The Red Hat Society's Domestic Goddess

by Regina Hale Sutherland

  A grin creased his handsome face as his gaze traveled down the short length of her. He didn’t call her on the lie, but his blue eyes twinkled.

  Heat rushed to her face, so she turned away, busying herself with squeezing the excess water and soap from the jeans sitting in the washtub sink. “So what brought you to my rescue?” she asked, trying for humor even though she felt more like crying than laughing.

  “Steve and Mitch told me it was my turn and sent me down,” he said.

  Steve and Mitch? He was already close enough to her sons to shorten their names? How had that happened? More importantly, what had her boys been telling him about her?

  “Well, they weren’t exactly telling the truth.” Must get that from their mother “They should have known it would take me a little while to clean up their mess and for the load to finish. I’m afraid these lessons aren’t going as well as I’d planned.”

  One of those strong hands that had saved her from flattening her face squeezed her shoulder. “Give yourself a break. You’re doing great.”

  She turned back toward him, to narrow her eyes skeptically. “Great? I don’t think so.”

  “I made breakfast the other morning,” he bragged, lifting his chin with pride.

  “You already knew how to make coffee.”

  “But I made the eggs without burning them.”

  “That is great,” she said, wishing Steven had had as much success. “I’m glad someone’s learning something.”

  “Your sons will catch on,” he encouraged her, then added, “when they start taking it seriously.”

  And that was the problem in a nutshell. One she hadn’t a clue how to solve. Yet.

  “I’ll be a while here,” she sighed. “You can go back up to the kitchen. You don’t want to miss Theresa and Kim’s instructions.”

  “I just finished with Theresa’s starching and ironing lesson,” he said, then referred to Kim’s lesson, “I already know how to load a dishwasher.”

  “Another skill, like your coffeemaking one.” Did he really need this class? And if not, why had he signed up?

  “Yes,” he agreed, “one born of necessity. There are some things you have to learn for yourself. I wish I’d had your class back then, in my single days.” He sighed. “Would have saved a set of dishes and more glasses than I can count.”

  A smile teased her lips. “So your self-taught method was trial and error,” she surmised.

  “A lot of error,” he admitted, with that adorable self-deprecating grin that creased his bearded face.

  “Too bad that’s also how I’m teaching this class,” she said, sighing. “With a lot of error.”

  “Stop being so hard on yourself,” he said, touching her cheek again. This time his fingers lingered, softly stroking her skin. ‘Like I said, you’re doing great.”

  Millie’s breath caught in her lungs, which her heart battered with its frantic beating. Charles’s gaze slid away from hers and focused on her mouth. Then his head started to dip.

  Someone called her name down the stairwell. “Millie!”

  A growl burned in her throat, an emphatic, frustrated No. But she held it in, with her trapped breath. Her no wasn’t for Charles but for whoever had stopped him from what he’d been about to do.

  Kiss her?

  She’d never know now. He stepped back, standing a few feet from her by the time Theresa rushed into the room. “Millie, you better come quick. Kim’s about to take Harry to your boys.”

  Millie considered letting her. Mitchell and Steven deserved a few welts. “I’ll be up in a little while. I have to clean up this first.”

  “They left a mess here, too?” Theresa asked, blowing out an exasperated breath as her gaze scanned the wet room.

  “I’ll take care of this,” Charles offered, reaching for the mop sitting in a bucket near the floor drain.

  “No, you don’t need to do that,” Millie protested, but Theresa had her arm, tugging her toward the door.

  “It’s a mopping lesson,” Theresa said, justifying Charles’s help.

  But Charles handled the mop efficiently, pushing the water and fizzing soapsuds toward the drain. It was another skill he already had. What skill had she just missed out on experiencing because her sons were causing more trouble?

  Maybe it was time to let them manipulate her into what they wanted. “Is it worth it?” she asked Theresa as they climbed the stairs to the kitchen.

  Theresa shook her head. “Men? No.”

