Risky Business (27 page)

“But don't you wonder? He or she would have been seventeen this year. Don't you wonder what might have been? We forfeited our chance to know that child.”

A shadow crossed her features. She looked down at her joined hands. “I know. I do wonder. Not always, but in quiet moments. How could I not? But it's not so simple, is it? I wonder about that baby, but I love my life. I can't imagine it any other way, and the thought that I was so close to marrying and becoming a mother at seventeen, trapped in that town, that child trapped with us. I can't imagine a worse fate. I regret so much about how I handled things with you and my parents, but at the same time, how can I regret any choice I made when it led me to my Elliot?”

He struggled with the same hard truths. If he hadn't made the choices he did, then he wouldn't have found Destiny Falls. He wouldn't have met Allison or played on Bomb Squad. All this time, he and Noelle had been struggling with the same demons, trapped in a gray area between regret and peace. “There's no easy answer. No neat bow we can wrap this one up in. I was so wrong to do what I did to you, pressuring you like that, but like you said, we would never have been happy there together.”

“Is there ever an easy answer in life? Is there ever anything purely good or purely wrong?”

“No.” He took her hand and cradled it between both of his. “When did you get so wise?”

“Oh, I wised up fast after you left. My parents kicked me out. I took the train to stay at my cousin's apartment in Montreal. I got a job as a waitress and moved up to an assistant manager. The restaurant's corporate owners transferred me to Toronto and one night a group of businessmen dined at the restaurant. The rest is history.”

They stopped and looked out at the water.

“Are you still a waitress?”

“Not for a long time. I manage Elliot's charitable foundation.”

Which meant she'd done well for herself. She certainly had a monied air about her.

“And what about you?” she said. “The news said you were wounded in the army.”

It was such a small part of who he was, yet such a large part. His disabilities were responsible for a million details and choices he made every day. “I survived a roadside bomb explosion with a brain injury. Hearing loss and vision trouble, that kind of thing.”

It was the explanation he was most comfortable with except with his closest friends. In light of how many men in his unit had lost their lives or limbs, Theo's injuries were minor, indeed.

“And then what?”

“I did my initial rehab in Montreal, but there were some innovative therapies happening here in New York, so I made the move. And I found work as an electrician for the man who runs the wounded vet hockey team; then I got this job managing the boat rental company you found me at.”

“And then Allison,” Noelle said.

It nearly made him laugh, it was such an understatement about how she'd crash landed into his life like a meteorite and turned his whole world on its axis. “And then Allison. Will you stay and have dinner with us tonight?”

“Thank you, but no. Elliot is expecting me at the hotel in Lockport. All I wanted to do was see that you're happy. And now that I've seen that you are, and you've forgiven me, I can move on. I won't worry about you anymore.”

She'd been worried about him? All this time that he'd been worried about her. It was baffling, how ironic life could be sometimes. “I won't worry about you either.”

“There's no need.”

He hugged her. “Thank you—for finding me, for accepting my apology.”

“We'll always wonder, won't we?” she said.

He didn't need to ask her what she was referring to. They would always wonder what might have been if they'd become parents, what their child would have been like and who he or she would have grown into.

“We will,” he said. “I think that's okay. I think we wouldn't be human if we didn't wonder.”

She offered him a smile at that. They walked in comfortable silence back along the canal, past Locks, and into the office. With every step, Theo felt lighter, freer, as if another link in the chain of regrets hanging around his neck had been broken.

***

Two days before the exhibition game and one day before the gala event, Allison drove herself and Katie to Lockport Community College. They were going to be really early, but she had some stops to make along the way and she figured they could go on a stroller walk around campus first.

She still hadn't come clean to Theo or Chelsea about the water acclimation class, comfortable in her choice to wait until she had one successful class under her belt before announcing what she was up to, but she was spared from telling a white lie because Theo was busy at the exhibition game site, checking on the newly laid ice rink and monitoring the electricity output and cables as the gala tent was erected in the high school's parking lot next to the stadium.

