Gail Saunders didn’t have a prayer. She was going to lose big, and Dennis was going to have a ball collecting on the wager.
He and the children darted between the raindrops to the front door. Opening it, they were greeted by a swell of voices—men’s in conversation, and children’s in bleating and braying. Hustling Erin and Sean ahead of him, Dennis followed the sound down a long entry hall lined with wooden cubbies and kiddie artwork and into a large back room. There were people in the room, mostly male people and small fry. But for a brief, disorienting moment, the only person he saw was Gail.
She was staring at him.
She was looking mighty worried, too, Dennis thought, shaking off that momentary sensation that he had somehow become detached from his surroundings and floated off to a separate reality that consisted only of Gail and himself. For God’s sake, he didn’t like her—he sure didn’t want to escape to some other, private existence with her. She was ornery and snooty and supercilious. She wasn’t even all that attractive, especially not today, dressed in baggy denim overalls, with her hair held away from her face by a dark blue bandanna, tied around her head as if she were a pirate or maybe a gypsy. Her earrings—small gold studs—were better suited to a hostess at a fundraising tea than to a pirate or a gypsy, though. Her creamy complexion was all wrong for a gypsy, and her curves—nearly impossible to see beneath the shapeless overalls, but Dennis could guess at them—were all wrong for a pirate.
Her eyes were astonishingly blue. They hadn’t seemed quite so blue the other day, when he and she had made this bet. He’d remembered them being as pale as glass. Today they were bright and sparkly, like blue topaz.
A familiar squawk tore his attention from her. He spotted Sean racing through a small swarm of younger children, bellowing, “Let’s play Batman. I’m Batman! You guys can be penguins!”
“I’m Lois Lane!” Erin shrieked, not to be outdone. “You—” she latched onto an apparently bewildered toddler with her thumb in her mouth “—can be my baby. I’ll name you Sue. You have to do everything I tell you, ’cuz I’m your mommy.”
A petite young woman with dark hair in a sassy cut clamped her hands on Erin’s and Sean’s shoulders as they flew past her. “Slow down, kids,” she said, then lifted her gaze to Dennis. She seemed slightly startled—or else he was only imposing his own surprise on her. He hadn’t expected a woman with brown hair and browner eyes to look so much like Gail, but she did.
He offered his right hand. “You must be Gail’s sister,” he said, unable to recall if Gail had told him her name.
She grinned and glanced at her right hand, firmly gripping Sean’s shoulder, to indicate why she wasn’t going to risk losing control of the boy just to shake Dennis’s hand. “I’m Molly. You’re...Murphy?”
“Dennis Murphy,” he said, shooting Gail a wry look. She must not have bothered to give her sister his full name. In fact, he couldn’t remember her ever calling him Dennis.
That was all right with him. It implied that she thought of him as less than fully human, which implied that she was scared of him, which in turn implied that he had the upper hand. “Amy?” Gail’s sister shouted across the room to an even younger-looking woman who stood by a rear stairway. “I’ve got two more kids for you. What are your children’s names?” she asked Dennis.
“Sean and Erin.”
“Sean and Erin,” Molly called over her shoulder to the woman near the stairs. “They’re a bit older than the others, so maybe you can make them helpers.”
“I’m a mom,” Erin told her, pointing to the dumbfounded tousle-haired toddler with her thumb in her mouth. “She’s my baby. Her name is Sue. I have to take her for a walk. You wanna go for a walk, Sue?”
The toddler nodded gravely.
“Why don’t you walk her up the stairs?” Molly suggested. “It’s too wet outside, so you kids are all going to play upstairs while the dads have their class down here.”
Dennis frowned. He’d thought the Daddy School was supposed to be about fathers interacting with their children, something Dennis was a pro at. But if Molly was separating the children from their fathers, interaction wasn’t going to be the procedure. Suddenly he found himself just a tiny bit less positive that he was going to ace the course.
He shook off his nerves. Of course he was going to ace it. He didn’t need Sean and Erin at his side to be a fantastic father.
