Calamity Mom (3 page)

As she thought, she walked. There was a long pier that ran down from the hotel, and usually at the end of it were fishermen. But this particular day the pier was deserted. A sound was coming from it. A series of sharp cries.

Curious, Shelly walked onto it and started out toward the bay. The sounds grew louder. As she quickened her pace to reach the end of the pier, she heard splashing.

She stopped and peered over the edge.

“Help!” a young voice sputtered, and long, thin arms splashed for dear life. She knew that voice, and that face. It was the teenage son of Mr. Sexy, the one she’d been dodging for two days. Talk about fate!

She didn’t stop to think. She tugged off her sandals and dived in after him, shoes, cutoffs, sleeveless white blouse and all. She’d taken a Red Cross lifesaving course and she knew what to do.

“Don’t panic,” she cautioned as she got behind him and caught him under the chin to protect herself. Drowning swimmers very often pulled their rescuers down with them, causing two deaths instead of one. “Stop flailing around and listen to me!” she said, moving her legs to keep afloat. “That’s better. I’m going to tow you to shore. Try to relax. Let your body relax.”

“I’ll drown!” came the choking reply.

“No, you won’t. Trust me.”

There was a pause and a very exaggerated bout of breathing. “Okay.”

“Good fellow. Here we go.”

She struck out for shore, carrying the victim she’d appropriated along with her.

It wasn’t that far to shore, but she was out of practice towing another person. By the time they reached shallow water, she was panting for breath along with the boy.

They flopped onto the beach and he coughed up water for several seconds.

“I thought I was a goner.” He choked. “If you hadn’t come along, I’d have drowned!” He looked at her and then grinned. “I’m sure you’ve heard the old axiom about saving a life.”

She frowned. Her brain wasn’t working. “What axiom?”

His grin grew even wider. “Why, that when you save a life, you’re responsible for it as long as you live!” He threw his arms wide. “I’m yours!”

CHAPTER TWO

“T
HANKS
,”
SHE SAID
. “But you can have your life back.”

“Sorry, it doesn’t work that way. You’re stuck with me. Where are we going to live?”

She knew her expression was as perplexed as her thoughts. “Look, you’re a nice boy…”

“I’m twelve and a half,” he said. “I have all my own teeth, I’m in good health, I can do dishes and make beds. I don’t mind cooking occasionally. You can trust me to feed and water whatever pets you possess,” he concluded. “Oh, and I’m an Eagle Scout.” He raised three fingers.

She glared at him. “Two fingers, not three fingers! Three fingers mean you’re a Girl Scout!”

He snapped his fingers. “Darn.” He looked at her. “Does that mean I have to give back the green dress?”

She burst into laughter. After the shock of seeing him almost drown, and the strain of rescue, her sense of humor came back in full force. She fell back onto the beach and laughed until her stomach hurt.

“I can’t stand it,” she choked.

He grinned down at her. “Great. Let’s go and feed me. I do eat a lot, but I can get a part-time job to help out with groceries.”

“Your father is not going to give you to me,” she told him somberly, and flushed when she remembered what his father had said to her two days ago, and what she’d said back. She’d been lucky, because she’d managed to avoid him ever since.

“Why not? He doesn’t want me. He’s trying to give me to a school with an R.O.T.C. and after I get out of there, he’s going to sell my soul to Harvard.”

“Don’t knock college fees,” she told him firmly. “I’ve had to fight every step of the way for mine.”

“Yeah, Dad and I saw you with the other college students,” he agreed. “Dad was right. You really
are
pretty,” he added critically, watching her look of surprise. “Do you like chess and can you play computer games? Oh, you have to like dogs, because I’ve got one.”

She looked around to make sure he was talking to her.

“Well?” he persisted.

“I can play chess,” she said. “I like cats, but my dad has two golden retrievers and I get along with them. I don’t know about computer games…”

“That’s okay. I can teach you.”

“What am I auditioning for?”

“My mother, of course,” he said. “Dad’s business partner has this daughter, and she’s done everything but move in with us trying to get Dad to marry her! She looks like two-day-old whitefish, she eats carrot sticks and health food and she takes aerobics. She hates me,” he added curtly. “She’s the one who thinks I belong in a school—a faraway school.”

