Here to Stay (3 page)

Staring blearily at the floor, he decided a hangover would have been preferable to the headache he had right now. At least then he would have had some fun earning his misery. The thought made him wince.
Yeah, right, like my life is fun? I’m so sick of this
. What would next Saturday night bring, another woman like Terry? Another boring round of sweaty sex with him hurrying away before the semen dried on his dick?

There has to be something more than this to look forward to
.

His father and a couple of his brothers had found love and happiness, but it hadn’t happened for Zach yet. Maybe it never would. So where did that leave him? Was he destined to spend the rest of his time on earth working his ass off by day and taking up space on a bar stool at night? The thought made him feel almost as claustrophobic as the cell bars did.
Okay, fine.
Maybe he wasn’t cut out to be a family man. Maybe that simply wasn’t in God’s plan for him. But surely the old man in the sky had something in mind for him to do that would be meaningful, something that would make a difference.

Zach’s thoughts circled back to the article he’d read about guide horses, and the blind man he’d fought to defend in the bar tonight. Was God tapping him on the shoulder?
Maybe
. The blind guy’s dilemma in the bar could have been God’s way of yanking Zach’s chain to remind him of that magazine feature.

Zach straightened from a slump.
Tiny horses?
Oh, man, if he decided to train them, he’d have to keep it under wraps. Zach was renowned for his work with world-class cutting horses, not toy equines that slept in the bedroom and accompanied you to the grocery store. His brothers would laugh themselves sick and never let him hear the end of it.

Besides, Zach knew squat about training a service animal. Hell, he didn’t know anything about disabled people, period. Even so, Zach had this weird feeling, way deep inside, that he’d been meant to read that article and that the incident tonight had been a reminder to him that there were better ways to spend his time than having less-than-satisfying sexual encounters with women whose names he couldn’t remember.

When his dad got here, and after they went through the familiar bailout crap, and after he’d listened to his dad fulminate about his son wasting his life, Zach was going to go home and find that article. He’d careened through young adulthood thinking mostly about himself. Maybe it was time he gave a little something back. He knew horses. And if they could be trained to guide a blind person, he could learn how to do it.

What did he have to lose by giving it a try?
Nothing
. A mini horse would cost him some money, but Zach had plenty in the bank. His biggest investment in an experiment like that would be time, and at the moment, with the inside of his mouth still bleeding from a barroom brawl, keeping busy with something worthwhile seemed like a plus.

An odd feeling welled within Zach’s chest. He realized that he felt excited, really excited, and he couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. There had to be more to life than sex and beer, and maybe, just
maybe
, he’d found it—something he could do that would make a real difference in the world.

Chapter One

Two Years Later, February 2009

M
andy Pajeck sat by her brother, Luke, on their battered tweed sofa and balled her hands into fists. She had to talk to him again. She’d been stalling for days because she knew, and dreaded, how he’d react. But she had no choice. His future was at stake.

Pulling in a breath, she surveyed his face, biting her lip as she searched his sightless gaze. Right now, he was focused on music blasting through headphones that pushed his chestnut hair into a rooster tail. His backbone slumped against the worn cushions. His long, slender fingers tapped his knees in time with the rhythm.

Sunlight slanted into the living room through the wood-framed windows, illuminating the scars on his handsome face and emphasizing the opacity of his hazel eyes, once so very like her own. At his feet, candy wrappers peppered the burnt-orange carpet. Mandy kept a wastebasket at his end of the couch, but he still tossed the papers on the floor. She didn’t know if he found it difficult to locate the basket or if he was just thoughtless. For her, it was a minor irritation, so she’d never taken him to task for it. She’d learned over the years to choose her battles.

“Luke?” When he didn’t acknowledge her, she touched his arm. “Can we talk?”

He jumped with a start. Then, brows snapping together, he jerked off the headphones. “Dang it, Mands, give me some warning. You scared the crap out of me.”

“I’m sorry. With the music so loud, you couldn’t hear me.”

“Next time, jiggle the cushion or something to let me know you’re there.”

“I’ll do that,” Mandy assured him. “I just didn’t think.”

