even care that I exist. So what does that make you? Huh? My stepdad—or just some guy who used to be married to my mother?”
Slade’s heart cracked and quietly split right down the middle. In the few years they’d been a family, he’d come to love the girl as if she was his own. “I’ll always be your stepdad,” he said gently. Shea’s father hadn’t been a “sperm donor”—Layne had been married to the guy once upon a time—but there was no use in arguing the point. The kid wouldn’t hear him.
Shea sniffled, and her voice got shaky. “She’s impossible.”
Slade smiled. Whatever their differences, hers and his, Layne was a good mother and an all-around responsible person. She’d set herself up in business in L.A., staging houses for real-estate firms, and made a success of it. “And you’re a teenager.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Slade ignored the question, since it had been rhetorical. “Shea,” he said. “You and I both know your mom loves you. What’s the real issue here?”
“She’s sending me to boarding school next fall,” Shea announced.
“What?” Slade thought for a moment that he hadn’t heard correctly.
“Mom’s in a relationship,” Shea said, interspersing the words with a few more sniffles. “They’re getting married.”
“All right,” Slade said, letting out his breath. Boarding school? What the hell was Layne thinking? “So what does your mom’s relationship have to do with going away to school?”
Shea gave a long, dramatic sigh. “I might have been a little difficult lately,” she confessed.
Slade leaned against the counter, pressing the receiver to his ear so hard that it started to hurt.
He eased up on the pressure, though his gut felt as tangled as the phone cord.
“This guy,” he said, after clearing his throat. “Do you like him?”
“Bentley’s all right,” Shea admitted, albeit reluctantly.
Bentley? What kind of name was that?
“So—?”
“So maybe I acted out a little—and stirred up some trouble. Which is probably what made Mom decide that if she was going to have a shot at true love, she’d better get the kid out of the way for a while.”
Slade moved to the fridge, opened the door, retrieved the arthritic slice of pizza and gave it to Jasper, who gobbled it up.
Had Joslyn given that critter water or food?
“Define ‘acting out,’” Slade said, thinking he’d ask Shea to put Layne on the phone in a minute or two, so he could get some straight answers.
“I got a tattoo.”
Slade swallowed a chuckle; he’d been expecting her to say she’d been doing drugs, or she was pregnant, or she’d been busted for shoplifting. The tattoo, while hardly good news, came as a relief.
“Doesn’t that require a parent’s permission?” he asked, watching Jasper lick his chops after scarfing up the pizza.
“There are ways around that whole permission thing,” Shea said airily. “Anyway, Mom went ballistic when she found out. She and Bentley had a long talk and decided to incarcerate me for my last two years of high school.”
Slade’s mouth quirked up at the word incarcerate. “Is your mom around? I’d like a word with her.”
“I’m not at home,” Shea said.
“Tell me you didn’t run away.”
“Of course I didn’t run away,” Shea answered. “It’s not like I don’t know that’s a bad idea, Dad. I’m at the mall, with a couple of my friends—I’m calling on my cell.” She paused, drew in an audible breath and went on in a rush. “Can I come and live with you? Instead of going to boarding school, I mean?”
Loaded questions, both of them.
It might have been different if there were a woman in his life, a wife or even a steady girlfriend. But Slade was single, living in a one-bedroom dive of a place with an inadequate bathroom. His job was demanding and sometimes dangerous. Furthermore, he couldn’t give Shea the kind of attention and guidance she needed—what did he know about teenagers, anyway? Especially those of the female persuasion?
Despite all those things, he wanted to say yes.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he said finally, because he didn’t want to cut the poor kid off at the pockets with an immediate “no.” “I want to talk to your mother and hear her side of all this.”
“She hates the tattoo. It’s just a little, tiny bumblebee, on my right shoulder—it doesn’t even show unless I’m wearing a tank top.”
Slade smiled, picturing his ex-wife, a flawless auburn-haired beauty who wouldn’t think of inking so much as a pore of her perfect skin. “You’re sixteen,” he reminded Shea. “That means your mom still makes the rules. I’ll have a word with her and get back to you.”
“She’ll just convince you that she’s right and I’m wrong and boarding school will be the best thing that ever happened to me,” Shea argued.
“For now,” Slade replied, gently but firmly, “this conversation is over. I’ll call you back after I talk to your mother.”
Shea huffed out another sigh. “Okay,” she said, sounding as though she might start crying. He didn’t think he could handle that.
“Shea?” Slade said.
“What?”
“I love you.”
“Sure,” Shea replied with mild skepticism, and they both hung up.
Slade kept a scrawled list of pertinent phone numbers taped to the inside of one of the cupboard doors; he pulled it open and scanned for Layne’s information. Her office, home and cell were all listed, though most had been crossed out and replaced so many times that he had to squint to make out the most recent.
It occurred to him that everyone moved on with their lives—new homes, new numbers, new everything—except for him.
He was still stuck in the same dismal digs and the same job—one he’d wanted very much at the time he landed it. Over the past few years, though, he’d begun to get bored, yearned more and more for the life he really wanted to live: that of a rancher, with a wife and kids and a dog like Jasper.
Layne answered her cell phone on the second ring.
“Hello, there,” she said sweetly with a warm smile in her voice. “Still breathtakingly handsome, I presume?”
References to his looks always embarrassed Slade a little, even from a woman he’d been married to; he regarded physical appearance as
