Heart Stealers

by Patricia McLinn

  “She’s a photographer, isn’t that right?” Murphy went on as Levi lifted the deck and dealt Evan three fresh cards. “She took Brett’s photos for his annual report. She must have liked what she saw in the view-finder, huh?”

  “Doubtful,” Brett argued. He really didn’t want to talk about Sharon. Not after last Saturday. Not after he’d recognized how much he’d be giving up by walking away from her—and nonetheless choosing, out of fairness to her and his own sense of self-preservation, to walk away. “I take shitty photos.”

  “I still have last year’s annual report lying around,” Levi said. He had money invested in Brett’s funds, and all investors received a copy of the report each year. “He really does take shitty photos. You looked like someone who’d been on steroids, kind of puffy and distorted.”

  Like Mr. Potato-Head’s mutant cousin, Brett thought. “This year’s photos came out better.”

  “Because you had Sharon take them,” Murphy pointed out. “She must be talented.”

  “She should get the commission for the Arlington book.” Brett knew she’d asked him not to intervene on her behalf, but mentioning her over a casual poker game wasn’t intervening. He hadn’t requested any favors or twisted any arms. He’d only made a comment to Murphy, whose wife just happened to be on the city’s birthday committee.

  That was how business was done. People made comments during poker games on Tuesday nights. If Sharon didn’t like it, she could turn down the commission—if she happened to win it. Which she ought to. Murphy was right: anyone who could make Brett look halfway decent in a photograph was definitely talented.

  “Is she submitting a proposal for it?” Murphy asked.

  Brett pulled the three cards that weren’t queens out of his hand and replaced them with the three Levi had dealt him. A jack, a four and another queen. He recalled an old saying his mother used to recite: “Unlucky in cards means lucky in love.” He wondered if the opposite was true. He’d won quite a few hands tonight, but he wasn’t feeling lucky.

  “As far as I know, she’s submitting,” he said, waiting for the betting to resume.

  “You want me to talk to Gail about her?” Murphy asked.

  “Sure,” Brett said. Evan tossed in a blue chip, Tom folded and Brett raised.

  “This one’s special, huh?” Evan asked. For a moment, Brett thought he was commenting on Brett’s hand. Then he comprehended that Evan was referring to Sharon.

  Yeah, she was special, damn it. Kissing her had only confirmed what he’d already felt about her. The way she moved, the way she composed her shots, the way she shut out the world when she was concentrating, the way she laughed... Special. Absolutely.

  “So, what’s the problem?” Levi asked, adding a blue chip to the kitty.

  Brett’s three queens won the hand over Levi’s two pairs and Evan’s bluff. Brett scooped in the chips and added them to his stacks, seeing each added chip as one more bit of proof that his love life was doomed. “What problem?” he asked, faking ignorance. “What makes you think I’ve got a problem?”

  “Gentlemen,” Murphy announced, “I saw this woman. She’s the one. Brett’s been bit.”

  “She’s not the one,” Brett snapped. Ordinarily, he didn’t mind being ribbed, especially by his poker pals. Giving one another grief was part of what bound these men together as friends.

  But insisting that Sharon was the one touched a particularly sensitive nerve, one that had never been exposed before.

  Murphy looked perplexed. “How can you say she’s not the one? Even Gail liked her—and Gail’s the toughest judge of character I ever met. Look how long it took her to figure out she liked me.”

  Brett sighed. To remain churlish when he had such a huge heap of chips in front of him would not go over well with his friends. “All right,” he conceded. “She’s a fantastic woman. She’s everything Murphy says she is. But she’s not the one. She’s got a kid.”

  His statement was greeted with groans and guffaws. The guys knew how Brett felt about children.

  “Just one?” Evan asked. “How old?”

  “I don’t know—two, two-and-a-half, something around there.”

  “That’s a sucky age,” Evan reassured him. “Things improve when kids pass their third birthday.”

  “It’s not his age,” Brett argued. “Any age would be a problem. You know me.”

  “If the woman is really the one,” Levi observed, “you might try to get past the kid thing.”

