Mothers of the Year

by Lori Handeland

  “I’m in Kiwanee.”

  “Where’s that?”

  Kelly was new to Wisconsin. Originally from Iowa, this was the fifth Rent a Mommy she and Paige had opened, but the first one in this state. If all went well, they’d get the location up and running, hire a manager and move on to the next satellite agency.

  “About thirty miles west of you.”

  Their storefront was in Madison, a booming metropolis filled with professors, lawyers, politicians, judges—exactly the type of city where Rent a Mommy would flourish.

  “I told her we aren’t really mommies.” Lisa took a deep breath. “She didn’t take it well.”

  Lisa must have held the receiver toward the screaming child, because Kelly could very distinctly hear, “I need a mommy! You said I could rent one.”

  “Who called and hired us?”

  “I thought it was a grandmother or an aunt, but it must have been the kid.”

  “You can’t tell the difference?”

  “The office was a zoo. Phones ringing, people in and out. I got distracted.”

  Kelly sighed. This was why she worked ten hours a day—so she could man the phones. But today she’d had a meeting with the bank, and just see what had happened.

  “Tell her you need to talk to her mother.”

  “I think that’s the problem. She doesn’t have one. She saw the ad in the paper and—”

  “Decided to rent one. Got it. Well, find her father—”

  “Not me. I’m out of here.”

  “What? No, you need to—”

  “I quit,” Lisa said. “I can’t take the screaming. You want to smooth this over, you get out here and smooth. The address is on the assignment form on your desk.”

  “But—” Click. “Hell.”

  Kelly hung up, then tore through her in-box. The form was second in the pile. “Kiwanee,” she muttered, sitting at her computer and clicking on MapQuest. “Ever heard of it?”

  “Nope.” Paige wasn’t from here, either.

  The two had met in Chicago. Kelly had been working in a day care; Paige had needed one. A single mother to a set of twins, Paige couldn’t work enough hours to pay for double day care, especially when she’d barely finished high school before she’d given birth to the girls.

  The father had taken one look at the identical babies and fled. Paige hadn’t seen him since. She definitely hadn’t seen any child support.

  Kelly and Paige had bonded as women sometimes do. They’d gotten an apartment and taken to working opposite shifts—Kelly at the day care and Paige at a restaurant in the evenings. One very late night, when they were punchy with exhaustion and a few glasses of wine, Paige had said, “What I really need is a mom. Think I can rent one?”

  “That’s not a half-bad idea,” Kelly said.

  In the morning, the idea had seemed even better.

  Five years later, she still thought so. Even on days like today when everything seemed to be on the fast track to hell.

  Kelly’s computer produced a map and she hit Print. As Lisa had said, Kiwanee was thirty miles west, on what appeared to be a two-lane highway. Kelly glanced at her watch. Four-thirty. At least she’d avoid the beltline. After only three weeks in Madison, she loathed that beltline during rush hour as much as a native.

  “Trouble?” Paige asked.

  “Lisa quit. I’m going to fix things. See if you can hire another mommy, one who doesn’t bail at the first temper tantrum.”

  “Got it.”

  One of the many things Kelly loved about Paige was her calm in a crisis. Of course, being the mother of twins made crisis a relative term. Very few things were worse than what Paige had already dealt with.

  Hiring the mommies was Paige’s job. She knew people, and usually she chose very well. But there was always one or two in every town who couldn’t cut it. Dealing with other people’s children was so much different than dealing with your own. Or at least that’s what Paige said. Kelly had no children of her own, and she never would.

  She grabbed her down coat and purse, climbed into her SUV and headed for Kiwanee. The trip took about forty minutes. Driving on two-lane highways might be slower than driving on the freeway, but Kelly preferred it. She’d grown up in central Iowa, where two-lane highways were the norm. As long as she stayed alert for slow-moving farm vehicles, deer and that most dangerous of beasts, the drunk driver drifting over the centerline, she was relatively safe.

