by Maggie Wells
“Ha. Ha.”
He stepped closer to her as a pack of kids dashed past them. “They are. Particularly when it comes to me. Kids are intuitive. Like dogs. They sense when you’re happy or sad…”
“You compare your kids to dogs?” she interrupted.
But he plowed ahead without confirming or denying. “They pick up on things.”
“And your friends?”
“Have even more concrete confirmation than the kids.”
She turned away, biting the corner of her lower lip as she scanned the area reserved for birthday parties. “Is the tall chick Colm’s girlfriend?”
Mike followed the line of her gaze and spotted Monica Rayburn, the raging bull of the Board of Trade, hoisting a large pizza high over her head. Tall and slender, she was a shark surrounded by a school of antsy six-year-old guppies clamoring for the obligatory slice of pizza.
“Yes. Monica Rayburn.” He nodded to Rosie, who was busy doling out paper plates and napkins printed with the sewer-dwelling amphibians Aiden loved so much. “You met Rosie the night you came into the office.” He started to walk toward the party area again, keeping his pace slow so he could fill Georgie in on the rest of the adult attendees. “The other woman is Monica’s sister, Melody. Monica used Melody’s daughter, Emma, as bait to catch our fair Colm. The guy beside her is her husband and Colm’s dentist.”
“Uh, okay. This is like a soap opera.”
“I’ll recap the whole story later,” he promised. “The older couple are Colm’s parents. You’ve met Colm and James, of course.” He glanced over at her. “And if the guy who splints legs isn’t nice to you, I’ll punch him in the nose.”
She turned to him with a gasp. “Would you?”
He nodded, his chest expanding as a wicked smile lit her gorgeous face. “Yeah. Hard,” he added for emphasis. “But, you’re pretty much carrying your ace. The minute they open these boxes, the whole room will be eating right out of your hand.” He paused as the thought sunk in. “Almost literally.”
Her grin turned impish. “I admit, cakes make great calling cards.”
Mike chuckled softly. She didn’t get how special she was. “This isn’t any old cake. It’s a cake you made for someone in particular, and that makes this cake a gift.”
She sighed. “Stop.”
“What?”
“Saying sweet things.”
“I can’t help myself, I’m a super-sweet guy.”
The moment was interrupted by Colm’s girlfriend. “Hey! Look!” Monica cried, spotting them. “I see bakery boxes!”
Two dozen tiny heads swiveled in their direction. Then the swarm started to move toward them, because cake trumped pizza every time. “Oh, well-played, Monica,” he grumbled as Colm reached over the jabbering kids to lift the cake box from Georgie’s hands.
“She’s learning,” his friend replied with a proud smile. Then, he focused his full attention on Georgie. “Thank Ms. Walters for bringing you a birthday cake, Aiden,” he ordered over the mishmash of squeals and shouts.
“Thank you, Ms. Walters,” the mass of children chorused like well-trained automatons.
“You’re welcome.”
Georgie laughed as she was swept up in the squirming mass and propelled toward the plastic-covered tables. Mike hung back, letting the kids eddy around him as he watched her try to field the rapid-fire questions launched at her.
“Well, I heard he likes the Ninja— Oh!” Someone must have asked about her hair, because she reached up to run her fingers through the rainbow of colors. “No, my mommy is not a fairy princess—I think you’re pretty, too.” She glanced over her shoulder at him, but he saw no reason to rush to her rescue. “Gosh, no, we don’t want nightma— No, I didn’t see your loose tooth,” she said to a girl Mike was pretty sure he’d never laid eyes on.
“Sorry,” Monica said, deftly stepping in to direct the flow of children toward the tables. “I panicked. I’m Monica, and I kind of suck at the kid thing.”
“Georgie,” she supplied, taking Monica’s proffered hand. “You looked to be holding your own.”
“They were eating her for lunch,” Colm called as he broke the strip of tape she’d used to secure the lid on the cake box. “But now there’s pizza and cake. Pizza, then playing. Get this party started,” he ordered.
