Читать книгу What a Man's Gotta Do - Karen Templeton - Страница 11

The Monday before Thanksgiving, Mala lay in bed, half-asleep, trying to fight off that itchy, icky feeling you get when Something Bad is about to happen.

“Mama! Guess what!”

She burrowed down farther into the pillows. “Unless there’s a van outside with balloons all over it,” she said, “go away.”

“Ma-ma!” Like Tigger, Carrie boing-boinged up the length of the bed, and it occurred to Mala that the only time her bed shook these days was when small children were jumping on it. Which, while a dispiriting thought, didn’t qualify as the Something Bad because that wasn’t something that was going to happen. It already had. “It’s a snow day!”

That, however, definitely made the short list. But after marshalling a few more brain cells, Mala decided that, nope, that wasn’t quite it, either.

Not that this wasn’t bad enough—if it were true—since that meant, being as the kids were already off for Thanksgiving Thursday and Friday…and Saturday and Sunday…she’d only have two kid-free days to do five days worth of work. Swiping her hair out of her face, Mala hiked herself up on one elbow, trying to get a bead on Carrie’s beaming, bobbing face. Her curls were a radiant blur in the almost iridescent glow in the many-windowed, converted porch she used as her bedroom.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Uh-uh. We got like a million feet of snow in the yard! You can go look! I already listened to the radio and they said the Spruce Lake schools were closed! We don’t have any scho-ol, we don’t have any scho-ol!”

Mala suppressed a groan as she glanced at the clock radio by her bed. Seven-ten. Far too early for so many exclamation points.

In footed, dinosaur-splashed jammies, Lucas unsteadily tromped across the bed, dropping beside Mala with enough force to rattle her teeth. “I’m cold,” he said, wriggling underneath the down comforter next to her, his beebee—as he’d christened his baby blanket at eleven months—firmly clutched to his chest.

“It’ll warm up in a few minutes,” Mala said.

Carrie skootched down on Mala’s other side, planting her ice-cold feet on Mala’s bare calf.

“Cripes, Carrie!”

“The heat’s not on.”

Damn. The furnace pilot must’ve gone out again. That made the second time this week. Not that it was that big a deal to relight it, but she supposed she couldn’t put off having somebody come out to give the ancient furnace a look-see any longer. Especially as she had a tenant. A tenant who, bless him, hadn’t yet complained about freezing his butt off in the mornings.

A tenant who, bless him, had made himself scarce since the night he moved in.

Except in her dreams.

Lucas snuggled closer, smelling of warm little boy and slightly sour jammies. Ah, yes…reality. As in, kids and clients and recalcitrant furnaces and laundry and meals to fix and mother’s and brother’s and well-meaning friends’ worried looks to dodge. And vague, itchy-icky feelings of impending doom.

Running away sounded pret-ty damn attractive, just at the moment.

Just at the moment, she wondered what it would be like to be able to come and go whenever you pleased, not having to answer to anyone, not be tied down to any one place for longer than a few months.

Carrie threw her arm around Mala’s middle, leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

Not having a child—or two—to come get in bed with you on a cold, snowy morning and remind you that you were the center of their universe.

She hugged and kissed first one kid, then the other, then gently swatted Carrie’s bottom through the bedclothes. “C’mon, move over—I gotta get up.”

“C’n you make pancakes?”

“Maybe. After I get the furnace going.” Mala struggled out from underneath the covers, static electricity crackling as she yanked at her flannel nightgown to dislodge it from the bedding. Half hopping, half stumbling, she stuffed her feet into her old shearling slippers as she made her way across the carpet to the window to see just how generous Mother Nature had been.

Yup—she rammed one arm, then the other, into her terry cloth robe, glowering at the vast expanse of white outside her window—it had snowed, alrighty. Not a million feet, but at least one, gauging from the pile of the white stuff on the picnic table. Oh, joy.

It was still flurrying, although the faint blue patches in the distance meant the storm would probably break up before noon. But with this much snow already on the ground, Mala thought on a huge, disgusted yawn, nobody was going anywhere, at least not until some kind person took pity on them and plowed the street. Which could be Christmas, with her luck. Whitey was probably sitting in the nice dry attached garage, chuckling. Man, she’d sell her soul for something with all-wheel drive.

The ceiling creaked slightly under the pressure of Eddie’s heavy, deliberate footsteps overhead. She heard the upstairs door slam shut, followed by the sound of boots clomping down the outside stairs. She edged back from the window and watched him plod through the soft snow toward the second garage out back in just his jeans and that denim jacket of his, and she felt her brow furrow in concern that he wasn’t dressed warmly enough.

