by Judi Fennell
“But who’s he gonna sleep with tonight?” Her thumb went back in her mouth.
Bryan gently pulled it out and kissed the back of her hand.
Beth’s stomach thudded. Women the world over would kill to have him do that to their hands. And she was one of them.
She was a rotten mother, being jealous of her own daughter. The daughter whose world had been turned upside down with the death of her father and now the danger to her dog. Yet here Beth was, wanting what had so generously been given to her daughter.
Maggie giggled. “That tickles. Your beard is all scratchy.”
Bryan put her palm on his cheek. “That’s what happens when I don’t have time to shave in the morning.”
Now Beth’s tummy fluttered. She missed watching Mike shave. Missed having a man in her life for those things that were so, well, dare she say it? Manly.
Bryan Manley . . .
Oh God. She had it bad. Just like half the women in America. And millions more across the globe.
She’d laugh if this situation were funny, for the fact that she had a movie star in the vet’s office for a silly dog who liked to chase underwear. You couldn’t write a story like this.
“So, what do you say we go grab breakfast?” Bryan asked Maggie. “I could use some pancakes, how about you? With lots of ice cream and whipped topping?”
Maggie giggled again. “That’s dessert, silly.”
“It is?” Bryan hiked her again in his arms, her curls bouncing around her head. “In my world, that’s breakfast. And I’ve missed mine. So what do you say?”
“Mommy, too?”
They both looked at her, the smiles on their faces interestingly similar. Which shouldn’t be, since they weren’t related, but . . . were.
“Mommy?” Bryan asked with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek. “Wanna join us?”
She ought to be asking him that question.
Beth shot to her feet. “Uh, yeah, sure.” Sure for breakfast. Him joining them—?
No. No way. Forget about it. Bad idea.
Well, actually, it was a good idea. It was just pointless to consider because he was, after all, Bryan Manley, Movie Star.
• • •
THE point was driven home—with nails pounded into the coffin of what ifs—the moment they stepped into the diner for those pancakes he was so eager to eat.
Everyone stared. And waved. And called out as if he were a returning hero. Though, actually, he was. The town called him one of their own. He’d been born and raised here, with just enough return visits to make it legit. They loved their Hollywood heartthrob.
It was evident in all the smiles. In the wistful glances of the teenage girls—and some of their moms. And the jealous ones from other women. Beth had never felt the glare of animosity so much as she did then, as if they were wondering who she, an outsider whose husband had come under suspicion, was to merit dining with the Bryan Manley.
Stop it! Stop thinking like that! Mike was proven innocent, and the onus is on them to acknowledge that, not for you to convince them of it. Be friendly. Smile.
“What do you think about this booth, Beth?” Bryan put his hand on her back.
Her smile suddenly came naturally. “It’s fine.”
They chuckled at that word.
She stopped chuckling when he slid in across from her and his leg brushed up against hers. His bare, manly, hairy leg against her equally bare, smooth, newly shaven one. (Yes, she’d shaved that morning when she’d gotten up, and no, it hadn’t had anything to do with the fact that Bryan would be spending the day at her home, and why was she defending herself to her conscience?)
“You okay?” He tilted his head slightly, his concern zipping along her nerve endings right into her heart.
Why did he have to be so perfect? Sure, it helped in his line of work, but wouldn’t physical perfection be enough? Did he have to be so incredibly nice and thoughtful and caring? Able to win over small, hurt five-year-olds with one kiss to the back of the hand?
Come to think of it, that would work with tall, middle-aged women by the boatload.
“Um, yes, I’m fi— Good. I mean.”
His laughter broke the tension, and Beth finally let herself relax. He was still a guy. Another human being. All the trappings of Hollywood didn’t define him. They were just window dressing.
Though what a nice window it was.
The waitress—or actually it was Claire, the owner—came over to take their order. “Hey, Bry. Haven’t seen you in a long time.” Insinuation dripped like maple syrup off every word.
“Claire. How are you? How’s Roddy?”