Her dress for the big event had been pressed and hidden in her closet for the next night's big reveal. She couldn't remember ever being so excited about a charity gala before, though she'd attended dozens of them over the years with Lowell. This time, though, she'd be among true friends, with the man she was falling in love with by her side.

She was nervous about getting in the pool, but was trying to keep her mind busy thinking about the gala instead of worrying. She knew she was getting in the pool, and she knew she was going to be perfectly safe—end of story. Or so she hoped to believe by the time they got there.

Her phone rang en route to the pool, so she tapped her hands-free device to answer. “Hello?”

“Allison. It's Oscar.”

She and Theo had been waiting for weeks to hear that the change of corporate partnership paperwork had been processed. Oscar, Theo's lawyer friend, had helped them file it and had created a new contract for the two of them to sign as soon as they became official partners in the eyes of the law.

He didn't sound happy, which had her thinking that there'd been some sort of glitch in the system.

“What's wrong? Is there a problem with the paperwork?”

“Are you and Theo available to meet today at my office?”

She didn't like his tone. Not one bit. She flipped on her turn signal, then rolled to a stop in a McDonald's parking lot. “Theo's busy prepping for the exhibition game. I'm not sure what his availability is. Is everything okay?”

Oscar sighed, sounding conflicted about telling her what was going on. “It might be better for me to tell you this first, before Theo finds out. It has more to do with you anyway, technically.”

She checked her watch. Two hours until pool time. “I'll be there as soon as I can.”

Twenty minutes later, she sat across the desk from Oscar Vintana, a handsome former marine dressed in a sharp business suit.

“You have bad news. I can see it in your eyes,” she said.

“I do, and I hate to be the one to break it to you. Do you want some water first?”

“No, thanks. Just, out with it please. The anticipation is too much.”

His jaw tightened, but he nodded. “Shorty never legally passed ownership of Cloud Nine Inc. to Lowell.”

Allison blinked. What the heck was that supposed to mean? Lowell was never the legal owner? Impossible. “I don't understand. Lowell owned Cloud Nine. He paid taxes. He—”

“I know, but that's different from filing for a change of corporate partnership. If you and Theo hadn't pursued this at a state level, we wouldn't have found out until an audit was performed or government regulation standards and practices for corporations changed and it was brought to someone in the state office's attention.”

“Lowell was never Cloud Nine's rightful owner?” Oscar had already said as much, but it still didn't make sense to Allison on any level.

“No. Trust me that I made sure that was accurate before coming to you. He lost Cloud Nine to your ex-husband during a poker game, and from what I can tell, Shorty was thorough about changing the names on the company's bank account and handing over the business's tax information, but that's as far as he went. In the eyes of the law, after Shorty Malone died, the corporation was passed to his heirs because the proper paperwork hadn't been filed with the government.”

Then he laid it all out for her, complete with copies of Shorty's original corporate partner filing thirty years earlier and the proof that no other change of partnership applications had been made in all the years since. Allison was too stunned to feel anything except panic.

“But they, the heirs, they can't want Cloud Nine. They don't know anything about it. Are they going to contest my ownership?”

“They don't have to contest it. They are the rightful owners, and have been since Shorty died.”

It was even money about whether Allison would pass out or throw up if she didn't catch her breath and get a grip soon. She sat Katie on the floor with her favorite teething toy and walked to the window. She looked out at the canal and touched the cool glass with her fingertips.

“What happens next?” she asked.

“The Malones are going to weigh their options, talk to a lawyer, and have the business appraised. They have a sick child, and Jeff Malone, the father, has been out of work for two years, so this is seeming like a godsend to them. They called it a miracle when I met with them.”

Cloud Nine had seemed like a godsend to Allison, too. But at least Katie was healthy, a blessing she counted every day.

“They wanted to come see Cloud Nine on Saturday,” Oscar said. “I know that's the day of the exhibition game, so I asked them to postpone the walk-through until Monday, as a courtesy.”

Some courtesy. “Thank you.”

This must have been what Theo felt like when she'd stormed into town, messing up all his plans for the future and the business. No wonder he'd been livid. That, perhaps, was the cruelest irony of all, that even though Theo had long since forgiven her, she was getting a taste of her own bitter medicine. Chelsea would call that karma's revenge.

