The Comeback Mom

by Muriel Jensen

  “I’ve never been, either.” Carlie’s voice went on behind her as Libby struggled to get a grip on the weighty bowl. It was very plain, but looked like something her grandmother might have used, and the last thing she wanted to do was drop it. “Julio wants to take me there.”

  “Julio?” Libby asked absently as she arched her back to lean the bowl against her chest so that she could wrap her arm around it. She was reluctant to let go of the shelf because the counter was narrow and her perch precarious.

  “A customer who collects azulejo. But he’s become more than that over the past few months.” The sound of the peeler at work accompanied her story. “We go dancing all the time. We can’t dip, of course, like that show-off Martha Gershoff and her husband, because of my back, but we have a wonderful time. We always close the place.”

  Libby turned in a small semicircle like a broken robot, the bowl in one arm, the shelf gripped in her other hand, when Spike raced through the kitchen with Tippy in pursuit. They ran under her chair, then around it as Scarlett, feeling rested and frisky, tried to head them off. They turned back and, with the leash wrapped around the legs of the chair, dragged it off.

  “Ah…” Libby said, trying to get Carlie’s attention.

  But she was apparently lost in thoughts of Julio as she pared apples like a madwoman. “I told the boys I’ve been going dancing, but I didn’t tell them that I was beginning to fall in love again. I mean, who thinks it’ll happen again at sixty-nine? I was as surprised as anyone. But do I really want to turn my entire life around? And what would I do about the shop if I moved to Puerto Rico?”

  “Move to Puerto Ri—!” Jared sounded shocked, then he cut off as he closed the kitchen door behind him and saw Libby standing on the counter, clinging to the shelf. He came to stand under her, hands on his hips. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m practicing to tackle Everest,” she said, annoyed that he seemed annoyed. “I intend to leave a bowl for offerings at the summit.”

  He shifted his weight, his eyes berating her smart reply.

  “I asked her to get me a bowl,” Carlie said. “No need to be testy with her.”

  “Really? You want to explain on the insurance claim how she fractured three limbs and her head?” He reached up for the bowl and placed it on the table. “When you asked her to get the bowl, you might have told her there was a step stool in the mudroom.” Then he reached up for Libby. “Come on. Get off there. How did you get up there, anyway?”

  She wanted more than anything at that moment to have the ability to flutter down to the floor on her own. She didn’t want to have to touch him. She didn’t want to have to let him touch her.

  “I used a kitchen chair,” she replied coolly, pointing with the hand now blessedly free of the bowl to the spot across the room where the dogs played. Tippy was still wrapped around the chair. “They dragged it away.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, then beckoned her with his fingertips. “Come on. Put your hands on my shoulders.”

  She did it, her teeth gritted against the contact. He was everything that stood in her way. He was smug and judgmental, and sometimes, when she turned and found him watching her, she wondered if he wasn’t onto her—or at least wondering what she was up to.

  She expected everything she so disliked about him to transfer itself to her when she touched him.

  What she experienced was entirely different. The instant she braced her hands on his shoulders and his hands gripped her waist, she felt warmth, muscle, competence and a paradoxical sense of safety. How that could be when he presented a threat to everything she wanted, she didn’t know; but she felt it all the same.

  He swung her off the counter and that sharp, startling realization made the small move feel as though it took an eternity. She looked into his eyes and saw reflected there the same strange timelessness she felt.

  She’d been held by men before, but the contact had had the feel of a very contemporary communication. She’d always appreciated being on an equal footing with a man, but she didn’t quite have that here. His hands were in charge. His muscle was supporting her. But she was being held protectively, her needs of the moment superseding his, so that for an instant she felt as though she’d gone one hundred years back in time rather than ten. And she had the feeling of not being equal at all, but very special.

  When he finally put her down she fought an alarming need to hold on.

  Jared couldn’t seem to take his hands off her. He could feel the fragility of her rib cage under his fingers, the swell of the underside of a breast under his thumb.

