Dear Cupid (20 page)

He gave a sigh of exasperation as she hefted the machine off the counter. “Is it necessary for me to lug that thing around? He’s only staying with me one night.”

“And you know as well as I do that a lot can happen in one night. I want you to promise me that if he starts wheezing, you’ll make him use it.”

“Of course,” he said as he took the machine from her.

“I’ve also written down Linda’s home number. If for any reason you can’t get a hold of me, she usually knows where I am.”

Taking the note, he gave her a curious frown. “Is there any reason why you wouldn’t be here?”

“Oh, I don’t know ...” She trailed a hand through the air. “Maybe I have some hot plans, since I’ll be a free woman all weekend.”

“I see.” His brow raised in doubt. Was it that hard for him to believe any man would want to spend time with her? Or just any man worthy of his jealousy?

“Okay!” Dylan shouted as he struggled down the ladder with his backpack over one arm and a stack of books and toys under the other. “I’m ready.”

Kate turned to give him a hug. “You have fun at the game, and don’t eat too much junk food, okay?”

“Okay. See ya.” Dylan wiggled out of her arms and hurried for the door. “Come on, Dad!”

With a resigned sigh, Edward carried his own load toward the car. “Dylan, wait,” he called. “Wipe your feet before you get in. Jeez, I just had the leather upholstery cleaned.”

Kate went to stand on the porch, calling a final good-bye as Edward loaded the nebulizer and Dylan into the backseat. Everything would be fine, she told herself as they pulled out of the drive and the car disappeared around a row of cedar trees and a rusted barbed-wire fence. She remained on the porch a moment, her heart already aching to have her son back even though she’d wanted him to have this weekend with his dad.

When the sound of the car had faded, she went inside, feeling at loose ends. As much to get her mind off Dylan as anything else, she settled back in front of the computer to finish answering Dear Cupid email. While she had to struggle to be upbeat about romance, she gave thanks to have the task. Her column had provided a refuge during an ego-crushing divorce and now, she hoped, would offer a path back to the person she used to be. At the very least, it would help her through the next two days without Dylan.

When she’d finished her response to Friend in Love, she clicked over to her Web site to see if they’d posted her latest article on role-playing between lovers. To her surprise, a line of text appeared on the screen saying “Address Not Found.” Wondering if the bookmark had messed up, she typed in the address. The same message appeared.
Could the server be down?
She opened
Gwendolyn
’
s Garden
, just to check. The site came up fine, although she noticed they’d changed the front page and had forgotten to include the little Cupid icon that linked the main page to her site. Curious, she typed in her site address again, and received the same message: “Address Not Found.”

She sat a moment, staring at the screen as a sense of foreboding settled over her. Reaching for the phone, she dialed Gwen’s office in L.A., knowing her friend would be at work, even on a Saturday.

“
Gwendolyn
’
s Garden
. Gwen speaking.”

“Gwen?” she said, somehow relieved by the mere sound of her friend’s voice. “It’s Kate.”

“Kate? Oh ... hi.” Gwen sounded a bit uncomfortable, but not alarmingly so.

“I just went to access my page and got some silly message about the address not being found.” Silence. “Gwen?”

“Oh, dear.” A heavy sigh came over the line, and the bottom fell out of Kate’s stomach.
God, no, please no.
“Kate, I—I’m sorry. I told the Web site manager not to upload the changes until I’d talked to you personally, but you’ve been out the last two days, and I didn’t want to leave a message about something like this. I guess he got tired of waiting.”

“W-what are you talking about?” Kate asked even though she knew. She pressed a finger to her lips to keep them from trembling.

“I’m saying that at our last staff meeting, we all decided that the page needed a little revamping, something fresher. You know, younger, trendier, The whole cupid concept is becoming passé.”

“We? What do you mean ‘we’?” Gwen was the sole owner of the magazine. While she might, on rare occasions, ask her staff for their opinion, all decisions were ultimately hers.

“It’s nothing personal, Kate. In fact, your site seems to be gaining hits again.”

“I don’t understand. Is this because of what happened last Monday with the animation?”

“No, of course not. Even though I am still angry about that.”

“Then what? You said if I eased off the male-bashing, you’d keep my site going.”

“I know. And you’ve done an excellent job this past week. In fact, I really loved your last column on role-playing.”

“Then why did you take it down?” she demanded as anger swirled with disbelief.

“Kate,” Gwen sighed. “The truth is, even though your number of hits are up, your site isn’t generating sales for our advertisers. People are signing directly on and off your page, without even browsing the rest of the site.”

“And that’s my fault?”

“In a way, yes. You’ve known from the beginning that the purpose of your column was to draw new people to the site and encourage them to splurge on some romantic notion. It was never intended to be something people took seriously, and certainly nothing that could stand on its own. Plus, our analytics show your demographics are all wrong. You attract too many older married women and men when our catalog is geared toward a young singles crowd.”

“So, you’re dumping me. Just like that.”

“I’m sorry. Really. But I don’t have a choice.”

“No choice? How can you say that?” The trembling settled into Kate’s bones, shaking her whole body. “You hold all the choices and all I hold is the short end of the stick.”

“Kate, don’t do this. It’s business, all right? That’s all it is—simple business.”

“Fine, Gwen,” she snapped, on the verge of tears. “Whatever you say. If it salves your conscience to say this isn’t personal, then you do that. But the truth is you can’t stand knowing my site is more popular than yours. You never could stand to be one-upped. This isn’t business. It’s you and your inflated ego.”

“My ego?” Gwen sputtered. “What about yours? You’re the one who had to go and take herself seriously when all your articles were supposed to be was a little fluff to help sell lingerie and bubble bath. If you’d kept it light and fun, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“If that’s what you want to believe, I guess that’s your choice too. I’m not going to argue about it. I’ll just find someone else to sponsor my site.”

