Dear Cupid (10 page)

“
DO
you speak Spanish?” a desperate voice asked the minute Kate picked up the phone.

“What?” She thought she recognized the voice as Mike’s, but couldn’t quite imagine him being this rattled.

“Please tell me you speak Spanish,” the voice begged. “Or at least tell me you know where to find your friend’s husband.”

“Who, Jim?” she asked, glancing at her watch. How had three o’clock arrived so quickly? She couldn’t believe she’d worked at the computer all day and accomplished so little. “Isn’t he at your house? I thought they were going to start tearing out your wall today.”

“They are. They did! That’s the problem. No, stop!” he shouted to someone else. “Don’t touch that. Don’t touch anything! Kate,” he said into the receiver. “I need you. Now. Get over here.”

With that, he hung up. She frowned at the dial tone coming from the handset, then glanced once more at her watch. As frantic as Mike sounded, he’d simply have to wait until she picked Dylan up from school. This late in the afternoon, she didn’t even have time to change out of the baggy tank top and elastic-waist shorts she frequently wore when working at home. She just grabbed her purse, slipped on some sandals, and dashed out the door.

In the car, she did at least take the plastic clip out of her hair then swipe on mascara and lipstick. She felt a little foolish for caring how she looked to Mike, but then a woman with red eyelashes and pale skin had no business being seen in public with a naked face.

All thoughts of Mike vanished, however, when she pulled into the circular drive of Lake Travis Elementary. Dylan sat on the front steps with his backpack lying forgotten between his feet and his chin resting in both hands. All around him, children jumped and hollered as they dashed for parents’ cars or fell into lines for the various after-school daycare shuttles. Her heart twisted a little when Dylan spotted her and rose slowly. With shoelaces dragging, he made his way to her car.

“Hi, sweetheart” She forced a smile as he climbed into the backseat “How was your day?”

“Okay,” he mumbled so low she could barely hear. After he dutifully fastened his seat belt, she eased the car back into the long line of vehicles waiting to exit the circular drive. “Care to tell me about it?”

“ ‘Bout what?”

She glanced in the rearview mirror. “Whatever put that frown on your face.”

He shrugged and turned toward the window.

Okay
, she thought and suppressed the urge to question him further, or worse, stop and pull him into her arms and smother him with motherly affection. She wondered what childish insult he’d suffered this time. Being so much smaller, paler, and more awkward than other boys his age made him a natural target for ridicule. Life could be so cruel to those who most needed kindness.

“What would you think about stopping at Hamburger Haven for some fries and a Coke on the way home?” she asked, hoping to brighten his mood.

He shrugged again.

“Only one catch,” she added. “I need to run by my client’s house in Lakeway first. I think there might be a problem with Jim’s crew.”

That finally got Dylan’s attention. “Will Jim be there?”

Her heart sank at the hopeful spark in her son’s eyes. While Jim made a great substitute dad, be wasn’t Dylan’s father and never would be. “I don’t think so, honey, which may be the problem.” Dylan looked so dejected, she quickly added, “But, who knows. He might be there.”

That hope died when she pulled into Mike’s driveway and found no sign of Jim’s truck. Climbing from the car, she heard Mike’s voice as he shouted orders in stilted English. Even with the front door standing wide open, his voice sounded muffled, and a strange, pink haze drifted from the house.

“Sweetie,” she said to Dylan when they reached the protection of the overhang by the front door, “can you wait for me here?”

Dylan nodded, his eyes going round at a stream of colorful language coming from within the house.

Cautiously, she stepped over the threshold and into a cloud of pink and white dust. Covering her mouth, she moved into the living room and her jaw dropped. While the ceiling in the main room remained intact, a whole section of ceiling in the kitchen had fallen, scattering chunks of white gypsum and pink insulation over the cabinets, floor, and the four construction workers standing beneath it. With white filters covering their mouths, they worked to brace what remained of the ceiling with two-by-fours.

“Good heavens,” she breathed through her fingers.

Mike whirled at the sound of her voice, a red bandana tied over his mouth and nose. The eyes above it filled with relief. “Thank God you’re here!”

“What happened?” she asked, her voice as muffled as his.

“What does it look like happened?” He flung an arm out to encompass the debris that littered the kitchen. “These morons tore down a bearing wall.”

“No, that can’t be,” she said, trying to keep one eye on Dylan and survey the damage at the same time. “Jim and I discussed it. He assured me the ceiling joists in the kitchen ran the other way.”

“Well, something sure as hell went wrong.”

“Where’s Jim?” she asked.

“A damned good question.” Mike raked a hand through his hair. Pink and white dust drifted to the shoulders of his Eagles reunion T-shirt. “He comes in here, rattles off a bunch of Spanish to these guys, then tells me not to worry about a thing, they’ll be out of here in a few hours. So I go downstairs to get some work done. The next thing I know, I hear these idiots shouting, so I run upstairs—and find this!”

Kate turned to the men who had just finished securing the two-by-fours. “Where is Jim?” They stared back at her, blank-faced. She tried again, using some of the limited Tex-Mex she knew.
“¿Dónde está el jefe?”

This time she got a flood of response, none of which she understood. “Wait. Slow down. 
No comprendo
.”

One of the men said,
“El jefe está en la casa en el campo de golf.”
He made a motion with his body like a golfer hitting a tee shot.

“He went to play golf!” Mike hollered. “I’m going to kill him. I swear to God, the man is dead.”

“No, wait.” Kate waved a hand at him. “I think he said that Jim is at the house he’s remodeling over by the golf course.” At least she hoped that’s where he was, or she’d help Mike kill him.

