The Husband Recipe

by Linda Winstead Jones

  Like gossip wasn’t one of the favorite pastimes around here….

  “Oh, look, there’s Mildred. I need to get that white-chocolate oatmeal cookie recipe from her.” Like that, Gran was off the chair and moving at a nice clip across the dance floor.

  Coward.

  Sitting there alone, Lauren had a moment to think. How badly did she want to see where this thing with Cole might lead? Was she really going to sit around and wait for him to make the next move? What if he didn’t? Lauren had to make a decision, here and now. Was she willing and capable of taking that next step herself?

  “Drink this,” Hank said in a low, serious voice as he handed over the plastic cup with SpongeBob on one side.

  Cole looked down, his eyebrows rising as he studied the unappetizing green liquid. When Hank got into full wizard mode, no one was safe. Fortunately all the ingredients for this potion came from the kitchen, and Cole was careful to keep all cleaners and bug spray out of reach, so the potions weren’t toxic. He hoped. “What’s this supposed to do?”

  “I can’t tell you. If you know what’s supposed to happen then it won’t be a good experiment.”

  His seven-year-old mad scientist. Since these potions always arrived when Cole was in a bad mood, he knew very well what they were supposed to do. But he played the game, pretending not to understand what the concoctions were for. If he ever got one that actually tasted good he’d pretend to get happy. So far that hadn’t happened.

  Cole downed the liquid in one long gulp. It tasted of lime fruit punch, salt, watermelon and last night’s leftover green beans, which the kids had hardly touched. He should’ve known this was coming when he’d heard the blender whirring away. He placed the cup on the coffee table in front of the couch, where he’d been sitting with a notebook making workout plans for his new baseball team, smacked his lips and gave what he hoped was a sincere enough “Ahh, good stuff.”

  As usual, Hank stared at Cole as he waited for the potion to take effect. His eyes narrowed and he leaned closer. Closer. Now and then, after downing a gulp of blended leftovers, Cole would cluck like a chicken, or pretend to fall asleep very quickly, or cross his eyes. If he really wanted Hank to outgrow the wizard phase, he should probably stop playing along. It was time to start, he supposed. This potion elicited no reaction.

  Before Cole could get back to his game plan, the doorbell rang. Hank—wearing his sorcerer’s cape and waving a magic wand—spun around and ran to answer, leaping dramatically over a small fire truck Justin had left on the floor. Not for the first time, Cole wished fervently that his son would outgrow this particular phase. If it went on much longer, he was going to get his ass kicked at his new school. He needed to start doing his part to take the fun out of the game. No more clucking, no more crossed eyes.

  Cole tossed his notebook onto the table next to the empty SpongeBob cup and stood, since whoever was at the door was likely looking for him. The kids had been inside all morning, so it couldn’t be another broken window. Could it?

  Hank opened the door with a flourish of his cape and wand and, sure enough, Lauren stood there. She was fully dressed. White capris, pink tank, bra. No bunny slippers. No muddy baseball and no basket of food. She looked so good he wanted to eat her up.

  She smiled when she saw him, and instinctively, he returned the smile. How could he not? “Come on in. Is everything all right?”

  “Everything’s fine.” Lauren stepped into the room. She was obviously nervous, but damn, she looked good. “I just came over to issue an invitation.”

  It was likely not the kind of invitation that immediately came to his mind.

  “I’d like to invite you and your family over for supper tonight. Do you have plans?”

  “No,” Cole answered quickly. “What’s the occasion?”

  “Does there have to be an occasion?” She looked up, caught his eye, and he was immediately taken back to the kiss.

  It had been easy to relegate Lauren to the back of his mind when he hadn’t seen her face-to-face, but when she was standing in front of him the memory of her—her mouth, the softness of her body, the way she tasted, the sweet smell of her skin—it all came rushing back. He didn’t want to wait a couple of months before he asked her on a date. He didn’t want to waste a single day. Slow was a bad idea….

  Besides, this wasn’t a date, it was an invitation for the entire family. It was a neighborly invitation, that was all. Yeah, right.

  “What time?”

  “Six, if that’s okay with you.” Her smile widened, and he felt like a teenager, bewitched by a woman for the first time.

  “Six it is.”

  She rose up on her toes, dropped down again. Was she nervous? “Don’t you even want to know what we’re having?”

  “Don’t care,” Cole said honestly.

  “See y’all at six, then.” Lauren backed away slowly. Cole moved forward, caught up with her near the door. He couldn’t kiss her again, not with the kids watching, but he inhaled deeply and her scent filled his lungs.

  “I can’t wait.”

  Once she was on the porch, Lauren spun and walked away. Cole watched her, enjoying the sway of her hips, the gentle, feminine shape of her body. Most of all, he enjoyed the way she glanced back.

  He barely knew the woman, and already he was in too deep.

  He closed the door and returned to the couch, scooping up his notebook and plopping down. It took a moment for him to realize that Hank was jumping up and down, waving his wand. “It worked! My magic potion worked!”

