The Perfect Match

by Kimberly Cates

  “Want to know a secret? I break lots of things, too,” she confided, drowning in Charlie’s sad green eyes.

  “So does Clancy,” Charlie said, looking from Rowena to her father; Cash so tall, so strong, as lost and alone in his way as his little girl was. “Maybe that’s why me and Clancy love each other so much. We match, Clancy and me. We break stuff but we don’t mean to.” Her chest rose and fell under the weight of a sigh far too heavy for such a little girl. “But it’s too late. Sorry doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it matters that you’re sorry, sweetheart,” Cash insisted, looking bewildered.

  Charlie shook her head. “That’s not what Mommy says.”

  “What did your mommy say, cupcake?”

  “I know!” Mac piped up from her window. “Last time Mommy came, Charlie stepped on the bracelet Mommy was letting me play with and Mommy said, Once you break something you can’t ever fix it, Charlotte Rose, so don’t be saying you’re sorry to me, young lady. ’Cause sorry’s just a big fat lie.”

  If Rowena, a virtual stranger, heard Lisa Lawless’s unforgiving tone in the little girl’s voice, Cash did, too. His jaw clenched so tight it seemed ready to snap.

  Charlie cringed at the memory of the harsh words, her thin cheeks coloring in embarrassment at having yet another of her “sins” exposed. Rowena wished she could grab the cold woman who was the child’s mother and shake Lisa Lawless until that cream suit of hers looked as if she’d slept in it. She wished she could parade Lisa’s mistakes in front of the world, denying her absolution.

  Once you break something you can’t ever fix it…

  Charlie believed that. And so did Cash.

  “Listen, cupcake,” Cash tried to soothe. “Sometimes when grownups get mad, they say things they don’t mean. I’m sure your mother—”

  “Mommy meaned it all right,” Mac said. “That’s why she went away. ’Cause she broked my legs and couldn’t fix it. I told her she could come back. ’Cause I don’t think sorry’s a big fat lie. But I don’t think she believed me.”

  Was Mac right? Rowena wondered. Did Lisa Lawless hold herself to the same harsh standard she did her eldest daughter? Did Cash’s ex-wife blame herself for Mac’s injuries? Was that why she’d left—because it was too hard to piece together her little girl’s life after the child had been hurt so badly? Too hard to face her husband when she’d been the one behind the wheel?

  Lives, broken to pieces like the teapots in the box in Rowena’s back room. All those jewel-like fragments Miss Marigold had tried to throw away. Just like Lisa Lawless had thrown away her family.

  “How would you like to do something magic?” Rowena reached out, cupped Charlie’s face in her hand.

  “Magic? Like talking to Clancy?” She chewed at her bottom lip. “I don’t know. That didn’t turn out very well. I listened, just like you told me to. He told me he came all the way to my house to find me, and he promised he’d live in my playhouse and never let Daddy see him. Like—well, like the invisible bunny in that old movie Daddy showed us. The picture that only has black and white. What was that movie’s name, Daddy?”

  “Harvey,” Cash said, actually sounding a little embarrassed at being caught watching something like that. “It’s an old black and white with Jimmy Stewart.”

  “I know,” Rowena said softly. “That’s one of my favorite movies.”

  “Me, too,” Charlie agreed. “But the rabbit was better at staying invisible than Clancy was.” Charlie’s brow wrinkled up as if she were thinking hard. “Getting invisible is a very tricky thing.”

  So is healing broken hearts, Rowena thought, looking from the little girl to Cash.

  But tricky or not, she had to try.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ORANGES AND PINKS SMEARED the horizon like one of Charlie’s watercolor skies, a single bead of light running along the edge of town. Cash climbed out of his SUV, every muscle in his body aching from two days without sleep.

  But he wouldn’t be able to hit the sack any time soon. He had breakfast to make, the girls to get to school, and then a trip to the grocery store to stock up Vinny’s cupboards. Mr. Google wouldn’t be up to carting bulging bags of salami and stinky cheese to his apartment anytime soon.

  Mounting the stairs, Cash rubbed his eyes with one hand, wondering if he should try Charlie’s sure-fire method for staying awake when she had friends stay overnight. He smiled, remembering the night he’d caught Charlie and Hope Stone in the bathroom at two in the morning, splashing their faces with ice-cold water.

  How long had it been since Hope had been underfoot at the house almost as often as his own kids? Cash’s smile faded. Too long. One more piece of everyday life that had gone missing in the years since everything had fallen apart.

  Cash unlocked the door and opened it quietly, not wanting to wake Rowena. But when he slipped into the living room, no blond-haired gypsy slept on the couch. The blankets and pillows Cash had set out for her still sat folded just where he’d put them before he’d left for work.

  He tried to quell a twinge of uneasiness—but he made his living by paying attention to things that looked suspicious. Still, suspicious didn’t always mean something was wrong. He glanced into the kitchen—empty, except for…what was that delicious smell?

  Coffee?

