The Takeover (The Miles High Club #2)(73)

How could I not?

He’s always making sure that I’m taken care of. There’s a gentle, caring side to him that I adore.

I call Harry, putting my phone on speaker in the car. “Hey, Mom,” he says.

“Hi, honey. How was your day?”

“Hmm, okay,” he says. “Can I go to Justine’s party tomorrow night?”

I scrunch up my face. Damn it. Justine is a girl he knows whose parents go away every weekend and leave her home alone with her elder sisters. The only problem is Justine’s sisters aren’t even home most of the time. “What’s the party for?”

“It’s her birthday. She’s fourteen.”

“Are her parents going to be home?”

He hesitates. “Um . . . yes.”

I roll my eyes. That means no. “I’ll see how you behave.”

“Can I, Mom, please?” he begs. “If I behave, can I go to the party?”

I roll my eyes again. “I’m not bargaining with you to behave, Harry. You should want to behave anyway. You’re thirteen, not two.”

“Well, can I go?”

“I want you to clean up the porch for me. Put all the shoes back in the shoebox, and straighten things up.”

“Oh, Mom,” he moans. “They aren’t even my shoes. I’m not putting everyone else’s shoes away. That’s not fair.”

My anger simmers. “Goodbye, Harry.”

“So can I go to the party?”

I narrow my eyes. God, it would be so much easier to barter with this kid, but I know there’ll be alcohol at this party, and if he starts drinking and goes off the rails now at this young age, I have absolutely no chance of reigning him back in. He’s too strong a personality. “Harrison, you want to be treated as an adult, but you act like a baby.”

“Mom,” he moans. “I’m going,” he snaps.

“Clean the porch, and do your jobs, and we will discuss it,” I snap back as I lose my patience. “Where’s Patrick?”

“I don’t know. Goodbye.” He hangs up.

I shake my head. That little twerp. He drives me mad.

I call Patrick. I had to give him a phone so that he could contact me whenever he wanted and so that I could call him. “Hi, Mama,” he says happily.

“Hi, buddy.” I smile. “I’m on my way home.”

“Oh, okay.”

“Where are you?”

“Nancy and I are at the park.”

Nancy, our babysitter, gets the boys off to school for me in the mornings and stays until five thirty in the afternoons. She works a night job, so she has to leave right on time. I’m usually home fifteen minutes after she leaves, so it works out well. “Okay, darling, see you soon.”

“Bye, Mama. Love you.”

“Love you too. Bye.” I hang up and smile. My sweet, placid child. I had to get one out of the three, I suppose.

Although Fletcher has really turned the corner since he started this internship, and I hate to admit it, but I think that Tristan has had a lot to do with it. His tough love approach has worked wonders with Fletch, but of course, it could just be the fact that he’s growing up too. Fletcher is a good kid, and his only crime is that he’s too protective of me. To the point where if Harry is giving me grief, Fletcher goes ballistic, and I have to break them up from a fistfight.

Harry, on the other hand, is an entirely different kettle of fish. He’s naughty wherever he goes and no matter who he’s with. His teachers are constantly calling me about his behavior, and last year he even nearly got expelled from school. I’ve had him at therapy. I’ve had him at behavioral psychologists. You name it—I’ve done it.

Diet, exercise programs, no blue lights on screens . . . nothing has worked. It pains me to admit it, but Harry needs his dad. More than the other two, and I’m so out of my depth that I have no idea what to do with him.

At this point, my only goal is to get through each day without an all-out war. If I can get into bed at night, and I haven’t had a call from school about him, and we haven’t had a run-in, it’s been a very good day.

I let him get away with a lot more than I should, simply so that Patrick and Fletcher don’t have to put up with his dramatics and my screaming.

It’s not fair to them to have to live with it, so I tiptoe around Harry to keep the peace.

It’s not right, but at this point, it’s all I can do.

“Hello,” Fletcher calls as he answers the door. “Mom, Tristan is here.”

“What?” I hear Patrick call. He goes running through the house to the door like a maniac. “Tristan!” he cries in excitement.

“Hey, buddy,” I hear Tristan’s deep voice reply.

What’s he doing here?

Nerves dance in my stomach, and I walk out to see Patrick hugging Tristan’s leg.

Fletcher rolls his eyes in a “he’s so embarrassing” way, and I smile at the beautiful man before me. “Hi.”

Tristan’s eyes hold mine. “Hello, Claire.”

The air buzzes between us.

It’s there again, like it is every time we’re together—this feeling between us where I want to take him into my arms and kiss him. It doesn’t feel natural being platonic.