Ginna Gray - Building Dreams

“But why?” Mike wailed.

Rarely did Ryan lose his temper with his son, but the anguished question pushed him over the edge. “Dammit, Mike, you know why. I will not be manipulated by some man-hungry female. What’s more, I resent the way the woman has been cozying up to you to get to me.”

Mike leaped out of his chair. His gangly body vibrated with outrage. “Tess wouldn’t do that!” he shouted. “Anyway, she’s not interested in you!”

“Don’t kid yourself. All women are on the make for a man. Or maybe I should say, a breadwinner.”

“Not Tess. That’s just plain stupid. You don’t even know her. You don’t know anything about her! She’s nice, and…and…and she’s special! And now she probably won’t ever speak to me again! And it’s all your fault!” he shouted, and bolted for his room.

“Mike! Mike, come back here!” Ryan called after him, springing up out of his chair. He could have saved his breath. Mike’s door slammed with a force that rattled the walls.

“Damn.” Spinning around, Ryan slammed his fist down on the back of the chair.

He paced back and forth across the room. This was all that damned Benson woman’s fault. He and Mike had never had a serious disagreement until now.

Why was his son so taken with her? What the hell was so special about the woman?

Ryan stopped and glanced toward the bedrooms. Mike might be innocent enough to believe she had no interest in him beyond simple neighborliness, but experience had taught him otherwise. Ever since Julia had walked out on him and Mike, women had been pursuing him like hounds after a fox. Strangely, it seemed that the more he tried to discourage them, the more remote and abrupt he was, the more relentless they were. And the more devious their ploys. Tess Benson certainly wasn’t the first woman who had tried to use Mike to attract his interest.

Ryan sat down on the sofa. Slumping forward, he braced his elbows on his spread knees and massaged his temples. He sighed. Maybe Reilly was right. Maybe Mike did need a mother figure in his life. That gentling, nurturing female influence that he and his brothers and sister had grown up with.

Guiltily, Ryan recalled the wistful look that sometimes came over Mike’s face when he talked about a friend’s mom. On those occasions Ryan had always stifled his twinges of conscience and told himself that they were doing just fine on their own. But were they? Was Mike?

Yes, dammit! Ryan shot up off the sofa and began to pace. Mike was bright and happy and well adjusted. He was doing well in school; he had plenty of friends. Just because no woman played an active role in his life that didn’t mean he was deprived. He could even be better off. God knew, some women were wretched mothers. Julia certainly had been.

He wanted to forbid Mike to have anything more to do with Tess Benson, but he knew that would not be wise. Mike was at a touchy age. Ryan didn’t want to push him into rebellion. No, the best thing he could do was wait it out. It might take time, but eventually Mike would get over his infatuation with their new neighbor.

At breakfast the next morning the atmosphere between the two McCall males was frosty. Mike responded to his father’s pleasant “Good morning” with a curt nod and skirted around him in the small kitchen as though he weren’t there, his young face stiff. Ryan’s question about what Mike wanted to eat was met with an abrupt, “Never mind. I’ll get it myself.”

After five minutes of sitting side by side at the breakfast bar, eating their cereal in stony silence, Ryan had had enough.

“This is ridiculous,” he snapped. “We have to talk about this, Mike.”

Mike merely shrugged and kept on spooning cereal into his mouth.

“Look, son,” he said as patiently as he could manage. “You know how I feel about women. You’ve always known. But, hey! Just because I don’t want to be around Mrs. Benson doesn’t mean you can’t be friends with her.”

Mike cut his eyes toward his father, his expression still sullen. “You hurt her feelings. Now she doesn’t want to be friends with me.”

“Well then, I guess you’ll just have to try harder. Look, tell her I said it was all right.”

Mike grimaced and stared at his cereal bowl.

“C’mon, son.” Ryan cuffed him on the shoulder. “Whaddaya say?”

Dramatically rolling his eyes, the boy heaved a sigh. “O-kay,” he agreed finally, in a put-upon voice that only a teenager can achieve.

“Good. So, how about it? Are we friends again?”

Mike shot him another sharp look. Ryan could see that he was struggling to hold on to his rancor, but Mike’s basic good nature never allowed him to stay angry for long. In that respect he was far more like his Uncle Reilly than his father. Ryan’s twin was unfailingly, at times maddeningly, good-natured and jovial, and on those rare occasions when he did lose his temper his anger never lasted long.

Finally Mike’s mouth twitched in a reluctant, somewhat abashed smile. “Yeah. I guess.”

By the time they headed out to do their Saturday grocery shopping and errands, the camaraderie between father and son was fully restored. Ryan’s mood was buoyant…until, a mile or so from the apartment, he spotted Tess.

Her car was sitting by the side of the road with a flat tire, and she was bending over the open trunk. He couldn’t see her face, but there was no mistaking that bright hair or that battered little car.

Ryan speeded up, hoping that Mike wouldn’t notice her. That hope was dashed almost instantly.

“Look! There’s Tess!” he shouted. “And she has a flat!” He looked at his father, his face at first eager, then crestfallen. “Aren’t you gonna stop?”

Ryan opened his mouth to tell him that these days liberated women changed their own flat tires, but before he could, Tess straightened up and turned around with the jack in her hands.

Ryan’s head whipped around as he zoomed past her. “What the—?” His eyes bulged and his jaw dropped.

He snapped his mouth shut then opened it again to cut loose with a stream of colorful curse words that had Mike gaping, stomped on the brake and brought the Cherokee to a screeching halt on the shoulder of the road.

He stabbed his son with an irate glare. “She’s pregnant! Why the hell didn’t you tell me she was pregnant!”

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