Single Mum Seeking...

A moment of peace. She slipped into a chair and smiled across the table at him.

“You look like a woman expecting a busy day,” he noted, smiling back at her and noticing how the morning light set off the faint sprinkling of freckles that still decorated her pretty face.

She nodded. “It’s my biggest day ever. I’ve got to get cakes to the charity auction at the Lodge, I’ve got cakes due for six parties, I’ve got a huge order, an engagement party at the country club today at three. They want 125 mini Bundt cakes. I was planning to get started on them last night, but after the baby riot, I just didn’t have the energy.” She shook her head. “As soon as Trini gets here, we’ll push the ‘on’ switch and we won’t turn it off until we’re done.”

He grinned at her. “You look like you relish the whole thing. Or am I reading you wrong?”

“You’ve got it right.” She gave him a warm look. “I really appreciate you being here to help me last night,” she said, shaking her head as she remembered the madness. “That was so crazy.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, polishing off the last piece of Lemon Delight. “But nobody got hurt. It all turned out all right.”

She nodded, looking at him, at his dark, curly hair, at his calm, honest face. She felt a surge of affection for him, and that made her frown. They’d been such good friends at one point, but she hardly knew anything about what he’d been doing lately. He’d walked out of her life at the same time Brad had. Both her best friends had deserted her in one way or another.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Yeah, right.

“So the way I understand it,” she said, leaning forward, “you’ve been in Singapore for the last year or so.”

“That’s right.”

“Are you back for good?”

“Uh...” He grimaced. “Hard to say. I’ve got some options. Haven’t decided what I want to do.”

She thought about that for a moment. Did Connor ever have a solid plan? Or was it just that he kept his feelings close to the vest? She couldn’t tell at this point. She resented the way he’d walked off over a year ago, but that didn’t mean she didn’t still love him to death.

Best friends. Right?

She narrowed her eyes, then asked brightly, “How about getting married?”

He looked at her as though she’d suddenly gone insane. “What? Married? Who to?”

She laughed. She could read his mind. He thought she was trying out a brand-new idea and he was ready to panic. “Not to me, silly. To someone you love. Someone who will enhance your life.”

“Oh.” He still looked uncomfortable.

“I’m serious. You should get married. You could use some stability in your life. A sense of purpose.” She shrugged, feeling silly.

Who was she to give this sort of advice? Not only was she a failure at marriage, but she’d turned out to be a pretty lousy judge of character, too. “Someone to love,” she added lamely.

His blue eyes were hooded as he gazed at her. “How do you know I don’t have all those things right now?”

She studied his handsome face and shook her head. “I don’t see it. To me, you look like the same old Connor, always chasing the next good time. Show me how I’m wrong.”

She knew she was getting a little personal, but she was feeling a little confused about him right now. What was he doing here? Why was he sticking around?

In the bright light of day she thought she could see things more clearly, and that fresh sight told her he’d come with a goal in mind. If he’d just wanted to see her, make a visit, he’d have called ahead. No, Brad had sent him. Coming face-to-face in the hotel dining room had been a fluke. But what did Brad have in mind? Why didn’t Connor just deliver the message and go?

She was beginning to feel annoyed with him. Actually she was becoming annoyed with everything. Something was off-kilter and her day was beginning to stretch out ominously before her.

“Okay, let’s stop avoiding the real issue here.” She stared at him coolly. “No more denials. What does Brad really want?”

CHAPTER FOUR

“BRAD?”

Jill saw the shift in Connor’s eyes. He didn’t want to talk about this right now. He was perfectly ready to avoid the issue again. Well, too bad. She didn’t have all the time in the world. It was now or never.

“Yes, Brad. You remember him. My ex-husband. The father of my children. The man who was once my entire life.”

“Oh, yeah. That guy.”

She frowned. He was still being evasive. She locked her fingers together and pulled.

“So, what does he want?” she insisted.

Connor looked at her and began to smile. “What do you think Brad wants? He always wants more than his share. And he usually gets it.”

She shook her head, surprised, then laughed softly. “You do know him well, don’t you?”

