“Jesus, Kelsey.” JD looked upset at her. “Then leave her with me on Mondays.”
“No!”
They both ignored Andie’s protest.
“It’s truly not a big deal.” She attempted to brush him off, but she should have known it wouldn’t be so easy.
“It’s altering your life. It’s enough that it’s altered mine. She’s not your child.”
“I am! I can be Kelsey’s little girl!” Andie blossomed at the thought.
JDs cheeks clenched and a muscle in his jaw started to tic.
Kelsey had to actively remind herself that she was attempting to face confrontation head-on these days.
JD unclenched his jaw. “Why are you doing this?” He stepped away from the kids in a vain attempt to have a private conversation. “Are we your charity case?”
For a moment she didn’t know how to respond. Then she felt the dam burst, and she remembered how it felt when she had been pushed to the edge.
“Do you see all my other friends around?” Her arms went out, gesturing into empty air. “I don’t really know anyone here. My birthday’s next week and I don’t think anybody knows! The adults in my family are all gone. I don’t date. I go to church, I work from home, and I’m a mom.
“I’ve been dead for a year! I’ve been in this fog since Andy died. I finally started seeing the world around me, and there was Andie, screaming her head off in the Target. You two need help, as anyone would in your situation, and I’m used to taking care of people. So pardon me.”
“What do you mean, ‘our situation’?” There was a threat in his voice, one that she was sure she’d never heard from JD. Her automatic first response was to read the faces around her and see if it was all going to blow up.
JDs face contained his anger, not the other way around.
“I meant that you just had a child dropped off on your doorstep. And there you were with no parenting skills and no place to go. That’s all.”
She wondered what he thought she’d meant.
“Kelsey, you flinched.”
“What?” What the hell he was talking about?
“Just a minute ago, when I got upset, you flinched.” He looked at her face as though he was looking for something. “Did you think I was going to hit you?”
Her mouth dropped open. She hadn’t realized, but she probably had flinched.
His hand went into his hair as it always did when he was upset. “Jesus, Kelsey, I wouldn’t-”
“I know. You wouldn’t hit me. It’s just an old reaction.” She shrugged it off as casually as she could.
But that only upset JD more. “Did he hit you?”
She didn’t have to ask who ‘he’ was, and she shook her head. “He didn’t hit me, but I got hit.”
“How the hell does that work?”
She didn’t bother to correct him for swearing in front of the kids. At least they’d lost interest in the conversation a long time ago. If only JD would now.
But he didn’t. He just stood there with his hands on his hips, in that moment reminding her of her own father, stern and sure of himself. He waited.
“Andy lashed out, but not at me. He threw things and I got in the way sometimes when I was stupid.”
“I don’t think that’s-”
“Andy was sick. Mentally.”
And JD was really listening. She wasn’t sure anyone ever had. Even the shrinks had always seemed to be waiting for her to hand them the piece of information that would prove that they should shove their latest therapy down all their throats.
“Andrew had Schizophrenia with rages and poor impulse control, among other things. And I took care of him.” That was nowhere near the full story of Andy, but it was more than she’d said to anyone in a year.
He looked across the yard to where his daughter was playing calmly, “That’s why you’re so good with Andie. How many years did you spend tiptoeing around and flinching?”
She couldn’t even muster a shrug. “Seems like forever.”
“Can you do me a favor?” He tucked his hands into his back pockets. “Can you not flinch around me again? That worries the crap out of me.”
She smiled. “Okay, but you stop swearing in front of my kids.”
His hands flew to his mouth, looking far too masculine under his wide eyes and startled expression. “Oh, shit.”
“Funny.”
His eyes went wider, and she changed the subject. “So are you coming swimming on Friday? Three kids really is too many.”
He snorted. “One kid is too many.” Then he followed it with, “Sure.”
Kelsey worked through Thursday, then dropped the kids off at JD’s, even though Maggie had called saying her son Jason was sick and she wouldn’t be able to make it. Kelsey contemplated sitting at home, and renting a movie, then realized that, from his condo, JD might very well be able to see that her lights were still on.
So she headed out to the mall by herself. Not the evening out she’d been going for, but two hours later, she had a pair of jeans and a two-piece bathing suit that made her look as good as she could. New swim suits hadn’t been part of the budget while Andy was alive.
It wasn’t like she was rich now, but it was the first time she ever had savings. Tomorrow morning, she was going out swimming with JD and the kids. JD was going to look like “young, hip, single dad” and she did not want to look like “tired-single-mom” next to that. The women would be draping themselves all over him. She’d need at least a few looks just to keep up.
She found a way-too-expensive sweater that she desperately wanted. So she bought it, then hit the bookstore for a thriller before settling into a table for one at her favorite mall restaurant. She read and ate and tuned out the world.
After she headed home, she stashed her bags in the house before heading over to JD’s.
She watched the pools of light from the streetlamps as she walked by. She should be more aware of her surroundings, she knew, but she was just content, for the first time in a long time. So she lazily walked up the back steps and knocked.