Claire’s left hand disappeared inside her apron. “Don’t know. Moved upstate with his new girlfriend.”
Okay, then. Single and letting Bryan know it. Yes, jealousy simmered just below Beth’s skin. Jealousy she had no business feeling.
“Oh, man, I’m sorry to hear that.”
Claire shrugged. “I’m not. He was drinking me out of house and home. That’s what happens when you don’t have enough drive to go after what you want outta life. Not that you know anything about that from what I can see.” She glanced at Beth. “Aren’t you that pilot’s wife?”
Beth couldn’t help the cringe. That’s what she’d become: that pilot’s wife. It hurt. Denigrated their marriage and Mike’s reputation and never let her forget a minute of the scandal that had surrounded his death.
“This is Beth Hamilton,” said Bryan, his eyes narrowing as he looked at her.
Beth shook her head slightly. Now wasn’t the time.
“Did you know my daddy?” Maggie’s thumb popped out and she leaned forward on her elbows. “My daddy was a pilot.”
“Yes, sweetie, I know.” Claire did, thank God, give Maggie a sweet smile.
Some of Beth’s animosity faded. At least the woman was kind to her daughter. That went a long way toward Beth giving her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe Claire didn’t know the effect that pilot’s wife had on her. Maybe she hadn’t meant anything by it.
“And this little urchin is Maggie.” Bryan ruffled her curls. “And she wants a big stack of pancakes covered in vanilla ice cream, whipped cream, chocolate fudge, chocolate chips, and a bright red cherry on top.”
Maggie’s eyes widened and she yanked her head around to look at him in awe. “I do?”
Bryan tweaked her nose. “Sure you do. And you’re going to share them with me.”
“Do I have to?”
Bryan patted the seat beside him and just like that, Maggie sat. No begging. No pleading. Not even a word to tell her what to do, something Beth hadn’t been able to manage with her headstrong (just like her father) daughter.
“Yes, you do. Or you’ll end up with a tummy ache and we’ll have to take you to the doctor’s instead of bringing Sherman home from his.”
“Oh. I don’t wanna do that.” Maggie nodded solemnly.
“I know. Besides, it’ll be fun sharing with me. We can have dueling spoons.”
“What’s that?”
He tapped her nose this time. “You’ll see.” He looked at Beth. “And what are you having, Beth?”
You with a big extra helping of hot fudge that I can lick off every inch—
“Um, just a glass of orange juice for me, thanks.”
“What? You’re not eating?” Bryan tsk-tsked. “That won’t do. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” He looked at Claire. “Beth will have some of our pancakes. Better bring extra.”
“Oh, but Bry—”
“And two cherries for her.” He smiled that dazzling million-watt smile at Claire, who looked dazed as she walked away to bring the Bryan Manley his meal.
The smile had enough wattage that it resonated with Beth as well. “You’re going to have to eat most of it, you know. My system can’t take all that sugar.”
“True. You’re sweet enough as it is.”
Okay, where’d her tongue go? She must have swallowed it. Or it’d dried up at his
comment.
He thought she was sweet? In what manner? Sweet as in a “That chick is so freakin’ sweet!” sort of way that sent her hormones into a tailspin and her what if mechanism into high gear? Or an “Awww, aren’t you sweet?” meaning that would completely suck, but would at least get her off this vacillating do-I-or-don’t-I-allow-myself-to-be-attracted-to-him seesaw.
“Mommy’s not sweet, she’s a prickly pear. That’s what Daddy used to say.”
Maggie giggled while Beth’s mouth dropped open that her daughter remembered that. She’d been three when Mike had been killed; how could she possibly remember that?
Mike had said it out of affection—they’d gone to Mexico on their honeymoon and sampled the fruit. He’d said she was just like it: a tough exterior with a sweet heart inside. It’d been his term of endearment for her ever since.
Her heart twisted as she remembered that. So hard to believe he was gone. But at least Maggie had good memories of him; Beth had been worried she’d have no memories at all.
“A prickly pear, huh?” Bryan thrummed his fingers on the tabletop. “I’m thinking more along the lines of a star fruit. Sweet and being pulled in five directions.”
