“Amanda. Try to concentrate. Because I’m getting more lost instead of less.”
Why did she have to be such an incoherent mess this morning? When it mattered? When everybody told her she was articulate in a crisis, how come she had such a hard time with Mike?
She clasped her hands together. “This is the thing. We’ve had this…connection between us. Neither of us want our kids hurt. Neither of us want it to go too far. But I just kept thinking, Mike, we’re friends. We’re both smart. I think there’s a level where we trust each other. So why couldn’t we do something we both want-and maybe need-as long as we’re both careful? But then…I thought…you really couldn’t be the one to take the plunge.”
“And why would that be?”
“For the same reason my daughter hit that little girl. And your son didn’t. Because you’re raising your son to be a gentleman. The same way you are.”
Something cooled in his eyes. A ruler stiffened his spine. “Trust me, Amanda. I’m not.”
“You are. In every way.” Her voice was warm, sincere…but from his expression, she seemed to be hitting him totally the wrong way.
“So.” His voice turned softer than butter. “You made the first move, because you didn’t think I had the guts to?”
“No. Good grief, Mike. No. That wasn’t what I meant at all-”
“I think it’s pretty clear. You and Molly think we’re the kind of guys who can’t do our own fighting.”
Now she was getting confused-as well as palm-cold anxious. “This wasn’t about fighting. Neither of us want our kids to fight. Both of us are teaching our kids that violence is not a way to solve anything-”
“I’m not talking about the kids. I’m talking about us. And if the only reason you showed up last night is because you didn’t think I’d ever find the guts to-”
“Wait. Just wait. That’s not what-”
Teddy and Molly barreled out of the house at the same time, shrieking and laughing…and soaking wet.
Amanda couldn’t remember what they said they were going to play-fish? Candy Land? A marble game? So she wasn’t sure which culprit had unearthed the squirt guns from the closet in the back room. Of course, it didn’t matter who.
She shot an unhappy look at Mike-who didn’t look back. He grabbed his kid. She grabbed hers.
There wasn’t going to be any more private talking. Not now. Amanda felt a sinking sense of loss. She told herself that you couldn’t lose what you never had.
But Mike’s expression had become starched, his posture rigid.
She’d hurt him. Really hurt him.
She’d bumbled a moment that seriously mattered-and she had no idea how to make it right.
Chapter Ten
A half hour later, Teddy didn’t object to a ride in the truck, but he kept sneaking peeks at him. “Dad. Molly and I didn’t break anything or hurt anything. We just got wet.”
“I know.”
“But you look so mad.”
“I’m not mad.”
“Then how come you keep looking mad, if you’re not mad?”
Mike declenched his jaw, rolled the iron out of his shoulders, smiled at his son. “I think you and I have earned a big day off.”
“I think so, too!” Teddy agreed, and then added, “What does ‘a day off’ mean?”
“It means you and I are going to have a guy day. We’re going fishing. In a lake. In a boat. Where there are no phones and no doorbells and no one can reach us. You like that idea?”
“I love it! I love fishes! I’ve always loved fishes!”
The whole afternoon, Mike tried to get his head back on track. There were tons of places to snag a rental boat, buy some live bait, set Teddy up with a fun afternoon. The sun was blazing, the lake silvery-calm, the sky a pure blue canvas without a single cloud. Teddy caught a little bass that fought like the devil, then a bigger one, a catfish, one pretty pike.
The whole time, Mike felt lower than a skunk, although he did his damnedest to hide the clunky mood from his son.
But he was hurting.
From the day he’d met Amanda, he warned himself not to fall for her.
She was the wrong woman-the most contrary redhead he’d ever come across. And it was the wrong time-for all the reasons they both knew and had commiserated about.
But last night, when she’d shown up in his shower…he’d known.
He hadn’t just fallen. He’d leaped straight off the cliff, so deep, so hard, there was no climbing back. She’d scraped past layers no one else ever had. She’d touched him…because she’d taken that kind of huge emotional risk. With him. For him. And for all their play, he’d tried to lavish her with tenderness and care and skill. The best of who he was as a lover.
