“I’m not, Mom. I haven’t visited the hospital. Neither have you, no matter how good friends you’ve been with the Dixons, or how serious Joe’s heart condition sounds.”
“I know, honey.” Her mother’s work noise stalled. “I feel bad about it, too. But . . .”
“It’s better not to rock the boat. I get it, Mom.”
Marsha had wanted to have Camille over to play with the Dixon kids. Selena and Belinda and Camille had been invited more than once to join their neighbors for one of the Dixons’ Saturday afternoon cookouts. Selena had declined every time.
“It would be asking for trouble,” Belinda warned. “You’ve got more than enough on your plate as it is, right?”
“Right.” Except the Dixons were the ones in trouble now. Which made Selena feel shabby for the way she’d rejected their friendly attempts to welcome her and Camille to town.
“Honey?” Belinda asked. “You know he’ll be there if you stop by the hospital.”
“I’m sure he will.”
And that would be even shabbier—Selena insinuating herself into an already tense situation, when the foster son she’d helped oust from Marsha and Joe’s home had just made it clear he wanted nothing to do with her.
“It would be a mistake,” her mother insisted.
“It absolutely would be.”
Except the prospect of losing such a fine, loving man as Joe had hit Selena and a lot of their community hard. And as Selena flipped on Fred’s blinker to turn into the lot beside Dan’s, she was strategizing how she could carve a few minutes away from school around lunchtime. To offer her long-overdue support to the Dixon family, and to make what would hopefully be her final mistake where Oliver Bowman was concerned.
“I almost didn’t recognize him when he first walked in,” Marsha Dixon said a few minutes before eleven.
She and Selena were gazing through the large windows of Joe’s CICU room. A mother’s proud smile bloomed across her weathered features as she watched her husband and Oliver.
“He looks so grown up,” she said. “Of course he’s grown up. It’s been years. But I mean . . . I wasn’t prepared for him to look so . . . responsible and, I don’t know, corporate or something. Even in those raggedy clothes.”
To Selena, Oliver looked all of that and more. He’d changed into different jeans and a plain black T-shirt. There were dark circles under his eyes. His face was shadowed with beard stubble that gave his cheekbones an even sharper edge. From the looks of him he’d been up all night. But there was something coolly sophisticated about him, too.
The rough-and-tumble rebel who’d once mesmerized Selena was long gone. And yet, he was exactly what she’d somehow known he’d become. Successful. Independent. Making his own way in a competitive business where few entrepreneurs thrived. And after Marsha had hugged Selena and thanked her for coming, she’d proceeded to behave as if Selena belonged there beside her, watching the man perched on the edge of his father’s bed.
Defying the hospital’s frigid artificial climate, a drop of perspiration trickled between Selena’s shoulder blades. She felt as if she were staring down a caution sign, flashing for her to turn back before all hope was lost.
“He’ll be glad you came,” Marsha said, carrying their conversation pretty much on her own.
“Your husband’s a wonderful man.”
Joe’s hand fumbled across the mattress. His fingers curled around Oliver’s. Something dangerous rattled Selena’s composure.
“I meant,” Marsha corrected, “my son will be glad to see you.”
Selena kept her focus on the touching scene playing out in Joe’s room. “Because of me, you had to boot Oliver from your foster home a week after graduation. He nearly killed his best friend in a bare-knuckles brawl because of me. He was finally sober, and because of me he drowned himself in a bottle of tequila and totaled your minivan. Glad to see me? You and I both know better.”
“What I know is that it’s been two months since you came back to town. And you haven’t brought that beautiful child of yours over once for a proper visit.”
“I’d love that, really.” It would be heaven. And hell. “But we just can’t.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
Selena shook her head.
She wasn’t ready for this. She and her daughter were nowhere near ready for this. She’d put Camille through enough. She’d promised to make her life and her daughter’s as uncomplicated as possible from now on. And this certainly didn’t qualify.
