by Maggie Wells
Mike frowned, vertical lines appearing between his brows and cutting deep. “There’s nothing wrong with the business. Legally, I mean,” he said, his tone disapproving but at the same time a little defensive.
“I didn’t say there was,” Colm replied, annoyance making his voice gruffer than usual. “I said I took the meeting. I’ll have a proposal drawn up in a day or so.”
“Are you okay?” Mike nudged the door partway closed for privacy. “You didn’t have to get a triple root canal or anything, did you?”
Colm returned the squinty-eyed stare. “No. Why?”
“Rosie said you growled at her.”
“I would never growl at Rosie,” Colm objected.
He wouldn’t. The three partners wholeheartedly agreed on one thing—their one and only employee was the lynchpin in the whole operation. As such, Rosie was accorded not only respect but a certain amount of deference.
“Have you ever heard me say anything even remotely rude to Rosie?” he demanded.
“No. Which is why I wondered what’s going on with you.”
“Nothing’s going on with me. Why do you think something is going on with me?”
“I’ve texted you five times about the Anderson account, and you haven’t responded. I figured the bakery lady had minced you up and put you in one of her penis cakes.” He pushed his hands into his pants pockets and took a step closer. “Turns out, you’ve been sitting right here.” He gave a casual shrug and rocked on his heels, but the grave expression of concern didn’t change one bit. “Not like you to ignore texts. James ignores things all the time, but you? No.”
The urge to tell his friend to piss off was strong, but nothing compared to the pressure of the hurt and confusion welling up inside him. Hell, his throat burned, and he had a sneaking suspicion the tickle he felt at the base of his skull might be more than the prickle of impatience.
He’d been so wrong about her.
So wrong.
Again.
Swallowing hard, he ignored the heat blazing up his neck and bleeding into his cheeks as he yanked his phone out of his pocket. The alert showed a mere nineteen texts messages awaiting his attention. Scowling at the number on the indicator, he set the phone aside without opening the application. “What did you need?”
Mike stepped closer, his gaze dropping to the cell laying face-up on the desk. The screen went black, but he gave a full head-tilt. “I was giving you a heads-up on two more prospects. James is on a hot streak.”
Without waiting for an invite, Mike dropped into the single guest chair. Colm had moved the chair’s mate to the reception area when he figured out his partners considered his office the optimal battleground for their disagreements. Thankfully, Colm didn’t feel the need to be as tactful with the guys as they all were with Rosie.
“No need to get comfortable,” he grumbled. He made a show of shuffling a few folders from one pile to another, then shook his mouse to wake his computer. “I’ll look them over and get them set up.”
“What’s up with you?” Mike asked bluntly.
“Nothing.”
“Something,” his friend countered.
Colm shot him a filthy look. “Leave me alone.”
“Make me.” Mike added a smirk to the taunt. “I think we know we can both go on like this all night, so why don’t we cut to the chase. What crawled up your ass?”
“I’m fine. Bad day, that’s all.”
Mike nodded, but the smirk stayed in place. A clear indicator he wasn’t buying the B.S. Colm was pushing. “No good day starts with a trip to the dentist.”
“She’s his kid!” Colm threw his hands up in the air, every bit as surprised as Mike by the outburst.
“What?”
Sighing with a mix of frustration and resignation, Colm rubbed a hand across his eyes. He had no energy for this. This whole screwed up scenario was too much to be believed. What were the odds?
“Emma. She’s my dentist’s kid,” he explained.
“Monica’s kid? Monica is your dentist’s baby mama?” Mike asked, as if slowly putting puzzle pieces together.
“Do people even use that term anymore?”
Mike shrugged. “Damned if I know.”
Colm shook his head dismissively. “No. The kid is my dentist’s kid.” He paused, but Mike stared at him, his face a perfect blank. “She isn’t Monica’s kid at all. She’s her niece.”
“Her niece?”
“Yeah.”
