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

at all surprised. “Don’t worry about it. It always happens that way in Pygmalion stories.”

Bo scowled. “Pig—what?”

“From mythology. A guy called Pygmalion sculpted the ideal woman out of stone. Nowadays, it’s shorthand for getting a makeover. You had your makeover. Now you’re her ideal man. And no offense, bud, but it’s about time.”

He thought about the shopping trips, the visit to the barber—correction, stylist—the lessons in manners, elocution, dealing with sponsors and media. “You talk like something was wrong with me before.”

“Oh, sorry, bro. You were perfect before.”

“I’m not claiming I was, but geez. She’s turning me into something…” Someone she can stand to be around, he thought.

“You like her, then,” Noah said. “Now you have to decide what to do about it.”

“I know what I want to do about it, but I’m not her type,” Bo said. “We’re Lady and the Tramp.”

“Thanks to my kids, I know how that one ends,” Noah said. “They have a litter of pups and live happily ever after.”

“Right. Like that’s going to happen.”

“Keep up the attitude and it won’t.”

“It’s just that I’ve never seen it.”

Noah spread his arms. “You’re looking at it.”

He had a point. A year ago, Noah Shepherd had been as unattached as Bo, rattling around in a big house all by himself. Now he was married with a family, and happier than Bo had ever known him to be. This was something Bo could never picture for himself, though. Noah was one of those guys who was good through and through. In contrast, Bo was a total screwup.

“We slept together,” he admitted.

“How was it?”

“The first time, very…restful. We slept, nothing else.”

“Get out of town.”

“It’s true. After that…not restful at all.” Bo couldn’t suppress a grin.

“Hey, Bo, get your skates on,” AJ shouted from the lake. “I’ll race you.”

“I need a beer,” Bo said, switching gears.

Noah laughed. “Sure, that’d be good.”

Resigned to his fate, Bo picked up his rental skates. Sophie and Kim joined them on a bench beside the lake. Kim’s cheeks were bright with color, her eyes dancing with laughter. She looked classy and athletic. And sexy as hell.

“I’m done,” Sophie told Noah. “Your turn. Two against one is too much for an old lady.”

“Hey, no fair playing the old-lady card,” Noah said.

“Daddy, come on, let’s go, Daddy,” his kids shouted.

“I don’t have to play it,” she said. “I am it.” She shooed him away to skate with his kids, then headed off to get some hot chocolate. She was a good bit older than Noah, and Bo suspected she was more sensitive about it than she let on. She shouldn’t be. The two of them made a great couple.

Kim turned to Bo. “Your turn. Skates.”

He shot her a look, but bent to take off his boots.

She patted his arm. “This means a lot to AJ.”

“That’s the idea.” He finished tying his laces and watched AJ for a few seconds. “It sucks, what’s happening to him, but I kind of like having him around. I mean, I’m not saying I’m father of the year or anything like that, but we get along, you know? Even through the hard stuff with his mother.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I didn’t expect…I mean, I don’t know the first thing about being a father.”

“Somebody, somewhere, taught you how to love a child.”

“That’s AJ. He takes me out of myself, you know? Out of my own head. I got to tell you, I’m learning a lot from the kid.”

She laughed. “Good to know. Now, go learn how to skate.”

“I know how to skate.” He stood and headed for the ice, wobbling a little. He hoped like hell he wouldn’t fall on his ass.

Twenty-Four

Since learning his mom had been deported and was in some women’s detention center in Mexico, AJ saw the world differently. Everything was gray to him—gray winter skies, dirty gray snow on the streets, a gray he never saw in the hot Texas sun. Sure, there were moments when Bo tried to distract him and succeeded sometimes, but every moment was weighted with the knowledge that his mother was in trouble and he had no way of getting her out.

Each day, he approached the bus stop like a condemned man to the gallows. Even though running away had been a stupid thing to do, and even though he was forcing himself to get used to Avalon, he still felt the same way—he wanted to be anywhere but here. Yet, realizing anything he did could affect his mother’s status, he was scared into being on his best behavior. He was going to have to figure out some other way to be with his mom again, but he hadn’t quite worked out what that was yet. In the meantime, he moved from day to day, crossing out each square on a small pocket calendar he kept in his backpack.

The middle school was an old-fashioned brick-and-concrete monolith rising out of a snow-covered expanse marked by bare trees and bike racks buried so deep, only the top rail was visible. To AJ, it resembled another planet, like the ice planet Hoth in Star Wars. Inside, the building was a maze of hallways jammed with loudly slamming lockers, and kids who seemed so different from AJ, they might as well have been space aliens. Hissing radiators filled the classrooms with steam, exuding a damp, uncomfortable heat.

AJ sat, subdued, through interminable classes and lectures by teachers who droned on and on in their Yankee accents. Every chance he got, he escaped to the computer lab to log on to the Internet. He kept hoping he would find a way, someone out there in cyberspace, to help him and his mom.

Back home, he used to wish for his own computer, but of course, there was no money for one. And even if there was, there would be no money for Internet service. He’d made do with school and library computers, but he’d never really needed one the way he did now. That was