That Runaway Summer (10 page)

“I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner,” she said. “I stayed late to help Frank—he’s Annie’s dad—with paperwork. Then he insisted I have a kielbasa sandwich, which was delicious, by the way. And then, would you believe it, I had a flat tire Frank helped me change.”

“Hi, Jill.” Dan looked the opposite of annoyed, with a lazy smile on his lips that reached his eyes. He even looked good with a five-o’clock shadow and wearing a plain gray T-shirt.

“Hey, Dan.” She slowed herself down and returned his smile, genuinely glad to see him. “Is Chris ready to go?”

“You must not have gotten the message I left on your cell,” he said. “I just got back from walking him home.”

This marked the first time they’d been alone since the kayaking “lesson.” Fine with her. She could handle that. She thought.

“My phone’s dead. That’s why I didn’t call to let you know I’d be late.” She backed toward the door. The dogs had stopped barking, which plunged the house into silence broken only by the fall of the rain on the roof. “Sorry to bother you.”

“No bother,” he said. “I’m actually glad we got our signals crossed. I need to talk to you about Chris.”

She stopped backing up and sighed. “He’s coming over here too much, isn’t he? I told him he didn’t have to visit those goats every night.”

“No, no. That’s not it.” He waved a hand. “Come in and sit down. We can discuss it.”

She hesitated, then replied, “Okay.”

He led her to the family room, dominated by a flat-screen TV mounted on one wall. His sofas, upholstered with a hearty beige fabric, formed a ninety-degree angle around a heavy square sofa table. Some basic floor lamps and a brown leather armchair completed the very masculine decorations.

“Would you like a beer?” he called from the kitchen, which was an extension of the family room.

“Nothing for me,” she said. “But you go ahead.”

She sat down on one of the sofas and was immediately flanked by his two dogs. They sat perfectly still, not crowding her or clamoring for attention. She tentatively stuck out a hand and stroked the first dog, then the second. Both of them practically moaned in pleasure.

“How’d you get to be so good with dogs?” Dan entered the room, holding a beer bottle.

“I’m not,” she said. “We moved a lot when I was growing up, so we never had pets. My mama said it wouldn’t be fair to them.”

“Could have fooled me.” He sat on the sofa catty-corner from her, stretching his long jean-clad legs in front of him. “You knew just what to do with those two. The way to get them to stop barking is to ignore them until they’re quiet.”

“Is that what you do?”

He laughed. “It’s what I should do. I’m excited to see Starsky and Hutch when I get home from work, too, so I don’t follow my own advice.”

Why that was endearing, Jill couldn’t say.

“Starsky and Hutch?” she asked. “Wasn’t that a movie?”

“And before that, a television show from the seventies,” he said. “I liked the movie so much a friend bought me the first season on DVD. Now I’ve got quite the collection of TV cop shows.”

Probably because he had a highly developed sense of justice, which could turn out to be a negative if his definition of right and wrong didn’t coincide with hers.

“So what has Chris done that you want to talk to me about?” she asked.

“It’s more what he hasn’t done,” Dan said. “It doesn’t seem like he’s made any friends his own age since he moved here.”

“He hasn’t,” Jill said sadly. “But then, he’s never had many friends.”

“Yea, but it seems like Bart used to be enough for him.”

“Bart?” She almost groaned. “He told you about Bart?”

“He talks about him all the time. About Bart’s sister, too. I think it was really hard on him to leave them.”

Jill rubbed the bridge of her nose. This wasn’t good. She thought her brother had grown out of this particular quirk. “Did he mention Bart’s sister by name?”

“Sure.” Dan took a swig of beer. “Her name’s Lisa.”

Jill waited for Dan to make the connection, but he looked at her blankly. “Bart and Lisa
Simpson,
” she clarified.

He frowned, then set down his beer on the coffee table. “The cartoon family?”

“You got it.” She blew out a breath. “I don’t like him to watch the show, but I’m pretty sure he does when I’m not home. Do you know who Milhouse is?”

“Isn’t he Bart’s best friend?”

“Bart’s
intelligent, nerdy
best friend,” she clarified. “Milhouse isn’t popular with anyone except, well, Bart. I’m afraid Chris identifies with him.”

“Wow,” Dan said. “Why didn’t I figure that out?”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed Chris has a problem with lying,” she said. “With him spending so much time over here, I should have mentioned it.”

“I know he lied to Lindsey about Tinkerbell,” Dan said, “but I didn’t know it was a problem.”

