What a Woman Needs (5 page)

Beth stood at the front door with Maggie on her hip, waving as he pulled out of the driveway. Okay, so maybe the nod to Kelsey was his
third
good deed of the day.

Those deeds felt good. Not that that was why he’d done them. He’d heard the pain in Maggie’s voice and it’d reached into his soul and twisted. He hadn’t had anyone to toss him in the air. Hadn’t had anyone to show him how to make a tree fort or mow the lawn or fix the bathroom sink when he’d leaned on it a little too hard. Life was tough enough; without a dad, it was even tougher.

Get off it already, Manley. You are not
the kids’ father.

Yeah, he knew it. Prided himself on not being
anyone’s
father. Not until he was good and ready. And that meant a bank account hefty enough to cover any eventuality and a woman who’d be on board with his crazy lifestyle.

W
HERE’D
you learn to do that?” Tommy asked for the sixth time since Bryan had arrived.

“I bet it’s from a movie,” said Mark. “I bet you were a supersecret agent who pretended to be a maid so he could learn the bad guy’s plans, right?”

Bryan grabbed the wrench to turn the nut on the sink drain. “Right now I’m fixing the plumbing, guys, not cleaning.” Yeah, it was semantics, but the meaning was important to him. He didn’t want the guys to think this was a maid’s work. It was plumbing, completely different.

Yeah, his masculinity was driving that sentiment. Sue him. Thankfully, Beth had taken him up on his handyman offer. He had to tell Mac—it’d be that extra
something
to set her company apart from her competition.

“Can you hand me the bowl? There might be some water in this trap and I don’t want to end up wearing it.”

They handed him a pink bowl. Covered in pictures of little white kittens.

So much for his masculinity.

Luckily for his ego, he managed a clean separation of the trap from the wall pipe with minimal leakage, directed the boys to hand him the new trap, and showed them how to replace it. Little fingers couldn’t close the PVC nut tightly enough, so he made a few last-minute adjustments after they extricated themselves from the tight confines of the cabinet, the boys none the wiser that they hadn’t done it all.

“What are you going to teach
me
, Bryan?” Maggie stood in front of him as he sat up from the uncomfortable position of lying partly in the cabinet and the bottom half of him on the kitchen floor.

His back hurt like a son-of-a-bi— “What do you want to learn, Maggie?”

“Mommy says girls should know how to change a tire. Can you show me? ’Cause she doesn’t know how.”

“Maggie, Bryan isn’t here to do everything. I’ll have Grandpa show you how to do it,”
Mommy
said.

Maggie wrinkled her nose. “Grandpa smells funny,” she whispered to Bryan. “And he’s not our real grandpa, so I don’t see why you can’t show me.” Maggie tapped his nose, then spun around to face her mother. “No thank you, Mommy. I want Bryan to do it.”

Bryan got to his feet, wincing at the twinge in his back. Those stunts in Sri Lanka had pushed him almost beyond his limits and he was paying for it now. “It’s okay, Beth. I don’t mind. And if you don’t know, I could show you, too. You’re right; it’s something everyone should know, not just guys.”

“Can
we
learn?” asked Tommy.

“I already know how.” Mark crossed his arms.

“Do not.”

“Do too.”

“Do not.”

“Do t—”

“Guys.” Bryan stepped between them. “Ten minutes. Driveway. Tire-changing lesson. Anyone who wants to learn, be there. Or don’t call me when you get a flat. You’ll have had your chance.”

He strode out of the kitchen, flicking Beth on the chin as he passed. “That means you, too, cupcake.”

“Cupcake? Did he call you cupcake, Mommy? That’s silly.” Maggie giggled.

Bryan wasn’t giggling. He’d said it to be flippant, but, yeah, Beth was as sweet and tempting as a cupcake. He wouldn’t mind licking icing off her, either.

He took a deep breath and headed for Jason’s room. Nothing like teenage-boy grunge to put his hormones on hold.