“And you don’t want to go.”

“I hate guns and stuff,” he said heavily. They were both beginning to dry out in the sun. His hair was dark brown, a little lighter than his father’s. He had those same silver-gray eyes.

“I know what you mean. My parents didn’t want me to go to college.” She leaned toward him. “My dad’s an investment counselor. All he knows are numbers and accounting.”

“Sounds just like my dad.” He scowled. “Listen, you won’t hold that against him? I mean, he’s real handsome and he has good manners. He’s a little bad-tempered,” he confessed, “and he leaves his clothes laying all over the bedroom so that Jennie—she’s our maid—fusses. But he’s got a kind heart.”

“That makes up for a lot,” she said, thinking privately that his father hadn’t been particularly kind to her.

“He likes animals, too.”

“You’re very nice to offer me your life, and your father, to boot,” she said pleasantly, “but I’ve got at least three more years of college to go, and I can’t think about a family for a long time. I want to be a social worker.”

“My dad’s real social,” he remarked. “You can work on him.”

“God forbid,” she said under her breath.

“He’ll grow on you,” he persisted. “He’s rich.”

She knew about being rich. She came from old money herself. His father seemed to think that she was after his. That was almost laughable.

“Money can’t buy a lot of things,” she reminded him.

“Name three.”

“Love. Happiness. Peace of mind.”

He threw up his hands. “I give up!”

“Try to give up swimming alone,” she advised. “It’s dangerous.”

“Actually,” he confessed, “I didn’t just jump in on purpose as much as I tripped over a bucket and fell in. But I would have been just as dead.”

“Indeed you would. Keep your mind on what you are doing,” she admonished.

He saluted her. “Roger, wilco.”

“You might like R.O.T.C.,” she said.

He shrugged. “I like to paint birds.”

“Oh, boy.”

“See what I mean? My dad hunts ducks. He wants me to. I hate it!”

This boy had a real problem. She didn’t know what to tell him. His father was obviously rock-headed and intractable.

“Have you been without your mother for a long time?” she asked gently.

“All my life. She died just after I was born. Dad and I get along all right, but we aren’t close. He spends so much time at work, and out of the country on business, that I almost never see him. It’s just Jennie and Mrs. Brady and me most of the time. They’re good to me. We had a wonderful Christmas together….”

“Where was your father?” she exclaimed.

“He had to fly to Paris.
She
found out and got on the plane when he wasn’t looking. Since he couldn’t send her home, she went with him,” he muttered.

“She?”

“Marie Dumaris,” he said curtly.

“Maybe he loves her,” she suggested.

“Ha! She comes from an uptown family and he’s known her since Mom died. She was a cousin or something. She’s always around. I guess he was too busy to notice other women, and she decided to acquire him. From the way she acts lately, she has.”

Shelly could have debated that, about his father being too busy to notice women. From what little he’d said to her, she gathered that he was no stranger to brief liaisons. He’d even thought she was angling for one. The brunette’s skinny form flashed into her mind and she wondered absently how a man could find pleasure in caressing ribs and bones with skin stretched over them.

“If he marries her, I’ll run away,” the boy said quietly. “It’s bad enough that I don’t get to say what I want to do
with my life, or where I want to go to school. I can’t stand having her for a stepmother as well.” He looked up at Shelly. “We’ll have to work fast, since you’re only here for a week.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I really don’t want your father,” she said.

“That leaves me,” he said worriedly. “Look, I’m only twelve. I can’t get married for years yet, and I’m too short for you. My dad’s a much better bet.”

“I don’t want to get married,” she said kindly. “Couldn’t you settle for being friends?”

“That won’t save me,” he moaned. “What am I going to do? My whole life’s an ongoing calamity!”

She knew how it felt to be young and helpless. She still had to fight her own well-meaning father to live her own life.

“Have you talked to your father? I mean, have you really talked to him, told him how you felt?”

He shrugged. “He thinks I’m just a kid. He doesn’t talk
to
me, he talks
at
me. He tells me what I’m going to do and then he walks out.”

“Just like my dad,” she mused.

“Aren’t fathers the pits?”

She chuckled. “Well, from time to time they are.” She studied his wet profile. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m fine. Are you?”

She nodded. “Just wet. And I think it would be a good idea if we both went and got dried off.”

