Читать книгу A Ceo In Her Stocking - Elizabeth Bevarly - Страница 10

Two

Unfortunately, as Francesca led them back the way they’d all come, Grant matched his stride to Clara’s and stayed close enough that she could fairly feel the heat of his body mingling with hers and inhale the faint scent of him—something spicy and masculine and nothing like Brent’s, which had been a mix of sun and surf and salt. It was just too bad that Grant’s fragrance was a lot more appealing. Thankfully, their walk didn’t last long. Francesca turned almost immediately down a hallway that ended in a spiral staircase, something that enchanted Hank, because he’d never seen anything like it.

“Are we going up or down?” he asked Francesca.

“Down,” she said. “But it can be kind of tricky, and sometimes I get a little wonky. Do you mind if I hold your hand, so I don’t fall?”

Hank took his grandmother’s hand and promised to keep her safe.

“Oh, thank you, Hank,” she gushed. “I can already tell you’re going to be a big help around here.”

Something in the comment and Francesca’s tone gave Clara pause. Both sounded just a tad...proprietary. As if Francesca planned for Hank to be around here for a long time. She told herself Francesca was just trying to make things more comfortable between herself and her grandson. And, anyway, what grandmother wouldn’t want her grandson to be around? Clara had made clear through Gus that she and Hank would only be in New York for a week. Everything was fine.

Francesca halted by the first closed door Clara had seen in the penthouse. When the other woman curled her fingers over the doorknob, Clara felt like Dorothy Gale, about to go from her black-and-white farmhouse to a Technicolor Oz. And what lay on the other side was nearly as fantastic: a bedroom that was easily five times the size of Hank’s at home and crammed with boyish things. Brent must have been clinging to his childhood with both fists when he left home.

One entire wall was nothing but shelves, half of them blanketed by books, the other half teeming with toys. From the ceiling in one corner hung a papier-mâché solar system, low enough that a child could reach up and, with a flick of his wrist, send its planets into orbit. On the far side of the room was a triple bunk bed with both a ladder and a sliding board for access. The walls were covered with maps of far-off places and photos of exotic beasts. The room was full of everything a little boy’s heart could ever desire—building blocks, musical instruments, game systems, stuffed animals... They might as well have been in a toy store, so limitless were the choices.

Hank seemed to think so, too. Although he entered behind Francesca, the minute he got a glimpse of his surroundings, he bulleted past his grandmother in a blur. He spun around in a circle in the middle of the room, taking it all in, then fairly dove headfirst into a bin full of Legos. It could be days before he came up for air.

Clara thought of his bedroom back home. She’d bought his bed at a yard sale and repainted it herself. His toy box was a plastic storage bin—not even the biggest size available—and she’d built his shelves out of wood salvaged from a demolished pier. At home, he had enough train track to make a figure eight. Here, he could re-create the Trans-Siberian Railway. At home, he had enough stuffed animals for Old McDonald’s farm. Here, he could repopulate the Earth after the Great Flood.

This was not going to end well when Clara told him it was time for the two of them to go home.

Francesca knelt beside the Lego bin with Hank, plucking out bricks and snapping them together with a joy that gave his own a run for its money. She must have done the same thing with Brent when he was Hank’s age. Clara’s heart hurt seeing them. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose a child. This meeting with her grandson had to be both comforting and heartbreaking for Francesca.

Clara sensed more than saw Grant move to stand beside her. He, too, was watching the scene play out, but Clara could no more guess his thoughts than she could stop the sun from rising. She couldn’t imagine losing a sibling, either. Although she’d had “brothers” and “sisters” in a couple of her foster homes, sometimes sharing a situation with them for years, all of them had maintained a distance. No one ever knew when they would be jerked up and moved someplace new, so it was always best not to get too attached to anyone. And none of the kids ever shared the same memories or histories as the others. Everyone came with his or her own—and left with them, too. Sometimes that was all a kid left with. There was certainly never anything like this.

“I can’t believe y’all still have this much of Brent’s stuff,” she said.

Grant shrugged. “My mother was always sure Brent would eventually get tired of his wandering and come home, and she didn’t want to get rid of anything he might want to keep. And Brent never threw away anything. Well, no material possessions, anyway,” he hastened to clarify.

