What a Man's Gotta Do

The sidewalk was looking pretty good, though.

Eddie straightened, letting his back muscles ease up some, then wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve before it froze to his forehead. Underneath the denim jacket, he had on three layers of clothes, and now he was overheated. His breath misted in front of his face as he squinted in the snowfall’s glare, taking in Mala’s neat little neighborhood, a conglomeration of one-and two-story houses, some frame, some brick, most with porches. Yards were small to average, tidy, liberally dotted with snow-flocked evergreens. Fireplace smoke ghosted from a few chimneys, teasing the almost bare limbs of all the oaks and ashes and maples, slashes of dark gray against the now crystal-blue sky. A few blocks off, a small lake, embedded in a pretty little park, twinkled in the sunlight.

It was a nice town, he supposed. If you liked that sort of thing.

From the back, he heard the kids yelling and laughing; Mala must’ve just let them out. Eddie went back to work, listening to them whooping it up over his shoveling, trying to ignore the ache of pure, unadulterated envy threatening to crush his heart. Still, it was a good thing Mala was doing, giving them the freedom to be happy in spite of what their daddy had done.

She was a good woman, he thought, almost like it was a revelation. And his thinking that had nothing to do with his breath-stealing sexual attraction to her. It had everything, however, to do with why he needed to stop thinking about sex every time he thought about Mala Koleski.

The front door opened. He bent farther over the shovel, but not before he noticed she was wearing baggy blue sweats over a gray turtleneck. She clunked down the steps in those clogs of hers, something clutched in her hand.

“Here. You might as well use these.”

Eddie looked over, noticed her hair was still damp, like she hadn’t taken the time to dry it properly. Then he saw the gloves in her hands. Turned away. “Those your husband’s?” Down the street, someone else came out of his house, shovel in tow.

“I would’ve burned them if they had been. No, they’re a pair of my father’s. He left them here a year ago. We couldn’t find them, so he got another pair. Of course, then they turned up. So, anyway…” She pushed them toward him.

They were good gloves. Pigskin, maybe, lined in fur.

He shook his head. “I can’t take those.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. What am I going to do with them?” When he didn’t reply, she added, “Borrow them, then, if I can’t dislodge that bug from your butt. But in case you haven’t noticed, this is Michigan. In November. It gets cold.”

Eddie lifted his gaze. “Says the woman standing out in twenty-degree weather with wet hair.”

Stubbornness vied with amusement in those cat’s eyes of hers, softened by the breath-cloud soft-focusing her just-washed face.

“Who’d be back inside by now if you’d stop arguing with me.”

He took the gloves, put them on. They fit perfectly.

“Thanks,” he muttered.

“You’re welcome. And thanks for shoveling. I appreciate it.”

Eddie grinned. The gloves felt real good, he had to admit. “I take it this isn’t one of your favorite chores?”

She smiled back. “You might say that—”

A child’s scream blew the moment all to hell. They both turned in time to see Lucas—at least, Eddie thought that’s who it was, it was hard to tell with all the clothes the kid had on—barreling through the side gate, bellowing his head off. Carrie followed, her hatless curls fire in the sun, yelling nearly as loudly.

Mala’s hands flew up. “Geez, Louise…what now?”

“Carrie hit me in the face with a snowball!”

“I did not! It hit your shoulder!”

“There’s snow in my eyes!”

“That’s ’cause it bounced! But I didn’t throw it at your face!” She whirled around to her mother. “I swear!”

“You’re lyin’! An’ it hurt!”

Carrie stomped her foot, her rage-red face clashing with her hair. “It did not, crybaby! The snow’s too soft to hurt!”

“All right, the both of you,” Mala said, her hips strangled by a pair of snowsuited arms, “that’s enough. Okay, honey,” she said to Lucas, cupping his head as he hung on to her for dear life. “You’ll live. But honest to Pete, Carrie, how many times have I told you not to throw snowballs at him?”

“He threw one at me first!” the girl shrieked, her arms flying.

“Did not!”

“Did so!”

“I t-told you to stop and you wouldn’t! You jus’ kept throwin’ ’em and throwin’ ’em, an’ I ast you to stop!”

Her mouth set, Mala glared at her daughter. “Carrie…?”

The ensuing silence was filled only by the sound of someone else’s shovel rasping against their sidewalk. Then, “You always take his side! Always!”

