Match Made in Court

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Two weeks into the parenting plan, and he was well satisfied with how it was going. All three of them had played soccer several times, after which it was assumed Matt would stay for lunch. Last Saturday they had gotten lucky with the weather, given that it was November, and had taken the ferry to Vashon Island. Hanna had insisted on staying outside the whole way over and back. She was positive she’d see an orca, but even though no pod had been obliging enough to be cruising that particular stretch of the sound, she seemed to enjoy herself.

  One Sunday Matt had taken his niece to a movie on their own, after Linnea told him she had plans with a friend. Animated movies, he discovered, had changed a hell of a lot since he was a kid. This one was sharp and funny. He and Hanna shared a small bucket of popcorn, and she grabbed his hand happily on the way out to the car.

  Halfway home, she did say, “I wish Aunt Linnie had come with us. She would have liked the movie, too.”

  Maybe his feelings should have been hurt, but the truth was he’d kept wishing Linnea was with them, too. He’d have liked to exchange a smile with her over Hanna’s blond head, bump Linnea’s hand with his when they reached for popcorn at the same time, hear her startled giggle.

  He had to keep reminding himself that having Hanna get to be as comfortable with him as she was with Linnea was the point. Lusting after Linnea, savoring her laugh, imagining the taste of her lips was dangerous.

  But damn, was it easy for him to be diverted from the main goal.

  So here they were now, heading into a store where, Linnea had assured him, he could not only buy linens but also get a start on kitchen stuff.

  “Why don’t we start with the comforter and sheets for Hanna?” Linnea suggested on the way in. “In case…” She gave their niece a significant look.

  A kid her age got bored. Matt guessed maybe a six-year-old would have a limited attention span.

  “Good idea,” he agreed.

  Hanna turned out to be decisive, pouncing with delight at a pink—big surprise—comforter with fairy-tale castles, princesses with flowing blond hair and unicorns. It turned out to be a bed-in-a-bag, which meant matching sheets and pillowcases were included.

  Linnea steered them next to choose mattress pads for both their beds, then on to the towel department. The house had two bathrooms, so he let Hanna choose pink and purple towels and bathmat for hers, while he went with forest green for his.

  “Now my bedroom,” he declared, turning Hanna to point her in the right direction.

  “Why don’t I go start looking at kitchen things?” Linnea suggested. “You can catch up with me there. Or us, if Hanna wants to come with me.”

  “Not a chance,” he said, interested in the extra-casual tone of her voice, belied by the rosy cast to her cheeks. She was embarrassed to help him pick out sheets. Maybe because she wouldn’t be able to help picturing him between them. “Remember the mystery of thread count?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Come on. You’ve slept on sheets your entire adult life. You must have some idea what you like.”

  Yeah, he did. He liked the idea of her thinking about him in bed. He liked that so much, he was uncomfortably aroused here in the aisle of a linen store.

  Matt had to clear his throat to be sure his voice wasn’t hoarse. “I never looked at labels.”

  Her suspicious stare slid away from him, as if she’d seen something in his eyes that made her self-conscious. “Oh, fine,” she muttered.

  Even as he got her talking about how silky sheets should be and what was worth paying for, he wondered what in hell he was playing at.

  We’re spending time together for Hanna’s sake, he reminded himself. I’m using Linnea. I’m going to break her heart when I take Hanna away, remember?

  He wanted to be friends with Linnea. Just…not such good friends he felt guilty at stealing his niece from her.

  Matt hoisted Hanna to his shoulders and laughed at her when she gripped his hair. Then he smiled at Linnea. “Let’s start with flannel. What do you think, navy or green?”

  She laughed at him. “I don’t know. You could live wild and go for, say, brown. Or that dark purple.” She read the label. “Eggplant.”

  “Purple,” he said, in pretend disgust. “I don’t think so.”

  “Uncle Matt!” Hanna drummed her heels on his chest. “Purple is pretty!”

  He grinned up at her. “But I’m not.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Linnea said, after which her face flooded with color and she turned quickly away. “I’ll go look at the regular sheets.”