  “I’m talking about my sons.”

  “We haven’t talked, really talked for a while,” Theresa said.

  “We will,” Millie assured her. “But about Steven and Mitchell, I’m beginning to think I’m wasting my time.”

  “Do you want Steven to get a divorce?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Do you want him to continue living with you?”

  “No.”

  “And what about Mitchell? Want him to stay a bachelor the rest of his life?”

  “No.”

  “Then this class is worth it.”

  If she kept on feeding everyone, Millie would run out of storage containers. Soon. But since Charles had cleaned up after her boys, he deserved a treat. She grasped the plastic bowl tightly as she walked purposefully up the drive to his condo, past the car the unknown woman had used last week to drive away from Charles’s place.

  She was back.

  But Millie wasn’t hiding in the bushes this time. Shewas the woman Charles had almost kissed just a little earlier that night. Even though it had been a while since she’d been kissed, she remembered how a man looked when he was about to do it, the flare of interest and passion in his eyes.

  That wasn’t why she’d walked the short distance between her condo and his; she didn’t want to realize the promise of that kiss. Or that was what she kept telling herself. Liar.

  But she did want to thank him… for cleaning up and putting up with her sons’ nonsense. What had they talked about with him? How had they gotten so friendly that he’d shortened their names? Had they talked about her?

  Her concern wasn’t due to embarrassment. Not anymore. She’d moved far beyond that. But if someone were to talk to Charles about her, she preferred it was someone who actually knew her, like Theresa or Kim. Or any of the other Red Hot Hatters of Hilltop. Her sons knew her only as a mother; her friends knew her as Millie, the woman. The complete person.

  She climbed the wide brick steps up his porch to the arched front door. As she reached for the doorbell her hand trembled. Should she do this? Should she interrupt his visit with the blonde? If she wanted to learn more about Charles, for instance who the woman was, she had to. So she quickly pressed the button.

  Barely a second passed before the door opened, not nearly enough time for Millie to run away and dodge behind the bushes. Just enough time for her to entertain the notion.

  “I thought I saw you walking up,” Charles said, his handsome face creased with that now-familiar grin.

  “I was just bringing you this,” she said, holding out the storage container.

  “More pie?” he asked, his blue eyes alight with hopefulness as he took the plastic bowl from her hands, his fingers brushing hers.

  That little electric current flowed from the tips of her fingers up her arm… almost to her heart, if she wasn’t careful. She shook her head. “Sorry, just oatmeal raisin cookies.”

  “I’m sure they’re just as good, since you made them,” he complimented her.

  “Since you and my sons are so enamored of that pie, I’m going to have to teach you how to make it.”

  If she continued teaching. After tonight, she wasn’t so sure. Not only had the boys flooded the utility room, they’d done the same to the kitchen and each other with the sprayer from the sink. Millie had cut the class short, giving laundry as homework and a stern lecture to her sons.

  Okay, it hadn’t been that stern. She didn’t want them to quit; they were her only reason for teaching it.
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br />   Or were they?

  Charles flashed that grin again, and she accepted that her sons weren’t her only reason. “So we’ll be making apple pie next class?”

  She shook her head again, tumbling her curls around her face. She resisted the urge to brush them back; she didn’t want to fuss with her hair in front of Charles.

  “Oh, I don’t think anyone’s ready for baking yet,” she said. “Maybe after a few more classes.” If she made it that long. It was ironic that she was the one struggling to survive the bachelor’s survival course.

  “Come in,” he said, stepping back from the doorway and gesturing his arm wide for her to enter. The two-story foyer was aglow with light streaming through the tall, arched windows, even though the sun would set soon. Beneath their feet the polished oak floor gleamed. He added, “Maybe I can persuade you to change your mind.”

  About what?

  She reminded herself, as well as him, when she said, “You have company. I don’t want to intrude. I only wanted to drop off the cookies to thank you for helping clean up. And to apologize.”

