Don’t play stupid. Carly’s your best friend. Keegan is not. Carly is a woman. Keegan is definitely not.
“Are the kids old enough to stay alone for a few hours at night?”
Her throat tightened, and so did her fingers, until the bite of the keys forced her to relax. Was he asking just for general conversational purposes, or did he have something in mind?
Something in mind. It was hard to just say it: dinner. More time together. A date. She didn’t even think of herself as a dating sort of person. Dating was for people who didn’t have the obligations she did, or the past, or the uncertain future.
“A few hours,” she said, wondering if her voice sounded as choked to him as it did to her. “As long as I’m in town. If I go out of town or it’s going to be longer than that, they go to their best friends’ house down the street. Their mom and I trade off sometimes so she and their dad can have date nights.”
Apparently, she’d developed the habit of talking too much when she was nervous. Why hadn’t someone pointed that out to her before?
Keegan was quiet, focused on gathering what little trash there was. When he’d done that, he looked up. “Could we have dinner? I’d be happy to get a pizza or take-out for the kids.”
Therese’s nerves tingled as if an electric current hovered in the air, about to disperse its energy at any instant, setting her hair on end and her heart to pounding and maybe scorching her in the process. She should say yes. All the best friends in the world couldn’t disguise the fact that she missed having a man in her life. She wasn’t a nun. She was alive and breathing. And she liked Keegan.
The kids didn’t get take-out that often. Jacob wouldn’t care, and Abby would be so busy acting out that she wouldn’t notice. They would appreciate that there’d be no table to set, no blessing to sit through, no cleanup. They wouldn’t miss her.
She refused to acknowledge the tiny prick of disappointment inside her.
“All right. What are you in the mood for?” Her lips trembled into a sort of smile. “Please don’t say Mexican. That’s what Jacob wanted for dinner yesterday and the margarita club will be having for dinner tomorrow.”
“Lucky for you, I’m not hungry for Mexican.” He stood, and she pushed to her feet as well, reaching for the umbrella she’d leaned against the wall. “You have any place that serves catfish?”
She gave it a moment’s thought—a couple of barbecue joints, plus at least two home-style cooking restaurants. She chose Paul’s favorite, though. “Walleyed Joe’s. It’s on the northeast side of town. I can give you directions or I can pick you up after I take dinner to the kids and change clothes.”
“Or I can pick you up. I don’t need directions to your house,” he pointed out.
Pick her up. Like a real date. A real man-woman thing. She needed to go by the house anyway. He might be comfortable in damp clothes and shoes, but she wanted something dry against her skin. She could grab food for the kids, deliver the undies to Abby, and have an excuse for not sticking around for the fireworks.
“All right.” She started toward the door, and he fell in step with her. “Give me fifteen minutes.”
He checked his watch. “How about twenty? I’ll go by the motel and change.”
“All right,” she said again.
With the awnings over the portion of sidewalk nearest the building, she didn’t bother to unfurl her umbrella. When she came even with her van, she dashed and splashed through the rain, climbed in, and started the engine. The windows immediately started fogging, probably from the heat radiating from her, from the excitement that she had a dinner date.
Not that she was looking for a relationship yet. Not that she even wanted a relationship with another soldier, as she’d told Carly. American troops might come home from Iraq and Afghanistan, but as long as one group of people held a grudge against another, as long as their solution to problems was violence, an American soldier would never be completely out of danger. As Carly sometimes said, she’d been there, done that, and had the posthumous medals to show for it.
But she could think of this as a practice date, for the time when she eventually—hopefully—met someone not in the Army.
Before backing out of the space, she called the house. Jacob answered on the third ring to the sound of doors closing and dishes rattling. He was predictable: if he wasn’t doing homework or playing games on the computer, he was on a search-and-devour mission in the kitchen. For an eleven-year-old boy, he ate an enormous amount of food. Granted, he was a head taller than Therese and broad through the shoulders.