The kids scattered, jostling and jockeying for position on the long benches. He opened the box and expelled a breath of unbridled relief. Mike felt a surge of annoyance on Georgie’s behalf. What did his friend expect? A Va-Va-Velma?
Rosie gasped, then clapped her hands as she peeked over Colm’s shoulder. “Oh, it’s perfect!”
Monica leaned in closer to Georgie. “The Turtles thing is really tricky,” she said by way of explanation.
Georgie nodded, then shot Mike a glance so filled with relief, any indignation he’d felt melted away.
“Mike told me. I camped things up.” She hurried to the table where Colm was trying to unbox the cake with Aiden dancing at his heels. “Here.” She expertly broke down the side panels so the cake could be lifted free of the box without incident.
“I hope you like it,” she added, speaking directly to the wide-eyed boy as he caught sight of the confectionary masterpiece.
Aiden’s sharp inhalation captured the attention of all the adults. He thrust one small fist straight in the air and shouted, “Cowabunga, dude!”
Mike felt Georgie’s exhalation. He turned to find her beaming at the boy with open delight.
Colm lifted a tall layer cake decorated like a slime-covered manhole cover high for all to see. The whole gang from Ninja Turtle cartoons peeked out from under the top of the cake. “Thank Ms. Georgie for making such an awesome cake,” Colm prompted, grinning his thanks.
Aiden flew around the end of the tables like a rock hurtled from a slingshot and plowed into Georgie. “Thank you,” he said, his voice muffled against her belly.
Georgie ran her hand over Aiden’s shiny dark hair and smiled. The glow of this simple pleasure made her incandescent. Mike found breathing more difficult than usual.
“Awesome. Cowabunga, dude.” Georgie offered Aiden her knuckles to bump, then grinned as he scampered back to his friends.
Mike looked up to see Tyler watching them closely. Jolted from his complacency, Mike mumbled an excuse to Georgie, then rushed over to get Chrissie settled with a slice of pizza. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Monica, her sister, and Rosie all moved in on the newcomer.
Unease gnawed at his gut. Panic pulsed through his veins. He had no business bringing her here. God only knew what kind of nonsense those women would plant in her head. He clenched his jaw as he sloshed three fingers of virulent red punch into a paper cup and set the dangerous brew as far from the edge of the table as his daughter’s short reach would allow. Dropping a kiss to Chrissie’s mop of riotous blond curls, he turned his attention toward his son. As usual, Tyler didn’t need any help from him. Always reliable, Ty had a slice of cheese pizza on his plate, a paper napkin, and was happily jostling and jawing with the other boys.
Drawing a deep breath, Mike turned away from the table only to find himself confronted with his business partners. “Hey.” Colm nodded, but James’s scowl intensified. Puzzled by his friend’s unusually foul expression, Mike asked, “What’s up?”
“Megan’s here,” Colm said in a low, preternaturally calm manner.
“What?” Mike whirled and frantically scanned the crowd for his sister. A rush of gladness he’d never admit to his friends surged through him. She was, after all, his only sister. And he hadn’t seen her in more than a year. Not since she took off with the tree sculptor from Oregon. “How did she—”
“She’s been calling for a couple weeks,” James reported. “I usually hand the phone to the boys.”
“One of them must have told her,” Colm concluded.
Colm nodded, his face a mask of solemn sincerity. “I’m not worried about the kids. They’re flexible.”
“They’re rubber, we’re the glue,” Mike said, muttering one of Tyler’s favorite retorts under his breath.
Colm clapped a hand to James’s shoulder. “Don’t let her stick to you.”
“Are you kidding?” James asked, his voice harsh with disbelief. “She hasn’t stuck to anything in her life.”
“Hey.”
Mike’s quiet interjection was enough to remind both men they weren’t talking about one of James’s crazy exes—and the man had a few—but his sister. Though he disapproved of her life choices, he was honor-bound to defend her. He was her big brother. Protector. Sometimes enabler. But most of all, the buffer stuck in the middle of her screwed-up relationship with his friend. And Megan was the one and only person in the world who understood exactly who he was and why he made the choices he made.
“Sorry, man,” Colm said gruffly. “You know I love her. She’s…Megan.”