In the space of a second, Eddie saw weariness add five years to Mala’s face. “That’s not true, Carrie—”

“Yes, it is! He’s the baby, he always gets his way! Ow!”

All three faces turned in Eddie’s direction, as Carrie wiped the remains of a half-assed snowball from her shoulder, her mouth sagging open in shock as bits of snow dribbled down one cheek. “Hey! Why’d you do that?”

Eddie leaned on the shovel handle. “Did that hurt?” he asked quietly.

“N-no,” the child said, tears cresting on her lower lids. “But it wasn’t very nice.”

“No, I don’t suppose it was, was it?” he said, then straightened, tapping the shovel on the sidewalk, just once, before he said to Mala, “You got any salt? I might as well lay some down so this won’t freeze up on you all over again tonight.”

“What? Oh, uh…in the shed,” Mala said, her voice brittle, her eyes glittering. Then after a couple of beats of looking like she was going to pop, she gathered her chicks and hustled them back to the house.

In the sunlight, her drying hair was fire-shot, too.

By the time Mala got back to Eddie, a good twenty minutes later, she was downright bristling. And yes, she knew she was overreacting, but tough beans. At least she was fired up enough to be able to march into the garage and light into him before he had a chance to do that thing with his eyes that threw her so much. “What the hell’s the big idea, throwing snowballs at my kids?”

In the process of putting oil in the Camaro, Eddie raised his head and cocked one eyebrow. “Is this a delayed reaction or what?”

Unfortunately, she’d had a momentary brain cramp about the drawl, which was nearly as bad as the eye thing. Mala raised her chin. “I couldn’t say anything in front of them. Then I got tied up on the phone. Well?”

He calmly wiped the end of the funnel with a paper towel. “As I recall,” he said, twisting the car’s oil cap back on, “it was one snowball, at one kid. And it was soft as cotton, I swear.”

“That’s not the point. The point is—”

“The point is—” he slammed shut the Camaro’s hood “—their bitchin’ at each other was obviously about to drive you crazy, it was driving me crazy, and that girl of yours needs to learn it’s not all about her.”

Then he did do the eye thing and her heart knocked against her ribs. Mala crossed her arms, forced herself to stay focused. “So you decided to take matters into your own hands?”

“It worked, didn’t it? Although, I have to admit, she’s right about one thing. You definitely baby the boy too much.”

“Excuse me?” She sucked in a breath, hoping it would keep her voice steady. “He’s barely six, for the love of Mike. And what makes you an expert on raising kids?”

“Oh, don’t go getting all riled up,” Eddie said with a half grin, wiping his hands on a rag. “All I’m saying is you’re not doin’ the kid any favors by coddling him the way you do.”

“And what would you have me do? Smack him every time he cries? Punish him for something he can’t help?”

“Dammit, woman—” He’d removed his jacket, even though the garage was unheated; now Mala could see every muscle tense underneath a flannel-lined denim shirt hanging partially open over a sparkling white T-shirt. He tossed the rag onto a nearby workbench, then looked back at her, his darkened gaze searing into hers. “Of course not! Okay, so maybe I don’t know anything about raising kids, but I sure as hell know how mean they can be. And if Lucas cries as much at school as I hear him when I’m around here, life must be hell for him on the playground.”

Oh, dear God. It wasn’t irritation with a whiny kid that had prompted his unsought advice, she suddenly realized, but something far deeper. And far, far too complicated for her to deal with right now, if ever. Especially with someone who wouldn’t be around, who was more than willing to tell her where she was going wrong but who couldn’t be bothered with putting his theories to the test in a real-life situation. She waited a beat, then said, “You know what you said about keeping to yourself? Maybe this is a good time to remember that—”

“Mama!”

Mala whirled around to the garage opening, hugging herself against the cold. “What?”

“Grandma called,” Carrie yelled through the barely cracked open kitchen door. “She’s coming over.”

Just what she needed. Then she looked back at Eddie, whose now shuttered features set off an alarm in her brain that somehow their exchange had shaken him as much as it had her. But hey—who’d started this, anyway? Not only that, but in the week since his return, Mala had learned nothing more about Eddie King than she’d known before. By mutual consent, true—she was no more inclined to pry than he was to divulge—but the point was, since she had no idea what, if any, his sore spots were, she refused to be held accountable for accidentally hitting a bull’s-eye or two.

