CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Even if there was nowhere for Rhys to escape his own folly in Concord, at least there was always the Zephyrus Energy headquarters, where he could seek refuge in conclaves with his engineering team. A few days after the ice-cream shop debacle, he touched base with Noah, his friend and Zephyrus’s SVP of engineering, to go over the latest modifications the team was making to a modular, midsize turbine that would soon be ready for the market.
Noah’s rapid-fire talk of mixing vortices and mean-flow kinetic energy was music to Rhys’s ears after too long brooding over his personal life.
“We’ve increased our peak energy output three times over,” Noah enthused as they rounded the corner to Rhys’s office, “and seriously cut down the final assembly costs.”
The door to the office was slightly ajar, the room dim, its motion-detecting lights at rest. Which made the sultry voice that issued from the interior doubly jarring as Rhys and Noah stopped in the doorway.
“Well, if it isn’t my lucky day,” came a sensual purr. “The two tallest drinks of water I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet.”
Not quite believing what he was seeing, Rhys swung the door fully open to reveal a figure perched on the edge of his desk. Karina, clad in a wine-colored blouse and a fitted skirt that revealed long, slender limbs encased in silky hosiery, looked right back at him, a feral glitter in her eyes.
“Karina!” Noah blurted nervously. Karina had always been amused by how easily she could fluster Rhys’s former protégé. Traces of the shy, awkward kid Noah had once been rose to the surface of his leaf-green gaze, belying his sophisticated veneer. He looked truly confused by her presence here. So he wasn’t one of the old friends who knew of her return.
“You didn’t mention you’d be stopping by,” Rhys said pointedly.
“It was a spur-of-the-moment thing,” Karina responded. “I’m meeting a friend for lunch and thought I’d drop in here first to surprise you.”
An odd energy vibrated from her, and as Rhys stepped closer, he noticed that—in spite of the seductive picture she presented—she didn’t quite gleam with her usual polish. When she turned sideways for a moment to pluck an invisible speck of lint from her blouse, he saw that her hair was slightly matted at the back, as if she hadn’t bothered to pass her brush through that section.
“I . . . uh, I should be going,” Noah announced. “I have that . . . thing I need to get back to.”
“It was wonderful seeing you, Noah,” Karina called knowingly.
He melted from the doorway, and Rhys turned his attention back to the intruder in his space. How long had she waited there? An oily queasiness came over him as he reflected that for the lights to have deactivated, she must have lurked there motionless for several minutes at least.
Motionless, yet bristling with tension—the air was alive with it, and Rhys was cast back to the memory of a time he’d discovered her sitting in the dark, trancelike, on the bathroom floor, when Will was about three months old. She was unable to sleep, she’d told him, so she was listening to the sounds of the night. Her uncanny stillness had been its own kind of exertion.
“Karina, what can I do for you?”
She slipped from the edge of the desk and straightened, the erect set of her shoulders causing the opening of her blouse to gape.
“I wanted to see you, just the two of us,” she said, stepping uncomfortably close. Her fingers grazed the front of his shirt.
She reached down to flick open the next button on her claret-colored blouse, exposing a delicate scroll of black lace. “I was thinking maybe we should get reacquainted, now that things are going so well with Will.”
“So well” was perhaps the most egregious overstatement Rhys had heard to date. And there was something painful, heartbreaking, in her hopeful expression as she drew closer. Her eyes burned bright but bore faint purplish shadows of fatigue, and her lips looked chapped.
“Karina, are you okay?” Sleeping on someone’s couch obviously didn’t agree with her. Maybe I should make inquiries . . . But no, she was her own person, and he had no business trying to manage her life.
“Never better,” she said blithely, sliding one hand up to rest on his shoulder.
He had to force himself not to recoil from the contact. Instead, he captured her wrist and gave it an avuncular squeeze before removing her hand and placing it gently back by her side.
“This can’t happen, Karina.”