  “Apologize?” he asked, his tone echoing the shock widening his eyes. “For what?”

  “I’m sure you expected more from this class.” She couldn’t truly be sure of that, though. She had no idea what he’d expected from the class, but she felt safe assuming that it wasn’t clean-up duty. “But my sons are so disruptive—”

  “Millie,” he said, reaching out with his free hand to grasp her shoulder. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

  “That’s sweet of you,” she said, warmth spreading through her chest, “but—”

  He squeezed her shoulder, then drew her closer, against him and just inside his front door. His eyes flared with that certain look again as he said, “I find I’m getting more out of the class than I expected.”

  Millie’s breath caught and held, burning in her lungs as Charles lowered his head. His breath touched her lips, then…

  Someone cleared her throat. Millie’s first thought was that it was Kim, in her role as neighborhood watch captain. But then she remembered his company.

  How had he forgotten?

  Millie blinked her eyes open, embarrassed she’d closed them in anticipation of a kiss she’d likely never receive. Heat rushed to her face as she turned toward where the young, blond woman stood in the foyer behind Charles.

  Amusement, not jealousy, sparkled in the woman’s blue eyes, and a smile lit her beautiful face. “Sorry,” she said, “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I was just leaving…”

  “Wait,” Charles said.

  Confusion furrowed Millie’s brow. “No,” Millie said, “I’m the one who should be leaving—”

  “No, really, I should,” the young woman insisted.

  Charles’s deep chuckle echoed off the walls of the foyer. “Nobody’s leaving until I introduce you two. I’ve been looking forward to doing that. Millie, this is my niece, Victoria Moelker, esquire. And Vic, this is Millie, my neighbor and the instructor for the bachelor’s survival course.”

  Victoria chuckled, the rumble of her voice amazingly deep for such a slim, feminine-looking woman. She wore a suit, but it was a skirt/jacket combination in a deep blue that complimented her stunning eyes, which were no doubt a Moelker legacy. “Too bad you didn’t take a class like that when I was growing up,” she said, but there was no criticism in her smile. “We might have eaten better.”

  He popped the lid open on the container and extended an oatmeal cookie toward her. “Try this. You’ll see we definitely would have.”

  She obliged and took a bite, then murmured around the mouthful, “Mmmm…”

  “She approves,” Charles translated for Millie.

  “She loves,” Victoria corrected him. “You see, Uncle Charles took over raising me when I was ten. We struggled a bit domestically.” She looped her arm around his shoulders. “But he was great about everything else. And still advises me when it comes to our practice.”

  “It’s your practice now,” he chided her.

  “Because Ellen made you retire,” she said, her pretty mouth twisting with obvious disapproval of his ex-wife. “But seriously, I have to go. I have a mountain of paperwork waiting at home.” She extended her hand to Millie, her shake firm and purposeful. “It was nice meeting you, Millie. Goodbye, Uncle Charles,” she said, and as she hugged him she sneaked a couple more cookies from the open container. “I’ll see you later. Maybe you, too,” she said to Millie with a wink.

  Charles sighed as she slipped out the door and rushed to her car. “That girl only has one speed. Fast.”

  “She must have been a handful as a child,” Millie said.

  Sadness dimmed Charles’s usually bright eyes. “She went through so much. Her parents died in a car accident.”

  “That’s why you raised her.”

  “My brother made me her guardian. I was supposed to raise her. But I think she was the one who made me grow up,” he ruefully admitted, flashing his wide grin again. “She was a great kid.”

  “And a beautiful, charming young woman,” Millie said, praising him for his good parenting. Obviously he hadn’t needed domestic talents to raise a happy, well-adjusted child.

  “She takes after her mother,” he said. “My brother was a rascal. He and I treated each other the way Mitchell and Steven do; everything was a competition.”

  Millie nodded. “I used that to get them both in the class. Now I wish they’d cut it out.”

  “You’ll get through to them.”

