The Perfect Mum

“Yep. They’re going to help her get better by making her eat. This is the first step.”

“Oh,” the child said solemnly.

Helen rose. “Kathleen, why don’t you make your calls from home? You can come back later. Emma will be fine. It might be just as well to give her time to get over her tantrum.”

Yes. Home sounded good.

Kathleen nodded and let her friends lead her to the nurse’s station where she explained, then to the business office where she gave all the information on insurance, and finally to Jo’s car.

“See you at home,” Helen said, and started across the parking lot with her hand on Ginny’s shoulder. Poor Ginny, Kathleen saw, still wore the baggy T-shirt she slept in along with a pair of jeans and sneakers with no socks and the laces dragging. Her unbrushed hair was lank and tangled.

Jo looked better, not because she’d spent more time on grooming, but because her thick, glossy hair seemed destined to fall into place. She wore little makeup at any time, and her sweater and jeans were pretty much what she threw on every day.

Even through her dullness, which she thought must be nature’s form of anesthesia, Kathleen remembered uneasily what she had looked like in the mirror. Yes, going home was a good idea.

As Jo drove out of the parking lot, Kathleen said, “Thank you.”

Jo shot her a startled, even annoyed glance. “You mean, for coming? For Pete’s sake, Kathleen! What did you think we’d all do? Head off to school and work as if nothing had happened?”

“Well, no, but…”

“Then let it rest.”

Exhaustion and worry weighing her down, Kathleen gazed unseeing at the passing streets. She wanted to go home and crawl into bed and pretend none of this had happened, that it was Sunday and she could sleep as late as she wanted.

Instead, she should shower and make herself presentable, then start a formidable list of calls. Work, to explain why she wasn’t coming. Someone else would have to cover the front desk at the chiropractor’s office. The insurance company, Emma’s doctor, the therapist, the treatment program…

Her mind skipped. Please, God, let there be room.

Ian. She should at least let him know, although chances were she wouldn’t actually have to talk to him. She’d leave a message on his voice mail or with his secretary. He probably wouldn’t even call back. Never mind phone his daughter and express concern.

After all, Emma could eat if she wanted. She was just being stubborn. Melodramatic. Ridiculous. Taking her to doctors and therapists was playing her game, pampering her.

He could not, would not, admit that his daughter had a real problem and was thus flawed in any way. After all, he’d had the perfect life, the perfect wife, hadn’t he? Kathleen thought bitterly. Why shouldn’t he have the perfect daughter, too?

She’d like to believe it was because he wasn’t perfect. In his rage and intolerance, Ian had made it easy for her to believe he was at fault: his demands, his expectations, his irritation with the tiniest mistake or flaw in appearance or failure in school or on the tennis court or at a dinner party.

What was becoming slowly, painfully apparent was that her expectations, her smugness, had hurt Emma as much if not more. Jo had once tried to convince Kathleen that Emma felt free to lash out at her mother not because she was angrier at her than she was at her father, but because she felt safer with her, knew Kathleen loved her. Kathleen hoped it was true.

But she couldn’t absolve herself. If she were warm, supportive and accepting, why hadn’t Emma been able to shrug off her father’s unreasonable criticism? Why hadn’t she recovered, after Kathleen left Ian and she’d no longer had to face his sharp, impatient assessment daily?

Would she be lying in the hospital, so perilously close to death, if her mother hadn’t failed her, too?

Kathleen didn’t say another word on the short drive home. Jo parked right in the driveway instead of on the street, as she usually did, so Kathleen was able to trudge up the concrete steps, stumble on the tree root that had lifted part of the walkway, and make it onto the front porch before she realized she didn’t have keys and would have to wait for Jo.

Fortunately, her roommate was right behind her to wordlessly unlock and let her in. Once inside, Kathleen glanced at the clock.

“Don’t you have an eleven o’clock class? You could still make it if you hurry.”

Jo shook her head. “No big deal.”

“Go,” Kathleen ordered. “I’m fine. Really. I’ll take a shower, make my calls, and go back to the hospital. Anyway, Helen must be right behind us. She’ll be here any time.”

Jo hesitated, then said, “Okay.”

She bounded upstairs, returning almost immediately with her bright red book bag. “You know my cell phone number. Call if you want me. I’ll leave it on even in class. Promise?”