  His nostrils were filled with her heady floral fragrance and did not seem to be taking in air. He looked into her eyes and experienced a disorienting weightlessness usually associated with asphyxiation or drowning. He could feel her heart thudding against his thumb.

  Then her feet touched the floor and he felt suddenly as though he, too, had landed.

  She dropped her hands from his shoulders and said a polite thank-you.

  He tried to stabilize his heartbeat as she went to the telephone table and returned with a paper she handed his mother. She sat opposite her, picked up a small paring knife and began to peel apples.

  He had no idea what that had been all about. Enforced celibacy, he guessed, during four weeks abroad. Like Darren, he enjoyed a lusty woman as much as the next guy, but he’d never been ruled by desire.

  He rationalized it as a result of the pressures of the past few days, then dismissed it.

  He went to sit beside his mother and take the peeler from her.

  “Puerto Rico?” he demanded, trying to pretend that that unsettling little interlude hadn’t happened. “What do you mean? Why? With whom?”

  “I mean San Juan,” she replied quietly. She always did that when she’d driven him to the point of apoplexy. “Because I’ve been invited to go. By Julio Ruiz, my dear friend. Not that I have to explain myself to you.”

  He was beginning to see the light. “So, that’s why you came.”

  “I came,” she said, glancing up at him over her glasses as she polished an apple with the sleeve of an elegant black blouse, “because I wanted to see my new grandchildren. You and your brother do seem to be cases of arrested development in the area of forming the permanent attachments required to make families.”

  “You came to Darren’s,” he stated, “before you heard about your grandchildren.”

  She cast him another look that scolded without actually denying the truth of what he said. “It isn’t nice to correct your mother,” she said.

  “So, maybe you should explain yourself to me.” He took the apple from her and put it aside. “Preferably before you end up on a tropical island sporting ruffles and a bare midriff.”

  She laughed at the notion, then sobered again and admitted with a deep sigh, “I’m in love, Jared. And I think I’m going to be married.”

  He did his best to take the news with equanimity, then tried to imagine how his father would have handled the situation. The man had always seemed able to deal with her. “No, you’re not,” he said with the quiet voice his father had always used that suggested death would result if his wishes were thwarted.

  She met his eyes, her own sparking. “Don’t forget who was in labor with whom for thirty-one hours.”

  He heard Libby draw a breath to offer an opinion, but he fixed her with a look intended to freeze the words on her lips.

  She arched an eyebrow at him, obviously not intimidated. “Shouldn’t you know a little about him before you determine your mother’s future?”

  His father, he decided, must have dealt with a different breed of woman.

  “You’re not marrying anyone,” he said firmly to his mother, “before Darren and I have met him. What does he do? What are his…his…?”

  “Prospects?” Carlie asked with a wry smile. “Retirement benefits, I believe. He’s with the Puerto Rico Bureau of Tourism. He used to be an entertainer and now he’s a sort of goodwill ambassador. H
e has a tidy savings account.”

  “An entertainer,” Jared repeated flatly. “Mom, what’s happened to the levelheaded woman who won’t even buy an iffy stock? Is this…” He waggled a hand, unable to find a word he was willing to say to his mother.

  She and Libby exchanged a look that made him feel completely alien.

  “Sexual?” his mother inquired. “You bet. He’s gorgeous. And every time he kisses me, I feel like a bride again.”

  He was horrified. “What? Don’t you listen to the warnings? Haven’t you heard about…?”

  “My interest,” she interrupted a little loudly, “is sexual as well as intellectual and spiritual and emotional. But both of us grew up in a time when we respected those things and held them only for each other. And we’ve done that. What am I, sixteen?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied a little hotly, “you sound a little hormonal to me.”

  She laughed. “Darling, my estrogen comes out of a bottle these days. I love this man, but I came to you because I am afraid of changing everything, of moving farther away from you and Darren, and I wanted you to reassure me that no matter what, you’ll always love me and support what I choose to do.”

