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Troy held up his soda can, squinting at the shiny metal in the late afternoon light. “A year or so. Ever since we started talking about relocating the business down here.” He lowered the can. “I don’t know, I guess the change finally rattled something loose. That maybe I’d like to think about another relationship while my working parts are all still in order.”
The dark-haired man crossed his arms, fixing Troy with a far-too-astute gaze. “Any idea what you intend to do about that?”
Troy released a weighty sigh. “None whatsoever. Amy and I were together for thirteen years. And she’s been gone for four.” He shook his head. “Saying I’m a little out of practice is a gross understatement.”
“It’ll come back to you, I’m sure,” Blake said dryly.
“I’m not talking about that, dirtwad. I’m talking about dating. Starting a new relationship. It was bad enough in my teens when at least I had youth to hide behind. Now I’m supposed to know what I’m doing.”
One side of Blake’s mouth tilted up. “You’re not exactly indigent and you still have all your teeth. My advice? Leave it up to the women. They’re born knowing what to do.”
Both men jumped when overloud country music knifed the silence; just as suddenly, the volume receded. Not, however, fast enough for Troy.
“Like that one, for instance,” Blake said when Karleen appeared in her yard, practically hidden by an umbrella-sized straw hat. A minute later, she was walking back and forth, head down, pushing something—a spreader, maybe?—singing enthusiastic backup with the female vocalist. Her cell phone rang; she stopped, answered it, that damned low, warm laugh carrying over the fence on the slightly chilly breeze.
Staring, borderline miserable, Troy shook his head.
“Why the hell not?”
“Her front yard?”
“At least there’s no junkers on cement blocks. Or toilets.”
“That we can see. Anyway, then there’s the hair. And the nails. And the…” He rolled his hand. “Attributes.”
Blake frowned. “I’m not following.”
Her call finished, Troy waited until he heard the rhythmic groan and squeak of the spreader before he said, “The woman’s not real, Blake, she’s a hallucination brought on by sexual deprivation. And I’m not looking for a hook-up. Which is all that would be. If anything.”
“Oh, believe me, buddy, anything it would be.” Blake took a swig of his soda, chuckling. “Something is what that would be. I half expected the grass between the two of you to ignite.”
“That’s crazy. And do not—” he jabbed his soda can in Blake’s direction “—shake your heading pityingly at me.”
“I’ll shake my head any damn way I want. I’m beginning to wonder if maybe I should go back and double check the van, make sure you didn’t leave your brain inside it. The woman’s pretty, likes kids, seems reasonably conversant in the English language and looked like she had her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth for a while there. No, wait—that was you.” Blake pushed himself back on the chair, grinning. “Not real sure I see what the problem is.”
“Just because she doesn’t have kids doesn’t mean she’s single,” Troy said before he caught himself.
Blake tapped his own wedding ring. “No ring.”
“So she could still have a boyfriend, you know. But it doesn’t matter, because I’m not interested. Oh, come on, Blake…you know as well as I do that ‘opposites attract’ stuff is a crock. Yes, she strikes me as a nice enough woman, but I’m looking for something with some substance to it.”
“Like you had with Amy.”
“Exactly. What?” he said when Blake shook his head again.
Dark-brown eyes met his. “They call it starting over for a reason, dumb-ass. There’s never gonna be another Amy, and thinking that’s even possible isn’t fair to anybody. Especially you. But aren’t you jumping the gun a little here? Thinking you’re gonna find the next Mrs. Lindquist right off the bat without taking a couple of test drives first? Why limit your options by automatically tossing out any woman who doesn’t immediately make you think wedding bells?”
“Because it’s a waste of time? Because…” He glanced toward Karleen’s house, then lowered his voice even further. “Because the enhanced look has never done it for me?”
“Must’ve been one helluva trick of the light, then, that poleaxed look on your face. And anyway, what makes you so sure they’re not the genuine article?”
“Educated guess.”
