Everything but a Husband

“So,” she said, her face smothered in breath clouds as she looked out over her whitening lawn. She yanked on a pair of driving gloves, taking her time smoothing them over her broad knuckles. “You gonna bring the baby to Elizabeth’s for Thanksgiving?”

Del stuffed his fingers in his jeans pockets, grateful he hadn’t yet removed his down vest if the woman was going to conduct a conversation outside. Elizabeth Louden Sanford was his stepsister, his father Hugh having married Elizabeth’s mother Maureen about a year and a half ago. To make things more complicated, Elizabeth’s husband Guy not only brought three children of his own to the marriage, but was the youngest of five sons. In what had to be either the world’s most courageous or dumbest moment, Elizabeth had volunteered to host Thanksgiving for everybody. At last count, Del’s father had said, the guest list was about to pass fifty, and still climbing.

“I haven’t decided,” he finally said. “That’s a lot of people to subject a certain someone to. I’m just not sure…”

Uh-oh. Cora was giving him her Look. “I swear to Heaven, child—when they pass out the award for Overprotective Father of the Year, you’ll win, no contest. You really gotta do something about those trust issues weighing you down, you know? Wendy loves being with people. She’ll be fine, if Paranoid Papa will give her half a chance. Okay, baby,” she continued without waiting for Del’s response, since clearly, nothing he could possibly say was worth listening to. “I’m going on to the store, then out to the airport. I should be back by one at the latest. You need me for anything?”

Del swallowed a smile. Cora drove his guys to distraction. Knowing she’d be gone for three hours would probably make their day.

“Nah. I think we can manage. I’ll be in and out myself, though. What with the holiday coming up and everything, we’re busting butt all over town today.”

“Huh,” Cora said, not paying any attention. She glanced at her watch, invoked the Almighty’s name and vanished. Del yelled, “Drive carefully,” as soon as he was sure she couldn’t hear him.

He stood on the porch for a moment, thinking about the conversation. About Wendy. About his—yeah, he’d admit it—obsessive need to protect her. He supposed it was only natural, considering. Still, Cora was right. Putting Wendy into a new situation was always harder on Del than it was on his daughter. But even though his kid was a fighter—yeah, a champ!—and even though it would take far more than throwing her into a crowd of strange kids to knock her for a loop…

He let out a long, ambivalent sigh.

Two clients later, in the midst of assuring Mrs. Allen that her stove would indeed be ready to go by that afternoon, his cell phone chirped at him. He’d no sooner said, “Yo,” than he was assaulted by a torrent of words from one really mad woman. The connection wasn’t wonderful, but he made out several choice cuss words, an injunction against nature in general and ice storms in particular, and two very distinct phrases: “won’t be ready until late today” and “her plane’s due in forty-five minutes!”

“Cora?”

“Well, who the hell else would be calling you to go pick up someone at the airport?” That came through clearly enough.

Uh-oh.

“Cora—why on earth are you calling me? I’m backed up clear to Canada—”

“Baby, you think I don’t know that? And I’m really sorry, I am, but I’ve called everybody else I can think of and you’re the first person to answer their damn phone.”

Great.

“Cora, I—”

“Oh, thank you, baby! And I’ll make it up to you, I swear. It’s just that the child’s all broken up about her grandmother and everything, you know—?”

Del didn’t have the heart to point out the “child” had to be significantly over thirty.

“—anyway, you got something to write down the flight number?”

With a sigh, Del pulled out a small notebook and pen he always carried with him from his back pocket, duly recorded the information. Clearly, strong-willed females were part of his karma.

“So, what’s she look like? Galen?”

“Oh, Lord. I haven’t seen her in years. She sent me a wedding picture, though. Poor baby. She’s a widow, did I tell you? Oh! And another picture, maybe four, five years ago. Don’t imagine she’s changed much since then. Longish red hair. Dark, like she uses henna on it except this is natural. Real fair skin, some freckles, maybe, I don’t exactly remember. Kinda tall, I guess. Slender. Eyes like those pictures of the Caribbean. Green blue. Pretty girl. You can’t miss her. Okay, this man is giving me a look like I don’t want to know how much this is going to cost me. I’ll see you back at the house.”

Well, that was that. Del hooked the phone back onto his belt, one eyebrow crooked. Red hair and green-blue eyes, huh?

“Mr. Farentino?”

