by Nancy Warren
She must have been waiting for him, for the door opened almost immediately. His eyes widened when he saw her. This woman holding the door looked like she’d just stepped out of the shower, smelled like it, too, he noted as he entered the house. Her blond hair curled around her flushed face in steamy tendrils. She was pretty even without makeup, he decided, and she smelled like flowers.
He’d never seen such a kissable mouth. Full and bow-shaped, the lips parted under his stare. He felt a shaft of heat rush through him, as unfamiliar as it was exciting. It had been a very long time since he’d thought about kissing a woman.
And he wasn’t thinking about it now. He forced his gaze away from her lips and shut the front door behind him. Check out the house—that’s why he was here. Glancing around the front hall, he noticed how neat it was. Blue-and-white striped paper on the walls, unmarked by fingerprints, gray blue carpeting that still bore the ridges of a recent vacuum job.
“Would you care to come into the kitchen?” she asked in her soft hostess voice.
Nodding, he followed her lead. Peeking into the unlit living room, he got the impression that it was rarely used. It seemed lifeless somehow, and the formal dining room across the hall looked like it hadn’t seen a dinner party in a while.
He followed Mrs. Theisen’s back. She wore pale yellow jeans and a flowered T-shirt, and he approved of the way they looked from behind. He ran his eyes up and down the slim form, noting the elegant set of her shoulders, the straight spine and the bewitching sway of rounded hips. He definitely approved.
The kitchen was obviously the heart of the house. It was done in blues and yellows that looked vaguely French. They sat at a wrought iron table with a spotless glass top and regarded each other. Seth wasn’t sure how to begin, what he wanted to ask her. She seemed suddenly shy.
“Would you like something to drink, Mr. O’Reilly?” she asked. “Herbal tea?”
“I’m fine, thanks.” He smiled, trying to ease the atmosphere between them. “After the day we’ve spent together, I wish you’d call me Seth.”
She appeared to consider his words for a moment, as though looking for a trick but finding none. The corners of her mouth tilted upward. “And I’m Melissa.”
Her house was obviously clean and well organized. A quick inspection showed all the outlets had childproof covers. His own pair were more devious than any toddler. He wondered how she was planning to keep them out of trouble.
“Well, Melissa…” He tried to lounge back in his chair, but the wrought iron curlicues gouged into the muscles under his shoulder blades, jerking him upright in a hurry. “What do I get for my money?”
If she was taken aback by his bluntness, she didn’t show it. “Apart from emergency medical response on demand, I’ll also provide wholesome home-baked snacks after school, I’ll supervise the girls’ homework, encourage them to play outside in nice weather. You can drop them off in the morning on your way to work. I’ll walk them to school with my eight-year-old son.”
“What if I’m late picking them up at night? Do I get charged overtime?”
It was obvious she hadn’t thought of this possibility. He watched her struggle with herself, clearly wondering how far she could push him. “Of course,” she finally answered.
“I tell you what, let’s try it for a month and see if it works out. You’ll have to keep them home from school tomorrow.” He paused, then voiced his biggest concern, “The girls are a little…lively sometimes. Do you think you can handle it?”
The slightest smile of superiority teased her lips. “In my experience, Seth, the best way to keep active children out of mischief is to keep them busy. I’ll do my best.” She rose. “Would you care to see the backyard?”
He nodded. Anything to get out of the torture device she called a chair and quickly hauled himself to his feet.
She crossed the kitchen to a pair of French doors and flipped on a light switch. As he came up behind her he could see an immaculate fenced yard with a swing set and child’s playhouse. A round patio table and chairs were pushed to the side of the deck awaiting better weather.
The backyard looked fine. Too fine. “Who does your garden?” he asked. He’d try to slip in a subtle reminder that she needed to cut nonessentials like professional gardeners out of her budget.
“I did it myself,” she said, not without pride. “Gardens are my passion.”
What a fool he was. She’d told him this morning she designed gardens. “It’s beautiful,” he said. So was the line of Melissa Theisen’s jaw since she’d relaxed and stopped clenching it. Her neck was slender and the skin appeared silky soft. If he moved forward an inch, his chest could touch her back. He breathed in the aroma of gardenia and woman, and was torn between an urge to pull Mrs. Theisen round and kiss her senseless, and an urge to run raging into the night. For, standing here, surrounded by the scent of her, he couldn’t for the life of him remember what Claire had smelled like. He tried to recall the scent of her perfume or shampoo, but the flesh and blood woman in front of him overpowered his memory.
He caught the gleam of her eyes reflected in the glass door and realized she was staring at him, wide-eyed and frozen. Jerking backward, out of the spell of her woman’s magic, he drew in a ragged breath.
“I’ll drop the girls off at eight tomorrow morning.”
She turned slowly, and he noticed a flush on her cheeks. “That’s fine Mr….I mean Seth.” The use of first names seemed a strange intimacy suddenly. He wished he’d kept his big mouth shut. Nobody thought about kissing a woman they called Mrs.
He unhooked his jacket from the chair and shrugged into it. The sound of something falling and hitting the ground with a smack had him turning.