Lord. She was such a mother.

He had the day off—the restaurant was closed on Sundays and Mondays—and she found herself wondering what he’d do, since his Camaro wasn’t any more snow-worthy than her sissy little Escort. Not that it was any of her business. She just wondered.

Mala suddenly realized he’d come back out of the garage and was looking in her direction through the light snow, his gaze steady in an otherwise expressionless face. She doubted he could see her, not from that distance and with it still snowing, but it was as if he knew she was standing there.

Heat dancing across her cheeks, Mala backed away, just as a sudden shaft of sunlight turned the flurries into whirling, glittering confetti. And as if in a dream, Eddie began trudging across the yard toward her window, the sparkling flakes settling onto his thick, curly hair and broad shoulders like fairy dust, at such odds with the serious set to his mouth. When he got to within a few feet of the window, he stopped, then mimed shoveling.

Mala raised the window, the brittle cold instantly goose-bumping her skin. Lucas crawled out of the bed and wedged himself between her and the windowsill. One little hand arrowed into the soft drift. “Honestly, Lucas—” Mala snatched back his hand, then wrapped him in her enormous robe and hugged him to her stomach, like a mother hen enveloping her chick. “You could just come around to the door, you know,” she said to Eddie, her breath a cloud.

His gaze snapped back to her face. “Waste of time, seeing’s as you were already standing there. So, you got a snow shovel?”

“You don’t have to—”

“I need to dig out my car.”

“Oh, of course.” She shivered. “Yeah, there’s one in the shed.”

He turned, glanced at the wooden shed huddled against the back fence, then angled his head back to her. “It locked?”

She shook her head. He nodded, then trooped away.

A half hour later, she was standing in her living room after her shower, staring at the TV and contemplating the possibility of being sucked into the perpetual springtime of Teletubbieland—but only if one could exterminate the Teletubbies first—when she heard the rhythmic scraping of metal against cement outside and realized she’d been had.

Eddie hadn’t exactly planned on shoveling the entire walk when he’d gotten up this morning. After all, he was just the tenant. Wasn’t his responsibility. But then he got to thinking about it, and it just seemed like the right thing to do. And since not too many opportunities to do the right thing crossed Eddie’s path, he figured he might as well take advantage of it. You know, just in case St. Peter asked him for a list or something down the road.

Didn’t hurt that the exertion had the added benefit of taking the edge off his run-amok libido.

It didn’t make a lick of sense. There she’d stood, no makeup, her hair every-which-way, wearing some kind of sack with a bigger sack thrown over it, and his blood had gone from frozen to boiling in about ten seconds. And she was just as close to forty as he was, to boot. In fact, in the stark light, he’d even seen a few strands of gray in her dark hair. Yet she opened her mouth, and that morning-gravelly voice of hers spilled out of the window at him, and all he could think was, whuh. He’d been trying to put a finger on just what it was about her that turned him inside out for the past half hour—okay, for the past week—but he was no closer now than when he’d started.

The sidewalk was looking pretty good, though.

Eddie straightened, letting his back muscles ease up some, then wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve before it froze to his forehead. Underneath the denim jacket, he had on three layers of clothes, and now he was overheated. His breath misted in front of his face as he squinted in the snowfall’s glare, taking in Mala’s neat little neighborhood, a conglomeration of one-and two-story houses, some frame, some brick, most with porches. Yards were small to average, tidy, liberally dotted with snow-flocked evergreens. Fireplace smoke ghosted from a few chimneys, teasing the almost bare limbs of all the oaks and ashes and maples, slashes of dark gray against the now crystal-blue sky. A few blocks off, a small lake, embedded in a pretty little park, twinkled in the sunlight.

It was a nice town, he supposed. If you liked that sort of thing.

From the back, he heard the kids yelling and laughing; Mala must’ve just let them out. Eddie went back to work, listening to them whooping it up over his shoveling, trying to ignore the ache of pure, unadulterated envy threatening to crush his heart. Still, it was a good thing Mala was doing, giving them the freedom to be happy in spite of what their daddy had done.

She was a good woman, he thought, almost like it was a revelation. And his thinking that had nothing to do with his breath-stealing sexual attraction to her. It had everything, however, to do with why he needed to stop thinking about sex every time he thought about Mala Koleski.

The front door opened. He bent farther over the shovel, but not before he noticed she was wearing baggy blue sweats over a gray turtleneck. She clunked down the steps in those clogs of hers, something clutched in her hand.

