Finding Perfect (Fool's Gold #3)(91)

Peter came running toward him.

“I heard,” the boy said, grinning and slightly out of breath. “I’m not going to be with them anymore. You’re going to take me.”

Raoul stared at the kid, then held up both his hands. “Peter, I think you misunderstood. You’ll be safely away from the Folios and another family will be found for you.”

Peter’s expression froze. The happiness faded from his eyes and tears appeared. He went pale and his mouth trembled. “But I want to go with you. I stayed with you before. You’re my friend.”

Raoul ignored the sense of being kicked in the gut. “We are friends. We’ll still be friends and I’ll see you at school. But I’m not a foster parent.”

“You were before,” he insisted, the last word coming out on a sob. “You took care of me.”

Mrs. Dawson hurried toward them. “Peter, we need to go.”

Peter lunged for Raoul. For a second, he thought the kid was going to hit him, but instead Peter wrapped his arms around Raoul and hung on as if he would never let go.

“You have to take care of me,” he cried. “You have to.”

Mrs. Dawson shook her head apologetically. “Come on, Peter. I have to get you to the group home. It’s only for a few weeks until we find something else.”

Raoul stood there, not moving. Although the boy wasn’t doing anything, he still felt his heart being ripped out all the same. People were stopping to stare.

Just when he thought he was going to have to forcibly push the kid away, Peter let go. Mrs. Dawson led him away, and neither of them bothered to look back.

MONDAY MORNING, RAOUL arrived at work at his usual time. Seconds later, Dakota walked in, slammed her purse down on his desk and put her hands on her hips.

“I can’t decide if I should quit or back my car over you,” she announced.

He stared at her. “What are you pissed about now?”

“What you did to Peter.”

Raoul didn’t want to talk about that. He hadn’t slept all night and he still felt as if he’d been hit in the gut. “He’s safe now,” Raoul said flatly. “I talked to Mrs. Dawson this morning and from what the psychologists can tell, he wasn’t abused by anyone. Folio’s threats about giving the kid to someone else were designed to make me hurry. He’s not part of a big child-stealing ring. He’s just an ass**le.”

She glared at him. “And that’s all you see?”

“What else is there?” He knew he sounded defensive, but it was all he had.

“Peter’s crushed,” she snapped. “You swept in and saved him. Do you think he doesn’t know what you did? You’ve been there for him all this time. You took him home when he broke his arm. You’ve been his friend.”

She spoke as if he’d been burning the kid with a cigarette.

“All that stuff is great,” he yelled. “So what’s your problem?”

She jabbed him in the chest with her index finger. “You led that poor kid on, you jerk. You let him believe that you cared about him and when they took his foster dad away, he thought he’d be going home with you.”

“You think I don’t know that? It was a mistake. All of it.” Getting involved in the first place. He knew better. He did his best work from a distance.

“It wasn’t a mistake.” She spoke more calmly now. “Don’t you remember what that was like? Packing everything you owned into a trash bag because you didn’t have a suitcase and moving on? Do you remember how scary it was to find yourself in a new place, to not know the rules? Now it’s happening again. And you’ve made that reality worse. You let him believe in you, trust you, and it all turned out to be a lie.”

Raoul wanted to protest that he’d never promised the boy anything. That he’d been there in a crisis, but that was all it was. Nothing more.

Only Peter wouldn’t have seen it that way, he thought grimly. He would have expected Raoul to rescue him again.

She shook her head. “I didn’t blame you for the Pia thing, but I’m starting to see a pattern here. You play at making a difference, at being the good guy, but none of it is real. You’re too afraid to give what really matters. You’re all flash and no substance.”

She turned away, then spun back to him. “Do us all a favor. Stay away from ‘causes.’ You’ve already done enough damage here.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

RAOUL’S DAY OF HELL ONLY went downhill from there. Dakota left him alone with his guilt. He wanted to do something, hit something—mostly himself. Nearly as bad, he honestly didn’t know if she’d stalked off because she was mad or if she’d quit.

He paced back and forth in the large empty space he’d rented, trying to find an answer. But it all came back to the same thing. He’d let Peter believe in him, and then he’d let him down.

About an hour later, when he was still trying to come up with a plan, Mayor Marsha Tilson walked into his office. Normally, she was someone he enjoyed talking to. But there was something about the way she moved so purposefully that made him aware he might not like what she was going to say.

“I’ve heard what happened with Peter,” she said, getting right to the point. “I must say, I wish things had turned out differently, Mr. Moreno.”