When his gaze met hers, Clara knew he was backtracking in an effort to not hurt her feelings by suggesting that Brent had thrown away whatever he shared with her.

“It’s okay,” she said. “Brent and I were never... I mean, there was nothing between us that was...” She stopped, gathered her thoughts and tried again, lowering her voice this time so that Francesca and Hank couldn’t hear. “Neither of us wanted or expected anything permanent. There was an immediate attraction, and we could talk for hours, right off the bat, about anything and everything—as long as it didn’t go any deeper than the surface. It was one of those things that happens sometimes, where two people just feel comfortable around each other as soon as they meet. Like they were old friends in a previous life or something, picking up where they left off, you know?”

He studied her in silence for a moment, and then shook his head. “No. Nothing like that has ever happened to me.”

Clara sobered. “Oh. Well. It was like that for me and Brent. He really was a wonderful person when I knew him. We had a lot of fun together for a few weeks. But neither of us wanted anything more than that. It could have just as easily been me who walked away. He just finished first.”

She tried not to chuckle at her wording. Brent finishing first was pretty much par for the course. Not just with their time together, but with their meals together. With their walks together. With their sex together. Yes, that part had been great, too. But he was never able to quite...satisfy her.

“He was always in a hurry,” Grant said.

Clara smiled. “Yes, he was.”

“He was like a hummingbird when we were kids. The minute his feet hit the ground in the morning, he was unstoppable. There were so many things he wanted to do. Every day, there were so many things. And he never knew where to start, so he just...went. Everywhere. Constantly.”

Brent hadn’t been as hyper as that when she met him, but he’d never quite seemed satisfied with anything, either, as if there was something else, something better, somewhere else. He told her he left home at eighteen and had been tracing the coastline of North America ever since, starting in Nome, Alaska, heading south, and then skipping from San Diego to Corpus Christi for the Gulf of Mexico. When she asked him where he would go next, he said he figured he’d keep going as far north into Newfoundland as he could, and then hop over to Scandinavia and start following Europe’s shoreline. Then he’d do Asia’s. Then Africa’s. Then South America’s. Then, who knew?

“He was still restless when I met him,” she told Grant. “But I always thought his restlessness was like mine.”

He eyed her curiously, and her heart very nearly stopped beating. His expression was again identical to Brent’s, whenever he puzzled over something. She wondered if she would ever be able to look at Grant and not see Hank’s father. Then again, it wasn’t as if she’d be looking at him forever. Yes, she was sure to see Grant again after she and Hank left New York, since Francesca would want regular visits, but Clara’s interaction with him would be minimal. Still, she hoped at some point her heart would stop skipping a beat whenever she looked at him. Odd, since she couldn’t remember it skipping this much when she looked at Brent.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I thought his restlessness was because he came from the same kind of situation I did, where he never stayed in one place for very long so couldn’t get rooted for any length of time. Like maybe he was an army brat or his parents were itinerant farmers or something.”

Now Grant’s expression turned to one of surprise. And damned if it didn’t look just like Brent’s would have, too. “He never told you anything about his past? About his family?”

“Neither of us talked about anything like that. There was some unspoken rule where we both recognized that it was off-limits to talk about anything too personal. I knew why I didn’t want to talk about my past. I figured his reasons must have been the same.”

“Because of the foster homes and children’s institutions,” Grant said. “That couldn’t have been a happy experience for you.”

She told herself she shouldn’t be surprised he knew about that, too. Of course his background check would have been thorough. In spite of that, she said, “You really did do your homework.”

He said nothing, only treated her to an unapologetic shrug.

“What else did you find out?” she asked.

He started to say something, then hesitated. But somehow, the look on his face told Clara he knew a lot more than she wanted him to know. And since he had the finances and, doubtless, contacts to uncover everything he could, he’d probably uncovered the one thing she’d never told anyone about herself.

Still keeping her voice low, so that Francesca and Hank couldn’t hear, she asked, “You know where I was born, don’t you? And the circumstances of why I was born in that particular location.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I do.”

Which meant he knew she was born in the Bibb County jail to a nineteen-year-old girl who was awaiting trial for her involvement in an armed robbery she had committed with Clara’s father. He might even know—

“Do you know the part about who chose my name?” she asked further, still in the low tone that ensured only Grant would hear her.

