What a Man's Gotta Do (17 page)

Steve grunted, yelled out his goodbyes to the kids, and left.

Just as the phone rang.

 

Eddie was afraid if he rang the doorbell, or even knocked, he'd wake the kids. So he fought his way through the privet hedge to rap lightly on the living room window.

He was rewarded with a short, shrill, muffled yelp. Two seconds later, the drape twitched back to reveal Mala with her hand at her throat.

She yanked open the window. “Thanks for scaring the snot out of me.”

“Bet that's not what Juliet said to Romeo.”

“That's because she was a clueless, horny, fourteen-year-old. So. What do you want?”

She sounded edgy. Eddie considered the wisdom of changing his mind.

“To talk,” he said.

Arms crossed over a red sweatshirt. “Thought men hated that.”

“You're right.”

“Oh.” There went the hank of hair behind the ear. “Well. As a matter of fact, I need to talk to you, too.”

Eddie felt a tremor in his gut. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. So. Shall I open the front door for you or are you planning on climbing in here?”

“I'll opt for the door.”

Ten seconds later, he was inside, like to gag on evergreen scent. “You overdo the PineSol or somethin'?” he said, walking into the living room behind Mala, who, he couldn't help but notice, wasn't looking at him. “You got a tree.”

“My brother showed up with it earlier. Isn't it great?”

Somehow, she didn't exactly sound thrilled. And somehow, he didn't think it had anything to do with the tree. Eddie frowned. “How come there's no stuff on the top half?”

“Short kids. So…” She sidestepped the upright vacuum, then dropped to her knees, closing up empty ornament boxes. “What'd you want to talk about?”

Something in her voice snagged his attention. He looked over, saw how the multi-colored tree lights shimmered like oil rainbows in her hair.

That her hands were shaking.

Damn.

“You first,” he said.

She darted a glance at him, but surprisingly didn't argue, even though she didn't exactly launch right in, either. Instead, she got up, stacked all the boxes on the coffee table, then grabbed the vacuum.

“You really gonna do that now?”

She whipped the cord behind her. “It'll just take a sec. Kids'll never hear it.”

So Eddie stood there, his arms crossed over his chest, his heart thudding
in
his chest, and waited until Miss Mala was good and ready to say whatever it was she had to say. Finally, after she put the vacuum away and carted the boxes off somewhere, she stood in front of him and said, “I talked to my ex today.”

Something that felt an awful lot like a brass-knuckled fist rammed into his gut. “You're kiddin'.”

“Nope. Scott Sedgewick is alive and well and wants to see me. Says he needs to…how'd he put it? Oh, yeah—
clear the air.
” She pulled a face.

“Forget it, Mala.”

Her brows shot up, although, to tell you the truth, Eddie wasn't sure which one of them was more surprised by his macho-protective act. “He may be toilet crud, Eddie, but he's the father of my kids. I don't think I've got a lot of choice.”

“Like hell. The jerk walks out on you, you don't owe him a damn thing.”

After a moment, she said, “This isn't you and your father we're talking about here,” and something jammed right up into his throat. Except then she went on to say, “Besides, this isn't about owing anybody anything. It's about using this as an opportunity to prove to myself that he has no power over me anymore.” She hesitated again, then said, “Not even in my memories.”

He chose to ignore the point she was obviously trying to make. “So what you're sayin' is, your mind's made up?”

“I can't let the past mess with my head anymore, Eddie. But I did say I'd only meet with him in a public place, in neutral territory, if that makes you feel any better.”

“It doesn't.”

She cocked her head at him. “And what's it to you, whether or not I see the man I was married to for four years?”

“What is this, a trick question? I don't like the idea of you getting hurt.”

Mala's gaze danced with his for several seconds before she walked over to the tree, fiddled with some ugly little felt ornament with glittery stones glued to it. “Interesting you should say that. Because ever since Scott's call, I've been doing a lot of thinking, especially about some choices I've made. Am still making. And…” She shut her eyes and swore softly, then turned to him. “Until I get this mess sorted out in my head, I've got no business fooling around with anyone else.”

It took a second. “You're calling it off?”

