Balancing Act

“Mom has her on Fridays,” Brady answered.

He flattened a hand against his back pocket, as if to check that his cell phone was there. It was an unnecessary gesture, since he’d put it there just seconds ago. He was on edge, just as she was. His strong shoulders were held tight, and he curled his hands into fists then let them go again.

“She works Monday through Thursday,” he went on. “So on those days Scarlett’s in day care. You’re earlier than I was expecting. I was just about to go pick her up from Mom’s. Here…” He opened the door.

It was a big room, built over the whole area of the double garage, and it was lit by large windows on three sides. The white drapes looked new. Libby recognized her own queen-sized oak sleigh bed, with matching tallboy and dresser, her own delicately flower-sprigged sheet set, comforter and pillows, and the oak glider-rocker she’d bought last year, for sitting in to feed a bottle to Colleen.

Brady had angled the rocker so that it would get bathed in southern winter sun, and the matching oak crib was right next to it, made up with Colleen’s white broderie anglaise bed linen.

Finally, on top of the tallboy, sitting on a plastic place-mat, there was a pewter beer tankard stuffed—yes, you’d have to call it stuffed—with a big bunch of supermarket flowers, still swathed in their silver wrapping.

“Anything you want moved,” Brady offered, “just say so.”

“No, it looks good.” Apart from the supermarket sticker on the flowers.

The flowers said a lot. He must have remembered she liked to have them around the house. He’d taken the trouble to buy some. But he didn’t have a clue how to arrange them, and he didn’t even own a proper vase. The mix of thoughtfulness and clumsiness somehow softened her heart to a dangerous level.

They were both trying so hard.

So hard.

That had to be a good thing, didn’t it?

“It’s a great room,” she told him, meaning it.

“There’s a bathroom right next door that’s just for you.”

“You didn’t have to make the bed.”

He shrugged. “You moved your life seven-hundred-odd miles. I made a bed. Are we even yet?”

She laughed, and it eased a little of the awkwardness in the air. Colleen wriggled out of her arms, toddled forward and launched herself at the rocking chair. Her fat, diaper-wrapped bottom stuck out and she buried her face in the cushion seat. She was attached to this chair, and Libby was grateful for the presence of the familiar object. All of this had to be confusing for a young child. It was confusing enough for an adult!

“Let me help unload your car, then I’ll go get Scarlett,” Brady said, watching Lisa-Belle watch Colleen.

He felt that they needed both girls here, blatantly identical, to remind them of why they were putting themselves through this. It was awkward. No doubt about that. He’d had Nate badgering him in one ear when she arrived. He hadn’t known what to say to her.

Welcome to my life?

And the flowers were probably dumb.

“Are you hungry?” he said, his voice gruff. “I could fix you coffee and a snack and you and Colleen can eat while I unpack.”

“I’m fine. I’m not leaving all the unpacking to you.”

No, Libby, honey, you missed your cue.

He’d been trying to give them both an out, a way not to have to eyeball each other as they went back and forth with boxes and bags for the next ten minutes. She hadn’t taken it. He tried again. “Or take a shower if you want.”

“Tonight. Not now.” She was too wrapped inside her own tension to perceive her wide-open escape route. “We should unpack.”

Colleen followed her mommy back and forth, threatening a couple of times to trip Brady up as he came in the opposite direction. He had to watch out for her underfoot, and he had to be careful, but he knew Scarlett would have done the exact same thing in an unfamiliar situation. Both girls were a little clingy.

Libby distracted him. She was petite, but she didn’t play helpless. She did her share. As he approached the car for his second load, he saw her leaning into the back seat to pick up a box, her bottom taut and round beneath a floral skirt that somehow managed to be both soft and flowing and sexily clingy at the same time. His body stirred and his blood felt as heavy as lead.

Ah, hell! This again!

This attraction that he didn’t want. The mechanics of male anatomy were a damned nuisance, sometimes. What would she think if she knew he was looking at her this way? How was he going to handle it, having her sleeping under his roof, maybe for weeks?

It had become clear during the day and a half he’d spent in Minnesota that she wasn’t involved with anyone there, and it must be pretty obvious to her that he hadn’t dated since Stacey’s death. Physically, his needs tormented him at times, but emotionally he felt only reluctance about any kind of involvement, and so in that area he was very much alone.

On paper, therefore, they were both free to leap into bed with each other tonight, as soon as the girls were asleep.

Who would know?

Whose business would it be, anyhow?

But he didn’t believe you could put sex in its own little compartment that didn’t impinge on the rest of your life, even if that was a convenient theory for some men, and he was sure that Libby wouldn’t believe it, either.

Sex mattered. Even sharing a kitchen could matter.

They had the girls to consider. They had to create a workable, co-operative relationship that would survive the next twenty years, and if they stuffed it up with sex and domestic illusions and a short-lived affair right at the beginning, it would be their daughters who would suffer the most.

He should have given Libby the phone number of one of the motels along Olentangy River Road and left her to fend for herself, honor and duty be damned. It might have been a necessary protection for both of them.

The car was full. Several suitcases, those boxes, and what looked like a big styrofoam cooler that Libby carried through the house and into the kitchen at the back. Two of the boxes she wanted in the kitchen as well.

“What’s in these?” he asked.

“Pantry goods. I thought I might as well bring them rather than throwing them out.”

“And in the cooler?”

“Frozen casseroles. Chicken and mushroom. Burgundy beef. Irish stew.”

Brady’s mouth began to water. So she cooked. She actually cooked. Having tasted her baking the day they’d first met, he was in no doubt whatsoever that she would cook well, and he hadn’t eaten a woman’s home-cooked meal in so long he could hardly remember what it was like.

Mom used to slap together a few easy recipes several nights in the week when he was a kid, but she’d stopped altogether when Dad had died ten years ago. She ate strange little evening meals now, like cottage cheese and sliced banana on toast, or canned soup in a mug. She was a big fan of the drive-through window at the local fast-food chain, too. Now that Scarlett had outgrown jars of baby food, so was Brady.

Burgundy beef, on the other hand… Shoot, but that sounded good!

“We could have one of them tonight, if you don’t have anything planned,” Libby offered.

Uh, no, he didn’t have anything planned.

He told her so, while realizing that he should have planned a whole lot of things. So that they didn’t have to confront the weird reality of their new situation. If either of them made too many mistakes at the beginning, their commitment to putting their daughters’ relationship first might show up as impossibly naive and unworkable.

They could end up in court, hating each other. That guilty wish—Libby had admitted to it, as well—that his mom had never seen Colleen’s photo in that magazine might turn into a bitter, lifelong and reasoned regret.

“I’ll put two of these in the freezer and leave the third to thaw,” Libby said.

“Burgundy beef sounds good,” he suggested, a little embarrassed at the eagerness that immediately crept into his voice.

She smiled. “Burgundy beef it is, then.”

The sun struggled through a thin patch in the low, smoky cloud at that moment and the kitchen lit up, striking her blond hair, giving that melted-candy look to her pretty mouth. His blood slowed and his groin stirred again.

He was hungry. Not burgundy-beef hungry, but candy hungry, hungry for a woman’s sweet, melting mouth, hungry for her soft skin, for the touch of her fingers and the press of her breasts. Hungry for this woman. Just because she was here?

“I’ll go pick up Scarlett,” he said abruptly. Libby was staring at him, lips parted, eyes startled and swimming with heat. “Please make yourselves at home.” He grabbed his keys from a pocket, headed out the side door and let out a sigh of relief as soon as he reached the steps.

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