A Mother in the Making

“We’re not.”

“Good…” he said, and the word drowned itself against her mouth.

He kissed her hard, ran his hands down her back and over her rear end, shaping her curves, coming up to lift her hair from her neck and make sensual touch patterns against her nape and behind her ears. She felt the press of her breasts against him, and the growing ridge of his arousal against her stomach. They were the wrong size for each other but it didn’t matter a bit. They still fit, somehow. He bent and she stretched. It was just…right.

And then it was interrupted.

Carmen heard the pop of car tires on the tarred driveway at the side of the house, right next to the windows above the old sink.

Cormack and Rob, with the cabinets.

Jack muttered something under his breath, and if it was a curse word, then Carmen fully agreed.

She didn’t want this to stop. How could she stop?

But the sound of the arrival had cut jaggedly into their kiss like a knife cutting tough steak, and she felt Jack start to let go. His hands showed his reluctance. So did his mouth. She felt his hot touch, first against her back then dropping to her hips. His kiss trailed across her jaw and down her neck, warm and giving and alive, promising more, promising later.

It was only the promise of later that allowed her to let go now. How crazy was that?

“This must be Cormack,” she said, breathless.

And maybe his timing was fortunate because the implications of kissing Jack were looming larger by the second. That other part of her was talking louder, the part she hadn’t listened to before, the part that said nothing about how this could possibly work, when Ryan came first in his life, and Kate’s current problems came first in hers, and what Carmen wanted most in the world right now was to be free of such a heavy weight of respon sibility.

“I guess,” he said, about Cormack.

“Finish cleaning the roller?” she prompted him. “We’ll be a while, unloading.”

He grabbed her hand and squeezed it and they looked at each other helplessly for a moment.

“Jack, maybe we should…”

“Go,” he said. “We can’t talk now.”

“No. I know.” Her body throbbed and burned as she hurried up the stairs. She smoothed her hair and her shirt, knowing Cormack would have questions about her flushed face and bright eyes. He’d probably think Difficult client, not Kissing by the basement sink, because difficult clients were far, far more common than clients who even looked as if they might touch a woman the way Jack Davey did.

Would her brother ask her about it?

Cool down, she coached herself. Don’t let him see that something happened.

She went directly to the side entrance, where Cormack and Rob should just about be standing by now. There was no one there, so she went to the front of the house, yanked the big, ill-fitting door open and found a petite, blue-eyed blonde standing on the porch with her mouth already pursed in impatience at how long she’d had to stand waiting.

Oh. Right.

“You must be Terri,” Carmen said, sounding a little too abrupt.

Jack’s ex.

She saw a boy with Jack’s dark hair and a slight but wiry build coming up the saggy old steps with a backpack slung on one shoulder. Ryan—number-one priority in Jack Davey’s life. To both mother and son she said, “Come in.”

The purse on Terri’s lips gathered tighter, as she looked Carmen up and down. “Jack didn’t say he’d have someone here.”

She said someone as if it meant call girl, or at the very best, sleazy new squeeze, but Carmen understood how a mother might have concerns about a possible unknown new girlfriend in her son’s father’s life. She explained quickly, “I’m not someone. I’m completely not anybody at all. I’m just remodeling his kitchen.” And if my cheeks are on fire, then they’re lying! “I actually thought you were going to be the rest of the team, bringing the new cabinets.”

Terri didn’t seem interested in the new cabinets, let alone Carmen herself, now that she’d turned out to be the hired help. “But he’s home?” She didn’t wait for an answer, just marched into the house. “Jack?” she called sweetly. “This is a little inappropriate, isn’t it?”

Inappropriate. Such a falsely sanitary word. It came out of Terri’s mouth with vinegar flavoring, and Carmen already understood quite a lot about why Terri and Jack were divorced.

She focused on Ryan, instead. He looked so much like Jack, down to the same expression on his face—a mix of anticipation and wariness. It melted her heart. This was a fresh start for him, too, in his relationship with his dad, and he was a little wary. “Hi,” she said brightly. She knew about fresh starts in families. “I’m Carmen. Want to put your backpack by the stairs or something? It looks heavy.”

Terri turned back to her. “Didn’t you say you were from the construction crew?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Carmen confirmed helpfully, since apparently she hadn’t been clear enough before.

“Hmm.” Terri’s look said that a kitchen remodeler making suggestions to a nine-year-old about where he could put his backpack was almost as “inappropriate” as the remodeler answering the door in the first place.

Jack had appeared. “We thought you were the cabinets,” he said to Terri.

“Didn’t I say we’d be here by six?”

He looked at his watch. “And it’s a quarter after. Which was about when we were expecting Cormack and Rob with the cabinets.”

Carmen heard another vehicle engine outside. “This is Cormack and Rob,” she said quickly. “No problem.” She went out to the porch and found that Terri’s car was blocking the truck’s continuation down the driveway. For convenience and speed, they needed to unload directly through the side door. She added apologetically, “Um, Terri, unless you’re leaving right away, I’ll have to ask you to move your car.”

With exaggerated patience, Terri held the keys out to Carmen at arm’s length. “Have you ever driven a BMW?” Her face said she doubted it, and she turned away without waiting for a reply.

Carmen held the keys, thinking sarcastically, Oh yeah, I run around in them all the time, stick shift and automatic, all makes and models, every color of the rainbow.

It was official.

She didn’t like Jack’s ex.

She was tempted to say out loud, I’m pretty good in a Mercedes or a Lamborghini, too. But she heroically managed to keep the lines purely in her thoughts.

Terri must be a mind-reader, however, because she almost looked as if she was about to snatch back the keys. On the way out the door to move the vehicle, Carmen heard her say, “I really don’t think this is appropriate for Ryan, Jack, for you to have a work crew in the house while he’s here.”

“It’s six-fifteen on a Friday. They won’t be here long.”

In the driveway, Carmen signaled to Cormack and Rob that she was moving the car, reversed out toward the mailbox, then angled the vehicle onto the unkempt stretch of grass in front of the house. They drove the truck farther in and began to unload the cabinets, keeping the protective packaging in place and setting everything down in the dining room. Cormack was still taking cold and flu medication, but he was a lot better than he’d been earlier in the week.

In the living room Terri and Jack were still talking.

“Go on upstairs, Ryan, honey,” Carmen heard Terri say, and, as soon as his footsteps sounded overhead, in quite a different tone, “This arrangement can be changed if it doesn’t work out, Jack, you know that, don’t you?”

“Of course I know that. And it cuts both ways.”

“What could you possibly mean by that?”

“Never mind, it’s nothing.”