Mackinnon 03 - The Bonus Mom (6 page)

Her fingertips sieved into his hair, then stroked the long muscles of his neck. He was so strong, his upper arms solid as a tree trunk. She’d always been strong and fit in her own right, but Whit was like an oak...where lately she’d felt as fragile as a reed.

She murmured, “The girls.”

Mentioning his daughters had no effect. Possibly if the girls showed up, appeared in the doorway, they’d both get a brain. Only the girls were nowhere in sight, and Whit was still kissing her.

He deserted her mouth, sank lips into her throat, her neck. His eyes were closed, as if the only thing in his sphere of attention was her. When he shifted, she felt his arousal graze against her, reminding her that this was no boy playing with flirtation and desire, but a grown man.

Definitely a grown man.

With a grown man’s needs...and a grown man’s earthy hunger. An appetite he seemed to definitely have....

For her.

“Whit...”

She was pretty sure he heard her this time. A hundred percent certain he’d stop if she asked him. Only he seemed to hear invitation in her voice instead of the warning she had in mind.

“Whit,” she tried again, and tipped her head to enable a kiss that started from her. Hell’s bells, if he was that determined to get into trouble, she might as well dive in deep water, too.

No one had wanted her—certainly not her ex-fiancé—the way Whit seemed to. She’d always picked good men, believed she had reasonably good taste in men. Only the good guys she’d picked in the past seemed to find her amazingly replaceable.

Not that she was pretending Whit could have serious feelings for her. They’d just met, for heaven’s sake. She’d always been a practical realist. She never thought for an instant that Whit was thinking about her in any kind of serious way. This was just a kiss.

A kiss that kept coming.

That kept building.

A kiss that wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t quell, wouldn’t behave.

Suddenly he lifted his head. His mouth was still damp, half open, and his hair was rumpled—from her hands—his face flushed. But a frown pinched his forehead. The first frown she’d seen on his face.

“Hey,” he said.

“That’s exactly what I was thinking. Hey.”

The frown eased. His gaze never left hers. He searched her face—owned her wet mouth, owned the shaky silvery look in her eyes. “I just wasn’t expecting...”

“Neither was I,” she said swiftly. “You don’t have to tell me. This just isn’t a good idea.”

Now he tilted his head, as if confused. “It’s not a good idea because?”

Her voice was soft, but she said the obvious. “Because your girls are grieving for their mom. Because you are. Because I wouldn’t want any of you worried even for a second that I thought I could take her place. Especially on a holiday, when she must be especially on all your minds.”

Again he looked perplexed. Then he brushed a rough thumb against the line of her jaw. “Rosemary. I was kissing you, not the wife I lost. I was thinking about you. Not her.”

She smiled. It was a nice thing to say. She didn’t believe him for a minute, but the kindness in his nature touched her, warmed her.

A loud shriek echoed from the living room, followed by a second one. As far as she could tell, the girls got along like two peas in a pod...until they didn’t.

She cast a rueful glance at Whit, and if her heart hadn’t been so scrambled, she might have chuckled. He was tucking in his shirt as fast as she was grabbing her jacket from the ground, straightening her sweater, raking a hand through his hair the same way she was trying to smooth down hers. He shot her a quick, stolen smile—how could she help not smiling back?

But then...that was it. One of the girls woke up, then the other; Whit gathered up their gear and in a matter of minutes, they were gone.

She rubbed her arms uneasily. The silence hit her the same way as when they’d left last time. She knew she was independent, comfortable alone...but now the quiet itched on her heart like a mosquito bite. The verdant Christmas tree filled her vision, and the scent of fresh pine brought back every loving Christmas memory she’d ever had.

She wanted family, a yearning so sharp it hurt sometimes. She didn’t want a marriage like her parents had—where work dominated both their lives more than family. But she and her brothers loved time together. They laughed, teased, supported and fought together. But more than anything they did, Rosemary felt safe with her brothers the way she’d never felt with outsiders.

That was what she wanted. A man she could be herself with. A man who wanted the kind of family she did—not perfect, not storybook, not pretend—but the real kind of family where you could let down your hair and always know, always, that they’d stand up for you.

From everything she’d seen so far...Whit was that kind of man. He couldn’t be the kind of father she’d seen if he weren’t that kind of man. But he must have deeply, hugely loved his wife to be that kind of man as well—and a strange woman in the picture of this specific Christmas was just totally wrong.

So there’d been a kiss.

Okay, more than a kiss.