He nodded. “One of the guards named you after the warden’s mother because your own mother didn’t name you at all.” Wow. She’d had no idea he would dig that deep. All he’d had to do was make sure she was gainfully employed, reasonably well educated and didn’t have a criminal record herself. He hadn’t needed to bring her— She stopped herself before thinking the word family, since the people who had donated her genetic material might be related to her, but they would never be family. Anyway, he hadn’t needed to learn about them, too. They’d had nothing to do with her life after generating it.

“And I know that after she and your father were convicted,” he continued in a low tone of his own, “there was no one else in the family able to care for you.”

Thankfully, he left out the part about how that was because the rest of her relatives were either addicted, incarcerated or missing. Though she didn’t doubt he knew all that, too. She listened for traces of contempt or revulsion in his voice but heard neither. He was as matter-of-fact about the unpleasant circumstances of her birth and parentage as he would have been were he reading a how-to manual for replacing a carburetor. As matter-of-fact about those things as she was herself, really. She should probably give him kudos for that. It bothered Clara, though—a lot—that he knew so many details about her origins.

Which was something else to add to the That’s Weird list, because she had never really cared about anyone knowing those details before. She would have even told Brent, if he’d asked. She knew it wasn’t her fault that her parents weren’t the cream of society. And she didn’t ask to be born, especially into a situation like that. She’d done her best to not let any of it hold her back, and she thought she’d done a pretty good job.

Evidently, Grant didn’t hold her background against her, either, because when he spoke again, it was in that same even tone. “You spent your childhood mostly in foster care, but in some group homes and state homes, too. When they cut you loose at eighteen, where a lot of kids would have hit the streets and gotten into trouble, you got those three jobs and that college degree. Last year, you bought the bakery where you were working when its owner retired, and you’ve already made it more profitable. Just barely, but profit is an admirable accomplishment. Especially in this economic climate. So bravo, Clara Easton.”

His praise made her feel as if she was suddenly the cream of society. More weirdness. “Thanks,” she said.

He met her gaze longer than was necessary for acknowledgment, and the jumble of feelings inside her got jumbled up even more. “You’re welcome,” he said softly.

Their gazes remained locked for another telling moment—at least, it was telling for Clara, but what it mostly told her was that it had been way too long since she’d been out on a date—then she made herself look back at the scene in the bedroom. By now, Francesca was seated on the floor alongside Hank, holding the base of a freeform creation that he was building out in a new direction—sideways.

“He’ll never be an engineer at this rate,” Clara said. “That structure is in no way sound.”

“What do you think he will be?” Grant asked.

“I have no clue,” she replied. “He’ll be whatever he decides he wants to be.”

When she looked at Grant again, he was still studying her with great interest. But there was something in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. Clara had no idea how she knew it, but in that moment, she did: Grant Dunbarton wasn’t a happy guy. Even with all the money, beauty and privilege he had in his life.

She opened her mouth to say something—though, honestly, she wasn’t really sure what—when Hank called out, “Mama! I need you to hold this part that Grammy can’t!”

Francesca smiled. “Hank’s vision is much too magnificent for a mere four hands. My grandson is brilliant, obviously.”

Clara smiled back. Hank was still fine-tuning his small motor skills and probably would be for some time. But she appreciated Francesca’s bias.

She looked at Grant. “C’mon. You should help, too. If I know Hank, this thing is going to get even bigger.”

For the first time since she’d met him, Grant Dunbarton looked rattled. He took a step backward, as if in retreat, even though all she’d done was invite him to join in playtime. She might as well have just asked him to drink hemlock, so clear was his aversion.

“Ah, thanks, but, no,” he stammered. He took another step backward, into the hallway. “I... I have a lot of, uh, work. That I need to do. Important work. For work.”

“Oh,” she said, still surprised by the swiftness with which he lost his composure. Even more surprising was the depth of her disappointment that he was leaving. “Okay. Well. I guess I’ll see you later, then. I mean... Hank and I will see you later.”

