Читать книгу Storybook Dad - Laura Bradford - Страница 9

Emily could feel the weight of Mark’s stare as she secured the kayak to the roof of her Jeep, his still-labored breath matching her own. She’d felt it as she’d paddled through the water with Seth safely seated between her legs. She’d felt it as Mark had pulled them onto the beach and plucked his son from the boat for a firm yet loving lecture. She’d felt it as they’d stood dripping on the sand, trying to catch their breath. And she’d felt it as she led the way to the car after he insisted on carrying the kayak.

In fact, the only time she wasn’t aware of him watching was when she was stealing glances in his direction. But she couldn’t help it. Mark Reynolds was easy on the eyes.

“Thanks for making that unexpected swim to help us out. It was above and beyond,” he finally said as she hooked the last clip into place. “One minute he was pointing at a fish and the next … well, you know what happened.”

She couldn’t help it; she laughed. It was either that or get caught enjoying his dripping, shirtless chest even more than she already was. “Kayaks tend to flip a little easier than canoes. It’s why people who are skittish around water tend to shy away from them in favor of a bit more stability.”

“Yeah, I get that now.” He bent to Seth’s level, buying her time to catch her breath. “How about you, little man? You doing okay?”

The boy jumped from foot to foot, the adventure of the past twenty plus minutes further fueling his natural energy. “I had my Floaties on, remember, Daddy?”

She felt Mark’s appreciative glance. “And we have Emily to thank for that, don’t we?” he continued, his attention trained once again on his son’s face. “Did you learn something from that adventure?”

“The lake isn’t as warm as the bathtub.”

“And …”

Seth’s brows furrowed in contemplation. “You should always wear your Floaties?”

“And …”

“Emily is a really good swimmer, just like you, Daddy!”

She tried to cover her ensuing laugh, but Mark’s exasperated eye roll made it next to impossible.

“Yes, Emily is a good swimmer. But didn’t you also learn that it’s better to look at fish from the beach?”

“But I got to get wet!” Seth exclaimed gleefully. “And so did you, Daddy.”

A playful smile stretched across Mark’s mouth. “Yeah, but so did Emily. And she’d still be dry if we hadn’t commandeered her boat.”

“Pizza might make her feel better.”

She looked questioningly at Mark as the four-year-old rattled on. “Daddy said we’d go to Sam’s for pizza when my castle was all done,” he said. “You can come, too, if you want.”

“I—I think I better head home, sweetheart.” Squatting down in front of him, she pushed a strand of wet hair from his forehead, then tapped the tip of his nose with her finger. “It was very nice to meet you, Seth. You are truly the best sand castle maker I’ve ever met.”

“Please, Emily? The pizza is really yummy. It was my mom’s favorite.”

Emily tipped her head to afford herself a better view of Mark, noting the hint of sadness in his face at the mention of his late wife. So much about his taking her class made sense now. The drive to check things off one’s bucket list always intensified after losing a friend or family member to an early death. It was as if the loss served as a wake-up call about the uncertainty and lack of promises in life. She saw it all the time.

Still, such a loss was hard to rationalize when it came to someone as young as Seth. “That sounds like some extra special pizza if it was your mom’s favorite,” she finally said.

“It is! Especially the pepperoni kind.” Leaning forward, Seth brought his mouth to Emily’s ear as if sharing a secret, the excitement in his voice negating any attempt at whispering. “Sometimes, if I smile really big at the waitress lady, she makes the pizza look like a great big smiley face … with funny hair at the top! So please? Won’t you come, too? Pretty, pretty please?”

Gesturing at her damp bikini top and drenched shorts, she scrunched up her nose. “I don’t think the folks at Sam’s Pizza would be too happy to see me in wet clothes.”

A snort of disagreement from the boy’s father brought a warm flush to her cheeks.

“I’m wet, too. So’s my daddy,” Seth argued.

“And Sam’s has outdoor tables,” Mark added.

Slowly she looked from one to the other and back again, the pull for a moment of normalcy making her relent in the end. “Okay. I’m in. It sounds like fun.”

Twenty minutes later, any residual worry over wet clothes and disapproving pizza eaters was gone, in its place the kind of happy-go-lucky fun she’d been craving for months. Any tension that came from being huddled so close to Mark evaporated as Seth kept them entertained with tales from his summer preschool program, most of which came back to a castle in some way.

“The other day? At lunch? I built a great big castle out of everybody’s milk cartons. And then Liam? He’s my bestest friend. He made one out of Pixy Stix during playtime,” Seth said. “But then Tyler—he’s a meany—he came over and kicked Liam’s castle down!”

Seth widened his eyes expectantly at Emily and waited.

“You’re supposed to gasp at the things Tyler does,” Mark whispered in her ear.

“Oh, sorry,” she whispered back, before giving the desired response.

Satisfied, Seth continued. “It’s okay. Me and Liam, we cast a spell on Tyler.”

She glanced at Mark, then back to Seth. “A spell?”

“Uh-huh. And you know what happened?”

Mark paused from taking a drink and narrowed his eyes on his son. “No-o-o … what happened?”

