Risky Business (15 page)

“What's wrong with Allison?” Chelsea asked, looking actually concerned, in her own drunken way.

“She's fine. Katie has a fever. I'm handling it.”

Chelsea's pout returned. “Poor Katie. She's been sniffly for a couple days now. I'm glad you're helping, because Brandon and I have plans.”

There was nothing he could say to that. “Take it easy,” he said instead as he headed for the door.

“Hey,” Chelsea called. He turned to see her teetering toward him on those impossibly tall heels.

“Don't tell Allison about . . .” She gestured to Theo, then her.

“About what?”

She tottered the rest of the way to him. “What I asked you and that you were considering it. What she doesn't know can't hurt her.”

Oh, hell, no. He'd done nothing wrong, but even still, he wasn't breathing a word to Allison about seeing Chelsea or her coming on to him, because all it would do was embarrass her to hear about Chelsea's lack of dignity. She had enough on her plate without that.

A fierce surge of protectiveness rushed through him. “You don't tell her anything, either. In fact, maybe it's not the best idea for you to be living with her. She needs someone in her life she can count on, and clearly that isn't you.”

But it's you
, his mind whispered.

He swallowed hard, told his mind to shut the hell up, and headed to the door. He wasn't a hero, he never wanted the pressure of being a hero again, and nothing was going to change that. Not even if every cell in his body told him otherwise.

“Hey, you don't have to treat me so mean,” she called after him. “I needed a place to crash while I get my shit together and Allison doesn't mind. All I was being was friendly to you. It didn't mean anything.” She paused, then added, “Don't tell Allison, okay?”

He heard Brandon's quiet, placating words behind him as he pushed out the door and into the storm.

Katie was crying again when he got to the car. Allison was in the back seat holding her, cooing and consoling. Theo slipped into the driver's seat of the car, careful not to let too much cold air in.

“How is she?”

She eased a flailing, screaming Katie from her arms to the car seat and said something in response, and though it was indistinguishable over the baby's cries, he read the worry on her face plain enough. He ripped the package open and a plastic syringe fell out along with the bottle of purple liquid. He held both items up for her to see. “How do I do this?”

While he waited for her to finish wrestling Katie's seatbelt harness on, Theo busied himself against feeling utterly useless by removing the safety seal on the bottle.

Before he was forced to repeat his question, Allison reached for the bottle and the syringe. He handed them over gratefully, then watched her prep a dosage with the practiced skill every mother seemed born with. Without ceremony, she pushed the tip of the syringe into the side of Katie's open, wailing mouth and depressed the plunger. Katie gurgled, then her cries turned mad. Guess she wasn't a fan of that nasty artificial grape flavor.

“Buckle up,” Theo said, releasing the emergency break. He wasn't even going to give her the chance to argue with him over who'd do the driving. Not that he'd hear her protests anyway. Katie had a set of lungs on her.

As soon as the car was on the road, Katie piped down. Theo took a deep breath. After a few blessed moments of silence, the mood in the car shifted. In the rearview mirror, he saw Allison's shoulders relax. She rested her head against the side of the car seat. He chanced a look over his shoulder. Katie's eyes were fluttering like she was fighting to stay awake.

He jumped at the feel of Allison's hand on his shoulder. “Thank—”

Theo bristled. He couldn't help it. She had no right to say that to him, to think that. No right at all, because he'd told her that was off-limits, and besides, anyone in their right mind would've done the same as he had. Going with her to buy medicine for her sick child was nothing special, and he refused to let her act like it was. “Don't. Please.”

She removed her hand and stayed quiet. Jaw clenched and mentally kicking himself for snapping at her, Theo kept his attention on the road, moving slow and steady through the deteriorating weather. It took him a lot of miles to decompress after Allison's misplaced gratitude and the stress of being confined in a small space with a screaming baby who was in pain.

In the world beyond the car, the night was still. The midnight, rain-soaked roads were empty. Street lights and neon signs glistened in the puddles of water. If he concentrated, he could hear the drops of water hitting the car and the occasional squeak of the wiper blades with every ineffective pass over the windshield. He made a mental note to buy replacement blades the next day.