  Desire tightened his body. “Forest green,” he said, and tossed the set of flannel sheets in the cart before following Linnea.

  “DID YOU BRUSH YOUR TEETH?” Linnea asked her niece, who rolled her eyes and said with exaggerated patience, “Yes, Aunt Linnie.”

  Matt hid his smile.

  “You ready to be tucked in?”

  The little girl nodded.

  “How about if I let Uncle Matt do the honors?”

  Hanna stole a look at him and shyly nodded again.

  Linnea hugged her and gave her a kiss.

  Matt felt ridiculously proud to be escorting a six-year-old down the hall. He’d been promoted. She trusted him. Hot damn, he thought in amusement mixed with pleasure.

  Three weeks into the parenting plan, and he’d been promoted.

  “Aunt Linnie always reads me another story once I’m in bed,” Hanna told him.

  “I’m up for that,” he agreed, and let her choose a picture book.

  He’d noticed before that she liked stories aimed at children considerably younger than her. When he’d asked, Linnea told him that since Tess’s death Hanna had gone for some of the simplest, most comforting books, including classics for very young children like Good-night Moon. Natural, he supposed. Didn’t children typically regress with trauma? And also he guessed that she was clinging to the memory of her mother reading those stories to her.

  Tonight she choose a longer one, about a warhorse named Clyde who was secretly terrified of everything and had to find his core of courage. The appeal to her wasn’t subtle, he thought. She listened in rapt, wide-eyed silence, then slid down in her bed and let him pull the covers up, then kiss her forehead.

  “Good night, Hanna Banana.”

  She chuckled sleepily. “Night, Uncle Matt.” She stirred when he turned out the bedroom light. “Aunt Linnie leaves on the hall light. And she says it’s okay if my door is open a little bit.”

  “Like this?” He adjusted the door to leave a six-inch crack.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Good night,” he said again, and went to the kitchen.

  Linnea stood at the stove. “Would you like tea or coffee?”

  He’d been expecting her to be hovering to walk him to the front door. Surprised and pleased about this, too, he said agreeably, “Whatever you’re having.”

  She nodded and poured boiling water into two mugs, then carried them to the table. “It’s MarketSpice tea,” she said. “I’m addicted.”

  Tess, too, had liked the tea made by the Seattle company. Matt recognized the rich fragrance.

  “How’s the week gone?” he asked, as she sat down.

  This was Thursday night, and he hadn’t seen her or Hanna since the Saturday shopping trip.

  From the moment he stepped back into the kitchen, he noticed how much shyer she was than when Hanna was here. Linnea did relax sometimes, such as when they played their weekly game of soccer, but otherwise she was getting less comfortable with him, not more.

  My fault.

  Matt couldn’t look at her anymore without being conscious of her quiet beauty, and all she had to do was smile or stretch or turn her head a certain way to give him a teeth-gritting jolt of pure lust. Obviously, he hadn’t hidden his reaction as well as he’d intended to.

  When she didn’t immediately answer, he said, “You look tired.”

  Her eyes met his in surprise, and color touched her cheeks. “I am.” She bit her lip
. “Actually that’s what I was hoping to talk to you about.”

  He waited, watching worries and hesitation cross her face so subtly he once wouldn’t have been able to identify them. It bothered him that she had learned somewhere along the line to disguise her emotions so well.

  He was fast becoming an expert on reading Linnea. How could he help it, he thought ruefully, paying as much attention as he had been?

  Sounding determined, Linnea said, “To start with, Hanna doesn’t want me to leave her at all. Just this last—I was going to say this week, but actually a couple of days the week before…But it’s getting worse. I swear, every morning, I have to pry her fingers off me and practically push her in the classroom door. She doesn’t cry, but she’s so stiff—” Linnea broke off. “It’s awful.”

  “Why now?”

  “I don’t know,” she cried. “It’s as if—”

  “She’s afraid you won’t come back to get her.”

  She bent her head and her voice came out on a soft sigh. “Yes.”

  “Do you want me to drive her some days?”