But Marsha had kept two generations of foster children in line. The woman could teach an NFL linebacker a thing or two about not backing down from confrontation. And Selena had set this awkwardness into motion when she’d shown up at the hospital. She turned to her neighbor, her hand clenched around the straps of her borrowed tote.
“You deserve your say, Marsha.” And then some. “I’m listening.”
“It’s been a long time since you and my son talked.”
“I wouldn’t call our last conversation talking.” The night Selena had gotten her drunk on and broken up with her soul mate. After which Brad had consoled her, had drank too much with her . . . And, Lord help them, the rest had just happened. “Oliver couldn’t get away from me fast enough this morning.”
Her neighbor’s expression softened with understanding . . . and something more. Selena held her breath, wondering if this was it, if someone had finally guessed. But Marsha went back to watching her husband and foster son. Worry tightened her smile to the breaking point.
Selena placed a palm on Marsha’s shoulder. There was frailty today beneath all that strength. “I’m so sorry about Joe.”
Marsha shivered. Selena wrapped her arm around the woman whose generosity had smoothed some of the jagged edges of Selena’s young life, created by her own mother’s bitter fight to survive as a single parent. Selena held on tighter. Marsha and Joe had been a lifeline for her when she and Belinda first moved to Bellevue Lane, years before Oliver arrived. It shouldn’t have taken their son’s return to get Selena to the hospital to check on them.
Marsha eased away. And like the marvel she was, she squared her shoulders, all five feet one of her.
“We never know how much time we have,” she said, short gray hair feathering about her rounded face. “We’ve got no business wasting a single chance we’re given to make things right. Oliver just got back to town. You’ve been keeping to yourself. But in a matter of hours, you two have somehow managed to see each other long enough for you to think he’s avoiding you?” She raised an eyebrow. “Yet here you are, right where you knew he’d head next.”
“This morning was a coincidence.”
A dangerous one that could cause them all a lot of trouble. Especially given that for Selena, being careful where Oliver was concerned was a Zen state she clearly hadn’t mastered.
“The fact that Joe and I got custody of Oliver in the first place was happenstance.” Marsha wiped at the corners of her eyes. “Or providence. There’s not much difference once you take a closer look. And we’re thrilled he’s back. Don’t throw away your opportunity to at least speak with him, whatever’s happened between you two.”
“I came to visit Joe to see if there’s anything Belinda or I can do to help.” Her mother had been more Belinda than Mom for years. “It must not seem like it, but I really do care.”
“Of course you do.” Marsha hugged her. The wave of peace that washed through Selena should be bottled and sold. “You and your mother have always meant so much to both of us.”
Marsha let go. Selena kept her gaze down.
All of Chandlerville admired what the Dixons had accomplished with their group foster home. Belinda’s garden club had just last week chosen Joe as Father of the Year. It would be a lovely community ceremony. And Selena knew she’d belonged in the front row, leading the applause. Her marriage was a miserable failure. But the family she still dreamed of giving Camille had always had its origins in watching the magic Marsha and Joe ach
ieved with their eclectic tribe of kids.
Selena had never felt the crush of her reckless secrets more. But how did she face the truth and the people who needed to hear it? How did she create more chaos and confusion for them and her child, when Selena had no intention of becoming a permanent part of anyone’s life in Chandlerville again? She’d come home to regroup for a few days, a week tops. She’d never meant to stay this long, get this attached or, God forbid, to be here when Oliver returned. And now . . .
All she knew for certain was that if there was ever a right time for her to come clean about her daughter’s paternity, this wasn’t it.
She took one last look into CICU. Joe smiled at something. Oliver grinned in response, his lips curling higher on the right side. She raised a clenched fist to scrub at her cheek. The needy teenager still inside her longed for Oliver to look up and see her and forgive her and somehow make everything okay the way he’d once promised he would.
“Tell Joe I stopped by. I’ll . . .” She forced out the words, the lie. “I’ll come back when it’s a better time.”
