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“Okay, you stay here while I unload the car.” There wasn’t much, just T.J.’s clothes, a bag of toys and his own overnight bag.
As he unpacked the trunk, he glanced over at the house next door. It was a neat brick ranch, much like his own, with green shutters and trim. Empty planters flanked the front steps and wind chimes hung from the eaves at the end of the porch.
“That’s where Chrissie lives.”
The small voice startled him. He looked down and found T.J. standing beside him. “I thought I told you to stay inside,” Ray said.
“I wanted to see what you were doing.”
“Okay, well let’s go in now. Can you carry this for me?” He offered the boy his overnight bag.
T.J. nodded and grabbed hold of the bag with both hands. Ray grinned and they started up the walk.
“That’s where Chrissie lives,” T.J. repeated, and stopped to point toward the house next door.
Ray’s grin vanished. “How do you know Chrissie?” he asked.
“Sometimes I stay with her when Mama goes out.”
According to Tammy’s e-mails, Chrissie had been her partner in crime on her nights on the town. Of course, after she met her soldier boy, she’d have wanted the freedom to see him alone. Chrissie had obviously done her part to help out.
Once inside, T.J. wandered through the house while Ray put their things away. He’d left the heat on and now it was too hot inside, so he opened a couple of windows. Maybe later he’d get one of those programmable thermostats and install it. The new bed had been delivered and set up; later he’d put the sheets on. He was still fighting jet lag and looked forward to a good night’s sleep.
When he returned to the living room, T.J. was on the couch again, the cartoon now a nature program showing chimpanzees climbing a tree. “Where’s Mama?” T.J. asked, looking at Ray.
Ray had spent long stretches of the drive home trying to come up with an answer to this question. He sat on the sofa beside the boy and muted the television. “Your mama went away,” he said, trying not to sound as grim as the words made him feel.
T.J.’s forehead wrinkled in a frown. “When is she coming back?”
Ray patted T.J.’s leg. “She’s not coming back.” At least, she’d expressed no intention to do so. Better for them both if she didn’t. They didn’t need her disrupting their lives any further. “I—I know that makes you sad,” he added. “I know you miss her. I miss her, too.” Maybe not what she’d become, but what she’d been—or the ideal of what she’d been. The loving wife, waiting to welcome him home. The loving mother, taking care of their son.
“I want M-Mama!” T.J.’s face crumpled and he began to sniffle, then sob.
Ray gathered his son into his lap and patted his back. “It’s okay,” he said. “It’s going to be okay.” The words were as much for himself as for the boy.
T.J.’s sobs turned to wails, his whole body shaking, the decibel level rising. Ray rose with the boy still in his arms, and began to pace. “It’s okay,” he said. “Stop that. You’re going to make yourself sick.”
The wails went on and on. He’d never heard a more pitiful sound in his life. All the grief and fear and sadness he had ever known was condensed into those cries. As he paced and patted and murmured words of comfort that T.J. did not seem to hear, Ray felt whatever optimism he’d mustered on the drive from Omaha slipping away. He wanted to open his mouth and join right in.
CHRISSIE HEARD THE CRYING from her house—a child’s pitiful wails. They went on and on and on. What was happening over there? T.J. was going to make himself sick carrying on like that. Why wasn’t his father doing something to comfort him?
She paced and spoke out loud to Rudy and Sapphire, who sat at either end of the sofa and watched her, whiskers twitching, tails flicking. “I know he doesn’t like me,” she said. “If I go over there, he’ll say I’m butting into something that’s none of my business.”
She snatched up the remote and turned on the television, then turned the volume up, drowning out the sounds of crying. But though she could no longer hear T.J., she knew he was hurting, and felt a corresponding pain in the pit of her stomach.
She debated leaving the house. She could go to the bookstore or the mall, do something to distract herself. But all she could think of was that sweet little boy, crying his heart out.
She couldn’t stand it anymore. “I have to go over there,” she told the cats, who blinked in what might have been agreement.
She grabbed her coat and marched next door, sidestepping patches of mud formed by melting snow. She punched the doorbell hard and tried to prepare herself for Ray’s anger.