Connor’s smile faded. He glanced around the kitchen, looking uncomfortable. “Does he have visitation rights to the boys? Does he come up here to see them or does he...?”

“No,” she said quickly. “He’s never seen them.”

For once, she’d shocked him. His face showed it clearly. “Never seen his own kids? Why? Do you have a court injunction or...?”

The pain of it all would bring her down if she let it. She couldn’t do that. She held her head high and met his gaze directly.

“He doesn’t want to see them. Don’t you know that? Didn’t he ever tell you why he wanted the divorce?”

Connor shook his head slowly. “Tell me,” he said softly.

She took a deep breath. “When Brad asked me to marry him, he told me he wanted a partner. He was going to start his own business and he wanted someone as committed to it as he was, someone who would stand by him and help him succeed. I entered into that project joyfully.”

Connor nodded. He remembered that as well. He’d been there. He’d worked right along with them. They’d spent hours together brainstorming ideas, trying out options, failing and trying again. They’d camped out in sleeping bags when they first opened their office. They’d been so young and so naive. They thought they could change the world—or at least their little corner of it. They’d invented new ways of doing things and found a way to make it pay. It had been a lot of hard work, but they’d had a lot of fun along the way. That time seemed a million miles away now.

“I knew Brad didn’t want children, but I brushed that aside. I was so sure he would change his mind as time went by. We worked very, very hard and we did really well together. The business was a huge success. Then I got pregnant.”

She saw the question in his eyes and she shook her head. “No, it was purely and simply an accident.”

She bit her lip and looked toward the window for a moment, steadying her voice.

“But I never dreamed Brad would reject it so totally. He just wouldn’t accept it.” She looked back into his eyes, searching for understanding. “I thought we could work things out. After all, we loved each other. These things happen in life. You deal with them. You make adjustments. You move on.”

“Not Brad,” he guessed.

“No. Not Brad.” She shrugged. “He said, get rid of them.”

He drew in a sharp breath. It was almost a gasp. She could hear it in the silence of the kitchen, and she winced.

“And you said?”

She shrugged again. “I’d rather die.”

Connor nodded. He knew her well enough to know that was the truth. What the hell was Brad thinking?

“Suddenly he was like a stranger to me. He just shut the door. He went down to Portland to open up a branch office for our business. I thought he would think it over and come back and...” She gave him a significant look. “But he never came back. He began to make the branch office his headquarters. Then you showed up and told me he wanted a divorce.”

Connor nodded. His voice was low and gruff as he asked her, “Do you want him back?”

She had to think about that one. If she was honest, she would have to admit there was a part of her—a part she wasn’t very proud of—that would do almost anything to get him back. Anything but the one thing he asked for.

She stared at him and wondered how much she should tell him. He was obviously surprised to know about how little Brad cared about his sons. A normal man would care. So Brad had turned out to be not very normal. That was her mistake. She should have realized that and never married him in the first place.

She also had to live with the fact that he was getting worse and worse about paying child support. There were so many promises—and then so many excuses. What there wasn’t a lot of was money.

The business was floundering, he said. He was trying as hard as he could, but the profits weren’t rolling in like they used to in the old days—when she was doing half the work. Of course, he didn’t mention that. He didn’t want her anywhere near the business anymore.

She knew he resented having to give her anything. After all, he’d given her the house—not that it was paid off. Still, it had been what she wanted, what she felt she had to have to keep a stable environment for the boys.

But now she was having a hard time making the mortgage payments. She had to make a go of her cake business, or else she would have to go back to work and leave the boys with a babysitter. She was running out of time.

Time to build her business up to where it could pay for itself. Time to stabilize the mortgage situation before the bank came down on her. Time to get the boys old enough so that when she did have to go for a real, paying job, it wouldn’t break her heart to leave them with strangers.

So, yes. What Brad wanted now mattered. Had he gone through a transformation? Had he come up with second thoughts and decided to become a friend to the family? Or was it all more excuses about what he couldn’t do instead of what he could? Women with husbands in a stable situation didn’t realize how lucky they were.

