Yours, Mine & Ours

“A punger! You know! A punger!” Quickly she said, “Please! This is serious!”

“A punger,” Mike repeated, but then he got it. Plunger. Plumbing problems. Some kind of major uh-oh. “Tell your mom I’ll be right there.”

“It needs to be now.”

“I understand, Molly. I just need to get a tool kit and the plunger.”

“But don’t tell mommy I told you. She told me to sit in the living room, that she could handle it. But there was water everywhere. And she was saying bad words. I’d tell you what the words were, but I can’t say them. My mommy says that nobody says those words in her house. Or my house. My mom-”

“Okay, honey. We’re going to stop talking now, and start moving.” He pushed on shoes, then grabbed tools, locked up the baying Slugger and herded Teddy out with him. He suspected Amanda might just guess that someone had “told” on her-particularly when he showed up with a plunger and tools-but that wasn’t remotely relevant.

Keeping his hands off her was one issue.

Not helping her if she was in trouble was completely different.

He yelled a hello when he opened her back door. “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Mike!” said the rock star in her loudest voice. She was still wearing the shades. “What a surprise! It’s Mr. Mike, Mom!”

“Molly Ann! Did you go next door and-”

“Me?” But to Mike, she lifted her head and whispered, “I’m in trouble.”

“I’ll fix that. You and Teddy either play or watch some TV for a little while, okay?”

It wasn’t hard to locate Amanda. The place had deteriorated since he saw it last. There seemed to be a whole bunch more purples and pale blues. Pillows. More pillows. Stuff to run into, stuff on top of tables. Flowers all over the place. But the main downstairs bathroom-where the descriptive vocabulary was coming from-had water seeping into the hall.

She must have heard him set down the tool kit, because she started talking-even though she hadn’t wasted a second turning around. “Go away, Mike. I can fix my own problems! I am not looking for someone to save me every time I get into some stupid mess!”

“Okay.”

“This would not be a good time to laugh.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t say one word! I mean it! Just go back home!”

Weeellll. He couldn’t quite say okay to that. The bathroom had definitely been redefined since his last visit. Now it seemed to be covered in butterflies. Butterfly wallpaper, butterfly pictures, butterfly toilet seat, towels embroidered with butterflies. It was almost enough to give a guy a rash-if he’d had the time to itch.

Amanda was pretty wet. Knees, feet, clothes. Towels had been used to sop up the water-or some of it. A few rolls of paper towels had been used for the same purpose. At some point she’d had a book open-Basic Plumbing Repairs-but that likely wasn’t helping her a whole lot at this point, because it was like learning to sail after your boat had already capsized.

“I do not want advice. Don’t you say one word!”

“I won’t, I won’t.” He was still trying to evaluate the situation. Not the plumbing problem. Her. Amanda was the only problem that mattered. She wasn’t crying, exactly. At least there were no sissy, sad tears leaking down her cheeks. This was more…a major, furious, sputtering type of crying.

He said carefully, “Behind the toilet is a shutoff valve.”

“You think I didn’t know that?” She huffed. “Where?”

“Just behind there. Look. You’ll see it. Turn it off-against the clock. If it’s too tight or hard to move, I could-”

“Do not touch anything. I will do it. And don’t tell me any more, either!”

“Okay.” It was amazing…almost from the minute he’d met her, he’d been tensed up. It was that relentless attraction thing. But now, finally, he could relax. He didn’t have to worry about falling in love with her anymore. She was a shrew. A witch times ten. She had a completely unreasonable and irrational side.

“Do we know what went down the toilet that shouldn’t have?” he asked delicately.

“An American Girl doll shoe.”

“A doll’s shoe,” he repeated.

“Possibly both shoes. She was dressing the doll when she went potty. Now the shoes are gone. And right after she left the bathroom, this all-” she motioned “-started.”

“Okay. Now, has the toilet run before? I mean, constantly run?”

“I just moved in this house. It was new, but not brand-new. Is there some reason in the universe I should know that answer for sure?”

“No, no,” he said in his best tiptoe voice. “It’s just that the more we know, the better chance we have of understanding the whole problem.”

“I’m the only one who has to understand anything.”

“You’re so right.” Hell, his pulse was practically humming. At the moment, she was as easy to love as a stingray. A splotchy-cheeked, furious, unmanageable stingray. “Amanda, I don’t know if you have an auger, but I happened to bring one over. I wasn’t going to use it myself. But you could. If you wanted to.”

“I don’t even know what a flipping auger is! Go home, Mike!”

“I’m going. I promise. In just a second. I just want to show you the auger… See? On one end, it has a corkscrew. So you push that end down into the hole…then you turn the handle-clockwise-until the entire spring has been fed into the pipe as far as it’ll go. The idea is to reach the obstruction…”

She tried. The first time she didn’t quite get it, and shot him a look filled with venom. Probably snake venom.

“I won’t offer to do it, I swear,” he promised, hands in the air. “It’s just…you could try it again. In fact, you could try it a couple of times. If you wanted to. And when this is all over, you might want to put some ice on that elbow.”

“I’m not hurt.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say anything nice. It just slipped out…and yeah, you’ve got it now. That’s the how of it. So when the auger’s all the way in, you could try-only if you want to!-to slowly, slowly pull the spring back. If that doesn’t free up the doll’s shoe, you could try it a second time.”

Thank God it worked. Out came a little white shoe. Amazing how much trouble a shoe less than two inches long could cause a person in life.

She started breathing a little better. Not a lot better. But definitely an improvement over the hyperventilating, crying, fire-breathing dragon she’d been a half hour ago.

“Okay now. I’m leaving. I’m going to take a wild guess that you don’t have an indoor-outdoor vac-why would you? So I’ll just bring mine over, leave it on your deck. It should suck up this water in no time. But before I leave… maybe you might want to turn on the water again. Remember? The shutoff valve? This time you turn it the other way.”

“I hear patronizing in your voice.”

“I swear. There isn’t a patronizing thought in my head.” His tone probably sounded virtuous because he was telling the complete truth. There was nothing on his mind but fear. He just wanted to get out of the house alive.

When she did the shutoff-valve thing and the crisis was finally completely over-except for the cleanup-she started crying again.

This time, he just backed away. There was a time to hold a woman. And a time when a man knew he’d sure as hell better get out of Dodge.

He was in bare feet by then, but he picked up his sandals by the back door, went searching for Teddy and Molly. The two were lying on the floor, leaned up on their elbows, watching TV. Only not cartoons. They were watching a mother give live birth. Apparently the event had just happened.

“Holy mother of…” Mike got calm, fast. In three long strides, he grabbed the remote, clicked off the TV and set it high on the mantel. “Molly. Do yourself a big favor and don’t tell your mother what you