  Here and there a tree sported feathery green buds, despite the chill in the air and the clouds in the sky. In the upper Midwest, two days of sun and a week of temperatures above freezing meant the daffodils would push through the still snowy earth. Anything warmer and the lilacs would bloom, the bees would awaken and leaves would pop out everywhere.

  Of course, the inevitable late-spring snowstorm had yet to make an appearance. The locals expected it any day now. Bets had been made; money would change hands. There’d been snow in these parts as late as May 13, or so she’d been told. She’d believe it when she saw it.

  A green sign with white lettering announced: Kiwanee 2 miles. Three minutes later, she rolled past a billboard, Welcome to Kiwanee—Population 2356.

  Her MapQuest directions took her straight to the Delgado house, a freshly painted white board Colonial on a side street lined with just-budding maple trees.

  “Three-fifteen Maple Street,” she murmured. “Wonder what genius came up with that.”

  Back in her hometown, the streets had been similarly named for their most impressive feature, which had led to such gems as Hill Road, Culvert Drive and Farm Lane. Kelly felt a slash of homesickness so deep she ached with it. Since, as the cliché went, she could never go home again, Kelly did what she always did. She went on.

  Strolling up the front walk, Kelly noticed the little things. The bushes needed trimming. The windows could use a good washing. Heck, they could use a few curtains. Kelly reached out to ring the bell, and the front door swung open.

  If she hadn’t known the child was a girl from Lisa’s use of pronouns, and if she didn’t understand kids well enough to realize that no little boy would ever wear pink, Kelly might have been stumped. The brown hair appeared to have been hacked off with a meat cleaver and stood up in tufts as if the child had been pulling on it. Her jeans were too big; her tennis shoes belonged in the garbage. Kelly didn’t think she was wearing any socks.

  But her brown eyes were shrewd as she looked Kelly up and down, then cocked her head. “So how much will it cost for you to be my mommy?”

  SCOTT DELGADO WAS on the phone trying to iron out a scheduling snafu when his assistant, Vivienne—call me Vee—Schwartzman, ran in. He automatically glanced behind her for his daughter, frowning when she wasn’t there. One glance at Vee’s face and he said, “I’ll call you back,” then hung up before the other man could answer.

  “What happened?” With Dani, it could be anything.

  “She’s not here?” Vee glanced around, her gray mop of curls swaying left then right.

  “She’s supposed to be with you.”

  “She never showed up at my place after school.”

  Vee had volunteered, and Scott had accepted her offer to watch Dani until he could find a more permanent solution. Since Vee had never had any kids—she hadn’t even had a husband—he probably should have thought twice, but he’d been desperate to find help and help of that kind was in short supply in Kiwanee.

  The town appeared to be overrun by perfect two-parent families, with equally perfect children—a boy and a girl, plus their dog. No single mother needing extra cash. No divorcée wanting to impress him with her parenting skills. He’d spent a week asking around and ended up with Vee. As she’d said, “How hard can watching one kid for a few hours be?”

  When that kid was Dani Delgado, pretty damn hard. Dani had made an art form of driving sitters insane.

  She didn’t mean to be difficult. She was a smart aleck with a lot of energy. She was also extremely intelligent and adept at getting her wa
y. She wheedled and cajoled, once in a while she threw a fit, though usually only with Scott. When she played, she played hard. Sometimes she broke things; so far he’d been lucky and she hadn’t broken herself. Scott wasn’t certain how long that luck would hold out.

  Vee knew baseball not children. She’d been watching the Warhawks since their inception, twenty years past, which had coincided with her early retirement from the post office. She’d volunteered her services as an assistant five years ago, and Scott had inherited her from the previous manager.

  From what he’d seen so far, Vee knew her stuff. The locker room, the equipment room, his office, the field were so orderly they made him edgy. He just knew he was going to mess them up.

  “Did you check the house?” Scott asked, already slipping into his coat, which was too damn thin for this ridiculous climate. He’d figured they would have time to buy winter apparel before next winter. He hadn’t realized winter was still here.

  “Should I have?” Vee frowned. “She was supposed to come to me.”

