What a Man's Gotta Do (8 page)

Her gaze, more watery than ever, shifted from his outstretched hand to his face. She sniffed, swiped at her cheek. “And you know what you said about not getting involved? I think you've forgotten
that.
”

He dropped his hand to his lap. “I know this may not make a lick of sense, but I'm not a loner because I don't like people, Mala. And I don't turn away from someone when it looks like they could use an ear to bend.”

She raised an eyebrow, sniffed again, but said nothing as she picked up a folder from a standing file on the desk where Eddie knew Galen kept invoices and such.

“This mean you're not gonna tell me why you're so upset?”

“You got it.” Her gaze flicked to his, then away. “I'm not a whiner, Eddie.”

“You think being unhappy about something makes you a whiner?”

“No.” The papers in the folder rattled softly as she skimmed through them. “I think bitching about things makes me a whiner.” She popped open the briefcase, stashed the folder inside. “Either I can change whatever's bugging me, or I can't. In either case, I see little point in burdening others with my problems.”

“Not even your family?”

That got a snort. “
Especially
my family. All I get out of that little exercise is yet one more thing to worry about, which is that now I've made someone else worry about
me.
So what's the point?”

Something nagged at him about that remark, like a hair in your eye you can feel but not see, but it was too late and he was too tired to figure it out right then. So instead, he linked
his arms over his chest and said, “Okay, change of subject. How come you're here on Thanksgiving night? Or is that off-limits, too?”

The briefcase snapped shut, but some of the tension seemed to drain from her shoulders. “My brother and his wife are keeping the kids for the night. I figured I'd use the time to catch up on some of the work I couldn't get to because of the snow day on Monday.” One hand lifted, rammed a stray piece of hair behind her ear.

“This the brother who just got married?”

“In July, yes.” She took a tissue out of her coat pocket, blew her nose.

She obviously wished he'd shut up and leave her be. Had she been anyone else, he would have. Hell, had she been anyone else, he wouldn't've even started this conversation. But Mala Koleski was the first woman he'd ever met who wasn't looking for someone to lean on, to fight her battles for her, and that intrigued the very devil out of him. In fact, it was her very self-sufficiency he found so magnetic, in large part, he supposed, because he didn't feel like he had to constantly watch his step to make sure she hadn't laid a trap for him. Shoot, at this point, he wasn't all that sure she even
liked
him.

“What was that your daughter was going on about, something about your sister-in-law being a princess?”

That actually got a little smile, which made him feel downright cocky. “It's true. Princess Sophie Ekaterina Vlastos of Carpathia, in fact.”

“Carpathia? I never heard of it.”

“In central Europe. Tiny. Very pretty. Well…” She hoisted the briefcase and hustled around the desk to shut the light. “G'night.”

He stood at the same time, which meant she couldn't get past him without brushing against him. Her coated sleeve against his sweatered chest. Big deal. Except he could smell her hair and her skin and the tang of cold still clinging to her coat and her hair and her soft, smooth skin and his nerve endings went
What? Hey! Get back over here!
when she moved away.

Even as his brain said
Let her go, fool.

And while his brain and his nerve endings were going at it like a football player arguing a call with a referee, she left before he even had a chance to say “Good night” back.

 

Mala shut her front door behind her and leaned against it, her heart thumping in her chest as if she'd just run home from the restaurant instead of driven. What she'd said back there, about not burdening other people with her problems, hadn't just been a line to get Eddie King off her case. She truly hated dumping on other people. Yet before the man sat down on the desk and stretched out his hand to her, before she dared to look up into those remarkably ingenuous blue eyes of his, she'd never even been tempted.

But boy, she'd been tempted tonight. Seriously tempted. I've-been-on-a-diet-for-three-weeks-and-someone-just-left-a-box-of-chocolates-on-the-counter tempted. And for a split second there, she'd thought, well, hey—what danger could there be in laying bare her soul to someone who'd be gone in a few months, anyway? Someone who had no vested interest in her welfare.

Her brain zipped back to the “laying bare” part of the last sentence and hovered there, cackling.

She pushed herself away from the door, down the hall and into the office, where she dropped the briefcase and sloughed off her coat, throwing it across an extra chair in the room…only to sigh and pick it up again, carting it back down the hall to the closet.

Sheesh. If she wasn't careful, she was going to give Elizabeth Sanford a run for her money for control freak of the new millennium.

And if she wasn't careful, she was going to spend the rest of her life being afraid to even be
friends
with a man. Would she ever let herself fall in love again? Uh, no, not in this lifetime. But criminy—all the guy'd said was he thought she needed a buddy. Everybody knew the ground rules, nobody was going to let anything get out of hand….

God, he had nice hands.

She laughed out loud, thinking it—she—sounded just a bit manic in the empty house. And then she thought, Whoa—get the kids out of the house for two minutes and look what happens. I start to crack up.

