What a Man's Gotta Do (10 page)

Something tugged at Eddie's heart, a feeling that only intensified when he gently squeezed the little hand in his and got a shy grin in return.

They'd reached the house by then; sure enough, Carrie battled her way behind a privet hedge under the windows, returning a few seconds later with a key. She clomped up the stairs and opened the front door with a flourish. Grateful exploded out onto the porch, yapping and spinning in circles. Lucas plopped his butt on the top step, dissolving into giggles when the excited pup knocked him onto his back.

“We're fine now,” he heard Carrie say. His grin from watching Lucas and the pup fading, Eddie looked over at her. “You don't have to stay. Like I said, I'll call Nana—”

“Uh-uh.” Lucas shoved the dog off of him and struggled to sit up, wiping dog slobber off his face. “Mama says we're not supposed to be alone.”

“
You're
not supposed to be alone, 'cuz you're a baby—”

“I am not!”

“You just turned six. I'm seven—”

“Which is still too young to stay by yourself,” Eddie said, walking up the steps and purposely planting himself so that he towered over the little girl.

She was clearly unimpressed. “We're not stupid,” she said, unabashedly meeting his gaze three feet over her head. “We know not to touch the stove or plug anything in or turn on the hot water or answer the door or say Mama's not home if someone calls. Even Lucas knows how to dial 9-1-1.”

Oh, boy, did she have her mother's chin thrust down pat. Eddie crossed his arms. “Oh? And exactly how many times has your mama ever actually left you by yourselves?”

The chin went up another notch. “Lots—”

“Nuh-uh!” Lucas said.

Carrie shot her brother a venomous look, after which she developed a profound interest in the toe of one sneaker.

“Yeah, well,” Eddie said, walking over to the door and pushing it open, “whether she has or not, I'm not about to. So you're stuck with me until your mama gets home, Carrie. Deal with it.”

With a toss of her curls, Carrie spun on her heel and flounced inside. Eddie followed, wondering just what he'd gotten himself into.

 

Mala threw the jack into the car's trunk, slammed it shut, then scooted around to the driver's side. Dammit to hell and back again—of all the times for her cell phone to go
pfft
on her! She'd been down to the wire as it was, leaving the nursery so late. But who knew the tire would blow? Well, okay, it wasn't as if it was a complete surprise, considering the condition the damn things were in. Hell, she'd seen heavier treads on a condom.

In any case, she'd be lucky to get to Big-O on the spare, let alone home. She simultaneously calculated how much breathing room she had on her credit card while reminding herself that she could call home from the tire place—she knew Carrie knew how to get in and what not to do, but still—and maybe phone her mother, too, see if Bev could scoot over there until she was done.

Fifteen minutes and a near heart attack later—she hadn't paid as much for the whole car as what these tires were going to cost—she called her mother, figuring Bev could be on her way while she talked to the kids. Hopefully, Lucas wouldn't be totally freaked out—

“No!” she said, loudly, as her mother's answering machine picked up. The guy at the counter gave her a funny look; she turned away. The place smelled like ripe rubber and stale cigarettes and men who apparently thought deodorant was for sissies. On an empty stomach, this was not good. Geez, Louise, her mother left the
longest
message—

“Ma! Ma! Pick up, it's me… Ma?” She waited a good ten seconds, but it was clear that her mother had actually had the audacity to leave the house without informing her daughter of her whereabouts.

Mala stabbed at the release button, then dialed her house, fully expecting to hear her daughter's voice. Instead, she got a “Y'ello?” in a deep, male, very familiar Texan drawl. The dog yipped in the background.

“Eddie?”

“Hey, Mala—where are you? Hey, kids,” she heard him call out, “it's your mama. She's okay.” Then to her. “You are, aren't you? Okay?”

“What? Yes, yes, I'm fine. Well, not
fine,
but the only thing in imminent danger of destructing is my charge card. My tire blew, followed immediately by my cell phone, so I couldn't call and I couldn't get anywhere where there was a phone until I'd changed the tire—”

“Whoa—you changed the tire by yourself?”

