Читать книгу What A Man's Gotta Do - Karen Templeton - Страница 9

Eddie King never had understood what it was about him that seemed to shake people up. Not that the pregnant lady frowning at his résumé on the other side of the cluttered, pockmarked desk seemed particularly shook up, exactly. But Eddie was hard-pressed not to notice that Galen Farentino hadn’t yet quite looked him straight in the eye, either, even though she was the one doing the hiring.

He supposed a lot of people thought he was a bit on the eccentric side, if not at least worth keeping one eye on. For one thing, old Levi’s and cowboy boots didn’t fit most folks’ expectations of what a five-star-quality chef was supposed to look like. Then when you factored in his refusal to get riled up about much, his preference for keeping to himself, the way he kept flitting from job to job after all these years…hell, in somebody else’s shoes, he’d probably keep one eye on him, too.

Eddie linked his hands over his stomach, thinking how much the cramped office tucked behind the restaurant kitchen still looked pretty much like it had two decades ago. His peripheral vision caught the photo on one corner of the desk, a wedding shot of his prospective employer and some huge, dark-haired man in a tux. One of the man’s arms possessively encircled his bride’s waist, while the other supported a tiny blond girl on his hip. All three of ’em wore sappy grins.

Eddie glanced away, like the picture hurt his eyes.

He idly scratched his prickly cheek, thinking he needed a shave, bad, after that long drive from Florida. It was crazy, coming all the way up here when this job wasn’t even in the bag yet. And why he’d been led to come back to Spruce Lake, he’d never know. Molly and Jervis had both passed away years ago, so it wasn’t like he had any real ties to the place. And anyway, Eddie usually steered clear of small towns, much preferring the anonymity of the big city. But that ad in the trade rag on his former boss’s desk had just kinda leapt out at him, and since the thought of spending the winter someplace where they actually had winter was not altogether unattractive, he’d figured what the hell. Since it’d been years since he’d applied for a job he hadn’t gotten, he wasn’t too worried about getting this one. And if he didn’t? No big deal. He’d just move on.

He was real used to moving on.

“Your references are very impressive, Mr. King,” the redhead now said, more to his résumé than to him. He guessed her to be around his age, but she mustn’t’ve been in Spruce Lake back then, since he didn’t recognize her. Then she looked up, reluctantly almost, her face not much darker than that white turtleneck sweater she had on underneath her denim maternity jumper. She’d said on the phone that both her doctor and her husband had ordered her to go easy for the remainder of her pregnancy, and that she then intended to take at least six, possibly eight, weeks maternity leave after that. So the job would last four, five months at the outside. Which suited Eddie fine.

As if reading his mind, she said, “I couldn’t help but notice you’ve worked in—” she glanced again at the résumé, then back at him “—eight different states in nine years.”

“Yes, ma’am, that’s true.”

Her head tilted. “Yet every reference I contacted said they were sorry to see you go. In fact, the owner of La Greque in New Orleans told me he offered you quite a handsome salary to stay on.”

“He sure did.” Galen’s eyebrows lifted, encouraging an explanation. Eddie shifted in the same seventies-era molded plastic chair his butt had warmed during more than one lecture all those years ago. “They were all temporary jobs, ma’am. Fill-ins, just like this one. Which is the way I like it, seeings as I don’t like getting tied down to one kind of cooking for too long.”

The phone rang, cutting off further interrogation. Galen mouthed a “sorry” and took the call. Eddie crossed his ankle at the knee in the don’t-give-a-damn pose that Al Jackson, Eddie’s septuagenarian boss back when this had still been the Spruce Lake Diner, had seen straight through. An odd, rusty emotion whimpered way in the back of Eddie’s brain; he frowned slightly at the scuffed heel of his boot, concentrating instead on the early season snow snicking arrhythmically against the office’s tiny, high-set window. He hadn’t mentioned his former ties to the place to his prospective employer—what would be the point?—but now that he was here, this odd, unsettled feeling kept nagging at him, like maybe there were answers here to questions he’d never bothered to ask before. Never wanted to.