  Levi wouldn’t understand. With the arrival of his baby, he’d discovered he had a knack for child rearing, and a taste for it. The other fathers at the table—Murphy and Evan—were insanely in love with their children. Tom had been married three times and was determined never to marry again, which meant the likelihood of his becoming a father was pretty slim. But even he wouldn’t understand the antipathy Brett felt toward children. He hadn’t lived Brett’s life. None of them had.

  “I’m serious, Brett,” Levi added. “When you love a woman, you figure out ways to accommodate her.”

  “First of all, I don’t love this woman,” Brett said. He wished he could introduce a new topic, the Red Sox’s traditional late-season fade, for instance, or the governor’s new tax proposal. “And second of all, if I did love her—” a totally preposterous notion; they had lots of chemistry going for them, but that was hardly the same thing as love “—the most loving thing I could do would be to clear out. The way I feel about kids, I don’t belong with her.”

  “Have you ever considered changing the way you feel about kids?” Levi asked.

  Brett muttered an obscenity, which made Levi laugh. “I am who I am,” Brett reminded him. “Why should I change?”

  “Because this woman may be the one,” Murphy noted.

  Brett swung his gaze around the table. His buddies were ganging up on him. If he didn’t have the damned mountain of chips in front of him, he would leave. But the group had an unspoken rule about not leaving early when you were ahead. It was bad sportsmanship, and bad sportsmanship was a far greater sin than tormenting one of the players about his hang-ups.

  “I think,” Murphy addressed the other men, “that our friend Brett here needs a few lessons at the Daddy School.”

  “Lessons?” What the hell was Daddy School? Whatever it was, its name made Brett want to run as fast as he could in the opposite direction.

  “It’s a great program,” Levi told him.

  “My sister-in-law is one of the founders,” Murphy said. “She’s the director of the preschool Evan’s daughter’s been attending.”

  “And the other founder is the wife of a client of mine,” Levi added. “They teach classes in how to become a better father.”

  “I don’t want to become a father at all,” Brett said defensively. “I sure don’t want to become a better one.” He punctuated that assertion by taking a long pull of beer.

  “Forget about becoming a father,” Evan explained. “They teach you how to get along with kids, how to get them to open up to you, how to build a stronger relationship with them.”

  Brett didn’t want Max Bartell to open up to him. He didn’t want to build a stronger relationship with the whiny blond imp. With the imp’s mother, sure, but not with him.

  Of course, the only way he could build a stronger relationship with her was through her kid. Max was the gatekeeper. Brett would have to get past him to reach her.

  He didn’t want to get past Max. But... damn. He wanted to reach Sharon. He did.

  “Why don’t you just give it a try?” Murphy suggested. “I met the woman in question, Brett. She’s worth putting yourself out a little.”

  “I don’t want to attend classes with a bunch of gaga dads,” Brett objected. “I can just imagine them all sitting around, boasting about how wonderful their kids are, how much money they spent on their kids and how their kids pitch better than anyone on the Sox roster. I’d need a barf bag to get through that kind of thing.”

  “It’s not like that
,” Evan assured him. “Most of the fathers are insecure about their abilities. They’re there because they want to learn how to be better at it.”

  “Except for me,” Murphy bragged. “I attended it a few times and discovered they had nothing to teach me. I was already the perfect father.”

  Levi aimed a red chip at Murphy’s nose and fired. Murphy ducked, and the chip bounced off the refrigerator.

  Brett didn’t share his friends’ laughter. He was already feeling queasy. The mere name of the program caused his stomach to buck. Daddy School. Brett didn’t belong there. He’d hate it. He’d get nothing out of it.

  Closing his eyes, he pictured Sharon. And it occurred to him that maybe he’d get something out of it, after all—her.

  But he didn’t want to go. He was happy with himself; he saw no need to transform his life. Classes on how to connect with kids? No way.

  “So, where does this Daddy School meet?” he asked.

  * * *

  Sharon heard the bell above the door ring, signaling that someone had entered the studio. She’d sent Angie down to the bank with the previous day’s receipts, so she had to go out to the front counter to deal with the customer herself.