Oscar tapped his pen. “I hope you're not planning to keep this from Theo until after the game. I know it might seem like the right thing to wait, but one thing I've learned in my line of work is that nobody likes being kept in the dark, even about bad news.”

In her heart, she knew he was right. Everything that had happened with Lowell had been made even worse because she was blindsided. She respected Theo too much to do that.

She was going to lose everything again. Theo was going to lose everything, too, which made it all the worse. She only hoped he could forgive her for yanking the rug out from under his future once again.

The ice was perfect, the rink looked great. Theo would go back tonight to check on the ice, then again in the morning, but everything was right on schedule. He hadn't been this content for the whole of his life.

He'd come home from checking on the ice rink and the portable cooler to find Will and Liam already busy constructing his surprise gift to Allison—a whole new fireplace, a nice one, with a river rock hearth that extended all the way to the ceiling, a thick oak mantel that he'd commissioned from Will, and an accordion glass front and all new gas works inside. She was going to love it.

In his mind, he could see them sitting there together after Katie was asleep, talking, making love. A sign to her that she belonged here, despite their shaky beginning. That she belonged here because they'd made it so. She'd fought for what she wanted and he'd come to admire everything about her. He'd never been so excited about what the future held.

They'd kept the area tarped off while they were working on it, and he thought they might have it done in time to present it to her the next night before he escorted her to the gala. He couldn't wait. He'd even secretly arranged with Mona to be the backup babysitter if—he was tempted to say
when—
Chelsea flaked out. A classy night out, followed by the big game, with his woman in the stands cheering him on, and now owning the business with her. It felt like the universe had finally rewarded him for sticking it out, for being a good person, for enduring everything he had in his life.

Today, they were mortaring the rocks, the messiest part of the job, but after that, all they'd have to do the next day was put the polish on. All the guys, Theo included, were full of nervous energy about the game, so this project was a great diversion.

The phone rang, but his hands were covered in mortar, so he ignored it. Now that Allison had taken over the business, she was handling the reservations and payments. At first, he'd balked about her taking it over because she'd wanted to change his system, but he'd relented after admitting to himself that he'd never enjoyed that part of the job anyway.

After five rings, the answering machine message clicked on, then beeped. Theo kept working, but he kept an ear open, curious about who she'd need to call back after his hands were cleaner.

“Chelsea, if you're there, pick up. Please.”

It was Allison, not sounding like herself at all. She paused, as though giving Chelsea time to run for the phone. Her breathing was shallow, agitated. In the background, Katie was crying. Theo stood. The others guys stopped working. He stared at the machine.

“Okay, um, if you get this message, would you come to the Lockport Community College pool? I signed Katie and me up for water acclimation classes. I didn't want anybody to know because I—” She sighed. “It doesn't matter why now because I can't do it. I'm having a really terrible day, but I thought this would make it better. I thought I could do this for Katie. I wanted just one thing to go right today. But I can't.”

Theo grabbed a rag and wiped his hands. A pool class? What had she been thinking?

“I can't believe you're not there,” Allison said. “Every time I need you, you're not there. This is important. I can't get in the water, Chelsea. I tried, but it's too much. For once in your life, can you do something for me? For Katie? They said you could be here for the next class, that they'd let me switch it. I don't want her to be afraid like I am. I want her to—” Her voice cut off, the emotion thick, choking her. “I'll wait here, in case you get this. Just, please.”

He ran for the phone, but she hung up as he said, “Wait, Allison.”

He didn't recognize the number on the caller ID, which probably meant she'd forgotten to charge her cell phone again and had borrowed someone's. He dialed the number anyway, but it flipped to voice mail after two rings.

“Where is she? What's going on?” Brandon said.

“I have no idea. She didn't tell me anything. Swim class? You know, her and water . . .” He shook his head, rattled. Why would she put herself through that? He wasn't sure he'd ever heard her so dejected, not even the night of Katie's fever.

