Page 9 of Sycamore Circle

“Like how?” He raised a hand. “And I’m not being a jerk. I’m really interested.”

Figuring he needed to understand what was happening himself, he said, “She has this sweet voice that was patient. No, I mean, that’s how her whole demeanor is. But under that? There’s a rod of steel and a vulnerability. It was like she was all about helping this guy she was tutoring but expected nothing in return.

“Like she’s gotten used to expecting nothing in return from most people in her life. It got to me.”

“That was it?”

Still trying to make sense of it himself, he shrugged. “Maybe. All I can tell you for sure is that one minute I was just standing there and the next I knew I had to get to know her.”

“Bam, huh?”

“I don’t know. All I can say is that I might have made a mistake but I had to try.”

Mason looked confused but didn’t speak of it again.

Bo was glad, because he really had no idea what was going on with him. But at the moment, he didn’t even want to try to figure it out.

CHAPTER 4

One day a week, Tony picked up Chloe from school. Even though she was sixteen, their daughter was in no rush to get her driver’s license.

Joy made no attempt to hide her relief about that. She couldn’t afford a second car and had no desire to pay for the extra insurance. Tony was on the same page, though for different reasons. He had always said that as long as Chloe still needed him to drive her around, he would have a pretty good chance of spending time with her. Once she had wheels of her own, he was afraid she’d become even more independent and the gap that had formed between them would widen.

Chloe always rolled her eyes and protested whenever her dad said things like that. It was sweet, but she also never went so far as to declare that she would always need him. Their daughter was growing up.

On that one afternoon a week, Tony picked her up from school, took her out to eat, drove her to dance practice, picked her up again, and tried to help her with whatever she needed his help with—then she either spent the night or he brought her back to Joy’s around eight.

Though their divorce paperwork stated that Tony would do this on Wednesdays, the two of them had agreed to be flexible with whatever evening worked best for him. He traveled a lot, so it was easiest to work around his plane flights instead of him being sure he was always available on a Wednesday evening.

Joy’s lawyer had cautioned her about being so flexible, saying that Tony could easily take advantage of that. But, so far, he hadn’t. The fact of the matter was that Tony might not love her anymore, but he adored their girl. In the four years since they’d divorced, he’d only backed out a handful of times. In addition, in every instance, he’d asked to make up the time he missed that weekend or the following week.

Their system worked for them.

It hadn’t been an easy adjustment for Joy. The first time Tony picked Chloe up from school, Joy had been a nervous wreck. She had been afraid he’d forget to pick Chloe up, or would forget to feed her, or wouldn’t remember to take her to her dance class or to collect her things at the studio—Chloe didn’t always remember to grab her leotard and tights after she changed. Or maybe even that he would simply ignore Chloe, which would have devastated the teen.

But their daughter had returned home with both her dance costume and a smile on her face. In addition, her assignments had been done and neatly returned to her backpack. When Chloe had shared that she’d not only eaten dinner, but she thought that her dad made better spaghetti than her mom, Joy had barely been able to keep a straight face.

That all had made Joy cry, of course, because that had been the state she was in. Only later had she forced herself to remember that Tony had never been a bad or uncaring father. He just had stopped loving his wife.

Tony had left her after admitting that he’d had an affair with one of his coworkers. The woman had been pretty, successful, and had traveled with him often. He said she’d been hard for him to resist. Though he supposedly broke things off with her after their brief affair, Tony had admitted that the experience had shown him that he’d wanted more than what Joy could give him.

It had taken quite a bit of counseling for Joy to realize that she also wanted a lot more than what Tony gave her.

It was just after seven o’clock when Joy’s phone rang. Seeing that it was an unfamiliar number, her pulse raced. Was it Bo calling?

Her nerves jangled as she picked up. “Hello?”

“Joy?”

“Tony?”

“Yeah, sorry. My phone died and Chloe’s is in the car. I’m using a clerk’s phone here at the mall.”

Huh? That wasn’t part of their normal routine. “What are you doing at the mall? Is Chloe there?”

“Yeah. That’s what I called about. I took her to dance class as usual, but when I picked her up she was pretty upset.”

“What happened?”

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