He nodded once—or maybe it was a twitch—then took another step that moved him well and truly out of the bedroom and into the hallway. Clara went the other way, taking her seat on the other side of Hank. When she looked back at the door, though, Grant still hadn’t left to do all the important work that he needed to do. Instead, he stood in the hallway gazing at her and Hank and Francesca.

And, somehow, Clara couldn’t help thinking he looked less like a high-powered executive who needed to get back to work than he did a little boy who hadn’t been invited to the party.

* * *

Grant hadn’t felt like a child since... Well, he couldn’t remember feeling like a child even when he was a child. And he certainly hadn’t since his father’s death shortly after his tenth birthday. But damned if he didn’t feel like one now, watching Clara and her son play on the floor with his mother. It was the way a child felt when he was picked last in gym or ate alone at lunch. Which was nuts, because he’d excelled at sports, and he’d had plenty of friends in school. The fact that they were sports he hadn’t really cared about excelling at—but that looked good on a college application—and the fact that he’d never felt all that close to his friends was beside the point.

So why did he suddenly feel so dejected? And so rejected by Clara? Hell, she’d invited him to join them. And how could she be rejecting him when he hadn’t even asked her for anything?

Oh, for God’s sake. This really was nuts. He should be working. He should have been working the entire time he was standing here revisiting a past it was pointless to revisit. He’d become the CEO of Dunbarton Industries the minute the ink on his MBA dried and hadn’t stopped for so much as a coffee break since. Staying home today to meet Clara and Hank with his mother was the first nonholiday weekday he’d spent away from the office in years.

He glanced at his watch. It wasn’t even noon. He’d lost less than half a day. He could still go in to the office and get way more done than he would trying to work here. He’d only stayed home in case Clara turned out to be less, ah, stable than her résumé let on and created a problem. But the woman was a perfectly acceptable candidate for mothering a Dunbarton. Well, as an individual, she was. Her family background, on the other hand...

Grant wasn’t a snob. At least, he didn’t think he was. But when he’d discovered Clara was born in a county jail, and that her parents were currently doing time for other crimes they’d committed... Well, suffice it to say felony convictions weren’t exactly pluses on the social register. Nor were they the kind of thing he wanted associated with the Dunbarton name. Not that Hank went by Dunbarton. Well, not yet, anyway. Grant was sure his mother would get around to broaching the topic of changing his last name to theirs eventually. And he was sure Clara would capitulate. What mother wouldn’t want her child to bear one of the most respected names in the country?

Having met Clara, however, he was surprised to have another reaction about her family history. He didn’t want that sort of thing attached to her name, either. She seemed like too decent a person to have come from that kind of environment. She really had done well for herself, considering her origins. In fact, a lot of people who’d had better breeding and greater fortune than she hadn’t gone nearly as far.

He lingered at the bedroom door a minute more, watching the scene before him. No, not watching the scene, he realized. Watching Clara. She was laughing at something his mother had said, while keeping a close eye on Hank who, without warning, suddenly bent and brushed a kiss on his mother’s cheek—for absolutely no reason Grant could see. He was stunned by the gesture, but Clara only laughed some more, indicating that this was something her son did often. Then, when in spite of their best efforts, the structure he’d been building toppled to the floor, she wrapped her arms around him, pulled him into her lap and kissed him loudly on the side of his neck. He giggled ferociously, but reached behind himself to hug her close. Then he scrambled out of her clutches and hurried across the room to try his hand at something else.

The entire affectionate exchange lasted maybe ten seconds and was in no way extraordinary. Except that it was extraordinary, because Grant had never shared that kind of affection with his own mother, even before his father’s death changed all of them. He’d never shared that kind of affection with anyone. Affection that was so spontaneous, so uninhibited, so lacking in contrivance and conceit. So...so natural. As if it were as vital to them both as breathing.

That, finally, made him walk down the hall to his office. Work. That was what he needed. Something that was as vital to him as breathing. Though maybe he wouldn’t go in to the offices of Dunbarton Industries today. Maybe he should stay closer to home. Just in case... Just in case Clara really wasn’t all that stable. Just in case she did create a problem. Well, one bigger than the one she’d already created just by being so spontaneous, so uninhibited, so lacking in contrivance and conceit, and so natural. He should still stay home today. Just in case.

You never knew when something extraordinary might happen.