Balancing Act (Silhouette Special Edition)

by Darcy, Lilian

He laughed, feeling the tightness in his neck and temples ease. She’d confessed about her lint fetish, maybe he should confess that he’d ogled her underwear.

  Uh, no. Sins of a different size.

  “I’ll check it out later, see if we need a new motor or a new machine,” he said instead. “When this furnace is on, things dry pretty fast down here anyhow.” They both looked toward her underwear, and looked quickly away again. “The soup smells great,” he added quickly.

  “Colleen and I walked down to the store to get some good bread to go with it. We can eat whenever you want.”

  “Now?” He couldn’t keep the hunger out of his voice, and explained, “I’m wiped. I had two of my best people try to resign today. When I stupidly tried to argue that, since they were resigning because of each other, only one of them really had to go, I had both of them telling me, ‘So, choose!’ It was horrible. My office manager cried. My site manager stormed out. One minute I’m a sexist pig, the next I’m a sucker for a female sobbing act. As the situation stands, neither of them are speaking to me.”

  “And you lost both of them?”

  “Yeah. I couldn’t choose. I mean, I couldn’t.”

  “You need more than soup.”

  “What else are you offering?”

  Hell, don’t make it sound so suggestive, Brady!

  “Chocolate cake with almond vanilla ice cream and hot fudge sauce.” She led the way upstairs, her bottom swaying like a dancing peach.

  “Don’t move out, Libby,” he said, sounding too much as if he meant it.

  She laughed, then sobered. “Yeah, well, we’re not, as of this afternoon.”

  “You haven’t found anywhere?”

  “I’ve found lots of places I don’t like. You know, they win on several optional criteria, like having a park in easy distance, or being on a quiet street, then they hit one big, fat deal-breaker. Too expensive. Too small. Pathological landlord.”

  She gave a short laugh, but her face was really tight, now, and her shoulders were tense. His hungry stomach sank. All joking aside, she was seriously anxious to leave, and he was a heel for thinking she should stay just because it was convenient for him, coming home to such great meals and warm company—and such erotic underwear—after a hard day.

  He felt—and this was crazy and without foundation—as if he’d been slapped in the face.

  He shut the door to keep the girls safe from the steep, backless basement stairs, and tried to regain some ground. “I talked to the manager at Scarlett’s day care today, and she wants to meet you, sometime late next week if that works for you. They’re looking for someone in their part-timers’ room.”

  “I liked the casual-care room there,” she answered slowly. She’d left Colleen there for the first time just this afternoon, although the option had been available all week. “I liked the atmosphere of the center as a whole.”

  “You know, we could work something out with you taking care of Scarlett outside those hours, too.”

  Again, she frowned. “I need more than part-time.”

  “Talk to the manager. I agree it’s a nice place. I’m sure we can work something out.”

  Libby knew where Brady kept all his dishes by this time. She got out two deep china bowls for them and two shallow plastic bowls for the girls, hoping Brady wouldn’t see how tense she was. She’d made the soup to soothe her own emotions, not his.

  She hadn’t been joking when she’d mentioned pathological landlords, but didn’t want to relive an unpleasant experience by talking about it. Didn’t want to risk the wrong reaction from Brady, either.

  As well, she’d been to a promising job interview today, at a place called the Toyland Children’s Center, and had been offered the position. She’d asked for the weekend to think it over.

  The hours were longer than she wanted—forty-five hours a week, Monday through Friday, with one hour off in the middle for lunch—and although the place wasn’t terrible by any means, it wasn’t as nice as the day-care center she’d worked in back in Minnesota. The toys were older and less varied. The playground was smaller and less sheltered. It was a step down for Colleen.

  And now here was Brady making plans for her without asking in advance.

  She hadn’t known he intended to mention her job search at Scarlett’s day care. He meant well, she was sure of that, but she reacted against it all the same. She didn’t want him organizing her life, making her decisions. She definitely didn’t want to depend on him financially.

