Heart Stealers

by Patricia McLinn

Sharon turned her back on Brett and the children. If she couldn’t see them, she wouldn’t be distracted by them. “Hi, Deb, it’s me,” she said. “I was wondering if you want me to bring Olivia home.”

  “Oh... um, no,” Deborah said. Her voice sounded muffled, as if she had wads of cotton stuffed into her cheeks. “Not yet. We’re not done yet.”

  “How’s it going?” Sharon asked.

  “It’s going horribly—but at least it is going.” Deborah didn’t sound horrible, though. She didn’t even sound upset. Just a little preoccupied. “I really can’t talk right now, Sharon.”

  “Are you still angry with me? Because—”

  “I’m not angry, but I can’t talk. Can you keep Livie for a while longer?”

  “Sure. How long? A couple of hours?”

  “That’d be great. Gotta go.” Deborah hung up before Sharon could question her further.

  She stared at the phone in her hand, shook her head and then placed the receiver back in its cradle. If things were truly going horribly between Deborah and Raymond, Deborah would have demanded that Sharon return home at once—with a police escort, if necessary. Not that Sharon believed Deborah would ever be in danger with Raymond, no matter how horrible their meeting was going. Raymond was a calm, quiet man. His greatest sin, in Deborah’s eyes, was not that he was controlling or meddling but quite the opposite, that he was too disengaged.

  Well, maybe they were making headway. At least they were in the same room, which was progress—even if they were only progressing toward a divorce.

  Sharon pivoted back to the children. “Mine is a biggest, biggest, big tree,” Max was telling Brett. “These are the birds in it.” He peppered the paper with shapeless brown blobs. “They live in the big tree.”

  “Uh-huh,” Brett grunted, looking neither convinced nor particularly interested. Sharon supposed toddler art criticism had not been a part of that morning’s Daddy School curriculum.

  “Who’s hungry?” she asked. “I think it’s lunch time. How does McDonald’s sound?”

  Her announcement was greeted with loud, gleeful whoops from the children and a smile of soul-deep relief from Brett—a response she suspected had little to do with hunger. “Clean up the crayons first,” she reminded the children, who in their jubilation had tossed their crayons down onto the table and bolted from their chairs. They must have really wanted lunch badly, because they clambered back onto their chairs without complaint and dumped all the loose crayons back into the bucket, their small hands moving with surprising dexterity.

  Sharon snapped the lid onto the bucket, stacked Max’s and Olivia’s masterpieces into a neat pile, and shepherded the kids out the door. She felt Brett behind her, close enough to warm her back. When he brushed a hand against her shoulder, the warmth turned to heat. She remembered his casual way of touching her at the Leukemia Foundation dinner—to get her attention, to excuse himself when he had to take care of some hosting duty—and his less than casual way, when they’d danced and later, when she’d been sure he was going to kiss her.

  And the way he’d touched her when he did kiss her.

  As ravenous as the children were for lunch, she was even more ravenous for a man’s touch. Not necessarily a sexual touch, though that would be lovely, but just what Brett was doing now, a moment of connection. A way of saying, “I’m here. You’re not alone.” She’d been alone too long. When Brett touched her, she didn’t feel so alone anymore.

  The rain had increased in the hour and a half since she and the children had arrived at the studio. The children pranced around the corner to the alley where she had a reserved parking space. They tilted their heads up, stuck their tongues out and bragged to each other about how much rain they were drinking. Sharon didn’t mind. The air was muggy— the temperature had to be above eighty-five degrees—and no one was going to catch a chill from remaining outdoors during a steady drizzle. In fact, a part of her wanted to stick her tongue out and sip a few raindrops, too.

  Would Brett think she was unforgivably juvenile if she did that? Would he decide he couldn’t like her because she was childish and he didn’t like children?

  He had moved beside her, and she noticed the rain glistening in his hair and dampening his shirt. “I should have brought an umbrella,” he said apologetically.

  “Why? It’s just water.” And then, to test him, she flicked out her tongue and captured a raindrop.

