A Mother in the Making

“A sunroom has to be sunny,” she said. “You can tone down the cheeriness with some darker furnishings. It’s not girly.” His concern for Ryan’s opinion reminded her of her own concern over Kate, and that she should call and let her know she’d be late home for dinner, because of Cormack’s delay. “And of course when the trim and floor are done it’ll look so different, and so much better,” she told him. “Really impressive. Great room for a kid’s computer and study desk.”

“You think so?” He looked happy at the idea.

“Definitely, when it’s all finished.”

He grinned. “I’m going to enjoy throwing this carpet into a Dumpster.”

“I’ll bet!”

She made the call to Kate but was asked to “Please leave a message” on both the land line at home and Kate’s cell. “Hi, Kate, it’s me,” she told the cell phone. “Wanna cook something, if you get in? There’s pasta and salad fixings, deli pasta sauce in the refrigerator. I’ll be there for it, but late. Cormack won’t be. Anyhow, call me when you get this, okay? Let me know what’s happening.”

She’s eighteen, she’s college age, she’s not a child, ran the familiar mantra in her head, after she put down the phone. The mantra didn’t help. Nothing helped. Kate was a mess. She’d broken up with her boyfriend a month ago, and even though Mitchell had been a jerk and bad news and not nearly good enough for Kate, she still had a wounded heart. Carmen was scared. Their talks achieved nothing.

Cormack had no solutions to offer, either. He tended to opt out by spending his evenings elsewhere, leaving Carmen to fret and yell and try a new strategy with Kate every week. Sometimes she got angry with her older brother and business partner, but he was probably right when he said that there was nothing they could do. Kate had to ride out her own problems, deal with her own heartaches and learn from her own mistakes.

Restless and concerned, Carmen wandered into the sunroom to watch Jack fill in the last unpainted rectangle of wall. “Want some help cleaning your gear?” she asked him, unhappy about the circular motion of her thoughts about her sister. “There’s nothing more I can do until Cormack and Rob get here.”

“You don’t have to help. You look pretty wiped.”

“I hate sitting around.”

Because then I’m just going to either A, worry about Kate or B, spend too much time watching the way Jack’s butt looks in those old jeans when he moves.

Yeah, definitely she was in trouble.

And though a part of her sang out a warning that she should run a mile, because she had no time for a man, especially a man with a nine-year-old son, when she had Kate to worry about and Melanie and Joe only just grown and gone, another part of her insisted, Isn’t it time I had something for me?

Jack Davey would most definitely be something for her.

Which part of herself did she listen to? The sensible, nurturing part, or the part that wanted to take a leaf out of Kate’s book and throw caution to the four winds, right along with her tender heart?

“If you’re serious, start on the trim brushes,” Jack said, pulling them from the plastic bag he’d stored them in to stop them from drying out. “I’m done with them. Use that old sink in the basement.”

“Sure.” She reached out and he gave them to her, the two handles inevitably sticky with paint drips that had run down them. She was accustomed to messy hands. His were stained and sticky, also, and when their fingers touched as she took the brushes, the stickiness glued them together for a moment. She didn’t try too hard to pull away.

“How fast does this stuff dry?” she murmured, and he favored her with his blink-and-you-miss-it grin.

“Fast,” he said. “Better go wash it off.” He dropped his voice. “Your hands are too pretty to have paint all over ’em.”

Yep. Serious trouble. What kind of signal had she sent just then?

Down in the basement she ran water over the brushes and squeezed the thick bristles, knowing she’d probably still have paint traces on her hands a couple of days from now, despite the industrial-strength soap she and Cormack kept at home.

The water was beginning to flow clearer when Jack came down with the roller. She heard his footsteps on the old wooden stairs and her heart began to beat faster. It was pretty shadowy down here. Atmospheric. A little more dangerous, in all sorts of ways, than being alone with him in the kitchen and sunroom while they worked.

She stepped sideways to give him room, and he used her almost-clean waste water to rinse away the thickest of the paint on the roller. “Those are about done, aren’t they?” he said, after a while.

She looked at her brushes. They were. For a good minute she’d just been standing here wondering why it felt so nice to have Jack Davey this close, and what one of them might do about it. She knew he felt this chemistry, too…

“Here’s a rag for drying them.” He reached up to a nail sticking out from the wooden floor beam above their heads and pulled down what had to be another one of his old T-shirts. Their arms bumped. He shut off the faucet.

When she took the rag from him, he didn’t let it go. She pulled. He tugged gently back. She looked up at him. “Thanks for saying the right things about the paint,” he said.

“That’s okay. It does look good.” She added, “But I know why it’s important. You want Ryan to like it.”

“Oh, I’m that transparent?”

“Maybe because I’m that way with my baby sister, sometimes. Thinking—oh, too much, probably—about what I can do to make her happy. I recognized what you felt. Ryan comes first.”

“That’s right. I say that to myself all the time. In exactly those words.”

He still hadn’t let go of the rag. Carmen stopped pulling. They both just stood and looked at each other, while he dried their wet hands on the soft, stretchy fabric. Finally, he dropped the rag into the sink and looked at what he’d done. Two sets of clean, dry, pink hands, the big, strong pair cradling the smaller, work-hardened pair.

“Much prettier,” he said softly.

“They’re not,” she stammered. “They’re not proper girl hands at all. They have cuts on them, sometimes, and scars. I use creams and stuff, but—”

He cut her off. “They’re sexy as hell.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Because they’re real. Sexiest girl hands I’ve ever seen.”

As if to prove it, he lifted them and kissed them, then took his lips away, laced his fingers through hers and kissed her mouth. It was the second time in three days that she’d found herself in Jack Davey’s arms, only this time no one was crying.

He kept his fingers threaded in hers, dropping their arms to their sides. His lips brushed her mouth, taking it slow. “Is this okay?” he muttered.

“Yes,” she whispered back. Because it was most definitely okay, so why pretend differently?

The single word was all it took. He deepened the kiss at once, pulling her hard against him, parting her lips with his, tasting her, turning her mouth delectably numb and tingling. He kissed like a dream, kissed from the heart, kissed as if the world might end tonight, and that was just the way she wanted it. Good, and unashamed.

Instinctively she lifted one hand into his hair and caressed the clean, silky strands. She’d done this four days ago. Different reason. Just as good. They knew each other better now. How did that happen to two people? It was strange. Making coffee for each other while they worked. A few casual lines about measurements and cabinets and paint colors.

But somehow, thanks to tears and embarrassment and coffee and paint colors, she knew him and he felt right. Right beneath the touch of her fingers, right to her sense of taste and smell, the right heat radiating from his strong body, the right words whispered in her ear.

“On Monday morning…” he said. Kisses and words. She could barely tell the difference. “Even when I was…” his breath touched her lips. His mouth was like poetry “…sobbing like a baby on your shoulder, I loved how you felt. I hit you with all of that emotion…”

“It was okay. I could see how it just washed over you.”

“You were great. The fact that you didn’t run screaming…”

“I’ve had some practice.”

“Yeah?”

“Family.”

“Why are we talking about this?”