Kathleen produced a weak smile. “Promise.”

The moment Jo shut the front door behind her, Kathleen sank onto the bottom step. She would shower; she had things to do. In a minute. Maybe in a few minutes. Right now, she needed to sit, be alone and regroup.

Pirate, the seven-month-old kitten they had rescued and adopted the previous fall, poked his fluffy Creamsicle orange-and-white head around the corner from the living room. His right eye, which had been hanging from the socket when Jo and the girls found him, didn’t gaze in quite the same direction as the other eye, so the veterinarian wasn’t certain how much he saw out of it. They didn’t care. The fact that he had two eyes was a victory.

Kathleen discovered suddenly that she didn’t want to be completely alone. A warm, fluffy, purring cat on her lap would make her feel better.

“Kitty, kitty,” she murmured, and patted her thigh.

Pirate took a step toward her.

The doorbell rang. Scared by the morning’s events, the kitten bolted again.

Helen must have forgotten her keys, too, Kathleen thought, heaving herself to her feet. But, wait— She’d come from work. She’d been driving. Walking away in the hospital parking lot, she had had her keys in her hand. Kathleen remembered seeing the silly hot-pink smiley face attached to a key ring that Ginny had given her mother for her birthday dangling between Helen’s fingers.

Mind working sluggishly, Kathleen was already in the act of opening the door before she had reached this point in her recollections, or she probably wouldn’t have answered the doorbell at all. She didn’t want to see anybody, even her brother, Ryan.

But the man standing on her doorstep wasn’t Ryan. In fact, he was a total stranger. One who…wasn’t scary exactly, but could be.

At a little over six feet, he wasn’t unusually tall, but he was broad. Big shouldered, stocky, with strong legs and powerful arms and neck. His hair was dark and shaggy, his eyes some unnameable color but watchful, and his face was blunt-featured, even crude, but somehow pleasing, the only reason Kathleen didn’t slam the door in a panic.

He was the kind of man she couldn’t picture in a well-cut suit, the antithesis of her handsome, successful ex-husband. This man had to work with his hands. Like her brother’s, they were nicked, callused and bandaged, the fingers thick and blunt-tipped. In one hand, he held a gray metal contractor’s clipboard.

He seemed to be waiting patiently while she appraised him from puffy eyes.

“May I help you?” she asked finally, warily, her hand on the door poised to slam it in his face if he lunged for her.

“I’m Logan Carr.”

He said his name as if it should mean something to her. Maybe it did, she thought, frowning. Somewhere in the back of her mind, it niggled.

Buying time, she said, “Um…I’m sorry. This isn’t a good time.”

“We had an appointment.” He looked expectant, adding when she didn’t respond, “I’m the cabinetmaker.”

“Oh, no!” That was it. On Ryan’s recommendation, she’d called Carr Cabinetmaking and arranged to dash home during an early lunch hour so that he could look and measure and give her a bid. She, of course, had completely forgotten.

“Are you all right?” He sounded kind.

Somehow this was the last straw. One more thing to have gone wrong, one more thing to think about when she couldn’t.

“I’m…I’m…” Suddenly he was a blur, and she was humiliated to realize she was crying in front of this stranger. “Fine,” she managed to say.

“No,” he said, stepping forward, taking advantage of her nerveless hand to come uninvited into her house and to close the door behind them. “You aren’t.”

The next thing she knew, she was engulfed in powerful arms and flannel shirt, smelling this stranger’s sweat and deodorant and aftershave, her wet cheek pressed to his chest.

And did she, dignified, gracious but reserved, wrench free and demand he leave?

No. She buried her face in that comforting flannel and let herself sob.

CHAPTER TWO

LOGAN CARR MADE SOOTHING sounds while he held the gorgeous blonde.

What in hell? he thought with wry amusement. His face wasn’t pretty, but didn’t usually inspire women to burst into tears.

When she didn’t quiet down, he became worried. Should he be calling the cops? An ambulance? “Can you tell me what’s wrong?” he finally asked.

She wailed something about her daughter hating her. Logan assumed she was Ryan Grant’s sister. There’d been an indefinable something about her that reminded him of Ryan. Logan didn’t know her brother that well, but now he tried to remember what Ryan had said about her.

