Better for Us (4 page)

Chapter 6

T
he first time Ryla walked into Noel’s campaign office in Dallas, Texas, she wanted to turn around and walk right back out. But Jaylen was pulling her toward her father’s office with a great big grin on her face. “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” Jaylen called out as she ran toward Noel.

As the people in the campaign office turned and gawked at the little girl screaming for her daddy, Noel picked her up and hugged her to him. “Hey, baby girl. I’m so glad that you’re finally here. I was missing you.”

“Mmph,” Ryla said.

Noel put Jaylen down and turned to Ryla. “How was the drive up?”

“Fine,” she answered too quickly.

“Did you have a hard time finding the place?” Noel asked.

Ryla began to look around the small office so she wouldn’t have to look Noel in the face, and then said, “I do have a GPS, you know.”

Noel turned to his campaign manager. “Ian, do you mind sitting out here with Jaylen? I need to speak with Ryla for a moment.”

Ian turned to Jaylen and asked, “Would you like me to show you around the office, so you can see what your Daddy does all day?”

“I sure would.” Jaylen grabbed Ian’s hand and skipped down the hall beside him.

Noel walked into his private office and held the door open until Ryla stepped in. The moment he closed the door, he swung around and faced off with her. “Thank you for bringing my daughter to me. Now please feel free to leave at any moment.”

Ryla harrumphed and folded her arms. “I wish I would leave my daughter to you and Cathy O’Dell.”

With a lifted eyebrow he asked, “What does Cathy have to do with anything?”

Oh, now he’s going to play dumb,
Ryla thought. But she had his
Cheaters for Dummies
handbook in the palm of her hand and was seconds away from hitting him upside the head with it. “I know what you and Cathy had going on when we were in college.”

Noel stepped back, the look of confusion apparent on his face. “What are you talking about? Cathy and I never had anything
going on
, as you put it.”

Waving his comment away, she got in his face. “Stop lying, Noel. Because I saw you and Cathy kissing after the play-off game.”

His eyes took on a faraway look for a moment and when he turned back to Ryla, he said, “You left college right after the play-offs.”

She stepped away from him and walked over to the big window in his office and looked out at the staff through wooden venetian blinds. Ryla starred straight at Cathy O’Dell, wondering why she alone hadn’t been enough for Noel. Why he had to go and ruin everything they had by cheating on her. If he had spit in her face, it would have hurt her less than how she ended up feeling after walking into that locker room and seeing Noel with another woman.

From the day Ryla’s father walked out so he could start a new family, she swore that she’d never marry a man like her father. The day she discovered that she was pregnant was supposed to be a happy day. Not wanting to throw Noel’s concentration off, she decided to wait until after the big play-off game to tell him about the baby. Ryla had been so excited that his team had won. And as she walked into the locker room to tell him her news, she just knew that he would feel as if he had won twice that night.

“Was Cathy the reason you left without as much as a goodbye to me?”

She heard the anger in his voice. But as far as she was concerned, all her sympathy for him went out the door the moment she saw Cathy behind that desk, taking calls and barking out orders as if she was working hard to help her man see all his dreams come true. Ryla should have been the one standing by his side, helping him get to the finish line, as the first lady did for the president. With a bit of her own anger, she turned to him. “You were the reason I left.”

He stood there, visibly trying to rein in his fury. “I don’t know how I could have been the reason you left. You never even gave me a chance.”

“You squandered the chance I gave you—” Ryla pointed out toward the office staff “—with Ms. Phone Girl out there.”

“Go home, Ryla. Jaylen and I don’t need you here.”

“Have you lost your mind?” She stepped to him again. “I am not about to leave my daughter here so you can flaunt your women in her face.”

Noel laughed.

“I’m not playing with you, Noel Carter.” She was shaking a finger in his face. “You are not going to parade your women around my daughter. I won’t allow that.”

“Whoa,” he said, lifting his hands. “You’re being a bit overdramatic, don’t you think?”

As Ryla realized that she was acting like someone off her meds, she dialed it back a bit. “All I’m asking is that you keep Cathy away from Jaylen.”

“That’s going to be a little difficult, since we have a small office of about fifteen people and everyone is running on top of each other as it is.”

“Well, aren’t there other campaigns that she can go work for?”

He stared at her for a moment. “Are you serious?”