Mrs. Allen was standing far too close, mouth pursed, hands clasped, one of those women to whom lipstick and a housecoat meant “presentable.”

“Does this mean you’re leaving? Before my stove is installed?”

“Now, Mrs. Allen,” Del said in his divert-the-potential-hysteria voice, flashing her his famous, and woefully unused, female-snagging smile. He fetched his vest from where he’d draped it over the back of a kitchen chair, slipped it on. “You gonna trust me here or what? I promise, Dan and Lenny’ll get you all fixed up, okay? By three o’clock this afternoon, you’ll be baking pumpkin pies in that baby, no problem.”

He was out the back door before she had a chance to point out the stove hadn’t even arrived yet.

Chapter 2

Where was Cora?

Swallowing down yet another surge of the nausea that had plagued her since the plane left Pittsburgh, Galen scanned the waiting room, already filling with passengers for the next flight out. She felt like a pack mule. Her purse strangled her diagonally from left shoulder to right hip, her carry-on bag and winter coat crushed the fingers of her right hand, while a beleaguered whimper floated up from the small plastic pet carrier clutched in the other. Amazing, how heavy it was, considering the animal in it weighed about as much as a hoagie. A small hoagie. A hank of hair had slipped out of its clip to torment her cheekbone, but if she put everything down, she’d never figure out how to pick it all up again. Underneath her five-year-old black sweater, she shivered. And not from cold.

All around her, winterized bodies swarmed and jostled each other, the cacophony of voices drowning out intermittent PA announcements and tinny music. Heavens—she hadn’t actually seen Cora in something like twenty years. Tears bit at Galen’s eyes as something close to panic tangled with the queasies. Baby whined again; Galen automatically offered some vague reassurance, as if the thing could hear, let alone understand, her.

She shut her eyes, hauled in a lungful of air. She’d been cloistered even more than she’d thought if a simple trip could throw her this much. True, she’d only flown once before—with Vinnie to St. Thomas for their honeymoon—but she was a grown woman, for heaven’s sake. Not a little kid. Her stomach heaved again; sweat broke out on her forehead, trickling down the side of her face.

“This is crazy,” she muttered to herself, beginning to re-think dumping at least some of her load before her fingers fell off. One corner of her lower lip snagged between her teeth, she craned her neck, her eyes darting around the terminal. Okay, Volcek. Get a grip. You’re just stressed and woozy. She’ll be here—

“Galen? Galen Granata?”

She jumped a foot at the sound of the deep masculine voice a foot away, whirled around to find herself face-to-chest with a ’63 Buick of a man, nicely packaged in plaid flannel and navy blue nylon. Her gaze drifted upward over a thick neck, a squared chin, a smile both tentative and cocky, and a pair of heavy-lidded, thickly-lashed, puppy-dog brown eyes that all but screamed Latin or Mediterranean or something equally threatening.

And then—oh, my—there was that headful of nearly-black hair at least three weeks past needing a haircut.

This was not Cora.

“I’m sorry,” rumbled the voice again. The kind of voice that, when you hear it over the phone, immediately conjures up, well, someone who looks like this. Except, in real life, you discover, eventually and with profound disappointment, the person attached to the voice really looks like Barney Fife. “I must have the wrong person…”

There he went again. Talking. Galen shook her head at the not-Cora, not-Barney-Fife person, which turned out to be a huge mistake. Served her right, she supposed, for holding everything down for two hours. But losing her cookies into a barf bag at thirty-thousand feet was just so…public. She wobbled for a second, both grateful and irked when a firm, large hand grasped her elbow. She caught a whiff of aftershave, and everything heaved inside her.

“Whoa—you okay?”

Reflex jerked her elbow from the man’s grasp, which was another mistake. Her coat and bag slithered and thunked to the floor as she clamped her hand over her mouth, her eyes going wide. The next few seconds were a blur as whoever-this-was scooped up her belongings, clamped one arm around her waist, and propelled her down the hall to the ladies’ room. She shoved the carrier at him, grabbed the carry-on, then lurched inside, narrowly missing a mother with toddler twins just coming out.

“I’ll wait here,” she thought she heard as the door whooshed shut behind her a split second before she catapulted into the nearest stall.

Well, that wasn’t a moment too soon. Del let out a sigh of relief, leaned against the wall outside the restroom door. He’d never seen anyone actually turn green before.

