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“Thanks for the offer, but I think we better go slow as far as the girls are concerned. They’re still getting used to the divorce. It’s only been a few months.”
“I know it’s only been technically a few months…but you were separated for a while before that. Right?”
“That’s right, but things are still a little bumpy.” Eddie closed his eyes briefly, hoping to remove the memory of an emotion-packed night just four months ago. That January evening had been chilly.
Shawn had lit the fireplace to warm things up. And boy, did it. From the moment his lips had touched hers, flames seemed to burn as bright as ever between them.
Returning to the present, Eddie cleared his throat. “Like I said, I better just be on my own with them.”
“You know, it’s probably good you’re giving your ex a break,” Jayne said casually, after their monster glasses of iced tea were delivered. “She looked kind of worn-out.”
“Did she?” He’d thought she looked…like Shawn.
Jayne tapped her glowing cheeks. “A little sallow. She probably just needs more sleep.”
“Huh.” Something had been off, but it was most likely their appearance. Shoot, he knew he’d feel awkward if she’d shown up holding some other guy’s hand.
Actually, Eddie wondered if he would have handled the situation half as well.
He kind of doubted it.
Chapter Two
Going to the marina had been a really bad idea from the get-go, Eddie decided as soon as he got all three girls buckled up in the car and was headed toward Shawn’s.
Toward his old home.
As the girls watched the Disney movie he’d popped in, he reviewed the past four hours. They had been something else, that was for sure. From the moment he and his daughters had stepped into the cool darkened corridors of the Bishop’s Gate Aquarium, he’d hardly been able to keep track of them. Every time he turned around, one was darting off to see one of the “pretty fishes.” It had taken them so long to get through the shark tunnel they’d missed their scheduled IMAX show, which Kit had not taken well. She’d just about had a meltdown next to the turtle exhibit.
Had Kit always been so…rigid? More importantly, had he always been so ineffectual? He’d corralled drunken Marines with greater ease.
Determined to make things better, he’d exchanged the tickets for the next show and used the time to get the girls ice cream.
He let them each have two scoops, then watched in dismay as only half was ingested—the other half seemed to run down their shirts and hands.
Which meant a really fun time in the restroom, washing sticky cheeks and fingers. Thank goodness for the family restroom. Otherwise he’d have been up a creek.
Later, after they’d gone into the theater and struggled over who was sitting next to whom, two out of three had fallen asleep in the cool auditorium.
Only Elsie had been awake.
Which hadn’t been good.
Seemed three-year-olds weren’t real fond of movies showing all kinds of unique fish. She’d liked the larger-than-life illustration of seals eating penguins even less.
The whole circle-of-life idea hadn’t meant a damn thing.
Now Eddie was ashamed to admit that he was actually looking forward to dropping the girls off, going back to his condo and having a beer. Maybe two.
Shoot. Maybe six.
As soon as he drove into the neighborhood, he dialed Shawn’s number—his old home number. “We’re in the neighborhood.”
“I’ll open up the garage door.”
“Thanks, Shawn. They wore me out.”
But instead of chuckling like she used to do, all Eddie heard was an irritated sigh. “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
Fifteen minutes later Eddie was driving back out of the neighborhood. Feeling curiously alone. Almost let down, too. The girls had hugged him goodbye, then went in the house, Shawn hardly saying more than was necessary.
And now that he was heading back to his spotless condominium, he was feeling a little blue. There was such a glaring difference between life with all three girls and life without them.
Whenever he dropped them off, it felt like someone took the volume of his life and turned it halfway down. Yeah, that’s what it felt like. Everything was running just a little bit too quietly.
He wondered if Shawn ever felt like that, too. He’d never dared to ask.
Even though he’d met someone new, sometimes he missed his old life so much it hurt—even when his head told him he was being a sentimental fool.
WORK ON TUESDAY morning brought the kind of stability Shawn was craving. As she sat in the break room with her friend Tricia, she wondered again if she’d been too harsh with Eddie on Sunday night.
He’d looked like he’d been through the wringer with those girls—though she could have told him taking all three to the marina and aquarium center was a bit ambitious, even for the most skilled parent.
Which he definitely was not.
