Enticed (10 page)

I shook my head. “I don’t want to get in the middle of your family business. It’s not my place. It’s not my job. And it’s not fair to any of you.”

“I’m afraid that’s the other reason I wanted to talk to you. We need to discuss Alex.”

“What does your brother have to do with me?”

Drew
rose from the chair and stepped around the desk to perch on the corner right in front of me. “He’s going to try to railroad you. That’s what he does. No doubt he’ll be over here more than once while I’m gone. He’ll try to bully you and manipulate you until you finally relent and let him take Jonathan from the house. Obviously Harrison and Cleo have already learned how to handle him. In his mind, that makes you the weak link to get what he wants.”

If he was determined to put me in the middle of his family drama, I felt I earned the right to ask some questions.
“Why is he getting involved with all this?” I asked. “Why is it so important to the admitted black sheep of the family?”

“My brother and my mother were very close. He was what some might say a ‘mama’s boy.’ He was softer as a result. He d
oesn’t have a head for business, can’t stomach competition. In fact he didn’t care to get involved in the family business mostly because my mother had convinced him it would make him hard and bitter, just like our father… and, I suspect, even me. It put us all in enemy camps from the time we were kids. Like our mother, he sees money and power as an inherent evil, something that drove most of the conflicts when we were growing up. When Elise and I separated, I think he saw it as a second chance to save another child from the same Fullerton family fate. He doesn’t see how destructive that would be for Jonathan. Elise is not like our mother, not by a long shot. But he’s so blinded by this idealistic image of motherhood he can’t see it.”

“And why do you put up with it?”

“That’s the crux of the problem, Miss Dennehy. There’s no getting rid of him. Despite his spurning the family business, my mother gave him controlling stock in the company in her will. Maybe she was trying to keep us bonded in some way, since she knew we had nothing else in common. And sadly, it’s working. I see more of him now than I did when my mother was alive and he had to come to the house to visit her. That means he knows when and where to strike. And he’s not backing down.”

“And he thinks he can strike an easy blow with me here and you gone
.” Drew nodded in response. I took a deep breath. “Then I guess I’ll have to set some boundaries early.”

“There’s just one caveat,”
Drew interjected as he walked back around his desk to sit in his chair. “You can’t tell Alex any details about what you do for the family.”

My brow creased. “Why not?”

“Forgive any hyperbole, but this fight with my brother and my ex-wife is a war with my son at stake. I’m going to do whatever I can to win it. Alex is rooted deep within Fullerton Enterprises International. He knows how to get all the information on what I do and where I go. I don’t need him getting any further information on how I live. What happens under this roof is none of his business.”

“
If I don’t tell him what I do, he’ll fill in the blanks with whatever he wants,” I informed him. “He’s already made it clear he thinks I’m some kind of opportunist.”

“Let him,”
Drew shrugged. “You don’t have to defend yourself to the likes of him. Believe me, he’s no saint… though he’d like to convince everyone else otherwise.”

“But won’t that hurt your custody case if people think I’m some sort of grifter?”

“You let me worry about that,” he said as he leaned back into his chair. “I need your focus on minimizing any damage with Jonathan. For some reason he idolizes Alex. They share a bond I’ve never been able to break. Honestly I think Jonathan feels like he has to fix that relationship, too. By bringing you into the home to teach him exclusively, my hope is that you can divert his attention onto something more positive so he will spend less time obsessing over the behavior of others he can’t change. He can only control himself. I need you to help me dive that message home.”

“I’ll do what I can,” I promised. “But I would prefer to keep interactions with your brother at a minimum.”

“Ditto,” he grumbled. “If you can make that happen, you’ll go from being a teacher to a miracle worker.”

I chuckled softly before I had to suppress a yawn. “Is that all, Mr. Fullerton?” I asked.

He leaned across his desk. “No,” he said. “I wanted also to thank you for taking this position. I know this is outside your comfort zone, and I do appreciate your taking a risk with us. I can already see significant changes in Jonathan’s behavior, and I know I owe that all to you.”

I shook my head. “I’m just the teacher. Your son is doing the hard work. He deserves all the credit.”

Drew smiled. “You are much too humble for your own good, Miss Dennehy. This further proves what a rare woman you are.” He stood and so did I. “You should probably get some sleep. I anticipate the next couple of weeks will be busy ones.”

He rounded the desk and walked me to the door. He braced himself against the doorframe with one powerful bicep as he looked down at me. “Goodnight, Miss Dennehy.”