She’d sat her brother down and expressed her disappointment after the Lindsey incident. As always, though, she was faced with an impossible dilemma. How could she get the point across that lying was wrong when they were living a lie?

She had a nearly overwhelming urge to ask Dan for advice. Her gut told her she could trust him. Her brain warned that her gut had been wrong before.

She’d been sure Ray Williams would accept her fervent belief that her brother, a proven liar, was telling the truth about Arianne. Instead Ray had insisted he’d go straight to her father unless she changed her mind about absconding with Chris, forcing her to put the plan into motion early.

If she couldn’t trust Ray, whom she’d been dating for three months, how could she trust Dan, a man she’d known for a third of that time and who’d just professed a love for cop shows?

“Chris lies about a lot of things,” she said. “It started after his mother died. She was one of those women who made her child the center of the universe. Always taking him somewhere, throwing him parties, showering him with presents and love.”

“It must have been heartbreaking for him to lose her,” Dan said.

“It was,” Jill agreed. “Chris had just started second grade. Our father worked all the time, so after his wife died he hired babysitters and put Chris in after-school care.”

“Weren’t you living with them?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “Growing up I lived with my mama and then I got my own apartment. I saw Chris whenever I could, but my place was about thirty minutes away and I was working a lot of hours myself.”

“Bartending?”

“No. I managed a bicycle shop that didn’t close until nine at night. Whenever I saw Chris, he’d tell these wild stories. Like about a monkey who played with him at recess. Or the bus driver who let him take the wheel.”

“Sounds like he was trying to get attention.”

“That’s what the school psychologist told my dad,” she said. “She said we shouldn’t let him get away with the lies, but at the same time we needed to show him how much we loved him.”

“Did that work?”

“For a while.” Until her father got remarried and unwittingly introduced a whole new problem into Chris’s life. Try as she might, Jill had never been able to convince her father that he’d married a bad person.

“Poor kid,” Dan said. “It must have been doubly hard on him when your father died.”

Jill’s heart clutched. Dan was such a good listener that she’d let down her guard. She’d even told him the truth about her last job! If he hadn’t mentioned her very-much-alive father, she might have blabbed even more.

“Yeah,” she said. “It was.”

“Is that when he started talking about Bart Simpson as though he were a real boy?”

“It was around then,” Jill said, although Chris had become imaginary friends with Bart soon after she’d spirited him away from Atlanta.

“Is Arianne a cartoon character, too?”

It felt as though someone had cut off Jill’s oxygen supply. She forced herself to breathe, to think and most of all not to react. “What do you know about Arianne?”

“I know she told Chris he was a loser,” Dan said.

She tried to hide her anxiety. “What else did Chris say about her?”

“That’s it. I take it she’s a real girl, then?”

Girl? Dan thought Arianne was a girl? Although why wouldn’t he? Adult women who disparaged and scared children were a rare breed, thankfully.

“Chris is too quick to listen to the negatives,” she said. “I’ve been trying to build up his self-confidence.”

“Friends his own age would help,” Dan said.

“Don’t I know it.” Jill had lain awake nights thinking about that very thing.

“Have you thought about sending him to Indigo Springs Elementary instead of homeschooling him?”

“He’s not ready for that yet.” Jill felt bad about misleading Dan regarding her true reasons, but it couldn’t be helped. “I signed him up for youth soccer last fall. He lasted one practice. Same thing with Boy Scouts. One meeting. Unfortunately he’s not the type of kid who makes friends easily.”

“He might if the other kids shared his interests.” Dan sat forward on the sofa, his forearms resting on his knees. “Have you thought about getting him involved in 4-H?”

“Can’t say that I have.” Jill had a fuzzy notion of what the organization stood for. “What is 4-H exactly?”

“It’s a youth organization sponsored by the department of agriculture. They do lots of things. Cooking, arts and crafts, horticulture. But the group here in Indigo Springs puts emphasis on working with animals. It’s right up Chris’s alley.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Jill said.

“There’s more. My boss runs the program. Hope you don’t mind, but I took the liberty of mentioning this to Stanley. They have meetings twice a month starting in September and running through May.”

Some of Jill’s enthusiasm waned. She couldn’t promise that she and Chris would even be in Indigo Springs come September. “It figures they wouldn’t be active in the summer.”

“I didn’t say that.” Dan’s blue eyes shone. “Most of the members of the group are going to Hersheypark this coming Sunday. Stanley said Chris is welcome to come along.”

