“No. She just wanted to give me a doll so I’d like her. And I’m never going to like her. She had three boxes of games. And grape Kool-Aid. So fine. I played some games with her. But you know what?”
“What?” Amanda finished one of her daughter’s hands, then started on the other.
“Daddy wasn’t even there half the time. And he didn’t play any games with me. But when he was there, you know what he did?”
“What, honey?”
“He and that lady took me to the back of the house, opened the door and said, ‘Ta da!’ And there was this room where I’m supposed to sleep when I’m there. It had a big white chair. And a big white bed. And shelves that already had books in them. And lots of stuffed animals all over the place.”
Amanda felt her heart clutch. “It sounds very pretty.”
Molly glowered at her mother. “I know it’s pretty. That’s not what was wrong. What was wrong is that I don’t sleep there. Which I told them. Daddy said, ‘But you will.’ And the woman said, ‘And when you come and stay with us, we want you to have your own special place.’”
Molly started blowing on both hands, trying to dry the polish faster. “I didn’t say what I wanted to say. I remembered that I was supposed to be good, so I said, ‘The room’s real nice. Thank you.’ And then I said, ‘But I’m not sleeping over. Ever.’ And you know what?”
“What, sweetheart?”
“The lady called me a brat. Me. A brat!”
“Oh, dear.”
“So then I told her she was ugly. Which she is. And I said she must be stupid, too, because she couldn’t even win at Candy Land. And she didn’t even know to cut the crusts off my sandwich, either!”
Amanda had to zip her mouth closed. Obviously she couldn’t say what she really wanted to, such as that she’d like to whack Thom upside the head-and that went double for The Bitch. She’d particularly like to tear out The Bitch’s heart for trying to win over her daughter with material crap, and even more wanted to scream at her ex for not spending parenting time with his daughter himself.
But she couldn’t just agree with Molly, because that would fuel her daughter’s unhappiness with Thom.
So she just listened. And once they finished all the nail painting, she cuddled her daughter on the deck rocker until Molly was sleepy enough to fold into bed. Tomorrow, when the little one was less upset, Amanda figured she’d think of some positive, constructive things to say about the day’s debacle.
Tonight, she wasn’t up for it.
For a half hour, she cleaned up toys, threw in a wash load, wiped down the kitchen. The whole time she was building up a good serious brood.
The whole evening had exemplified-painfully-why she had to quit playing attraction games with her next-door neighbor. The divorce was still fresh for her daughter. Molly had to be her one hundred percent primary concern. And just as relevant, Amanda knew perfectly well that her marriage, and divorce, established her stupid judgment about men.
There was no trusting her feelings for Mike. The magic, the pull, the wonder…that was the fairy tale. The wanting to believe there was a hero, a knight, a good man just for her. The wanting to believe in “in love.”
The feeling that she was already in love with the damn man.
This was all exactly why she’d given up sex. Because she couldn’t trust herself. Because she wanted her daughter to grow up seeing a strong, self-reliant mother…not a dependent female who couldn’t get along without a man.
She had to show her daughter that she was strong, not just tell her.
Which meant she needed to just cool it with Mike. At least, for a much longer period of time.
That all settled in her mind, Amanda started turning out lights, closing up, locking the doors. When she climbed the stairs for bed, at the top stair she glanced out the window.
Night had fallen in a whisper of dew and stardust. Mike was upstairs, in his second-story window. He’d turned off his lights, too. He was probably enjoying just a few moments of peace and silence, probably no different than she was…but then he spotted her.
She could have moved. Could have waved. Could have…done pretty much anything.
But somehow heat transmitted across the driveways, through the closed windows, somehow past all the reasons she needed to get a serious brain.
She didn’t just feel a pull toward him. She felt a force field.
He put a hand on his window.
Like a damn fool romantic idiot, she put a hand on her window.
And then, before she could do anything more stupid, she whipped around and headed straight, no talking, no thinking, no deterrents, to her bed. Alone. The way she needed to be.
Chapter Seven
Rain shivered down the windows, starting at daybreak. Clouds bunched and punched, building into a dark gloomy morning even before breakfast. As Mike poured coffee, he studied his son.
Teddy had come home yesterday in a rare silent mood. He’d been contentious, crabby, couldn’t settle in to play anything, wouldn’t talk. Mike hadn’t pushed him. Hell, the kid was as male as he was. Neither of them wanted to talk about feelings…but Mike figured a good night’s sleep might help clear the air.
He’d set up the playing field to make talk easier. Let Teddy turn on cartoons-which Mike hated; he didn’t like kids doing the whole veg-out-in-frontof-the-TV thing. But cartoons and scrambled eggs invariably brought out conversation, particularly when Teddy was allowed to eat in the living room.
His tough guy was curled up on the couch, still wearing his dinosaur pj’s, Slugger glued to his side-a sure sign that Teddy was upset. Still, the kid had the remote. And a deep bowl of the scrambled eggs-this, because Mike had learned early on that the deeper the bowl, the less chance of spilled eggs all over the house.
Mike took the recliner with his plate and a mug of coffee. “So, hey. You never said anything about the zoo yesterday. You did go, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“So, was it as fun as you thought it’d be?”
“It was fun for one whole second. Until George started sneezing and sneezing.” Teddy, who rarely had power over the remote, was channel surfing at dizzying speeds. “He was the one who said he wanted to go. That was the thing. He kept saying we’d have fun. Only, he already knew he was ’lergic to animals.”
Mike was already forming a wincer of a picture. “Okay. Then what happened?”
“We had to leave. That’s what happened. Because he couldn’t stop sneezing. But he said he’d make it up to me. We’d go to a nice place for lunch.” Teddy froze on a different cartoon, then hit the trigger again.
“And?”
“And I thought he meant McDonald’s. Chuck E. Cheese. Burger King. Someplace good. Instead it was this place where you had to wait and wait and wait. It had a tablecloth, and I didn’t mean to pull it, but it was itching at my knees. So his drink got acc’dentally spilled. It wasn’t my fault.”
“What else happened?”
“We went back to their place. Mom played cards with me. Go Fish. Crazy Eights. Then I said, ‘You wanna go swimming?’ She said, ‘Maybe another time.’ I said, ‘You wanna do a movie or something?’ She said, ‘Sure.’ Only, she just turned on the TV. Not like going to a movie. And when she got a movie on, then she just left, started doing things. Talking on the phone. Talking to him. Cooking. Junk like that. Dad?”
When Teddy left the trigger at a news channel, Mike knew exactly how upset his tough guy was. “What, sport?”
“Mom doesn’t want to be with me. She doesn’t even like me. I want to be here. With you. All the time. I don’t want to go with her anymore. And you know what else?”