Between Darkness and Daylight (19 page)

"Who says you deserve an explanation?"

130

Gracie C. McKeever

"I don't." He averted his eyes, seeming unsure of himself for the first time since coming into the kitchen. "But I'd like one." He looked at her once more, his gaze steady and soft, as if he were asking rather than demanding.

"Ransom…it's complicated."

He smiled at some secret joke, sitting back in his seat. "Please. I want to know."

How could she deny such an earnest request? If she had any sense, she'd find a way.

"Why? And what possible difference will it make to you?"

"I'd like to know what your intentions are towards my uncle."

Nova almost burst out laughing, had to cough to cover a chuckle. Was she talking to a thirteen-year-old or a thirty-five-year-old? "My intentions?"

"Look, we both know something's going on here, some secret reason you've come into his life, some reason—"

"
You
mugged
me
, remember?"

"I do." He nodded. "But that picture's dated way before that happened, way before you ever met either of us." Ransom waited, brows raised expectantly.

Sighing, she rubbed a hand over her face as she sat back in her chair.

"You're so sure it's Zane? That I did it before I met him?"

"We wouldn't be sitting here talking if I weren't."

She tried to stare him down, but the kid wasn't having any of it, returning her look with equal intensity before he broke the silence.

"You're pretty good, you know. Almost as good as my Aunt Sinny was."

"I take that as an extreme compliment."

"It is." He leaned forward again, surprising her when he caught and held her hand. "I love my uncle, Nova. I know it doesn't seem that way half the time, but I don't want to see anything bad happen to him."

"You think I mean him harm?"

"I don't know. Do you?"

"Of course not!"

"Hey, I had to ask." Ransom shrugged. "And you have to admit this would all look suspicious to anyone, especially someone who's lost
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someone the way he has and is going through the things he's going through."

Smart aleck had an answer for everything. She should have been used to his spunk by now, prepared for anything that came out of his mouth.

"You're right." She nodded at him, not ready to give up the ship just yet. Why did she feel like she was outmatched by a master in a game of chess? "Could you trust me, Ransom?"

"Depends."

Nova took a deep breath and braced herself for his disbelief. She knew she was going to regret this later but saw no other way out of the situation.

She had to trust him whether he trusted her or not. "How much do you know about psychic phenomena?"

* * * *

Enrique relaxed behind the wheel of his blue Corvette after Mr.

Caseworker rushed out of the building, pulling on a suit jacket as he hurried towards the subway. He stared up at the loft's new front windows and sneered as he imagined what was going on between the woman and Ransom inside, wondering how attached the boy was to the new chick in town and if he had to worry about divided loyalties and affections.

He had to admit to a certain amount of jealousy. Mr. Caseworker had everything he did not. Sure, the man had lost his wife, but now he had a new woman, a beautiful woman, from what Enrique had been able to see.

He'd also lost his sister, but he had his nephew. For everything he'd lost, he had something or someone of equal value to replace it.

Enrique had no such fail-safe; everything, every
one
who meant anything to him, had been capriciously taken away by the system for which Mr. Caseworker labored. Taken away by Mr. Caseworker.

He watched the window longingly, hoping for another glimpse of the woman from the night before. He liked her boldness; it reminded him of the others—Mrs. Caseworker and his own Frenchie. He admired them all for their intrepidness, and yet didn't, because nine times out of ten, the women didn't know how to temper their boldness with obedience.

132

Gracie C. McKeever

Maybe his father had had the right idea about a woman's place. There had been no gray area for the old man. You either listened to him and did what he said or suffered the consequences.

But not anymore. No more listening and no more suffering. Enrique had taken care of that a long time ago, made sure his father never raised a hand to his mother again.

He didn't realize how much time had gone by until he noticed activity at the front door of the building and the woman and Ransom exited seconds later. He'd been so lost in thoughts of the past, almost an hour had come and gone since Mr. Caseworker's departure.

Enrique watched them walk to the woman's expensive SUV and

noticed the companionable silence between them, how close together they walked, almost touching but not. The jealousy reared its ugly head again—not that it was ever very far away—clogging his airways and blurring his vision with frustration and impotent rage as he watched the easy camaraderie the boy and woman shared.

He imagined the relationship he could have had with his own children but didn't, pictured the walks and drives to school he'd been deprived of for the last few years. He thought about the doting he hadn’t done on his little girl Angela, and all the games of catch and one-on-one he had missed playing with his boy Ricky. And always, at the end of the day, at the root of his imaginings, was the fact that he missed his wife and his kids.

He itched to go over there, just a few miles uptown in the Bronx. He knew exactly where they were, drove by the now-familiar row house often. Francesca thought she could hide from him, keep him away from his own children.

Every day Enrique waited for Mr. Caseworker to show his hand, to reveal that he knew of Frenchie's whereabouts by making a visit to see how the kids were doing, how Frenchie was faring in her new life without her abusive husband. He often envisioned the relationship that must exist between his wife and the pencil-pushing busybody. That had to be the real reason for Frenchie's emotional defection, for her finally taking the kids and leaving him, for her boldness—inspiration from an enchanting new lover, a lousy civil servant whose main goal in life was to make Enrique's life miserable because said civil servant had nothing else better to do.

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But despite his surveillance and suspicions, he'd never seen any evidence of a relationship—other than professional—between his Frenchie and Mr. Caseworker. Mr. Caseworker never came through and visited, never showed his face in the vicinity of Frenchie's new digs, which led him to believe the man was either as patient as Enrique himself and biding his time, or he actually didn't know where Frenchie and the kids were. The latter he found almost impossible to believe, since Mr. Caseworker was an intrusive bastard bent on keeping a husband separate from his wife, and a father from his children.