I sputtered for a moment. I was standing too close to his strong, solid body to think straight. It reminded me of my dream, which made my brain misfire. He had never behaved inappropriately, yet my subconscious mind tried to convince me otherwise. In my dream it had felt entirely too real.

When his eyes landed on my mouth, I nearly
choked on my own spit. It felt all too familiar, like an intimacy already established between us. Since I hadn’t felt this way for many years, quite frankly didn’t know what to make of it. Maybe it was nothing at all and I was just innocently misconstruing the entire situation. I was definitely playing in a new league now, with all the new rules that came with it. I simply gave a slight nod of my head and escaped down the hall to the stairs.

What the hell was wrong with me? I had been so composed before, so in control. Three months apart and one stupid dream and all of a sudden I’m like a
fan girl struck mute when she meets the object of her affection for the first time.

I couldn’t
seem to stop myself from replaying that dream kiss over and over in my head. Damn that Nancy. She had corrupted my entire thought process when it came to Drew. Everything she had done to warn me away from Drew ultimately planted thoughts in my head that didn’t belong there. Because of her, I was thinking about him as a man instead of as my boss.

Granted he was rich and powerful. Granted he was one of the most eligible bachelors in the country. But I had no need for any of the fancy trappings. I was here to teach his son, and by God that was what I was going to do.

For the second time that night, I breathed a sigh of relief that he’d be gone for the next two weeks. That was just enough time to whip myself into shape and get rid of these thoughts once and for all.

Drew was gone by eight o’clock that following
morning, leaving Jonathan and me to begin with his studies in earnest. We designated a portion of my office as his workstation, making the space “our” office, since it was certainly big enough to accommodate the both of us. It had a window seat looking out onto the back lawn, which made an excellent reading spot. One entire wall had been dedicated to built-in bookshelves, with a big-screen TV suspended right in the middle. The opposite wall had a fireplace, and our desks were on either side of the window. This particular morning, he had sprawled out in the window seat with his tablet, ready for my instruction. I already knew from several placement exams I had given him over the previous three months that he was ready for seventh grade material, so that was where we started.  We were knee-deep in a spelling assignment when Cleo paged me on my private line.

“Deprive,” I said to Jonathan, offering another word for his list, before I picked up the phone. “This is Rachel.”

“Alex Fullerton is here,” she said in a quiet but tense voice.

“Of course he is,” I said under my breath. “I’ll be right
there.” I turned back to Jonathan.

“D-e-p-r-i-v-e. Deprive. It means to deny access.”

I grinned at the irony. “Very good,” I said. He had correctly spelled and defined the first ten of my twenty vocabulary words. “I have to tend to some household business. Here’s the second half of the list. I’ll quiz you when I get back.”

Jonathan’s eyes met mine. Like his father, he missed nothing. “Uncle Alex is here, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” I answered. I decided not to lie to him. He needed to know there was an adult he could trust.

Jonathan nodded and looked down at his spelling homework. “Are you going to send him away?”

It was my turn to nod. “These are your father’s rules. And this is your father’s house.”

His eyes met mine.
He wasn’t happy about it, but he seemed resigned. “I’ll stay here. It’ll make it easier.”

I touched his arm slightly. This poor kid carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. It broke my heart every time I thought about it.

“Next word,” I said as I pointed at the list. “Connecticut. Bonus if you can tell me the capital city by the time I get back.”

“I can tell you now,” he said with a cheeky grin.
“It’s Hartford.”

I gave him a playful scowl. “Then tell me what’s on the state flag, wise guy. And tell me what the motto and state flower are, too.”

He made a face at me before he turned back to his computer. I used that opportunity to slip from my office and head down the hall to the foyer. I found Alex in the living room, standing in front of the family portrait. He seemed lost in the image, so much so I had to clear my throat to get his attention. “Mr. Fullerton,” I said as I stepped into the room.

He turned around to face me. “Rachel,” he greeted.
“Can’t say I’m surprised you came back, but after everything Jonathan told us about you, I can honestly say I’m disappointed.”

“Is that why you summoned me?
To chastise me for accepting a job in my chosen profession?”

His brow furrowed. “This isn’t some teaching job and you know it. You can’t be that naïve, no matter where you’re from.”

I bit back a sigh. “So I take it I’ve graduated from gold-digging tramp to ignorant hick?”

