With him decked out in his work uniform—a pale blue polo shirt with an oval logo for the Waterford County Country Club over his left pec and Khaki pants to match—I was suddenly reminded of what Eva had said about him being a gigolo.
Holy crap, she hadn’t been lying about the Country Club thing; what if she hadn’t been lying about—
My eyes grew round. And his narrowed as he stared back, his lips tightening as if he could read my mind.
“…Mason just started taking classes at the community college this semester too,” Dawn was telling me. “Maybe you two will see each other there.”
“Yeah,” I murmured, half out of it as I smiled tightly at the mother before turning back to the son. “I…I think I might’ve seen you around campus already.”
“You dumped a bag full of books on my feet before my calculus class on Monday,” he reminded me dryly.
“Right,” I agreed slowly before trilling out a guilty little laugh. “That was you, wasn’t it? Yeah, sorry about that…again.”
His stare was borderline hostile, telling me I didn’t impress him in the least. But it still held a powerful punch.
Whenever he’d glanced at Eva on that first day of classes, it was as if he’d stared straight through her. With me, it was the complete opposite.
He saw me. He just didn’t approve of what he saw, for some unknown reason.
“Oh, so you two have already met, then.” Dawn seemed pleased to learn this. “That’s great.”
I sent her a horrified glance to let her know she was crazy. Mason and I had certainly never “met” before. But she was too busy pointing to something he was blocking with his body like some kind of protective papa bear.
“I guess that leaves one introduction. Reese, this is Sarah.” Taking Mason’s elbow, Dawn manually dragged his resisting body aside to reveal the little girl sitting in a wheelchair behind him.
Yeah, I said wheelchair. Sarah, the twelve-year-old I was supposed to babysit, sat in a wheelchair.
This, I had not expected.
Trying not to show my shock, I clasped my hands together and gave the girl such a huge smile it stretched my lips to unbelievable proportions. “Hi, Sarah. I’m so happy to meet you,” I said aloud when internally, I screamed, Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Why didn’t Dawn mention this in the phone interview?
In response, Sarah flailed her head and arms, limbs and neck spasms floundering her out of control as her torso went limp and floppy. A low, garbled sound, like a sick cow on drugs, moaned its way from her throat.
I’m not too sure, but I think she said, “Hello.”
I freaked.
How the hell was I supposed to watch a special needs child in a wheelchair? I wasn’t trained for this. Artie, the autistic boy I’d watched once or twice two years ago, had had such a mild case that sometimes I’d forgotten he was different at all. But there would be no forgetting it with Sarah. I didn’t know the first thing about…well, whatever it was she had.
“Sarah, this is Reese.” Dawn crouched next to her and set her hand gently on the girl’s shoulder. “She’s going to stay with you in the evenings now that Ashley’s gone.”
I smiled encouragingly at Sarah, hoping she understood I was a good guy, hoping she understood anything.
Sarah moaned out another inarticulate sound that didn’t give my hope a lot of room to breathe.
Damn it. Why had Dawn kept this a secret?
Mason stiffened. Don’t ask me how I knew that, but I felt a blast of angry chill attack me from his direction, so I glanced over. He glared with so much pent-up anger I actually shrank back. But the meaning in his glower was clear. If I did anything to hurt his little sister, he would make me regret it.
I was tempted to hold my thumbs up in a message-received signal but restrained myself. Bad timing and all that.
“Sarah has CP,” Dawn told me.
“Oh.” I nodded as if I knew what that meant and unconsciously turned Mason’s way with a questioning wrinkle in my brows.
“That’s short for cerebral palsy,” he said, his voice damn near a challenge, daring me to run screaming from the house.
Except I wasn’t really the running and screaming type.
Again, I nodded as if I totally understood and had no problem with it. Really, though, what the hell was cerebral palsy? I’d heard the term plenty of times but had no idea what it actually entailed.
“It’s a muscle disorder,” Dawn answered my unspoken question. “Sarah was born premature, and it injured the motor part of her brain, affecting the muscles in her entire body, from her limbs to trunk to even her tongue and eye muscles. It takes an extreme effort for her just to talk, or chew, or even blink.”
Ohhh. Good to know. But poor Sarah. That kind of life had to suck monkey butt. I glanced at her with a commiserating grimace, which seemed to tick her big brother off something fierce.