The Red Hat Society's Domestic Goddess

by Regina Hale Sutherland

  Who was going to get grilled later, Millie suspected. Amusement twinkled in the blue depths of Charles’s eyes as he met Millie’s gaze across the counter. Uh-oh; he probably knew she’d made up the story about Kim’s cat.

  As a few more men filed into the room, Millie had to push that concern aside and deal with another: the nerves fluttering back into her stomach and chest. Compared to the class sizes Kim had undoubtedly taught, theirs was small. But to Millie, who had never done much public speaking, let alone teaching, the class felt huge, more than she could handle even with the help of her friends.

  Then her sons returned, jostling each other with their shoulders like they were teenagers, and she remembered her mission. Nothing but their happiness mattered to her. Sure, she’d get something out of their success in this class, too. She’d get to retire her domestic goddess tiara and take some time for herself, some time where she didn’t worry about anything but having fun for a while. Maybe she’d go on that annual cruise with the Red Hot Hatters of Hilltop.

  “Welcome to our Bachelor’s Survival course,” she announced, in a voice she was surprised to find so clear and strong. Even the ensuing chuckles didn’t detract from her determination. “Everyone take a seat and let’s get started. We have a lot to pack into this six-week course.” So much that she was glad they’d decided the class needed to meet twice a week. Her sons, however, weren’t aware of that. Yet.

  “I know not everyone is thrilled to be here,” she remarked, smiling at her boys. “But we’re going to have fun.”

  Someone groaned. She suspected it was Steven.

  “Really, we are,” she promised. “And more importantly, we’re going to eat.” She stepped back from behind the counter, gesturing for Kim to take over, but her friend just smiled and shook her head.

  When Millie turned toward Theresa, she did the same, mouthing, “You’re doing great.”

  “Okay,” she said, “since this is our first class, we’re going to start with breakfast.” She laughed at the expressions on the male faces, brows knitted as they looked from her to the eggs and pads of butter at their workstations.

  Most of the men had doubled up into teams, Steven and Mitchell, Wally and Charles. One group had three, two sons and a dad. Only Mr. Lindstrom stood by himself, dapper in the dark, pinstriped suit he always wore, even when he attended Kim’s exercise class.

  “I know,” she said, “it’s seven at night, hardly the right time for breakfast, but this way you’ll be prepared for the homework you’ll have to do in the morning.”

  “Homework?” Mitchell scoffed. “I didn’t sign up for that.” Chuckles emanated from the students. Naturally her youngest would be the class clown.

  She glared at him. “Of course there’s going to be homework. Everything we teach you here, you have to do at home. That’s the whole point of the class.”

  He grumbled some more, but she ignored him. She couldn’t ignore Charles, however, and the fact that he and Wally were deep in conversation. About what?

  She pushed the question from her mind as she read off the measurements for coffee and grounds and demonstrated how-to. Before moving among the students to supervise their attempts to make their first pots of coffee, Theresa and Kim squeezed her shoulders.

  “You’re doing great,” Kim added her compliment to the one Theresa had earlier mouthed.

  She mock-glared at them as she had Mitchell. “Thanks for the help, ladies.”

  “You’re the domestic goddess,” Theresa reminded her.

  “Don’t start that again,” she warned Theresa and Kim.

  “But it’s so fitting,” Kim insisted.

  She ignored her friends’ teasing, and walked over to check on her boys’ efforts. Grounds swam in the nearly clear water streaming into the pot. “You guys need serious help,” she said, sighing. “That’s why we decided the class would meet twice a week.”

  “Mom, I never know when I’ll get sent out of town,” Mitchell began his argument, until she gave him her most beseeching look and a sideward glance toward his brother. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

  “If he’s not going, I’m not going,” Steven said. Despite his deep voice, it was an echo of a thirty-year-old argument started when they were toddlers.

  “I’ll be here,” Mitchell vowed, a muscle ticking in his jaw, as he ground out the words.

