When Somebody Loves You (12 page)

He rapped the gavel sharply. “This court is adjourned.”

With a last censuring glance at January and a swirl of his black robes, the judge exited the bench. Behind her January heard the shuffling murmurs of the crowd milling out of the courtroom.

She remained seated, her hand, out of sight beneath the defendant’s table, clasped firmly around Toby’s. She wasn’t even aware when she’d reached for him. His hand was shaking. So was hers. Not for the first time she hoped to heaven Michael knew what he was getting himself into.

Seeing that Michael had passed through the bar behind them and was approaching the table, she squeezed Toby’s hand and offered a smile of encouragement. The boy looked up at her, his blue eyes cold, his small, childish mouth hard. Without breaking eye contact, he pulled his hand away, effectively erecting a barrier between them. He was a pro at building barriers, she thought. She and Toby were birds of a feather. She didn’t try to recapture his hand.

“Do you understand what just happened, Toby?” she asked.

He glared at the glossy tabletop. “I ain’t stupid.”

“Why don’t you explain it to me, January?” Michael intervened, easing a hip onto the edge of the table. “I’m a little fuzzy on the details.”

Thanking Michael with her eyes for being sensitive to Toby’s pride, she directed her explanation to Toby.

“Yesterday, after what happened at my office, I contacted Human Services and explained how your cousin has been neglecting you. Today the judge referred to a ‘china’ petition, remember?”

“China?”

“Spelled C-I-N-A, which stands for Child in Need of Assistance. The petition demands immediate action to get any child out of a bad living situation. So, according to the law, your cousin’s neglect required the Department and the court to do something to help you right away. That’s why we were granted a meeting with the judge today.”

Though Toby’s head was still down, she knew he was listening to every word. “Normally Human Services would appoint an attorney to represent your best interests,” she continued, “but because the county attorney’s office is overloaded right now, and because Michael and I requested it, the court agreed to let me represent you.” She paused to give Toby time to absorb what she’d just told him.

“The judge agreed with our and the Department’s contention that you needed to be removed from your cousin’s home. Normally, the next thing to happen would be that you would be placed in an emergency foster home.”

Toby squirmed in his chair. January was quick to reassure him. “I know you’ve had a bad experience in foster care, Toby, and neither Michael nor I wanted that to happen again. The judge agreed, and in light of the fact that there is a shortage of licensed foster homes with vacancies, he decided to place you in Michael’s custody.”

Toby glanced up at her. “I thought he said I couldn’t stay with him.”

She nodded. “You’re right, the judge did say you couldn’t stay with Michael, but he did award Michael temporary legal custody. Because Michael isn’t married, the judge didn’t feel he could provide you with a family home situation. That’s where Michael’s sister and her family come in. Just as soon as a foster care specialist conducts a study of their home this afternoon, you’re going to be moving in with them.”

January watched Toby’s face carefully. She saw both understanding and resignation set in. Everything she’d said added up to temporary, not permanent.

But January knew something Toby didn’t. January knew that Michael Hayward was one determined man. As of yesterday, she also knew Michael’s sister, and that determination was a strong Hayward character trait. All of the Haywards would follow through with this commitment.

Late the previous afternoon, after they’d dutifully but reluctantly seen Toby settled into an emergency shelter as required by Human Services, Michael had taken her to meet his sister.

January had liked Gretchen Lockridge and her husband, David, on sight. Blue-eyed and dark-haired like her brother, Gretchen was a feminine counterpart to Michael, with the same quick smile and inquiring nature. Her husband, David, unlike the Haywards, hadn’t had the cushion of financial security to pave his way. A self-made, successful businessman, he understood both poverty and despair. Though their backgrounds were vastly different, the mutual respect and love the Lockridges felt for each other had been evident as they’d listened to Michael. His explanation of Toby’s situation had been met with compassion and then with enthusiasm for what Michael was proposing.

In the end Toby’s fate had seemed predetermined. Gretchen, in the last two weeks of maternity leave after the birth of their second child, Andrea, had been agonizing over returning to her career in a Boulder advertising agency and leaving both Andrea and their four-year-old son, Kevin, with a child-care provider. Toby and his obvious need put an end to her deliberation. Like her brother, she wanted to help. David supported her decision uncategorically, and by the time January and Michael had left the Lockridges’ home that evening, they’d arrived at a plan of action. All they needed was a little luck and a favorable judge’s ruling.