Okay, a whole lot more than a kiss—at least for her.

But she could put it out of her mind. For their sakes.

* * *

Whit was on his second mug of coffee when the girls woke up. Typical of a Saturday morning, Lilly sprang awake at gallop speed to greet the day...where Pepper slouched into the kitchen with a yawn and a scowl, daring anyone to speak to her before she’d had her favorite cereal and a banana.

He’d woken before dawn, found himself staring out the window, waiting for the sun to come up, replaying that embrace with Rosemary over and over in his mind.

Maybe he’d liked her on sight, but he’d never expected Armageddon or the Clash of Titans emanating from a first kiss. But it had. It troubled him that Rosemary clearly believed he was pining for his wife...the truth was more complex than that, and probably not a truth that he knew how to share. He’d never tried putting words to his feelings. Certainly not with a woman he barely knew.

But it festered more why she was living like a hermit, what exactly her damn fool fiancé had done that was so profound she’d shut herself away. He assumed the jerk had cheated on her...wasn’t that the conclusion most people would leap to? And some guys just had roving eyes, a screw loose that way that nothing seemed to fix.

Still, Whit couldn’t fathom how a guy would ever cheat on a woman with so much heart and passion. It didn’t make sense.

All he really knew was that she’d obviously been badly hurt. And that he didn’t want to add to that hurt.

“Dad?” Lilly poured a heaping bowl of cereal, no milk, and sat on her legs the way she always did. “What are we going to do today?”

“I figured we’d do some tree decorating. At least a little later.”

“With what? We didn’t bring any ornaments.”

“I looked up some old traditions on the Net. We could string popcorn. And cranberries. Decorate with stuff like that. I also thought...how about if we make cookies? Starting with oatmeal raisin, your mom’s favorite.”

Pepper dropped her spoon and stared at him. Lilly raised the same stricken eyes her sister had.

“I didn’t mean we had to do your mom’s favorite,” Whit said hastily. “I just figured you’d like making cookies. Lilly, you love—”

“Double chocolate chip.”

Which he knew. “And Pepper—”

“My favorite’s oatmeal raisin. Like Mom’s.”

Another silence fell with a clunk. No one seemed able to fill it.

Whit tried. “What about those cookies that are just plain? You know where you put the frosting on and sprinkles, like that.”

“Those are sugar cookies, Dad.” Lilly used her patient voice. The kind both eleven-year-old girls had opted to use with him for some time now. “And yeah, we could make those.”

Thank God for Lilly. He wasn’t sure if he was going to survive the girls’ coming adolescence, but Lilly tended to say an exuberant yes to most ideas.

Pepper played with her cereal. “Are we really not going to do presents this year?”

Whit hated to answer. She hadn’t taken off her first-of-the-morning scowl yet. “I thought we all agreed that this year—just this year—we’d do presents in a different way. Just buy some things that we could do together. Like games. Or an ice cream maker. I’d pop for new bikes—”

“What about cell phones?” Pepper piped in.

“No new cell phones. You have a cell phone.”

“But we don’t
both
have cell phones. And the one we have is boring. It doesn’t
do
anything.”

“Except call home in an emergency,” Whit agreed.

“Dad! That’s like what you have when you’re six years old. We’re way past that now.”

“I know you both feel that way.” Sometimes Whit had the worrisome feeling of being the mouse cornered by two cats. “But a lot of the new technology that costs a ton...we can’t do all of it. So some of the fancy stuff, you have to be old enough to work, to earn some money yourselves, rather than count on me to pay for it.”

Pepper opened her mouth to argue—this argument had been building for months now—but Lilly intervened, her voice careful and quiet.

“Dad, I think your idea about an ice cream maker is way awesome. But still. I don’t want to wake up Christmas morning with no presents, no surprises at all. Pepper and I like different things these days. We
need
different things these days.”

“If you really need something, just tell me. That doesn’t have to be about Christmas. I’m pretty sure we can always find a way to do something you really need.”

Lilly’s lip started to tremble, which meant her emotions were threatening to get away from her, but she obviously had something she wanted to say. “Even before Mom died, we were talking about redoing our room. Or using the study, so we could both have our own rooms. Pepper still wants purple, but I don’t. I want blue. I could paint it myself.”

Whit didn’t have tics. But sometimes he felt like he could easily develop a few when his daughters tossed him in quicksand and he had no rule book about how to get out. “I don’t have a problem with your having separate rooms. I didn’t know about that. But that has nothing to do with Christmas.”

