“Good job,” Daria said. “But do you see a problem?”
“No.”
“Back up a little.” The boy did so. “Now walk toward me.”
He started to do as she’d said. Then, suddenly, just before his face would have collided with the protruding skillet handle, he yelped, “Oh!” Samuel reached and moved the skillet so the handle wasn’t sticking out.
“Wow, you figured that out quick,” Daria said. And Stefan felt the strangest sensation somewhere in his chest as his son beamed at her. He’d been wrestling with the boy for a month now, and she had charmed him in fifteen minutes flat.
Not only that, but when she’d finished preparing the thick, melted cheese sandwich, the boy gobbled it down, along with a big glass of the milk Samuel had looked at scornfully when Stefan had offered it to him.
“Now, let’s get you to bed, so you can be all rested up to attack tomorrow.”
The boy seemed to like the way she put it and happily headed into the bathroom next to his bedroom to brush his teeth. Daria stood in the doorway, saying, “Look at you—you don’t even need a step stool, you’re so tall. Are you sure you’re not six or seven?”
Samuel gave her a toothpaste-laden grin. And just to further emphasize the difference, he jumped into bed happily. Daria pulled the covers up over him as she said, “Kind of a big bed, huh?”
“Too big,” Samuel muttered, so low Stefan almost couldn’t hear it. He frowned. A bed was a bed, wasn’t it? If you fit in it, what did it matter how big it was?
Well, unless you had someone like Daria in it with you.
He could feel the pressure on his teeth telling him just how hard he was clenching his jaw to make sure he didn’t say anything even vaguely like what he had just thought.
“I see you’ve got some fun books there,” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed as she gestured at the two colorful books on the nightstand.
“They’re dumb,” Samuel pronounced. “For babies. Teacher reads it to us. ‘The cat chased the mouse.’ What kind of story is that?”
“I see. I guess you’d better learn to read yourself in a hurry so you can get into the good stuff.”
For the first time, Samuel glanced at his father. “You mean like the boring stuff he reads?”
Daria didn’t look at Stefan. She was fixated on his son as if he were the most interesting person in her life. “Boring, huh? What doesn’t it have that it should?”
Samuel thought, his brow furrowed. “Dragons. Maybe spaceships. Or a cool dog, not a silly cat.”
“Hmm,” Daria said, and she pulled out her phone. “I might just be able to help you there.”
Stefan couldn’t see what she was doing from here, but he was afraid to move from the doorway and shatter the mood. Plus, he was feeling decidedly extraneous, unnecessary. Add to that the realization that was dawning that he’d never quite thought of his son as a person with opinions and ideas of his own, and he was feeling like a complete failure. Again.
He watched as Daria held out her phone for Samuel to see. “Maybe a dog like that?”
“Yeah!”
“Well, I just happen to have his story right here. Want to hear how it starts?” The boy nodded excitedly. “Okay,” Daria said. “But you have to listen with your eyes closed, so you can imagine the story in your mind better.”
Obediently, Samuel’s dark eyes closed.
She swiped a finger across the screen, obviously opening what was a reading app. And then she began to read in a low, pleasant voice. But when she got to dialogue, her voice took on a different tone for each character, making it come even more alive.
Stefan found even he was caught up in the story of a lost dog looking for home. And when she stopped what seemed like a very short time later, he realized he was waiting for Daria to begin again. But instead she brushed her fingers gently over Samuel’s cheek, stood up and stuffed her phone back into her pocket. Only then did Stefan realize his son was fast asleep.
“You’re a miracle worker,” he said softly when she had crossed the room to the doorway.
“It didn’t take that much.”
More than I’ve got, apparently.
He backed out into the hallway and stood there, still a little in shock, as Daria pulled the door closed behind her. Well, almost closed; she left it open about an inch. When he reached for the knob to close it the rest of the way, she looked at him curiously.
“Don’t you leave it open a little so you can hear him in the night, if he needs anything?”
In fact, he had not. It had never occurred to him. He had looked upon the closing of that door as a sign they had survived another day, and usually felt a sense of relief that made him also feel guilty.
“I…didn’t think of it. We used to, when he was a baby, but I didn’t think—Damn, I suck at this,” he muttered.
Turning away, he headed down the hall, embarrassed that she’d seen him at his most…ineffective. She followed him into the den, where he powered up the laptop and began to set it up to mirror onto the flat screen that was actually bigger than the one at the office.
“The first time you shot for a score, was it perfect?”
He stopped, wondering where that had come from. Looked over his shoulder at her. “Of course not. I’d never shot at a target before.”
“Exactly.”
“What?”
“You didn’t expect to be a crack shot the first time, so why expect to be dad of the year when you’ve only just jumped back into the parenting pool?”
He blinked. “I…never thought of it like that. I mean, he’s five, and…”
“You said you hadn’t had much contact since the divorce?”
“No. And what we had was…strained.”
“And you’ve been on your own for a couple of years now, so in essence, you’re starting over. Building from scratch, and that takes time.”
Stefan looked at his watch, not realizing why until the thought formed in his head. In the space of less than half an hour, Daria Bloom had both charmed his son and made Stefan himself feel so much better in the process.
“Miracle worker,” he said, “doesn’t even begin to describe it.”
Daria tried to focus on the screen as they laboriously went through the security video as promised, frame by frame, but her mind kept drifting back down the hall to where a little boy slept. He was a sweet kid who was just feeling helpless right now, ripped out of the life he knew and plunged into another world. A world that clearly hadn’t ever had him in mind. No wonder he was snarly. It was self-preservation. Especially if what he’d said was true—that some man in his mother’s life didn’t like him and so he was discarded. At least her own mother had had no choice. She couldn’t imagine what it would have felt like to know she just hadn’t wanted her child.
And even more disconcerting, she kept looking up and finding Stefan watching her. Something in his eyes unsettled her.
“Problem?” she finally asked.
“Sorry,” he said with a slight shake of his head. “I just can’t get over how you handled Sam. Samuel.” He