“Oh, I thought I fixed that,” his hostess said with an irritated tone. On the floor was a wooden drawer front. Everything in her kitchen was so pristine that the broken drawer made him feel more at home somehow.
He walked forward and picked up the wooden slab. It was solid maple he noted. No particleboard for the Theisen home. “How did you fix it?”
“A tube of glue. It’s about the only handyman thing I know how to do.”
He nodded, oddly pleased that he could do something better than she could. “It needs a vise. To hold the pieces together until they’re dry.”
“A vise. Oh.”
He stifled a grin. “Want me to take it home? I can bring the drawer back in the morning.”
Her eyes closed for a moment. Then she opened them and he saw she wasn’t annoyed, as he’d feared, but grateful. “That would be so wonderful. You know, I try to watch home fix-it shows, and I have a couple of books, but I don’t think I’m the handyman type.”
“Well, I can’t cook worth a damn.”
A silent laugh shook her. “Between the two of us, we make a great single parent.”
He was too busy pulling the drawer all the way out and placing the plastic thing holding the cutlery onto the counter to answer her.
“I’ll bring this back tomorrow with the girls.”
She followed him slowly to the door. “Do I need to worry about the twins sneaking home for any more illicit cooking sessions?”
“Not anymore. I confiscated their house key.”
“Good.”
“See you tomorrow.” He opened the front door and plunged into the darkness before she had even reached the door. He felt a sudden urge to run.
CHAPTER SIX
MELISSA HADN’T FELT sexually stirred in a very long time. Even before her marriage was over, she’d lost respect for Stephen, and with that loss went her pleasure in physical intimacy. When she found out he was cheating, they’d stopped having sex altogether. To have this angry, grieving man be the one to reawaken her desires was just perfect.
When had it even happened? One minute she’d been showing him the backyard, and the next minute she’d felt his warmth at her back, felt longing coming off him in waves, and to her complete surprise, had experienced an insane urge to respond.
> “Melissa, you sure can pick ’em,” she said aloud.
Flipping off lights as she went, she made her way up to bed, then lay awake for a long while wondering.
First, she wondered where Stephen was. Did he ever think about them? Was he sorry? She’d read about deadbeat dads in the newspaper and never understood how a man could run away rather than support his own children.
She was going to have to track him down somehow and make him resume his responsibilities.
From Stephen, her mind drifted to another tall, handsome man who’d come into her life and pretty much shunted it onto a whole new course, all in one day.
Seth O’Reilly would have been faithful to his wife forever—she could tell from his obvious pain that his love had been the forever kind. It seemed an unfair irony that the man who’d loved his wife so faithfully should lose her in such a cruel way, while the man who’d had it all, healthy wife and children, should abandon them like flotsam on the shores of his life.
Seth had been furious when she’d said his wife was lucky. He couldn’t understand the stab of envy that had shot through her for the woman who’d been loved so deeply that her husband was still calling out her name long after she was dead.
What would it be like to be loved by a man like that, Melissa wondered as she rolled over and tried to find a more comfortable spot. What would it be like to love a man like that, a man you could trust? To know that when he had to work late, he kept his pants on. To know that when he was out of town on business, he slept alone.
That love extended to his children. She smiled in the dark, recalling the panicky affection in his eyes as he tried to comfort both vomiting girls at once. She shuddered to think where her own children would have ended up if she’d been the one to die young and Stephen had been left with two children.
She was completely unprepared to entertain a couple of convalescing ten-year-olds tomorrow. Darn, she’d meant to ask Seth to send along some of their toys and games. They certainly wouldn’t want to play with a three-year-old’s toys, and she couldn’t imagine any of Matthew’s would hold much appeal, either, except maybe that game cube thing that had been his father’s parting gift.
Don’t even go there, she warned herself, feeling the familiar bitterness begin to rise. If she started herself on the “How could Stephen have…” path, she’d never get any sleep, and she had an inkling she’d need to be on her toes tomorrow.
FEELING LIKE SHE’D tossed and turned all night, Melissa finally got out of bed at six-thirty, flipping off the alarm that was set for seven.
Tired and dispirited, she put on coffee then jumped into the shower while it brewed.
Toweling off, she glimpsed her naked body in the mirror and sighed. Nothing was quite as perky as it used to be, although she was slim enough—too thin, really. Since she’d given up her fitness club membership, her body had lost its tone.
At least her breasts were still round and firm, that was something. As if it mattered. She’d been discarded. Stephen had taken everything she had to give, from her virginity to her trust, and treated them like worthless junk-store gifts to be used, broken and discarded.
She was thirty-four years old, she reminded herself. Not old enough for the scrap heap. Still, she dressed quickly. An image of the taut young nymphet Stephen had finally left her for flooded her mind while she automatically dried her hair, wondering how soon it would turn gray.
By eight o’clock, her own children were breakfasted and dressed, and she’d sent them up to tidy their rooms and make their beds before school. Alice imitated her older brother in everything, and Melissa knew she longed to follow him to school almost as much as her mother dreaded the day she’d send her baby out into the world.
