Full Disclosure (Homefront: The Sheridans Book 2) (6 page)

- RYAN -

A fiery red sun dips behind Southview
Mall in Jeffers, just north of Newton’s Creek. If we weren’t surrounded by a
stark parking lot and warehouse-like buildings right now, I’d be tempted to sit
here for a few minutes and watch the last vestiges of the day fall away.

I’ve traveled to a lot of places, and
have to say that this area north of Newton’s Creek is just about as soulless as
a region can get, filled with fast food chains and big box retailers. I try to
avoid it like the plague. But it’s a necessity tonight, and in the present
company, I don’t even mind.

“You’ve really got a knack for this,” I
say, glancing over at Kim as I open the gullwing doors of my Mercedes SLS. We’ve
been reinventing the concept of a night out on the town, wandering around the
mall for the last hour or so. She’s somehow managed to secure sixteen donations
from stores for the silent auction, everything from $25 gift cards, to a pair
of children’s bikes. She even got one of the anchor stores to donate a flat
panel TV.

I graduated top of my class at NYU, and
got my MBA at Harvard. I can manage a multi-billion dollar company. But right
now in Kim’s presence, I’m feeling like a novice.

She smiles at me, shifting slightly to adjust
to the low seats of my Mercedes. Feeling indulgent, I chose it over the Jag
tonight. I love my Jag, don’t get me wrong—especially since Jaguar’s not
making the four-seater convertibles anymore, so I might never part with it.

But with only two seats, I don’t get to
drive my Mercedes much these days.

“I’ve got you in HR? I’ve got to find a
place for you at JLS where you can use these skills,” I tell her.

She laughs and the sound of it makes my
heart feel lighter, less serious. Actually, the entire evening has made me feel
that way.

“My dad always said I could talk a leg
off a chair.”

With the gullwing doors still open, the
breeze toys with her white linen shirt so that I can see a hint of the camisole
she has underneath.

If she didn’t work for me, I’d be all
over her “like flies on shit” as my grandpa used to say. He was a Marine, so
his vocabulary was a lot saltier than my dad’s, and to this day, I feel like I
take more after him than my father. But I keep that side of me locked up tight
behind my Armani suit.

I’m having fun tonight. Honest to God fun
with a woman who is completely free of ulterior motives. Outside of Allie, I’ve
never been around a woman who didn’t seem like she was trying to impress me. But
with Kim, there are no coy, flirtatious looks or clandestine glances. Every
time we stepped out of a store triumphant with another donation for the auction,
she’d give me a high-five and flash a smile so bright it had to be visible via
satellite.

I haven’t high-fived a woman in my life
till today.

“Have you ever thought of going into
contracts? You’d be excellent at the negotiating table. Or maybe fundraising. God,
yes. That’s it, Kim. If you could get people to part with their money the way
they part with these auction gifts, you’d be a real asset. What did you major
in in college?”

“I was still undeclared when I got
pregnant with Connor.”

I pause as I pull out of the parking lot,
waiting to see if I’ll hear more about Connor’s father. I can’t help being
curious.

I shouldn’t be. But I am.

“Is Hannah settling into school all
right?” She adeptly changes the subject. Somehow, I knew she would. She doesn’t
seem to like talking about her past much, and that’s unusual in the women I
tend to be around these days. Most of them over-share their past as though that
somehow makes them closer to me, or in particular, closer to my family’s
fortune.

Maybe I’m no different from Dylan. I need
to date a different kind of woman.

“Loves it,” I answer her. “The teacher’s
really patient with her. I don’t know if Allie told you, but she’s got ADHD, so
she had a pretty rough time in the bigger classes. We tried the pills, you
know, and nothing really clicked with her.” I always feel the necessity to
explain that last part, and it annoys me that I even feel the need. People are
always butting their noses in, telling me I should try the meds again for her,
but they didn’t hear about the times the school called when Hannah was crying
hysterically, stricken with anxiety, cowering in the coat closet. Or the times
she’d get dizzy—presyncope, the doctor called it—and have to sit
down on the floor of the grocery store just to keep from falling down.

I’m sure for some kids the pills are a
godsend. But for my daughter, the side effects were too hard to handle.

Kim nods. “My brother had ADHD. It can be
hard on a kid.”

I smile. “You say
had
rather than
has
.
Does that mean there’s a light at the end of the tunnel for my girl?”

She’s silent a moment too long, and I
glance over.

“No,” she answers quietly. “I mean, he
died when he was fourteen. He had ALL. It’s—”

“Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia,” I finish
for her, the memories of a few precious young faces being called to the
forefront of my mind. “I’m so sorry, Kim.”

A couple years ago, I started
volunteering for an organization of private pilots who fly patients to wherever
they need to go to get specialized treatments or participate in clinical
trials. Travel expenses aren’t usually covered by insurance and sometimes the
best treatment isn’t close to home. Since I started doing it, I’ve learned more
about cancer, diabetes, heart conditions, and genetic disorders than any other
CEO I know outside of the hospital industry.

Her eyes glance at me as we reach a
stoplight, with a hint of surprise that I know about this form of cancer. “It
was a long time ago.” She shrugs dismissively, but behind her eyes I see the
pain. “Makes being a mom difficult though. Every time Connor has a headache or
a bruise, I pretty much hit the ceiling. I’m a pretty paranoid mom.”

“You’re not paranoid.”

“No, I really am. I’m off the charts with
worry all the time. You’re supposed to think that things like that won’t happen
to your kid. Statistically speaking, you should feel safe. But when it hits a
family member, you can’t find comfort in the odds anymore. So now, any time I
hear about some disease or condition, I’m immediately watching out for symptoms
in Connor.”

 “Second year syndrome.”

“What?”