So when she’d pulled the “friends” on him this morning, it ripped. But the details-that she thought she’d had to seduce him-as if he weren’t man enough to do the seducing…it just sent him into a crash funk.
He’d been trying to play by her rules by not touching her. He’d been trying to be a decent guy, for once.
Amanda was nothing like his ex, Mike knew, but suddenly it felt like new song, old refrain. Amanda was the cultured, classy type. She thought he was fine for a roll in the hay-but not good enough to fit in with her image of a long-term mate.
Teddy snoozed the whole way home, and Mike had the quiet sunset drive to put it all in perspective. That’s it. He’d shut up from here on. Go back to the rules they’d agreed on to begin with.
He’d be a friend.
Nothing else.
His resolve lasted a whole four days. When the phone rang, he had thick gloves on and was working in the basement with Teddy’s worm farm-knee-deep in a project that didn’t smell good, didn’t look good and needed to be done.
He’d have let the machine pick up-Teddy was with him, and there was no other emergency that couldn’t wait five minutes that he could imagine. But when the machine clicked on, he heard Amanda’s voice.
“Mike? I’m pretty sure you’re there. You probably just can’t come to the phone. But…I had a problem come up, and I was hoping-”
That’s all that went down before he’d taken the stairs three at a time and grabbed the landline in the kitchen. “I’m here. I was just downstairs. What’s up?”
He knew from the way she said his name, from everything in her voice, that she was stressed and strung tight.
“I hate to ask you. But I have to be in court at one. I didn’t ask my parents to babysit, because frankly, I’d rather they didn’t know until afterward. They get all upset, and this was something I didn’t want spilling on Molly inadvertently. Anyway, I called an agency. They sent over a babysitter with fabulous credentials. She got here at ll:00 a.m. I kicked her out three minutes ago. There was just no way-”
“You need me to watch Molly.”
There. He heard her take a breath. Breathe. “Yes. If you could. It’s too late for me to set up anything else. I have to be in the car before ll:30 a.m. And-”
“Hey. Molly’ll be fine with me. You know that. Don’t even think twice.”
The girls arrived five minutes later. Amanda was dressed like he’d never seen her, wearing judge-sober navy, nothing like her usual put-together thing. Just a navy skirt, white blouse, all tidy and meticulous, makeup on the spare. Her hair was rolled up in some kind of coil in back; God knew how she’d tamed it, but it was pinned and straight within an inch of its life. She had a smile on. He didn’t know whose smile it was, but it sure as hell wasn’t Amanda’s.
“Thanks, Mike,” was all she said.
“You need someone to go with you?” He couldn’t take his eyes off her strained face.
“No. Everything’s fine. I just needed help with Molly-” she shot a reassuring smile at her daughter “-because she would have been completly bored all afternoon, stuck sitting in a chair while I was at this little meeting.”
It wasn’t a little meeting, but Mike got it. That was the story for Molly.
“
Hey, she’ll have a good time with us. Right, Mol? And don’t worry about the time. We’ll be here.”
She took a breath, thanked him again, gave him a house key in case he needed anything for Molly…then bent down to kiss her daughter and she was off.
He turned to Molly. It appeared to be a Cat Day. She wore a top with pastel cats, carried two stuffed cats and had a purse the size of a half dollar that looked like a cat. There were two jelly beans inside the purse. She gave one to Teddy right off, so she could have the other, but so far she wasn’t talking to him.
He hunkered more to her height. “Here’s the deal. We’re not doing something you’re likely to have fun with, right this minute. We’re bringing the worm farm up from the basement, because they’re ready to live outside in the shed. And there are enough worms to start feeding the frogs in the water garden. But that’s all pretty dirty work. Nothing you’d probably like.”
She nodded.