Like anyone could really keep him from going right up to the house and getting in to have a few words with his wife if he really wanted to.

They were his. His wife and children belonged to him body and soul and he wouldn't let anyone take them away from him.

Enrique waited for the right time. He wanted everyone together, at the same place and time, one big happy family. He wanted to see them—his wife, the police, Mr. Caseworker, and now his new woman—wanted them to see him, know him and why he was doing what he was doing. When the right time came, they would all understand what they had done to him and why he couldn't allow them to get away with it. He wanted to see them all squirm, and he would.

Especially Mr. Caseworker.

134

Gracie C. McKeever

Chapter 12

After last night, Zane felt totally out of his element, vulnerable and on the edge, two emotional states he wasn’t used to feeling since Sinny’s death. Both had become a little more commonplace after Ransom moved in, when the threat of losing someone he cared about so fiercely hung in the balance of the career he had chosen.

For Zane, social work had always been about expressing a genuine interest in and sincere caring for people. Every day he got to combine his own sense of integrity with the demands of his job and felt honored to be able to listen to each individual's stories. For him, it was a spiritual thing, like theater without the trappings. There was no stage and no audience, but it was still about sharing something dynamic, about revealing conflict and connecting with people.

He'd never worried about his own welfare, about what disgruntled clients could or would do to him for following the protocols of his job and his heart's calling. Perhaps because he had always been so absorbed with the idea of making life better for those around him, he'd never been overly concerned that his attempts weren't always welcome, that everyone didn't want the "connection" he offered through his concern and efforts.

It seemed the more connecting he did in his professional life, the less he was able to connect in his personal life. And that was a real shame, because memories of Sinny had been swapped for the reality of Nova, a woman with whom he shared an instant connection, soul-deep and jolting.

The threat of losing her before he could even claim a small piece of her heart loomed heavy, growing each day he spent in her company. She was gradually becoming a part of his and Ransom’s life that he didn’t want to do without.

Zane had seen her at odd hours throughout the school day. He’d caught her face perched on the talking heads of random meeting members
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in the middle of his conferences and glimpsed her lush figure in the halls during his rare breaks. At midday, when he'd distractedly pushed around tasteless meatloaf and peas and carrots on his plate, he'd seen her image staring up at him from his tray. In the afternoon, while he was sitting behind his desk waiting for the next parents to come in, desperate for advice on how to handle their troubled teen, her dimple-deep smile had shone on him from the glass panels of his office door. It hadn’t mattered what he was thinking about or working on before these sightings—

somewhere in the background, Nova had lurked, a ghost popping up to harass him like a guilty conscience.

He had never before fallen so hard, so fast, for a woman. Not even Sinnead. In fact, his affection for Sinny—often as heated, impetuous, and mercurial as the woman herself—paled in comparison to the passion, the
obsession
he felt for Nova Foxx. It was boundless, dangerous, and irresponsible, everything he'd spent most of his life avoiding before the older and more experienced woman who'd become his wife had burst into his existence.

Sinnead had always been an irrepressible ball of energy, with the ability to sap or amplify another's vigor depending on how far he allowed her spirit into his aura. Most didn't have a choice, found it difficult to keep out an Irish spitfire like Sinny.

Zane had been one of those. He’d found himself just going along for the wild ride when he first encountered her in Washington Square Park one afternoon during a break between his masters’ classes at NYU. Sinny had been shooting photographs of the various street artists and performers scattered in strategic locations around the fountain and throughout the park and had spotted him on the edge of the crowd, writing in a little spiral notebook as he watched the action around him.

She’d boldly approached him and taken his pen out of his hand, sticking it behind her right ear. Then she’d grabbed his notebook and crammed it into her back jeans pocket. Zane had gaped at her, unable to protest as he stared into the greenest eyes he had ever seen.

Sinnead had folded her arms across full breasts and arched a brow as if daring him to try and get back his property. "Life should be lived, not observed." She smiled.

"I could say the same about your picture-taking."

136

Gracie C. McKeever

"You're a real smart cookie, aren't you?"

"It's an effort, but we do try."

His smirk hadn't fully formed before Sinny leaned in, placing a palm on each side of his face as she drew him close and thoroughly kissed him on the mouth. She stopped just short of sliding in her tongue, as if leaving to his imagination all that she could and would do to him once she got him alone.

When she pulled away Zane sat breathless, staring at her as the summer sun glinted off the camera dangling around her neck. Her scent was fresh, pungent and forbidden, like ripe fruit plucked from a neighbor's tree without permission, and he closed his eyes and immersed himself in her musk.

She smiled at him when he looked again, the tiny laugh-lines around her eyes a gentle reminder that she was woman he might not be able to handle, someone who'd been around the block a time or two and ate up twenty-somethings like him for breakfast.

But he didn't scare easily. He was accustomed to older women, preferred them. And they seemed inordinately attracted to him—drawn in by his looks, surely, but more by the sincerity in his eyes and the wise-beyond-his-years manner.

The nurturer types wanted to take care of him, protect him from the harsh realities of the world. The manipulators thought they could control him, take advantage of his youth and inexperience. Then there were the others, the enlightened and liberal pedagogues who wanted to show him the world, usually by way of the bedroom, which was perfectly all right with Zane.

He wasn't quite sure into which category his new friend fell, only that he would have an exciting time finding out.

Sinnead smiled again, seeming to come to a decision as she relaxed and took a seat next to him on the edge of the stone fountain. "I think I like you."

"Think? You mean you're not sure?"

"Not yet. One more kiss might do it. Or a roll in the hay. I haven't quite decided. But I think you can handle me."

"What if you can't handle me?"

"I seriously doubt that."

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Zane did too, but he'd never admit it to her.