Single Dad

Three

All evening, Josh had the weird sensation that it was wicked and wrong to be alone with her. His six-year-old was having trouble handling the temptation of Ariel’s magic. He wasn’t afraid of crystal balls or card tricks, but yeah, he was uncomfortably aware that the lady had some kind of magic. Dangerous magic, because she sure as hell seemed to have cast some kind of spell on him.

For that reason alone, he never meant to kiss her. He’d have sworn in court that neither the thought nor intent was remotely on his mind. And a guy was supposed to be able to count on those handy physics laws of the universe—like the relationship between fire and fuel. If nobody lit a match, nobody had to worry about the repercussions of starting a blaze.

There were no matches in sight. There was just an instant—an innocent instant—when they were standing together in her shadowed doorway. Her face was tilted up to his. He was wearing his denim jacket, ready to leave, his hand even on the doorknob. Their eyes met. It couldn’t have been for more than a millisecond. Nobody made a soul connection in a millisecond. For cripes’ sake, Josh didn’t even believe in hoaxy ethereal stuff like “soul connections.”

But something happened. Something insane. Something that made it feel perfectly natural to lift his hand to gently touch her cheek. When she turned her head, he bent down, as if they already naturally knew the steps to this dance. When their lips met, though, there was nothing natural about the kiss.

Her lips were softer than butter. Softer than spring. Her eyes turned this smoky misty green, and then they closed, as if inhaling the texture of this sensation was all she could concentrate on. She tasted sweet, and to kiss her small mouth, her lips, was like sliding on silk.

Hormones. His mind lanced on the word, seeking excuses and explanations for an explosion of emotion that had no such simple reason. Yeah, his whole body tightened from the chemical connection. And below his belt, he knew exactly what she was doing to him.

But that crazy, wild kiss had nothing of lust in it. It was a lost kiss. A testing, tentative, beguiling acknowledgment of longing and loneliness.

He’d never denied being lonely; it was just supposed to be a back-burner item, a problem he’d take out and deal with after the kids were grown and he had time for it. Only, she put it on his table right now. How many nights he’d been alone. How fiercely he missed believing there would ever be someone to talk to, be with. How rich, how heady, how mountain-tall a man could feel with a woman who cared about him.

He wasn’t used to riches—not extravagant, expensive, luxurious riches like her. Her silk rustled alluringly against his denim. His callused hands seemed an impossible contrast against her pearl skin. The pulse was beating hard in her throat. Hard, but not fast. The whole world had tuned down to slow motion, as if life had been kind enough to give them both a time-out, and nothing existed, not at this moment, but the two of them and a kiss that neither of them could seem to let go of.

He’d wondered how that long hair would feel sifting through his hands. Now he knew. Dangerous. A man’s fingers could get lost in those long, shivery strands and never come out. Her hands clutched his jacket and then slid, softly and slowly, around his neck.

Somewhere, he could smell blueberry muffins. Somewhere, he could hear a clock ticking. Somewhere, a coat hook was stabbing him directly between the shoulder blades, and it was extremely odd, but he didn’t give a damn. She was kissing him back as though she hadn’t met a man who mattered to her in the past four, five thousand years. His instincts pitched back to the caveman era, but even accounting for those primitive, prehistoric male emotions, he knew damn well he’d never kissed anyone like her. The crush of her plump breasts made him feel hot and violently protective at the same time. Her skin warmed under his touch—warmed and flushed. Her scent, her texture and touch, hit him like a seductive, erotic overload.

He tried to gulp in oxygen.

There wasn’t a lick of air in the whole room.

She tried to gulp in air, too, then raised her eyes and smiled at him as if she were waking from some dream. “Josh?”

He wasn’t sure what she was asking. Her voice was husky, low, shy. Hurtable, he recognized. Never mind her sensual feminine lair and her antimarriage rhetoric and the free spirit implied by her walking around in pajamas. She didn’t do this every day.

Hell, neither did he.

It took a second to untangle his hands from her hair, to smooth a strand away from her face, to brush his lips against her brow. The kiss was a gesture of comfort, not apology. He couldn’t apologize for something he wasn’t sorry for. But he also couldn’t talk about something he couldn’t explain.

She seemed to understand, seemed in no mood for conversation, either, because she smiled at him just before he turned around and pulled open the door.

Outside, a cool drizzling rain was still falling. He yanked up his collar and headed down the slick, wet metal steps. Smells drifted off the Connecticut River; a passing car swished water from a puddle, but that was the only sound. The whole town was dark and quiet. The white steeple of the Congregational Church and pointed rooftops were familiar landmarks, everything washed and clean this night. Rainbows haloed under the street lamps as he climbed into the cool, damp seat of the Bronco. He lifted up to filch the key from his jeans pocket and started the engine.

