the bright blue chair, where the dog’s teeth marks whittled into the wood. “He stares in the window.”
The smudges along the lower panes of the front window were, evidently, nose prints. Rowan winced.
“He seems to be trying to dig a tunnel under the cottage. Take a look around the corner,” he suggested. “He has something else in common with convict escapees. The middle of the night is his favorite time to work on his project.” He paused. “The tunnel happens to be right underneath my bedroom window. Oh, and I ate out here one night and was stupid enough to set my sandwich down while I reached for my beer.”
He didn’t have to finish.
“I’m so sorry! I…” Her shoulders sagged. “Well, I don’t know what to do about Sam. Maybe I could tie him up some of the time. And…and keep him in at night. Only, if I do that, he…”
He lifted one eyebrow in a masterpiece of sardonic inquiry.
“He chews things up,” she admitted. “Mostly the kids’ toys. It’s hard to get them to put everything away.”
“And if he couldn’t find a toy, he’d start in on the furniture.” He leveled a significant glance at his porch chair.
“Possibly. Still.”
His sudden grin took her breath away. “Don’t worry about it. I can afford to replace the chair if he gets all the way through the leg. And it’s better to have him digging by the foundation than under the fence.”
“Yes, but sooner or later he’ll happen to dig beside the fence,” she muttered.
If anything, his grin widened. “Happen? Implying your dog is stupid, by any chance?”
“He’s not!” Desmond declared, indignant.
Rowan finally had to laugh. “I can’t blame it on overbreeding.”
“No, you definitely can’t do that. He must have a dozen breeds in him. His legs sure as—” his gaze briefly settled on her son “—heck don’t come from the same ancestor as his body does, and then there’s the head, and the ears, and…”
“Mommy, you said he was cute. Why are you laughing?”
“He is cute. In a, well, sort of ugly way.” She bent to hug her six-year-old. “Looks don’t matter anyway. It’s his heart that really counts.”
So why, she asked herself, was she so drawn to this man’s looks? She had no idea what his heart held. Except he had been kind to the kids, after that first meeting. He did avoid them, but when either of them cornered him, he was nice. And that said something about his character, his heart, didn’t it?
Probably, but it really didn’t matter. This was as friendly as they were going to get.
“Excuse us,” she said to Niall. “I don’t want Anna to wake from her nap and find us missing.” She firmly quelled Desmond’s protest and marched him back to the house, feeling Niall MacLachlan’s thoughtful gaze all the way.
“I HAVE TO REEXAMINE my whole life,” Rowan’s mother told her. “Did your father ever love me? I think back to conversations and get this jolt. Maybe he wasn’t thinking and feeling anything like I believed he was. That vacation we’d planned where he suddenly had to stay behind and work. Remember? We went to Ocean Shores? Was it a woman? Were there other women all along? He completely refuses to talk to me. ‘Think whatever you want,’ he says, as if that’s any answer!”
Rowan knew she was supposed to offer sympathy and understanding. Sitting on her back porch with the phone to her ear instead of mowing the lawn the way she’d intended, she was feeling low on sympathy and even lower on understanding. If only Mom didn’t call every day or two, reiterating the same miseries.
Mom and Dad’s separation had come as a huge shock to Rowan. Even worse was the way they both used her to bad-mouth the other one.
Dad had started to date from practically the moment Mom moved out, and that was the part that was infuriating her. Hurting her, too, probably, Rowan realized, but the whole subject had become an obsession.
Her best tactic would be to start dating, too. Dad might not want to be married to her anymore, but his pride would be stung by the sight of her seemingly enjoying herself with a succession of men. Rowan would have suggested it—her mother was an attractive woman who’d kept her figure at fifty-two—except Rowan could totally understand Mom never wanting anything to do with a man again. A desire she frequently proclaimed, and one Rowan shared.
“Mom, I really have to go,” she said.
As if she hadn’t spoken, her mother went on and on. Her father was making himself look ridiculous, dating women half his age—which Rowan thought was a slight exaggeration. Dad’s latest was maybe mid-thirties, bad enough. “Why don’t you talk to him?” Mom suggested. “He might listen to you.”
A car was pulling into the driveway, and Rowan’s heart sank when she recognized it. Glenn and Donna Staley, her parents-in-law, had come calling.
“I don’t care who Dad dates,” she told her mother, perhaps more brutally than she should have. “I don’t want to meet them, I don’t want to hear about them and, honestly, Mom, what difference does it make who he dates? You’re getting a divorce.”
“You blame me for feeling hurt by his foolishness?”
Rowan sighed. “No. Of course not, Mom. But I’d love to see you focus on yourself now. On finding what makes you happy.” As long as it was something besides calling her daughter to bitch about Dad. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have to go. Glenn and Donna are here.”
“Oh? You didn’t mention that you were expecting them.”
“That’s because I wasn’t,” she said, possibly a little tersely. Not that she necessarily would have told her mother they were coming, but she wasn’t thrilled to see them.
She ended the call to her mother as the couple reached the bottom of the porch steps.
“I don’t see the children,” Donna said, her disappointment obvious.
“Anna is napping, and Desmond is playing with a neighbor boy at his house.” Rowan had been pleased to find another boy exactly Desmond’s age who lived less than a block away, and delighted when the boy’s mother suggested they plan a few playdates.
Glenn frowned. “Do you know these people?”
“You left Anna alone in the house?” exclaimed Donna. “Dear, is that a good idea?”
Rowan dug deep for patience. Donna loved the kids, but worry also made her judgmental. “The back door is open. I’ll hear her the minute she wakes up. And since she can’t reach the lock on the front door, she can’t get out even if she’d do something like that, which she wouldn’t. And yes, I went with Des the first time to Zeke’s house and had coffee with his mother. She’s very nice, a stay-at-home mom.”
“You know we’d have happily taken him today if you wanted to have time on your own,” her mother-in-law said.