Galen hung up the phone, picked up a pen and started twiddling with it. Her plain gold wedding band glinted in the flat light. “If I hire you, can I trust you won’t leave me high and dry?”

He kept his gaze steady, almost sighing in exasperation as a telltale blush swept up the woman’s cheeks. All he was doing was looking at her, for God’s sake. And if it was one thing Al had drummed into him, it was that if you want respect—if you want folks to take you seriously—you had to look them in the eye when you talked to them, a philosophy only reinforced by four years in the Marines. “I may not be in the market for anything permanent, ma’am, but I don’t leave people in the lurch. I’ll stay as long as you need me to.”

After a moment, she apparently decided to believe him. “Glad to hear it,” she said, then awkwardly pushed herself up from her chair. Eddie stood as well, ducking underneath the still too-small door frame as he followed the woman back out into the immaculate kitchen, where a half-dozen assistants were preparing for the evening rush. The restaurant/pizzeria had taken over the building next door as well, making Galen’s twice the size of the original diner, but the kitchen didn’t look much different than it had. Oh, some of the equipment had been updated—a bigger, fancier stove, a pair of new Sub-Zero refrigerators—but otherwise, it, too, was just like he remembered. A shudder of déjà vu traipsed up his spine; it was right here that an old man had cared enough to show a displaced Southern boy with a two-ton chip on his shoulder how to channel all that resentment into making apple pie and hamburgers and beef stew and real milk shakes.

To do something with his life, instead of bitchin’ about it.

He realized Galen was looking at him, her smile slightly apologetic. “You know, we don’t have to do this right now,” she said. “I mean, you probably want to find someplace to stay first, get settled in?”

Eddie shoved back his open denim jacket to hook his thumbs in his pockets. “Already did that, as a matter of fact. Got a room in a motel right outside of town. Figure I’ll look for a furnished apartment or something, once you hire me.” When she didn’t take the bait, he added, “I can cook in my sleep, ma’am. So now’s as good a time as any.”

“Well, if you’re sure…”

“I’m sure.”

“Okay, then. Well, we agreed on three dishes, right? Your choice, except that one of them needs to pretty standard—red spaghetti sauce, lasagna, ravioli, something like that. I don’t care about the others, as long as they’re Italian. If they pass muster—”

“They will.”

“—if they pass muster,” Galen repeated, “you can start tomorrow.”

Eddie stuck out his hand, quickly shook Galen’s. “Deal,” he said, then shrugged off his jacket, shoved up his sweater sleeves and slipped into the only world he trusted.

This morning, it had been nearly sixty and sunny. Now, at four-thirty, it was barely above freezing, and had been spitting snow for two hours already. And Mala Koleski, whose thirty-seven-year-old body’s themostat didn’t take kindly to sudden temperature changes, was freezing her hiney off. She wished.

“Come on, guys,” she said through chattering teeth as she hustled the kids down her mother’s ice-glazed walk and into Whitey, her ten-year-old Ford Escort, blinking against the tiny snow pellets needling her face. She usually tried to meet the school bus herself in the afternoons—a definite advantage to working from home—but it had taken her far longer than she’d expected to unearth last month’s receivables from the garden center’s new computer program after one of their employees decided to be “helpful.” So now she was running late. And freezing to death. And grateful she’d gotten away from her mother’s before the woman could scrutinize her for signs of physical and emotional decay.

“I need to stop at the restaurant for a sec,” she said, yanking open the back door, “then we’ve got to get home or else there’s gonna be a couple nekkid Pilgrims in the school play tonight. For God’s sake, Carrie—button your coat!”

“I’m not cold,” her seven-year-old daughter announced through a toothless gap as Mala practically shoved them both into the back seat.

“Why can’t I sit up front?” Lucas whined.

“B-because it’s not safe,” she said to Lucas, clutching her sweater-coat to her chest. Her nipples were so rigid, they stung. “Carrie. Now. Button up.”

Underneath a froth of snow-kissed, coppery curls, a pair of big blue eyes blinked back at her. “No.”