He was his father’s son.
“Hey, Jacob, it’s Therese. I’m not going to be home this evening, so I thought I’d pick up dinner for you and Abby. What would you like?”
A chugging sound came over the phone—milk, drunk straight from the carton—then a burp. “I don’t care. Anything so long as it doesn’t take forever.”
“Starving again, huh?”
“Yeah. I haven’t had anything to eat since I got home besides some cookies. And a frozen waffle. And some cereal. We’re almost out of milk.”
“Put it on the list. Want to ask your sister if she has any preferences?”
After a moment’s silence, a bag rustled in the background. He’d found the potato chips, apparently. “Yeah, do I have to? If she’s hungry, she’ll eat whatever you bring. If she’s not, I will.”
Abby wasn’t quite so malleable, as they both well knew. One week she might love pizza; the next, all that cheese and fat would be disgusting.
“How about Chinese?” Jacob suggested. “I’ll call it in.”
He was eleven, Therese reminded herself. And he was trying. She could look ahead six months, a year, three or five, and see him in her life: acing middle school; making the football team; starting high school; getting his driver’s license; playing baseball the way his dad had; graduating.
No matter how she tried, she couldn’t fit Abby into the picture.
“Thanks. I’ll be there soon.”
* * *
Soon translated to ten minutes. Added to the time she’d sat in the van, Therese had about seven minutes to change clothes and deal with Abby.
She hustled from the driveway to the front door, juggling bags, then gave herself a shake on the rug in the front hallway. Jacob climbed over the back of the couch, where he’d been lying, and met her with a grunt that she took for hello, claimed the food, and headed for the kitchen.
“Good evening to you, too,” she called after him.
Without turning, he raised one hand in a wave, a habit he’d picked up from his father.
Therese kicked off her shoes and climbed the stairs to the second floor. At Abby’s door, she knocked, waited a moment, then opened it. “I’m going out for a while. I brought Chinese, and I got you these.”
Her stepdaughter was lying on the bed, an old pair of running shorts exposing most of her legs, a ratty hoodie swallowing the rest of her. She’d stuffed pillows behind her back, had earbuds in, her phone in one hand, and a biology book propped open against her knees. Her disinterested gaze locked on Therese for a long moment before she pulled one bud loose. “You say something?”
Therese considered her response a smile, though it was really only the baring of her teeth. “I’m going out. I brought Chinese. I bought you underwear.”
Abby’s gaze shifted to the shopping bag and its familiar Walmart logo, and her face crinkled into a sneer. “I don’t care where you go. I don’t want Chinese. And I’m not wearing anything you bought.”
Nerves tightening, Therese advanced into the room, hanging the bag from the back of the desk chair. “Has your mother shipped your other clothes yet?”
Again Abby stared at her disdainfully, but instead of answering this time, she turned her gaze back to the biology book.
A little twinge of sympathy mixed with anger shivered through Therese. She knew that look. It meant Catherine hadn’t bothered to call back. Usually it took days for her to make hers
elf available to her daughter, and too often she ignored Abby’s messages and texts entirely.
The time left to change her clothes, freshen her makeup, comb her hair, and be ready for Keegan ticked off loudly in Therese’s head. She was sorely tempted to inform Abby that she would wear what she’d bought; who did she think had bought everything for her the past four years? It might not have been her bright idea to leave her old clothes in California, but she’d gone along with it when she certainly knew better.
But Therese didn’t have the energy. “You can’t live with only two pairs of panties and a sports bra, unless you want to be doing laundry every night. Look at them before you decide you hate them. If you or Jacob need anything while I’m gone—”
“We won’t.”
“If you do—”
“We. Won’t. We don’t need or want anything from you.” Abby shoved the earbud back into place hard enough to make Therese wince and fixed her gaze on the book. As far as she was concerned, Therese was dismissed.
