Old Flames

Old Flames: Chapter 11

"Does Lainie know of this?"

"According to her lease agreement, she is to be notified soon," his father explained without going into further detail.  Aaron had a good idea what those details enailed.

"No," he said.  "I won't do it."

Richard kept his smile in place, stretching the skin of his lips uncomfortably.  "You haven't even heard what I'm asking yet."

"You want me to ask Lainie to give up her lease," Aaron said, more calmly than he felt.  "I won't do it.  She just lost her husband, she's just settling down into a house, and her children have been through enough change and heartache as it is.  If you need her to leave, then you ask her."

He watched as his father's face grew panicky.  "I can't."

"Considering as how you don't own the property yet, I assumed as much," Aaron said.  "But as you said, that will change.  I won't take on your responisibilities, misguided and evil as they are."

Studying his son for a long minute, Richard quietly asked, "You think I'm misguided and evil?"

Not wanting to hurt his father, because the same blood ran in both their veins, Aaron slumped his stance.  This was another reason he couldn't be around his dad very much.  He might despise him, but he didn't have it in him to not love his father.  Never before had the old addage, You can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family, rang true.  If that were the case, Aaron would have been shopping for new parents from the start.  A mother without cancer and a father without a flighty nature.

Instead of answering and telling a boldfaced lie, Aaron said, "Just ask Lainie yourself.  If you present yourself in the right way, she might understand, but I wouldn't count on it.  She doesn't like you much."  She doesn't like me much right now either, he thought to himself.

With that, Richard dropped down onto Aaron's napping cot and rubbed his graying temples.  Aaron recognized the acting for what it was.  He kept his expression nuetral, not allowing himself to feel manipulated or burdened by the deception of sadness.

"I meant what I said," Richard sighed forlornly.  "I can't go anywhere near Lainie Moon."

That brought a frown to Aaron's brow.  "Why not?  She file a restraining order that I don't know about?"

His dad laughed harshly.  "You could say that."  When his eyes met Aaron's, Aaron saw something inside them that he had never seen before...regret.

"I upset her, didn't I?" Richard asked.  "All those years ago."

"You upset everyone," Aaron pointed out.

Richard stared at his hands.  "I never told you what happened afterward, did I?"

"After what?"

The man shook his head slowly, not raising his head.  "After what happened with Genna...Lainie was very upset about it.  When she found out and confronted her mother, I received another visit from a very angry Genna Moon."

Aaron had a hard time picturing Lainie's mom as angry.  He barely knew the woman, but she seemed more ditzy and scatterbrained than anything.  In all these years, Aaron never knew there was more to that fateful day.  "What happened?"

His dad snorted a rough laugh in his throat and turned a ruddy color.  "I was told, at the end of a butcher knife, that I was never to see, speak to, or come into any contact with Lainie ever again, and liking my intestines inside my body where they belong, I never did.  I never had reason to."

Wow, Lainie's mom threatened his dad?  Aaron had to blink a few times to get the mental image in his head.  When it solidified with a whole scenario of Genna backing Richard into a corner in their old kitchen, Aaron bit back a laugh of his own.  He wondered if Lainie knew about that.  Probably not, or she would have said something...right?

"But now you have reason to?"

His father raised his head then, searching his son's face.  "That property is worth a couple of hundred-thousand dollars."

So, they were back to Richard's selfishness again.  "Then it seems you have a problem," he said, not all that kindly, to boot.

"You're not going to help me...why?"

Did he really just ask that question?  Aaron closed his eyes to even out his breathing.  Yes, he really did ask. 

"I know you've seen Lainie," his dad went on.  "You were never able to stay away from that girl.  And I can see why.  She's all grown up now, and turned out to be a good-looking woman.  Too bad, she's got those brats, but being a mother gave her quite a nice little figure, all rounded out in the right places now.  She was always too skinny in my opinion."

Aaron's eyes flew open.  "Don't."

His dad frowned and looked ignorantly at him.  "Don't what?  Tell you how pretty Lainie is?  I'd figured you would have noticed."

Aaron's blood began a slow burn, threatening to overtake him if he so much as swallowed wrong.  His father had no right -- no right! -- to speak of Lainie that way.  And her children...those beautiful, precious, loveable kids...  To call them brats, to even assume that Chris and Chloe were anything other than the wonderful tiny persons they were...  And pointing out Lainie's body in such a racuous voice...  The image of her warm, sweet figure entered his blurring vision...the soft curves of her...like a perfect hourglass...breasts fuller than he ever expected that once-skinny girl could possibly gain, a trim waist, rounded hips and a pear-shaped bottom...legs that moved across a room with a grace of a thousand dancers...an elegant neck that stretched from the bottom of her cute, pointed ears down to the gentle slope of her shoulders...

Hazel eyes so big and full of sadness...that mouth, begging to be kissed and forgetting what it was like to smile -- really smile -- again...

I shouldn't have allowed that kiss, he thought.  But she looked so sad, so lost, so needing...  What an ass I was...to just up and leave her after the kids discovered them kissing.  He panicked, he knew that.  He read the angry lines on Chris' small face, and the feeling of betrayal came over him.  He liked the young boy too much to hurt him further.  By kissing his mother, Aaron blatantly told Chris that the friendship they were building meant nothing as long as he could get in good with Lainie.  From what he learned about the twin's father, Aaron assumed that he'd been another man who placed so little emphasis on a solid relationship with the children. 

Gary had been a fool.  Aaron was an even bigger fool for making the same mistake, by belittling his friendship with Chris.  Lainie seemed to be the only person in their lives that put them first, and Aaron could understand why Chris was so protective of his mother and his sister.  Even at such a small age, that young boy could teach the world of men a thing or two.

"Aaron!"  Richard's voice boomed in his ears.  His dad stood in front of him.  "What's wrong with you, son?"

Aaron focused on the man that faced him, seeing him again for the first time.  "Get out," he spit.

"What'd I say?"

"Get!  Out!"  Aaron yelled.  "Don't you ever talk about Lainie that way!  Haven't you done enough damage?  Get out of my office, and don't you dare think about trying to coerce her and her kids out of their home."

Richard straightened slowly.  "So, that's it, huh?  You're choosing a woman over family."

"Like father, like son," Aaron returned in a dangerously low tone.  The man -- Aaron refused to think of him as his father any longer -- tightened his expression and left.  Aaron sat down at his desk and stared off into nothing.