The Red Hat Society's Domestic Goddess (12 page)

“Don’t start that again,” she warned Theresa and Kim.

“But it’s so fitting,” Kim insisted.

She ignored her friends’ teasing, and walked over to check on her boys’ efforts. Grounds swam in the nearly clear water streaming
into the pot. “You guys need serious help,” she said, sighing. “That’s why we decided the class would meet twice a week.”

“Mom, I never know when I’ll get sent out of town,” Mitchell began his argument, until she gave him her most beseeching look
and a sideward glance toward his brother. “But I’ll see what I can do.”

“If he’s not going, I’m not going,” Steven said. Despite his deep voice, it was an echo of a thirty-year-old argument started
when they were toddlers.

“I’ll be here,” Mitchell vowed, a muscle ticking in his jaw, as he ground out the words.

“So what happened with the coffee?” Millie asked, lifting the cover on the top of the maker. Her answer was a torn filter,
undoubtedly a casualty of their wrestling. “Start over. And no fighting this time.”

With a sigh she moved throughout the students, getting to know the men their Red Hat chapterettes had signed up for class.
There were a couple of sons, not quite as inept as her own, a nephew, and two husbands whose wives had tired of waiting on
them. Like Mitchell, Steven, and Wally, they had been coerced to join, but unlike them, they seemed willing to make the best
of it.

Only two men had willingly signed up: Mr. Lindstrom and Charles. Kim was helping Mr. Lindstrom, who had yet to get the grounds
into the filter, he was shaking so badly. She doubted it was due to his age or a
medical condition; it was more likely Kim’s fault for standing so close to the little old man. Instead of looking at the coffeepot,
he was totally focused on the part of Kim that was directly at his eye level due to her height and his lack. Not only was
he a little old man but a dirty one, too.

Charles caught the amused smile Millie tried to hide and returned it. His coffee brewed, he poured a cup. “Care to inspect
it?”

She glanced around, looking for his workstation partner. But Wally stood near Theresa by the sink. Apparently she was already
giving him a cleaning lesson.

So Millie took the cup from Charles’s fingers, careful not to shake like Mr. Lindstrom and burn either of them. She inhaled
the rich aroma, then admired the dark color. “You’ve done this before.”

“I told you I was a bachelor a long time. I wouldn’t have survived without coffee.” His blue eyes held a trace of smugness.

“You could have bought it in the gas station like my son Mitchell does,” she said, turning back to check on her boys, who
were once again wrestling over the filter.

Maybe making them pair up had been a bad idea. As Steven poured coffee into the maker, Mitchell knocked his elbow, sending
grounds flying across the counter and the white tiled floor.

“Those are your sons?”

She bit her lip and considered denying it… for a moment. “Yeah, they’re mine.”

“Wally said the oldest is why you wanted to start this class.”

Now she knew what he and Wally had been discussing earlier. Her. Her heart did that giddy little flip.

“Yes. I hope his wife hears about it.” If Steven would stop being so stubborn and call her. “And she’ll realize that he’s
making an effort.” But as she glanced back, the only effort Steven was making now was getting grounds into his younger brother’s
shirtfront. When she turned back to Charles, she caught his amused grin, and her mother’s pride bristled. Sharing amusement
over Mr. Lindstrom’s crush on Kim was all right, but her sons’ childish ineptitude was no laughing matter.

“If my brother were in this class, I might act the same way,” Charles assured her with his soft eyes. The blue was even brighter
tonight, probably due to the blue polo shirt he wore with his jeans.

“You have a brother?” It was nice to know that he had family. Millie had grown up an only child, so she’d been grateful her
sons had a sibling. Until tonight.

He nodded, then said, “When you were over the other night, you just missed my—”

Whatever he’d been about to say was lost as Theresa launched into lesson two of the evening’s class: kitchen cleanup. Her
instructions were given, pointedly, to Wally, as they stood shoulder to shoulder at the sink.

Forever the referee, Millie rushed up next to her. “We’ll hold off on a complete cleanup until after the cooking lesson.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed the coffee scattered around her sons’ work area. “But we do need to pick up any
spilled grounds. They’re not going to be very good flavoring if they get into the eggs. Dampen a paper towel.”

She resisted the urge to personally address Steven and Mitchell. Barely. She sufficed with a mom-means-business glare directed
their way instead. “That works best to get up all the grounds.”

Her glare must have gotten her point across that the boys
best
clean up, because they didn’t fight over who had to handle that detail; they both dampened paper towels and picked up their
mess. She had a sorry feeling that it might have been the first time for both of them.

“What a neat trick,” she heard one of the guys say. She shared a quick, commiserating glance with Theresa. Kim was still helping
Mr. Lindstrom. What women considered common sense men considered a trick.

“I guess we really are from other planets,” Theresa commented, a little bitterly.

Before she could get testy with Wally again, Millie started the cooking lesson. She quickly demonstrated how to scramble and
fry eggs. Best to hold off on the Red Hat Society recipes until the students learned the basics. “All the stuff you need is
at your workstation.”

“For those of you watching your cholesterol, wisely,” Kim spoke out, startling Mr. Lindstrom, “you can substitute egg beaters.
I set those out, too.”

Theresa grumbled out some smart retort, but Mr. Lindstrom’s hearing aid screeched too loudly for Kim to hear the disparaging
comment, and pick up where the two women had left off on their earlier argument. Millie silently thanked Mr. Lindstrom’s hearing
aid for running interference.

As she watched the students whisk broken eggshells in their eggs, Millie wished they would have used the
egg beaters instead. Maybe she had gone too quickly with the instructions because she was disappointed with most of the students’
efforts. Although his coffee had been good, Charles’s eggs were burnt on the edges and raw in the middle. As for her sons,
they’d cooked more of the shell than the yolks.

