A Mother in the Making

Shouldn’t she prefer to be shoe shopping at the mall?

“I like knowing how to do it right,” she said, deciding to trust him with the truth. “There’s a satisfaction in getting the rhythm and hitting the sweet spot, feeling the nail go in like a knife through butter. And I like creating a kitchen or a bathroom that works, as well as looking good. If you want, you can call that the feminine touch. For some clients, it’s one of C & C’s selling points. That I have a woman’s eye for where to put the utensil drawer and the hooks for the pot holders.”

He laughed. “I didn’t even know the second half of C & C was female when I talked to your brother.”

“Yeah, that can work pretty well for us, too,” she drawled deliberately.

They looked away from each other again.

“Want to go back in and see upstairs?”

“Maybe you’ll want C & C to tackle the upstairs bathroom next, so I should take a look.” At this stage, they were only contracted to do the kitchen and half-bath downstairs.

He led the way back inside and up to the master bedroom, where his T-shirt drawer hung open with a mess of fabric spilling out. The sight reminded them both of how he’d greeted her an hour ago and what had happened next. He went to shut it, but an awkwardness had come back into the atmosphere now, and the rest of his tour was sketchy and brief.

“We should both probably do some work if we’re going to get much done this morning,” he said.

“Yes, or I’ll have to answer to Cormack as soon as he’s better. I’m not expecting you to help, though, seriously.”

“That’s okay. Got a project of my own.”

Turned out he was preparing to paint the sunroom today, keeping the horrible carpet in place to protect the floor. They arrived back in the kitchen, and with misgivings, she watched him climb a stepladder and start scraping the ceiling. “Are you fit enough for that, Jack? Your chest, I mean.”

“I’ll stop if it starts hurting. You’re right, though, I couldn’t help you pull out those old cabinets, judging from how much it seemed to tear me up, coming too fast down the stairs.”

Carmen had begun working on the cabinets with a pry bar. They weren’t original to the house and weren’t worth saving. The green laminated particle board had swollen out of shape in numerous places, and it was ugly and cheap to begin with.

“Rob should be here sometime this morning to help with the heavy work,” she said. Several nails screeched as the pry bar pulled a strip of wood loose. She added without thinking, “But I’m not as much of a girl as I look.”

From his position on the stepladder, Jack Davey twisted around and looked at her, long and slow. “What’s wrong with being a girl?” he said, his gray eyes teasing and thoughtful and steady at the same time, and that was the moment Carmen first began to understand that she could be in real trouble, that Jack Davey knew it, and that he could be in trouble, too.

The twisting motion on the stepladder had not been a good idea, Jack soon realized. The surgically repaired mess under his left rib cage burned again. Carmen saw him wince and heard the hitch in his breathing.

“Don’t say it,” he warned. “You’re right. I’m going to call the doctor, see if he can squeeze me into his appointment hours to check this out. It keeps happening, and it probably shouldn’t.”

“Are you supposed to be driving yet?”

“No. Wanna call me a cab?”

“I was going to offer to be the cab.”

“That works, too, if you don’t mind doing it.”

“I’m getting the impression today’s going to be slow for C & C Renovations.”

“Add the extra time into your invoice.” He looked down at his chest. “I’d better change my shirt. Again.”

The receptionist at Dr. Seeger’s put him through to the doctor himself, who sounded concerned. “You’re right. I should take a look. You’re not doing anything stupid, are you?”

“Maybe I’d better not answer that. What would you say, just hypothetically, if I told you I was doing paint preparation in my sunroom?”

The doctor sighed down the phone. “Didn’t we go over this in the hospital?”

“You said nothing strenuous. I’m right-handed, and the shot went in on the left. When the pain first tweaked this morning, all I was doing was coming down the stairs a little too fast.”

“I’ll fit you in as soon as you get here.”

They took the C & C pickup truck. Jack liked the way Carmen drove. She was a little sassy at the wheel, delivering sarcastic one-liners to any idiots on the road, but with a thread of humor in the mix that toned it down. She had the windows shut, too, so no one would hear.

“I hope your eyebrows get painted on crooked, lady!” she yelled at a woman who was applying her makeup at the traffic lights and who clearly found the process far more interesting than checking the color of the lights. “Green means go, honey, green means go, say it after me,” she chanted, until the vehicle in front finally moved. Then she turned to Jack. “Tell me to shut up if you hate this,” she said. “Cormack often does. Even though he knows it helps my sanity.”

“You need help with your sanity?”

She shrugged and grinned, and her red earrings swung against her tanned neck. “Life gets complicated. I’m the go-to girl in the O’Brien family and my baby sister is being a pain in the butt right now—she’s just turned eighteen. Helps to yell at idiots in traffic instead of yelling at her.”

“I can relate to that,” he said, thinking of Terri and her new husband, and the ice junkie with the crazy gun. “Sometimes you need to off-load stuff onto someone safe.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly, as if she’d understood his thoughts. “Um, are you going to ask the doctor about that, too? I mean, about…”

“Crying on your shoulder?” He raked his teeth over his lower lip, a little scared that even just saying the words might bring those hair-trigger emotions bubbling back up.

“Yep. That.” She glanced across at him, must have seen the way his face had gone tight. She added lightly, “Not that your tears have ruined my gorgeous silk blouse or anything.” She fingered her plain cotton T-shirt.

The humor helped. “I’ll buy you a new one in gold satin,” he promised. “You want C & C Renovations embroidered on the pocket, like on that one?”

“Seriously, though…”

“How about if we’re not?” he said quickly. “Serious, I mean. I’ll ask the doctor. He knows I’m seeing the counselor and taking time off.”

“Okay. Just wanted to check.”

“Well, thanks, but I think I have a handle on this.”

She made a tricky lane change in silence, then asked, “And your partner, how’s he doing?”

“He took a vacation with his wife to Bermuda. She’s great. Down to earth. Says she’s planning to come home pregnant. Her dad’s a cop, too. Russ’ll be okay.”

“He didn’t get shot.”

“The getting shot is the least of it. It’s the shooting someone else that breaks you up.”

“I can imagine.”

“Here’s the doctor’s building coming up on the right, after the next light. There’s parking out front. You can wait in the pickup, if you want. Hopefully this won’t take long.”

“Hmm, wait in the pickup… Does this doctor have good magazines? Or just ones with fish and cars on the covers?”

“What’s wrong with fish and cars?”