“What you described sounds like second
year syndrome. When medical students start diagnosing themselves with whatever
they’re studying. It’s a real thing. When I went to NYU, I had a friend who was
in medical school there, and he really suffered with it. You just described the
mom version of it.”

“Yeah, well, it takes a lot of the fun
out of parenthood for me. Even talking about this now will have me checking
Connor for unexplained bruising tonight. Or when I see those St. Jude’s
commercials, I end up scheduling an appointment at the pediatrician just to
make sure there’s nothing I’m missing.”

“Then let’s change the subject,” I tell
her, making a mental note to never mention all the people with life-threatening
conditions I see in my volunteer flying. She’d be sleepless for a month.

But it doesn’t affect me the way it
apparently does Kim. When I fly these kids, I just feel so damn lucky that the
worst thing my daughter has to deal with is ADHD.

“So, do you think this will be a good car
to teach Hannah to drive in when she’s sixteen?” I ask, taking the conversation
in a completely different direction.

Laughing, her head flings back slightly
and I love the motion of her hair when it falls back into place. The chocolate-colored
locks seem to frame her face perfectly, falling just below her jawline, contrasting
to her pale, smooth skin.

“Absolutely not. You need something
boring. Not even that Jag you take in the carpool line will work for a teenage
girl. It’s got half the moms in the line drooling in their minivans. If I was
sixteen driving a car like that, I’d have ten tickets in my first week.”

“Hey, my Jag is practical. Four-seater.”

“There’s nothing practical about a Jag.”

“Well, I got a pretty basic SUV now that
we’ve got a dog.”

“You got a new car for your
dog
?”

I press my lips together, regretting that
I had said that. I’m well aware that I live in a different world than most people,
but my mother raised us to keep our feet firmly planted in the reality where
most Americans reside. “The back seat on the Jag is too small for Hannah now. I’ve
got to pull the passenger seat all the way up to the dash just to fit her legs
in.” I chuckle at the memory of how much space the back seat had for my girl
not that long ago. She’s growing so quickly and I can’t help feeling like it’s
all too fast. “And now I can help transport animals from the pound after Allie’s
new shelter opens up,” I add.

“Any word on when that will be yet?”

“We’re breaking ground next week and
shooting to open next summer.” It was my brother who coerced me into having JLS
establish a charitable foundation and having our first donation to our
community be a new, no-kill animal shelter. There couldn’t be a more qualified
person to run it than Allie.

“We’ll definitely fit more dogs in that
shelter than we could ever save just running out of foster homes. But I just
hope there will be enough people around to adopt them. We’re kind of out in the
sticks.”

I smile. “There’ll be a lot more people
moving to our area.”

“You mean because of that new development
you’re building near the expressway?”

I’m so tempted to tell her about my
bigger vision for this town. Most of the downtown stores are struggling and if
someone doesn’t act now, Newton’s Creek will be leveled and turned into a vast,
characterless span of tract housing—not much different from that area in
Jeffers by the mall.

But I won’t let that happen on my watch.

I can’t tell her about that right now,
though. So I just respond, “There’s a lot of potential in this area, with a commutable
distance to Dayton and Cincinnati. The people will come, believe me. And a lot
of them are going to want to round out their families with a dog or cat from
Allie’s shelter.”

“You’ve thought a lot about this, I see.”

I lift my shoulders casually. “Allie’s
rubbed off on me, I guess. And I’ve got a soft spot for animals. We had lots of
pets growing up.”

At Kim’s direction, I turn off the main
road toward Bergin’s Hotel and Conference Center just outside of Newton’s
Creek. “Do you seriously think they’ll donate a couple nights here?”

She shrugs. “Can’t hurt to ask. It’s
great advertising for them, you know.”

I point out that Orchard Acres is a pretty
small school by today’s standards, and a listing in our auction program really
won’t reach enough people to make a donation of that size worth their time. Dollar
for dollar, they’d be better off using the money elsewhere.

But she just rolls her eyes at me and
says, “It’s not all about the bottom line, Mr. Sheridan.”

She grins as she says the “Mr. Sheridan,”
and her dark eyes crinkle up in the most adorable way.

“Besides,” she adds, “Logan and Allie met
here. So the place might be lucky for us.”

We approach the front desk and Kim asks
to see the manager. She’s all business now, and I swear I’m ready to promote
her to something—anything—on the spot. The idea that a smooth
talker like Kim is withering away inside a cubicle, tells me we are misplacing our
staff.

I shake the manager’s hand when he
arrives, and figure it can’t hurt to mention to him that my brother is staying
in their Presidential suite right now. But I shut up then and let Kim work her
magic. She’s quick on her feet and for every refusal the guy manages to get out
of his mouth, she’s got some rebuttal. Before five minutes has passed, we’ve
got in our hand a gift certificate for a two-night stay here.

“Your calling is definitely not in human
resources,” I mutter under my breath after we step away from the front desk.

“I hope that’s not your way of firing
me.”

I’m tempted to say yes, just so that
she’s forced to find a place that can use this hidden talent of hers. “Hell no.”
I glance at my watch. It’s past dinner, and she’s got to be starved. “How about
dinner? I owe you, since all I’ve done tonight is chauffer you.”

She flashes a grin my way. “And what a
marvelous chauffer. I’ve never done this in a Mercedes before. And those doors
are really wild. What are they called again? Batwings?”

“Gullwings,” I correct, even though I
kind of like the sound of batwings more.

“You don’t have to get me dinner,
though,” she adds quickly.

“Why not? We both actually have
babysitters for the night. We need to live it up while we can.” I edge toward
the hostess stand. Momentarily, I consider calling Dylan to see if he wants to
join us since he might be in the building. But I feel unwilling to share Kim’s
company. “The food here is pretty mediocre, but the people watching is
fantastic.”