“You going to eat that whole muffin, Shawn?” Tricia asked. “It looks big enough to feed a family of four.”
“I’m going to try,” she said, picking up another chunk and popping it into her mouth. “I’ve been so hungry, I didn’t know if ten-thirty was ever going to come.”
“Did you not eat breakfast?”
“I ate. I’m, uh, just hungry again.” Yep, no one could ever say she didn’t thrive when she was expecting. To her chagrin, Shawn knew that within a few weeks, she’d be positively blooming. This pregnancy felt very much like her previous ones with the girls. Trying to come up with a believable excuse for her hunger, she said, “I get so used to eating every two hours when I’m home.”
Tricia crumbled up the wrapper to her breakfast bar before standing up to refill her coffee. “That’s good, I guess. All the diet books say to eat often. Now if only I could get used to this schedule, I’d be doing great.”
“You will soon, I promise.”
“I hope so.” Tentatively Tricia said, “Part of me really misses child care. I don’t enjoy all the rules and regulations here.”
Those rules and regulations were exactly why Shawn liked the Carnegie Airlines call center. She was good at her job, and she received recognition for a job well-done often.
That was a whole lot different from life as a mom. At home no one was around to say “good job” for doing five loads of laundry. Or for playing house and dolls with a four-year-old, instead of paying bills.
Or planning playdates and church outings and scheduling dentist appointments.
Oh, she was going to keep this job as long as she could. It felt comfortable at Carnegie. Before the girls came, she used to work forty hours a week, now she hovered around twenty.
But practically every moment she was there was regimented. The phone calls were sometimes demanding. The pace grueling—a new call came approximately every 360 seconds.
But she was good at it. And here, she didn’t have to think about Eddie or babies or how she still had a pile of dishes in the sink and a load of laundry in the washing machine. She could objectively see how well she performed and pinpoint areas where she needed to improve.
The job was the complete opposite of motherhood, where everything felt questionable and she constantly forgot parking places, snacks and thirty other things a day. Here, at Carnegie, she felt useful and appreciated—the complete opposite of how Eddie had started to make her feel.
He’d never fully embraced her job, either. She knew it was because his life as a cop was so precarious. Because of that, he liked one of them to be home all the time. But she’d never agreed with that.
It was yet another area where they’d clashed. And yet another reason she was going to wait as long as possible to tell him about the baby. He’d have plenty to say about her going off birth control—like she should have known they’d sleep together sooner or later.
“The money’s good,” Shawn said, trying to come up with anything to push the job in Tricia’s favor. Though she’d made lots of friends at Carnegie, she and Tricia had become especially close.
“I thought I’d like the change of pace, but I’m really thinking of either taking kids in at my house or being a nanny or something.”
Shawn blinked. Against her will, she started imagining just how great Tricia would be with her kids. Especially when the baby came.
“I didn’t want to tell you things weren’t working out for me here—after all, you were so nice to give me a reference.” Tricia was prevented from adding any more comments by the not-so-subtle chime on the oversize clock above them. Glaring at the timepiece, she said, “Back to the grind.”
Grabbing her can of soda, Shawn carefully wrapped up the last of her muffin. Remembering also how Tricia was always on the lookout for a new guy, she teased, “Maybe your afternoon will be better. Who knows—you just might talk to someone tall, dark and handsome today.”
“Doubt it. Most likely I’ll only speak to people who want me to tell them all about our airline specials and flight times and then book a flight on the Internet.” Blowing dark auburn bangs off her forehead, she added, “Not everyone falls in love on the phone here. Only you.”
“I didn’t fall in love on the phone.”
“Still, it was romantic,” Tricia said right before they parted ways at their cubicles. “Your story about how you and Eddie met on the phone is the best ever.”
It had been, Shawn mused as she slid back into her rolling chair and slipped her headset on. Eddie had still been in the military and had been trying to get home.
She’d done everything she could to help him, especially since he’d had the kind of voice that screamed alpha male. So masculine. Sure-sounding. Almost gravelly.
Oh, he’d been so sexy.
By the time they’d disconnected, he’d known her name, and she’d known that he’d grown up only a few hours away.
And though she sometimes hated to remember, by the end of that phone call, she’d known she’d fallen in love.
She still didn’t understand how that feeling could have faded away.
