The Real Mr. Right

by Karen Templeton

  “I like it. Not that I know squat about this stuff—” he waggled the magazine, then tossed it back on the coffee table “—but far as I’m concerned, you decorate as well as you cook.”

  Kelly blushed, only to then sneeze—loudly—when a stray curl tickled her nose.

  Chuckling, Matt blessed her. Then said, “You sneeze like a teamster.”

  “Awful, isn’t it?” Heading toward the wicker baskets on the shelves on the other side of the room, Kelly caught a glimpse of the sparkling kitchen. And her heart went ba-dump. “Wow.”

  “Between the Colonel and my mom, we all learned to clean. Early and often.”

  “I remember that. Thank you. Or them, whoever.”

  “No, thank you.” He paused. “Kids get to sleep okay?”

  So sad that she couldn’t tell if he was simply being polite or giving her a cue. Sadder still was that she had no idea which of those she wanted it to be. Or whether she should fib, say they were still awake—thus mitigating the hokey-pokey potential—or tell the truth, see how that played out. She’d meant what she’d said, about needing her space, to continue figuring out who she was. What she needed. And yet...

  Going for option number two, she said, “Out like lights, both of them. They’re both definitely sleeping better now that things have...calmed down.”

  Kelly dumped the toys and straightened, finally tucking that damn curl behind her ear where it couldn’t cause any more trouble. Matt was on his feet, hands in pockets, his jacket tucked into the crook of his elbow, and she thought, All righty then, problem solved.

  Except, alas, in her head, where self-preservation and loneliness were locked in mortal combat. Yes, loneliness. Because all that stuff she’d thought earlier? About not having time for lonely? Utter and complete hooey.

  “Um...would you like to take some pie with you? Can’t eat it all, would hate to throw it out.”

  Matt smiled. A soft smile, barely visible through the scruff. Kelly duly—but not dully—considered that scruff, about how sensitive her skin was, and her heart started banging so hard she nearly passed out—

  “Can’t have that, God knows.”

  What? Oh. “No,” she said. “Can’t have that.” Goodness gracious, her sternum was going to hurt like hell in the morning. “Well. Okay. Let me get that packed up for you....”

  Kelly turned toward the kitchen, letting out a little gasp when she found herself somehow cradled to his chest.

  Oh, she thought, smelling him, wanting to inhale him as she listened to his lovely strong heartbeat, soaked up how amazing those arms felt folded around her, and she nearly cried, it felt so good and it had been so long, and heck, yeah, she missed this....

  Then reality cleared its throat behind her, and she thought, Right.

  Also, damn. But right was louder.

  With extraordinary effort she pulled away, imagining her expression was about as defined as one of Aislin’s scribbled masterpieces. Matt, however—standing with his thumbs in his pockets, almost slouching, for crying out loud—looked as though a bomb could go off behind him and he wouldn’t even flinch.

  “Your call,” he said, and Kelly did flinch.

  “Wh-what?”

  “Whether I go or stay.” He smiled. “And before your head explodes, I don’t mean ‘stay’ as in ‘overnight.’ Or even what ‘overnight’ implies. I know you don’t want that, and even if you did—” he paused, giving her a moment for that to sink in “—I wouldn’t suggest it, anyway, given...given where we both are in our lives right now. Especially not with the kids around. No, I mean ‘stay’ as in hang out. Talk. Watch TV. Hell, play a board game, if that floats your boat. Whatever friends do.”

  “Oh,” she said, wondering why she didn’t feel more...relieved. Instead of, say, like a bird had just crapped on her head—

  “And I’m guessing,” Matt said, his voice all low and rumbly and, not to put too fine a point on it, sexy as hell, “there’s enough going on behind that ‘oh’ to fill a Russian novel.”

  After a very brief detour involving the incongruity of Matt and Russian novels in the same thought, Kelly finally lowered herself to the overstuffed chair, gripped the corded cushion’s edge and said, “You should probably go.”

  “If that’s what you want...”

  Want. Such a simple word, so many interpretations...

