Along Came Trouble(38)

“Maureen? What’s going on? You know he’s only allowed to see Henry on Saturday mornings.”

Maureen made a pained face and looked at her lap.

“We were hoping I could spend some more time with him this weekend,” Richard said.

“Call your lawyer. We have a custody agreement.”

Richard let out a long breath and pushed his hand through his hair. “I want to make amends, Ellen.”

“You’re not driving him anywhere,” she replied. It was petty, but she couldn’t help it. Even if he hadn’t had a drink in a month, she didn’t want her ex-husband driving her son around. Not ever, but if she couldn’t prevent it, then at least not until he’d done a hell of a lot more to prove he could be trusted than show up at her house unannounced and declare his intention to make amends. Whatever that meant.

“Not just with Henry,” he said. “I want to fix things with you, too.”

She became aware of Caleb standing behind her, close enough that she could feel the heat of his body. “There’s nothing left to fix.”

Richard reached out and stroked her arm where it was wrapped around Henry. “Els. Come on, be reasonable. I told you I’m four weeks sober. I’m really serious about this. I’m trying to make some changes. Give me a chance.”

Recoiling from his touch, she backed into Caleb, who steadied her with one hand on her hip. He asked, very quietly, “You want my help with this?”

She shook her head. Looking past Richard, she caught Maureen’s eye. “You drive, Maureen. Take Richard home to his apartment before you take Henry to your place. Saturday morning is it. No other visitation. You understand me?”

Maureen frowned, but she unbuckled her seat belt and got out of the car. As she came around to Ellen, she smiled at Henry and said, “Hey, pumpkin! Ready to go to Grammy’s house? I have a surprise for you this week.”

Henry held out his arms for her and asked, “Prise is?”

“I’ll give you a hint. It’s something sweet, with frosting on top.”

“Cupcake?”

“That’s right! Only one guess. Aren’t you clever?” She opened the back of the car and started buckling Henry into his seat. Ellen backed up to make room for Richard to open his door and move around to the passenger side. Caleb backed up too, but his hand didn’t leave her hip. She saw Richard notice it, caught the narrowing of his eyes and the flattening of his lips, and thought, Good. He deserved to feel jealous after everything he’d put her through.

She could hear Henry nattering in the backseat. “Cabe has a screwdriver, Gammy Meen! An’ a drill. He showed you how to use it.”

“That sounds like fun!”

Richard lifted his hand as if to touch her again, and she backed away quickly, stepping on Caleb’s foot and plastering her whole backside against him. He didn’t move, just held her there. Solid and strong. Richard dropped his hand.

“I want more than one morning a week,” he said. He was frowning in a way she recognized from when they were married. Angry. She’d never seen him so angry and so controlled at the same time. Usually, when he was this mad, he was also drunk, and he spoke incessantly, rage-dumping his every self-righteous thought on the people around him.

Richard didn’t deserve more than one morning a week with her son. He didn’t even deserve that.

“Earn it.”

She turned her back on all of them and walked up the driveway to retrieve Henry’s belongings.





Chapter Ten



Minutes later, the entire peanut gallery had cleared out.

After Henry was packed into the car, Caleb had followed Maureen home so he could do a security assessment. He must have called off the workmen when Ellen wasn’t paying attention, because Bill and Matthias had left, too. She didn’t know what that meant, decision-wise, but she expected Caleb would be back to make his intentions known.

In the meantime, she went to work. It was hard to concentrate, but it wasn’t as if she had a choice. When Henry was with his grandma, she worked. Her to-do list was as long as her arm.

Plus, she had the urge to kick some serious ass. After ninety minutes on the phone, at least half of which she spent berating the attorney responsible for Aimee Dawson’s contract, she’d won a number of concessions from the label and the promise of a revised contract in her in-box by the end of the workday.

She wrote threatening letters full of lawyer-speak until six, when she decided to call it a night, having managed to burn through most of her Richard-and-Caleb-related fury. In the meantime, her head had been growing more and more crowded with all the implications of the day’s events.