Yours, Mine & Ours (11 page)

It finally stopped raining after lunch, but the sky was still drizzling. The trees looked waxed-wet and shiny, but humidity hung in the air like a blanket. He parked, noting the expensive landscaping at the doctors' complex, took the stairs up two at a time.

And paused.

Amanda had just pushed through the door and was bolting down the steps. She'd have barreled straight into him if he hadn't put out a hand.

The simple touch made her head shoot up. She sucked in a breath before she found a wry smile. “Pretty unbelievable, huh? Two places in a row?”

And then, “Don't waste your time. This one's a no vote.”

“Really?”

She listed her concerns. “Four crying kids in the waiting room. The receptionist was frazzled and out of patience. Dust in the corners. Just…no.”

“The doctor had hefty credentials.”

“I thought so, too. And maybe she's brilliant. But it's just not a well-run place.”

“You have more on your pediatrician list?”

She nodded. “Oh, yeah. Dr. Alan Rivers is the next on mine—”

“He was at the top of my choices, but I was doing a circle, hitting the geographically closest ones first.”

“Well…”

“Well…”

Since they both had cars, it seemed a foolish idea to leave one, but they both liked the idea of checking out “Dr. Alan” together. Two sets of eyes were always better than one. The office was just five blocks from the first doctor—but a major difference in worlds.

Mike stalled in the waiting room. The setting was a kid's dream. A big-screen TV carried a whole selection of programs, from reading shows to movies like
Free Willy.
An aquarium took almost a whole width of wall, with all sorts of colorful fish darting around, the setup no higher than his knees. There was a lot for a kid to do besides wait and worry, he thought.

Amanda tracked down Dr. Alan for both of them. The doctor emerged from the exam rooms as soon as he was free. The guy was almost as little as his patients, big glasses, floppy hair, a bright blue stethoscope. Amanda remarked on the bins near the doorway—a child could pick out a pair of slippers, if he or she wanted to wear them in the office. And another bin held small, washable stuffed animals. A sign read Pick a Friend to Take in the Room with You.

The doctor gave them a full ten minutes. Neither
needed more. On the way out, Amanda said, “For me, this is a cut-and-dried. He's my guy.”

“Because the place was so kid-friendly?”

“Yeah. That mattered. And it was spotless. And no one was in uniform.”

“And nobody looked scared.”

She smiled at him. “Yeah. That was the biggie. I don't doubt kids cry when they're getting a vaccine, but I liked it, that none of the kids looked afraid, even though they were at the doctor's.”

His truck was parked next to her car, where both of them hesitated again. “So we've got two things marked off the parenting list for the day?” he asked.

“Yup. And I'm exhausted.”

He laughed. “You think there's a chance we can refrain from running into each other for a few hours?”

She stopped smiling, cocked her head. Something passed between them—something that muted the sounds of traffic and voices, that intensified the rustle of wet leaves and hint of lilac in the air. Something that made her eyes look mesmerizingly honest. That made him want to look and never stop looking.

“I'm not sure we're going to manage it,” she said suddenly, softly.

“Manage what?”

“Staying out of trouble.”

She turned around, ducked in her car. He stood
there even after she'd backed out of the parking lot and zoomed down the street.

He was about eighty-eight percent sure that she'd just given him a dare. She hadn't
said,
“I want trouble.” But her tone had a whispery dare in it. Her eyes had a fever-bright dare for damn sure. Her body, her smiles… Oh, yeah. She was all about danger and dares.

It wasn't a good idea to dare a guy who was at the end of his hormonal tether. He'd been good as gold. But like his four-year-old said—his
male
four-year-old—nobody could be good
all
the time.

 

Amanda arrived at Warren White's house at ten to seven. As she'd expected, the White decorating scheme was beige. As in, beige, period. No bright color had seen a surface in the White house. The setup for the Home Owners' Association meeting was a gathering in Warren's great room…which opened onto a deck, where teenagers were supposed to watch over the little kids who came with their parents. Amanda wasn't about to trust strangers with Molly, but she could see there were a ton of kids there, all having fun.

