Mr. Congeniality

by Sherry Lewis

  The fire popped, and sparks flew into the sky. Nessa folded her arms and rested her weight on one leg. “What?”

  “It’s after dark, sweetheart. Do you really think it’s smart to take off into the woods?”

  “We’re not going into the woods. We’re just going to walk down by the creek.”

  Annie blinked a couple of times and processed what seemed like a convoluted bit of logic. “Don’t you have to go through the woods to get to the creek?”

  “Not really.”

  “Yes, you do. And I’d rather you didn’t.”

  Nessa shifted her weight and her expression grew even more pained. “So, what are you saying?”

  “That I’d rather you didn’t go.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, honey. It’s late. We all have to get up early in the morning.”

  Nessa gaped at her. “Where did that come from? I’ve been staying up later than this every night we’ve been here.”

  “That doesn’t mean we have to continue.”

  Nessa studied Annie closely for a long minute. “What’s wrong, Mom? You’ve been acting weird all night.”

  Annie wasn’t ready to tell Nessa about her dad’s offer. Nessa would encourage her to accept it and Annie wasn’t sure she could think clearly under the pressure. She focused on the other issue bothering her. “Why don’t you sit down for a minute. I think we should talk about this.”

  “About what?”

  “You and Tyler. I’m getting a little worried about how close you’re becoming.”

  Nessa took a quick step backward. “We’re friends, Mom. Is that okay with you?”

  “Of course. As long as that’s all it is.”

  Nessa darted a glance at Tyler, glowered at Annie and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Would you please quit treating me like a baby? We just want to walk over to the creek.”

  “I’m not treating you like a baby,” Annie said softly. “I’m just asking you to use a little common sense.”

  Firelight flickered and shadows danced across Nessa’s face. “What do you think’s going to happen? That Tyler’s going to attack me as soon as we’re out of sight?”

  “No!” Annie glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one could overhear them. “That’s not what worries me.”

  “Oh. So you think I’m going to attack him?”

  “I’m not worried about anyone attacking anyone else. But I am worried about you putting yourself into a compromising position and then losing control of it.”

  Nessa tossed her head angrily. “I’m a lot smarter than you give me credit for, Mom.”

  “It’s not a question of how smart you are,” Annie said, struggling to keep her voice level. “Intelligent people get into situations they can’t control all the time.”

  Nessa moved still closer. “We just want to take a walk. Why do you have to make a big deal out of it? Nobody else does.”

  Annie glanced at Tyler, who seemed as unhappy with her as Nessa. She darted another glance at Dean and Gary. It was true that neither of them seemed even slightly concerned about the two kids wandering off in the dark together—but, then, neither of them was this teenage girl’s mother.

  “I know you don’t understand why I’m worried,” she said to Nessa. “Maybe you will when you have a daughter of your own. Until then, you’re just going to have to accept my decision.”

  Nessa’s eyes flashed with a mixture of hurt, anger and embarrassment. “That’s not fair.”

  “I know you don’t think so now,” Annie began.

  But Nessa wasn’t listening. “It’s times like these when I can’t wait to live with Dad,” she shouted. The instant the words left her mouth, her eyes flew wide and regret was written all over her face. But that didn’t stop her from bolting across the clearing and disappearing into the trees, or Tyler from following only a step behind.

  DEAN WATCHED FROM the shadows as Annie argued with Nessa. He felt the weight of her concern as the two kids disappeared along the path toward the lodge, but he waited a couple of minutes before pulling a camp stool over to sit beside her.

  “Are you okay?” he asked softly.

  She nodded slowly. “I think so. How much did you hear?”

  The hurt on her face was so raw, Dean could almost feel it. “Enough.”

  “And I thought I was keeping my voice down.”

  Dean shrugged. “Sounds carry at night.”

  “I’ll remember that.” A breeze gusted from the mouth of the canyon and Annie shivered slightly. “I wonder if I ever said anything that hurt my mother like this when I was Nessa’s age.”