“Yes, Eddie,” she said patiently. “My
mother
showed me how when I was sixteen.” In the resulting silence, she asked, “But how'd you—? I mean, why'd you—?”

“Noticed your car wasn't there, figured something was up, went to get the kids. They're right here, by the way, eating peanut butter crackers. That okay?”

She realized she was picturing all those loose limbs leaning against her kitchen counter and that her brain had grabbed her by the libido and yanked her back to the night of The Kiss. She'd only seen him in passing, and not even that, really, unless you counted watching the guy come and go from the garage as “passing.”

Damn, they kept the heat up in here.

“Peanut butter?” she asked in the midst of shucking off her car coat. “You sure you got the right kids? I mean, it's sometimes hard to tell one prissy little girl wearing purple from another.”

Eddie's chuckle sent this little trickle of…something la-did-a-ing through her veins. “Pair of redheads, right? Boy has glasses, girl has attitude?”

“Yeah, you got the right kids.” Suddenly, her heart twisted in her chest. “Oh, God, Eddie, thanks so much for picking them up. I've never missed the bus before, unless I'd arranged with my mother to pick them up instead…” To her annoyance, her voice cracked.

“Hey…lighten up. It's okay, they're okay. No harm done. So…when you think you'll be home?”

“Oh, Lord, I have no idea. Depends on how fast they can change out these tires. I tried getting my mother, but she's not home either—”

“For cryin' out loud, Mala. Stop worrying, okay? I'll stay as long as I have to.”

“But you said you weren't a kid person.”

The silence this time fairly crackled. “I think we'll all survive for the next couple of hours,” he said quietly. “Long as you tell me what they usually do now, so they don't try and pull one over on me, we'll do just fine—”

“Hey, miss?”

“Hang on a sec,” she said to Eddie, then looked over. The balding, paunchy guy behind the counter was glowering at her. “Thought you said this was gonna be a short call?”

“That was before I knew how much the tires were going to cost me.” She waved him off, then again held her phone to her ear. Eddie was chuckling.

“Now I know where Carrie gets it.”

A small, tired laugh wriggled from her throat. “Start 'em out early is my motto. Anyway, you don't have to—”

“You want me to sit 'em down in front of a slasher movie?”

“No!”

“Then just tell me what you want me to do.”

She let out a long, long sigh. “You really want to get down and dirty with first grade math and Dr. Seuss?”

“I think I can handle it.”

“Then go for it. I'm sure Carrie will tell you what she's got for homework, and Lucas has books in his room. He's just learning to read—”

“Miss! Please!”

“See you later,” she said into the phone as she chased it into the cradle. “And thanks again.”

She hung up, surprised to discover she actually felt better now than she had five minutes ago. It was that making-her-laugh thing, she realized.

Eddie also made her hot, but let's not go there.

With a whooshed sigh, she tramped across the waiting room and flopped into a vinyl chair to wait. The tire place was a few minutes outside of town, opposite a medium-size strip mall she rarely went to, next to a fairly popular steak-house type joint she
never
went to. The parking lots adjoined; from her seat, she could watch the restaurant patrons coming and going. Not that this was particularly entertaining, but it beat all to heck the beat-up three-year-old
Newsweek
lying forlornly on the table next to her. At four o'clock, the place wasn't exactly hopping, and between the stifling heat in the room and the adrenaline crash after finding out the kids were being taken care of, she nearly dozed off, until a car door slamming jerked her awake.

It had begun to get dark, the bright lights inside preventing her from clearly seeing outside. On a yawn, she tried to focus out the plate glass window. Then her heart knocked, just once and very painfully, at the sight of the tall, broad-shouldered man in a black wool topcoat with his back to her as he double-checked to make sure his door was locked. She couldn't quite tell, but his hair sure looked red from here…

Alarm streaked through her as she waited, breath held, for the man to turn around so she could see his face. After what seemed like forever, he finally did…and she sagged with relief. It wasn't Scott.

But, as if startled out of a nightmare, her pulse still pounded, her breath came in short, ragged gasps. And her throat clogged with the effort not to dissolve into tears.

Mala shut her eyes, riding out the unexpected panicked reaction. For God's sake—it wasn't as if she hadn't seen a man in a black topcoat since Scott's departure. And after three years, she'd thought that was all behind her.

