Fooling Around (4 page)

“I’ll call you Friday, then. You can give me your answer then.”

Before she could respond—maybe tell him to go to hell—he’d hung up.

She stared at the phone for a long time, wondering what had just happened, if it was real, if it was something she should even consider.

She tried to push it out of her mind, but she couldn’t entirely do so.

Maybe it wasn’t as crazy as it sounded.

Eric hung up the phone, satisfied that Julie would agree to be his assistant. He’d found most people were easy enough to manage, as long as they were offered the right incentive. Money was the incentive that worked most often.

At the moment, he was alone in the office, since he’d sent Kristin to do an errand and dismissed the nurse back to her agency. He just had to make it through two more days. Then Julie Nelson would come to work for him, and maybe he wouldn’t feel like roaring in frustration at every moment of the day.

He was considering pouring himself a drink when his phone rang. He answered it as soon as he saw the caller. “Hi, Peanut,” he said.

“Hi, Daddy.”

Eric only saw his daughter, Maddy, every few weekends, since she lived in Raleigh with her mother. After Trish had gotten pregnant during a drunken one-night stand, she’d insisted that the girl live a normal life, one not affected by Eric’s money and notoriety. Eric had agreed, since he wanted to be part of his daughter’s life.

He hadn’t realized back then how hard it would be to see his daughter so infrequently.

“How was school today?” he asked, wondering why Maddy had called at such a strange time. He called her every evening, so she called him only if she had something in particular to say.

“It was okay. I left early because I had to go to the doctor.”

Eric stiffened slightly. “I thought your appointment was tomorrow.”

“It was, but he had someone cancel, so I got in early.”

“And how was it?”

“It hurt a lot. They stuck a big needle in my back.”

Eric shuddered at the thought of his eight-year-old daughter going through such a painful procedure. If it made her better, it would be worth it, but it was still deeply disturbing to think about. It was just like Maddy to talk about it in such a matter-of-fact way. “I know. It was a hard thing to go through.”

“Mom says it’s going to make me better.”

“That’s what we’re hoping. You just have to keep being brave to get through the bad stuff.”

For the last three years, Maddy had suffered from a neurological condition that caused debilitating headaches, dizziness, and disorientation. She’d been diagnosed with everything from lupus to an invisible brain tumor, but so far none of the treatments they’d tried had been effective. Eric had finally pulled some strings to get her in to see a specialist at Duke, and they all had great hopes for this latest treatment.

“I know,” Maddy said. “I’m staying brave.”

“Good.” He searched his mind for something encouraging to say and came up with nothing. He was momentarily overwhelmed with guilt that he’d been grumbling so much about a broken leg when his daughter had to live through this.

But one of the best doctors in the world was taking care of her. They had a promising treatment. Pretty soon, she would be okay. If this doctor didn’t work out, then he’d find her a better one.

Once his daughter was better and his leg healed, then his world would be back under his control.

A couple of hours later, Julie was sitting on a stool in her sister’s kitchen, slumped over on the large granite bar. She’d been lonely and confused, so she’d headed over to Marie’s house in one of the new developments about forty-five minutes outside of Charlotte. Her sister had asked her to help chop vegetables for the stew she was making.

A pile of diced vegetables lay on the cutting board, and now Julie was so exhausted she couldn’t move. Her sister was still on the phone, talking to one of her many friends about how hard her mother’s death was on her and how long she’d devoted herself to taking care of her.

At a few points, Julie was hard-pressed not to roll her eyes. Her sister had always been a bit of a drama queen, so it wasn’t anything new. But Marie was talking like she’d been the one to live with their parents, tend to their needs, do all the small, difficult acts of care for them as they aged. At most, Marie had visited a couple of times a week, unless one of them had been in the hospital, when she’d stopped by more often.

“Anyway,” Marie said at last, after taking a sip of the glass of wine she’d poured when Julie first arrived, “I better get going. There’s a lot to do with funeral arrangements.”

