Chapter 2
A thousand alarms are sounding in my mind. Who is this woman? Why is she standing in front of me, looking at me as if I should know her? She’s not a client of mine. I’ve definitely never met her before. Believe me, I would remember.
She’s exactly the sort of woman I usually take one long look at and then mentally enter into my little black book of DO NOT EVER CONTACT AGAIN. I’m writing her name inside, shutting the book, wrapping a chain around it, bolting it, and dropping it to the bottom of a lake.
I can tell immediately that this woman would be trouble for me. Gorgeous, tempting trouble.
She’s strikingly beautiful. And that immediately puts me on edge, because I just got off the phone with Strikingly Beautiful. Last night, Strikingly Beautiful was calling from Hawaii to tell me that she won’t be able to visit Sam this weekend like she swore she would, because her new Hollywood boyfriend surprised her with a trip to some tropical resort. She said it as if I should be happy for her and her good fortune. I’m not happy for her. I kind of hope that the shark from Jaws swallows Natalie up while she’s floating on a yellow tube in the ocean.
Fine, maybe not swallow her up—but definitely give her a good scare.
I haven’t always been this vengeful. Not sure if that makes it better or worse, but I didn’t get to my current level of anger overnight. It took months and months of watching my daughter cry in her bedroom when her mom didn’t show up like she said she would, didn’t call like she said she would, wasn’t there for Sam like she promised she always would be. It’s been two years since Natalie left us to move to Hollywood and pursue her dream of becoming an actress, and with each passing month it seems like we’re becoming less and less of a thought in her mind.
My sisters are always encouraging me to get back out there. But as I look in the eyes of the first woman I’ve found strikingly beautiful since Natalie, I feel the opposite of ready to date again. In fact, I’m terrified at the prospect.
The woman’s wide smile falters, and she looks at my daughter, Samantha, with a question in her eyes. This concerns me even more than the fact that I’ve already memorized the exact shade of green of Evie Jones’s eyes.
Mrs. Jones—the woman I know I’ve never met before this moment—comes to some sort of conclusion, and she looks back up at me. Her smile finds its way to her mouth once again, and my stomach tightens. For one absurd second I consider finding the damn key to my black book and fishing it out of the lake.
“I’m guessing you’re not the one who emailed me?” asks Mrs. Jones.
“Emailed you?” I feel like a patient learning he has amnesia. “No, definitely not.”
She nods and chews her bottom lip briefly while casting her eyes down at her dog. Her service dog. There’s a binder tucked under her arm with the words Southern Service Paws written across it.
Ah—and now I have it.
Sam has been leaving their pamphlets around our house for weeks. She’s been begging me endlessly to let her get a service dog ever since she saw an interview of a woman and her service dog on an episode of The Wake-up Show. But I’ve been firm in my answer of no, and that answer still stands.
How should I proceed here? I’m frustrated that my daughter has evidently gone behind my back and contacted whomever this woman is without my knowledge, but I also know that she’s had a hard couple of years with her mom leaving and then being diagnosed with epilepsy. I don’t want to pile on by reprimanding her in front of this random woman. At the same time, it’s not okay for her to be pulling stunts like this. Ever since she was diagnosed, she’s been acting out in strange ways, and I’m not always sure how to handle her.
When I told her Natalie couldn’t come into town for her birthday last month because she got the flu (reality: she told me she needed to keep her schedule open for a potential audition she heard through the pipeline might come), Sam told me to cancel the whole party. I wasn’t going to, but she completely freaked out, crying and yelling that birthday parties were stupid anyway and she didn’t even want one. She’s quiet these days too—holing up in her room so much it worries me. She’s gone through a lot of difficult change, and I don’t know how to help her. I think it might be time to find us a therapist, actually.
I’m in way over my head doing this parenting thing alone. Sam needs her mom. Or rather, she needs a healthy mom, and Natalie hasn’t been healthy in a long time. Even before our divorce was finalized, she had slowly started to change into someone I didn’t recognize—not engaging with Sam as much and handing basically all parental responsibility over to me. And then she moved out, and now Natalie gives her image on social media more attention than she gives Sam.
The thing is, I’m all for Natalie pursuing her dream of acting. I even understood when she said she didn’t love me anymore and wanted a divorce. Yes, it sucked and it hurt like hell, but it wasn’t out of left field. We were married so young and didn’t grow together over the years—instead, we grew in completely different directions. So, I understood and supported all of that. What I take issue with is how Natalie has made our daughter feel unimportant. How she never makes time for her. How Natalie’s dream of making it big has completely taken over her life, leaving a hurting child in her wake. And each time I confront her about it, I’m met with a weak promise to do better next time. Even Sam’s diagnosis hasn’t seemed to affect Natalie much. It’s like she’s completely checked out as far as we are concerned, and it breaks my heart for Sam.
I turn to Sam and raise an eyebrow. “Did you email Mrs. Jones?”
“Miss,” the woman corrects quickly and then smiles. “It’s Miss Jones. Evie, actually.”
I choose not to dissect exactly why she felt the need to clarify her marital status and instead fix my eyes on my daughter. “Did you email her?”
Sam dodges my gaze and looks down at her hot chocolate. She presses her lips together and then crinkles her nose. That’s really not fair. She knows that’s her secret weapon to get out of trouble, and she’s using it now.
“If I admit to it, am I going to be in trouble?” Sam was born only ten years ago, but I swear she’s sixteen.
I refuse to look at Evie. There’s no need. I’ll be done with her in five minutes, and she’ll be on her way, and I’ll never think of her and her cute accent again. “How about if you fess up to it now I’ll only take away your iPad for one week instead of two?”
