“Have you ever actually calculated how much time you spend doing things for him?” Brett asked.
“God, no! If I did, I’d probably want to kill myself,” she joked.
“Or maybe him.”
“No, never him. It’s not his fault. Children are time-consuming, that’s all.”
“I know.”
He knew because he’d raised his siblings. Because his mother hadn’t been up to the job. He appeared engrossed in the label on his bottle of beer, but his unwillingness to look at her didn’t discourage her. “Can you tell me what happened with your mother?” she asked.
He lifted his gaze to her, then right past her to stare out the small, square window above the kitchen table, where Max was mashing his banana with his fingers. The screen was mottled with raindrops, a dreary contrast to the cheerful blue curtains framing the window.
“Nothing happened with her,” he said. “She was depressed. They didn’t have the kind of pharmaceuticals then that they have now, and even if they had, she went undiagnosed for a long time.”
“Oh, God. Was she suicidal?”
“No. Just depressed. So she’d take off. Run errands. Disappear until dinner time. She’d put me in charge and then leave.”
How difficult that must have been for a young boy—losing his father and then, in effect, losing his mother as well. And being stuck raising four siblings. His flat tone and raised chin were defiant, but she felt a terrible sorrow for him and what he’d endured.
Sorrow and something more, something dark and achingly soft. She remembered the way she’d felt when he’d stared at her in the alley behind the studio earlier that day, and heat had flared between them. She was amazed, and even a little embarrassed, to admit how attracted she was to him, how much closer she felt to him now that he’d allowed her to glimpse his past, how much closer she wanted to get to him.
Max had reduced his banana to a mass of pulpy yellow goo. He clearly wasn’t going to eat any of it. Sighing, Sharon lifted him out of his chair, carried him to the sink and turned on the water. She washed his gummy hands, dried them with a paper towel, and lowered him to his feet. “I go potty,” he announced.
She couldn’t ignore his toilet-training when he was specifically asking to use the potty. Sending Brett an apologetic smile, she let Max lead her out of the kitchen. Given Brett’s practice with his siblings, he must be used to untimely interruptions, particularly those revolving around bodily functions.
But even as she hurried up the stairs after Max, her thoughts remained down in the kitchen, with Brett and his mysteries.
* * *
A million times that day, he’d wanted to leave. But there he was, at seven-thirty that night, still at Sharon’s house.
After his potty adventure, Max had wanted to show Brett his waffle blocks. It had been bad enough offering his abdomen as a substitute tennis net, but sitting on the carpeted floor of the finished basement with Max while he wedged blocks together and took them apart, all the while yammering in occasionally fractured English which he expected Brett to understand was worse. The hardest part was pretending he enjoyed such a tedious activity.
Sharon certainly seemed to enjoy it. She built structures with the blocks, chattered with Max and tried to engage Brett in their play. He watched her, amazed by her stores of energy, the ease with which she conversed with the kid, the apparent delight she took in erecting a colorful tower of blocks. Every now and then his gaze would settle on her long, tan legs, her bare toes digging into the carpet pile, the graceful curve of her upper breast when she leaned forward and her blouse drooped at the neckline, and he’d wonder if the only reason he was still putting up with her noisy, obnoxious son was because he wanted to make love to Sharon.
He did want to. But that could never be enough of a reason for him to stay.
Other things were holding him here. Stubborn perseverance, perhaps. The desire to test himself. But mostly Sharon—his amazement that she could do as much as she did for Max and still look fresh and buoyant and pleased with her life. It was a life that reflected his worst nightmare—not just parenting, but doing it without assistance. And not only did she seem to be enjoying it, but she clearly didn’t feel any obligation to convince him it was the right life for him.
She accepted him. He was resistant to everything she’d devoted her life to, and she never made any attempt to show him the error of his ways. She didn’t try to draw him into her nonsensical conversations with Max, or goad him into contributing to the waffle-block village she and Max were constructing. She just let him be himself.