The door pulled open and she was greeted by four smiling faces. Andie jumped up and down in the background, while JD had Daniel on one leg and Allie on the other. “Mommy!”
“I thought you guys would be asleep by now!”
JD smiled over the tops of little heads. “After all you have done for us, I thought you might use the gift of sleeping in. So I wore them out.”
“Ahhhh.” That just might work.
Once shoes were on, Kelsey grabbed the bag they had brought, and ushered them out the door.
“So, how was the night out?” JD asked.
“It was good.” Allie asked to be lifted up into Kelsey’s arms and she obliged. She had to carry them as much as possible before they got too big. “Thank you.”
He simply nodded and she started down the steps, only to realize a few moments later that JD was following her. She looked at him.
He looked back. “I’m walking you home.”
“Thank you, but that’s not necessary.”
“This may feel like a small town in this neighborhood, but it’s still a big city. Besides,” It was soft-spoken but clear, “with everything else you’ve done for us, the least I can do is walk you home.”
He crouched down and before she realized what he was doing, he had offered a piggyback ride to Andie, been turned down, and had Daniel up and was walking again and offering to carry her bag. Daniel was grinning. Andie tucked her hand in Kelsey’s free one, and Kelsey couldn’t remember the last time she’d given one of the kids a piggyback ride.
They were almost to her front door, and Allie was already sound asleep.
Chapter 7
Friday morning swimming had gone well, except for the part where JD had played with the kids and Andie had hung back. He had offered to teach her to swim, and she refused, instead asking Kelsey to teach her. Kelsey refused. She could have JD or no lessons. Andie chose no lessons.
They went to t
he pool again on Monday morning, with JD joining them at their usual time. Kelsey could almost see the summer slipping away. She sent JD to register Andie for kindergarten while she watched Andie.
They went shopping for school supplies that evening at Target, the same place where Andie had pitched the temper tantrum. JD seemed utterly relieved to have Kelsey there. No wonder, every time he tried on his own to get Andie to do something, she balked—when she was in a good mood that is. When she was in a bad mood she pitched a fit, the likes of which Kelsey hadn’t seen since Andrew.
But with all of them there, she stayed calm. JD had swallowed the biggest bill, since Andie didn’t have anything for school, practically nothing had come from her mother’s. Kelsey made a mental note to ask Andie what it had been like when her mother was sick. It seemed the mysterious Stephanie had no help, and Kelsey wondered if the few incidents when Andie had climbed her counters to get something from a cupboard were indicative of how she’d lived with her sick mom.
Tuesday Kelsey closed another loan, picked up the kids, and took Daniel and Allie to the drive-thru for corndogs. Wednesday was her birthday, and she would simply have another day. She thought about asking JD to take the kids that evening, but she was afraid it would feel bad if she wound up spending the evening alone. So she decided that she wasn’t going to do anything outwardly special to ring in thirty-two, but take the day off and spend it being grateful for all she had.
She started the next morning still in her pajamas when Andie and JD arrived. She invited him to stay for pancakes but he declined, saying he needed to make money. That made her laugh, and then she made dollar-sign pancakes for the kids.
She let the kids run through the sprinkler in the backyard. Then laughed and got wet when they hauled her in with them. She threw all the kids in the tub before letting them watch cartoons while she took a long hot shower and changed into dry clothes. She had Daniel read them Dr. Seuss, then the kids requested green eggs and ham for lunch and so she grabbed the food coloring and made it, even though she feared her skillet would never be the same. But it was just a skillet.
JD picked up Andie, and bowed out quickly, much to Andie’s dislike, but she went with him. Andie always walked off with the look of a condemned man facing the gallows.
The kids begged to watch a movie, and she gave in. Then they cajoled her into watching with them. She’d probably seen Peter Pan a hundred times. When the movie was three-quarters over and she was half asleep, she heard her name from the back yard.
Allie and Daniel were right beside her. Her name had sounded weird, and Allie looked confused, but Daniel was grinning like a used car salesman. “Daniel?”
Right then her name came from the back yard again. It was JD, she recognized it now, only it still didn’t sound quite right. Making her way to the back of the house, she realized his voice sounded like it was coming over a PA system.
As she looked out into the back yard, she realized that she was right.
“JD!”
The place was festooned with helium balloons, the picnic table had a plastic party tablecloth on it, and was loaded with buckets of chicken and sides and—smack in the middle—a birthday cake. Her mouth opened.
She turned to say thank you to Andie, who was hopping up and down and holding about fifteen balloons, and yelling ‘surprise’, and to JD as well. But just as she realized that Craig and Alex and TJ were there, a heavily reverberated chord came out of the air, and she saw their instruments.
They burst into the Beatles’ “You Say It’s Your Birthday.”
Her hands flew to her face, and remained there, as she stood on the edge of her patio, through the entire song.
Only as they finished the last chord, the synthesizer hanging on until it was just below threshold, did she move from her spot. “Oh my God, guys. Thank you.”
JD leaned away from his mic, “Happy Birthday. We’re taking requests.”
“Um, all right, . . . how about Should’ve Been A Cowboy?”
