by Rachel Cross
“Yes, ma’am,” Asher drawled.
“Ms. Anderson?”
Maddy swallowed hard. She peeked over at Asher.
He was staring at her, expressionless.
“Yes, your honor. I’d like to continue to care for Ella.”
The judge turned to Sterling Lowe. “Mr. Lowe. Clearly you are a man used to getting what you want by subverting the rules.” She raised a dismissive hand. “That may work in your world, but it doesn’t work in mine. Where children and families are concerned, we care about the character of those providing for them. You’re no spring chicken, so I’m certain my words are falling on deaf ears, but if you pulled this ‘end justifies the means’ nonsense with your children, it’s no wonder you’re estranged.”
“I love Ella. I want what’s best for her,” Sterling Lowe said, hoarsely.
The room was silent, every pair of eyes on the older man at the end of the table.
The judge continued in a softer tone. “Yes. All of us here understand that. In fact, believe it or not, every single one of us in this room wants that. And everyone but you believes that Ella is getting the love and care she needs in her current environment. So when you are the sole outlier, you need to consider that your desires may be in conflict with reality. You’d be best off mending fences with your son.”
Asher made a sound — a derisive snort? — and covered quickly with a cough.
• • •
Maddy walked out of the conference room, brushing at the tears continuously leaking from her eyes.
“Maddy.” She recognized Asher’s authoritative tone and picked up her pace. She’d call him later, after she got herself under control.
She turned the corner and spotted the door to a handicapped bathroom. She dashed in but the door was slow to close so she tugged the handle. A large male hand wrapped around the upper part of the door, pulling it out of her grasp. Asher pushed her inside the dark, tiled room and locked the door. Her vision was slow to adjust to the dim light, but she eyed him warily.
He raked a hand through his hair.
“What do you want?” she said.
“To apologize.”
He stepped toward her, and she backed up into the wall.
She looked around. Drat. She could just make out the light switch on the other side of him.
“Maddy. I’m sorry I assumed the worst, but you have to admit — ”
“I don’t admit anything. I told you I didn’t betray you. You wanted to believe the worst of me. You didn’t even give me a chance to explain.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to discuss it with you. I’ll come back to care for Ella, but that’s all.”
He took another half step forward.
Her back was to the cold wall so she put a hand up to ward him off.
“Damn it, Maddy. I’m sorry. More sorry than you could ever imagine.”
Her eyes were adjusting to the dark room, illuminated only by the sliver of light coming under the door. He was close enough that she could see the remorse in his expression. “Will you please just give me a chance to apologize?”
Her stomach clenched. “Fine,” she said, curtly. “You did. Now get out.”
“Maddy.” She examined him more closely. He looked terrible. Strung out. Worse than he had the first weeks he had Ella. “I’m sorry I misjudged you,” he spread his hands, “I just figured you thought Sterling would do a better job than me.”
“What?”
“Well, once I calmed down, I realized you weren’t the type of person who gives in to blackmail. The only thing that made sense was that I’d made so many mistakes you didn’t think I was able to … ” his voice broke and he rubbed his eyes, “cut it as her guardian. And that you couldn’t tell me because of our … because of our relationship.”
She pulled his hand down.
His expression was stark.
“How could you even think that?” She grabbed his upper arms and gave him a little shake. “You’re doing great. I’ll admit I had real qualms at first but you’ve stepped up. And, even if I did still have concerns, I’d tell you, not go behind your back!”
“I know. I know. But the information he had. There was no way it could have come from anyone but you — fucking Sterling, I should’ve known. Can you forgive me?”
In answer she wrapped her arms around his neck and urged his mouth to hers. The kiss started out softly, tentatively apologetic. One large hand came up to cup her jaw. His lips stroked hers, again, then again while his other hand ran down her back in a long caress.
With an impatient sound, she fisted her hand in his silky hair and held his head. She was starving for him.
His mouth muffled her moans, his hips pressed her into the wall and she struggled to get closer as she rubbed herself against his pants. She could feel his huge erection straining against her as his free hand went under her tailored shirt, under her soft, cotton camisole to hold her breast. She whimpered against his lips, gripping the back of his head, her tongue searching for and finding his. His long, skilled fingers played with first one nipple, then the other. His free hand went to her hips to grind her harder against the hot strength of his arousal. Grabbing his hand, she dragged it down, over her stomach, lower, to the hem of her skirt. She maneuvered it, up the inside of her trembling thigh. She let go and he continued the journey, yanking her panties down and cupping her with his broad palm.
Maddy whimpered, her hands clawing at his back.
He locked his mouth to hers as he stroked her clit. Rubbing the sensitive nub in small circles with his thumb, his two long fingers pumped into her. The orgasm came, hard and fast. She threw her head back, banging it against the wall as she came with a cry that turned into a yelp, echoing off the tile in the bathroom.