When he opened the door, she didn’t give him time to argue or turn her away. “I could hear T.J. crying all the way over at my place,” she said. “You’ve got to let me help.”
He glanced over his shoulder and she followed his gaze. T.J. sat in the middle of a brown leather sofa, his mouth wide open, harsh sobs shaking his shoulders. “What can you do?” Ray asked, raising his voice to be heard above his son’s keening.
“He knows me.” As if to confirm this, T.J. opened his eyes and saw her.
“Chrissie!” he wailed, reaching his arms toward her.
She pushed past Ray and scooped the boy into her arms. “It’s all right, honey,” she soothed. “Chrissie’s here. Tell me what’s the matter.”
“I want my mama!” he sobbed.
“I know you do, hon. But she’s not here right now. But your daddy is here. And I’m here.” His eyes were red and snot dripped from his nose. She looked around for a tissue but seeing none, carried him into the bathroom and tore off a strip of toilet paper and held it to his nose. “Blow,” she commanded.
He obliged, then let her wash his face with a cool rag. “Doesn’t that feel better?” she cooed.
Ray stood in the doorway, watching them. “I could have done that,” he said.
Then why didn’t you? she wanted to say, but didn’t. The man wasn’t used to dealing with small children. “You’ll learn,” she said.
She smiled at T.J. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “How about some supper?”
He nodded, his face still solemn and sad.
“I was going to order pizza,” Ray said.
Of course he was. “Pizza is fine, but a time like this calls for comfort food.” She set T.J. down long enough to remove her coat, then carried him to the kitchen, where she began searching through cabinets.
“What are you doing?” Ray asked.
“I’m going to make this boy some macaroni and cheese.” She pulled out a familiar blue box and turned to him. “Do you want some?”
He stared at her with the same lost expression as his son, but his gaze was devoid of all childlike innocence. His eyes held a wariness. And beyond that was grief and exhaustion and another sharper emotion—a hard masculinity that touched the most feminine part of her, and sent a warm flush over her cheeks.
Then he blinked, breaking the spell. “Better make two boxes,” he said. “I’m hungry.”
She set T.J. on the floor. He had quieted, though he still sniffed from time to time. “Come on, big boy, you can help,” she said. “Ray, would you drag a chair over here by the stove for T.J. to stand on?”
“Are you sure that’s safe?” he asked.
“I’ll be right here,” she said, smiling at T.J. Then, in a softer voice, she said to Ray, “The trick is to keep him distracted. I can’t guarantee no more meltdowns, but maybe this way you can shorten the duration.”
He nodded and moved the chair. “Thanks.”
She filled a pot with water and set it on to boil, then opened the first box of macaroni and gave T.J. the cheese packet to hold on to. “When I’m ready, you can help me put that in,” she said.
He nodded, and clutched the foil packet to his chest.
“I see you have some new furniture,” she said, adding salt to the water in the pot.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t want him to come home to an empty house,” Ray said.
“That was smart.”
He leaned against the counter, close enough that one step back would have brought them into contact. “So you can admit I’m not a moron as a parent?”
“I never said you were.” She stared at the pot, willing the water to boil, every part of her aware of his eyes on her. What did he see when he looked at her? Did he still think of her as his enemy? Or as the lonely woman she was? She cleared her throat. “This is a difficult situation,” she said.
“Yes.” He let out a breath, almost a sigh. “For everyone.”
For her, too, she thought as she poured the dry macaroni into the boiling water. A person watching her might think she’d never been alone with an attractive man before. She didn’t know where to look, how to act.
She settled for focusing on the little boy beside her. He stared at the macaroni spinning around in the pot. “It looks like it’s swimming,” he said.
“Yes, but it wouldn’t be any fun for you to swim in boiling water,” she said. She gave the noodles a stir. “What should we have with our macaroni?” she asked. She turned to the cabinets once more. “We have green beans. Or tomato soup.”
“Soup,” father and son answered in unison.
She laughed. “Not much for vegetables, are you?”
“I don’t like green beans,” T.J. said.