Mike took a moment to digest the information. “Wow. Well…” He hummed softly as he worked his way around the problem. “I guess that makes life a little less complicated.”
Colm blinked, stunned by his friend’s cockeyed take on the situation. “Less complicated? How do you figure?”
His friend tossed Colm’s incredulity off with a shrug. “One kid, one babysitter. I mean, she’s free as a bird, right?”
He snorted. “Yeah, I guess you could say so.”
“Less complicated,” Mike concluded.
“If I ignore the fact that she’s been lying to me all this time,” Colm interjected.
“Right,” Mike murmured, almost to himself.
Colm could almost see his friend processing the data. The three of them were different this way. In Mike’s case, the information would be broken down to the essentials and plugged into some kind of mental computer. He’d weigh every fact, recalculate possible outcomes, and spit out an opinion only when he’d had time to consider every angle. Mike was the polar opposite of James, who was quick to jump and not always inclined to ask questions later. Colm always figured he fell somewhere in the middle ground, but processing the situation, he wondered if he might be even more cautious than Mike. Giving his head a shake, he dismissed the thought. While he might not be as impulsive as James, he didn’t analyze every angle like Mike. No, he wasn’t overly cautious. More a believer in the old fool-me-once school of thought.
“Doesn’t matter. I already told her we were done.”
The declaration startled Mike from his contemplation of the situation. “What? Why?”
Colm snapped his fingers to get the guy’s attention. “Weren’t you listening?”
“I was. She’s not the kid’s mom.”
“She’s a liar.”
Mike’s brow beetled and he sat up a little straighter. “Yeah, well, yeah. Did she say why she lied?”
“Does it matter why?” Colm exploded. “I mean, what the hell? Do I have the word ‘gullible’ tattooed on my forehead or something? One of those weird UV tats people can only see in a certain light?”
“Whoa, hang on—”
Mike held up both hands to stop him, but Colm had a full head of steam worked up.
“What. The. Fuck. Why me?” His chair shot out as he stood. “Why do they always lie to me?”
He side-armed the cube of notepaper he’d been fanning. The pad hit the wall with a thunk, then descended in a flutter to the floor, the glue binding folded neatly in two, leaving the pad open like a tiny book. Running his hand through his hair, he exhaled in a blast. “I’m a decent guy. I try to do the right thing most of the time. I don’t go around pretending to be something I’m not. Why can’t they?” He swung his arm in an all-encompassing arc. “What’s so hard about telling the truth?”
Mike stared up at him, understanding overriding the concern in his eyes. “You really want me to answer?”
“Yes.” Colm gestured for him to hit him with his best shot. “Please.”
“You don’t want to hear the truth any more than you want to tell her the truth.”
His friend made the statement with the kind of quiet firmness that makes a person wonder what he missed.
Colm rewound the conversation in his head, but for the life of him, he couldn’t quite make the answer match up with his question. “What’s that suppos
ed to mean?”
“Did you tell her the truth? Tell her you wake up dreading whatever unseen catastrophe life has in store for you that day? That the majority of your social interactions revolve around cartoons and arguments over food?” He took a breath but forged ahead, warming to the topic. “Did you tell her you couldn’t talk on the phone before eight because you’re too busy doling out fruit snacks and sniffing Aiden’s head to see if he actually shampooed or just got his hair wet?”
Folding his hands across his belly, he leaned back in the chair.
“Did you mention you’d forgotten what it feels like to touch someone other than your kid?” He stared Colm straight in the eye. “Did you tell her you go to bed every night terrified you won’t be enough? That no matter how much you do, or how hard you try, you’ll never be able to make not having a mom up to him?”
Colm scrubbed a hand over his face. “Christ, Mike.”
“Did you tell her you fantasize about finding some woman willing to take the two of you on—and not for the whole happy family bit, but because you want someone else to do a fucking load of laundry, or decide whether you’re having chicken nuggets or fish sticks for dinner?”
Colm sucked in a sharp breath, but Mike didn’t let up.
