The One That Got Away (21 page)

A
female student in the third row of Tony's class raised her hand. “Mr. Gooden, I say you're just flat wrong.”

Stepping away from the projector he'd hooked to his laptop computer, Tony eyed his seating chart. “Well, uh, Tanisha, why don't you explain exactly where you think I'm wrong.” Four weeks into teaching a weekly seminar on political science, he'd spent today's class educating the kids on the nasty realities of political campaigning.

“I asked my uncle about the reading assignments you gave us,” Tanisha said, her hands pressed together, her neck bobbing and weaving. Today's discussion had been based around a group of handouts Tony provided, all of them excerpts from books by or about the country's most successful political operatives: Lee Atwater, James Carville, Dick Morris, and Karl Rove. “My uncle,” Tanisha continued, “he was a judge in the municipal court for years and worked with a lot of politicians. He says most of them are good people, trying to do the right things. He says you're too cynical about them.”

“Really.” Shutting off the projector and flicking on the classroom lights, Tony smiled at his student. “Well, I have to say, Tanisha, if that's really been your uncle's experience, you tell him he's
found heaven on earth, because that's not how the real world works.”

Tanisha was not deterred. “I just think you're too negative, sir,” she replied, her head shaking. “How are you gonna convince any of us go into politics, when you make it sound so dirty?”

He stepped around his desk and took a seat on its front edge. He was good and tired of this child's naïve, starry-eyed views, but he reminded himself that she at least gave a damn about what he was teaching. Half the kids, while civil and polite, were clearly phoning it in.

“The reason I keep it real, Tanisha, is so that you can enter this field someday with your eyes wide open. How else can you help change things?” The hallway filled with the ring of the day's final bell, and Tony clapped his hands as the kids grabbed at their bags and coats. “Okay, your final will be coming up in two weeks, so make sure you read this week's assignment closely. And remember, my cell number is listed on the syllabus, so don't hesitate to call with questions!”

Once he'd tolerated a couple more of Tanisha's naïve stories about her uncle the saintly judge, Tony waved the girl good-bye, his classroom now empty. As he packed up his projector and laptop, he chuckled at what he'd turned into: Tony Gooden, Teacher.
This was never part of the plan.
As a money-hungry teen he'd pitied nearly every classroom instructor in his life, viewing them through the lens of the old saying “Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.”

Despite his occasional clashes with overly idealistic students like Tanisha and the amiably apathetic kids surrounding her, Tony was glad he'd agreed to Audrey's suggestion that he lead this seminar. Now that he'd achieved Larry and Arthur Champion's financial goals for the year—he had raised a quarter million dollars more than required and paved the way for the establishment of four new Rowan Academies nationwide—his business trips were nearly a thing of the past, meaning it was easy to pop over to Rowan one afternoon a week. As a people person, too, Tony found he got more out of leading the classes than the kids likely
got from his wealth of knowledge. He enjoyed the give and take, the opportunity to size up each student and experiment with ways to draw their interest. Sharing his talents with kids still seeking theirs was more rewarding than he'd imagined.

Though he was still trying to accept a life without Serena in it, he had accepted that he could have a very rich one, one richer than he'd ever had before, without her. After an exhaustive, sometimes insulting inspection process, the department of Children's Services had just certified him as Ben and Glenn's foster father. While adjusting to life as a full-time role model had its downsides—living with Glenn had brought the boy's roguish attitudes toward sex into full view, attitudes he recognized from his own youth—he had no regrets. The chance to guide two impressionable young men toward brighter futures was irresistible.

He had just zipped his laptop bag when he heard the knock at his door. Turning over his shoulder, he felt his shoulders jerk at the sight of Dawn Kincaid. Her hair having grown and now worn in shoulder-length curls, she stood dressed in a black leather skirt with a matching sweater and thigh-high boots. Not a Rowan Academy uniform; she'd clearly changed clothes as soon as the bell rang. A Coach bag over her shoulder, she crossed her arms and blew a bubble with her gum before saying, “What's up, Mr. G?”