  He flicked on the light. There it was, right on the counter. The carafe was full, looked steaming hot, promising the caffeine he needed to kick start his morning. Rowena must have made it before she went to sleep and set the timer. But how had she known how badly he needed a cup of joe when he got home?

  It surprised him, tugged at something inside him he didn’t want to name, that she’d taken the trouble on his behalf.

  He’d check on the girls first, then pour himself a mug full. Reenergized just at the prospect, he went down the hall, peering first in Charlie’s room, then in Mac’s. The girls’ beds hadn’t been slept in either. Alarm quickened his pace to his bedroom. But what would they be doing in there? Cash pushed wide the door and went still.

  Rowena lay in the middle of his bed, her yellow sweatsuit like a drop of sun that had spilled through the window. Picture books littered the floor, and it looked like the stuffed animals had made a jailbreak from the toy box. The fugitives scattered the bed. Mac and Charlie snuggled against Rowena like kittens, as if they were trying to burrow as deep into all that womanly warmth and softness as they could.

  Cash didn’t blame them. They’d missed so much—his girls—even before Lisa had left them, from the sound of Charlie’s revelation after school yesterday.

  Sorry doesn’t matter…

  Anger and bitterness gnawed inside him. How could Lisa have said that to their little girl? Charlie, with her tender heart and her desperate need to please. Charlie, who had always tried so hard to get things right even before the accident. And now…

  “Cash?”

  He started at the low, husky sound, a sleepy feminine voice. Rowena, looking abashed as she carefully disentangled herself from the girls and eased herself up to a sitting position. She looked so damned beautiful, her hair all tousled, pillow creases in her cheek, her shirt rumpled where Mac’s head had lain.

  “Go back to sleep.” He squeezed the words from a throat suddenly too tight.

  She shook her head, then oh so carefully started to climb over Mac. The blankets snagged around her legs and Cash reached over to set them loose. He didn’t expect to touch bare skin, where her sweat pants had ridden up. He gritted his teeth at the smoothness of her ankle, her perfectly shaped bare feet.

  The instant he got the blanket loose he leaned over and grabbed Rowena under her arms, lifting her over Mac’s sleeping form.

  What’d you do that for? a voice inside his head asked him. So I could touch her. The truth unnerved him. Yet he let his hands linger as he set her on her feet. What else could he do, since her shirt had ridden up in the process and his left palm melded against bare skin? The cove a mere finger’s width away from where her breast be
gan.

  He couldn’t help himself. His thumb skimmed up just a smidgen. Touched pillowy softness where a bra should have been.

  Cash heard Rowena’s breath catch, and for an instant he almost slid his hand up to cup her, then he glanced back at the bed. Was he so desperate he’d feel up a woman with his kids in the room? He drew away from Rowena, scowling. He covered the girls back up, then left the room. Rowena followed him. He could imagine those breasts he’d almost touched bouncing subtly against the soft cotton.

  “Charlie was having trouble sleeping, so I said I’d lie down with her a little while,” she explained. “Then Mac felt left out. Your bed was the only one big enough for all three of us to fit in.” She swept her hair back from her face with one hand. “But you probably wanted to lie down this morning until it was time for the kids to get up. I just wasn’t thinking.”

  “Don’t apologize to me.” The words jabbed him again, reminding him of Lisa, and the contrast between her and the woman standing in his kitchen this morning.

  “Charlie still feels bad about what happened to Mr. Google. She just needed some snuggle time, you know? Instead of lying in her bed all alone, beating herself up.”

  “Yeah, and we know where she got that habit, don’t we? From her mother. One more little present Lisa gave Charlie before she left the kid behind.”

  “You seemed as surprised by it as I was.”

  “How could I not have seen that? Not have known?”

  “You were working hard. You couldn’t be with them every second.”

  “No. But if anybody should have known about Lisa’s talent for holding grudges, it was me. I bet she could have told you every mistake I ever made with her, including the first time I—” Nailed her against the elevator wall.

  He winced, remembering how Lisa had pushed the stop button, then leaned back against the elevator doors, arching her back so her nipples pushed against her silk blouse. She’d smelled expensive, classy, way out of his league.

  I’ve never done anything like this before. She’d flashed him that smoky come-hither look, hiking her already short skirt up so he could see shapely thighs, a flash of red panties. Be bad with me, Cash…

  He’d known she and her rich girlfriends had come to the bar slumming, aware that it was frequented by sailors and marines on leave. But he didn’t care. It was his first day off in months and he was drunk, not only from the tequila shots he’d been throwing back with his buddies, but with the freedom of having his discharge papers in his pocket and knowing he’d never have to go to war again.

  “It must have been hard for you.” Rowena’s voice jarred him, and for a moment he wondered if she’d read his mind. Yeah, he’d been hard all right, and dumb as a rock. He gave a snort of self-disgust.

  “I mean, to have your wife hold things against you that way,” Rowena explained hastily.

