For the Girls' Sake - By Janice Kay Johnson Page 0,37

a lot more tempting than Rhonda McIntyre’s over-plumped lips.

Blushing, murmuring that the bathroom was all his, Lynn had fled, leaving him with thoughts that kept him awake. Now, being tormented on Lynn Chanak’s ancient couch, every time he closed his eyes, he saw himself tangling his fingers in that mass of glorious hair. He imagined her pretty eyes. The smell of her soap and the lavender and roses drifting from her bureau.

She was the mother of his daughter. Her body had once swelled with child, and it was his Rosebud she’d carried. Knowing that muddled his thoughts. When he tried to see his Jenny pregnant, he imagined Lynn instead.

It didn’t help to tell himself that she’d be horrified if she knew he was lying out here on her couch thinking about her.

What if he acted on it? What if he kissed her? What if she didn’t slap him?

Would he long for Jenny when he kissed Lynn?

Groaning, Adam rolled over again and stared up at the dark ceiling.

Even if he didn’t think about Jenny, what he felt wasn’t love. It was loneliness butting up against involuntary intimacy with a woman. It was encountering her barefooted in her nightie with her teeth freshly brushed and her cheeks rosy. It was seeing her as his child’s mother.

And it could not be. The inevitable hurt feelings and anger would destroy any hope of sharing their daughters.

Grimly Adam tried to shut off the show his imagination was directing. Obviously, it was time—past time—he found a woman with whom he could laugh and kiss, if nothing else.

Any woman but Lynn Chanak.

* * *

OF COURSE, BY MONDAY morning, rain dripped dismally from a gray sky, killing his hope of taking the girls to the beach. The kitchen table didn’t seat four, so Adam sat wedged between Rose and Shelly while Lynn munched toast and served them.

"No movie theater in town," he remembered.

“Nope. Lincoln City is the closest. And I don’t think anything is playing that they’d enjoy."

"Any ideas?" he asked without hope.

"We could hang around here." Whisking back and forth between stove and table, she barely glanced at him. "The girls’ll be happy playing. You can do whatever it is brokers do. Use your laptop to check what prices are going up or down. That terrorist bombing in Rome probably panicked a few stockholders."

He didn’t care whether Intel had dropped a point and a half because some zealot had blown up himself and half an office building just outside the Vatican. He didn’t want to spend the day with her. But he’d had the girls yesterday. Today was, in a sense, her turn. He couldn’t decide to leave until mid-afternoon at least.

"Sure," he said without enthusiasm. "Sounds good."

"You girls could dress up," Lynn suggested. "I’ll get the box down if you want."

"Dress up?" Rose brightened. "We could have a parade. Like we do at preschool."

"Yeah!" Shelly bounced. "And maybe sing!"

"And dance."

"You could put on a performance for us." Lynn set more bacon on the table.

"Let’s go practice." The girls were gone in a flurry, Lynn behind them to get down "the box."

Adam usually avoided cholesterol-laden foods like bacon, but he gloomily began crunching a strip. When Lynn reappeared, he asked, "What’s in the box?"

“Oh..." She smiled and took a tea bag from a canister. "Dress-up clothes. I’m always adding new stuff from the thrift store. I have feather boas and gaudy jewelry and high heels and scarves. Lots of sequins. You’ll see." Pouring hot water into her mug, she added over her shoulder, "But what makes it magic is, I only let Shelly into it every once in a while. On a day when she’s really bored. Or like today, when she and a friend can put on a production."

Magic. Adam guessed he did okay as a parent, but he didn’t know how to make magic. This woman did.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked.

Surprising himself, he told her.

"Nonsense." She joined him at the table. "A dress-up box is a girl thing. Why would you think of it?"

Jennifer would have, he knew.

"That doesn’t mean you don’t come up with your own ideas. Or at least provide Rose with the opportunity to find them elsewhere."

"Preschool."

"Sure. Why not?"

"If she loved it there, she wouldn’t hate going."

Lynn lifted out the tea bag, squeezed it and set it on the edge of a breakfast plate. The rich scent of orange and cinnamon overrode the greasier scent of bacon.

"I don’t know about that," she said calmly. "Just because Rose cries when she