Yours, Mine & Ours

thought. Pompous and silly, but still kind of cute.

Mike wasn’t. The women all silenced when he walked in-Amanda suspected they hadn’t seen that much testosterone in one package in a long time. He’d brushed and showered, done the whole cleanup thing, but he still had that look-the cross between ruffian and quarterback. He was a bad boy with charm. They could all smell it.

He spotted her in less than a millisecond. And there it was again. The Dare. Just like this afternoon. She’d been a perfect lady, hadn’t done a thing to entice or invite him, had been keeping to her celibacy pledge like a damned saint.

But at the preschool, then the pediatricians’ offices…well. He’d been daring her, Amanda thought darkly. And he was still daring her. She’d tried to be honest with him. She’d tried to stay out of his way, to avoid temptation, to just be a good neighbor and a good friend. But he had to quit looking at her that way. Had to quit sending out those hungry, hungry vibes…as if he wanted to eat her up, and to spend a whole long night doing it.

He was sending out dares.

As if she’d sucker into that childish double-dog-dare kind of thing. Well, she was smarter than that. She smiled at him, crossed her legs at the ankles, went for the ladylike posture. She wasn’t the one who was asking for trouble. It was him. Every time he looked at her. Every time he came close. Every time he breathed.

“Calling the meeting of the Home Owners’ Association to order. Lucy, would you read the minutes from the May meeting?”

Warren started the meeting in a voice that resembled the drone of flies in the summer. Lucy-a woman with cotton-candy hair and a girl’s swim-team logo-dutifully read the minutes.

Mike quietly crossed the room to sit next to her. Since Teddy wasn’t with him, she glanced outside-and yeah, there he was, already teamed up next to Molly in the crowd of kids in the big backyard. The game had changed to “Simon Says.” The kids looked happy.

She wasn’t.

For a man who had almost no hips and no butt, somehow he took up a huge amount of room. He smelled like fresh soap and vanilla ice cream. And yearning. He definitely smelled like yearning. He carried a folder.

“New business,” Warren announced.

Mike raised his hand.

“Well. It’s nice to have a newcomer so willing to participate in our group. Welcome, Mr. Conroy.”

“Mike,” he said as he stood up.

There followed a gasper.

She knew the neighbor who raised worms for his kid, who dug in mud, who neglected to shave for days at a time. But she didn’t know the lawyer. She’d never have guessed Mike could turn into a powerhouse who tapped into authority and command the minute he opened his mouth.

He was wearing sandals, for Pete’s sake.

He didn’t talk for long, just said he wanted to respond to issues raised by his putting in a water garden in his backyard…and a proposed electric fence he wanted to install. He handed a legal-looking document to Warren, but to the group of home owners, he laid out the gist of it more simply.

“I didn’t realize the Home Owners’ Association had ‘rules’ until Warren expressed them to me. My response is that document. I guarantee that I’ll return the property to its original condition, if or when I sell the place. I also guarantee that the water garden I’ve been putting in will exceed any standard of good landscaping set by your association…”

There was quite a bit more. When he finally sat down again, Warren had the expression of a major suck-up. “Mike, Mike, Mike. None of us were objecting to the water garden. We think it’s a wonderful idea. We just wanted you-and anyone else who’s new to the neighborhood-to ask first.”

When the meeting was over, the group of neighborhood women swarmed Mike. Amanda might have gotten a cup of lemonade with the rest…except that her mom’s ear, the left one, picked up the sound of crying.

Not her Molly’s crying.

But Teddy.

Chapter Nine

Mike would have chosen to stay a few more minutes at the infamous Home Owners’ Association, partly to shake hands with a few more neighbors-but mostly to walk home with Amanda. But Teddy’s brouhaha forced an immediate exit.

Teddy held his hand on the short walk home. He didn’t talk. Couldn’t. There were no tears now, but his eyes were still blotchy, his mood still stormy. Teddy didn’t want to cry in public. Mike understood that guy kind of pride.

Once at home, though, Mike lifted him to the kitchen counter, plucked ice cream from the freezer, got them both spoons. “So just say. What happened.”

“There was this stupid girl.”

“Yeah, when I was your age, a lot of stories started that way.” There were more ice cream cartons in the freezer than meat. Mike pulled the cover off the Cherry Vanilla. One spoonful for Teddy. Two for him.

“We were doing Simon Says. And I took four steps like I was supposed to, only that meant I sort of ran into this stupid girl. So she turned around and slugged me.”

Mike did the next round of ice cream, this time with a wet dishcloth ready for the spill he knew was coming.

“I didn’t do anything, Dad. I was just playing the game like I was supposed to. Only, I won the last one and I think she didn’t like that. When she punched me, I really, really, really, really wanted to punch her back. But I didn’t. You tole me a million times. You never hit a girl.”

“You did the right thing,” Mike assured him. “So then what?”

“So Molly hit her.”

“Molly?”

“That was the thing. I told her I couldn’t hit a girl. She said fine, but nobody ever said she couldn’t. So she hit her. But, Dad. It’s a bad thing. A very bad thing. When a girl has to do your hitting for you. I was so mad I started crying. It wasn’t fair.”

Mike put away the ice cream, hooked his arms to make a seat for his big guy, and they moved into the bathroom, then the bedroom. Slugger and Cat both knew Teddy was upset. The critters climbed on the bed first, so there was almost no room for Teddy.

Mike was still trying to figure out what had upset Teddy more-that a strange girl had hit him, or that Molly had been his hero instead of his having the chance to be one himself.

Apparently his stress level wasn’t all that great, because he zonked out before Mike could pull up the covers or turn out the light. “Cat. Slugger,” he called, thinking that the critters needed one more let-out that night…but neither acknowledged him in any way.

They weren’t leaving the kid.

Abruptly the house turned silent…and Mike turned restless. He cleaned up in the kitchen, because he’d learned early on that ice cream spills were easier to deal with when they happened, rather than waiting for the next day. After that…well, there was always stuff to do. Start a load of wash. Hit the mail, go through bills.

Instead, he just…sort of aimlessly paced. Overall, he wasn’t unhappy at how the Home Owners’ meeting had gone. He’d gotten what he wanted. He just had a real bug about other people imposing rules on him…but most of the neighbors were nice enough. A bunch of the guys invited him to a Wednesday-night poker game. A few moms had clustered around him, talking about preschools.

But the only one he’d wanted to be with was Amanda. He wanted to know what she thought of the group. He wanted to tease her-she was supposed to be as afraid of suburbia as he was-yet she’d fit in so easily; both men