“Don’t you want to wait until—”
“No . . .” She backed toward the elevator. It dinged, urging her to hurry.
“Selena—”
“I shouldn’t have come at all. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She stopped, appalled at the rudeness of what she’d said. “I didn’t mean . . .”
“Stay.” Marsha stepped toward her.
“I can’t.” She was moving again, twisting away. “I have to—Oof!”
She’d barreled into something solid that felt like a wall with arms and legs. She saw a blue shirt and stars. She couldn’t make her vision clear.
“Are you okay?” asked a deep voice that was as achingly familiar as Marsha’s hug had been.
“Travis . . .” Selena brushed hair out of her eyes.
Oliver’s brother wore a deplorably wrinkled version of the starched shirt and dark navy pants that made up his sheriff’s department uniform. He looked rumpled and in need of a hug. But he was smiling down at Selena, same as every other time he’d seen her around town.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I didn’t know you were behind me. Been bouncin’ off things all morning. Stuff jumping off practically every table I passed at school. It’s been a bit crazed, ever since Camille’s and my morning doughnut dash. And I . . .”
Good God. She was babbling. Lines of friendly confusion wrinkled Travis’s forehead and ratcheted up his blond, boy-next-door good looks.
“I need to get back to school,” she said.
“Not yet you don’t.” Marsha pushed Selena toward Oliver’s brother. “Don’t let her out of your sight.”
At Selena’s scowl, Marsha’s eyebrow shot up again.
“Five minutes, my dear.” Marsha’s voice had shifted into the same my word is law tone that kept her kids in line. “You’ve been running from us long enough. You want to help Joe and me. Then break the ice with Oliver and our family. My boy being back isn’t becoming another reason why we never see you and that beautiful child of yours.”
Marsha disappeared into her husband’s room.
“Make yourself comfortable, darlin’.” Travis shot her a wickedly smooth Southern smile. “No one says no to Mom once she makes up her mind.”
Selena gave him her best puh-lease glare. She’d been immune to his charm since they’d been teenagers and he’d harmlessly flirted with her once or twice, admitting later that he’d done it only to get a rise out of Oliver. But she was also a realist. Marsha wanted Selena and Oliver to talk. Likely as a distraction from the helpless feeling of watching the love of Marsha’s life suffer in a hospital bed.
What were the chances of the woman turning the idea loose until she’d had her way?
“Five minutes.” Selena rolled her eyes.
Five minutes followed immediately by her avoiding the entire Dixon family again, at least until Oliver was good and gone.
Chapter Four
“Computers?” Oliver’s dad was beaming.
Joe also had an intimidating array of tubes and wires coming out of him, hooked up to a roomful of equipment. The hearty, indomitable man Oliver remembered appeared anything but indestructible now.
“I make computers do what my clients want them to do,” Oliver said, keeping his shock at Joe’s weakened state to himself.
His dad hadn’t wanted to talk about himself or the past any more than Marsha had. She’d hurried Oliver into Joe’s CICU room, and Oliver’s dad had instantly insisted on a recap of Oliver’s life since he’d been gone. Marsha had slipped away to give them some time alone.
“It takes you all over the world?” Joe asked.
A man could get addicted to hearing the growing wonder in his voice, like a kid opening presents on Christmas morning.
“Wherever they’re paying the most,” Oliver said.
“Wherever they need the best?”
“Something like that.”
“Tell me everything. Not that I’ll understand much of any of it.” Joe coughed out a soft laugh and winced at the pain in his chest.
Everything . . .
Not the kind of everything, Oliver warned himself, that would unnecessarily worry either of his parents.
“I reengineer systems and software other people can’t handle. It’s crisis work, usually at the eleventh hour for clients who can’t afford for things to stay broken any longer. I untangle whatever mess they’ve made trying to avoid paying a professional problem-solver who charges what I do. I straighten things out, good as new. Better, usually.”
