What a Woman Needs

by Judi Fennell

  He posed on the deck for enough pictures to fill a magazine for an entire year, answered a ton of questions, and fielded a few not-so-covert invitations with his usual noncommittal good humor, all the while very aware that Beth was hovering in the background, glancing his way every so often.

  She hadn’t forgotten about the almost-kiss. Good. Well, maybe that was good. He had almost overstepped the boundaries and that would so not be good. For either of them.

  No shit, Sherlock. Does she look like the type who goes around kissing random guys?

  Jealousy churned in his gut, which surprised him because he’d never been the jealous type. Call it arrogance, but if a woman wanted someone else, he wasn’t about to beg. The reality was, he had them lined up.

  But with Beth . . . He didn’t get it. She was everything he didn’t need at this point in his life, just when his career was posed to go to that next level. His agent was counting on a new romantic lead role to give him an all-roles credibility. To be able to play emotional as well as action roles. He was going to be seen as a jack-of-all-trades and make it really big.

  The last thing he needed was to pine away for a mom of five in middle-class America. This was his time to shine. To make his mark. Not be tied down with roots so deep he’d never be free.

  Tied down? Tied down? What the hell are you saying, Manley?

  He didn’t know and he didn’t want to know. Bryan plastered a big, charming, movie star smile on his face and looked at the last mom of the bunch. He swung her into his arms in a classic romantic pose, knowing it’d hit the Twitterverse within minutes and start the speculation about his upcoming film. It was all about the publicity. And always would be.

  • • •

  BETH couldn’t help feeling a twinge of jealousy as Lori wrapped her arms around Bryan’s neck and hung on. Beth wanted to be the one there. Which was silly. Ridiculous. She actually had a date tonight and Bryan was only posing for a photo op, not sweeping Lori off her feet to ride into the sunset with a happily ever after. Bryan wasn’t cut out for this world. This life. He was made for bigger and better things. The glitz and glamour of Hollywood. Weeks in the south of France at film festivals. Award shows and red carpets and interviews . . .

  Interviews. Remember that, Beth. Publicity. PR.

  God, how she’d hated interviews. Everyone had wanted to talk to her when Mike’s career had come under suspicion. She’d had to speak out then. Had to defend him. He was a good man, and a great pilot. He’d never put his passengers, his career, his life in jeopardy. That wasn’t Mike, and that’s what she’d told everyone. But still, they’d looked at every aspect of his career while the official investigation had gone on. Mike had been tried in the press. They’d never delivered a verdict because, Beth had surmised, they’d found out that Mike’s image was so squeaky clean there was no story to be found.

  But with Bryan . . .

  No, she didn’t need that kind of scrutiny in her life again, and while she had to admit that she definitely felt an attraction to Bryan, it could go nowhere. She wouldn’t let it. She wasn’t some on-set fling. She had five kids she had to set the example for. Five kids who depended on her for everything. She couldn’t afford to lose herself in the hyperactivity that was Bryan’s life, and she couldn’t let herself get distracted by what ifs that would never come true.

  So she buried her grimace when Lori squealed and tossed her head back, showing off the three-grand boob job, and sucked it up as if it meant nothing. Because, really, it could—should—mean nothing.

  “Well, ladies, I’m sorry to cut this short, but I’m actually here to do a job. Beth’s friends are paying for this, and I want to make sure she gets her money’s worth.”

  Beth wouldn’t mind getting it in another form of payment—

  She had a date. Tonight. With a doctor. She had to put Bryan out of her mind.

  She backed into the gas grill with a clang. “Oh. Sorry,” she said when they all looked at her—a first since they’d arrived because they’d only had eyes for Bryan.

  Bryan chose to take the distraction and, with Maggie trailing after him, headed to the outside stairwell toward the basement. Darn. She hadn’t had a chance to get on the kids about straightening it up and God only knew what food they’d left down there.

  “Come on, Beth,” Julia, the wife of Mark and Tommy’s soccer coach, asked once they watched him descend the stairs—and Julia didn’t even have a daughter here with Kelsey. “He’s not really cleaning, is he? It’s just a cover, right?”