  She dropped her face into her hands, suddenly so weary she wondered how she was still upright. Well, mostly. Then, on a huge breath, she let her hands fall to her knees and met that steady brown gaze. “Okay, here’s the thing—part of me wants you to stay, too. The part...I can’t trust. The part that got me into so much trouble before. Having you come to dinner, with the kids, is one thing. Being alone with you...” She frowned. “What do you want?”

  “From you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Right now? Your company.”

  “And that’s all?”

  Matt chuckled. “The truth? No. But you don’t strike me as the kind of woman who fools around just for fun. And that’s all it would be.”

  “For whom?”

  He hesitated, then said, “Either of us, I imagine.”

  “Because your ex broke your heart?”

  He actually flinched. “How...?”

  “Abby, first. Then Bree. Yes, we’ve been talking again. So you’ve got no one to blame but yourself for that one. And it’s pretty obvious,” she said gently, “that they’re both worried about you.”

  “Sisters,” he muttered, and she smiled. Then, very slowly, he slipped his jacket back on. “Well. Thanks again for dinner.”

  “Um...you’re welcome?”

  Matt called the dog, stretched out on the floor in front of the hallway. “Alf? You coming?” She lifted her head, seemed to ponder his question for a moment, thumped her tail once then laid her chin back on her front paws.

  “Why am I not surprised?” Matt muttered, then opened the door, banging his hand on the edge a moment before saying, “Watching you with Coop and Linnie tonight, all I could think was that those kids lucked out, getting you for their mother. I also remember—” his eyes darkened “—how you used to be with the kids we fostered. And Abby. It’s why I...” He stopped, his mouth pinching shut for a moment before he said, “You deserve more than a little fun, Kelly.”

  Stunned, she could only gawk as he dug in his pocket for his keys, then turned to leave. Only he’d barely set foot outside when something like rage surged through her.

  “Hey.” Matt pivoted back, frowning. “So do you, turtle brain.”

  Then she slammed shut the door, the doo-doo in the ’do feeling ratcheting to epic proportions.

  Especially when she realized, with a huge sigh, she still had all that pie....

  Chapter Seven

  In his living room, Matt laid the paint roller in the pan on the newspaper-covered coffee table and grabbed his can of cola off the windowsill—the prissy sheers having gone to the Big Window in the Sky a week ago—and stretched out his back as he frowned at the newly painted wall. Kind of a brown-paper-bag color, which looked better than it sounded. With white trim it’d be okay, he guessed. Some random lady at Home Depot—who he’d finally figured out was coming on to him—tried to sell him on either this gray the color of wet cement, or an acidy green that had reminded him of something he’d pitched from his fridge the other night. She insisted the colors were very popular these days. Sophisticated, she said. Ugly was what they were. Not to mention depressing as hell.

  A moment later, the feeble early-March sun scooted out from behind a cloud and lit up the still-wet wall, and the color brought to mind fresh-baked peanut-butter cookies. He’d take that over mold any day, he thought with a slight smile as his gaze landed on the picture album the Colonel had left on the family room coffee table the other day,
now splayed open on Matt’s.

  Cola in hand, Matt crossed the room to lower himself to the edge of the sofa, the corners of his mouth tucked up as he leafed through the album again. He wasn’t sure why he’d lugged it back to his house—nostalgia was usually lost on him—but the damn thing had sucked him right in, all those pictures of his brothers and sisters as kids. Of the people he’d called his parents for most of his life, his mother laughing, the Colonel close by, his eyes always on her, never the camera. Of skinny baby Abby, her flyaway blond hair floating around a perpetual glower. Like she’d been born tough.

  Of Kelly, grinning shyly between Matt and Bree at middle school graduation, her ballooned red hair tickling Matt’s nose; as a wild-haired Thelma to Bree’s head-scarfed Louise that next Halloween; a shot of her asleep in one of the Adirondack chairs out back, one-year-old Abby sacked out on top of her, both of them with their maws wide open.