“Here. You might as well use these.”

Eddie looked over, noticed her hair was still damp, like she hadn’t taken the time to dry it properly. Then he saw the gloves in her hands. Turned away. “Those your husband’s?” Down the street, someone else came out of his house, shovel in tow.

“I would’ve burned them if they had been. No, they’re a pair of my father’s. He left them here a year ago. We couldn’t find them, so he got another pair. Of course, then they turned up. So, anyway…” She pushed them toward him.

They were good gloves. Pigskin, maybe, lined in fur.

He shook his head. “I can’t take those.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. What am I going to do with them?” When he didn’t reply, she added, “Borrow them, then, if I can’t dislodge that bug from your butt. But in case you haven’t noticed, this is Michigan. In November. It gets cold.”

Eddie lifted his gaze. “Says the woman standing out in twenty-degree weather with wet hair.”

Stubbornness vied with amusement in those cat’s eyes of hers, softened by the breath-cloud soft-focusing her just-washed face.

“Who’d be back inside by now if you’d stop arguing with me.”

He took the gloves, put them on. They fit perfectly.

“Thanks,” he muttered.

“You’re welcome. And thanks for shoveling. I appreciate it.”

Eddie grinned. The gloves felt real good, he had to admit. “I take it this isn’t one of your favorite chores?”

She smiled back. “You might say that—”

A child’s scream blew the moment all to hell. They both turned in time to see Lucas—at least, Eddie thought that’s who it was, it was hard to tell with all the clothes the kid had on—barreling through the side gate, bellowing his head off. Carrie followed, her hatless curls fire in the sun, yelling nearly as loudly.

Mala’s hands flew up. “Geez, Louise…what now?”

“Carrie hit me in the face with a snowball!”

“I did not! It hit your shoulder!”

“There’s snow in my eyes!”

“That’s ’cause it bounced! But I didn’t throw it at your face!” She whirled around to her mother. “I swear!”

“You’re lyin’! An’ it hurt!”

Carrie stomped her foot, her rage-red face clashing with her hair. “It did not, crybaby! The snow’s too soft to hurt!”

“All right, the both of you,” Mala said, her hips strangled by a pair of snowsuited arms, “that’s enough. Okay, honey,” she said to Lucas, cupping his head as he hung on to her for dear life. “You’ll live. But honest to Pete, Carrie, how many times have I told you not to throw snowballs at him?”

“He threw one at me first!” the girl shrieked, her arms flying.

“Did not!”

“Did so!”

“I t-told you to stop and you wouldn’t! You jus’ kept throwin’ ’em and throwin’ ’em, an’ I ast you to stop!”

Her mouth set, Mala glared at her daughter. “Carrie…?”

The ensuing silence was filled only by the sound of someone else’s shovel rasping against their sidewalk. Then, “You always take his side! Always!”

In the space of a second, Eddie saw weariness add five years to Mala’s face. “That’s not true, Carrie—”

“Yes, it is! He’s the baby, he always gets his way! Ow!”

All three faces turned in Eddie’s direction, as Carrie wiped the remains of a half-assed snowball from her shoulder, her mouth sagging open in shock as bits of snow dribbled down one cheek. “Hey! Why’d you do that?”

Eddie leaned on the shovel handle. “Did that hurt?” he asked quietly.

“N-no,” the child said, tears cresting on her lower lids. “But it wasn’t very nice.”

“No, I don’t suppose it was, was it?” he said, then straightened, tapping the shovel on the sidewalk, just once, before he said to Mala, “You got any salt? I might as well lay some down so this won’t freeze up on you all over again tonight.”

“What? Oh, uh…in the shed,” Mala said, her voice brittle, her eyes glittering. Then after a couple of beats of looking like she was going to pop, she gathered her chicks and hustled them back to the house.

In the sunlight, her drying hair was fire-shot, too.

By the time Mala got back to Eddie, a good twenty minutes later, she was downright bristling. And yes, she knew she was overreacting, but tough beans. At least she was fired up enough to be able to march into the garage and light into him before he had a chance to do that thing with his eyes that threw her so much. “What the hell’s the big idea, throwing snowballs at my kids?”

In the process of putting oil in the Camaro, Eddie raised his head and cocked one eyebrow. “Is this a delayed reaction or what?”

Unfortunately, she’d had a momentary brain cramp about the drawl, which was nearly as bad as the eye thing. Mala raised her chin. “I couldn’t say anything in front of them. Then I got tied up on the phone. Well?”

