What a Man's Gotta Do

Mala sank into her desk chair after he left, only then noticing her answering machine was flashing. She really should get Caller ID one of these days, but right now it was ranked way on the bottom of a depressingly long to-do list. She halfheartedly punched the play button.

A hang up. Just as well, since she didn’t think she could conduct a logical conversation right now if she tried.

Eddie stomped up the stairs to the apartment, his forehead knit so tight, he thought it might stay that way. And he wasn’t breathing right, either. Doggone it—what had he been thinking? In the space of a half hour, he’d managed to break every single rule in his book, number one being, “Don’t get involved, bonehead.”

He batted open the door—nobody’d bothered to lock it, seeings as he was coming right back up, anyway—and went inside, jerking back the drapes and opening a living room window to air out the place some. Not that he hadn’t been in places that’d smelled a far sight worse….

Shoot, it must’ve embarrassed the life out of Mala, showing him the place in this condition. Women tended to get their drawers in a knot about stuff like that. And this one’s drawers, he imagined, thinking back to when he used to watch her scurrying from class to class, her arms always loaded with about a dozen books, had probably been knotted since she was three.

Those eyes of hers…damn, damn, damn. Fierce and questioning and scared and so incredibly honest, even behind that puny veil of control, it knocked him clear into next week.

Hell, Eddie was the last person to think about reassuring some woman he barely knew that things’d work out. About reassuring anybody. He didn’t much believe things did, for the most part. But he was at least used to dodging the crap life seemed determined to fling in his path. If Eddie didn’t like the way things were going, he could pretty much just up and walk away. Mala Koleski, though, wasn’t the type of person who could do that. Not with two kids, especially. He could tell that right off, and he admired her for it. Which was why Eddie couldn’t help thinking that here was someone who deserved whatever it was she wanted.

That she needed to know that.

Still, what the Sam Hill had come over him, getting all personal like that? And then, even worse, admitting he was attracted to her? Eddie rammed a hand through his sorry-looking hair, then just held it there, even though most of his brain cells had long since left the building. Sweet heavenly days, he’d never wanted to kiss a woman so bad in his life. And he sure had never wanted to take one in his arms and tuck her head against his chest and just…hold her.

He slipped off his jacket, threw it on the sofa, then went on back to the bedroom to make up the bed. It smelled much better in here, thank heaven. Like freshly washed linens.

And Mala.

With a groan of frustration, Eddie sank onto the edge of the bare mattress, scrubbing a hand across his face.

Okay, so he’d admitted his attraction because something told him it’d been a long time since anyone had let Mala Koleski Whatever-Her-Married-Name-Was know she was attractive. That a woman didn’t have to look like those emaciated Hollywood actresses for a man to get turned on. So he figured she should know that she was worth a man’s time and attention, doggone it. Even if he couldn’t be that man for more than about two minutes.

But that was okay, since he figured hell would freeze over before she’d take him up on his offer, such as it wasn’t. Women like her just didn’t do that, get involved with strays like him.

A weird, empty kind of feeling swelled inside him, vaguely familiar but definitely unwelcome. He got up, trying to shake it off, but it followed him right into the bathroom like an overloyal puppy.

“Go away,” he actually said out loud, but it didn’t. He looked over at the sink as he draped the thick, soft towels over the bar next to the john, saw the new bar of soap she’d left out for him.

The emptiness torqued into an sharp, nasty ache.

“You can’t,” he said to his reflection. “She can’t.”

He yanked open the cupboard door under the sink, found a whole mess of cleaning supplies. Dumping a thick layer of cleanser into the tub, he set to scrubbing it, thinking it’d been a long time since he’d entertained the idea of wanting something he couldn’t have.

Chapter 3

The Monday before Thanksgiving, Mala lay in bed, half-asleep, trying to fight off that itchy, icky feeling you get when Something Bad is about to happen.

“Mama! Guess what!”

She burrowed down farther into the pillows. “Unless there’s a van outside with balloons all over it,” she said, “go away.”

“Ma-ma!” Like Tigger, Carrie boing-boinged up the length of the bed, and it occurred to Mala that the only time her bed shook these days was when small children were jumping on it. Which, while a dispiriting thought, didn’t qualify as the Something Bad because that wasn’t something that was going to happen. It already had. “It’s a snow day!”