  She had no idea he’d taken that picture, Matt thought with a slight smile. Let alone that it had found its way into the family album—

  Her nose smashed to the bottom the front door, Alf started woofing and whining and wagging; a moment later Matt heard the side door to Kelly’s van slide open, the kids’ chatter as they disembarked. He got up and sidled over to the window, his mouth stretching again when Aislin headed straight for a puddle left over from yesterday’s rain and he heard Kelly’s exasperated “Don’t even think about it!” as she grabbed the back of the little girl’s puffy coat. Beside her, Coop yakked away, swinging his backpack. Matt thought maybe the kid’s face looked thinner. He seemed happier, too. Okay, so maybe “happy” was overstating it. But definitely less unhappy, which must have been a huge relief for his mother.

  It’d been two weeks since that dinner in her apartment. Far as he could tell she seemed to be getting along okay, doing whatever it was she did during the week when Coop was at school, heading out with the kids almost every Saturday dressed in her caterer duds, often returning without them late that night—sleepovers at Grandma’s, she’d explained as they exchanged mixed-up mail one day. And if Matt couldn’t relax until he heard the van chug back into the driveway on those nights, that was his problem. Not Kelly’s.

  Otherwise he hardly ever saw her or the kids except from right here, watching her herd her brood in or out of her van, or Coop ride his bike when the cul-de-sac was dry enough. Or when Alf asked to go play with her boy, so Matt would take her down to the apartment and he and Kelly would exchange a minute or two of carefully pleasant conversation, and he’d see glimpses of the bright-eyed girl from the album, from his resurrected memories, overlaid with the gutsy mother of two that girl had become.

  Yeah. Gutsy enough to throw his words right back in his face.

  After that dinner, he’d lain awake most of the night. Fuming, for the most part, even though he had no reason, or right, to be mad. At Kelly, especially. But then, somewhere around two in the morning, the annoyance burned away enough for him to at least entertain the idea that maybe she had a point. Not that Kelly knew the details about his and Marcia’s breakup—nobody else did—but aiming blindly or not, she’d hit the target dead-on.

  Because far as he could tell, it wasn’t his fault his marriage had failed. That wanting to take care of someone didn’t make him the bad guy. And that, hell yeah, he deserved good things. Same as he’d said to Kelly. Same as Jeanne had said to him, to all of them, more times than he could count.

  Including Kelly, as he recalled.

  Everything she’d said about needing to find her own footing... He got that. Respected it, even. But that girl in the photos... He’d liked what he’d seen, and heard, even back then. Even if he hadn’t really understood what it was he liked so much. And now she was back and all grown up, and the grown-up version fascinated him even more—

  He realized she was looking right up at the window, her forehead creased. Chuckling at himself, Matt backed away from the window.

  Only to immediately think, The hell with this.

  * * *

  “Shoes off!” Kelly yelled, kicking off her own at the door as the kids rushed inside ahead of her. It had warmed up just enough to melt the ice from the last storm, turning Maple River into Mudville. Disgusting.

  Not nearly as disgusting, however, as her realization, when she’d noticed Matt at his window, that, (a) she yearned for him as much as ever—if not more, that whole absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder thing a truism for a reason—and, (b) that despite being ever so grateful he was giving her the space she’d asked for, it also galled her that he was. Because, see (a).

  The urchins dashed to the kitchen for a snack, never mind that Aislin had devoured a stick of string cheese, an entire cut-up apple and three peanut-butter crackers an hour earlier. At this rate she’d be taller than Kelly by next week.

  As would Coop, Kelly thought as she wrenched open the plastic container filled with her “special” cookies—whole-grain oatmeal with raisins, pecans and dried cranberries. “Only one, it’s spaghetti night,” she said, ruffling first one curly head then the other before pouring glasses of milk to go with.

  Grabbing her own cookie, Kelly leaned on the kitchen side of the tiny breakfast bar, watching her kids watching some cartoon on Nickelodeon...and watching her thoughts meander down dangerous paths. As in, for all she knew Matt was shagging some other woman senseless on a regular basis. A thought that made her, well, sad. And...itchy.

  She broke off a huge chunk of cookie and crammed it in her mouth.