“Fine. Freeze.” Mala slammed shut the door and scurried around to the driver’s side, hurtling herself behind the wheel. Yes, she knew the child would moan about how cold she was in five minutes, but tough. Mala had more pressing things to occupy her pretty little head about. Like finishing up those damn costumes. Thawing out her nipples. Figuring out how to finance Christmas without putting it on plastic. Again. Finding a new tenant for the upstairs apartment before the first big heating bill came. One who maybe wouldn’t just up and leave, stiffing her for two months’ back rent—

“Mama?” Lucas said behind her. “I gots to pee.”

“Hold it until we get to Galen’s, ’kay?” She gingerly steered the car onto Main Street, tucking one side of her hopelessly straight pageboy behind her ear. The bright red hair, the kids had clearly gotten from their father, but Carrie’s curls were a total mystery.

The car’s rear end shimmied a couple inches to the right; silently cursing, Mala carefully steered with the skid, pulled out of it. New tires—ones with actual treads—had just officially been promoted to the top of the priority list. Tires she might’ve had already if that jerk hadn’t—

“I’m gonna wet my pants!”

“Do and you die,” Carrie, ever the diplomat, cooly replied.

“Carrie,” Mala said in her Warning Voice, despite feeling pretty much the same way. “Two more blocks, Luc—cross your legs or something.”

Lucas started to whimper; Carrie started in about wussy, crybaby brothers, and Mala turned on the windshield wipers, thinking of all the joy Scott had missed by walking out of their lives three years ago. Okay, so maybe Mala had given him a push, but still.

She eased the car through a four-way stop, then glided into a parking space in the alley behind the restaurant, casting a brief but appreciative glance at the snow-speckled, pepper-red Camaro parked a few feet in front of her. Lucas was out of the car before she’d turned off the engine, hauling his bony little butt toward the propped open kitchen door.

“Lucas! Don’t run—!”

“I told him to go before we left Grandma’s,” Her Supreme Highness intoned from the back seat, “but would he listen to me? Noooo—”

Splat! went the kid on the icy asphalt.

With a sigh, Mala hauled herself out of the car and toward the heap of now-sobbing-child lying facedown in the alley, her flat-soled boots slipping mercilessly in the quickly accumulating snow. Considering Lucas had on at least four layers of clothes, she doubted he was hurt, but she’d long since learned that the decibel level of his screams was in direct and inverse proportion to the seriousness of the injury. A stranger, however—like the tall man now darting out of the restaurant’s kitchen door, snowflakes clutching his thick, wavy hair and heavy sweater like crystalized burrs—might well think the child had been set upon by ravening wolves.

“You okay, kid?” the man asked as Mala reached them both. In fact, he’d already helped the child to his feet, thereby proving that nothing was broken, although you sure wouldn’t have known that from the Lucy Ricardo wail emanating from her son’s throat.

“Yes, I’m sure he’s fine,” Mala said in the guy’s general direction as she squatted down in front of her howling son. “Lucas! Luc, for heaven’s sake…” She tried to keep her teeth from knocking as she dusted dry snow from the child’s face and spiky hair. At least his glasses hadn’t fallen off, for once. “It’s okay, sweetie—”

“I falled dooooown!”

Mala tilted the child’s face toward the light spearing from the partially open door. Nope. No blood. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Carrie’s approach, the child’s expression even more serious than usual underneath the fake-fur rimmed hood of her coat. Which was done up, surprise, surprise.

“Mama told you not to run, dork-face,” she began, but there was genuine concern threaded through the otherwise imperious tones. Her daughter could be a pain in the patoot at times, but she was a protective pain in the patoot. Especially toward her younger brother, and especially since Scott’s vanishing act. Just ask Josh Morgan, the third-grader who’d gotten Carrie’s loaded backpack in the groin last year when he’d reduced her son to tears by calling him “Lucas Mucus.” Still, the smart-mouth comment earned her Mala’s glare. Carrie sighed. “Is he hurt?”