“Okay. I’ll be back to see you later,” he promised. “My name’s Ben. Ben Scott. My dad’s first name is Faulkner.”

She shook the hand he offered. “I’m Shelly Astor.”

“Nice to meet you. Shelly Scott would have a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”

“Listen…”

“A life for a life,” he reminded her. “Mine belongs to you, and you’re responsible for it.”

“I didn’t do anything except pull you out of the ocean!”

“No. You saved me from a calamity,” he said. “But we have several calamities to go. Calamity Mom—that’s
you,
” he added with a grin.

She glared at him. “I’m not a mother.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No!”

“Are so, are so, are so!” he called, and ran away, laughing.

She threw up her hands in frustrated impotence. Now what was she going to do? And how was she going to explain what had happened if his father came gunning for her after he was told that his son now had a mother? She didn’t know where they came from, or anything about them.

She almost wished she’d never agreed to come with the other students on the trip. But it was too late now. She’d jumped into the ocean, and into the frying pan—so to speak.

* * *

T
HAT EVENING, SHE AND
Nan walked through the lobby of their motel and came face-to-face with a haughty Marie Dumaris, with Faulkner Scott at her side, and a subdued Ben trailing behind.

The boy brightened at the sight of Shelly. “Hi, Mom!” he said brightly. Faulkner’s eyebrows shot up and Marie bristled.

“She is
not
your mother!” Marie snapped.

“She is so,” Ben told her belligerently.

Shelly colored, and Nan patted her on the shoulder. “I’ll meet you at John’s Burger Stand, okay?” she asked quickly, and retreated.

Shelly would have a few things to tell her later about desertion under fire, she thought wickedly. She didn’t look at Faulkner. She was barely composed and painfully aware of her shabby attire. She and Nan had decided to have a casual supper, so she hadn’t bothered over her appearance. She wasn’t even wearing makeup. Marie had on a green silk
pantsuit with designer shoes and bag. Last year’s style, Shelly thought with gentle spite, but trendy enough. Shelly herself was wearing faded jeans and a worn blue-striped top with a button missing at the top.

“She says you shouldn’t send me to military school.” Ben set the cat among the pigeons, grinning as he retreated toward the television on one wall.

“I did not!” Shelly gasped.

“You have no right to comment on Faulkner’s decisions about his son,” Marie said with cool hauteur and a speaking look at Shelly’s attire. “Really, I can’t imagine that Ben’s education is of any concern to a tacky little college girl.” Her cold green eyes measured Shelly and found her lacking in every respect.

Shelly’s eyebrows rose. Tacky college student? This social climbing carrot-eater was looking down her nose at Shelly? She could have burst out laughing, but it was hardly a matter for amusement.

Faulkner wasn’t saying anything. He was watching Shelly with those devil’s eyes, smiling faintly.

Shelly glared at him with bitter memories on her face. “Ben is my friend,” she said, turning her eyes to Marie. “I have a vested interest in his future. Or so he says,” she added under her breath. “He hates military school and he doesn’t want to shoot things.”

“Don’t be absurd, they don’t have to shoot anything! Besides,” Marie added, “people have hunted since time began.”

“They hunted when they had to eat,” Shelly agreed. “That was before supermarkets and meat lockers.”

“Faulkner enjoys hunting,” Marie countered, smiling up at him. “He’s very good at it.”

Shelly nodded, staring at him. “Oh, I don’t doubt it for a second,” she agreed readily. “Drawing blood seems to be a specialty of his. You don’t have any vampires in your family lineage…?”

Faulkner was trying not to smile, and Marie was about to explode, when Ben came running back up blowing a huge bubble.

“Throw that stupid bubble gum away,” Marie told him icily. “And stop slouching. Must you dress and act like a street person?” She glanced haughtily at Shelly, beside whom Ben was standing. “It must be the influence.”

How dare that woman talk about Ben that way, and in public! The youngster went scarlet and looked as if he wanted to go through the floor. That was the last straw. Shelly glared at her, her eyes deliberately noting Marie’s silk jacket. “That particular jacket was on sale last fall, wasn’t it? You do know that it’s out of style this season?” She smiled deliberately, having delivered an insult calculated to turn the other woman’s face white. It did, too.