The Perfect Match

  “I’m more of a chocolate frosting man myself.”

  “That’s the whole problem of it, Daddy. You’re a boy. Boys like chocolate. Girls like pink.”

  “I like chocolate,” Charlie said, falling into the usual routine and taking hold of the handles of Mac’s chair. Cash’s heart hitched as he noticed for the first time how small Charlie looked, pushing the weight of the wheelchair along behind him.

  “You always like everything Daddy likes.” Mac dismissed her. “I like what Rowena likes better.”

  “Mac!” Charlie hissed. “You’re gonna hurt Daddy’s feelings.”

  “Am not. I’m just saying it’s nice having a girl around here for a change.”

  Cash forced a chuckle. “Hey, from where I’m sitting it looks like I’m already outnumbered around here two to one.”

  “I don’t mean little girls,” Mac explained. “I mean a grownup girl. It’s like having a mommy even if I am just borrowing her the way A.J. used to borrow my crayons.”

  “Used to?” Cash said as he opened the back door with one hand, holding it so Charlie could push the chair up the ramp he’d built there two years before. “Don’t tell me A.J. finally got a box of his own?”

  “Nope. I just won’t share with him ever again.”

  Lovers’ quarrel? Cash wondered, exhausted at the thought of handling yet another complication. A.J. VanDuren had been sweet on Mac since they started the early intervention program for kids with special challenges a year ago. Last Valentine’s Day he’d given her a boy’s idea of the most awesome present ever: a plastic heart full of edible green slime crawling with gummy worms. “You and A.J. have a fight or something?”

  Mac’s small chin jutted out with pure Lawless stubbornness. “He said you can’t borrow a mommy, but I can so.”

  Borrow a mommy… Cash felt as if the kid had sucker punched him. He hesitated, busying himself with getting the girls, Destroyer and the chair back inside.

  “Rowena’s borrowed, isn’t she, Daddy?” Mac insisted.

  “Rowena’s not a mommy, Mac,” Charlie said in that serious tone of hers. “At least not a kid kind of mommy. Maybe a dog one.”

  Mac didn’t like that answer. She kicked at her sister with one foot. “I didn’t ask you. I asked Daddy.”

  “Rowena is just babysitting for a little while,” Cash said, trying not to betray his unease. “Mr. Google will back soon.” In fact, it was a damn shame Cash couldn’t arrange a miraculous recovery for the guy or his ex-partner would be back on the job tomorrow.

  Mac frowned. “A.J. says that families are supposed to have a mom and daddy or they’re broken. He even says all the books in school are proof he’s right, ’cause they’ve got mommies and daddies in every one. A.J. is a poopy-face.”

  Cash didn’t bother to correct her. At the moment he wasn’t too fond of A.J. himself.

  “There are lots of different kinds of families,” he said carefully. “Some have just a mommy, some a daddy or maybe just a grandma or grandpa. As long as they love each other, that’s what really matters. Not whether your family is just like everybody else’s.”

  “But you had a mommy. Didn’t you, Daddy?” Mac demanded.

  “Of course he did,” Charlie said, rolling her eyes.

  “You’ve seen the picture of me in my marine uniform. That lady standing next to me is my mother. Your Grandma Rose.”

  “She’s in heaven,” Mac said. “But my mommy isn’t in heaven, is she?”

  “She’s in Chicago!” Charlie exclaimed, glancing nervously up at Cash. “I told you and told you a jillion times, Mac! Remember?”

  Cash’s stomach sank. Charlie had been telling Mac that Lisa was in Chicago? Then Mac must have been asking.

  He remembered snapping at Rowena, telling her that his kids barely even remembered their mother anymore. That they never even mentioned Lisa’s name…

  It looked like he’d been wrong about that. Like so many other things.

  Mac scrunched up her face. “It must be a long way to Chicago. Even farther than the moon.”

  “Chicago’s not farther than the moon!” Charlie argued with the dignity of her years. “The moon’s in outer space, so far you’d have to take a rocket ship to get there. Besides, they don’t just take anybody up to the moon, you know. You’ve got to be an astronaut.”

  “Is Mommy an astronaut, Daddy?” Mac asked as he pulled out the barstool-high chair he used to boost Mac up so she could “help” at the kitchen counter.

  “No, sweetheart. She’s not.”

  “Well, Chicago is real far away though, right, Daddy?”

  Not nearly far enough, Cash thought, looking into Mac’s curious blue eyes. “I can show you where it is on the map if you want,” Cash offered, trying to avoid answering the question his daughter was really asking. How far away did a mommy have to be if she almost never came to see her children?

  “I don’t want maps,” Mac complained. “I want Rowena to play with.”

  “What am I, kid? Chopped liver?” Cash gave her a head a gentle knuckle rub. But she still hurt his heart. “Suddenly your old dad’s not good enough?”

  “’Course you are, Daddy!” Charlie exclaimed, poking her sister none too gently. “Tell him, Mac. Right now.”