“Because let’s be honest here, Col, it’s not all about the sex or even love anymore, is it?”
“Okay, all right.” He raised his hands in surrender, but apparently his pal wasn’t quite done yet.
“This girl liked you so much she lied to get you into bed. Shit. You should be down on your knees thanking her,” Mike said, rising from the chair. “You fucking hypocrite.”
Colm reared, stung by the accusation. “Hypocrite? Wait a—”
“How many women have you lied to, to get laid? We all did. We’d lie about our grandmothers if it meant we had half a chance,” he corrected. “I can think of a dozen of my standard lines off the top of my head. Hell, I can probably name two or three of yours. I was standing right next to you when you told one woman you were S.W.A.T.”
“Okay, okay.”
“I couldn’t believe she believed you,” Mike continued, undeterred. “Like there’s anything stealthy or tactical about you. You make the proverbial bull in a china shop look graceful.”
“All right, fuck off.”
Mike waved his protests off and turned to stomp toward the door, clearly pissed. Colm smiled a little as Mike jerked the door open and strode toward his office. Rosie looked up from her monitor when Mike slammed his door hard. The prints on the wall trembled, then settled. She turned to Colm, her eyes wide and worried. Standing in his own doorway, he blew out the dregs of a breath, feeling lighter than he had since he first spotted the photograph. He lifted a hand to assure the office manager all was well, but let his fingers curl into his palm as he retreated.
“Hey, Rosie?”
Her head popped up again. “Yes?”
“Men are nothing but lying scum. Stay away from them.”
She smirked, her nose wrinkling as she peered at him through her glasses. “Even you?”
“Even me.” He nodded to add a little oomph to the confirmation. He pointed to Mike’s closed door. “Him, too.”
The outer door opened and his pal James blew in. As usual, he held his cell phone pressed to his ear. He greeted them with a distracted wave, made a beeline for his own office, and kicked the door closed behind him. James treated the caller on the other end of the line to what could only be described as a lascivious chuckle.
Colm took a step into the safety of his own domain. “And him in particular,” he called to Rosie. “Never, ever believe anything he says,” he cautioned.
Closing his office door, he sighed. The warning came too late to be any use. Rosie had been moony-eyed over James since the day she first stepped foot in their offices. He hoped James remained oblivious. Maybe he could make Rosie believe James was single because he had a raging case of herpes or something. After all, it wouldn’t take a huge stretch of the imagination.
Leaning against his door, he closed his eyes. “Well, what do you know? Mikey was right. Nothing but liars with their pants on fire around here.”
His phone vibrated, skittering across his desk. The sustained urgency of the buzzing indicated an incoming call, not a text or email. He wished he could ignore the damn thing, but Mike’s scolding and the ever-niggling worry of Aiden’s daycare calling always won out. Mustering all his strength, he pushed away from the door and lunged for the desk.
His heart jumped up and lodged in his throat like a fist when he saw the caller displayed. Pawing at the screen, he fumbled the phone a little, then pressed it too hard to his ear. “Yeah. Hello?”
“Mr. Cleary?”
He closed his eyes, silently cursing himself for tempting fate. “Yes, this is Colm Cleary. What happened? Is something wrong?”
“This is Mrs. Bell at Jump Start.”
“Yes, yes,” Colm interrupted the daycare director impatiently. “Is Aiden okay?”
“Aiden took a spill on the playground today and hit his forehead. Ms. Seever has taken him to St. Vincent’s to be looked at on the chance he may need stitches—”
Colm grabbed his keys from the desk and started for the door. “I’m on my way.”
He ended the call, belatedly remembering he hadn’t thanked the woman for keeping him informed or asked for any details of the accident. He didn’t slow as he passed Rosie’s desk. “Gotta go. Aiden’s hurt,” he managed to mumble. The moment he opened the exterior door, Colm broke into a dead run.
His stupid phone beeped, blerped, and buzzed the entire drive from their office to the emergency room, but he didn’t risk a glance. His hands were shaking so hard he was scared to let go of the steering wheel.