Still, she sat next to the door, with an eye on the yard outside. The older kids started a game of Mother, May I…and Molly, being the competitive tiny overachiever that she was, instantly joined in.

Amanda relaxed—a little—and scoped the room,
trying to pick up names, friendly faces, who had which kids of what ages. She'd worn a scoop-neck top with white slacks, sandals, just a scrunchie pulling her hair back…while she knew the dress code for a city job with her hands tied behind her back, she wasn't so sure of the rules in the suburbs. Most seemed to take her in as “one of them” from the start—a relief.

At least until Mike walked in.

Warren took center stage in front of his fireplace precisely at 7:00 p.m. He even had a little gavel. Cute, she thought. Pompous and silly, but still kind of cute.

Mike wasn't. The women all silenced when he walked in—Amanda suspected they hadn't seen that much testosterone in one package in a
long
time. He'd brushed and showered, done the whole cleanup thing, but he still had that look—the cross between ruffian and quarterback. He was a bad boy with charm. They could all smell it.

He spotted her in less than a millisecond. And there it was again. The Dare. Just like this afternoon. She'd been a perfect lady, hadn't done a thing to entice or invite him, had been keeping to her celibacy pledge like a damned saint.

But at the preschool, then the pediatricians' offices…well. He'd been daring her, Amanda thought darkly. And he was still daring her. She'd
tried
to be honest with him. She'd
tried
to stay out of his way,
to avoid temptation, to just be a good neighbor and a good friend. But he had to quit looking at her that way. Had to quit sending out those hungry, hungry vibes…as if he wanted to eat her up, and to spend a whole long night doing it.

He was sending out dares.

As if she'd sucker into that childish double-dog-dare kind of thing. Well, she was smarter than that. She smiled at him, crossed her legs at the ankles, went for the ladylike posture.
She
wasn't the one who was asking for trouble. It was him. Every time he looked at her. Every time he came close. Every time he breathed.

“Calling the meeting of the Home Owners' Association to order. Lucy, would you read the minutes from the May meeting?”

Warren started the meeting in a voice that resembled the drone of flies in the summer. Lucy—a woman with cotton-candy hair and a girl's swim-team logo—dutifully read the minutes.

Mike quietly crossed the room to sit next to her. Since Teddy wasn't with him, she glanced outside—and yeah, there he was, already teamed up next to Molly in the crowd of kids in the big backyard. The game had changed to “Simon Says.” The kids looked happy.

She wasn't.

For a man who had almost no hips and no butt, somehow he took up a huge amount of room. He
smelled like fresh soap and vanilla ice cream. And yearning. He definitely smelled like yearning. He carried a folder.

“New business,” Warren announced.

Mike raised his hand.

“Well. It's nice to have a newcomer so willing to participate in our group. Welcome, Mr. Conroy.”

“Mike,” he said as he stood up.

There followed a gasper.

She knew the neighbor who raised worms for his kid, who dug in mud, who neglected to shave for days at a time. But she didn't know the lawyer. She'd never have guessed Mike could turn into a powerhouse who tapped into authority and command the minute he opened his mouth.

He was wearing sandals, for Pete's sake.

He didn't talk for long, just said he wanted to respond to issues raised by his putting in a water garden in his backyard…and a proposed electric fence he wanted to install. He handed a legal-looking document to Warren, but to the group of home owners, he laid out the gist of it more simply.

“I didn't realize the Home Owners' Association had ‘rules' until Warren expressed them to me. My response is that document. I guarantee that I'll return the property to its original condition, if or when I sell the place. I also guarantee that the water garden I've been putting in will exceed any standard of good landscaping set by your association…”

There was quite a bit more. When he finally sat down again, Warren had the expression of a major suck-up. “Mike, Mike, Mike. None of us were objecting to the water garden. We think it's a wonderful idea. We just wanted you—and anyone else who's new to the neighborhood—to
ask
first.”

When the meeting was over, the group of neighborhood women swarmed Mike. Amanda might have gotten a cup of lemonade with the rest…except that her mom's ear, the left one, picked up the sound of crying.

