by Susan Meier
She thought she knew him...but did she?
He thought he knew her...but he didn’t. Nobody did.
She stopped kissing him, squeezed her eyes shut. That was the real reason she shied away from men. Nobody knew her. Sure, Wyatt had seen her stubborn streak. He’d seen her with the kids, in full mom mode, but nobody knew about her dad. Nobody knew about the beatings, the alcoholism, the gambling that had colored her childhood and had formed who she was. And at this stage in her life, she wasn’t sure she could tell anybody. Just as she was equally sure Wyatt, this Wyatt who fixed things, who probed into things, who wanted to make everything right, would never let her get away with the usual slick answers she gave when anyone asked her if she’d seen her dad lately.
Wyatt would realize there’d been trouble in her past and he’d demand she talk about it.
She stepped away. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”
He caught her hand and tugged her back. “Seems to me you were ‘doing’ it just fine.”
She couldn’t help it; she laughed. He was such a fun guy, but her past was just too much to handle. Even for him.
She slipped away from him. “I’m serious. I don’t want a relationship—”
He caught her hand and yanked her back. “That’s perfect, because I don’t want a relationship, either.”
That confused her so much she frowned. “You don’t want a relationship?”
He chuckled. “No.”
She pointed at him, then herself, then back at him. “Then what’s this?”
“A fling?”
She blinked. A fling? While she was worried about telling him her deepest, darkest secret, he was thinking fling?
“Look, I’ve only been divorced for two weeks—”
She stepped back, her mind reeling. Before thoughts of her secret had ruined the moment, she’d felt things she’d never felt before. And he wanted a fling? “But—”
“But what? We’re single, adults and attracted to each other. There’s no reason we can’t enjoy each other while I’m here.”
She blinked again. The emotions careening through her didn’t match up with the word fling. “Let me get this straight. You want to sleep with me, no strings attached, no thought of a relationship. No possibility of falling in love?”
His face scrunched. “You’re making it sound tawdry.”
She’d never once considered sex just for the sake of sex. Even though it solved the problem of telling him about her dad, her stomach took a little leap. He didn’t want to love her. He wasn’t even considering it.
He caught her shoulders and forced her to look at him. “You said that your ex leaving you with three kids and no money made you independent?”
She nodded.
“Well, think about this. Think about working for something from the time you’re sixteen, and one mistake—picking the wrong person to trust—causes you to lose one-third of it. But it’s about more than the money. My ex cheated on me. Lied to me. Tried to undermine me with people in the industry, saying that when she got half the company she could take over with a little bit of help, positioning herself to take everything I’d worked for. She didn’t just want money. She wanted to boot me from my own company. She wanted to ruin me.”
“Oh.” Hearing the hurt in his voice, understanding rose in Missy, but it didn’t salve the emptiness, the letdown she felt from realizing he didn’t even want to consider loving her. It seemed in her life there’d been nobody who’d ever really loved her. At home, her dad wasn’t ever sober enough to have a real emotion. Her mom stayed too busy keeping up appearances that if she kissed her or hugged her, Missy always knew it was for show, not for real. Her sister locked herself away. Like Wyatt, she’d studied. The first chance she’d gotten, she’d left.
In going along, living the lie, Missy had been alone.
Alone.
Confused.
Not wanted.
He sighed. “I just don’t believe relationships last, and I don’t want either one of us to get hurt.”
“Sure.” She understood. She really did. No one wanted to be taken for granted, and hurt as he’d been by his ex. It could be years before he would trust again.
Which was why she stepped back. “I get it.”
He sighed with relief. “Good.”
But when he reached for her, she moved farther away. Put a distance between them that was as much emotional as physical.
“I can’t have a fling.” At his puzzled look, she added, “The things you didn’t factor into your fling are my kids.”
He frowned. “Your kids?”
“I can’t leave them to be with you and you can’t...well, sleep over.”
His frown deepened. “I can’t?”
“No. They’re kids. Sweet. Impressionable. I don’t want to confuse them.”
“So you won’t have a fling because of your kids?”
“I don’t want them confused.” Tears welled behind her eyes and she struggled to contain them. She hadn’t ever quite realized how alone she was until a real relationship, a real connection, seemed to be at her fingertips, only to disappear in a puff. “I don’t want them involved. And until they’re old enough, I’m...well, I’m just not going to...” She reddened to the roots of her hair. “You know.”
“Sleep with anybody.” He shook his head. “You’re not going to sleep with anybody until your kids are teenagers.”
“I hadn’t really thought it through, but I guess that’s what I’m saying.” Determined to be mature about this, she held out her hand to shake his. “No hard feelings?”
He took it. Squeezed once. “Lots of regret, but no hard feelings.”
She nodded, but when he released her hand, disappointment rattled through her.
She liked him. But he didn’t want to like her.
CHAPTER SIX
SUNDAY MORNING, Wyatt wanted nothing more than to stay in bed. He looked at the clock, saw it was only seven, and pulled the covers over his head. Then a car door slammed and he realized he’d woken because he’d heard a vehicle pull into the drive. He bounced out of bed, confused about who’d be coming to his Gram’s house at seven o’clock on a Sunday morning. But when he walked to the kitchen window and peered out, he realized the caller had parked in Missy’s driveway.