He watched his twins and Erin’s newly adopted daughter troop up the stairs. Then he surveyed the adults left behind—maybe ten men in assorted sizes, styles and ages. And Gail.
Her mouth had changed as much as her eyes. She wasn’t pursing her lips in a repressed way, as she had the last time he’d seen her. Her lower lip was full, her upper lip shaped like the top half of a valentine. She didn’t look entirely comfortable—why should she, in this kid-oriented environment?—but she didn’t look overly anxious, either. Her gaze was direct and steady, first on her sister and then on Dennis.
He wanted to approach her, but before he could, Molly was addressing the group of fathers milling about in a central area of the room, which was otherwise partitioned off into smaller, fenced-in play areas. “Today,” she said, her voice bigger than he would have expected from such a petite woman, “we’re going to get down and dirty.”
Dennis perked up. Down and dirty sounded right up his alley.
“One problem fathers sometimes have with their children is that the children have few inhibitions when it comes to making messes. You’ve probably noticed that,” said Molly, and a few of the men chuckled and nodded. “In today’s class, we’re going to throw off some of our adult inhibitions about dirt. We’re going to play, and we’re going to be messy about it—as messy as our children are. We’re going to look at their world through their eyes.
“I’ve got a different mess in each room.” She pointed out the four sections. “We’ve got finger-paint in the Pre-K area, and modeling clay in the Young Toddlers. Over here, I’ve set up tempera paints and easels, and in the Older Toddlers area we have glue, scissors, paper and string. I’ve got smocks for anyone who wants them—although they may be a bit small on some of you. There’s nothing here that stains permanently, though. Not even the glue. It’s all machine-washable. So—get going, and get messy.”
Stumped, Dennis scowled, first at Molly and then at her blond sister. What the heck kind of class was this? Get messy? He’d come here to prove what an outstanding father he was, not to create arts-and-crafts projects.
The other dads were doing as they were told, migrating to different parts of the room to play with paint. Body paint might have interested Dennis—especially if he could have used Gail as his canvas. He wondered if the skin of her body was smooth and lush, if her flesh undulated in curves or was defined by well-wrought muscle. Her slender wrists didn’t belong to a hard-core jock. But her legs...well, he couldn’t see them today, because of those blasted overalls. But if she stripped down, and let him cover her with smooth paint...it would have to be finger-paint, of course....
She headed for the clay in the Young Toddlers area. Once again shaking off that strange feeling that he wanted to vanish into another dimension with Gail, he followed her through the gated entry. A low table covered with a plastic cloth stood at the center of the room, with several large blocks of gray clay, plastic bowls of water and wooden shaping tools on it.
“Don’t feel you have to do clay on my account,” she goaded him as she circled the table. Its surface was no higher than mid-thigh on her.
“I wouldn’t do anything on your account, sweetheart,” he shot back. Ignoring him, she shoved up her sleeves, dropped down to kneel on the floor next to the table, and tore a blob of clay from one of the mounds. Dennis knelt across the table from her. “Did anyone happen to notice you weren’t a dad?” he asked amiably as he wrenched a huge chunk of clay from the mound nearest him.
“My sister introduced me before you arrived,” Gail explained, not sparing him a look. Her slim fingers worked the cla
y in her hand meticulously, flattening it into a sheet. “She said I was here to observe, just to see what the Daddy School was all about.”
“So she lied.” He stretched his clay, as extravagant with his chunk as she was cautious with hers. Dipping his hand into one of the bowls of water, he dampened the clay to make it more malleable. The water created a gray slime on the surface of the clay. He grimaced. “This is disgusting,” he said.
“Your children would love it.” She dabbed her fingertips into another bowl and used the moisture to smooth the surface of her clay, which she’d managed to flatten as thin as bone china.
“Are you saying my children are disgusting?”
She gazed across the table at him, then sent him a cool smile. His gut tightened a little at the sight of her large blue eyes. Her lashes were gold, making her eyes appear even more like jewels—except that she was probably the type who’d think jewelry was frivolous. Look at those boring earrings, and the leather-strapped wristwatch. Anything elaborate, like blue topaz set in gold, would be too lavish for a public defender.