There wasn’t anything left to do. Julie had handled all the last details before she’d come over.

Marie looked a lot like Julie, except her hair was highlighted, she always wore makeup, and she worked out every day, so she was in better shape. She pushed her hair behind her shoulders as she hung up the phone at last. “Sorry about that,” she told her sister. “You know how it is.”

Julie actually didn’t know how it was, but she didn’t argue. “It’s fine.”

“Do you think you could go pick up the kids from school in a half hour? I’ve got to finish this stew and clean up, and I’m so sad I can barely move.” Marie drooped back against the counter.

“Sure,” Julie said. She loved her nieces and nephews—although she sometimes thought they needed a little more discipline—and she liked to spend time with them. At least it would be a distraction from thoughts of her mother, of the lonely house waiting for her, of having absolutely no purpose in her life anymore.

Marie brushed away tears from her eyes. “I don’t know how you’re so practical about everything. I feel things so deeply, so any blow makes me fall apart.”

Julie knew from long experience that there wasn’t any use in arguing, explaining that just because she didn’t do high drama didn’t mean she didn’t feel things just as deeply as her sister. “I can pick up the kids.”

“Thank you.” Marie straightened up, her tears disappearing for the moment. “Doug and I were talking last night, and we agreed that you can move in here with us now.”

Julie blinked. “What?”

“Well, we’re going to sell that house, right? It’s a piece of junk, but the property is valuable, being so close to the city, so we could make some okay money on it. Then you won’t have anywhere to go, so we decided that it wouldn’t be too much trouble for you to move in here. There’s that room above the garage. You could teach your classes and help around the house. You know how busy and stressed I always am. Four kids is so much, plus all my community work and taking care of Doug.”

Marie’s days were always packed with errands and meetings and social engagements. Julie was pretty sure her sister could cut her schedule down by half and not lose anything important. She could just imagine what her life would be like, living with Marie. She’d be the live-in, unpaid housekeeper and nanny, while her sister was freed up to go out more often to get her hair done.

But she had no idea what else to do, unless she took Eric up on his offer. She didn’t have the energy to do much of anything right now. And at least with Marie and her family she wouldn’t be alone.

“I’ll think about it,” she said. “I actually have another offer I’m considering.”

“What’s that?” Marie asked, looking surprised.

“It’s a strange thing, but this guy who is really rich broke his leg, and he wants me to be his assistant for three months, since I have so much practice taking care of Mom and Dad.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“Normally I wouldn’t, but he offered me a million dollars for it.”

Julie couldn’t help but feel a surge of pleasure when her sister’s mouth dropped open. “What?”

“You heard me. A million dollars. For three months’ work.”

“Is he legit?”

“Yeah, I checked him out. He seems to be legit.”

“Oh my! Well, you should do it.”

Julie was a little surprised, since she’d assumed her sister would want her to move in and start helping as soon as possible. “You think so?”

“Of course. A million dollars. Think what you could do with it! You could buy us all a huge house. We could go on trips. Think of the shopping we could do. Of course you should take it.”

Naturally, Marie would assume that Julie would want to blow her money on her sister’s family. Julie was too tired to temper Marie’s enthusiasm, since that would probably lead to an argument and more dramatics. So she just smiled and said, “I’m still thinking about it.”

That evening Julie went out with Ned. He’d called her back to check in on her, and he’d said he was going to grab something for dinner and asked if she wanted to join him. No pressure. Just a comfortable dinner she didn’t have to cook for herself.

Since Julie’s other option was to eat stew with Marie and her family, she accepted.

Ned was an engineer. He was kind and quiet and rather plain-looking, but Julie had always liked him as a person.

He seemed to have gotten more boring in the intervening years, however. He asked her about her mother and then about her degree in history. Then he told her about his job promotions and about the deck he was building at the back of his house.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with their conversation. It was normal. But Julie was having trouble not nodding off over their meal.

She wanted to go home and go to bed.