Luke nodded, and his scowl melted into a reluctant grin. “No big. My heart has started beating again. So, what’s up?”

Mandy moistened her lips. “It’s just—we need to talk.”

The stony look that settled over his face told her he knew what the topic would be. “We’ve had a great day so far, and you’re not going to change my mind, so just drop it.”

Mandy wished she
could
. It would be lovely to float along, pretending all was well, but experience had taught her that giving in to Luke was a mistake and not what was best for him. “Can’t we talk like two adults? You’re nineteen, not a little boy anymore.”

“That’s right—nineteen, old enough to make my own decisions. Just let it go.”

“Sweeping problems under the rug doesn’t make them go away.” She kept her tone nonaccusatory. “It’s February. You passed the tests and got your high school diploma last June.”

“And all I’ve done since then is take up space. I’ve got that part of the speech memorized, okay? You can skip the demoralizing details and get right to the point.”

Mandy lifted her hands. “You’ve got no life!
That’s
the point. All you do is sit in this house! I love you. How am I supposed to deal with that?”

“The same way I do, by accepting it.” His voice rose in anger. “What do you want from me? It’s not as if I can go out and get a job!”

Why can’t you?
she yearned to ask. Luke’s counselors said there was no reason her brother couldn’t do everything other blind people did. Unfortunately, as a child, Luke had refused to use a cane and resisted rehabilitation, and when Mandy was awarded custody of him seven years ago, he’d insisted on being home-schooled, an option in Oregon that allowed kids to get a high school diploma through the local education service district. Mandy had gotten Luke textbooks on tape that had been supplied by the state, appropriated everything she could find for him in Braille, and had hired tutors she couldn’t afford when her workload interfered with Luke’s lessons. Luke had excelled academically, but the seclusion had left him socially inept.

Mandy knew her brother’s negative attitude and helplessness were mostly her fault. She’d been barely thirteen when their mother had left their dad and abandoned them. Their father should have hired household help to look after his four-year-old son. But although Tobin Pajeck had been wealthy, he’d also been a tight-wad. He’d found a cheap day-care facility near where they lived, and every day after school, it had fallen to Mandy to walk Luke home, care for him, clean the house, prepare a gourmet supper, tidy the kitchen, do laundry and ironing, find time for her homework, and put Luke to bed.

Traumatized by the loss of his mother, Luke had clung to his sister for reassurance, and Mandy, who’d felt lost herself, hadn’t discouraged him. Luke’s neediness had worsened; it had grown more pronounced at age six, when he lost his sight.

A burning sensation washed over Mandy’s eyes as she recalled that time in their lives. She’d tried so hard, ached to make everything right for him, and still she had made every mistake in the book, doing things for him, giving in when he threw tantrums, and never correcting his behavior. For the next two years, what Luke wanted, he got. Even after Mandy had their father thrown in jail for beating her up, and she and Luke became wards of the court, Mandy had run interference for her brother, trying to placate their foster parents when Luke misbehaved, making excuses for him so he wouldn’t be punished, and enduring frequent moves into different homes without complaint because she’d been afraid their caseworker might separate them. When Mandy had been emancipated at age eighteen, she’d been frantic about leaving Luke behind in foster care and had petitioned for custody. The judge had turned her down until she turned twenty-one, saying he couldn’t give a girl her age that much responsibility.

For the next three years after Mandy left foster care, she and Luke had been apart except for weekly visitations. In a perfect world, the lengthy separation would have forced Luke to become more independent. Instead he’d thrown tantrums at home and at his special school, broken things, and had even struck one of his foster mothers. Only his blindness had saved him from being transferred into a juvenile correctional facility. By the time Mandy could finally assume responsibility for her brother, he’d become nearly impossible to handle.

Mandy would never truly know why she hadn’t insisted that Luke straighten up, but she felt pretty certain guilt played a major part. Luke was blind and she was responsible, a circumstance he reminded her of whenever she confronted him. She’d slipped right back into the same old patterns, protecting and spoiling him. If only she could turn back the clock, but life didn’t come with a rewind button. Why had she given in so easily? Had she been
that
weak-willed and spineless? Or had it been more a case of bad judgment? She knew only that she’d been sorely ill equipped to deal with a needy, disabled teenager, and now both she and her brother were paying the price.