She also refused to apologize for who her children were.

“Look,” she said, “I know Lucas is overly sensitive. I know sometimes Carrie could give Imelda Marcos a run for her money. And God knows there are times when I’m tempted to believe I’m the worst, most ineffectual mother in the universe. But you know what? Lucas is one of the kindest children I’ve ever known. And as for Carrie…well, at least I can sleep at night knowing that nobody, but nobody’s ever gonna walk all over my little girl.”

Without waiting for a response, she stomped out of the garage, her arms tightly crossed over her ribs as she plowed across the snowy yard to the house.

Some four hours later, Mala glowered at the computer screen, willing her head to stop throbbing. The day had not gotten any better after the snowball incident. Not for her, at least. Oh, the kids had made up, per usual, which would have been fine except that, since they decided it was too cold to stay outside and the snow was too “mushy” to make a snowman, anyways, they’d been chasing each other around the house for the past three hours, shrieking with laughter at the tops of their extremely healthy lungs. Which meant she’d straightened up the house at least three times, not counting lunch, since she kept expecting her mother to arrive at any minute, which she hadn’t yet done. And which meant Mala hadn’t gotten an ounce of productive work done the entire day.

Especially as her mind simply would not let go of the Eddie King Quandary. The more she thought about it, the more confused she got. About the way her heart was still doing a boogie and a half at that raw, vulnerable look in his eyes. About the fact that she had to admit, now that sufficient time had passed for her to get over herself, that he’d been right, dammit. Especially about Lucas.

Still, the man had no business sticking in his nose like that. And if he ever did it again, he was gonna find himself looking for a new place to live, boy.

Maybe.

She thought of her shoveled sidewalk and sighed.

God knew, people butted into Mala’s life all the time. She was hardly raising her kids alone, not with her parents living barely ten blocks away and her brother and Sophie taking the kids off her hands at least once a week to hang out with their adopted brood of five. But they were family, part of a unit whose members were SuperGlued together; this guy wasn’t, and never would be, part of anything. Eddie King was the kind of man who might be dependable, in his own weird way, but there was no getting around the fact that he was still a baggage-laden commitment-phobe who substituted charm for sincerity.

He was also the kind of man who’d spend a good two hours shoveling her sidewalk, her driveway and a fair portion of old Mrs. Arnold’s sidewalk next door as well. Without being asked.

Who’d say he wasn’t a kid person, yet would care enough to show concern for a little boy’s self-esteem, even though he had to know he was taking his life in his hands by confronting said child’s mother about the issue.

But who wasn’t the least bit afraid to confront said child’s mother, either.

And then there was the little sidebar dealie of his being the first man since Scott who made her skin sizzle when she got within ten feet of him.

Her hormones strrretched and yawned and said, groggily, “You rang?”

Yeah, well, she knew all about sizzling skin and where that led.

Mala lobbed a pencil across the room, then sank her chin in her palm and stared out the window, watching the sun flash off the icicles suspended from her next-door neighbor’s eaves as she admitted to herself that the one hitch in her decision not to put herself through the dating/courting/marriage wringer again was that, contrary to popular belief, she wasn’t dead. In fact, if recent physical stirrings could be believed, she was a helluva lot more alive than she’d thought. However, she had far too much sense—

Another roar of shrill laughter shot down the far-too-short hall.

—not to mention children, to let herself be bossed around by a few clueless hormones. Loud and insistent though they might be.

“Ooooh, Lucas—you are gonna be in so much trouble!”

Mala shut her eyes and the hormones hobbled back to their cold, airless cell. To the casual observer, the downstairs apartment was more than big enough—besides the living room, there were three bedrooms, two baths, the eat-in kitchen and the office. Today, it seemed about as big as a matchbox. And four times as suffocating.

Something thudded out in the living room. The doorbell rang. The phone rang. Lucas screamed. Carrie remonstrated. Lucas screamed more loudly, the sound escalating as he approached the office, which meant he was ambulatory at least. The phone rang again; Mala picked it up.

“Grandma’s here!” came Carrie’s yell from down the hall.

“I slipped and bumped my head!” Lucas wailed. “Kiss it!”

“Lucas, shush!” She kissed his head, said “hello?” but got nothing for her trouble except a dial tone.

“Ma-ma! Grandma’s here!”

Her headache escalated to nuclear proportions.