Oliver huffed out his own laugh. He sounded like the kind of PR-pimped-out jerks he avoided at corporate parties. The walking billboard types, touting their brilliance to whoever’d listen. Oliver’s work spoke for itself. He was already on the short list of the corporate officers who spent a fortune on damage control. That’s all that mattered. Usually. But this was Joe, with pride shining in his eyes . . .
It was a crazy perfect moment.
“Any type of company?” his dad asked.
“I’m wily that way.” Oliver winked, when in actuality he’d been called a con man by more than a few of the competitors he regularly finessed contracts away from. Xan Coulter in particular.
She’d made sure to e-mail him that morning during his predawn pilgrimage to Chandlerville. She’d closed the Seattle contract last night, after his less-than-convincing pitch. A rare enough outcome that she’d wanted to know if he was okay.
“But no college?” Joe asked.
Oliver squeezed his dad’s hand.
A formal education was what his foster parents hoped all their kids would try for. Kids who aged out of the system often weren’t prepared for or didn’t see the point of going to college. Too much of life had landed on them at too young an age, making it harder to believe in things like going for your dreams. Marsha and Joe were having none of that.
“I did tech school for a while,” Oliver said. “Scraped my way through, busting it at part-time jobs to make tuition. Then I realized I was pretty much better at what I was doing than my professors.”
“Computers were always your thing. They were all you wanted to do, whatever class you were in”—Joe coughed around another soft laugh—“on the rare occasions that you actually found your way to class.”
Oliver wanted to hug his dad and hold on to the moment. He wanted to go back and better appreciate every day he’d had his parents’ unconditional support in his teenage life.
“I’ve been lucky,” he said. “My first real client paid me crap in return for giving me a shot. The company had contacts everywhere. Now corporations part with a chunk of their bottom line to have me reengineer the communication and data-sharing nightmare that modern cloud computing can make out of business solutions.”
“You’ve worked your ass off making your life happen. That’s determination, not luck.” Joe pointed with his free hand for emphasis. “Your mother and I always knew you’d figure out how
to put being so obstinate to good use.”
Oliver grinned, the memories bittersweet. “I was a piece of work, wasn’t I?”
“You were finding your way.”
“Listen, Dad, I’m sor—”
“Don’t you say sorry to me.” Joe sounded disappointed for the first time. “You were young and making the mistakes young people have to make. Do you think I regret a single thing that’s happened, when I look at the man you’ve become? What you’ve done with your life, what you’ve done for our family, working as hard as you have—it’s a miracle. I won’t have you apologizing for that.”
Oliver shook his head but kept his peace. His dad’s praise was everything he’d wanted. And now that he had it, it only made him want more. He got a grip and shrugged. “I solve problems. Wrangle them into submission. Most messes want to be figured out. You just have to dig under the surface, find a place to grab hold, and get to work. The rest falls into place if you keep pushing and don’t give up.”
It was the mother of oversimplifications. His client schedule on a typical day was loosely organized chaos. Xan Coulter had been hammering at him about partnering up: sharing project loads; not working himself into an early grave; maybe even having a shot at a personal life. Which he clearly didn’t, if the parade of women he’d torched short-lived relationships with—including Xan—was any indication. And then there was his burnout, spring of last year.
Oliver would have given anything to tell his dad about all of it. Get his advice. But not today. Not ever. Not his parents’ problem.
“You’ve done a lot of good with the money you’ve made,” Joe insisted. “There’s so much your mother and I couldn’t have given the kids without you. Extra school supplies and field trips and computers at the house, vacations for the family, even presents at Christmastime. Tuition for Bethany at the community college after she gave up her scholarship to art school. Specialized therapy the state can’t cover because Family Services is forever tightening their budget. My salary’s stretched to the breaking point just covering the everyday.”
Let Me Love You Again (An Echoes of the Heart Novel Book 2) Page 3