He calmly wiped the end of the funnel with a paper towel. “As I recall,” he said, twisting the car’s oil cap back on, “it was one snowball, at one kid. And it was soft as cotton, I swear.”

“That’s not the point. The point is—”

“The point is—” he slammed shut the Camaro’s hood “—their bitchin’ at each other was obviously about to drive you crazy, it was driving me crazy, and that girl of yours needs to learn it’s not all about her.”

Then he did do the eye thing and her heart knocked against her ribs. Mala crossed her arms, forced herself to stay focused. “So you decided to take matters into your own hands?”

“It worked, didn’t it? Although, I have to admit, she’s right about one thing. You definitely baby the boy too much.”

“Excuse me?” She sucked in a breath, hoping it would keep her voice steady. “He’s barely six, for the love of Mike. And what makes you an expert on raising kids?”

“Oh, don’t go getting all riled up,” Eddie said with a half grin, wiping his hands on a rag. “All I’m saying is you’re not doin’ the kid any favors by coddling him the way you do.”

“And what would you have me do? Smack him every time he cries? Punish him for something he can’t help?”

“Dammit, woman—” He’d removed his jacket, even though the garage was unheated; now Mala could see every muscle tense underneath a flannel-lined denim shirt hanging partially open over a sparkling white T-shirt. He tossed the rag onto a nearby workbench, then looked back at her, his darkened gaze searing into hers. “Of course not! Okay, so maybe I don’t know anything about raising kids, but I sure as hell know how mean they can be. And if Lucas cries as much at school as I hear him when I’m around here, life must be hell for him on the playground.”

Oh, dear God. It wasn’t irritation with a whiny kid that had prompted his unsought advice, she suddenly realized, but something far deeper. And far, far too complicated for her to deal with right now, if ever. Especially with someone who wouldn’t be around, who was more than willing to tell her where she was going wrong but who couldn’t be bothered with putting his theories to the test in a real-life situation. She waited a beat, then said, “You know what you said about keeping to yourself? Maybe this is a good time to remember that—”

“Mama!”

Mala whirled around to the garage opening, hugging herself against the cold. “What?”

“Grandma called,” Carrie yelled through the barely cracked open kitchen door. “She’s coming over.”

Just what she needed. Then she looked back at Eddie, whose now shuttered features set off an alarm in her brain that somehow their exchange had shaken him as much as it had her. But hey—who’d started this, anyway? Not only that, but in the week since his return, Mala had learned nothing more about Eddie King than she’d known before. By mutual consent, true—she was no more inclined to pry than he was to divulge—but the point was, since she had no idea what, if any, his sore spots were, she refused to be held accountable for accidentally hitting a bull’s-eye or two.

She also refused to apologize for who her children were.

“Look,” she said, “I know Lucas is overly sensitive. I know sometimes Carrie could give Imelda Marcos a run for her money. And God knows there are times when I’m tempted to believe I’m the worst, most ineffectual mother in the universe. But you know what? Lucas is one of the kindest children I’ve ever known. And as for Carrie…well, at least I can sleep at night knowing that nobody, but nobody’s ever gonna walk all over my little girl.”

Without waiting for a response, she stomped out of the garage, her arms tightly crossed over her ribs as she plowed across the snowy yard to the house.

Some four hours later, Mala glowered at the computer screen, willing her head to stop throbbing. The day had not gotten any better after the snowball incident. Not for her, at least. Oh, the kids had made up, per usual, which would have been fine except that, since they decided it was too cold to stay outside and the snow was too “mushy” to make a snowman, anyways, they’d been chasing each other around the house for the past three hours, shrieking with laughter at the tops of their extremely healthy lungs. Which meant she’d straightened up the house at least three times, not counting lunch, since she kept expecting her mother to arrive at any minute, which she hadn’t yet done. And which meant Mala hadn’t gotten an ounce of productive work done the entire day.

Especially as her mind simply would not let go of the Eddie King Quandary. The more she thought about it, the more confused she got. About the way her heart was still doing a boogie and a half at that raw, vulnerable look in his eyes. About the fact that she had to admit, now that sufficient time had passed for her to get over herself, that he’d been right, dammit. Especially about Lucas.

Still, the man had no business sticking in his nose like that. And if he ever did it again, he was gonna find himself looking for a new place to live, boy.

Maybe.

She thought of her shoveled sidewalk and sighed.