And then he took a breath. It seemed the first lungful of real oxygen he’d had since being with her.

For some crazy reason, that spellbound feeling didn’t want to go away. Josh had no patience or belief in fairy dust. He didn’t exactly mind a singular, temporary, short, one-shot excursion into insanity...surely any guy was entitled? Every male human being had fantasies from the day he reached puberty, but he never expected to actually experience one. Ariel. Hell. If all those looks and sensuality and sex appeal weren’t enough to knock a guy to his knees, her openness and giving nature, the way she listened as if he were the only man in the universe—and yeah, the way she kissed—were enough to rattle any man.

Of course he was shook up.

It was okay that he was shook up. No reason to panic. It was probably underlined and italicized in the guys’ rule book somewhere—any male exposed to Ariel Lindstrom who was not shook up should probably run, not walk, to a doctor for an immediate physical.

It was just that nothing like that had ever happened to him before.

He turned at the light, cruised Maple for a block, then traveled up the hill into his little burb. If it hadn’t been storming earlier, he’d have walked to her shop. The drive didn’t take five minutes.

The kids had left the lights on. In fact—no surprise, with him gone—every window in the house was ablaze with lights. The month’s electric bill was gonna be a monster. He swiped a hand over his face as he locked the Bronco and loped to the back door. It was coming back. Sanity. Slowly, too slowly, but logic and common sense had never deserted Josh for long.

A moment’s craziness was understandable, even acceptable. As long as a guy didn’t mistake it for reality.

The reality was that he had three troubled kids, a work and life schedule that blitzed any free time, and a mess of a divorce behind him. What would she want with a ready-made household of trouble, dirty towels, dishes and a kleptomaniac squirt? No way, nohow, could he picture Ariel fitting in. No way could he picture any sane woman wanting to.

He was in no position to ask any woman in his life.

And that was that.

* * *

He’d call. Ariel was sure he’d call. The secret, heady, champagne-high feeling of anticipation lasted for three days.

She never expected anything monumental. She never had—not from men or relationships. All her life she’d been an enthusiastic defender of magic, but that was never because she couldn’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality. She had no faith in forevers, but a body could still seek—and reach for—those rare and real magical moments in life.

The evening with Josh had been magical. Special. There was no doubt in her mind that he felt the same way. They’d talked as easily and naturally as kindred spirits. He’d looked so stiff and tired when he first walked in, but she’d slowly watched him unbend, unfold, relax. Other men had looked at her with desire, but she’d never sensed a predator-and-prey feeling with Josh. The excitement he’d inspired had been wicked and nerve tingling, but not really threatening. She’d never have gone in his arms if she were afraid of him. She never remembered experiencing a kiss quite like that. It was like skydiving off a star, free-falling in the darkness to a place where she felt dizzyingly protected and desired and cherished all at once.

She’d kissed her share of men in the past decade. Never had a kiss or a man felt so right. And she wasn’t presuming to know Josh’s feelings, but positively he couldn’t have power-packed that kind of tenderness and raw emotion in an embrace if he hadn’t shared some of those feelings.

Only he hadn’t called the next day.

Or the next night.

Or the next day.

Three days had passed now, though, and that heady feeling of anticipation had fizzled out like too-long-uncorked champagne. Apparently she’d been wrong. Embarrassingly wrong. The only one doing any emotional skydiving must have been her, because it was hurtfully obvious that he wasn’t interested.

The telephone rang, but she ignored it. New stock had just arrived; she was buried neck-deep in boxes, and Dot was out front and would surely catch the call. Seconds later, though, her partner’s head poked around the doorway. “It’s for you. Mason.”

Grateful for the distraction, she wiped her dusty hands on a rag and hustled for the phone. Mason, an English professor in Boston, had been her one foray into trying out a forever. They’d lived together for three years. No different than any other relationship, that delightful spin of first love hadn’t lasted, but they’d managed to call it quits and still stay friends. Good friends.

“I haven’t heard from you in two weeks, you piker. Whatcha been up to?”

Mason was “up to” a deliriously happy love affair with a woman named Suzanna. He wasn’t getting any work done. He was losing weight, couldn’t eat, had given up sleep, was having trouble remembering his own name.