Consternation flooded her features. “I'm…well, yeah. I guess I am. It's not that I
want
to…stop…what we were do
ing…it's just…” Another cussword flew out of her mouth. “The timing's just really lousy, and this is really, really hard, and God, I feel so stupid…”

Relief should've washed over him, that she'd said it first, that this way, Eddie didn't have to feel guilty about letting her down or hurting her feelings. Instead, he felt suckerpunched. And unaccountably pissed off.

“Is it because you think you might get back together with…what's his name?”

“Oh, my God, Eddie!” A short, sharp laugh flew from her throat. “Not even if the survival of the human species depended on it. No, this has to do with me and my…pattern of being attracted to men who are wrong for me and all that fun stuff. I not only have to face up to Scott, on my own, without anybody else's interference, but I have to face up to myself, which is a helluva lot harder.”

She knotted her arms over her midsection. Tears glittered in her eyes as two spots of red bloomed in her cheeks. “And the conclusion I came to is, I gotta learn to stop myself
before
I make the mistake, to love myself enough to say ‘no' when ‘yes' is only gonna get me in trouble. To stop pretending I can handle the consequences, in order to justify going after things I know aren't good for me. Because I have finally gotten it through my head that it's a damn sight easier to avoid the mess to begin with than it is to clean it up afterward. And I know there's a name for women who do what I just did to you, but all I can say is, I'm so, so sorry.”

Eddie stood there, trying to figure out why what she'd just said hurt so damn bad. Except, he knew. Never mind that he'd been about to head the whole thing off at the pass himself, for almost those exact reasons. And, on some level, he was actually proud of her for having the courage to not only face the thing that had caused her so much pain, but to save her own butt. But the fact remained that it'd been a long time since he'd given anyone the opportunity to get one over on him, and now he remembered why he'd made it such a point not to.

“Hey, no problem.” He schooled his features, dismissed the whole thing with a wave of his hand. “You've got a lot on
your plate. God knows you don't need me to complicate things.”

Her brow puckered. “You're not mad?”

He pushed a puff of air through his lips. “Why would I be mad? In fact—you're gonna love this—I was about to break it off with you.”

“You…were?”

“Yeah. That's what I'd wanted to talk about. So now I don't have to. Great minds think alike, huh?”

He turned and walked to the living room doorway, then twisted back, wondering why it was such an effort to breathe right. “By the way, I guess this is as good a time as any to tell you I got a job lined up for after I leave here. In Vegas. So I'll be outta your hair by April Fool's.”

No sense in telling her about Galen's offer. But what made even less sense was how much he'd wanted to.

He'd made it all the way to the door when she called out in a whisper, “Eddie, this isn't about you. You've got to believe that.”

He tried not to let the door slam behind him.

Wasn't until he got up into the apartment that he realized he hadn't even been in Mala's long enough to take off his jacket. Why that ticked him off even more, he didn't know. It was all he could do not to stomp into the kitchen, but he knew she'd be able to hear him, and the last thing he wanted was for her to think she'd gotten to him. By the time he was ten or so, he'd gotten real good at that, not letting folks see the wounds. By the time he turned twenty, he'd gotten so good at it, he didn't even see them himself.

But the thing was, this time, there weren't
supposed
to be any wounds.

Took him less than a half dozen strides to make it into the kitchen, grab a Bud from the fridge. He didn't normally drink this late at night, but just this once wasn't gonna kill him, he didn't imagine. Then, for some reason, his eyes lit on the business cards the P.I. had given him last night. One was his, the other belonged to his father. Or the man who liked to think of himself in those terms.

Eddie viciously twisted the top off the beer, guzzled down half the bottle before coming up for air. Then he snatched his father's card off the counter.

What
would
he do if Rudy Ortiz showed up?

He tossed the card back down, not even bothering to question why he didn't just throw the damn thing in the trash. Then he wandered back out into the living room, dropped onto the edge of the sofa. Took another swig of beer.