“Other than his pride, uh-uh,” Mala said, straightening Lucas’s wire-rimmed glasses and planting a quick kiss on his cold little lips before allowing herself the luxury of breathing in the warm, garlic-laced air beckoning from the noisy kitchen. Her stomach rumbled; she’d skipped lunch, and the thought of the canned chili she’d planned for tonight’s dinner made her very depressed.

Lucas glanced up at the man standing silently a few feet away—oh, right, an audience—then back at Mala. “I wet my pants,” he whispered on a sob, and she got more depressed. Especially when Carrie groaned.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” Mala whispered back, skimming tears off the mortified little face. “There’s dry clothes in the trunk.” With all the stuff she carted around in that trunk, she could outfit an emergency storm shelter for a month.

She finally hoisted herself upright, fighting the urge to groan as her joints popped—that extra twenty pounds she was still lugging around from Lucas’s pregnancy wasn’t doing her any favors—trying to get a good look at the man who’d come to Lucas’s rescue. Except, between his skulking in the shadows in the darkening alley, as if not quite sure what to make of her kids—an understandable reaction—and the snow pinging into her eyes, all she got was a vague impression of angles and clefts and lashes no man should be allowed to have, dammit.

Along with a subsidiary impression that those angles and clefts and long lashes were somehow familiar.

“Thanks,” she said, guiding the still whimpering Lucas toward the door.

The man nodded, muttering “S’okay” in a soft, Southern accent.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Mala whipped around so fast she nearly knocked Carrie over. Oblivious to her daughter’s affronted “Mama!” she stared at the man, hard, as her heart free-fell straight to her pelvis and her brain warped back twenty years to a time when she could still get into jeans that didn’t have elastic at the waist, a time when nobody knew that Spruce Lake High’s Senior Class President had a secret crush on a bad-ass kid whose ice-chip blue eyes regularly sent chills of forbidden promises down her spine, even though he never—not once—returned her smile.

A boy with sinfully thick, caramel-brown hair and the sharply defined, beard-shadowed face of a man; a boy whose lean, muscled body had filled out his worn, fitted jeans and T-shirts like nobody’s business, whose direct, disquieting gaze spoke of innocence lost but not regretted. He showed up at school every day, yet never spoke to anyone, never carried around any books, neither got involved in any activities nor caused any trouble. Not that Mala knew of, at least. He had appeared out of nowhere, a month into their senior year, only to vanish six weeks before graduation. Mala hadn’t seen him since.

Until today.

She stood there, hugging herself against the cold, barely aware of Lucas’s entreaties to get inside as she let Eddie King once again ensnare her gaze in his.

Then it dropped, unerringly and unapologetically, to her breasts, and she thought, Hold the phone—somebody noticed. Damn, she’d just about forgotten what it felt like to have a man look at her with a little Hmmm in his expression. God knew, Scott sure hadn’t. Not once she’d gotten pregnant with Lucas, at least. Yeah, yeah, so she was a feminist turncoat. Tough. Rushes of sexual awareness didn’t often happen to single mothers with two kids and too many pounds plastered to their butts. It was kinda nice, having her nipples tighten for some other reason than being cold.

Even if it was just a passing thing.

At seventeen, she’d been the quintessential good girl, while Eddie King had been the quintessential good girl’s fantasy. At thirty-seven, not a whole lot had changed on that score.

But she had. At seventeen, she’d still believed in “one day…” At thirty-seven, that day had come and gone. But not before taking a healthy chunk out of her ample butt on its way out the door.

Eddie had no use for memories. The bad ones—and there were plenty of those—he’d ditched years ago. And the few good ones…well, that’d be like refusing to throw away a pair of shoes you’d outgrown, wouldn’t it? No matter how cool they were, if they didn’t fit, no sense hanging on to ’em.

Mala Koleski had been a pair of shoes that’d been the wrong size from the get-go. A pair of shoes he’d never even bothered trying on.

Not that he hadn’t been tempted.

In any case, he hadn’t thought about her in years. Yet all it took was one chance meeting, a split second’s worth of a connection that was startlingly and unmistakably sexual, to haul those memories of her front and center, boy, all shined up and ready for inspection.