  “Yeah, please tell us they’re shooting a movie here or something? Magazine spread?”

  “Hey, he can spread—”

  “Mikayla!” Debbie Johnson slapped “Trash Mouth” Mikayla McCarty—who came by her name honestly if not classily—across the arm. “The girls might hear you.”

  “I’m hoping he might hear me.”

  Beth looked at the five of them, all soccer and PTA moms like herself, their eyes wide with anticipation, hopeful smiles on their faces.

  Was this what they’d all become? Gossip-seeking teenagers in women’s bodies, talking about a man they thought they knew from his public persona, but really didn’t? Salivating over him? Turning him into a piece of meat? Was this what he lived with on a daily basis? Posing for pictures with strangers who liked the packaging but had no idea of the man inside it?

  “Sorry to disappoint, ladies, but, yes, Bryan’s here to clean.” She adjusted the grill cover, then headed toward the French doors back into the kitchen. “I’ll have Kelsey bring the girls around front to meet you.”

  She walked through the tornado of breakfast dishes Kelsey had served her friends on, grimacing when she thought of Bryan seeing this. He’d just made her kitchen spick-and-span yesterday; now it looked like a bomb had gone off. Tornado Hamilton had struck again.

  She kicked her oldest’s sneakers out of the path just as the TV came to life. Ah, good. Jason was up. “Jase!”

  “Yeah?” His Cousin-Itt head rose off the sofa.

  “Seriously? You’re tired? Didn’t you just get twelve hours?”

  “Uh, not really, Mom. I was up playing Call of Duty with the guys.”

  She hated that game. Blood and death and destruction. It couldn’t be healthy. She’d talked to the counselor about it, but the guy said to let him play. It was a social outlet for Jason, a way to connect with friends who didn’t know about the family tragedy. It gave Jason the chance to escape the memories. A place and time where he didn’t have to remember them and he could just be a kid.

  But it didn’t mean she had to like it or let him use it as an excuse to not do his share around the house. “Well, peel your tired self off the sofa and grab all the trash bags. It has to go out today.”

  “Aw, man, Mom. Why do I have to do it? Isn’t that why we have Mr. Big Shot here?”

  “I don’t like your tone, Jason. And, no, that’s not why Bryan’s here. He’s here to clean, not be your personal pick-up boy.” She wasn’t going to think about him being her personal whatever boy. “You might be finished with school for the summer, but this isn’t a vacation. The man has other things to do in his life than pick up after you. And so do I.” She flung one of his stinky socks at him. She hadn’t had any brothers growing up. Just an older sister who was more like a babysitter than a sister. Being an “oops” wasn’t fun when there were twelve years separating her from her only sibling.

  “Aw, Mom, can’t it wait ’til a commercial?”

  “We have a DVR, Jase. Pause the show and get it done.” There were some things to be said for technology.

  Especially when Jason froze the screen on the next commercial—a photo of Bryan coming out of that lake with the bombs bursting behind him and nothing but a pair of low-slung cargo pants threatening to have a wardrobe malfunction.

  “Hey, look who it is.” Jason swung his mop of hair to the side, clearing his eyes. “Dude sure looks different in a maid’s costume.” He snorted.

  “Jason, what exactly
do you have against Bryan? You’ve been snarly since he got here.”

  He immediately hung his head and stared at his fingernails. “Dunno. It’s just weird. A guy cleaning our house. What’s he get out of hanging in some random family’s house? Where’s his man card?”

  Man card? Her fourteen-year-old son was talking about man cards? She didn’t know how to handle this. She wasn’t a guy. Guys knew about this stuff. That’s why she’d chosen a male therapist, hoping he could provide that male influence she wasn’t capable of. But man card? What was she supposed to say to that?

  “He gets paid, Jase. It’s his job.”

  “Come on, Mom. Smell the coffee. The dude makes a zillion dollars a minute. No way he needs the money working here. So what’s his angle?”

  “He’s helping out his sister. It’s her business.”