He held her slack form against the wall with his body. His fingers still inside her intermittently pulsing body, he palmed the back of her head with his other hand, pulled her forehead to his, never breaking eye contact, and sang softly in his unmistakable baritone, “I’ll give you all, if you let me.”
She shivered, a full body ripple. “Not here you won’t, not in a damn restroom.” Her eyes narrowed. “Is that a Spade lyric I should know?”
He released her and smoothed her clothing. “Something I’m working on.” He cast a look behind him. “Looks pretty clean to me.”
“Your standards must be very low. I’m certain you’ve done it in worse places,” she grumbled.
He laughed. “If I have, I never enjoyed it so much.”
Maddy laid her head on the soft cotton of his dress shirt and listened to his heart gallop.
His body was immobile, but she could still feel him pressed against her. She raised her head.
His flushed face was deadly serious. “God, Maddy. I’m really sorry.”
“We told the judge we wouldn’t do this.”
He released her, reluctantly.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t. Nothing has changed. I don’t think it’s a bad thing for Ella to see us together.”
“Until we aren’t.”
“Maddy, this is not casual. I’m crazy about you. Even when I thought you’d betrayed me, I couldn’t get you out of my head. Apparently my feelings for you don’t have an off switch.”
That had to be the least romantic declaration ever made, but her heart leapt at his words.
She gave him a withering look. “Just so we’re clear. If I have a problem, Ella related or not, I’ll tell you. I don’t care if you’re my lover, my employer, my favorite singer or all three, you will know where you stand with me.”
A little twinge of guilt twisted in her and made forgiveness a whole lot easier. She had considered it, before she knew him.
• • •
An hour later she called her mom f
rom Asher’s house.
“Maddy love!” Her mother’s overjoyed voice came over the line. “I was going to call you a little later. You sitting down? I got some good news this afternoon. I’m not sure of the specifics, but apparently some veteran’s supporter paid off the house. It’s one of the private programs to help wives of men killed in service to their country. They had a benefactor and I was one of the people selected. Can you believe it? The bank called this morning.”
“Wow,” Maddy said. “I mean, congratulations.”
Asher.
Mrs. Anderson laughed. “Maddy, it’s like a miracle. I was really in trouble.”
“What?”
“Oh, I guess it doesn’t matter if you know. I couldn’t refinance when my rates went up a few years ago and I was only making partial payments. They didn’t allow me to restructure the loan. I was in deep trouble, Maddy.”
“Oh, Mom. You should’ve told me.”
“What could you have done?”
What indeed.
“I’m overjoyed. I’m going to meet the Stuarts tonight to celebrate.”
Maddy attempted a few more happy sounds. Her mother was too excited to notice.
Maddy walked into the kitchen and sat across from Asher at the kitchen table. She put the phone down and sized him up. “I guess a thank you is in order? I’m not sure how I feel about it.”
Asher cocked his head over his burrito.
“I’m not following, babe.”
“My mom. Her mortgage.”
“I was going to talk to you about that this morning. You know I’m happy to pay it off, Maddy. Just wondering how best to do it. Your mom has an excess of pride. Could I give you the money to give to her?”
Was this an act? She studied him, chewing his food. “She called this morning. It’s been paid.”
He dropped the burrito onto the plate. “Motherfucker,” he said, through a mouthful of carne asada.
Maddy’s eyes widened as the other possibility dawned. “Sterling?”
“Who else?” he asked bitterly.
Chapter 19
Maddy stretched on her lounge chair on the sunny patio. It was a cloudless day, warm in the sun, cool in the shade — typical LA winter weather. She hugged herself, trying to remember when she’d been so happy. Despite her reservations about getting involved in a relationship with Asher, everything fit together. Ella was thriving.
The questions about Dee continued of course, and she still grieved, but the nightmares were few and far between. It was achingly sad and reassuring that Ella was moving past the desperate grief of losing her mother. Asher still couldn’t bring himself to go through Dee’s things, but he had asked Maddy to do it. She’d planned to go through the boxes today and made a mental note to ask the therapist if she could share some of the items with Ella.
Now that she knew Asher better, she understood the magnitude of his loss. Dee was one of only a handful of people in his life he was close to, and their sibling bond had been forged through their parents’ respective marriages and divorces, through nannies and prep schools and rebellions against their father. In many ways, taking care of his sister in his youth had paved the way for taking care of her child.
Maddy made her way up to one of the many guest rooms. Each had a seasonal theme and the boxes were stored in the “fall” guest room, her personal favorite. The walls were a beautiful sage green, the black-and-white prints on the wall were exquisite, the linens in shades of chocolate brown with orange accents. She pulled the top off the first box — a Bankers Box — stuffed full of papers. There were mostly bills, neatly organized by month, going back a few years. No mementos, nothing personal. She put the top back and put it aside. The second box was more of a trunk. It contained beautiful scarves; a faux fur wrap; a barely used, giant designer handbag; and a diaper bag.
