who hang out here, guys I don’t want my son around….
Wyatt Blake, that was the difference. He’d unsettled her, made her suspicious.
Even as she thought it, watching the two males talk as if they were of an age, she knew that wasn’t quite true. Because it was odd that Max had started to show up mostly in the afternoons, around the time Jordy always came in. Odder still that someone Max’s age, unless he was a relative, would even pretend such an interest in a kid so much younger. And she’d thought that even before Jordy’s father had come barreling into her life.
So why hadn’t she told him? Why hadn’t she aimed him at Max, let him be the one to ferret out the true reason behind this unexpected kindness by someone who was, from what she’d heard outside the store, generally surly and rude most of the rest of the time?
Because Wyatt Blake aggravated you?
Because he had aggravated her. He had provoked the temper she’d worked hard to quash. She’d worked hard at it because she hated being a cliché, a redhead with a hot temper. And she’d managed to put a respectably long fuse on it, and then hide the matches, after years of effort.
She hadn’t counted on a guy who brought his own lighter.
She yanked herself out of unwelcome thoughts.
“Your old man still giving you a hard time?” Max was asking.
Jordy shot her a quick, sideways glance. “It never stops. Ask Kai. He was in here hassling her last week.”
Max looked at her, his pierced right brow lifting. She shrugged. “He was here. But I can’t blame him for wanting to know where his son spends a lot of time.”
Jordy’s eyes widened, she supposed at the unexpected defense of the man he hated. “He was a jerk!”
There was the tiniest hint of a hovering sense of betrayal in the words, so Kai grinned at the boy and said, “I believe I told him that. And worse.”
In an instant Jordy’s mood shifted. “You did?” he asked, wide-eyed and with an awed tone.
“I did. You can’t, but I can, because he can’t do anything to me,” she said.
“Parents. Always trying to run your life,” Max put in.
She focused on the older boy for a moment. “When you’re only thirteen, that’s the way it is,” she said, watching Max’s face for any sense of surprise at how young Jordy really was. There was no reaction, and she knew he’d already known. Which made his amiability toward the boy who was barely more than a child even more suspect.
“I can’t wait until I’m eighteen,” Jordy said. “I’ll take off and never come back.”
Kai thought about pointing out that some kids stayed and leeched off their parents into their twenties, but decided poking at Max wasn’t the best path right now. After all, she had nothing to indicate the guy was really a problem, nothing suspicious except the way he treated a much younger boy, and the ready cash with no visible source. His rather awkward but harmless flirting with her, and his kindness and interest in Jordy might be out of character, but hardly a crime.
The money? Maybe he really had done favors for a friend.
And maybe you’re the queen of gullibleville, she told herself drily.
She remembered her thoughts later as, walking back from the grocery store to her apartment over the store, she saw Max and his two regular companions standing outside the local pizza place a block down off the main street, across from the bakery. Most of the local teenagers hung out at Dinozzo’s, and since Max and his friends didn’t seem to have progressed beyond that age, she supposed it was reasonable that they would, too.
She glanced down the street again as she crossed at the corner. There was a row of outdoor tables with umbrellas, lit by lights on the outside of the building. They’d be put away for the winter soon, and the lights dimmed, but for now the area in front was lit like a stage. Just as she reached the opposite curb, she saw Dan, the least likeable of Max’s two regular companions, gesture to an older man around the corner of the building.
She kept walking.
Forget it, she told herself. Just get home. It’s late, you’re starved, and it’s affecting your imagination.
She fired up her barbecue before she put the groceries away, then quickly fixed a salad and put the steak she’d bought on the grill out on her small back balcony, big enough only for the barbecue and a pub-style table with a couple of stools. She liked the high seating because it allowed her to look over the railing and across the small neighborhood that was dotted with so many trees it made for a pleasantly green landscape. In the distance were the mountains, and the vista gave her a feeling of space that was an antidote to the cramped balcony.
Not that her apartment itself was cramped, it was as big as the store below, and two years ago she’d had it remodeled so that the walled off kitchen was now open to the main living area in a great room effect. And she liked it.
“You’ll be bored to tears in that little town,” her mother had warned her.
But for once, her mother had been wrong. She loved it, she loved living here, loved her store, all of it. And despite the confidence she’d expressed all along to her parents, no one had been more surprised than she was that Kai Reynolds was actually a small-town girl at heart.
She decided to eat outside; it would soon be too chilly, and she’d miss the opportunity. For the first few bites she focused on how good the local beef was, and the tang of Mrs. Bain’s homemade salad dressing, well worth the regular trips to the weekend farmer’s market. She’d have to stock up for the winter soon, before the markets ended for the season. She didn’t go for any esoteric, organic reasons, but simply because she liked the feel of it, the way things used to be in a simpler time.
A simpler time. A simpler place.
She thought of what she’d seen by the pizza parlor, Max and his friends, which led her to Jordy. Could she really blame his father for bringing him here when she herself had come here seeking many of the same things? Could she blame him for making assumptions when in a great many stores like hers what he’d accused her of—the paraphernalia at least—was in fact true? Had she been so predisposed because of Jordy’s complaints that she hadn’t given the man a chance?
She played the encounter back in her mind. No, he was pretty much a jerk from the beginning. But, she admitted, she’d made no effort to be conciliatory, either. She’d gone on offense from the moment he’d opened his mouth, reacting to his harsh tone more than what he’d said. And it had gone downhill from there.
She was still pondering when she went to bed. Maybe she should have told him about Max. At least that Jordy was fascinated by the older boys, and the attention Max in particular paid him, enough that Kai was wary. Maybe she still should. After all, his father was only trying to keep the boy out of trouble.
“Or maybe you should just stay butted out,” she muttered into the darkness.
She was certainly no expert on raising kids, her only experience stemming from the kid side. But by his own admission, neither was Jordy’s father.
I should call Mom, she thought again. Ask her how
