Zenith Fulfilled (14 page)

Rob laughed. She was funny. Rebecca. So different from what he first thought. Not so saintly. Not so prim and perfect. In fact, she seemed full of everything: life and fun. She didn’t seem the least bit hung up on appearing perfect to her daughters. They got to see their mother as she really was, and not always politically correct.
And don’t forget, she liked to run around naked. That was an image to think about.

S
he let her daughters hang around him and didn’t seem to mind them seeing the two of them together. She could have easily led him into the house, or asked him to sit on the porch while she worked on her book. Her daughters could have been kept busy, and away from him, but she didn’t. She invited him to join them.

“What about the pooh
, Wob?”

There seemed no getting around it. Karlee was looking so hopefully at him.

“I can’t go naked though, Karlee,” he said, his voice deadly serious. The grin he was trying to suppress kept pulling at his lips, until he met Rebecca’s eyes. Then he laughed.

“
Thath okay, Wob. You can wade in it. Wike Mommy youthwally duth.”

He found himself being pulled up by the smallest hand he ever held. She kept her grasp until he was standing before her foot-deep pool. He bent down
and rolled his jeans up. Karlee still didn’t let go. She kept holding his hand. Finally, she tugged him in. The water was sun-warmed, and felt good actually against the heat of his skin. He couldn’t believe he was standing in a child’s wading pool. Karlee walked him around it a few times, then finally let his hand go, before she came back, packing toys. She showed him them all, and insisted that he bend down and play with the little boat she liked to float around.

It wasn’t long before Kathy came over. She stood for a while before she got in and sat down. She watched him and watched her sister, but finally, started to play with them.

It was the strangest hour Rob ever spent in his whole life. He never played
pretend
before. He had to follow Karlee’s lead. She must have had a tone of different stories that she made up, as well as rules and requirements as to what he was to do and say. Kathy played along too. He was allowed to get out of the pool, but only if he watched them still. He didn’t know why they cared so much if he was there. But they did. Except Kayla. She pretended not to look at him from her towel where she kept her earphones on and ignored them.

Finally
, while playing with one another, they let him edge his way over towards their mother, who was now sitting on the porch steps and watching them.

“Want something cold to drink?” she asked after they sat side-by-side together, and observed the two red-headed girls frolicking in the yard. Her knees were almost touching Rob’s, and their bare feet rested near each other.

“Sure,” he said.

She got up and went into the house, returning a few minutes later with two glasses filled with lemonade and ice. He followed her over to the porch swing
to sit down.

Suddenly quiet again, they drank their refreshments without a word. He didn’t get it. How two people with nothing in common, and totally opposite lifestyles and family values could sit so comfortably together. Why wasn’t it weirder between them? 

“How come you let me near them?” he asked finally. “You seem like you’d be more careful, or an overprotective kind of mother. Why allow someone like me to be around them?”

“I am… careful and overprotective. But you’re good with them. You’ve been nice, when they’re not frightening you.”

“I’m not frightened of them.”

She laughed. “Rob
, they scare you more than any bad-ass biker gang could. You’d be more comfortable, and much more sure of yourself being surrounded by knife-wielding muggers, than you are when encircled by those three little girls.”

“I’m just not used to kids.”

She was quiet for awhile, watching the children playing. “They’re not used to strange men.”

He glanced at her sharply. “What? You want me to hang out with them?”

She shrugged. “I don’t think it harms anything. I live so far from everyone, no one ever comes here regularly.”

Rob took a long cold drink. And her solution was him? He couldn’t think of a worse person for the position. She glanced at him
and seemed to read something in his face.

“Relax. Really. Just relax. I don’t mean anything by it. It’s no deeper than that. We’re writing this book together, and you’re around me to do that. What harm is there in the small amount of time you’re around me, if they see you? You don’t have to do anything, or be anything different than whatever you are or want to be.”

“I just don’t see how I could be a good influence on little girls.”

“You don’t have to be. Just be an influence. I’m right here, and I see everything you’re doing. And yeah, I have to admit I think it’s a good thing.”

“Your oldest doesn’t agree with you. You’ve noticed that, haven’t you?”

Rebecca set her drink down, pulling her knees up again, her feet on the swing
, rocking it as she moved. “Karlee doesn’t remember much of Doug. Not really. So it’s easy for her to not think about him. Kathy, as you can see, doesn’t know what to think. Or how to act. She wants to treat you with the same abandon her little sister does, but she hasn’t missed her older sister’s reluctance to get to know you. So she’s a bit slower to join. And Kayla? She’s old enough to remember everything and she’s angry at me. And Doug. Why should she give you the time of day? You’re nothing to her. What she fears most is you becoming something to me.”

“Why would you want her to sit around worrying about that?”

“Because it’s not going to happen; that’s why. And I think she should see it’s not the end of the world if a man who isn’t part of our family hangs around me, and her sisters and her.”

“You invited me here on purpose then?”

She nodded and smiled. “Truthfully? Yes.”

“So you already knew how each one would react. Didn’t you worry how I’d react?”

“Like I said, I figured out during that first meeting that you’re terrified of them. So no, I didn’t worry.”

“Don’t you date?”

She shook her head, and her curls bobbed. “No. There was a brief flirtation with another single dad who belongs to the PTA at school.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. He invited me to dinner and we took his blue mini-van instead of my red one. It was like watching paint dry, just trying to think of something to say that went beyond our kids. But the girls didn’t have a clue it was even a date.”

“So w
here is he? Their dad, I mean?” Rob finally asked after stretching his legs out, and clearing his throat.

“Not here.”

“Yeah, I caught that. You want to know my entire messed-up history and intend to publish it and tell everyone about it. You can answer me that.”

