This Heart Of Mine

by Susan Elizabeth Philips

  Kevin rubbed the boy’s head to settle him down, then slowly took the football from him. He tossed it back and forth in his hands a few times, spoke to the boy again, then gestured toward the center of the Common. For a moment the boy simply stared at him, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Then his feet flew, and he raced out to catch his first pass from the great Kevin Tucker.

  She smiled. It had taken a few decades, but Kevin finally had a kid to play with at the Wind Lake Campgrounds.

  Roo joined in the game of catch, yipping at their ankles and generally getting in the way, but neither of them seemed to mind. Cody was a little slow and endearingly awkward, but Kevin kept encouraging him.

  “You’ve got a good arm for a twelve-year-old.”

  “I’m only nine.”

  “You’re doing great for nine!”

  Cody beamed and tried harder. His legs pumped as he ran after the ball, then tried unsuccessfully to duplicate Kevin’s form when he tossed it back.

  After nearly half an hour of this he finally began to tire, but Kevin was too caught up rewriting history to notice. “You’re doing great, Cody. Just relax your arm and put your body into it.”

  Cody did his best to comply, but he began to dart yearning glances toward his cottage. Kevin, however, focused only on making sure this boy wouldn’t suffer the same kind of loneliness he had.

  “Hey, Molly!” he called out. “You see what a good arm my friend has here?”

  “Yes, I see.”

  Cody’s sneakers were starting to drag, and even Roo was looking tired. But Kevin remained oblivious.

  Molly was just getting ready to intervene when the three O’Brian brothers—ages six, nine, and eleven, as she recalled—came running out from the woods behind Jacob’s Ladder.

  “Hey, Cody! Get your suit on. Our moms said we could go to the beach!”

  Cody’s face lit up.

  Kevin looked thunderstruck. She really should have remembered to tell him that several of the families checking in yesterday had kids. She experienced a sudden, irrational hope that this somehow would make him change his mind about selling the place.

  Cody hugged the football to his chest and looked uneasy.

  “It’s been nice playing with you, Mr. Tucker, but… uh… I have to go play with my friends now. If it’s okay?” He edged away backward. “If you… can’t find anybody else to play with, I guess—I guess I can come back later.”

  Kevin cleared his throat. “That’s okay. You go on with your friends.”

  Cody was off like a shot with the three O’Brian boys following.

  Kevin approached her slowly. He looked so disconcerted that Molly bit her lip to keep her smile within reasonable boundaries. “Roo’ll play with you.”

  Roo whimpered and crawled under the gazebo.

  She rose and walked to the bottom of the steps. “Okay, I’ll play with you. But don’t throw hard.”

  He shook his head in bewilderment. “Where did all these kids come from?”

  “School’s finally out. I told you they’d show up.”

  “But… how many are here?”

  “The three O’Brian boys, and Cody has a baby sister. Two families have one teenage girl each.”

  He sank down on the step.

  She held her amusement in check as she sat next to him. “You’ll probably meet them all this afternoon. Tea in the gazebo will be a nice way to kick off a new week.”

  He didn’t say anything, just gazed out at the Common.

  She considered it a tribute to her maturity that only a small bubble of laughter escaped. “Sorry your playmate ran away.”

  He stubbed the heel of his sneaker in the grass. “I made a fool out of myself, didn’t I?”

  Her heart melted, and she rested her cheek against his shoulder. “Yes, but the world could use more fools like you. You’re a very nice man.”

  He smiled down at her. She smiled back. And that’s when it hit her.

  This wasn’t a crush at all. She’d fallen in love with him.

  She was so horrified, she jerked away.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing!” She started to chatter to cover up her dismay. “There’s another family. More children. Checking in today with… some kids. The Smiths. They didn’t say how many—how many kids. Amy talked to them.”

  In love with Kevin Tucker! Please, not that! Hadn’t she learned anything? She knew from her childhood how impossible it was to make someone love her, yet she’d once again fallen into that old, destructive pattern. What about all her dreams and hopes? What about her Great Love Story?

