Yours to Keep (3 page)

He followed her out, and they stood together on the wide concrete curb in front of the school. It was the middle of the day, so there were no buses or cars, and only the occasional student coming and going. The sun shone strongly from a bright blue, late-September sky with a few wisps of cumulus clouds. She could smell turning leaves and the faint cinnamon note that fall air held. After the claustrophobia of Ed’s office, it was a profound relief.

“So—crazy question.” He had a nice voice, too, low and rumbly. “You wouldn’t happen to be a Spanish tutor, would you?”

Oh, hell.

“Because my son needs a Spanish tutor.”

Was he serious? She checked him out for signs that he was propositioning her, but his face was earnest.

She needed the work. Always needed the work, and needed it worse now, if Ed decided to blacklist her. But there were a million reasons she shouldn’t work for this guy. He might cling to the idea that she should report what had happened with Ed to some authority figure. Or he might get curious about what had gone on behind the closed door and start asking questions. She could easily imagine him putting two and two together, especially when she asked him to pay her in cash. Or he could decide that if Ed could take a shot at her, so could he. She didn’t want to believe this last thing about him, but she knew better than to assume that because a man was physically beautiful he was also a saint.

“Mr. Branch can help you find a Spanish tutor,” she said finally.

He made a face. “Don’t make me go back in there.”

She couldn’t help herself; she laughed. The last of her shakiness dissolved.

“He’s really disgusting.”

“Totally vile,” she agreed.

The bell buzzed inside the high school, and from a few open windows came the sounds of chairs scraping and students chattering. He shifted from one foot to the other, and a scowl twisted his features. “My son is giving me hell. He forged my signature on a form and dropped Spanish. And I didn’t know anything about it until the teacher started grilling me this morning about why I’d ignored her note suggesting that I get him a tutor.” He kicked an uneven spot in the sidewalk and didn’t quite meet her eyes.

“Ouch.”

His gaze came up, green eyes bright, and he smiled ruefully. “Yeah. So I need a competent tutor, and I’m guessing you need work, if you were in there talking to Mr. Hands.”

She giggled. She couldn’t help it.
Mr. Hands.
Perfect.

“I’m Ethan Hansen, by the way.” He extended his hand.

Her life didn’t provide chances to shake hands with men, or for any casual touch outside her family. So it shouldn’t have surprised her that his hand felt startlingly good around hers, warm and strong, his palm slightly rough. Her breath went somewhere and was temporarily unavailable to her. “Ana Travares,” she said, when she could.

“I’m assuming you’re competent? Let’s see. Are you on the Recommended Tutors list?” He unfolded a piece of paper from his pocket and scanned it. “You are.”

“Where’d you get that?”

“There were a bunch of them in a pocket outside that madman’s door.” He held it out. Her name was indeed on it. “If you’re on the list, you can’t be all bad, right?”

She wanted to clutch the list like a talisman. She was on it for the time being, until Ed got around to making a new list. Which he could be doing at this very moment. And Ethan Hansen had just vividly illustrated how valuable it was to be on it. In tutoring, there were no certifications or licenses. Even college and teaching degrees weren’t essential. All that mattered was how well you convinced the world that you possessed, in abundance, the required skill.

“Okay,” she said. Or someone said it; she wasn’t actually conscious of having made a decision to accept the job offer. If her id had its own greedy little voice, that would have been it speaking: yes to a job, yes to money, yes to extra security against Ed Branch’s whims.

“Thanks.” The deep smile lines at the sides of his mouth got a thorough workout for the first time. “That’s great. How’s Monday?”

“Sure. Five o’clock?”

“That sounds good. He’s home alone after school. Do you mind if I’m not back when you get there? I’ll be home before six, in time to pay you.”

“You and your wife both work?”

“My wife died when Theo was seven.” Ethan said it matter-of-factly.

“Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks.”

That could
not
have been relief she’d felt when he said his wife was dead. It must have been a stab of sympathy. She wasn’t interested in him.
Couldn’t
be interested in him. Not only because he was probably married, definitely white, and undoubtedly rich and highly educated but also because she didn’t date
anyone.

