What's Life Without the Sprinkles - By Misty Simon Page 0,45

fingers just there when they sat at football games and froze in the winter. It was always exposed by his knit caps. She wasn’t sure what it meant that she felt nothing at the memory but a brief surge of nostalgia.

She shook her head slightly to clear it of the image that wouldn’t do any good in helping her get through the next several minutes. At least there wasn’t an inch-wide strip of naked skull where the hair plugs had not been put in right. Although it might have been easier to do this if Peter had turned into a frumpy, pudgy old man in the last ten years.

She tried to steel herself against looking into Peter’s face and seeing her son in twenty or so years. From pictures of Peter as a boy, she knew Justin looked very like his father at this age. If nothing else, at least she knew her boy was going to be good-looking when he was older.

And she’d stalled long enough. “Hello, Peter.”

Chapter Six

After what felt like an eternity, Peter finally turned around. She hadn’t spent the time to look anywhere else than at his eyes, in the kitchen. And that had felt more like a tractor beam she couldn’t disengage from than anything she actually wanted to be a part of. Claudia hadn’t seen any pictures of him in years. May knew better than to bring them out. Or bring him up, for that matter. He was the tabooest of subjects.

So she still had a picture of him in her head as an eighteen-year-old with bronzed skin, dark hair, and perfect smile that could turn her knees to jelly across the cafeteria table.

And there wasn’t much different about him now. He’d filled out a little, had more of a man’s body, but the smile was still there, the bronzed skin was still kissed by the sun, and the dark hair didn’t contain a single strand of gray. Thank God she’d gotten her hair dyed last week and her knees were rock solid.

“Claudia.”

And his voice was still as sinful as ever. It slid over her skin and down her throat. Damn it. Nate. She’d think about Nate and forget the smile. But she couldn’t even pull up a decent picture of Nate in her mind now. She was surprised she’d remembered his name. Her knees would not turn to jelly now if they knew what was good for them. Finally an image popped into her mind, the one with Nate and his shirt halfway up that scrumptious belly the other day. The forced smile on her face relaxed a half inch.

And then they did the awkward dance—Do you give a hug? Kiss the air next to his cheek? Shake hands? Keep ten feet between you? God, this was killing her.

She settled on a hybrid—the one-armed hug. But Peter was attempting the very same thing and ended up getting a handful of her boob.

She jumped back faster than she thought she could possibly move and blushed to the roots of her hair.

He, on the other hand, smirked and looked just like the old Peter, sure he could get everything in the world handed to him on the platter without any work or investment in anything other than himself.

“Well, it was nice seeing you.” She started to walk away and realized she couldn’t go any farther than the kitchen. The joke was on her. She couldn’t duck out of lunch before lunch even happened, couldn’t leave May in the lurch. So she’d have to buck it up.

“Zoe, could I see you in the kitchen?” If she had to be in the house, she’d make sure it wasn’t right near him. Certainly something must need to be done before they all sat down at the table and acted like one big happy family.

“Right behind you.”

Taking careful steps back across the living room, which seemed to have grown even larger, she heard May talking in a low voice to Peter and then a solid thwack when she smacked him in the back of the head. Claudia barely contained a snicker and wondered when the hell her life had become this insane weirdness.

“Well, that went well, don’t you think?” Zoe yanked open the refrigerator, dove inside and came up triumphant. She tore into a crisp carrot like she was taking off someone’s head.

“Yeah, that wasn’t uncomfortable at all. And you were a real big help. Thanks.” Claudia searched without any luck for something, anything, to do. “You could have