The reporters backed out the door, grumbling. When it clicked shut, Cal’s boss watched him as she held the phone to her ear. “Hey, Don,” she said. “We had a little trouble with a couple of Ramon’s friends and there are a bunch of reporters outside the door. I don’t want things to get out of hand.”
She listened for a moment, then said, “Thanks. I appreciate it.” She snapped the phone closed.
Then she took a deep breath and turned to the rest of the kids. “All right, everyone. Show’s over.” Her voice was strained.
She pointed at Cal. “You. Stay right here.”
The kids all glanced at him, pity in their eyes. As if he was supposed to be afraid of a woman less than half his size? Then chatter resumed and the tension eased. The boy with the basketball went back to dribbling. Several of the kids near the tables sat down. The rest remained standing in small groups, their voices rising and falling as they rehashed the confrontation.
Without another glance in Cal’s direction, Frankie cut two sniffling girls out of the herd, draped her arms across their shoulders and steered them toward the opposite corner of the room. Three couches, two of them ugly flowery things and one dark brown, all of them shabby, were arranged in a U shape. Two worn, mismatched chairs completed a square.
The other furnishings in the place weren’t any better. Cal’s guess about the supermarket history of the space had been right. An old deli case stood against the back wall, now holding what looked like a bakery box. The other corners were also used for equipment, but the area in the center was wide open.
In one corner, the boy with the basketball shot with single-minded concentration. The few pieces of netting remaining on the hoop swished with every basket.
Beside that small court was a scratched and dented Ping-Pong table. A basket of balls and four paddles rested on top, and a paperback propping up one of the legs made it mostly level.
An air-hockey table and a foosball game were in the third corner. Battered and scarred, both looked as if they’d had a hard life.
At the cluster of tables and chairs in the last corner, Ramon sat by himself. The other kids had chosen seats as far away from him as possible.
Frankie sat down on one of the couches, a girl on either side of her. She leaned close and talked to them for a minute, and the girls wiped their faces with the backs of their hands. When one of them smiled shakily, Frankie squeezed her shoulder and stood up.
And headed toward him.
“Hey, I’m sorry I knocked you down,” he said as she approached.
“Don’t worry about it. I assume you’re Caleb Stewart, our community-service person. Let’s talk in the office.”
“I guess you’re Frankie Devereux.”
“Yes,” she said evenly. She glanced at a group of kids who were clustering close.
“I thought you were one of the kids at first.”
“You were wrong.” Her dismissive gaze flicked over him, as if he’d just confirmed her assumptions about stupid jocks.
He clenched his teeth as he smiled. “I can see that now. I guess I was too busy trying to save your ass to take a good look earlier.”
The boys watched him with shocked awe, as if no one ever spoke to her like that. The girls gave him sidelong glances and tried to talk to Frankie at the same time. One girl hung on her shoulder, and Frankie absently wrapped an arm around her and gave her a hug while listening to another.
She let the girl go and narrowed her gaze at Cal. But before he could speak, she said over her shoulder, “If you guys can’t agree who plays first, find a fourth to play doubles.”
What the heck was she talking about? Then Cal saw three boys standing around the Ping-Pong table hunch their shoulders and stop arguing. “Sorry, Ms. Devereux,” one of them said in a soft Southern accent. They called to the boy shooting baskets, who let the ball bounce into the corner as he joined them.
She resumed talking to the girls, and her low, smoky voice was soothing. Reassuring, if you were a teenage girl. Which Cal wasn’t. Why on earth had he thought that husky voice belonged to a boy?
Frankie Devereux wasn’t what he’d expected.
He’d figured someone running a teen center would be older. Matronly. The last thing he’d say about Devereux’s short, slender body. But her resemblance to the uptown trixies he usually spent time around ended there.
Frankie’s cargo pants were frayed at the hem and a little too big for her. When she’d walked away, he’d noticed a tiny tear just below a back pocket—too small to be revealing, but big enough to catch his eye. Her black tank top was faded and one strap was held together with a safety pin. She had three piercings in one ear and two in the other. Her black hair was short and tousled-looking, as if she’d brushed it once in the morning and forgot about it.
Clearly, she hadn’t dressed to attract attention. So why couldn’t he drag his gaze away from her?
“Over here,” she said, walking away without looking back. She headed toward the front corner of the place, and he saw a door not too far from the air-hockey game.
He followed her into a closet-size room and saw a desk covered with papers, two rickety bookshelves filled to overflowing and a chair with only one arm. He closed the door behind him.
“What the hell were you thinking?” She stood with her hands on her hips, practically vibrating, her bright blue eyes sharp enough to slice through him.
“I was thinking that things were going to explode and that someone needed to stop it. Those two punks were about to pounce.”
Frankie studied him for a long moment, and he shifted his weight. “Appearances can be deceiving, Mr. Stewart. I had that situation under control.” She sounded completely confident, as if those two gang members had been five-year-olds.
Oddly off balance, he said the first thing he could think of. “Are you kidding me? Those guys were twice your size.”
It was as if those bright blue eyes of hers saw all the way into his soul and zeroed in on what was missing. “Is brute force the only way you know to control things?”