Whether he liked it or not.

The kids annihilated the moment, as kids tended to do, and they’d all stumbled back inside, where he and Mala did this dumb so-wow-how-are-you-doing-fine-and-you? number until she’d shepherded her babies into Galen’s office and Eddie’d gone back to the stove.

Where the sizzling sausage and peppers now taunted him. Galen had more or less left him to his own devices, and instructed her staff to do the same, even though they’d been helpful enough about showing him where everything was. Still, he could feel them all watching him as they went about their chores, like they were wondering how he was gonna pull this one off. Not from meanness, nothing like that. Just…curious. Probably as much about why he didn’t join in their jawin’ as about his cooking skills.

Well, if he got the job, they’d figure out that one soon enough. He was into doing his job, period, not getting overly chummy with his co-workers. It wasn’t that he had anything against being friendly. And that chip he used to cart around had pretty much disintegrated years ago. He’d tell the occasional joke, put up his two bucks for the football pool or pitch in for somebody’s wedding present, stuff like that. He just had no use for getting involved in people’s personal lives.

Just like he had no use for anyone getting involved in his.

Eddie grabbed the bottle of wine set to one side, dashed some into the pan, reveling in the fruity steam that billowed up. From the office, he heard Mala’s laugh.

Soft. That had been the only word to come to mind the first time he saw her, dashing between classes, surrounded by a half-dozen giggling girlfriends. Everything about her—her full figure, her velvet-smooth voice, even her perfume, which hadn’t been overpowering like most of the other girls’—had made him think of being someplace warm and comfortable and…soft. She’d glanced at him, just for a heartbeat, as she whizzed past on her high-heeled sandals, and all the air just whooshed from his lungs at the sight of those vaguely curious green-gold cat’s eyes. A smile, genuine and just this side of devilish, erupted between round, dimpled cheeks, but he wasn’t completely sure it’d been for him. He remembered standing stock-still in her wake, watching the ends of her dark, gleaming hair twitching across the top of a generous bottom unabashedly displayed in snug designer jeans. An achy sense of longing that he never, ever allowed himself—not then, not now—had damn near knocked him over.

Eddie chuckled to himself as he turned down the heat under the pan. Oh, he’d ached, all right. Hell, his physical reaction at the time had embarrassed the life out of him. While it had been hardly the first time the sight of some girl had gotten him hot, it had definitely been the first time he’d feared for the buttons on his 501’s. And while he was way beyond getting embarrassed about things like that these days, he wasn’t beyond being startled. Because damned if those buttons weren’t being put to the test again.

Her hair might be shorter, and that pretty face attested to the fact that she was a woman in her late thirties. But the eyes still held that note of devilment, and the dimples were still there, and her voice had ripened into a huskiness that both soothed and excited. And she was still soft as a hundred down pillows all piled on top of each other.

And still out of his reach.

Behind him, he heard a minor commotion as Mala apparently ushered the boy through the kitchen to the bathroom in order to change his pants. Mama-mode suited her well, he decided, although he also decided not to think too hard about the man responsible for those kids. The man who got to snuggle up to all that softness every night.

Dimly, he heard the boy start crying again.

He dragged over a bowl of already cooked rigatoni, dumped out the sausage-pepper mixture. Damn, those kids were something else, weren’t they? The girl, especially—whoo-ee. She’d put the fear of God in King Kong. And the boy—what was up with the crybaby routine? Kid had to be, what? Five, six? And still bawling from a tumble in the snow? Shew, Eddie couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried. Being the new kid on the playground every year or two kinda knocks that right out of you—

“What’s that?”

He looked down into a pair of challenging blue eyes underneath an explosion of red curls that didn’t look real. Long legs in white, lacy tights or whatever you called them peeked out from underneath a purple jumper with flowers all over it, incongruously ending in clunky pink-and-silver sneakers. Kid was skinny, but not fragile. Probably one of those girls who liked to beat up boys. And did, regularly. “Italian sausage and peppers. Wanna taste?”