  Jason shrugged. “If it were me, I’d write a check and be done with it. He can’t like cleaning up after us. So what’s the deal?” Now Jason looked at her. Intently. He even shoved his hair off his forehead. “Why you, Mom? Why’d he pick you to clean for?”

  Her? Jason was making this about her? Had he seen what’d almost happened between her and Bryan after Sherman’s fence escapade?

  “Jason Michael Hamilton. I don’t like what you’re insinuating and I don’t want to hear another word about this. Bryan is working for his sister, and Mrs. Leopold and Mrs. Harte were the ones who decided I needed a maid. They’re paying for this. It has nothing to do with Bryan. I don’t know why he’s working for his sister, but that’s not our business. The fact is, he’s here, he’s working, and that’s the end of it. But he is not your personal slave, so round up all the trash and then tackle your room. It’s getting to be a health hazard in there. Have I made myself clear on this?”

  The hair went flopping into his eyes again as he mumbled something.

  “I didn’t hear that.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She winced at the “ma’am.” Nothing like aging twenty years with that term, but it was the biggest show of respect she could hope for, so she let it pass. He headed up the stairs to the disaster zone that was his bedroom.

  Beth exhaled when he rounded the corner and she heard his heavy tread schlumping up the steps. God, what had he been insinuating? Did he really think Bryan was here for something other than what he’d been hired for?

  Or was he hoping it?

  She didn’t know where that thought came from, but it resonated with her. Jason had had to grow up quickly in the two years since Mike’s death. Two years, during which Jason had hit puberty, the most difficult phase of his life. All while dealing with his father’s horrific death . . .

  He didn’t want to be the man of the house. She hadn’t wanted that, either, but Jason had taken some things on himself. Not the trash—that one, she’d thrust on him because chores were chores and she needed the help. But the sense of responsibility he felt at times, the looking out for the other kids, the money he was socking away in the zipper in his beanbag chair that he thought she didn’t know about . . . And the damn knowledge on his face every time he saw her with the checkbook, or on her last nerve with Tommy and Mark, or digging Sherman out from under the front porch . . . All things her husband should be worrying about, not her fourteen-year-old son. But the universe didn’t see it that way. Which would be why she was, once more, going on a date she had no interest in going on.

  “He’s doing okay, you know.”

  Beth looked up, startled, to find Bryan in the doorway, backlit by the sun—the perfect highlight to that crazy-ass physique of his that she had no business noticing but would have to be dead not to.

  “I . . . I’m sorry. What?”

  Bryan flipped a dust rag over his shoulder and sauntered into the room. Oh, he didn’t do it on purpose, but the man was so naturally sexy that the swagger just happened. And made her drool, all the while wondering, in vivid Technicolor glory, how it would feel to be smashed up against that body, with his arms around her and his lips on hers and God! What was wrong with her? Bryan could be nothing to her. She was as bad as Lori and Mikayla and the rest of the moms.

  “Jason,” Bryan said, oblivious to the direction her thoughts were twirling. “His surliness is part of being fourteen, but he’ll outgrow it. He’s a good kid. Messy, but he did go up without giving you any lip.”

  He went to sit on the arm of the sofa, but Beth squiggled sideways so he could sit on the sofa itself. Next to her.

  “And guess what?” He winked at her.

  Winked at her. No wonder millions of women swooned whenever he was on screen.

  “Beth?”

  Oh God. He caught her fantasizing about him. “Uh, what?” That ought to cover whatever it was he’d asked her.

  “I caught him taking socks out of his drawer this morning and tossing them around his room.”

  That blew away the fog Bryan had blown in over her normal rational thought processes. “What? Why would he do that? He spent all that time cleaning it up.”

  Bryan smiled and it was killer. “Exactly. He cleaned it up because you made him, but he wants to have control over his room. His environment. His world. He’s had so little that that tiny act of messing up his room gives him pleasure. Gives him that sense of control he needs. It’s a good manifestation. Better than other ways he could act out to take control of his life.”

  “I thought you were an actor, not a shrink.”

  A strange look crossed Bryan’s face, and he glanced away. Oh, it was brief, but enough that Beth realized she’d struck a nerve.