Wasn't any of his business, whether Mala saw her ex or not. After all, like she said, the jerk was the kids' father, even if the idea of somebody like that weasling his way back into Carrie and Lucas's lives made him sick to his stomach. Lucas, especially, he needed somebody better in his life than a man so weak, he got his rocks off from bullying women. Still, that didn't change the fact that Mala and this Scott person had a history together.

Unlike Eddie, who'd never had a history with another living soul.

And who damn well intended to keep it that way.

“I
'm sitting with the Farentinos,” Eddie said to the restaurant hostess. “They might be here already.”

The forty-something brunette scanned the reservation list, quirked a very red, very flirtatious smile up at Eddie. “Yes, sir. Come this way.”

Trying not to finger his tie, Eddie followed the woman through the herd of linen-swathed tables, each with a flickering, amber globe in the center. The atmosphere was strictly mid-sixties Classy Traditional: dark reds, wood panelling, intimate lighting—dim, in other words—but it wasn't off-putting or anything. And the Christmas decorations were pretty nice, mostly evergreens and tiny white lights. It was early yet, only around six—and on a Monday night, no less—but the restaurant was fairly full. Mostly older couples and families, Eddie noticed, which tended to hold true most places. The younger crowd didn't generally show up before seven-thirty.

God knew, he was here under duress, but Galen had practically threatened to fire him unless he joined Del and her for dinner tonight. When he'd accused her of trying to strong-arm him, she'd gone all indignant on him.

“Don't be ridiculous. In fact, I've already got a couple interviews set up for next week. I just want your opinion, that's all. See what your reaction is to the place, what you think I should keep, what you think I should change, that sort of thing.”

Yeah, right. Like Galen Farentino listened to anybody's advice about anything. What woman did?

He spotted her vibrant, auburn hair a good fifteen feet before he reached the table, saw Del look up and smile, wave him over. Saw, too, the builder's daughter Wendy, sitting between them in a froufrou little dress like she owned the place. Eddie'd met Wendy once before, so he knew the little girl was profoundly deaf, that her mama had died right after she was born and that Galen and her stepdaughter were crazy about each other. What he didn't know was how he was supposed to communicate with her, since he didn't know sign language.

So the last thing he expected was for the kid to grin and say, “Hi,” when he took his seat across from her.

“Uh, hi…Wendy.”

Her grin widened. “If you…talk so I…can see your…lips,” she said, slowly and deliberately, “I can under…stand you.”

“Well, okay, honey, I'll be sure and do that.”

Looking only marginally more comfortable than Eddie in his sport jacket and tie, Del said, signing as well as talking, since Wendy wouldn't be able to see his face, Eddie figured, “Her school has this new computer program that teaches the kids to speak. You wouldn't believe how much her speech has improved in the last few months.”

The gleam of pride—and love—in Del's eyes poked at something inside Eddie, reminding him of the way Mala looked at her kids, even when they exasperated the living daylights out of her. If his mama had ever looked at him that way, it had been so long now, he couldn't remember. God knew, nobody else ever had, not even Molly and Jervis, whose expressions had more often conveyed either pity or confusion than love. Not that he blamed them.

“…I already ordered for you,” Galen was saying, which got his attention. As usual, she wore little makeup, but the tur
quoise sweater she wore made her look real good, especially considering how pregnant she was. “The Coq Au Vin, because I know you've made it before so I want to know what you think. Hope that's okay.”

In spite of himself, he grinned. “I'd be in real trouble if it wasn't.” He unfolded his linen napkin, spread it over his new khakis. He hadn't had the nerve to admit to Galen on Saturday, when she'd said in that imperious tone of hers, “You do have a jacket and tie, don't you?” that, up until that day, he hadn't. But Hannah had put him onto a nearby outlet mall where he picked up a few essentials. And he had to admit, he didn't look half bad all gussied up.

He buttered a roll, glancing around. The place was easily four times the size of Galen's restaurant. “You sure you want to take on something this big?”

Del's chuckle caught his attention. “You sure you want to go there?”

Eddie felt his stomach muscles loosen, just a little. He liked Del, even if the man made him feel downright puny by comparison. But the dark-haired, gentle giant had a ready smile and honest brown eyes, and his contentment was dangerously contagious.