“Why not? The physical part of our relationship was so good. And you said Andie isn’t your girlfriend, so—”
She was right that their physical connection had once been enthralling. Karina’s capriciousness and the pervasive sense of uncertainty she’d incited had kept him constantly guessing, dangling, panting after her. But the thrill had evaporated in an instant once her fundamental untrustworthiness was revealed. Now her touch inspired nothing but unease. And for all that he’d spoken the truth when he said he and Andie weren’t together, he wished there were some way he could make it so. It was the sensation of her skin that he craved in his restless dreams each night. Andie was the one whose presence closed some vital circuit that lit him to incandescence.
“Just because I’m not with Andie doesn’t mean I’m available to start something with you.”
Karina went dangerously still. “I see,” she said, shutters slamming down over the hurt and speculation in her eyes.
She paced to the door and paused, her delicate hands resting for an instant on the doorframe, like small, fearful birds poised to take flight. She turned back to him with a breezy smile painted on her face. “I understand,” she said with an intimate, almost conspiratorial lilt. “It’s too soon. Of course, I was only testing the waters. This can wait. I do have a lunch date to keep, you know.”
This can wait? When was she going to get it into her head that there was no this?
Throwing a final, knowing look over her shoulder, she stalked off, her fragile bravado practically shimmering around her like a reality-repelling dome.
What the hell is Rhys playing at? Andie shivered and adjusted the faulty heat setting on Ernie’s 1980s dashboard, fretting over the strange disappearing act the man had pulled for the past several days. She’d seen little more of him than the dust his Porsche kicked up as he sped down the driveway each morning. And, other than the afternoon two days ago when he’d stormed into the kitchen, the bridge of his nose swollen and bruised, carrying a squalling Will in his arms, he’d barely seen his son, either.
That day he handed Will directly over to Mrs. Hodge and headed straight for the den, muttering something about the ice-cream shop. Andie passed Will’s room after midnight that night to fetch a water glass from the small upstairs kitchen and had been surprised to see the door slightly ajar. Peering surreptitiously inside, she’d discovered Rhys, outlined by the soft glow of the night-light, sitting cross-legged on the floor by Will’s bed, his attention riveted to the serene contours of his sleeping son’s face. She’d thought about planting herself in the doorway and demanding a word, but something about Rhys’s expression stopped her from breaking the spell.
What is going on with him? Andie nursed her irritation like a flame because she was terrified of the alternative. What if this was about something more than the embarrassing brush in the dark? What if Rhys had finally seen through her and realized she was unworthy of the trust and kindness that had been halfway to transforming her entire world? Perhaps this was his way of withdrawing from her—taking back his friendship. Taking back his endorsement of everything she was. She knew from childhood experience that even the meanest shreds of comfort could be snatched away in an instant.
Well, she was sick to death of drifting around Rhys’s big, empty house, waiting for the man himself to put in an appearance. It was soul destroying to lurk around the halls where they’d laughed and talked together, and she became more and more convinced they would never recapture that happiness and ease. That she might finish out her days here without ever again basking in the warmth of his kindness. So she’d decided to go exploring. She might as well make the most of being in picturesque, historic Concord.
She pointed Ernie down snow-lined roads that were the very picture of quaint suburban affluence, past gracious facades of historic houses in every hue—from colonial yellow to sage green, pale apricot, blue gray, and sparkling white. Pretty soon, the houses grew fewer and farther between and were interspersed with rustic red barns, fallow fields glittering with frost, iced-over ponds, and deep stands of towering evergreens.
Andie drove at a leisurely pace along quiet, winding lanes, naturally drawn to the more rural roads. Despite having turned her back on her childhood town in western Massachusetts, she was still seduced by visions of rolling acres, weathered post-and-rail fences, and the inquisitive liquid, dark eyes of horses peering out over stable doors. The scenery evoked a strange shiver of nostalgia.
A memory ambushed her, and she had to slow Ernie to a crawl as it shimmered in her field of vision and took possession of her senses. She recalled the musty-sweet smell of decaying leaves, the cold wind whistling by her ears as she bent over the neck of her chestnut quarter horse, Bingo. She remembered the swooping sensation in her chest as she took daredevil leaps over a makeshift cross-country course, through fields lined with blazing red-and-orange trees, while her father whooped in exhilaration, following on Flash, his tall off-the-track thoroughbred. She’d shone with pride when they’d finally pulled up and Jim had uttered a word or two of gruff praise.
