Keeping Caroline

“Poor baby, working so hard. You’re hot, aren’t you? I’ll bet you could use something tall and wet.” She rolled the cold thing across his back while her other hand grazed his side and settled on his hip, holding him in place, then slipped around to the front of his jeans.

Biting back a curse, he peeled her hand from his waist and turned. Parched as he was, he backed away from the tumbler of iced tea she held, but he didn’t let go of her wrist. “No thank you.” He pinned her down with a hard stare. “On all counts.”

“Gem?” Caroline turned the corner of the house. Shocked at the scene she walked into, she swiveled her head back and forth between Gem and her husband. Gem stared at the ground while Matt’s flustered gaze and his grip on the girl’s wrist told Caroline all she needed to know about what had been happening.

Gem giggled. Matt let her go.

As surprise faded into displeasure, aimed at both Gem and her husband, Caroline decided to start with Gem. “You’re late again,” she admonished. “That’s twice this week.”

Gem made a Betty Boop “O” with her lips, for Matt’s benefit, Caroline was sure, and covered her mouth with her hand before she sashayed away.

Caroline turned to Matt. “And you. Go easy on her, would you? She’s had a tough time of it.”

Matt raised his hands. “Hey, I’m Mr. Easy,” he said, then muttered, “at least she seemed to think so.”

Caroline didn’t appreciate the sarcasm. “So what were you going to do? Get her in a wristlock and cuff her?”

“What was I going to do? She was the one with the roaming hands. And I don’t think it was the change in my pocket she was after.”

The lecture Caroline had been about to spout vanished from her mind, blown away by a single sweep of his tormented gaze.

Taking a good look at her big, sweaty husband, she couldn’t blame Gem for putting the moves on him. The sight of him, all hard muscle and bronzed skin, was enough to stir the hormones of a nun.

Suddenly, Caroline felt the need to giggle. “I’m sorry. Gem doesn’t exactly have a grasp of appropriate adult relationships.”

“Maybe that’s because she’s not an adult,” Matt rumbled.

“She’s seventeen, and she’s going to have to grow up fast. She’s got two little ones depending on her.”

Matt shoved his fingers into his back pockets, scowling. “The twins?”

Caroline nodded.

“Their father?”

“Not in the picture.”

“She’s seventeen and they’re fourteen months?” Matt shook his head. Math had never been his strong point, but even he understood how those numbers added up. Too much, too fast, too young.

Caroline stubbed the toe of her sneaker in the dirt. “Reminds me of myself at that age.”

“You weren’t saddled with two kids.”

Caroline’s eyes burned. She told herself it was just the dry wind that had kicked up. She would never consider a child a burden. “I could have been. I was younger than she is now when I fell in love with you. I got pregnant before we were married.”

Matt’s fingers rolled up into fists in his pockets. “Not when you were fifteen you didn’t.”

“No,” she said softly. “You made sure of that, didn’t you? Running off to play soldier as soon as things started getting serious between us.”

“I came back.”

“Five years later.”

“When we were both ready to make a commitment.”

“And then I was pregnant within a month, remember?”

“It’s not something I’m likely to forget.”

“We had a child between us, right from the start,” Caroline mused. “Maybe that’s why our marriage didn’t work when he was gone. We’d never really learned to live together, just the two of us. We didn’t know how. We still don’t.”

Matt never answered her. Straight-faced, he just picked up his tools and put them away one by one. Meticulous as ever.

Damn him, she knew what he was doing. He’d been here a week and she’d barely seen him. He was burying himself back here in the rubble of the porch he was deconstructing so that he didn’t have to deal with his life.

It was funny. As a negotiator, Matt’s job was communication. But little by little, after Brad’s cancer had been diagnosed, he’d shut down. At least at home. On the job he was sharp as ever, the best in the state at what he did. In the final months before their separation, it seemed his H.T.s were the only ones Matt could talk to. There were times she’d been jealous of them. At least they had his full attention when they talked.

Sometimes he even talked back.

Kicking a loose board and wishing it had been his shin, Caroline stormed off. At the kitchen entrance she jerked the rickety screened door open and let it slam behind her.

He wouldn’t get away with ignoring her. Not this time.

He was going to face her. Face the past.

He couldn’t avoid her forever.

She wouldn’t let him.

“Come on in,” Caroline invited, holding open the door behind her. Matt paused, evaluating her tone of voice. It fairly bubbled with levity. Too much levity.

She was up to something.

Inside, she practically skipped across the kitchen. “I’ll just check on the baby and then we’ll get started.”

Before Matt could respond, tell her this was a bad idea, her feet were pounding up the steps toward the nursery.

No way was he going to follow her up there.

Once again he cursed the storm front sweeping in from the west. For the past two days, since the run-in with Gem, he’d pretty much been able to dodge Caroline and, thank heaven, the children in her care. But the dark clouds and rumble of thunder overhead were about to end that streak.

He’d been thinking the rain would give him an excuse to take an afternoon off. Visit some old friends in town. No such luck. Caroline had asked him to help her indoors. She had ceiling fans to hang.

Ceiling fans. The two of them together on a ladder, no more than six inches apart. He’d be able to smell her lavender scent. Feel every breath she took. Watch the flecks of gold and black swirl in her sparkling irises. They’d talk, and he knew where the conversation would lead. The same place it always led.

Christ, he’d rather try to negotiate the devil out of hell than have to explain to her why he didn’t want a child while she looked at him with those furious, desperate eyes.

He closed the kitchen door behind Alf. The brass knob rattled in his hand. He’d have to fix that soon. A child could jimmy his way into the house with the back door lock dangling from its socket like a loose baby tooth.