  Of course, she didn’t know what—or who, or if there even was a who—Matt was doing. She did know, however, that she missed him. Which was sad. So sad, in a what-the-blue-blazes-is-wrong-with-me? kind of way. Because that little business about just having a little fun... Yeah. Kept calling to her as loudly as that pint of premium double-chunk chocolate-fudge ice cream hidden from the kids in the back of the freezer: the temptation to indulge this...this ache that would not go away. If anything, the whole giving-her-space thing wasn’t working worth beans.

  And she didn’t only mean sex. Although, okay, fine, that was a huge part of her confuzzlement. Again, sad. Because...one touch? One? And boom, her body was all, Oh, yes, more please? Like being bitten by a freaking vampire, for God’s sake.

  But, heck, that was about missing something that hadn’t even happened—she shushed the sniggering little yet—as opposed to all that he-man protectiveness crap she’d sworn she would never, ever, ever get sucked into again. Ever.

  Because she knew Matt had been watching her this whole time. No, correct that—watching out for her. Watching over her.

  Exactly like an angel is supposed to do, she thought on a smirk as her doorbell rang. She stuffed more cookie in her mouth. Because it was there and she could and she was queen of her domain.

  Coop checked the peephole, opened the door. “Matt!” he said, gleeful. Yeah, she strongly suspected her son missed the man, too. Not to mention how much the dog, who was about to explode with bliss, missed her kids. So there, in all his Latin-Jersey-cop glory—a deadly combination if ever there was one—the man stood beside his combusting dog, his gaze sliding right to her masticating self. And he did that corner of the lip lift that got everything buzzing, and she thought, Doomed, I so am.

  Then again, since avoidance wasn’t working now any more than it had in her marriage, maybe it was time she bucked up and met it head-on. Like the way you trained a dog to ignore distractions by putting them in various, potentially aggravating situations until they no longer reacted. Worth a shot, right?

  Still chewing, Kelly shoved up her glasses and held out the container. “Cookie?”

  Because if you can’t beat ’em, feed ’em.

  * * *

  Matt had no idea what he was doing. Why he was here. Much less why “It’s actually sunny and not freezing, you guys wanna go for a walk?” came out of his mouth. As, it should b
e noted, he ambled over to Kelly and took the cookie. Took a bite. Nearly died from sensory overload. Behind him he heard a pair of enthusiastic “Yays!” from the short people, who were probably as tired of the sucky, yucky winter as he remembered being when he was a kid.

  Still munching away, Kelly glanced up at the kitchen window. Not wearing black today, but a button-front sweater in a dull purple—for her, practically a circus color—that went really great with her hair.

  “Not much daylight left for a walk,” she said, which got a chorus of “Aww...” from her munchkins. She turned back to the kids, brushing crumbs from her hands. “I didn’t say we couldn’t go—”

  “Can I take my bike?” Coop asked, and Kelly sighed. Matt could tell she wasn’t a huge fan of Things with Wheels That Might Hurt Her Child, and she’d bought the kid enough protective gear to outfit a New York Ranger, but she was doing her best. “Yes, you may take the bike. But it’ll get dark soon. And cold. So we’ll have to make it quick.”

  Matt could handle quick. Sure, slow was better, he was a big fan of slow, but if your only option was quick, you went with it. And were grateful.

  Kelly’s gaze flicked to his, like she knew exactly what he was thinking. Damn. Was he really that transparent? Aw, who was he kidding, he was a guy—might as well stick a megaphone in his skull and bypass speech altogether.

  Feeling like an idiot—if not a jerk—Matt was briefly tempted to say, “On second thought...” and book it the hell out of there. Instead, a few minutes later everybody was bundled up and off they went, Alfie playing Nana to the kids’ Peter and Wendy about fifteen feet ahead of him and Kelly. And Matt would have been lying if he said he didn’t think about what it would be like, going for a walk with his own family, his own kids. His own wife. Annoyance pinched that he’d been so close.

  Only not as close as he’d thought. Obviously.

  And don’t go getting any ideas about this one, either.

  He glanced over at Kelly, hands balled in the pockets of her down coat, her gaze nailed to her children. He wondered what she was thinking. Wondered why the silence between them didn’t particularly bother him, even though he guessed she was only doing this for the kids.