  She felt like burying her head in her hands and crying. She wanted love, but he only wanted sex. He stirred beside her. She was glad of the distraction, and she followed the direction of his gaze across the Common. The O’Brian boys were chasing each other while they waited for Cody to change into his swim trunks. Two girls who looked as though they were about fourteen came walking up from the beach carrying a boom box. Kevin took in the kids, the boom box, the old trees, the sherbet-colored cottages.

  “I can’t believe this is the same place.”

  “It’s not,” she managed. “Things change.” She cleared her throat and tried to block out her turmoil. “The woman you hired. Is she starting tomorrow?”

  “She told me I had to fire Amy first.”

  “What? You can’t! She’s finishing all her work and doing everything you ask! Besides, that patronizing little twit’s terrific with the guests.” She shot up from the step. “I mean it, Kevin. You should make her cover up her hickeys, but you can’t fire her.”

  He didn’t respond.

  Molly grew alarmed. “Kevin…”

  “Relax, will you? Of course I’m not going to fire her. That’s why that old biddy drove off in a huff.”

  “Thank God. What was her problem with Amy?”

  “Apparently Amy and her daughter went to high school together and never got along. If her daughter’s like her mother, I’m on Amy’s side.”

  “You did the right thing.”

  “I guess. But this is a small town, and I’ve reached the end of a very short list. The college kids have all gone to work on Mackinac Island for the summer, and the kind of person I need to hire isn’t interested in taking a job that’s only going to last through September.”

  “That’s your answer, then. Keep this place and make the job permanent.”

  “That’s not going to happen, but I do have another idea.” He stood and looked down at her, his eyes doing a sexy dance and his mouth curling in a smile. “Did I mention that you look real good naked?”

  She shivered. “What idea?”

  He spoke lower. “Do you have any animals on your panties today?”

  “I forget.”

  “Then I guess I’ll have to look.”

  “You will not!”

  “Yeah? Who’s gonna stop me?”

  “You’re lookin’ at her, jock boy.” She jumped from the top step and raced across the Common, glad for the excuse to run off her turmoil. But instead of heading toward the B&B, where the presence of the guests would keep her safe, she darted between the cottages and toward the woods where she’d be… unsafe.

  Roo loved this new game and scampered after her, yipping with excitement. It occurred to her that Kevin might not be following, but she needn’t have worried. He caught her at the edge of the path and pulled her into the woods.

  “Stop it! Go away!” She slapped at his arm. “You promised you’d carry those card tables out to the gazebo.”

  “I’m not carrying anything until I see what’s on your panties.”

  “It’s Daphne, okay?”

  “I’m supposed to believe you’re wearing the same underpants you had on yesterday?”

  “I have more than one pair.”

  “I think you’re lying. I want to see for myself.” He dragged her deeper into the pines. While Roo circled them barking, he reached for the snap on her shorts. “Quiet, Godz
illa! There’s some serious business going on here.”

  Roo obediently quieted.

  She grabbed his wrists and pushed. “Get away.”

  “That’s not what you were saying last night.”

  “Somebody’ll see.”

  “I’ll tell them a bee got you, and I’m taking out the stinger.”

  “Don’t touch my stinger!” She grabbed for her shorts, but they were already heading for her knees. “Stop that!”

  He peered down at her panties. “It’s the badger. You lied to me.”

  “I wasn’t paying attention when I got dressed.”

  “Hold still. I’ve just about found that stinger.”

  She heard herself sigh.

  “Oh, yeah…” His body moved against hers. “There it is.”

  Half an hour later, just as they were emerging from the woods, a very familiar-looking Suburban came barreling around the Common. Kevin told himself it was just a coincidence as he watched it screech to a stop in front of the B&B, but then Roo barked and raced toward it.

  Molly let out a squeal and began to run. The car doors opened, and a poodle that looked like Roo jumped out. Then came the kids. It seemed like a dozen, but it was only four, all of them Calebows who were rushing his not-so-estranged wife.