Where did that come from? Andie took a deep breath, feeling to the very outer edges of the memory. Her parents had not had any extra money when she was growing up, but before everything in his life had narrowed to the aperture of an Old Crow whiskey bottle, her father had kept a few riding horses on their land. Occasionally, he’d even been motivated to share his interest with his kids. Only Andie had really taken him up on the offer. Louisa, Rose, and Jess had dabbled and then lost interest. Gus, of course, never reached the age to truly start—a fact that made Andie’s heart lurch as she idled on the quiet road, lost, for a moment, to history.
This forgotten memory of her father, hidden for so long behind subsequent years of slurs, rejection, and plain old indifference, felt like something important. Like evidence of something. He did care about me, once. She wasn’t sure what to do with the insight. After all, how much value could you put on the fleeting good opinion of a man like her father? But she had to concede that once upon a time she would have happily risked her neck to see the gleam of approval in his eyes.
Her mind drifted, for a few seconds, back to the dream Will’s screams had interrupted on the night of the tank-top malfunction. The strange dynamic between Susan and Jim, and her role in it, as they’d sat in the familiar old kitchen. Was it truly a dream, or a memory from the days when the three of them could still be in the same room together?
After the age of eleven, Andie’s main source of company—other than Jess and her sweet sympathy—was the horses. She remembered hiding out for hours on end in the tumbledown stable, where she could soak in their company, always gentle and forgiving, and the intoxicating scent of their big, warm bodies.
She could practically conjure the scent as she shook herself back to the present and pressed down on the accelerator, rounding a bend in the road that provided a glorious view of a sprawling white farmhouse.
A more idyllic setting she had never seen. The house, with its generous porch, red door, and black shutters, was flanked by a grove of majestic trees on one side and a wide lawn and overgrown English garden on the other. A sweeping driveway lined with more towering trees led to a big red barn and a complex of fenced yards. At a second glance, the barn looked more lovingly tended than the house itself. As she slowed down, she noticed the front door was weathered, the porch sagged slightly, and one of the black shutters was hanging.
A sign over the barn’s wide doorway read SADDLE TREE FARM, and, on a series of smaller shingles, LESSONS, BOARDING, CAMPS, HIPPOTHERAPY. She suddenly felt as if all the air had been knocked from her lungs. Abruptly, she turned on her indicator and pulled to the side of the road.
She could see Will in her mind’s eye, perched atop a sturdy chestnut pony, a huge grin making his dimples pop. Therapeutic riding could work wonders for a child’s postural control, balance, and coordination. Even better, it could help build communication and socialization skills. Hippotherapy went another step beyond that, enabling physical, occupational, or speech therapists to use a horse’s movement as a therapeutic tool. Andie couldn’t think of a better way to help Will progress.
Over the past week, she’d been even more intensely focused on her reason for being there, pouring ever more energy into Will’s therapy. And Will needed the extra support. He was more challenging in his daily OT sessions and at mealtimes. Rhys still handled bedtime, but the change in his other routines meant Will was sleeping more fitfully again and waking everyone in the house with his nighttime cries, feeling Rhys’s absence acutely. Andie kind of knew how he felt.
Gravity and a sense of inevitability propelled her down the hill. She turned into the drive. The soles of her boots crunched on the gravel as she approached the barn.
“Hello!” she called, but the only response was from a huge black mare, who ambled over and hung her massive head over the fence of the closest yard. Probably a Percheron, Andie guessed, assessing the horse’s stocky build and intelligent eyes. She reached out a hand, letting the giant animal sniff her fingers before stroking the incomparably soft skin of her nose. The mare blew out in a gentle snort through huge, velvety nostrils, sending a cloud of vapor into the frigid air. Andie lay her hand on the flat plane of the horse’s cheek and leaned in to her neck, inhaling deeply. That was it: the smell that had meant peace, calm, and security in the ruins of her fractured childhood.
Reluctantly, she stepped away from the fence, where the mare seemed content to linger, and walked toward the barn’s entrance.
“Can I help you?” A shape emerged from the wide center aisle, in the form of a grizzled-looking man in overalls and work boots.
“Yes, I wanted to ask about your therapeutic riding program.”