  He hadn’t offered before; he’d been very careful thus far not to ask for more time with Hanna than the parenting plan prescribed. But it was ridiculous that Linnea, who was working more than full-time between her two jobs, should also be chauffeuring Hanna to school and home, when he had so much time on his hands he was desperate for occupation. He had started to do some serious job hunting, but hadn’t seen what he wanted yet.

  “Would you?” she said. “Maybe she won’t cling to you the same way.”

  He knew what she meant, but felt a pang nonetheless. Hanna liked him, was coming to trust him, but she had latched on to Linnea with fierce and frightened love. The counselor Hanna was now seeing weekly said it was natural and unlikely to diminish until her permanent placement was established.

  In other words, Matt thought grimly, until she knew whether she was going to be forced to live with her father.

  “Sure,” he said. “I’m looking for a job, but I’m not in any hurry. I can take her every morning if you want, or pick her up any day.”

  “I’m off Mondays. Could you do Tuesday and Thursday?”

  When he agreed, relief suffused her face. “With traffic heavy, it can take nearly half an hour each way. I’m having to leave her early, which doesn’t help. Mrs. Harris is fine with having Hanna sit and read until the other kids get there, but it must be boring for Hanna. She might be less clingy if other kids were arriving at the same time.”

  Matt made note of her doubtful tone.

  She sighed again. “I can hardly wait until Christmas break. The only thing is I’m worried that she’ll be scared of starting a new school. Maybe this isn’t the best time. We could wait until summer—”

  He was shaking his head before she finished. “It will be scary for her. Isn’t it always for kids? But it’s not as though she’s happy about going to school now. I wonder…”

  When he hesitated, Linnea finished, “Whether going back to part of her normal life isn’t even more upsetting?”

  “Maybe on some level she thinks she’ll be going to her after-school care or that Tess will be picking her up.”

  “Or her dad,” Linnea murmured.

  Matt said nothing.

  “I’m half-dreading Thanksgiving.”

  So was he, but for different reasons. “Because Finn will be there?” He was proud of his tone, a hell of a lot milder than he felt.

  “I suppose.” She took a sip of her tea, her blue eyes meeting his. “Finn came to see Hanna this week.”

  Matt’s whole body went rigid. “Did he.”

  He knew Hanna was seeing her father when she went to her grandparents’ house, but, unless Linnea was keeping it from him, this was the first time Finn had made the effort to visit here.

  “I know you’d rather she didn’t see him, but I was ordered to give him supervised visitation. I think it’s been hard for Hanna to understand why she only sees her father at Grandma and Granddad’s. Parents are supposed to be part of your everyday life. You know? She’s talked to him on the phone, too, but it’s not the same.”

  He nodded.

  “The thing is, it didn’t go very well. The visit, I mean.”

  Matt would love to hear that Hanna had completely rejected her father.

  “She was shy, and that made him mad.”

  No wonder, he couldn’t help thinking, that Linnea had purplish shadows beneath her eyes. She hadn’t had a good week.

  Very carefully, he asked, “Mad in what way?”

  Linnea gave him a look. “Not what you’re thinking. I’ve told you before, I don’t think Finn has ever even thought about hitting Hanna. Why would he, when—” She screeched to a stop, all but burning rubber, her eyes widening.

  “When he’s so good at stripping a layer of skin off with his tongue?”

  “He’s my brother.” She sounded miserable.

  “We both know him. I wish I’d realized years ago that you didn’t like him.”

  Her chin came up. “Why? Would you have deigned to speak to me?”

  Okay. She knew how to hit him where it hurt.

  “I jumped to conclusions. If I hadn’t, we’d have gotten to know each other then. Maybe that would have made this—” he gestured to encompass her kitchen and their still-wary relationship “—easier.”

  “Maybe.” She didn’t sound so sure.

  “Not that we could have anticipated a situation like this.”

  “No.”

  His eyes narrowed. She didn’t sound entirely sure of that, either. Or was he imagining things? With rare exceptions, Linnea tended to be diffident when expressing her opinions, as though wanting to convey that she could be wrong.

  Anger backed up in his throat, but he was careful not to let it show on his face. He took a sip of tea.