“I suppose you were going to talk them out the door.”
“That’s exactly what I was going to do.” Frankie sank onto the edge of the desk and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she said, “I so do not need this today. You’re probably not the right person for community service at FreeZone. Our first rule here is no violence. You broke that one before you introduced yourself.”
“I was reacting to a threat,” Cal said stiffly.
Before she could respond, there was a sharp knock at the office door. “Frankie? You okay?”
She sprang off the desk and opened the door. A tall, solidly built police officer stood there, his dark eyes zeroing in on Cal. Measuring. Assessing.
“I’m fine, Don. Thanks for getting here so quickly.” She motioned him into the already crowded room. “This is Caleb Stewart. He’s supposed to do his community service at FreeZone. Mr. Stewart, this is Officer Wilson. He’s the patrol officer for our neighborhood.”
The one she had on speed dial. Cal reached for his hand and shook it. “Nice to meet you.”
“So, what happened here, Frankie?” the police officer asked, studying Cal.
“Two of Ramon’s buddies came in and said they wanted to talk to him. I told them to get out. They were about ready to leave when Mr. Stewart showed up. He grabbed them by their collars and tossed them out the door.”
“Shouldn’t do that,” Wilson said to him matter-of-factly. “They’ll charge you with assault.”
“They were threatening her,” Cal said, incredulous.
“Just saying.” Wilson shrugged. “You have a record. The judge wouldn’t like it if you got arrested again.”
“Screw the judge. I’m not going to stand by and let a couple o
f punks rough up a woman.”
Wilson stared at him, and Cal shifted his feet wider and flexed his hands as he stared back. Suddenly, Frankie was between them.
“Don, we’re okay now, but thanks for coming by. Why don’t you go have a cupcake?”
Wilson held Cal’s gaze for another moment, then turned to Frankie and smiled. “You know my weakness.”
The police officer’s vest made him appear even more imposing as he walked away. As he headed toward the kids, they crowded around him, clamoring for his attention.
“Do they always talk at the same time like that?” Cal asked, trying to ease the tension in the tiny room. “It sounds like electric drills boring into my head.”
She glanced at the group of kids milling around Don. “Yes, that’s what groups of teenagers do. Don’t you remember?”
“I never did that,” he said, his voice flat. He’d played sports as a teen, and his life had been all about discipline and obedience.
His father had made sure he didn’t have free time to hang with other kids.
“I’m not sure this is going to work out,” Frankie said after a long moment. “Let’s see how it goes today, and we’ll talk after the kids leave.”
Not work out? He couldn’t let that happen. “As it happens, I have a proposal for you.”
“What would that be—” Heading out of the office, she stopped so abruptly that Cal almost bumped into her.
“What’s wrong?”
“Those reporters are still out there.” The outlines of their figures were visible through the blinds. She whirled to face him. “They came with you, didn’t they?”
“They just showed up,” he said.
“Get rid of them.”
“How am I supposed to do that? I’m not their boss.”
“And how did they know you were going to be here today?”
He shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe they read the transcript from the trial.”
She folded her arms. “Cut the crap, Mr. Stewart. I know FreeZone wasn’t mentioned in the transcript.”
Watching him steadily, Frankie evoked memories of the nuns in grade school who’d given him the stink eye. He barely managed to keep from squirming. “Okay, maybe I told one guy.”
“And now you can tell all of them to leave. I don’t want to see them again.”
“Not possible.” Sweat pooled in the small of Cal’s back. “I need them. I need to keep my face in the news. I’m going to be… I’ll have competition at training camp in six weeks. I have to shape my publicity.”
“You can shape it into a pretzel for all I care. But you’re not doing it here.”
Okay, different tactics. He forced himself to smile. “This can be good for you, too, Ms. Devereux. We can work something out. I’ll make sure they talk about FreeZone and all the good sh…things you’re doing.” No swearing was probably one of the rules, too. He glanced around at the bare-bones furnishings. “It looks like you could use some donors. I’ll talk you up a few times, they’ll get some shots of you, maybe with some of the kids, and the money will flow in.”
Frankie recoiled as though he’d struck her. “That’s it. You’re not doing your community service here. Get out, Mr. Stewart.”
CHAPTER TWO
FUMING, FRANKIE STARED at the man who was trying so hard to charm her. Caleb Stewart wanted photos of the vulnerable kids at FreeZone, her kids, in the paper. To promote himself. Pictures of her, too.
Fear overwhelmed her anger.
Bascombe would see her.
She couldn’t let that happen. Not until she was ready to confront him.
“Take your reporters and get out of FreeZone. Now.”
“Relax, Ms. Devereux,” he said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I just got here.”
Frankie squeezed the bridge of her nose, trying to stave off the building headache. “I don’t care. Get out.”
His smile slipped. “You need to calm down. Think about this. I’m already here. Give me something to do.”
“I just did. Get rid of the reporters.”
“You haven’t thought about the possibilities,” he said.
“Oh, yes, I have.” Another wave of anxiety rolled over her. “I want those reporters gone.”
