She caught up with him. “I’ll do whatever you ask me to do to make this fundraiser happen safely. But keep your hands off my son.”
His control snapped. “What the hell is your problem? I didn’t hurt your kid. I was trying to insert a little discipline into a situation that was getting completely out of control-”
“It’s not your place to discipline my son.”
“I just tried to get him to be quiet so you could do your job,” Harlan threw back at her. “The kid could talk paint off a wall, and he has no sense of control over his impulses. Do you let him just do whatever he wants whenever he wants?”
“He has impulse control issues because he has Asperger’s syndrome,” Stacy snapped back. “Ever heard of it?”
Harlan shook his head.
Stacy shoved his coat at him. “Look it up. And if you can’t deal with what you find, stay far away from my son.”
He stepped out into the cool October evening, wincing at the sound of the door shutting firmly behind him the second he stepped through the opening.
“That went well, don’t you think?” he asked the waxing moon rising over the cottonwood trees to the east.
The moon remained silent.
He glanced at his watch. Just a little after seven-thirty. And he’d barely touched his burger.
Yeah, a spectacularly successful night all the way around.
Maybe he could coax the cook at the ranch house to make him a sandwich. He could eat it in the office the governor had set up for him down the hall from her own.
Anything was preferable to going to his lonely, sparsely furnished apartment and trying to pretend it felt like home.
Or that he didn’t feel like a complete idiot.
“ARE WE GOING to get a horse?” Zachary asked.
Stacy’s head was pounding, but she tried not to let her son see how much stress she was feeling. “Zachary, we don’t actually own this house. Ms. Lila just lets us live here, so we can’t bring a horse onto her property. She has her own horses and you get to ride them sometimes, don’t you?”
“Only sometimes,” Zachary complained. “I want a horse I can ride all the time. And I can feed it apples and carrots and give it a name I pick. I think I would name him Zachary’s Horse. Because he’d be mine. And a horse.”
Stacy let out a soft chuckle, feeling a bit of her tension beginning to ease away. “Zachary, we’re going to be staying here with the governor for a long while more.” At least, she hoped they were, although if Harlan McClain was the vindictive sort, he could be making trouble for her even as they spoke.
She pushed the bleak thought aside. “We’re just going to have to ride Ms. Lila’s horses for now. If we ever get our own place, though, and we have enough room and it’s not against the law, we’ll talk about getting our own horse. I promise.”
Zachary looked as if he were inclined to argue some more, but Stacy couldn’t spend the rest of her evening treading the same rhetorical ground with her son when her job might be dangling by a very thin thread.
“Zachary, would you like to go see Chico?” she asked, taking her son by the hand. Chico was the half-Siamese cat that belonged to the governor’s groundskeeper, Miguel. The cat seemed to disdain most visitors, but for some reason, he loved Stacy’s young son.
They walked along the dark path to the original ranch house, where the ranch staff now worked, and dutifully checked in with the guard at the checkpoint. Miguel and his wife, Rhonda, greeted her and Zachary with delight, and almost immediately, Chico wound himself around Zachary’s ankles, purring audibly.
“Rhonda, I’m so sorry to ask this of you, but can you keep an eye on Zachary for a few minutes? I need to speak to the governor for a little while.”
“Of course, we’ll watch him,” Rhonda said immediately, smiling her understanding. Rhonda and Miguel had become her immediate allies here on the ranch, as they had a grandson with autism and understood the challenges their own daughter and son-in-law were now facing.
Stacy was very lucky to be surrounded with so many people who were willing and eager to help her out with her son. She just had to make sure she still had this job come morning.
As she walked back to the main house, she spotted Harlan McClain’s shiny black truck parked in the side parking area, near the governor’s office and the smaller office the governor had set up for him earlier that day.
So he’d gone from her house straight to see the governor. That couldn’t be good.
Tamping down her dread, she signed in with the man standing guard at the side entrance and entered, heading straight to the governor’s office. She expected to find her deep in discussion with Harlan, but to her surprise, the governor was alone.
“I’m surprised to see you here so late, Stacy.” Lila slipped her glasses off and waved at the empty chair in front of her desk. “Have you hit a snag with the fundraiser?”
“No, I- No. Everything’s going surprisingly well. I was able to reach more people on the first call than I expected.”
“Perhaps my recent brush with death has made people feel more inclined to take your calls,” Lila said with a wry smile. “In case it’s their last chance to do business with me.”
“Don’t even joke about that,” Stacy said, her stomach aching with the memory of just how close they’d both come to dying only a couple of days earlier.
“Sorry. Sometimes the only way to deal with a bad memory is to laugh at it.” Lila leaned back in her chair. “So, if you’re not here with a work problem, it must be something personal. Is your ex giving you trouble?”
“No, I haven’t heard from Anthony in a couple of months.” Stacy started to get up, realizing she’d made a mistake coming here. She wanted to hide her troubles from the governor, not lay them at the woman’s feet.
“Sit. Spill.”
Stacy resumed her seat. Before she knew it, she’d told the governor everything about her disastrous reaction to Harlan McClain’s attempt to discipline her son. “I know he meant well, but I didn’t take it well. You know how defensive I can be when it comes to Zachary-”
“And you thought he’d come here and tell on you?”
Stacy nodded. “I guess that was stupid, huh?”
“Not stupid, but I have to tell you, if you were worried that I’d sack you just because some big strappin’ hunk of a fellow came in here telling tales, you don’t know me very well. A man who’d tattle like a grade-schooler about something so petty isn’t the sort of man I’d want guarding my rose garden, much less my life.”
Stacy smiled. “So he hasn’t even spoken to you tonight?”
“He dropped by a few minutes ago to make sure it was okay for him to stay late and do a little work. He didn’t mention seeing you.”
Stacy felt a sliver of guilt dig into the center of her chest. Here she’d been expecting the worst from him, and he hadn’t even mentioned seeing her at all, much less spilled all her deep, dark secrets. “I guess I’d better go apologize for snapping at him.”
“Might be a good idea,” Lila agreed. “You know where to find him.”
Stacy left the governor’s office and walked down the long hallway, past her own office, to the office she and the governor had helped set up earlier that morning. The door was open a few inches, but Stacy knocked anyway. “Mr. McClain?”
He looked up as she entered, his expression wary. He filled the small office, not just with his muscular chest and broad shoulders but also the intensity of personality burning in his dark eyes.
He gave her a brief, businesslike nod. “Ms. Giordano.”
“Mr. McClain.” She paused where she stood a few feet away from him, trying to figure out what to say next. She could explain herself a little more directly, tell him why her salary was so important, how it paid for the therapies that gave her son half a chance at a more normal life. She could tell him how she hadn’t anticipated being left alone to deal with her son’s problems without his father’s help.
But when she opened her mouth to speak, only one word came out. “Sorry,” she said.