  Ordinarily, this would not be a problem. Ordinarily, she was not in such a sour mood.

  She’d never been a temperamental person. Even after Steve’s death, she’d maintained an even disposition, afraid that mood swings would make her pregnancy and the first months of her baby’s life more difficult. Back then, surviving each day had been challenging enough without her turning into a grouch.

  It was all Brett’s fault that she was a grouch now. She’d been doing fine before she’d met him. She hadn’t spent all her free time mourning over what her life lacked, yearning for a man to come along and fill in the missing pieces and hollow places. No man could do that—certainly not Brett. He didn’t have what it took to be Sharon’s lover.

  She wanted to get beyond him, to move on. To forget the warmth and texture of his lips on hers, to eradicate her image of him carrying Max to her car, so strong, so protective of a child he apparently loathed. She wanted to regain her optimistic outlook, to fall asleep at night without first enduring hour after hour of restlessness over how empty her bed was. She wanted to get over him.

  She might have a chance of doing that if she didn’t keep staring at that one photo of him, the one she’d saved for herself. Like a masochist poking a bruise to see if it still hurt, she kept pulling out the photo and staring at it, resenting him for not being the man she needed him to be, hating him for having been so honest with her, wishing he didn’t matter to her.

  She plastered a fake smile on her face and marched into the front room, determined to keep crabby, cranky state hidden from her customer. Her smile faltered when she saw the man lurking by the front counter. “Raymond?” she blurted out.

  Deborah’s husband had obviously come to her studio directly from work, since he was dressed in a debonair suit which was not the least bit wilted from the heat outside. His shirt was crisp, his hair neat, his tie even and snug against his throat.

  Whenever she glimpsed him at Deborah’s house, or at parents’ meetings at the Children’s Garden Preschool, Raymond Jackson appeared confident to the point of arrogance. But today he looked uncertain, his eyes troubled, his smile hesitant. “I hope you don’t mind my stopping in,” he said.

  “Why should I mind? This is a public business.”

  “I’m not here on business,” he said.

  She stood straighter. “Is everything okay with Deborah? Is Olivia—?”

  “Olivia’s fine,” he assured her. “So is Deborah. I guess,” he added, then abandoned her to gaze at the walls, which held displays of the studio’s assorted offerings. After scrutinizing some of the arty bridal portraits, he turned back to Sharon. “I was hoping... I know, I have no right to put you in the middle of anything, but...” He sighed. “She won’t talk to me. She won’t listen to me. I don’t see how we’re going to fix things if she refuses to deal with me. You’re her closest friend, so I was hoping...” He left her to complete the thought.

  Sharon had no idea how to help him repair his marriage with Deborah. As Deborah’s confidante, she’d heard plenty about what was wrong between the Jacksons, but little about how to make things right. In fact, the way Deborah talked, Sharon was almost convinced that Deborah didn’t want to make things right at all.

  “Aren’t you working with a marriage counselor?” she asked gently. “That would probably be the best person to talk to.”

  “I missed last week’s session. I had to be in New York City on business. And now Deborah’s saying she doesn’t want to see the counselor anymore, because I missed this one session.”

  According to Deborah, that week’s session hadn’t been the only one he’d missed—and there was much more to it than his missing sessions with the counselor. But Raymond looked so defeated, Sharon couldn’t send him away, not even out of loyalty to Deborah. Sharon wanted what was best for her friend. For all she knew, hearing Raymond out right now might be the best thing for Deborah.

  “I know we can work this out,” Raymond insisted. “I love Deborah. I want to be back in her life—and in my daughter’s life, too. But Deborah refuses to even talk to me anymore.”

  “She’s not talking to you at all?” Sharon hadn’t realized things had deteriorated to such an extent.