Hoisting his laptop bag over his shoulder and buttoning his suede leather overcoat, Tony forced a smile. He hadn't seen Dawn in several weeks, not since running into her and Glenn in the school cafeteria during a rare unsupervised moment together. While he wasn't sure it was healthy, Tony had respected Serena and Jamie's decision to restrict Glenn's access to their daughter. Of course, even if he hadn't respected their choice, he wouldn't have done anything about it. He had decided to keep a wide berth from Jamie Kincaid; if the rumors in the wind were true, the dude knew that his suspicions about Tony and Serena had been well grounded, and frankly Tony was a bit amazed he hadn't come calling yet.

He walked toward the girl before she could step further into the room. “How's it going, Dawn? I have to run, got an urgent
meeting back at the office.” A bald-faced lie, but Tony had simply grown into a better man, not a saint.

“Mr. Gooden,” Dawn replied, stepping forward suddenly. Her quick movements as well as her use of his formal name gave Tony pause, freezing him in place. “Please, I just need a moment of your time.” She popped her left pinky into her mouth, began chewing. “I need you to talk to Glenn for me. It's serious.”

They were both standing near the open door, and Tony crossed his arms before clearing his throat. “Okay, what's going on?”

Glancing at the open doorway, her eyes starting to mist, Dawn nodded. “Can we shut that? I don't want this getting out, at least not right away.”

Better not be what I think it is . . .
Tony stepped over to the door and slammed it shut. Turning back toward Dawn, he said, “Let's make this quick, honey.” He gestured slowly toward her, trying to keep from getting too excited. “If you're pregnant, let's just get that out into the open now.” He'd taken great pains to ensure both of the twins were versed in the art of condom management, and with Dawn specifically he had begged Glenn to find other girls to “express” himself with. If the boy had already made him a foster grandfather, somebody was gonna die, and it wouldn't be the baby.

“No, it's nothing like that,” Dawn replied, slumping into a seat near the front of the class. She rested her head in her hands, sniffles punctuating her words. “I feel like Glenn's avoiding me.” She looked up at Tony. “He said you told him to stay away from me.” Her eyes betrayed fear, as if she didn't really want an honest answer to the question. “Is that true?”

His hands deep in the pockets of his suit pants, Tony stared at the ceiling, taking several silent beats. “Dawn, maybe what's important here is that you learn to realize when a boy's good for you and when he's not.”

She whipped her neck toward him, her tears drying. “You saying Glenn's no good for me? I thought you loved him like a son?”

He slid into the seat next to the woman-child, struck by the great distance between her highly developed figure and her
emotional immaturity. The injustice of young womanhood hit Tony between the eyes more squarely than ever. God allowed these girls to flower into targets for every man's lust well before they developed the smarts to cut through the haze of bad intentions.

For years he himself had abused that biological imbalance; as he stared into the girl's eyes, he forgot for a moment whose child she was. No, the thing most on his mind was that this was a chance to help balance the scales of justice, to help one jilted girl understand that it wasn't her fault.

“Glenn has his own set of problems,” Tony said, his hands tented as he scooted his chair closer to Dawn's. “You have to understand, the fact that his mom's never been very attentive, the fact he's never had a real father figure, this makes it hard for him to really appreciate you right now.”

Her eyes drying, Dawn stared at Tony and scooted her chair so close that their knees touched. “You sure it's not something I did? Or some grudge you hold against me, that I'm not a good enough girl 'cause I got caught sleeping with him?”

“No,” Tony said, tapping Dawn's left hand lightly as a comfort. “Dawn, you're on your way to a great life if you make the right choices. You're smart, beautiful, and have two loving parents. Who knows? In a year or two, you and Glenn may both be mature enough to appreciate each other. Your story as a couple may end for the time being, but that doesn't mean it's over for good.” He tapped her hand again. “Okay?”

Her head down now, Dawn flipped her hand over and reciprocated Tony's tap before taking his hand in hers. The merging of their warm flesh immediately felt wrong to Tony, but he resisted the instinctive urge to pull away. The child was hurting; the last thing she needed was to have him yank his hand away unceremoniously. He exhaled, certain she'd release his hand in a matter of seconds.

That was the very moment he felt a fingernail trail its way up the middle of his hand. Moving with swift, circular motions, Dawn applied something on the order of a hand massage, a type so out-of-bounds that Tony threw sensitivity to the wind. Jerking
his hand back, staring at the child with contained concern, he began to stand. “Just remember what I said, okay? I–It's not about you.” He couldn't get her out of this room fast enough.