Not her Molly's crying.

But Teddy.

M
ike would have chosen to stay a few more minutes at the infamous Home Owners' Association, partly to shake hands with a few more neighbors—but mostly to walk home with Amanda. But Teddy's brouhaha forced an immediate exit.

Teddy held his hand on the short walk home. He didn't talk. Couldn't. There were no tears now, but his eyes were still blotchy, his mood still stormy. Teddy didn't want to cry in public. Mike understood that guy kind of pride.

Once at home, though, Mike lifted him to the kitchen counter, plucked ice cream from the freezer, got them both spoons. “So just say. What happened.”

“There was this stupid girl.”

“Yeah, when I was your age, a lot of stories started that way.” There were more ice cream cartons in the freezer than meat. Mike pulled the cover off the Cherry Vanilla. One spoonful for Teddy. Two for him.

“We were doing Simon Says. And I took four steps like I was supposed to, only that meant I sort of ran into this stupid girl. So she turned around and slugged me.”

Mike did the next round of ice cream, this time with a wet dishcloth ready for the spill he knew was coming.

“I didn't
do
anything, Dad. I was just playing the game like I was supposed to. Only, I won the last one and I think she didn't like that. When she punched me, I really, really, really,
really
wanted to punch her back. But I didn't. You tole me a million times. You never hit a girl.”

“You did the right thing,” Mike assured him. “So then what?”

“So Molly hit her.”

“Molly?”

“That was the thing. I told her I couldn't hit a girl. She said fine, but nobody ever said she couldn't. So she hit her. But, Dad. It's a bad thing. A very bad thing. When a girl has to do your hitting for you. I was so mad I started crying. It wasn't
fair.
”

Mike put away the ice cream, hooked his arms to
make a seat for his big guy, and they moved into the bathroom, then the bedroom. Slugger and Cat both knew Teddy was upset. The critters climbed on the bed first, so there was almost no room for Teddy.

Mike was still trying to figure out what had upset Teddy more—that a strange girl had hit him, or that Molly had been his hero instead of his having the chance to be one himself.

Apparently his stress level wasn't all that great, because he zonked out before Mike could pull up the covers or turn out the light. “Cat. Slugger,” he called, thinking that the critters needed one more let-out that night…but neither acknowledged him in any way.

They weren't leaving the kid.

Abruptly the house turned silent…and Mike turned restless. He cleaned up in the kitchen, because he'd learned early on that ice cream spills were easier to deal with when they happened, rather than waiting for the next day. After that…well, there was always stuff to do. Start a load of wash. Hit the mail, go through bills.

Instead, he just…sort of aimlessly paced. Overall, he wasn't unhappy at how the Home Owners' meeting had gone. He'd gotten what he wanted. He just had a real bug about other people imposing rules on him…but most of the neighbors were nice enough. A bunch of the guys invited him to a Wednesday-night poker game. A few moms had clustered around him, talking about preschools.

But the only one he'd wanted to be with was Amanda. He wanted to know what she thought of the group. He wanted to tease her—she was supposed to be as afraid of suburbia as he was—yet she'd fit in so easily; both men and women warmed to her right away. Not that he was surprised. She gave off a quiet friendliness, an honesty and warmth.

His prowling around eventually led him to his front window, where he just stood there, staring at the windows in her place. Her household looked shut down. Molly had undoubtedly been put to bed by now. He saw no movement in any of the rooms, nothing but some distant light.

She definitely wasn't finishing her evening on the deck tonight. The firefly-night rolled through his mind on slow replay. The fireflies, the dancing in the grass, the moonlight, her soft silver laugher… He remembered every minute of that crazy evening.

Abruptly realizing how long he'd been standing there, staring at empty windows next door like a complete fool, he pivoted around. Kicked off his shoes. Headed for the shower.

 

When Molly was finally asleep, Amanda left her daughter's bedroom with a major sigh. They'd had quite a discussion before bedtime—brought on by the shiner in her daughter's left eye. It wasn't a bad bruise, considering the other little girl in the altercation had been a hefty second grader. But it invoked
a torrent of talk about when “wrong is wrong” and when “wrong is right.”