Like a dog burying its bone, Bev Koleski wiped her booted feet about a hundred times on Mala’s doormat before stepping inside, chattering to the kids. Mala glanced out at the curb. No car.

“You walked?”

“Well, of course I walked,” her mother said as she began shedding layers of clothes—scarf, gloves, knit hat, down coat, cardigan, a second sweater and, at last, the wiped-to-death boots—neatly placing each item on or by the mirrored coatrack next to the front door. Then she tugged down a rust-colored turtleneck that she’d been swearing for ten years must’ve shrunk in the wash over fearsome, polyester-ized hips. The women in Mala’s family were not petite. “Carrie, honey—go put on the kettle for me. Yes, you, too,” she added to Lucas, whose ten-second old boo-boo had already been consigned to oblivion, then said to Mala as the kids bunny-hopped down the hall to the kitchen, “You don’t think I’m gonna risk gettin’ in a car with the streets like this, do you?”

No, of course not. Out of the corner of her eye, Mala spied somebody’s wadded up…something draped over the banister. She sidled over, snatched up whatever it was as Bev frowned in the mirror at her somewhat lopsided hairdo, which, thanks to better living through chemistry, had been exactly the same shade of dark brown for thirty years. With a resigned sigh, she swatted at her reflection, then dug in her aircraft carrier–size vinyl purse for a pair of pink terry cloth scuffs, which dropped to the wooden floor, smack, smack. Then she squinted at Mala as she shuffled her feet into the slippers.

Oh, Lord. Here it comes.

“You look tired.”

“I’m fine, Ma.”

“Don’t lie to your mother.”

“Okay, I have a little headache. It’s nothing.”

Golden brown eyes softened in sympathy. “Kids making you nuts?”

“Not any more than Steve and I did you. And you lived.”

“Barely.” Then the eyes narrowed even more. “You doin’ okay, money-wise?”

“Yes, Ma. Picked up two new clients this week, in fact. But thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“This has nothin’ to do with confidence, and don’t get smart with me, little girl. I’m not stupid. It’s hard, raising two kids on one income. Bad enough you won’t let your father and me help out—”

“Ma. Stop.”

Bev pursed her lips. “Then why don’t you let us at least hire someone to go after the scuzzbag. Wring child support out of him if you have to.”

“And I’ve told you a million times, I don’t want Scott’s money. He’s gone, it’s over, and I don’t want anything to do with Scott Sedgewick, ever again.”

“The kids deserve a father,” her mother said.

“Not that one, they don’t.”

“Oh? You got somebody else lined up for the job?”

Mala laughed, a sound as dry as the heated air inside the house. “Damn, you’re good. I didn’t even see that one coming.”

“Took years of practice. You should take notes.”

Yeah, like maybe she should’ve taken notes on what to look for in a life partner before she let a charming smile and pretty words delude her into thinking, after years of fizzled-out relationships, that Scott had been The One. That he’d fall in love with his children, once he saw them. Managing a smile despite the fact that her heart suddenly felt like three-day-old oatmeal, Mala turned away, starting for the kitchen. Her eyes stung like hell, but damned if she was gonna cry in front of her mother. She didn’t get it, why the pain seemed to be getting sharper, not duller, as time went on.

Especially in the past week. Ever since Eddie King and his damned, vulnerable eyes and his damned, sexy-as-hell drawl and his double-damned good-enough-to-eat body moved in upstairs.

The itchy-ickies started up again.

“Hey—” Her mother snagged her arm and turned her around, then lifted one hand, gently cupped her daughter’s cheek. Mala bested her by a couple inches, but the instant she felt that soft, strong touch on her skin, she felt like a little girl again. Except, when she’d been little and innocent and trusting, her mother’s touch had always held the promise that, sooner or later, everything would be all right.

“Your father and me, we are so proud of you, baby. You and Steven both. Sometimes, Marty and me just sit at the table and talk about how lucky we were, to get a pair of kids like you two. You know that, don’t you?”

Afraid to speak, Mala only nodded.

Bev went on, now skimming Mala’s hair away from her face. “The way you take care of these kids all by yourself, run a business on your own… God knows, I don’t think I could’ve done it. But sometimes, we worry about you. That you’re lonely, y’know?”

