Finally, the project was finished, and Mike could put the lid on. “Okay. Your grandma’s coming in fifteen or twenty minutes, so we’ve got just enough time to get you cleaned up. But remember, we can’t look at the worms for at least two weeks.”
“Except for peeks.”
“No. No exceptions. No peeks. No looking at all. Light can hurt them. Okay? Promise.”
“I promise with my whole life. I promise, hope to die.”
While Mike was dunking Teddy in the tub and then getting him brushed and dressed, he took advantage to give his son the bigger worm picture. “Even though we have to wait two weeks to see the worms again, we have lots of good things to do in the meantime. Like building our water garden in the backyard.”
“For the frogs.” Teddy lifted his hands so Mike could thread a fresh T-shirt over his head.
“Yeah, for the frogs. The frogs are going to love those worms. And there’ll be extra worms for fishing. And we can even use the worms’ waste besides that.”
“What waste?”
“Their castings and tea.” Mike should have known his son wouldn’t let him off that easy. “That’s their poop and urine. It works like a fertilizer. So we can dump that in another part of the yard, like where we plant bushes or trees… Hey, I hear the doorbell. That’ll be your Grandma Conroy.”
“No! Do I
His parents may have been unhappy about the divorce, but both were thrilled to have their one and only grandson suddenly within three miles of them. Barbara Conroy had always tended to dress on the formal side, but today she wore snug jeans and a long T-shirt-a perfect getup for surviving the day with a four-year-old. “Hey, you.” She snagged a kiss off him first, gave him a motherly look over. “You doing okay?”
“Couldn’t be better.”
She said something to him-but his attention was diverted when a car pulled up next door. It was a meeting of the Lexuses. His mom’s was lipstick-red, Amanda’s mom favored a custom-painted sapphire. Apparently it was a mutual grandma-pick-up-grandkid day.
Both grandmothers looked alike-blondish hair, great bones, slim and both appearing energetic and younger than their years. They spotted each other, about the same time Molly skipped out the door and saw Teddy.
Molly stuck out her tongue at Teddy. The insult was returned. Then Slugger started baying because the poodle next door started an excited-barking thing. The grandmothers started talking and laughing at the commotion, but for one whole, long second, all he saw was her.
Amanda.
The grandmas herded their respective grandkids into their respective Lexuses. Mike heard Amanda tell her mother, “Mom, please don’t call her princess” and then a minute later, “Mom, no buying her a million toys. Just be together, okay? Have a good time.”
And her mom responded with a chant of “uh-huh, uh-huh” as if they’d had this conversation a zillion times before, and the whole while she was winking at her granddaughter. Molly appeared to need several suitcases to be gone for a few hours.
Teddy just galloped to the car and climbed in. By the time the cars pulled out and all the noise disappeared- even the dogs quieted down-suddenly there were just the two of them with nothing more than a spare stretch of driveway separating them.
Lightning arced between them, even though there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky.
“I owe you a big thanks,” she called out.
“No sweat.” He’d put her painting stuff on the back porch before daybreak, hoping he wouldn’t have to run into her. But now, the more he looked at her, the more he relaxed. Last night, there’d been something…off…between them. An intimacy, because of being alone at night, the dark, her not wearing much and then nothing while she was in the shower, her crying, the whole thing.
It wasn’t as if that chemical-lightning thing had disappeared. If anything, the charge was more intense-but now he was braced for it. And looking at her this morning was reassuring. She looked…well…prissy. Not vulnerable and cute, like last night, with the naked navel and the wild heap of red hair. Today, her hair was scooped up, a spotless yellow shirt paired with white shorts, sandals with yellow flowers. And she had on makeup. At this hour of the morning.
He hadn’t shaved in three days now-hadn’t brushed his hair in two. No reason to spruce up-he wasn’t trying to please or attract any female again. Still, he was glad to admit he had a heap of things he had to do-she hastily admitted the same-and they both took off in opposite directions.
It was the truth, besides, Mike thought self-righteously. With Teddy gone, it was a perfect chance to make a trip to the hardware store.
Amanda let Darling out for a quick business trip in the backyard, petted Princess, grabbed her car keys and list and headed out. She’d had a spiffy Austin Healey before the divorce. Now she had a white SUV, which looked like a clone of all the soccer moms’ transport vehicles up and down the neighborhood.
Mike was gone, she noticed. At least, his garage door was open and his truck nowhere in sight. She hadn’t forgotten what a hero he’d been for her last night, but thankfully, she’d wakened this morning certain that he was a resistible hero. They both had their hands full with major life changes right now. And she wasn’t about to forget the major life lesson that had been battered into her by the divorce.
She wasn’t going to be the needy one in a relationship ever again.
She backed out of the drive and turned left-then immediately realized she should have steered right. It was going to take a while before she got her bearings in the neighborhood, and hardware stores were hardly her normal milieu. This morning, though, she had a major hardware-store type of list. She wanted bricks, to make a brick walkway in the back. Mulch. Stones. Eventually she wanted a porch swing back there, too.
In the meantime, she needed just
She located the store-after only a couple of wrong turns-and even found a reasonably close parking spot. She’d been in one of these warehouse hardware stores before. Once. But she didn’t have a clue where anything was, so she just grabbed a cart and pulled out her list. She figured she’d get the boring stuff over with first-the household tools. Hammers and screw drivers and flashlights. Picture-hanger doohickeys. Things like that.
Thankfully that chore didn’t take long, but once she wandered into the garden center, there seemed a million choices, a million things to look at. She slowed down. Absently started humming…
Moments later, she realized someone else was humming, too. A man’s hum. Not in the same aisle where she was looking at bricks and stones, but somewhere not far. When she stopped humming to listen, he stopped, too.
When she started humming again, so did he.
She glanced around the corner into the next aisle. Saw nothing. Shaking her head, she continued on. She would have to find some help, get someone to carry the bulky items for her. In the meantime…well, she wasn’t sure how she ended up in the plumbing aisle, but suddenly there he was.
Mike.
He spotted her about the same time she spotted him. He had a faucet set in his hand. She was still holding her list. But for a petrifying second, she forgot what she was doing altogether.
She told herself swiftly that it was nothing like the night before. Granted, he’d come across as this handsome, wonderful white knight, all sexy eyes and protectiveness and strength…but she so wasn’t about to believe in the fairy-tale thing again.
And once she caught her breath, she realized it was okay today. Better. He was just an oversized scruffy mutt, after all. And as long as she didn’t look directly in his eyes, she didn’t feel any of those…well, zingers. As if she’d been prodded with something electric and compelling. As if she was somehow meant to move closer to him.
She tried a light laugh. “I swear, we keep meeting in the oddest places!”
He finally looked away from her, too, and lifted the package in his hands. “I’ve been looking at faucets. Nothing exactly wrong with what we’ve got, but there’s a new kind…” He showed her. “You can turn it on and off with a wrist, never have to touch a handle. Which means that little boys-and big ones-don’t necessarily have to wipe out a whole sink when they’re cleaning up.”