She’d given up. The men from her neighborhood, the ones who could handle the news that she was undocumented, found her strange—too brainy, too American, too self-sufficient for their tastes. And as for men she met on her own, outside the confines of her family’s approval … Well, there were only two ways they ever responded to finding out that she was living in the United States illegally—the way Ed had, by taking advantage of her, or by running for the hills. As Walt had. She felt a stab of pain at the memory of how things had played out with Walt.

Ethan coughed. “Yeah, so, about Monday. Like I said, I work until late. Theo’s home alone. But if it’s not a problem for you, then Monday should work.”

“That’s fine.”

“Do you have something I could write my address on?”

She fished in her backpack for a pen and some paper. He wrote his address and handed them back to her.

“Um, see you Monday, then?”

They shook on it, and this time she steeled herself, so she felt only a shiver of pleasure at the rough touch of his palm.

“See you Monday.” He released her hand.

As she went up the hill toward the train station, she tried hard not to think about whether he was watching her walk away, or whether he was looking forward to Monday, or whether he’d been similarly affected by that very small, theoretically innocent, skin-to-skin
contact.

Chapter 3

He watched her slim back retreat up the hill.

It wasn’t only the thrill of solving his tutoring problem that had made his body hum. It was her. She had thick dark hair and big brown eyes that had flashed with suppressed anger in Ed Branch’s tiny office. Her skin was a pale caramel, and her baggy clothes did only a so-so job of disguising her phenomenal hip-to-waist ratio and the rest of her curves. As he followed her up the hill with his gaze, he could already imagine that the trusty hand would be well employed tonight—and maybe tomorrow morning in the shower, too.

But none of that accounted for the effect she’d had on him, that fizzy, chemical awareness she’d unleashed. It was a cliché, but it was like electricity, the hum of her slim, soft hand in his, the nearly overwhelming urge he’d had to reach out and undo her ponytail to watch her hair tumble over her shoulders.

He was used to beautiful, fit women. Most of them might be mannequins, for all the effect they had on him. Ana had broken through the defenses.

It wasn’t the things that were
right
about Ana that intrigued him, he decided. It was the things that were wrong. She didn’t smile much—though he’d made her laugh a couple of times, which had given him an improbable amount of pleasure—and there was suspicion in her face that he guessed was always there. She wore battered sneakers, not new leather boots like the mommies, and carried an equally battered backpack—not an expensive handbag. And she hadn’t flirted, which filled him with relief and, perversely, a need to win her interest. To find out what made her nervous and hesitant and so thoroughly un-Beaconish.

He cast a quick glance at his watch. It was almost one o’clock. He’d be late for his first appointment, and he hated starting behind the ball. He jogged to his car.

He was only a minute or two from the office, but it was a slow drive. He navigated the parking-lot speed bumps then found himself in a long line of cars turning left into traffic. He tapped his fingers impatiently on the wheel.

He’d see Ana again on Monday. He could cook dinner, invite her to stay. He let himself imagine the two of them sitting on the couch together, sipping wine, chatting—

The fantasy ground to an abrupt halt. He couldn’t cook her dinner. There’d be no sitting on the couch together. For one thing, if he made a move on her now he’d be the second creep in a week to cross professional lines.

It made him uncomfortable that she didn’t want to report Branch, but he didn’t know the whole story. He had to trust Ana’s judgment. If she didn’t want to report him, she probably had her reasons.

A driver stopped to wave him out of the parking lot and onto the main road, where he promptly got stuck at the light. He shifted impatiently in his seat, waiting for the green.

The truth was, even beyond not wanting to pull an Ed Branch on her, getting involved with Ana was not an option. Because he kept his dating life completely, antiseptically Theofree. And vice versa.

Temptation was one thing; yielding was another. It was not a sin to be human, but he wouldn’t let a passing itch get in the way of what mattered most.

Passing itch.
For sure, that described his reaction to the flirtatious mom in the gym. Or how he felt about the women who passed through his office. But it seemed a pale way to describe his attraction to Ana. Or the sense of protectiveness she’d unleashed. The curiosity he still felt. His eagerness to see her on Monday.