  He halted, staring at her so intensely that for one brief, dangerous moment she lost all track of the children. She saw only him, the tension that tugged at his mouth, the stark desire that glinted in his eyes. Surely she didn’t look her best—her hair was lank, her face streaked with moisture—but he gazed at her as if his life depended on that one inane gesture, her attempt to taste the rain. She saw the bone in his neck slide as he swallowed, and then he reached out and touched her cheek, wiping a stray raindrop from her skin. There was nothing casual about his touch this time. It communicated much more than simply that he was there and she wasn’t alone.

  “Open the car!” Max hollered. “It’s locked, Mommy! Open it!”

  Brett’s eyes glinted again, desire replaced by irritation. He fell back a step and spun around to glare at the kids as they yanked futilely on the door handles. She wondered if everything he’d learned in his class that morning had been undone by Max’s impatience.

  Well, who could blame the child for being impatient? It was raining and he was famished. He wanted to get into the car and go to McDonald’s.

  Sighing, she shoved a damp lock of hair back from her face and hurried to the car to unlock it. Brett watched her buckle the children into their seats—she was just as glad that he didn’t try to help her, since he probably wouldn’t know how to hook all the straps correctly.

  The children squirmed. Olivia fretted. “I’m wet! I got wet on my knees!” Sharon leaned across the front seat to the glove compartment and pulled out some fast-food napkins she kept stashed there. She dried off Olivia’s legs, but the child continued to whimper. Hunger mixed with fatigue, Sharon diagnosed it.

  “Let’s go get something to eat,” she said, tuning out Olivia’s whiny litany. She wondered whether Brett would be able to tune it out, too.

  He settled into the passenger seat, struggling to fit his long legs comfortably into the space. Sharon revved the engine, turned on the windshield wipers and pretended not to hear Olivia as she querulously listed every part of her that was wet—her hair, her fingers, her chin, her diaper.

  “Not exactly dinner at Reynaud,” she joked, shooting him a look.

  He didn’t smile. “Not exactly.”

  “Go with the flow,” she urged him as she steered out of the alley and down the street. “Did Molly teach you that in Daddy School?”

  He shook his head. “That must be the curriculum of the advanced class. I’m still at the intro level.”

  He still wasn’t smiling, but his comment assured her that he had some humor about the situation, after all. “So, what did you learn in your intro-level class?”

  “The class wasn’t intro-level. I was way out of my depth. All the other students were real fathers, and most of them actually liked their kids. Maybe they didn’t understand their kids a hundred percent, or they might be struggling with them, but they liked them.”

  And maybe someday Brett would like kids, too, but Sharon didn’t say that. “What was the class like?”

  “Molly talked about children’s perspectives, about how their intellectual development and immaturity alter their ability to interpret the world. She was trying to get us all to erase everything we’d learned since turning three, so we could figure out how a two-year-old would see things.”

  “And... ?”

  “I found that pretty nearly impossible.”

  “It is hard,” she assured him, not wanting him to grow disheartened so soon. “Did Molly lecture the entire time?”

  “No. There was lots of discussion, questions and answers. Kind of a support-group feel to th
e whole thing.” He eyed her plaintively. “I’m not a support-group kind of guy.”

  “You were very brave to do this, Brett.”

  “Brave or stupid. Or maybe they’re the same thing.”

  She pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot, and Olivia stopped crabbing. “McDon-o’s!” she crowed.

  “Lunchtime!” Max bellowed.

  Brett cringed. Sharon would bet he was feeling more stupid than brave right about now. That was a shame, because—as he was about to learn—taking two toddlers to lunch at McDonald’s on a rainy Saturday was the sort of activity that required a great deal of courage.

  “Buck up,” she exhorted. “You’re about to experience a whole new world.”

  “God save me,” he muttered as he got out of the car.

  * * *

  The noise level inside the McDonald’s was excruciating, on a par with air raid sirens, fingernails on a chalkboard, and jackhammers chewing up concrete. Brett had been aware of the clamor upstairs in the play area above the room where the Daddy School class had been held, but that noise hadn’t been painful. He’d been a level removed from it, of course, and the ceiling had muffled the children’s strident voices.