As January looked over Toby’s head to Michael, they each breathed a sigh of relief that they’d gotten both.

“Come on, Toby,” Michael said, placing a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “There are some people I want you to meet.”

Toby shrugged out from under Michael’s hand.

“Toby,” Michael said, hunkering down in front of the frightened boy, “I promise you things are going to be different from now on. I know it’s been rough for you, and I want to change that. You’re going to have to trust me on this one.”

He glanced up at January, then went on. “Give me a chance to prove it’s going to be different. What’s happened to you in the past was unfortunate, and I can’t explain why things didn’t work out. There are wonderful foster families out there who want to help and who offer loving homes. You haven’t been lucky enough to get hooked up with one . . . until now. And now your luck’s about to change.”

January watched as Toby struggled to keep a mask of bland indifference pulled over his emotions. Both she and Michael knew by now that Toby felt anything but indifferent. He was scared. He’d also eat dirt before he’d admit it.

At the ripe old age of twelve, Toby Walters was a cynic. Not a born cynic, but a carelessly nurtured one, learning from the school of hard knocks and a gross of broken promises that nothing in this world comes easy . . . and that talk is cheap.

Watching him, January suspected that was exactly what Toby was thinking now. He figured he’d just been paid a little more lip service to satisfy a system that had failed him at every turn. Just because one more judge had made one more ruling, it didn’t mean his life was going to get any better. And just because someone said they cared, it didn’t mean they did.

Seven

Michael, January was soon to discover, was determined to make Toby’s life better. And in his bid to help Toby, he also gained ground on another goal to which he was equally committed: winning her trust.

The wooing of January Stewart, as Helen delighted in referring to Michael’s tactics, was sometimes subtle, sometimes sweeping, as every day in every way he showed her he was a factor to be reckoned with. He made it clear that he wasn’t going away, not from her life and not from Toby’s. At least not anytime soon.

Not that she wanted him to go, January admitted to herself one evening as she looked down at his dark head pillowed on her lap. She’d always been a loner by choice. Michael, however, by virtue of being Michael, had greatly depreciated the value she’d placed on solitude.

While he’d been relentless in his pursuit of what he teasingly promised would ultimately be her happiness, it was in the most conventional, most gentle of ways. He’d instinctively known that a series of elegant dinner dates and evenings at the theater weren’t the approach to take with her. Instead he’d given her cherished glimpses of what it felt like to be young and foolish and falling in love.

He took both her and Toby roller-skating; on long playful romps with George; and to Toby’s favorite spot, the carnival atmosphere of Pearl Street, where they listened to street-corner musicians and delighted in the antics of jugglers, sword swallowers, and stand-up comedians. He bought them silly and sentimental gifts, despite her many protests. And the night before, after pizza and after they’d dropped Toby off at Gretchen’s, Michael, with a wicked glint in his eye and mischief on his mind, had taken her parking on Boulder’s equivalent of lovers’ lane.

There, by the light of the radio dial and under the cover of soft music and heavily steamed-up windows, he’d pulled her onto his lap and informed her that he was about to enlighten her on the fine art of innocent necking and the thrill of clandestine petting.

He’d enlightened her out of her ever-loving mind. A man of great, giving passion, of fierce, breathless hunger, Michael had stirred the woman within her to a new and profound awareness. And he’d effortlessly fostered an appetite in her to match his own.

Shivering at the memory, she touched a hand to his hair and marveled that he’d taken her this far. A month ago she couldn’t have handled a simple hug, much less this easy kind of intimacy. But as he’d promised, she had become used to him touching her. And as she’d feared, she had come to need his touch.

That day she’d had a grueling and disastrous session in court. Before Michael’s intervention in her life, she would have wanted nothing more than to be left alone. Tonight, she needed him.

With Michael she felt alive. With Michael she indulged. And more and more often, with Michael she lived for today and forgot about the ghosts that haunted her. He made it so easy, sometimes, to forget.

This night, though, as much as she needed him, she couldn’t forget. She felt tired and defeated, and the stigma of her past wouldn’t leave her alone. Michael’s part in it loomed like a shadowy prelude to pain.

Leaning her head back against the cushions, she closed her eyes, distantly aware of the low drone of the TV and the sweet scent of vanilla from the candle burning on the end table. One part of her wanted her past out in the open. Another was afraid. Afraid to trust in anything as superfluous as steamy midnight kisses and an emotion as fickle and as fallible as love.

“You’re awfully quiet tonight.”