She pressed a fingertip to her throbbing temple. “I don’t expect you to get a job right now, Luke. You need some kind of training first.”

“Here it comes,” he muttered. “The college pitch again.”

“You need an education.”

“Why? I’m happy the way things are.” He switched off the CD player. “Besides, what would I study to become? It takes no training to sell pencils on a street corner.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Blind people aren’t reduced to that unless they choose to be.”

“Are you saying I
choose
to be helpless and live in limbo?”

She wasn’t touching that observation with a ten-foot pole. “I’m saying you can have a wonderful, productive life if only you put forth some effort. There are people at the college to help you pick a major. They’d give you aptitude tests to see what you’re good at. You could find something that you really love to do.”

“And how would I make my way around the campus?”

“You were taught how to navigate with the cane. Your failure to use it doesn’t mean you’re
incapable
of it. It’s in the closet. You could start practicing with it here.”

“No way! I might fall. I could get hurt again.”

Mandy gritted her teeth in frustration. He’d tripped and sprained an ankle years ago, and ever since, he’d wielded the incident like a club whenever the cane was mentioned. Now Luke wouldn’t even move from one room to the next without her help, and he refused to go outdoors alone. One sunny day when Mandy had insisted that he walk around the backyard, using the fence to guide himself, he’d tripped over a shrub and banged his head on a rock. For an instant, Mandy had wondered if he’d fallen on purpose, but she’d quickly pushed the suspicion from her mind. Who would injure himself that badly to make a point? The cut on his scalp had required nine stitches.

“If you use the cane properly, it’s very unlikely that you’ll fall, Luke. If you’d only practice with it every day, you could be running footraces around here in nothing flat.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re not blind. You forget to push the chairs back under the table. You kick off your shoes and leave them on the floor. Sometimes you don’t put the vacuum attachments back in the closet. The whole place is booby-trapped.”

“I don’t worry about keeping the traffic paths clear because you never move around the house without help!” Mandy cried. “If you start practicing with the cane, I’ll make sure there’s never anything left out to trip you.”

Luke snorted in derision. “Even if I could use a cane inside the house, finding my way around a campus would be a whole different story. Get real, why don’t you?”

“I admit that it might be challenging for you the first few days. Maybe I could attend your classes with you for a while. I’m sure I can get special permission to do that.”

“And have everybody think I’m a big baby who needs his sister to hold his hand?”

In truth, Luke
was
a big baby—a spoiled, demanding young man who was frozen in place—and, God help her, she didn’t know how to help him reverse that.

“Sometimes,” she said carefully, “the things we fear turn out to be no big deal once we force ourselves to face them.”

“You’re really into pontificating today, aren’t you? We should rent you a soapbox.”

Pinching the bridge of her nose, Mandy counted to ten and then replied, “Any young man who knows the word ‘pontificate’ has the brains to do something worthwhile with his life. All you need are some solutions. I know you get upset when I bring it up, but maybe a guide dog is the answer. We could get you on a waiting list and—”

“
No!
We’ve been over this a hundred times. I’m terrified of dogs.”

As a child, Luke had been badly bitten by the family Doberman, and a fear of canines had bedeviled him ever since. “Guide dogs aren’t your average, run-of-the-mill animal. They’re well trained and trustworthy. Why not at least give it a try?”

“End of subject!” He flipped on the CD player, clearly intending to block her out again. “Not one more word.” He pushed the headphone cups firmly over his ears. “Get off my back and leave me alone.”

Mandy shot up and grabbed the headset, feeling a stab of satisfaction at her brother’s startled expression. He flailed for the headset but she jerked it out of reach. Frustration and fear for Luke’s future churned inside her, and she spoke louder than she intended. “What if something happens to me? You have no one else. Mama had no family. Dad’s in prison. His rich, snobby parents hung up on me the one time I called them for help. Name one other person you can count on besides me!”