Who would visit Missy at seven o’clock on a Sunday?
With a sigh he told himself not to care about her. Ever. For Pete’s sake. She’d rebuffed him twice, and the night before out-and-out told him she didn’t want anything to do with him. She even made him shake on it.
Did he have no pride?
He ambled to the counter, put on a pot of coffee and opened the back door to let the stale night air out and the cool morning air in.
Leaning against the counter, he waited for his jolt of caffeine. When the coffeemaker gurgled its final release, he poured himself a cup.
Turning to walk to the table, he almost tripped over Owen.
Still wearing his cowboy pajamas, the little boy grinned. “Hey.”
“Hey.” He stooped down to Owen’s height. “What are you doing here?”
“There’s a man talking to my mom.”
Even as Owen spoke, dark-haired Lainie opened Wyatt’s screen door and stepped inside. Dressed in a pink nightgown, she said, “Hi,” as if it were an everyday occurrence for her to walk into his house in sleepwear.
“Hi.”
Before he could say anything else, Claire walked in. Also in a pink nightgown, she smiled sheepishly.
Still crouched in front of Owen, Wyatt caught the little boy’s gaze. “So your mom’s talking to somebody and I’m guessing she didn’t see you leave.”
“She told us to go to our woom.”
At Wyatt’s left shoulder, Lainie caught his
chin and turned him to face her. “He means room.”
“Your mom sent you to your room?”
Owen nodded. “While she talks to the man.”
Wyatt’s blood boiled. For a woman who didn’t want to get involved with him, she was engrossed enough in today’s male guest that she hadn’t even seen her kids leave.
Maybe he’d just take her kids back and break up her little party?
Telling himself that was childish, he nonetheless set his coffee cup on the counter and herded the three munchkins to the door. Missy would go nuts with worry if she realized they were gone. Albeit for better reasons than to catch her in the act, he had to take her kids back.
“Let’s go. Your mom will be worried if she finds you gone.”
Owen dug in his heels. “But she’s talking to the man. She doesn’t want us to sturb her.”
His eyebrows rose in question and he glanced at Helaina, the interpreter.
Who looked at him as if he was crazy not to understand. “Yeah. She doesn’t want us to sturb her.”
“Sturb?”
“Dee-sturb.” Claire piped in.
“Oh, disturb.”
Lainie nodded happily.
Well. Well. Little Miss I-Don’t-Want-A-Fling didn’t want to be disturbed. Maybe his first guess hadn’t been so far off the mark, after all? She might not want a relationship with him, but she was with somebody.
Wyatt corralled the kids and directed them to the porch.
When they were on the sidewalk at the bottom of the steps, Helaina caught his hand. “We stay together when we walk.”
Claire shyly caught his other hand.
Warmth sputtered through him. He seriously wasn’t the kind of guy to hang out with kids, but not only was he playing in dirt and organizing Wiffle ball games, now he was holding hands.
Owen proudly led the way. He skipped to the hedge and pulled it aside.
Lainie stooped and dipped through. Claire stooped and dipped through. Owen grinned at him.
Wyatt took one look at the opening provided and knew that wasn’t going to work. “You go first. I need to hold it up higher for myself.”
Owen nodded and ducked down to slip through.
Wyatt pushed the hedge aside and stepped into Missy’s backyard, where all three kids awaited him.
He pointed at the porch. “Let’s go.”
But only a few feet across the grass, Missy’s angry shout came from the house, as if she was talking to someone on the enclosed front porch.
“I don’t care who you are! I don’t care what you think you deserve! You’re not getting one dime from me!”
Wyatt’s blood ran cold. That didn’t sound like the words of a lover. It didn’t even sound like the words of a friend.
Could the man in her house be her ex? Returning for money? From her? After draining their accounts?
His nerve endings popped with anger. He dropped Claire’s and Helaina’s hands. “Wait here.”
But when he looked down at their little faces, he saw Claire’s eyes had filled with tears. Owen’s and Helaina’s eyes had widened in fear. The shouting had scared them. He couldn’t leave them out here alone when they were obviously frightened.
“Oh, come on, darlin’. You know I should have gotten this house when your grandmother died. I’m just askin’ for what you owe me.”
Wyatt’s mouth fell open. That was Monty.
“I heard you’ve got a sweet deal going with this wedding cake thing you’re doing. I just want what’s coming to me.”
“What should be coming to you is jail time!”
“Aren’t you being a little melodramatic?”
“Melodramatic? You beat Mom to within an inch of her life so often I’m not surprised her heart gave out. And you beat me and Althea.” She stopped. A short cry rang out.
Then Missy said, “You get the hell away from me! Now. Mom may not have wanted to call the police, but the next time you show up here I’ll not only call the police, I’ll quite happily tell every damned person in this town that you beat us. Regularly. They’ll see that the happy-go-lucky diner owner everybody loves doesn’t really exist.”