God knew, people butted into Mala’s life all the time. She was hardly raising her kids alone, not with her parents living barely ten blocks away and her brother and Sophie taking the kids off her hands at least once a week to hang out with their adopted brood of five. But they were family, part of a unit whose members were SuperGlued together; this guy wasn’t, and never would be, part of anything. Eddie King was the kind of man who might be dependable, in his own weird way, but there was no getting around the fact that he was still a baggage-laden commitment-phobe who substituted charm for sincerity.

He was also the kind of man who’d spend a good two hours shoveling her sidewalk, her driveway and a fair portion of old Mrs. Arnold’s sidewalk next door as well. Without being asked.

Who’d say he wasn’t a kid person, yet would care enough to show concern for a little boy’s self-esteem, even though he had to know he was taking his life in his hands by confronting said child’s mother about the issue.

But who wasn’t the least bit afraid to confront said child’s mother, either.

And then there was the little sidebar dealie of his being the first man since Scott who made her skin sizzle when she got within ten feet of him.

Her hormones strrretched and yawned and said, groggily, “You rang?”

Yeah, well, she knew all about sizzling skin and where that led.

Mala lobbed a pencil across the room, then sank her chin in her palm and stared out the window, watching the sun flash off the icicles suspended from her next-door neighbor’s eaves as she admitted to herself that the one hitch in her decision not to put herself through the dating/courting/marriage wringer again was that, contrary to popular belief, she wasn’t dead. In fact, if recent physical stirrings could be believed, she was a helluva lot more alive than she’d thought. However, she had far too much sense—

Another roar of shrill laughter shot down the far-too-short hall.

—not to mention children, to let herself be bossed around by a few clueless hormones. Loud and insistent though they might be.

“Ooooh, Lucas—you are gonna be in so much trouble!”

Mala shut her eyes and the hormones hobbled back to their cold, airless cell. To the casual observer, the downstairs apartment was more than big enough—besides the living room, there were three bedrooms, two baths, the eat-in kitchen and the office. Today, it seemed about as big as a matchbox. And four times as suffocating.

Something thudded out in the living room. The doorbell rang. The phone rang. Lucas screamed. Carrie remonstrated. Lucas screamed more loudly, the sound escalating as he approached the office, which meant he was ambulatory at least. The phone rang again; Mala picked it up.

“Grandma’s here!” came Carrie’s yell from down the hall.

“I slipped and bumped my head!” Lucas wailed. “Kiss it!”

“Lucas, shush!” She kissed his head, said “hello?” but got nothing for her trouble except a dial tone.

“Ma-ma! Grandma’s here!”

Her headache escalated to nuclear proportions.

Like a dog burying its bone, Bev Koleski wiped her booted feet about a hundred times on Mala’s doormat before stepping inside, chattering to the kids. Mala glanced out at the curb. No car.

“You walked?”

“Well, of course I walked,” her mother said as she began shedding layers of clothes—scarf, gloves, knit hat, down coat, cardigan, a second sweater and, at last, the wiped-to-death boots—neatly placing each item on or by the mirrored coatrack next to the front door. Then she tugged down a rust-colored turtleneck that she’d been swearing for ten years must’ve shrunk in the wash over fearsome, polyester-ized hips. The women in Mala’s family were not petite. “Carrie, honey—go put on the kettle for me. Yes, you, too,” she added to Lucas, whose ten-second old boo-boo had already been consigned to oblivion, then said to Mala as the kids bunny-hopped down the hall to the kitchen, “You don’t think I’m gonna risk gettin’ in a car with the streets like this, do you?”

No, of course not. Out of the corner of her eye, Mala spied somebody’s wadded up…something draped over the banister. She sidled over, snatched up whatever it was as Bev frowned in the mirror at her somewhat lopsided hairdo, which, thanks to better living through chemistry, had been exactly the same shade of dark brown for thirty years. With a resigned sigh, she swatted at her reflection, then dug in her aircraft carrier–size vinyl purse for a pair of pink terry cloth scuffs, which dropped to the wooden floor, smack, smack. Then she squinted at Mala as she shuffled her feet into the slippers.

Oh, Lord. Here it comes.

“You look tired.”

“I’m fine, Ma.”

“Don’t lie to your mother.”

“Okay, I have a little headache. It’s nothing.”

Golden brown eyes softened in sympathy. “Kids making you nuts?”

“Not any more than Steve and I did you. And you lived.”

“Barely.” Then the eyes narrowed even more. “You doin’ okay, money-wise?”

“Yes, Ma. Picked up two new clients this week, in fact. But thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“This has nothin’ to do with confidence, and don’t get smart with me, little girl. I’m not stupid. It’s hard, raising two kids on one income. Bad enough you won’t let your father and me help out—”

“Ma. Stop.”