It was always wrong to fight, Molly knew.

But it was always right to stand up for a friend against a bully.

So which was the rightest answer? If you had to act really quick and your friend was hurt
right then
and there was no time to go in and ask your mom?

Amanda wasn't about to agree that hitting was an effective answer for anything, but by the time she wandered into the kitchen, her head was spinning. In the next life, she wanted to be her daughter. So passionate about life. So full of spirit and love and absolutely certain of what she felt about everything.

Without turning on a light, Amanda opened the fridge, then a cupboard. There didn't seem to be anything she wanted to eat or drink. Nothing she wanted to do. She was definitely too antsy to watch a show or read…and positively too wide-awake to sleep.

But then she froze.

Mike was awake. She could see him across the way, a tall dark silhouette. The distant sink light provided the only illumination, or she'd never have caught his shadowed frame. He couldn't see her. He was facing her windows, but she had no lights on. So it was unlikely he could see her, yet he stood there, as if he were searching, and then suddenly turned away and disappeared back into the darkness.

Her pulse started thrumming…and wouldn't
stop. A lump filled her throat…that refused to be swallowed.

It was his loneliness that struck her. An invisible loneliness, nothing he'd say or admit to, nothing anyone was supposed to see.

But he'd been looking at her house, her windows. For
her.
Even if he never said it. Even if he never intended to do anything about it.

And something abruptly snapped in Amanda. She couldn't explain what exactly. She just felt suddenly, oddly…angry. Vibrantly angry. Impatiently, infuriatingly, zestily angry.

She tore around the house faster than a wet cat, brushing her hair, brushing her teeth, unearthing the monitor she used when Molly was a baby. Then she charged outside, barefoot, prancing fast because the grass was wet and the night damp-cool and ghostly.

Before she lost her nerve—before she got scared—she zipped up his deck steps, didn't knock on the back door, just pushed open the glass and charged in. Immediately she stubbed her toe—on heaven knows what, probably a toy—made a groan of a sound, loud enough to wake the dead, but his watchdog didn't even come out to see her, much less bark. Mike couldn't possibly be sleeping yet; she'd seen him from the window less than ten minutes ago. But he didn't show up, either, no matter how much noise she was making, stomping around.

Of course she realized why, when she aimed
toward a flicker of light, and finally heard the sound of water coming from the master bath.

She took a step into his bedroom, and in the dark, for just a second, she lifted her foot because the toe was still stinging. She was acting crazily, she knew. She was behaving completely out of character.

She was taking a risk she was terribly afraid of.

On paper, this was just an impossibly wrong thing to do. On paper.

She took a breath, turned the knob on the bathroom door. Steam engulfed her, dancing on the mirror, shining up the tile floor. A giant gray towel waited on the counter. Mike was in there, beyond the smoked-glass shower doors.

She put the monitor on the counter, pulled off her cowl-neck top, pushed down her green cotton slacks. Opened the door and stepped in.

Mike turned around on a spin at the sudden burst of cool air. There was soap in his hair, water in his eyes. Mostly what she saw was somewhere around two hundred pounds of wet, naked man.

His first reaction was shock. That shocked silence lasted somewhere around a short millisecond. Initially his mind was clearly on something unrelated to sex. One look at her, and his body altered faster than a millisecond, too.

Before she'd taken a second step, he'd pulled her in and closed the glass door with the two of them inside. Before she could conceivably explain why she
was here, he layered her against his hot, wet body and leveled a kiss on her.

If she'd just
known
she was going to do this crazy-fool thing, she'd have worn her black lace bra and matching panties, definitely not the pale yellow set from Target, on sale. She'd brushed her teeth. She just hadn't remembered the right clothes. She always remembered the right clothes for the occasion.

Only…well, it seemed the bra and thong were soaked in two seconds anyway. So was the rest of her. If she was going to drown in there, what possible difference could it make if she wasn't wearing her best bra?