  He’d taken out a cutting board and a serrated knife and was cutting the bread with a smooth, easy action, like a carpenter cutting wood. The slices peeled off thick and straight. Libby brought the soup to the table and ladled it into the bowls. It was a one-pot meal—her mother’s recipe, thick with corn, potato, chicken, celery, carrots and cream.

  They ate largely in silence, using the girls to deflect the usual awkwardness. Colleen and Scarlett were tired at the end of a long week, and both began to droop while still in their high chairs.

  Separately, Libby and Brady carried each child upstairs. In separate bathrooms, they brushed their teeth. In separate bedrooms, they got them into night-time diapers and fluffy sleepsuits, and tucked them into their cribs. They were both ready to come down again at exactly the same time.

  “I think they’re starting to get in sync with each other,” Brady said. “Did you notice they woke up within five minutes of each other this morning? Neither of them finished their soup, both of them ate all their bread, and they both started crying with tiredness at the same time.” He cleared his throat. “They’re a lot more in sync than we are.”

  “What are you saying, Brady?”

  “Just that having them mesh together might make things easier than we think, when we’re living separately and arranging playdates and sleepovers.”

  “Is that what we’re going to do? Sleepovers?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “I guess.”

  “We wanted to bring the girls together,” he reminded her.

  It was the divorce-without-the-marriage thing that Libby’s friends had lamented over, on her behalf. They’d been right. She didn’t want it. The idea of losing Colleen for two nights every second weekend, even though it meant gaining Scarlett for the other weekends, made her feel empty and scared. She was used to herself and Colleen being a team of two, and almost never being apart. She wasn’t used to wondering what twin daughters were doing, out of her care.

  “You look tired, Brady,” she said, avoiding a real answer, and hoping he wouldn’t notice she’d avoided an agreement as well. “I’ll clean up tonight, if you want to sit.” He’d stacked the dishwasher all this week, since she’d cooked.

  He looked at her for a moment, as if weighing his options, then shook his head. “Thanks. I don’t need to sit. I’m going to take a look at that dryer.” He disappeared down to the basement.

  The kitchen was warm. Without thinking about what she was doing, Libby took off her sweater and laid it over the back of Colleen’s highchair and started clearing up. As she worked, her thoughts skittered along like a sewing machine, basting her plans together like basting temporary seams, using big, makeshift stitches.

  I’ll take that full-time job, if it’s offered, and if nothing better comes up next week. I’ll go see the manager at Scarlett’s day-care center, just so I can tell Brady I did it, but I won’t take a part-time job. Hopefully, we can get past the problem of his suggestion without having a confrontation. I’ll just tell him it didn’t work out. I don’t want him organizing my life. I don’t want him even thinking about it!

  Brady wasn’t in the basement for long. He unplugged the power cord, opened the back of the dryer and found the motor. It was definitely burned out, and he thought it probably wasn’t worth replacing or trying to fix. He screwed the back of the dryer into place again, listening to the occasional creak of the floorboards over his head as Libby moved around in the kitchen upstairs.

  It frustrated him that she
frequently wouldn’t spill what was on her mind. All that “It’s fine” stuff. It angered him occasionally, but at the same time he didn’t want to crowd her, or push her to talk. His instinct was to respect the signals she sent out, to give her space. For now, at least.

  Words were slippery little beasts, in any case. Two people could talk and talk and end up saying nothing…especially if one of them was lying. You could listen to someone pouring their heart out, and take it all seriously, lose half a night of sleep over it, and the next day it would turn out to be, quote unquote, “just a mood.” He didn’t want to get into all that again.

  He twisted the last screw tight into the dryer back, put the screwdriver away and went upstairs again. Libby was at the sink, with her back to him, and he felt his gut shift and his blood beat at the sight of her.

  Her hair was twisted up in a clip so he could see the curve at the back of her neck. He immediately started to imagine how it would smell. Her back stretched a little to the side as she reached for the empty soup pot. He should have guessed she’d scorn to put cooking pots in the dishwasher. She was a woman with standards.