“Kate, wait!” Gwen called, then sighed in frustration. “I don’t want to end things this way. We’ve been friends too long.”

Kate closed her eyes, trying to push the pain away. Gwen was right. They had been friends a long time. Which made this slap in the face even worse.

“Kate?” Gwen asked. “Are you okay?”

“I’m perfect, Gwen. How else would I be? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go.” She disconnected and dropped her face into her hands.
Oh, God!
She’d lost her column. Even though she’d seen it coming, she felt as if Gwen had reached inside her chest and ripped out something vital.

Lifting her head, she swiped the tears from her cheeks. She refused to sit here and indulge in a crying jag. That wouldn’t solve anything. She still had one job left, one that would last a while longer since Mike kept adding to his list of things he wanted her to do.

The thought of going over there suddenly held infinite appeal. Not that she wanted to go running into Mike’s arms like some wounded child needing comfort, she assured herself. She just, well ... needed something to do. Jim had told her the drawer pulls she’d picked out had come in yesterday and that he meant to install them today. She wanted to see how they looked, that was all. Anything to get out of the house.

~ ~ ~

Mike stumbled into the kitchen, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, and nearly tripped over Jim.

“Jesus!” Jim exclaimed, jumping up from his crouching position before the cabinets. “I didn’t think you were here. You didn’t answer when I rang the bell.”

“No problem,” Mike assured him, as his heart settled back into his chest. Even though he’d given the contractor a key, he couldn’t quite get used to construction workers coming and going on their own. He’d be glad when this phase of Kate’s project ended and she got down to picking out living and dining room furniture. “I probably slept right through the bell.”

“Long night, eh?” Jim asked, moving aside an assortment of doorknobs and drawer pulls so Mike could get to the coffeepot.

“Yeah,” Mike sighed, thinking with satisfaction of the work he had accomplished as he scooped grounds into the filter. The robot was shaping up into a horrific bit of work—frighteningly fluid and lifelike. When finished, it world scare the pants off the audience. “You working alone today?”

“It’s Saturday,” Jim grumbled, obviously in a surly mood.

“Already?” Mike mentally counted the days since he and Kate had made love. “So it is,” he said, amazed at how quickly the week had flown by. “I take it your crew doesn’t work on the weekend.”

“Most of them have families, so I give them the weekends off.” Jim shrugged and moved on to the next drawer.

Since he needed to wait for his coffee to brew, Mike took a seat on one of the stools Kate had picked out for his new breakfast bar. He had to admit, now that the kitchen project was almost over, she’d been right about knocking out part of the wall. The open look made the kitchen seem larger and brighter. For countertops, she’d selected a light colored granite that went great with the oak cabinet fronts. For drawer pulls, she’d found copper knobs in a Texas star motif.

He couldn’t wait to see what she did with the rest of the place. With luck, he’d be able to come up with enough projects to keep her around until she finally admitted they had something more important going on between them than physical attraction. How any woman could look at him as she did at times, with those hungry, admiring eyes, then insist she wasn’t interested in a relationship boggled his mind.
Time
, he reminded himself.
Give her time
.

He turned back to watch Jim. “Speaking of families, why aren’t you home with yours?”

“I don’t have a family,” Jim grumbled as he tightened the screw on a drawer pull. “What I have is a pregnant wife.”

“Doesn’t that qualify?”

Jim looked up from his work. “You ever had a pregnant wife?”

“No, I, uh, can’t say that I have.” Mike chuckled. He did, however, remember some of the tales his brothers-in-law had told when Kim and Kelly were pregnant.  There had been days when they, too, had fled from the house to preserve their sanity. Although, he noticed as he reached around to pour his first cup of coffee, Jim looked a bit more uptight than Bryan or Larse ever had. “So,” he ventured, “what is it today? The crying tizzy about being too fat, or the hundred-and-one projects she wants you to do before the baby comes?”

“If only it were that easy.” Jim gave the screw another twist, coming dangerously close to stripping the threads. “Linda’s never looked better than she does right now, and as for projects, I’d build her a whole damned house if it would make her happy.” Sitting back on the heels of his work boots, Jim let out a heavy sigh. “This, however, I have no idea how to fix.”

“And what is ‘this’?”

Jim  rummaged through the pile of hardware for another drawer pull. “She thinks I don’t want the baby.”

“Ah,” Mike said, sounding far sager than he felt. “I assume you’ve told her that you do?”

“Well, of course I’ve told her.” Wielding the screwdriver, he tightened the next drawer pull into place. “I’m making her the baby crib, aren’t I? Every night, I spend hours out in the shop working on the thing. And what does she do? Breaks out bawling and accuses me of avoiding her.”

“Hmm.” Mike mulled that over as he sipped the scalding coffee. The situation was clearly more complicated than he’d thought. “How about getting her to talk about, you know, how she’s feeling and everything? My sisters’ husbands seem to think listening to them go on about their bodies and the baby and making a big deal over all that confusing stuff they get at baby showers helps. Women are big on talking about things.”

“I don’t know.” Shaking his head, Jim grabbed another drawer pull. “Right now, I don’t think anything will help. I might as well just stay out of her way until this whole thing is over.”

Mike frowned, thinking something sounded wrong with Jim’s logic, but damned if he knew what it was. When it came to women, logic rarely applied. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

“So.” Jim eyed him. “You got any more rooms you want me to tear apart and put back together?”

Mike started to laugh, but realized the man wasn’t joking. In fact, Jim looked frustrated enough to tear apart a whole house with his teeth. “I’m afraid you’ll have to ask Kate on that one.”