Maddy pulled this last item out and stared at it. She opened it and dug her fingers into its cavernous interior. A cold metal object with a plastic tip met her fingertips and she fished it out. A baby spoon.
There was something in one of the pockets too substantial to be a diaper. Frowning, she pulled it out of the pocket. It was a little red book, thin and slightly larger than a paperback novel, with no writing on the outside. Each page was filled with blue inked words. Maddy sat back on her heels. A journal? She held it shut between her palms. Huh. She flipped through the pages again peering at the tiny script. She opened it to the first page. No name, no information about the owner, just the brand printed on the bottom left inside cover.
Maybe Asher should read it. But what if there was personal information in there that Dee didn’t want her family to know? Shouldn’t Maddy at least ask someone? She read the first page. Nothing too risqué — not on the first page at any rate — and it was very stream of consciousness. She set it aside and quickly went through the other boxes looking for journals. Among the mementos, photos and memorabilia she found three more books tucked away. She restacked the boxes and sat with the four red books in front of her.
Then she called him. “Asher?”
“Hey babe.”
“Sweetie, listen, I was going through Delilah’s stuff … ”
“Yeah?”
“I found some journals.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“Have you read them?” His tone was sharp.
“Of course not. I found them and called you.”
When he spoke again his voice was unutterably weary. “I guess we can’t burn them, can we?”
“Asher, it’s one of the few links Ella has to her mother.”
“I know. But what if there’s negative stuff in there?”
“About?”
“Me. My dad. Her old lifestyle. She was a party girl until she got pregnant with Ella. Stuff a brother doesn’t want to know about his sister.”
“Only one way to find out.”
“Can you read them, please? If she writes about things she wouldn’t want Ella to see, get rid of it, will you? Like if she talks about being upset that she’s pregnant or — ”
“I understand.”
“I hate to put this on you.”
“Don’t worry. It’s not hard for me. I didn’t know and love her the way you all did.”
Asher sighed “I know it’s a lot to ask but if there’s — well, if she writes stuff I don’t need to know, don’t tell me, okay?”
“Okay, babe.”
“Even if I insist.”
“I know,” she said softly.
It took a few tries but she finally got the journals in chronological order. The first one Dee had kept intermittently for several months for an English project in high school, then two she kept through college. Ill-fated relationships, her troubled relationship with her father, her distant relationship with her mother, classes, trips, Asher. It was all there.
Unlike the others, the last journal had huge gaps of time. It was started a few years after college when she was very social and it ended before Ella’s birth. Maddy got a real sense of who Dee was, and knew she would’ve liked her. She was almost through the last book when she read a sentence. She read it again. All the air rushed out of her lungs and she put a hand to her forehead, lightheaded.
She closed the journal and put it away from her on the floor. No, she had read that wrong. Maddy picked it up and flipped through to find the line again. This time she continued to read the journal through to the end and then flipped back to that fateful page, staring at it with a dawning sense of horror.
There it was in black and white. Ella’s father’s name. Printed in Delilah’s loopy script. Maddy considered putting all the journals away, hiding them. Burning them. This one at least.
Oh God.
Dee ha
dn’t revealed much about him in the journal, just his name and that he was a contractor in Las Vegas. A fling with a man totally removed from her world and her friends; a chance meeting at a bar that led to a long, sex-filled weekend in a motel.
Why hadn’t she told him? Maybe she was afraid he would reject her and the baby or turn something casual into something serious because of the Lowe money. Whatever the reason, she didn’t write it down. She didn’t mention him throughout the rest of the journal. The last few pages were filled with the excitement of a newly pregnant woman and plans for the future.
What on earth should she do with this information? Asher had to be told. Her hand holding the journal tightened until it was painful. Sometimes doing the right thing could be disastrous.
She picked up her phone and dialed. “Asher?”
“Hey, babe. What’s up?”
“Can you come home?”
“What, Maddy? I’m in the middle of a few things here.”
“It’s urgent and I don’t want to talk about it on the phone.”
“On my way, be there in twenty.”
She was sitting on the sectional in the living room when he arrived, a glass of water, untouched on the coffee table in front of her, the red journal in her hand.
He eyed it warily. “Is that it?”
“This is one of four, the most recent one. It ends just before she delivered Ella.”
He stood in front of her, staring at the journal as though it were a poisonous toad.
“There’s nothing bad in here — in any of them — about you, Asher. She obviously loved you, counted on you, and trusted you. She was conflicted about a lot of things — her relationship with her parents, boyfriends, her career or lack thereof, her friends — but she’s very clear about how much she loved you.”
He covered his mouth with a shaking hand. “I wish I’d been around more, especially the last few years.” He dragged his hands through his hair “I thought I’d have more time.”
Maddy blinked away tears and Asher sat next to her on the edge of the couch.
