She turned and spotted him over by the security door. “Yes?”
He hesitated, then took his hat off, holding it in both hands by the band. Was he going to apologize for what his kids had done to her? Or was he going to warn her again about the dangers of living at the loft? Neither of those things happened. Instead, he asked, “How’s the cat?”
She’d totally forgotten about the cat. He came, he went, he ate. And since Mrs. Holden had asked her to let him be there, she’d tried to ignore him. “He’s probably taking over the world as we speak.”
Rafe laughed softly, a warm rich sound that was all too fleeting. “He’s tough,” he said.
“Yes, he is.”
He hesitated again, then said, “Your slacks, are they okay?” He glanced down at her legs.
“Sure. Fine.”
“Your head...” He motioned to the spot they’d bumped each other. “It’s okay?”
“Yes, it didn’t even bruise very much.”
“Good. Good.”
They faced each other awkwardly, and she couldn’t think of another thing to say. So she shrugged slightly, gripping the files in her arms. “I need to get these things in the car. Homework.”
“Sure. Have a good evening,” he said, slipping his hat back on. With a nod, he opened the door and disappeared inside the building.
Megan watched the door click shut, wondering what that was all about, then she got to her car. She put her things in the back, then sank into the seat. As she touched the steering wheel, she noticed that her hands weren’t quite steady. She reached for the replacement earpiece she’d found on her lunch hour, clicked the On button by the microphone and put in a call to Ryan at work, got no answer, then tried his home. “Ryan. Home.” Once the number was connected, it rang twice, then she got his voice mail. Obviously he wasn’t there, either. “Ryan, it’s Megan. I just wanted to...” She exhaled, not sure what she wanted to do. “I just wanted to say hi and see how you’re doing. I’ll call later.” She clicked off and started the car.
She exhaled, then put the car in gear and would have driven to the exit if another car hadn’t pulled out of a stall and cut right in front of her. She braked hard, and the other car kept going to the security gate. She looked to her right, and saw that everything she’d had on the seat had slid off onto the front passenger floor mat. She stretched to pick it all up, and when she lifted a brown envelope, realized she hadn’t given certain vital paperwork to Mary. She’d promised her some rough drafts by five, and she’d worked on them, but had totally forgotten to stop by and give them to her.
Megan turned off the car, grabbed the envelope and her car keys, then climbed out and hit the alarm as she headed for the door into the building. Where there had been people everywhere just minutes ago, now the hall was totally empty, and soft background music that was piped through all the public areas during the day had been shut off. The hush made the sound of her shoes hitting the hard floors ring in the emptiness.
She walked quickly toward the bright doors of the center, and when she got within ten feet of the entrance to Just For Kids, the door nearest her opened. She hesitated, for a moment worried that Rafe would be coming out. But it wasn’t Rafe who emerged, it was his tiny double. One of the twins. Gabe? Greg? She wasn’t sure, but his overalls were clean, so maybe it was Greg, the one who had kept giving her “the look” earlier.
The door swung shut behind him, then he pushed his little hands in his pockets and headed toward the front entrance of the building. A kid on a mission, she thought as she went closer, watching him walk determinedly toward the exit. She expected Rafe to come into the lobby, or Mary, or even one of the teenagers who worked at the center, but no one showed up. And the child was almost at the exit doors, the only barriers between him and the busy street outside.
She reached for the center door to go in and get someone, but stopped when she saw the child reach out, pressing both tiny hands against the glass barrier. She hesitated, then did the only thing she could do. She went after him, calling out, “Hey there, little boy, hey!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE CHILD DIDN’T turn, and he didn’t stop trying to push the doors open.
“Hey, little guy!” she called as she caught up to him.
He had both hands on the glass, pushing as hard as he could against them. She could see his face in the reflection, and his expression was one of fierce determination, his mouth set, his eyes scrunched tightly with the effort.
“Hey, buddy boy,” she said, using the nickname Rafe had used earlier.
