She shrugged. “Well, maybe they canceled the wrong one, who knows. Reuben just sounded mad on the phone, and I wanted to make sure everything was okay.” She turned to leave, but glanced back before she shut the door. “Oh, and if I were you, I wouldn’t rummage around Reuben’s desk too much. Invasion of his privacy won’t get you very far either.”
The door slammed, and Maddie bit her lip to prevent herself from screaming. What had Reuben ever seen in such a frustrating woman? Sure, she was all chic and dressed to the nines. But if she was what he found attractive, both in personality and looks, then Maddie must only be a temporary diversion.
And she didn’t want to be temporary or permanent in Reuben’s love life.
But even while she thought it, the memory of his brief kiss Saturday night flooded her. Gentle, sweet, and quick, but left her heart mushier than wet bread.
Despite what she tried to convince herself, Reuben wasn’t like the other guys. He didn’t take pleasure in hitting her. He didn’t force her into his bed. He didn’t broadcast to the whole school that she was lame in the sack.
Not that he had a school to broadcast anything to or experience in bed with her to know.
Maddie sat down in his chair and closed her eyes, willing the memories to stay away. But the ache of her body in its bruised state transported her back not too many years ago.
It’d started with Mark. Even though almost every guy snickered at her behind her back, she realized that not many girls would put out, and even though she didn’t want to, something about being with a guy made her feel powerful. Like she was in control of what she was doing.
Thinking back, maybe it had nothing to do with the control thing at all. Because really, they were mean jerks, the whole lot of them, and they held more control over her than she wanted to admit.
She just didn’t want to be alone.
Until that last time. Maddie cradled her cast-covered arm as she remembered his fists.
As her memories turned toward that fateful day, Maddie pounded her fist on Reuben’s desk. No, no, no.
She wouldn’t go there.
The architect. She still needed to call him and reschedule before Reuben got back. It’d get her mind off old nightmares better left buried.
And maybe she could figure out what happened to cause the whole scheduling mess.
She punched in the phone number and a high-pitched receptionist answered. “Good Morning. Sanders office, how may I assist you today?” The woman had obviously had a nice dose of sugar this morning.
“Yes, can I speak with Mr. Sanders’s secretary please?”
“You sure may. Hold one moment please and I’ll transfer you through. Have a most wonderful day!”
Gag. She hoped Reuben didn’t expect her to talk like that. If so, she might as well go back to cutting hair.
She spent the next several minutes talking with a much older, and saner, secretary, who claimed she’d taken the cancelation call earlier.
“I’m sure the caller wasn’t you though, dear. The woman who called had a lower voice. Almost raspy, like she had a cold.”
Strange. “And she said her name was Maddie?”
“Oh, no. She just said she was Reuben’s assistant. Let me see here what I can do about his schedule though. You know, I think I can squeeze him in right before lunch tomorrow. About eleven-thirty? He doesn’t have lunch plans but he does have a one o’clock.”
Maddie drummed her fingers on the desk. She’d have to make a decision, and hope it worked out for Reuben. Please, God, let this be okay!
“He’ll take the eleven-thirty and, if it’d be okay, they can probably finish their discussion over lunch.”
“That would work just fine. If there’s a problem, I’ll call and let you know. Otherwise, just plan on that.”
Maddie hung up the phone, proud of herself for making the decision and fixing the problem, but hoping Reuben wouldn’t be irritated. If anyone had control issues, her boss fit the bill.
She stood from his chair as the subject of her worries walked through the door. The poor guy looked depressed, his face drawn, almost defeated.
“Hey, Maddie.”
Why did she have this overwhelming urge to run and give him a huge bear hug? The only thing that held her back was the thought of the pain it would cause, in body and heart.
“You don’t look so hot.”
He eyed her as he set the briefcase down beside his desk. “Thanks. Appreciate the compliment.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.” She moved to allow him room to sit in his chair, but he just leaned against the desk and ran his fingers through his hair, messing it up.