Funny. Sometimes it almost seemed as though Brad had screwed up her marriage and now he wanted to screw up her single life as well.

She shook her head slowly. “I want my life back,” she admitted. “I want the life I had when I had a loving husband. I want my babies to have their father. But I don’t see how that can ever happen.”

Her eyes stung and she blinked quickly to make sure no tears dared show up.

“Unless...” She looked up into Connor’s eyes. “Unless you have a message from Brad that he wants it to happen, too.”

Whistling in the wind. She knew how useless that was. She gave Connor a shaky smile, basically absolving him of all guilt in the matter. She saw the look in his eyes. He felt sorry for her. She cringed inside. She didn’t want pity.

“Don’t worry. I don’t expect that. But I do want to know what he sent you for.”

Connor shook his head. Obviously he had nothing to give her. So Brad must have sent him on a scouting expedition, right? To see if she was surviving. To see if she was ready to hoist the white flag and admit he was right and she was wrong. She couldn’t make it on her own after all. She should have listened to him. And now, she should knuckle under and take his advice and give it all up.

She bit her lip. She wasn’t disappointed, exactly. She knew the score. But she was bummed out and it didn’t help her outlook on the day.

A timer went off and she hopped up to check on her cakes. This was where she belonged, this was where she knew what she was doing. The realm of human emotions was too treacherous. She would take her chances with the baked goods.

* * *

Connor watched her getting busy again and he wished he could find some way to help her deal with the truth—that Brad didn’t want her. He couldn’t say it might never happen. Brad could change his mind. But right now, he didn’t want Jill at all. What he wanted was to be totally free of her. At least, that was how he’d presented things a few days ago when they’d talked.

Brad wanted that, and he wanted her to give up her remaining interest in the company. That was the message he was supposed to make her listen to. That was the message he just couldn’t bring himself to tell her. Maybe later.

He took his cup to the sink, rinsed it out and headed back into the living room. He was folding up the covers he’d used when the front door opened and a young woman hurried in.

Connor looked up and started to smile. It was Sara Darling, Jill’s sister, and she stopped dead when she saw who had been sleeping on her sister’s couch.

“You!” she said accusingly, and he found himself backing up, just from the fire in her eyes.

He knew that Sara and Jill were very close, but he also knew they tended to see things very differently. Both were beautiful. Where Jill had a head full of crazy curls that made you want to kiss her a lot, Sara wore her blond hair slicked back and sleek, making her look efficient and professional. Today she wore a slim tan linen suit with a pale peach blouse and nude heels and she looked as though she was about to gavel an important business meeting to order.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded of him. “Oh, brother. I should have known you’d show up. Let a woman be vulnerable and alone and it’s like sharks smelling blood in the water.”

“Hey,” he protested, surprised. He’d always been friendly with this woman in the past. “That’s a bit harsh.”

“Harsh? You want to see harsh?”

He blanched. “Not really.”

Okay, so Sara was being extra protective of her sister. He got it. But she’d never looked on him as a bad guy before. Why now? He tried a tentative smile.

“Hey, Sara. Nice to see you.”

She was still frowning fiercely. “You have no right to complicate Jill’s life.”

He frowned, too, but in a more puzzled way. That was actually not what he wanted to do, either. But it seemed he was right. Sara was circling the wagons around her sister. How to convince her she didn’t need to do that with him?

“Listen, staying for the night wasn’t how I planned this.”

“I’ll bet.” She had her arms crossed and looked very intimidating. “Just what did you have in mind, Casanova?”

What? Did she really think he was hovering around in order to catch Jill in an emotional state? If only! He wanted to laugh at her but he knew that would only infuriate her further.

“Listen, I saved your sister from a blind date gone horribly wrong. Seriously. Do you know the guy she went out with?”

Sara shook her head, looking doubtful.

“I think his name was Karl.”

She shook her head again.

“Well, if you knew him, you’d see why Jill needed rescuing. He was flamboyantly wrong for her.”

“Okay.” Sara looked a little less intimidating. “Good. I’m glad you were there to help her out.”

He breathed a sigh of relief. She was approachable after all.

