eyes and see the glow of plea sure his words had produced.
Chapter 3
Chris sat in evening rush-hour traffic, one hand resting on the leather-wrapped steering wheel of Ken’s custom truck, the other hand pressing against her churning stomach. She’d done something incredibly stupid. She’d allowed Ken into her house-into her heart. She would have been better off if she’d simply allowed him into her bed. That would have been sex. That would have been something she could handle.
She inched the truck forward in the endless traffic and slumped in her seat. Who was she trying to kid? Sex with Ken would be a disaster. I’m like a dinosaur. I’m practically an extinct species. I’m a mental virgin, for Pete’s sake. She couldn’t even imagine casual sex. And even if she could divorce sex from love, sex with Ken would probably ruin her for life-how would she ever top it?
Chris turned left off Little River Turnpike and headed for her subdivision. Her street looked normal enough. Her town house seemed just as she’d left it, but she knew it was merely a deceptive facade. Nothing would be normal as long as Ken had the key to her front door. She parked at the curb and tried to squelch the turmoil in her chest. This will never work, she told herself as she hopped from the truck. He has to go. She stomped up the sidewalk, berating herself. “How could I ever have agreed to this?” she muttered, throwing her arms in the air. “This is absurd.” The front door crashed open and Chris stormed into the room.
“Well, here she is,” Aunt Edna said to Ken. “Just like I told you. Muttering and stomping. All in a dither. Just look at her. Ain’t she a pip?”
The last sentence was uttered with such unadulterated pride and love that Ken had to smile in appreciation. He adjusted the little girl on his lap to a more comfortable position and carefully laid a picture book on the coffee table.
Lucy smiled happily and held out her arms for her hello kiss. “Mommy, you’re just in time to hear Ken finish the story.”
Chris tipped her head in Ken’s direction and gave him her most withering stare. “Little Bear?”
“Uh, no. I tried that, but I didn’t feel entirely comfortable with a bunch of bears. I found one about a steam shovel. It’s about this guy and his old steam shovel, and they’ve got to finish this job by sundown or…” Ken paused. “I suppose you already know the story,” he added with an embarrassed grin.
I’m in big trouble, Chris thought. No woman in her right mind could hold out against that grin, and how could she possibly evict a man when he had her daughter enthralled on his lap? She bolstered her flagging hostility with the thought that this was just a temporary setback. She would kick him out after supper. She would do it the sneaky way-when Lucy and Aunt Edna were in bed and couldn’t come to his rescue. Chris walked cautiously across the room to receive her daughter’s hug, noting that the afternoon nap had erased the dark circles around Ken’s eyes, and the tension lines had faded from his bearded cheeks. The corners of his mouth twitched with suppressed deviltry. There was no need for him to speak-his crackling blue eyes told her he had won this round and was openly gloating over his victory.
Chris bent to kiss her daughter’s orange curls and upturned nose, unavoidably coming inches from Ken’s freshly washed hair. She recognized the lemon-and-lilac scent. He had used her shampoo and bath soap. She paused for a moment, astonished at the wifely feelings this knowledge produced. It seemed perfectly natural and surprisingly intimate. A pang of longing for crushed dreams pierced her heart. It was such a simple thing-the intermingling of male and female fragrance. Emotions long buried were evoked and produced a pain that lodged in her throat like a huge silent sob.
She had always imagined that her marriage would be long and happy-like her parents’-a collection of shared intimacies, communal goals, loving memories. She had jumped at the first man who’d come along because she’d wanted all those things so badly. And she’d ended up with nothing.
No, that wasn’t true. She had Lucy. And Lucy had been enough until this Ken Callahan had popped into her life. Damn him. Ken resurrected tender, hungry feelings that couldn’t be trusted. He had the potential to be heartache and grief-and trouble with a capital T.
“This is ridiculous,” she mumbled gruffly.
Ken chuckled at her exclamation. His laughter rumbled warm against her ear, and he feathered a kiss against her hair as she bowed her head to hug Lucy. “I’m not sure I follow you,” he teased. “Care to elaborate?”
“This whole thing is ridiculous,” she hissed in a stage whisper. “And I’ll tell you more of what I’m talking about after supper.”
She stiffened her back and fled to the kitchen to sort out her emotions. What was wrong with her? How could she be feeling so comfortably bound to a man that she’d picked up on the highway twelve hours ago? And if she did feel so comfortably bound to him, why did he make her so uncomfortable? The answer to that was obvious. Because he was slick and handsome and too good to be true; another Prince Charming. A Steven Black clone. She pulled four plates from the kitchen cabinet and marched into the dining room. She thumped them on the table.
Lucy, still on Ken’s lap, giggled. “Isn’t Mommy funny when she’s mad? She always makes so much noise.”
Chris glared at the two of them, and Ken suppressed a smile. “Maybe we’d better finish this book,” he suggested tactfully.
Chris made a frustrated gesture as she swished back through the kitchen doors. Twelve hours ago she’d picked up a construction worker on the highway and now he was living in her house and reading books about steam shovels to her daughter-and very shortly they’d all be sitting around feeling used and abandoned. Chris thrashed around in the silverware drawer. Everyone liked him. Aunt Edna liked him. Lucy liked him. She had to admit it-she even liked him. Why couldn’t he have been some frog? Someone everyone hated. Someone that would have been easy to get rid of.
Aunt Edna turned from the stove with a disapproving look for the havoc Chris was causing among the silverware. She paused for effect, her wooden spoon held at half-mast. “He fits right in, don’t he?”
“Mmmph,” Chris gurgled, an expletive strangling in her throat. “I don’t want him to fit right in. I want him to leave. I liked my life the way it was…without a man in my house.”
Aunt Edna plopped her spoon back into the spaghetti sauce. “Nonsense. You’ve lived without a man long enough. Lucy needs a father, and you need a husband.”
“I’ve already had a husband, and I didn’t like it.”
“That horse’s rump wasn’t a husband. Spent the whole day looking in the mirror, fixing his hair.”
“What makes you think Ken’s any better?”
The old woman wiped her hands on her apron and faced her niece. “I’m not real book smart, and every now and then I worry I’m getting a little senile, but I’ve got some common sense, and I know something about people. Ken Callahan is a good man. He’s got gentleness and humor.” Edna turned back to the stove, then shot her niece a sidewise look and smiled broadly. “And he’s got a great body.”
“Aunt Edna!”
“I might be old, but I know a great body when I see one. Uh-huh!”
Chris threw her head back and burst out laughing. She crossed the kitchen and hugged her aunt. “You’re right, as always-he does have a great body.”
Ken pushed through the kitchen door and snatched a breadstick from the glass jar on the counter. “So, you think I have a great body, huh?”
Chris grimaced. “God is really out to get me today.”
“Don’t be blasphemous,” Edna warned.
Ken looked sadly at the cast on his arm. “My body used to be perfect.”
I don’t doubt it for a second, Chris thought.
“This is the second time I’ve had spaghetti today,” Lucy announced. “We had spaghetti for lunch in school.” She looked at the plate in front of her, piled with whole-wheat spaghetti noodles and Aunt Edna’s chunky homemade sauce. Lucy sprinkled the freshly grated parmesan cheese on her meal with painstaking care. “The spaghetti we had in school was yucky. The noodles were white…like dead worms. And it didn’t have any sausage in it or nothing. And the sauce was orange and watery. And I didn’t eat it.”
