Just Another Day in Paradise

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It hit him then. “You’re Kyle?”

The boy nodded. “I remember when you were there. When my dad died.”

He said it levelly enough, but Rider could hear the lingering pain behind the words.

“That was a tough time.”

“My mom said you made sure he got brought home.”

“I did what I could.”

The boy stood up straighter. “Thanks,” he said, and held out his hand. Startled, Rider took it. While the boy’s grip was firm, his palm was sweaty. But the gesture was very adult, and Rider treated it that way.

“You’re welcome, Kyle. I wish I could have done more.”

And in the next instant the boy was back. He plucked a leaf from the hibiscus, and nervously started to fold it into a tiny square. “You going to tell my mom? About me smoking?”

He had been only ten when his father had died, and when Rider had first seen him he’d been dazed by what had happened, not quite comprehending yet that death truly did mean forever. He’d changed a lot, of course, since then, but Rider could still see traces of the child in the teenager, although the sullen set of the mouth was new, as was the half-shaved head with the thick mop of slightly maroon hair above it, and the earrings piercing his left lobe.

“Well? You gonna tell her?”

“I’m not sure.” He drew in a breath; the smell of smoke was fading now. “How much will it hurt her?”

The boy flinched but recovered quickly. “Probably none. She doesn’t care what I do.”

“Oh?” If there was one thing about Paige he was certain of, it was that this boy was her life.

“She doesn’t care about me at all. If she did, she wouldn’t have dragged me here, away from my friends.”

“So why did she?”

“She says it was to keep me out of trouble. But I wasn’t really in trouble, she just doesn’t understand. She never does.”

“At least she cared. Maybe you should be glad of that.”

“Yeah, sure,” the boy said sarcastically. “Look, she doesn’t like my friends, doesn’t like what I like to do, doesn’t like my video games. She doesn’t like anything!”

She liked flying, Rider thought, picturing her face this morning and the huge smile she’d given him when she’d landed.

“And now she’s my teacher, too, and it really sucks.”

“I can understand how that would be tough,” Rider said neutrally.

“She just wants me to work and study all the time.” Kyle added a four-letter word that succinctly pronounced his opinion of that.

“You know, swearing doesn’t make you an adult any more than smoking does.”

“Oh, yeah, and I guess you never swear?”

“Me? Oh, sure I do, when provoked. In fact, I can say what you just said in about nine different languages.”

“Nine languages?” Kyle looked intrigued. Then he frowned. “So why are you on my case?”

“Swearing is best saved to make a point. If you use it all the time, it becomes meaningless.”

“Huh?”

Rider smothered a sigh; he’d never realized talking to teenagers was so much work. “Look, if you wanted to…say, scare somebody with a firecracker. You set one off and they jump. You set off a whole string, they jump at the first one, but by the end of the string they’re used to it and it doesn’t scare them anymore.”

“Oh.”

Kyle said nothing more, but at least he looked thoughtful. Rider glanced at his watch and winced. He wondered if the boy knew he was going to be having dinner with his mother in less than ten minutes. He started walking again, and to his surprise the boy followed.

“Have you seen your mother this afternoon?” he asked.

“Nah. I try to avoid her.” Kyle grimaced. “She’s probably hunting for me for dinner by now, though. If I don’t go back she’ll be really snarly.”

“Actually, maybe not,” Rider told him. “She and I are having dinner at the restaurant in just a few minutes. Chef Aubert is using us as guinea pigs for something new.”

The boy looked startled, then shrugged. “Rudy’s cool. He’s been just about everywhere in the world.”

“I know. I ate at his restaurant in London, and then in Rome. After that I went on a campaign to get him for Redstone.”

“You’ve been to London? And Rome?”

Rider nodded. “And just about every place in between.”

“Wow.” The boy was genuinely impressed now. “My dad used to travel a lot.”

“I know.” He said it carefully, not wanting to open up a subject he had no desire to get into.

“Once he brought me back something, too. A model of the Eiffel Tower, from Paris.”

Odd, Rider thought. The boy spoke as if he’d had the perfect father, with nothing but love and sadness at his loss in his young voice. As if it didn’t matter why his father had been on that plane when he died.

And you’d think a traveling father would bring something back for his only son more than once.

On impulse he said, “You’re welcome to join us for dinner, if you want. You have to eat, anyway, and Rudy always has some good stories to tell when he’s got a captive audience.”