Beth laughed at that. “Definitely feeling that pull. More so as they get older.”
“I don’t know how you do it. Five kids would do me in.”
She shrugged. “You do what you have to. And they’re great kids. Really.”
“Not Jason. He’s moody.” Maggie wrinkled her nose. “And his room smells like socks.”
“All teenage boys’ rooms smell like socks, Mags.” Bryan put his arm around her and leaned in. “It’s what makes boys grow so tall. They want to get away from their feet.”
Maggie giggled again and Beth wanted to kiss Bryan for making her do so. Well, she wanted to kiss Bryan for other reasons, but this one, too.
Wait. She wanted to what?
She was still mulling that over when Claire returned with their food.
“Holy cow!” Maggie stood on the vinyl booth seat. “That’s a mountain of pancakes.”
It certainly was. There must have been a dozen buttermilk pancakes and a gallon of ice cream, and a whole canister of the whipped topping.
“Well, we have to keep up with those Hollywood folks, don’t we?” Claire said, her gaze firmly planted on Bryan.
His shoulders, Beth thought. Or maybe his chest. Good thing he was sitting down with a table over his lap, because Beth was sure Claire would be staring that down as well.
She blushed when Bryan raised an eyebrow at her. Oh God. She didn’t need him knowing what she was thinking. Or that she was jealous of Claire looking at him. She had no reason—no right—to feel jealous. Bryan was single. Unattached. And she . . . well, she was unattached at the companion-for-life level, but five kids were an anchor no man she’d dated had wanted to weigh in.
Which, really, was fine with her. She had more important things to fill her time than looking for a substitute father for her kids—namely, be a mom to her kids. That, plus everything else she had to do solo in life, was where she had to put her focus.
Other people stopped by their table once Claire had broken the ice, some asking for autographs, others for photos. Bryan graciously spoke to each person. Made them all feel as if they had his undivided attention, yet still managed to not exclude her and Maggie. He introduced them to people he’d known growing up—even garnered an invitation or two for Beth to join him at a party or get-together they invited him to. She wouldn’t go, of course. Bryan was here to clean her house, not play house.
That idea, however, didn’t go away, no matter how much she wished it would.
Chapter Eight
MOMMY, is Bryan coming to play today?” Maggie hopped onto the foot of Beth’s bed the following morning, her T-shirt on backward and her sneakers on the wrong feet, but her smile was so bright and sunny, Beth didn’t have the heart to tell her so.
She also didn’t have the heart to tell her that Bryan wasn’t here to be their friend. Though maybe she should; Maggie was becoming a little too attached to their temporary help.
Beth winced. Bryan was anything but “the help.” The day before yesterday, he’d been the plumber and the mechanic. Yesterday he’d been the handyman when they’d gotten home from the diner. All the little things Mike had planned to get to that he never had had become glaringly obvious to Beth over the two years he’d been gone. The crooked cabinet doors on the laundry room cabinets, the shredded rug edges from when Sherman had been a puppy that’d started to spread from the constant tromping-on from five pairs of scuffling sneakers. Then there was the loose railing on the stairs to the basement.
Bryan had started with that last one first. Said it was a safety issue, which it was. She’d been meaning to get to it, but by the time she got home from work, made dinner, supervised homework and baths, then set out clothing and lunch items for the next day, the last thing she’d wanted to do was household maintenance. She usually saved that for the weekends, but Jason had joined the football team this year and Kelsey had made cheerleading, and fall weekends had turned into tailgating extravaganzas—minus the booze. It’d been fun, and she’d loved cheering her kids on, but the time-suck was amazing. Single-parenting was definitely not for the faint-of-heart.
“I have a tea party all set up in my room. Do you think he likes girl-may or darling tea?” Maggie scrunched her little face and tapped her lips as if Earl Grey and Darjeeling tea decisions would decide the fate of the free world.
“You’ll have to ask him, Mags, but I’m not so sure Bryan likes tea. He didn’t have any at breakfast yesterday.”