He turned into the pediatric office’s lot, parked, and dashed inside.

“Dr. Hansen!” a nurse called as he rounded the corner at a trot. “Can I—?”

He paused to smile at her. “Can it wait?”

She smiled back, nodded.

“I promise, you’re first in line.”

“Exam three,” another nurse called.

He lifted the patient chart from the wooden rack on the door. Despite being nearly five minutes late, he didn’t open the folder or knock on the door right away. He stood there. One last moment to himself before the afternoon unfolded. The shine of Ana’s dark hair in the sun, her soft lower lip. The gleam of gratitude and admiration when he’d rescued her. He got to play the hero all the time with the mothers of his patients, but this was different. With the mothers, it was an accidental side effect, an unwanted residue of doing his job. With Ana, he’d gloried in it. He’d rescue her again and again if he could. Because he had the odd feeling it was the other way around, which made no sense. That when he opened that door,
she’d
rescued
him.

From what?

He took a deep breath, rolled his shoulders, and gathered himself. Then he raised his fist, knocked on the exam-room door, and went in.

Three-year-old Mary Freyer sat on the exam table, her curly blond hair in two matching ponytails, her feet dangling off the end, drumming a beat on the metal of the table.

“Hi, Mary,” he said, in the playful voice he used with very young kids. “Are you playing the drums? What song are you playing?”

She turned her head, and he turned, too. Her mother sat in the wooden-armed chair beside the exam table, slim and cool, her long hair tugged back in a smooth ponytail.

Oh. He’d forgotten about Nicole Freyer. Nicole Freyer was one of the desperate mommies.

Desperate mommies were an occupational hazard, like parents who asked him pediatric questions at awkward moments. They were usually the mothers of infants or toddlers. They felt ugly and unattractive because of post-pregnancy body changes, insecure because the dynamics in their household had shifted radically, and bored because they were smart and highly educated but they’d been forced to spend long hours playing Candy Land and watching
Sesame Street.
It all added up to a terrible case of frustration, and he was, unfortunately, an outlet.

He felt sorry for them. Actually, he
hurt
for them, partially because he remembered when Trish went through a very similar phase. But that didn’t keep him from maintaining a safe distance—as much for their own good as for his. And, yes, Nicole Freyer had been an offender, at Mary’s one-year appointment. At the end of the visit, when he’d extended his hand to shake hers, she’d moved past his extended hand, put both her palms on his chest, and laid her head against him so that the clean shampoo scent of her hair swam into his consciousness. He’d fought down his instinctive physical reaction, said, “Pardon me,” as if he’d accidentally walked into her, and spun out of the office.

Now she looked calm and collected, not desperate at all, but he felt a low-grade wariness take root, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to shake it. He’d keep physical and emotional distance between them, more than usual.

“Nicole—good to see you. What brings you here today?”

She lowered her chin as if she were ashamed. “I think I’ve been in denial.”

He smiled. “It happens to the best of us. Don’t beat yourself up. Tell me what’s going on.”

“Mary’s behavior has been weird. She’s been angry and fearful. More clumsy. Hypersensitive. I kept telling myself it was just a phase, that she was in a growth spurt. But.…” She fiddled with her earring, her hands shaking. Her voice shook, too, as she said, “Her preschool teacher noticed the behavior change. She said she needs to be evaluated. She said it’s the age when spectrum disorders show up.”

He hated the idea of Mary Freyer, one of the sunniest infants he’d ever known, with an autism diagnosis. Unfortunately for Nicole and Mary, preschool teachers were notoriously good at identifying kids on the autism spectrum. They saw many kids the same age, so they knew when something was wrong, and they weren’t so close to the situation that denial blinded them. “Okay. Let’s not jump to any conclusions. I’m going to ask you a lot of questions.”

Nicole nodded.

He quizzed her for several minutes about the changes in Mary’s behavior. Then he thoroughly examined the child, teasing her into letting him search for Elmo in her ears and throat and listen for people singing songs in her chest and back. She didn’t giggle when he palpated her belly. She hardly reacted at all, which worried him more than he wanted to admit. Afterward, he sat on his stool and rolled it so that he was sitting across from Nicole.