“But it would have. If Mom were here. Because it’d be about coordinating colors of bedspreads and rugs and stuff on the wall. Figuring it out, then doing it together. And shoes. And my school jacket...it’s just gorpy now.”

“Gorpy,” Whit echoed carefully.

“I’m not mad at you or anything,” Lilly said. “But you just don’t understand.”

“I’m trying, honey—”

Too late. Her face had scrunched up, tight and red, the way it did when she was trying hard—too hard—not to cry. She bolted from the chair and ran upstairs before he could try to talk her down.

Pepper ducked her head, mainlined the cereal.

All he could think was that he was way, way over his head. He’d chosen the holiday away so they wouldn’t be so constantly reminded of their mom. But nothing ever seemed simple with the twins. It wasn’t just their mom they’d lost. But a woman in their lives. A grownup female’s influence.

He could buy fifty ice cream makers and he still couldn’t come through the way they needed sometimes. Bedspreads? How was he supposed to make getting a bedspread—a color coordinated bedspread—something he could do with his daughters?

He could probably do it.

Hell, he could probably volunteer for a root canal, if it was something good for his girls.

But hell’s bells. Sometimes talking with them was like translating a language from New Guinea.

He needed help.

Chapter Five

Y
ears ago, Rosemary had discovered that one of the best places to hide out was a darkroom—figuratively and literally. She wasn’t thinking about Whit when she turned out the lights. Or her ex. Or Christmas. Or anything else but her work.

The photograph slowly clarifying in the tray was never going to make National Geographic quality, but that couldn’t be helped. She remembered taking it; she’d been deep in the woods, on her stomach, in a pouring rain last summer when she spotted the orchid.

From the far room, she heard the landline ring. She ignored it. She couldn’t answer either her cell phone or the lodge’s landline when she was in the darkroom. Months before, she’d rigged up an answering device in the darkroom so she could catch messages, but there was no way she could reply without risking the work.

Muddy-browns gradually cleared. Background greens gradually sharpened. Raindrops on the camera lens hurt the picture—but still, there she was. A tiny pale yellowish flower, with an even tinier white lip.

The species was the small whorled pogonia—a treasure because she was probably the rarest orchid in the eastern U.S. Finding her had been sheer, wonderful luck. The word
orchid
came from the Greek
orchis,
which meant testicle, not that Rosemary mentioned that particularly often in public. The point, though, was that particular shape was a key to identifying species that had orchid characteristics. Like this bitsy whorled pogonia...

The speaker in the corner of the wall registered the answering machine going on, then a hang up.

She returned to developing her baby. Some people called the plant “little five-fingers.” If she hadn’t found it flowering in late June, likely she’d never have spotted it ever. She wasn’t that pretty, but she was
so
unique, and these days, so close to complete extinction.

The telephone rang again. She ignored it again.

Analyzing the testicle shape as the photograph developed to its clearest potential, was not, perhaps, the best way to keep her mind on serious subjects. Not that she was particularly interested in testicles. Or that she ever spent time thinking about testicles, for that matter.

But they were, after all, boy parts. And analyzing boy parts inevitably made her think of the human kind—not that she’d ever wasted daydreaming hours wondering about men’s apparatus. Or that she’d ever spent time thinking about an individual man’s apparatus, either.

But Whit, she couldn’t help but remember, had expressed an inordinate amount of enthusiasm, pressed against her. That moment kept ripping through her consciousness. Feeling his arousal. The sudden thrill, the sudden sense of danger sending blood shooting up and down her pulse.

And there was his voice on the answering system. “I hung up a moment ago, Rosemary. It’s me, Whit. I figured you’re busy if you can’t answer, and that’s all right. Just need to leave a message. Here’s the thing.”

He cleared his throat.

Then cleared his throat again.

She lifted the soaking photo from the tray, hung it up with clothespins, tried not to breathe. When he said nothing else, she wasn’t certain if he’d hung up or if she couldn’t hear him—or if something else was wrong.

But he finally spoke again. “Okay, here’s the truth. I’m in trouble. I wasn’t going to call you this quickly after yesterday. I was afraid I may have overstepped some boundaries. I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. But this is different. I’m not kidding about being in trouble. Terrible trouble.”

Again, he cleared his throat.

“It’s the girls. It’s about trying to have a Christmas and my goofing it all up. And somehow it’s become about comforters or bedspreads or color coordinating or something like that. The twins...I’m used to them double-teaming me. But when they both completely confuse me, I just plain don’t know how to dig my way out.”

