He froze, the good feeling fading away instantly. He stuck his hand in his pocket, his fingers closing around his cell phone, but he couldn’t pull it out. “I can’t.”
“Why not?” she asked point blank. “It’s what you want, isn’t it?”
He shook his head. “I can’t kick Kofi out. That’s one of my goals, to help him succeed. And I keep seeing the look on my dad’s face and how disappointed he’ll be in me.”
“Why would he be disappointed by you standing up for yourself?” she asked.
He shrugged. He had no idea how to answer that.
She nodded, as if she could read his mind. “Don’t your opponents look disappointed when you disrupt their plans and they can’t score on you?”
“Of course.”
“Why doesn’t what they want matter? You know they must get angry at you.”
“It’s the nature of the game. They try, and I stop them. Feelings don’t matter.”
“Then why do they matter here? It’s also the nature of the game. Your turf, your rules. A man’s house is his castle.”
He shook his head. “But my dad—"
“If your dad’s love is conditional,” she said, interrupting. “Do you really want it? If this were me, and I had a bunch of people who were no good for me in my house, what would you tell me?”
Fuck. He kicked the ball to the other side of the lawn.
She snorted. “Now you’re acting stupid. You’re not a stupid man, Danny Gilbert.”
“I’m not sure I’m much of any kind of man,” he mumbled, sticking his hands in his pockets.
Reaching up, she took him by his shirt and pulled him down so her eyes were the only thing in his view. “You just spent half an hour humoring an old woman by playing soccer with her. I’d say you’re one of the good ones.”
He shook his head. “You’re kind to say that, but I don’t know that it’s true.”
“You’re doing everything you can to protect your younger brother, even though you didn’t grow up with him and probably don’t know him that well,” she surmised. “I’d say those are the actions of a good man.”
He grunted. That didn’t sound entirely like a compliment.
She let him go, though she kept studying him. Then she said, “You better go fetch the ball. Didier will kill you if you lose it.”
Pascal was the least of his worries, but he ran over to it and picked it up. Then he waited to put his shoes back on till Lottie got hers, offering his arm as support, before he escorted her back to the office.
“That was fun.” She poked him in the side, obviously trying to lighten the mood. “Maybe I should join a recreational soccer league.”
“Don’t threaten me,” he joked.
Seventeen
“Knock, knock.”
Lottie looked up from the signs she was making for Danny’s next assignment. She smiled when she saw Rachel in the doorway. “Who’s there?” she asked brightly, playing along.
“The knock-knock jokes were always Chris’s thing,” her granddaughter said as she walked in. She sat in the chair across from Lottie’s desk. “Remember that joke book he had in the fourth grade?”
“He loved that book.” She chuckled. “I can still see him, with his curly hair and dimples, reading it after school on the days when it was my turn to watch you two.”
Rachel tipped her head. “Have I ever told you how grateful I was to come home to you?”
“Aww.” She sniffed at the sudden tears. “I wouldn’t have changed anything about that, except to wish that your parents had been more present.”