Halfway home, his curiosity got the best of him. At a yellow light, he slowed and took the red light. Then he tipped his chin over his shoulder and glanced at the back seat. Katie was asleep. So was Allison.

His shoulders relaxed as his glance turned into a long, studying look. Her head was propped against the side of the car seat, her hair falling in unruly waves over her cheek and coat.

A whole mess of emotions swirled inside him. She was beautiful. That was nothing new. He'd figured that out that first night they'd stood dripping wet on the back deck of Lanette. And she needed him. That wasn't new, either. She was a single, new mom alone without any kind of real support network except her flaky sister, and she was in over her head with a business she didn't know the first thing about.

Theo was the person in the best position to help her. What was new—the part that shocked Theo most—was that he was starting to be okay with that, not trapped or duped into responsibility, as he had with Noelle. Tonight, driving to the drug store, he felt like a man taking care of his responsibilities. There was a satisfaction he hadn't anticipated in being that man. Like there was satisfaction now in knowing he was the man who was going to get Allison and Katie home safely.

Home?
Damn. When had he started to think of the landing as Allison's home? In fact, he had no business feeling anything remotely positive about what he was doing tonight. He should be pissed at being out in the middle of the night during a storm, forced to deal with his disabilities and field come-ons by her drunk sister. Pissed that she hadn't been prepared to handle a simple fever in the first place. But he wasn't. He should have been, if he'd known what was good for him.

The problem was, this felt good for him.

And what was he supposed to do with that information? Hell if he knew. He was supposed to be girding himself to deliver an ultimatum—
sell to me or I'll sue
. Sympathizing with Allison's plight and letting his attraction to her grow worked at cross purposes with what he should be keeping in the forefront of his mind: looking out for number one.

He was a thirty-six-year-old employee with brain damage and hearing loss who didn't own anything but a motorcycle, a piece-of-shit truck, and a run-down houseboat. What kind of life was that? He wanted to own something substantial. For the first time in his life, he wanted to plant roots, and Allison Whitley was the one obstacle keeping him from it.

Annoyed with himself, he turned his focus forward as the stoplight turned yellow, then red. He'd idled there for a whole light cycle, missing the green.

The baby stirred. Theo reasoned that was because the car had stopped moving, so he gave a serious look around the intersection. There wasn't another car in sight, so he pressed the gas pedal and ran the red. Katie settled back down, confirming his theory.

He drove a loop around Destiny Falls, from the landing, to the ice rink, to Liam's apartment complex, and all along the canal back to the landing again. Katie drifted back into deep sleep. Allison remained still, looking peaceful and cozy in her heavy coat, cuddled up with the car seat and Katie. He didn't have the heart to return to Cloud Nine and wake them up, force them through the rain to reach the house. So he drove the loop again.

The car smelled like Allison, a pleasingly sweet and feminine fragrance. It was the kind of identifying scent that was so uniquely hers that Theo could be blindfolded in a room full of women and still find her with no problem. He wasn't sure why that discovery didn't freak him out all over again. It should have, but just as his sense of self-preservation had misfired about driving to the store tonight, it didn't bother him at all. He liked the way she smelled. He liked that he knew her in that way.

After several more loops, the low gas warning light turned on. If Katie's condition got worse and Allison decided to take her to the pediatrician, that could be a problem. He shook his head, exasperated with the realization that he was going to keep her keys with him so he could fill the tank come morning and replace her wiper blades. This was one motherfucker of a slippery slope he was on.

He tightened his fists, strangling the steering wheel. What the hell was he thinking? He was not that man, the one that handled things in his house, for his woman, even if he'd felt like it tonight. Allison was an adult. She could pump her own gas. She could buy her own fever medicine. She was not his responsibility. She'd made the terrible choice to pledge her life, faith, and body to that sleazebag Lowell Whitley. Now she had to own up to the consequences—and Theo needed to let her.