“So I brought her back here, planning to drop her off and come back to see her in the morning, but there was a riot going on in the house. The twins had taken the babysitter hostage. I had to stay and help Jill regain the high ground. There was no choice.”

It was as though she hadn’t heard a word he’d said. She paced slowly back and forth in front of him, glaring like a tiger. It was evident she thought he was exaggerating and she’d already gone back to the root of the problem.

“So...what’s the deal?” she said, challenging him with her look. “Brad sent you, didn’t he?”

Uh-oh. He didn’t want to go there if he could help it. He gave her a fed-up look. “Why does everyone assume I can’t make a move on my own?”

She glared all the harder. “If he’s trying to get her to come back to him, you can tell him...”

He held up a hand to stop her. It was time to nip this supposition in the bud. “Sara, no. Brad is not trying to get her back.”

“Oh.” Her look was pure sarcasm. “So the new honey is still hanging around?”

He ran his fingers through his thick, curly hair and grimaced. “Actually I think that was two or three honeys ago,” he muttered, mostly to himself. “But take my word for it, Brad isn’t looking for forgiveness. Not yet, anyway.”

Her dark eyes flared with outrage, but she kept her anger at a slow simmer. “That’s our Brad. Trust him to make life and everything in it all about him and no one else.”

He nodded. That was one point they could agree on. “Brad does like to have things go his way.”

Sara’s gaze had fallen on the plastic bag of items picked up in the yard. She scowled, touching it with the toe of her shoe.

“What’s all this?”

“Oh. Uh. I left it there. I’ll get it....”

She looked up in horror. “What are you doing, moving in?”

Now he couldn’t help it. He had to laugh. “Sara, you don’t need to hate me. I’m not the enemy.”

“Really? What are you, then?”

“A friend.” He tried to look earnest. He’d always thought Sara liked him well enough. He certainly hadn’t expected to be attacked with guns blazing this way. “I’m Jill’s friend. And I really want what’s best for her.”

“Sorry, Connor. You can’t be a true friend to Jill while you’re still any sort of friend to Brad. It won’t work.”

His head went back and he winced. “That’s a little rigid, don’t you think?”

She moved closer, glancing toward the kitchen to make sure they weren’t being overheard. “If you’d seen what she’s gone through over this last year or so, you might change your tune.”

“What?” He caught her by the upper arm. “What happened?”

She shook her head, looking away.

“Has Brad been here to see her?”

She looked up at him. “Not that I know of. But he manages to make life miserable for her by long distance.”

He frowned, wishing she would be more specific.

She looked at him, shook her head and her shoulders drooped. All her animosity had drained away and tears rimmed her eyes. “Oh, Connor, she deserves so much better. If you could see how hard she works... And every time she turns around, there’s some new obstacle thrown in her path. I just can’t stand it anymore. It’s not fair.”

She pulled away and he let her go. And now he was the one whose emotions were roiling. Damn Brad, anyway. Why couldn’t he just leave her alone?

He ran his hand through his hair again, tempted to rip chunks of it out in frustration. He had to get out of here. If he wasn’t careful, he would get caught up in the need to protect Jill. From what? He wasn’t even sure. Life, probably. Just life. As Sara had said, it wasn’t fair. But it also wasn’t his fight. No, he had to go.

He would drive back to his hotel, check out and head for Portland. He would tell Brad he couldn’t help him and advise him to leave Jill alone. Maybe he would even tell his old friend what he really thought of him. It was way past time to do that.

* * *

Jill was in a hurry and things weren’t working out. She had Tanner dressed in his little play suit, but she couldn’t catch Timmy, and now he was streaking around the room, just out of her reach, laughing uproariously.

“Timmy!” she ordered. “You stop right there.”

Fat chance of that. He rolled under the bed and giggled as she reached under, trying to grab him.

“You come out of there, you rascal.”

She made a lucky grab and caught his foot and pulled him out, disarming grin and all. “Oh, you little munchkin,” she cried, but she pulled him into her arms and held him tightly. Her boys were so precious to her. She’d given up a lot to make sure she would have them. Tears stung her eyelids and she fought them back. She couldn’t let herself cry. Not now. She had a day to get through.

