“If you don’t want this . . .” Miranda began.
Eli flung himself on top of both of them. “It’s okay, Mom, he’s a coward, but if you give him a chance, he can become your hero on a black stallion.”
Frank was recovering. “I do. You can’t be angry at a man for being slow-witted, can you? In fact, I think it may be illegal.”
Eli hugged them both. “I got exactly what I wanted for Christmas and my birthday,” he said. “And I’d rather go to Cambridge than Princeton.” But his mother and Frank didn’t hear him because they were kissing again.
Smiling, Eli untangled himself from the two adults and the horse and ran to his room to call Chelsea and tell her the news.
Robin and Marian Les Jeunes had struck again.
Part Two
* * *
7
Edilean, Virginia
Twenty years later
2014
And get some bottles of champagne,” Eli said as he put his hands on the bar and bench-pressed six reps with over two hundred pounds.
His assistant, Jeff, tapped the note into his phone. “What kind of champagne?”
As Eli sat up and wiped the sweat off his face, he gave him a look.
“Right,” Jeff said. “You have no idea. How about the kind that has pretty flowers painted on the bottle?”
“Keep it up and I’ll make you hold the pads.”
Jeff groaned. The gym they were in was big and smelly and full of people who were so physically different from him they might as well have been another species. In the boxing ring was a woman with a fantastic body wearing red boxing gloves and hitting the hand pads held by a kid who made grizzlies look small.
Those were the pads Eli was threatening him with. All 130 pounds of him would have to stand there with those things on his hands while Eli hit them very hard. Once was enough!
He watched Eli do more reps while lying under a bar that could come down and crush his neck—something Jeff was sure would happen to him so he never touched it. But Eli said that a man didn’t join the Taggert family and not get into iron. “Iron” as in picking it up and putting it down.
“Okay,” Jeff said, “what else should I get for the beauteous Chelsea? Flowers? Candy? Condoms?”
Again, Eli gave him a look to stop it.
“Got it,” Jeff said. “Chelsea the Pure. Chelsea the Innocent.” He lowered his voice. “Even if you haven’t seen her since she was a kid, and you know she’s had a lot of boyfriends, you still think she is an angel come to earth.”
Eli took a couple of forty-five-pound dumbbells from the rack and went to an incline bench to do three set of flys. When he’d finished, he sat up and looked at Jeff. “I know I’m being ridicul
ous, but I want this visit to be a good one. Get whatever you think will make her feel comfortable. I’m doing abs, then hitting the shower. I’ll meet you at the car.”
Gratefully, Jeff started for the front door, while mumbling, “And the objective in all of this is to persuade her to stay for the entire summer. Or maybe a lifetime.” He didn’t mean to be so negative, but he thought Eli was putting too much hope into the coming meeting. And he feared that Eli was going to be seriously hurt when it failed. He’d worked for Eli for seven years, and while his boss had had a few girlfriends, none of them had stayed around for long. But then, when there was a choice between work and a girl, Eli always chose work.
For all that Jeff was only five foot eight, skeletal skinny, and had a face like a mischievous boy’s, women liked him. He said his secret was that he made them laugh.
But Eli was shy around women. If Jeff got him to go to a bar, Eli would sit there drinking his beer until he’d eventually take out his ever-present notepad and start creating something. There were times when Eli had excused himself and later Jeff had found him outside in the car doing calculations while his pretty date waited inside. Only women who were very determined made it past Eli’s work barrier. But eventually they all left because, although he’d often grow fond of them, he never came close to giving them the love they wanted.
But about a year ago things had changed. One morning Jeff had shown up at his boss’s small apartment as usual, and Eli said, “I’m going to take next summer off.” Jeff had nearly choked on the bagel he was eating.
“Take off? As in, not work?” Jeff was shocked.