“He got in trouble with Miss Drake. She said she had eyes in back of her head, which means me and Liam are good at casting spells!”

“Then I guess I’d better watch out,” Emily declared. “I don’t want any eyes in any funny places.”

Seth elevated himself onto his knees. “Oh, I wouldn’t cast a spell on a princess. That would be bad.”

Mark winked at her over the top of his glass before addressing his son once again. “And Emily is a princess, huh?”

“Yupper doodle.”

When the pizza arrived and Seth took a break to eat, Mark took over the conversation, peppering her with questions about Bucket List 101 and the clients she’d encountered since starting the business four years earlier.

“When you drew those pictures I saw on your wall, did you know back then that you wanted to teach people how to do all those things?”

She nibbled at the crust of her first piece and then tossed it on her plate. “Back then, I just knew I wanted to do all those things one day. By the time I was halfway through college, I knew I wanted to do them in conjunction with a business.”

“Who’s your typical client?”

“I’m not sure I have a typical client. People come for all sorts of reasons. Some want to conquer a fear. Some come simply because they love the outdoors. And some, like yourself, are motivated by a personal goal.”

Seth pointed at his dad with his slice of pizza. “My mommy taught my daddy not to wait for tomorrow.”

Mark drew back. “Where did you get that, little man?”

Turning the pizza toward his mouth, Seth shrugged. “I heard you saying that this morning when you were standing in front of the mirror, trying to decide if you should play in the woods or not.”

Emily watched Mark’s eyes close only to reopen mere seconds later. “I was talking to myself.”

“Then you should be more quiet, Daddy.” The little boy took a bite of pizza and started chewing.

“Apparently you’re right.” Mark looked at Emily with an impish grin. “Nothing like getting a behind-the-scenes look at my many shortcomings, eh?” Suddenly uncomfortable, he grabbed a slice of pizza for himself and raised it in the air like a champagne glass. “Next topic, please …”

Story by story, they ate their way through the rest of a pizza that was every bit as good as Seth had promised. But it was the time with Mark and Seth that affected Emily most, temporarily filling a void that had been lurking in her soul for years. It was as if Seth’s sweet stories and Mark’s genuine interest allowed her to pretend, if only for a little bit, that they were her family, sharing the details of their day over dinner.

“You know how to rock climb?” Seth asked around a piece of pizza crust bigger than his face.

“It’s not polite to talk with food in your mouth,” Mark reminded him.

Seth dropped his crust onto his plate. “Do you, Emily?”

Pulling her paper napkin from her lap, she brushed it across her face, then crumpled it into a ball beside her empty glass. “I do.”

“Wow!”

“Emily can do all sorts of things.” Mark shifted beside her, the brush of his thigh against hers sending a tingle of awareness through her body. “She can pilot a raft through rapids, she can ride a horse through the woods, she can rappel over the side of a mountain and climb huge rocks.”

At the naked awe on Seth’s face, she turned a playful scowl on the child’s father. “You do realize you just made me out to sound like Superwoman, don’t you?”

“Nah. Superwoman is a little taller. And her hair is a lot longer. Besides, you’re much, much better looking.”

Mark’s words, coupled with the huskiness of his tone, brought her up short. Unsure of what to say, she was more than a little grateful when Seth leaned across the table. “Could you teach me how to rock climb?”

With a steadying breath, she nodded, acutely aware of Mark’s hand beside hers. “After you shared such yummy pizza with me, I’d be happy to teach you how to rock climb. If it’s okay with your dad, of course.”

“Daddy?” Seth’s eyebrows rose upward, making both adults laugh out loud. “Please, please? Can Emily teach me how to rock climb?”

A moment of silence had Seth nearly falling out of his seat in anticipation.

“Hmm. If it’s okay with Emily, it’s okay with me—under one condition.”

Bracing herself for the inevitable clean-your-room or put-away-your-toys bribe, she was more than a little surprised—pleasantly surprised, if she was honest with herself—when he revealed his nonnegotiable terms. “I get to learn, too.”

Beaming triumphantly, Seth brought his focus back to Emily. “Daddy has this whole week off and I do, too. So we’re free tomorrow.”

She bit back the laugh Mark was unsuccessful at hiding.

“Oh we are, are we, son?”

“Yupper doodle!”

“Think ten o’clock would work for you?” she asked, with the most serious face she could muster.

Seth hopped down from his seat and consulted his father in a series of back and forth whispers before repositioning himself at the table. “Ten o’clock works great!”

When the last of the tables around them had been cleared for the night, Mark reached for the check, plunking down thirty bucks and declaring their dinner a delicious success. “Well, little man, I think it’s time we walk Emily to her car and give her a big thank-you for rescuing us from the lake and accepting our invitation to dinner.”

The little boy moaned. “Do we have to stop eating?”

“We stopped eating an hour ago, when we finished the pizza.” Mark pushed his chair back and reached for his son’s hand. “Besides, if we want Emily to teach us how to rock climb in the morning, we really should let her go home and get some sleep.”

Sensing the boy’s reluctance, she took hold of his other hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Rock climbing is serious stuff, Seth. You need to be well rested so you can listen extra carefully when I tell you what you need to do.”

