Everything but a Husband

“No, it’s okay, I’ve got it.” He lifted it up, peeked inside for the first time. Managed not to wince. Huge, batlike ears, buggy eyes, hairy—the thing looked like a Furby. Before they perfected the prototype.

“She was my grandmother’s,” Galen said on a sigh, as if that explained it. Which, in a weird sort of way, it did. “Now she’s mine, I guess.”

Del lowered the carrier. “Lucky you.”

That got a tiny smile. And another blush. “Well. Talk about your inauspicious beginnings,” she said, traces of blue-collar Pittsburghese tingeing her speech patterns. She jerked her head back toward the restroom door, cleared her throat. “So. You know I’m Galen. And you are?”

Del snapped to, now tried to take her bag as well. Wariness flared in her eyes as she inched away, choking it more closely to her. He swallowed a grin. The dog, he immediately surmised, he could have. Whatever was in that bag, though, she’d fight to the death for. “Del Farentino. I’m the contractor doing some work on Cora’s new house.”

“Oh. The one that’s costing her way too much money?” She flushed even brighter. “Th-the house, I mean. Not the contractor…”

“I think she’d probably agree with you on both counts,” Del said with a grin, wondering what it was about this woman that was making him feel…good. Like something remotely human, even. “Well, we might as well get a move on.” Del started down the concourse, assuming Galen would follow.

She didn’t. Del turned around, got bumped from behind by a foreign tourist. He frowned at the not unwarranted suspicion in Galen’s eyes. “What?”

“Why couldn’t Cora pick me up?”

Del took a step back to her, resisting the urge to glance at his watch. “Well, the story is, she went to do some shopping, her car skidded off the road, messing up the muffler or something, so she couldn’t pick you up. And I was the only person to answer the phone. Can we go—?”

She stayed put, squinting at him with an expression caught neatly between guarded and nervous. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth?”

Ah, hell.

“Oh, I’m telling the truth, honey, trust me. It’s whether Cora’s telling the truth we have to consider.” He gave her the reassuring smile he’d given Mrs. Standish earlier. She didn’t smile back. Del took a step closer. The dog yipped. Del’s hand streaked through his hair as minutes ticked by like race cars. “You afraid to get in the truck with me, what?”

“Uh, yeah.” Caution stiffened her features, shadowed her eyes. But not, he thought, from experience as much as…lack of it. That’s what it was, he realized. She was like a child on the first day of school, excited and fearful all at once. She shifted the bag, which was clearly heavy. “Kinda got that drummed into me by the time I was three. It stuck.”

It wasn’t that he didn’t understand—he hoped his daughter would grow up to be half this streetsmart, which he doubted, which he decided he did not need to think about just now—but he still had a lot of work to do and it was Thanksgiving week and he had to pick Wendy up from the sitter’s at four and, frankly, he wasn’t in the mood. Hadn’t he just explained who he was? Did she really think he made all that up, somehow? Still, he plastered on another smile. “Honey, I just got you to the john before you threw up all over the terminal floor. You can trust me to get you to Cora’s with both your reputation and body parts intact, okay? I mean, come on, already—do I look like someone you should be afraid of?”

She drew her bottom lip between her teeth, color pinking her cheeks. Shook her head. But that was it.

Del huffed out a sigh. “Okay, here’s the deal. Trust me, and I’ll get you to Spruce Lake in just under an hour, no hassles, and for free. Otherwise, take your chances with a taxi. And remember. It’s two days before Thanksgiving. And the weather sucks.”

He pivoted on his heel, started to walk away, figuring if this tactic worked at least fifty percent of the time with a four-year-old, he might have a shot of it working with a grown woman.

Five seconds later, he turned back, undecided whether to throttle or comfort the basket case in front of him. Then he lifted both hands, the carrier dangling like a suspended Ferris wheel basket. “For crying out loud, I know who you are, I know who Cora is, I didn’t run off with your dog when I had the chance—” he jerked the carrier to prove his point, which he noticed did provoke a small, startled reaction on her part, not to mention the dog’s “—so why are you so afraid of me?”

“It’s not that…”

He sighed. Mightily. But he walked back, dumped the carrier and her coat, then fished his wallet from the vest’s inside pocket. As what seemed like the entire population of the Great Lakes region milled around them, he flipped it open to his driver’s license, which happened to sit opposite a picture of his daughter. “Okay, here. I don’t know what this will prove, but what the hell.”

She never even noticed the license, he could tell. She tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear, a soft “Oh” falling from her lips. “Is that your little girl?”