She couldn’t answer the phone, still couldn’t leave the darkroom, but the first smile came on strong, then a chuckle.

“I guess this is about shopping. Look. I won’t do anything, won’t say anything, won’t touch even your hand, nothing. This is nothing about...that. But I’d pay you. A mortgage on your real house? A ruby or emerald or something? If you’d please go to Greenville with us tomorrow. I guess we could go to Traveler’s Rest, but the girls seem to think we need to shop where there are more choices. Please. Please, Rosemary. I’m groveling. I’m desperate. I’m scared out of my skull. I can do teenage bras if and when I have to. But I can’t color coordinate. I don’t even get what that means. Please don’t make me do this alone.”

She wasn’t sure whether he severed the call or her answering machine quit recording. Either way, he was off the line—and she let out a burst of a laugh.

Maybe if she could quit thinking of him as a lover, she could just enjoy what he had to offer. A friend. A caring dad with two daughters alone on a special holiday. Someone to have fun with. Someone to help him with the girls.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t have the free time...or didn’t enjoy them all.

She just had to be careful about Whit. And she could do that.

Somehow she’d find a way to do that.

* * *

When Whit’s SUV showed up the next morning, Rosemary dashed out. She opened the door, took one look at the expression on the two girls’ faces and quickly glanced at Whit.

“Save me,” he mouthed.

She popped into the front seat, and opened a travel tote that was filled to bursting. “I brought catalogs,” she told Lilly and Pepper. “So each of you could look through them, give me some idea about what you like and don’t like.”

As she latched her seat belt, she added to Whit, “Could you give me a general price range?”

He looked at her with the same trapped expression. “Whatever they want?”

She rolled her eyes, turned to the girls. “Where did your mom usually shop for clothes? Things around the house? Shoes?”

Neither had a problem answering the question, but Pepper came through with the most detail. “Mom liked to go on a shopping trip a couple times of year. She’d go to Atlanta or Dallas or like that. She liked Neiman Marcus. And Saks. Places like that.”

She shot a startled look at Whit. She’d never envisioned his wife as being fancy and status-driven that way. “And those kinds of prices are okay with you?” she asked carefully.

“Is there something wrong?”

“No, not at all.” Except that he was an earthy guy who worked with his hands and loved diving into projects headfirst. And the girls were describing a mom who was a dry-clean-only type of formal lady. She turned back to the girls. “We don’t think we have any of those stores in Greenville, but there are still a ton of places to shop. In the meantime, I painted several rooms in the lodge when I moved there last June. Being me, I couldn’t make up my mind, so I collected somewhere around five million paint swatches. So...”

Paint swatches came from the bottomless travel tote and were distributed to the backseat.

“You don’t have to pick just one color. Pick, like, four or five. If you like blues, they don’t have to be all blue. But I want you to choose colors that...well, that make you happy. Colors that you’d like to wake up to every morning. And then...”

She turned halfway, to include Whit in the conversation. “Then, I had another idea. If no one likes it, no problem. But possibly you might want to put up composite board or peg board or cork or something like that for one wall. That way, they’d have a place where they could hang their favorite rock stars or pictures or phone numbers or whatever they wanted. But they could also take down stuff and put up new without damaging the walls.”

“Yeah! That’s an awesome idea,” Pepper said.

“I like it, too,” Lilly agreed. The girls looked at each other as if astonished they’d agreed on anything—at least that day.

When Lilly handed back her choice of paint sample cards, they were all in blues and greens. Rosemary pushed her into a little more brainstorming. “Okay, is there something that you’d like to do with these colors? Such as...well, blues and greens make me think of water. The sea. Or I can imagine patterns of blues and greens—in paisley? Dots? Stripes? Paint swirls?”

When it was Pepper’s turn, her choices were all violent oranges and reds. “Hmm, so you’re not thinking restful. You like pops of color, right? So, we might find a comforter with red on one side, orange on the other. Or a bedspread with those colors in a pattern. Or...we could do white walls, with massive circles of orange and red.... Or do one wall orange, one red, then have white rugs, a white spread...?”

“Yeah, yeah!” If Pepper wasn’t wearing a seat belt, she’d have been bouncing off the roof with excitement.