“So what are you going to do now?” he asked as she was stirring what was left of her pasta on her plate. “For your future, I mean.”

Julie gave a little shrug. “I have no idea. It’s hard to think about it right now. I’ve spent so long taking care of my parents.”

“I can understand that,” he said, nodding soberly. “But you’ll need to do something. Will you go back and finish your dissertation?”

“Maybe.”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“I’m just so tired. It doesn’t really interest me anymore.”

“But you’ve already put a lot of money and time into the degree. You should go ahead and finish it.”

Of course she should. She just didn’t want to hear practicalities at the moment, any more than she’d wanted to hear her sister’s dramatics. “I might.”

“Will you move in with your sister?”

“I don’t know. I might.”

“It’s probably a good idea, just so you could save some money while you finish your degree.”

“Yeah.”

The plan made sense. She wasn’t making enough money in adjunct teaching to rent a decent apartment, and after all the bills were paid, there would be almost nothing left from the sale of her parents’ house. If she went back to finish her PhD, she’d have to take out more loans. She hated the idea of it as much as the idea of living with her sister for at least a year.

“What are your other options?” Ned asked, his pale blue eyes watching her with his characteristic seriousness.

She hadn’t been planning to tell him, but now she did, mostly so she could see his expression. She explained Eric Vincent’s offer and felt a stirring of amusement when Ned’s eyes widened.

He sat and thought for a full minute before he finally responded. “Well, that’s what you should do, then. Just three months, after all.”

“Yeah, but I don’t really like this guy.”

“Why would you have to like him? You just have to put up with him for three months. Then you wouldn’t have to move in with your sister, and you’d have plenty of money to finish your PhD.”

Naturally, he was right about that too. All she’d have to do was be patient, bite her tongue when Eric was obnoxious, for three months. Twelve weeks. How hard could it be?

A million dollars might not be much to Eric Vincent, but it would transform everything for Julie.

“I’m thinking about it,” she said.

She was thinking about it more and more.

The next morning when she woke up, she had a few nice moments of comfort, enjoying the warm bed, before she remembered her mother had died.

The memory was crushing, and she cried for a few minutes.

As she cried, a memory slipped into her mind of one of the family’s yearly camping trips. Other than an occasional trip to Myrtle Beach, camping had been the only way her family had spent vacation. When they were younger, they’d all loved it—hiking, fishing, sitting around the campfire and chatting as they roasted marshmallows. But once they’d become teenagers, Marie had always whined about the trips, and Julie had been stressed because she didn’t want her parents to be disappointed that they weren’t all having fun.

One evening, when Julie was thirteen and Marie was fifteen, Marie had been whining again, saying all her friends went to fun places for vacation and got to stay in hotels and eat out. Her father had kept saying they didn’t have money for that, but Marie had just kept it up. “It’s still fun,” Julie had said, seeing the tension in her parents’ faces. “We don’t have to have a lot of money to have fun.”

“I do,” Marie had said. “I hate this trip. I hate this life.”

“Well, this is the life you have,” her father had said, his voice strangely resigned. “No one likes everything about their life, but who you are is always who you are. No use in wishing for something else.”

Marie had huffed off to the tent, and Julie had been upset about the conflict, since she’d never liked it when her sister had a temper tantrum. As she grew older, Marie had rebelled against her father’s attitude toward life. She’d married a man with a good job and built for herself a suburban paradise. She stayed at nice hotels and ate at good restaurants during every vacation she ever had.

But Julie sometimes felt like her sister’s life was a little bit fake, like she’d surrounded herself with the trappings of a life that wasn’t really hers.

Looking around at the small, shabby bedroom she was sleeping in, Julie felt the deepest connection to her parents. This was what they’d been able to afford, and it had always been enough.

She wondered if they’d have wanted her to do this crazy job for Eric and earn a million dollars.

She heard her father’s voice in her head. “Don’t trust anything that comes too easily.”

Then she heard her mother’s voice. “But don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”