  At the moment, she wasn’t as worried about that as she was about Charles getting through to her, straight to her heart. The more she learned about him, the more she liked him. And that was dangerous; she was losing her focus. She wanted her life to be less complicated, with more free time, not more complicated.

  “Come inside,” he invited her, gesturing beyond the foyer to the great room aglow with light from the tall, arched windows. Deep, brown leather couches with plump cushions invited her to sit down.

  But she shook her head, losing her nerve, too. “It’s getting late,” she reminded him.

  “Do you have a curfew?” he teased.

  She laughed, but it sounded disturbingly like a giggle. “I don’t, but sometimes Steven thinks I do.” He had taken to commenting on her comings and goings, that she was so busy. She doubted that he was as concerned about her overdoing it as he was about her not being available to wait on him.

  “Is it nice to have someone living with you again?” he asked.

  Striving for nonchalance, she shrugged. “I’d rather he were back home, living with his wife and daughter. And I haven’t actually lived alone that long. My dad just moved out last year, when he got married again.”

  He nodded. “That’s about how long I’ve been alone. Well, except for Buddy.”

  “Where is Buddy?” she asked, curiously getting attached to the little yippy dog.

  “I have to shut him in a bedroom when Victoria’s here.”

  “They don’t get along?”

  He grinned. “It’s probably because they’re too much alike, both too hyper.”

  “How is it that you were alone so long? I thought that Ellen left you while you were in Arizona.” Realizing how personal she’d gotten, Millie pressed a hand against her mouth. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry.”

  His blue eyes twinkled. “You’re not prying. She moved out before I went to Arizona, right after she went to a class reunion and ran into her old flame.”

  “She must have really loved him.” But Millie couldn’t imagine a woman leaving Charles for anyone.

  He shrugged. “Probably. After all, she didn’t just leave me, but Buddy too.” His self-deprecating grin flashed again. “I suspect it was harder for her to leave Buddy.”

  Millie couldn’t miss the bitterness in his tone. Charles carried scars from his divorce, and even though a year had passed since Ellen had left, Millie wondered if he was ready to move on with anyone yet.

 
“I have to let Buddy out,” he said, “so come inside.”

  Millie heard the rhythmic pounding from the interior of the condo. Somewhere Buddy was hurling his little furry body against a door. She winced, hoping he wasn’t hurting himself.

  “I have to go,” she said, shaking her head with regret. But her regret wasn’t over leaving; it was over Charles not being ready for more than neighborly friendliness.

  But then she wasn’t ready either, not until the bachelor survival course was over and Steven had returned home to his family and Mitchell didn’t need her. Then she could concentrate on what she wanted, once she figured it out… because suddenly she wasn’t so sure anymore.

  Chapter Eleven

  “They shared the chores of living as some couples do—she did most of the work and he appreciated it.”

  —Paula Gosling

  How can he live like this?” Steven asked, as he and Millie stepped inside Mitchell’s loft apartment.

  The hardwood floor, what was visible under clothing and discarded pizza boxes, was dull with stains. In the light streaming through the tall windows, dust particles danced. At the other end of the expansive living area, the galley kitchen was cluttered with empty milk cartons and pop cans, the milk glass cupboard doors standing open.

  Just a week ago Millie had cleaned the apartment so that the oak floors had gleamed, the windows sparkled, and the kitchen had been neat, inviting guests to sit at the leather stools at the concrete countertop. When it was clean the space, with its exterior brick walls and open ceiling, befit a young professional like Mitchell. Now it once again befit a fraternity house.

  A grimace of disgust twisted Steven’s mouth. But he really had no room to criticize. Despite the classes, he had yet to pick up the basement himself. The chips would probably still be there if Millie hadn’t vacuumed.

  “He’s a slob,” Millie said, surprised at how easy it was to admit now when the words had nearly stuck in her throat the first time. Steven laughed, but she lightly tapped his arm and reminded him, “You are too.”