  “Where did you look?”

  “The playground, the park, the route from the school to my house.”

  Well, that made sense, although the house should have been the next step. He debated calling, then decided against it. He’d go home, see if Dani was there and, if not, he’d call then wait for the police. Wasn’t anything he hadn’t done before. He’d just hoped he wouldn’t have to do it again, or at least not this soon, and not here.

  For the first time since he’d arrived in town, Scott wished he’d driven his car to work. In Kiwanee, there wasn’t much need for a vehicle unless the temperature was below zero, you had a lot to haul or you were leaving town. The city was one mile square. Scott had been walking the seven blocks between his house and the ball field each day. Today he retraced them at a run.

  A strange SUV was parked out front. For an instant Scott panicked, though he wasn’t sure why. After all, a kidnapper wouldn’t linger. A kidnapper would have snatched Dani and been gone. Maybe his ex-wife had finally gotten tired of searching for a new, rich and famous husband and decided to pay some attention to her daughter.

  Nah. Never happen.

  So who belonged to the shiny gas-guzzler? Hard to say since everyone in town except Scott had one. According to Vee, in the winter you needed them or you wouldn’t be going anywhere.

  Which made him think that the car belonged to a neighbor and had nothing to do with him or Dani at all.

  He raced up the front walk and burst in the door. A woman stood in his kitchen, speaking calmly and quietly to Dani.

  Tall and slim, she wore a light gray business suit with a pale peach silk blouse beneath. The skirt ended at her knee revealing a very nice set of calves and ankles. Her blond hair had been twisted and pinned so it was hard to tell how long it was, though definitely not short.

  Speaking of which…he glanced at Dani. What the hell? When he’d dropped her off at school that morning, she’d had hair.

  “Dani,” he began, his voice coming out louder and angrier than he’d meant for it to.

  The woman glanced up, and he was startled by the shade of her eyes. Grass-green when he’d expected sky-blue.

  Then his daughter turned, and the tears shimmering on her cheeks made him forget everything but her.

  “What did you do?” he demanded.

  “It wasn’t her fault,” the woman began.

  Scott lifted his gaze from Dani’s to the stranger’s. “I wasn’t talking to her.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “YOU THINK I DID something?”

  Scott moved farther into the room. “Did you?”

  The woman’s spine stiffened; her head lifted. The movement caused her suit jacket to separate as her breasts thrust forward.

  He averted his gaze. He had no business noticing her breasts. Not only because his daughter was watching every move he made with those sad, teary eyes, but because breasts were off-limits. Just look at the trouble he’d gotten into the last time he’d been interested in a pair.

  He glanced at his daughter and softened. At least he’d gotten Dani out of the deal. Otherwise his marriage would have been a total loss.

  “I take it you’re the father.”

  “Got it in one,” he said. “And you are?”

  “Kelly Rosholt.” She stepped forward, high-heeled pumps clicking on the vinyl floor, as she offered a perfectly manicured hand. “Rent a Mommy.”

  Scott shook her hand as he asked, “Rent a what?”

  “We’re a new service, out of Madison. We help with the kids, the house, the school, pretty much anything you need.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Your daughter called and hired us. She seems to be under the mistaken impression that we’re actually mothers for hire.”

  “That’s what the paper said.” Dani wiped her eyes.

  She hardly ever cried. Of course, he couldn’t bear it when she did, so he always made a joke about there being no crying in baseball. Dani loved baseball. She’d been playing it with him since she could swing a bat.

  “Let me get this straight,” Scott said. “You called and hired a service to be your mother?”

  Dani dug the toe of her ratty old sneaker—he could have sworn those things had been new a month ago—into the floor. “Yeah.”

  He glanced at Kelly Rosholt. “No offense, lady, but you don’t seem like much of a mommy to me.”

  Something flickered in her eyes, and he could have sworn her lips trembled before they tightened. But when she answered, she was all business. “I’m the owner. I came out here when your daughter threw a screaming fit and the employee who’d taken the job quit.”

  Dani refused to look at him. He’d deal with her later.

