A Place Called Home Page 4

  Mitch was fairly certain his mother was relieved, but he didn’t know how he felt about it yet. “I think I’ll manage without her.”

  “Of course you’ll manage,” she said immediately. “Why wouldn’t you? You’ve done—”

  “Mum! The bus is here. I’ve got to run.”

  “All right, dear! Call me later!”

  Mitch heard a few more good-byes in the background before he hit the Off button. He set the phone down and leaned against the counter. The bus wasn’t anywhere in sight and a glance at his watch told him he had a few more minutes. He just couldn’t bear to hear his mother offer praise when he didn’t think he deserved it. She thought he could do anything, and even though he usually shared her confidence, he wasn’t so sure it was warranted just now.

  Thea was right about one thing. He wouldn’t be taking on the task of raising the kids alone. He only had to go as far as his refrigerator for proof of that. He could probably count on his mother’s version of meals-on-wheels at least two times a week. More, if he asked her. Amy would be good for some baby-sitting time. She’d been married three years but she and David were in no hurry to have children. Gabe and Kathy’s kids had always been surrogate grandchildren to his parents; but now that he had them in his care, the pressure to reproduce was really off him and Amy. There was no way of knowing how long the reprieve would last.

  Mitch finished his beer, rinsed the bottle, and dropped it in the blue recycling bin inside the breezeway. He started out to wait for the bus, felt the chill, and went back for his coat. In the past he wouldn’t have thought twice about making a jaunt to the corner without his jacket. Even if he had had to wait there a few minutes he’d have been okay. Now, with the twins watching his every move, and Emilie grading his screwups as mild, moderate, and I’m-gonna-call 911, he tried to make sure he practiced what he preached. Just that morning he wouldn’t let Grant go for the bus without snapping his jacket. Mitch couldn’t very well go outside now without a coat.

  He made it as far as the driveway when he saw Gina’s bright yellow Nissan Xterra turn the corner. Case and Grant loved her banana car and were always clamoring for rides. Mitch wished she had chosen another color from the Crayola box. Like black.

  He waited on the sidewalk for her to pull up. The street in front of his house was wide enough to permit parking on both sides. Gina stopped the SUV directly beside him and threw it into park. That was another thing that bothered Mitch. She bought a tough little truck-based SUV with an automatic transmission. It was some kind of vehicle castration as far as Mitch was concerned. It made him uncomfortable.

  “Hey,” he greeted her when she fairly danced up to him. “What’s up?”

  Gina threw her arms around his neck, gave a little hop, and clapped her thighs around his hips, locking her ankles behind him. Scooching around a bit to find a comfortable cradle against his groin, Gina waited for Mitch’s hands to cup her bottom. As soon as he did she planted her mouth firmly over his.

  Mitch was the first to draw back. “Wow,” he said softly. “What’s that for?”

  “I sold a house today.” Beaming, she kissed him again, humming against his mouth so the kiss fairly vibrated.

  Out of the corner of his eye Mitch was watching for that other banana ride, the No. 83 bus, and wishing Gina would give him back his tongue. He gently disengaged himself from her mouth and a moment later from the barnaclelike hold she had on his body. “This part of town is zoned residential,” he said dryly. “You want to put on a show, we should take this outside the town limits.”

  Gina caught Mitch’s wrists and leaned back against the Xterra. Tugging, she got him to take another half step toward her. “Too bad. I’d let you fuck me right here.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh, yeah.” She put his hands inside her open jacket and arched just enough to make her breasts an offering. “Go on. You know you want to.”

  Mitch wasn’t certain that he did but his hands seemed to be taking their orders from his other head. He cupped Gina’s breasts. Her nipples poked the heart of his palms. “You do pick your moments.” He lowered his head and blew lightly on the strands of dark hair that were covering her ear. He felt her shiver; her delicious little body rubbed against him. Mitch nuzzled her neck.

  “Hey, Mitch! You wanna getta room? I don’t let my kids watch PG-13 yet!”

  Tips of his ears reddening, Mitch was still game. He stepped back and called out to Susan Gerow as she walked briskly past him on her way to meet the bus. “I was going for an R here.”

  Susan turned, never breaking her brisk stride as she walked backward. “Then someone has to get nekkid.”