 • • • 

B
ETH
reached for the kitchen chair once Bryan walked past her and sank into it.
Cupcake
. She ought to be offended. Disgusted. But all she could think of was Bryan licking icing off of her, one long, slow lick at a time.

“You feeling okay, Mommy?” asked Tommy.

“Yeah, you look kinda funny.”

That’s because she was having a hot flash and she didn’t mean the menopause kind. Hell no. Bryan Manley could set her hormones buzzing with one glance, start them boiling with a word, and incite an inferno with a touch so insignificant that it shouldn’t even be called insignificant.

“I’m fine, guys.” Though that term was relative. “Why don’t you go round up Kelsey and Jason? They could both use this lesson as well, since they’ll be driving in a few years.”

Wow. Thank God she was already sitting because that thought would have knocked her legs out from under her. Jason driving. He’d have to cut his hair first or he’d never pass the vision test. They frowned upon a kid having to look sideways and up from beneath his hair to drive.

Her baby driving. Wasn’t it just yesterday that she’d brought that squalling bundle of energy home from the hospital? She and Mike had sat on the sofa with Jason between them and stared at each other, petrified out of their minds. What had they been thinking? They’d practically been kids themselves, yet there they were with the infant they’d created.

It hadn’t gone too badly. It’d been chaos at first, a little more when Kelsey had come along, but by the time the twins were born, they’d found their rhythm. They were a good team. So when Maggie, the “oops,” had arrived, she’d fit in seamlessly. Then fate had struck.

Beth inhaled and shoved the nightmare aside. The family counselor she took the kids to every few weeks—and who she saw on a few others—said not to dwell on
what ifs
. That
what ifs
got you nowhere. This was their reality and living in La-La Land would only do more damage than good.

Still, it was nice when she was alone to imagine what could have been. If Mike hadn’t picked up that flight. If the weather had held off even a few more minutes. If they hadn’t been late leaving the gate. There were a whole bunch of variables that had put him on the tarmac at that moment and any one of them could have changed the outcome, but the reality was, none had. Everything had conspired to put Mike and his passengers and crew at the wrong place at the wrong time, and she and the kids had to deal with it.

Still, life really sucked sometimes.

 • • • 

T
HE
six of them gathered round Bryan’s truck in her driveway, paying attention as he showed them where the jack was, how to set it up, how to remove the lug nuts and change out the tire. The twins wanted to climb in the tire well to see the truck’s “guts,” but Bryan yanked them out by their waistbands before they could.

“You could knock out the jack, guys, and the truck will fall on top of you. Remember, safety first. And never change the tire next to oncoming traffic. It’s not worth the risk.” He looked at Kelsey. “What do you do if that happens?”

Beth had to bite her lip to keep from laughing at Kelsey’s rapt expression. She doubted her daughter had understood a word of what Bryan had said. Since he’d arrived, Bryan’s movies had shown up on the DVR schedule to be recorded and there’d been a flurry of googling on the family room laptop. Beth knew who’d done that.

“Um, call someone?”

“Exactly. Who?”

Kelsey twiddled her hair and looked up at Bryan from under her lashes. “You?” She held out her cell phone.

Beth wanted to groan. Bryan Manley was
not
the guy for Kelsey to practice her feminine wiles on.

Beth on the other hand . . .

Bryan, bless him, chuckled softly, took Kelsey’s phone, and programmed something into it. “No. You call your mom. She’ll call a roadside assistance company.” He held up the phone. “This says ICE. In Case of Emergency. Emergency responders look for this in your phone, so you want to make sure you have your mom listed as your contact.” He handed the phone back. “Any questions? Jason?”

Jason shook his mop. Beth wished he’d cut it, but she kept her mouth shut. There were fights she needed to have with her son and there were ones she didn’t. His hair fell under the
Didn’t
category, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t hope.

“No, I’m good.”