She was divorced, or at least separated. Logan remembered Ryan banging around one day on a work site, growling under his breath about his goddamn stubborn sister who was buying a house that would fall down on top of her idiotic head any day. Logan had paused, a screwdriver in his hand, and asked why she was buying the place. The gist, as he recalled, was that she’d left her bastard of a husband and she claimed this was all she could afford without asking for help either from him—or her own brother—which she refused to do.

“I wouldn’t give a damn,” Ryan had concluded viciously, “except that the roof will fall on my niece’s head, too. Why couldn’t she buy a nice condo?” he had asked in appeal.

Personally, Logan didn’t blame her. He liked the looks of this place. It was worth a little work.

He kept patting her back and waiting while her sobs became gulps and then sniffles. Logan knew the exact moment when she realized she was crying all over a man she didn’t know.

Her body went very still, stiffened, and then she all but leaped back. “Oh, no! I must look…” She scrubbed frantically at her wet cheeks. “I’m so sorry!”

“I invited myself in,” he reminded her. Sticking his hands in his pockets, he ostentatiously glanced around, admiring the French doors leading into the living room, the staircase, the arched doorway to the kitchen. “Nice place,” he added.

“If you’ll excuse me a moment, I’ll just, um…”

The doorknob rattled behind them, and the door swung open.

“Helen!” exclaimed his bedraggled blonde. “Thank goodness! This is Mister, um… The cabinetmaker. Will you show him the kitchen while I…” She was already fleeing up the stairs.

The redhead who’d come in with the child gazed in surprise after her…friend? Sister? Roommate? He had no idea.

“I didn’t beat her,” he said, trying to look harmless.

She gave him a distracted look. “No, she’s… It’s been an awful day. We should have called you, but we forgot you were coming.”

“Logan Carr,” he said, extending his hand.

“Helen Schaefer.” She shook his hand. “This is Ginny.”

“Ah.” How did you politely say, And who the hell are you?

“Ginny, did you want to watch television while I show Mr. Carr the kitchen?”

The waif shook her head hard, her big eyes fixed suspiciously on him.

Helen Schaefer didn’t look so hot, either, he noted, which made him wonder anew what had happened to upset both women so much. Her face was too pale under skillfully applied makeup, the shadows beneath her eyes purple. He’d felt the tremor in her hand, saw the gentleness with which she stroked her daughter’s head.

“Lead on,” Logan said, wishing the classy blonde hadn’t skipped. He picked up his clipboard from the step where he’d dropped it earlier.

The kitchen had potential and not much else. The vast floor space was wasted, as was typical for a house of this era. Cabinets had been added in about the 1940s, if he was any judge. Which meant drawers didn’t glide on runners, cabinets were deep spaces where you could lose a kid the size of this Ginny, and they stretched to the ten-foot ceiling, the upper ones useful only for stowing stuff that ten years later you were surprised to discover you still owned.

“We can’t afford to replace those,” the redhead told him. “What we’re thinking is that we can make use of this corner.” She gestured.

One area held a table, set with pretty quilted placemats. The corner she had indicated currently had a cart and oldish microwave, an extra chair and a lot of nothing.

Logan considered. They didn’t want to replace their crappy, inadequate kitchen cupboards. Instead, they had in mind him building something that didn’t match in this corner.

Go figure.

“Make use in what way?” he asked politely.

Apparently reading his mind, she smiled with the first spark of life—and amusement—he’d seen in her.

“Kathleen and I have started a business together. We’ve only made a few sales—this is really at the ground floor—but unfortunately it’s taking over the kitchen, and we all have to live here, too.”

“All?” he asked, hoping he didn’t seem nosy.

“Kathleen owns the house,” she explained, “but Ginny and I live here, too, along with another roommate, Jo, and Kathleen’s daughter Emma.”

The one who hated her, he presumed.

And who was Joe, lucky bastard, living with a couple of beautiful women? Unless they were lesbians and Joe was gay.

Nah. Logan couldn’t imagine the woman who’d tumbled into his arms and felt so natural there as a lesbian. Unless that was why she’d left her husband…

Damn it! he thought in irritation. What difference did it make what lifestyle she’d chosen? He wasn’t courting the woman, for Pete’s sake! He was bidding to build some cabinets for her.

Period.