  One of Mitch’s brows kicked up. “Really?”

  “Really!” She pivoted again and continued on, yelling back, “They set the bar so low that Porky’s would get a G.”

  Gina was dusting off her behind from where she’d been rubbing up against the SUV. “What’s Porky’s?”

  “You never saw it?”

  She put her hands on her hips and gave him a sigh that was not entirely exaggerated. “Why do you do that? I just asked you what it was and then you ask me if I’ve seen it. Doesn’t that seem a tad like you’re wasting your breath? No, I haven’t seen it.”

  “Think American Pie of the eighties.”

  Regina Sommers graduated magna cum laude from Pitt. She had a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and was accepted for the master’s program in the fall at Duquesne. She knew she wasn’t exactly a slouch in the brains department, but sometimes she really didn’t understand what Mitch was talking about. “American Pie the movie, right? Not the song.”

  “The movie, Regina.”

  “Now you’re being patronizing. Last week we had this big ol’ discussion about “American Pie” the song and how it was about the day the music died—which was not, apparently, about the Beatles breaking up or even Kurt Cobain offing himself—which, by the way, I apologized for not knowing where I was even though I was only six at the time—and how the song referred to the Buddy Holly plane crash and him dying along with Richie Valens and the Big Chopper.”

  “Bopper.”

  “What?”

  “It was the Big Bopper.”

  “Oh.” She slipped her arm through his and fell in step as he began walking to the corner. “It’s not as if you remember where you were when Buddy bought it.”

  “It’s just about having some sense of the past, I suppose. I admit it’s a quirk of mine.”

  “So, what? I need to watch the History Channel and Legends of Rock and Roll?”

  Mitch chuckled. “I promise I’ll pick up tips from HGTV.” He gave her arm a squeeze. Gina leaned into him, all warm and snuggly. She had a lithe, compact body, a nice round ass and hard belly. She was built more like a gymnast than a runner but she ran several times a week, always outdoors. Treadmills, she’d told him, were for pussies. She came from WASP stock on both sides of her family. Mitch believed that somewhere in the past the thin blue-blooded Sommers’ line had benefited from the infusion of a little Mediterranean DNA. Gina had thick, coffee-colored hair and eyes, beautiful olive-toned skin, and fairly radiated warmth when she smiled. She liked to touch him when she talked, laying her hand on his forearm or leaning into his shoulder, and she never seemed to be satisfied that she was close enough. Conversation was practically foreplay because Gina could rub herself against him like a cat in heat when they were just discussing where to order takeout. She was excitable and exciting and it was a pretty heady combination. When Mitch considered the breasts that went with all of it, it was damn near intoxicating.

  So why couldn’t he quite get Thea Wyndham out of his mind?

  “If you can control your hormones,” he told Gina, “tell me about your sale.”

  “Later. When the kids are in bed.” She gave him an arch look. “Then I’ve got a story for you that will make your interest rate soar.”

  “Sounds good.” Mitch felt her stiffen slightly and knew he had not quite mu
stered the enthusiasm she was looking for. “How late can you stay?”

  “I can stay all night.”

  “Gina.”

  “Yeah, I know. Not while the kids are with you. You know, you’re a pretty old-fashioned kind of guy.”

  “Their parents were married. I’m just not ready to try to explain a different kind of relationship to them.”

  She held up both hands. “All right. I can appreciate that. So, tell me about your meeting today. When is Thea taking the kids?”

  Mitch loosed himself from Gina’s arm and waved to the twins. They were sitting in separate seats on the bus, both of them with their faces pressed to the window, mouths open wide so they could make humid circles on the glass. They saw him almost simultaneously and jumped up as the bus squealed and groaned to a stop. The doors opened and there was a lot of scrambling for position in the aisle. The mothers congregating on the sidewalk stopped their conversations and prepared to pluck their chicks as they descended the steps.

  “She’s not,” Mitch told Gina. He didn’t look at her as he dropped the bomb. “She says she can’t.”

  “You’re not fu ...” She remembered herself at the same time one of the mothers turned to give her a sharp, disapproving stare. Smiling sweetly, Gina began again, this time in a much less vocal manner. “You’re not freakin’ serious.”