That got a wrinkled nose. “No, thank you. Peppers don’t agree with me.”

Cocking one brow, Eddie opened one oven door to remove the baked ziti. Instantly, the temperature in the kitchen rose another ten degrees. It wasn’t that he didn’t like kids, even though the idea of having any of his own never even made the playoffs. He just never quite knew what to make of them, was all. “Who told you that?”

“Nobody told me,” came the indignant reply. “I get all burpy when I eat them. What’s your name?”

Eddie straightened, set the ziti on the prep table behind them, then grabbed a towel from the bar on the stove, wiped his hands. Where the hell was the kid’s mother? “Eddie King. And yours?”

“Caroline Sedgewick, but most people call me Carrie. My mama’s Galen’s accountant. That’s why we’re here, so she can get some papers or something so she can take them home and work on our computer. After she finishes our costumes for the play tonight. Galen’s gonna have a baby pretty soon. That’s why her belly’s so big. Are you the new cook?”

Figuring the question signaled a break in the onslaught, Eddie said, “That’s what I’m hopin’. You know, you sure got a lot to say for such a little thing.”

“I know.” Unaffected, the child hiked herself up onto a nearby stool, making something sparkle on the sneakers. “I’m in first grade, but I can read better’n anybody in my class. Better’n some second graders, too. Lucas can’t even write his name right yet, and he’s only a year younger’n me. But he’s a boy. And everybody knows boys are slower’n girls.”

“Oh?”

“Uh-huh. Well, ’cept for my uncle Steve, who lives out on a farm. He just got married last summer and we all got to go to the wedding, which was all the way over in Europe because Aunt Sophie’s a princess. But I heard Grandma Bev tell Pop-Pop one day when they didn’t know I could hear ’em talking that my daddy was dumber than…well, it’s a word that rhymes with ‘spit’ but I’m not supposed to say it.” Then she pointed. “What’s that around your neck?”

Feeling slightly dizzy—what was that about somebody marrying a princess?—Eddie felt for the chain that was always there, then slipped it out from underneath his sweater. Had to admit, the kid was kinda entertaining. If you were into bossy little girls with egos the size of Canada. And one thing he’d say for someone who talked that much: it made his part in the conversation much eaiser. “It’s a cross. Used to belong to my mama.”

Carrie leaned over to inspect it. He half expected her to whip out a jeweler’s loop. “It’s pretty. How come you have it?”

“My mama gave it to me right before she died, when I was real little. About your age, in fact.”

She looked up, her expression melting into what Eddie could only surmise was genuine sympathy, tugging something in his chest he didn’t want tugged. “Are you sad? That your mama died?”

“It was a long time ago. Like I said.”

“Oh. Where’s your daddy?”

With a shrug, he slipped the cross back inside his sweater, his emotions back inside their little box. “I have no idea.”

Eddie realized the child was scrutinizing him like she was trying to decide whether or not to admit him to the club. “My daddy left us when I was four,” she said at last, showing a sudden interest in the way the flowers were arranged on her jumper. “We don’t know where he is, either—”

“Carrie—for heaven’s sake! Stop pestering the poor man!”

Eddie turned around to see Mala, Lucas in tow, jerkily shrugging back into her long tweedy sweater. The two spots of color sitting high on her cheeks kinda clued him in that she’d overheard.

“It’s okay,” he said, surprised to discover he meant it. At least, for the moment. Not that he wanted to make it a habit, mind, of having heart-to-hearts with little girls.

“Yeah, well…” Downright humming with nervous energy, Mala tugged a strand of electrified hair out of one gold loop earring as she dangled a red-and-black car coat in front of her son. Although she looked good—damn good—she’d put on a few pounds since high school, which she’d done her best to cover up with a baggy ivory sweater over a straight, beige skirt that came nearly to the insteps of her flat-heeled boots. Too bad, ’cause he’d bet she’d look real fine in a pair of those tight jeans like she used to wear. “She can talk your ear off, if you let her. C’mon, Luc…get this on—”

The strain in her voice tore another memory loose, of him and his mother walking down some street, somewhere, his hand tightly clamped in hers as she hurried along, as if trying to outrun her tears. He’d been four, maybe five, afraid to ask his mother why she was crying in case he was somehow at fault.