He jogged into the kitchen and washed his hands, his heart pounding. He had to get to her. Bring her home, take care of her.

While he was drying his hands, Will appeared in the threshold. “It's either you or me.”

“Excuse me?” Theo said.

“She wants Katie to take the next class, but she can't do it. So it's either you or me getting in the pool with Katie.”

“Or me,” Brandon said. “I'll go. I have a swimsuit in my gym bag.”

Theo brushed past them. “I'm going to go get her and bring her back here.”

Liam blocked his way to the garage. “No, man. You have to do it. She wants Katie to not be afraid of water like she is. So you need to take the class.”

Will stood shoulder to shoulder with Theo, barring his passage. “Katie was crying because she wants to get in the pool. She should get to go in the pool. If you won't, then I will.”

Theo scrubbed a hand over his face. “She's mine to take care of, not yours.”

Will held his arms up in a show of surrender. “Don't snap my head off. You've never wanted to take care of anybody before. You hate that shit, so excuse us for thinking you might not be up for swooping in and saving the day.”

He hated that they thought that about him still. How much did he have to change before he proved he was over that, at least where Allison and Katie were concerned? He left them standing in front of the garage door while he jogged through the back door and down the stairs to Lanette to look for a swimsuit.

As they watched him ride away on his Fatboy, he wondered wryly if they were going to follow him to the pool to make sure he saw his responsibilities through.

He found Allison and Katie sitting in the lobby. Both of them had obviously been crying, though they weren't presently, at least until Allison saw Theo and her face crumbled.

She covered her face with her hand. “I don't want you to see me like this.”

He sat in the chair next to hers and wrapped his arms around her. “Like, what, a real person with hopes and fears and flaws?”

“No, a failure.”

“You're not a failure. You're just Allison. That's enough for me. More than enough. Tell me what's wrong.”

“I'm mad at myself. And I'm mad at Chelsea. And I'm mad at the whole damn universe.”

All right. That just about covered it.

“How can I teach Katie how to take control of her life and live without fear when I can't?”

He held her close. He wasn't a man of many words, but he hoped he could find the right ones today. “Are you kidding me? You took control of your life. You're learning how to run Cloud Nine and build a wonderful future for Katie.”

He would have thought it impossible, but she started to cry even harder. He couldn't think of anything to say, but he was looking forward to getting her away from the pool and taking her home so he could hold her and comfort her in private, for as long as she needed. The trouble was, if he didn't get Katie in that class, the guys were going to kick his ass.

“When does this next water class start?”

She lifted her head from her hand. “Oh, you don't have to do that.”

Katie was dressed in a long jacket, winter gear, and beneath it he saw a hint of green and white polka dotted swimsuit, lots of ruffles. He eased Katie from her arms. She came to him happily, cooing, smacking his cheek. He made a funny face at her. She seemed to love it when he did that, so he tried to do it every chance he got.

“Look at Katie, all dressed up in a new swimsuit. Let me do this for her.”

Allison brought her feet up to the chair and hugged her knees. She nodded, but didn't seem able to find her voice.

Theo stood. “Be easy on me, okay, Katie? This is my first time doing something like this.”

As for Katie, she shoved her whole hand in her mouth and cooed at him around her fingers.

“What's that you say? It's your first time, too? Then we're a good match. Let's go get my swimsuit on, then go have some fun.”

***

Allison's eyes stung as she watched Theo wade into the pool with Katie in his arms. Her heart opened. She'd never felt so raw, so on edge, so damaged from the experience of realizing that she hadn't come as far as she thought she had.

Despite Oscar's terrible news, she'd decided to take Katie to water class anyway. It was supposed to be her way of proving to herself that she was stronger for having come to Destiny Falls. A silver lining so she didn't feel like a complete failure. She wanted to do this one thing right for her daughter, despite everything else she'd done wrong, but she'd gotten to the edge of the pool and frozen, paralyzed with fear. Katie had started crying, which had frayed the last of Allison's control, and she'd started crying, too. Though none of the other parents or instructors had looked at her with anything other than pity, she felt humiliated. She'd thought she was ready to shake hands with her demons, but the fear that had buried itself in her psyche twenty long years ago wouldn't release its grip on her soul.

