The Husband Recipe (11 page)

“Gran!” Lauren couldn’t help but laugh. “You’ve been watching too much daytime television.”

“See those two?” Gran pointed at the couple Lauren had been watching earlier, the two who looked to be ninety plus and hopelessly in love. “There are a lot more women in this place than there are men, and single men? You can count them on one hand. When John moved in, Pearl set her sights on him from the get-go. She took him an apple pie. She offered to mend the hem of his trousers when she noticed that some stitches had come loose. The next thing you know, they’re staying at her place more than his. They’re getting married next month.”

“I just assumed they’d been married fifty years or more,” Lauren said.

“No, that’s new love.”

Great. Ninety-year-old women had better luck in the romance department than she did. “Are you trying to tell me that it’s never too late? That maybe when I’m eighty I’ll find a man who loves me?” The pity party continued….

“No. I’m advising you to take Whiplash an apple pie and mend his trousers and see what happens. In this day and age there’s no reason to sit around waiting for a man to make the first move.”

Lauren didn’t tell her grandmother that Cole’s daughter had tried to interfere before there had been anything to interfere with. She didn’t admit that she was terrified that this man she was attracted to had three kids—and two of them didn’t like her. She didn’t confess that when she looked realistically at the situation she saw more obstacles than potential…but that she wanted desperately to try anyway.

Audrey Walker, social director for The Gardens, joined them, taking the vacant seat by Lauren. She wouldn’t stay long. Audrey was like a hummingbird, never still, always busy, always planning something. Audrey and Lauren had attended the same high school. They hadn’t been close friends then—they’d run in different circles—but that connection gave them a bond. It was the “I knew you when” bond. Back in high school Audrey had been a cheerleader and an honest-to-goodness beauty queen. She probably had a collection of tiaras and sashes on display in her apartment—or else tucked in a special box stored in a closet.

Everyone had thought Audrey would jet out of town after graduation and become a model or a movie star. Instead she’d married her high school sweetheart and stayed right here in Huntsville. The marriage hadn’t lasted very long—no one seemed to know exactly why it had ended so abruptly—but even after it was over Audrey had stayed. She’d been working at The Gardens for the past three years.

Audrey seemed to love her job here. She liked the people, and they liked her.

After they’d exchanged pleasantries, Audrey said, “I’m thinking of putting together a big Labor Day picnic, complete with a big band and an outdoor dance floor.

“You should bring your friend.”

Lauren felt her spine stiffen. “What friend?”

“The baseball player. Well, coach, I guess that’s what he is these days. Bring him! We always need a few extra able-bodied dancers.”

Audrey was called away, and she left in a shot. Yeah, hummingbird fit her perfectly. Lauren turned to her grandmother. Before she could say a word, Gran said, “Patsy must’ve said something. I would certainly never gossip about my own granddaughter. Or anyone else.”

Like gossip wasn’t one of the favorite pastimes around here….

“Oh, look, there’s Mildred. I need to get that white-chocolate oatmeal cookie recipe from her.” Like that, Gran was off the chair and moving at a nice clip across the dance floor.

Coward.

Sitting there alone, Lauren had a moment to think. How badly did she want to see where this thing with Cole might lead? Was she really going to sit around and wait for him to make the next move? What if he didn’t? Lauren had to make a decision, here and now. Was she willing and capable of taking that next step herself?

“Drink this,” Hank said in a low, serious voice as he handed over the plastic cup with SpongeBob on one side.

Cole looked down, his eyebrows rising as he studied the unappetizing green liquid. When Hank got into full wizard mode, no one was safe. Fortunately all the ingredients for this potion came from the kitchen, and Cole was careful to keep all cleaners and bug spray out of reach, so the potions weren’t toxic. He hoped. “What’s this supposed to do?”

“I can’t tell you. If you know what’s supposed to happen then it won’t be a good experiment.”

His seven-year-old mad scientist. Since these potions always arrived when Cole was in a bad mood, he knew very well what they were supposed to do. But he played the game, pretending not to understand what the concoctions were for. If he ever got one that actually tasted good he’d pretend to get happy. So far that hadn’t happened.

Cole downed the liquid in one long gulp. It tasted of lime fruit punch, salt, watermelon and last night’s leftover green beans, which the kids had hardly touched. He should’ve known this was coming when he’d heard the blender whirring away. He placed the cup on the coffee table in front of the couch, where he’d been sitting with a notebook making workout plans for his new baseball team, smacked his lips and gave what he hoped was a sincere enough “Ahh, good stuff.”

As usual, Hank stared at Cole as he waited for the potion to take effect. His eyes narrowed and he leaned closer. Closer. Now and then, after downing a gulp of blended leftovers, Cole would cluck like a chicken, or pretend to fall asleep very quickly, or cross his eyes. If he really wanted Hank to outgrow the wizard phase, he should probably stop playing along. It was time to start, he supposed. This potion elicited no reaction.

