“Goddammit, I’m going to kill him if I find—”
“He’s home,” his mom quickly interrupted him. “He just came wandering in like he always does after school. He doesn’t know that I know he ditched school today. I thought you might want to be here when I talk to him.”
“Yes, I definitely want to be there,” he said through clenched teeth. “Look, Mom, it’s time he came to live with me,” he blurted. “I’ve been thinking about this—he needs to learn how to be a man, and I’m going to have to be the one to teach him. It’s too hard on you.”
“You know how I feel about that, Jacob. You aren’t home enough as it is.”
“I’ll be home more.”
“How are you going to do that? Are you going to give up school? You were so hellfire bent on it, even though I told you it’d take away from your obligations. Now you don’t have the time to give to him. I’ll grant you he needs to learn to be a man, but he needs someone who can devote his full attention to it. You can’t do that.”
“Maybe not, but you can’t deny he’s running roughshod over you, Mom,” Jake insisted. “He needs a firm hand. He needs to be jerked up by the short hairs once in a while and know he’s going to find his butt on the end of my boot when he cuts school.”
She paused, lit a smoke, and exhaled wearily. “Are you coming over or not?”
Jake sighed, looked at his watch. “Yeah. I can be there in an hour,” he said and warned her to keep an eye on Cole before he got there. He clicked off the cell phone and stared blindly out the casement window at the thick, lush lawn surrounding Robin’s house. Maybe his Mom was right. Maybe his vow at Ross’s funeral was just a wish, not really a promise. He didn’t have time for Cole; he barely had time to breathe. He was working hard, trying to make something of himself . . . but for what? So he could be a rich and lonely old man some day? He was thirty-eight years old and had so far managed to avoid a long-term commitment. Cole was in desperate need of one, and Jake worried if he was even capable of giving him his full commitment.
Whatever the answer—and Jake really wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer—he had the immediate problem of Cole’s cutting school to deal with. Lost in thought, he walked down the curving staircase to the entry, lost in thought, packed up his things, and left to fight Houston traffic to have yet another heart-to-heart with a lost kid.
Robin never heard Jake leave, and in fact, was a little surprised he’d managed to get out without her noticing. Perhaps she was actually able to focus on her work. Or perhaps it was because Evan had talked and talked and talked until her head was pounding. Who could even hear themselves think in all that racket? And then he was pacing about the dining room, complaining that he was hungry, and somehow convinced her to try a new restaurant with him.
But when they got there, Evan was smiling in that familiar way of his, like he knew something about her that perhaps Robin didn’t know herself. She hated that look; it implied an intimacy that just wasn’t there. She decided, over appetizers, that this was the perfect opportunity to explain that they were not getting back together again, and if he ever brought wine to her house again, she just might clock him one. She owed him at least that much—after all, she had slept with him last night. She could understand where a man might misconstrue things.
But when she told him, as nicely as she could, that last night had been one huge, monumental mistake, Evan got a little pissy. After he insisted she’d liked it, Robin said again, “I had too much to drink, Evan. I got carried away when I should have showed some restraint. But I need to tell you that even though we did . . . it . . . that it really has no bearing on my feelings about . . . about . . .”
“Wanton and meaningless sex?” he snapped.
“About us,” she had said, ignoring his jab. “I haven’t changed my mind.”
Evan lowly leaned back in his seat and glared at her, finally managing to say (through a jaw that was clenched tightly shut), “You can be pretty damned arrogant at times, Robin. And cruel. I wonder why you think it is okay to toy with people like this.”
There was that arrogant thing again, and it pricked her hard. “I am trying to be honest,” she said. “You should try it because I think you’ve been trying to rekindle something with me for several weeks—”
“You ran off to London. How could I try and do anything? Okay, fine. You made some huge mistake. But we have to work together and I don’t want to screw that up.”
“Me, either,” she said softly and contritely.
Evan downed his wine and said, “I won’t go so far as to say I understand you, but okay. Colleagues only, right?”
“Right,” she said, only she didn’t feel right at all. Not at all.