Jodie frowned at his response. “You intend to keep him from spending time with us?”
“Of course not. It just won’t always be right after school,” he responded, determined to keep control of his son’s activities and whereabouts.
“How can you be so inconsiderate and ungrateful?” she demanded. “After we did this to help you out?”
“If you were really doing it to help me out, you’d have discussed it with me first,” Boone replied mildly. “Don’t get me wrong, Jodie. B.J. will love having you here through the holidays. It’s great that you’re going to stick around. We’ll just have to work out the details about when he’s going to spend time with you. Even at his age, he has things he’s committed to doing, things he enjoys.”
Of course, they all knew that the real goal was to ensure that none of those things involved time with Emily. And with this plan in place, there was little chance they wouldn’t cross paths with Emily and find an opportunity to make things more difficult for her and Boone.
Still, in an attempt to pacify them, he said, “As soon as you get settled in the rental, we’ll sit down and work out a schedule of times you can have with B.J. Since things come up, we’ll probably have to do it on a week-by-week basis.”
Jodie opened her mouth to argue, but Frank put a hand on her arm. “That’ll be great, Boone. Come on, Jodie. We’d better take our things over to the new place and get settled. Since we didn’t come prepared for a long stay, we’re going to need to spend a little time shopping for warmer clothes than we brought, too.”
“Don’t forget you left a few boxes of winter things here just in case you came back up here this time of year,” Boone reminded him. “They’re in the garage.”
For an instant Jodie’s eyes lit up. “That’s right, we did do that. Frank, put those boxes in the car right now. I’d like to have another word with Boone.”
“Jodie, now’s not the time,” Frank said, his expression distressed.
“There’s never going to be a good time,” she argued. “I might as well get this out there now.”
Frank looked as if he wanted to argue, then shrugged and gave Boone an apologetic look before heading out to load up the car.
“What is it, Jodie?” Boone asked, his stomach in knots and his antenna on full alert.
“You should know that if we don’t like how things look the next few months, Frank and I are considering legal action,” she announced.
“So, that’s what this is really about,” Boone said flatly. “You want custody of B.J., and you intend to snoop around looking for excuses to file for it, is that it?”
She nodded, not even bothering with a phony attempt to deny it. “I think it’s what Jenny would want,” she said piously.
He gave her a pitying look. “Then you didn’t know Jenny at all,” he said quietly. “Jenny would want our son to be right here with me. She would want you to play an important role in his life, which is what I’ve been trying my best to allow.”
He held her gaze. “But if you insist on making threats like this, I will keep you away from him, Jodie. And I’ll happily go to court to make that nice and legal, too. I doubt your threats to rip him away from his only remaining parent just because you’re being spiteful will sit well with a judge, not when it’s balanced against my efforts to make sure his grandparents remained in his life.”
She blinked at his quiet resolve. Apparently she’d expected a different reaction, perhaps an explosive one she could use against him. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“I can’t lose that boy, Boone. He’s all that’s left of Jenny,” she whispered brokenly.
“Neither of us needs to lose him, Jodie,” he said more gently. “It’s up to you how ugly this gets.”
She stood up shakily and started for the door. Boone followed. He saw then just how much she’d aged since Jenny’s death and for the first time really understood the toll that death had taken on her. It allowed him to feel sorry for her, rather than focusing on his anger over her threat.
Outside, he touched her shoulder. She glanced up at him.
“What?” she asked.
“I loved her, too,” he said softly. “No matter what you think, I did, and I tried to make sure every day I had her that she knew that.” He knew he’d failed some days, but it was never for want of commitment.
Jodie merely nodded. When she was in the car, Frank glanced over at her, then back at Boone. He lifted his hand in a wave.
“Talk to you soon,” he called out.
“If you need any help over at the new place, let me know,” Boone said.
Frank nodded, then pulled out of the driveway.
Boone watched them go, wishing he could breathe a sigh of relief, but something told him there were plenty of problems ahead. First on the list was how on earth he was going to tell Emily about their decision to stay in town.
* * *
“Oh, boy,” Emily said when Boone informed her that the Farmers intended to stick around for a few months. “How’s that going to work, for you and me, I mean? Am I banished?”
“Absolutely not,” he said at once.
“Then what? You want to rub their noses in our relationship? That’s a surefire way to make trouble for yourself.”
“I was thinking once they got to know you, they’d see that you’re not a threat.”
“Oh, you wonderful, sweet man! You’re as naive as Gabi,” she said. “She said the same thing, that I should show them I’m not the devil.”
“Exactly,” Boone said.
“But I am a