“Huh. Never realized MBA stood for Master of Boob Authenticity. Hey!” Laughing, he ducked when Troy threw his empty soda can at him, the crushed aluminum making one hell of a racket as it bounced across the wooden deck. Karleen jerked her head in their direction. They both waved. She waved back. A little reluctantly, Troy thought.
“And anyway,” Blake said, “haven’t you always wondered what fake ones feel like?” only to laugh again as he dodged Troy’s smack upside the head. Then, hearing the boys’ voices as they trooped around the side of the house toward the backyard, Blake stood, checking his watch. “I need to get back, I told Cass I’d be home by five. You ready to drop off the truck and pick up your car?”
“Might as well.”
Which Troy had fervently hoped signaled the end of the discussion. Except, after the U-Haul had been returned and Blake dropped Troy and the twins back by their old apartment to pick up the Volvo, Blake called Troy back to his car.
“So, you gonna put out feelers with Karleen or not?” Blake said quietly over Shaun’s hip-hop on the stereo, and Troy glared at him.
“This is payback for all the grief I gave you when you were trying to get back with Cass, isn’t it?”
Chuckling, Blake put the SUV in reverse, then gave Troy one final, concerned glance. “No. But I am wondering how you think looking for another Amy is being open to possibilities. Just something to think about,” he said, then backed out of the driveway.
Twenty minutes later, Troy pulled up in front of his new house, the boys springing themselves from their car seats the instant he cut the engine. “Stay in the backyard!” he yelled out the window, a moment before they vanished in a cloud of dust and giggles. Then he sagged into the leather seat, his head lolling against the rest as he looked at his new home, waiting for the dust storm of memories to settle inside his head.
Several years before, when Troy had finally felt confident enough that the business wasn’t going to disintegrate out from under him, that he and Amy could actually apply for a mortgage with a straight face, they’d driven the poor Realtor in Denver nuts, looking at house after house after house. But it had been their first and it had to be perfect. Especially since they’d start raising their family there.
Meaning, the minute they’d walked inside, it had to say home. And the way his and Amy’s tastes had dovetailed so perfectly had almost been spooky. They’d both craved clean lines, openness, light woods and walls—a house nothing like their parents’ slightly disheveled, suburban two-story pseudo Colonials. The house they’d finally fallen in love with had smelled of fresh plaster, new wood, new beginnings, even if they’d filled it with the comforting, muted colors and traditional styles of their childhood.
After Amy’s death, Troy had assumed he wouldn’t be able to bear staying there. He’d been wrong. Instead, the familiar, the routine, had succored him in those first terrible weeks, months, after the unthinkable had happened. The house, and their beautiful, precious babies, had saved his butt. And his sanity. Leaving it hadn’t been easy.
So after the move, he’d again taken his time, driving another Realtor crazy, looking for a new home for him and his boys. Another new start. He could have bought pretty much any house he wanted in Albuquerque. But he hadn’t wanted any house; he’d wanted the right house. Only, who knew “right” would be this quirky, lopsided grandmother of a house, mottled with the patina of mold and memories? That his new definition of home would include bowed wooden floors and a wisteria-and-honeysuckle choked portal, weathered corbels and windows checkered by crumbling mullions and pockmarked wooden vigas ribbing the high ceilings?
Damn thing was twice as big as they really needed, even after getting everything out of storage. And he’d have to buy one of those John Deere monsters to mow the lawn. Still, he thought as he finally climbed out of the car, hearing the boys’ clear, pure laughter on the nippy breeze, this was a house that exuded serenity, the kind that comes from having seen it all and surviving. A house that begged for large dogs and swing sets and basketball hoops and loud, boisterous boys.
Troy walked over to inspect what turned out to be a loose, six-inch thick post on the porch, shaking his head. And, because he’d clearly lost his mind, smiling. The house needed him. Right now, a good thing.