“Me neither.” Ray ruffled his son’s hair. The boy grinned at him, tears now forgotten.
They ate macaroni and cheese and tomato soup, with water to drink, since there was no milk. “I guess tomorrow I need to go to the grocery store,” Ray said.
She opened her mouth to offer suggestions of what he should buy, then quickly shut it. Ray Hughes didn’t strike her as the helpless type. He was probably perfectly capable of buying food for himself and his son.
T.J. cleaned his plate, then sat back. “Can I go watch cartoons now?” he asked.
“All right,” Ray said. “For a little while.”
When they were alone, Chrissie started to clear the table. Ray put out a hand to stop her. “I’ll get the dishes later. You’ve done enough.”
His hand on her bare arm was warm and firm. He kept it there longer than was really necessary, but she didn’t protest. How long had it been since a man other than her father had touched her at all?
“I’d better go,” she said after a moment and turned away.
“T.J. said you babysat him sometimes,” he said.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“When Tammy went out.”
She risked looking at him then. His expression was guarded, mouth a hard line, eyes revealing little. “Yes. She told me she was taking classes at the community college, but I suspected that wasn’t true.” She raised her chin, daring him to disbelieve her. “No matter what you think, I didn’t approve of what she was doing. I tried to talk to her about it, but she wouldn’t listen.”
He looked away, his posture still rigid, but he didn’t protest her explanation. “She said you were single,” he said after a long pause.
“Yes. I…My husband was killed in an assault on Fallujah. In the early days of the war.”
All the stiffness went out of him. “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
There was an awkward silence. She wasn’t sure why she’d told him something she rarely revealed to anyone. Maybe because she wanted him to think better of her, to realize she wasn’t some wild, partying jezebel who had led his wife astray.
“I really should be going.” She was scared to take things too quickly—to hope for too much. If anything was going to happen between them, he’d have to make the first move. She slipped past him, into the living room. She reached for her coat, but he took it, and held it while she fit her arms into it.
“What time should I put him to bed?” he asked.
She glanced toward T.J. She could just see his profile in the light from the television screen. “He’ll be tired tonight,” she said. “Make it early. By eight. Give him a bath first. And read him a story.”
He nodded solemnly, a man receiving instructions for an important mission. “I can handle that. And thanks.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I was ready to pull my hair out when you walked in.”
“It will get easier,” she said.
“I hope so.”
She hurried away, almost running across the lawn to her own house. Safely inside, she leaned against the door and took a deep breath, trying to conquer the shakiness she felt. “Oh, boy,” she said out loud. She wasn’t sure what had happened back there, why a man who had professed to not even like her had her so shook up. He was masculine and strong, physically handsome, and his obvious desire to be a good father to T.J. touched her. He was also a soldier on active duty who could be sent back to fighting at any time, a man separated from his wife with a child to care for. A man who could so easily make her forget common sense and caution. He was everything a woman could want—and everything she absolutely didn’t need.
“COME ON, sport, time for a bath.” Ray picked up the remote and clicked off the television.
T.J. looked up at him. “Are you going to take a bath?”
The question stopped him. “Uh, I usually take a shower.”
“You could take a bath with me.”
After the long drive from Omaha, a hot bath might feel good at that. He shrugged. “Sure, why not?” Father-son bonding and all that.
In the bathroom, he helped T.J. undress and started the water running, then began removing his own clothes.
“Mama puts in bubbles.” T.J. picked up a bottle of Mr. Bubble from the bathtub ledge.
“Bubbles?” Wasn’t that kind of, well, feminine?
“Please?” T.J. gave him a winning look.
Wanting to avoid another meltdown tonight, Ray nodded. “Okay. Pour ’em in.”
T.J. dumped a generous glug of bubble solution into the water and Ray finished undressing.
He lifted T.J. into the water, then lowered himself in, at the tap end. “Can you wash yourself, or do you want me to do it?” he asked.
“I can do it.” T.J. picked up the bar of soap.
“That’s my big boy.” Ray handed him a washcloth, then leaned back as far as he could and closed his eyes. The hot water felt good. Even the bubbles were nice, fragrant and soft.