“You sure?”
The guy was good-looking, if you liked tall, muscled and blond. Even in jeans and a dress shirt with rolled-up sleeves, he was imposing. An impossible-to-ignore presence.
But Frankie didn’t trust charmers. And Cal Stewart was as slick as a politician looking for votes.
Sarah, the judge who’d sentenced Stewart to CS here, would yank this guy out of FreeZone and send someone else. Someone who wouldn’t be a problem. Cal Stewart had trouble written all over his lean, dimpled face.
“FYI, relentless pushing doesn’t work with me. Charm doesn’t, either,” she added when he tried to speak. “The reporters are nonnegotiable. Get rid of them now.”
His eyes narrowed a little, he opened his mouth, then shut it again. He shrugged, and she read his expression easily. He’d figure out a way to get around her. “I’ll be right back.”
She waited near the office as he spoke to the reporters. One of them tried to get into the center. Stewart glanced over his shoulder at Frankie, then blocked the woman.
“Sorry, guys, but I have to get to work.” He flashed them a smile and stepped inside. “Happy now?” he said to Frankie.
“Not until you’re out of my life.”
“We got off on the wrong foot, Ms. Devereux. Give me another job.”
Any other day, Frankie would have refused. But she was too upset, too frazzled to concentrate today. “Fine. Help the kids with their homework while I deal with Ramon.”
Ramon sat at a table, slouched in a chair, his legs spread wide. A thick gold chain hung around his neck, and his white T-shirt with the sleeves torn off exposed his heavily muscled and tattooed upper arms. He was watching the kids playing Ping-Pong. Frankie sighed to herself and began to walk toward him.
“You’re letting him stay?” Cal asked incredulously, stopping her with a hand on her arm. He let go when she narrowed her eyes at him.
“Of course I’m letting him stay.”
“After he brought gang members in here?”
It wasn’t hard to see that Ramon had been in a gang, as well. The boy didn’t try to hide the crude tats on his arms and hands. “He’s a former gang member. He’s trying to leave, and the two guys you threw out are enforcers, trying to change his mind.”
Cal stared at Ramon for a moment. Then he turned back to her. “Watch him,” he said abruptly. “And don’t trust him.”
“Ramon has never given me any reason not to believe him,” she said, her hackles rising. What did this stranger know about her kids? “He wants out.”
“And you took him completely at his word?” Cal gave her a disbelieving look. “A banger? It didn’t occur to you that he might have another agenda?”
She could lie and tell him no, that she trusted all her kids. But that would make her stupid. She grabbed Cal’s wrist and dragged him toward her office again, where no one would hear them.
“Yes,” she said, letting him go. Even his wrists were muscular. “I wondered at first. But he’s been here for two months and he hasn’t slipped. I can’t be suspicious of every kid who walks in here. I want them to trust me. I have to trust them back.”
“Don’t trust Ramon. That’s all I’m saying.”
“And you know him so well after being here for a half hour?” Scorn for this rich football player’s casual dismissal of Ramon made her stand straighter. “Because he made a mistake, he’s irredeemable? Not worth trying to save?”
“God, you do-gooders are all
the same. You think you can save the world. But some people don’t want to be saved.” Cal shoved his hand through his shaggy blond hair. “I saw something when his two buddies were here. Something in his expression.”
He glanced over his shoulder, and she followed his gaze to where Ramon sat. He wore earbuds and he was nodding his head in time with the music on his iPod. Right now, he looked like any other teenager.
Cal Stewart thought she was a dewy-eyed idealist, determined to rescue the misunderstood bad boys. He had no idea how wrong he was. Every ounce of naivete had been crushed out of her a long time ago.
She knew exactly what Ramon was.
“Everyone deserves a second chance.” She shoved her fists into her pockets. “Even bangers and street kids.”
Cal stilled as he studied her, but she kept her gaze on the kids. “Look, Ms. Devereux, I’m not an expert on adolescents or how to treat them,” he finally said. “I’m just a football player. But I—”
She interrupted. “That’s right. You’re a football player and I’m the one who runs FreeZone. I’ve been doing this for two years, so you can shove your opinions of Ramon.”
A smart man would have backed down. But Cal continued to stare at her. “Football players know violence. And that’s what I saw in Ramon and his buddies. Hostility. Aggression.”
She glanced at Ramon again. He’d retrieved his backpack and was reaching inside. When he pulled out a schoolbook and a pad of paper, she said to Cal, “Looks pretty dangerous, doesn’t he? He’s doing his homework, which is exactly what he’s supposed to do. But I appreciate your perspective. Thank you for sharing it with me.”
“Which means I can stick my perspective up my ass, right?”
Exasperated, she said, “Mr. Stewart, we have a few rules here at FreeZone. The first one is no violence, which you broke when you manhandled me and threw Ramon’s former buddies out the door. The second one is no swearing. I hope you’re not going for the trifecta, because if you’re carrying any drugs or weapons, I’ll call Don back to arrest you.”
“Nope. No drugs. No weapons.” He held his arms out to the side. “You want to frisk me?”
A Safe Place Page 2