“Which I take it means you've always been a risk taker,” Eddie said to Galen.

Her deep blue-green eyes met his for a moment, before she took a sip of water…then winced, water sloshing out of the glass when she clunked it back onto the table.

“You okay?” Del and Eddie both said at once.

“Yes, yes. Just a little twinge in my lower back. It's nothing.” She looked from one to the other. “I swear. Now, what was I…oh, yes. Actually, I was thirty-five before I found my…” She glanced at Wendy, winked at Eddie.

“…wings. Before that, I didn't even know how to pay an electric bill.”

“You're kidding? What happened?”

“Oh, Lord, it's a long story involving grandparents and old husbands… Trust me, you really don't want to know. But the upshot was, I got tired of being afraid to go after what I
wanted.” Her eyes twinkled over her grin. “It just takes some of us longer to grow up, I guess.” Eddie didn't miss the meaningful look the redhead aimed at her husband. “To learn that facing our fears isn't fatal.”

An older, very gentlemanly waiter brought their food—prime rib for Del, stuffed sole for Galen, a chicken salad sandwich for Wendy, the Coq Au Vin for Eddie. He hadn't gotten but two bites into his meal when he was struck by an extremely irritating revelation, one made all the more irritating when Galen said, “You can do better than that, can't you?”

“What makes you think—?”

“It's written all over your face,” she said, smiling smugly at her own dinner.

“It's a little…bland,” he admitted. “But this close to Christmas, they could just be having an off night.”

“Mama? May I go…look at…the…fish?”

There was one of those fake ponds up near the cash register, Eddie remembered, complete with plastic waterlilies and about a dozen carp easily large enough to serve up as an entrée.

“You barely touched your sandwich.”

The little girl shrugged. “Not hun…gry.”

Galen let out a long, heartfelt sigh not dissimilar to ones Eddie had heard from Mala's mouth. Only Eddie didn't hear whether or not Galen gave her daughter her permission to go, since the world had just come to a screeching halt.

Fork poised in midair, his breath, along with his most recent bite of chicken, caught in his throat.

“Eddie?” Del's deep voice barely penetrated his concentration. “Something wrong? Holy… Hey, honey…isn't that Mala? Over there in the red dress?”

Galen sent him a look. “Like I can turn around.”

“She won't see if you do it now…”

“No, doofus.” She laid her hand on her belly. “I mean, I really can't turn around.” She looked at Eddie. “It is, isn't it?”

He nodded. Then he somehow managed to ask, “Either of you know what her ex looks like?”

“Drat,” Galen said. “Now I
really
wish I could turn around.”

“On second thought,” Del said, an evil grin teasing his mouth, “maybe you shouldn't. That dress is something else.”

“Oh,
you
really know how to cheer up a woman in her last month of pregnancy….”

But Eddie barely heard them, because one, the dress really
was
something else, all right. And Mala was something else in it, especially with her hair all done up like that, classy as all get out and sexy as hell. And two, because the tall, impeccably dressed man who'd stood when she got to the table had to be Scott, if the hair color was anything to go by. Even from clear across the room, the man radiated success and breeding. Eddie would've bet the farm that the navy double-breasted pinstripe hadn't come from any outlet store, or that Scott Sedgewick hadn't been any high school dropout.

And that Mala Koleski wouldn't've married him if he had been.

Eddie just about couldn't see for the haze of jealousy that had just sprung up out of nowhere.

Never mind that the man had been a scumbag. Was probably still a scumbag. Or that Eddie had no reason not to believe Mala when she'd told him just how slim the chances were that she'd ever get back together with the scumbag. Fact was, the father of Mala's children was a purebred, not a mutt like Eddie.

And the fact was, the first inkling Eddie got that Mala wasn't happy with the way the conversation was going, he'd be hard pressed not to kill the guy with his bare hands.

Even though none of this was his business.

 

Mala had insisted on taking her own car. At least, this way, she could get away if she needed to. Which either made her very smart or a big chicken. Although, frankly, at the moment, she didn't really care.

