Читать книгу Love and the Single Mum - C.J. Carmichael - Страница 12

ROBERT FELT LIKE banging his head on the desk the moment Margo left the room. What was he doing here? Margo might be divorced, but she had two kids. This woman was off-limits.

Why had he offered to help her?

He leaned back in the chair and looked around the place. Pictures of Margo’s children were everywhere, reminding him of the folly of what he was doing. After his experience with Belinda and Andrew, how could he be getting involved with another single mother?

Robert studied the pictures on the wall. Unlike studio-variety photographs, these were candid shots, taken from unusual angles, each of them capturing something unique and special. In one, Margo’s daughter hung upside down from a monkey bar. In another, a shot had been taken from above, Margo’s son as a baby, playing with bubbles in his bath.

Robert took a deep breath.

He didn’t have to stay. She wasn’t paying him anything. He could find another coffee shop to hang out in until he was back working again.

But there was something about Margo that had drawn him in and it wasn’t just the enticing aroma of her homemade soups.

His gaze fell on a photograph of her with her children. They were sitting on a wooden porch step. She had her arms around them in a protective, motherly pose. Her head was angled to the camera and her blond curls covered one of her fabulous blue eyes. Her smile seemed so real, it made him feel warm inside just to look at it.

He enjoyed looking at her. Talking to her. Just being around her. And she seemed to like him, too—if he discounted that one comment about cell phones.

If only she didn’t have kids….

He’d never even considered the danger when he’d been dating Belinda. Andrew’s father never bothered to see him, so with hindsight it was easy to understand why the boy had taken to Robert so quickly. Ignorant of the potential danger, Robert had welcomed this first instance of hero worship. In fact, he’d reveled in it.

He’d always planned on having children, but before Andrew, his desire to do so had been theoretical in nature. Andrew had given him a real-life taste of the pleasures of fatherhood. Robert could still remember the first time Andrew had fallen asleep in his arms. The three of them had been watching a movie on the living room sofa. Andrew had turned from the television with a yawn, and the next thing Robert knew, the little boy’s head was nestled against his chest.

His heart couldn’t have been filled with more love if that child had been his own flesh and blood.

He brushed a hand over his face and gave himself a mental kick. The truth was, since their breakup, he missed Andrew a hell of a lot more than Belinda.

If it was up to him, he would have continued spending time with Andrew. But Belinda wanted her son to bond with the new man in her life. And she felt that would never happen if he continued to visit Robert.

Maybe she was right. Maybe not. But she was Andrew’s mother and this was her call to make. What was in Robert’s control was the power to avoid situations like this in the future.

So…he should leave.

But he couldn’t. He sensed Margo was in a real jam here. And he had the time to help her. He pulled out one of the wicker baskets and riffled through it. Seemed like an awful lot of unpaid bills. He tried a different basket. These invoices had been paid, but hadn’t been entered into the computer. He checked through the stack and saw that she was several months behind with the record keeping. Better start with the bank statements….

He looked for those, then became so engrossed in the work, that he barely heard the squeak of the stairs, or the sound of footsteps moving toward him.

“I brought you a brownie with your coffee.”

Margo spoke in hushed tones as if afraid to interrupt his train of thought. Though he didn’t look up, he could smell the citrusy scent of her perfume and he felt the brush of her arm against his as she set the coffee cup and plate on the desk.

Immediately, he lost all track of what he was doing. Before he could say anything to her, though, she was gone, hurrying down the stairs back to her customers.

He stared at the paper in his hand, and when it continued to remain meaningless, set it down. He took a bite of the brownie, then a swallow of coffee.

Children, he reminded himself. Margo has two children. You can’t get involved with her.

He raised his gaze to a picture of Ellie and Peter with their arms around a huge tree trunk. The tree was too thick for their hands to meet. Both kids were laughing.

Based on all these photographs they seemed like happy, well-adjusted kids. Why wouldn’t they be, with a mother like Margo?

Belinda had been a good mother, too, but she’d emphasized rules and order just a little too much, he’d thought. Margo definitely didn’t seem like that. He guessed she would be fun and exciting and…passionate.

Robert groaned. Even if he took a chance on Margo and things worked out, blended families were always complicated. And if things didn’t work out, the kids were bound to end up getting hurt.

Concentrate on the business and forget about the woman. He did his best to follow his own advice for the next few hours. In fact, he was so preoccupied that the next time Margo came up, he was surprised to discover it was six-thirty.

