by Diana Palmer
“We can see about that later, Colin,” Chase said, trying to move the boy along.
“Come by anytime and take a look around.” Stated with resolve, Nettie’s offer surprised everyone. Beneath their stares, she addressed herself to Colin. “If Sara’s not too busy, I bet she’ll even let you stand inside a cell.” She smiled and received a tentative smile in return.
Sara looked as disgruntled as a mule and Chase regarded Nettie with a wary mix of curiosity and reproach. Nettie stared back at them both. True, she’d taken into her own hand matters that weren’t hers, but in this isolated instance she wasn’t sorry. It was simply meant to quench a child’s thirst for adventure.
After an abrupt nod, Chase led his son back to their booth. Pretending a renewed interest in dessert, Nettie picked up her fork and stuck it into the sliver of pie still remaining. She felt her sisters’ stares like lasers blazing through her skin.
“I thought you were through with that guy,” Sara said, her disapproval blatant. “Now he’s going to show up at the jail—him and his kid—and that’ll be nothing but trouble. If you ask me—Ow!” She jerked in her seat. Reaching below the table to rub her shin, Sara glared at Lilah, who had obviously kicked her. “You nearly broke my leg.”
Lilah smiled unapologetically. “Oops. Sorry,” she said, utterly insincere. “My foot slipped. Ow!” Lilah’s gorgeous features scrunched into a furious scowl as her own leg took a blow. “Revenge is childish,” she growled at Sara. “Or hadn’t you heard?”
“That one was from me.” Nettie forked a bite of sweet dark berries and flaky crust into her mouth and chewed calmly. She swallowed, nudged Lilah with her elbow this time and said, “Scoot out.”
“I’d love to, but my shin bone has been fractured. What was that for, anyway?”
Moving with enviable calm, Nettie gathered her sweater and purse. “Lilah Owens, you are still the most outrageous flirt in Kalamoose County.”
At first Lilah appeared ready to launch into an automatic protest. Then she changed her mind and shrugged. “So? He’s good looking, he’s single—he’s a celebrity, so he’s probably rich—if you don’t want him, why should we let him go to waste?”
“Listen to you!” Sara leaned far over the table before Nettie could respond and sneered at Lilah. “Not let him go to waste. As if he’s got an expiration date! Men are just so much hamburger to you. Like that time you kissed Nick at your sweet sixteen party.”
Lilah rolled her eyes. “You’re still harping on that?”
“‘Sweet sixteen and never been missed,’” Sara taunted, “‘Every guy she saw, she kissed!’”
“All right, kiddies,” Nettie said equably. “Time to go home and clean up your rooms now.” Again she nudged Lilah. “Slide out.”
Lilah remained stubbornly right where she was. “Not until you tell me whether Chase Reynolds—” she lowered her voice “—is up for grabs or off limits. Fish or cut bait, little sister. What’s it going to be?”
Nettie saw it then—the challenge and appraisal in her sister’s eyes. Lilah was testing her. Pushing her to make a choice. And Nettie, who had believed her choice was already made, understood that in the game of romance minds were made up, changed, and made up again, sometimes over and over. Choose again, Lilah was telling her.
“Let’s just say I don’t want my sister to cast her line.” Refusing to say more than that, Nettie stared at Lilah levelly until the other woman gave up and slid out of the booth. Keeping her back straight, her eyes focused straight ahead of her—and away from Chase’s table—she made her way to the front of the restaurant.
Chapter Twelve
Four days later, Nettie thought that perhaps she’d seen the last of Chase. He hadn’t brought Colin to the jail. The only reason she knew they were still in town was that Etta Schlag, who owned the bakery, had rattled on for ten minutes this morning about how handsome Chase was and that he and his son had eaten three of her Bavarian cream donuts yesterday—three, she hoped to tell you, and she made them extra large—plus, they’d each had a cup of hot chocolate, besides. Then Chase—“that sweetheart”—had told her that if she ever decided to move to New York, he’d set her up in a donut shop and they’d be bigger someday than Krispy Kreme. Whatever, Etta said, that was.
Nettie had taken her loaf of German sourdough rye and walked home.
