“My baby’s jumping so much that his mother needs to get her own back.” She grinned at the girls, and then she caught sight of Michael, who just happened to arrive breathless. “Michael.”
He said the first thing that came into his head, and his first thought was the same as the elderly lady’s. “You shouldn’t be jumping.”
“Are you an obstetrician?”
“No, but…”
“Then I’m jumping.”
“Nope.” He reached her and pulled her away from the hopscotch court, then stood glaring into her laughing eyes. “Honestly, woman, have you no sense?”
She laughed at him, her face glowing with exercise and sunshine. The October morning was clear, with the promise of a gorgeous day to come. “I’m not feeling very sensible,” she admitted. “I’m feeling pretty happy right at this minute. Michael, this is Mrs. Eldbridge and her granddaughter Susan, and Susan’s friends, Lucy and Veronica and Louise and Carrie and Rebecca. It’s Susan’s seventh birthday, or it was yesterday. We’re still celebrating. Ladies, this is…this is Michael.”
“Is he your husband?” A child with a hole instead of a front tooth and two extremely long pigtails looked at him with interest. For the first time, Jenny faltered.
“Yes. This is my husband.”
“And your husband says you shouldn’t be playing hopscotch,” Michael growled, and the little girls giggled. They clearly didn’t think much of his ferocity, but they seemed to think Michael himself was just fine.
The little girls obviously thought he was a hunk, Jenny observed. Her husband.
Somehow she made herself concentrate on something other than his body. “Michael, I was thinking…”
He still held her. His hands were on her shoulders where he’d pulled her from the hopscotch court. She looked into his face and smiled, and suddenly she was too close for comfort. Way too close-but there was no way he was releasing her.
“Can we all come back to your-to our place for pancakes?” she asked.
That stunned him. “What, everyone?” He looked around the sea of expectant faces, and Jenny put an entreating hand on the collar of his shirt.
“It’s just… Mrs. Eldbridge lives in a one-room apartment with her granddaughter, and Susan really wanted a sleepover for her birthday party. So that’s what they had, but the girls woke up very early and there’s a man who sleeps in the apartment above who…who doesn’t like being woken up early and was rude.”
“He yelled awful things,” the little girl with pigtails said, wide-eyed.
“And the girls aren’t being collected by their parents until eleven, so Mrs. Eldbridge brought them down to the river. But she still has more than two hours to fill.”
He gave an inward groan. “Jenny, I don’t see…”
“We have enough to give everyone breakfast, don’t we?”
“I don’t think I do,” Michael said. “I mean we. For a start we don’t have enough plates.” For heaven’s sake, what was he saying? This was nothing to do with him. He didn’t want to be part of a child’s birthday party!
“Of course you don’t have enough plates,” Mrs. Eldbridge said. “That’s nonsense. We’re fine. We’ll keep walking, won’t we, girls? Let’s see if we can see some boats.”
The girls’ faces fell as one.
“I’ve walked enough,” one said sadly. “These are my party shoes.” She gulped, sticking one shiny red shoe in front of her. “Actually,” she said carefully, “they’re my sister’s party shoes, and they pinch my toes. They hurt.”
She looked at Michael with huge, mournful eyes, and Jenny gazed at him with eyes just as pleading. Cocker spaniel eyes. Eyes a man could drown in.
Good grief!
“We don’t have enough plates,” he repeated weakly. It sounded pathetic, even to him.
“We could share,” the little girl with the pinching shoes said.
No! The thought of a seven-year-old birthday party in his bachelor town house was almost claustrophobic. But every eye was on him, including Jenny’s. Clearly she’d offered hospitality, and she expected him to back her. He was wedged into a corner, and he said the only thing possible.
“Why don’t we go to Shelby’s?”
“Shelby’s?” Jenny was as confused as the children.
“My sister runs a diner. It’s not too far from here.” Yep. That’s what they’d do, he decided. After all, what use were sisters if they couldn’t bail you out once in a while? “Shelby makes the
“You want to go to your sister’s diner?” She stared at him and then at her stripes. “Now?”
Hey, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, he realized, but he’d already suggested it, and the kids were looking as if they’d been offered Christmas. This wasn’t a privileged group, he decided. Most of the little girls looked as if they were dressed in hand-me-downs, and Susan, the birthday girl, was almost waiflike. She obviously lived with her grandma, and Grandma didn’t look as if there was any money to spare at all.
Okay. So Jenny’s heartstrings had been tugged, and he was expected to come to the party. He didn’t even know if Shelby would be at the diner herself.
“We’ll need two cabs,” he said in a voice that sounded more sure than he felt. He’d get this over with and then he’d give Jenny a very firm talking-to about what she should expect of him. Maybe it was okay for her to get involved, but she couldn’t involve him. He didn’t need this in his life. “We’ll take two cabs, and we’ll drop you back at your home at eleven.”
“There’s no need for you to do that, young man,” Mrs. Eldbridge said with quiet dignity. “The girls and I are just fine walking by the water until it’s time to go home.”
He should agree-but they were all looking at him. One elderly lady in a worn dress and six small girls with bright, expectant faces. And one Jenny.
All of a sudden it was easy. “There is a need,” he said, smiling at the elderly lady with his most heart-stopping smile. “It would be a real pleasure for Jenny and me to be included in Susan’s birthday. If you’ll permit us.”
She smiled then, a huge, relieved smile that almost made him glad he’d offered. “Well, young man. That’s so nice of you, you and your lovely wife. I’d almost forgotten that such nice young couples exist.” She beamed at Jenny. “You’re so lucky, my dear. He’s really special.”
Jenny beamed right back, and tucked her hand proprietorially around Michael’s arm.
“Don’t I know it?” she said. “I’m feeling luckier by the minute.”
SHELBY was at the diner.
It only took five minutes to get there by car. Michael and Mrs. Eldbridge went in one cab with three of the girls while Jenny and the other three followed behind in a second taxi. They assembled on the pavement, and Michael opened the door to usher them inside.
Shelby looked up from behind the counter-and nearly dropped the plate she was carrying.
“Michael,” she said, in a voice that sounded like she’d been hit with a hundred volts.
“Hi, Shel. What do you do in the way of birthday breakfasts?”
“Birthday?”
“It’s Susan’s birthday,” Michael told her patiently, in a voice that suggested she’d better treat this as normal-or else. He motioned to Susan. “Here she is. The birthday girl herself. I thought pancakes. Or doughnuts. Or…”
“Or both?” Susan said wistfully, staring around in appreciation at Shelby’s cozy eatery. The smells coming from the kitchen were mouthwatering, and Michael could see lights coming on in all the little girls’ eyes.
“Or both,” Michael agreed gravely. “Could you manage that, Shel? And maybe hot chocolate all around?”
“With marshmallows on top,” Jenny added from behind him, working up courage. She bit her lip. It wasn’t the time, in front of this birthday group, to admit she was meeting Michael’s sister for the first time. “Hello, Shelby.”
“Jenny,” Shelby said, dazed, her eyes wandering to the amazing stripes. “You’re…”
“Jenny and I met Mrs. Eldbridge, her granddaughter and their friends on the riverbank while we were jogging,” Michael said quickly.
“You were
