Fireside by Susan Wiggs (pdf e book reader txt) 📗

had of his mother. The shot depicted the two of them with their arms around each other, grinning straight at the camera. In the background was some kind of fair or carnival. In the smiling, dark-haired woman, Bo tried to see the girl he’d once loved, but too much time had passed. She looked like a stranger to him. Yet in the photo, the bond between her and AJ was tangible. The kid clearly adored his mother, and having her ripped away from him was probably the emotional equivalent of an amputation. Bo just hoped they could resolve this soon and end the boy’s hurt.

Bo went down to the kitchen for coffee, where he encountered Kimberly van Dorn. The moment he spotted her, he’d felt an instant surge of attraction, a reflex as automatic as breathing, because she was that beautiful. Never mind that she had been sending out not-interested signals since the moment he’d shown up on her doorstep.

“Hey,” he said.

“Good morning.” In plain jeans and a sweater, her hair still damp from the shower, she looked kind of vulnerable, maybe fragile in a way. “Help yourself to breakfast.”

“Thanks.” He grabbed an orange from a fruit bowl and stood over the sink, peeling it.

“Is AJ all right?”

“As all right as he can be, given the situation. Thanks for asking.”

She nodded and took her coffee into the dining room. Bo felt a little easier after the exchange. She seemed cautiously willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he shouldn’t have said anything about how pretty she was, but damn. That would be like walking past a Playboy centerfold and not stopping to admire it. For the time being, Playboy was going to be as close as he could get to an actual relationship with a woman, because having a kid didn’t leave him any time for dating.

On the AJ front, things were not going so hot. He’d come downstairs and refused breakfast. A few minutes later, he sat slumped in the passenger seat of the Z4, staring out the window and staying conspicuously silent as they drove into town, on their way to register him for school.

“I never saw the snow except in pictures,” Bo said, “until I moved up here in ’04 to play baseball. Why anybody would want to move here if he didn’t have to is beyond me.”

En route, they passed the offices of Peyton Byrne, Esq., a local lawyer, the establishment marked with a discreet hand-lettered sign. Bo never looked at that sign without feeling an unpleasant twinge of memory. Last year, Byrne had repped some crazy-ass woman in bringing a paternity suit against him, and he’d had to hire Sophie Bellamy just to get the test results—negative—admitted before the court. After AJ, Bo had been scrupulous about birth control.

Bo decided not to share that particular Maury-Povich moment with his son. He did want to get more friendly with the boy, though. Win him over a little. Ordinarily, this was not a chore for Bo. Growing up as he had, he had learned at an early age to turn on the charm in order to get what he wanted. Sometimes, personal charm was the only thing in his arsenal.

“There’s a winter carnival every year,” he continued, gesturing at Blanchard Park as they passed it. “They’ll build an ice sculpture as big as a house. They cut huge chunks of ice from the lake.”

“Uh-huh,” AJ said, his breath misting the car window as he kept his gaze trained away from Bo.

“You ever read a book called The Last of the Mohicans?” Bo asked. AJ liked books. Maybe they could find something in common.

“Nope,” AJ said.

“It’s by James Fenimore Cooper. I had to read it for English class when I was in high school. And I’m sorry to tell you, it was the most god-awful, boring thing I’ve ever read. It’s about the Indians who lived here when the French and English guys first came over. They had a word for the big water between the forested mountains—Glimmerglass. I didn’t much care for the book, but I still remember that word. When I look at the lake, I can kind of see how the guy came up with a word like that. I swear, in the summer that’s just how it looks. The rest of the story, I can do without. I usually like fighting in books, but in this one, even the fighting was boring. The whole thing is about a white guy named Natty Bumppo, living with the Indians. Who the hell could take him seriously with a name like that? Natty Bumppo, for chrissakes.”

“How is that any less weird than Bo?” asked AJ.

“You got me. Hey, listen, I thought after we finish with the school stuff today, we could go to the gym. I have to stay in training. Sixty throws a day, minimum. You might like the gym. Good pickup games of basketball, a pool. Great snack bar, too. What do you say?”

“Sounds okay.”

So much for trying to sweet-talk the kid. And honestly, Bo didn’t blame him for being unhappy and suspicious. Given the way Yolanda had misrepresented Bo to AJ, it was no wonder the boy didn’t trust him. To salve her own conscience, or perhaps to mollify her now-ex-husband, she’d led AJ to believe his biological father had never cared enough to want to see him, and that the presents and monthly checks were sent out of guilt. She’d characterized him as a ballplayer living the high life. That part, at least, had a grain of truth. He was a baseball player. If drinking and getting laid regularly constituted the high life, then yeah, he’d cop to that. What was omitted was the fact that, up until a couple of months ago, he’d earned next to nothing from baseball. The checks often represented his food budget for the week. Yet he’d never once considered stiffing AJ. Bo remembered what poverty was like, and he wouldn’t wish it on any