The boy hesitated, and suddenly Rider was anxious for him to come. “Of course, it’ll be kind of adult discussion, so if you’ll be bored…”

“I won’t,” Kyle said instantly, as Rider had thought he might.

And so he had company when he walked into what would be the main restaurant at the resort. Rudy had only been expecting the two of them, but a single extra body, even with a teenage boy’s appetite, was but a minor obstacle for someone with Rudy’s experience.

Paige was already seated at the table when they arrived. She was toying with her silverware, as if too nervous to simply sit still. Rider noticed she had a stack of folders on the seat beside her. They looked like the same ones she’d had at the meeting the day he’d arrived.

“I invited a friend,” he said as they got to the table. She looked up quickly, apparently so intent on the fork that she hadn’t realized they were there. “Hope you don’t mind.”

“No, of course not…”

Her voice trailed away and her eyes widened when she saw her son beside him. “Kyle?”

“He invited me,” he said almost angrily, his chin jutting out slightly.

Rider wondered if Kyle remembered that they hadn’t really settled the question of whether he would tell Paige he’d caught her son sneaking a smoke. If he did, it didn’t show in his attitude, and Rider suddenly wondered why on earth he’d done this, invited the kid. He was clearly furious with his mother, and Rider doubted he himself would be able to stay out of it if Kyle continued to talk to her in that tone.

“Then sit down,” was all Paige said.

Kyle did, glancing at the folders on the chair. He rolled his eyes. “You even brought school stuff here?”

To Rider’s surprise, Paige blushed. “I thought Mr. Rider might want to see how things are going.”

Rider was puzzled as he took a seat across from her, and then it struck him. The school papers were protection, so she could make this seem like a business dinner, not a personal one. He felt oddly disappointed by the realization.

It wasn’t until Rudy arrived and muttered something in his ear about bringing your own buffer, that he realized he’d done the same thing. Inviting Kyle hadn’t been for the boy’s sake, it had been for his. Nothing could get too personal with Paige’s fifteen-year-old son at the table with them.

He almost laughed aloud at the absurdity of it, both of them so busy protecting themselves from the possibilities.

He wondered if that meant she was as tempted by them as he was.

Paige got over her nervousness rather quickly, if only because she was wondering who this kid was sitting at the table. The sullen, snippy teenager she’d almost grown used to was nowhere in sight. This Kyle wasn’t the outgoing, friendly boy he’d once been, but he was considerably more civil and sociable than he’d been with her for longer than she cared to remember.

He seemed more than willing to talk to Noah, and listened to what he said with every appearance of rapt interest. When their food came, he even ate like a normal person, instead of shoveling it in as fast as he could in order to escape. And when Rudy sat down for a few minutes, to get their reviews of his experiment—fresh mahi grilled with his personal choice of spices that had given it a wild combination of flavors that somehow worked—Kyle was downright friendly to him, as well.

Paige was aware she wasn’t sharing in the conversation very much, but it had been so long since she’d seen her son act like a human being she didn’t want to waste it. Even though she realized that to Noah he probably seemed like a normal, even likable kid.

Eventually Kyle asked Noah what time it was, and when he said nearly eight, the boy stood up.

“I gotta go. Thanks, Mr. Rider.”

More courtesy than I get, Paige thought. She was curious about where he was going, but knew if she asked she would only get that pained look he did so well, accusing her of treating him like a child.

“Be home by ten. School tomorrow.”

He glared at her. “This isn’t—” He stopped himself, as if aware that what he was going to say—This isn’t my home—might insult his new friend. “Later,” he muttered, and left.

Paige smothered a sigh.

“How long has the attitude been going on?”

Paige looked at him in surprise. “I thought he was perfectly nice to you.”

“He was. It was you he was treating like a pariah. When he bothered to acknowledge you exist at all.”

She was surprised again—this time that he’d noticed and had bothered to mention it.

She tried to shrug as if it didn’t matter. It did. And she knew there would come a time when she was going to have to start demanding respect from Kyle. But tonight had made it clear that that time was here and now. She didn’t like being humiliated ever, but in front of this man it was unbearable.

“He’s still hurting,” she said. “I know it’s been five years, but they’re very tough years for a boy.”

For a long moment the silence spun out. Noah seemed about to speak twice, but stopped. Then finally, slowly, words began to come.

“After my mom was killed in a car accident when I was Kyle’s age, my dad came down on me hard. He was tough on my sister, Michelle, too, but he really caged me. Stopped me from doing everything except going to school.”