Breaking the Greek's Rules. Anne McAllister
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the moment of his birth. Before his birth, in fact. He’d come almost two weeks early, right before Christmas. And he’d been taking the world by storm ever since.
He had a chipped tooth from a fall out of a tree back in May. He had a scab on his knee beneath his jeans even now. Daisy had told him last week she was going to buy stock in the Band-Aid company, and after he’d wrinkled his nose and said, “What’s stock?” he’d listened to her brief explanation and said, “Good idea.”
His stick-straight hair, the color of honey shot through with gold, was very close to the same shade as her own. But his light eyes were nothing like her stormy dark blue.
He didn’t look like Alex—except for the shape of his eyes.
And after nearly five years, she was inured to it. She didn’t see Alex in him every time she looked at him. She saw Charlie himself—not Alex’s son.
Except today. Today the eyes were Alex’s. The impatience was Alex’s. The “let’s get moving” was Alex down to the ground.
“In good time,” she said now, determined to slow Charlie down—a little, at least. But she managed a smile as she shut the computer down. And she was sure she was the only one who noticed her hands were shaking.
“You said we’d go at six-thirty. It’s almost six-thirty. The game’s gonna start.” He grabbed one of Daisy’s hands and began to tug her back toward the stairs.
“Coming,” Daisy said. But she straightened her desk, made a note to reorder the Cannavarro files, put her pencil in the drawer. All very methodical. Orderly. Step by step. Pay attention to detail. From the day that she’d learned she was pregnant, it was how she’d managed to cope.
Charlie bounced from one foot to the other until she finished and finally held out a hand to him again. “Okay. Let’s go.” She allowed herself to be towed down the stairs.
“We gotta hurry. We’re gonna be late. Come on. Dad’s pitching.”
Dad. One more reason she prayed that Alexandros Antonides didn’t darken her door again.
“Hey, Sport.” Cal dropped down beside Charlie on the other side of the blanket that Daisy had spread out to sit on while they watched the softball game.
They had been late, as Charlie feared, arriving between innings. But at least Cal, Daisy’s ex-husband, had already pitched in his half, so he could come sit with them until it was his turn to bat.
“We made a fire engine,” Charlie told him. “Me ‘n’ Jess. Outta big red cardboard blocks—this big!” He stretched his hands out a couple of feet at least.
Cal looked suitably impressed. “At preschool?”
Charlie bobbed his head. “You an’ me could make one.”
“Okay. On Saturday,” Cal agreed. “But we’ll have to use a cardboard box and paint it red. Grandpa will be in town. I’ll tell him to bring paint.”
Charlie’s eyes got big. “Super! Wait’ll I tell Jess ‘bout ours.”
“You don’t want to make him jealous,” Cal warned. He grinned at Charlie, then over the boy’s head at his mother.
Daisy smiled back and told herself that nothing had changed. Nothing. She and Charlie were doing what they often did—dropping by to watch Cal play ball in Central Park, which he and a few diehards continued to do well after the softball leagues ended in the summer. Now, in early October, there was a nip in the air, and the daylight was already going. But they continued to play.
And she and Charlie would continue to come and watch.
It was the joy of a civilized divorce, Daisy often reminded herself. She and Cal didn’t hate each other—and they both loved Charlie.
“—you?”
She realized suddenly that Cal was no longer talking to Charlie. He was talking to her. “Sorry,” she said, flustered. “I was just … thinking about something.”
“Apparently,” Cal said drily. Then he looked at her more closely. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She looked around. “Where’s Charlie?”
Cal nodded in the direction of the trees where Charlie and the son of another one of the players were playing in the dirt. “He’s fine. You’re not. Something’s wrong.”
“No. Why should anything be wrong?” That was the trouble with Cal. He’d always been able to read her like a book.
“You’re edgy. Distracted. Late,” he said pointedly.
“I didn’t realize you were timing me. I’ve got things on my mind, Cal. Work—”
But he cut her off. “And you’re biting my head off, which isn’t like you, Daze. And you must’ve come on the bus.”
“The bus?” she said stupidly.
“You always walk, so Charlie can ride his bike.” Cal looked around pointedly. There was no bike because, he was right, they hadn’t had time to bring it. Charlie wanted to ride his bike everywhere. It was the smallest two-wheeler Daisy had ever seen, but Charlie loved it. Daisy was sure he would have slept with it every night if she hadn’t put her foot down. Cal had given it to Charlie for his fourth birthday.
Daisy had protested, had said he was too young, that no four-year-old needed a bike.
“Not every four-year-old,” Cal had agreed. “Just this one.” He’d met her skeptical gaze with confident brown eyes and quiet certainty. “Because he wants it more than anything on earth.”
Daisy couldn’t argue with that. If Charlie’s first word hadn’t been bike it had been in the first ten. He’d pointed and crowed, “Bike!” well before his first birthday. And he’d been desperate for a bicycle last winter. She hadn’t thought it would last. But Cal had insisted, and he’d been right.
Charlie’s eyes had shone when he’d spotted the bike that morning. And over the past six months, his love for it had only grown. Since Cal had helped him learn to balance and he could now ride it unaided, Charlie wanted to ride it everywhere.
Usually she let him ride to the park while she walked alongside him. But they had been late today because … because of her visitor.
She was suddenly aware that Cal was watching her, not the game. “He doesn’t have to ride his bike every time,” she said testily. “And it’s nearly dark.”
“True.” Cal stretched his legs out in front of him and leaned back, resting his weight on his elbows and forearms as his gaze slowly moved away from her to focus on the game, yelling at the batter to focus. Then, still keeping his gaze on the batter, he persisted quietly, “So why don’t you just tell me.”
He wasn’t going to leave it alone. She’d never won an argument with Cal. She’d never been able to convince him of anything. If he was wrong, he couldn’t be told. He always had to figure it out himself—like his “I can love anyone I will myself to” edict. He’d been as wrong about that as she had been about her “love at first sight” belief.
Clearly, when it came to love, the two of them didn’t know what they were talking about.
Now he stared at her and she plucked at the grass beside the blanket, stared at it. Nothing’s changed. Nothing’s changed. She tried to make it into a mantra so she could convince herself. But she was no better at lying to herself than she was at lying to her ex-husband. Finally she raised her gaze to meet his as he turned away from the game to look at her. “I saw Alex.”
There was the crack of bat hitting ball. Whoops and yells abounded.
Cal never turned his head to see what happened. His eyes never left Daisy’s. He blinked once. That was all. The rest of his body went still, though. And his words, when they came, were quiet. “Saw him where?”