The Billionaire's Allure (The Silver Cross Club Book 5) (22 page)

“You’re making a mess,” I told him.

He smiled at me and licked his fingertips. “But you’re smiling, so it’s all worthwhile.”

He wasn’t sweet, or charming. He didn’t make my heart pound, or my breath come faster.

Not at all.

The hotel he had picked was a bed and breakfast in a lovely brick home in downtown Ithaca. The smiling proprietress led us to our room and explained that breakfast would be served on the front porch starting at 7:00 the next morning. She told us to call the front desk if we needed anything at all, and then swept off and left us alone in the room.

I sighed and set my overnight bag on the floor beside the bed. The room was wallpapered in a small floral print, and the bed looked soft and cozy. The adjoining bathroom was painted a cheerful coral and had a deep soaking tub occupying one corner of the room. I planned to take full advantage.

Max, leaning in the doorway to the bathroom, said, “Everything to your liking?”

“It’s really nice,” I said. “Have you stayed here before?”

He shook his head. “I just picked the place that had the best breakfast.”

How like him. “And on the porch, no less. I’ve always like dining
al fresco
.”

“I can’t tell if you’re making fun of me,” he said, “but I’ll take it. Beth, are you going to be okay?”

“What do you mean?” I turned away from him to examine the little bottles and soaps lined up beside the sink.

“You’ve been quiet all day,” he said. “It isn’t like you. I know you’re worried about your mother. Will it really be that bad?”

“Not at first,” I said. It always started out fine. She cried and told me how happy she was to see me, how grown up I looked, how proud she was that I had turned into such a responsible young woman. She would look for work. She would find an apartment and a part-time job, and then something would happen—I was never sure what—and she would start using again, and then she would start dealing again, and then I would get a call at some random hour of the day or night and I would have to go down to the station and tell the officer that, yes, she was my mother, and that I wasn’t going to post bail. And then it started all over again. The whole miserable cycle.

Maybe this time would be different.

I always thought that, and it never was.

I went back into the bedroom and unzipped my bag. I needed to make a list of everything I had to do.

Max followed me. He lingered by the bed, watching me. “Beth, there’s something I need to tell you.”

“What is it?” I asked absently. Once we got back to the city, I would need to unpack my mother’s things from where they were stored in my bedroom closet, and get in touch with her parole officer to see if she could have a case worker assigned. I needed to help her sign up for food stamps. I needed to see about getting her a work placement. God. I rubbed my face and looked up at Max. “Sorry. What did you want to tell me?”

He hesitated. Then he smiled at me and touched my cheek. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Don’t worry about it.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Beth

We drove to Willard in the morning. It was Friday. My mother had been taken back to the treatment facility for paperwork and final processing. We sat for a while in the waiting room, side by side in uncomfortable molded plastic chairs. Max held my hand. A little toddler, waiting with a man who looked just slightly too young to be her father, rolled a toy train along the floor and babbled to herself. The man met my eyes and we shared a weary smile, the kind of smile that said
here we go again
. I wondered who he was waiting for.

Finally, a woman in uniform came to the door and said, “Patterson?”

I rose. Max shifted his weight, but I put one hand on his shoulder and said, “They won’t let you in. Family only. I’ll just be a few minutes.”

“Okay,” he said, although I could see he didn’t like it.

I showed the guard my ID. She studied it narrowly, her eyes darting back and forth between the picture and my face. As if some random stranger would come here to take responsibility for my mother. But at last she was satisfied, and she led me down a short hallway to a room where my mother was waiting, a large plastic bag held on her lap.

I stopped in the doorway. “Hi, Mom.”

Her head lifted, and she saw me. Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Beth. You came.”

She looked better than she had on previous pickup days. Her hair was neatly styled, and the whites of her eyes were clear, not tinged with yellow. Her clothes were clean and pressed. She didn’t look like a drug addict. She looked like a responsible citizen, an ordinary person, someone I would pass on the street without a second glance.

I knew it wouldn’t last.

We hugged, me a little tentative, her clinging to me and sniffling. “My baby, my Beth,” she said, patting at my face. “Oh, what a good girl you are, to come all this way for me.”

What choice did I have? Who else would come? But I didn’t say it. “A friend drove me,” I said. “He’s waiting for us. Come on, Mom. We’ll be back in New York by tonight.”

The guard let us back to the waiting room, walking close behind us, like she thought maybe my mother would bolt back into the facility at the last second, desperate for the security of prison and terrified of the world outside. I’d heard that happened, sometimes, to people who had been in prison for a long time. Not my mom. She was always happy to get out.

Max climbed to his feet when we entered the waiting room. My mother glanced at me, silently asking with her eyes if this was him, the friend I had referred to. I told her with my eyes that he was. We looked at him as he walked toward us, and I saw him then as my mother no doubt did: tall, handsome, wearing a light sweater that looked expensive and probably was. White. Rich. Everything about him screamed money. Not flashy new money. Old money, the kind of money that had stopped thinking about money, that lived in a blissful state where money was no object and didn’t matter. But it still mattered to everyone else.

And I loved him, money or not, fancy sweater or not. He couldn’t help being who he was, any more than I could, or my mother. He was just Max.

“Mrs. Patterson,” Max said, and shook my mother’s hand.

She gave me another look, like:
Really? Him?
But I could tell that she was impressed.

“Mom, this is my friend Max,” I said. “He offered to drive up here with me.”

“That was very kind of you,” my mother said. “Please, call me Donna.
Mrs. Patterson
makes me feel old.”

I waited for him to say something smarmy, like how a beautiful young lady like her could never look old, or whatever, but he just smiled and said, “Donna it is. Would you like for me to take your bag?”