  Her little speech made him feel like a heel. Libby’s glance from across the table rubbed it in. He decided to hold firm.

  “I will always love you, no matter what,” he said earnestly, “but I can’t support something that could ultimately hurt you—unless you can convince me it won’t. So bring Julio down to meet us.”

  “He wants to go home the first of December,” she said, her gaze sliding away from his.

  “So, you’d be gone for Christmas?” he asked defensively. He couldn’t imagine Christmas without her. Since his father’s death, he and Darren had always made it to her home for Christmas, no matter how far away they’d been. “Now that you have grandchildren?”

  “She could bring him down for Thanksgiving,” Libby suggested.

  Carlie looked at him hopefully.

  He couldn’t think of one reason that wouldn’t work out—though he intended to have a word with the intrusive Miss Madison. Julio. An entertainer, no less. He imagined ruffled sleeves and maracas.

  “Sure. Let’s do that,” he said, hiding the reluctance with which he agreed. “Thanksgiving here.”

  Carlie smiled and pulled him toward her over the edge of the table to kiss his cheek. “Thank you. I knew you could be reasonable. If you let me have the peeler back, I can have apple pies in the freezer before Darren comes back for me.”

  CARLIE ROCKED Zachary while her pies baked, then she colored with Savannah and left on schedule after hugging everyone.

  “See you at Thanksgiving,” she promised as Darren closed her into the car.

  “Am I gonna paint now?” Savannah asked as the car turned out of the driveway and onto the road. She looked up at Jared, an expectant smile in place. “You said I could paint today.”

  He turned to Libby, the baby in his left arm. “Do you have all the paints you’ll need?”

  She knew she was on thin ice with him for taking his mother’s side, so she tried to smile pleasantly. “Yes, I do. I made a few sketches last night before I went to bed. Would you like to approve them before we start?”

  His dark eyes widened dramatically as he held the door open for them to go back into the house. “You’d like my opinion? How novel.”

  She shooed Savannah toward the stairs. “Go change into the jeans with the torn knee, okay? And that old Mickey Mouse sweatshirt.”

  Savannah raced upstairs to comply.

  Libby turned to her employer, thinking that she really had to assume a more subservient role if she was going to get anywhere with this man, but she kept finding herself in situations that made it difficult. She tried to recall if she’d been less impulsive ten years into the future, but couldn’t remember.

  It was a strange concept, she thought absently, trying to remember the future.

  “I know your mother’s affairs are none of my business,” she said frankly but reasonably, “but I related to her instantly. She looked so alone and afraid when you came on so disapproving. I thought she could use someone on her side.”

  “Maybe you related to her,” he said, moving Zachary into his other arm. He turned her toward the stairs and held her elbow as they climbed, the chivalrous gesture at odds with the chewing out. “But you’ve known her all of six or seven hours. I’ve known her all my life.”

  “Yes, but in all that time, you’ve never been able to think like a woman to understand what she’s feeling.”

  He couldn’t deny that, so he looked for another point to dissect. “She’s lived most of her life in Seattle! Now she wants to go to Puerto Rico? With an entertainer?”

  “You mean it’s all right for you to go to Scotland and wherever else you’ve been in the interest of your work, but she has to stay in one place?”

  “I didn’t go to Scotland to get married.”

  “No, but you came home and made an instant decision to take in two little children, and I didn’t hear her climb all over you for making a drastic change in your life.”

  He expelled an exasperated sigh as they topped the stairs. Zachary frowned at him, his little bow mouth moving as though he had an opinion he’d like to share if only he could.

  Jared patted the baby’s back, thinking how good it would be when he was old enough to offer a second male point of view.

  “Mom has her shop,” he said, “her friends, Darren and me. She’s been happy. Why take a chance like that?”

  “Why do you think she travels everywhere with three dogs?” she asked gravely. “I think she needs someone. If she loved your father, she’s probably more lonely without him than she’d ever admit to you. And people who had a good first marriage are more likely to find a second permanent partner. Don’t you get lonely?”