She smiled. It looked cute messed up.
“I don’t suppose you were able to get the time moved up.”
“Oh ye of little faith.”
His head jerked up. “You did?”
“Tomorrow at eleven-thirty. You meet him, then have lunch. Hope that’s okay, but it was your last chance.”
She found herself swept into his arms and squeezed tighter than an almost empty tube of toothpaste, crushing all the air from her lungs. Thankfully she’d moved her arm out of the way, but it still hurt like the dickens. “Reuben—”
He let go, but moved his hands to her shoulders. “I’m sorry for blaming you, Maddie. I should have asked first and not accused.”
She shrugged. “I don’t blame you. I just hope you can trust me though.”
He nodded and squeezed her shoulders. She tried to hide her wince. “Of course.” One of his hands moved toward her cheek, and she backed away, pretending not to notice the move.
She walked back to her own desk and flipped back on the monitor. “I do wonder who made the call though. The secretary said the person just said she was your ‘assistant’ and that her voice was raspy, like she had a cold.”
“That’s odd, but to be honest, I just want to put the whole thing behind me. Maybe someone else called to cancel and the secretary misunderstood.”
Maddie shrugged her shoulders and got back to entering the payroll. She wasn’t sure she liked the idea of just letting it go. If someone had made the call, they were doing it to be malicious. There’d be no other reason.
32
I can go by myself.” Maddie crossed her good arm over her chest and dug her heels into the gravel driveway.
Reuben held open the door to his rental Camry and pointed inside. “I’m driving you, and that’s final.”
“I’ve been driving myself to and from work for the last three days and you didn’t have a problem with it.”
The obstinate man didn’t budge. “A five-minute drive is a little different than an hour.”
She didn’t relish driving with her arm out of commission, but showing up with Reuben on her elbow might not look that great. Especially with her history. “I don’t want Mrs. Blakely getting the wrong idea about us and telling Corina.”
“I don’t see what your love life has to do with Kyle visiting you, or even your request for custody.”
Maddie flung her arm in the air. “Oh, yeah. Showing up on my kid brother’s foster parents’ doorstep with my drop-dead gorgeous boss isn’t going to wave any flags. Two seconds after we leave she’d be on the phone with child services telling them about how I’m shacking up with my boss to keep my job.”
He didn’t move or back down an inch. “That’s ridiculous and you know it. Just because I offer a ride to my invalid employee to help her out doesn’t mean we’re involved in anyway.” A smile crept onto his face. “But I’m flattered you think I’m drop-dead gorgeous.”
Ugh, that wasn’t what she meant at all. Sorta. “Fine, but you stay in the car when we get there, okay? Maybe I can just say you’re a guy from church and the brother of my friend.”
Maddie climbed into the passenger seat and wiggled around trying to buckle her seat belt one-handed. Stupid broken arm.
Reuben got in the driver’s side and took the buckle from her hand and fastened it.
Great. Next he’d be brushing her teeth for her.
After they were on the road, Reuben popped in a CD. “Matthew West. That okay?”
She nodded, having never heard the group before. Usually she had the rock station on in her car, but in the last month she’d taken to just turning it off. She still liked the songs, but wasn’t sure that God wouldn’t zap her dead for listening to something unchristian.
Better safe than sorry.
The music filled the car, and a peace settled over her as she listened. Christian music was an anomaly to her outside of sitting in the pew at church and singing. Maddie closed her eyes as a song started about being strong.
Something she could totally relate to. She needed to be strong enough to get through the next few months. To fight for Kyle.
As the song played, Maddie squirmed in her seat. Not strong enough? Completely different from what she thought it was going to say.
Who could sit there and admit to being weak? To talk about failing?
Her mind raced to Kyle. Admitting failure and weakness was giving up.
God, who do you think you are to try and tell me I’m weak? I think I’ve proved that I’m tough. Geez.