  “This clinginess,” he said. “Is that all—”

  A scream tore through the small house.

  Swearing, he leaped to his feet, the chair falling backward.

  Rising more slowly, Linnea said, “She’s having nightmares, too.”

  “God.”

  The cat came shooting out of Hanna’s bedroom and vanished into Linnea’s. The two adults hurried down the hall, wrenched by the gasping sobs. Matt crowded in behind Linnea, who immediately sank onto the edge of the bed and gathered Hanna into her arms.

  “Pumpkin, it’s all right. I’m here, honey,” she murmured, in a voice as soft and loving as any he’d ever heard in his life. “I’m here.”

  Hanna cried more quietly against her aunt’s breast. Matt stood, feeling both helpless and useless. What if he’d insisted on an overnight at his house and she’d had this kind of nightmare? He doubted that she would find in him the comfort she did in her aunt Linnie.

  Linnea rocked her and cuddled and murmured until Hanna was ready to lie down. She let out a sad sniff, turned her head on the pillow and seemed to fall asleep in an instant.

  Linnea gestured at him and they both slipped silently out of the bedroom and all but tiptoed down the hall to the kitchen.

  “How often does she have these?” he asked.

  She collapsed in her chair as if exhaustion had tackled her. “A couple of times a night.”

  Matt swore again as he righted his own chair and sat. “You can’t go on this way.”

  Her spine stiffened. “Of course I can. Kids have nightmares. Parents—adults—comfort them. It’s nowhere near as tiring as having a newborn.”

  He reached across the table and laid his hand over hers, feeling the quivering intensity in it. She gave a small jerk, as if he’d startled her.

  “Of course you can.” He made his voice a soothing rumble. “I didn’t mean it. Just that I’m worried about you.” In the face of her shocked stare, he added, “And Hanna. Have you talked to her counselor?”

  Linnea’s shoulders sagged, as if the momentary fight had left her. Her hand went slack, and after a moment he took his back.

  S
he said, “Sonja was surprised Hanna hadn’t started having nightmares sooner. Unfortunately, she either doesn’t remember them or doesn’t want to tell us what they’re about. I’ve thought about letting her sleep with me in hopes she’d feel safer, but Sonja didn’t recommend it.”

  Matt nodded, imagining the separation issues Hanna would have when Aunt Linnie wanted her to go back to sleeping in her own bed. She likely wasn’t selfish enough to regret her lost privacy, despite being used to living alone.

  Had a man ever spent the night in her bed? Matt had seen no sign of a boyfriend, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t one. The idea didn’t sit well with him, he discovered, and knew damn well why.

  He almost grunted. If nothing else, she’d be afraid he would take advantage of any indiscretion on her part to snatch custody from her.

  No, that was a dumb thought. All he had to do was look at Linnea to know she wasn’t the kind of woman who would entertain a man in her bedroom while her six-year-old niece was down the hall. In fact, having caught a glimpse of Linnea’s bedroom, he had trouble picturing a man in it at all. The antique bed was covered with a fluffy white spread and heaps of lace-edged and quilted pillows in palest pink and cream and white. What he’d seen was a virginal bower designed to make a man feel clumsy and crude. Or maybe designed with no idea that a man would ever stumble into it.

  “You’re quiet.” Tiny puckers had formed on Linnea’s forehead. “What are you thinking?”

  Nothing he could tell her. “Worrying,” he said.

  After a minute she nodded. “Me, too.”

  “I wish there was something I could do.”

  Her eyes widened as she looked at him, and he’d have given one hell of a lot to tell what she was thinking. “If you weren’t here…” she said softly.

  Guilt roughened his words. “You wouldn’t have had to fight me for custody and have one more stress.” No, it was worse than that: she wouldn’t have to live with knowing she was still going to have to fight him for Hanna.

  “That’s not what I was going to say. I’d have been alone. Instead, I know—” Her hesitation was microscopic, but noticeable. “I know I can depend on you.”

  She meant it well, but Matt took it like a blow. Sure, she could depend on him—two days a week, when he saw her and Hanna. The rest of the time, she was on her own even as she lived with the uncertainty of the future.