Ryla knew she was being unreasonable, but she just couldn’t back down. She felt violated by Cathy just as she would have felt violated by any thief that kicked in her front door and stole something from her. She put her hands on her hips and declared, “Either she goes or I’m taking Jaylen back home.”

“Then I call my lawyer,” Noel volleyed back as he walked over to his desk and picked up the telephone.

“You said you wouldn’t do that,” Ryla protested, wondering if she had overplayed her hand.

“That was before you came to my campaign office and started making unreasonable demands.” He pushed a few buttons on the telephone.

Ryla pushed the disconnect button on the phone. “Don’t do this Noel. We don’t need to get lawyers involved.”

Still holding the receiver, Noel’s voice elevated. “If you think you’re going to come in here and make demands after keeping my child from me for seven years, then I think we need a third party to straighten this out. Because I’m not letting you take another minute of my time with Jaylen away from me.”

Ryla surrendered. “Okay, okay, you win. Jaylen stays.... Just keep her away from your little girlfriend.”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Whatever.” Ryla waved his comment off.

The door to Noel’s office opened and Ian quickly stepped in and closed it behind him. “You might want to bring it down a few notches. And in case you were wondering, if they didn’t figure it out when Jaylen ran through the office screaming, ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,’ you two have now informed the entire staff that Jaylen is your daughter.” Ian was glaring at Noel as he leaned against the wall. “Oh.” He held up a finger as if he needed to add one more thing. “They also know that Ryla kept her away from you for seven years.”

“I don’t see why this is an issue. I was going to tell them all anyway,” Noel said.

Rising up from against the door, Ian walked toward Noel. “That is true. However, I just spent the last few minutes introducing Jaylen to everyone and not once did I mention that she was your daughter. Then, as Cathy was showing Jaylen how to work the phone system, everyone heard you yelling about Ryla keeping your daughter away from you for seven years.”

Noel held up a hand. “Okay, I messed up. But we can trust our staff. They won’t repeat anything I’ve said.”

“We don’t just have the staff out there this morning, Noel. We had a few vendors bringing in supplies. So, we’ll be lucky if this information isn’t reported by the nightly news.”

“Noel, that’s why you shouldn’t have demanded that Jaylen accompany you this summer. You’re only making trouble for your campaign that you don’t need,” Ryla said, trying to sound like the reasonable one in the room.

Noel turned on her. “Don’t you go there with me. It wouldn’t be necessary for me to get to know my daughter while I’m campaigning if you hadn’t kept her from me all these years.”

Tilting her head back, Ryla asked, “Do you really want to give the staff and the vendors things to talk about?” She suddenly turned to Ian and asked, “Where is my daughter?”

“She’s fine. I left her with Cathy so that I could come in here and calm y’all down.”

Ian was talking, but Ryla was walking. After hearing that her daughter had been left with man-stealing Cathy, she hadn’t heard another word that Ian said. She swung the door open and rushed to Jaylen’s side as if she needed a protector. “Come on, baby, let me take you to get some lunch.”

“I can do that,” Noel said as he approached the scene.

Cathy stuck out her hand to Ryla and said, “Hey, Ryla, I wasn’t paying attention when you came in earlier. I had no idea that it was you. How’ve you been?”

Ryla quickly shook Cathy’s hand and then let it go as if she would be in need of some disinfectant if she held on a second longer. “I’ve been good, and you?”

“I’m doing great now that I’m finally able to use my political science degree.” Cathy put her hand on Noel’s shoulder and said, “I just can’t thank Noel enough for rescuing me from that boring accounting job I was in.”

“I’m sure you’ve found many ways to thank him,” Ryla said with a knowing look in her eyes. She then grabbed Jaylen’s hand. “Come on, baby.”

“Where are we going, Mommy?” Jaylen asked as Ryla tried to rush her out of Noel’s campaign office.

“Yes, where are we going, Ryla?” Noel asked, keeping up with them.

Ryla swung around. “I’m sure you’re busy, so you don’t need to go to lunch with us. I’m sure I can find my way around.”

Noel opened the door for them, and as Ryla and Jaylen walked outside, he said, “I’ll tag along. I need to get Jaylen’s suitcase out of your car anyway.”

Ryla glared at Noel as they walked toward her car. “I wasn’t trying to run off. I was going to bring her back.”

“Well, this way I’ve got one less thing to worry about.” As they reached her car, Noel said, “Pop your trunk.”

“What for?” Ryla was beginning to get irritated by Noel constantly barking orders at her.