He sent a snarky smirk in my direction. “Who says you can’t be all four? You look like a multi-tasker to me.”

“Is there a point to this little meeting?” I asked. I crossed my arms over my chest as I stared at him.

“Since you are now living full-time with my nephew, his mother and I want to make sure that you are both qualified to teach him and emotionally equipped to handle the changes that are going to happen in the near future.”

My eyebrow arched. “And who exactly is fit to judge me for either?”

“
Is there anyone who is better to decide this than a child’s mother? Clearly she would want to meet with you, to see if your motives truly are sincere.”

“If I wasn’t sincere, I doubt very much Drew would have hired me,” I said. This made Alex chuckle.

“Seems you’ve gotten a little chummier than the last time we spoke,” he pointed out. “First name basis and all that. What exactly is your title again?”

I smiled sweetly. “Take it up with my boss,” I
directed before I spun to leave.

Only this time h
e was on my heels before I could make it to the stairs. “What’s the matter, Rachel?” he asked as he spun back around with one hand. “Afraid you’ll open your mouth and a bone will fall out? There are no skeletons in your closet this family doesn’t already possess. You can be honest with me.”

“I can be,” I agreed. “I just don’t want to be. Frankly, it’s none of your business what I do or don’t do. You’re not Jonathan’s father.”

“I also don’t have a $28-million dollar mansion in Beverly Hills,” he returned.

“You really think that’s what this is about, don’t you?”

He shrugged. “Not the first time. Doubt it will be the last.”

I yanked my arm from his grasp. “Like I said, take it up with your brother.”

“He’ll never love you, you know,” Alex called out to me as I rounded the corner toward my office. Everything in my fiber demanded I stalk back to where he stood and give him a good tongue-lashing. Who did he think he was?

I owed him nothing, not even an explanation.

But I was still fuming by the time I got back to the office I shared with Jonathan, who was brimming with the information I had requested and pounced on me the moment I crossed over the threshold.

“The Connecticut state flag is a white baroque shield on a backdrop of azure blue. The shield itself features three grapevines, and the banner below contains the state motto: ‘He who transplanted still sustains,’ in Latin.”

I landed in my chair with a thud. I was still fit to be tied. “And what is the motto in Latin?”

“I don’t know,” Jonathan admitted. “I don’t know Latin.”

“No time like the present to start,” I quipped as I turned to the computer.

Jonathan was crestfallen. He had done what I asked and yet I was still dissatisfied. Instead of taking responsibility for that, like I feared, he said quietly, “You and Uncle Alex had a fight, didn’t you?”

I sighed as I slumped in my chair. “It doesn’t matter,” I said with a forced smile. “That’s adult stuff and you don’t have to worry about that in here. You did great research, Jonathan. Really.”

He held up the flag he had drawn on a blank piece of paper. He had nearly completed it while I had been away; all that was missing was the wording inside the banner. I rolled my chair to his desk and we finished the task together.

I was tempted to order lunch to be brought to my office, just so we wouldn’t risk seeing Alex should we venture too far outside the sanctity of my new ‘classroom,’ but it violated my strict rule of never eating where I did other tasks. Rule #12: Eat dinner at a table and work at a desk. This kept me from grazing absently while I worked… a necessary precaution after I gained the last twenty pounds a few years ago.

I solved this problem by packing up the lovely lunch prepared by Cleo into a picnic basket. I had Harrison drive us to a city park on Sunset Boulevard, where we could eat lunch in a beautiful outdoor setting Alex Fullerton was not likely to find us.

The trip outside revitalized both Jonathan and me, making our afternoon quite productive indeed. We only spent a couple more hours on my lesson plan before I finally let Jonathan rip through his energy with a brisk walk to survey our surroundings. While I marveled over the picture perfect fountain and the majestic palm trees, he was on his knee to make friends with every four-legged friend that crossed our path.

We even opted to walk home since it wasn’t that far away, freeing up Harrison’s afternoon to run his errands and complete his own chores.

“Why don’t you have a dog, Jonathan?”

He shrugged as he kicked a stray pebble from his path. “Dad says I’m not responsible enough. Since he’s not home enough to supervise me, he said it would put an ‘unfair strain’ on the house staff to ensure its safety and wellbeing.”

I imagined those words came straight from his father’s lips verbatim. It was out of my mouth before I could stop it. “Harsh.”