The man scratched his forehead and squinted, his pale-blue irises gleaming from within deep pockets of weather-beaten flesh. “Ah, well, you’d have to talk to Maisie about that.”
“Is she in?” Andie asked eagerly.
“She’s . . . no, not right now,” the man said, rubbing his jaw and raising bushy gray brows. “You could try her at the main number in a day or two. Wait a second.” He broke off and disappeared into what could have been a tack room or an office and reemerged moments later bearing a flyer photocopied inexpensively in black and white.
“Here,” he offered, passing it to her with a calloused hand ingrained with dirt. Andie was relieved to see a web address listed at the bottom of the page. At least the operation had a passing acquaintance with the digital age.
“Thanks,” she said with a smile, glancing into the cleanly swept barn. “I’ll be in touch.”
The man waved good-bye and returned to breaking up a bale of hay into individual flakes. One of the horses in the barn gave a whinny of anticipation, which widened Andie’s smile as she walked back toward the road, pausing to say farewell to the big black mare.
She rested her hand on the horse’s well-muscled black neck, her mind full of possibilities. Are you really contemplating the idea of putting Will up on top of a half ton of horseflesh? Not without an experienced instructor and at least two side walkers, she decided. And even then, she would only consider it if they used an extremely docile horse and an abundance of adaptive equipment. But something about the idea lit her up inside.
These gentle, majestic animals had saved her during her teenage years, making it possible for her to salvage a vital spark of caring and connection with the world, rather than turning on herself, losing herself in the same downward spiral of grief and recrimination that had consumed her parents. Why, then, could they not be effective in the much more optimistic task of helping Will—with his sweetness, his curiosity, and his limitless potential—connect more fully with his world? She would have to raise the idea with Rhys. That is, if she ever got to talk to the man again.
She headed back to the car, a spring in her step. She could not have guessed how much being around horses again would lift her spirits. Somehow it had reset her perspective, reacquainting her with an undamaged thread of herself from the long-distant past.
The girl she was once was not afraid to take risks. That girl still had the courage of her convictions. That girl would not just hang around the Griffiths house, waiting for Rhys to quit his Invisible Man routine. She would demand what was right, what was necessary. For Will, that meant getting his father back. And when she thought about what was necessary for her—what had become as vital to her as oxygen—her thoughts drifted inexorably back to that almost-kiss in Rhys’s den.
If she possessed even an echo of the courageous spirit that had once defined her, she would admit the truth: What she felt for Rhys was not just friendship. No, what she felt was much riskier than that. And it was disingenuous to pretend otherwise. She’d been denying that truth when she’d averted their near-kiss, and the result was her current state of limbo—and Will’s. So she was done pretending. Forever was off-limits, but she would accept what Rhys offered with openness, honesty, and joy, for as long as it lasted.
And if he was no longer offering, that was fine, too. As long as she didn’t have to endure the waiting and wondering any longer, and as long as Rhys was back under the same roof as his son. She was going to confront him, she decided. She wasn’t sure yet what she’d say or do, but she would do it at the very next opportunity.
“Do you have a minute?” Tom poked his head around Rhys’s office doorway. Rhys had been staring, unseeing, at his screen saver as it etched fiery trails across a field of black on his monitor, his mind full of blueprints and hypotheses.
“What’s up?” Rhys had spent so long in brooding solitude lately that his own voice surprised him. It sounded like it came from the bottom of a well.
“You want the truth?” Tom seated himself in his usual chair facing Rhys’s chaotic desk, where sketches and formulas had recently sprouted on pieces of scrap paper.
The one silver lining to this whole Andie catastrophe was that it had forced Rhys to take refuge in invention. “I feel certain you’re about to give it to me,” he responded drily.
“Allison sent me an emergency text to warn me you’re wearing your holey shirts again.”
Rhys looked down at his plaid sleeves almost in surprise, noticing the frayed cuffs and threadbare elbows. His administrative assistant, Allison, knew him too well. Whenever he was in crisis, he would automatically reach for one of his softest, most well-worn shirts. Like Will with his security blanket or his trains.
“So? I’ve had nothing but internal meetings this week. Does it matter?”
“Not in a business sense, no,” Tom conceded. “I’m talking on a personal level here.” He surveyed his friend. “What’s going on with you?”