  “So what happened with the coffee?” Millie asked, lifting the cover on the top of the maker. Her answer was a torn filter, undoubtedly a casualty of their wrestling. “Start over. And no fighting this time.”

  With a sigh she moved throughout the students, getting to know the men their Red Hat chapterettes had signed up for class. There were a couple of sons, not quite as inept as her own, a nephew, and two husbands whose wives had tired of waiting on them. Like Mitchell, Steven, and Wally, they had been coerced to join, but unlike them, they seemed willing to make the best of it.

  Only two men had willingly signed up: Mr. Lindstrom and Charles. Kim was helping Mr. Lindstrom, who had yet to get the grounds into the filter, he was shaking so badly. She doubted it was due to his age or a medical condition; it was more likely Kim’s fault for standing so close to the little old man. Instead of looking at the coffeepot, he was totally focused on the part of Kim that was directly at his eye level due to her height and his lack. Not only was he a little old man but a dirty one, too.

  Charles caught the amused smile Millie tried to hide and returned it. His coffee brewed, he poured a cup. “Care to inspect it?”

  She glanced around, looking for his workstation partner. But Wally stood near Theresa by the sink. Apparently she was already giving him a cleaning lesson.

  So Millie took the cup from Charles’s fingers, careful not to shake like Mr. Lindstrom and burn either of them. She inhaled the rich aroma, then admired the dark color. “You’ve done this before.”

  “I told you I was a bachelor a long time. I wouldn’t have survived without coffee.” His blue eyes held a trace of smugness.

  “You could have bought it in the gas station like my son Mitchell does,” she said, turning back to check on her boys, who were once again wrestling over the filter.

  Maybe making them pair up had been a bad idea. As Steven poured coffee into the maker, Mitchell knocked his elbow, sending grounds flying across the counter and the white tiled floor.

  “Those are your sons?”

  She bit her lip and considered denying it… for a moment. “Yeah, they’re mine.”

  “Wally said the oldest is why you wanted to start this class.”

  Now she knew what he and Wally had been discussing earlier. Her. Her heart did that giddy little flip.

  “Yes. I hope his wife hears about it.” If Steven would stop being so stubborn and call her. “And she’ll realize that he’s making an effort.” But as she glanced back, the only effort Steven was making now was getting grounds into his younger brother’s shirtfront. When she turned back to Charles, she caught his amused grin, and her mother’s pride bristled. Sharing amusement over Mr. Lindstrom’s crush on Kim was all right, but her sons’ childish ineptitude was no laughing matter.

  “If my brother were in this class, I might act the same way,” Charles assured her with his soft eyes. The blue was even brighter tonight, probably due to the blue polo shirt he wore with his jeans.

  “You have a brother?” It was nice to know that he had family. Millie had grown up an only child, so she’d been grateful her sons had a sibling. Until tonight.

  He nodded, then said, “When you were over the other night, you just missed my—”

  Whatever he’d been about to say was lost as Theresa launched into lesson two of the evening’s class: kitchen cleanup. Her instructions were given, pointedly, to Wally, as they stood shoulder to shoulder at the sink.

  Forever the referee, Millie rushed up next to her. “We’ll hold off on a complete cleanup until after the cooking lesson.” Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed the coffee scattered around her sons�
�� work area. “But we do need to pick up any spilled grounds. They’re not going to be very good flavoring if they get into the eggs. Dampen a paper towel.”

  She resisted the urge to personally address Steven and Mitchell. Barely. She sufficed with a mom-means-business glare directed their way instead. “That works best to get up all the grounds.”

  Her glare must have gotten her point across that the boys best clean up, because they didn’t fight over who had to handle that detail; they both dampened paper towels and picked up their mess. She had a sorry feeling that it might have been the first time for both of them.

  “What a neat trick,” she heard one of the guys say. She shared a quick, commiserating glance with Theresa. Kim was still helping Mr. Lindstrom. What women considered common sense men considered a trick.

  “I guess we really are from other planets,” Theresa commented, a little bitterly.