  Dean decided to go along with her efforts to lighten the mood. “Of course you didn’t. Just like I never had a bit of attitude. We were both perfect angels. I’m sure of it.”

  Annie laughed and brushed hair away from her forehead. “That helps.” They sat in silence for a few minutes before she spoke again. “You’re missing your cue. This is the part where you tell me not to worry. That Tyler’s a good kid and you trust him completely.”

  Dean leaned forward and rested his arms on his thighs. “Tyler’s a good kid,” he said without inflection. “I trust him completely.”

  Annie glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “Do you mean that?”

  “I hope so.” He linked his hands together and smiled to ease the worry on her face. “I don’t think they’ve gone too far yet. And Tyler seems to genuinely like Nessa, so I don’t think he’s looking for a conquest.”

  Annie let out a soul-deep sigh. “That’s not very comforting.”

  “I know, but the truth is I hardly know Tyler. I think he’s a good kid and I do trust him to a point, but we don’t have a very long history and I can’t offer any absolute guarantees.”

  Annie stretched her legs out in front of her. “I’ve noticed that things are a little strained between the two of you, but it’s been better the last couple of weeks, hasn’t it?”

  “Things aren’t any worse. That’s a definite plus.”

  Annie smiled softly. “I’ve been curious about your relationship, but I haven’t wanted to pry.”

  “Afraid I’ll bite your head off?”

  “You’re not that touchy,” she said, putting more warmth into her smile. “And now that I know what a great apology you offer, I’m ready to chance it—if it’s okay with you, that is.”

  Dean nodded slowly, not at all sure how to explain his family and a little nervous about how she would react. “It’s a long story.”

  “I’m not going anywhere for a while. I don’t think Nessa will be waiting to make cocoa over girl-talk right away, and it will probably be smart to let her simmer down before I talk to her again. So tell me about the two of you. Tyler seems so angry with you sometimes, I can’t figure out why he’s here.”

  “That makes two of us.” Dean was amazed by the strength and understanding he saw in her eyes. He’d only known her a month, yet it seemed as if he’d known her forever. And the need to share some of the burden they were each carrying—if only for a moment—was almost overpowering.

  “Tyler’s mom and I are the only kids in our family,” he said after a moment. “Our dad died shortly after Carol was born. Mom died when I was twenty-one and Carol was still in high school.”

  Annie’s expression sobered instantly. “I’m sorry. I had no idea.”

  Dean shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”

  “Yes, but still—”

  Dean wasn’t ready to delve that far into his emotional waters. He kept his gaze riveted on the fire and tried to stay focused on what he felt comfortable telling her. “Losing Mom was hard on both of us, but I think it affected Carol more than it did me. Before Mom’s diagnosis, Carol was a straight-A student. She followed all the rules and never got into trouble. But afterward—” He broke off, remembering. “It was almost as if Carol felt responsible for Mom’s cancer. As if losing her proved something horrible to Carol about herself.”

  The fire popped and a
log slid to the edge of the pit. Dean leaned forward and nudged it back into place with the toe of his boot. “Losing Mom was a whole lot rougher on Carol than I realized at the time. I was just getting out of college, full of myself, and determined to be somebody. I’d gotten into the university on a baseball scholarship, and coming out, I had a shot at the Major League. I took it.”

  “And made it?”

  He nodded. “And then, suddenly, it was just Carol and me. I was oldest so I felt responsible, but I was scared half to death that I’d fail.” He paused, surprised that he’d just admitted that aloud. No one, not even his closest friends, knew how frightened he’d been. “Carol told me she was okay, and it made everything easier to believe her. I poured all my energy and frustrations into my career. Carol poured hers into booze and men.”

  Annie’s gaze drifted to his again. Her eyes reflected the firelight. Her skin glowed from the cool night air and the heat of the blaze. “Sounds like she was looking for someone to take care of her.”