He pulled the car in front of the landing, as close as he could so she'd have a shortest walk possible through the rain. He twisted in his seat and took another long last look at his passengers. Allison didn't look like Lowell Whitley's ex-wife. She just looked like Allison—a fierce, smart, overwhelmed woman fighting for her future. And Katie didn't look like the consequence of a terrible choice. She looked like Theo would've bet his own baby would have looked: like a gift. A scary, noisy, smelly, magical gift.

He turned off the engine and stared at the key ring in his hand. Both Allison and Katie roused immediately. He watched through the rearview mirror as Allison set the back of her hand on Katie's forehead while Katie stretched and blinked. She let out a visible sigh that Theo didn't have the skillset to interpret.

Then she met his gaze with a relieved grin.

“Better,” she said.

Nodding, Theo pocketed the key ring and got out. Huddling into his jacket, he trotted around the car and unlocked the landing door.

He turned to see Allison's backside as she unstrapped Katie. He wrenched his focus higher, stripping his jacket off as he walked. Squinting against the rain falling on his face and eyes, he held it over her head like an umbrella and walked them through the door.

He held the door for Allison as she brushed passed him, fighting hard to ignore the thrill he got at her slight, inadvertent touch. Every single time she touched him it was like that. A zing of sensation that startled him into awareness of their proximity—and awareness of how much he wanted her to touch him more.

The darkened fireplace on the far side of the office caught his attention. Allison had said she loved having fires in the fireplace. He'd convinced the guys not to fix it, thinking it would only encourage her to stay. The memory brought with it a measure of shame. He really should fix that for her. It was a cold spring and this was an old, drafty house. It probably wouldn't take Theo more than ten minutes to get it working again. A half hour, max.

Nope. He wasn't going to go there.

She stopped just past him, Katie asleep in her arms. “I know you hate me to say things like this, but I can't help it. Thank you.”

He swallowed back a cringe, chanced another look at the fireplace, and inched backward out of the open door. “The only reason I did it was so Katie would stop screaming and I could get some sleep.”

The petulance and disrespect oozing from the words shocked him. So those were his choices, then? Asshole or hero. Nothing in the middle—not with Allison, anyway. She pushed him to extremes, forcing his hand over and over, every day.

Perhaps the biggest shock was that Allison didn't look affronted. Instead, her expression turned weary and her focus shifted to the floor near Theo's feet. “I get that you don't like me. I wouldn't like me either if I were you. I'm sorry for all this. I truly am. If I had somewhere else . . .” Her voice trailed off and she shook her head. “But I don't. I'm going to make this work because I have to. It'd be easier with your help, by a long shot, but if you don't want to work for me, then you shouldn't stay. I can probably scrape up some kind of severance pay. It wouldn't be much, but I don't have very much right now.”

It was the perfect opportunity to issue that ultimatum he'd been practicing.
Sell to me. You be my employee instead.
But he didn't.

Dumbfounded, he watched her straight-spined march up the stairs, Katie in her arms. Her life had been ruined far worse by Lowell Whitley than Theo's had, but he would bet his life savings that nobody ever apologized to her for it the way she'd apologized to Theo.

For all of Theo's crushed dreams, he still lived on Lanette, still had the same job in the same town. The same friends. Allison had lost her home, her husband, her reputation, and probably her credit score and life savings, and was having to fend for herself with no job skills or training and—from everything he could tell—very little family or friend support. And doing it all while caring for a baby.

In a fog, he walked away. After locking her car doors, he returned to Lanette. Leaping onboard held none of his usual comfort of returning home. The fog swirled in his brain as he moved, short-circuiting the devil and angel on his shoulders, short-circuiting any type of reason or thought at all.

Onboard, he walked to the kitchen and pulled a tin from the cupboard, then, after a split second hesitation, a bottle of liqueur. Then it was back to the landing office. It was tempting to claim he was motivated by guilt, but that wasn't it. Not really. What was actually going on, he wasn't ready to acknowledge, though its force inside him was gathering power.