He gave her a “duh” look. “I need to get Jaylen’s suitcase, remember?”

“Actually, you don’t.”

Noel turned to his daughter. “Jaylen, why don’t you get in your mother’s car, so she and I can decide where we’re going for lunch.”

“Okay, Daddy,” Jaylen said as she joyously jumped into the backseat of the car.

Since it was hot out, Ryla got in the car, started it and turned on the air. She then got back out of the car and asked Noel, “What’s the problem now?”

“What are you trying to pull?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about.” Indifference showed all over her face.

“You just said I don’t need Jaylen’s suitcase. So, are you telling me that you didn’t bring her any clothes to wear when you knew that she was supposed to be staying with me for the summer?”

“I brought her clothes, Noel. But Jaylen won’t be staying with you every night. My aunt lives in Dallas, so Jaylen and I will stay with her this summer and she can visit with you every day.” She couldn’t resist her last dig, so she said, “That way, Jaylen won’t interfere with your nightlife.”

Chapter 7

N
oel wasn’t about to let Ryla run his show. He had tried that in college and all he got for his efforts was a broken heart. After getting himself through that ordeal, he’d sworn that he would never let another woman take a piece of his heart as they walked out of his life. As a matter of fact, he now did the walking.

Noel was in his office wearing his carpet out as he tried to come up with a strategy for dealing with Ryla. He adored Jaylen and would forever be thankful that she was his daughter. But when it came to dealing with Ryla—that was another matter altogether. The woman was driving him nuts with her demands and drama. If she wasn’t telling him who Jaylen couldn’t be around, she was dictating how long he could keep her out at night, even though Jaylen was on summer break and didn’t have anywhere in particular to be first thing in the morning.

Ryla was driving him to drink, or at least to think about drinking more than he had in years past. Noel prayed that he could stay away from alcohol and all the things that came with it. But to do that he would need to get Ryla off his back.

A knock on his door stopped Noel’s pacing. “Come in,” he said as he sat down on the leather couch in his office.

Ian stormed in, waving a newspaper around and looking as if somebody had stolen something from him. “I don’t want to say I told you so. But for the record, I did tell you that bringing Jaylen on the campaign trail was a bad idea.”

With his feet propped up on the coffee table, Noel let out a long-suffering sigh. “What’s the problem now?”

Ian thrust the newspaper in Noel’s face. “This means trouble for us, my friend.”

Noel took the paper. The headline read, Former Bad Boy NBA Player Noel Carter Has a Baby Mama. Noel almost laughed at the headline. Because he knew the reason Gary Morrison had bothered to write the fit-for-a-tabloid piece was that he was a wannabe pro baller, trapped in a sportswriter’s fat body. As he read further, he noted that the cruel reporter provided Jaylen and Ryla’s full names, ages and the actual town in which they lived. He did everything but offer up their address and phone number.

Noel threw the newspaper against the wall as he stood and growled. “I want Gary fired for this one.”

Shaking his head, Ian said, “Everything in that article is factual. You can’t get the man fired for printing the facts.”

“Come on, man. Everybody knows that Gary loves to trash me in his column simply because he got cut from the team the same year I got picked up. Now, if that doesn’t show bias in reporting, I don’t know what does.”

“He can have as much bias as he wants, he just can’t lie,” Ian explained. He picked up the paper off the floor and added, “And anyway, there’s worse news than this.”

A storm cloud of hot anger brewed in Noel’s eyes as he asked, “Did something happen to Jaylen as a result of this article?”

Ian waved the notion away. “No, nothing like that. It’s just that this article has been out less than twenty-four hours and your poll numbers have already dropped.”

Noel sat back down. “Polls fluctuate. We can’t hang our hopes on one poll versus another. Last week you were cheesing because I was a point ahead of Dan Bridges.”

“Noel, you have to understand. You are the underdog. Representative Samuel Dwight held that title for six consecutive terms before he died, and his party is not about to just lie down and give his seat to you.”

“Yeah, but Bridges tried to align himself with the Tea Party, and the polls you love to talk about so much show that America is sick of tea. They’d rather have a job or at least an elected official who will actually do something to help the people.”

Ian sat down across from Noel. “The odds are in your favor to win. But it will be an uphill battle, because many of the voters still remember you as a womanizing, gambling drunk, with more money to spend than sense. We need to convince them that you are a changed man. And I’ll be honest with you, Noel. This article about you having a
baby mama
doesn’t help us one bit.”