Blah.
Blah, blah, blah.
Reuben flicked the volume button down a hair. “You look madder than snot.”
Maddie squirmed in her seat. “It’s nothing.”
“Bull. Spill it.”
Baring her heart to her boss, letting him know her doubts and irritation with God, didn’t sit well with the health of her job. “I was just thinking about the song. Interesting message.”
“How so?”
Couldn’t he just leave it alone? “You’re such a nag.”
“We have a good forty-five minutes left of this trip. We have to talk about something, and the reason for your scowl sounds like a good place to start.”
She looked out the window and watched the corn fields fly by. “I think the singer is an idiot.”
Reuben laughed. “I’m sure Matthew would appreciate that a lot.”
“What man would admit to being weak and sing about it to the world? Talk about losing your man-card. There’s no way I’m going to sit here and sing, ‘I’m weak and broken, not strong at all, look at my flabby muscles, ladedadeda.’ And I’m a girl, the supposedly weaker gender. Blows that stereotype out of the water.”
The man beside her laughed so hard she was pretty sure she saw tears. “I don’t remember the line about flabby muscles in the song.”
Maddie just stared out the window. “Don’t laugh at me. I’m serious.”
He blew out a breath. “Sorry.”
“We might as well change the CD now. I can’t respect a word this guy sings.”
Reuben pressed a few buttons and another song on the same CD started to play. “Listen to this one.”
Maddie shut her mouth while she listened. Now this she could deal with. Survivors. That’s what she wanted to be. Unstoppable until God calls her home.
When the song ended, she glanced at Reuben. “Matthew needs to make up his mind. First he’s a weakling, now he’s a survivor.”
“The point he’s making is that as humans, we’re weak, but we get our true, lasting strength through God. When we lay ourselves at God’s feet and admit that we can’t do everything, that’s when God can really work. We’re survivors because of God’s strength in us. It’s in the Bible.”
“Yeah? Where at?”
Reuben frowned. “I don’t remember. But there are a lot of places it talks about God’s strength being made perfect in our weakness. If we were all strong, we wouldn’t need God.”
It made sense. She could admit she needed God. What she could not admit was that she needed Reuben. Or anybody else. “This is getting too deep for a car trip. Wanna hear a knock-knock joke? Or play the alphabet game?”
Reuben reached for Maddie’s hand and squeezed it. “You know you’re the queen of avoiding a topic, right?”
She pointed to an exit sign. “I see an A.”
He smiled. “I’ll say one last thing, then let it drop, okay? I learn more every day just how much of a failure I am when I try to do it all myself. When I try to be strong and drive my life, I crash. You’ve seen that first hand. When I admit I can’t drive worth anything and let God have at it, I may go down some roads that confuse me, I may be lost, but God knows where I am, and He won’t let that car veer off the path, no matter what happens. He loves you, Maddie.”
She finally turned toward him, her lip curling in a half-smile. “God’s love is why I came to Him in the first place.” She wiped her hands over her eyes, erasing tears that threatened to fall. “Anyway, fine. I’m a weak failure and God is big and strong. Happy? Oh, and there’s a B on the Burger King sign.”
A weak failure described him exactly. “Tell me about Kyle.”
She snorted. “He’s a cute little dorky eleven-year-old who has the attitude of a sixteen-year-old and the smarts of a fifty-year-old.”
“An odd combination.”
“Just wait until you see him. He gets straight As and is in advanced classes, which is not normal in the city, yet will smart off to you quicker than you can blink. The very typical troubled foster-care kid in that department.”
He spent the next twenty minutes having all the letters of the alphabet pointed out to him in signs and hearing all the past escapades of the boy who, while Reuben would never in a million years tell his assistant this, reminded him very much of Maddie. By the time he took the exit off I-80, he looked forward to meeting the mini male version of Maddie even more.