  “I call, I leave messages—she doesn’t return them. I phoned her at work and she hung up on me. I thought about sending flowers, but she’d just think that was an empty gesture. If she really doesn’t want to talk to me, flowers aren’t going to change her mind.” He sighed again, his dapper grooming belied by his pitiable expression. “She says I spend too much time working. But why does she think I’m working so hard? It’s all for her and Olivia. They’re the reason I’m putting in all those hours at the office and traveling to Boston and New York. She wants it all—a full-time father for Livie, and someone with a fancy title and a big income.”

  Sharon held up her hand to silence him. She preferred not to hear his tirade. “I really think the marriage counselor—”

  “No, listen: here’s what I was hoping you’d do—just help me to get some time alone with Deborah, so she’d have to talk to me. If you could take Livie out of the house for a while—because Deborah hides behind Livie, she uses her as a shield. I try to talk to her about us, and she goes on and on about Livie. So I thought, maybe you could take her to the movies or something, maybe bowling—”

  “Bowling?” Sharon laughed. “She’s not even three years old! The bowling balls probably weigh more than she does.”

  “All right. Forget bowling. A movie, then. Or some other outing for a couple of hours. Then I could have Deborah’s full attention, and maybe she’d listen to me. Would you do that?”

  He looked so plaintive, she felt her resistance crack. Allowing herself even a sliver of sympathy for him struck her as a betrayal of Deborah, as if she were collaborating with the enemy—but really, what would be the harm of giving the two of them a couple of hours alone? “I don’t like the idea of tricking Deborah,” she hedged.

  “You wouldn’t be tricking her. You’d just be taking Olivia for an afternoon. You’d do that if Deborah had a doctor’s appointment, wouldn’t you?”

  Of course Sharon would. And the fate of Deborah’s marriage might be as important as anything a doctor could do for her. “All right. I suppose I can take Olivia for a few hours this weekend.” She wouldn’t be able to drive around town taking pictures for her portfolio—as difficult as that was with one toddler in tow, it would be impossible with two—but maybe she could bring the kids here to the studio, arm them with crayons and paper, and spend a little time working on the photos she’d already taken. Unlike her portrait work, these were photos she wanted to print herself, so she could experiment with the tone and color and get them just right. Afterward, she could take the kids to the playground, or to the park where Max’s favorite rock
was.

  Where she’d taken Brett last weekend. Where he’d watched Max climb the rock and wandered the paths with Max—and evidently despised every minute he’d had to spend with the boy. She suppressed a grimace at the memory.

  Deborah might be furious with her husband. But at least he loved his daughter. At least he didn’t detest children. How bad could he be?

  “If you want to make a plan with Deborah for Saturday, I’ll take Livie,” she promised.

  His smile was hesitant, flickering with hope. Sharon didn’t know him well enough to interpret that smile, but she wanted to believe in it. She’d seen him open his arms to his daughter; she knew he loved Olivia. A man who loved children deserved a few extra points.

  A man who hated children wound up with a negative rating. She was going to have to remember that—even when she was staring at that unposed photo of Brett, and remembering the heat of his lips on hers. A man who hated children deserved no points at all.

  Chapter Seven

  Deborah was still simmering when Sharon rang her doorbell Saturday morning. “I don’t know why you let Raymond talk you into this,” she muttered as she rummaged through the bag of provisions she’d packed for Olivia. “Livie likes the diapers with the fish on them,” she noted, lifting one out of the bag so Sharon could see the trim, which featured a waistband stripe of aqua populated by cartoonish drawings of sea life. “She refuses to wear the ones with the rocket ships. If you want to take them for Max, be my guest.” She handed Sharon a few space-travel disposable diapers, then apparently remembered that she was supposed to be angry with Sharon. “So Raymond waltzes into your shop and gives you a sob story, and now you’re on his side.”

  “I’m not on his side,” Sharon insisted. She and Deborah had had this conversation twice before, but she was willing to go through it one more time. “All I said was, you owe it to yourself—not just him but yourself—to hear him out. You aren’t going to resolve anything if you won’t even talk to him.”

  “He had plenty of chances to talk,” Deborah argued. “Unfortunately, he neglected to show up. He’s missed sessions with the counselor, sessions with the lawyers, at least two dates with Olivia—”