Mala heard a car drive up. Her heart began to tap dance as she realized Eddie hadn't driven around to the back to park the car in the garage. Silence swallowed the engine's purr; a car door slammed, then she heard footsteps, slow and heavy, coming up onto the porch.

She could remind him that she had work to do.

Or maybe she'd get over herself and invite him in for coffee and a few minutes of adult company.

Or maybe she'd skip the coffee and conversation and just jump the man's bones—

The doorbell rang.

Mala tugged her sweater down over her hips, sucked in her stomach. She counted to twenty—slowly, long enough for the bell to ring again—then opened the front door.

Eddie stood there, alrighty, all crooked grin and big, blue eyes and wind-blown hair. Except…he wasn't alone.

“I heard something out in the alley, just as I was locking up,” he said, hitching the tiny, fuzzy…thing with the please-don't-hurt-me brown eyes up higher in his arms. From what Mala could tell, he'd wrapped up the…thing in his sweater. Which got her to wondering what he had on underneath his denim jacket. “Somebody'd tied him up in a black garbage bag, tossed him in the dumpster. D'you believe that?”

The weather had been working up to something all day. Now she noticed it had started to precipitate, a nasty cocktail of snow, sleet and rain. Eddie's shoulders and wavy hair were dotted with moisture, although the…thing certainly looked snug and dry in its little cocoon.

Mala had had a dog once. A golden retriever named, originally enough, Pumpkin. Gorgeous animal. And sweet as could be. Used to lick her scabby knees while she'd sit in her window seat, reading. Growl at the kids who made fun of her for being too heavy. Then, three days before Mala's twelfth birthday, Pumpkin got run over. Mala had cried all summer over that
dog, swore she'd never have another animal again. Of course, the kids had been begging for a pet for two years already, but she'd kept putting them off.

The…thing—okay, okay, the
puppy
—lifted its scrawny, prickly little muzzle and licked Eddie underneath his chin, then turned those soulful, manipulative eyes on her.

Oh, God—it was
shivering.
And obviously frightened out of its little doggy wits. Mala's stomach clenched at the idea that someone could be so cruel.

With a heavy, heavy sigh, she reached out. “C'mere, cutie,” she cooed, cudding the stinky, trembling fur ball against her chest.

And she had to admit, the sight of Eddie King's full-blown grin was almost worth the prospect of being kept awake all night by a whimpering mongrel.

E
ddie hadn't really expected her to take the dog from him. In fact, all he'd wanted to do was to make sure it was okay to keep it in his apartment overnight until he could take it to the local animal shelter.

“No sense in my taking on a pet,” he said as he followed her back into the kitchen. “Seeings as I don't stay in any one place for longer than a few months, usually. But it never even occurred to me that you might want him.”

“I don't.” The pup still cradled to her breasts, she flicked on the kitchen light. Over her jeans, she wore this pretty sweater, a deep red fluffy thing with a great big floppy collar that framed her jawline. That it now probably smelled like wet dog didn't seem to bother her any. “I have no intention of keeping him, either. So we'll have to figure out something before the kids get home tomorrow, or I'm doomed.”

“How come?” He glanced around the spanking clean room, took in the artwork-and-magnet littered refrigerator, the cutesy country decorations. “You allergic or something?”

“No. I just don't need another body to be responsible for. And the kids are still too young to take care of an animal.”

“That's nuts. The girl's, what? Six, seven? That's plenty old enough to feed him, take him for walks…”

Her eyes flashed. “I don't want a pet, Eddie. But I agree with you—you certainly couldn't leave the poor thing where you found him.” She visibly shuddered. “How anyone could do that to an animal…”

With a shake of her head, Mala clumsily lowered her rump to the braided rug centered on the beige linoleum floor, cooing to the pup still cradled in her arms. She kept up her one-sided conversation in a real soothing voice, low and soft, but the poor little guy just kept shaking up a storm, alternately giving Eddie these furtive little bug-eyed glances from the safety of Mala's embrace and jabbing his snout into the crook of her arm.

“Let's see…why don't you bring me a towel from the linen cupboard outside the bathroom? One of the old ones, from the bottom shelf.”

A minute later, he handed her the rattiest towel he could find—which wasn't saying a whole lot—then squatted beside her, his knees creaking. “I probably wouldn't've brought him back here, but it being Thanksgiving night and all, I didn't know what else to do with him.”

She'd carefully unwrapped the critter from his sweater, immediately replacing it with the towel. “S'okay,” she said, briskly rubbing the tiny thing, who rewarded her efforts with a series of faint, ineffectual growls. Mala laughed, then removed the towel, only to laugh harder at the sight of what now looked like an eight-inch tall porcupine. Clearly mortified, the black-and-brown pup tucked its pointy little tail between its legs, then scampered underneath a worn, white-washed cupboard on the other side of the kitchen table, where it peered out at the two of them with huge, cautious eyes.