Theo wasn't the only man in the pool with a baby, which gave Allison a degree of comfort. She sat in the bleachers along the side of the pool. Every time he looked over at her, she tried to smile, but she felt so fragile. He'd come through for her in a major way and it made her heart open and ache to hear him talk to her daughter, to step up and be what she needed. That's when it hit her: all this talk about nothing good coming out of her experience in Destiny Falls was nonsense because she'd met Theo. She'd fallen in love with him.

Maybe, rather than gifting Katie with being comfortable around water, this was the gift she was meant to give her daughter, the gift of showing her by example what it meant to fight for your happiness and the people you loved, like she was going to fight for Theo. The decision filled her with a small measure of hope.

During the class, he didn't sing, but he motorboated and blew bubbles with Katie and held her while she kicked. The longer she watched the two people she loved most play together in the pool, the more she considered the Malones, with their sick child and how they considered Cloud Nine a miracle.

She was reminded of Noelle getting pregnant, and Theo's perspective that she'd been the one without any good options, the one without the power. The more she considered it, the more she watched Theo play with her perfectly healthy child, the more it dawned on her that she had a lot of options left. Many more than the Malones.

If she could have Theo's love, then she'd have all she needed. The business was just a business, it wasn't home. Her home was wherever Katie and Theo were. She loved this man; she wanted a life with him—and she was going to fight for it. Tonight, when she told him the truth about Cloud Nine's ownership and her decision to let it go, she'd tell him she loved him. She'd tell him she didn't want to live without him. She'd lay her heart on the line and ask him to save her one last time.

***

Long after the sunset, Theo stood in Lanette's cabin, watching Cloud Nine and worrying about Allison. In the hours since he'd followed her car home on his bike, she hadn't snapped out of the slump she'd been in at the pool, though she did a valiant job putting on a cheery front for Katie.

As he watched, a light turn on in her room. He could visualize her moving around, bathing Katie, feeding her a bottle. He nearly walked to the house, to be with the two people who were starting to mean so much to him, and to see if he could coax her back to her usual happy self.

Taking Katie swimming had given him a lot to think about, especially in the wake of his conversation with Noelle. What surprised him the most was how much pleasure he'd gotten during the swim class from feeling like a dad, there with all the other dads. He'd been too young the first time, with Noelle, but he'd done a lot of growing up since then.

He was starting to see now that Allison was the reason none of his other girlfriends, choices, or life reboots had worked. She and Katie. This business. This was the life he was meant to live, and he was grateful for the bumpy, windy road that had led him here. Noelle had said she wouldn't change her current life for anything, which meant she couldn't regret the past. Theo was starting to feel that way, too.

The light went out in Allison's bedroom. He counted the seconds and sure enough, right on schedule, the light clicked on in the kitchen. Maybe she'd make a cup of the hot cocoa he'd left for her. He really should go join her. The thought of her so near, of how easy it would be to walk up to that house, into that kitchen, and make love to her right there on the kitchen table—that might restore her mood: the thought stirred his body to life.

They'd have the house to themselves because Chelsea hadn't been back to Cloud Nine or called Allison for more than forty-eight hours. Theo had been worried at first, but Allison hadn't been. This wasn't the first time, she'd told him. What a way to live. He could see that Allison adored her sister, despite her many shortcomings. If Theo could get past the fact that she kept not being there for Allison when she was in need, he probably would have liked her too, because she was a lot of fun and made Allison smile a lot when she was around.

Tonight, though, he was happy for the privacy with Allison. He was tired of sleeping alone on Lanette, when what he really wanted was to sleep with her every night and wake up next to her every morning. He'd been wondering how a man could tell if what he felt for a woman was love. He'd been thinking on that a lot.

Some time since Allison had burst through the doors of Cloud Nine, on fire, but before they'd made love that first time, he'd stopped thinking about her as Lowell's ex-wife. He'd stopped thinking of Katie as Lowell's child.