On the other side of the partition, he heard a round of male laughter. The finger-paint guys were having more fun than he was—and probably getting messier, too. “What are you making?” he asked her as he clapped another wad of clay onto his piece.
“A vase,” she said, working the sheet into a cylindrical shape. “And you?”
“I’m not sure, but I think it’s a triceratops. A vase,” he murmured, gazing across the table at her masterpiece. “You must get lots of flowers from men.”
She sent him another cool look. “Maybe I get them from women.”
His hands jerked and he gaped at her, trying hard not to be judgmental. But damn, if she was that way...what a waste of gorgeous woman.
Gorgeous? Where had that come from?
From her eyes, he realized. From her plump lower lip and her soft pink cheeks and the mysteries lurking beneath the baggy blue denim of her outfit. Gail Saunders might be as prickly as a burr stuck to the middle of his back, where he couldn’t reach it—but she was also a woman. Definitely a woman.
She laughed. “Got you, didn’t I,” she said, and he realized she’d been pulling his leg.
Yeah, she’d gotten him. He got her back by dunking a large blob of clay into one of the water bowls and then dropping it with a wet splat on her elegant little vase.
She let out a yelp which he suspected would have been much louder if she weren’t in the middle of a Daddy School class. “What did you do that for?” she asked through gritted teeth. “I was trying to make something here.”
“It was too fussy. You need to think bigger, Gail. You need to get dynamic.” To prove his point, he soaked another handful of clay and slammed it into her pretentious little flower pot.
She sputtered. “That was my vase! You have no right—”
“Oh, come on. Loosen up. Get messy,” he goaded her, shaping three horns onto what was evolving into his clay dinosaur’s head. “That’s the point of this class, isn’t it?” He worked the horns into long, nasty points. “Getting messy.” He molded some leg-like appendages out of the bottom of his triceratops and tipped it onto its rear legs, letting it throw back its head and contributing his own throaty roar to the animal.
When she didn’t respond, he glanced up—just in time to see her swing her arm across the table. In her fist was a ball of clay, which she pressed onto his nose. Settling back onto her haunches, she smiled. “You’re right,” she said happily. “Getting messy is the point.”
He peeled the cold, clammy goo off his nose. He refused to give her the satisfaction of seeing him lose his temper—or sneeze. But cripes, all he’d done was attack her stupid little vase. She was attacking him.
Aggressive bitch.
He lifted his half-formed triceratops, thinking he would plant it on her head. But watching her cower and shriek and shrink from him was more fun than smashing clay into what hair of hers wasn’t protected by her bandanna. “Don’t!” she begged, shielding her face with her hands as he clomped his beast across the table on its fat, stubby legs. “Don’t!”
“Don’t what?” Under Dennis’s gleeful guidance, the dinosaur advanced on her.
“Don’t let that thing near me.”
“Ever hear the expression, ‘tit for tat’?”
“Ever hear the expression, ‘turn the other cheek’?” She scooted backward on her butt as he rounded the table.
“If I turned the other cheek, you’d probably smash some clay into it.”
“I was only joking around,” she said, backing up until she hit a wall and couldn’t flee. “Because you were mocking me, and—”
He crawled over to her, his clay dinosaur lumbering along in his hand. He roared again on the beast’s behalf. “Mr. Triceratops is going to get you, lady.”
“Don’t call me lady,” she protested, holding her hands defensively in front of her face.
“What should I call you?” The clay triceratops took a flying leap at her. Even with her hands blocking the assault, Dennis got her good, mushing the clay through her splayed fingers and all over her chin, forcing her to shut her mouth or she’d be eating the stuff. “How about Clay-Face?” he asked, smiling as he ground the clay into her jaw. “Would you like me to call you that?”
She made a retching sound and wiped the clay off her chin. “Yuck!” she spat out, leaping to her feet and darting away from him. “You’re even more disgusting than your kids.”
“You started it, lady—I mean, Clay-Face.”