Hersheypark was an amusement park located ninety minutes away in a town Jill had always wanted to visit. She’d heard the streetlights were shaped like Hershey kisses and that the place smelled like the chocolate plant that lent the town its name.

“I don’t know about that,” she said slowly. “Chris isn’t the most daring kid around. I can’t imagine he’d ride any of the roller coasters.”

“One of the reasons Stanley picked Hersheypark is it includes admission to an adjacent zoo,” Dan said. “Chris would like that.”

“Probably,” Jill said, “but you know how shy he can be. He might be miserable on a trip with a bunch of strangers.”

“Then you and I can go with him,” Dan said. “Counting Stanley, that’ll be three people he knows.”

“Three adults,” she clarified.

“Three adults who can encourage him to get to know the other kids,” Dan said. “What do you say? Can you get the day off?”

Although Jill was scheduled to guide a white water trip on Sunday, finding a substitute on a weekend was usually not a problem. If she couldn’t get the entire night off from the Blue Haven, Chuck Dudza almost certainly wouldn’t have a problem with her arriving a little late.

“I’m pretty sure I can,” she said.

“Great!” Dan said. “It’s a date.”

A date? What had Jill done? In her eagerness to ease things over for her brother, had she agreed to spend the day with a man she should avoid?

She should backtrack. She should tell him she doubted she’d be able to take the time off work after all. She should…

“Together we’ll make sure your brother has a good time.” He grinned at her, and she felt stupid. And ungrateful.

Since they’d gone kayaking, Dan hadn’t done a single thing to make her think he didn’t respect her wishes.

Why, they were alone in his house and he was talking about her brother.

She stood up.

“It sounds like the rain is letting up,” she said. “I should get going before it starts up again.”

“Okay,” he said. No argument. Just okay.

Her imagination was really running away with her.

Dan was proving repeatedly that he was a nice guy. As long as she was careful not to reveal too much about herself or her past, there was no reason they couldn’t be friends.

“No. Nuh-uh. No way.” Chris had barely strayed from Jill’s side since they’d boarded the charter bus that morning in Indigo Springs, first sitting next to her, then keeping within a few feet of her at the amusement park’s zoo. Now he edged even closer.

The rest of the dozen or so children in their group, who ranged in age from ten to twelve, hurried to get in line, laughing and pointing at the impressive wooden structure. Stanley Kownacki and the three other chaperones followed, not as quickly but just as eagerly.

Stanley had talked up the Wildcat on the bus ride, claiming it reached speeds of up to forty-five miles per hour and was the most thrilling of the park’s eleven coasters. Since most of the children didn’t meet the minimum height requirements for three of the coasters, Jill thought he’d tailored his comments for the audience.

Still, the Wildcat looked impressively daunting. Chris certainly seemed to think so.

“Are you sure you don’t want to try it, honey?” Jill wished she had the magic words to help her brother conquer his fear. “It might be fun.”

Chris stared down at the ground, saying nothing.

Jill shot Dan a resigned look. That morning while they’d visited mountain lions, black bears and gray wolves in the eleven-acre walk-through zoo, she’d quietly reiterated her concerns that Chris would be too timid to try many of the rides.

“He might surprise you,” Dan had said.

She’d wanted to believe that. Unfortunately, she doubted Chris was about to spring any bombshells on her.

“Jill, have you seen Brittany Waverly?” Dan asked, a non sequitur if she’d ever heard one.

Brittany was the only girl on the trip and the sole child besides Chris who wasn’t a 4-H member. Brittany’s mother, one of the chaperones, had brought her along, to the obvious horror of her older brother Timmy.

Jill indicated the line, where the adorable young girl was craning her neck and bouncing on her toes while the boys ignored her. She was maybe nine, but at about four foot three or four she was almost the same height as Chris. If the two of them were any shorter, they wouldn’t meet the minimum height requirements for the ride. “She’s over there with the rest of the kids.”

Almost as if she knew they were talking about her, Brittany looked over at them. Jill noticed Dan give the girl a slight nod. Brittany immediately broke off from the group, skipping across the pavement on her pink tennis shoes, her blond ponytails flying.

“C’mon, Chris.” Her high-pitched, little-girl voice sounded breathless. “I saved you a place in line.”

Chris shook his head.

Brittany glanced at Dan, who gave her another of those puzzling nods. “I used to be scared, too,” Brittany said. “Then I—”

“I’m not scared of some dumb old roller coaster!” Chris denied hotly.