The boy didn’t stop trying to make his escape, but he did turn his head in her direction and look up at her. When he saw who was there, he turned back to the door and pushed even harder.
“You can’t go out there alone,” she said. The boy ignored her.
She remembered her brother, Quint, when he was talking to his daughter, Taylor. He always crouched down in front of her. “Don’t tower over them,” he’d told her. “Get to eye level.” So she did. She crouched by the boy. “What are you doing?”
“Going,” he muttered as he kept up the fruitless pushing.
“Where are you going?”
“To find Mama,” he said, then closed his eyes again, lowered his head and pushed harder. The door wasn’t going to open for him, and he must have realized it, because he stopped. His exhaled sigh shuddered through his little body, and she had the startling urge to hug him to her. She clenched her jaw and did no such thing.
He really wanted to get to his mother. “Honey, you can’t go out there alone,” she said, thinking she was making perfect sense.
He looked at her then, and his chocolate-brown eyes were overly bright, as if he’d been crying or was about to. Then she saw the dimple, so much like his father’s. And for some reason she realized that Gabe had a dimple on his right cheek, like his dad did, but Greg had a dimple on his left. This was Gabe, the dramatic one. The crier. She hoped against hope that he wasn’t gearing up for another crying session.
He pointed to the door. “Open it.”
“Why don’t we go and get your daddy?” she suggested.
“No,” he said quickly, his bottom lip in a full pout now.
“Well, you can’t go out there,” she said in as even a voice as she could muster. “There’s big cars out there, and they go fast and they can hurt you.”
He frowned, looked out the glass door, then back at her. His bottom lip wasn’t at all steady now. “Want out,” he mumbled.
“Well, we all do, but sometimes it’s not a good idea,” she said. Always give them a way out, Quint had told her. “Tell you what, why don’t you come with me, and we’ll find someone who can let you out so you can go see your mother?”
He frowned at her, and Megan held her breath, hoping he’d buy into that rationale. But he said, “You mad?”
“Me, mad?” she asked.
He nodded once. “Uh-huh.”
“No, no, I’m not mad.” She tried to smile, and found it was easy to do so. “I’m not mad at all.” She pushed her luck just a bit by holding out her hand to him. “Come on. Why don’t we go looking for someone to help you out?”
He jerked his hands behind his back and shook his head. “No, you...you’re strange,” he said with total seriousness.
Strange? Then she understood. “I’m a stranger, is that what you mean?”
He nodded emphatically.
“And your daddy told you never to go with strangers, didn’t he?”
He nodded again.
“Good, that’s a good boy. You shouldn’t. You’re really smart. You should never go with a stranger, not anywhere. But I’m not a stranger. You met me before,” she said, and wished she hadn’t reminded him when his eyes got wider. “Okay, that was a mistake, an accident, but it’s okay, and I know your dad
and Mary, Mrs. Garner. And I work here.” She knew enough not to push too hard. “Why don’t you come with me, but you don’t have to take my hand, okay?”
She saw him falter, then he nodded. “Okay.”
She wanted to pump her arm and shout, “Yes!” but merely stood and said, “Okay then, let’s go.”
She started back toward the center, moving slowly so that he could keep up. With the envelope and her keys in her left hand, she kept her right hand ready to grab at him if he took off. But he didn’t. In fact, as they neared the doors, he quite unexpectedly took hold of her hand, his tiny fingers curling around two of her fingers. And she was totally unprepared for the lurch in her heart. “Good,” she said softly, startled that he felt so tiny and that she felt so overwhelmingly protective at that moment.
She’d never felt that way in her life—that sense of being the only person available to keep another human being safe. She was going off the deep end, she thought. It wasn’t as though she’d taken a bullet for someone, or stepped into the path of a speeding car to save him. She just had been there and managed to stop this little boy from leaving.
As they got to the center, the far door flew open and Rafe was there yelling, “Gabe!”