We went out to the car, and I saw my mother take its measure: a nice sedan, expensive, but nothing out of the ordinary. “What a nice car,” my mother said.

“It isn’t mine, I’m afraid,” Max said. “Just a loaner.”

I shot him a look. Had he rented a car just to drive me upstate? He returned my gaze, very bland, and I knew then that he had.

What a liar. But what else did I expect, from a former thief?

“Don’t be mad at me,” he said in a low voice, the two of us standing beside the open trunk as my mother settled into the passenger seat. “I knew you would argue, and I wanted to do this for you.”

“I’m not mad,” I said. “How could I be? Oh, Max. You do everything right. It isn’t fair for you to be so perfect. I’ll never measure up.”

He made a face. “I’m far from perfect.”

“False modesty doesn’t become you,” I said, and pushed up on my toes to kiss his cheek.

We had a quiet drive back to the city. Max chatted with my mother in the front seat, and I sat in the back and tried to decide what I was going to do. I had to let her stay with me, at least for a few days. Until I could find her a place of her own. I would probably need to pay her rent for a few months, until her paperwork for housing assistance went through.

This was always the hardest part. The hoping. The insidious thought that this time would be different.

We stopped for lunch in a nondescript town in northeast Pennsylvania. When Max excused himself to use the restroom, my mother leaned across the table and said, “Beth, where did you
find
this boy?”

I sighed, and set down my fork. “Mom…”

“Not that I disapprove,” she said. “He
is
your boyfriend, right?”

Worse and worse. “Mom…”

“That’s fine, don’t tell me,” she said, putting on a hurt expression.

I groaned and rubbed my eyes. The guilt trip worked on me every time. “Okay. Fine. Yes, he’s my boyfriend. I guess. We haven’t really talked about it. I met him, uh.” Landmine. My mom didn’t know that I had been homeless. “I’ve known him for a long time. We got to be friends after Grandma died. But we lost touch for a while, and we just reconnected about a month ago.”

“Well, he seems very nice,” she said. “And rich, too, isn’t he?”

I sighed again. “Yes, Mom, he’s rich. Tech money. He ran a few start-ups.”

“Hmm,” she said, looking at me thoughtfully. “Well, just make sure you get married before you start giving me grandchildren.”

“Mom!” I yelped. “I am
not
having babies anytime soon.” I really didn’t want to have this conversation. Over her shoulder, I saw Max coming our way, winding through the scattered tables. “We need to stop talking about this now. He’s coming back.”

“Later,” my mother agreed. “Have you met his people yet?”

He didn’t have any, but that was another conversation I wasn’t ready to have. “Not yet.”

Max slid into the booth beside me. “Are you ladies enjoying the meal?”

“Delicious,” my mother said, beaming at him.

I closed my eyes and prayed for death to take me.

When my mother, a few minutes later, made her own trip to the restroom, Max rested one hand on the back of my neck and rubbed at the tense knots there. “You holding up okay?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Fine. She isn’t—this is the good part, you know? She’s happy. She’s glad to be out. She thinks everything is going to work out great, and that this time she’ll stay clean and be part of my life and—everything. But I can’t just relax and enjoy it, because I know it will all go to hell in a handbasket before too long.”

“Not necessarily,” he said. “Maybe this time she
will
stay clean.”

“That’s not how it works, Max,” I said. “You can’t just snap your fingers and make her quit being a drug addict. Money can’t fix everything.”

“Can’t it?” he asked. I turned my head and stared at him. “Beth, you know I’ll do whatever I can. If she needs an apartment, a drug counselor, the best outpatient services money can buy…”

I leaned against him, and he slid his arm down to wrap around my shoulders. I let myself rest there for a minute, taking comfort in him, the warm, solid heat of his body, the easy confidence of his approach to life. “I can’t ask you to do that.”

“And you didn’t,” he said. “Haven’t we had this conversation before? I want to help you. Let me.”

“Okay,” I said, and felt a weight lifting from me, a burden I had carried alone for too long. “Okay. You’re right. Thank you.”

He kissed my temple, and we sat there together until my mother returned.

* * *

The next few days were a blur. I had taken a day off work for the drive up to Willard and back, but I still felt too guilty about my trip to San Francisco to take any additional time. And so, for several days in a row, I woke up far too early after far too little sleep and spent the morning and early afternoon running around to various government offices before I left for work. My mother was sleeping on my couch and making vague noises about how she didn’t want to be any trouble, which meant I had to spend time reassuring her that she was no trouble at all and that I was happy to have her stay with me—for a very short time, until she was able to get her own apartment.

She understood. We’d had that argument years ago, about how she couldn’t stay with me long-term. That was the first time I successfully set any boundaries with her, and it had been excruciating. She cried and told me I was a terrible, ungrateful daughter. But I had held fast, somehow, and now it wasn’t even a question, beyond a few half-hearted mentions about how nice it would be for us to live together for a while.

“I’m sure it would be nice, Mom,” I said, filling the kettle with water to make coffee, taking care to keep my voice light and even. “But that isn’t going to happen. We’ll find you a place of your own.”

“Maybe I’ll get a dog to keep me company,” she said, a little wistful.

What a terrible idea. I would have to nip that one in the bud. She couldn’t even take care of herself, much less a helpless animal. “Not right now,” I said firmly. “We can talk about it again in six months.”

I didn’t like it, having to be the adult in my relationship with my mother. I had memories of her, from my childhood, as a capable, confident, ambitious woman. But life had changed her, and now she was hesitant, uncertain. Always looking to me for approval or advice.