Читать книгу Parents Wanted! - Ruth Dale Jean - Страница 8

CHAPTER THREE

LAURA was looking straight at Jessica when Brandee made her stunning announcement. The little girl had slipped up to hover behind her father instead of joining the circle—eavesdropping, it was clear to Laura.

But the satisfaction on Jessica’s face now was eyeopening to say the least. The girl was overjoyed! Laura’s heart went out to her. She’d obviously felt threatened by her father’s girlfriend, rightly or wrongly. Did that mean she’d resent any woman who might enter Matt’s life, temporarily or permanently?

Not that it mattered to Laura, of course, except that Jessica so obviously needed a woman’s guidance. It would be awful if the right woman came along and the little girl rejected her.

Matt finally found his voice. “You’re what?” he demanded of Brandee.

“Breaking up with you, darling.” She touched his cheek lightly with one graceful hand. “I know I’ve chased you shamelessly for years but something’s come up.” Her smile sparkled. “I’m moving to Denver to manage a new health club Daddy just bought me.” A tiny frown line appeared between her perfectly made-up eyes. “I don’t think I could stand a long-distance relationship, do you? I was just waiting for the right time to tell you and this is it.” She beamed at all and sundry.

Katy said, “Ye Gods!” very softly.

Laura said, “This is personal. I think I’ll just run along and give you two privacy.”

Brandee waved such discretion aside. “No need. We’ve said all that needs saying.” She added belatedly, “Haven’t we, Matt?”

Matt blinked as if he were still trying to come to terms with her brush-off. “Yeah, I guess we have.” He took a deep breath, then grinned. “Good luck, Brandee. I hope everything goes the way you want it to.”

Her smile was radiant. “Aren’t you a sweetie! I’ll miss you, you good-lookin’ thing.” Another light kiss, this time on his mouth; then she turned and sashayed away.

They stared after her, then they stared at Matt. He still looked stunned. The silence stretched out uncomfortably until it was finally broken by Jessica.

“Ya-hoo!” She flung herself at her father’s back, catching him by surprise when she hugged him fiercely around the waist. “We don’t need her, Daddy! Just you wait and see—!”

“Hey,” Dylan said, “did you ever dodge a bullet! Brandee’s chased you for so long that when she finally caught you, I was afraid your goose was really cooked.”

Matt had just filled his friend in on Brandee’s surprise announcement, and the two were loitering beneath a shady tree while the picnic wound down around them.

“Yeah, I was a little worried myself.” Matt took a deep pull on his beer. “It was kind of a shock, though,” he admitted.

“Kinda hurts your feelings, gettin’ dumped more or less in public.”

Matt shrugged, but he wasn’t thinking about the “public.” He was thinking about Laura, who’d looked so disapproving. “Jessica was kinda obvious about her feelings on the subject,” he said. “Brandee just wasn’t the motherly type.”

Dylan laughed. “You can say that again!”

“Yeah, well, it’s over. This dating stuff can be a real pain, you know? I think I’ll just take my time before I get mixed up with another woman.”

“Sure,” Dylan said, “you do that.”

John invited Laura to join him for coffee in his office Monday morning. “Just wanted to tell you what a fine job you did on that Citizen of the Year story about my grandson in Sunday’s paper,” he said. “I know it’s not easy, writing about the boss’s kin, but you handled it just fine.”

“Thanks,” Laura said, truly grateful because it had been a difficult story. At least she could be proud she hadn’t let her personal feelings about the man show through. Actually, she’d felt kind of sorry for him, being dumped in public that way.

“So,” John said, “how do you think the picnic went? Seemed to me folks were having a good time—at least until we ran out of beer.”

Laura laughed. “I don’t think that hurt the event in the slightest. Actually, I think everyone had a great time.”

“Pick up any good gossip?”

She thought for a moment. “Not really,” she confessed. “Everyone was too busy discussing the Prince Charming ad to get into much of anything else.”

John frowned into his coffee cup. “There is a lot of interest in that, all right.”

From the open doorway, Matt’s voice surprised them. “A lot of interest in what?”

Laura realized instantly that he thought they’d been talking about him. She hastened to set his mind at ease. “About the Prince Charming ad,” she said. “It was a hot topic of conversation at the picnic Sunday.”

His lip curled with disdain. He looked big and tough and impatient this morning in his faded jeans and red plaid work shirt. “I pity the poor guy who placed that ad when his identity comes out—and it will. It always does.”

“Why?” Laura frowned. “I think the ad is kind of sweet.”

“Sweet!” Matt rolled his eyes. “He’s gonna deserve what he gets, if you ask me. And what he’s gonna get is a women who can’t get a man any other way—that is, if anyone besides Katy answers the ad at all.”

Laura’s temper soared. “What an arrogant thing to say!”

He shrugged. “I call ’em like I see ’em. Have there been any other responses, Granddad?”

“A few,” John said evasively. “That’s privileged information, by the way.”

“Whatever.” But Matt didn’t look any less skeptical.

John cocked his head. “Did you drop by for a reason or are you just passing through?”

“I’ve got a reason all right—the usual.” He turned to Laura. “There’s going to be a delay in delivery of that fancy hardware you want for your family room. I told you it might take a little extra time to get that particular faucet but—”

“Oh, good grief!” She glared at him. “Just how long is ‘a little extra time’?”

He shrugged. “A week, maybe ten days.”