  “Ouch! Stop pinching me!” Mac yelped, and yet something in the glare Charlie gave her must have surpassed even that indignity.

  “Charlie, no pinching—” he started to warn. But Mac jumped right in.

  “I’m not trying to be mean, Daddy, really. It’s just, you’re here all the time, but Rowena…Rowena’s way different.”

  God, yes, Rowena was different in about a hundred ways Cash couldn’t forget, no matter how hard he tried. She was soft to his hard, warm when he felt so cold. She was brave enough to be vulnerable, a kind of courage he could never again possess. “Different how?” he asked, his voice sounding strange even to his own ears.

  “She jingles all the time.”

  Cash thought of the bracelets Rowena wore on her slender wrists, the music they made, even when she was in the other room. He couldn’t help the way his spirits lifted at the sound, knowing she would soon appear.

  “She smells good, too,” Mac added.

  “Daddy doesn’t smell bad!” Charlie defended.

  “I didn’t say he smelled bad. He just doesn’t smell pretty.”

  “That’s a good thing for a deputy, right?” Cash tried to joke. “If I smelled like flowers the bad guys would probably laugh in my face.”

  “Rowena doesn’t smell like flowers, silly. She smells like…like…”

  “Lemonade,” Cash supplied. Charlie’s gaze snapped up to his. He felt his cheeks warm under his daughter’s searching stare, thought of how Rowena’s hair had felt in his hand, the way the scent of her had filled him with longings he dared not allow. Needs obliterated when he’d raged at her in the hallway. And by his duty to the girls he loved more than life.

  “That’s right, Daddy!” Mac piped up in delight. “She does smell like lemonade. See, Charlie? Even Daddy says Rowena smells better than he does! And Rowena gets to use all the colors in her crayon box. I wish we could.”

  “Back to crayons again?” Cash tried to decipher what Mac was trying to tell him. “What do you mean, kitten?”

  “She’s got orange and pink and yellow and blue and purple in her shop. We just get to use gray.”

  “Are you talking about the house?”

  Mac nodded.

  “I thought…” Cash stopped himself. What had he been thinking? He’d kept the house just the way Lisa had left it. Thought he’d been doing what was right for the girls’ sake. They’d been forced to endure so many other changes.

  “I thought you liked the house just the way it was. The way…” Obviously avoiding saying Lisa’s name to the girls didn’t mean they weren’t thinking about her. “The way your mom left it.”

  “I don’t remember Mommy that much anymore. But Charlie does. She tells me ’bout her sometimes.” r />
  Cash’s throat felt tight as he glimpsed Charlie’s face, pinched with guilt.

  “I only talk about Mommy when she makes me, Daddy,” Charlie apologized. “I won’t ever again if you don’t want me to.”

  Charlie knew, Cash realized with a sick lurch in his stomach. Charlie knew talking about Lisa upset him. All these months his daughter had been trying to shield him—from his own rage, from MacKenzie’s questions, from the woman who’d painted the house gray and left empty places at the kitchen table, on the walls, in their lives.

  Charlie was protecting him…Damn it, he cursed in self-disgust. He was the one who was supposed to be protecting her!

  “Daddy?”

  He felt a tug at his sleeve, looked down into Charlie’s worried face. “Are you mad at me?”

  “No, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m the one who made the mistake.”

  For the rest of the evening he tried to lose himself in a whirlwind of cake mix speckled with broken egg shells. Spatulas he let the girls lick clean of batter. He worked through Mac’s exercises, Destroyer watching by his side. He felt Charlie’s loneliness emanating from the gray room where the little girl had gone with her book. And he fought the truths Rowena had put into his head, the needs his little girls’ questions had finally driven home.

  They wanted their mother. Even though she’d deserted them. Had rarely called them. Didn’t deserve them.

  It didn’t matter that Lisa was nothing like Cash’s own mom had been, or Rowena with her jingling bracelets and her laughter and all the colors of the rainbow. Rowena was right. Lisa was the only mother Charlie and Mac would ever have.

  It was well past midnight when he went into Mac’s room, expecting her to be asleep. Instead, she was lying bare-legged with her feet up by her headboard, while she stared out her window at the sky.

  “What are you doing, you goofball?” Cash said, kneeling down beside the bed. “Your head’s supposed to be on your pillow.”

  Mac rolled over toward him and sighed sleepily. “I got some questions. But a moon is real hard to talk to.”

  Cash’s throat constricted as he tucked Mac’s ballerina bear tighter into her arms. “You could talk to me.”

  “It’s girl stuff, Daddy. You wouldn’t understand.”

  She was right, Cash knew.

  Girl stuff…Those feminine secrets that had daunted him for two long years.