Most kids pout right about now. Not Sam.
“Five days and you have a deal.” Her brown eyes find mine, and she’s Natalie in the flesh. This girl is going to be trouble.
I can hear Miss Jones try to hide a chuckle from beside me, but I still refuse to look at her.
“One week. It was wrong of you to go behind my back, and you know it.” I go easy on Sam because, honestly, she’s a good kid, and even though she looks tough and rebellious now, she’ll cry in her pillow tonight if she thinks she has disappointed me. And even though I’ll never admit it to her, I’m impressed that she managed to hack into my email, impersonate me to set up this meeting, and then convince me to take her out for hot chocolate at the agreed meeting place.
I hope she channels this cleverness into curing cancer one day and not robbing banks.
“Okay,” says Sam, tucking a lock of her dark-brown hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry.”
Sam and I smile at each other for a moment, and I think I’ve handled this situation well. I don’t always come out on top of these parenting moments, but this one feels like a small win.
Miss Jones clears her throat and reminds me that I’ve still got a loose thread to tie up.
Or cut off.
“I’m sorry to have wasted your morning, Miss Jones. But as you can see, there was a little miscommunication between my daughter and me. I’m sorry for any inconvenience.” I’m just about to turn my back to this woman and join Sam at the table when Miss Jones speaks up.
“The morning doesn’t have to be a waste. I’m already here, and I have all my information with me. If you’re interested, we could still—”
“I’m not interested,” I say, cutting her off with a sharp tone.
I can tell I’ve startled her, because those glittering green eyes widen and her lips part. I don’t want to be a jerk to this woman, but I’m also not in the mood to deal with her or her sunny smile. And definitely not her long legs that I’m refusing to notice. Is she wearing running shoes with a dress? Did she jog here? Never mind. I don’t care. Miss Jones needs to go. She represents everything I don’t want right now.
“It was nice to meet you, and again, I’m sorry for taking up your morning.” There. I said it in a way that was firm but still nice enough that I could be cast in a children’s television show where I pull on a red sweater and pretend to like everyone.
I glance at Sam, and she looks so disappointed that it physically hurts me somewhere in my chest. I know she thinks having a service dog is going to solve all her problems, but she’s wrong. A dog can’t keep her safe. But I can, and I will. I’m not about to step back and let a dog take on the responsibility that is mine. If I’ve learned anything this year, it’s that I can’t trust anyone else to love and care for my daughter the way I do. Definitely not an animal.
“Are you sure you don’t want to hear just a little bit about the company or our process? I’ll even go so far as to mention that no question is too silly.” Is she serious with this? I clearly said no.
“In the email, it said that your daughter has epilepsy.” Miss Jones’s smile grows as if we are talking about a mutual favorite TV show rather than a life-altering disability. It grates on me. She looks down at her dog, and her smile grows more devastating. “This is Charlie. He’s been trained as a seizure-assist dog, but he also alerts—”
I hold up my hand to stop her. I’m not proud of how condescending that makes me look, but she’s just not taking the hint. I want her to go away. Far, far away from me and my daughter. “I don’t think you’re understanding, Miss Jones. We don’t want to hear about your company or the dog.”
“No, you don’t want to hear about the dog,” Sam says under her breath but at a volume that indicates she definitely meant for me to hear it.
I look at Sam and prepare to tell her to watch it because she’s already on thin ice when Miss Jones pipes in again. “If Sam is interested, I would really love to tell you about Charlie and how he’s—”
Now, here’s the thing. I’ve had a bad week. Nothing has gone right. I’ve been looking into private schools for Sam to attend in the fall where they can give her more attention than she’d get in her large public school, and she’s hated every single one of them that we’ve toured. She wants to stay with her friends even though I explained to her that it would make me feel more comfortable for her to be somewhere smaller. I’ve also had to tell her three times that she can’t go to Jenna Miller’s eleventh birthday party sleepover. Sam stormed up the stairs after her third try, with the words I hate you lingering in the air between us.
On top of all this, she had a longer-than-usual seizure last week that scared the hell out of me, and I haven’t slept soundly in the past year since she was diagnosed. I can’t stomach the thought of her having a seizure in the night and me not knowing about it, so I get out of bed at least fifteen times a night to check on her before I usually just give up and make a pallet on her floor. And the last thing I need to add to my plate is caring for a dog.
Because of all these things, I stand up so fast that my chair scrapes and everyone in the coffee shop turns to watch me be a complete ass to this woman.
“Stop. I told you we don’t want to hear about your company’s dog. I don’t know if you’re hard up for the cash or what, but you should know that you’re coming across as an annoying car salesman about to get fired if he doesn’t meet his quota for the week.”
Damn . . .that was bad. I immediately feel remorse.
Miss Jones shifts on her white-sneaker-clad feet, and her dog’s ears shoot up. I’m prepared for all sorts of replies from her, including her siccing her dog on me for being so rude. I’m not, however, prepared for her smirk. “So, I’m a man in this analogy?”
I’m honestly not sure how to respond to that, so I settle for a very mature shrug.
She scoffs and shakes her head. I see pity in her eyes, and I don’t like it one bit. Mainly because I deserve it, and I despise feeling like I need anyone’s sympathy.
“Good luck to you, Mr. Broaden.” She leans in close to me, speaking low in my ear and proving she smells as good as she looks. “You’re going to need it when you try to walk out of here with your head shoved so far up your ass.”
I’m a statue as I watch Evie Jones and Charlie walk out of the coffee shop, her sundress swaying with her hips, and my daughter’s angry gaze burning a hole in the side of my face.