Risk (It's Complicated Book 2) (22 page)

“
Angela
,” he said reproachfully, “don’t kid a kidder.”

She flushed to her ears but tried to hide her embarrassment. “The best defense is always a good offense, isn’t it, Vincent?”

Before he could laugh, his chest tightened in a precursor to the pain that was always with him these days. He stiffened, his smile fading.

“I’m sick, Angela.”

Her expression darkened. “I know.” She put her hand on his arm and squeezed it. “You should think about what I said.”

“You should think about what
I
said,” he told her, winking.

Her reluctant smile felt like the sun dawning over the Arctic after months of darkness.

“I’m leaving, Vincent.” She hitched her purse over her shoulder. “You’ll have to find someone else to torture for the rest of the day.”

This time he did laugh, delighted with this girl. If he were young enough, he’d more than give Justus a run for his money.

“I’m going to keep working on you, Angela. One day you’re going to like me,” he told her.

“I doubt it,” she said, pursing her lips.

* * *

“
I
hate it
,” Maya whined later that night. To make sure Angela really got the message, Maya also folded her arms across her chest, planted her feet wide, and poked out her lower lip. “Hate. It.”

Unbelievable
, Angela thought, looking back and forth between the guest bedroom, which she’d completely made over per Maya’s specifications, to Maya, who now looked perilously close to tears. What could the kid possibly hate?

After finishing up at the gym early this afternoon, Angela had spun into action like a professionally trained Tasmanian devil. She’d hit Lowe’s for paint, accessories, and decorations, then come back here and thrown a coat of lilac paint on the walls. She’d folded up her treadmill and wheeled it into her own bedroom, where it hopelessly crowded the space. She’d gotten rid of the old linens and replaced them with a beautiful floral duvet and pillows. She’d removed the curtains and draped white tulle scarves over the rods, then woven garlands of flowers through the tulle. She’d found a flower lamp and a white wicker rocker for Maya to sit in while looking at her books, and she’d found a huge, flower-shaped rug to warm the floor.

And she had, miraculously, done all this before racing back over to Vincent’s to pick Maya up.

Angela had, in short, spent a small fortune and worked her ass off to create a room any preschool princess would be proud to call her own. She’d expected Maya to, at the very least, burst into ecstatic applause and whirl deliriously around the room.

She had not expected sullen pouting.

Angela sank to the edge of the bed, determined not to take this personally. “But it’s beautiful! Look at the pretty purple walls. Purple is your favorite color. You told me so.”

Maya snorted. “I hate purple.”

What the—?

Angela hesitated, giving herself time to sand all the sharp edges that wanted to roughen up her voice. Then she scooted around and turned on the flower lamp.

“Look at the lamp, Maya. Isn’t that cool?”

“I hate flowers,” Maya snapped. “I wanted a rainbow room.”

With that, all of Angela’s good intentions went up in smoke.

Enough was enough, she thought, her face prickling with anger. It was late and she was tired and hungry. Her feet hurt and her back ached. She still had to cook dinner, bathe Maya, and read to her before putting her to bed, then do about three more hours of work before she could even
think
about going to bed herself.

She stood and decided it was time to put her foot down. How on earth had Carolyn ever let this girl get so out of hand? Surely the little diva didn’t think Angela would run right out and redecorate the room
again
, did she?

“Maya,” she said sharply, “you told me you wanted a purple room with flowers, so I made this into a purple room with flowers. I worked very hard in here all afternoon. You should thank me.”

Maya crossed her hands over her chest and studied her for a long time, clearly weighing her options with great care.

When the process took a little too long, Angela decided to help her along.

“I’m waiting, Maya.”

Maya’s lips compressed into near invisibility.

Angela put her hands on her hips.

They glared at each other.

Tension filled the air, as if they were opposing coaches waiting for the final ruling on a disputed call during the last two minutes of the Super Bowl.

Finally, Maya made her move.

She uncrossed her arms and gave Angela the finger.

* * *

A
ngela went back
to Maya’s room, which had, in the last couple of hours, begun to feel like a demilitarized zone teetering on the brink of renewed hostility. Maya, fresh from her bath, sat cross-legged on the bed, glowering at Angela in the soft lighting of her rejected flower lamp.

“Maya,” Angela said in her most imperious tone, “you may get off your bed and come into my room to call Uncle Justus and tell him good night.”

“I don’t want to,” Maya said, her lips barely moving.

Angela snorted out a bitter laugh. “Of
course
you don’t want to. You didn’t like your new room, you didn’t want the spaghetti I made for dinner even though you loved spaghetti the other night—”

“I love
Uncle Justus’s
spaghetti!”

“Yeah, well, Uncle Justus
isn’t here
!” Angela yelled. Realizing she was dangerously out of control—in the last couple of hours, she’d begun to understand why gerbil parents sometimes ate their young—she took a deep breath and tried to calm down.

“You didn’t want to take your bath,” she continued, counting off on her fingers, “you didn’t want to brush your teeth, you didn’t want to sit on the bed for your time-out, and
now
you don’t want to call Uncle Justus.”

Angela took another deep breath, the first one not having worked very well.

“What
do
you want to do, pray tell?”

In response, Maya flopped over backward on the bed, kicking her feet out from under her.