  Mitch rolled his eyes. “You don’t need the adjective.”

  “The fuck I don’t.” Making an abrupt about-face, Gina stalked off toward the house.

  “Hey, Uncle Mitch!”

  Case reached him first and Mitch immediately put him in a headlock and gave him a noogie. “Nice hair, Spike. Did Nonny let you gel it yourself?”

  “Yeah! Pap said I’m a lethal weapon. Double-O Jell-O.”

  “Cool.” Since the district only offered half-day kindergarten, the twins sometimes went to his mother’s house in the morning so Mitch could work undisturbed. She put them on the school bus at eleven-thirty. “Great secret identity.”

  Grinning, Case escaped the loose headlock and gave up his place for his brother. “Double-O Poop-O,” he said to Grant once Mitch had him securely under arm.

  “Hey! Not nice,” Mitch said. “I can’t keep him here forever.” He knuckled Grant’s head while the boy struggled to get free so he could pulverize his brother. “Easy, Sport. Case is sorry.” He gave Case a significant look which suggested he’d better get sorry fast.

  “I was only teasin’.” He broke into a high-pitched giggle as he danced around his twin and Mitch. “Poop-O knows that.”

  “Hmmm. Let’s see.” He let Grant go and Case immediately sprinted off, his brother hot on his trail. Their book bags bobbed against their shoulders until they both managed to wiggle out of them on the run. Mitch just shook his head, a glimmer of a smile on his lips, and followed at a slower pace.

  Susan Gerow and her daughter passed him as he was picking up the book bags. “They’ll be friends by the time they reach the door,” she assured him.

  “Yeah. That’s what I’m learning.”

  She gave him a thumbs-up.

  The boys were actually waiting for him at the stop sign on the next corner. It was a rule they weren’t allowed to cross without an adult yet, though their spin on it was that they were helping him get to the other side.

  Grant pointed up the street to where Gina was opening the door to her banana car. “Is Miss Sommers leaving?”

  Mitch felt a brief surge of wistfulness and pride each time the twins and Emilie addressed adults with polite formality. That was Kathy’s instruction and Mitch had discovered he liked it. It was what he had been taught as a child but he was finding that many of his friends’ children were permitted lots of familiarities, usually by adults who were not their parents. Gina had tried to get them to call her almost anything but Miss Sommers until Mitch gently put his foot down. “It looks like she’s getting her purse,” he told them. Indeed, Gina seemed to be wrestling with her Sak. “She’s probably got the straps caught in her wannabe stick shift.” He looked both ways, made certain the coast was clear, and sent the boys ahead to help her. Gina would be so appreciative. They would undoubtedly clamor for a ride in the SUV.

  “Maybe later, guys,” she was telling them as Mitch approached. By the tone of her voice, Mitch judged it was probably at least the third time she’d said it.

  “Just say no, Gina. Believe it or not, they get that.”

  She slammed the door, slinging her bag over her shoulder. “Sorry, guys. You heard your uncle Mitch. No.”

  The twins, having perfected the hangdog expression of monumental disappointment, turned on Mitch in unison. He felt the double blow of soulful brown eyes—their mother’s eyes—and pouty lower lips. He simply canted his head to the side, indicating they should hightail it into the house. “And take off your shoes in the breezeway!” he called after them. To Gina, he said, “That was low.”

  She shrugged. “‘Just say no, Gina,’” she mimicked. “Isn’t that what you told me to do?”

  “You know I meant that you should give them a clear answer one way or the other.”

  “Hmmm.” Gina glanced over her shoulder at him as she entered the garage. “Then maybe you’re the one who needs to give clear instructions.”

  Mitch sighed. She really had her back up.

  Gina yanked off her boots in the breezeway. “Don’t ever correct me like that again in public, Mitch. I’m not one of the kids.”

  He bit back the obvious reply—Then don’t act like one.—and said instead, “The potty mouth has no place around the kids.”

  “What are you doing, like, reading every parent magazine? You think they haven’t heard it before?”

  “Not from their parents or mine. I’m trying not to let them hear it from me, and I’d like that they didn’t hear it from you.”

  “They weren’t even around yet. You were just worried about the other parents. As if they’ve never said anything like that.”