She'd thought she was free.

Still shaking, she grabbed the mangled magazine and slapped through the limp pages, even though she had no idea what she was seeing. Anger seeped through the remnants of her agitation, revving her heart rate even more. After all the pains she'd taken…

Well. One thing was for certain—she'd have to be more on guard than ever. If the simple sight of someone who looked vaguely like her ex-husband could derail her like that…

It's okay,
she told herself.
No regrets.

No recriminations.

“Ma'am?”

She jerked her head up, her brow knotted. Another man stood behind the counter, younger, his overalls baggy. A scraggly goatee quivered when he smiled. “You're all set to go.”

“Oh. Oh, great.”

Her knees were still shaking as she stood and slipped her coat back on, an affliction which had suffused her entire body by the time she got in the car. “For God's sake, girl—get a grip!” she muttered as she started the car. Okay, so maybe she was overworked and stressed and hungry and had been spending far too much time obsessing about a man she knew she didn't want, couldn't have and should be ashamed of herself for even
thinking
about…having. But still, that was no reason to be hallucinating ex-husbands.

She popped a Fleetwood Mac tape into the player, forced the heebie-jeebies from her brain. The past was just that—the past. Now, all she had to worry about was picking up something for dinner, then going home to face her dirty house, several hours of work, her children…

And that man she'd been spending far too much time obsessing about.

 

Okay. Like Mala had said, Carrie had pretty much taken care of her homework on her own—actually, when Eddie had offered his help, he'd gotten the primmest, prissiest “No, thank you” ever bestowed in history. And he'd managed maybe twenty minutes of listening to Lucas stumble over “the” and “in” and “not” about fifty thousand times before he decided
Mala was right, he didn't have to do this. So, in time-honored male tradition, Eddie wandered out into the toy-and-clothes strewn living room, crouching in front of the glass-fronted case housing the video collection. A couple of old black-and-white jobbers, about a million Disney movies, and some unopened, very dusty, workout tapes. No cable that he could tell, no satellite, no
TV Guide,
even.

“We're not allowed to watch TV before dinner,” Carrie said behind him.

So much for that.

Eddie twisted around to find her standing a few feet away, hugging herself. “Oh? How come?”

“I heard her tell Uncle Steve she doesn't want us brain-dead before we hit…” A neat little crease wedged between her amber brows. “Pu-something.”

Eddie choked back a grin. “Puberty?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Well.” He stood. “Guess I can't fault her there.”

The pup prancing along beside him, Lucas wandered in, his hands rammed in the pockets of his baggy little jeans. “So…” Eddie matched Lucas's stance. “Whaddya think we should do now?”

“We could play a game,” Lucas said. “I've got Candyland.”

Eddie dimly remembered that his mama had gotten Candyland for him one Christmas. He hadn't much cared for it then, as he recalled.

“Candyland is for babies,” Carrie pronounced.

“Is not!”

“Is, too—”

“Okay, guys, knock it off.” He and Carrie glared at each other as he wondered what sort of game Carrie would consider sophisticated enough to suit her. With Eddie's luck, probably poker. “You know what, y'all…I'm really not much good at games.”

Silence jittered between them for another several seconds, until Lucas said, “Hey, Carrie! Maybe Eddie could put up the Christmas decanations!”

“Decor-
a
-tions,” Carrie corrected, rolling her eyes. “Honestly.”

But when the eyes stopped rolling, Eddie caught the hopeful look in them. Which immediately got to arguing with the you-really-shouldn't twitching in his stomach.

His hand snaked up to rub the back of his neck. Ah, hell…rescuing the kids from the bus stop was one thing. That was simply being neighborly. And feeding them, making sure they got their homework done…well, shoot, anybody would've done that. Putting up Christmas stuff, though…well, that was getting just a little too personal. Too close. And, hey, Mala said she didn't want the kids to get too close, right? So Eddie frowned and shook his head and said, “Gee, guys, I dunno. Seems to me most women have real definite ideas about stuff like that. I mean, I wouldn't want to step on your mama's toes.”