“Tell me.”
“George said I was rude. And he said I wasn’t ’siplined.”
’Siplined? Mike thought. “Disciplined?”
“That’s what I said,” Teddy said crossly. “And I said to mom on the way back, ‘I don’t get it. Why you’re with him when you could be with Dad.’ That’s when he said I was rude.”
Mike winced. “You asked your mom while he was right there in the car, huh?”
“Well, yeah. I didn’t ask before. I wasn’t thinking about it before. I asked her when I was thinking about it.” Teddy put the bowl on the floor, then burrowed deeper into the cushions. Slugger burrowed after him. Cat suddenly leaped on the couch, looking fierce and lionlike. “This is how I like it, Dad. Us guys together. No more girls.”
Mike remembered last night…whenever it was…when his house and Amanda’s house were both closed down for the night, and he’d just stood at the window for a moment, inhaling the quiet…and there she was.
He wasn’t touching her. Wasn’t thinking about her. He’d been thinking about his kid. And her kid. And what divorces did to kids, and why he needed to get back to the Celibacy Principle. But then he’d looked at her and felt that…yearning.
Yearning to be with her.
To talk to her. To touch her. To hold her and be held.
This morning, of course, turned into another wake-up call. Yearning was just yearning. Sex was just sex. It wasn’t the time. Period.
“Did you hear that?” Teddy grumbled.
“Yeah.” Mike bounced up from the recliner, not certain if the sound was an actual knock on the back door-but something had provoked Slugger into going into his nose-to-the-sky warning bay. Of course, some days, a purr of a breeze could do that.
In this case, though, a pint-size rock star stood at the back door-at least Mike thought Molly’s getup was about that. The sunglasses were unnecessary for a stormy morning, but the little shirt was full of glistening stars. Her red hair was all braided and pinned up with sequins or jewels or something. Her nails were painted like rainbows and her shoes had flashing lights.
At four years old, she had a petrifying amount of estrogen.
She might even be as bad as her mother in a few years.
Right then, though, he figured they had a more immediate problem on their plate. Molly was out of breath from running. Her lower lip was trembling, her big eyes spattering tears. “Mr. Mike. I need a punger. Right now. Right right now. For my mom!”
“A punger,” Mike said blankly.
“A punger! You know! A punger!” Quickly she said, “Please! This is serious!”
“A punger,” Mike repeated, but then he got it. Plunger. Plumbing problems. Some kind of major uh-oh. “Tell your mom I’ll be right there.”
“It needs to be now.”
“I understand, Molly. I just need to get a tool kit and the plunger.”
“But don’t tell mommy I told you. She told me to sit in the living room, that she could handle it. But there was water everywhere. And she was saying bad words. I’d tell you what the words were, but I can’t say them. My mommy says that nobody says those words in her house. Or my house. My mom-”
“Okay, honey. We’re going to stop talking now, and start moving.” He pushed on shoes, then grabbed tools, locked up the baying Slugger and herded Teddy out with him. He suspected Amanda might just guess that someone had “told” on her-particularly when he showed up with a plunger and tools-but that wasn’t remotely relevant.
Keeping his hands off her was one issue.
Not helping her if she was in trouble was completely different.
He yelled a hello when he opened her back door. “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Mike!” said the rock star in her loudest voice. She was still wearing the shades. “What a surprise! It’s Mr. Mike, Mom!”
“Molly Ann! Did you go next door and-”
“Me?” But to Mike, she lifted her head and whispered, “I’m in trouble.”
“I’ll fix that. You and Teddy either play or watch some TV for a little while, okay?”
It wasn’t hard to locate Amanda. The place had deteriorated since he saw it last. There seemed to be a whole bunch more purples and pale blues. Pillows. More pillows. Stuff to run into, stuff on top of tables. Flowers all over the place. But the main downstairs bathroom-where the descriptive vocabulary was coming from-had water seeping into the hall.
She must have heard him set down the tool kit, because she started talking-even though she hadn’t wasted a second turning around. “Go away, Mike. I can fix my own problems! I am not looking for someone to save me every time I get into some stupid mess!”
“Okay.”
“This would not be a good time to laugh.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t say one word! I mean it! Just go back home!”
Weeellll. He couldn’t quite say okay to that. The bathroom had definitely been redefined since his last visit. Now it seemed to be covered in butterflies. Butterfly wallpaper, butterfly pictures, butterfly toilet seat, towels embroidered with butterflies. It was almost enough to give a guy a rash-if he’d had the time to itch.
Amanda was pretty wet. Knees, feet, clothes. Towels had been used to sop up the water-or some of it. A few rolls of paper towels had been used for the same purpose. At some point she’d had a book open-Basic Plumbing Repairs-but that likely wasn’t helping her a whole lot at this point, because it was like learning to sail after your boat had already capsized.
“I do not want advice. Don’t you say one word!”
“I won’t, I won’t.” He was still trying to evaluate the situation. Not the plumbing problem. Her. Amanda was the only problem that mattered. She wasn’t crying, exactly. At least there were no sissy, sad tears leaking down her cheeks. This was more…a major, furious, sputtering type of crying.
He said carefully, “Behind the toilet is a shutoff valve.”
“You think I didn’t know that?” She huffed. “Where?”
“Just behind there. Look. You’ll see it. Turn it off-against the clock. If it’s too tight or hard to move, I could-”
“Do not touch anything. I will do it. And don’t tell me any more, either!”
“Okay.” It was amazing…almost from the minute he’d met her, he’d been tensed up. It was that relentless attraction thing. But now, finally, he could relax. He didn’t have to worry about falling in love with her anymore. She was a shrew. A witch times ten. She had a completely unreasonable and irrational side.
“Do we know what went down the toilet that shouldn’t have?” he asked delicately.
“An American Girl doll shoe.”
“A doll’s shoe,” he repeated.
“Possibly both shoes. She was dressing the doll when she went potty. Now the shoes are gone. And right after she left the bathroom, this all-” she motioned “-started.”
“Okay. Now, has the toilet run before? I mean, constantly run?”
“I just moved in this house. It was new, but not brand-new. Is there some reason in the universe I should know that answer for sure?”
“No, no,” he said in his best tiptoe voice. “It’s just that the more we know, the better chance we have of understanding the whole problem.”
“I’m the only one who has to understand anything.”
“You’re so right.” Hell, his pulse was practically humming. At the moment, she was as easy to love as a stingray. A splotchy-cheeked, furious, unmanageable stingray. “Amanda, I don’t know if you have an auger, but I happened to bring one over. I wasn’t going to use it myself. But you could. If you wanted to.”
“I don’t even know what a flipping auger is! Go home, Mike!”