Sing Me Back Home (8 page)

“This is like your third date with Dr. Gallagher,” she persisted. “If you don’t count Sunday night when he came by, or Tuesday when you met him at the diner.”

“Nobody likes a cookie counter.” Maya held a chunky gold necklace around her neck. Wrinkling her nose, she selected a slim silver and turquoise one.

“I’m not counting cookies. I’m counting dates.”

“Nobody likes a date counter, either.”

Carmen sat cross-legged on Maya’s bed and watched her while she searched for matching earrings. A few seconds later she pulled out big silver hoops. Perfect.

“You two are like, dating.
Dating
dating,” Carmen added, emphasizing the word.

“Yes. I suppose we are,” Maya agreed cautiously.

“Like, exclusively?”

Maya turned around to look at her daughter, who seemed uncharacteristically solemn. She and Jack hadn’t talked about exclusivity. Maya hadn’t thought they needed to, she’d just assumed they were exclusive. But Carmen didn’t need to know all that.

“Yes. Does it bother you?”

Carmen shrugged. “Daddy got married again. And then he moved to Germany.”

Bless her heart. Her daughter was stressed about being uprooted again. Or she was worried about a stepfather to deal with. Or both. “Don’t worry, we won’t be moving again.”

“But you could get married again.” She picked at imaginary lint on the bedspread. “Daddy did.”

Married? Sure she could. Someday. “Dr. Gallagher and I are just dating, honey. We enjoy each other’s company. There’s nothing serious going on.”
Yet
, came the unspoken rider. Could this . . . affair be serious? Did she want it to be serious?

She didn’t know. She liked being around him. Enjoyed talking to him. She loved the sex. But serious? No, no, no. Not yet.

Maya walked over to Carmen and ruffled her hair, then sat beside her. “I know it’s been hard on you having your father move so far away. But you’re going to see him at Thanksgiving. And you still video chat with him at least once a week.”

“It’s not the same.”

Maya put her arms around her and hugged her. “I know.” After a moment she said, “Is something else bothering you? About your dad? Or me?”

Carmen’s voice was muffled when she spoke, since she still had her face buried against Maya’s chest. “Daddy and Adele are having a baby.”

Typical Graham, she thought angrily. He told Carmen before he told Maya, never considering that Maya could have smoothed the way and perhaps made Carmen feel better. As for herself, she couldn’t have cared less if her ex and his new wife had one new child or ten. But Carmen did.

“Your father loves you, Carmen. He loves you a lot.”

“I know. But he’s going to have a new baby now. He might just . . . ” her voice trailed off, then she said, “He might forget me.”

Graham was clueless and annoying, but he loved Carmen. “No he won’t. You’re his first born and he loves you very much. Besides, you’re impossible to forget,” Maya said, trying for a lighter note. “Do you want me to find a weekend soon so you can go see him? Maybe take off a Monday or a Friday?” With all of her business traveling, Maya had points enough to fly both of them whenever and wherever she wanted.

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Think about it and check your school schedule. I’ll check into flights.” Maya glanced at the clock. “Are you ready to go? It’s time.”

“Okay.” At the door, she stopped and said, “There’s a new app for the tablet that Gina and I could play. It’s not expensive. Can I get it?”

“What kind of app? It’s not one of those blow-’em-up ones, is it?”

“Of course not. We don’t even like those. It’s a fashion app. You can dress the models and everything. You get to design outfits and then see what they look like on a model. It’s cool.”

Fashion was better than death and mayhem. “All right, but I want to see it. And don’t think I didn’t notice how you slipped that in there.”

Carmen laughed and left the room.

Fashion. Fortunately, Carmen was interested in designing clothes, not modeling them. While Maya had enjoyed modeling, it wasn’t a career she necessarily wanted her daughter to embrace.

‡

L
ate Wednesday afternoon
Gina answered the door to Maya and Carmen. The girls immediately took off to test out Carmen’s new app for her tablet. Jack was nowhere to be found, and apparently, Gina hadn’t felt the need to point her in his direction. Carrying the bowl of salad, Maya walked through the living room and headed for a swinging door, which she assumed led to the kitchen.

She pushed it open and stopped. She saw his legs first. And then his rear, which looked particularly fine in an old, faded pair of blue jeans. With the oven door open, he was bending down over it, cursing softly and reaching one hand inside. Just what he was doing she couldn’t figure out.

“Hi. I come bearing salad.”

“Hey.” Jack emerged from the oven holding a large spatula. “Did Gina let you in? I didn’t hear the doorbell.”

“That would be hard to do with your head stuck inside the oven,” she agreed. “What are you doing in there?”

After closing the oven and setting down the spatula, he took the salad from her and set it on the counter. “Salvaging potatoes. Two of the damn things exploded. The remains are not pretty.” He looked her over with an appreciative gleam in his eyes. “You, on the other hand, look good enough to eat.”

She smiled. “Cute. Weak, but cute.”

Putting his hands on her waist, he pulled her to him. “Wow, you smell as good as you look.”

“You smell a little like burned potatoes.”

“Can’t win ’em all,” he said and kissed her.

She returned the kiss, wrapping her arms around his neck and meeting his tongue with hers. Her brain shut down and she could only feel. His hand beneath her jacket at the small of her back. His other hand sliding over her rear to bring her closer. His lips locked to hers, his tongue doing a tango with hers as heat swamped her. He backed her up against the swinging door and took her deeper.

“Better watch out,” she murmured between kisses. “This door isn’t stationary.”