“I don’t know what you want me to do about it, Ian. I can’t go back to the days when I didn’t know I had a child, and even if I could, I don’t want to.”

“I’m not asking you to deny your child, Noel. I know that you can’t do that.”

Noel shrugged. “Well, then, I guess that’s it. Low-life reporters like Gary Morrison will try to make something of this, but I think people will understand that I didn’t just run out and impregnate some random woman while handing out Vote for Noel Carter buttons. Jaylen is seven years old.”

“I know that, and you know it, but if this news continues to circulate, we both know that you’ll lose this election.”

“What do you want me to do about it, Ian?”

“I’m glad you asked,” Ian said with a sly grin. “Because I do have a solution.”

“How painful will this solution of yours be?” Noel knew that Ian had his best interests at heart, but sometimes the man asked too much of him.

“That depends.”

“On what?” Noel asked cautiously.

“On how you feel about marrying Ryla Evans.”

“What? Have you lost your mind?” Noel prided himself on keeping a level head at stressful times. But Ian was raising his blood pressure with the nonsense he was talking. “Did you just ask me to marry the same woman who kept my child from me for seven years?”

“I know it’s a lot to ask, but you really need to think this through. If you want to win this election, I think you need a wife in order to convince your constituents that as an elected official you won’t be spending your time chasing women and missing important votes on the House floor as an elected official.”

“I hear what you’re saying, Ian. But I just can’t trust Ryla. If she could do what she did to me and Jaylen, what else is she capable of?”

“Maybe she had a good reason for not telling you about Jaylen. Did you ever ask her why she left without telling you she was pregnant?”

“I don’t have to. I figured out what happened about two seconds after she demanded that I fire Cathy.”

“She did what?” Ian’s eyes grew big with Noel’s pronouncement.

“You heard me. And I think I know why,” Noel said with a smirk on his face. As Ian listened intently, Noel continued, “Somehow she got it in her head that Cathy and I had something going on in college.”

* * *

“Mommy, why don’t you and Daddy live together?” Jaylen asked as Ryla was helping her out of the tub while drying her with a towel.

Ryla sighed, as she wrapped the towel around Jaylen and walked her down the hall to the guest bedroom her aunt allowed them to stay in. She didn’t like having conversations with Jaylen about her father. Jaylen always ended up asking questions that were painful for Ryla to answer. “Your daddy and I aren’t married, sweetheart, that’s why we don’t live together.”

Jaylen lifted her arms and let her Princess Tiana gown slide down her body. “Why didn’t you marry my daddy?”

“It’s complicated, Jaylen. I really don’t want to discuss this tonight.”

As Jaylen climbed into bed and pulled the covers up, she said, “But you told me that you wanted to marry Daddy and that if you had the chance you would.”

Ryla remembered their conversation well. Jaylen had been five and her best friend’s mom had just remarried her children’s father. Jaylen came running home with the news. Once she’d told Ryla everything about her friend’s mom and daddy being so happy together again, she’d asked Ryla if she would remarry Noel. Ryla hadn’t even bothered to correct Jaylen with the fact that she had never been married to Noel in the first place. Ryla had thought the entire conversation was moot because she never expected to see or hear from Noel again. So, she smiled and said, “If I ever got the chance, I would marry your dad in a heartbeat.” Now those words were coming back to bite her.

Sitting at the edge of Jaylen’s bed, Ryla tried her best to explain the situation. “Your dad and I are two different people now. He’s changed and so have I.”

“Yeah, but he’s a really nice man and you’re a really nice mom. You guys are perfect for each other. You just need to stop arguing over me so much and then you’ll see what I see.”

Everything was so easy when you were a seven-year-old who hadn’t yet experienced heartbreak. “I wish it were that simple, baby, but sometimes life is more complicated than that.”

Jaylen protested, “Daddy would marry you. Just stop arguing with him so much and you’ll see.”

Ryla laughed. “Okay, baby, I’ll stop arguing with your daddy.”

“And then you’ll get married?” Jaylen persisted.

“If you say so, sweetheart.” Ryla kissed Jaylen on the forehead, then stood and walked out of the bedroom, wondering how in the world she could explain the true facts to her daughter without crushing her spirit. Not to mention the fact that each day she spent with Noel brought back sweet memories of long ago when she loved him and he loved her.... Things were definitely getting more complicated.