“I’m real sorry to hear about your husband,” he said.

Mala glanced at him, clearly as startled as he was, then away. “S’okay. It’s ancient history now. But thanks. I guess. Lucas, now. We’ve got to go—”

“Not until you help me with a taste test!” Galen said as she waddled over to the prep table. She planted her hands on her swollen belly, either ignoring or oblivious to the tension sputtering around her. “Wow, it smells absolutely fantastic!” She picked up a fork from the tray on the end of the table and went after the sausage and peppers. “C’mon, Mal—dig in. You know you want to.”

“Galen, really, I’d love to—” Mala wrestled the coat onto the boy, who kept craning his neck to stare at Eddie like he couldn’t figure out what he was “—but I’m so far behind now—”

“Oh, my God!” Galen pressed her hand to her chest, her expression downright rapturous, then dug into the ziti. Two seconds of chewing later, she said, “You can start looking for that apartment, because mister, you are hired! Mmm, Mal—” she swallowed “—what about yours?”

“What about my what?”

“Your upstairs apartment. Didn’t you say you were looking for a tenant?”

The words bad and idea came roaring out onto the field from opposite sides of Eddie’s brain and collided right at the fifty-yard line. It was one thing dealing with tight jeans for fifteen minutes, another thing entirely dealing with the prospect of being permanently—and hopelessly—erect for the next four or five months.

Because that’s what living anywhere near this woman would mean. He didn’t understand any more now than he did twenty years ago what it was about Mala Koleski that turned him on so much, but the fact was, she did. However, what he did understand was that—even allowing for the mutual consideration of such an eventuality—women with kids were bad news, not unless the idea of long haul was at least sitting on the sidelines. Hell, in Eddie’s case, they weren’t even in the stadium.

And judging from Mala’s expression, she apparently thought the idea held about the same appeal as lying naked on hot coals. He wasn’t sure whether to be insulted or flattered. Or what to do with the image of her lying naked on anything, which was now stuck to his brain like a piece of Scotch tape you can’t shake off. “Oh, uh…eventually, sure,” Mala said, then waved her hands. “Wait a minute…what about the apartment over the restaurant?”

“Not available. I promised it to Hannah Braden a few days ago.” Galen turned to Eddie, her nose wrinkled. “College kid, wants a little independence, you know how it is.”

“Well, my place isn’t available, either. I mean, not yet.” Cheeks blazing, Mala knelt down to zip the kid’s coat. “It’s not fixed up. The other tenants left it in a real mess and—”

“Oh, get over yourself. What did they do…leave crumbs on the counter? Besides, you just said yourself you needed to get someone in there soon.”

Shew. That glare Mala was giving Galen could broil steaks.

“Hey, look, it’s okay,” Eddie interjected before somebody spontaneously combusted. “Besides, I need to find someplace furnished—”

“Oh, it is,” Galen said, a tiny frown nestling between her brows, like she was wondering why everybody was making this so complicated. “And it’s just a few blocks away, too.” Then she leaned over and stage-whispered, “And she’s a real pushover. Bet she’d let you have it for next to nothing.”

“Galen! Honestly! Would you mind letting me negotiate my own deals?”

A triumphant smile spread across the redhead’s face. “Be my guest.”

Mala opened her mouth, only to immediately shut it again.

A short person tugged on Eddie’s sleeve. He looked down into Lucas’s blue eyes, fought the urge to straighten the kid’s glasses. “If you come live with us, I’ll let you borrow Mr. Boffin.”

“Lucas, for heaven’s sake—he wouldn’t be living with us! Just…oh, rats.” Mala forked one hand through her hair, which only added to her frazzled look. Then she said to Galen, “Mind if we use your office?” turned on her flat heel at Galen’s “Sure” and stomped to the back.