“I know. It’s my door,” he said, kissing the pulse racing at the base of her throat.

Her head fell back and she sucked in a breath, trying to think, but it was no use. Her brain was addled.

The swinging wood door bonked her in the head. Maya yelped, coming down to earth with a bang.

“Dad, what’s going on? We’re hungry,” Gina said, pushing the door open as Jack dropped his hands and smothered a laugh. Following right behind her, Carmen came in too.

“You hit Ms. Parrish in the head with the door, Gina.”

“Oh, sorry Ms. Parrish.”

“Don’t worry about it. I shouldn’t have been standing in front of the door.”

Gina turned to her father, while Maya rubbed her head. “We’re
starving
.”

“Why were you standing there?” Carmen asked her.

When she wanted, Carmen’s eyes were extraordinarily sharp. Maya suspected she looked more mussed than she had when she came in, but she hadn’t had a chance to even smooth her hair. Luckily, Jack distracted Carmen before Maya could come up with an answer. He picked up two apples from the fruit bowl and tossed one to Gina and the other to Carmen. “Scram. That should hold you until I get dinner ready.”

“You exploded the potatoes again, didn’t you?” Gina looked at the bowl sitting on the floor by the oven, containing burnt bits of potato. She heaved an exasperated sigh. “Didn’t you poke holes in them?”

“Yes, Ms. Smarty, I did. They still exploded.” He glared at the remains of the offending potatoes. “They hate me.”

Gina gave him a superior look. “Dad, potatoes aren’t alive. They can’t hate you.” With that, the girls walked out.

Maya couldn’t hold back her laughter any longer. “‘Dad, potatoes aren’t alive,’” she repeated in Gina’s exact tone. “I love it.”

“I raised a smart ass,” he muttered. “I must have poked forty holes in the stupid things.”

“There, there,” she said, still laughing. “Let Maya fix it.”

“How do you salvage exploded potatoes?”

“Mash them.”

“I never thought of that,” he said, seeming struck by the idea.

“Do you cook a lot?” she asked while he found what she needed to mash the potatoes.

“Some. I can grill. I’m good with breakfast, even though I don’t often have time to cook it. I can make sandwiches. But pizza is my specialty,” he added modestly.

“Really? You make homemade pizza?”

“Who said anything about homemade? I know where to pick up the best pizza in town.”

“Oh, good. Tell me where, because the last one I bought was terrible.”

“I’m a man of many talents,” he said. He caught her hand and pulled her close to him. “For instance—” He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. Deliciously, slowly.

Maya’s eyes fluttered closed and she sighed. “Yes, you are.”

It was a wonderful evening. Maya hadn’t had as much fun in a long, long time. Good food, good company, and the two girls were funny and entertaining, only rolling their eyes a couple of times when they caught Maya and Jack gazing foolishly at each other. After dinner, the four of them played a game, a variation of dominoes called Chicken Foot that had them all laughing. Even though she’d never played before, Carmen cleaned up at the game, beating them all soundly.

The girls went off to Gina’s room. “We can’t stay long,” Maya called after them. “Tomorrow’s a school day.”

She and Jack sat on his couch and talked for a little while longer. “Carmen and I should be going,” Maya said, reluctantly.

“Okay.” He kissed her.

“Soon,” Maya murmured and kissed him.

“Okay,” he repeated, and kissed her again.

“I really, really have to go,” she said against his lips.

“Mom,” Carmen said in disapproving tones, “you said we had to go soon.”

“Busted,” Jack murmured, lifting his head and smiled at Maya.

“By both of them,” she said, looking over at the two girls, who exhibited identical censorious expressions.

*

The following evening,
Jack was reading a medical journal when Gina came into his study. He smiled at his daughter and asked, “Are you going to bed already?”

She rolled her eyes. “Dad, it’s only nine o’clock. I’m not a baby.”

He hid another smile. “You’re right about that. I didn’t realize what time it was.” He’d been having a hard time concentrating, mainly because he couldn’t stop thinking about Maya. She and Carmen had plans with Maya’s parents, who were in town for the night, so Jack knew he wouldn’t see her until the weekend.

Gina wandered around the study restlessly, looking at the bookshelves, picking out books and putting them back, and sighing a lot.

A sure-fire sign that she had something on her mind. He knew a cowardly urge to hope the problem wasn’t about boys. He sucked at that sort of thing. Gina didn’t want to hear that Jack didn’t trust one single teenage boy with his little girl. She’d say he was being overprotective, and he was. But Jack had been a teenage boy, and he knew how their minds worked.

“Did you want to talk about something, honey?” he asked her.

She shot him a glance and shrugged. “You won’t want to talk about it. You never do.”

Boys, damn it. “Gina, you know you can talk about anything with me. Out with it. What’s wrong?”

“It’s about Mom. You don’t like to talk about her.”

Jack felt a pang of guilt. Gina was exaggerating, but she did have a point. He didn’t avoid conversations about Brianna, at least not with Gina, but he rarely initiated them. It always saddened him to think that Brianna was missing so much with their daughter and with him. “What about your mother?”

Gina sat in the comfortably shabby overstuffed chair where Jack often sat to read—anything except medical journals. He read those at his desk. Curling her legs up under her, Gina began plucking at the fabric of the chair. Another sign of troubled thoughts.

“I miss her,” she said, her tone so sad it broke his heart.

“I know you do. I miss her too.”

“Do you . . . do you still love Mom?”

Now he knew what was going on. He should have realized from the first. “I’ll always love your mother. You know that.”