  Standards, and the softest, prettiest figure he’d seen in months.

  “Any good news on the dryer?” she asked, half turning and half smiling, so that the ceiling light contoured her face, her breasts and her hips. His blood beat harder.

  “No, it’s dead,” he said, struggling to keep even the pretense of focus. “Guess I’m going shopping for a new one—” He stopped.

  She’d taken her sweater off, and he could see the baby-soft stretches of skin on the inner curves of her arms. Streaking diagonally down one of them was a long, ugly red scratch that had to be only a few hours old.

  She realized he’d seen it before he said anything, and if he’d thought there might have been an innocent explanation, that thought evaporated as soon as he saw her hunted expression. This was something she hadn’t wanted to tell him about, and wouldn’t have, if he hadn’t seen it.

  He couldn’t imagine why she’d feel this way, but he’d already let enough of her silences and evasions slip past without challenge this week. Hell, he hated this stuff!

  “—weekend,” he finished, then added without drawing breath, “What happened to your arm?” He made quite sure that she knew he was angry.

  “I’m fine. It’s okay. It’s not deep. It’s nothing.” Stupid to say it. Libby knew she’d have to explain the whole event now that he’d seen the scratch, now that he’d asked so directly.

  “That’s not what I asked,” Brady said.

  Okay.

  She took a breath. “I just had a sleazy experience with a landlord today, that’s all. It wasn’t a big deal.”

  Not that she’d felt quite this calm about it at the time. She’d felt repelled, and caught off guard.

  “Tell me.” His eyes were bright and hard.

  She tried to make light of it. “It wasn’t a particularly nice place. A duplex—half-double—over toward Indianola. Handsome landlord thought that the prospect of his sexual services might prove an added inducement to my taking the place. I communicated that he was mistaken. He attempted a more seductive form of persuasion.”

  “Sweet jiminy! And you didn’t tell me?”

  “I am telling you. I’m telling you now.”

  “You weren’t going to.”

  He was right. She’d dreaded having to talk about it, experiencing a familiar, stomach-caving reluctance that she never fully understood in herself. Why did she so hate to share important emotions? Why did she so rarely ask for emotional support? Why did she keep these kinds of things locked inside her whenever she could?

  Glenn had been a good, steady man. Just because he hadn’t listened to her particularly well, just because he’d controlled too many of their decisions and had taken all her agreements for granted…that wasn’t an explanation. She’d actively wanted all that when she’d fallen in love with him at nineteen. He’d never been abusive or cruel. She’d wanted her rock-like certainty that he’d always be there, strong and sure of his needs and hers, and in that way she’d chosen well. He always had been.

  The independence she’d built since Glenn’s death had done a lot to cancel out the bad patterns that had grown up in their marriage, but it hadn’t gotten rid of this sickening dread of laying out her emotions or admitting to her needs in front of someone important.

  And now Brady was angry because she’d said nothing about today’s experience.

  “You wouldn’t have told me,” he went on, his face tight and dark, “if I hadn’t seen that ugly scratch on your arm.”

  “I guess not,” she said. It was inadequate, and she knew it.

  “Why? I hate that.” His low voice had a rough note in it. “I hate lies and evasions.”

  “I never lied.”

  “Silence is a kind of lying, isn’t it?” His eyes were narrowed and bright.

  “Is it?” The idea shocked her. She didn’t think of herself as someone who lied.

  “Hell, I wish I’d been there!” He paced the kitchen. “You shouldn’t have had to deal with something like that! You were looking at a house, not cruising a bar!”

  “I guess this is why—one reason—why I didn’t want to tell you,” she said. She was almost stammering, trying to understand what was going on inside herself, and she could feel the fire in her cheeks. “Because there’s nothing you can say or do, and it only makes two of us feel bad.” This wasn’t the whole of it, though. She knew that.

  “What did you do when it happened?” he asked, his whole body still angular and distant.

  “I kneed him and ran out.”

  “Where?”

  “Just into the street, to my car. The whole thing only lasted thirty seconds.”