  Cole glanced at the cup on the coffee table. Crap. “It did?” he asked, as if he was ignorant of the potion’s purpose. “What did it do?”

  “My magic potion made you smile. It made you happy. It’s an ungrumpy potion, and it worked! Finally.” His smile faded. “I have to go write down the ingredients before I forget.” With that he turned, cape whipping around his thin body, and he ran for his bedroom.

  Hank would never understand that it had been Lauren who made his dad happy, so that potion would probably become a regular part of his diet. At least until Hank outgrew this wizard kick.

  Lauren, a woman he barely knew, made him happy. She made him smile. Shouldn’t these kids see their dad happy now and then? Meredith wasn’t going to like it, but dammit, he had to give this a shot.

  Meredith sulked openly as she picked at her chicken and rice. She didn’t care who knew that she was unhappy! Justin and Hank were traitors, chatting away as if nothing was wrong, eating everything on their plates like they hadn’t been fed a good meal in months, smiling at Lauren Russell as if she were…as if she were their mother.

  She wasn’t. No one would ever take the place of their mother.

  It was bad enough that Hank had been taken in by Miss Lauren from the beginning. Now Justin was going over to the dark side.

  Dad had taken her aside this afternoon and told her, in a very serious voice, that while he didn’t want to upset her, he didn’t want to wait much longer before he asked Lauren out on a date. Then she got the spiel about how no one would ever take the place of her mother, and no one would come between the four of them, but that the time had come to move on. Blah, blah, blah. Move on! Meredith didn’t want to move on, and she didn’t see why her dad wanted things to change.

  Miss Lauren’s kitchen wasn’t anything like theirs. The shape of the room was the same, but her appliances looked newer. Everything matched. The plates and the glasses and the cloth napkins, the tablecloth. It all looked like something out of a magazine, the ones at the grocery store checkout. There was a low, clear vase of fresh flowers at the center of the table. Even that matched everything else, as if Miss Lauren only grew flowers that matched her decor.

  Where did Miss Lauren keep her stuff? There was nothing cluttering the counter, no dirty dishes in the sink, no pictures on the fridge. The only things on her counter were a carefully arranged bowl of fruit and a tall, perfect chocolate cake Hank had been eyeing since they’d walked into the room. />
  Meredith was not unaware of the fact that her father looked at Miss Lauren the way Hank looked at the cake. He smiled a lot. She smiled back. It was totally disgusting.

  This had to be taken care of before the situation got completely out of hand.

  Meredith knew what Lauren saw in her dad. For an old guy, Cole Donovan was handsome. He didn’t have a pot belly and he still had all his hair. His picture was on a baseball card, for goodness’ sake! Meredith remembered going to baseball games, hearing fans scream her father’s name, getting caught up in the excitement when he got a hit or made a great play on the field. She could still hear them chanting “Whip-lash! Whip-lash! Whip-lash!”

  But Meredith had to wonder, what did her dad see in Miss Lauren? She wasn’t the prettiest woman in the world. In fact, she was kind of flat-chested and ordinary. She wasn’t at all funny. She didn’t bat her eyelashes at him in adoration. It had to be her cooking. Meredith picked at a piece of celery in the chicken and rice, then she poked her fork at the homemade roll. If she could learn to cook just as well as Miss Lauren, they wouldn’t need her at all.

  While the two adults at the table were looking at one another with totally disgusting gooey eyes, Meredith reached out and knocked over Justin’s milk. Since he hadn’t drunk much, the milk splattered and quickly soaked the tablecloth. It pooled around the vase.

  “Hey!” Justin shouted, turning an accusing glare to his sister. “Why did you do that?”

  “Do what?” Meredith said sweetly, as Miss Lauren jumped up and ran for the paper towels. She’d have a fit over some spilled milk, she’d get angry that her meticulous order had been disrupted, and then everyone would see what she was really like.

  It had worked before.

  “You knocked over my milk!” Justin shouted.

  Meredith shook her head. “It’s okay, Justin, I know you didn’t mean to make a mess. Accidents happen.”

  Miss Lauren—who was definitely annoyed and more than a little flustered—started sopping up the milk with a clump of paper towels. Dad helped. Too bad there was a tablecloth to slow the flow. If the glass had fallen over on a bare table the milk would be running onto the floor by now. That would make a real mess and Miss Lauren would be freaking out. Then Dad would see what a basket case she really was.

  To Meredith’s dismay, Miss Lauren didn’t yell at Justin. Her annoyance faded quickly, and soon she was smiling again. She even laughed. “Justin, honey, Meredith’s right. Haven’t you ever heard that you shouldn’t cry over spilled milk?”

  “But I didn’t spill…” Justin began.

  “Justin’s very clumsy,” Meredith interrupted. “He’s always dropping stuff or losing things, or spilling his milk.” She glanced around the very neat kitchen. “Everywhere he goes, he makes a big mess.”