“Then c’mon!” Brittany was fairly dancing in place. “We’re going to lose our place!”

She pivoted on one of her dainty feet and dashed away. Chris hesitated for a second, then ran after her. Brittany turned, smiling and backpedaling while he caught up to her.

“I bet you scream,” she said.

Jill couldn’t hear her brother’s answer. Chris’s vigorous head shake, however, spoke volumes. So did Dan’s wide grin.

She narrowed her eyes. “What is going on, Dan?”

“Your brother just agreed to ride the roller coaster.” Smugness practically oozed from him.

“No. I meant what’s going on with you and that sweet little Brittany? I swear, it looked like you were egging her on.”

“You noticed that, huh?” He seemed proud of himself. “Once she remembered what she was supposed to say, she was a good little actress. I’d say she earned her five bucks.”

“Why, Dan Maguire.” Jill balanced one hand on her hip while the full extent of his plan struck her. “Are you saying you paid for a child to embarrass Chris into riding the roller coaster?”

“Yep,” he said, totally without shame.

Jill let the laugh she’d been holding back break forth. “How did you know it would work?”

“It’s called peer pressure,” he answered. “I have three sisters. They didn’t get paid a cent and the same thing worked on me when I was a kid.”

He related the story without a trace of self-consciousness, painting a picture of a childhood that sounded exceedingly ordinary. How she wished she could provide a fraction of that sort of normalcy for Chris. Maybe, with a little bit of help, she could.

“You are a man of hidden talents,” she remarked.

He waggled his eyebrows with comic exaggeration. “Say the word and I’ll show you more of my talents.”

She swatted at his arm, laughing. “Now you’re being silly.”

“Maybe and maybe not.” He slung an arm around her shoulders. Her pulse jumped and her senses flared. She stayed put, though. Here at an amusement park in the middle of the afternoon, she was well equipped to withstand her involuntary physical reactions to him. “I can promise you this. I won’t try anything on the roller coaster. Even I’m not that talented.”

He started walking her in the direction of the ride. She craned her neck to look up at him. It wasn’t fair, but the man was even good-looking from this angle. “I don’t remember saying I’d go on the Wildcat with you.”

“What are you? Scared?” His eyes danced.

“Bring it on, mister!” she said. “But don’t you dare tell me not to scream. That’s part of the fun.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He winked. “You can grab my knee if you want, though.”

“You wish,” she said.

“That’s right,” he said good-naturedly. “I do.”

As it turned out, she grabbed the handlebars. They were too far back in line to take the same coaster train as the rest of their group. Somehow they wound up in the last car, which seemed to fly off the tracks at every wild turn and stomach-plunging dip.

Jill was breathless and laughing when they exited the ride. Chris ran up to them, his thin chest puffed up. “Did you see me! I didn’t even scream!”

“Of course you didn’t.” Dan clapped the boy on his shoulder. “Your sister, on the other hand, sounded like a fire alarm.”

“Roller coasters scare girls,” Chris said knowingly. “Brittany screamed, too.”

“Hey! Like I told Dan, screaming’s part of the fun. There’s no shame in it,” Jill said. “Half the guys on our coaster were shrieking. Why, I even think I heard a yowl from—”

“Shhh.” Dan placed two fingers over her lips before she could fill in his name. “I can’t let you ruin my macho image.”

The ability to speak momentarily left her, but she did manage to roll her eyes.

Chris wasn’t listening, anyway. He was halfway between them and the other children. Brittany was the only one paying attention to him.

“We’re going on the Lightning Racers next!” she called, then skipped along with the large group of boys.

Chris followed, but at a distance. Small steps, Jill told herself. She counted it as a triumph that he was no longer plastered to her side.

“The Lightning Racers are dueling roller coasters,” Dan explained. “You race to see who finishes first.”

Both the Wildcat and the Lightning Racers were in a section of the park known as the midway. They hurried to keep up with the children, walking past a Ferris wheel and a steel coaster called the Wild Mouse. Dan explained that the allure of the Wild Mouse was the illusion the four-passenger car would fall off the track.

“How do you know so much about the coasters here?” she asked. “Have you been to this park before?”

“Nope, but Stanley has. He’s a roller-coaster nut. He’s been talking about this trip for weeks. Notice we didn’t visit the chocolate factory. Not Stanley’s priority.”