But he had eaten most of Maggie’s pancakes—a good thing because Beth hadn’t relished the idea of a five-year-old’s upset tummy. But if she’d said anything to Maggie about eating too much, she would’ve been the bad guy. She was tired of being the bad guy, so it was great that Bryan had figured out how to solve both problems by eating the bulk of them. And lord knew, he could hide those thousand or so calories a lot better than she could.
Though, not if he wanted that washboard he’d had in his last movie.
Beth thrust aside thoughts of his last movie, otherwise she’d have to admit that she’d watched it last night on her iPad, courtesy of her online movie subscription, and had almost had the first non-self-induced orgasm in two years.
She climbed out of bed and busied herself making it to cool down the flush that suffused her body as images of her dreams kept popping up in her head. Just like something else had kept popping up on Bry—
“Are Mark and Tommy awake yet?” she asked Maggie, yanking her robe on over her T-shirt to cover her hardened nipples. It was senseless to ask if Jason and Kelsey were up; teenagers didn’t get up before the crack of two p.m. during the summer unless they were working. And even then it was a chore to get them moving. Beth hated to admit it, and felt like a bad mother for taking advantage of it, but it was a lot easier to let the two of them sleep most of the day while she dealt with the three younger ones’ schedules. She’d managed to set up carpools most of the time so that she only had one day of running everyone around. Nothing else got done that day, but that was okay. She enjoyed the time she spent with the kids and their friends. Life went by too fast to miss those precious moments.
Plus, Kelsey had had friends over last night. Beth had let the paltry excuse for a reason pass—Kelsey wanted to show Bryan off to a new set of friends, and while Beth wasn’t in favor of it, her daughter did deserve to have sleepovers. The Bryan-ogling was going to happen; might as well get it over with.
“Tommy took Sherman out.” Maggie hopped off the bed, dragging the comforter with her. That was Maggie, one disaster after another. And she was totally oblivious to all of it, which explained how she could live in the heap she called a room.
Beth never quite reached the same level of acceptance as her daughter.
She sighed and tossed the comforter back onto the bed. Maggie did have a point—why bother
to make the bed when you were going to climb right back into it that night?
And maybe someone else would climb in, too . . .
Beth picked up a pillow off the floor and tossed it on the chair beside her bed. Great. Bad enough she was having erotic dreams about the guy, now her subconscious was inviting him into the room?
“Mom!” Mark hollered up from downstairs in the tone that could set Beth’s mothering instinct on red alert in one second.
“Coming!” She patted Maggie’s thigh. “Come on, sweetie. Tommy’s in trouble.”
“How do you know that, Mommy? From your third eye?”
Beth bit her lip. The kids had bought that story for as long as they’d believed in Santa. She’d miss the day Maggie grew up. “Yes, sweetie. So let’s hurry.”
She shoved her feet into her sneakers. Sherman’s trip to the vet had left him with an overactive digestion problem—probably still recovering from the shock—and she wasn’t about to run into the backyard without shoes on.
She did a double take as she passed Maggie’s room.
“Maggie?” She leaned against the doorframe and poked her head farther into the room.
“Yes, Mommy?” Maggie poked her head around the doorframe under hers.
“Your room.”
“Yes, Mommy. It is.”
“It’s neat.”
“That’s ’cause you painted it, remember?”
“No, I mean, it’s all cleaned up.”
“That’s ’cause Bryan did it.”
“Yes, but that was yesterday.” Neat didn’t stick to Maggie. It slithered off and shriveled up in a corner within ten minutes of making an appearance.
“Yes,” said Maggie so matter-of-factly, Beth had to remember that this was Maggie she was talking about. Tornado Maggie. Messy Maggie as Jason called her out of Mom’s earshot—or so he thought. Maggie didn’t know the meaning of the word neat unless it meant cool.
“Is something wrong, Mommy?”
Maggie’s erstwhile little face was turned up at hers with a smile so big Beth curbed her gut reaction—namely to ask if Maggie was feeling well.
“It looks very nice.”