A redhead, Cora had said. Check. Caribbean-green eyes. Pretty girl. Can’t miss her. Check, and check, and hoo-boy.

Then a sardonic smile twisted his mouth. Yeah, right… Cora’s car skidded on the ice, she was stuck at the service station, she just couldn’t get anyone else to answer the phone…

Woman was about as subtle as Ru Paul’s makeup.

Of course, all the women he knew—and half the men—had been trying to fix him up ever since he moved to Spruce Lake, three years ago. Thus far, he’d been able to deflect everyone’s good intentions with either a grin or a glower, depending on his mood. But like the slow, torturous shift and grind and upheaval of the earth’s plates, so Del’s thoughts had begun to shift over the years, leading him to think that, mmm, well—he scrubbed a palm over his chin, hardly believing he was admitting this to himself—he might actually be open to the idea of marrying again.

Well. He’d finished the thought and his heart was still beating. But it was true. He was tired, dammit. Tired of trying to figure out his precocious, inquisitive, hyper daughter by himself, tired of having nothing but the TV to keep him company after she went to bed, tired of waking up alone. Not that he didn’t love his daughter with everything he had in him, mind, but…

But.

He let out a sigh loud enough to make some woman coming out of the ladies’ room give him a funny look.

Yeah. But.

What did he think, he could order up a wife from Spiegel’s or something? Criminy. Look how long it had taken him to find one woman willing to hitch herself to a guy smart enough to get a college education but not smart enough to use it, who clearly preferred living in near poverty—but, hey, calling the shots—than sucking up to some boss just for some minor thing like, oh, security. Like there was actually another woman on this planet that crazy?

One willing to take on, besides the promise of continued financial instability, the exhausting, often thankless task of raising someone else’s child?

Especially one as strong-willed and independent as Wendy.

Find another wife? Sure, why not? Piece of cake.

Let’s see…if Wendy was four and a half now, and she left home at eighteen, that meant…only thirteen and a half more years of celibacy.

That brought the old mouth down into a nice, tight scowl.

He jumped each time the restroom door opened. Three women gave him the eye, one looked as though she was willing to give him far more than that. Galen finally emerged, slightly less green but still frighteningly pale, hugging her carry-on to her stomach like a drowning woman a log. He thought she might have run a comb through her hair, splashed water on her face, if the damp tendrils hugging her temples and clumped eyelashes were any indication. Those incredible turquoise eyes met his; a flush swept up from underneath the baggy, high-necked sweater—black, severe, a startling contrast with her fair skin, the dark red hair.

“Thank you,” she whispered, a smile flickering over almost colorless lips.

“Rough flight?”

Her gaze darted to his, vulnerable and embarrassed. A breath-stealing urge to put his arm around her swamped him again; he handily fought it back.

She nodded, shifting from foot to foot. Even without makeup, her complexion was flawless, the skin as clear and fine as a teenager’s. Only the hairline creases bookending her mouth hinted that she was older. And yes, Cora, there were freckles. Just a few, nicely arranged.

“We hit—” she swallowed “—turbulence over the lake.” Another smile played peekaboo with her lips. Nice mouth, even if a bit on the anemic side. Geez…how long had it been since he’d noticed a woman’s mouth? Hell, since he’d noticed a woman’s anything? Or, in this case, everything.

At first glance you’d say, okay, sure, she’s pretty—definitely pretty—but in an ordinary way for all that, y’know? Just…average. Average height, average weight, averagely clothed in sweater and jeans. Very average hair, except for the color. Straight, parted in the middle, clipped back. Strictly utilitarian, right? On second glance, however, you’d say, “Hmm.”

On second glance, you’d notice the delicacy of her bone structure, the way one tawny eyebrow sat slightly higher than the other, that the loose sweater, the no-frills jeans, really didn’t hide what he suspected was a spectacular figure as much as she probably thought it did. That her ears were absolutely perfect. If red rimmed.

She held out her hand for the carrier. Short nails. No polish. No rings. “Here, I’ll take that back—”

“No, it’s okay, I’ve got it.” He lifted it up, peeked inside for the first time. Managed not to wince. Huge, batlike ears, buggy eyes, hairy—the thing looked like a Furby. Before they perfected the prototype.