TJ laughed. “We know that one.” Before he was even finished saying it, she saw JDs foot reach out and touch something on the ground, and his fingers start to move over the strings. The chords were completely different this time, having lost the synthetic wail and now sounding acoustic in spite of the knobs and wires that adorned the instruments.
Daniel grabbed her hand and pulled her to the table, pointing to what she had missed before in her surprise. “Look, Mom, we got you a whole pile of presents.”
Every cell of her turned warm and something long dormant moved in her chest. She just hadn’t expected this.
Her kids joined in at the chorus, but Andie held back. They’d have to teach her the words. Or clearly JD could if she’d just listen. For a brief moment Kelsey held out the false hope that in one of those brightly wrapped boxes was a smile from Andie for JD. But that wasn’t going to happen.
Andie was having a great time, but she wasn’t even looking at her father.
Kelsey was.
This was bad.
The entire band, still in their uniform of jeans and old tees and ratty sneakers, had transformed from slacker boys to sexy men. What was it about a man with a guitar? Kelsey was no sucker; it wasn’t a band-boy thing. He was sexier with the guitar, certainly. But the guitar alone didn’t do it. But each of these guys had easily upped the sexy quotient by picking up an instrument and shaking it with the band. Worst of all was JD. His muscles flexed while he was playing, his fingers flew in a serious demonstration of skill, and he smiled at her each time he stepped up to the mic to add back-up vocals to his brother.
This was bad.
It was bad to see JD this way. Because he was younger than she was. He was in her house all the time. He was Andie’s father. Never mind that it had been niggling at the back of her brain for weeks that he had turned his whole life upside down for a child he legitimately could have given back to the state. It had been clear from the start that JD was just a good guy. If he was also a sexy one . . . well, that was bad bad bad bad bad.
She fought the red flush that threatened her cheeks.
“What’s next?” It was JD’s voice. She could tell it from TJ’s even though they sounded remarkably similar.
So she blurted out whatever she thought of. “Copa Cabana.”
That required a few minutes of shuffling before they started playing. The music started, and she swung Daniel around, laughing and accusing him of knowing about the party. He giggled that he had kept it a secret from her for three whole days.
The voice that started singing wasn’t TJ’s, but JD’s.
Kelsey’s head snapped up. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. He was crooning about Lola and the Copa. It wasn’t supposed to make him sexier. But he was having fun, and there was something about the way he held the stage, even if the stage was just a patch of grass in her back yard. And he’d thrown her a birthday party.
She pushed those thoughts away and got Andie into the next dance. Allie was always willing to be the center of attention, so she hopped around in little circles and shook her butt in a way that made the band laugh and Kelsey wonder what her daughter had been watching.
The kids kept dancing, but she stepped aside to sit out the next couple songs, and when they asked for requests she suggested they play something of their own. That only made them put their heads together and confer for a moment before TJ switched back to singing lead and JD slipped his guitar strap over his head, and toed his amp switches, sending the first chords softly into the air.
Kelsey could only sit and watch.
The kids played around, tugged some of the balloons out of their ties, and danced with them. But Kelsey was oblivious to anything in the world other than the band in her back yard. Even when Allie tripped and let go of her balloon, Kelsey let Daniel hand his sister another string and stop the wailing.
The song was a slow three-count about the one that got away.
She didn’t say anything when the song ended, until it was made clea
r that they were waiting for her. “You guys wrote that?”
TJ grinned that shark grin of his. “JD wrote that one.”
“Wow.”
They were simply that good. For a moment she wondered why she’d ever doubted them when they said they were waiting for their break. Then she wondered who the idiots were who weren’t signing them. “Do another.”
The second one was just as good, if highly different. It was about picking fights just for the make-up sex. It even had a funny line where the whole band pitched in their voices about going to bed mad and waking up glad. Kelsey was joining in by the third time it came around.
She rallied the kids to yelling “Encore! Encore!” when they threatened to stop. The boys agreed to one last song.
This time Alex let fly on the drums to open the piece, and TJ railed about her being here, then being gone, then being here again.
This song ended on one strong short note, and immediately all the guys abandoned their instruments. There would be no more cajoling for just one more. Kelsey was willing to bet that Nashville had their next stars on their hands, if someone would just sign them to a record label.
The guys surrounded the table, and threw a few ‘Happy Birthday’s her way before tearing into the food. The kids mostly served themselves, eating huge quantities of macaroni and cheese that was an unnatural shade of orange.
Kelsey didn’t care. She wasn’t policing anyone tonight, and she was certain she wore a permanent grin. The chicken tasted better than it had the last time she’d ordered it, maybe because of the thought behind it.
Alex was the first one up, even before the cake was cut. He excused himself saying he had a prior engagement, and he carefully packed away all his drums, which took long enough that TJ, JD and Craig had all eaten another helping and wolfed down cake in the time it took him.
TJ and Craig offered polite good-nights and one last ‘Happy Birthday’ before they slipped through the side door into the garage. Kelsey heard the garage door protest as they raised it, and that answered the question of how they had gotten into her back yard in the first place.
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