Bobbing his head in acknowledgement of all the statement encompassed, he cast a worried glance over at Georgie, then stepped forward to intercept his sister.
* * * *
“Ut-oh,” Rosie Herrera injected with enough gravitas to imply impending doom.
Georgie and Monica turned away from the gaggle of giggling children and followed her narrowed gaze. Something inside Georgie seized when she saw Mike lean down and sweep a gorgeous blond into an embrace.
“Who’s she?” Her attempt to make her voice come off casual ended up somewhere in the gerbil on helium range. She coughed lightly, then affixed a bright smile to her face. She’d learned calm and cool at her mother’s knee. She could pull this off, even if the smile made her face ache almost as much as the lump lodged in her throat.
“She,” Rosie drawled, “is trouble.”
Monica turned to her sister. “See, and we thought our parents were bad with the M-names. At least they didn’t name one of us Trouble.”
“Megan. Her name is Megan.” Rosie pursed her lips as if the name were flavored with bitters. “Ridiculous name,” she added under her breath, a hint of a lilting accent edging into the pronouncement.
Georgie stood by baffled as the woman turned to scan the crowd, her forehead puckering with concern. “Megan?”
Her mind raced. She tried to place the name, but failed to come up with the match. Mike’s ex-wife’s name was Laurel, and their divorce hadn’t been final long. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who leapt into relationships with both feet, so she doubted the woman was one of his conquests. Her heartbeat slowed as she tried to make the pieces fit.
“Is she someone’s ex or something?” she asked at last.
“Or something. She’s Michael’s sister,” Rosie said darkly. “The mother of James’s children.” She waited a beat. “And trouble.”
Mike’s sister. Sister. A rush of relief crashed over Georgie like a wave. Then, she caught the look on Rosie’s face. “Hey, are you okay?”
The question drew Monica and Melody’s attention as well. “You look shaky,” Melody said in a voice edged with concern. She took Rosie’s arm. “Have you eaten?”
“What? Oh!” Rosie shook her head as if to clear out the cobwebs, then forced an unconvincing smile. “Me? I’m fine. I must have… I probably need to eat.” She winced but kept babbling as she allowed Monica’s sister to pull her toward the tables. “Not that I ever need to eat. I’m too heavy already—”
“Nonsense. You’re perfect,” Melody insisted. “I’d kill for a figure like yours. Hell, I think Georgie makes cakes that look like you,” she said, glancing over her shoulder.
Taking her cue, Georgie nodded. “Va-Va-Velma. My best seller, aside from the Big Kahuna.”
Kids were scattering, ready to run off some of their pizza. Georgie glanced over at Monica and gave a shrug. “Shall we?”
Monica leaned in to speak beneath the din. “She’s not wrong from what Colm says.” She pressed a hand to her chest. “I mean, I’ve never met her, but from what I hear, she tends to show up, stir things up, then leave.”
Georgie accepted the paper plate Melody thrust at her, but angled her body away from Rosie as she replied. “I haven’t heard much about her. Mike hasn’t said anything about his family other than he has a sister, and from what I gather, their home life wasn’t so great.”
Monica nodded. “These guys are pretty tight-lipped when they wanna be.”
The four of them cleared plates of abandoned pizza, then claimed the spots for themselves. The temptation to leave the subject alone was pretty intense. But a lifetime of not asking questions, and accepting whatever explanations she was given, had made her a strong proponent of the truth. And Rosie was their best chance at getting the unvarnished version.
“So, what’s her deal?” Georgie asked, striving for casual as she snared a slice of cheese pizza from the nearest platter. “Total bitch, or flighty and oblivious?”
Rosie’s stunned, and slightly hurt, expression told her she hadn’t been expecting the inquisition. Nevertheless, she persisted.
“I can see a combination of the two at work,” Melody interjected. “What kind of mother walks away from her kids?”
“Plenty of them, apparently.” Monica’s eyes rounded as her audience turned to her in unison. “What? Two out of three in this case alone.”
“Two?” Georgie asked.