Rebecca stared harder into her yard as a kind of sadness descended over her features. “He’s in Japan.”

“What?”

“You heard me right. He always traveled a lot for business. On his last trip, he called and said he wasn’t coming back home here. He needed... I don’t know what he needs. Space. A new life. Whatever; it means he’s not here with us.”

Rob shook his head in disbelief. “But why leave the kids? I know about marriages going south. I know about wanting another life. But his kids?”

“He hasn’t seen them in two years.”

“It must be hell on them,” Rob said, nodding towards the three little girls in various positions on the lawn. Two playing, and one pretending not to like playing.

“It was. It is.”

“How did you tell them?”

“I told them the truth in the kindest way I could. About Daddy needing time because he was upset. How it didn’t have anything to do with them, blah, blah, blah. The usual, how Daddy still loves them, even if he isn’t here.”

“You must hate him for putting you in that position, for not being here and facing them himself.”

“I don’t know.”

“How do you not know if you hate a man who would do that to you and those kids there?”

Rebecca glanced at him. “Because, as you should know, good men can do bad things sometimes.”

Rob got the meaning. “I never ran out on three kids.”

“No. I didn’t mean that. I meant it’s complicated. There were reasons he left me. Reasons he can’t deal with his life.”

Rob wondered what reasons could justify leaving Rebecca and her girls. He didn’t see one valid enough reason, but she didn’t seem inclined to tell him why. She also didn’t seem as angry as he imagined someone in her position should have been.

“He calls them still.”

Rob sat up straight. He didn’t know about that particular piece of information. That she was still in contact with her gone, but not forgotten, husband.

“And you? Does he call you?”

“Sometimes,” she said, as she suddenly got up. “I think I should start dinner. Do you mind keeping an eye on them out here?”

Rob sat for a while, watching the little girls playing. It wasn’t long before they had him out playing again and running around with a ball being kicked back and forth. That got Kayla to get up and join in, though she scowled at Rob as if he made her join them against her will.

He learned that Kathy was in second grade. Kayla was in fifth, and Karlee was in pre-school. He learned all their teacher’s names, and the younger two were a wealth of useless information on their favorite friends. They talked on and on. All the while, Karlee never managed to kick the ball, but caught it and ran off before throwing it randomly. The other two kept the ball kicking easily.

It wasn’t long before Rob heard Rebecca shouting that dinner was ready. He followed the small herd of three girls as they ran around the house to the back, where the patio table was
all set. Their backyard was large and landscaped, with distant trees, assuring privacy and a natural view. It was like a private park. The patio table was covered with a large, magenta umbrella and the table was set with cheerful plastic plates and dishes. Mouth-watering hamburgers sat in the center, with buns and condiments nicely presented beside it all. There were cold salads in big bowls and Rebecca kept going in and out the French doors to the kitchen and coming back with last minute items.

“Wob
, thit here.”

Rob stopped at the edge of the patio. Karlee was smiling up at him with delight in her sunny face. God, she was cute with the smear of dirt that trailed over her face after playing in the mud she created with the hose. Her baby voice was enough to make anyone smile, no matter what she was saying.

“Sure,” he said sitting beside her.

Rebecca seemed in no rush about having him there for dinner, and in no hurry to continue her story or glean more information. She seemed casual, as though she liked having him there. Rob didn’t know how he felt about it, or them, when Rebecca sat down across from him, smiling.

The meal was pleasant in a way Rob never experienced. The girls talked constantly, flipping topics, interrupting each other, getting mad at each other, and giggling happily with each other. The air was warm, the yard peaceful, the setting beautiful in the woods, with the girls’ red hair shining brightly under the fading sun. Rebecca also shone under the sun. He was watching her like he never did before. Everything she did fascinated him. The way she choreographed their lives was like a juggling act. She could scoop up all the plates, and smile and talk, following each conversation as she attended to their multiple needs at once. All the while, Rob watched her, feeling helplessly entranced at the way her mouth turned up, and her eyes sparkled when she laughed, and how her red hair turned to burnt gold whenever it caught an errant ray of sun. He noticed how clear and open her facial expressions were, how her freckles enhanced her pretty face. The overall warmth and laughter she had seemed to radiate from her just as the sun reflected through her red hair.

He
wasn’t sure of his thoughts or why he could not stop noticing Rebecca. He kept gritting his teeth and mentally chanting in his brain that she was Nick Lassiter’s
sister,
and the mother to three little girls. She wasn’t even remotely near the radar that someone like he, Rob Williams, could look at the way that he was doing now. Let alone feeling such an attraction towards.

Then there was baby Karlee, who engaged him constantly. She giggled and smiled at him.
She told him thousands of little stories and “you know what, Wob?” ad nauseum, but the thing he found most shocking was that none of it annoyed him. He found all of them fascinating. The differences he saw in a ten to a seven to a three-year-old was like a study of childhood. He liked listening to them and found them not only funny, but sweet and wonderful. Their take on the world, through eyes of innocence and joy was something Rob never experienced before. He couldn’t remember ever being a child like these three were. He didn’t remember ever being as happy as this family was together. And their happiness became intoxicating, engaging, and practically contagious.

After he caught Rebecca looking at him in much the same way he was looking at her, it left both of them turning away, and feeling confused. Even stunned. Yet, there it was.
Attraction.
And even stranger,
chemistry
. An undeniable attraction to each other had begun. And worst of all, he was starting to like Rebecca Randall, despite her being Nick’s sister, the mother of three girls, married, but separated, and living in the middle of nowhere. Damn, if he wasn’t suddenly, liking all that distance and isolation too.