by Karen Leabo
He reached for the doorknob. She did too. Their hands collided.
“Oh, excuse me.”
“Sorry.”
Then she was in his arms and he was kissing her again, because he couldn’t stand the thought of leaving without tasting her again, feeling her warmth against him.
This was dangerous territory, he knew; last time he’d been the one to find sanity first, and he wasn’t sure he could be that strong a second time. He buried his fingers in the honey-gold silk of her hair and groaned at the exquisite torture of holding her and knowing he couldn’t have her, not that night.
The blaring of the doorbell served as a bucket of ice water, and they sprang apart with surprised gasps. Lana laughed as she pulled open the door. “Goodness, you’d think we were doing something wrong,” she said with a nervous laugh. Then, turning to the porch, she asked, “May I help you?”
The door blocked Sloan’s view of the visitor.
“Are you Lana Gaston?” a man’s voice said. Sloan didn’t like the sound of this.
“Yes.” The screen door squeaked. Lana reached out and accepted something.
“Thank you, ma’am,” the voice said.
She closed the door, staring at a white envelope in her hand, her brow furrowed.
“What is it?” Sloan couldn’t help asking.
“Something official. That guy was a process server, I think. What on earth?”
“You haven’t done anything lately to prompt a lawsuit, have you?”
She shrugged. “Not that I know of. Well, let’s have a look.” She picked up a letter opener from the hall table and slit open the envelope. The paper rattled as she unfolded it with shaking hands.
Sloan refrained from looking over her shoulder. She would tell him if it was something she wanted him to know.
“Oh, my God.”
“Lana?” She’d gone as pale as the paper she held. He went to her mostly out of fear that she would keel over, sliding an arm around her waist. “What is it, honey?”
“That bastard.”
“Who?” As if he didn’t know already.
“Bart. He’s suing me for custody.”
SEVEN
Lana didn’t question the fact that there was a warm, solid man standing behind her. She was just grateful; she leaned into Sloan’s strength and tried to absorb some of it. The response was automatic.
“Why would he do this?” Sloan asked, sounding almost as bewildered as she felt.
“I don’t know. Maybe because he resents paying child support, such as it is. He grits his teeth every month when he has to write that check, even though I know it’s less than his car payment. He even had Rob taken off his health policy when his insurance company raised the rates. He claims he told me about it and that I said I’d add him to my policy, but I don’t remember.”
“Then the hospital bill …”
“Is all mine. I signed the papers, so Bart refuses to pay a dime.”
“That’s criminal.” Sloan balled his fists. “He shouldn’t get away with it.”
“Oh, I don’t care about that. That’s little stuff, compared to what he’s pulling with this.” She rattled the offending papers.
“You don’t … I mean … how do I ask this politely? You don’t try and keep father and son apart, do you?”
“No, of course not. Bart was the one who wanted to limit the visitation to two evenings a week and one weekend a month. He claimed that with his ‘busy schedule’ he would rather concentrate on quality time than quantity. Then he’s never home during visitation anyway, and he relies on his housekeeper or his girlfriend to baby-sit. I can’t believe he suddenly has some burning desire to spend more time with his son.”
Sloan gently guided Lana back to the living room, where they could sit down. “You were probably right the first time. It’s the money.”
“Or …” She sat gingerly on the sofa because she felt like she might break if she sat down too hard. “He could be doing this because he’s angry with me. We had an argument the other night.”
“About what? Not that it’s any of my business.”
“Oh, I don’t mind telling you. It was about you, in fact. Rob told his dad you were fixing the roof, and Bart wanted to know everything about you, what our relationship was. I politely told him it was none of his business. He went ballistic because I dared to question his authority in front of Rob. As if he doesn’t do that to me all the time.”
“Would Bart really retaliate over something so trivial?”
“Yes,” Lana answered without hesitation. “Bart’s whole life is measured in trivialities. There’s nothing of substance there. He plays with people’s lives every day like they were pieces on a chessboard. He thinks nothing of lying to a judge to keep his clients out of jail, but if they do go to jail, he immediately forgets about it and moves on to the next client. Taking Rob away from me might just be a game to him, a chance to one-up me.”
She was shivering. Sloan grabbed an afghan from the back of the sofa and tucked it around her shoulders. Then he slipped his arm around her, and she snuggled into his warmth. It seemed very right that he should be there with her. She didn’t know how she would have faced this blow alone. Normally she would have called Callie or Millicent, but Callie was on her honeymoon, and she just couldn’t burden Millie. She had too many problems of her own to deal with in the aftermath of her husband’s death.
“Surely he doesn’t mean this,” Lana murmured. “He might just be doing this to scare me, so I’ll toe the line. So I’ll behave, so I won’t get any notions about who’s really in charge here.” She turned her head to look at Sloan, finding his face surprisingly close to hers. “I know I must sound like a bitter, mean-spirited divorcée.”
“You have every right to be furious.”
“Bart hasn’t been all bad. At least he’s involved in his son’s life, if only sporadically. He’s not abusive, he pays his child support—”
“Not physically abusive. I call what he’s doing right now emotional abuse. He’s trying to take away the one thing you cherish the most. Don’t make excuses for him.”