Bev pursed her lips. “Then why don’t you let us at least hire someone to go after the scuzzbag. Wring child support out of him if you have to.”

“And I’ve told you a million times, I don’t want Scott’s money. He’s gone, it’s over, and I don’t want anything to do with Scott Sedgewick, ever again.”

“The kids deserve a father,” her mother said.

“Not that one, they don’t.”

“Oh? You got somebody else lined up for the job?”

Mala laughed, a sound as dry as the heated air inside the house. “Damn, you’re good. I didn’t even see that one coming.”

“Took years of practice. You should take notes.”

Yeah, like maybe she should’ve taken notes on what to look for in a life partner before she let a charming smile and pretty words delude her into thinking, after years of fizzled-out relationships, that Scott had been The One. That he’d fall in love with his children, once he saw them. Managing a smile despite the fact that her heart suddenly felt like three-day-old oatmeal, Mala turned away, starting for the kitchen. Her eyes stung like hell, but damned if she was gonna cry in front of her mother. She didn’t get it, why the pain seemed to be getting sharper, not duller, as time went on.

Especially in the past week. Ever since Eddie King and his damned, vulnerable eyes and his damned, sexy-as-hell drawl and his double-damned good-enough-to-eat body moved in upstairs.

The itchy-ickies started up again.

“Hey—” Her mother snagged her arm and turned her around, then lifted one hand, gently cupped her daughter’s cheek. Mala bested her by a couple inches, but the instant she felt that soft, strong touch on her skin, she felt like a little girl again. Except, when she’d been little and innocent and trusting, her mother’s touch had always held the promise that, sooner or later, everything would be all right.

“Your father and me, we are so proud of you, baby. You and Steven both. Sometimes, Marty and me just sit at the table and talk about how lucky we were, to get a pair of kids like you two. You know that, don’t you?”

Afraid to speak, Mala only nodded.

Bev went on, now skimming Mala’s hair away from her face. “The way you take care of these kids all by yourself, run a business on your own… God knows, I don’t think I could’ve done it. But sometimes, we worry about you. That you’re lonely, y’know?”

“Ma—”

Bev’s hands came up. “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t come all the way over here to upset you.” She started toward the kitchen. “Anyway,” she glanced back over her shoulder, “I figured it probably wouldn’t hurt to have someone around to keep the kids out of your hair for a couple of hours, so you could get a little work done. We’ll bake cookies or somethin’. Oh, hell—you haven’t had a chance to clean the living room in a while, huh?”

Oh, hell, was right. Mala dashed into the living room right behind her mother, snatching up whatever she could from the most recent layer of kid-generated debris before her mother got a chance. She just didn’t get it—she and Steve had never dared dump stuff all over the place the way her two did. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t get after them. It just never seemed to take.

“So. Is he here?”

Slightly out of breath, Mala glanced over at her mother, who was about to vanish behind the free-standing sofa. Oh, crud…now what do you suppose was back there? “He, who?”

“Your new tenant.”

“Uh-uh. He went out a couple hours ago.”

Like a bat out of hell, actually.

Bev stopped, her arms full of assorted sweaters, books and a two-foot tall inflatable dinosaur. “In this weather?”

“He’s a big boy, Ma. He’ll manage.”

Her mother gave her a look, then swooped behind the sofa. Then Mala heard, “He’s real good, let me tell you,” followed by her mother’s reddened face as she struggled back up.

“Good?”

Bev gave her a “keep up” look. “Yeah, good. As in, cooking. Your father and I were up to Galen’s Saturday night, figuring we should give it a try, although your father wasn’t all that sure he wanted to, since you know how crazy he is about Galen’s ravioli. Where do you want these?” she said, holding up a bunch of socks. Mala grabbed them out of her mother’s hand. A good half dozen, none of them matching. “Anyway,” her mother went on, “I had the lasagna, but I made your father have the grilled tuna, since the doctor told him he needed more fish in his diet, and they were both out of this world. Between you and me, maybe even a little better than Galen’s.”

“Really?”

“Okay, maybe not better, but just as good. He uses slightly different seasonings or something. But when we told the waitress—it was Hannah Braden that night, you know, Rod and Nancy Braden’s girl? I mean, isn’t that something, with all that money they have, she doesn’t think she’s too good to wait tables to earn her own pocket money.”

“Ma-aa? Geez.”

Bev swatted at her. “So, anyway, when we told her we wanted to thank him personally, she said she was sorry, but he wouldn’t come out front for anybody. Can you imagine that?”