  Before she could get testy with Wally again, Millie started the cooking lesson. She quickly demonstrated how to scramble and fry eggs. Best to hold off on the Red Hat Society recipes until the students learned the basics. “All the stuff you need is at your workstation.”

  “For those of you watching your cholesterol, wisely,” Kim spoke out, startling Mr. Lindstrom, “you can substitute egg beaters. I set those out, too.”

  Theresa grumbled out some smart retort, but Mr. Lindstrom’s hearing aid screeched too loudly for Kim to hear the disparaging comment, and pick up where the two women had left off on their earlier argument. Millie silently thanked Mr. Lindstrom’s hearing aid for running interference.

  As she watched the students whisk broken eggshells in their eggs, Millie wished they would have used the egg beaters instead. Maybe she had gone too quickly with the instructions because she was disappointed with most of the students’ efforts. Although his coffee had been good, Charles’s eggs were burnt on the edges and raw in the middle. As for her sons, they’d cooked more of the shell than the yolks.

  After all the students had filed out, she confessed her fears to her friends. Well, some of her fears. She didn’t share the ones she harbored over her sons leaving in deep conversation with Charles.

  She embarrassed herself enough on her own; she didn’t need their help. But she needed her friends.

  “That didn’t go well,” she said with an exhausted sigh, as she hoisted her weary body onto a stool at the cluttered counter.

  Theresa shrugged, as she checked over the pans the students were supposed to have cleaned. Still operating at top speed, she vigorously scrubbed at a spot. “At least they showed up.”

  Kim nodded, as she reached for a towel and the pan Theresa held out. “That’s the most important thing. You can’t expect miracles with the first class, Millie. It’s going to take time.”

  “Good thing we increased the number of classes a week.” Every precious minute of class time was necessary to get their students to be self-sufficient in the kitchen. She doubted there was a domestic goddess in the bunch.

  She really was an endangered species.

  “You’re right,” she agreed with Kim, trying to summon the energy to help her friends with cleanup. She slid off the stool. “It’s just going to take time.”

  Time she hoped they had. “Audrey has to understand that Steven won’t catch onto everything overnight. She has to at least appreciate that he’s trying. This is going to work.”

  Because it had to… her son’s marriage couldn’t end in divorce. Not only would it leave him heartbroken, it might leave him living with Millie for the rest of her life.

  Chapter Eight

  “No matter how lovesick a woman is, she shouldn’t take the first pill that comes along.”

  —Dr. Joyce Brothers

  Kim eased into a Downward-Facing Dog pose, stretching the muscles in her arms and calves as she leaned forward. Her feet and palms pressed against the yoga mat lying on the carpeted floor of the family room in her walkout basement. In the darkened glass, her contorted body, clad in a black leotard, reflected back into the room.

  Tension drained from her neck, as she hung her head and breathed deeply. She wished all her concerns would drain away, but she was too worried about Millie. Her friend was so hopeful that their new classes would cure all the problems in her son’s marriage. Although Kim had never gone through with a wedding, she had a feeling that curing Steven’s marital woes would take more than a pot of coffee and some scrambled eggs, especially if he didn’t put forth any more effort than he and his brother had tonight. Like she’d told her friend, it would take time for them to learn, but they also had to want to learn.

  But would learning some domestic skills be enough to get Steven moved back in with his wife? Kim worried that it wouldn’t be and that Millie would be crushed.

  Something soft and furry brushed against Kim’s arm as a tiger-striped gray tail tickled her cheek. “Go away,” she said, gritting her teeth so her lips wouldn’t twitch.

  The cat purred and rubbed against her arm again. Kim would have shoved it away, but she had to hold her pose for five minutes. So she endured the animal “petting” her. Then it suddenly tensed, its hair lifting along its back and neck, and let out one of those bloodcurdling howls as it stared into the darkened glass of the patio door.