Before Cole could get back to his game plan, the doorbell rang. Hank—wearing his sorcerer’s cape and waving a magic wand—spun around and ran to answer, leaping dramatically over a small fire truck Justin had left on the floor. Not for the first time, Cole wished fervently that his son would outgrow this particular phase. If it went on much longer, he was going to get his ass kicked at his new school. He needed to start doing his part to take the fun out of the game. No more clucking, no more crossed eyes.

Cole tossed his notebook onto the table next to the empty SpongeBob cup and stood, since whoever was at the door was likely looking for him. The kids had been inside all morning, so it couldn’t be another broken window. Could it?

Hank opened the door with a flourish of his cape and wand and, sure enough, Lauren stood there. She was fully dressed. White capris, pink tank, bra. No bunny slippers. No muddy baseball and no basket of food. She looked so good he wanted to eat her up.

She smiled when she saw him, and instinctively, he returned the smile. How could he not? “Come on in. Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine.” Lauren stepped into the room. She was obviously nervous, but damn, she looked good. “I just came over to issue an invitation.”

It was likely not the kind of invitation that immediately came to his mind.

“I’d like to invite you and your family over for supper tonight. Do you have plans?”

“No,” Cole answered quickly. “What’s the occasion?”

“Does there have to be an occasion?” She looked up, caught his eye, and he was immediately taken back to the kiss.

It had been easy to relegate Lauren to the back of his mind when he hadn’t seen her face-to-face, but when she was standing in front of him the memory of her—her mouth, the softness of her body, the way she tasted, the sweet smell of her skin—it all came rushing back. He didn’t want to wait a couple of months before he asked her on a date. He didn’t want to waste a single day.
Slow
was a bad idea….

Besides, this wasn’t a date, it was an invitation for the entire family. It was a neighborly invitation, that was all.
Yeah, right.

“What time?”

“Six, if that’s okay with you.” Her smile widened, and he felt like a teenager, bewitched by a woman for the first time.

“Six it is.”

She rose up on her toes, dropped down again. Was she nervous? “Don’t you even want to know what we’re having?”

“Don’t care,” Cole said honestly.

“See y’all at six, then.” Lauren backed away slowly. Cole moved forward, caught up with her near the door. He couldn’t kiss her again, not with the kids watching, but he inhaled deeply and her scent filled his lungs.

“I can’t wait.”

Once she was on the porch, Lauren spun and walked away. Cole watched her, enjoying the sway of her hips, the gentle, feminine shape of her body. Most of all, he enjoyed the way she glanced back.

He barely knew the woman, and already he was in too deep.

He closed the door and returned to the couch, scooping up his notebook and plopping down. It took a moment for him to realize that Hank was jumping up and down, waving his wand. “It worked! My magic potion worked!”

Cole glanced at the cup on the coffee table. Crap. “It did?” he asked, as if he was ignorant of the potion’s purpose. “What did it do?”

“My magic potion made you smile. It made you happy. It’s an ungrumpy potion, and it worked! Finally.” His smile faded. “I have to go write down the ingredients before I forget.” With that he turned, cape whipping around his thin body, and he ran for his bedroom.

Hank would never understand that it had been Lauren who made his dad happy, so that potion would probably become a regular part of his diet. At least until Hank outgrew this wizard kick.

Lauren, a woman he barely knew, made him happy. She made him smile. Shouldn’t these kids see their dad happy now and then? Meredith wasn’t going to like it, but dammit, he had to give this a shot.

Meredith sulked openly as she picked at her chicken and rice. She didn’t care who knew that she was unhappy! Justin and Hank were traitors, chatting away as if nothing was wrong, eating everything on their plates like they hadn’t been fed a good meal in months, smiling at Lauren Russell as if she were…as if she were their mother.

She wasn’t. No one would ever take the place of their mother.

It was bad enough that Hank had been taken in by Miss Lauren from the beginning. Now Justin was going over to the dark side.

Dad had taken her aside this afternoon and told her, in a very serious voice, that while he didn’t want to upset her, he didn’t want to wait much longer before he asked Lauren out on a date. Then she got the spiel about how no one would ever take the place of her mother, and no one would come between the four of them, but that the time had come to move on. Blah, blah, blah. Move on! Meredith didn’t
want
to move on, and she didn’t see why her dad wanted things to change.

Miss Lauren’s kitchen wasn’t anything like theirs. The shape of the room was the same, but her appliances looked newer. Everything matched. The plates and the glasses and the cloth napkins, the tablecloth. It all looked like something out of a magazine, the ones at the grocery store checkout. There was a low, clear vase of fresh flowers at the center of the table. Even that matched everything else, as if Miss Lauren only grew flowers that matched her decor.

Where did Miss Lauren keep her stuff? There was nothing cluttering the counter, no dirty dishes in the sink, no pictures on the fridge. The only things on her counter were a carefully arranged bowl of fruit and a tall, perfect chocolate cake Hank had been eyeing since they’d walked into the room.

Meredith was not unaware of the fact that her father looked at Miss Lauren the way Hank looked at the cake. He smiled a lot. She smiled back. It was totally disgusting.