  Nothing muffled the cacophony in the fast-food restaurant. An indoor playground occupied a corner of the dining room, and the shrill, jubilant voices of some eight or nine children hard at play, no doubt fueled by sugar-rich milk shakes and salty French fries, echoed off the walls and floor. Every hard surface—and the restaurant was full of hard surfaces—bounced the shrieks back at him.

  When they’d entered the restaurant, Sharon had immediately hustled the children down the back hall to the bathroom. Brett could guess what she was doing with them in there, and he was grateful not to be a part of it. While they were gone, he snagged the only available table big enough for four. It was adjacent to the play area, close enough that he could feel the exuberant screams and laughter of the children vibrating in the soles of his feet. As soon as Sharon emerged from the ladies’ room, Brett volunteered to join the line weaving toward the counter so he could place their orders. The counter was on the opposite end of the building, as far from the play area as he could get without evacuating the building.

  The distance didn’t do much to reduce the noise. He stared at the people sharing the line with him—a few teenagers, boys in baggy shorts and girls in skimpy tops—and one silver-haired man with a stoop to his shoulders, but mostly people of parent age, young-ish mothers and fathers who’d brought their kids to McDonald’s for a quick lunch. Afterward, perhaps, they’d be taking their charges to the mall or to the multiplex for a movie. It was too rainy for Little League and soccer games, for outdoor playgrounds or picnics or swimming at any of the lakes that dotted the hills and woodland surrounding Arlington.

  Most of the people in line with him had probably chosen to be parents, he thought as he inched closer to the counter. They loved their kids. Maybe they even enjoyed eating lunch with their kids at restaurants where the stools were bolted to the floor and the food was served wrapped in waxy paper. Maybe this was their idea of the perfect Saturday outing. He supposed he should be thankful enough people made the choice to have children that the human race was in no imminent danger of dying out.

  He moved closer to the counter. In front of him, a woman in denim shorts and a Six-Flags T-shirt hunkered down to confer with her child. “I think you like the vanilla shakes better than the chocolate ones,” she said in a soft, cooing voice. “You sure you want me to buy you a chocolate one today?”

  The kid nodded gravely.

  God, what patience. What empathy. Brett reminded himself that she was the normal one, he the oddball. Most people liked kids—liked them enough to take the time to discuss with them which flavor milkshake to buy.

  Brett had jotted down Sharon’s and the kids’ lunch selections on a napkin. He wanted to get their orders correct so they wouldn’t start crying. He could still remember the horrible noises his brothers and sister used to emit whenever he didn’t do exactly what they wanted—a ghastly keening sound that pierced his brain like bolts of electricity. In this cacophonous room, of course, a few wails from Max and Olivia would probably go unnoticed.

  At the counter, he read his notes from the napkin. A perky young woman in a crisp uniform tossed wrapped burgers and lidded cups onto a tray. Once he’d paid, he pocketed his wallet, lifted the tray, and threaded a path through the tables to where Sharon waited for him. She sat by herself, the children gone. His dream come true, he thought with a wry smile—just Sharon and himself, without their two tiny, screechy chaperones. Alone, Sharon looked magnificent, an oasis of serenity in the bedlam that was McDonald’s at lunchtime.

  He set the tray on the table and lowered himself onto the stool across from her. “Where are the kids?” he asked, even though he didn’t really want to know.

  She motioned with her head toward the play area. Max and Olivia were jumping in a pile of colorful plastic balls inside a pen, flopping around and tossing balls at each other and several other children in the pen with them.

  “I thought they were hungry.”

  “They‘re always hungry, unless something better comes along.” She removed items from the tray and distributed them around the table, leaving the children’s Happy Meals at their empty places and then poking a straw through the lid of her diet cola.

  Brett took a sip of his ginger ale and suppressed a sigh. He liked good food and soothing ambiance. If he couldn’t have that, he’d take fresh deli sandwiches and real ale, not a semisweet beverage the name of which was as close as it got to anything alcoholic. But gazing at Sharon—and remembering how she’d looked when she’d poked out her tongue and caught a raindrop on it—was more satisfying than feasting on the finest gourmet meal and the most exquisite vintage wine in the most elegant surroundings. With Sharon filling his vision, he could even put up with the rowdiness arising from the play area.

