but so far—beyond feeling eternally grateful that he hadn’t brought up that blasted kiss—she seemed to be having a major problem following the conversation.
Spence pushed aside the bowl and lazily propped his long legs on the opposite kitchen stool. “You sounded... trapped. I understand how that feels, Gwen. My life is my daughter right now—and I don’t want it any other way. But besides her and work, there doesn’t seem to be any free time in a day. Single parenting is a twenty-four-hour-a-day job.”
“You’re not kidding,” she agreed.
“But even loving it, you can feel trapped. At least I do, sometimes. I imagine you feel just as buried under the same mountain of single-parent responsibilities.”
“I do,” she agreed again, still unsure where he was leading.
“Well, I don’t think it’s selfish—or weird—that you feel like you need to break out sometimes. Maybe you were teasing about doing something ‘reckless.’ But I think it’s a pretty human, healthy need to crave some time to yourself. And it occurred to me...”
“What?”
He lifted a hand in a boyish gesture. “It just occurred to me that we’re both in the same boat. It’s really hard for a single parent to pull off any free time-without a fellow conspirator. I’m guessing you don’t hire many baby-sitters?”
“No.”
He nodded. “Me, either. I’ve got Mary Margaret during the day for April, but I really hate leaving her with strangers in the evening just because I selfishly need some time off. I mean... I want to give my daughter that personal time, or at least know she’s with someone who really cares about her. Strangers don’t cut that mustard.”
“I feel exactly the same way,” Gwen said honestly. “I hate leaving the boys with baby-sitters. Even though I’m home, I’m either working—or running hard—during the day. It’s not the same as real time with them, and especially because of the divorce I feel they need that time in the evenings. I just feel really selfish and guilty if I leave them.”
“Yeah. I understand. But I kept thinking about how our kids play together all the time, have a good time with each other, so it’s not like any of us are strangers. If we combined resources, it seems to me it could help us both. Which is to say—if you want an ally, I’m volunteering to be one.”
“Well, Spence, you’ve got an ally right back. But I don’t know exactly what you’re thinking about doing....”
“I never had any set plan. I was just thinking... why don’t we try something?” He shrugged his shoulders, and then as if the idea had just popped in his head, suggested, “I’ve got an early workday tomorrow, should be home by four. How about if you just plan to take off, do whatever you feel like doing. I’ll take the kids, do dinner, keep ’em busy until bedtime.”
The thought of four hours free—actually free—danced in her head like a vision of sugarplums and gaily wrapped packages at Christmas. But a lot of years had passed since she believed in Santa. “I can’t possibly ask you to do that,” she informed him—and herself—firmly.
“You’re not asking me to do anything. I’m offering. And you can offer back the same way. Hey, if it doesn’t work out for the kids in a good way, we just won’t do it again. But I can’t see how we’ll know unless we try out an experimental run, do you?”
“No,” she said hesitantly.
“So we’re on for tomorrow? I’ll pick up your boys around four?”
“Well...okay, I guess. As far as I know, there’s no reason why that timing wouldn’t work out....”
She’d barely, hesitantly, agreed before Spence up and left. It was late, of course. Time for any parent of young children to be packing it in, and Spence never visited for more than a few minutes. Still, Gwen found herself at the kitchen window, hands on her hips, until he disappeared into the night’s shadows.
She felt... odd. Her pulse was charging, her nerves kindling awareness—but that was just hormone nonsense, she suspected. Even a woman in a coma would probably notice those liquid brown eyes and that slow, wicked grin of his, and the kiss last night had naturally upped her sexual awareness quotient around Spence. No man had ever made her feel wicked before.
If she hadn’t been a card-carrying Good Girl for thirty years, maybe he might have affected her less potently. But she’d liked that kiss. Liked that wicked, reckless feeling. Liked him—suddenly, personally, and way too much.
Still, her deplorable lack of control over her hormonal response to him didn’t seem to completely explain the chugging, charging, uneasy beat in her pulse. Spence was turning into a serious friend. No one else, not even her sisters, understood how much or how long she’d felt trapped. Spence’s perception had come as a surprise, like finding a kindred spirit, and he’d been so nonjudgmental and undersranding....
Abruptly the oven timer buzzed. Swiftly Owen whisked out the brownies and set them on the rack to cool, then glanced at the clock and mentally shook her head. The boys would be raring wide awake by six-thirty. It wasn’t time to think. It was time to crash. She’d be crabbier than a porcupine if she didn’t catch some shut-eye.
She turned out lights, checked on her monsters, then climbed into a Miami Dolphins T-shirt and burrowed between her lemon-yellow sheets. That quickly, the whole house was dark, quiet and peaceful.
Yet she tossed. Then turned. Sleep refused to come. Those uneasy warning bells kept clanging in the back of her mind.
Spence’s whole plan about helping each other sounded wonderful. She craved some free time right now. She needed the space to figure out who she was and where she was going with her life. Josh and Jacob thought Spence was “majorly cool,” and likewise, she was crazy about his daughter. For fellow single parents to help each other was the best of all worlds, because they both shared the same concerns.
It was just that she felt ... steamrollered ... into the plan. Spence couldn’t help being a dynamic, take-charge type of man. But Gwen was just coming to understand that hiding in a steamroller’s shadow was exactly what she had done with Ron. It was all too easy to let a lion lead—if you were a mouse. And by making a man her whole life, she’d not only bored one husband straight into divorce court ... she’d become boring to herself, somehow lost any concept of her own life in the process.
She needed to be careful. Infinitely careful not to fall seriously for Spence. Eventually she’d look for love again—after she mastered this independence business and learned to stand up for herself. But she already knew that she was a disastrous failure with steamrollers. Spence could never possibly work for her.
Falling for him would be her worst nightmare.
Spence decided he was going to put up his feet and read the newspaper—as soon as he quit pacing the floors. The kitchen clock read 8:20. He always had a full quota of energy, but he’d never been a nervous man. There was no earthly reason for him to be wearing a path between the kitchen, hall and living room.
The house was quiet. Dead quiet. Mary Margaret had long gone home, and all three kids had hit the sack around eight. They were already asleep. He’d checked. Josh and Jacob were camping in the spare bedroom, and April was sawing zz’s on her pink pillow. The plan, in the morning, was for him to