“Glad to hear it.” Bryan flipped the tire iron over. “Your turn.”

Jason’s face turned white beneath the mop. “My . . . my what?”

“Your turn. You’re going to change the tire.”

“But . . .”

The twins started giggling and imitating Jason’s stutter—

Until Bryan put a hand on their heads and tilted them back to look at him. “And when he’s done, you guys are going to do it.”

“But we don’t know how,” said Tommy.

“That’s what we were learning, dufus,” said Mark.

“Good,” said Bryan. “Then Mark, you can show Tommy how to do it when Jason’s finished.”

Kelsey, wisely, kept her mouth shut.

But Bryan wasn’t kidding. He made each one of them—all six of them—change a tire. Even Maggie, but that was more to make her feel a part of the crew as much as the rest of them. She did look awfully cute sitting on Bryan’s knee as she helped him crank the lug nuts with the tire iron.

And after six reviews, Beth was no longer surprised that she knew what a lug nut and tire iron were.

“Okay, then.” Bryan set Maggie on her feet and stood up. “Anyone have any questions?”

“Yeah,” said Tommy. “Can we learn how to change the oil, too?”

Kelsey and Jason groaned and Mark cuffed his twin on the back of the head. “You’re a dufus.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

Bryan shook his head and laughed, leaving the two of them there to duke it out verbally, and held out a hand toward the house for Beth to precede him. “I hope that was okay with you.”

“The lesson? Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I don’t want to overstep my bounds, but since all the kids were here, I figured it was as good a time as any for them to learn. They’ll probably forget, but it might come back to them should they ever need it.”

“I don’t have a problem with it. It was a good idea. Thank you. Not that I ever want to change a tire. I do have roadside assistance on my insurance, but it can’t hurt to know what to do just in case. And the kids really appreciated it, I think.”

“They will if they’re ever stuck. It gives them some comfort in knowing they can handle a flat tire if they need to. Make them feel more confident about going places.”

“I’m not sure that’s such a good thing with teenagers, but I know what you mean.”

He meant that they felt out of control. That, with Mike’s death, their world had been tossed upside down and flattened—just like Mike’s plane.

Beth sucked in a breath as she stumbled up the last step into the foyer, the image searing across her brain. She’d tried not to see what had happened to the plane, but the media had broadcast it for what seemed to be twenty-four-seven, nonstop for days. Weeks even. She hadn’t been able to go anywhere without seeing the inferno that had been her husband’s last moments on earth. The really sad thing was, the kids had seen it, too.

And then there’d been the reporters. There’d been an investigation into the crash. Possible pilot error. Mike’s career had come under intense scrutiny and, while she’d known there was nothing to work against him, it had still scared the hell out of her. She didn’t need his name smeared when she was trying to hold the family together and deal with the fallout. The press had only compounded it to the point where the kids had been frightened to go outside for fear of having microphones stuck in their face. They’d become recluses in their own home with people staying away so that they, too, wouldn’t be barraged by everyone looking for the story.

It’d taken the National Transportation Safety Bureau and the FAA entirely too long to clear his name and by then, the damage had been done. The kids were wary, scared. Withdrawn. Jason hid behind his hair. Kelsey by laughing a little too loud. The twins had had each other, but they’d grown apart, no longer finishing each other’s sentences. And Maggie had sucked her thumb. All coping mechanisms, but how
had
they coped? It was a question Beth was still working on.

“You okay? You’re awfully quiet.” Bryan held open the door for her.

“Me? I’m fine.” As fine as could be.

“Fine, huh?” He chuckled.

“Yes. What’s wrong with being fine?” It was what the counselor—and she—wanted for them. To be fine.

Beth didn’t think she’d ever be fine again—oh. Now she got his chuckle.

She chuckled, too. “I mean, yes. I’m good. Thank you for teaching all of us. We appreciate it.”

“My pleasure.”

No, really, it was hers. If he kept smiling at her like that, she’d be way more than fine and good.