As if anticipating his every move, Dawn rose from her seat as Tony did. “Can I ask you something else, Mr. G?” In a flash too quick for Tony to stifle, she undid the last two buttons on her sweater and slung it off, revealing a too-tight white turtleneck that barely contained her increasingly womanly breasts. “If I'm not good enough for Glenn, am I good enough for you?”

Looking away, Tony took the child by one arm, steering her toward the door. “I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that. Go home.”

“No!” Her shout was loud enough that Tony just knew someone would come running. Before he could calculate what to do next, Dawn snaked her free arm out and grabbed the knot of his tie. “You know you want this, Mr. G,” she said, lowering her voice now as if she didn't want them interrupted.

Tony slapped at her hand on his tie and missed, and the next thing he knew Dawn, who was nearly as tall as he was, had her face in his. Leaning into him, she opened her mouth and bit at his lips and his cheeks until Tony released her arm and used both hands to shove her away. It still wasn't enough; though her face was thrown back from his, the girl held tight to his tie, which had started to unravel in her hand. Eager to free himself from her grasp, Tony reached toward his own neck and undid the tie's knot until it flew free from his neck, the other end of it encased in Dawn's fist.

Staring back at him from her position near the closed door, Dawn twisted her lips into a snarl before grabbing her sweater. Still holding on to Tony's tie, she swung the door wide open. “Your loss, Mr. G,” she shouted as she departed confidently, the
clickety-clack
of her heels filling the hallway.

His mind buzzing with blank energy, Tony sank into the nearest seat. Raising a shaky hand to his heated brow, he began coaching himself. He'd never make it to his car otherwise.
Nothing to report,
the voice told him.
You're Tony Gooden, after all. She's just
one of many females overcome by your charms. You did the right thing, sent her away and drew a clear, bright line.

Standing, he felt his legs finally stabilize beneath him.
I'll pretend this didn't happen, Serena,
he told himself,
but, God, have you got a handful in that one.

A
s she rode the elevator to the top floor of the Whitaker Holdings office tower, Serena repeated the opening lines she had rehearsed. As ridiculous as she felt, she knew she was handling things in the only way that made sense, the only way that was true to the dilemma she faced.

“I'm here to see Tony Gooden, please,” she said calmly when the receptionist greeted her. “Serena Kincaid.” Standing before the young girl, a well-appointed twenty-something with a hairstyle that had probably set her back a few days' wages, Serena removed her gloves and wool overcoat as the receptionist rang Tony's line.

After speaking under her breath and pausing at whatever Tony's reaction had been, the young fashion plate cautiously turned her eyes back up to Serena. “What business are you here on, Ms. Kincaid?”

Folding her coat over her right arm, Serena smiled. “Oh, I should have specified that I'm treasurer of the Cincinnati school system.”

“Oh.” The girl's face brightened and she reached a hand forward. “Pleasure to meet you.” She spoke back into her receiver. “She's with the school system, sir. Are you free now?” She looked back up at Serena. “Have a seat, please, ma'am. He'll be ready for you in a couple of minutes.”

As she sat waiting on Tony, Serena practiced a public-speaking technique she'd learned years earlier. Taking deep breaths, she locked each hand's thumb and index finger together, drawing desperately on a sense of calm. Just a few more minutes, and she'd have this all behind her.

When she entered his office, Tony sat with his back to her, staring out his large window toward the Cincinnati skyline. Clearing her throat, Serena checked to see that the receptionist had closed the door behind her, then patiently took a seat across from his desk.

As he turned to face her, she saw two colliding emotions in her old lover's face. A peaceful, settled quality battled with a sense of trepidation, one made evident in his wavering eye contact and the occasional fiddling of his hands. Struck by this, she moved quickly to cut the tension crowding the air. “I'm here to apologize, Tony,” she said. “And to explain myself.”

Processing her words, Tony narrowed his eyes in what looked like surprised relief before walking around his desk and taking the chair adjacent to hers. Crossing his legs with controlled calm he said, “I guess I shouldn't complain about your choice of location.”

Serena couldn't hold his gaze. “I figured we're both pretty busy in the evenings, with our families and all. And I didn't want to set up anything in advance, that would have just made us both nervous anticipating it.”

