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“If they’d even agree to do that, which is highly unlikely with only circumstantial evidence, I can almost guarantee you his answer would be an unequivocal no. And then, if it is Mark, he’ll definitely be tipped off.”
“Wouldn’t that be like an admission of guilt?”
“You’d think so, but no. People guard their privacy, especially these days. But what it could do is make Mark nervous...”
“...and that we don’t want. Not while he still has Jackson. Not only because he could run again, but because we have no idea if...”
The stark fear in her gaze burned a hole so deep in him, he felt places he hadn’t known existed. “You’ve said all along that he’s gentle and kind. Patient. Great with kids,” he quickly reminded her. He didn’t know whether a man who was unhinged enough to kidnap his son because his own mother had died would be capable of hurting the boy. He just knew that Tabitha’s clutching that fear served no good purpose.
“He is.” She nodded once again, her smile filled with the kind of thanks a man wanted to hold on to.
He wanted to hold on to her. To pull her into his arms and keep her there. For a little while, anyway. Then he’d let her go. Before violating their friendship, making things messy, which would lead to an earlier end to their relationship than planned.
He didn’t want that.
Tabitha wasn’t anything like the other women in his world—and had absolutely no interest in becoming one of them—a woman who lived in the society he’d been born to. And he couldn’t see himself as anyone other than Johnny Brubaker, top legal counsel for his father’s holdings until the old man retired, if he ever retired, at which point the holdings would belong to Johnny. It had all been loosely mapped out before his birth.
“I think what we need to do first is fill out that application and see if we can get Chrissy enrolled at The Bouncing Ball.” Legal pitfalls bounced all around him. Over him.
“Don’t we need a two-year-old girl to do that?”
“She’s not the one who’ll be looked at. We will be.” He’d already perused the application. It was general stuff. Their jobs. Addresses. “We can use your home address and then the address of the commissary I rented here for the week...” Food truck laws in California required a street address for the business, one that passed health code regulations for storing and preparing food, and included a place where the truck could be parked. “I’ll rent it for the rest of the month. We can explain that we’re moving here and that Chrissy’s at home with...my mother.”
For the first time that day, Tabitha’s features relaxed. She looked like herself. Because they had a plan.
He thought about his mother...and Tabitha...and started to squirm inside again.
Tabitha knew his family had money, that he and Angel had gone to private school with limousine transportation to and from. She knew he’d been legal counsel for his father’s business. She didn’t know how rich they were and that he’d been groomed to be lead counsel for a team of about twenty. And his parents had no idea how or where he was currently living. There was no way he was inviting them to the little place he’d bought. They’d worry about him more than they already were. They’d agreed to give him his year to grieve Angel, to leave him alone as long as he call
ed regularly.
And he couldn’t very well just show up at the mansion with Tabitha, unless he gave her some kind of heads-up.
It wasn’t like his family owned a business that she could just look up on the internet and learn all about them. More like, his father invested in many diverse interests, from patents to oil rigs, but only with his own capital. He wasn’t an investor for others. Sometimes he invested in failing companies and brought them around. It was always about the next challenge to him. Just as it had been for his father before him.
“I don’t know how to thank you, Johnny,” she said, “But if you need me to wash your clothes for you for the rest of your sabbatical, I’m game.” Her grin was like a hundred others she’d given him over the months and the world righted itself.
Then he caught a glimpse of a random drop of moisture on her top lip. He couldn’t look away. And knew he’d pay a high price for what that minute drop of wine made him want to do.
Chapter Four
Tabitha stared at Johnny’s bare feet. He had nice feet. Toes aligned. Tanned. Nothing knobby about them. Good enough to be a foot model, if he’d been so inclined. She’d told him so once.
He’d quirked his eyebrow at her and continued whatever conversation they’d been having at the time.
“Did you go barefoot a lot growing up?” she asked now, still thinking about him saying they’d say that “Chrissy” was with his mother as they sat together on the couch in their suite sipping wine. She understood why she hadn’t met his family, but that didn’t mean she didn’t wonder about them.
Other than this year away, his entire life revolved around them. He worked for the family. Had married his parents’ best friends’ daughter. Lived close enough to them that he’d made it to his own bed with his own two feet after getting blistering drunk in his father’s den, with his father, on the night of his wife’s funeral. He had more aunts, uncles and cousins than she had acquaintances. And he was an only child.
She didn’t know that man. But as their time together grew shorter, she wanted to know him. Felt she needed to know him.
She was ready to recover her son. She wasn’t anywhere near ready to lose the friend she’d found in Johnny. Wasn’t sure she’d ever be ready for that.
And yet she realized she had to be. She was a loner. Other than her small circle, anonymity was her comfort.
He hadn’t answered her question. He was watching her, though. Probably wondering why she was talking about feet when they’d been discussing their plan to get Jackson back.
“I like it that you go barefoot,” she told him, needing to have a moment of non-Jackson conversation. To breathe. “You’re so...smart. And together. It’s not surprising that everything you touch turns to gold. You have life so figured out, it actually works the way it’s supposed to—well other than Angel, of course...” She paused, and then added, “But your whole life has been a plan...and yet your feet...they’re free. You’ve got things together enough to leave room for freedom.”
