Yours, Mine & Ours

kind of huge emotional risk. With him. For him. And for all their play, he’d tried to lavish her with tenderness and care and skill. The best of who he was as a lover.

So when she’d pulled the “friends” on him this morning, it ripped. But the details-that she thought she’d had to seduce him-as if he weren’t man enough to do the seducing…it just sent him into a crash funk.

He’d been trying to play by her rules by not touching her. He’d been trying to be a decent guy, for once.

Amanda was nothing like his ex, Mike knew, but suddenly it felt like new song, old refrain. Amanda was the cultured, classy type. She thought he was fine for a roll in the hay-but not good enough to fit in with her image of a long-term mate.

Teddy snoozed the whole way home, and Mike had the quiet sunset drive to put it all in perspective. That’s it. He’d shut up from here on. Go back to the rules they’d agreed on to begin with.

He’d be a friend.

Nothing else.

His resolve lasted a whole four days. When the phone rang, he had thick gloves on and was working in the basement with Teddy’s worm farm-knee-deep in a project that didn’t smell good, didn’t look good and needed to be done.

He’d have let the machine pick up-Teddy was with him, and there was no other emergency that couldn’t wait five minutes that he could imagine. But when the machine clicked on, he heard Amanda’s voice.

“Mike? I’m pretty sure you’re there. You probably just can’t come to the phone. But…I had a problem come up, and I was hoping-”

That’s all that went down before he’d taken the stairs three at a time and grabbed the landline in the kitchen. “I’m here. I was just downstairs. What’s up?”

He knew from the way she said his name, from everything in her voice, that she was stressed and strung tight.

“I hate to ask you. But I have to be in court at one. I didn’t ask my parents to babysit, because frankly, I’d rather they didn’t know until afterward. They get all upset, and this was something I didn’t want spilling on Molly inadvertently. Anyway, I called an agency. They sent over a babysitter with fabulous credentials. She got here at ll:00 a.m. I kicked her out three minutes ago. There was just no way-”

“You need me to watch Molly.”

There. He heard her take a breath. Breathe. “Yes. If you could. It’s too late for me to set up anything else. I have to be in the car before ll:30 a.m. And-”

“Hey. Molly’ll be fine with me. You know that. Don’t even think twice.”

The girls arrived five minutes later. Amanda was dressed like he’d never seen her, wearing judge-sober navy, nothing like her usual put-together thing. Just a navy skirt, white blouse, all tidy and meticulous, makeup on the spare. Her hair was rolled up in some kind of coil in back; God knew how she’d tamed it, but it was pinned and straight within an inch of its life. She had a smile on. He didn’t know whose smile it was, but it sure as hell wasn’t Amanda’s.

“Thanks, Mike,” was all she said.

“You need someone to go with you?” He couldn’t take his eyes off her strained face.

“No. Everything’s fine. I just needed help with Molly-” she shot a reassuring smile at her daughter “-because she would have been completly bored all afternoon, stuck sitting in a chair while I was at this little meeting.”

It wasn’t a little meeting, but Mike got it. That was the story for Molly.

“Hey, she’ll have a good time with us. Right, Mol? And don’t worry about the time. We’ll be here.”

She took a breath, thanked him again, gave him a house key in case he needed anything for Molly…then bent down to kiss her daughter and she was off.

He turned to Molly. It appeared to be a Cat Day. She wore a top with pastel cats, carried two stuffed cats and had a purse the size of a half dollar that looked like a cat. There were two jelly beans inside the purse. She gave one to Teddy right off, so she could have the other, but so far she wasn’t talking to him.

He hunkered more to her height. “Here’s the deal. We’re not doing something you’re likely to have fun with, right this minute. We’re bringing the worm farm up from the basement, because they’re ready to live outside in the shed. And there are enough worms to start feeding the frogs in the water garden. But that’s all pretty dirty work. Nothing you’d probably like.”

She nodded.

“But you could sit on the table in the yard and just watch us for a bit, okay? We’ll get this done as soon as we can. And after that, Teddy and I’ll get cleaned up. And then we could all go for an ice cream cone. Or to the library. Or watch a movie. Or go to the park. Or…”

“Go shopping,” Molly supplied.

That hadn’t been on his list, would never have been on his list, but he nodded. “That’s just what I was hoping you might like to do.”

“I really don’t want to do anything. My mom did not want to go to this meeting. Something is wrong and I don’t like it. But I guess I could sit here for a while.” She perched on the deck table, crossed her legs like her mother and motioned like a princess for the boys to proceed.

Mike hesitated, thinking maybe he should get her to talk if she was upset. But without knowing what Amanda was dealing with exactly, he figured he’d better try a wait-see before trying to dive into Molly’s little head. As it happened, he didn’t have to worry about either choice, because she’d ambled down to the water garden, holding one of her stuffed cats, before two minutes had passed.

“Mr. Mike, your stones are all wrong.”

He’d framed the kidney-shaped water garden with stones, both to keep down the liner and to make the project look “done.” “What’s wrong with them?”

“You just didn’t put them in a pretty way. They don’t look right.”

He looked at his brilliantly designed minipond, then raised an eyebrow at the pint-size diva. “So how do you think they should look?”

She showed him, and damned if she wasn’t right. After she’d rearranged all the stupid stones, the whole setup looked better landscaped.

“You’re pretty smart,” he told her.

“That’s what my mom says. But grown-ups never listen to me. I don’t know why.” She was ignoring Teddy as if he didn’t exist, but that was possibly because his son had his hands full of worms and was dying to get her attention. “Only, now you need some lights.”

“What kind of lights?”

“You know. The kind of little lights that you put outside. They don’t have cords. They have to get sun during the day to make them work. Then they’d make your pond look pretty at night.” She frowned. “I think you need four.” She motioned where she wanted them.

She was a miniature of her mother. “I think you’re right again.”

“I could give you more ideas, if you want.” Once she opened up, of course, she couldn’t shut up. She supervised lunch, which included how to properly wash hands, how Mike should cut the bread crusts and how napkins were folded. Once they all sat down-including Slugger and Cat-she opened up about Amanda.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” she said, “and I think I know where my mom is. It’s all about heat.”

“Heat,” Mike echoed.

“Yup. Heat. I’ll bet her meeting is with the vet. Because when we took Darling to the vet a while ago-the new vet, the one we’re going to now-he said it might be too late. And then my mom sent me out to the waiting room. And when we got home, that’s when we had to start locking Darling up in the laundry room. Or she had to wear a diaper when she was walking around. It’s all about in heat.”

“I see.”

“Darling doesn’t have to wear a diaper anymore. So I thought everything was okay. But then Mom had to go to this meeting. And that’s the only thing I know she was worried about.”

Okay, he just couldn’t completely let that go. “You know what? Your mom may be worried about something, just like you’re thinking. But you might want to remember, she’s really strong and smart.”