What a Woman Needs (16 page)

B
RYAN
showed up early for work the next morning.

And he knew exactly why he’d done it.

These early morning hours were precious in Beth’s home. Usually he used them to redo what he’d done the day before that the kids had undone, but today there was the mess the boys had left as they’d tramped through after the ice cream parlor. If he’d driven them home, he could have done it then, or at least supervised them to
not
leave a trail behind.

They really needed a father.

He dropped the mop into the water bucket. He was out of his flipping mind to be thinking what he was thinking. Yes, sure, they needed a dad but they did not need
him
to be that dad. He wasn’t cut out to be a dad.

Yet last night . . . God, it’d been so nice. So fun. Him, Beth, the kids, all chatting at the ice cream parlor. Teasing each other, reliving the highlights from the game. Even discussing the ankle-clipping incident. It’d all been so nice. So normal. Like that time with his brothers and Mac and Gran—

Bryan’s breath hitched. He’d forgotten when Gran had brought them to Papa Gino’s market. A general store with a deli counter, a butcher shop, and a soda fountain. They’d had root beer floats and sat in one of the booths, a treat for “paying folk” as Gran had said. She hadn’t had a lot of money, so those floats had been special.

Bryan could still feel what it was like to be sitting at that table and have the waitress look at him with a kind smile and ask him what he wanted. Liam and Sean had known instantly, but he and Mac had had too many choices to decide so easily. Gran had just smiled and patted his arm and told the server they’d have to think about it some more.

Ah, the patience she’d had in taking on four scared, sad children. Sure she loved them, but it couldn’t have been easy. Widowed without more than her old home to her name, Gran had somehow made do. She’d saved them from the foster system and for that he’d always be grateful. It’s why he was paying the extra it cost at her retirement community for the apartment she’d wanted. No one knew, not Liam or Sean, not Mac, and especially not Gran. The arrangement was between him and the director and he’d bought the unit outright so all Gran had to do was pay for her care. He would have arranged that for her, too, but Gran did have her pride. He knew all about pride.

He swept the mop over the cleat marks on the hardwood and took care of Sherman’s muddy paw prints as well. Even the dog was starting to grow on him.

He sloshed the mop back into the bucket. Two and a half more weeks. How was he going to survive without falling for all of them?

His cell phone rang, thank God, pulling his head back to reality.

It was his agent.

“Hey, Don, what’s up?”

“I got a call that they’re starting the shoot early if they can get enough people on set. You up for it?”

He would be, but that’d mean breaking his commitment to Mac. It’d also mean leaving Beth and the kids. He
couldn’t
do that.

“I’m committed to this job, Don. Can’t really back out. Is that going to be a problem?”

Uh, hell yeah. You’re putting your career on hold to clean?

“The widow, huh? Anything happening there that I need to know about? I’ve seen some rumblings in the press.”

“You know how the press is. Any story they can find. There’s nothing here.”

Liar
.

“Pity. It’d make for good press. You sure you don’t want to start something?”

“You did not just ask me that.” He was surprised. Sure, he knew people planted stories to generate interest to make themselves more marketable, but he’d never done that. Don knew it, too. They’d discussed it. He’d make it in his career on his own merits or he wouldn’t make it, but no way would he ever lie to get ahead.

“Sorry.” Don didn’t sound very sorry. Not that Bryan could blame him, but it was the seedy side of this business. Casting couches were another. Whoever said they didn’t still exist in this day and age hadn’t been around the block enough.

“So I’ll tell PJ you’re out for the early shoot, right?”

Bryan smiled. This was why Don was such a good agent; he wanted clarification on every point from both the studios and his own clientele. His career was in good hands with Don.

“No go, Don.”

“All right, then. Two weeks from Friday you’ll be on set.”

Seventeen days in total. That was all he had left with Beth and the kids. “Yeah, that’s it. I’ll be there then.”

Even if he didn’t want to be.

“Bryyyyyaaaannnn!” Maggie ran across the kitchen floor, her arms outstretched and a smile so big it covered almost her whole face. God, he’d miss this. Miss her. Miss her hero worship of him—but not from his movies or what he did for a living. Maggie loved him because of who he was.

Maggie loved him.

Shit. She did.

Look at that face. Those bright eyes. The smile that stretched from ear to ear. She’d wanted him to move in. To be her father.

And he was going to leave her.

It wasn’t his fault that she needed a dad. He was here to clean. So he helped out a bit. Had taken to her. Liked her inquisitiveness. Her questions. Her tea parties and her messy drawings. Why did that have to make her love him? Why couldn’t she just enjoy the time and the attention and it’d be no big deal?

Because she was five, she missed her father, and she’d found a substitute right in her very own home, that’s why, moron.

“Will you make me a peanut butter and applesauce sandwich?” She blinked her big brown eyes at him.

Some day she was going to be a heartbreaker. He just hoped to hell that his wasn’t broken when he left because
hers
was.

He needed to pull away. Not be so involved in the kids’ lives. He had to create that distance so they wouldn’t be upset when he left. Hell, this wasn’t supposed to have happened. He was supposed to have come in, cleaned the house, and gotten out. Live his life away from Mac’s company.

But he’d signed on for extra projects—he was doing the mudroom closets today—to help out “the widow.”

Beth.

Mother of five.

Widowed
mother of five.

Sexy
widowed mother of five.

Who could drive him insane with just one look.

And with a kiss . . . have him thinking things he’d never thought he’d think.

“You want a sandwich for breakfast?”

“Yep. Daddy liked sandwiches for breakfast. I miss that.”

Another knife to the heart. He could
not
be Maggie’s dad.

He was going to make her that sandwich, though. “You’re sure you want applesauce on your sandwich? Not apple butter?”

