The Perfect Mum

Kathleen didn’t say another word on the short drive home. Jo parked right in the driveway instead of on the street, as she usually did, so Kathleen was able to trudge up the concrete steps, stumble on the tree root that had lifted part of the walkway, and make it onto the front porch before she realized she didn’t have keys and would have to wait for Jo.

Fortunately, her roommate was right behind her to wordlessly unlock and let her in. Once inside, Kathleen glanced at the clock.

“Don’t you have an eleven o’clock class? You could still make it if you hurry.”

Jo shook her head. “No big deal.”

“Go,” Kathleen ordered. “I’m fine. Really. I’ll take a shower, make my calls, and go back to the hospital. Anyway, Helen must be right behind us. She’ll be here any time.”

Jo hesitated, then said, “Okay.”

She bounded upstairs, returning almost immediately with her bright red book bag. “You know my cell phone number. Call if you want me. I’ll leave it on even in class. Promise?”

Kathleen produced a weak smile. “Promise.”

The moment Jo shut the front door behind her, Kathleen sank onto the bottom step. She would shower; she had things to do. In a minute. Maybe in a few minutes. Right now, she needed to sit, be alone and regroup.

Pirate, the seven-month-old kitten they had rescued and adopted the previous fall, poked his fluffy Creamsicle orange-and-white head around the corner from the living room. His right eye, which had been hanging from the socket when Jo and the girls found him, didn’t gaze in quite the same direction as the other eye, so the veterinarian wasn’t certain how much he saw out of it. They didn’t care. The fact that he had two eyes was a victory.

Kathleen discovered suddenly that she didn’t want to be completely alone. A warm, fluffy, purring cat on her lap would make her feel better.

“Kitty, kitty,” she murmured, and patted her thigh.

Pirate took a step toward her.

The doorbell rang. Scared by the morning’s events, the kitten bolted again.

Helen must have forgotten her keys, too, Kathleen thought, heaving herself to her feet. But, wait— She’d come from work. She’d been driving. Walking away in the hospital parking lot, she had had her keys in her hand. Kathleen remembered seeing the silly hot-pink smiley face attached to a key ring that Ginny had given her mother for her birthday dangling between Helen’s fingers.

Mind working sluggishly, Kathleen was already in the act of opening the door before she had reached this point in her recollections, or she probably wouldn’t have answered the doorbell at all. She didn’t want to see anybody, even her brother, Ryan.

But the man standing on her doorstep wasn’t Ryan. In fact, he was a total stranger. One who…wasn’t scary exactly, but could be.

At a little over six feet, he wasn’t unusually tall, but he was broad. Big shouldered, stocky, with strong legs and powerful arms and neck. His hair was dark and shaggy, his eyes some unnameable color but watchful, and his face was blunt-featured, even crude, but somehow pleasing, the only reason Kathleen didn’t slam the door in a panic.

He was the kind of man she couldn’t picture in a well-cut suit, the antithesis of her handsome, successful ex-husband. This man had to work with his hands. Like her brother’s, they were nicked, callused and bandaged, the fingers thick and blunt-tipped. In one hand, he held a gray metal contractor’s clipboard.

He seemed to be waiting patiently while she appraised him from puffy eyes.

“May I help you?” she asked finally, warily, her hand on the door poised to slam it in his face if he lunged for her.

“I’m Logan Carr.”

He said his name as if it should mean something to her. Maybe it did, she thought, frowning. Somewhere in the back of her mind, it niggled.

Buying time, she said, “Um…I’m sorry. This isn’t a good time.”

“We had an appointment.” He looked expectant, adding when she didn’t respond, “I’m the cabinetmaker.”

“Oh, no!” That was it. On Ryan’s recommendation, she’d called Carr Cabinetmaking and arranged to dash home during an early lunch hour so that he could look and measure and give her a bid. She, of course, had completely forgotten.

“Are you all right?” He sounded kind.

Somehow this was the last straw. One more thing to have gone wrong, one more thing to think about when she couldn’t.

“I’m…I’m…” Suddenly he was a blur, and she was humiliated to realize she was crying in front of this stranger. “Fine,” she managed to say.

“No,” he said, stepping forward, taking advantage of her nerveless hand to come uninvited into her house and to close the door behind them. “You aren’t.”

The next thing she knew, she was engulfed in powerful arms and flannel shirt, smelling this stranger’s sweat and deodorant and aftershave, her wet cheek pressed to his chest.

And did she, dignified, gracious but reserved, wrench free and demand he leave?

No. She buried her face in that comforting flannel and let herself sob.

CHAPTER TWO

LOGAN CARR MADE SOOTHING sounds while he held the gorgeous blonde.

What in hell? he thought with wry amusement. His face wasn’t pretty, but didn’t usually inspire women to burst into tears.

When she didn’t quiet down, he became worried. Should he be calling the cops? An ambulance? “Can you tell me what’s wrong?” he finally asked.

She wailed something about her daughter hating her. Logan assumed she was Ryan Grant’s sister. There’d been an indefinable something about her that reminded him of Ryan. Logan didn’t know her brother that well, but now he tried to remember what Ryan had said about her.

She was divorced, or at least separated. Logan remembered Ryan banging around one day on a work site, growling under his breath about his goddamn stubborn sister who was buying a house that would fall down on top of her idiotic head any day. Logan had paused, a screwdriver in his hand, and asked why she was buying the place. The gist, as he recalled, was that she’d left her bastard of a husband and she claimed this was all she could afford without asking for help either from him—or her own brother—which she refused to do.

“I wouldn’t give a damn,” Ryan had concluded viciously, “except that the roof will fall on my niece’s head, too. Why couldn’t she buy a nice condo?” he had asked in appeal.

Personally, Logan didn’t blame her. He liked the looks of this place. It was worth a little work.

He kept patting her back and waiting while her sobs became gulps and then sniffles. Logan knew the exact moment when she realized she was crying all over a man she didn’t know.

Her body went very still, stiffened, and then she all but leaped back. “Oh, no! I must look…” She scrubbed frantically at her wet cheeks. “I’m so sorry!”

“I invited myself in,” he reminded her. Sticking his hands in his pockets, he ostentatiously glanced around, admiring the French doors leading into the living room, the staircase, the arched doorway to the kitchen. “Nice place,” he added.

“If you’ll excuse me a moment, I’ll just, um…”

The doorknob rattled behind them, and the door swung open.

“Helen!” exclaimed his bedraggled blonde. “Thank goodness! This is Mister, um… The cabinetmaker. Will you show him the kitchen while I…” She was already fleeing up the stairs.

The redhead who’d come in with the child gazed in surprise after her…friend? Sister? Roommate? He had no idea.

“I didn’t beat her,” he said, trying to look harmless.

She gave him a distracted look. “No, she’s… It’s been an awful day. We should have called you, but we forgot you were coming.”