Mala bent over the coffee table to clear away the same assorted cups and plates she’d already cleared twice today. “Eddie prefers to keep to himself. That’s all.”

“Still?”

The thin, annoying whine of the teakettle pierced through the whoosh of the heat pumping through the floor vent. Mala straightened, swiping back a hank of her hair with her wrist. “What do you mean, still?”

“Nana Bev!”

“I know, honey,” Bev called over her shoulder. “And don’t you dare touch it—I’ll be there in a sec.” Then to Mala, “From when he was here before, when you were still in high school. Mind you, I only saw him the one time, but the way he hung back, that stay-away-from-me look on his face…” She shook her head.

“I had no idea you even knew who he was.”

“Which just goes to show there’s a lot about your old mother you don’t know,” Bev said. Mala rolled her eyes. “Anyway, he was staying with Molly and Jervis Turner, y’know—”

Yes, that much she knew.

“—and Jervis occasionally did some work for your father, when he got more calls than he could handle. He couldn’t handle the complicated stuff, but he was fine when it came to switching out plugs or installing new ceiling fans, things like that. Anyway, this was when I was still going into your father’s office a couple days a week to do the books. Jervis came by for his paycheck, and he had Eddie with him. Jervis wasn’t much of a talker, either, but he said the boy was staying with them until he finished out school, that his mother had died when the kid was six, and that the kid’d lived with various and assorted relatives down south since then. And that Molly and him might’ve taken the kid on sooner if anybody’d bothered to ask. Since you never said anything about him, I figured he wasn’t part of your group.”

Mala forced her knotted hand to relax, then shook her head. “By his own choice,” she said, remembering how Eddie had rebuffed everyone’s overtures. Not rudely, exactly. But it hadn’t taken long for everyone to get the hint. For a while, Mala had regretted not trying harder—even as wrapped up as she’d been in her own hectic life, she’d sensed Eddie’s hanging back was actually a challenge, seeing if anyone would care enough to work for his friendship. But he’d scared her, she realized, even then. So she hadn’t met his challenge.

He still scared her, she realized.

He was still challenging her, too.

She sucked in a quick little breath, then said, “I don’t suppose you know why Eddie left before he graduated?”

Bev shook her head. “No. I rarely ran into Jervis or Molly. I’m not sure I even knew he had. But whaddya suppose possessed him to come back?”

A question that had nagged at Mala for the past week. “I have no idea. Galen says he could probably find work anywhere, at a top restaurant if he wanted.”

“Well, he’s sure not back because of Molly and Jervis, since they both passed on years ago….”

The doorbell ringing made them both jump. Before Mala could answer it, both kids came roaring out from the kitchen, each one claiming whoever it was on the other side. Mala opened it to find Eddie standing there, a huge sack of salt slung on one hip. He glanced at the kids, sort of the way one might regard last night’s still unwashed dinner dishes, then up at her.

“Hey,” he said without preamble, his voice just slightly laced with contrition, she thought. “I used up most of what you had out there in the shed, figured I may as well pick up some more while I was out. Heard there’s another storm predicted for the weekend.” The kids, clearly bummed it was only Eddie, retreated down the hall, halfheartedly calling each other names. Her mother, however, had eagerly taken their place. In fact, Mala noted with a slight twinge of dread, the woman was one step removed from panting.

“Mom, Eddie King. My new tenant. Eddie, Bev Koleski. And yes, she bites.”

“For godssake, Mala, where you get that mouth, I have no idea.” Bev reached out to meet Eddie’s already extended hand as Mala grabbed her purse off a hook on the rack. “We met, when you were here before,” Bev said, “but I doubt you’d remember me.”

“No, ma’am, I can’t say that I do.”

Her wallet clamped in her hand, Mala wedged between them before her mother bonded for life. “Okay, how much—”

“Forget it,” Eddie said. “I’ll take it out in trade.”

Mala blushed. Her mother chuckled, low in her throat. Mala sent her a brief but lethal glance, then forced her focus back to the deadpan expression in those ice-blue eyes. “Excuse me?”

The eyes thawed, just a little. Just enough to poke at the snoring hormones. Then he grinned, all bad and little boyish, and she nearly lost it. “For the occasional use of your washer and dryer, is all I meant.”

“Oh. Um, yeah, that sounds fair to me.”

“I thought it might.”

The phone rang. “You want me to get that?” Bev asked.