“She was my grandmother’s,” Galen said on a sigh, as if that explained it. Which, in a weird sort of way, it did. “Now she’s mine, I guess.”

Del lowered the carrier. “Lucky you.”

That got a tiny smile. And another blush. “Well. Talk about your inauspicious beginnings,” she said, traces of blue-collar Pittsburghese tingeing her speech patterns. She jerked her head back toward the restroom door, cleared her throat. “So. You know I’m Galen. And you are?”

Del snapped to, now tried to take her bag as well. Wariness flared in her eyes as she inched away, choking it more closely to her. He swallowed a grin. The dog, he immediately surmised, he could have. Whatever was in that bag, though, she’d fight to the death for. “Del Farentino. I’m the contractor doing some work on Cora’s new house.”

“Oh. The one that’s costing her way too much money?” She flushed even brighter. “Th-the house, I mean. Not the contractor…”

“I think she’d probably agree with you on both counts,” Del said with a grin, wondering what it was about this woman that was making him feel…good. Like something remotely human, even. “Well, we might as well get a move on.” Del started down the concourse, assuming Galen would follow.

She didn’t. Del turned around, got bumped from behind by a foreign tourist. He frowned at the not unwarranted suspicion in Galen’s eyes. “What?”

“Why couldn’t Cora pick me up?”

Del took a step back to her, resisting the urge to glance at his watch. “Well, the story is, she went to do some shopping, her car skidded off the road, messing up the muffler or something, so she couldn’t pick you up. And I was the only person to answer the phone. Can we go—?”

She stayed put, squinting at him with an expression caught neatly between guarded and nervous. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth?”

Ah, hell.

“Oh, I’m telling the truth, honey, trust me. It’s whether Cora’s telling the truth we have to consider.” He gave her the reassuring smile he’d given Mrs. Standish earlier. She didn’t smile back. Del took a step closer. The dog yipped. Del’s hand streaked through his hair as minutes ticked by like race cars. “You afraid to get in the truck with me, what?”

“Uh, yeah.” Caution stiffened her features, shadowed her eyes. But not, he thought, from experience as much as…lack of it. That’s what it was, he realized. She was like a child on the first day of school, excited and fearful all at once. She shifted the bag, which was clearly heavy. “Kinda got that drummed into me by the time I was three. It stuck.”

It wasn’t that he didn’t understand—he hoped his daughter would grow up to be half this streetsmart, which he doubted, which he decided he did not need to think about just now—but he still had a lot of work to do and it was Thanksgiving week and he had to pick Wendy up from the sitter’s at four and, frankly, he wasn’t in the mood. Hadn’t he just explained who he was? Did she really think he made all that up, somehow? Still, he plastered on another smile. “Honey, I just got you to the john before you threw up all over the terminal floor. You can trust me to get you to Cora’s with both your reputation and body parts intact, okay? I mean, come on, already—do I look like someone you should be afraid of?”

She drew her bottom lip between her teeth, color pinking her cheeks. Shook her head. But that was it.

Del huffed out a sigh. “Okay, here’s the deal. Trust me, and I’ll get you to Spruce Lake in just under an hour, no hassles, and for free. Otherwise, take your chances with a taxi. And remember. It’s two days before Thanksgiving. And the weather sucks.”

He pivoted on his heel, started to walk away, figuring if this tactic worked at least fifty percent of the time with a four-year-old, he might have a shot of it working with a grown woman.

Five seconds later, he turned back, undecided whether to throttle or comfort the basket case in front of him. Then he lifted both hands, the carrier dangling like a suspended Ferris wheel basket. “For crying out loud, I know who you are, I know who Cora is, I didn’t run off with your dog when I had the chance—” he jerked the carrier to prove his point, which he noticed did provoke a small, startled reaction on her part, not to mention the dog’s “—so why are you so afraid of me?”

“It’s not that…”

He sighed. Mightily. But he walked back, dumped the carrier and her coat, then fished his wallet from the vest’s inside pocket. As what seemed like the entire population of the Great Lakes region milled around them, he flipped it open to his driver’s license, which happened to sit opposite a picture of his daughter. “Okay, here. I don’t know what this will prove, but what the hell.”

She never even noticed the license, he could tell. She tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear, a soft “Oh” falling from her lips. “Is that your little girl?”

