, silent for almost the first time since he’d arrived.
“You’re Brandon’s father?” she asked when Brandon ran off to get a drink of water.
Harley sent a glance at Lauren, wondering if she wished he’d deny the connection. But she wouldn’t look at him. She picked up her purse and started digging around inside it.
“I am,” he said.
“Oh!” The woman’s red lips formed a perfect circle, which matched the roundness of her eyes, then relaxed into a smile even more eager than the ones she’d flashed before. “How long have you been in town?”
Another glance at Lauren told Harley she was concentrating her entire mental energy on unwrapping a
stick of gum. He didn’t like her cool reserve, he decided. He didn’t like the way she’d been acting ever since he arrived. It reminded him too much of her father. And though he might regret it later, if she was going to be embarrassed by him, he was going to do his best to give her reason.
“Including jail time or not including jail time?” he said to Kara, and when they left thirty minutes later, he had the whole place staring after him as though expecting to see his mug on America’s Most Wanted.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“WHAT THE HELL was that all about?” Lauren demanded as soon as she and Harley reached the house and Brandon ran down the hall to straighten his bedroom so they could go to the park.
“All what about?” Harley responded, taking the seat in the living room that was closest to the window, ostensibly to use the sunlight streaming through the sheers to read the newspaper he’d carried inside.
“You know what I mean. All that stuff you said to Kara Fletcher. Don’t you realize that what you say and do reflects on your son?” Not to mention the fact that she’d been trying not to make too many waves in her father’s small pond and now he’d be inundated with calls from appalled friends and acquaintances.
“Brandon doesn’t have a problem with who I am. You do,” he said. “Besides, I was just having a little fun with your friend.”
“A little fun. You made Kara believe you’re some kind of dangerous criminal,” Lauren cried.
He unfolded the paper. “Maybe she hasn’t had enough dangerous men in her life. You heard what she said about men in leather. She fantasizes about them. But you wouldn’t understand a fantasy if it bit you on the ass. You’ve probably never even had one. In any case, a man in leather doesn’t appeal to you. You like a different sort.”
“Really!” she said. “And you think you know what kind of man that is?”