  The animal had seen Kim in her leotard and yoga poses too many times to be frightened of her reflection. She followed its stare to the door and noticed a movement in the darkness beyond the glass. Her heart shifted in her chest, pounding hard and fast against her ribs. Since she’d considered a night run earlier, she’d brought Harry out of the drawer next to her bed and left it sitting on the other side of the couch. She quickly reached for the pellet gun, then darted over to the sliding doors and flipped the switch to flood the patio with light.

  The man who’d been peeking in her windows stumbled backward as he blinked against the bright light. He tripped over a steel chair and sprawled across the brick pavers. Before he could regain his feet, Kim darted through the sliders to stand over him with Harry pointing in his face. His very handsome face. His dark eyes glittered in the porch light, and his teeth flashed white as he grinned widely.

  “So that’s the infamous Harry,” her new neighbor said, laughter rumbling from his throat and chest. “Your BB gun.”

  She would have been surprised if the toy had fooled a police officer. The gun was ugly enough to fool most criminals, who wouldn’t be breaking laws in the first place if they had any sense. She was a cop’s daughter through and through.

  As such, by nature, she was too suspicious to lower her weapon even after identifying her intruder. Well, almost intruder…

  He’d intruded on her evening, on her meditation. Even though he hadn’t actually broken into her home, he’d broken into her thoughts… entirely too much. Her fingers tightened on her weapon.

  His laughter died as he stared up at her from his incongruous position—half-sprawled, half-sitting on her patio bricks. “I think you could choose a better weapon if you’re looking for protection. A stun gun—”

  “I don’t want to do any nerve damage.” But she was beginning to think she had some. Seeing his long, lean body lying on her patio was doing all kinds of things to her nerves, like making her hands shake. She tightened her grip again.

  “You’d rather shoot someone’s eye out?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not that great a shot—”

  “A former police chief’s daughter admitting that?” he teased, his dark eyes wide with feigned astonishment.

  Pride stinging, she lifted her chin. “I can raise some serious welts, though.”

  “And give yourself enough time to get away,” he surmised.

  “Harry is really just for the fear factor,” she confessed. “I have pepper spray for protection.” And she had her attitude. Usually that was enough to scare men off, or that was what Theresa told her.

  He grinned. “I guess I should be grateful you just wanted to scare me.”

  “I owed you for scaring…” She
wouldn’t admit to that little jump of fear in her heart over the movement outside her window. “… the cat.”

  “I scared the cat?” he asked with skepticism, as he lithely vaulted to his feet. Did he do any yoga?

  She nodded. “Yes, the cat.”

  “Just the cat?” he asked, his shoes scraping against the bricks as he stepped closer to her. She had to look up to him; at five ten, Kim rarely had to look up to anyone. His head and shoulders blocked the porch light, surrounding Kim in shadows.

  Her traitorous knees weakened. She locked them and stood firmly in place… too close to him. She could smell the fresh scent of soap clinging to his skin and see the dampness of his salt and pepper hair, straight from his shower. “I don’t scare.”

  He tilted his head, studying her as if to judge the veracity of her words. Then he nodded.

  “But what are you doing lurking around my patio,” she glanced at her watch, “at this hour?”

  In the bright glow of the yard light, his face flushed with color. “Not what you think—”

  “What do I think?” she asked, trying hard to keep the amusement out of her voice. He was so darned cute, and his name was George. Now she struggled to hold in a sigh.

  “Hopefully that I got home from work and noticed the light in the back. You didn’t have any on upstairs. I got worried. Thought I should check it out.”

  “And you couldn’t do that with a phone call?”

  “You haven’t given me your number.”

  He hadn’t asked. But she wasn’t about to point that out. “You’re a smart cop.” She’d asked her dad, or as everyone, herself included, called him—Chief—about George. From the sudden light flickering in his dark eyes, she guessed he’d figured that out. She ignored that little twinkle and said, “You should have been able to find it.”

  “You’re unlisted.”

  She struggled to control the smile teasing her lips. “What does that tell you?”

  “That you don’t want to be bothered.”

  She touched the tip of her nose with her free hand.