He cleared his throat. “What kind of business is taking over the kitchen?”

“Kathleen makes soap. I market it.”

“Soap.”

“Yeah. You know.” She gazed expectantly at him. “Bars of it. The good kind. Not the kind you buy at the grocery store.”

Personally, he bought whatever was cheap and not too smelly. Speaking of which… He inhaled experimentally. The kitchen was fragrant. He’d vaguely thought they must have been baking earlier, but the overall impression wasn’t of food, but more…flowery.

“Soap-making,” he repeated, and contemplated the corner. “Tell me what it involves.”

They both turned at the sound of a footstep. Looking like a different woman, Kathleen came into the kitchen.

Her face was expertly made up, her thick golden hair loosely French braided. She wore a long, black, knit skirt that clung to her hips and thighs, and over it a simple T-shirt in a vivid shade of aqua. She looked like a million dollars.

“I’m back,” she said with a warm but somehow practiced smile. “Ready to beg your pardon for forgetting you were coming, and then weeping all over you.”

Her face was maybe still a little puffy, her eyes a little red. Even so, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, from her high graceful forehead to pronounced cheekbones and a full, sensuous mouth. She had the kind of translucent skin, faintly touched with freckles, that gives a woman an ageless quality. He couldn’t tell if she was twenty-five or forty. Either way, her face would have looked fine on the cover of one of those fashion magazines.

“Ms. Schaefer was just telling me about the soap-making,” he said. “I gather you work out of the house.”

“We both have real jobs, too,” Helen Schaefer said almost apologetically, “but we have faith this will take off.”

Kathleen Monroe smelled good, Logan discovered when she stopped beside him. The scent was citrus, a little tart but also delicious. He wanted to bury his face in her hair.

Cabinets, he reminded himself. He was here to make a bid. Not make a move on a woman.

They showed him their supplies and the small pantry, which currently held row upon row of bars of soap, all “curing” according to them. Here was where the smell emanated from. Shelves and the single countertop overflowed, and more circled the floor.

There were long square-edged “loaves” that would be sliced into bars, according to Kathleen. Some of these were clear but vividly colored, sea-green or shocking pink or rainbow streaked. Others were cloudy, dark-flecked and oatmeal colored, another a deep, speckled plum. Some soaps, looking more conventional, had been molded into ovals and rounds, with intricate designs of flowers and leaves pressed into the tops. They were beautiful, he realized, bemused. Not delicate and feminine, but solid and colorful and even sensual. He resisted the urge to touch or bend over to sniff individual bars.

The fragrance swelled in this tiny enclosed area, a symphony where a few notes strummed on a guitar would have been plenty. Cinnamon and flowers and God knew what swirled together to overload his nose.

As he backed out, the two women laughed.

“Gets to you, doesn’t it?” Helen asked.

“Ventilation,” Logan said. “You’ll want a fan out here and maybe another one in the pantry.”

“That would be great,” Kathleen agreed. “Sometimes it’s hard to eat, oh, say, Thai food when what you’re smelling are vanilla and cinnamon.”

He took out his clipboard and started to make notes: broad, double sinks, a stove top, storage for the tools of soap making: scales, jugs and huge pots and measuring cups and spoons.

“Oh, and molds,” Kathleen said, her face animated. She opened a kitchen cupboard so he could see the odd conglomeration of containers used to mold soap, some—he guessed—meant for the purpose, others as simple as ice cube trays, muffin tins and boxes. “A cupboard with nooks designed specifically for the molds would be great.”

Her main need, he gathered, was for work and storage space. He took his tape measure from his belt and began making notes while they watched, the kid still clinging to mom and staring as if she thought he was an ax murderer.

“Get my name from Ryan?” he asked casually.

“He says you’re the best,” Kathleen said.

“Oh, is Ryan a friend of yours?” the redhead asked. “He’s marrying Jo.”

Joe? The tape measure strung on the floor, Logan turned to see if they were pulling his leg.

Both laughed. “J-O,” Kathleen told him kindly. “Short for Josephine.”

Ah. Satisfied, he jotted down the measurement.

“So, you didn’t put me on your calendar,” he remarked.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her flush.

“I did. But the day went hayfire from the get-go.”

The kid decided, at last, to speak. In a loud, clear voice, she said, “I thought Emma was dead. She fell on the floor and there was blood and she didn’t talk to me.”