  “Maybe. Probably.” Dean glanced around to make sure Tyler hadn’t come back, and lowered his voice just in case. “It was as if she’d suddenly turned into a magnet for every loser on the planet. She got pregnant and had Tyler. And she went through one boyfriend after another so quickly afterward, I never knew who she was going to be with when I called. But I always knew there’d be somebody and I always knew that she’d be drunk.”

  Annie touched his hand gently. “That couldn’t have been easy to watch.”

  He turned his hand over and closed it around hers. “It wasn’t easy, so I didn’t watch.” That admission surprised him as much as the first one had. He smiled sheepishly and dropped his gaze to their joined hands. “I hated seeing what she was doing to herself. Hated wondering if this guy was married, or if that one was on drugs, or if the next one was abusing her. Nothing I ever said made any difference, except to make her increasingly angry with me.”

  “It’s human nature to get angry with people who make us face the truth.”

  Dean had been guilty of that a few times. He let out a shaky breath and nodded. “Yeah, it is. Things went on that way for a few years and then, suddenly, Carol met this decent guy and actually married him. She seemed happy and settled and he was a good stepfather for Tyler…and I was thrilled. My career was stalled and needed all my attention.”

  He relaxed as the conversation moved further away from his own mistakes. “When Tyler was eleven, Carol’s husband left and things started up again. Carol’s ex-husband hasn’t made contact with Tyler in months. I’ve never met the guy she’s with now, but Tyler doesn’t like him. Carol thinks Tyler’s stealing from her, but Tyler insists Randy’s the guilty one.”

  Annie glanced toward the lodge. “And now Tyler’s here, hurt that his mom doesn’t trust him, angry because the only dad he knows doesn’t want him, and furious with you because you haven’t spent enough time with him over the years.”

  She’d hit the nail so squarely on the head, Dean let out an embarrassed laugh. “Sometimes I feel responsible for what Carol and her ex-husband, Brandon, have done. But I can’t bridge the gap they’ve left in Tyler’s life, no matter how hard I try. And it wasn’t that I didn’t want to spend time with him. I just couldn’t. The team was on the road for weeks at a time, and Carol and Brandon moved around a lot. There’d be long gaps in time when I didn’t even know where to find them.”

  Annie squeezed his hand gently and sent him a sidelong glance. “That last part makes a nice story, but what’s the truth?”

  Dean pulled back sharply. “That is the truth.”

  “You couldn’t spend time with him? Or you used your career as an excuse not to?”

  “I couldn’t,” he said firmly.

  “Tyler’s a smart kid, Dean. Smart enough to understand that people only do what they really want to. We just justify our decisions with excuses to make them more palatable. You can say you wanted to see him all you want, but the fact is that if you’d honestly wanted to, you’d have found a way—and he must know that.”

  Her observation sliced through every excuse he’d ever created. He tried like hell to come up with a response that didn’t sound self-serving but couldn’t. “You’re probably right,” he said at last. “I could have flown in to see him. I was making enough money.”

  “In that case, you could have flown him to where you were.”

  Dean acknowledged that with a dip of his head and thought about what Tyler had said in town. “I never had five minutes to spare for him. That’s what he told me the other day.”

  Annie tilted her head to one side. “Well, now we know why he’s so angry. What are you going to do about it?”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Of course you do. You’re far better with him than you think you are.”

  She might never know how much that simple vote of confidence meant to him. “I guess I’ll keep doing what I’ve been doing, then. I’ll try to talk sense into Carol and try to get through to Tyler. But if you have any other suggestions, I’m open.”

  Annie shook her head. “Maybe he just needs you to acknowledge the truth. Tell him just what you’ve told me.”

  “You don’t think I’ve done that? I’ve told him everything, short of bad-mouthing his mother. That’s one thing I won’t do, no matter how disappointed I am in her.”

  Annie let a few seconds lapse, then shifted on her stool to face him. “The whole time you were talking I kept waiting for you to say that you love Tyler, but you never did. I can’t help wondering if he’s noticed that you never say it.”

  Dean stiffened under the implied criticism. “He should know I do. He’s my sister’s kid.”

