Two of a Kind (Fool's Gold #11)(54)

Gideon pointed to the components. “It’s the Kinect. We’ll try it out after dinner.”

“I played at my friend’s house,” Carter said, dropping to the floor. “It’s fun. I can show you.”

“Good, because I have no idea how this works.” He motioned to a card on the coffee table. “That’ll give you some time online. To play with your friends.”

“Thanks.” Carter picked up the card and studied it. When he put it down, he drew in a breath. “Do you remember my mom?”

Gideon turned so he was facing the cables, even though they were already hooked up. He’d known the question was coming. Even so, he didn’t want to answer it. “Sure. I never forgot her. She was great.”

“She told me how you met. She said you carried in that big dog even though it was in pain and could have bitten you.”

Gideon chuckled. “Yeah, she yelled at me about that. Said I should have known better.”

Without meaning to, he glanced at his son. Carter was staring at his hands. “Did you love her?”

Gideon instinctively wanted to surge to the door. He stopped himself in time and stayed where he was.

He knew the correct answer to the question, and he knew the truth. They weren’t the same. Felicia would tell him this wasn’t about him. That Carter was the one who mattered. For someone who’d never been around children, she seemed to have the instincts of a natural-born mother.

“I loved her,” he lied.

Carter looked at him. “But you had to leave?”

He nodded. “I warned her from the beginning that I would be shipping out, and I didn’t know how long I’d be gone. I never knew she’d gotten pregnant.”

“She told me that. She said she thought about finding you, but by then 9-11 had happened and you would have been sent to war. After a while she stopped talking about you.” Carter turned the card over in his hands. “When she got sick a few years ago, she told me your name. You know, in case she didn’t make it.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

“Me, too. It was cancer. For a while we thought she was going to be fine, but then it came back and she died.” He pressed his lips together. “She dated some, but she always said they didn’t measure up.” He raised his chin defiantly. “She wasn’t waiting for you or anything.”

Gideon hoped not. He wasn’t worth waiting for. Worse, he’d never once thought of going back. Ellie had been in his past.

His son stared at him, as if waiting, as if needing something more. Gideon tried to figure out what he was supposed to say, but there was nothing. After a few minutes Carter got up and walked away, and Gideon was left sitting by himself.

* * *

FORD AND ANGEL started up the ropes. Consuelo watched them intently. The two men kept pace with each other, then as they reached the end, Angel surged upward and hit the bell first.

Consuelo groaned. “How is that possible? Angel broke his shoulder years ago. That limits his range of motion. Ford should have won easily.”

“Maybe he’s distracted,” Felicia said. “Or you’re wrong about the shoulder.”

Consuelo rolled her eyes. “Really? Wrong about it?”

“Sorry,” Felicia said, grinning. “I forgot that you’re never wrong.”

“I can be wrong. Just not about stuff like that.” She turned away from the ropes hanging in the outdoor workout center behind CDS. “At least this time the bet wasn’t about cooking. I don’t think I could stand another week of Ford’s idea of gourmet cuisine.”

“Pretty bad?”

“He’s fine on the barbecue, but everything else is horrible.” They headed for the offices. “This competition is getting out of hand. If they keep at it, one of them is going to kill the other. I told them one of them has to move out. They flipped for it. Ford’s going to look for a place.”

“Does that mean he won or lost?”

Consuelo considered the question, then laughed. “I don’t know and I’m not sure if I care. Although Angel is the better cook. The things that man can do with pasta.”

A plate of his seafood linguini meant doubling her workouts for a couple of days, but it was worth it.

They stepped inside. The temperature was immediately cooler, the light dimmer. She led the way to the break room and pulled two bottles of water out of the refrigerator.

Felicia studied her. “Don’t you find it interesting that you live with two very attractive men and you’ve never dated either of them?”

“Neither have you.”

“I don’t know Angel very well, and Ford always thought of me as a sister.”

Consuelo raised her eyebrows. “Meaning you would have said yes if he’d asked?”

Felicia tilted her head to the left, then the right. “Maybe when we first met but now I don’t have any sexual interest in him.”

“He’s not my type, either.” She wanted something else. Something impossible.

A normal man, she thought wistfully. One who didn’t know a Glock from an M-16 and had never had to slit even a single throat in his life. A guy who watched sports on weekends and grumbled about taking out the trash. A man who called his mother every week and remembered birthdays and thought dinner and a movie was a pretty hot date.