Swallowing a sigh, Therese closed the door behind her and continued down the hall to her own room. She stripped off her damp pants and shirt, grabbed a pair of jeans and a lightweight sweater from the closet, and went into the bathroom to dress. For an instant, before she pulled the jeans over her hips and fastened them, she gazed at her own underwear in the mirror. A cream-colored bra, its only ornamentation a small bow between the cups, and plain pale blue bikinis. Nothing to recommend either besides comfort.
When had she stopped wearing lingerie? When had she decided function was more important than form? When had a thirteen-year-old girl outstripped her in fashion, style, and sheer sex appeal?
Laughing at the thought that the answers mattered now—the chances of anyone else seeing her undies tonight were somewhere between slim and none—she fastened the jeans and pulled the sweater over her head. She redid her lipstick, put on socks, and was lacing up a pair of water-resistant hiking boots when the doorbell rang.
Oh, God, did her heart just skip a beat?
Hastily she tied the second boot, then rushed into the hall and down the stairs. When Keegan suggested he pick her up, she hadn’t thought twice about it. Now that he was here, she wished they’d agreed to meet elsewhere. All she’d told the kids was that she was going out. She hadn’t said with a man. She didn’t want them to know it was with a man.
She deserved a few things just for herself, didn’t she?
No need to worry, it turned out. Abby didn’t so much as crack her door, and Jacob was out of sight at the kitchen table. It took more than a ring of the doorbell to pull him away from food.
Like interest. Neither he nor Abby cared where Therese was going, or with whom. If she didn’t come back, it would take them twelve hours or so to realize it and who knew how long for it to matter.
She opened the door, then grabbed a slicker from the closet. “Hi,” she said as she shrugged into it, one arm sliding right into the sleeve, the other tangling somewhere else.
“Hey.”
She felt Keegan’s movement before she heard it: electricity, a quiet step, then a hand brushing her shoulder as he held her jacket. Sensation rippled through her. Murmuring thank you, she forced her mouth into an unsteady smile. “You’re right on time.” Inane comment, but it was his fault. If he hadn’t come close, if he hadn’t helped her, if he hadn’t touched her…
“I always am. My father was late to his own wedding and didn’t make it to the hospital for the births of any of his children until at least twenty-four hours after the fact. As a result, my mother can’t stand tardiness in anyone. If you’re gonna be late, you’d better have a damn good reason for it.”
“I agree.” She gazed past him out the open door. Streetlamps illuminated the rain falling in sheets. She looked at him again—jeans, boots, a thin slicker of his own. “Want an umbrella?”
“Nah. I don’t melt.”
If he touched her again, she might. After pulling the hood up over her head, she tucked her purse under her jacket. “Jacob, I’m leaving now. If you need anything, call my cell.”
A garbled version of something she took for acknowledgment came from the kitchen, then she smiled at Keegan. “Shall we go?”
* * *
Walleyed Joe’s was, predictably, a rustic-looking place, reminding Keegan of old fishing camps back home in Louisiana. Built so that its deck extended over the shallow water of a small lake, it looked as if it had grown right up out of the dirt, weathered and so worn that the main traffic paths through the dining room dipped an inch or two lower than the surrounding boards.
It was exactly the kind of place he preferred.
A teenage girl with orange hair and red braces led them to a table. Due to the weather, probably, there were few customers besides them. They’d barely had a chance to remove their dripping jackets before the waiter appeared to take their drink order.
The table was near the deck, with the door propped open and a cool damp breeze blowing in through the screen door. It balanced out the heavy scent of fried food and carried with it the drumming of the rain on the deck’s tin roof. Definitely his kind of place on a wet evening.
He and Therese hadn’t talked much on the way to the restaurant. She had folded her hands primly in her lap and gazed out the window, pretty much speaking only to give directions. He was okay with quiet. Sabrina had been a say-something-even-if-you-have-nothing-to-say sort, and her chatter had driven him crazy. Quiet was good.
To a point.