And then the bra was gone. Tossed over the shower door.

Warm water splashed in her eyes, forcing her to close them…while Mike kept kissing her, swinging her against the warm, damp smooth wall, pinning her there. He held her hands flat against the tile, using his body to touch, to stroke, to incite. He groaned when his mouth left hers, only to trail a wreath of kisses down her throat.

He lifted her as if she weighed nothing, making it natural for her to wind her legs around his waist. When the nest between her legs rubbed against his belly, he swore. Then swore a second time when he nuzzled his cheeks between her breasts.

She recognized the tone in his voice. He was making that anger sound that she'd experienced earlier.
That vibrant anger. That infuriating, impatient, zesty anger.

Who knew he'd feel the same? Her heart opened in a shattering crack. She hadn't let anyone inside in forever. Hadn't trusted anyone, possibly ever, not this way. He'd been strung tight with denying what he needed, what he wanted. That ferocious hunger and yearning, to touch and be touched, was better denied than answered from the cold distance that came from failing marriages. Sex without trust had made her heart sore and scared.

But with Mike…it was right. The way it hadn't been right in a long time. He
liked
her. He valued her. It showed in his touch, his taste, his tenderness…his wildness.

He came up for a hoarse breath, asked, “Molly?”

She motioned outside the shower. “Brought monitor.”

“Birth control?”

“What, you don't store condoms in the shower, waiting for me?”

He laughed, but it sounded a whole lot more like a groan. She rewarded him with a tiny bite from his ear. “I was giving up birth control, since I never planned to need it. Ever. Again. Until you. But for now I've got the long-term patch.”

“Good.”

That seemed to end the conversation. At least, he lost interesting in talking. So did she.

The damn man found the showerhead hose. She saw his sudden grin, saw his hand shoot up, grab the attachment by the showerhead. He eased her onto the tile floor, crossed her legs over his, and then played, pelting her throat, her tummy, her spine, between her legs…with warm, pulsing water. Well, if
he
was in the mood to torture and tease…she was more than capable of stealing the hose and taking her turn. His laughter provoked another shattering crack in her heart. He was laughing with her. Sharing with her. It wasn't
using.

It was giving.

And suddenly, as much fun—and teasing—as their playing had been, suddenly she wanted his hands. His skin. Him. Nothing between them.

His eyes darkened, sharpened. The water was still warm, blindingly warm, when he palmed her fanny, snuggled her closer, aimed inside. He slid in slowly, all slick slippery warmth, watching her reaction as he began a careful stroke…until he was all the way in. Slow turned into a canter, than a galloping hurry. She had a fearsome sensation of falling, a buildup of want so explosive, so consuming that she feared it would never end, never be over, never be appeased.

He whispered encouragement, praise, promise. When she peaked, her head fell back on a near scream…and he followed with an exultant groan as deep as hers.

She tried to breathe again, but couldn't. She stayed
wrapped around him like a scarf, her head in the crook of his shoulder, her body limp and wildly sated, not wanting to move…but the water started turning cool.

They both let out a yelp. He lifted his head. “I wondered when we'd run out of hot water. Darn it.”

She was suddenly freezing. He was, too. He flipped off the faucets, helped her to her feet, and grabbed the thick gray towel to wrap around her. He had to step outside to find another. Towels were heaped in a basket on the floor; he took a black one for himself, but he wasn't concerned with drying himself off.

Instead, he rubbed her down until she was warm, kissing her brow, her neck, her shoulder en route. “I'm not afraid of much, Red. But I was afraid of this.”

“Afraid of…?”

“Afraid that we'd be this good. I was hoping—if we did this—that it'd be kind of a clunker. Good, but not crazy good, so we could just get it out of our heads, go back to the friend thing, knowing the chemistry wasn't that bad of a problem.”

She said, “For me. I'm afraid it's a mighty big problem.”

For that, she got another kiss. On the nose. And a shine in his eyes that could have kindled fire. “You're not kidding. That was beyond anything I remember, Amanda. So now you've made our whole chemistry dilemma even worse.”