“Ma—”

Bev’s hands came up. “Sorry, sorry. I didn’t come all the way over here to upset you.” She started toward the kitchen. “Anyway,” she glanced back over her shoulder, “I figured it probably wouldn’t hurt to have someone around to keep the kids out of your hair for a couple of hours, so you could get a little work done. We’ll bake cookies or somethin’. Oh, hell—you haven’t had a chance to clean the living room in a while, huh?”

Oh, hell, was right. Mala dashed into the living room right behind her mother, snatching up whatever she could from the most recent layer of kid-generated debris before her mother got a chance. She just didn’t get it—she and Steve had never dared dump stuff all over the place the way her two did. And it wasn’t as if she didn’t get after them. It just never seemed to take.

“So. Is he here?”

Slightly out of breath, Mala glanced over at her mother, who was about to vanish behind the free-standing sofa. Oh, crud…now what do you suppose was back there? “He, who?”

“Your new tenant.”

“Uh-uh. He went out a couple hours ago.”

Like a bat out of hell, actually.

Bev stopped, her arms full of assorted sweaters, books and a two-foot tall inflatable dinosaur. “In this weather?”

“He’s a big boy, Ma. He’ll manage.”

Her mother gave her a look, then swooped behind the sofa. Then Mala heard, “He’s real good, let me tell you,” followed by her mother’s reddened face as she struggled back up.

“Good?”

Bev gave her a “keep up” look. “Yeah, good. As in, cooking. Your father and I were up to Galen’s Saturday night, figuring we should give it a try, although your father wasn’t all that sure he wanted to, since you know how crazy he is about Galen’s ravioli. Where do you want these?” she said, holding up a bunch of socks. Mala grabbed them out of her mother’s hand. A good half dozen, none of them matching. “Anyway,” her mother went on, “I had the lasagna, but I made your father have the grilled tuna, since the doctor told him he needed more fish in his diet, and they were both out of this world. Between you and me, maybe even a little better than Galen’s.”

“Really?”

“Okay, maybe not better, but just as good. He uses slightly different seasonings or something. But when we told the waitress—it was Hannah Braden that night, you know, Rod and Nancy Braden’s girl? I mean, isn’t that something, with all that money they have, she doesn’t think she’s too good to wait tables to earn her own pocket money.”

“Ma-aa? Geez.”

Bev swatted at her. “So, anyway, when we told her we wanted to thank him personally, she said she was sorry, but he wouldn’t come out front for anybody. Can you imagine that?”

Mala bent over the coffee table to clear away the same assorted cups and plates she’d already cleared twice today. “Eddie prefers to keep to himself. That’s all.”

“Still?”

The thin, annoying whine of the teakettle pierced through the whoosh of the heat pumping through the floor vent. Mala straightened, swiping back a hank of her hair with her wrist. “What do you mean, still?”

“Nana Bev!”

“I know, honey,” Bev called over her shoulder. “And don’t you dare touch it—I’ll be there in a sec.” Then to Mala, “From when he was here before, when you were still in high school. Mind you, I only saw him the one time, but the way he hung back, that stay-away-from-me look on his face…” She shook her head.

“I had no idea you even knew who he was.”

“Which just goes to show there’s a lot about your old mother you don’t know,” Bev said. Mala rolled her eyes. “Anyway, he was staying with Molly and Jervis Turner, y’know—”

Yes, that much she knew.

“—and Jervis occasionally did some work for your father, when he got more calls than he could handle. He couldn’t handle the complicated stuff, but he was fine when it came to switching out plugs or installing new ceiling fans, things like that. Anyway, this was when I was still going into your father’s office a couple days a week to do the books. Jervis came by for his paycheck, and he had Eddie with him. Jervis wasn’t much of a talker, either, but he said the boy was staying with them until he finished out school, that his mother had died when the kid was six, and that the kid’d lived with various and assorted relatives down south since then. And that Molly and him might’ve taken the kid on sooner if anybody’d bothered to ask. Since you never said anything about him, I figured he wasn’t part of your group.”

Mala forced her knotted hand to relax, then shook her head. “By his own choice,” she said, remembering how Eddie had rebuffed everyone’s overtures. Not rudely, exactly. But it hadn’t taken long for everyone to get the hint. For a while, Mala had regretted not trying harder—even as wrapped up as she’d been in her own hectic life, she’d sensed Eddie’s hanging back was actually a challenge, seeing if anyone would care enough to work for his friendship. But he’d scared her, she realized, even then. So she hadn’t met his challenge.