Rosemary felt Whit shoot her a sudden odd look—she wasn’t sure why. So far, the trip seemed to be going far more smoothly than she’d thought at first glance. The girls had started out looking so huffy with each other, but they’d warmed up almost right away. She’d felt...well, not like a playmate with the eleven-year-olds. But not like a mother. More like an aunt—an aunt who didn’t have to discipline or set rules or responsibilities. She could just...be with them. Be an adult female in their lives. Not intrude in any way that could hurt anyone.

She just had to be careful not to hurt Whit the same way.

She had no way to say anything private to him for quite a while. All roads were crowded with holiday traffic, and once they were inside the Greenville city limits, the congestion quadrupled.

Downtown Greenville, typically, was decorated within an inch of its life. Charity Santas rang bells at every corner. Lights sparkled in every doorway, on every tree; wreaths with red bows blessed every window. People hustled and bustled, frantic to get their last-minute shopping done. Whit likely found the last parking space in the county, and he’d barely locked the car before the girls cavorted ahead.

Rosemary stuck her hands in her pockets and snugged next to him—not hip-bumping close—but near enough so he could hear her.

“Okay, before I worry it to death—how much of an apology do I owe you?” she asked.

“Apology? For what?” He did a good job of looking confused.

“I can go overboard. I know it. The thing is, I spent so much time with my two brothers that when I finally get around female company...well, I just really love some plain old girl time.”

“You mean, like when the three of you were all talking at once and asking and answering questions at the same time?”

She grinned. “Yeah. Exactly that. And what a great definition for girl talk. But...honestly, I didn’t mean to get carried away. I know you didn’t want a commercial type of Christmas....”

“Are you kidding? Rosemary, I don’t care what kind of Christmas we have, as long as the girls do something that doesn’t make them sad. Besides, this whole business of redoing their bedrooms...I couldn’t be happier you’re doing this. For the past year, they stopped wearing the same clothes, stopped brushing their hair exactly the same way. I think it’s a good thing, that they want their own sense of identity. I just didn’t have a clue how to do the room thing. It just started coming up last year, around when their mom died.”

“Still...”

“Still?”

“Well, I bumbled right into trouble—completely forgot to ask you ahead what you might want to budget for this, or how far you wanted me to go. When the girls mentioned Saks, I almost had a stroke.”

“Because?”

She lifted her shoulders. “My parents made good money, even what most people would call darned good money. We never wanted for anything. But my mom used to say that if you wanted sheets more expensive than Penney’s, you needed your head examined. We were a really busy family. Too busy to be dedicated consumers, I guess. But if your girls are used to shopping by brand, or by what’s an ‘awesome’ brand...I probably won’t know names like that.”

He stopped dead, which she didn’t realize until she glanced up and found him several steps behind her. He was staring at her so intently that she felt a flush—not outside, but inside—warm from her toes on up. “What?” she asked.

“Their mother was all about brands. Status. Appearance. Those things were important to her. I never put down Zoe in front of them, and never intend to. They loved her. She was devoted to them.” He hesitated, and just as he started to say something else, the girls abruptly turned around and galloped back to them.

They spotted the first store they wanted to shop in.

The shopping adventure only took three hours...really, they all wanted to continue a little longer, but Whit started looking glassy-eyed and a little bit shell-shocked. Weak pulse, gray, lack of ability to focus. Rosemary may not have chosen a medical profession, but she’d seen men walking in malls before. The symptoms of an impending panic attack were unmistakable.

“Can we go home now? Are we done?” he asked after the last purchase, which happened to be a quilt that Pepper fell for hook, line and sinker.

“I love it, I love it, I love it!” Pepper crowed. “It’s way better than a comforter or a bedspread. It’s all the colors I totally love—!”

“Can we drive home now?” Whit repeated, his voice the weakest of the four exchanging conversation.

She patted his hand, which couldn’t conceivably be construed as a sexual gesture. “You did very, very well.”

“Why isn’t shopping recognized as an Olympic sport? Like triathlons or steeplechasing? You know, the kind of sport where you go through intensive training before you have to compete. The kind where you have to have proven athletic abilities to even survive. You three could all bring home medals.” He added, “Could I lay down on the pavement now? I can’t make it another step.”

“You’re so funny, Dad.” Lilly crowded him with a massive hug on one side, Pepper on the other.

“Maybe the military could hire you three. The Marines are always looking for a few good men, but I suspect they’ve never met shoppers of your caliber.

“You could probably overthrow a country or two and still have energy left over.”

“You’d better sit in the back with us, Rosemary. Trust us. He won’t let up.” This was whispered loudly from Pepper.