She told him she planned to make macaroni and cheese for dinner, but he insisted on traveling into town for take-out Chinese. He savored the silence in his car during the drive to the restaurant to pick up the food, and the warm, spicy scent of Szechuan cuisine inside the restaurant. After paying for their order, he found himself walking unforgivably slowly back out into the rain, to his car. Not because he was reluctant to return to Sharon, but because this brief break hadn’t been long enough for him to figure out how he felt about the day, about her, about how he could possibly fit into her life.
Her life and Max’s.
A drive to Boston and back wouldn’t have been long enough for him to figure it out. And he wanted to return to Sharon’s house while the tubs of shrimp in black bean sauce, chicken with straw mushrooms and fried rice were still hot. Even the thought of what Max could do with the dinner food, given his comprehensive mutilation of his banana earlier that afternoon, couldn’t keep Brett from returning to Sharon’s townhouse.
Max did manage to get at least as much food into his mouth as onto his clothing, his lap, his hair and the floor. Afterward, he needed a bath, and Brett politely declined Sharon’s invitation for him to join them upstairs to observe this ritual. Left to himself while she brought Max upstairs to be de-riced and de-sauced, Brett stacked the dishes into the dishwasher, packed the leftovers into the refrigerator, and swept the floor. He remembered sweeping the floor in his mother’s kitchen after the twins had eaten. “Why do I have to clean it up?” he used to ask her as she tucked one twin under each arm and hustled off to hose them down and slap fresh diapers onto their bottoms.
“Because you’re a big boy,” she’d say. “Because you’re my best helper.”
He hadn’t wanted to be a big boy. He’d resented being her best helper. The memory jabbed him in his gut like a well-placed punch as he swept the stray bits of food into a dustpan in Sharon’s kitchen. He was a big boy now, mature enough to be Sharon’s best helper, if that was truly what he wanted. At least this time it would be his choice, one way or the other.
He took another beer from her fridge and exited into the living room. Sharon’s and Max’s voices drifted down the stairs, his squeals of laughter in counterpoint to her soothing instructions. Brett moved slowly around the living room, studying the framed photographs decorating the walls. Some were of scenery: bucolic landscapes, an ocean wave erupting over a breakwater, a striking pattern of sloping roofs that, he realized after a moment, were a row of townhouses in her complex. Others were portraits—of strangers, of two giggling toddlers he immediately recognized as Max and Olivia, of Olivia’s attractive mother seated on a park bench, her legs drawn up and her chin resting on her knees. All the photos struck Brett as optimistic: sunny mornings or colorful sunsets and people with hope in their eyes.
How had Sharon, a young widow with so much responsibility and so much grief, managed to take so many upbeat photographs? Had she taken them all? Even if she hadn’t, she’d obviously chosen them because she wanted to fill her home with cheering imagery.
Maybe this was why he’d had to come back to her house—because like the people in the portraits on the wall, Sharon had such abundant hope shining in her eyes.
“I still have to read to him,” she said.
He turned to see her descending the stairs.
“I read to him every night before bed,” she explained. “He won’t go to sleep
otherwise.”
Brett gestured toward the photos. “Did you take all these pictures?”
She hesitated, as if thrown by his non sequitur. Maybe he should have commented on her bedtime reading ritual. But as far as Brett was concerned, how she got Max to bed wasn’t as important as the photos on her wall.
“Yes,” she finally answered.
“You’re really talented.” He’d make sure Gail Murphy on the Arlington birthday committee knew just how talented Sharon was.
She laughed. “If I weren’t, I’d be a fool to try to make a living at it.”
“I’m sure these—” he again waved at the wall of pictures “—are different than taking pictures of little girls in party dresses at your studio.”
“Not that different,” she told him. “Photography is about light and shape. Whether I’m taking a picture of condominium roofs or little girls in party dresses, it’s all a matter of getting the light to play over the shapes the right way and then capturing the moment. It’s a little easier with rooftops, because they don’t squirm.”