  He followed her down the hallway, which was lit by a leaded glass window at the far end. She turned at the door to her room to await his answer. He didn’t have one. Not one he’d admit to, in any case. He hadn’t been lonely a day in his life until he’d met Mandy. And he hadn’t felt whole since the day she’d told him she loved Frank.

  “I’m never lonely,” he lied.

  She smiled thinly, a vulnerability in the gesture that was sharply at odds with her buttinsky disposition. “Good for you,” she said, turning away from him to push the door open into her room. “I’m lonely all the time. The sketch is over here on the drafting table.”

  He followed her into the tidy room and looked over her shoulder as she pointed to the paper pinned to the board. “This is Rosie…” She indicated a young, winged female figure in what was probably a night-gown, floating over the rooftops and spires of a city—Paris, he guessed, judging by a stylized version of the Eiffel Tower. Flying behind her, also winged, was a black-and-white cat. The whole of her design was trapped in a border about four inches deep. She pointed to the cat. “And this is Tux.”

  He nodded. “They have croissants at the boulangerie and visit the Louvre, as I recall. And go home on the Concorde. You’ve been to Paris?”

  “Only in my dreams.” She pointed to rooftops and enumerated the places they represented. “I’ll do different cities on different walls. London, Rome, New York. And except for a bottom drawer that Savannah can work on, I’ll just do a border so that…” She stopped herself from saying aloud, So that when you can’t deal with the children after all and agree to let me take them, all you’ll have to do is repaint the upper five inches of wall and pretend you never made the mistake of thinking you could parent.

  “So that…” she said aloud, “if you don’t like it, it’ll be easy to repaint. And it won’t intrude on whatever you had planned for decor.”

  “I hadn’t planned anything, really,” he said. “Her toys are coming along with a shipment of architectural details I sent from Scotland. So I thought we’d just wait until those arrive and do what she wants.”

  “All right. Then we’ll
get busy.” She pointed to a deep bottom drawer across the room. “I’ll sketch that for Savannah to paint while I work along the top.”

  “Can you manage that and Zachary, too?”

  “Sure. I’ll be working in fits and starts anyway. I’ll bring the carrier up to make him comfortable. I think he’ll be fine as long as he can see us.”

  “Okay.” He studied her an extra moment. “I’m going to spend the rest of the afternoon in the workshop. If you need anything, there’s an intercom down the hall in my room, and one downstairs in the kitchen near the phone. Press the button to signal me, press the bar to talk, then let it go to hear my answer.”

  “Right.”

  Savannah ran into the room, dressed just as Libby had suggested, except that the shirt was on backward and the tag stuck out of the neck under her delicate chin.

  “I’m ready!” she said excitedly, jumping in place.

  Jared handed Libby the baby, dropped laughingly to one knee and pulled Savannah in front of him. “Well, how’s Mickey supposed to see what you’re doing when he’s behind you,” he teased, raising her arms so that he could pull the shirt off her. He held up the tag. “See this? It goes in the back.”

  He pulled it over her head again and tugged it back down. Then, in an artlessly tender gesture, he brushed the baby-fine dark hair out of her face with the tips of his fingers.

  She giggled.

  Libby felt a stab of barbed guilt.

  He kissed Savannah’s cheek, stood and chucked Zachary under the chin, then turned to the door. “I’ll bring the carrier up before I go.”

  “Am I sappose to call him ‘Daddy’ now?” Savannah asked as his footsteps sounded on the stairs.

  Libby felt the answer catch in her throat. But the little girl needed a sense of security, of a situation that wouldn’t change. She felt at a loss.

  “Do you want to call him ‘Daddy’?” was a convenient evasion.

  Savannah shrugged. “He doesn’t look like my other one.”

  That was the point, Libby thought righteously. She would want to call him “Daddy” if he felt like a daddy. Of course she knew that kind of bond couldn’t be forged over a matter of days, but it helped fortify her own position.