And for once, she'd had the good sense to keep her mouth shut and not tell her loving, overprotective family about this meeting. She'd even arranged to let the kids stay overnight with Elizabeth and Guy Sanford and their kids, rather than ask her
folks. At best, they would have only worried; at worst, Steve and Pop would have stood guard like a pair of overzealous pit bulls.

God, it had been years since she'd been to
Gardner's
. The restaurant had been Scott's favorite before they were married, a bastion of the traditional cuisine and conservative appointments favored by old money, of which Scott was the quintessential poster child. Even though both the decor and food had slipped a bit in the past four or five years, the establishment's reputation had somehow remained intact, in large part due to the staunch loyalty of the Scott Sedgewicks of the world.

“White wine,” she murmured when he asked what she'd like to drink, then immediately picked up the menu to avoid looking at him. Or to give him a chance to scrutinize her, to search for clues that her heart was beating too fast and too hard, that, despite her every effort to appear in control, her hands were so clammy, her fingers stuck to the laminated menu.

She'd spotted him first, as she crossed the room. And in those few seconds before he noticed her, she saw how little he'd changed. Although why should he have? It'd only been a little more than three years, after all. He was still tall and graceful and well-dressed to the point of obsession, as a good little hotshot finance officer should be. His auburn hair was still cut short and parted on the left, although he'd changed his glasses from the thin tortoiseshells he'd always worn to a pair of chic, black wire rims.

Same sharply defined cheekbones, same finely shaped mouth, same opaque gray eyes…

“You look…amazing,” he said with something approaching genuine astonishment.

…the same charming smile that had dazzled his lonely, twenty-nine-year-old assistant into thinking she'd finally found her prince.

She didn't even try to squelch the frisson of triumph that shot through her. Granted, she'd needed the come-and-get-it red jersey dress like she needed termites, considering the stack of bills sitting on her desk. But there was no way she was
meeting this man looking like the cowering little—okay, cowering
big
—mouse she'd let him turn her into. Maybe it was childish, wanting to dangle things he couldn't have in front of him, things he'd walked away from, but it was empowering, too.

She'd started wearing the loose clothing after Carrie's birth, so Scott wouldn't see, couldn't ridicule. They'd made Lucas in total darkness, too, since that was the only way Scott would make love to her by that point. Odd how she hadn't even realized how humiliating that had been, that her husband couldn't bear to look at her naked, even in the privacy of their own bedroom.

Or how ridiculous, that she should have ever been ashamed of looking like a real woman, a woman who'd given birth and nursed her babies and had boobs and hips and thighs and all those things men in some parts of the world actually revered.

Like a certain Texan, for example.

A certain Texan she'd thrown out on his ear—

No. Not now.

“Thanks,” she said at last, nodding to the waitress as she set the glass of Sauvignon Blanc in front of her.

“You've finally lost weight, haven't you?”

She looked him straight in the eye. “Not an ounce.”

Scott leaned back in his chair, fingering his chin before letting loose with the first and only nervous laugh she'd ever heard from his mouth, which is when she realized she'd won the first round. Damned if he was taking her taciturnity for confidence, when in fact she was petrified he'd hear her voice shake if she said more than a three-word sentence. But her insides weren't trembling from nervousness as much as from pent-up anger, the anger she'd lost somewhere along the way during her marriage.

But she didn't want him to see her angry. She didn't want him to think he affected her in any way at all.

The waitress appeared to take their order.

“Have you had enough time to decide?” Scott asked.

Oh, boy, had she. In more ways than he'd ever know, that was for sure. God knew, the last thing she felt like doing was
eating—especially in this damn girdle—but eating was exactly what she intended to do.

“Yes, I'll start with the stuffed artichoke appetizer. Oh, and ranch dressing on the salad. Then the petite sirloin in mushroom and wine sauce, rare, with a baked potato, the broccoli Hollandaise, and for dessert…” She ticked her tongue against the roof of her mouth as she frowned at the menu.

“Perhaps you'd like to see the dessert cart when you finish your meal?”

She smiled up at the waitress. “Yes, I think I would.”

She bit back a smile at the stiffness in Scott's voice as he ordered.