Mala rearranged herself to sit back on her heels, gently slapping her thighs with her hands. “C'mon, sweetie, it's okay…”

The snout vanished.

“Okay, fine, be that way. But I bet I know what
you
want.” She got up, went over to the counter and began hauling covered bowls and things out of a plastic grocery bag. Thanksgiving leftovers, Eddie assumed. Sure enough, he heard the crackle of
foil being unwrapped, then watched as she began shredding pieces of turkey into a margarine tub she'd grabbed from a whole mess of them underneath the sink. Seconds later, she knelt down again, maybe five feet from the cupboard.

“Hey, muttsky…come see what I've got.”

The snout reappeared, whiskers twitching around a shiny black nose.

“Now, you know and I know you're hungry,” she said softly, “so just get your fuzzy little butt out here…come on…that's a boy…just a few steps farther…”

His belly hugging the floor, the dog slunk over to Mala, snatched a piece of turkey from her hand, then streaked back to his hiding place to scarf it down.

Eddie picked his sweater up off the floor, shook it out, slipped it back on over his T-shirt. “You've gotta admit, he's a cute little bugger.”

“I'm not keeping the dog,” she said, again settling cross-legged onto the rug and holding out another piece of turkey. The dog repeated the slink-snatch-retreat routine twice more, but by the fourth time, he apparently decided nobody was gonna stick him in another garbage bag so he might as well just stay put and let the nice lady pet him while he ate.

“Okay, that's all,” she said a few seconds later, holding her hands up in front of the pup to show him they were empty. The beast planted his bony butt on the floor, wagging his tail, and yipped. Mala laughed, then sighed. “I can't keep you,” she said, only to sigh again when the pup crawled into her lap, curled up, let out a huge, contented sigh and promptly passed out. “I can't,” she whispered, stroking his head.

Eddie frowned. Any fool could see she wanted the dog, that it had already wormed past her defenses and into her heart. Yet there she sat, obviously tearing herself up over this, like she was being pressured to take in an ex-con or something rather than a five-pound puppy. A little on the aggravated side, although he wasn't really sure why, Eddie got to his feet and said, “I guess I should go,” except she said, almost at the same time, “Would you like a sandwich or something?”

She won't let you go without feeding you first, either.

The thought slammed into him, ricocheting around his brain for a couple real scary seconds before she looked up. And he saw an ache in her expression that just plumb twisted his gut all to hell.

“You know, there's nothing says you can't keep the dog,” he said, wondering where the hell he got off trying to convince this woman to take a chance on anything. All he knew was, he hated seeing that pain in her eyes, hated even more knowing there wasn't a damn thing he could do to take it away.

She looked away. “I know.”

Against his better judgment, he squatted beside them, playing with one of the dog's floppy little ears for a moment and inhaling that soft, sweet scent that he knew he'd already be able to identify blindfolded as Mala's. He'd been around plenty of sweet-smelling women in his day, but none of them had ever stirred up feelings inside him the way this one did. Dumb feelings, most of them, of belonging and trust and hope. Little boy dreams, he realized.

And he hadn't been a little boy in a very long time.

Yet he didn't move away, either from her or the feelings, so that when he said, “So you'll at least think about it?” his breath stirred the fine, silky hairs at her temple. She shuddered, just slightly, in response, rousing deeper, stronger feelings that were anything but those of a little boy.

“I'll think about it,” she said.

“Then I guess I'll stay and have that sandwich,” he said, even though he had no idea what one thing had to do with the other.

 

For an hour, maybe a bit longer, they sat across from each other at her kitchen table and listened to golden oldies on the radio and the sleet
tick-tick
against the window, while they drank coffee and ate turkey and ham sandwiches and pumpkin pie and talked about safe things, like how the restaurant was doing and her plans for fixing up the house one day. Then the pup, who'd been snoozing nearby in a little box Mala had lined with an old blanket, woke up and actually asked to go outside to do his business.

“Sure wish it was that easy to housebreak kids,” Mala said, drying him off again with the towel when he scampered back in, his fur glistening with melting sleet. Still seated at the table, Eddie laughed, which made her feel really, really good. Sophomoric, but good.

Why he'd accepted her invitation, she had no idea. And her issuing the invitation to begin with wasn't exactly the smartest thing she'd ever done. She was playing with fire, and she knew it. But Eddie King made her laugh, too, more than she had in a long time. He could tell a wicked story, in that quiet drawl of his. And, boy, did he have a ton of them stored up from his exploits as a gypsy chef, as he called himself. Yes, she wondered about his sudden loquaciousness, for maybe, oh, two seconds. But it was nice, how he made her forget, just for a little while, that she was the mother of two high-maintenance children and the sole proprietor of a struggling new business and a woman with a shattered marriage on her résumé.