  How many times had he thought about them himself on nights when he couldn’t sleep? He’d imagined trying to explain to Charlie how her body would soon be changing. About boys and tampons and how deathly important it was that she protect herself. He’d imagined trying to help her understand how precious she was. Worth waiting for. Worth far more than the backseat of a Buick or a wall-shaker in an elevator frozen between two floors.

  Worthy of a man far better than Cash had ever been.

  Girl stuff…

  Rowena was right. He might love his girls with every cell in his body. Might be willing to fight for them, die for them. But he’d never be their mother.

  “I love you, Mac. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. I love you, too. ’Cept when you make me do therapy sometimes.”

  Cash smiled in spite of his pain. No pulling punches with that kid.

  Cash scooped Mac up and turned her around. He tucked her legs under the sheets, covering up scars he couldn’t change.

  “You’re going to get cold lying that way,” he explained. “Your legs are supposed to be under the blanket. Not on top of it.”

  “I s’pose,” Mac allowed. He leaned over her and kissed her forehead, wondering why love had to hurt so much.

  “Mac?”

  “Humm?”

  “I’d move heaven and earth for you and your sister.”

  Tonight he had to move something far harder.

  The boulder of hate weighing down his own heart.

  Cash went to his room, picked up the phone and punched in Lisa’s number. He ground his teeth as it rang, hoping the answering machine would pick up and he could just leave a message. Wouldn’t have to say the words to her.

  But just when he thought he might be in luck for once in his life, he heard the bounces and bleeps of Lisa fumbling with the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Cash.”

  “Cash?” He could hear her pushing herself upright in bed. She’d have that bewildered look Mac sometimes did when he woke her from a sound sleep. One more of the marks that he’d tried to deny she’d left on his daughters.

  “You can take the girls for the weekend.”

  “Great! That’s…great,” Lisa said, and he could hear the relief in her, and something else. An undercurrent of fear? “But it’s…it’s two o’clock in the morning. Couldn’t this have waited?”

  “I was afraid I’d change my mind.” He wished the words back the instant he said them. Exposing the truth to an enemy was a chance he didn’t want to take.

  “Cash, I really do appreciate you letting me take them. And…everything else you’ve done for the girls.”

  “You want to show your appreciation, Lisa?” he growled. “Bring them back in decent emotional condition. I don’t want to have to patch up your messes again.”

  “Cash…” Was that a quaver in her voice? Or just the last threads of sleepiness? “The last thing I want to do is hurt them.”

  “Somehow I don’t find that very reassuring. You said the same thing when you called to tell me you weren’t coming home.”

  “Cash, I—”

  “They have a four-day weekend coming up soon. You can get them Thursday night, bring them back before Tuesday morning.”

  “That would be…wonderful. Thank you.”

  What the hell was he supposed to say to that? You’re welcome? She wasn’t welcome. Not to his kids, not back into his life. He let the silence stretch between them until she broke it.

  “I’ll pick them up as soon as they’re off school. Make sure to pack their swimsuits. My new condo has an indoor swimming pool.”

  He should have been glad about that. Mac would get some exercise. Her muscles wouldn’t get stiff. “I’ll pack ’em.”

  “And I thought I’d take them to Brookfield Zoo. Do you think they’d like that?”

  Cash pushed back a surge of bitterness. When was the last time he’d had the time or energy to take the girls someplace like that? Somewhere special Mac and Charlie would remember?

  “Yeah. They’d like it.”

  By the time he finally hung up the phone, he felt so drained he sank down on his bed and threw his arm over his eyes. He tried not to remember how natural Rowena had looked cuddled with the girls on his pillows that first morning. How safe, how comforted, how at peace his children had seemed for that tiny space in time.

  The way a child should feel with a mother. How would they be with Lisa? He’d never know.

  Cash swallowed a lump in his throat, his jaw clenching hard.

  Let it go, he told himself.

  It was done. All the arrangements were made. He’d explained to her about Mac’s chair, booster carseats and such. Every question was asked and its answer filed away—except for the one that really mattered.

  Had he just made the biggest mistake of his life?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  IT WAS HARD TO STAY ANGRY at a woman who kept plying him with coffee first thing in the morning, Cash realized as he leveled a bleary eye at Rowena. Especially when he had figured she’d never set foot in his kitchen again.

  Tiny turquoise stones embroidered around the V-neck blouse she wore shimmered against her creamy throat, the notch in the fabric revealing just the barest hint of cleavage. No question about it, Cash thought grimly. He was definitely underdressed.

  His police academy sweats were cut off above the knee. His hunter-green terrycloth bathrobe hung open because its belt had come up missing after being put to use in one of the girls’ games. Cool air tickled the fine mat of hair on the rectangle of skin left expo
sed as he crossed to the counter and grabbed a steaming mug. He tried to ignore the strange sensation beneath his ribs when she lifted her own cup to those soft pink lips he’d kissed and her bracelets jangled softly.

  “What are you? A glutton for punishment?” he grumbled, tugging his robe a little tighter over his bare chest. “You aren’t supposed to be here.”