“This sounds wonderful. She’s really something, huh?” Dragging the phone cord, Ariel reached in the back room minirefrigerator and snatched a soda. No way to open it single-handed. She trapped the receiver between her ear and shoulder, so she had both hands to flip open the lid. “I don’t want to hear how gorgeous she is, you doofus. Who cares. Is she nice? What does she do, how’d you meet her, what kinds of things have you two been doing together...?”

Ariel had never quite figured out why the lovelorn sought her advice, since she never made a secret of her chosen single life-style. She’d been an advice-giver for so long that she rarely thought about it. But Mason was winding up to a long dissertation—and she’d guzzled half her ginger ale—when she abruptly realized that she wasn’t alone.

Josh may have dismissed her from his personal map, but apparently his offspring hadn’t.

Killer was standing on one foot, a balancing act apparently designed to give her something to do when she was stuck being patient. Her tennies were powder pink today. One of her lopsided pigtails sported a green polka dot bow, and her fingernails were painted a startling hellion-red shade, most of which was bitten off. Hopeful chocolate eyes were peeled on Ariel.

Behind her were two boys, standing still as statues. In no sense were they a physically matched set, but they definitely had a few things in common—slicked back hair, cowlicks, gawky arms and legs, and a terrified look of adolescent self-consciousness. One glance at their eyes, and Ariel would have bet the bank who their daddy was.

“Mason, catch you later, okay? Something’s come up. I’ll call you back.” She hung up the receiver and turned around. “Hi, sweetie.”

“Hi, Ariel. Did you see how quiet I was while you were on the phone? Are you still busy?”

“Yes, I saw how quiet you were—and nope, I’m not busy at all.”

“Good, ‘cause my brothers didn’t believe me about you. And Dad said I couldn’t come here any more unless I was...supravised. So I brought everybody to meet you. This is Calvin and this is Bruiser and this is Boober.”

Ariel extended her palm to Calvin, who flushed beet red for the handshake. He was going to be eight feet tall if he ever finished growing, she guessed, but temporarily he was stuck with big feet and a cracking voice and arms that were just too long to know what to do with themselves. “She’s not supposed to bother you,” he said, with a shoulder hunch in the direction of Killer.

“There’s no bothering involved. Patrice and I are old pals,” Ariel assured him, and then extended a hand to Bruiser. “That’s not your real name, is it?”

“Nah. My real name’s Daniel, but I take wrestling, you know? So everybody calls me Bruiser.”

“I can see why,” she said gravely. Although the muscles weren’t that developed yet, the attitude was all there, from the swaggering posture to the fingers dug into his jeans pockets. He was maybe thirteen? And he’d had peanut butter for lunch, judging from the teensy bit stuck on his chin. She wasn’t about to tell him what that peanut butter did to his tough-guy persona. “Nice to meet you, Bruiser, and this is Boober, huh?”

Remembering that Killer’s imaginary friend was of legendary height, Ariel looked way up as she extended her hand into thin air. “Nice to meet you, too, Boober.” She duly pumped the air as if there were actually a handshake involved. Both boys rolled their eyes at her foolishness, but they didn’t seem to mind her catering to their sister. She could see a little of those terrible self-aware nerves fading.

“Killer said you knew magic tricks and stuff.” Calvin, cracked voice and all, had apparently been voted spokesman. “Not that we’re interested. We’re too old for stuff like that. But she was driving us crazy, and I don’t have to deliver papers for a coupla hours, so we just kind of thought we’d take a walk. And we accidentally ended up here. But if we’re in your way or anything...”

“You’re not in my way,” Ariel immediately denied. The day she was too busy for kids would never happen. Too many adults had made her feel “in the way” when she was growing up.

Still, what to do with the Penoyer clan was trickier than a land mine. Josh’s silence had clearly spelled out his lack of interest in any personal connection with her. Maybe he didn’t want his kids involved with her, either?

Killer elbowed her brother. “I told you she was cool, didn’t I?”

Cool. Ariel’s heart sank. How the Sam Hill could she live up to an impossible kid epithet like cool? And there was no way she bought Calvin’s story about “accidentally” stopping by. Positively she was being checked out with more studying interest than a crammer in exam week. Bruiser, the poor kid, couldn’t keep his eyes off her breasts. Calvin hovered more at a distance, his eyes examining her face, her hair and how she behaved, as if prepared to abscond with his brother and sister any second if she did anything suspicious.

She handed out cans of soda. That broke some ice. Bruiser caught a look at her jewelry tools on the counter. That started him talking. And then Calvin, who denied his interest in magic loudly several times, was eventually coaxed into trying out some sleight-of-hand coin tricks.

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