He froze when he saw them, then came toward them and had Gabe in his arms so fast that it was all a blur. He was hugging the boy to him, and the look in his eyes, the expression on his face of such heart-wrenching relief, hit her hard. He was scared to death, and all she wanted to do was tell him it was okay, that everything was fine. Another first for her, and another disturbing reaction.
“He’s okay,” she managed to say, although she wasn’t sure Rafe was listening to her.
“What were you doing?” he was asking the boy, holding Gabe back so he could look in his face. “Where were you going?”
“Going to Mama.” The voice was tiny and quavering, but it could have been as strong as a trumpet’s peal for the reaction it had on Rafe. The pain produced in his eyes because of those three simple words tore at Megan.
Rafe hugged Gabe to him. “Oh, buddy boy, you can’t. And you can’t do this again, either. You scared me a lot.” He exhaled. “You can’t leave me. Not now,” he finished in a rough whisper.
The little boy buried his face in his father’s shoulder and patted his back slowly. “Promise, never, never do that again,” he said in a low voice.
Then the door opened once more, and Mary was there with Greg in tow. He ran at his dad, attacking him at knee level and hanging on to him tightly. “Gabe, Gabe,” he said, and his brother twisted in his father’s arms. The next instant, Gabe wiggled down onto the ground, facing his twin, then both of them turned at the same time to look at Megan. Gabe’s eyes were soft and vulnerable, wrenching her heart, but Greg glared at her. “You’re bad,” he muttered. “Real bad.”
Gabe grabbed his brother, whispered something to him, and whatever he said changed everything. Greg looked back at her, cocked his head to one side to study her intently, and she thought he was going to say something. But he didn’t. Instead, he grabbed his brother’s hand and spoke to Rafe. “We got to clean blocks.”
Mary nodded. “I’ll take them, Mr. Diaz. I can’t tell you how sorry I am that we got distracted. It’s never happened before and—”
Rafe cut her off. “Please, it wasn’t your fault.”
Megan realized she was standing there holding the envelope for Mary. “Mrs. Garner, here,” she said, and held it out. “The papers you needed?”
“Oh, yes, thank you, dear,” the woman said, taking the envelope. “I’m coming, you two,” she called out as she went back into the center after the boys.
Then it was just Rafe and Megan, and she could see the way he was collecting himself—the shuddering sigh, then the deep breath, and finally, those dark eyes on her. “Okay, what happened?”
“I saw him come out and go to the door. He was leaving, and if he’d been any stronger, he would have been out on the street.”
He ran a hand roughly over his face. “Thank you for stopping him.”
She shrugged, uncomfortable with him seeing her as a rescuer. “Well, he couldn’t open the door.”
“Just the same...” He shook his head sharply as if to clear it. “Thank you.”
“Sure. He just wanted to see his mommy,” she murmured for something to say, then wished she hadn’t said anything.
Words meant to fill in spaces were potent enough to make Rafe pale slightly and his eyes become flat. “His mommy,” he echoed.
“That’s what he said. He seemed pretty determined to get home to her.”
He exhaled. “He can’t get home to her,” Rafe said in a low, rough whisper.
“She’s gone?”
He exhaled again, as if he couldn’t quite catch his breath. “She’s gone. She passed away. I lost her. We lost her.”
Megan stared at him, his words sinking in. “She’s...?”
“Dead. She’s dead,” he said with more power in his voice. “I hate the euphemisms for it. People never say, ‘She died. She’s dead.’ They have these phrases that they make up so it doesn’t sound so bad.” He had unconsciously begun to twist his wedding band, and Megan was stunned at how she could feel his pain. It wasn’t even sympathy, but a gut knowledge that his grief was almost beyond bearing. He had to have loved her more than life itself. Megan wasn’t used to this sort of feeling, or the staggering need to make his pain stop.
“I’m so sorry!” That was all she could get out right then, and it sounded so ineffective.