“Oh. Okay.”

They walked through the pizza parlor and out into the night, the answering silence of the crickets marred only by the sound of Seth’s flip-flops slapping the pavement. It was a sweet sound, one she’d never really noticed until that moment.

“I had a really nice time tonight, Seth. Thank you for including me—” A shot of pain zipped up her leg, making her drop his hand and reach for the support of a nearby car.

“Emily? Are you okay?”

She smiled through the pain, praying that would wipe the worry from the boy’s face. But it didn’t work.

In an instant, Mark was at her side, his strong arm slipping around her shoulders and drawing her close. “Hey … talk to me.”

As the untimely pain released its grip, she did her best to shrug away the incident. “I’m okay. I just had a quick pain is all.”

“Do you get those often?”

Wiggling out from beneath his arm, she did her best to sound nonchalant as she made her way across the parking lot. “Yeah. Well, sometimes, I guess. It’s no big deal.”

Mark jogged to keep up, her pace quickening as she neared her Jeep. “No big deal? Are you kidding me?” He pointed at the nearest lamppost while studying her face. “Even in this lighting I could see your color drain away.”

She shrugged. “It happens from time to time. And it always stops.”

“If that happens again, maybe you should call your doctor. You know, to get it checked out or something.”

And just like that, the magical spell that had transformed the evening was gone, wiped away by the reality of her life. Turning her back, Emily reached into her purse and pulled out her car keys, her response barely audible to her own ears. “I can’t do that.”

He took hold of her shoulders and spun her around, raising her chin with his hand. “Why not?”

“Because I can’t call him every single time I get a pain. I can’t call him every time my arm goes numb. I can’t call him every time a bout of fatigue decides to rear its ugly head and confine me to bed for three days. I have a disease, Mark. It’s life.”

MARK TIGHTENED HIS GRIP on the steering wheel and resisted the urge to close his eyes. When he’d picked the multiple sclerosis pamphlet off the floor of Emily’s office that morning, it had never dawned on him that it was she who had MS. She was too beautiful, too energetic, too much of a go-getter to have such a debilitating disease.

Yet now that he knew, so many things made sense. The angst she’d exhibited over accepting his business card wasn’t denial over a loved one’s condition. Her refusal to let him help her with the kayak wasn’t some over-the-top display of feminism. And her insistence at racing Seth from the car to the restaurant, even though Mark had pointed to their unexpected dunk in the lake as a reason to take it slowly wasn’t about some bottomless well of energy.

No, Emily Todd was angry, and she was determined to show anyone within a stone’s throw that she had things under control.

He understood that stage. He’d been there once, too.

“Daddy?”

The sound of his son’s tiny voice from the backseat derailed Mark’s thoughts and forced him to focus on the moment. “What is it, little man?”

“Is Emily gonna die like Mommy did?”

The question was like a punch to his gut, grabbing hold of the arm’s-length thoughts and bringing them much too close for comfort. Sneaking a peek at his son’s worried face peering at him through the rearview mirror, Mark did his best to change the subject.

“You know what? I think it’s time we dust off your bike and start working on getting rid of those training wheels sometime soon. What do you say?”

He released a sigh of relief when the little boy nodded and turned his gaze toward the passing scenery, leaving Mark to his own thoughts once again.

It was still so hard to believe. How could someone who looked like Emily be sick?

The same way Sally was …

Just the thought of his late wife brought a lump to his throat. Sally had been so healthy one minute and so sick the next, her all too quick downward spiral made even quicker by the way he’d handled everything. Burying his head in work might have made much of what was happening seem more distant, but it had also robbed him of the little time they had left.

Instead, it was Seth who had been by her side day in and day out, watching his mother slip away until she was gone for good. The memory made Mark sick. What kind of father placed a burden like that on a little boy?

A coward, that’s who …

Somehow, some way, Mark was going to make things right. He had to. He owed that much to the boy. And to Sally.

But try as he did to engage Seth in conversation for the remainder of the ride home, the worry he’d seen in his son’s eyes in the rearview mirror was still there when they returned home. It was there when they’d shared a bowl of ice cream at the kitchen counter. And it was still there when he kissed Seth’s forehead and tucked him under the sheets for the night.

Mark had seen that worry in his son’s eyes for far too long. He’d watched it eat away at the pure joy that had been Seth’s existence prior to Sally’s cancer diagnosis. And he’d sat by, virtually paralyzed by his own fear, while that worry had morphed into a steely determination to be what Mark himself seemed incapable of being.

But no more.

Seth had suffered enough for one lifetime.

It didn’t matter how hot Emily Todd was. It didn’t matter that her enthusiasm and boundless energy breathed life into Mark’s stagnant world.

All that mattered was Seth.

All that mattered was keeping his son from ever reliving the kind of grief that had consumed his young life to this point.

Pulling Seth’s bedroom door shut behind him, Mark wandered across the hall and into his own room, where the picture of Sally with Seth on his third birthday brought a familiar mist to his eyes.

With fingers that knew the way, he lifted the frame from his nightstand and slowly traced the contours of his wife’s face. “His heart is safe with me, Sally,” he whispered. “You have my word on that.”