  Dread pooled in the pit of his stomach. One thing he knew: Where there were Calebow kids, there were bound to be Calebow parents.

  His steps slowed as the luscious blond owner of the Chicago Stars slithered from the driver’s side of the car and her legendary husband emerged from the passenger side. The fact that Phoebe had been driving didn’t surprise him. In this family, leadership seemed to shift back and forth according to circumstances. As he approached the car, he had an uneasy premonition neither of them would like the circumstances at Wind Lake.

  What were those circumstances? For almost two weeks now he’d been acting crazed. Training camp was a little over a month away, but he was either laughing with Molly, getting mad at her, freezing her out, or seducing her. He hadn’t watched any game film in days, and he wasn’t working out enough. All he could think about was how much he loved being with her—this sassy, aggravating kid-woman who wasn’t beautiful, silent, or undemanding, but a pain in the ass. And so much fun.

  Why did she have to be Phoebe’s sister? Why couldn’t he have met her in a bar? He tried to imagine her in glitter eye shadow and a cellophane dress, but all he could see was the way she’d looked that morning in her underpants and his T-shirt. Her bare feet had been hooked over the rung of a chair, her pretty hair tousled around her face, and those wicked blue-gray eyes had shot trouble at him over the rim of a Peter Rabbit cup.

  Now Molly hugged her nieces and nephew, apparently forgetting that her clothes were rumpled and she had pine needles in her hair. He didn’t look much better, and any astute pair of eyes could see what they’d been up to.

  There were no eyes more astute than the ones belonging to Phoebe and Dan Calebow. All four of them rotated toward him.

  He slipped his hands into his pockets and played it cool. “Hey, there. Nice surprise.”

  “We thought so.” Phoebe’s polite response stood in marked contrast to the warm way she used to greet him, while Dan’s expression was assessing. Kevin beat back his uneasiness by reminding himself that he was untouchable, the best quarterback in the AFC.

  But the Chicago Stars had no untouchables as long as the Calebows were at the helm, and right then it flashed through his mind exactly how this could play out if he wasn’t careful. If they decided they wanted to keep him away from Molly, he’d be called into the front office one day soon and hear that he was part of a big-ticket trade. A lot of struggling teams would be more than happy to give up some top draft choices for an All-Pro quarterback, and before he knew what had happened, he’d find himself playing for one of the league’s bottom-dwellers.

  As he watched Dan taking in the pine needles stuck to Molly’s hair, a mental picture flashed through his head of himself barking out signals for the Lions in the Silverdome.

  Molly hugged the kids who were chirping around her. “Are you surprised to see us, Aunt Molly? Are you surprised?”

  “Roo! Kanga’s here to play with you!”

  “… and Mom says we can go swimming in…”

  “… fell off the monkey bars and got a black eye!”

  “… this boy calls her every day, even though…”

  “… then he threw up all over the…”

  “… Dad says I’m too young, but…”

  Molly’s attention shifted from one child to the next, her expression flickering from sympathy to interest to amusement without missing a beat. This was her real family.

  The sharp ache took him by surprise. He and Molly sure weren’t a family, so it wasn’t as if he’d been cut out of anything. He was just having a leftover reflex from his childhood, when he’d dreamed about being part of a big, messy crowd like this one.

  “Omigosh!” Molly squealed. “You’re the Smiths!”

  The kids squealed back and pointed their fingers at her. Gotcha, Aunt M!

  Kevin remembered Molly’s earlier comment that a family named Smith was checking in today. Meet the Smiths. His sense of dread grew.

  Molly gazed at her sister, who was holding Roo the Fierce. “Did Amy know who you really were when she took the reservation?”

  Tess giggled. At least he figured it was Tess, because she wore a soccer jersey while her look-alike scampered around in a sundress. “Mom didn’t tell her. We wanted to surprise you!”

  “We get to stay all week!” Andrew exclaimed. “And I want to sleep with you!”

  Way to go, Andy boy. You just tossed good ol’ Uncle Kevin right out on his ass.