  At least, he could in theory. That was the whole point of his experiment with the Daddy School—to figure out if he could put up with it in practice.

  Because especially now, when his vision was filled with her and his knees bumped hers under the table, he was convinced that Sharon Bartell would be worth putting up with pretty much anything.

  “Tell me about yourself,” she urged him as she delicately unfolded the wrapper of her chicken sandwich. “It’s amazing how little I know about you. How did you wind up in Arlington?”

  “I was born here,” he told her.

  “And you loved it so much, you couldn’t leave?”

  He smiled. Arlington was a great little city, with a dense, generally prosperous downtown area surrounded by residential neighborhoods, which were in turn surrounded by rolling countryside, orchards and farms and forest land. It had decent shopping, a well-stocked public library, an outstanding regional hospital and easy access to New York City. He couldn’t imagine anyone falling passionately in love with it, however. “My father died when I was two, and my mother and I moved to Boston, which was where she was from. She remarried a few years later, and we moved to a suburb north of Boston. That was where I grew up.”

  “And you came back to Arlington as an adult because you remembered the city? Or because of your father?”

  Her voice was so gentle, he didn’t mind her inquisitiveness. “I didn’t remember either the city or my father, to tell you the truth. All I remembered was that I was happy here.”

  She reached across the table and gave his hand a squeeze. It seemed unpremeditated, an impulsive gesture of comfort. He wasn’t looking for comfort, or pity, or anything remotely resembling sympathy. He wasn’t wracked with grief, a prime candidate for intensive therapy, a bereaved specimen unable to overcome his early loss. He honored his father’s memory by raising money for leukemia research, but other than that, he was coping fine. He didn’t believe in clinging to past sorrow. You endured it, you recovered from it, and you got on with the business of living.

  That was on
e of the things that drew him to Sharon—besides her height and her long legs and those lovely cheekbones, the hollow at the base of her neck where her collarbones met and the glints of multicolored light in her eyes. She’d suffered a catastrophic loss, but she refused to let it flatten her. Like him, she was getting on with the business of living.

  “So how did you wind up in Arlington?” he asked her.

  “I met my husband in college. We were both photographers, and we went to New York City looking for work after we graduated. The cost of living was too high, though. We couldn’t afford to start our own business. We couldn’t even afford the rent we were paying for a dark, cramped apartment in a seedy part of Manhattan. Lots of New Yorkers had weekend homes here in western Connecticut, so we came up and visited and decided Arlington was just the right size for us.”

  Max and Olivia chose that moment to scamper over to the table. “We played with balls!” Max shouted. Brett would have heard him if he’d spoken in a normal tone, even with the surrounding din, but the kid was obviously pumped up from his grand adventures in the play area.

  “I want to eat,” Olivia declared.

  The children ate. Not without some difficulty—the drinking straws in their cups inspired a lot of dribbling, squirting, and sloppy slurping, and the hamburgers had to be broken into manageably small pieces, a task Sharon attended to. She was like the other people at the restaurant, the normal ones, the parents who didn’t mind ignoring their own food while they mopped spills and dribbles and all but hand-fed their children because they loved those children and wanted them and couldn’t think of anything they wouldn’t do for them—including sacrificing their ability to eat their own meals.

  He admired Sharon’s sacrifice—but he also resented it because it stood as a barrier between them, a manifestation of what might keep them from ever getting beyond their current level of closeness. He thought again of the pink tip of her tongue sliding between her lips when she’d stood outside in the rain, and he felt a tug in his groin, wholly unexpected in this most unseductive of settings. He wanted to get beyond his current level with her, wanted it so much he was devouring a Big Mac while being serenaded by a chorus of overstimulated children—including the two messy, giggly punks at his table who had discovered the tactile joy of tearing French Fries into little pieces and smearing their soft insides all over the table tops.