“How did you get that picture?” he asked, turning back to study it. The row of slanting black slate rectangles curved, the roofs equidistant and uniform in size and shape. They reminded him of a domino chain. “Did you rent a helicopter?”
She laughed again, low and melodic, and shook her head. “I climbed onto the roof of a townhouse across the street.”
“You climbed onto the roof? You could have killed yourself!”
“I was careful. And it’s a great photo, isn’t it?”
He pictured her standing on a roof. Regardless of how dangerous it was, she looked fearless in his mind, focused on her camera and the roofs across the way, oblivious to everything but the shot she wanted to take. “You ought to include this in your submission to the town,” he suggested.
“Do you think so? It’s not really representative of Arlington, is it?”
“Of course it is. Village Green Condominiums is as much a part of town as the YMCA.”
She drew to a halt next to him and scrutinized the photo. “Maybe you’re right.”
“No maybe about it.” She was so close he was tempted to wrap an arm around her. She smelled of soap and baby powder from Max’s bath, and her hair was pulled back in a barrette, exposing her slender throat. He ached to kiss that vulnerable skin.
“Mommy!” Max shouted. “Mommy, read me a book!”
She sighed and slipped away from Brett, moving back to the stairs. “You’re welcome to come upstairs and listen to Hop on Pop,” she said.
“I’ll pass, thanks.” He watched her climb the stairs and tried not to focus on the taut curves of her bottom. Her shorts weren’t particularly tight, but...
Hell. She was going to spend the next half hour reading Hop on Pop, whatever that was, to her son. How could Brett possibly be fantasizing about her sexy rear end? There were plenty of other women in the world with equally sexy rear ends and no sons to read Hop on Pop to. Why was he in Sharon’s home right now, instead of with one of them?
It didn’t matter. He was in Sharon’s home, and he didn’t want to leave.
He finished his beer—and that day’s edition of the Arlington Gazette, which had been lying untouched on her coffee table, no doubt since it had been delivered that morning. Mothers of toddlers must have little time to relax with the newspaper. He couldn’t imagine not having time to read the newspaper as soon as he brought it in from his front porch. Yet he had to admit that none of the news it carried was so imperative that it had to be read first thing in the morning. Newspapers could wait if one chose to give priority to a child.
She appeared on the stairs as he was finishing a back page article on a movement to turn golf into an Olympics sport. After such a long day, capped by a half-hour of reading children’s stories to a toddler, he would not have looked as refreshed as she did. Her hair was still pulled back from her face, but her skin looked dewy, her eyes bright as she descended to the living room and smiled at him. “Did anything important happen today?” she asked, gesturing toward the newspaper.
Not according to the stories filling its pages—but yes, something important had happened. He’d spent nearly the entire day in Sharon’s orbit, convinced that he could get past his lifelong aversion to children just because of her.
He stood and her eyebrows rose, two pale, quizzical arcs above her eyes. “Are you leaving?” she asked.
“Do you want me to?”
Her gaze slid past him, then returned to his face, direct and honest. “I’d rather you didn’t, but it’s been a long day.”
“Not that long,” he countered. It had felt long to him when the kid had been awake, but he was asleep now, or close to it. “If anyone might be tired, it would have to be you.”
“I do this all the time,” she reminded him, grinning. “I’ve got stamina.”
Stamina and a hell of a lot more. He moved around the coffee table and crossed the room to her. The line of her jaw beckoned, smooth and sharp and open to his view. He cupped his hand against it, then tilted her face and pressed a light kiss to her lips.
Her mouth softened against his and clung for a moment. He heard her breath catch.
It suddenly seemed to him as if he’d been waiting forever for the chance to kiss her, really kiss her. He’d tried to persuade himself he didn’t want her, but he’d failed. Even knowing what her life was like, the diapers and whines and baths and story books, the dawn until dusk of it—he still wanted her.