  “When was the last time you told him?”

  “That I love him?” Dean started to answer, realized he couldn’t remember and clamped his mouth shut. He remembered how angry Hayley used to get because he couldn’t say those words to her, how angry she’d been the night of the accident. He felt the familiar tightening in his chest begin, the way it always did when someone pressured him about his emotions, but this time he tried to overcome the sensation.

  “I don’t say those words easily,” he admitted. “I never have.”

  Even now, Annie’s eyes held no censure. “They’re important words,” she said simply. “I have the feeling Tyler doesn’t hear them very often.”

  She might be right, but the risk involved in actually saying those words aloud to Tyler was a huge one. “I’m not sure Tyler wants to hear those words from me,” he said after a long time.

  Annie brushed a lock of hair off her shoulder and her lips curved slowly. “Everyone likes to hear that someone loves them. And it’s obvious that you love him deeply, so it wouldn’t be a lie. If it makes a difference in his life, isn’t it worth the risk? I’d say them a thousand times a day if they’d make Nessa change her mind about living with Spence and Catherine.”

  Dean jumped at the chance to move onto a new subject. He released her hand and slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Is this the part where I tell you that everything’s going to work out fine in the end?”

  Annie laughed and leaned against him as if she’d been made to fit there. “That would be nice to hear, even if I don’t believe it.”

  Dean tilted her chin and looked deep into her eyes. “Trust me, Annie. Everything’s going to work out fine in the end.”

  Her eyes locked on his and searched the depths of his soul. More than anything, he wished for the strength to make things right in her world. She sighed softly and her eyelids flickered closed for a heartbeat. “I’d love to believe you.”

  Dean traced the outline of her lips with his thumb, just the way he’d done that day in the kitchen. Fire burned deep inside his belly, and he wanted her so much he could hardly breathe. “I could try another tactic to persuade you.”

  Annie’s eyes opened wide and her lips warmed beneath his touch. “That might help.”

  With his heart in his throa
t, Dean dipped his head and grazed her lips with his. It was nothing more than a feather-soft touch, but scorching heat shot through him in response. She melted against him and ran her hands up his back, holding him tightly and pulling him to her.

  Her eagerness sent his desire off the charts, but he forced some restraint. He ran his tongue lightly along the open space between her lips. When she responded by parting her lips to invite more, Dean groaned with pleasure and felt her answering sigh in the very center of his being.

  The urge to lower her to the ground and make love to her was almost more than he could resist, but knowing that anyone might find them this way helped him hang on to a little common sense. He could have spent the rest of the night kissing her, but he forced himself to pull away. His breathing was rough and ragged, his heart hammered in his chest. He searched Annie’s eyes and face, saw her pulse jumping in the hollow of her throat and had to force himself not to cover it with his lips.

  It took a few seconds to pull himself together enough to say, “I thought we were just going to be friends.”

  Annie slid her hands from his shoulders and grinned wickedly. “That was pretty friendly.”

  “It was, wasn’t it?” Dean’s smile was so broad it almost hurt. He tried to look solemn. “I had no idea how rewarding a platonic friendship could be.”

  Annie snuggled against his chest, wrapped her arms around his waist and trailed her fingertips along his side. “Neither did I. But you know, we really shouldn’t do that again.”

  Dean drew back slightly. “Give me one good reason why not.”

  “There’s Nessa. And Tyler. And the Eagle’s Nest. And—”

  “I said one good reason, not half a dozen.” Dean took her hands again and stood, pulling her to her feet with him. “Is that what you really want?”

  Annie nodded, wide-eyed and straight-faced. “It is. Nessa’s having so much trouble adjusting to the divorce, I really can’t throw a new relationship at her. And Gary…well, Gary loves to tease and I’d be foolish to just hand him ammunition.”

  Dean drew her away from the fire, into the shadows of the aspen. He bent to kiss her again, but Annie stopped him. “Tyler’s confused and hurt enough. It would be weird and uncomfortable for everyone if you and I started seeing each other this way.”