That, however, definitely made the short list. But after marshalling a few more brain cells, Mala decided that, nope, that wasn’t quite it, either.

Not that this wasn’t bad enough—if it were true—since that meant, being as the kids were already off for Thanksgiving Thursday and Friday…and Saturday and Sunday…she’d only have two kid-free days to do five days worth of work. Swiping her hair out of her face, Mala hiked herself up on one elbow, trying to get a bead on Carrie’s beaming, bobbing face. Her curls were a radiant blur in the almost iridescent glow in the many-windowed, converted porch she used as her bedroom.

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Uh-uh. We got like a million feet of snow in the yard! You can go look! I already listened to the radio and they said the Spruce Lake schools were closed! We don’t have any scho-ol, we don’t have any scho-ol!”

Mala suppressed a groan as she glanced at the clock radio by her bed. Seven-ten. Far too early for so many exclamation points.

In footed, dinosaur-splashed jammies, Lucas unsteadily tromped across the bed, dropping beside Mala with enough force to rattle her teeth. “I’m cold,” he said, wriggling underneath the down comforter next to her, his beebee—as he’d christened his baby blanket at eleven months—firmly clutched to his chest.

“It’ll warm up in a few minutes,” Mala said.

Carrie skootched down on Mala’s other side, planting her ice-cold feet on Mala’s bare calf.

“Cripes, Carrie!”

“The heat’s not on.”

Damn. The furnace pilot must’ve gone out again. That made the second time this week. Not that it was that big a deal to relight it, but she supposed she couldn’t put off having somebody come out to give the ancient furnace a look-see any longer. Especially as she had a tenant. A tenant who, bless him, hadn’t yet complained about freezing his butt off in the mornings.

A tenant who, bless him, had made himself scarce since the night he moved in.

Except in her dreams.

Lucas snuggled closer, smelling of warm little boy and slightly sour jammies. Ah, yes…reality. As in, kids and clients and recalcitrant furnaces and laundry and meals to fix and mother’s and brother’s and well-meaning friends’ worried looks to dodge. And vague, itchy-icky feelings of impending doom.

Running away sounded pret-ty damn attractive, just at the moment.

Just at the moment, she wondered what it would be like to be able to come and go whenever you pleased, not having to answer to anyone, not be tied down to any one place for longer than a few months.

Carrie threw her arm around Mala’s middle, leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

Not having a child—or two—to come get in bed with you on a cold, snowy morning and remind you that you were the center of their universe.

She hugged and kissed first one kid, then the other, then gently swatted Carrie’s bottom through the bedclothes. “C’mon, move over—I gotta get up.”

“C’n you make pancakes?”

“Maybe. After I get the furnace going.” Mala struggled out from underneath the covers, static electricity crackling as she yanked at her flannel nightgown to dislodge it from the bedding. Half hopping, half stumbling, she stuffed her feet into her old shearling slippers as she made her way across the carpet to the window to see just how generous Mother Nature had been.

Yup—she rammed one arm, then the other, into her terry cloth robe, glowering at the vast expanse of white outside her window—it had snowed, alrighty. Not a million feet, but at least one, gauging from the pile of the white stuff on the picnic table. Oh, joy.

It was still flurrying, although the faint blue patches in the distance meant the storm would probably break up before noon. But with this much snow already on the ground, Mala thought on a huge, disgusted yawn, nobody was going anywhere, at least not until some kind person took pity on them and plowed the street. Which could be Christmas, with her luck. Whitey was probably sitting in the nice dry attached garage, chuckling. Man, she’d sell her soul for something with all-wheel drive.

The ceiling creaked slightly under the pressure of Eddie’s heavy, deliberate footsteps overhead. She heard the upstairs door slam shut, followed by the sound of boots clomping down the outside stairs. She edged back from the window and watched him plod through the soft snow toward the second garage out back in just his jeans and that denim jacket of his, and she felt her brow furrow in concern that he wasn’t dressed warmly enough.

Lord. She was such a mother.

He had the day off—the restaurant was closed on Sundays and Mondays—and she found herself wondering what he’d do, since his Camaro wasn’t any more snow-worthy than her sissy little Escort. Not that it was any of her business. She just wondered.