Chapter Three
“You working a double shift, Eddie?” Sal Temple called out from the other end of the community room in the police station.
Eddie pushed E5 on the vending machine. Slowly the mechanical arm retrieved a red Gatorade. “Yeah.”
Crossing the room, Sal fumbled in his pocket, pulled out two bucks and slipped the bills in the slot of the machine as soon as Eddie stepped away. After a pressing a few buttons, a Snickers bar free-fell to the bottom. “Didn’t you work a double shift last Thursday, too?”
“I did.” Curious, Eddie looked a little more closely at his lieutenant. “You keeping track of me?”
“No, just wondering why you’re working so much.”
Eddie didn’t have a real reason, other than he hated going home to an empty place and extra money always came in handy. Especially now that he had child support and Jayne. Jayne liked nice dinners. “The money’s good,” he said.
“It’s only good if you’re around to enjoy the stuff you can buy with it. Overtime can kill a guy, you know.” Thumping on his chest for good measure, he added, “You’ve got to watch your heart.”
“It’s ticking just fine. Don’t worry so much.”
“I’m just looking after you. Someone’s got to, you know.” As he neatly placed his candy bar on his stack of paperwork, Sal said, “By the way, I heard you’ve got a new girl.”
Eddie almost choked. “Where did you hear that?”
“The usual way, the grapevine.” Sal looked him up and down. “So, Wagner, is it true?”
“I’m seeing someone, but it’s not serious. I wouldn’t call her my girl.”
“Uh-huh. When did you get divorced?”
“It was final four months ago.” Eddie closed his eyes for a moment as he heard his tone—completely defensive. “Sal, Shawn and I were separated six months before that. I’m not doing anything wrong.”
“Still—” Sal clucked. “—it’s kind of soon for a rebound gal.” Wagging a finger, he said, “You gotta watch those women, you know. She’s probably looking for a ring. Don’t want to rush into anything.”
Oh, these old guys, always imagining the worst! “Jayne’s not a rebound anything, and she’s certainly not looking for a ring already. She’s nice, Sal. I promise. Plus, she’s a teacher.”
To his surprise, Sal didn’t look too impressed. “Humph.”
“She’s educated and good with kids. She’s a dynamite person. Organized, too.” Actually, there were a lot of things to admire about her.
“I liked Shawn. Even more, I liked you with her. I thought you two were good together. She kept you lively.”
“I’m plenty lively now.” He didn’t want to be any livelier, anyway. Living with Shawn had been exhausting. He never knew what she was planning or what she had in mind.
Sometimes, those spur-of-the-moment decisions stressed him out—like the time he’d come home from work to find a trio of suitcases in the kitchen. Without consulting him, she’d decided they needed to take the girls to Disney World because there was a special going on.
Yes, they’d had fun, but the whole while he’d been wishing for just a few hours of downtime. Every time he’d tried to tell her about the rape case he’d been working on, she’d changed the subject. Like it was going to mess up their holiday.
Jayne was the exact opposite. Calm. Serene. On time. She kept a database of all the books she read. He admired that. “You weren’t married to Shawn, Sal.”
Eddie hated like hell to snap at his lieutenant, but honestly, did the old guy have to comment on everything in his life? Tell him exactly what he thought about things? He had parents who already did that. “Shawn’s the mother of my children. She’ll always be special to me. But we’re through. It’s over.”
“I hear you.” Sal put down his stacks of folders and bit off a chunk of his candy bar. “So how is Shawn? How’s she doing?”
“Fine, as far as I know.” He couldn’t deny that she looked just fine at the beach.
“Is she working?”
“Twenty hours or so a week at Carnegie Airlines.” He’d always hated how it took her away from him. She was always sprinting either to work or home. She’d never understood how much he’d counted on things being settled when he got home from a long shift. Months before they separated, he’d be lucky to find milk in the fridge.
“I always liked hearing her stories about the customers.”
“The thing is, it’s not like she has a career—she answers the phones. Shawn makes that job sound like it’s amazing. Like she’s helping to change the world.”
“She told me once that she helped a lady get funeral tickets,” Sal chided, telling him pretty plainly that he didn’t like Eddie’s tone of voice. “I thought that was special.”