“How can you work in the dark like that?” Margo switched on a lamp by the desk. She swept her hair off her forehead and sank into one of the easy chairs. She looked exhausted.

But also sexy and appealing….

He saved his work on the computer, then swiveled his chair to face her. “Long day?”

“Very. And one of my employees on the evening shift showed up late again.” She worried her bottom lip. “I hope I’m not going to have to fire him.”

“Why not? You can always hire someone else.”

“I wish it was that easy. I’m discovering that good employees are very difficult to find.” She eyed the computer. “Well, how bad was it? I’m surprised you didn’t run out of here screaming hours ago.”

“I’m still entering data into the computer. You know, if you did this every month, it wouldn’t be such an enormous job. Come here, and I’ll show you.”

Margo moved closer and he wondered if this was such a good idea. He definitely thought straighter when there were a few feet between them. Quickly he took her through the steps she should be following every month. She caught on quickly.

“I try to set aside a little time for record keeping every night,” she admitted. “But when you have kids, it’s not so easy. By the time they’re ready for bed, I am, too.”

She sighed, then pushed herself out of her chair. “How does a glass of wine and some herbed goat cheese sound?”

Robert swallowed as she pulled off her apron to reveal her curvy figure. He had to get out of here before he clouded his intentions with a glass of that wine.

But before he’d risen from his chair, Margo was in the kitchen, decanting a bottle. Deftly she poured some into two glasses, then handed him one.

They clicked glasses together, then drank. He could feel the blood pounding in his ears. He knew he had to leave, but his feet were rooted like tree stumps.

Margo returned to the kitchen, where she prepared a plate of cheese and crackers. She came back to the sofa and he found himself sitting next to her. They chatted about the weather, baseball and movies.

Then she glanced at her watch and he saw her jaw tighten.

“What’s wrong?”

She hesitated. “My kids are at their dad’s tonight, getting ready for a wedding ceremony tomorrow. I was just wondering how they’re handling everything.”

He took another swallow of the wine. Get out of here, Robert, his wiser half cautioned. He ignored the warning. “Your ex is getting remarried?”

“Yeah.”

“That must feel weird.”

She laughed. “Yeah.”

Crazy guy, Robert found himself thinking, as he watched Margo tip her head back and enjoy another mouthful of the light Chablis. Why would any guy married to Margo let her go? She was pretty, sexy and a damn good cook.

And even when she was in a funk—as she obviously was right now—she was still good-humored about it.

He watched as Margo spread creamy cheese over thick crackers. She slipped from the sofa to the floor, stretched out her legs and leaned back her head. He stared at the golden curls that spilled oh-so-close to the hand he had resting on one of the seat cushions. After a moment, he sat on the floor next to her.

“Her name is Catherine,” Margo said, making it sound like a confession. “The kids seem to like her, but I don’t know.”

“You’re not so keen on her?”

“We haven’t even met.”

“Does that worry you?”

“A little. What if she turns out to be awful? You hear such horror stories about stepmothers.”

“Yeah, I know. But most stepfamilies get sorted out eventually, don’t they? My mom raised me on her own, but a lot of my friends’ parents were divorced. Most of them did just fine…despite the statistics that seem to indicate otherwise.”

“Oh, God, I hope you’re right.” Margo topped up their wineglasses. “Even though Tom and I have been apart for a year, sometimes I still can’t believe my life ended up this way. Tom and I were supposed to be forever. And now he’s getting married to someone else.” She forced a laugh. “And he wants me to go to the reception after.”

“Really?” Robert tried to imagine attending Belinda’s wedding to the new guy who’d replaced him. “That doesn’t sound like fun.”

“Especially since I don’t have a—”

She didn’t finish. But her eyes met his and he knew what she had been planning to say. She didn’t have a date to take to her ex-husband’s wedding reception.

Well, that was too bad for her, but it had nothing to do with him.

Except, he felt badly on her behalf and he didn’t know why. Just as he couldn’t really explain why he’d offered to do her cash flow statements for her.

He tried not to notice her cleavage as she reached for a cheese-smeared cracker. Her hair was a mess, and she seemed to realize it at just that moment, because she released the clip at the back of her head and blond curls tumbled to her shoulders.

Oh, God. He really shouldn’t do this.

“If you want, I could go to the reception with you.”