“Hush,” her mother murmured.

“My daughter fainted and hit her head,” Kathleen said. “We had an ambulance here and everything. I just got back from the hospital. I’m sorry! It was scary, and everything else just left my mind.”

“She okay?”

“Just has a concussion. They’re keeping her overnight.”

Uh-huh. She’d fallen apart because her daughter had bumped her head.

He wasn’t buying.

Writing down another measurement, he asked, “How old is she?”

“Sixteen. Almost seventeen.”

A teenager. Well, that explained the “she hates me” part. It also upped his estimate of her mom’s age. Kathleen Monroe had to be mid-thirties, at least.

Satisfied with his measurements, Logan turned to them. “Let’s talk about wood and styles.”

They sat at the kitchen table. Ginny at last became bored and, after a murmured consultation with her mother, wandered away. A moment later, canned voices came from the living room.

He nodded after her. “How old is she?”

“Ginny just turned six. She’s in first grade.”

He hadn’t been around children enough to judge ages. Opening his clipboard, Logan took out a sheaf of pictures.

They discussed panel doors versus plain, maple versus oak, open shelves versus ones hidden behind cupboard doors.

As expensive as Kathleen Monroe looked, Logan half expected her to choose something fancy: mahogany with gothic panels and glossy finish, maybe.

Instead she went for a simple Shaker style in a warm brown maple. “I want it to suit the era of the house,” she explained. “Later, when—if—I can afford it, we’ll re-do the rest of the kitchen to match.”

He sketched out an L shape of cabinets to fit in the corner, then lightly turned it into a U. “A peninsula there,” he said, pointing, “would visually separate your work area from the dining area. Plus, it would give you more counter space. You could have suspended shelves or cabinets from the ceiling, too.”

“Um…” Kathleen frowned into space. “It sounds wonderful,” she finally decided, “but it may be beyond my means. This may all be beyond my means,” she admitted frankly. “We looked at ready-made cabinets at Home Depot and Lowe’s, but Ryan thought we could do as well going to you, plus you could configure them more specifically for our needs.”

“I’ll do my best,” he promised, standing. “I’ll have the bid to you in a couple of days.”

The bottom line would be affordable, he already knew, even if he took a dive on the job. He wanted to help these women achieve their dream, he wanted to know why Kathleen Monroe had been sobbing—and he wanted to find out what a woman that classy would feel like in his arms when she wasn’t crying her heart out.

Even if that didn’t have a damn thing to do with building cabinets.

EMMA LAY IN THE DARK, feeling the sugar trickling into her body. It was like…like sipping on soda pop nonstop, all day long, until you ballooned with fat. She could feel it sliding through her veins, cool and sticky. Every time a bag emptied, somebody came and changed it.

She hated the nurses who had put the IV needle back in three times, and even more the ones who had finally tied her hands to the bars of the hospital bed so she couldn’t tear it out again.

But most of all, so much it corroded her belly, she hated her mother for letting them do this. For making them do it. Mom could have said, “I’m taking her home.” She could have told them not to force calories on her.

Instead, she was committing her own daughter to a jail. Just because Emma wouldn’t stuff her face.

She was, like, almost at a perfect weight. She used to think eighty pounds would be good, but she had still been pudgy when she got there. So she made her goal seventy-five. Or less. Less would be good. It would give her some room to go up a pound or two and not freak so much.

She didn’t even know why she was surprised. Mom wanted to control her, and food had become their main battlefield. It was so weird, because Emma knew her mother used to think she was fat. Her eyebrows arching disdainfully, she’d say, “Emma, do you really need a second serving?” Or, “Don’t you think carrots would be better for your figure than potato chips?”

She liked to give these little mother-daughter lectures, too. She’d sit on Emma’s bed and say, in this friendly voice, “I know you’re only twelve—” or thirteen or fourteen, the lecture didn’t change “—but pretty soon you’re going to want boys to notice you. It’s going to really matter to you if you feel plump or don’t like the way you look in cute clothes.”

What she really meant was, You embarrass your father and me. To her friends, she said with a laugh, “Emma still has some baby fat, but she’s stretching into this tall beautiful girl.” Baby fat, of course, would magically melt away. Real fat was just disgusting and stayed.