  The youngest Donovan child gave Meredith a narrow-eyed glare that made him look like a very small version of their dad. “I do not.”

  Hank, who hadn’t even stopped eating, said, “I think I need to make a big batch of my ungrumpy potion.”

  “How about chocolate cake instead?” Miss Lauren suggested. “In my experience, no one can eat cake and remain grumpy.”

  The thought of chocolate cake soothed even Justin, who had been falsely accused. “I think I’ll need two pieces to get ungrumped.”

  Miss Lauren laughed. Dad laughed. And Meredith had the sinking feeling that she was losing this battle.

  And losing this battle would mean losing her father.

  The boys were in the backyard, chasing fireflies. Cole could see them through the window. Lauren was cleaning up. He’d offered to help but she’d refused, so he stood at the end of the counter and watched her.

  Meredith, refusing to leave them alone, sat at the clean kitchen table leafing through several cookbooks.

  Lauren was a good woman, a rare woman. Chemistry was one thing, but when he felt that chemistry with a woman he actually liked…wouldn’t it be foolish to walk away? Maybe they’d get involved and he’d find out that she wasn’t all she appeared to be. Maybe they’d tire of one another quickly. Maybe whatever he felt wouldn’t last. But damn, he wanted to find out.

  He tried to remind himself to take things slowly, but he had a sinking feeling that spectacular plan was going to fly out the window.

  The dishwasher was running, and she had the milk-soaked linens in the washing machine. Other dishes were stacked in the sink and the few things she wanted to wash by hand—good lord, why would anyone go to that trouble—had been washed and set aside to dry.

  He should go. He didn’t want to go.

  “Mer, would you collect the boys and get them in?” he said. “If they don’t start getting baths now they’ll be midnight getting to bed.”

  “But I really wanted to look through these…”

  “Take them with you,” Lauren said, smiling at the sullen girl. “I’ve probably got two hundred cookbooks. Any kind of cuisine you want to try, I can get you started.”

  Meredith stood, snatched up the books and stalked toward the back door. She didn’t say thanks, she didn’t even look back. The door slammed behind her, and they heard her calling her brothers’ names at the top of her lungs.

  Cole looked at Meredith. “Sorry.”

  She shook her head gently. “No need to apologize. Twelve is a difficult age, as I remember.”

  “She spilled the milk on purpose, then tried to blame it on Justin.”

  “I know,” she whispered.

  They were neighbors who hadn’t known one another nearly long enough to explain away the electricity in the room. They had all the time in the world, and yet it felt as if every minute that passed was a minute wasted. He’d said slow, he’d planned slow. But this…it was anything but slow.

  “If we…do this, it’ll happen again. And worse.” Might as well lay it all out on the table, let Lauren know what she was in for.

  She didn’t pretend not to know what he was talking about. “I suspect that’s true.”

  Cole moved closer to Lauren. She stood there, waiting for him, tilting her head up to catch his eye. His arms wrapped around her, so easily. She leaned into him and it felt incredible. Amazing. He could stand here for hours, just like this.

  He nuzzled Lauren’s neck and breathed deeply. Her scent filled him. She leaned into him, fitting against him as if they’d been made for one another. Height difference aside, the way they fit together was very right. He liked it. She sighed, took a long, deep breath. His body responded to hers and he realized he could not stand here for hours just like this.

  “I’m going to ask you out on a date,” he whispered.

  Lauren hummed deep in her throat, then she whispered, “It’s about time.”

  “I’m a little afraid, though.”

  “Why?”

  “I haven’t dated in a while, but the last few were…”

  “Interesting?”

  “Disasters.”

  She laughed and turned her head. Their lips brushed, met, settled together for a kiss that rocked him to the core. Slow? Uh-uh. Whatever this was, wherever it was going, it was powerful and would not be set aside. Lauren’s lips moved gently, testing him, teasing.

  She took her lips from his and whispered, “Let’s not overthink this. If we do we might end up talking ourselves out of something good.”

  Was she getting in his head now, or did she have the same nagging doubts he did? “You don’t strike me as a ‘go with the flow’ kinda girl.”

  “I’m usually not. For you I’ll make an exception.” She tilted her head, touched her lips to his.

  Before the kiss had a chance to grow into more, a sharp crash from next door—too close—interrupted. Hank screamed at his sister. Something about a broken jar of fireflies, as far as he could tell.

  “I have to go,” he said, reluctantly stepping away. Lauren nodded, crossed her arms across her midsection and leaned against the sink. “If you ask me on a date,” she said, “I think I’ll say yes and take my chances.”<
br />
  If he hadn’t already been a goner, that would’ve done it.

  Chapter Eight

  Lauren had just finished putting away the second load of dishes out of the dishwasher when a tap at the back door made her jump. Seeing Cole standing there beyond the square window, illuminated by the back porch light, made her smile. Inside her heart did a strange flip, and her gut tightened.

  She could so easily fall in love with him.

  She unlocked and opened the back door. “Is everything all right?”