Suddenly, he wasn’t quite so ticked with her. Suddenly, he was aware of her shiny, fragrant hair, the way the part wasn’t quite straight, that she was just the right height to fit neatly under his chin, if he were to hug her.

That this feeling-like-a-human business could easily get out of hand.

After a stunned moment or two, Del angled his head to look at the shot, one of those a-thousand-photos-for-fifteen-bucks JC Penney specials. Wendy’s fourth birthday portrait, all deep brown eyes and dimples. A twinge of something like fear hobbled through his gut, as images of strapping, hormone-sodden teen males—guys just like he had been, once upon a time—popped into his head.

God, she looked so freaking much like Cyndi, although the dark eyes were definitely Farentino stock. And everytime he saw Wendy, or even a photo of her, it socked into him how long it had taken him, was still taking him, to come to grips with her mother’s death. Yeah, Cyndi had been the most bullheaded woman he’d ever known, but he’d loved her from the bottom of his heart, and her death had damn near devastated him. He and God were still on the outs about that one. In fact, he pretty much figured if he did get married again, it would be more for companionship—and, okay, sex—than for love. It wasn’t that he was saying he’d never love again, exactly, as much as he just wasn’t sure he could. Not the way he’d loved Cyndi, that was for sure.

But then, the next Mrs. Farentino—should there ever be such a creature—would be nothing like Cyndi. She’d be…

Demure. That’s it.

Did women even come in demure anymore? Or had that concept gone the way of avocado kitchen appliances?

He glanced at Galen.

Huh.

“Uh, yeah,” he finally said before she wondered if he’d fallen in a hole or something. “Wendy. She’s four and a half. All we’ve got is each other.”

Now why the hell did you say that?

He could feel Galen’s gaze dust his cheek, sweep back to the photo. “What a sweetheart.”

“She has her moments.”

Seconds passed. Del wondered if you could get drunk from just smelling someone. If letting too many hormones flood the bloodstream too fast could give you the bends.

“She has your eyes,” Galen said at last, softly, which, for some odd reason, seemed to settle things in her mind, as they decidedly unsettled things in his. Without warning, she took off, leaving Del grabbing for the carrier, then double-stepping to catch up.

He switched everything to one arm, then took her bag from her; she actually didn’t protest. “You got any other luggage?”

She shook her head, her russet hair gleaming in the overhead lights as she walked. “I’m only here for the weekend. Oh!”

She swayed again, as if being tossed on a wave. Del reached again for her elbow; she moved away. “I’m fine.”

“What you are, is full of it.”

“Not any more.” She bobbled again, but the hell with her. She didn’t want him to touch her, he wouldn’t touch her. Well, unless she listed more than twenty degrees, in which case, he was there.

“You didn’t eat before you boarded, did you?”

A herd of teenagers, all talking and laughing at the top of their lungs, swarmed past, forcing Galen to step closer to him or risk being trampled. Close enough to catch another whiff of her hair. Of her. Floral-scented pheromones. A few more hormones surged forth, like an army determined to breach the enemy’s stronghold.

The throng of kids passed, Galen reclaimed her space, and the hormones ebbed.

“No, really. I’m okay.” Except she went all wobbly again, coming damn close to passing the twenty degree mark.

His hand shot out, grabbed her elbow. “Come on,” he said, steering her toward a coffee shop. What the hell—the day was blown, anyway. As long as he was back in time to pick up Wendy, it wasn’t as if the guys couldn’t cope without him. “You need a cup of tea, something to settle your stomach—”

“Don’t tell me what I need!” She squirmed away from his touch, yet again, digging in her heels. Perplexed, Del was startled to see something almost like fear glittering in those turquoise eyes. “I told you, I’m fine.” Criminy—they were talking a lousy cup of tea. What was with this woman? “If you don’t mind, Mr…. Farentino, was it? I’d really just like to get to Cora’s.”

First he couldn’t get her to leave, now he couldn’t get her to stay. Del stared her down, ignoring—or so he told himself—the odd prickling sensation in various parts of his body when their gazes locked. “Okay, answer me one thing.” The higher of the two slender brows lifted in question. “If you’d just about upchucked all over Cora and she’d suggested getting a cup of tea, would you be giving her a fight about it?”

She looked away, and Del felt like she’d just broken an electrical connection. “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment, her words coming out on a long breath. “I know you mean well. It’s just…” She flushed, color staining her pale cheeks. “Please?”