“You’d never get anybody to believe you.”
“Try me.”
By now the kids had huddled around the knees of Wyatt’s sweatpants. No sound came from the house, but the front door slammed shut. With his hands on the kids’ shoulders, Wyatt quickly shepherded them to his side of the shrubs, where Monty couldn’t see them.
As her father screeched out of the driveway, Missy came barreling out the kitchen door. Standing on the porch, she screamed, “Owen! Lainie! Claire!” as if she’d gone looking for them after Monty left, found them gone and was terrified.
Wyatt quickly stepped out from behind the thin leafy branches, three kids at his knees. “We’re here. They came to get me to play in the sandbox.”
She ran down the porch steps and gathered her children against her. “They haven’t eaten breakfast yet.”
“I didn’t know that or I would have given them cereal. I have plenty.” Not knowing what else to do, he babbled on. “Gram had enough for an army, and most of it still hasn’t hit the expiration date.”
She looked up at him. Tears poured from her blue eyes, down her cheeks and off her chin.
He stooped down beside her and the kids. “Hey.” His heart thudded against his breastbone. What did a man say to a woman when he’d just heard that her dad had beaten her when she was a child?
Wyatt didn’t have a clue. But he did have a sore, aching heart. She’d had a crappy husband and a rotten father. While he’d had two perfect parents, talent, brains and safety, she’d lived in fear.
The knowledge rattled through him like an unwanted noise in an old car. He couldn’t deny it, but he didn’t know how to fix it.
And the last thing he wanted to do was say the wrong thing.
He set his hand on her shoulder. “You go inside. Take a shower. I’ll feed the kids.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re crying.” He hated like hell stating the obvious, but sometimes there was no way around that. “Give yourself a twenty-minute break. I told you I have lots of cereal. We’ll be okay for twenty minutes.”
Owen broke out of her hug. “We’ll be okay, Mommy.”
Fresh tears erupted. She gave the kids one last hug, then rose. Her voice trembled as she said, “If you’re sure.”
“Hey, we’ll make a game out of it.”
Owen tugged on the leg of his sweatpants. “Can we wook for tweasure?”
Wyatt laughed. “Yeah. We’ll wook for treasure.”
* * *
She’d never abandoned her kids.
Never handed them over to another person just to give herself time to pull herself together. But she also hadn’t had a visit from her dad in...oh, eight years?
And he’d decided to show up today? Knowing she had money in her checking account? Demanding that she give it to him?
How the hell did he know she had money?
She put her head under the shower spray. Now that she’d had a minute to process everything, she wasn’t as upset as she was surprised. Shocked that he’d shown up at her house like that. But now that she knew she was on his radar again, she wouldn’t cower as her mom had. She’d stand her ground. And she would call the police. If he touched her or—God forbid—her kids, he’d be in jail so fast his head would spin.
She got out of the shower and dried her hair. In ten minutes she had on clean shorts and a T-shirt. Her hair was combed. Her tears were dry.
She headed outside.
She expected to find Wyatt and the kids in the yard. Instead, they were nowhere in sight. When she knocked on his kitchen door there was no answer, so she stepped inside.
“Wyatt?”
“Back here.”
She followed the sound of his voice to the large corner bedroom, the 1960s version of a master suite, just like the one in her house. Old-fashioned lamps and lacy curtains reminded her of the room she’d inherited herself.
But the bed was covered in boxes, and more boxes were piled on the floor. Taking a bite of cereal from a bowl on the bedside table, Owen saw her. He grinned. “Hi, Mommy.”
Lainie popped up from behind the bed. Claire peeked around a tall stack of shoe boxes. “We’re looking for treasure.”
Missy walked into the room. “In the boxes?”
Owen said, “Yeah. But Lainie spilled her milk.”
Wyatt came running out of the bathroom, holding a roll of toilet paper. “Okay, everybody stand back....” Then he saw Missy. “Hey.”
She took the toilet paper from him and rushed to the other side of the bed, where rolling milk rapidly approached the edge of the area rug. She spun off some tissue and caught the milk just in time.
Wyatt rubbed his index finger across his nose. “Things look worse than they really are.”
On her way to dump the milk-sodden tissue in the bathroom, she said, “What is all this?”
“This,” Wyatt said, following her to the bathroom, “is everything I found in the closet.”
“Are you kidding me? How’d your gram get all that in a closet?”
“She was quite the crafty packer.”
“I suppose.” Missy glanced around. “So it looks like you haven’t found the jewelry from Scotland yet.”
“Nope. And the kids were fine. Great, actually, until Lainie spilled her milk.”
“She gets overeager.”
He laughed. “She wants to do everything at once.”
“I can take them home now.”
“Why? We’re having fun. And I’m actually getting through three boxes a minute.”
“Three boxes a minute?”
“They open, dump, get bored and move on to the next one. And that leaves me to collect up everything they dumped, and get it back in the box. As I’m collecting, I’m checking for jewelry. At this rate I’ll have this whole room done by noon.”