The older vet was indeed leading the group, sort of resembling an aging Pied Piper in baggy madras shorts and a T-shirt. Once they reached the surprisingly short line at the Lightning Racers, Stanley organized their group into teams. He instructed half of them to ride the Lightning Red coaster and half the Thunder Green.

Jill and Dan wound up in a middle car of the red coaster. Chris, again paired with Brittany, settled in directly across from them in the green coaster.

“Thunder rules!”

“Lightning’s faster!”

“You’re going down!”

The 4-H’ers shouted rallying cries as the coasters sat idle on the track. Jill noticed that Chris, although silent, was smiling.

“Get ready to eat our wind!” Dan yelled just as the coasters took off.

“Good one!” Jill told him before the wind in her face robbed her of speech.

The coasters raced around the side-by-side tracks, affording glimpses of the riders in the other cars between plunges and hairpin turns.

Jill let her screams rip. At the end of the ride, when the green racer won by the narrowest of margins, she was surprised to find herself clutching Dan’s arm, her face buried in his shoulder.

She let go of him. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay.” His teeth flashed. “You’re cute when you’re afraid.”

Stanley and the 4-H’ers didn’t hesitate when they got off the ride, circling back around and getting in line again. Jill and Dan followed the group, walking alongside two of the other chaperones, both mothers wearing fanny packs and sensible sneakers.

“I could use something to drink,” Jill remarked through a suddenly parched throat.

“Go ahead and take a break.” Liz Waverly, Brittany’s mother, made the offer. “Chris is your brother, right? I’ll keep an eye on him. You can catch up to us later.”

“Why, thanks,” Jill said. “Are you sure it’s not too much trouble?”

“Absolutely sure,” Liz said, “so go enjoy each other when you have the chance.”

“Enjoy each other?” Jill repeated a moment later. They were headed for a slushie stand they’d passed when they’d first arrived on their mad dash to the Wildcat. “That was a strange choice of words.”

“Not really,” Dan said. “Liz probably thinks we’re a couple.”

Jill was afraid of that. “We should tell her we’re just friends.”

“So I won you over, did I?” He slung an arm around her shoulders. She willed herself to breathe and not to read too much into the friendly gesture. “I remember when you said it wouldn’t be smart for us to be friends. You said Penelope would never accept that was all there was between us.”

Judging by the warmth rapidly spreading through her body, it still wasn’t smart. These past few weeks, though, she’d discovered that some things were worth the risk.

A friendship with Dan was one of them.

“No way am I admitting you won me over,” she said. “I don’t want you getting a big head.”

He threw his very nicely proportioned head back and laughed.

The day passed quickly, with the children clamoring to stay until the park closed at ten o’clock. Stanley gave in—not that it took much persuading.

By the time the bus was thirty minutes into the trip back to Indigo Springs, most of the children and some of the adult chaperones were asleep.

“Even Gigantor looks tired,” Jill whispered to Dan from her seat next to him in the back of the bus. Across the aisle the enormous stuffed teddy bear he’d won on the midway had a seat to himself.

“Gigantor had it easy,” Dan said. “I carried him all over the park.”

“Thanks again for winning him for me,” Jill said.

“Don’t mention it,” he said. “I knew if I threw enough darts, odds were some of them would hit a balloon.”

“You spent more money to win that bear than it would have cost to buy a new one.”

“Probably,” he said, “but it gave me the opportunity to impress you with my mad dart-throwing skills.”

She giggled, then leaned her head against the seat and turned. She liked the way the ends of his black hair curled and the way his long, straight nose, strong chin and full mouth looked in profile. “Just in case you haven’t realized it, I had a wonderful day. Thank you.”

“I didn’t do much,” he said.

“You arranged for Chris and me to go on this trip. If not for you, my little brother might have grown into an old man who’d never ridden a roller coaster.”

He smiled lazily. This late in the day, his skin showed the barest hint of stubble, somehow making him even better looking. “If not for Brittany, you mean.”

She nodded to indicate a seat three rows in front of them where Chris and Brittany sat side by side. After going on the Wildcat together, they’d partnered up on every ride.

Judging by the slightly slumped position of Chris’s body, he appeared to be asleep. Even awake, he didn’t have much to say to Brittany. Most likely they’d gravitated to each other because none of the other children showed any interest in riding with them.

“I’m glad Chris had Brittany to hang out with today,” Jill said. “I can’t see them becoming close friends, though.”

“Me, either,” Dan said. “But it’s a start. Come fall, Chris might be more open to joining 4-H.”