“
Fine
. Suit yourself. Stay on the bed.”

Ignoring Maya’s groan, Angela stalked off down the hall. But before she could collapse on the sofa, the phone rang.

Cursing, she snatched it up.

“Hello,” she snarled.

A long pause, then, “Duchess? You okay?”

“Justus! Thank God it’s you!” Lowering her voice, she shot a covert glance over her shoulder to make sure Maya hadn’t somehow snaked a listening device down the hallway to eavesdrop. Then she sat on the sofa, sinking deep into its cushions. “Maya’s driving me
crazy
!
”

“Yeah?” He chuckled. “What’d you do to her?”

Having her hands full with more pressing matters, Angela decided to let Justus’s obvious amusement over her misfortune slide this one time.

“I worked my butt off all afternoon trying to put her room together and the little princess says she hates it!” she hissed. “She’s been snotty and disrespectful to me all night! She didn’t even want to call you just now!”

Another long silence ensued. “I thought you were going to hold off on that whole room thing, Angela,” Justus finally said. “Until the magistrate decides where she should live.”

Angela didn’t like his reproachful tone. “I never said that. I promised Maya I’d decorate her room, and I kept my promise. Anyway, if the magistrate gives her to you, she’ll still need a room to sleep in when she stays here.”

“True,” he agreed. “But did you ever think maybe she doesn’t want a new room because she realizes if she has a room with you, then she really won’t be going back to her old room?”

“Oh, God.” That constricting pain Angela thought had receded slightly in the last couple of days tightened across her chest again. Of
course
Maya didn’t want some new room. She wanted her old one—and she wanted her parents back. “You’re right. Dr. Brenner warned me. The other day when I called him? He told me to expect her to act out.”

“Exactly.”

Angela smacked her forehead, feeling equally frustrated and clueless. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I could come over...”

Yes
, she wanted to say.

As much as Angela hated to admit it, even to herself, Justus could handle Maya in a way she couldn’t. If he came, he would have Maya giggling and singing “Kumbaya” in no time, and peace would reign in the kingdom once again. Angela should invite him over for Maya’s sake.

And maybe...for her own sake, as well.

But if she did that, how on earth would she ever learn to handle Maya herself? What made her think she could be Maya’s guardian when she couldn’t even make it through one night alone with her?

“No,” she reluctantly said. “Thanks. I’ll work this out on my own. And”—she cringed at the thought—“it’s Saturday night. I’m sure you have plans, anyway.”

He grunted.

“Well.” Angela stood and stared dispassionately down the quiet hallway. There was no telling what mischief Maya had gotten into now. In another few seconds Angela would probably start smelling smoke. “I should go check on her.”

“Suit yourself,” he said shortly.

But she couldn’t hang up just yet. Probably because she hated to let Justus go for more reasons than she cared to think about.

She hesitated, wishing she knew why she always felt like she had so much more to say to him. “Well...wish me luck. She gave me the finger earlier, by the way.”

Justus laughed.

She laughed too. Now that a little time had passed, she had to admit the incident had been
somewhat
funny.

“Was it an appropriate use of the gesture?”

“Oh, yeah,” she admitted.

“I hope you didn’t make too big a deal out of it. Some kid at preschool who has an older brother—it’s always the ones with the older brothers—got all the other little kids started doing it. V.J.—”

He cleared his throat. Angela tried not to get teary.

“V.J. and Carolyn were having a terrible time with her the other week,” he said, his voice hoarse. “They decided the best thing to do was ignore it. She doesn’t even know what it means.”

“Oh.” He sounded so sad. Angela couldn’t stand the thought of him sad and alone. “You’re not brooding, are you? I hate it when you brood.”

“Brooding is what I do.”

“You should stop,” she told him. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow?”

“Good night, Duchess.”

Angela hung up and, squaring her shoulders, marched down the hall prepared to see a bonfire of new linen burning or maybe a Magic Marker mural on the freshly painted walls.

The scene that greeted her was much more startling.

Maya sat cross-legged in the wicker chair, a fleece throw tucked over her lap, upon which sat a small, open book. She had her head bent low, her face screwed up with concentration, almost as if she was actually reading.

She didn’t notice Angela.

Pointing a tiny finger at the page, Maya, with absolute focus and great effort, said, “Th...the c...the c-cat s-sat—”

Angela cried out with astonishment.

Maya’s head jerked up and the book slid from her lap.

“Sweetie! You’re reading!” Angela rushed to kneel by her chair. “You can
read
!”

Maya grinned and puffed up like one of the strutting peacocks at the zoo. “Yeah! I can read!”

“Let me help you.” Angela scooped her up, sat in the chair, and put Maya in her lap.

After raining kisses on the squealing girl’s head (Maya could
read
! At three and a half! What kind of precious genius child was
this
?) for a minute or two, they settled down to read together until Maya dozed off.

Later, after Maya was safely asleep and Angela had finished about three hours of correspondence, research, and dictation for work, she got up from the kitchen table, rubbed her burning eyes, and roamed around her apartment, too wired for sleep.

This was the witching hour, when her thoughts ran wild and free.

Not her thoughts of work, or of how Maya had gotten the best of her that day, or of Ronnie and how much, to her surprise, she
didn’t
miss him, or even of her dead sister, whom she missed more than she’d thought possible.