Rhys ran a restless hand through his hair and fixed him with a weary gaze. “I’m fine.”
“How are things at home?”
“Funny you should ask.” Rhys laughed mirthlessly. “I actually wouldn’t know. I was getting in the way, so I took myself out of the equation.” He snatched up a squeeze ball that sat on his desk and lobbed it through an executive basketball hoop in the corner.
Tom’s eyebrows rose. “What happened? Last I heard, things were going great. I’ve seen for myself that Andie’s a freaking miracle.”
“Yeah, she is,” Rhys agreed. “I figured I should step back and let her do her thing. Stop putting my foot in it.” He paused and added grimly, “Or hand.”
“O-kay.” Tom whistled. “I won’t ask what that’s about.”
“It’s about me,” Rhys fumed. “It’s about the fact that Andie’s the best thing to come into my life—and Will’s—in fucking . . . ever, and here am I, blundering around with my usual Night of the Living Dead clueless Aspie act, screwing things up.”
“Yeah, you’re such a terrible person,” Tom said with a deadpan expression. “Give Andie a bit of credit here for a minute. My guess is she can probably handle you.”
“Thanks a lot, asshole.” Rhys bridled. “You think her training with special-needs kids might just qualify her to deal with me?”
“Oh, give me a break!” Tom collapsed in helpless laughter. “This from the millionaire PhD with the Elvis charisma, who has to beat women off with a stick every time he steps out in public. My heart bleeds!”
Rhys shot him an incendiary look and then went back to staring at his monitor. Tom, still stifling chuckles, sat back to let his words sink in.
Rhys could feel the weight of his friend’s fond scrutiny as the minutes ticked by. “What?” he finally exploded in frustration.
“You like her,” Tom observed. “Like, like her like her.”
“That’s the stupidest statement I’ve heard since second grade,” Rhys harrumphed.
“Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
“Have you seen my track record with relationships?”
“Okay, so your college years were a bit of a roller-coaster ride. Grad school, too, I guess. And Karina was a spectacular flameout, I’ll admit,” Tom said. “But since then you haven’t even tried.”
“The stakes are too high,” Rhys snapped. “I can’t bring a woman into Will’s life and turn things upside down, only to have it not work out. I can’t put him through that.” There had been no one serious since Karina. Not that he hadn’t occasionally been tempted, while on a business trip, to indulge just for the physical release. And it seemed that, since his public profile had expanded, there were always plenty of attractive women angling to spend time in his bed. But, when push came to shove, the idea generally left a sour taste in his mouth.
“Andie is already in Will’s life,” Tom pointed out helpfully.
“And, like I told you before, my goal is to keep her there. Not to mess with her and foul things up so completely that she runs screaming for the hills.”
“Ah, but there’s the important thing. I don’t think you would be messing with her.”
Rhys narrowed his eyes and squinted balefully at his friend. Tom was right. If he got involved with Andie, he wouldn’t be messing with her at all. His feelings for her—complicated as they were—were genuine. This is real. Disturbingly so.
Another worry intruded into his thoughts. “You know that by getting involved with Andie, I’d be putting her right in Karina’s sights.” He was shaken by how acute the fear was.
“So you’re saying that you’ll never have another relationship, in deference to Karina?”
“Not deference, exactly.” Rhys paused. “She’s just in a complicated place right now.”
“You’re all grown-ups,” Tom pointed out. “And if you don’t act decisively, you may miss your chance.”
Yeah, like I did in front of the fireplace that night. Rhys leaned forward to pick up the squeeze ball. “You’re fired!” he growled good-naturedly as he hurled the ball right at the space where Tom’s head had been. But his friend had already disappeared into the corridor. His face appeared around the doorframe an instant later, a broad grin lighting up his features.
“Actually,” Rhys said, “get back in here. I have a project for you.”
“Oh?” Tom set one tentative foot back into the office.
“I want to look into setting up a foundation for special-needs grants,” Rhys said. “For families that can’t afford autism services not covered by health insurance or Medicaid.”
Tom’s grin seemed to widen, if that were even possible.
“Yeah, yeah,” Rhys said with a conciliatory smile. “Andie gave me the idea.”