Suddenly, he wasn’t quite so ticked with her. Suddenly, he was aware of her shiny, fragrant hair, the way the part wasn’t quite straight, that she was just the right height to fit neatly under his chin, if he were to hug her.

That this feeling-like-a-human business could easily get out of hand.

After a stunned moment or two, Del angled his head to look at the shot, one of those a-thousand-photos-for-fifteen-bucks JC Penney specials. Wendy’s fourth birthday portrait, all deep brown eyes and dimples. A twinge of something like fear hobbled through his gut, as images of strapping, hormone-sodden teen males—guys just like he had been, once upon a time—popped into his head.

God, she looked so freaking much like Cyndi, although the dark eyes were definitely Farentino stock. And everytime he saw Wendy, or even a photo of her, it socked into him how long it had taken him, was still taking him, to come to grips with her mother’s death. Yeah, Cyndi had been the most bullheaded woman he’d ever known, but he’d loved her from the bottom of his heart, and her death had damn near devastated him. He and God were still on the outs about that one. In fact, he pretty much figured if he did get married again, it would be more for companionship—and, okay, sex—than for love. It wasn’t that he was saying he’d never love again, exactly, as much as he just wasn’t sure he could. Not the way he’d loved Cyndi, that was for sure.

But then, the next Mrs. Farentino—should there ever be such a creature—would be nothing like Cyndi. She’d be…

Demure. That’s it.

Did women even come in demure anymore? Or had that concept gone the way of avocado kitchen appliances?

He glanced at Galen.

Huh.

“Uh, yeah,” he finally said before she wondered if he’d fallen in a hole or something. “Wendy. She’s four and a half. All we’ve got is each other.”

Now why the hell did you say that?

He could feel Galen’s gaze dust his cheek, sweep back to the photo. “What a sweetheart.”

“She has her moments.”

Seconds passed. Del wondered if you could get drunk from just smelling someone. If letting too many hormones flood the bloodstream too fast could give you the bends.

“She has your eyes,” Galen said at last, softly, which, for some odd reason, seemed to settle things in her mind, as they decidedly unsettled things in his. Without warning, she took off, leaving Del grabbing for the carrier, then double-stepping to catch up.

He switched everything to one arm, then took her bag from her; she actually didn’t protest. “You got any other luggage?”

She shook her head, her russet hair gleaming in the overhead lights as she walked. “I’m only here for the weekend. Oh!”

She swayed again, as if being tossed on a wave. Del reached again for her elbow; she moved away. “I’m fine.”

“What you are, is full of it.”

“Not any more.” She bobbled again, but the hell with her. She didn’t want him to touch her, he wouldn’t touch her. Well, unless she listed more than twenty degrees, in which case, he was there.

“You didn’t eat before you boarded, did you?”

A herd of teenagers, all talking and laughing at the top of their lungs, swarmed past, forcing Galen to step closer to him or risk being trampled. Close enough to catch another whiff of her hair. Of her. Floral-scented pheromones. A few more hormones surged forth, like an army determined to breach the enemy’s stronghold.

The throng of kids passed, Galen reclaimed her space, and the hormones ebbed.

“No, really. I’m okay.” Except she went all wobbly again, coming damn close to passing the twenty degree mark.

His hand shot out, grabbed her elbow. “Come on,” he said, steering her toward a coffee shop. What the hell—the day was blown, anyway. As long as he was back in time to pick up Wendy, it wasn’t as if the guys couldn’t cope without him. “You need a cup of tea, something to settle your stomach—”

“Don’t tell me what I need!” She squirmed away from his touch, yet again, digging in her heels. Perplexed, Del was startled to see something almost like fear glittering in those turquoise eyes. “I told you, I’m fine.” Criminy—they were talking a lousy cup of tea. What was with this woman? “If you don’t mind, Mr…. Farentino, was it? I’d really just like to get to Cora’s.”

First he couldn’t get her to leave, now he couldn’t get her to stay. Del stared her down, ignoring—or so he told himself—the odd prickling sensation in various parts of his body when their gazes locked. “Okay, answer me one thing.” The higher of the two slender brows lifted in question. “If you’d just about upchucked all over Cora and she’d suggested getting a cup of tea, would you be giving her a fight about it?”

She looked away, and Del felt like she’d just broken an electrical connection. “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment, her words coming out on a long breath. “I know you mean well. It’s just…” She flushed, color staining her pale cheeks. “Please?”