She’d tried hard to concentrate on her work, spending most of the morning illustrating a scene from her latest book, but by early afternoon she’d been too restless to sit still. Lilah had gone into Minot for the day, so Nettie walked back into town. Now she was hanging the curtains she’d made for the jail…and trying not to admit to herself that standing in the cell where she’d first met Chase was far more satisfying than staying home, pretending she wasn’t thinking about him.
Sara had gone out on a call fifteen minutes ago, answering a summons from the janitor at the local elementary school. That left Nettie once more alone with her thoughts.
By now she had to confess—to herself only—that she’d been living a four-day-long fantasy about seeing Chase again. The fact that she hadn’t seen him left her feeling utterly disappointed.
Yeah, right, she thought, bunching a panel of curtains along their rod. “Flat-out rejected” was more like it. And that was so dumb! She had chosen not to continue their relationship. Reason still told her she’d made the right decision, the one with the least potential for excruciating pain in the long run, but there seemed to be a gap the size of the Grand Canyon between what her reason told her and what desire demanded.
Desire…She desired to see him again. To feel her skin tingle and her heart skip from the look in his eyes. And from trying to judge when, where and how he was going to kiss her. There were certain sensations of danger, she was beginning to realize, that felt mighty good.
Shoving the curtain rod into a bracket, Nettie hopped down from the cot. Emotions were the most illogical things. She was better off without them.
Looking around, she wondered what else she could dust, mop or redecorate to within an inch of its life, but before she could determine her next victim, Sara stormed through the door, grumbling something about “…stray dogs and kittens…”
“Come on,” Sara said, holding open the solid wood door. “You’re under arrest, so don’t give me any resistance or back talk.”
Nettie watched with interest as a little boy, his shoulders straight and his eyes huge with curiosity, marched through the door, the most willing prisoner she had ever seen.
Nettie lifted a brow in inquiry.
“He was wandering around Wilbur Elementary,” Sara explained. “Hank found him drawing on the chalkboard in a schoolroom that was supposed to be locked. Breaking and entering is a crime, so I arrested him.” Colin’s thin shoulders were manfully squared. He stared straight ahead, chin up, countenance solemn but oddly dignified, as if he was telling them, I committed the crime; I’ll do the time.
“The school is almost two miles from Nick’s place. Was, uh, your prisoner by himself?” Nettie asked.
“Yep. Rode his bike. Nice shiny new bike. It’s in the back of the squad car now. Impounded.”
While Kalamoose was by no means the crime capital of North Dakota, Nettie didn’t like the idea of a seven-year-old riding his bike two miles in one direction in an area that was unfamiliar to him. “Does your father know where you are?” she asked, receiving a noncommittal shrug in return.
“He says Chase told him he could go wherever he wanted. I called Nick’s place. No one’s there.”
That made no sense to Nettie. She knew she was overly cautious, but to tell a child he could go wherever he desired and then leave so there wasn’t an adult at home while he rode off to explore? If that was Chase’s idea of parenting, it left a lot to be desired. Every child needed an anchor. She looked at the little boy.
Colin maintained the posture of Repentant Convict until he noticed Sara’s police radio. Then he broke into a gallop. “Wow! Does this thing really work?�
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“Of course it works!” Following him, Sara grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and hauled him several steps back. Colin didn’t seem to mind a bit. “Don’t touch it, though. I use it for official police business only. It’s not a toy. In fact, nothing in here is a toy.” Placing her hands on her hips, just above her gun belt, she added, “I expect you to remember that.”
Colin nodded. “I will.” He turned around. “Can I look in the cells?”
Sara rolled her eyes, as if the effort to show him around kept her from something hugely important. “Yeah, I guess. You’re going to make it quick, though, because I’m putting you under house arrest with my sister in charge.”
“What?”
“What’s that mean?”
Nettie and Colin spoke at the same time, Colin mildly curious but with most of his attention on the configuration of the cells. Nettie, on the other hand, felt every nerve-ending buzz to life. “Explain that,” she said to Sara while Colin crawled beneath one of the cots, looking for a trap door or other means of escape.
