скачать книгу бесплатно
“Maybe when I get better organized…”
Ross smiled broadly. “Great! Because there’s an inherent bonus in talking to Mom’s group.”
“What’s that?”
“There’s a Daddy Club meeting going on across the shop at the same time.”
“A what?”
“The Daddy Club,” he explained, “is a group I formed for single fathers needing help dealing with their children. We have men who are changing diapers and staying up all night with teething babies, and others who are going through the minefield of raising teenagers and staying up all night waiting for them to come home. But you’d have free child care while you’re talking to the ladies, because we’ve just turned part of the stockroom into a playroom full of toys and games, and we dads alternate supervising.”
Susan tried to take it all in. A self-help group of single fathers holding meetings in a hardware-and-muffins store where women were learning to work with tools.
Micah smiled at her perplexity. “It works, believe it or not. You’ll have to come and see.”
Susan was beginning to believe that she would.
But for now, she had to deal with Aaron Bradley and his propensity for taking over.
She raised an eyebrow at him. “It’s very nice of you to bully your friends into helping,” she said politely, “but I’ve got it covered. My friends are coming to help.”
As she spoke, Paulette and Chris arrived, stepping into the living room and studying with interest the collection of men.
Paulette wore black tights, a baggy black sweater and hiking boots with black socks. Her luxuriant blond hair had been pulled into a ponytail on one side of her head, giving her a frivolous look very much at odds with her television savvy.
Chris wore green velour sweats that highlighted rather than concealed her diminutive proportions. Bleached blond hair was cut short around a wide-eyed gamine face.
All three men turned and stared.
Susan made introductions, noting with a hint of disappointment that now that she had four little boys following her everywhere, men would never look at her the way these men studied her friends. Then she admitted to herself with bleak candor that they’d never looked at her that way before.
Aaron turned to Susan his eyes alight with amusement. “This is your idea of a moving crew?” he asked.
“They’re my friends,” she replied, a little annoyed with the question. “And they’re busy. I went for loyalty, not muscle.”
“I beg your pardon,” Chris interrupted, walking up to Aaron, her eyes filled with amusement, also, but mingled with pride. “I run a fitness center.”
Aaron gave Chris a smile that caused the smallest flutter in Susan’s chest. She chided herself for her absurdity. The smile hadn’t even been directed at her.
“But furniture has to be carried, not run on,” he said pointing toward the stairs. “Why don’t you direct, and we’ll be the muscle?” He looked over her head at Paulette. “Or did you want to direct, too?”
Paulette laughed. “No, no. Chris can direct. I’m just here to look pretty.”
Micah smiled at her. “You’re doing a wonderful job.”
Paulette tucked her arm in his as they followed Chris and Ross up the stairs.
Aaron crossed to the table and looked down into his nephews’ still-troubled little faces. “I bet you’re thinking that moving’s going to be really awful,” he said.
Paul and George nodded. Ringo continued to pick cereal out of his bowl and eat it with great concentration.
“We don’t want to go,” John said. “Everything’s…different.”
Aaron picked George up, sat in his chair, then perched the boy on his knee. “But everything’s different whether you stay here, or go to Susan’s. And Susan’s got more room than you have here, and a much bigger yard.”
“She doesn’t have a pony,” George reported.
“Or a dog,” Paul added.
Aaron’s expression said that he agreed those were severe failings. “But don’t you think it’d be cool to have a big swing set with a slide and monkey bars and stuff like that?”
Paul and George looked interested.
“I’m going to order one this afternoon,” Aaron said with an apologetic glance at Susan. “And a sandbox for Ringo.”
Susan presumed the apology was for not having asked her first. Usually his presumptions annoyed her, but she understood that he was desperate to cheer the boys up, just as she was.
“I can build a shelter over it,” she contributed, “so that you can even use it when it rains.”
“We have to go to a different school,” John complained.
Susan nodded. “Yes, you do.” She wanted to add that he’d make friends in no time, but she knew he didn’t want to hear platitudes.
“I hate that,” he said.
Aaron nodded. “That’s tough. But we’ll put up a hoop at Susan’s—” again that apologetic look “—and get a basketball so you can practice for the team. Maybe a baseball and a glove, too. For spring practice.”
Susan remembered the price of the new palladian windows she’d put in the back of her house, which looked onto the woods, then dismissed it at the sight of the thin smile on John’s face. It was fragile, but it was there.
“There’s probably not even a park around,” John said.
Aha! Finally! A chance to one-up him. “I have three acres,” Susan said. “If there’s no park and you get a team together, you can play at our place.”
She saw the light go on in his eyes.
“Okay,” he said simply, then concentrated on his cereal.
“I want a ball and glove, too!” Paul demanded.
“Me, too!” George said.
Aaron nodded. “Balls and gloves for everybody,” he promised.
“All right!” Paul exclaimed. “Then we’ll have a team!”
Chapter Three
They were moved in by lunchtime, and after the promised pizza for the boys and the moving crew, Aaron took John, Paul and George with him to shop for playground equipment. Ross and Micah went along in an advisory capacity, and Paulette and Chris stayed to help Susan remake beds, replace drawers and redistribute toys.
“What do you know about Micah Steadwell?” Paulette asked.
Susan stood on top of a stool, putting away the box of groceries she’d brought from Becky’s kitchen. Paulette handed things up to her, and Chris sat on a rug on the hardwood floor playing ball with Ringo.
“Not much,” Susan replied. “Just that he owns a nightclub, and that he and Aaron were good friends all through high school.”
“You don’t know if he was with the rock band the Knights?”
