“It isn’t about being a dad for him. It’s about manipulation. Because when she’s over there, he’s somehow an absentee. There’ll be some woman friend of his that does the babysitting. He doesn’t actually want joint custody, because he doesn’t spend half the time with her that he could. He just wants not to have to pay me child support.”
“Keep talking.”
And about then, she bolted out of the blue wing chair, as if sitting still even a second longer was impossible. She was still wearing the navy-and-white outfit thing she’d put together for the court, but it was coming undone mighty fast now. The white shirt was no longer tucked in, no longer buttoned at the neck. She’d lost the shoes. The navy skirt was twisted around. Her hands started gesturing. The hair got wilder. She stumbled and circled and ambled around in her bare feet, not crying. Sometimes her eyes spit out some moisture, but those tears were hot and mad, not soft.
“I don’t need the child support. But I’ve been using that money to put together a college fund for Mol. He makes over six figures. Don’t you think it’s fair that he contribute?”
“Absolutely,” Mike agreed.
“I told the judge that Thom cancels half the time he sets up a visitation with Molly. I told him that he’s repeatedly left her with strange women she doesn’t know, and that often enough she comes back upset and shaken up. The judge didn’t care.”
“Who’s the judge?” Mike asked, thinking there was another tar-and-feather candidate. He knew a good number of judges, but not so many in the family court setup. She told him the name. Unfortunately all he knew about the guy was that he’d been on the bench for over a decade.
“The judge said…that unless there’s abuse or specific proof of neglect, that Thom is entitled to more time. Initially he didn’t grant equal custody. But as of right now, Thom gets an overnight every two weeks. Mike. I’m supposed to just spring this on Molly. After she just talked to me about not wanting to spend nights there!”
She spun around, and he saw her expression in the colored light from the Tiffany lamp. “Aw, Red. That’s the worst sting, isn’t it?”
“It is. This is supposed to start this coming weekend, which means I have to start talking to her about tomorrow. My job as a mom is-obviously-to make this as smooth and stress-free as I can. So I have to say something like, ‘Hey, lovebug, you know your dad loves you, and you’ll have fun on those sleepovers, and you know I’ll be there when you get back.’ So I’ll try. But, Mike, I’m afraid it’ll come out fake, because it’s such a lie. She doesn’t have a choice. How am I supposed to make her do something that I think is wrong? And make out like I think it’s okay?”
“I hear you.”
“When I got out the courtroom…Thom grabbed my hand. He said there’d be another custody hearing after this. I could count on it. And in the next one, he’d win full joint custody. That I shouldn’t kid myself. He’ll end up not paying a dime of child support.”
“Come here.”
“It’s not about the money. It’s about his using Molly in the wrong way.”
“Come here.”
“It’s about her feeling she’s lied to when she’s with him. That’s why she doesn’t feel safe there. And I always promised her that I’d protect her. And now I can’t.”
“Come here.”
She heard him, because she finally quit pacing around like a caged cat and faced him. “Mike, you can’t help me. And if you could, I wouldn’t want you to. I need to fight my own battles. And I swear, I’m trying. This is just the worst kind of thing to lose. I feel cut off at the knees. I failed my daughter.”
That was it. Mike strode over, scooped an arm under her legs, and lifted her in his arms.
He’d wanted her to talk. Well, she had. She’d spilled thoroughly. Only, now she was saying such ridiculous things that she obviously wasn’t in a reasonable mood.
And no one, but no one, could be more unreasonable than Red when she was upset.
Come to think of it…he was damned good at being unreasonable when he was upset, too. And right now, he was more than upset.
For her.
And with her.
Chapter Twelve
Amanda was beyond shocked. She had no idea what triggered Mike, much less what changed him from a listening, empathetic friend into a wildly out-of-control lover. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t breathe.
She really couldn’t breathe. Once she’d started talking about the afternoon in court, the story had burst out like a runaway freight train. She hadn’t cried, but her throat was thick with unshed tears…and Mike, out of nowhere, took her mouth in a deep kiss.
He’d picked her up as if she were lighter than pearls and just…taken off. He seemed to be careening up the stairs to her bedroom, because the pale lamplight in the living room had disappeared and they were galloping somewhere in the darkness. His shoulder bumped into a wall.
That didn’t stop him from kissing her.
Nothing seemed to stop him from kissing her.
She was a disaster. Surely he’d noticed? She was unbrushed, undone, un-everything. She felt sick, anxious, lost. Her self-worth index seemed to be hovering around a negative ten.
And still he kissed her. He lifted his head for a gulp of air, smiled at her as if they both had something to smile about, then dipped down again. The last time he’d seen her bedroom, she-and the room-had been covered with paint. Moonlight streamed through the froth of curtains, ribbonlike on the thick, soft carpeting she’d put in.
The next time he came up for air, he dragged his T-shirt over his head, then started stripping her. He didn’t seem to notice that she had drastically low self-esteem issues. He seemed to esteem every part of her quite thoroughly. He pulled down the zipper on her navy town skirt…popped off the button on her proper white blouse.
She should have smacked him from here to Timbuktu.
She considered it.
Temporarily, she seemed to be kissing him back and fumbling for the snap on his jeans…but she was still considering it.
He groaned as if she were killing him…when he was the one being the devil. He backed her to the bed edge, slipped her bra straps down, then laid her down on the poufy, soft comforter. The comforter didn’t last long. He pushed away the covers and the pillows in one long swoop…then swooped back on her.
“You prepared to suffer?” he asked her.
The question made as much sense as anything else he’d done, but it wasn’t like he gave her time to answer. His face dipped in and out of moonlight, and he made her giddy, the way he looked at her. As if it was his first time with a woman, and he’d waited a hundred years-not just for this-but for her.
That tongue of his. His hands. He made it seem like no woman ever had more gorgeous knees. More delectable elbows. More fascinating navels. It didn’t seem to occur to him that these weren’t erogenous zones. You couldn’t seduce a woman by kissing her elbow.
Except her.
He seemed to be seducing her, no matter what he touched, no matter where, no matter how. She wasn’t sure how a woman who could have been so, so low earlier in the evening could somehow, someway, now feel more powerful than any woman alive.
He seemed to be the somehow and someway.
He played and kept playing, until her skin had a silken sheen, and her heart was thundering a symphonic drum and she couldn’t stop touching him back. She felt on fire, inside and out, with need, with want, with…love.
“Enough,” she said.
“I haven’t even gotten started.”
With the sudden superwoman power she’d developed, she twisted and miraculously moved him around until she was on top of him, and he was lying at her mercy on the rumpled sheets. “I’ve had it with you, Mike.”