“Mike’s ex, Mike’s sister,” Monica responded with nod toward Megan. “Huh. Maybe Mike drives women away.”
“Hasn’t worked on me yet,” Georgie reminded them.
Monica simply smiled and gave her head a sad shake. “The assumption annoys me. Why do people think a woman is predisposed to be any better at parenthood because she has a womb?” When they continued to stare, she huffed in frustration. “We’re not all meant to be mommies.”
“You’re fantastic with Aiden,” her sister interjected. “Where do you get the idea you wouldn’t be a good parent?”
Monica shot her sister a glare. Georgie cringed for Melody, but neither woman backed down. Georgie felt a twinge of envy. She and Gerry used to be like them—the best of friends, the worst of enemies. Watching the two sisters square off made her ache for the old closeness. She’d call Gerry when the party was over to see how he was doing.
“You know exactly where I get the idea,” Monica said in a voice thick with unspoken layers.
Melody planted her hands on her hips. “Your logic would imply I’m a crappy mother, and I’m not buying.”
The jut of her chin told Georgie this wasn’t the first time the sisters had aired this disagreement. The mulish gleam in Monica’s eyes said it wouldn’t be the last. But their spat was neither here nor there. Beside her, Rosie stood stiff as a concrete post, her dark eyes fixed on the woman she said was Mike’s sister.
“So Mike’s sister is back,” she prompted, hoping to snap the other woman from her fugue state. She hesitated a second, searching for the right words, “He said they were close when they were younger, but they’ve drifted apart…”
“They have a difficult relationship,” Rosie answered distractedly, her gaze darting toward Mike’s partner James. “She makes things difficult.”
Georgie didn’t need to be a seismologist to get a good read on the undercurrent in the party area. Mike’s sister Megan wasn’t exactly welcome, but no one would tell her to leave. Georgie was all too familiar with the feeling. Her own family often treated her like the spoiler. A ticking time bomb who occasionally dropped in on special events and made everyone shift to the edge of their seat. If she wasn’t already feeling bad for Mike and now Rosie, she’d have an extra helping of sympathy for poor Megan.
“She is not a nice wo
man,” Rosie proclaimed, tearing her eyes away from the greeting and refocusing on the children bouncing like bunnies on the wall-to-wall trampolines.
Georgie noted the watchful way James eyeballed the mother of his children. If there were to be a battle for sympathies, as far as the women were concerned, Rosie would win hands down. She was nice, and nice women never registered on the radar men like James used to guide them to potential targets.
She turned her back on the so-called grown-ups. Focusing her energy on the kids was easier on the old psyche. Within seconds, she was grinning from ear to ear. The kids were blessedly oblivious to the melodrama. A group of them had commandeered the middle tramps and were busy showing off for one another. Some of the smaller and shyer ones took tentative hops not far from the heavily padded edges. Georgie spotted Mike’s daughter, Chrissie, sitting flat on her butt, her legs splayed in front of her, absorbing the jostling of the kids bouncing around her.
“Are we allowed to jump, too?” she asked Rosie.
“What?” The other woman looked genuinely startled. As if Georgie had asked if she wanted to streak through the snack bar area with her.
“Do we get to jump around?”
Rosie turned to look her square in the eye, a tiny furrow bisecting her dark brows. “I’m not sure,” she responded at last. “I’ve been to three parties here in the last six months, and I have yet to see any of the adults climb up there.”
An employee in a Trampland polo shirt approached. Eager to escape the undercurrents, Georgie reached out and grabbed the Bieber-haired kid by the arm. “Hey, are grown-ups allowed to play?”
The startled teenager blinked at her. “Huh?”
She hooked a thumb in the direction of the bank of trampolines, then spotted Mike’s daughter Chrissie crawling toward the safety of the padded edge. “Can the adults jump, too?” She watched the kaleidoscope of confusion play across the young man’s face. At last, understanding dawned.
“Oh! In the party area? We recommend only the kids. Don’t want to bounce anybody off,” he added with a shrug. Almost immediately, he seemed to regret his flippancy. “But you can. I mean, the moms can, if they need to help a kid or something.”