A flimsy wooden screen door whined when he opened it, the floorboards creaking underfoot as he walked through the family room to check on the boys in the backyard. The French doors leading outside were suffocated underneath God-knew-how-many coats of white enamel paint; Troy dug his trusty Swiss Army knife out of his pocket and scratched through to the wood: maple. Maybe cherry. Pocketing the knife, he pushed the doors open, his lips curving at the sight of the kids chasing each other around and around the trees, their yells competing with doves’ coos, the occasional trill of a robin.
“You guys want pizza?” His voice echoed in the half-empty house, the emptiness inside him.
“Yeah!” they both hollered, running over, their faces flushed under messy, dirty hair. Find towels, he thought. Wash kids.
“C’n Karleen eat wif us?” Grady said, five times louder than necessary, and Troy thought, What? even as he stole a please-don’t-be-there glance at her yard.
“She probably has other plans, guys. You go back and play, I’ll call you when it gets here.”
God, kids, Troy thought as he tromped back into the house, thumbing through the phone book for the nearest pizza delivery. After ordering two larges—one cheese, one with everything—a salad and breadsticks, he soldiered on upstairs to the boys’ new room. Since it faced the back, he could work and still keep an ear out. Blake and Shaun had helped him set up the bunk bed, but the boxes of toys and clothes and heaven knew what else had clearly multiplied in the last two hours.
Shaking his head, he got to it, only to discover a couple boxes of his junk among the kids. After another glance out the window at the boys—huddled together underneath a nearby cottonwood, deep in some kind of twin conspiracy, no doubt—he stacked the boxes and carted them to his bedroom across the hall, no sooner dumping them on the floor at the foot of his (unmade) bed when his cell rang.
“Just called to see if you were settled in yet,” his mother said in his ear.
“In, yes,” he said, shoving one of the boxes into a corner with his foot. “Settled?” He glowered at the pile of boxes sitting in front of him, silently jeering. “By the time the boys graduate from high school, if I’m lucky.”
“Which is where a woman comes in handy. Although listen to me,” Eleanor Lindquist hurriedly added, as if realizing her gaffe, “I’ve still got unpacked boxes in the garage from when we moved in here when you were five! At this point, I think we’re just going to leave them for you and your brothers to ‘discover’ after we’re dead.”
“Can’t wait.”
Eleanor laughed softly, then said, “I’m sorry, Troy. About the woman comment—”
“It’s okay. Forget it.”
A brief pause preceded “Anyway. Your father and I are thinking about coming down there for a visit. In a couple of months, we thought.”
Troy stilled. “Oh?”
“We’ve always wanted to see the Southwest, you know—” News to him. “But we thought we might as well wait until you got your housing situation straightened out. Of course, we can certainly stay in a hotel if it’s inconvenient—”
“No! No, of course not, there’s plenty of room here.” Good one, Mom. “But…how’s Dad? Is he up to the trip?”
“Of course he’s up to the trip, it’s been more than five years, for goodness sake!”
The doorbell rang. Wow. Domino’s must be having a slow night. “Pizza guy’s at the door, I’ve got to run,” he said, digging his wallet out of his back pocket as he thundered down the stairs. “My best to Dad.” He clapped shut his phone and swung open the door, only to jump a foot at the sight of Karleen on his doorstep.
Bookended by a pair of slightly smudged, grinning, yellow-haired boys.
“Lose something?” she said.
Chapter Two
Troy allowed himself a quarter second’s worth of sexual awareness—the perfume alone was enough to make him light-headed—before the hindsight terror thing kicked in nicely and he grabbed two skinny little arms, yanking the bodies attached thereto across his threshold.
“What’s the big idea, leaving the yard? You know you’re not supposed to go anywhere without a grown-up! Ever,” he added before Scotty could snow him with the pouty lower lip.
“We didn’t cross the street or nothin’,” Grady said, his defiance trembling at the edges. “We only went to Karleen’s.”’
“Why on earth did you do that?”
“’Cause we wanted her to come over, only you said she prob’ly had plans. ’Cept she doesn’t. Huh?” Grady said, twisting around to look up at her.