  “You often accept jobs from munchkins?” he asked.

  “It was a mistake, which is why I came.”

  Something she’d said made Scott pause. “Wait a second. Your employee left, then you came? That’s a thirty-minute drive.”

  She tipped her chin. “Give or take.”

  “You hire people who just walk out and leave kids on their own?”

  “Dani was alone when my employee got here, Mr. Delgado. I wouldn’t be throwing stones in that glass house. The crash just might catch the attention of social services.”

  “She wasn’t supposed to be alone.”

  “Uh-oh,” Dani muttered.

  “Yeah.” He fixed her with a glare. “Why didn’t you go to Vee’s?”

  “I didn’t wanna.”

  Scott resisted the urge to smack himself in the forehead. She didn’t wanna. What was he going to do with her?

  “You don’t like Vee?”

  At first Dani didn’t answer, then she lifted her head and stared at him defiantly. “I need a mommy.”

  When had this started? It was natural that Dani would miss her mother, though he had to say Kara had never been much of one. She’d hired a nanny the instant Dani was born, and when she’d left, there’d been no question of custody. Dani had been Scott’s from the beginning.

  Kara never called—forget about visiting—and maybe every other year she remembered to send a gift at Christmas, though for some reason she thought it was a terrific idea to send a pink shirt for every birthday. Scott had believed he was doing a pretty good job being both mom and dad, but maybe he’d been wrong.

  “You have a mother,” he said.

  Dani snorted and rolled her eyes. Scott nearly gaped. She might have a bit of a smart mouth—she got it from him—but she was rarely a brat in front of company. Yet, according to this woman, Dani had thrown a screaming fit this afternoon.

  Had she hit puberty already? He thought it was too early, but then again, he didn’t know much about little girls. She was his first. He had hoped she wouldn’t be his last, though, with the way she was acting, maybe he should rethink his dream of a houseful of kids.

  “I don’t understand this,” Scott murmured. “You never cared about having a mother before.”
r />   Kelly Rosholt shot him a look. He got the impression he’d said something wrong, though he couldn’t figure out what.

  Dani sighed. “I volunteered my mom to plan the Kiwanee Mother’s Day Picnic.”

  Now Scott snorted. Kara planning a picnic. He doubted she’d ever been to one.

  “Honey, you know your mom—” Scott stopped. He wasn’t sure what to say, especially in front of Ms. Rosholt. Dani’s mom wasn’t going to plan a picnic. They’d be lucky if she showed up for anything less serious than a lifesaving bone-marrow transplant.

  “I didn’t mean for my real mom to do it,” Dani said. “I’m not stupid.”

  Scott winced. Well, so much for keeping family secrets a secret.

  “You called us to plan the picnic instead of your mother?” Ms. Rosholt asked.

  “Kind of. I didn’t exactly tell them I didn’t have a one.”

  “What did you tell them?” Scott asked.

  Dani hunched her shoulders. “That she was on her way.”

  Scott counted to ten to keep from shouting. Shouting worked pretty well with baseball players, not so well at all with little girls. He knew that much.

  “You’re going to admit the truth tomorrow,” Scott said, thrilled at the calm, level, sane tone of his voice.

  “But, Dad, there’s no one to plan the picnic, and it’s the biggest thing of the year, and everyone will be upset if they don’t have it.”

  “I’m sorry about that, but there’s not much I can do. I have all I can handle with a new job and you.”

  Ms. Rosholt cleared her throat. They both glanced at her. “I could plan the party.”

  “Yay!” Dani shouted, making Ms. Rosholt jump. “It wouldn’t be so bad if I could at least say I had someone to plan the party.”

  Scott didn’t want to reward Dani’s deceit. She’d lied about having a mother who was on her way to town. However, he could understand why she’d done it. Still—

  The phone rang. He picked up the handset, glanced at the caller ID. Vee. Damn, he’d forgotten to call and tell her he’d found Dani.

  “Excuse me,” he murmured to Ms. Rosholt, then answered, “She’s here,” skipping hello.