“Sure, everyone is,” he breathed, then must have realized what he was doing with his ring, because he stopped abruptly. He pushed his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “Sorry to get into this,” he said. “It’s been two years, but I think that some kid in there must have said something about his mom, maybe that she was coming for him. I don’t know. I was talking to Mrs. Garner when Gabe obviously decided he was leaving to find his mom.”
“Probably,” Megan said, thinking a child would believe that just going to find someone would work. Maybe young ones couldn’t fathom death.
“Thanks again for stopping him.”
“Of course.”
Rafe hesitated, as if he wanted to say more, but he didn’t. He just went back into the center and left her standing there.
She stood unmoving for a moment, realizing how shaken she was by the past ten minutes. Life was strange, and people were never what you thought they were.
She headed back to the parking garage. You really need to stop judging people, big or small, when you don’t know them at all. Rafe’s words resonated because that’s just what she’d been doing. And once again, she owed him an apology.
* * *
FOR THE NEXT WEEK, Megan spent more time at the center than she did at the loft or in her cubicle in Legal on the nineteenth floor. She didn’t see Rafe except in passing, but she saw Gabe and Greg every day except for the weekend. Saturday and Sunday she spent at the loft, working and trying to ignore the partying in the next loft.
On Thursday, she stayed upstairs in her cubicle and worked straight through lunch. By five, she’d loaded her car with the paperwork she had to take home, and had made one last trip up to the office to check her messages. But Mr. Lawrence called her, catching her at her desk, and reminded her that Mary Garner needed some numbers by five. The work had to be ready to go the next morning. Megan grabbed the folder and carried it along with her car keys down to the center.
When she walked in, she saw both boys immediately. Only four children were left, and Greg and Gabe were in the middle of finger painting with the others under the guidance of a woman with fiery red hair—Brittany Terrell, married to the CEO, Matt Terrell.
When Gabe spotted her, he smiled and waved a bright red hand. Megan smiled back, and realized that he was a particularly lika
ble child. Since she’d made her “rescue,” he seemed to think that they were friends, and she was fine with that as long as the red hands didn’t touch her off-white slacks or her beige silk blouse.
Greg, on the other hand, wasn’t angry at her anymore, but he kept his distance, warily sizing her up and keeping a close eye on her when she talked to Gabe. She smiled at Greg, but got nothing in return, so she looked for Mary. The older woman wasn’t in sight, however.
Brittany got to her feet, said something to the boy beside her, then came across to Megan. “Do you need something?”
She flinched when Greg splattered a bunch of bright yellow paint on the paper in front of him on the floor. Brittany saw what she was looking at and said, “Don’t worry. Anthony, my son, is tough. He’ll make sure they don’t destroy the world while I’m not watching.” So that boy, Anthony, was her son? They looked nothing alike, but Megan didn’t miss the connection between them. Or the way Brittany smiled when she looked back at him. “The little darlings,” she murmured. Then she gazed at Megan. “Now, what can I do for you?”
“I need to leave some paperwork for Mrs. Garner.”
“There’s a never-ending flow of paperwork in this business,” she said. “You’d think with the way computers are taking over the world, the trees would be safe, but no way.”
Megan smiled, liking her and the fact that they were almost the same height. There weren’t many women who met her eye to eye.
“Can you just leave the papers with me?”
“I guess, but I don’t know if Mrs. Garner has questions.”
Brittany came a bit closer and lowered her voice. “Well, between you and me, she’s busy.” She grinned as if she were the cat who ate the canary. “Seems she’s in the office talking with my father and another man. They didn’t look happy when they went in, and they’ve been in there awhile.”
“Well, I guess I’ll just wait.”
Brittany touched her arm lightly. “You know what? Why don’t you just go on in? I would, but I promised Mary I wouldn’t let the kids out of my sight.” She hesitated, then said, “If you want to watch the kids, I could go in and let Mary know you’re here. I’m dying to find out why Dad’s in there.”
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