“His father isn’t home.” Sara tossed her hat like a Frisbee, cleanly hitting a peg of the coat rack. “Nick’s not there, either, and I don’t have time to baby-sit till they get back. Besides, a jail isn’t day care.” She lowered her voice, crossing toward her desk. “I’ve got guns here, too many things I don’t want him messing with. I figure you can take him to our place until his wayward parent decides to show up. Anyway, that way if he gets hungry or thirsty, you’ll know what to do with him. Little kid rode his bike almost two miles. He’s got to be hungry, and I don’t know anything about feeding kids.”
“Right.” Nettie’s tone was droll. She refrained from pointing out that Sara fed her inner child several times a day. Looking at Colin as he crawled around on the hardwood floor, she felt her pulse increase. She was about to take responsibility for a little boy again. And sooner rather than later, she was going to see Chase.
“I like these waaayyy better than the ones he got us.” Colin sat at the kitchen table, swinging his legs while he ate homemade oatmeal cookies and sipped from a tall glass of milk.
“‘He’ meaning your father?” Nettie stood with her back against the counter. Colin had seemed shy on the walk home, but a quick tour of Nettie’s studio and a handful of cookies had relaxed him considerably.
“He can’t cook. He made spaghetti last night and it tasted like barf.”
It was stated so matter-of-factly, Nettie burst into laughter. “It wasn’t that bad, was it?”
Colin bobbed his head. “Yeah. The noodles were weird.”
“Weird?”
Mouth full, he rocked and kicked the rungs of the chair, filled with boyish energy. “Kinda like Goop.”
“Goop?” Nettie was familiar with the strangely gelatinous toy, though she’d never had the pleasure of tasting it. “That’s not good.”
Colin shook his head vigorously. “And he burned the oatmeal. And then he put jam on it ‘cause we ran out of sugar!” Affording his onlooker the courtesy of first swallowing his cookie, Colin mimed throwing up.
“Mmm. This does sound serious.” She felt vaguely sorry for Chase. He was probably making a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to stand in for ruined meals. It certainly explained his gratitude for Etta’s Bavarian creams.
“Can I have another cookie?”
Noting his still scissoring feet, Nettie took pity on Chase and vetoed the notion of more sugar. “How about a sandwich?” she suggested. “Have you ever had a roast beef club?”
While she built the sandwich, Colin studied the two books she’d autographed for him. The stories and illustrations were sophisticated enough to hold his attention and he studied them intently, seeming engrossed by the element of magic.
Nettie found herself smiling as she glanced at him, smiling as she sliced cheese and stuck a knife into the mayonnaise jar. All the daily, innocuous acts she seldom gave a second thought to suddenly infused her with a quiet happiness that felt almost…holy. If this had been Tucker, if she’d been making sandwiches for her own son these three mislaid, lonely years, would such commonplace moments have begun to slip by virtually unnoticed?
She’d never know. So for now, each swipe of mayonnaise over wheat bread and each crisp turn of the page as Colin read her book was something that stood out like a little gift.
How, she wondered, trying not to be judgmental and failing miserably, could Chase be so bored with fatherhood already that he’d encourage this child to simply wander off on his own? Besides, a day like this, when the weather hung between summer and fall and the lazy breeze coaxed a person into the sun, a perfect day like this was simply meant to be spent with someone you loved. Chase had told her that commitment and constancy were not his strong suits. Apparently, he’d told the truth.
Nettie sliced the sandwich into triangles, using more force than necessary, but she was angry. Not for her own sake. No, that’d be a waste of cortisol. She and Chase were past history. But for his son’s sake—yes. On behalf of that little boy, Chase Reynolds was going to have to learn to commit.
She was hunting through the snack cabinet, in search of Sara’s stash of barbecued potato chips, when a car pulled too quickly up to the house. The driver cut the engine and Nettie realized she easily recognized the sound of Chase’s car.
Moving as if her heart wasn’t racing a mile-a-minute, Nettie set the sandwich and chips in front of Colin, then went to open the door the senior Reynolds was already pounding on. Not just knocking, actually pounding.
