boy looked blank. “Fire somebody?”
“For selling them to an underage kid.”
The boy stiffened. “I’m not a kid.”
“Prove it. Be smart enough not to smoke.”
“Yeah, yeah,” the boy muttered in the tone of one who’d heard it all before. As perhaps he had. Then he gave Rider a sideways look. “You’re Rider, aren’t you? The big kahuna around here?”
“I’m Rider, at least,” he agreed.
“I remember you.”
Rider blinked. He hadn’t met any of the children on the island yet, so how could—
It hit him then. “You’re Kyle?”
The boy nodded. “I remember when you were there. When my dad died.”
He said it levelly enough, but Rider could hear the lingering pain behind the words.
“That was a tough time.”
“My mom said you made sure he got brought home.”
“I did what I could.”
The boy stood up straighter. “Thanks,” he said, and held out his hand. Startled, Rider took it. While the boy’s grip was firm, his palm was sweaty. But the gesture was very adult, and Rider treated it that way.
“You’re welcome, Kyle. I wish I could have done more.”
And in the next instant the boy was back. He plucked a leaf from the hibiscus, and nervously started to fold it into a tiny square. “You going to tell my mom? About me smoking?”
He had been only ten when his father had died, and when Rider had first seen him he’d been dazed by what had happened, not quite comprehending yet that death truly did mean forever. He’d changed a lot, of course, since then, but Rider could still see traces of the child in the teenager, although the sullen set of the mouth was new, as was the half-shaved head with the thick mop of slightly maroon hair above it, and the earrings piercing his left lobe.
“Well? You gonna tell her?”
“I’m not sure.” He drew in a breath; the smell of smoke was fading now. “How much will it hurt her?”
The boy flinched but recovered quickly. “Probably none. She doesn’t care what I do.”
“Oh?” If there was one thing about Paige he was certain of, it was that this boy was her life.
“She doesn’t care about me at all. If she did, she wouldn’t have dragged me here, away from my friends.”
“So why did she?”
“She says it was to keep me out of trouble. But I wasn’t really in trouble, she just doesn’t understand. She never does.”
“At least she cared. Maybe you should be glad of that.”
“Yeah, sure,” the boy said sarcastically. “Look, she doesn’t like my friends, doesn’t like what I like to do, doesn’t like my video games. She doesn’t like anything!”
She liked flying, Rider thought, picturing her face this morning and the huge smile she’d given him when she’d landed.
“And now she’s my teacher, too, and it really sucks.”
“I can understand how that would be tough,” Rider said neutrally.
“She just wants me to work and study all the time.” Kyle added a four-letter word that succinctly pronounced his opinion of that.
“You know, swearing doesn’t make you an adult any more than smoking does.”
“Oh, yeah, and I guess you never swear?”
“Me? Oh, sure I do, when provoked. In fact, I can say what you just said in about nine different languages.”
“Nine languages?” Kyle looked intrigued. Then he frowned. “So why are you on my case?”
“Swearing is best saved to make a point. If you use it all the time, it becomes meaningless.”
“Huh?”
Rider smothered a sigh; he’d never realized talking to teenagers was so much work. “Look, if you wanted to…say, scare somebody with a firecracker. You set one off and they jump. You set off a whole string, they jump at the first one, but by the end of the string they’re used to it and it doesn’t scare them anymore.”
“Oh.”
Kyle said nothing more, but at least he looked thoughtful. Rider glanced at his watch and winced. He wondered if the boy knew he was going to be having dinner with his mother in less than ten minutes. He started walking again, and to his surprise the boy followed.
“Have you seen your mother this afternoon?” he asked.
“Nah. I try to avoid her.” Kyle grimaced. “She’s probably hunting for me for dinner by now, though. If I don’t go back she’ll be really snarly.”
“Actually, maybe not,” Rider told him. “She and I are having dinner at the restaurant in just a few minutes. Chef Aubert is using us as guinea pigs for something new.”
The boy looked startled, then shrugged. “Rudy’s cool. He’s been just about everywhere in the world.”
“I know. I ate at his restaurant in London, and then in Rome. After that I went on a campaign to get him for Redstone.”
“You’ve been to London? And Rome?”
Rider nodded. “And just about every place in between.”
“Wow.” The boy was genuinely impressed now. “My dad used to travel a lot.”
“I know.” He said it carefully, not wanting to open up a subject he had no desire to get into.
“Once he brought me back something, too. A model of the Eiffel Tower, from Paris.”
Odd, Rider thought. The boy spoke as if he’d had the perfect father, with nothing but love and sadness at his loss in his young voice. As if it didn’t matter why his father had been on that plane when he died.
And you’d think a traveling father would bring something back for his only son more than once.
On impulse he said, “You’re welcome to join us for dinner, if you want. You have to eat, anyway, and Rudy always has some good stories to tell when he’s got a captive audience.”
The boy hesitated, and suddenly Rider was anxious for him to come. “Of course, it’ll be kind of adult discussion, so if you’ll be bored…”
“I won’t,” Kyle said instantly, as Rider had thought he might.
And so he