“But you could sit on the table in the yard and just watch us for a bit, okay? We’ll get this done as soon as we can. And after that, Teddy and I’ll get cleaned up. And then we could all go for an ice cream cone. Or to the library. Or watch a movie. Or go to the park. Or…”
“Go shopping,” Molly supplied.
That hadn’t been on his list, would never have been on his list, but he nodded. “That’s just what I was hoping you might like to do.”
“I really don’t want to do anything. My mom did not want to go to this meeting. Something is wrong and I don’t like it. But I guess I could sit here for a while.” She perched on the deck table, crossed her legs like her mother and motioned like a princess for the boys to proceed.
Mike hesitated, thinking maybe he should get her to talk if she was upset. But without knowing what Amanda was dealing with exactly, he figured he’d better try a wait-see before trying to dive into Molly’s little head. As it happened, he didn’t have to worry about either choice, because she’d ambled down to the water garden, holding one of her stuffed cats, before two minutes had passed.
“Mr. Mike, your stones are all wrong.”
He’d framed the kidney-shaped water garden with stones, both to keep down the liner and to make the project look “done.” “What’s wrong with them?”
“You just didn’t put them in a pretty way. They don’t look right.”
He looked at his brilliantly designed minipond, then raised an eyebrow at the pint-size diva. “So how do you think they should look?”
She showed him, and damned if she wasn’t right. After she’d rearranged all the stupid stones, the whole setup looked better landscaped.
“You’re pretty smart,” he told her.
“That’s what my mom says. But grown-ups never listen to me. I don’t know why.” She was ignoring Teddy as if he didn’t exist, but that was possibly because his son had his hands full of worms and was dying to get her attention. “Only, now you need some lights.”
“What kind of lights?”
“You know. The kind of little lights that you put outside. They don’t have cords. They have to get sun during the day to make them work. Then they’d make your pond look pretty at night.” She frowned. “I think you need four.” She motioned where she wanted them.
She was a miniature of her mother. “I think you’re right again.”
“I could give you more ideas, if you want.” Once she opened up, of course, she couldn’t shut up. She supervised lunch, which included how to properly wash hands, how Mike should cut the bread crusts and how napkins were folded. Once they all sat down-including Slugger and Cat-she opened up about Amanda.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said, “and I think I know where my mom is. It’s all about heat.”
“Heat,” Mike echoed.
“Yup. Heat. I’ll bet her meeting is with the vet. Because when we took Darling to the vet a while ago-the new vet, the one we’re going to now-he said it might be too late. And then my mom sent me out to the waiting room. And when we got home, that’s when we had to start locking Darling up in the laundry room. Or she had to wear a diaper when she was walking around. It’s all about in heat.”
“I see.”
“Darling doesn’t have to wear a diaper anymore. So I thought everything was okay. But then Mom had to go to this meeting. And that’s the only thing I know she was worried about.”
Okay, he just couldn’t completely let that go. “You know what? Your mom may be worried about something, just like you’re thinking. But you might want to remember, she’s really strong and smart.”
“Yeah, she is,” Molly agreed.
“Being smart doesn’t mean you’ll never have a problem. Everybody has problems. But I think you can stop worrying about your mom. She’s so strong and smart, that I’m positive she’ll find a way to work it out.”
“I sort of know that.” Molly sighed. “I just don’t like it when she doesn’t tell me everything.”
Teddy, clearly tired of being cut out, interrupted to say, “If you get to talk to my dad, then I get to talk to your mom.”
“Yeah. So?”
“And if you get to come over here, then I should get to go over to your house sometimes.”
“Sure,” Molly said.
“And I worry about my dad, too. All the time.”
“Yeah? What about?”
Teddy had to think. “Just things. Like when my mom isn’t nice to him. Things like that.”
The kids had a competitive argument over who was the best kid/who worried most/who took best care of their mom or dad. Mike felt like a humorous fly on the wall; they battled back and forth as if he weren’t even there. The afternoon filled up. He took the kids for ice cream, then had to find a potty. A trip to Target thankfully solved Molly’s shopping need, where he bought exactly the lights she told him to-that required another potty break. By three o’clock in the afternoon, he brought out cards on the deck and played fish forever. At least twenty minutes.