By the time he parked and jogged his way to the urgent care entrance, twenty minutes had passed. Try as he might, it was hard to forget he’d lost Carmen in about the same short window of time. And almost lost his son.
Up until the day of the accident, Colm was convinced he had everything. A home. A job he loved. A baby on the way. And Carmen. Beautiful, tempestuous Carmen.
Whose name was actually Estella.
Breathless and sweating, he ran directly to the information desk. He hit the stylized glass and faux-granite countertop so hard, the young man seated on the stool jumped. “Aiden Cleary. His school brought him. Jump Start,” he panted.
“Are you—?”
“His dad. I’m his dad. Where is he?”
The younger man’s brow arched in such a way to imply Colm was perhaps a tad melodramatic, but he was beyond caring. All he wanted was his kid. Whole and healthy. Aiden was all he needed in his life. Now or ever.
He didn’t need a woman in his life. He and Aiden were fine. They were perfectly fine on their own.
When the guy failed to answer right away, he leaned over the counter and rearticulated the question through gritted teeth. “Where is my son?”
The gatekeeper pushed away from his podium. “Exam three. I’ll take you there.”
Exam three. Carmen—or Estella Perez, as he discovered—had been in trauma four. Different hospital, same gut-wrenching trip down the hall.
Her head bloodied nearly beyond recognition, but her belly swelling with life. There’d been mere moments between his son’s birth and her death. The woman he’d married, but hadn’t known. A man showed up at the hospital claiming to be Colm’s wife’s brother. A guy named Adrian Perez. And he kept telling Colm his wife’s name wasn’t Carmen, but Estella. The man who spilled the whole story of his family’s illegal immigration from Mexico, but Colm refused to believe him. How could he?
How could everything be a lie?
But Carmen had claimed she was from Colombia. She’d been working at Carita and Pablo’s restaurant when they met, so he had no reason not to believe her. The older couple had been incensed
when he told them what he’d discovered about his late wife. Angered by both the lie, and the fact that their good friend the cop had made the typical white guy mistake of thinking all Latinas were the same.
He skidded to a stop as the attendant pulled the edge of a curtain. Relief flooded through his veins the moment he saw Aiden sitting up on the exam table, a yellow freezer pop in hand. He looked up and almost immediately those big brown eyes filled with tears.
“Daddy.”
“I’m here, bub,” Colm assured him, flashing a quick glance at the young daycare teacher who’d been standing at Aiden’s bedside.
The first big, glossy tear trickled over dark lashes. Colm was at his son’s side in a heartbeat. His kissed the boy’s head, tipping his face up for inspection. Aiden gave a hiccuppy little laugh and Colm hugged him tight.
“Jeez, if you wanted an ice pop, all you had to do was ask.” He wiped at the drying tear tracks. “I bet the other guy looks worse.”
“I fell off the slide.”
Colm raised his head to look at the teacher. Ms. Seever grimaced. “There seems to have been a scuffle on the platform, but no one is talking…” She raised both eyebrows and craned around Colm’s arm to peer at Aiden. “…Yet.”
“Anyone else hurt?”
“No others bleeding. Some scrapes and crying,” she assured him.
“Well, it’s not a party until there are scrapes and crying.” He reluctantly released the boy when the inevitable squirming set in.
“The doctor says the cut isn’t too deep. He thinks they can close it with tape,” the woman rushed to assure him. “He should be back in a minute.”
Colm nodded and tore his gaze away from his son. Turning his full attention to Ms. Seever, he said, “I can take things from here.”
“But, Mrs. Bell—”
“I’ll call her and tell her he’s okay.” He blew out a breath as he watched Aiden suck half the frozen treat into his mouth. His expression puckered comically. “Go on. And thank you,” he added, remembering his earlier rudeness to Mrs. Bell.
Ms. Seever moved to the bed and patted Aiden’s leg gently. “You were really good, A,” she assured the boy. “Super brave.”