She snapped her eyes open to see him frowning up at her, his gaze full of concern.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded and looked away, knowing her eyes told him she lied.

He didn’t push, but she could tell he wanted to.

“Want some more popcorn?” he asked instead as he rose lazily to his feet.

She shook her head.

“Sure?”

“I’m sure.”

She was sure of something else, too, she thought as she watched him disappear into the kitchen to refill his bowl. The physical attraction between them grew stronger every day. She was dying a slow, lingering death waiting for him to take them to the end they both desperately wanted, but that he refused to give.

Her heavy sigh woke George, who promptly rose to all fours. He stretched lazily and abandoned the rug in front of the TV for the spot Michael had vacated on the sofa. Absently stroking George’s silky head, she realized she no longer approached lovemaking with Michael as a means to an end, or merely to satisfy her curiosity. She wanted to make love with Michael because he made her ache. He made her burn. He made her lose control when he touched her.

She felt her breasts tighten at the memory of last night’s kisses. Her lower body clenched with the desire he’d been nurturing for weeks now. He’d taken her to the limit and beyond, and she didn’t know how much more she could handle.

For the longest time she had tried to convince herself the attraction was purely physical, arguing that the sexual drive, after all, had been created for the express purpose of perpetuating the species. It was not designed to be easy to resist. Then, of course, there was Helen’s perspective. “If the good Lord’s only intent when he created men and women was to make babies, he’d never have invented black lace and stilettos. Or whipped cream.”

January had told herself repeatedly that it was chemistry, that there was nothing else between them.

She’d lied.

She missed Michael when he wasn’t with her. She looked for him when she knew he was coming. And more and more often she found herself wishing she could truly become a part of his life.

Her heart tightened, then swelled as she watched him stride back into the room, watched the play of firm muscle beneath the denim of his jeans, the flex of sinew and bone, the black hair and flashing eyes that made him a beautiful, virile man.

A fresh bowl of popcorn in hand, he grinned when he spotted George on the sofa. “Not that I blame you, buddy, but that’s my spot.”

George pleaded dumb with a liquid look from his big black eyes, then snuggled his head deeper into January’s lap.

“Up, George, now,” Michael ordered sternly, “or you’ve seen your last milk bone.”

George lay like a blanket.

Michael affected a scowl, then hit on the solution. “Where’s the squirrel, George?”

Instantly alert, George bolted off the couch and trotted to the window to look, never realizing he’d been duped.

With a superior grin, Michael settled quickly back into his place. Resting his head on January’s lap again, he stretched his long legs out and sighed without an ounce of repentance.

Despite her melancholy mood, January grinned down at him. “That was sneaky.”

“Hey, it’s a dog-eat-dog world. He’d have done the same to me if he’d had the chance. Besides, the day I’m outmaneuvered by a mutt—no offense, George—is the day I pack it in.”

Discounting Helen, January had had little whimsy in her life. Consequently, it was this whimsical side of Michael she was drawn to most. His express interest in making her smile seemed so at odds with his status as an important and powerful journalist. His prowess was of a magnitude that made world leaders take notice. Whether he was chronicling the life of a film industry mogul, a Fortune 500 CEO, or a rebel leader in an underdeveloped South American country, no one wanted to be on the receiving end of a Michael Hayward exposé. He was tenacious to the point of employing seek-and-destroy tactics when he was hot on an assignment. He never left a stone unturned. Yet being with him like this, she found it increasingly hard to remember the man behind the reputation.

She had to be careful. He was a journalist first. That she was just a temporary diversion for him was the last thing she wanted to believe. Because she didn’t want to believe it, it was the one thing she forced herself to remember. It was her mother’s future as well as her own that was at stake if she confided in him.

“So.” His voice drew her back to the moment. “What happened while I was gone?”

I accepted the fact that I’m in love with you
, she thought bleakly, then shoved that knowledge aside until she had the strength to deal with it logically. “Three commercials and a station break,” she said instead.

“Doesn’t sound too exciting. In fact . . .” he set the popcorn on the floor and turned his attention to her, “the movie isn’t too exciting. I wish you’d have let me take you out tonight.”

She looked deep into the blue eyes that promised more than he could possibly deliver. “In or out, I wouldn’t have been very good company.”

“You had a rough day,” he assessed accurately.

“Not as rough as my client.”

“Can you tell me about it?”