She gritted her teeth.

“So what do you want me to do?” he pressed.

“I want you to wait for it! I want what I want!”

“Yeah,” he muttered, “you want what you want when you want it. This time it ain’t gonna happen.”

She changed her tactics. “Then we’ll just have to cope, won’t we?” But she said it very sweetly.

He practically growled at her, then turned abruptly and disappeared through the open door. He nearly bumped into Mayor Rogers, who was entering.

“Matt!” she called after him. “Matt, I want to talk to—”

But he was gone. She entered, shrugging. “I’ll track him down later,” she said cheerfully. “In the meantime, I’m delighted to find the two of you together.”

John waved her toward a seat. “How so, Madame Mayor?”

“Because now I’ll only have to say this once.” She took a seat and reached for the carafe of coffee on John’s desk, poured some into a foam cup. “I’d like you both to come to my house Friday night for a kind of dinner party.”

John groaned. “You know how I hate that sort of thing.”

Her sunny smile didn’t waver. “You’ll like this one. It’s a barbecue in the backyard.”

John hurrumphed. “What’s the occasion?”

“No occasion. I just enjoy breaking bread with a few of my favorite people now and again.” She turned to Laura. “Can you make it?”

“Of course.” She wouldn’t miss a social occasion at the mayor’s house. Not only did she like Marilyn, but keeping abreast of the social scene in Rawhide was part of her job.

“Good.” Marilyn grinned. “Because I’ve also invited the new city planning director, who just happens to be available.”

Laura’s first impulse was to groan, but then she asked herself, why not? Why not let the mayor play matchmaker? Laura wasn’t doing too good a job of it on her own. After three years of widowhood, she was feeling somehow... lonesome.

Not that she wanted anything more than casual friendship. To love wholly and freely was to take an enormous risk. She’d lost one love; she wouldn’t risk losing another.

She smiled. “I love meeting new people,” she said. “Now if you’ll both excuse me, I should get back to work before the boss realizes I’m goofing off.”

John waved her away. “You do that.” Before she was even out the door he was talking to Marilyn. “Did you happen to see that little scene at the picnic between my grandson and the banker’s ditzy daughter?”

“As a matter of fact, I did.”

Laura stepped through the door, half closed it and paused. A quick glance around showed her that no one was in sight. If she just happened to bend down to retie her shoelace...

John: “There was no call for her to dump him in public.”

Marilyn: “I think Matt can stand up to the strain. He’s better off without her, John, and you know it”

John, sighing: “You got that right. But I worry about little Jessica. She needs a mother in the worst way.”

Marilyn: “Not that kind of mother. It’s very perceptive of you to figure that out, though.”

John: “I didn’t figure out nuthin’, it hit me in the face. Dammit, Marilyn, someone ought to fix Matt up with a nice girl who’ll be a mother to that child—”

Laura thought that no nice girl in her right mind would waste her time with a ladies’ man like Matt Reynolds, even if Jessica was a nice little girl. Why, he’d probably been through every woman in town already, and he still—

April Forbes rounded the corner heading for her receptionist’s desk. She stopped short at the sight of Laura kneeling beside the boss’s half-closed door. “Everything all right?” she asked.

“Fine, just fine.” Laura shot to her feet, her cheeks burning. “I just had to—” She pointed to her foot. “—shoelace, you know—gotta get back to work.”

And she rushed out, leaving April staring after her. The new planning director’s name turned out to be Roger Reedy and he turned out to be a pleasant, if bland-looking, man in his mid-thirties. “I know you two will get on like gangbusters,” the mayor said when she introduced them. “Just go on out back to the deck—you’ll know everyone, Laura—and introduce Roger to anyone he hasn’t met.”

The doorbell rang at that moment so Laura nodded and led Roger away. She’d been in the mayor’s home a couple of times before, so she knew her way around.

Sure enough, she recognized all those who’d arrived before her: John, of course, plus the president of the chamber of commerce and his wife, the superintendent of schools and his wife, the fire chief and his wife.

John was manning the barbecue when she led Roger up to him and began the introductions.

“We’ve met,” John said, shaking hands. “So how’s it going at city hall, Rog, old boy?”

Roger launched into an earnest explanation but Laura wasn’t listening. Instead, her attention was drawn like a magnet to the man just pushing open the sliding-screen door.

Matt. Why should this surprise her? He was, after all, the newly crowned Citizen of the Year.

Their glances crossed paths, circled back and held. He looked great in crisp khaki trousers and a baby-blue Henley shirt, which was not to say he didn’t look equally great in his usual uniform of jeans and work shirt. But he’d gotten a haircut and he looked sleek and commanding as he stood there in the open doorway.

He started toward her, or maybe he was heading for his grandfather. She’d never know because Marilyn appeared behind him and called his name. He stopped instantly, turning toward her.

Marilyn had a stranger with her. a tall, impressive thirty-something woman dressed all in black, her black hair pulled back in a tight bun. There was a strength about her face that was hardly traditional but she was intensely striking, Laura thought.

Marilyn’s voice carried clearly. “Matt, I’d like you to meet Meredith Zink. She’s new in town and I’m trying to help her meet a few people.”

Matt took the hand the woman offered. “And what brings you to our fair city, Meredith?” he inquired.

“I’m an attorney,” she said crisply. “I’ve just joined the law firm of Lowe and Winkler. Perhaps you know of them...?”