Following Maddie’s turn-by-turn directions, they pulled up to a small but presentable house in a so-so part of town. Not the slums, but definitely not the suburbs either.
Before he got told to stay put, he stepped from the car and walked around, opening Maddie’s door for her.
“I thought I told you to stay in the car.”
“We’ll explain it. Don’t worry.”
But the frown on her face told him she would do it anyway. They walked up to the house, and as they approached the porch with chipped white paint, the front door swung open.
“Maddie!” A boy with shaggy brown hair, looking a little older than Reuben had pictured, threw himself into Maddie’s good arm.
Maddie wrapped her arm around him. “Kyle, you’ve grown a foot and it’s only been two months. What’s up with that? I specifically told you not to grow until I saw you next.”
He pushed back and stood up straight, a smirk on his face. “Shut up. I’ll grow when I want to.” The response was gruff but typical eleven-year-old words. Kyle glanced at Reuben and immediately stiffened. “Who’s this?”
Maddie nodded toward Reuben. “A friend from Sandwich. I busted up my arm last weekend so he offered to drive me.”
Kyle turned toward him and tried to get in his face, except given his height, he only reached his chest. “You hurt my sister? There’ll be hell to pay if you did.”
Maddie stepped in between them, a dash of red painting her cheeks. “Be nice. Reuben’s the brother of my friend, and my boss. He’s been nothing but kind. I was driving his car and wrecked it, and he didn’t even yell. The fact that I’m still employed should tell you he’s a pretty great guy.”
Kyle still studied him through squinted eyes, then looked back at his sister. “How’d you break your arm then?”
“Car accident. Reuben wasn’t even there. I swear.”
Reuben nodded at the boy. His level of respect for the little man sky-rocketed. “I’d never hurt your sister, man. I promise. I just wanted to help her out. She’d planned on driving here by herself, and no way was I going to let her drive with one arm out of commission.”
Kyle nodded. “Yeah, she can be a stubborn brat sometimes.”
Reuben decided wisely not to respond.
An older woman, probably in her early forties with dark hair streaked with a few strands of gray, stood in the doorway. “I see you’ve already found a m
an. Didn’t take you long.”
Maddie flashed him an I-told-you-so glare. “It isn’t like that. He’s my boss, and my best friend’s brother. Just helping me out is all.”
The roll of her eyes told how much she believed her. “Kyle needs to finish eatin’ before he can head out.”
Reuben took a step forward and opened his mouth to defend his assistant, but the scorned woman put a hand to his arm and looked up at him with pleading eyes.
Fine, he’d be quiet this time. But Mrs. Blakely was just plain rude.
At the same time, Reuben couldn’t help wondering the details of his assistant’s past. She’d mentioned more than once that it wasn’t good but hadn’t offered any details. Not a boss-asking-his-assistant kind of question though.
Despite not officially being invited, they followed Kyle into the house, which was neat, clean, and slightly outdated, but other than that, shouted of normality. A blue flowered couch in the living room, family pictures covering the fireplace mantel, and a collection of bells from a variety of states in a corner china cabinet. For some reason, the term “foster parent” had equated itself with “poor losers who get kids for money.” A totally unfair stereotype, he knew.
And maybe Mrs. Blakely was just concerned about Kyle. Maddie herself had said she was quite wild not too long ago.
The older woman motioned to a spot at the table. “Have a seat. Want something to eat or drink?”
“No thanks.” He sat down at the plain, solid oak wood table on the other side of Maddie.
The woman sat across the table and sipped an iced tea. “So you’re Maddie’s boss?”
“Yes, ma’am. I own a couple restaurants. Maddie has been a godsend to me. I’m in the middle of another expansion project to open two more restaurants, so she’s been helping keep some of the day-to-day administrative work taken care of so I can focus on the building project.”
Mrs. Blakely eyed Maddie. “What happened to the hair thing?”
Sandwich, With a Side of Romance Page 21