Susan frowned down a her. Ten years ago the Knights had been one of those music groups whose sound and lyrics struck an empathetic chord with young people. Their reputation for hard living, however, made parents mistrust them.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Aaron didn’t say anything about that.”
“I think I recognize his face.” Paulette handed up a cardboard tub of hot-chocolate mix. “But they all had wild makeup so it’s hard to tell. And he seems so…I don’t know, mature, I guess.”
“Ten years can make a big difference in someone’s life,” Chris offered. In her distraction, Ringo’s large colorful ball hit her in the face. She pretended to glower at the little boy, who laughed with delight. “Especially in your twenties. How old is he now?”
“I’d guess middle thirties.” Paulette handed up a box of crackers. “He did tell me he’s single and that he’s pretty busy with the club. I’d take that as a warning that he doesn’t have time to date but he flirted with me all morning. I don’t know what to make of him.”
“Maybe you’ll just have to see what develops.” Chris reached out to catch Ringo’s throw. “I’m not usually one for subtlety but if he has a wild past, that’s not a very safe bet today.”
Paulette nodded, clearly lost in thought.
“But you,” Chris said to Susan, “have no doubt what you have on your hands.”
“Four little boys leave little to wonder about.”
“I’m not talking about the boys.” Chris lifted Ringo into her arms and carried him to the counter, where Paulette and Susan worked. “I’m talking about that most dangerous and appealing of God’s creatures, the macho male who is too good at heart for you to be upset by his take-charge tactics.”
Susan rapped a knuckle lightly on Paulette’s head. She came out of her thoughts with a start to hand up a cake mix.
“He does annoy me,” Susan corrected, putting the box away, “and I don’t find that quality at all appealing.”
“He got the moving done in half the time it would have taken us.”
Susan held on to the shelf and made a face at her. “And whose fault is that Ms. Size Three, Hear Me Roar? If you guys had a little more meat on you—” she swatted playfully at Paulette’s ponytail “—and a little more serious approach to manual labor, I’d have had a more impressive-looking moving crew. They wouldn’t have been able to laugh at us.”
“They stopped laughing,” Paulette pointed out, “when Chris carried the campaign dresser in all by herself.”
Chris rocked from side to side with Ringo, shrugging away any glory for the feat. “The drawers were out. It was a cinch. But I think it’s rotten that you two stuck me with the one married man among the three.”
Paulette made a scornful sound. “You can wrestle them to the ground. You don’t have to charm them like we do. You deserve a handicap.”
“How long is Aaron staying?” Chris asked Susan.
Paulette handed up cereal.
Susan stepped off the stool to the counter to reach the highest shelf. “I’m not sure,” she said, holding on to the door as she put the cereal away. “Maybe tonight.”
“I thought he was staying to put the playground equipment together.”
“I can do that.”
“But the boys seem to really like him. He might want to hang around awhile just to…you know, be here.”
Susan sighed. “That’s true but that isn’t going to help me much when he leaves and does his usual three-year disappearing act.”
Susan held her hand down for the next box, and when nothing was forthcoming, she looked down wondering if she’d have to nudge Paulette again. But Paulette wasn’t there. And neither was Chris.
She turned carefully on her perch to see Aaron standing behind her, hands on his hips as he looked up at her, his stormy eyes telling her he’d heard everything she’d said. Behind him the boys played excitedly at the table with what looked like new Matchbox cars, Ringo in possession of a big plastic truck. Paulette and Chris stood together on the other side of the room, looking concerned.
Susan wasn’t sure what made her lose her balance—the embarrassment of having been overheard speaking her mind, guilt over having condemned a man who’d offered nothing but kindness since he’d arrived, or the simple physics of a body occupying too narrow a space.
Whatever the reason, she was suddenly flailing and trying to turn the fall into a leap, because Aaron seemed to be making no move to catch her.
His hands left his hips just as she’d braced herself to break both legs, and he caught her against him, one arm under her bottom, the other at her back.
She half expected him to fall backward but he caught her firmly. They stood for one protracted moment, his steely arm under her backside, his hand clutching her thigh, his breath warm against the soft skin exposed by the V neck of her sweater.
Then he let her slide down his body until her toes touched the floor. She felt every muscle he possessed from neck to knee.
She didn’t want to look into his eyes, but she didn’t want to be cowardly, either. She’d said what she felt and, right or wrong, she had to stand by it.
She raised her eyes to his and saw not the anger she’d expected but a sadness she couldn’t entirely understand. Somehow it made her feel even worse.
“Tomorrow,” he said in an even tone of voice, “we’ll get you a taller step stool.”
Paulette and Chris excused themselves, and as Susan walked them to the door, Ross, Micah and Aaron carried the jungle-gym boxes into the backyard.
Paulette hugged her. “You’re sure you’re going to be okay for Friday’s show?”
Susan nodded. “Sure. I don’t know what I’ll do with the boys yet. I’m not putting John and Paul in school until Monday.”
Paulette smiled. “Maybe we can work them into the show.”
Susan looked doubtful. “I don’t think so. Too many power tools. Too much potential for on-air disaster.”
“But we film. We can work it out.”
Chris gave Susan a hug. “Just tell him you didn’t mean it and you’re sorry.”
“I did mean it,” Susan said defensively. “I just didn’t mean for him to hear it.”
Chris studied her with a furrowed brow. “It isn’t like you to be so judgmental. Your father was a flake. That’s a different thing from someone who’s spending every waking moment trying to build a business.”
Cut to the quick because Chris was right, Susan followed her to her van and said tightly, “Family should always come first.”
“He’s here, isn’t he?”
With that, Chris and Paulette climbed into the green van and drove away. Susan went back into the kitchen to find George and Ringo playing happily with their trucks, but John and Paul were not at the table.