By eight-fifteen, Melissa was beginning to wonder whether the bank manager had had a change of heart, or a better offer for child care. But, as she was getting ready to walk Matthew to school at eight-thirty, the Volvo pulled into the driveway and one very harassed-looking father emerged, followed more slowly by two little girls with sullen faces that told their own tale.
Even though she knew she was the probable source of the long faces, Melissa had to bite back a smile. Seth O’Reilly was a poster boy for the hopelessly manipulated single dad. His face was red, as though he were bottling up a mighty temper, when he stomped up the path with two identical red knapsacks that looked high tech enough for a Mount Everest climb. He dumped the bags unceremoniously in the front hall. His gray-blue eyes looked like a stormy winter ocean, and there was a large nick on his chin where he’d cut himself shaving.
“The girls aren’t too happy about this arrangement,” he grumbled. As if that was news, when she could see them crawling up her driveway with mutiny written all over them. The tune to Aretha Franklin’s Respect started playing in Melissa’s head, only she substituted the letters T-R-O-U-B-L-E.
A double portion.
Instinct warned her not to leave those two unattended in her house even for the fifteen minutes it would take her to deliver Matthew to school.
Earlier, while her children had made short work of a cheap but nutritious hot oatmeal breakfast, she’d told them she’d be looking after the girls.
Matthew had looked disgusted that more girls would be invading his home—until he found out they were twins. That put them firmly in the cool category. He eyed them now with open curiosity, his eyes huge blue pools as he discovered they really were identical.
Seth said, “Sorry, I gotta go, I’m late.” His face was drawn and tired, his eyes underlined by dark half circles. He was backing away even as she opened her mouth to ask him questions.
“But, what about—”
“I’ll call from the office,” he muttered, then turned and strode back to the car. As he passed the twins, still only halfway to the front door, he grabbed each in turn for a quick hug, only to be treated to two icy rebuttals. The girls’ actions did nothing to improve her appraisal of them.
“Oh, here,” he said from the car and reached into the backseat, emerging with her kitchen drawer.
She walked down and took it from him, noting how solid it felt, as if it might actually stay fixed this time. “Thank you.”
He nodded, got into the driver’s seat and pulled away before she’d recovered from the fact that he was dumping two very grumpy-looking girls on her for the day.
“Matthew, honey, go knock on Josh’s door. You can walk to school with him today.”
“But…” His eyes were still glued to the twins.
“Don’t worry, the girls will still be here when you get home from school. You’ll get to know them then.” If you still want to, she thought, noting the glances of open disdain the twins were throwing his way.
“Hi!” he chirped, with his eager, friendly smile.
“Hey,” they both muttered, sounding as though they were speaking around wads of bubble gum.
“I see Josh on his front step, go on Matthew,” she urged, giving him a quick hug and a pat on the backside. With a cheery wave, he took off down the sidewalk, and she watched him all the way to his buddy’s house.
Pam was now out front with her coat on. Matthew jogged up to join her and her son, and Melissa watched him chatter excitedly to the pair. Pam’s head popped up from where she’d been bent over listening, and she peered over to where Melissa stood giving a thumbs-up sign. Her friend threw her fist in the air and mouthed “Yes!” before heading off toward the school with the two little boys in tow.
Now that she had Matthew on his way, Melissa turned her attention to her day care’s first customers. They didn’t look thrilled. Without a word to her, they trooped into the house, and with a child’s uncanny instinct, headed straight for the kitchen.
“Girls.” Melissa stopped them in their tracks with her nurse’s voice, pleased to see it hadn’t lost its ring of authority after eight years of disuse. “When you arrive in the morning, I’d like you to take off your shoes and put them in the front closet. You can hang your coats there, too.”
They dragged themselves back up the hallway and one after the other kicked their shoes off into the closet that Melissa had opened for them. Biting her tongue against further rebuke, she handed each of them a hanger and watched them shove their red-and-navy jackets on the wire. She was impressed at the way they both managed to hang their jackets so that they sagged disreputably. Without a word she put the jackets away, knowing they would fall to the ground long before the day was over.
Leading them into the kitchen, Melissa asked, “How are you feeling today?”
“Gross,” replied one.
A glance at their pale faces confirmed it. “Have you been able to eat anything since yesterday?”
A firm shake of the head from one and gagging motions from the other answered in the negative.
Knowing they should at least get some electrolytes in their bodies, she sent them into the TV room with a couple of blankets and pillows and glasses of watered-down apple juice. “This is an exception to my rule,” she warned them. “I don’t usually allow television until after school when all your homework is done. I’m letting you watch TV today because you’re sick. Understood?”
She got a couple of lackluster grunts out of them.
One day at a time, she reminded herself. Today she was earning real money. Not enough to solve all her problems, but enough to solve a few.
When she heard music that didn’t sound like it came from a children’s show, she popped into the den, where the girls were curled up watching a music video channel. Alice sat on the couch beside them, enthralled by some spiky-haired women who looked like aliens belting out lyrics with only two decipherable words: hot and deep. Alice had a thumb in her mouth and her favorite stuffed dinosaur in her lap as she watched the screen with wide-eyed fascination.