  Molly rumpled his hair and didn’t reply. At the same time she reached for the quietest Calebow.

  Hannah had been standing a little off to the side, as she usually did, but her eyes sparkled with excitement. “I thought up a whole new Daphne adventure,” she whispered, barely loud enough for him to hear. “I wrote it down in my spiral notebook.”

  “I can’t wait to read it.”

  “Can we see the beach, Aunt Molly?”

  As Dan took the keys from Phoebe, he turned toward Kevin. “Maybe you could show me the cottage so I can start unloading.”

  “Sure.” Just what he didn’t want to do. Dan was on a mission to assess how much damage Kevin had done to his precious Molly. But when it came to damage, Kevin felt as if he were the one who’d suffered a head wound.

  Molly pointed toward the cottage on the other side of the Common. “You’re staying in Gabriel’s Trumpet. The door’s unlocked.”

  Kevin walked across the grass while Dan drove around. They did a catch-up on the team as they unloaded, but he knew Dan fairly well, and it didn’t take the Stars’ president long to say what was on his mind.

  “So what’s going on here?” Dan slammed the tailgate on the Suburban harder than he needed to.

  Kevin could be as in-your-face as Dan, but he decided it was smarter using Molly’s “dumb” ploy. “The truth is, I’ve been having a bitch of a time.” He picked up a laundry basket filled with beach toys. “I didn’t think it was going to be so hard to get someone to run this place.”

  “Dad!” Julie and Tess came running up, followed by Andrew. “We need our suits so we can go swimming before the tea party this afternoon.”

  “Except Aunt Molly says I get to drink lemonade,” Andrew declared,” ‘cause I don’t like tea!”

  “Look at our cottage! It’s so cute!” Julie raced to the door as Molly and Phoebe approached with Hannah.

  Molly looked tense, and Phoebe regarded Kevin with eyes as chilly as a Lions uniform in the middle of a losing Detroit November.

  “The lake’s freezing, girls,” Molly called out to the twins on the porch, trying to act as though everything were normal. “It’s not like the pool at home.”

  “Are there water snakes?”

  The question had come from Ha
nnah, who looked worried. Something about her had always gotten to Kevin. “No snakes, kiddo. Do you want me to go in with you?”

  Her smile flashed a thousand watts of gratitude. “Would you?”

  “Sure. Get your suit on, and I’ll meet you there.” He didn’t want to leave Molly alone with the enemy, so he said, “Your aunt’ll come along. She loves swimming in that old lake, don’t you, Molly?”

  Molly looked relieved. “Sure. We can all go swimming together.”

  And wasn’t this going to be a whole new way to have fun?

  He and Molly waved cheery see-you-laters to the Calebows. As they walked away, he thought he heard Dan muttering to Phoebe, but he caught only one word.

  “Slytherin.”

  Molly waited until they were far enough away before she let her agitation show. “You have to get your things out of the cottage! I don’t want them to know we’ve been sleeping together.”

  After the way they’d looked coming out of the woods, he figured it was already too late, but he nodded.

  “And don’t let Dan get you alone again. He’ll just give you the third degree. I’ll make sure one of the kids is always around when I’m with Phoebe.”

  Before he could reply, she took off toward the cottage. He kicked at a clump of gravel and headed for the B&B. Why did she need to be secretive? Not that he wanted her to say anything—things were rocky enough as it was. But Molly didn’t have to worry about being traded to Detroit like he did, so why didn’t she tell them to go to hell?

  The more he thought about it, the more her attitude bothered him. It was okay for him to want to keep this private, but somehow it wasn’t okay for her.

  Chapter 20

  In olden days a girl who liked a boy always made sure he won when they played cards and board games.

  “Playing Rough”

  article for Chik

  They changed out of their suits in time for Molly’s tea in the gazebo, which she’d decided to hold at three o’clock instead of five because it would be better for the kids. She complained to Phoebe that the paper plates and store-bought cake disqualified her from a photo spread in Victoria magazine, but Kevin knew she cared more about having a good time than bringing out the good china.