Single Mum Seeks…

“Sweet. Smart. Eager to please,” she said. “He offered to mow my lawn in exchange for another batch of fudge.”

“Hey, sorry—”

“No, it’s great. I get tired of mowing the lawn, especially by this time of year. Believe me, it’s worth a lot more to me than a plate of fudge to have someone else do it.”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.” She walked into the kitchen and grabbed a couple of glasses from the cabinet. “Would you like something to drink? You look like you’ve been out there in the heat for a while.”

“Water. Thank you.”

She handed him a glass, which he downed in one, long swallow. She watched as he did it, looking like she wasn’t quite sure what to make of him or if he made her uneasy or something.

But then she just smiled and refilled his glass again.

“So, if it’s all right with you, I’ll make a deal with Jake? Food in exchange for lawn-mowing duty?”

“Fine with me. Just don’t let him take advantage of you or your time.”

She shrugged, smiled a bit nervously. “I like to cook, and it’s just as easy to make something for five people as it is for me and the girls. What’s his favorite meal?”

“I don’t even know,” Nick said. One more thing he didn’t know about kids in general and this one in particular. “I mean, I haven’t found anything the kid won’t eat. I do remember being at my sister’s a year or so ago, and she’d made a pot roast. Jake ate plates full. I came into the kitchen not an hour and a half later to get something to drink and found the pan of leftovers still on the stove, cooling I guess, and Jake was eating out of the pan. Kid’s got no manners when it comes to food, and that he could be hungry again after eating so much at dinner…”

Nick just shook his head in wonder.

“Okay,” Lily said. “A pot roast, it is. Everything else going okay?”

Nick hesitated, needing to talk to someone, but…Lily?

He didn’t know her that well, and as open about their sexuality as some women were these days, he suspected Lily wasn’t one of them. She seemed sweet and a little shy, and Jake had volunteered that she hadn’t been divorced from her husband for that long.

Nick just couldn’t see asking her how she handled her sex life with two little girls in the house.

“I’d like to help, if I could,” she said, all sweetness and earnestness.

Nick frowned, thinking he could at least find out a little more about Audrey Graham to help him avoid her.

“Well…” He hesitated. “I don’t think there’s any easy way to say this, and I really don’t want to make you uncomfortable, but…”

Ahhh!

Lily thought she was going to die of embarrassment right there on the spot.

He knew!

He knew she’d been practically slobbering all over him, and he wanted to talk about it?

“Ahhh,” she whimpered.

She didn’t mean to. Not out loud at least, but she must have, because suddenly, he looked concerned. He took her by the arm and said, “Lily? You okay?”

“Yes,” she lied and not at all convincingly.

“You sure?” he asked.

“Yes. Really. Just go ahead. Tell me. It’s about—”

“Audrey Graham,” he said, looking like it pained him to even say the name to her.

“Oh! Audrey?” Lily smiled, so relieved she could have fallen to her knees and said a prayer of gratitude right then.

She’d been certain he knew she’d been all but drooling over him while he moved in and then while he’d been doing yard work the other day. She was so grateful it hadn’t gotten that hot yet, and he still had his shirt on this morning.

Him shirtless in her kitchen was probably more than she could have handled.

“Yes, Audrey. Did you say something about her running every morning?”

“Yes,” she said.

Did he want to watch?

Because the woman was certainly putting on a show.

Her outfits got skimpier by the day. She must have gone shopping after Nick moved in.

Someone had even said Nick and Audrey had run together the day before, and that when it was over, Audrey had followed Nick into his house. But people said a lot of things, and Lily made a policy to discount at least half of what she heard, just on principle alone, and it must have been one of the few occasions when Lily hadn’t been watching his house, because she hadn’t seen a thing.

“Do you know where she runs? Like how far and the route she takes?” Nick asked, looking really uncomfortable with the question.

“Not really. I’m not a runner. I mean, I see her go by our houses sometimes,” Lily said.

More often, now that Nick moved in.

Did that mean he hadn’t run with her the other day?

“And…uh…I guess there’s no easy way to say this, but…if I wanted to run without…running into her?”

“Oh,” Lily said, relieved, but puzzled.

He wanted to avoid a woman with a body like Audrey’s?

She didn’t think anybody who looked like him would want to avoid someone who looked like Audrey.

“I like to run alone,” he said. “That’s all. Really. It’s just time to clear my head, and she followed me the other day and…well, she talked the whole time.”

“Oh. Of course.” Lily nodded, gleeful at the thought of Audrey, half-dressed and nearly bouncing out of her bra and annoying Nick every step of the way.

It shouldn’t make Lily so happy, because Audrey’s husband had walked out on her just like Lily’s had, and Lily knew how awful that was. Lily felt bad for everything Audrey had gone through, but still…She didn’t want Audrey to have Nick.