That she was, at times, almost unbearably lonely, unable to reconcile her basic female need for the company and attention of a man with her resolve to stop making herself crazy trying to find something that obviously didn't exist. Not for her, anyway. It was a good thing, then, she told herself as she poured them both their second cups of coffee, that the long-legged, soft-speaking man currently sitting in her kitchen was a nomad, a loner, the kind of man who wouldn't let another human being past that veneer of nonchalance for love nor money.

And that she had no business trying. Everything else aside, it wasn't fair, trying to get a peek at his pysche when she'd been so adamant about not revealing hers.

But where was the harm in a question or two?

“So, what did you do for dinner today?”

His mouth hitched up as he stirred his coffee. “Cooked it.”

“But the restaurant—”

“Not there. At a homeless shelter in Detroit.”

Why his answer should derail her, she didn't know. But it did. “Oh. Wow. That's really…nice.”

His mouth quirked up on one side, Eddie arched back, link
ing his hands behind his head. “Does that make you uncomfortable?”

Her brows lifted. “No. Why should it? I was just thinking that maybe if you didn't keep it such a secret, other people might be goaded into being more generous with their time, too.”

His hands still laced behind his head, his gaze never wavered. “I wasn't tryin' to keep it a secret. Just don't see the point in going around, callin' attention to myself. Besides, guilt's a lousy motivator, Mala.”

“Whatever works.”

“But it doesn't. Trust me on this, folks who are down on their luck can spot someone who's in it to appease their own conscience faster than this little guy can wolf down a piece of turkey.” He picked up a scrap from his plate and waved it at the dog, who tripped all over himself in his split to get to the loot.

She watched as the pup demonstrated Eddie's simile, telling herself it wasn't prying if he'd given her the opening. “Sounds as though you're speaking from experience.”

He glanced at her, then wiped his fingers on a napkin, which he balled up and tossed onto the plate before getting up from the chair and striding over to the back door. His hands rammed in his back pockets, he stared out the paned glass at the driving sleet. “I never had to live on the streets, if that's what you mean.”

“But…?”

Silence yawned between them as he obviously wrestled with how much more to say. “But I can't say as I'd ever had what you'd call a real home, either.”

Mala studied her cup of coffee for several seconds, debating how far to push. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the dog prance over to him and plop its tiny behind on his booted foot. She now watched as Eddie leaned down and scooped the puppy up to nestle against his chest, a smile teasing his lips as the wriggling mutt's tongue darted out to lick his chin.

“And what's to prevent you from having one now?” she said at last.

He turned, his expression bemused. “You know, I've never yet met a woman who didn't think, given enough time, she could domesticate me.”

At that, Mala let out a laugh. “Hey, I got all I can handle just trying to civilize my kids. Trust me—you're in no danger from me.”

“Maybe it's you who's in danger from me.”

Her heart jolted. “Meaning?”

His eyes never left hers, even as his fingers methodically scratched behind the pup's ears. “You know how long it's been since I've been in a woman's company as long as I've been in yours tonight?”

Irritation knifed through her. “Yeah, well, nobody's tied you down. You got intimacy issues, the door's right over there.”

“This has nothing to do with intimacy issues, Miz Oprah.” His obvious frustration stopped her short. “And God knows, I'm not into dredging up memories, but…” He let the pup down, then raked a hand through his hair, his features contorted with obvious conflict. His hand slapped back to his side, his eyes searing into hers.

“My father took off before I was born,” he said. “My mother's parents kicked her out, I gather, and it wasn't until I was nearly born that my great-grandmother, who was living in Austin at the time, apparently took pity on her and took her in. Except they fought all the time, and it seemed like every week, Mama'd be draggin' me off to some motel or somethin' in the middle of the night, only to drag me back to her grandmother's the next day. But then Mama died when I was six, her folks were already gone, too, and I guess my great-grandmother decided she had better things to do with her life than worry over six-year-old boys. So she sent me off to Long-view to live with some cousin or other who eventually got tired of me, too, and sent me on to someone else. To make a long story short, for most of my childhood, I got passed from relative to relative like a Christmas fruitcake.”

The bluntness, the brevity of his accounting didn't fool Mala for a minute. Nor was its significance lost on her. “What about
your father? Did you ever hear from him? Do you even know who he—”

“No.”

Up to that point, Eddie might have evaded an issue, but Mala would bet her Sara Lee cheesecake he'd never outright lied about it. Now, however, alarms went off, big-time.

“Were you…mistreated?”

He gave a rueful laugh. “Hell, Mala—you gotta notice somebody before you can mistreat them.”

“Oh, Eddie…”