“So…Jacob is your stepson. How old is he?”
“Eleven. Looks like he’s sixteen.”
“And Abby is…?”
“Thirteen.”
“And trying to pass for twenty. I take it that’s her mother’s influence.”
Therese’s smile was strained. “Catherine wants to be a best friend, not a mother.”
At least she wanted to be something. That was more than he could say for Sabrina. “Can I ask why they’re living with you and not her? Isn’t it easier to be a best friend when you’re at least in the same state?”
“Ah, but then you have to accept responsibility, and that’s not Catherine’s strong suit.” She opened the menu, but barely glanced at it. No doubt, she’d been there often enough to know what she wanted. He didn’t need to look at it, either. He’d come for catfish, and that was all that would tempt him.
As far as food went, he added to himself as he watched Therese.
She folded her hands in her lap again as the waiter brought their drinks. They ordered their meals—grilled chicken breast with a salad and roasted vegetables for her; fried catfish, coleslaw, and beans for him. The food he’d been raised on.
“Paul and I had been married four years when Catherine informed him that she needed time for herself so she was sending Abby and Jacob to stay with us. She said it was temporary, that she just needed to focus on her own needs for a while. After he died, I thought she would want them back—you know, be there for her children while they grieved for their father, but no. She wasn’t ready. She couldn’t deal with them. She was grieving herself. For a husband she’d been unfaithful to and had divorced when Jacob was tiny.”
Selfish parents. Catherine Matheson, Sabrina, Keegan’s own father. It hadn’t been so bad for him—his mother and grandmother had more than made up for his father’s absence—but it couldn’t have been easy for Jacob and Abby. It remained to be seen what life would be like for Mariah.
“So you’re raising her kids. How is that working out for you?”
Her cheeks turned pink, and she began fiddling with the paper securing silverware inside the napkin. “Like anything else, some days it’s better than others.”
A teenage drama princess could easily make life miserable for biological parents who’d had custody from birth. From his very brief exposure to Abby Matheson yesterday, Keegan could guess there were days she made it twice as miserable for the stepmother who’d wound up with her through no fault of her own.
He was in
the same situation with Mariah, except he wasn’t a step-anything. That designation didn’t belong to ex-boyfriends.
“Are you married?” she asked.
She’d stopped playing with the napkin, he noticed, and the color in her face was returning to normal. Okay, so Matheson’s kids were a sore point for her—or, at least, her feelings about them were. If she was having problems with them, even letting her know about Mariah’s existence was pointless.
But there was still the major’s family.
“Nope, never have been. I considered it a time or two…”
“But sobered up before it was too late?” she asked with a faint smile.
“More or less.” He wasn’t much of a drinker, mostly because his father was a hell of one, but he figured emotion could wreak as much havoc on good sense as booze could.
“No kids?”
He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Lucky for him, the waiter brought their salads and a basket of hush puppies and Texas toast to provide a moment’s distraction.
It was a simple answer. As far as he knew, he had no children. Mariah wasn’t his. He owed her mother nothing, and the best he owed Mariah was a family of her own. One that had some claim on her. Since Sabrina had no family, that left her father’s family by default.
When Therese repeated the question after the waiter left, he opened his mouth again, but the answer got garbled between it and his brain. “One.”
Damn. His mom had been trying to get him to acknowledge Mariah as his child from the moment she met her, even knowing better, but he’d resisted. So where the hell had that come from?
“Boy or girl?”
“Girl. Nearly three years old. Mariah.” Her birth certificate did list him as father. And it was easier than going into the whole explanation of how he wound up with custody of another man’s daughter—especially when that man was Therese’s dead husband. If the time came when there was a reason to tell her, okay. Until then…
“I take it she doesn’t live with you.”
“Right now she’s staying with her grandmother.”
“Do you mind if I ask why she’s not with her own mother?”
A Man to Hold on to (A Tallgrass Novel) Page 9