“I am so sorry,” Troy said, following his son’s gaze, which was when it registered that Karleen was wearing one of those painted-on exercise outfits that left little to the imagination, and that her skin was flushed—From exercise? From being pissed?—and her lipstick was eaten off and she’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail, leaving all these soft little bits hanging around her face and her eyes huge underneath her bangs and—
“We were coming right back,” Scotty said softly, cruelly derailing Troy’s train of thought.
Kids. Right.
Troy straightened up, forking a hand through his hair. Giving them the Dad-is-not-amused face. “That’s not the point. You’re too little to be by yourselves, even for a minute.”
Grady’s little forehead crumpled. “Then how come you always tell us what big boys we are?”
“Yeah,” Scotty said, nodding, looking impossibly tiny and vulnerable. Not for the first time, responsibility walloped Troy square in the chest.
So he pointed a hopefully stern finger in their faces. “You’re not that big,” he said, just as a compact sedan with a Domino’s sign clamped to the roof screeched up in front of the house, and the kids started hopping around like grasshoppers, chanting, “Piz-za! Piz-za! Piz-za!”
“No, wait,” he said to Karleen as she made her getaway (he couldn’t imagine why), breathing an oddly relieved sigh when she stopped, biding her time while Troy paid the pizza guy. After the very well-tipped teen loped back toward his car, Troy focused again on Karleen. Her arms were crossed underneath her breasts, her lips curved in a Mona Lisa smile as she watched the boys. The sun had begun to go down in earnest, soft-edging the shadows, leaving a chill in its wake. He wondered if she was cold…
“Good Lord, honey…how long has it been?”
Troy’s head snapped up. “What?”
Bemusement danced in her eyes. “If you stare at my chest any harder, my bra’s gonna catch fire.”
“I—I’m sorry, I don’t usually…” He blew out a breath, his face hotter than the pizza. “I didn’t mean…” She laughed. Troy sighed again. “Okay, so maybe I did. But I’m not a letch, I swear.”
“Oh, don’t go gettin’ your boxers in a bunch. You’re just bein’a man, is all. No harm, no foul. It’s kinda cute, actually.”
Cute. Not exactly the image he was going for.
Oh, God. He was staring. Again. Not at her breasts, at least, but still.
“Uh…thanks for bringing the guys back,” he said, shifting the pizzas.
One eyebrow lifted. “I hadn’t exactly planned on keepin’ ’em.”
“More’s the pity,” Troy muttered, then shook his head. “Honestly, I have no idea what got into them, they’ve never gone off like that before. But you really are welcome to stay. If you haven’t eaten, I mean.” He hefted the two boxes, which he now realized were slowly melting his palms. And probably the salad on top. “There’s plenty. I’ll even promise to behave,” he said, remembering to smile.
Now it was apparently her turn to stare, in that thoroughly assessing way women had that made men feel about six. “So the boys really came all on their own? You didn’t send them over?”
Troy jerked. “What? No! Why would you think that?”
“Sorry. I just…” For one small moment, wisps of regret floated between them, only to spiral off into nothingness when she said, “Thanks for the offer, anyway. But I can’t.”
She pivoted and again started back toward her house.
Let her go, let her go…
“Another time?”
Karleen turned. “You’re not serious?”
“Well, yeah, actually I am.” What? “Was. I mean, we’re neighbors and everything…” He shrugged. Lamely.
“Yeah, well, it’s the and everything part of that sentence that worries me.”
“Figure of speech,” Troy muttered, fighting another blush. Bad at this didn’t even begin to cover it. “I promise, Karleen, I’m not coming on to you.”
“Well, no, you haven’t reached salivatin’ stage yet, maybe. But you are definitely coming on to me.”
Troy snagged the Really? before it got past his lips, then thought, Hey, maybe this is easier than I thought. Or maybe she is.
Then he remembered she was the one walking away.
“And…that would be inappropriate because you probably have a boyfriend or something.”