About then he started glancing at his watch. It might be too soon to start watching for Amanda, but he figured whatever had gone right-or wrong-about the custody hearing had already happened. She was either hugely relieved…or hugely upset.
His mother called. She wanted them over for dinner on Sunday. The phone rang again. It was a headhunter who specialized in attorney positions and wanted Mike as a client. The kids settled on the rug with the dog in front of a Disney flick.
Mike told himself to get the mail, get some bills paid, use the quiet time to tackle some chores.
But it was four-thirty by then, and Amanda still wasn’t home.
He knew how courts worked. How custody hearings went. Amanda had no way of knowing how long she’d be gone, and she’d have called him if she expected to be crazy late, or if anything had happened. She’d never have left her daughter hanging.
So there was no reason for him to worry.
And he wasn’t worried exactly.
He was just glued to the window.
At ten to five, her white SUV zoomed into the driveway. The sound of the car sent Slugger baying and Cat snarling at the dog door to confront the arrival. Molly and Teddy didn’t budge-they were near the end of the movie-but when Mike said, “Your mom’s just pulling in, Mol,” the little one bounced to her feet.
Slugger and Cat beat everyone else out the door to greet her, then came kids, with Mike bringing up the rear. By the time he got a look, she was bending down to give Molly a giant hug and kiss, so he couldn’t see her face.
Teddy got in there, to start explaining that he thought he should have time at her house, too, and Amanda was agreeing with him. “I was thinking of something we could do that would be fun for you. You like getting your hands dirty, don’t you?”
“Yeah, I do,” Teddy confirmed.
“In fact, Teddy, I was thinking…maybe you could come over when we have a baking afternoon. Lots of flour all over the place. Lots of messes. Lots of squishing butter between your fingers. We could make pies or cookies or somethi
ng. That sound okay to you?”
“That sounds like something I’ve wanted to do my whole life. And nobody ever let me before.”
After Teddy’s turn, his hound had to be petted, and Molly was still talking to her mom nonstop…but finally, finally, she lifted her head. “Hey, neighbor.
Did you survive?”
“We had a blast.”
“Uh-huh. What do I owe you? A day in a padded cell? Brownies? Cookies for the rest of your life? Slave labor cleaning floors? Pizza?”
She made the kids laugh…he did, too. “Let me think on it.”
“Yeah, you probably need a five-hour nap, huh?”
He chuckled again at her teasing, since she clearly wanted him to. “Everything go okay for you?”
“Sure did,” she said heartily. “Tell you about it when I get a chance. In the meantime…I’d better get Molly in and my brood fed and watered. Thanks, Mike. I really, really appreciate it.”
“Hey, no sweat. Anytime,” he said, and meant it. She looked at him, her expressions, her words, as if he were seriously a cherished friend, sincerity radiating from her tone and smile.
They were doing the friend thing really well, he thought.
And wished he could kick a mountain in the shins.
Something had whipped the hell out of her in that custody hearing. He didn’t know who won what-or who lost what-but Amanda’s eyes had the fierce brightness of a lioness. She was hurting. Bad.
Mike felt a sudden, sharp ripping sensation. Her hurting wasn’t supposed to be his business.
She didn’t want a hero. She wanted a friend. She didn’t want someone to beat up her enemies, to protect her, to watch over her.
She wanted a friend. She didn’t want him in the parts of her life that involved pain or fear or any of that other rotten life crap. She just wanted a friend.
Those were her rules.
Well, they’d played it her way. Now they were going to play it his way.
Chapter Eleven
Well, Amanda thought, she’d handled that reasonably well. Or as well as she possibly could have. Mike hadn’t guessed she was upset. Neither of the kids sensed anything was wrong…although Molly was still sneaking questions at bedtime.
Yours, Mine & Ours Page 13