She peeled blobs of clay from her fingers, then rubbed her cheeks and winced. “You are vile, Murphy. You are scum.”
A sliver of moist gray remained on her lower lip. She must not have felt it, because she scraped the rest of the clay from her skin but left that one small shred. He stared at it, thinking thoughts about her mouth that might qualify him as scum, or else as merely a healthy, red-blooded man.
“I ought to report you to the bar association,” she muttered.
“For what? Making you messy?” That tiny piece of clay on her lip was driving him crazy. He couldn’t take his eyes off it. “You were the one who told me I needed this class. I’d say I’m doing pretty well for a first-time student, by the way.”
“You attacked me!”
“You attacked me first.”
“Because you wrecked my vase.”
“I thought I was enhancing it. I was giving it character.” He eyed her speculatively. “I bet you were the kind of kid who never colored outside the lines.”
“We are not going to psychoanalyze me,” she snapped, shoving past him and resuming her seat at the table. He gazed down at her, and his eyes narrowed on that daub of clay, almost white against the coral surface of her lip. “I’m going to make another vase,” she said, “and if you so much as look at it, I’ll kill you.”
“I’m shaking in my boots,” he murmured, kneeling next to her and reaching for her lip. If he didn’t remove that piece of clay, she might eat it. Or humiliate herself by going out in public with it still stuck to her lip. It was for her own good that he was going to touch her. He’d do as much for his kids if they had grape jelly or chocolate pudding smeared on their mouths.
His thumb brushed her lip and she flinched. “Just some clay you missed,” he explained, carefully rubbing the clay away. Her face was less than an arm’s length from him, close enough that he could feel her gaze like a touch, close enough that he could hear her hold her breath. Her lip was like velvet, trembling as he stroked it.
He withdrew his hand and showed her the fleck of clay, as if to prove his noble intentions. The way she averted her gaze implied that she knew damned well his intentions had been anything but noble.
“I’m going to make a vase, now,” she said in a hushed, oddly husky voice. “Go back to your side of the table and leave me alone.” She plunged her hands into her clay, working it as if it were a legal case, twisting and tearing and manipulating the stuff, and refusing to lift h
er eyes to him again.
***
SHE WAS GRATEFUL when a father in a green polo shirt and khakis swept down on their table. “Mind if I give the clay a try?” he asked, flashing a toothy smile at Gail.
Murphy answered for both of them. “Be my guest. The more the merrier. Just be forewarned: we’re very messy.”
“I tried the glue and scissors, and I couldn’t seem to get much of a mess going,” the man said, settling onto his knees next to Murphy and helping himself to a lump of clay. “My name’s Avery.”
“Dennis Murphy,” Murphy introduced himself. “That’s the teacher’s sister over there. She’s not a dad. She’s lucky we haven’t kicked her out. I was positive I saw a sign on this tree house, saying: ‘No girls allowed.’”
Avery chuckled good-naturedly. “What’re you making?” he asked Gail.
“A vase,” she replied in a terse, unwelcoming tone, hoping he would leave her alone and chat with Murphy so she wouldn’t get dragged into another exchange with the incorrigible man. Her lip still tingled where he’d touched it. She was afraid that if she slid her tongue out she would taste him—and she was afraid of what he’d taste like. Something hot, she thought, something smoky.
The hell with him. She was going to make not one vase but a collection of them, delicate and pretty. And if he dared to destroy them, she would make his life torture.
Evidently he had little interest in suffering torture at her hands. Ignoring her, he turned to Avery and said, “You look familiar to me. Do we know each other?”
“You don’t look at all familiar to me.”
“No? I’m sure I’ve seen you somewhere before. Are you a lawyer?” Dennis seemed to be constructing another dinosaur. His palms glistened with water and gooey clay. They no longer looked like a pianist’s hands to her. A sculptor’s hands, perhaps. Hands that could shape the world. “Maybe we shared an elevator at the court house, filing briefs or something?” he asked.
Avery shook his head and scooped another fistful of clay onto his mound. “I teach math at Arlington High School.”
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