The Late Bloomer's Baby

She’d tied him in knots. Again.

“I think you should dispatch the papers to your wife and be done with it,” LeeAnn said. “She told you she didn’t want you around.”

Ethan smiled. He’d decide how to handle Callie. Maybe he should learn to be honest to LeeAnn without telling her every detail. “I appreciate the input,” he said, turning the conversation to other topics.

Twenty minutes later, he stood and tossed a couple of bills on the table. “You ready?”

“I’m ready.” LeeAnn led him from the restaurant with a sure stride. Anyone watching might think him lucky to be with her.

That was probably true. LeeAnn was terrific.

After walking her to her car, however, Ethan kissed her quickly and tried not to think of a more provocative parking lot kiss. “I’ll call you later,” he promised before he closed the car door between them.

In his car, Ethan sat for a minute, thinking. He hadn’t told LeeAnn, but he had the day off.

He had no, business heading to Augusta.

LeeAnn was right. Callie would no doubt be thrilled if she received divorce papers. She’d sign and return them, and she’d be through with him.

As he left the parking lot and headed east out of town, Ethan tried not to think about where he was going, or why. He just switched on the radio and drove. He wound up sitting in his car at Augusta’s city lake, staring at the shady clearing where he’d proposed to Callie.

He could picture the two of them, stocking the kitchen in their first Wichita apartment. They’d talked for hours about their plans. Careers in law enforcement and biomedical research. Three kids, because he’d been a lonely only and she enjoyed her sisters so much. Date nights on Saturdays and family time on Sunday afternoons.

He was a different person now.

But he was a good man, he reminded himself. This guilt was unwarranted. He hadn’t left Callie to pursue a life of debauchery. He’d left after she’d made it clear that she believed her mother’s tenets about men in general and about him in particular.

Damn it all, anyway.

Tomorrow, he’d pull those papers from his filing cabinet and send them to Josie’s address. Callie would receive them while she was within easy driving distance. If she had problems with anything, they could meet to talk.

And after the concert tonight, Ethan would take Lee-Ann out to celebrate a new start.

That decided, Ethan drove away from the lake with every intention of heading home. But he couldn’t resist driving by Isabel’s house one last time, just to see which cars were parked in front of it.

And when he saw the silver Toyota truck with a JO-Z vanity plate, he had to stop.

Callie’s youngest sister had been twelve when he’d met her. The last time he’d seen her, she’d been twenty-one and in her senior year of college. Rowdy and fun, Josie was the least complicated of the Blumes. Callie couldn’t blame him if he dropped by to say hello to Josie.

By the time he got to Isabel’s front door, he’d almost changed his mind. He knocked anyway, and his nerves about did him in until a stranger answered the door.

“If you’re here to help, come on in and find where you need to be,” the man said. “If you’re looking for the Blumes, they’re somewhere in the back of the house.”

“Thanks.” Ethan followed him into the living room, where the stranger and two other guys were installing new Sheetrock. On his way through the house, Ethan saw two more men ripping out the ruined kitchen flooring.

Isabel and Josie were removing old wallpaper from the top half of Izzy’s bedroom, presumably intending to match it to the newly replaced bottom half.

“Knock, knock,” he said. “I’m just stopping by to visit my favorite tomboy.”

“Ethan!” Josie set down the paintbrush she’d been using to apply a chemical stripper, then rushed across the room to throw her arms around his neck. After a warm hug that did much to feed Ethan’s courage, he backed up, smiling as he studied Callie’s youngest sister.

Just below average height, voluptuous Josie had very dark, very short hair. Isabel was a couple of inches taller, with lighter brown hair and an hourglass figure. And Callie was a blonde, of course, and just four inches shorter than his own six-two. Except for similar upturned noses and full lips, the Blume sisters were all very different in appearance.

Josie glanced at the peeling wallpaper with a grave expression. “The place looks awful, doesn’t it?”

“It’s much improved over past weekend,” Ethan said, gazing across at Isabel. “I can’t believe how fast your house is coming together.”