Tony shifted in place, recrossing his legs. “Well, then.” In a flash, he had decided to cast his bets on Dawn's silence about their run-in the day before. If Serena had come about that she'd have led with it; no way she'd waste time with small talk if she thought he'd made a pass at her baby.

Serena forced herself to look Tony in the eye this time. “I have loved you since the day you crashed my wedding,” she said. “I think I loved you before that too, Tony, but, hell, what did I know about love? When you laid yourself bare like that, though, making a true fool of yourself in front of hundreds, including dozens of Northwestern folk you'd always tried to impress? I knew that was the type of love I wanted in my life.”

His chest heaving, any fears about Dawn now knocked far
from his mind, Tony uncrossed his legs and scooted forward until his elbows were on his knees. His eyes on the floor, his voice warbling like a bad folk singer, he struggled to collect himself. “Do I ask the obvious question?”

“I was already pregnant with Jamie's child,” she said, the words coming out in a biting staccato aimed at herself, not at him. “I was so driven by that. I had been such a screwup throughout my youth, making life hell on my parents, even forcing them to raise Dawn. When I knew Sydney was on the way, I had to make some practical choices in life, things that would give me some stability in my situation. And even though I knew how much you loved me, I still wasn't sure you could handle having to raise someone else's child.”

Tony's lips formed an “O” as he exhaled, his chest nearly collapsing with the released tension. “And you were right to worry about that,” he replied. “Serena, I know that I loved you, and you may as well know my intention was to raise Sydney as my own, or at least as a dear stepdaughter if Jamie would have insisted on being in her life. But at twenty-two, would I have backed up those noble intentions? God only knows.”

“The reality is,” Serena said, marshalling her resolve, “that everything you thought in moving here was correct. I did love you; in fact, I still do. I fantasize about being with you, Tony, about whether I could have been the woman to settle you down, about whether you could have helped me sharpen my ambitions even further. But it would have been so
risky.
”

Tony sat silent and frozen in position, elbows still on his knees, eyes on the carpet. She was saying all the words he'd dreamed of hearing for years, but so much had changed in recent weeks. A selfish urge ripped through him and for a second he wished for a world with no twins, no Dawn, no Audrey, and—you better believe—no godforsaken Jamie Kincaid.

“I have to fight for my marriage,” Serena said, the volume in her voice fading. “I can't say that I really want to, but I have to, for my children's sake and for my parents'. What type of example would I set for the girls, running off with you? Not to mention the
embarrassment it would cause my parents, after they've spent years helping to raise my children.”

Though he was starting to doubt her reasoning, Tony was not equipped to argue with Serena's bottom line. Hoping to make things easier for her, if not for himself, he scooted his chair closer to hers, and took one of her hands into his. “This is the right way to go,” he said, reaching forward to wipe a tear from her eye. “Really. You remember the woman I told you about?”

Serena nodded soberly. “I know who she is, Tony. The grapevine in black Cincy is a bitch. Audrey Jacobs seems like a real catch. I–I'm happy for you.”

“It's a relationship that deserves a shot,” he replied, still holding lightly to Serena's hand. “Odds are I'll jack it up completely, but rest assured, your decision will help me and Audrey along.”

Serena pulled her hand back, placed it over her mouth. “I hope you're happy, really I do. I just—I just have one request.”

His breathless response was full of anticipation. “What?”

Serena couldn't look at him now, she had to just get the words out. “Why don't you move back to Chicago?” Stony silence hanging in the air, she clasped her hands and stared out his office window. “I know you've done some great things here, but didn't you really come here for me? If we're agreed that not's happening, do you really need to be here?”

Processing her request, Tony found himself truly speechless. The unspoken truth beneath her request—that she didn't want the temptation of him in such close proximity—was both flattering and heartbreaking. For nearly a minute, he grimaced, gestured, even began two separate false starts filled with “um” and “you see.” What she was asking was incredibly self-centered, yet the underlying truth was undeniable.
You came here for me.

In the days to come they would each construct their own memories of that moment, one they later recognized as a final chance to head off much heartbreak and destruction. As they sat there in his office, though, Tony and Serena stared blankly into each other's eyes, filled with a sense that if they could turn back time, they each knew the exact moment and place they would choose.