“Please,” Mala said, sending up a prayer of thanks. Bev shuffled away; Mala looked back at Eddie, who shifted the salt to his other hip, which of course caused Mala’s gaze to likewise shift before she snapped it back up to his face. “Well, I guess I’ll just go on and put this in the shed,” he said.

Mala sucked in a breath, let it out sharply. “Yeah. Thanks.”

Eddie angled away, only to turn back, a combination of regret and defiance shining in his eyes. He glanced into the house over her shoulder, as if to make sure nobody else was in earshot, then said, his voice low, “I apologize if my directness earlier upset you. I didn’t mean to criticize your mothering, even if that’s the way it came out. It’s just that…” He looked away for a moment, then back at her, his mouth pulled taut. “When you live alone as long as I have, you tend to forget about things like being tactful. Or how to put across what you’re thinking without—”

“—pissing people off. Yeah, I got it.”

There went that half smile again. Mala’s heart stalled in her throat. “It’s okay,” she said softly, leaning against the door frame. Leaning into that I-can-see-straight-through-you gaze, wanting to reach out to him so badly, her teeth hurt. “As it happens, you gave me some things to think about.”

One brow lifted. Skeptical. Amused. “Really?”

A smile tugged at her mouth, even as a little voice said, “Watch it, sister.”

“Yeah. Really.”

One Mississippi…two Mississippi…

“Well. Okay. That’s…good, then. Well…uh, tell your mama it was nice to meet her, okay?” He turned around and trudged away, his strides long and purposeful.

“Nice butt,” Bev observed behind her. Mala jumped.

“Oh, geez, Ma. Besides, what can you see under that shirt he’s wearing?”

“A wealth of possibilities, missy. And what was that all about?”

“You heard?”

“Enough.”

“Well, it was nothing. Just a little misunderstanding.” Mala managed a nonchalant shrug. “All cleared up now.”

“Oh?”

The woman could pack more meaning into a two-letter word than Webster’s in the whole flipping dictionary.

“Don’t even go there, Ma,” Mala said, shutting the door a bit more forcefully than necessary and heading back toward the kitchen.

“What? What did I say?”

“You don’t have to say anything.” She went into the kitchen, pulled a mug out of the dish drainer, a box of tea bags from the cupboard. “What you’re thinking’s written all over your face.”

“Like you know what’s going on in my head, little girl. Well, for your information, Miss Know-It-All, what I was thinking is that Eddie King turned out okay. Not many men can find it in themselves to apologize for anything. Give me that,” she said, snatching the box from Mala’s hand. “I can make my own tea. Anyway, he’s a nice boy.”

“Ma, he’s a year older than me. He’s hardly a boy.”

“So he’s a nice man. Even better. You know if the restaurant’s open for Thanksgiving?”

Mala frowned. “It isn’t. Why?”

“I just wondered if he’s doing anything, that’s all.”

“Oh, dear God,” Mala said, raising her eyes to the heavens. Well, okay, the ceiling, but it was close enough. “What have I done to deserve this?”

“So you should ask him if he’d like to have dinner with us.”

Us. Meaning her parents and Mala and Steve and Sophie—whose first Thanksgiving this would be, since they didn’t do Thanksgiving in Carpathia—and their five kids and her two.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not that mean. Besides, he has other plans.”

“You know this, or you’re only trying to get me off your case?”

“Yes.”

Footsteps creaked overhead. “You know somethin’?” Bev said, “I’ve got half a mind to go up there and ask him myself.”

Mala opened her mouth to protest, when suddenly, she didn’t care anymore. What the hell did it matter to her if Eddie King accepted her mother’s invitation? He certainly didn’t need her protection. And with all those people around, it wasn’t as if they’d even see each other. Probably. Besides, her parents had been inviting strays to holiday dinners for as long as she could remember. So big fat hairy deal.

“Fine,” she said. “Go ask.”

Which Bev did. Mala listened, heard faint voices upstairs, then her mother’s slow, steady descent on the outside stairs.

“You’re right,” Bev said when she came in. “He can’t make it. Says he’s got plans.”

So how come she felt disappointed rather than relieved?

And what kind of holiday plans could a man have who didn’t know anybody in town? And how was this any of her business?

Mala shook herself, yanked open the dishwasher to stack another half dozen dishes inside. “So who was on the phone?” she asked her mother.

“The phone?” her mother said from the kitchen table. “Oh, right. Nobody. A hang up. Which is so rude. Geez. I mean, if you get a wrong number, the least you can do is say ‘sorry’ or something, y’know? And when the hell you gonna get Caller ID, anyway?”

Mala just sighed.