Second Time's the Charm

“This morning, when I asked how many cars he had, he held up his fingers.”

“He just learned how to do that this week. It’s a new trick. He’s proud of himself. Kids repeat new tricks.” She should know that. She knew all about the developmental stages of kids.

She wasn’t a medical doctor. She didn’t have ear canal training.

“He’s been using visual cues more increasingly for a while now.”

He wasn’t convinced. At all. He knew his son—he was with Abe every day. He’d have noticed if there’d been some change in him. Or if his son was going deaf.

“He answers when we speak to him.”

“Yes, he does. I didn’t say he was deaf, only that he’s exhibiting signs of losing his hearing. But think about it, Jon...” Her gaze was so sincere, so filled with compassion, he knew he was in grave danger of falling in love with this woman.

Not just in love and if you leave me, fine. But in love and if you leave me it’s going to be horrible.

The kind of in love he should be with his wife. The kind he’d always dreamed about.

“One of the practices we instigated to help minimize the tantrums was to get right up in Abe’s face when we talk to him.”

“To get him to focus,” Jon agreed. “When he focuses, he uses his words and communicates his wants and needs instead of freaking out. We put him in control of his own destiny so he doesn’t have to panic.”

He’d listened well. And her idea had worked.

“That’s right.” She let go of his hand. Jon left it where it was on his thigh. “The teachers at Little Spirits have been told to do the same.”

He knew that.

“I’ve been noticing that Abe focuses on our mouths every time we talk to him, not just when we’re right in his face. My professional opinion is that he’s learning to figure out what we’re saying by using a combination of skills, his limited hearing and lipreading.”

“He’s always had that look of concentration about him when he looks at you,” Jon said. Abe’s six-week-old pictures included a shot of him with that same frown on his face, as if he was trying to solve a calculus problem or something. It had always been Jon’s favorite of Abe’s baby pictures.

“I think he throws tantrums because he can’t hear, and when something sudden happens that he doesn’t expect, it scares him. As soon as we get in front of him and he can see that we’re talking to him, can hear us in the midst of all the white noise around him, he calms down.”

She was digging deep. And he loved her for it. For caring about them that much.

Okay, he was admitting it. In a few short weeks, he’d fallen in love. Professional caring didn’t mean she loved him back. She’d said she was only after the sex.

Fine.

He’d deal with it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

“IT WAS JUST a weekend of great sex.” Lillie pedaled hard, putting herself almost a full bike length in front of Caro as the sun was rising up over the horizon Monday morning.

She’d thought about denying having had sex at all, except that she’d left her car parked outside of Jon’s duplex—which Caro owned—overnight. She’d known someone would see it and comment. Saturday night she hadn’t cared.

“I know you better than that,” Caro said, not the least bit winded as she caught up. Of the two of them, Caro was the better athlete. She was also two decades older and had given birth three times. Lillie should be able to outride her. “What really happened?”

“Why did something have to happen?”

“Because Friday morning you were as jittery as popcorn in hot oil and this morning you’re trying to pretend that you don’t feel anything at all.”

She wasn’t pretending. Mostly. Pedaling more steadily, she turned a corner and glanced at her friend as they fell in line next to each other for the long empty strip of road in front of them.

There were very few cars out on the roads at this time of the morning. And the nip in the early-morning air kept the wildlife quiet, too.

“I told him that I think his son has a hearing problem.”