  Mitch slipped Grant’s book bag onto the same forearm that held Case’s. He used his free hand to rake his hair. “Look, I’m sorry, Gina, if I embarrassed or offended you.”

  “If?”

  He sighed heavily this time. “I’m trying to apologize.”

  The arms that were crossed tightly under Gina’s breasts relaxed slightly. “Go on.”

  “That’s it. I’m sorry. I’m feeling my way here. I haven’t had time to read a magazine about parenting. I’ve hardly been able to read what I have to to do my job. I could use your help, and if you can’t give that, I could at least use your understanding.”

  Gina was silent a moment, studying his face. There was about a snowball’s chance that she wasn’t going to forgive him. As much as these recent choices of his had inconvenienced her plans, there was a part of her that admired Mitch for taking it all on, almost without blinking an eye. Steady. Decent. Sincere. It didn’t hurt that he was handsome as sin either. She took one of the book bags from him, stood on tiptoe, and gave him a kiss full on the lips. “I still want to boink you,” she whispered against his mouth.

  Mitch wasn’t exactly proof against the firm little body she thrust against him. “Yeah,” he whispered back. “Boink works for me, too.”

  She laughed and grabbed his hand. “C’mon. Before Case and Grant get curious.”

  No chance of that, Mitch thought as he rounded the corner into the living room. The twins were already sitting cross-legged and catatonic in front of the TV, their jackets only partially unbuttoned and halfway to their elbows. Disrobing interruptus. “Guys! Jackets. Hall closet.”

  Gina smirked when they didn’t move. “You’ve got to turn the TV off or stand in front of it. Even I know that.”

  Mitch chuckled and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for the help.”

  Thea was curled in one corner of the overstuffed sofa in her office when her assistant buzzed her. She looked up from the layout she was only pretending to study and stared just as vaguely at the offending phone.


  “Ms. Wyndham? Are you in there?”

  It was no use not answering. Mrs. Admundson, a frighteningly efficient holdover from the days when Thea’s father still ran the firm, would wonder why she hadn’t seen her leave and come in to check. “I’m here,” Thea answered, trying for a tone that was neither tired nor impatient and afraid it was both. “What do you need?”

  “Mr. Strahern is here.”

  “Oh. Of course.” She pushed the layout to one side. “Show him—” The door was opening before Thea could unfold her legs and make a search for her sling-back Ferragamos.

  “Don’t move,” Joel commanded. “You look all soft and sleepy-eyed. Very sexy.” He shut the door behind him and leaned one shoulder against it, just taking his fill of Thea’s momentary and unexpected vulnerability here in her office. “Were you napping?”

  “Hmmm. No, not really.” Thea’s smile surrendered to an abrupt yawn. Embarrassed, and not entirely certain why that was, she added, “Though I wasn’t doing anything more productive.” She found her shoes and slipped them on, coming to her feet in spite of Joel’s insistence that she do otherwise. “Come in. Can I get you something to drink?” She started in the direction of the wet bar, remembered herself, and backtracked to give Joel a kiss. What she intended as a peck on the cheek became something more than that when he turned his head and caught her mouth with his own. She returned it but her discomfort was clearly communicated. After a moment, he let her go. “It’s just that it’s my office,” she said, explaining herself for perhaps the dozenth time. “I have to work here and I don’t want—”

  He laughed deeply, a pleasant chuckle that was at once knowing and indulgent. “I know,” he said, cupping the side of her face. “But you can’t blame me for trying.”

  Actually she did, though she felt rather small about it. He was her fiancé, after all. One would think she’d be able to make some allowances where he was concerned. On the other side of the door Mrs. Admundson was probably thinking Joel already had her dress shoved up to her hips and was bending her over the desk. Mrs. Admundson remained thoroughly professional but Thea could see that the specter of some sexual escapade had been raised. It was there in her eyes, in the way she couldn’t quite meet Thea’s after Joel left. Thea was mortified. When she told Joel, he was amused. He rather liked the idea that the office staff at Foster and Wyndham thought he dropped in for a quickie. That was because she’d never told him about the seltzer-water-with-a-Viagra-chaser jokes that were going around. He would have screwed her in front of the entire agency just to prove medication had nothing to do with it.