Again Jonathan shrugged. This was his life and he was used to it, though I personally couldn’t imagine a childhood without a pet, especially when Drew had the resources to properly care for one. I had grown up
on a farm with home-sewn clothes, but I still had a dog. It was one of the very things that taught me responsibility, wrapped up in a cuddly, furry package of unconditional love.

I put it on my mental notepad to bring up to Drew the next time we spoke.
Now that I was a permanent fixture in the household for at least another year, I virtually invalidated his major argument against Jonathan’s having a pet of his own.

Since I drove Jonathan to his Kung Fu class later that afternoon, I decided to make it a night on the town. We went to an open-air shopping center in Century City, where we took in a movie at the Cineplex after
some serious window shopping and a brief stop at a yogurt shop. For dinner we opted for a noisy, trendy taco joint, eating on the patio so that we could hear each other talk.

“You don’t shop like my mom,” he pointed out before he tore into his second chicken taco. “I came here with her a few times and she never made it out of Bloomingdales.”

I laughed. “Yeah, well
, I’m not a Bloomingdales kind of girl,” I said. The only bag that sat beside me was full of boxed chocolates from a candy maker we didn’t have back in Texas, gifts for several of my friends back home.

“What kind of girl are you?” Jonathan asked.

I sat back in my chair to ponder the question. “A simple one, I guess. I believe in the Golden Rule. I work hard. I read a lot. I have a small but dedicated circle of friends. I don’t care to live my life to impress anyone else. I just do what I think is right because that’s all any of us can do. I guess that makes me fairly low maintenance.”

“So why are you alone?” he asked so directly it took my breath away.

My eyes met his for a long moment. “I wasn’t always,” I confessed. “It’s just easier to be single.”

He nodded, wise beyond his nine years. “You don’t want to get hurt.”

That was how this little boy looked at love. It hurt, period. And here I was telling him it wasn’t worth the risk. I couldn’t be responsible for that. “No one
wants
to get hurt, Jonathan. Some people just brave the risk better than others. For some, it’s worth it. When you start out and you’re in love, you feel invincible. Like there’s nothing in the world you can’t handle. That’s usually around the time life throws everything at you to test you. Sometimes you make it, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes the ride is worth it, and sometimes you just want to get back on solid ground again. I guess I belong to the latter group. All that other stuff generally isn’t worth it to me. I’d rather go home to a good book and let all the angst happen to other people. But that doesn’t mean that love itself isn’t worth it. It can be wonderful, even if it ends.”

“I don’t think my mom and dad thought it was worth it, either,” he confessed. “She keeps trying, though. I doubt my dad ever will.”

I nodded. “Your dad has a lot at stake. It’s not just him anymore. He has you to consider. Parenthood is the only love affair more passionate than romantic love. When you have a piece of you walking around outside your body, it makes you way more cautious.”

He examined me quietly. Finally he asked the question I had been dreading. “Do you have kids, Rachel?”

I swallowed back some of my iced tea, wishing I had gotten something a lot stronger. If I hadn’t been driving, I might have ordered a margarita. Or ten. I knew I had two choices here. I could maintain the honesty and build upon his trust, or I could take the easy way out and lie my ass off – like I had done for the last three years.

I looked into those light blue eyes framed by thick dark lashes and did what anyone would do.

I told the truth.

“I did,” I said softly.

“Did?” he echoed.

I nodded. “I met my ex-husband my first year in college. His name was Zach and he was a football star. That is as close as you get to a celebrity in Texas,” I added with a wry smile. “For some reason he liked me. He was romantic and thoughtful and when he asked me to marry him after that first amazing month together, I said yes. My best friend warned me it was too soon, but I was too far gone to hear her. I was married within six weeks, and pregnant six weeks after that.
I gave birth to my son, Jason, in 2003. June,” I added quietly, once again reminded that his birthday was coming up.

Jonathan must have watched every painful memory march across my face as I edited what I could
in order to tell this young boy about the trauma I had endured. I wanted to be honest, but the last thing he needed was more adult drama. “What happened to him?” Jonathan finally asked.

I took a deep breath and blinked away the inevitable tears. “Zach and
I had just moved into a new house. It had a pool. Generally the gate was always locked, but on this day it wasn’t. Jason ended up in the hot tub, and his hair had tangled in one of the jets. They think,” I managed to croak, “that he was bobbing for one of his toys and he simply wasn’t able to resurface. I found him,” I confessed in a broken whisper. “And I dove into the water to pull him free.”