“Apple
butter
?” Maggie scrunched up her face. “Butter comes from cows, not apples.”

Okay, then. Applesauce it was. He wasn’t about to get into a discussion on butter-making because he had a feeling he’d lose to Maggie’s convictions.

He propped the mop in the bucket and let her lead him by the hand back to the kitchen. So much for detachment.

Maggie had already started to make her sandwich. The evidence dripped from the countertops, down the cabinets. Sherman was in an orgy of pleasure, running between the cabinets to lick the different ingredients.

Bryan hoped to hell that peanut butter didn’t make dogs sick. Though it’d serve the mutt right if he got an upset stomach.

“First order of business, we’re putting Sherman outside.” He scooped up the dog and looked for his leash. He found it lodged behind the potato bin.

Once Sherman was out, barking and pulling against the leash, Bryan closed the back door to muffle the sound, then grabbed a set of sponges from the pantry. “Come on, Maggie. Let’s clean up the mess before we make another one.”

“Well that’s silly. We should just keep making the same one so we only have to clean it up once.”

Words of wisdom from a five-year-old.

“Did you ever have peanut butter and applesauce when you were little, Bryan?”

He tried to remember back—because he’d tried so hard in the interim years to forget. “Not applesauce, no. But I did have peanut butter and banana.” Both of which were staples from the welfare system.

His gut twinged. He’d vowed to never eat peanut butter again once he’d had a job, yet now he was going to do just that.

Surprisingly, the applesauce was good with the peanut butter. It also smeared across Maggie’s face every time she took a bite and dripped onto her plate, once with such a big drip that it splashed applesauce onto her chin.

Maggie’s eyes sparkled with laughter as she giggled and wiped it off. “Kelsey says I’m a messy eater.”

“I think you eat messy food.”

She cocked her head sideways with a look on her face that stole his breath because it looked so much like her mother. “I think you’re right. I like messy things. Glitter glue, applesauce, peanut butter, my room. Well, except for Mrs. Beecham. I don’t like her messes. But I like her. She’s cuddly.”

Bryan had gotten more than a few glimpses of the Maine Coon cat. Cuddly was a good word for it. So was messy. The cat shed enough fur to knit a winter blanket from. That’s what he’d found himself cleaning up the most of, especially in the corners of the dining room on the hardwood floor. Forget dust bunnies, the cat shed dust
kitties
. It’d watched him clean up its fur once. Sat there licking its front paw as it washed its whiskers, complete boredom in its stance. Cats were peculiar that way. But he was even coming to like the damn thing almost as much as he liked Sherman.

Wait. When the hell had he ever decided he liked the dog?

Bryan shook his head. Dogs, cats, kids . . . they were all going to cease to be important once his contracted date was up.

And would you be interested in buying a bridge in Brooklyn while you’re at it, Manley?

“Will you help us look for Muffy, Bryan? Mommy and I are going out in a little bit to search. You’re so good at finding Sherman, I bet you can find Muffy.”

No pressure . . . Bryan didn’t even think about trying to get out of it. The truth was he
wanted
to help them find the missing dog, though he wasn’t so sure he believed Beth’s story yesterday. There’d been a gleam in her eye and a purpose to her stride that hadn’t seemed like a lost-dog finding attitude, but when he’d asked her about it, she’d stuck to her story.

He wanted to know what the truth was and why she was hiding it, so for that alone he’d go with them.

To be around Beth . . . well, that went without saying.

And speaking of the devil—er, angel—Beth ran into the kitchen at that instant, and came to an abrupt stop when she saw him.

“Bryan! What are you doing here?”

“He works here, Mommy,” Maggie, in all her five-year-old wisdom, answered. “And he’s going to help us find Muffy.”

Great. Beth had counted on being able to have Maggie home in a half hour by saying she must have been mistaken. But with Bryan . . . He wasn’t going to buy that so easily.

After the soccer game, he’d looked at the tear on her shirt and the missing button and her hair. He’d smoothed it down and it’d been a major lesson in keeping her composure that she hadn’t melted in to him and told him the truth.

Especially after she’d looked at the pictures last night. If she ever saw Mr. Steve McAllister again, it’d be too soon. His pictures had made it look as if there was something between them. He’d captured her, Maggie, and Bryan laughing, with Maggie on Bryan’s lap. She hadn’t even remembered that Bryan had put a hand on her knee, but Steve McAllister had captured that moment for all posterity.

She’d kept the memory card instead of destroying it. Stuck it in her safe where no one but her would ever be able to see those photos. Should the need ever arise, that was.

Or should she
want
to relive these surprising days in the lonely years to come.

“Uh, sure, that’s great if he wants to come. Another set of eyes is always good.” Though it would be torture on her acting skills to keep up the pretense. He was the actor of the bunch, not her. She couldn’t even lie about Santa effectively. Mike had been the one to keep that myth going for their kids. When he’d died and Maggie had been so into Santa and the Easter Bunny, and the stork . . . Christmas had been tough these last two years.

The next hour rivaled Christmas for toughness.

“Are you sure you saw something over here?” Bryan asked for the umpteenth time, moving branches around.

Beth nodded. Oh, yeah, she’d definitely seen something, but it’d been much higher than the knee-high branches Bryan was searching through. Mr. Steve McAllister was at least six feet tall and so was his tripod. Too bad he hadn’t used the camera—the very big, very expensive camera—to find a lost dog instead of stealing someone’s privacy and well-being.

“I don’t see anything. Especially not a hole for a fox’s den.” He let the branches fall back into place. “You’re
certain
this was the spot?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean the fox lives here. He could have been wandering around.”

“Not in the day. Foxes are nocturnal.”

Crud. She knew that. She also knew that Maggie
didn’t
know that. “Maybe it was rabid?”