Without breaking client confidentiality, she talked with him frequently about some of her cases. He seemed genuinely interested, and sharing with him provided a much-needed outlet for her. Today’s case, however, was different. This one hit very close to home.

The look on his face told her he sensed it. His insight scared the hell out of her. She countered the fear with weary anger. “Michael, why are you here?”

He studied her, frowning thoughtfully. “Because you make the best popcorn in town?”

She looked away.

More softly he said, “Because you put up with my dog?”

When the smile he’d been playing for still didn’t develop, he sat up and met her eye to eye. “Okay, what’s this about, January?”

She hesitated, then drew a heavy breath. “It’s about the fact that I don’t understand why you’re here . . . with me.”

“Why
not
you?”

“Why not someone who can give back to a relationship as much as she takes?”

He was quiet for a long moment. “I ask you about your court case and you’re suddenly talking about our relationship. What does one have to do with the other?”

Her heart jackhammered inside her breast. “Nothing,” she lied. “One has nothing to do with the other. It’s just . . . like you said. Today was rough.”

“Tell me,” he urged gently.

Focusing on a spot somewhere past his shoulder, she began, trying to keep any emotion from her voice. “My client was a desperate woman. She was fighting for sole custody of her three-year-old daughter. Today we tried to have the father’s parental rights severed. Tried and failed.”

“Why?”

His direct questions no longer intimidated her. She’d become used to them, and was grateful for the reminder that he was first and foremost a journalist.

“Why such drastic measures? He’s a violent and abusive man, and my client felt the only hope for herself and her daughter was to force him completely out of their lives. Why did we lose? Because he is also a prominent and highly connected man from a wealthy and influential family. And because sometimes there is no justice in justice.”

Feeling very tired, she pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes.

Michael’s hand dropped to her shoulder, resting there softly. “You can appeal.”

She nodded once without enthusiasm. “And wait months for another court date. In the meantime, my client has to hear her daughter’s cries when Daddy comes to pick her up for visitation, then lie awake each night waiting for her baby’s screams to ring through the darkness when the nightmares follow the visits.”

She heard his deep intake of breath and knew he was fighting the same revulsion she was feeling.

“Is there no other recourse for them?”

“Nothing legal. If she refuses to let him see the little girl, she’ll be held in contempt of court. In this case it would mean jail time, and then the father would have complete physical custody.” She shuddered just thinking about it.

“What about supervised visits?”

“The judge wouldn’t allow it. Said we hadn’t clearly established that the child is in any danger, and it would be a violation of the father’s rights.” She tried to swallow back her anger. “Three psychologists testified, yet their professional opinions weren’t, in the judge’s words, ‘conclusive.’ ”

His hand moved to the nape of her neck and kneaded consolingly. “What happens now? She can’t just quit fighting.”

The compassion in his voice was almost her undoing. “She hasn’t.”

His eyes narrowed as comprehension dawned. “She’s going underground, isn’t she?”

Her silence confirmed his suspicion.

“January, you could face disbarment if you have a hand in arranging that.”

Without conscious thought, she cupped his cheek in her hand. His concern touched her deeply. No one but Helen had ever been concerned about her before. “Your worry is misplaced. I didn’t arrange it. I’m not even certain it’s going to happen. If I receive a call from Judge Lawton telling me my client is in contempt of court for not delivering the little girl for her scheduled visit tomorrow, I’ll know that she decided to go under.”

She became quiet, thoughtful. “Frankly, I don’t know what I would have done if she had asked me for that kind of help. While I don’t have connections, I’m well aware of the Underground Railroad. The network is rumored to be strong and supportive. If I were faced with a decision to help, I’d hate to think I’d refuse, and in doing so be a passive party to the horror that little girl has to endure if her father remains a part of her life.”

“But is a life of constant running and hiding, of leaving behind family and friends, such a healthy alternative?”

“The key word is ‘alternative,
’
” she said firmly, and while she had the courage she added, “at least she’d have an alternative. She deserves that much. Every child does.”

The room became deadly still, like the calm in the eye of a storm, or the pregnant silence before the last piece of shattered glass falls from a broken window. Beside her she could feel Michael’s body grow bowstring tight.

“And you, January,” he asked quietly, “were you ever offered an alternative?”

Her eyes snapped to his. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He gazed at her solemnly. “Who made you so afraid to trust?”

Her heart tripped into double time. She looked away as her body began a deep, uncontrollable trembling.
Do it!
some reckless inner voice cried.
Tell him! Test him.