After all the students had filed out, she confessed her fears to her friends. Well, some of her fears. She didn’t share the
ones she harbored over her sons leaving in deep conversation with Charles.

She embarrassed herself enough on her own; she didn’t need their help. But she needed her friends.

“That didn’t go well,” she said with an exhausted sigh, as she hoisted her weary body onto a stool at the cluttered counter.

Theresa shrugged, as she checked over the pans the students were supposed to have cleaned. Still operating at top speed, she
vigorously scrubbed at a spot. “At least they showed up.”

Kim nodded, as she reached for a towel and the pan Theresa held out. “That’s the most important thing. You can’t expect miracles
with the first class, Millie. It’s going to take time.”

“Good thing we increased the number of classes a week.” Every precious minute of class time was necessary to get their students
to be self-sufficient in the kitchen. She doubted there was a domestic goddess in the bunch.

She really was an endangered species.

“You’re right,” she agreed with Kim, trying to summon
the energy to help her friends with cleanup. She slid off the stool. “It’s just going to take time.”

Time she hoped they had. “Audrey has to understand that Steven won’t catch onto everything overnight. She has to at least
appreciate that he’s trying. This
is
going to work.”

Because it had to… her son’s marriage couldn’t end in divorce. Not only would it leave him heartbroken, it might leave him
living with Millie for the rest of her life.

Chapter Eight

“No matter how lovesick a woman is, she shouldn’t take the first pill that comes along.”

—
Dr. Joyce Brothers

K
im eased into a Downward-Facing Dog pose, stretching the muscles in her arms and calves as she leaned forward. Her feet and
palms pressed against the yoga mat lying on the carpeted floor of the family room in her walkout basement. In the darkened
glass, her contorted body, clad in a black leotard, reflected back into the room.

Tension drained from her neck, as she hung her head and breathed deeply. She wished all her concerns would drain away, but
she was too worried about Millie. Her friend was so hopeful that their new classes would cure all the problems in her son’s
marriage. Although Kim had never gone through with a wedding, she had a feeling that curing Steven’s marital woes would take
more than a pot of coffee and some scrambled eggs, especially if he didn’t put forth any more effort than he and his
brother had tonight. Like she’d told her friend, it would take time for them to learn, but they also had to
want
to learn.

But would learning some domestic skills be enough to get Steven moved back in with his wife? Kim worried that it wouldn’t
be and that Millie would be crushed.

Something soft and furry brushed against Kim’s arm as a tiger-striped gray tail tickled her cheek. “Go away,” she said, gritting
her teeth so her lips wouldn’t twitch.

The cat purred and rubbed against her arm again. Kim would have shoved it away, but she had to hold her pose for five minutes.
So she endured the animal “petting” her. Then it suddenly tensed, its hair lifting along its back and neck, and let out one
of those bloodcurdling howls as it stared into the darkened glass of the patio door.

The animal had seen Kim in her leotard and yoga poses too many times to be frightened of her reflection. She followed its
stare to the door and noticed a movement in the darkness beyond the glass. Her heart shifted in her chest, pounding hard and
fast against her ribs. Since she’d considered a night run earlier, she’d brought Harry out of the drawer next to her bed and
left it sitting on the other side of the couch. She quickly reached for the pellet gun, then darted over to the sliding doors
and flipped the switch to flood the patio with light.

The man who’d been peeking in her windows stumbled backward as he blinked against the bright light. He tripped over a steel
chair and sprawled across the brick pavers. Before he could regain his feet, Kim darted through the sliders to stand over
him with Harry pointing
in his face. His very handsome face. His dark eyes glittered in the porch light, and his teeth flashed white as he grinned
widely.

“So that’s the infamous Harry,” her new neighbor said, laughter rumbling from his throat and chest. “Your BB gun.”

She would have been surprised if the toy had fooled a police officer. The gun was ugly enough to fool most criminals, who
wouldn’t be breaking laws in the first place if they had any sense. She was a cop’s daughter through and through.

As such, by nature, she was too suspicious to lower her weapon even after identifying her intruder. Well,
almost
intruder…

He’d intruded on her evening, on her meditation. Even though he hadn’t actually broken into her home, he’d broken into her
thoughts… entirely too much. Her fingers tightened on her weapon.

His laughter died as he stared up at her from his incongruous position—half-sprawled, half-sitting on her patio bricks. “I
think you could choose a better weapon if you’re looking for protection. A stun gun—”

“I don’t want to do any nerve damage.” But she was beginning to think
she
had some. Seeing his long, lean body lying on her patio was doing all kinds of things to her nerves, like making her hands
shake. She tightened her grip again.

“You’d rather shoot someone’s eye out?”

She shrugged. “I’m not that great a shot—”

“A former police chief’s daughter admitting that?” he teased, his dark eyes wide with feigned astonishment.

Pride stinging, she lifted her chin. “I can raise some serious welts, though.”

“And give yourself enough time to get away,” he surmised.

“Harry is really just for the fear factor,” she confessed. “I have pepper spray for protection.” And she had her attitude.
Usually that was enough to scare men off, or that was what Theresa told her.

He grinned. “I guess I should be grateful you just wanted to scare me.”

“I owed you for scaring…” She wouldn’t admit to that little jump of fear in her heart over the movement outside her window.
“… the cat.”

“I scared the cat?” he asked with skepticism, as he lithely vaulted to his feet.
Did he do any yoga?

She nodded. “Yes, the cat.”

“Just the cat?” he asked, his shoes scraping against the bricks as he stepped closer to her. She had to look up to him; at
five ten, Kim rarely had to look up to anyone. His head and shoulders blocked the porch light, surrounding Kim in shadows.