Mike’s eyes glazed over as he stared at the gaping hole in his ceiling. “I can’t deal with this right now. I have to finish inputting my wire-frame data. And the alliance wants me to help with the final plans for the party tomorrow night.”

“It’s okay,” she placated. “Why don’t you go on downstairs and let me take care of this.”

After a bit more persuasion and soothing, he handed over his bandana and went back to his lair. 
Jeez
, Kate thought, as she secured the makeshift mask into place.
What a mess
. At least Mike had managed to get them to brace what remained of the ceiling before the entire thing caved in. Now for the cleanup.

Turning to the workers, she motioned toward the chunks of gypsum that littered the floor. “We need to clean—I mean,
limpia, por favor
. No in
casa
. Outside.” She racked her brain for the Spanish word for outside.
Afuera!
She pointed toward the front door. “Move all this—
esto
—
afuera
.”

To her relief, the workers began picking up bits of debris and carrying it out onto the driveway. As for the pink fiberglass insulation, it would likely take days for all of it to settle. After asking Dylan to wait right where he was, she called Jim’s mobile number.

“We’re sorry,” a recording said. “The party you are trying to reach is not available at this time.”  Which probably meant Jim had once again forgotten to recharge the battery.

Grinding her teeth, she called Linda.

“Wife for Hire, Linda speaking.”

“Thank heavens you’re there,” Kate breathed through the bandana. “I’m over at Mike Cameron’s house and we have a major catastrophe on our hands.” After hearing the situation, Linda promised to hunt Jim down and send him over.

Kate hung up and looked about her. This whole mess was her fault. She’d wanted to make Mike pay for a threat that hadn’t even been real. Now it looked like she and Jim would be the ones paying, in a very real, monetary sense. Well, nothing to do but clean up the mess.

As she bent to pick up some of the debris, she saw Dylan hurry toward her without even a hand covering his mouth. “No, honey, stay back.”

“But I can help,” he said.

“Dylan, no, it’s too dusty in here.” Lord knew what fiberglass would do to his lungs. Yet she couldn’t very well expect him to stand in the doorway forever. “Come sit over here on the steps.” She led him to the stairs by the foyer, well away from the kitchen and near the fresh air that came through the open door. “Hold your T-shirt over your mouth and nose. Can you do that for Mommy?”

“You never let me do anything!”  he protested.  “I’m not a baby, you know.”

“I know that, Dylan,” she sighed. “But all this dust is bad for your lungs. Do you really want another trip to the hospital?”

Muttering under his breath, he stomped over to the stairs and sat with his back to her as he pulled the neck of his T-shirt over his mouth and nose. At times like these, he made her feel like the world’s meanest mother. What choice did she have, though?

With a sigh, she gathered chunks of drywall and headed outside to dump them on the growing pile. By the second trip, a trickle of sweat had formed between her breasts. She picked at the front of her tank top in an effort to cool her skin, then returned to work.

~ ~ ~

Mike sat staring at his computer screen. He’d never considered himself a man who cared about material things, but the thought of the mess upstairs made him so mad he couldn’t see straight. He tried to tell himself  it was just a house; it could be fixed. Only, a house meant a lot more than just walls and a roof.

The house he’d grown up in certainly wasn’t as nice as this place. And yet, when he thought of that clapboard structure in the hills of Santa Monica, he didn’t think of the cracked driveway or the peeling paint. He thought of all the years of living that filled the rooms, the sound of sitcoms playing on the old TV in the living room, and the smell of his mom’s chocolate-chip cookies baking in the stove she’d complained about for years. He remembered her tears the day his dad had surprised her with a brand-new Kenmore stove; and he could still hear the sound of his sisters’ voices coming from the one bathroom the four of them shared. He’d listened in fascination over the years as they talked about everything from boys to the mysteries of makeup.

But most of all, he remembered the back deck that overlooked the ocean. How many nights had all of them sat on that deck with hamburgers sizzling on the grill as the fiery ball of the sun melted into the shimmering water? The day the real estate agent had shown him this house on Challenger Drive, the sun had been setting just like that over Lake Travis. He’d walked out onto the deck, looked across the water, and known this was the house where he wanted to raise a family of his own. He’d known it the same way he’d known that Kate was the woman he wanted to raise that family with. He’d just known.

Only Kate had knocked a giant hole in the middle of their house.

Before that thought could make him even madder, he tried again to concentrate on his work. He’d received approval on his sketches that morning, but wanted to get some more input from the special-effects supervisor before he started creating the skin that would cover the wire frame of the robot. Signing onto the studio’s site, he entered his password so he could transfer a file.

Behind him, something crashed to the floor. He bolted out of his chair and whirled to find a boy standing by the built-in bookshelves. A spaceship model from the first
Star Wars
film he’d worked on lay at the kid’s feet

“Holy shit!” He stared in disbelief at the broken pieces on the floor.

“I didn’t do it!” the boy said frantically, his blue eyes wide with fear.

“The hell you didn’t,” Mike snapped as he came forward to inspect the gift that George Lucas had presented to him at the end of their first project together. The boy stumbled backward.

Mike drew up short, realizing he’d frightened the pint-sized intruder. Only, how had a kid gotten into his workroom in the first place?  “Look, it’s okay. I’m not going to hit you or anything.”  He bent down and retrieved the model. Relief went through him as he saw the break was clean. A little glue and some paint, and no one would ever know.

“I didn’t touch it,” the boy insisted. “It was just sitting there, right on the edge, and it just fell all on its own. Honest!”

Mike gave him a narrowed look. “All on its own, eh?”

“I’m not lying!” Red flooded the boy’s cheeks. “It’s just a stupid toy, anyway.”

“It’s not a toy,” Mike corrected as he wondered again who the kid was and how he’d gotten into his house. “What’s your name?”