  “I, uh . . . I . . . saw someone for a while. A therapist. To, you know, sort a few things out. Learned all about needing to be in control.”

  “Your parents.” The words were out before she could stop them. Thankfully, though, he didn’t clam up or storm off.

  Instead, he exhaled and nodded. “Yeah. It was rough.”

  “I can imagine. I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing for you to be sorry for.”

  “Well, for you to come into my home and see the same sort of thing you must have lived through.”

  “Beth.”

  He put his hand on her knee. It was a light touch. Completely asexual she was sure. Or at least that was probably how he intended it, but it so wasn’t to her. A spark shot up her leg, through her stomach, taking every ounce of breath from her lungs, and lodging it all in her throat. Just like it had when he’d almost kissed her.

  “I just wanted to tell you that, from what I can see, and having lived through something similar, your kids are doing fine. Sure, they’re carrying the loss—that won’t ever go away—but they’re being normal kids. You’re the one who sees that their father is gone every minute of every day. And I get that, I do. But they don’t. There are times they actually forget. Or when the memories are good, not painful.”

  He then told her that Maggie had shared Mike’s special hug with him, and Beth was floored. Not only that Maggie had shown Bryan that, but she’d smiled when she had.

  “You’re not just saying that to make me feel better.”

  He chuckled. “Trust me, if my brothers heard you say that, they’d tell you in no uncertain terms that I don’t say things to make people feel better. That I’m brutally honest. To a fault at times.” Now his fingers squeezed her knee just before leaving it. “No, if anything, I’d tell you the worst of it. But the truth is, kids are resilient. They only had however many years with Mike. You had so many more. It’s harder for you to make the adjustment because he’d been in your life for so long. In your plans for the future. You’ve lost all that.”

  “Are you trying to make me feel better?” She was opting for humor. Because anything else would make her cry. Including the thought that Bryan Manley was trying to comfort her. Her world had shifted so much these last two years, and here it was shifting yet again.

  It took a sharp turn to Uh-Oh-ville when he smiled sheepishly. “Guess I’m not doing that great of a job, huh?”

  He
was doing so much more than he knew.

  Stop it, Beth! her subconscious yelled. This means nothing. He means nothing. He’s used to making women feel special. It’s his job. It’s what’s made him so successful. Stop reading things into it that you want to be there. Because they aren’t and you’re only going to end up getting hurt.

  Hurt. Right. Pain. Pain sucked. Pain was bad. She didn’t need any more pain.

  She took a deep breath and stood, trying not to notice how cold her knee suddenly felt without his big, strong hand upon it.

  “Beth, what’s wrong?” Bryan grabbed her hand.

  She yanked it away. Or, at least, she tried. He didn’t let go.

  His gaze didn’t let go of hers, either. Not the whole, long, slow time it took for him to stand up beside her, his gaze level with hers, then rising as he reached his full height. She’d forgotten he was so tall.

  He reached for her other hand and brought their joined hands between them, resting her knuckles against his chest.

  His very firm, well-defined, muscular chest.

  “Beth, if this is about what almost happened in the backyar—”

  “Could we not talk about that?” She tried to surreptitiously tug her hands free, but that was a lesson in futility. And humility.

  “Obviously we need to or it’s going to not only stay between us but grow and become a huge problem.”

  “No it’s not. Really. I’ve already forgotten about it.” The way her fingers were intertwined with his constituted being crossed, right?

  “You’re lying.”

  Obviously not.

  “I . . .”

  “Don’t, Beth.” He took another step closer, though Beth didn’t know how that was possible, given that she was already smushed up against him. “Don’t deny it. You might not like it, but don’t deny it.”

  Problem was, she did like it. That was why she wanted to deny it.

  But then she made the mistake of tearing her gaze from his and looking at his mouth. At those lips that she’d imagined against hers and, all of a sudden, it was as if sunlight burst into the house through every nook and cranny and every window and door. Bright, blinding light, surrounding her and Bryan until there was nothing here but him. Towering above her, making her feel so small. And delicate. As if she needed protecting. As if he were the one who would do that for her.