She was surprised at the heated tone of Sloan’s words. Since when had her battle become his? She’d better tread very carefully here, or she might find herself … what? Indebted? So what? This was her child they were talking about. If Sloan could help her keep her kid, she’d be indebted to him for the rest of her life and she wouldn’t care. Right now she needed all the help, support, friends, and allies she could get.
“Know a good lawyer?” she asked in a small voice.
“What about your divorce attorney?”
“She moved to San Antonio.”
“I’ll ask around. We’ll find you the best.”
Lana sighed hopelessly. “Bart probably already has the best in his pocket. Lawyers hate to sue other lawyers. They never know when they might need a favor from the very guy they just reamed in court. Besides, I haven’t got much money.”
“Don’t borrow trouble. We’ll find someone good.”
“Another woman lawyer, maybe,” Lana said, thinking aloud. “The women don’t like him so well.”
“There, you see? Don’t give up before you’ve started the fight.”
“I don’t want to fight!” she said with a sudden burst of anger. “Why is he doing this? What does he really want?” She threw aside the afghan. “I’m going to call him. Maybe it’s something simple. Maybe it is the child support payments, and if I tell him he can stop making them, he’ll drop the custody suit.”
Sloan was behind her in an instant, grabbing a handful of her sweater before she could reach the phone. “Lana, don’t. I’m all for solving disputes through arbitration, but not like this. If you call him now, while you’re upset, he’ll have you at a disadvantage. That might be exactly what he’s hoping for. That you’ll call him, scared, emotional, and he’ll get you to agree to let him stop child support payments.”
“But if that would get him to drop the suit …�
�
“Think about it, Lana. He could hold that suit over your head for the next ten years. What would stop him from filing another suit next month, when he wants something else? Besides, he has an obligation to that child. You can’t let him get away with this.”
“He always wins,” she said dejectedly.
“Not always. He lost you.”
The husky timbre of Sloan’s voice, and the emotion behind it, did Lana in. She crumpled, and he was there to catch her. Despite her best intentions, she was sobbing away on his shoulder. She didn’t want him to see her like that. She so wanted to be strong and capable and in control, like Callie and Millicent always seemed to be. Right now she was everything but.
Sloan soothed and stroked and told her not to worry. “Even if this stupid thing goes to court, there’s no way a judge will take Rob away from you. You’re a good mother.”
“I let the garage roof fall on him. I knew it was d-dangerous, but I waited to have it fixed. It could have k-killed him. I should have supervised his play more closely. I should have cautioned him more strongly not to play near that part of the garage. But—”
“Lana, listen to me.” He pulled back and took her chin in his hand the way he’d done earlier, forcing her to look into his expressive eyes. “Maybe that’s why Bart chose now to spring this custody thing on you. He knows you’re feeling guilty about the accident. He’s already planted seeds of doubt about your supposed negligence—don’t forget, I heard what he said to you at the hospital. But, Lana, accidents happen. No one can anticipate from one moment to the next what a kid will do, or what forces of physics will cause a roof to collapse. Stop blaming yourself.”
She pressed her face against his shirt again. On an intellectual level she knew Sloan was right. The roof collapse was an accident. Active, curious kids like Rob could get into trouble anywhere, anytime—climbing trees, chasing a ball into the street, trying to make friends with a stray dog. It seemed like Millicent made pretty regular trips to the emergency room, and no one would dare consider her a negligent mother.
Still, Lana felt she’d somehow failed Rob. That maybe Bart was just a bit right, that their child would be safer, better off in a home where repairs were never put off because of money.
After a few minutes her tears slowed. The worst of the storm had passed, and she was relieved the inevitable reaction was over with. Now she could get on with coping, figuring out a plan, a strategy. She was good at that when she could think clearly.
“Better?” Sloan asked, loosening his hold on her.
“A little.” She pulled back and wiped her eyes. She managed a watery smile for Sloan, who was studying her with such concern.
She thought back to the way he’d stepped so easily into the role of comforter. That’s where he likes to be, she thought. That was where he was comfortable—offering help, support, advice. He was on much more slippery ground when it came to simply relating as a man and a woman.
It wasn’t that she blamed him. It was only natural for him to prefer being the strong one in a relationship where roles were clearly spelled out. She’d found that most men were like that. She was the one who had problems with it. If she was going to open herself up like this—and it appeared she couldn’t stop herself—she wanted Sloan to offer her the same degree of trust.
Right now that appeared unlikely.
“It’s probably safe for you to go now,” she said sheepishly. “I promise not to go hysterical or do anything dumb.”
He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “I don’t want to go.”
“I’ll be fine, really. You don’t have to worry about me.”
“I’m not worried. I know you can take care of yourself. But I don’t feel right about just leaving you in this freezing house to brood all by yourself. Let me stay, Lana. As a friend if nothing else.”
She wavered. If the truth be known, she didn’t much care for the idea of spending the night alone. She could go pick up Rob at the sleepover and bring him home, but she was sure he would much rather stay at the party than come home to hibernate at the North Pole with his semi-hysterical mother.