She had a huge, wonderful day full of work ahead. A day like this could turn things around, if it started a trend. She heard Sara’s voice downstairs and she smiled. What a relief. Good. Sara was here. She would be able to help with the children.

She so appreciated Sara giving her some time like this. She knew she was applying for a promotion. She’d been a contributing editor to the design section of Winter Bay Magazine for almost two years and she’d done some fabulous work. If she got the new job, she would be working more hours during the week and wouldn’t be able to help out as much. Still, she hoped she got it. She certainly deserved the recognition.

She was thankful for small blessings. Right now, if she had Sara here to help with the twins, and then Trini coming in a half hour to help with the baking and delivery, she would be okay. She would just barely be able to fulfill all the commitments she’d made for the day.

It was a challenge, but she could do it. In fact, she had to do it.

Sara appeared at the doorway just as she finished dressing her boys and sent them into the playroom.

“Hey there,” she said, ready to greet her sister with a smile until she saw the look on her face. “What’s the matter? What’s wrong?”

Sara sighed and shook her head.

“Did you see Connor?” Jill asked brightly. “He looks so much the same, you’d never know he’d been gone for a year and a half, would you?”

Sara gave her a look. “Jill, we’ve got to talk.”

Jill groaned and grabbed her sister’s hand. “Not now, sweetie. Not today. I’ve got so much I’ve got to get to and...”

Sara was shaking her head. “You’ve got to get rid of him, Jill.”

She frowned. “Who?”

Sara pointed back down the stairs as though he were following her. “Connor. You’ve got to make him go right away.”

Dropping her hand, Jill turned away, feeling rebellious. She’d been thinking the same thing but she didn’t want to hear it from anyone else. Connor was hers. She resented anyone else—even her beloved sister—critiquing their relationship. She would make him go when she was good and ready to make him go.

Sara grabbed her by the shoulders. “You know he’s just here spying for Brad,” she said in a low, urgent voice. “You don’t want that, do you?”

Sara had never warmed to Jill’s ex-husband, even during the good times. And once he’d gone off and left her high and dry, she’d developed what could only be described as a dogged contempt for the man.

Jill took a deep breath and decided to ignore everything she’d said. Life would be simpler that way.

“What are you doing here so early?” she asked instead, trying to sound bright and cheery. “I appreciate it, but...”

“Oh.” Sara’s demeanor changed in an instant and she dropped her hold on her sister’s shoulders. “Oh, Jill, I came early to tell you...I’m so sorry, but I won’t be able to help you today. They want me to fly down to L.A. There’s just no way I can get out of it. I’ll be meeting with the editorial staff from Chicago and...”

“Today?” Jill couldn’t stop the anguish from bursting out as she realized what this meant.

Sara looked stricken. “It’s a really bad day, right?”

“Well, I told you I’ve got a huge stack of orders and...” Jill stopped herself, set her shoulders and got hold of her fears. “No, no.” She shook her head. “No, Sara. It’s much more important for you to go do this, I’m sure.”

Sara grabbed her hand again. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry, but I really can’t turn them down. They want to see how I handle myself with the visiting members.” She bit her lip and looked as though she was about to cry. A range of conflicting emotions flashed through her wide dark eyes and then she shook her head decisively. “Oh, forget it. I’ll tell them something has come up and I just can’t do it. Don’t worry. They’ll understand. I think.”

Jill dismissed all that out of hand. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you have to go. This is your career. This is something you’ve worked so hard for.”

“But I can’t leave you if you really need me.”

“But I don’t.” Jill dug deep and managed a bright smile. “Not really. Trini will be here soon and we’ll be able to handle it.”

Sara looked worried. “Are you sure?”

“Positive.” She smiled again.

“Because I can stay if you really need me. I can tell them...”

“No.” She hugged her sister. “You go. You have to go. I will lose all respect for you if you let silly sentiment keep you from achieving your highest goals. Say no more about it. You’re gone. It’s decided.”