  “Yeah, well.” He walked to the coffee machine and pulled a mug down from the cabinet. What else was there to say? he thought as he poured himself a cup. Lisa was a master at revisionist history. Somehow later, the whole elevator scene became his fault instead of hers.

  But then, maybe Lisa was right. He’d been more than willing to bury memories of bullets tearing into human flesh by fulfilling one of those Penthouse moments any red-blooded twenty-two-year-old male fantasized about. Especially since fantasies were the only kind of sex he’d been having while deployed for the past nine months.

  When the condom had torn he should’ve ignored her urging just to pull out before he came. He knew better than to take that kind of risk, but he’d done it all the same.

  When he’d awakened the next morning with a throbbing headache, he figured she must’ve enjoyed their interlude in the elevator, too, because she’d given him her number. The next night, they’d done a repeat performance—this time in the ladies’ room at a different bar.

  He’d taken her back to the hotel room he and one of his marine buddies shared. By the end of the week he had a room of his own and Lisa’s one night of slumming had turned into weeks, then two months.

  “You know what gets me?” Cash surprised himself by saying. Part of him knew it was strange to be having a personal conversation with his babysitter first thing in the morning, but something in Rowena’s open expression made him continue in spite of that.

  “What?”

  “If she wanted to hold crap against me, then fine. I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself. But to do that to Charlie…my little girl…” Fury boiled to the surface. “How could Lisa do that to her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “A mom is supposed to build kids up, you know? Be there, no matter what. When I was a kid, I got in plenty of trouble. I could probably have even given you a run for your money in that department.”

  “Good to know.”

  “My mom—she was about five feet tall, ninety pounds soaking wet. She had this temper, you know? Fired off when she was mad like nobody’s business. She could still scare the devil out of my brothers and me when we were a foot and a half taller than she was.”

  He saw a smile tick up the corner of Rowena’s mouth. “Hell on wheels with a wooden spoon, huh?”

  “She never hit us once. She never had to. She’d be the first one to lay into us over whatever trouble we’d gotten in. Take away ball games, television, whatever punishment she thought would work. Time out was the worst. Sitting on the kitchen stairs, watching out the back window, seeing the rest of those lucky sons of bitches playing ball.” He chuckled at the memory. “We begged her just to spank us and get it over with like all the other moms.”

  “I know what you mean. My mom was the queen of ‘I’m so disappointed in you.’ Wow, does that ever mess with a kid’s mind.”

  Cash studied her face for a long moment. “You know what the best part about my mom was?”

  “What?”

  “After we’d served our sentence, she’d come over and sit on the step with us. She’d give us this bone-cracking hug and say, ‘if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not living. And living’s what God put you here to do.’ It was like a lead weight rolled off my chest when my mom would say that.”

  “She sounds wonderful. Your girls must adore her.”

  “She died a few months after Charlie was born. Breast cancer.” But even sick as she was, she’d wanted what was best for all six of her boys. The last bit of advice she’d given Cash was to move the new granddaughter she’d adored far away from her. It was the only way to get Lisa’s family to give them the space they needed to build a life of their own. As usual, his mom’s plan had worked. Until the accident had brought Lisa’s sister swooping in.

  “You know what I miss most about my mom? I’d feel so—I don’t know, so clean when she’d hug me and say everything was all right. She’d forget whatever bad thing I’d done. Never brought it up again. At least not to hurt us. Sometimes, when we got older, she’d retell one of the stories and laugh.”

  Come to think of it, something in Rowena’s face reminded him of Rose Lawless. The fresh-scrubbed look of her, the eyes that sparkled, the warm, ready smile and the fierce way she protected any creature she loved. He’d seen it with that devil dog of hers. And with his daughter. He’d thought she was just trying to foist the dog off on the nearest mark. But obviously that wasn’t the case since she’d refused to sell Destroyer to Mac’s teacher. And why? Because keeping the dog herself meant Charlie could visit it, even if she could never have it for her own. Even if the dog caused mayhem anywhere he went. Even if Cash raged at Rowena and argued with her and hated the dog on sight.

  “You showed that dog of yours more compassion than my ex-wife showed our kids,” Cash said. “My mom was so…so kind. Loved us, you know? But Charlie—what did Charlie get for her apologies? ‘It’s too late’? The feeling the black marks under her name would stay there forever, tallied up by her own mother?”

  “But Charlie has you.”

  “Yeah. She has me. Poor kid.”

  Rowena clos
ed the space between them, laid her hand on his arm. “You’re a good father, Cash.”

  “Even if I won’t let Charlie have that dog?”

  “Well…” Her eyes sparkled beneath those thick gold-tipped lashes. “The truth is I haven’t given up on you yet.”

  He should have been aggravated. Instead he took her hand in his and turned it over, looking down into her palm. “At least you’re honest.”

  “I have to be. I’m a rotten liar. My sister Ariel says it’s one of my worst faults. When Mom came through town I told her I got the black eye from stepping on a rake.”

  “Like in The Three Stooges?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I’m thinking your mother didn’t buy it?”

  “It’s tough to fool a doctor.”