He kissed her again, more deeply this time, and she sighed. One of her hands rose to his shoulder and he felt her strength in her fingers as they flexed against him. Her hands were strong enough to do all those things for her son: bathe him and diaper him and wipe his tears—but it wasn’t just her physical strength he felt in her grip. It was her confidence, her resolve. Her willingness to do what had to be done, and to make the best of it. To go beyond just making the best of it—to celebrate everything her life had turned out to be.
He slid his hand to the back of her head, unclasped the barrette and felt her hair spill against his knuckles, soft and wavy from the rain that had washed it earlier that day. He wanted to kiss her hair, to feel its silken texture against his cheek. But his mouth was locked to hers, and he wasn’t about to pull away. Instead, he slid his tongue between her lips.
A quiet moan escaped her. She touched her tongue to his, almost shyly, then broke the kiss, turning her head against his hand. “Brett,” she whispered.
“What?”
“Please don’t tell me you put up with Max all day because you wanted this.”
For a moment he thought he’d have to lie to her—and he would hate to do that. But then he realized that telling her what she wanted to hear wouldn’t be a lie. He’d put up with Max all day, and he’d wanted this—but he wasn’t sure the two were connected.
Well, they were; Sharon was at the heart of both.
But even if he hadn’t had the chance to kiss her like this, to twirl his fingertips through the tufts of hair at her nape and to have her standing so close to him he could feel the heat of her body through his clothing, he would not have regretted putting up with Max today.
He didn’t know why that was. He just knew it was true.
“I want you,” he told her. “Max has nothing to do with that.”
“He should,” she said. “He’s a part of me.”
“This is also a part of you,” he pointed out, grazing her forehead with his lips, and the hollow below her cheekbone, and stroking his thumb along the edge of her jaw. “A different part. The part I want.”
He covered her mouth with his once more. This time he sensed no hesitation in her. No questions. No reminder of the part of her—Max—who had dominated the day they’d spent together.
Max would be asleep soon. He wasn’t a part of this. This was about Sharon and Brett and no one else, and Brett felt as if it were the culmination of not just one long, trying day or a couple of thought-provoking
weeks, but of his entire life.
This was the part he wanted.
Chapter Ten
The nearest drug store was less than ten minutes away—closer than Brett’s house. Sharon felt awful sending him out into the rain, which was coming down harder now, a persistent muffled drumbeat against the roof, the windows, the lawn beyond her door. But he’d headed out the door, laughing and promising to return as soon as he could.
It had been two years since she’d made love—and that had been with her husband. Condoms were not an item she’d thought to stock up on.
Ten minutes there, ten minutes back. She raced up the stairs, yanking off her clothes as she ran, and twisted the shower faucets to a warm spray. Just a quick rinse, to wash away the mingled scents of her day—soy sauce and ginger, baby soap and powder. She splashed a light fragrance behind her ears and between her breasts, then wrapped herself in her old terry-cloth robe and wished she owned something silkier, sexier.
She wasn’t used to being sexy. She was a mom. The only person she’d shared her bed with since Steve’s death was Max, when he needed soothing after a nightmare or during the days last winter when he’d been afflicted with roseola. She and he would cuddle in bed together and watch cartoons on the small TV set in her bedroom, and he’d doze, his body steaming and his hair limp with perspiration.
She and Brett would not be watching cartoons tonight.
A faint tremor rippled through her, part anticipation but largely fear. Was she doing the right thing? Did this make sense? He was, as Deborah had dubbed him, Mr. Wrong. Until he changed his attitude toward children, their relationship had no future.
But it had a present. And she deserved to experience it, to revel in it. She deserved to be romanced by a man like Brett, if only for one night. She would deal with the future tomorrow.
The doorbell sounded. She peeked into Max’s bedroom on her way down the hall to the stairs. He had graduated from a crib to a bed right after he’d recovered from roseola last January, and in the dim glow of his night light she saw him in silhouette, a tiny island protruding above an ocean of mattress. She listened for the steady rhythm of his breathing that indicated he was asleep, then continued to the stairs and down.
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