He looked as though someone had stuffed him into a washing machine and left him too long on the spin cycle. His hair was disheveled as if he’d plowed his hands through it dozens of times, and in fact he did so now as he entered the house. His eyes were at once tired and sharply alert, like a man standing watch.
“Is he here?” Eschewing preliminaries, Chase marched into the house and looked around. “There was a message on Nick’s machine, from Sara.”
“He’s here,” Nettie said. “He’s eating lunch in the kitchen. He’s fine.”
Her last statement was clearly the most important to Chase. Again, his restless fingers raked his hair, but this time he released a long sigh of relief, as well. “Sara said she found him at the elementary school. I’ve been driving all over! Where the hell is the elementary school?”
“A couple of miles from Nick’s.”
Chase’s reaction was almost identical to Nettie’s. “Two miles? He’s only seven! He rode his bike two miles?” Obviously intending to relieve some of his agitation in a lecture, Chase started toward the kitchen.
Nettie stopped him with a hand on his forearm. “Let’s sit down,” she suggested, gesturing to the couch.
Chase sank to the sofa, elbows on his knees and forehead resting against his clasped hands.
“Were you home when he left the house?” she asked quietly, and Chase nodded. “You didn’t even know he was leaving, did you?”
“No.” He raised his head, pressing his lips against his knuckles. Guilt seemed to emanate from his very pores, and Nettie felt a surge of protectiveness. She was beginning to get a clearer picture of what had transpired this afternoon.
He turned to look at her, his eyes puffy and tired. Several days of hands-on fatherhood had taken a toll. “I blew it. I was working, writing an article.” He wagged his head. “I’m trying to figure out how to have a kid and a career at the same time. I can’t keep traveling. I mean, he’s got to go to school in one place, right?” Frustration and uncertainty coiled his muscles. “I’m no damn good at this! Some people shouldn’t be parents. I’ve always known that. What kind of a father doesn’t know where his son is?”
Nettie sighed, immensely sorry for having judged him. Real life so seldom played out like the picture in your head. Chase thought he knew what fatherhood was supposed to look like and figured he was coming up short.
Studying him she felt a surge of compassion—for him and for herself as well. There was su
ch a gap between who we thought we should be and who we feared we actually were. And the truth, Nettie was beginning to realize, wasn’t either of those false notions. The truth was somewhere in the middle. Like most people, Chase was neither as perfect as he’d hoped nor as puny as he feared. Maybe that’s what happiness is, she thought, watching him silently wrestle with his “shoulds.” It’s making peace with that gap in the middle.
Sensing the coil of energy that was about to make Chase stand up and start pacing, Nettie placed a hand on his. She meant the touch to be a comfort, but a zing that felt like static electricity sizzled beneath her palm.
Unsure of whether Chase felt it, too, she tried to speak calmly. “Tell me what happened.”
Searching her face, Chase nodded. “Colin was restless. I was busy, trying to concentrate, and it wasn’t going well. So I told him to play in his room while I finished and when he said it was boring in his room, I said then play outside. I bought him a bike a couple of days ago, but I never figured…” Lips thinned, he shook his head, far angrier with himself than his son. “All of a sudden, the article started kicking in for me. I don’t think I looked up for the next hour. I wasn’t even thinking about him. It was like I completely forgot—” Chase smacked a fist into his palm.
“That is so normal. Yes,” Nettie insisted when he shook his head. “Getting frustrated, telling him to play outside, even becoming lost in your work and losing track of the time—and certainly not being able to anticipate a child’s next move—it’s all normal, Chase. You are not a bad parent.” Then more quietly she said, “He wasn’t running away from you, you know. He wasn’t leaving you.”
The hungry expression on Chase’s face told her how much he craved that very affirmation. A faint smile of gratitude curved his lips, but he shook his head. “Thanks. I appreciate the thought. Really. And I hope this doesn’t sound rude or condescending, but I think this is one of those things you can’t quite understand until you’ve been there.” He gave a brief laugh. “I certainly didn’t. Being a parent…” He wiped a hand down his face. “I’ve never felt this responsible for anything or anyone else in my life. I can’t even describe how it feels.”