That left Sloan. It didn’t seem right to lean on him just because he was willing and she was feeling needy. At the same time, she couldn’t bring herself to tell him again to go home.
“As a friend,” she finally said, giving herself a small margin of safety.
He grinned, obviously pleased with her decision. “Okay, friend. What do you say we go out for a while to someplace warm?”
“For hot chocolate? Like you suggested before? The new bookstore on the strip has a coffee bar.”
“Perfect. We can browse through books just like we used to do at the library.”
“Yes, that’ll be fun,” she said with false enthusiasm. Remembering old times with Sloan wasn’t the safest activity she could think of. Not when she still hadn’t figured out whether his willingness to stick around meant he wanted to spend the night in her bed.
Sloan was feeling pretty good about keeping Lana’s mind off her problems. They went to the bookstore and sipped hot chocolate in the coffee bar. They played Trivial Pursuit. They ambled through the aisles—Philosophy, Humor, Biography—pulling random volumes from the shelves and reading interesting passages to each other, which was what they’d done as teenagers during their secret assignations at the library.
The nostalgia was intoxicating. Sloan’s stomach tightened over and over as he recalled those fleeting hours they’d spent together, falling in love. At least he’d fallen. And he was in danger of doing it all over again, something he’d sworn to avoid at all costs.
Despite his earlier warnings to himself about moving cautiously, he’d plunged right into the middle of things with Lana, deliberately entangling himself in the threads of her life. He couldn’t help it, he rationalized. She needed him, or at least she needed someone, and he happened to be convenient.
That thought sobered him. If some other guy had given her a ride to the church and fixed her roof, would he be the one she wanted to be with right now? Much as he admired Lana, she’d proven herself unsteady in the past and he wasn’t above doubting her affections.
Well, no sense obsessing about it now. She’d agreed to let him stick around only “as a friend” anyway. Maybe she wasn’t unsteady at all—just not quite as interested as he was.
The wind whistled through the parking lot lampposts as he and Lana ran to the car with their purchases—a new Peanuts cartoon book for Rob, a volume of poetry for Lana, a true-crime book for Sloan. Sloan kept thinking about how cold Lana’s house would be now. If they were going to spend the night together—not that that was a certainty—he wished they could do it at his house, where he could build a fire.
“Man, oh, man,” Lana said as she started the old Mercedes and pushed the heater up to high. “Feels more like January than October. At least the car heater works.”
“This is a great car,” Sloan said. “I’ve been meaning to ask you about it. What year is it?”
“Seventy-eight.”
“Really? That old? It doesn’t look old.”
“It has only eighty-two thousand miles. It belonged to Bart’s grandmother. When we divorced he didn’t want to give me either of the cars we drove, a Jaguar and an Infiniti. His grandmother had passed away a few months earlier, and the Mercedes was just sitting in the driveway at his parents’ house.”
“That hardly seems fair.”
“Nothing about the divorce was fair, but I didn’t want it to drag on because it was so hard on Rob. My lawyer thought I was crazy to agree to the terms Bart offered.” She shrugged. “It didn’t matter that much to me. I want to make my own way. And if the truth be told, I like this old car a lot better than some modern luxury car. It has character, and it’s pretty reliable. Unless I drive it into a ditch, of course.”
The car slid smoothly into gear, the engine humming. “It’s a beautiful machine, all right,” Sloan said. “Especially the heater.” He held his ha
nds in front of the vent. “Why don’t you spend the night at my house?”
The question hung between them. Sloan could almost see it written in red letters, suspended in the air. Hell, when would he learn to keep his mouth shut?
“I thought you’d never ask. Tell me where to drive.”
“Uh, turn right out of the parking lot.” What? She’d said okay? “My house is only about a mile from yours, down by McLaughlin Park. You know where that is?”
“Sure. Rob and I walked there a lot this summer to feed the ducks and fly kites—until he decided that wasn’t cool.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t personal. The worst thing in the world for a kid to be is uncool.”
“Don’t I know it.”
There was an awkward silence. Sloan wondered what kind of small talk was appropriate in a situation like this. “I’ve never had a houseguest before, not since I moved back to Destiny. I have a fold-out bed, but I’m not sure I have sheets to fit it.”
“I’m sure we can work something out.”
Something, yeah. He had some ideas. But this time he kept his mouth shut, because one of these days his boldness was going to get him a slap in the face.
Lana couldn’t stop shivering. Nerves, she supposed, in addition to the cold. The modern clock above Sloan’s fireplace said it was only a little after eleven. With all that had happened that evening, she felt like it ought to be later.
“Would you like a fire?” he asked. “I usually build one on a chilly evening, but if you really don’t care for them—”
“That would be nice,” she replied. “I guess I like them better in other people’s houses than in my own.” And she was past caring about romantic settings and whether she was giving Sloan the wrong idea. After all, she’d agreed to spend the night at his house.
She trusted him completely. He’d said he would be her friend, and she knew he wouldn’t cross the line unless she gave him a clear directive. It was herself she didn’t trust. She was feeling fragile and vulnerable, and very afraid that she was the one who would jump over that line with both feet.