  “I mean where did you knee him?”

  “There’s only one place to knee a man, Brady,” she said impatiently, and somehow, suddenly, it was almost funny, in a black sort of way.

  “And you kneed him there?” A slow grin, an impressed grin, was breaking onto his face.

  “Didn’t I just tell you that? Oh, lord!” She covered her face with her hands for a moment, then looked up at him again. “I was just glad I didn’t have Colleen with me! I went straight over and picked her up. Just hugged her.”

  Brady muttered something, and covered the distance between them before she could draw breath. He ran his hands lightly up her arm, exploring the swollen scratch with incredibly gentle fingertips, setting every fine hair on end.

  “Sweet jiminy!” he muttered again. “You were upset. You still are. You don’t want to pursue this, Libby?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I want to forget it. The scratch only came when I wrenched myself free. He was wearing a chain bracelet. I guess it must have had a half-open link with a sharp end. He wasn’t trying to hurt me. He was just a good-looking sleaze who doesn’t get told no often enough. The kneeing him thing was probably over the top on my part.”

  “The kneeing him thing was great.” Brady’s arms were light and soft around her—supporting her but ready to drop if she didn’t want them. She did want them, as it happened—far too much. “I’m impressed,” he said.

  “Not that I’m pleased about that, or curious or anything, but…why?”

  “It’s not a big target, the place where you knee a man.”

  “You would have expected me to miss?”

  “To be honest, yes. You keep surprising me, Libby.” His voice had softened, and he wasn’t trying, anymore, to keep the smile off his face. He was letting her see it, confident of her response.

  “We’ve only known each other for around six weeks,” she answered, smiling but still a little shaky. Getting shakier, actually, with his touch and his warmth surrounding her. It was a different kind of shaky. Nice. Amazingly nice. “We’ve been living under the same roof for just seven days. I should hope I’m still surprising you.”

  “Yeah, but I have a feeling you’ll go on doing it for a while.”

&n
bsp; “It might be fun, surprising you.”

  He still hadn’t let her go. He held her lightly, his body motionless, and she didn’t move away. They looked into each other’s faces, suspended in the expectant, important moment. Libby hadn’t seen him this close before. But she’d wanted to, for days. His eyes were steady and open and serious and warm. His mouth was still and closed, imperfectly shaped with the tiny scar that nicked his upper lip, but perfectly kissable.

  She wanted to kiss it. Softly at first, just to see how it felt, then a little deeper if it felt good, which every intuition and every nerve-ending in her body told her it would. His mouth was a magnet, with its own energy field. Her senses were mixed up, plugged into the wrong outlets. The scent of him drowned out her hearing, and his whispered words blinded her to sight.

  She reached up and touched the tips of her fingers to his lips, and her mouth was only a few inches farther away. Dropping her fingers lower, she placed them softly in the curve between his neck and his shoulder.

  Brady moved even closer. His thighs dragged against her skirt, two hard columns of warmth. He dropped the cradling touch on her bare arms and brushed his hands down her sides, nudging the swell of her breasts in passing and at once making them tingle and grow full with need. Her pulses slowed, and there was an aching heaviness in her core.

  “What will you do if I kiss you?” he whispered, letting his palms come to rest against the curves of her hips. His mouth was an inch from hers—so close, but still not close enough. Her whole body ached with the exquisite torture of wanting that tiny space to disappear. “I know you won’t turn away, Libby. I know it.”

  “No, I won’t turn away….” She lifted her face to meet the soft brush of his lips.

  Chapter Six

  Their mouths pouted and opened, making the kiss full and deep almost at once. Her breasts pushed against his chest. She felt the roughness of prickly new beard on his jaw, as necessary to her senses as salt on an egg, and tasted cool mint and cinnamon in his mouth. Time melted and stretched.

  The air around them was sweet and silent, and the kitchen lighting was yellow and warm. Upstairs, the girls slept at opposite ends of the house, not yet fully sisters, but under the same roof, beloved and safe.