like normal.
She grabbed a soapy sponge. Something about making brownies always took out her whole kitchen. There were drips of chocolate on the pecan cupboards and a dusting of flour everywhere on the coral Formica counters. Working around Spence at the island bar, she swiped and scrubbed with the sponge. She was conscious that her feet were bare, her face as scrubbed as a kid’s, and he’d probably been around women all day dressed in elegant business suits. Her oversize brown T-shirt and red shorts were ancient and looked it—but he’d seen her look worse.
Come to think of it, he’d never seen her looking anything but worse. At the moment she doubted he’d notice if she were wearing red satin or gold lamé. His head was buried pretty deeply in the chocolate bowl. “Good grief. Doesn’t Mary Margaret ever make you brownies?”
“She bakes. We had a mystery pie last night. I didn’t have the courage to ask what it was. Definitely not brownies, though. And definitely nothing like this. How’s your head?”
“My head?”
“No headache? I only had one experience with dark sweet rum, way back in college, but I remembered it being pretty lethal the next morning.”
She’d hoped—she’d so earnestly prayed—that he’d forgotten all about last night. “Well, I woke up this morning with a fairly good head pounder. Bad enough to convince me that if I were going to take up a vice, it’d be something besides alcohol.” She added swiftly, lightly, “I can hardly remember anything that happened last night after the first sip.”
“No?”
“Nope. Not a thing. I slept like the dead, though, that’s for sure....” She finished her cleanup and perched on the kitchen stool next to him, still drying her hands on a watermelon-print towel. Not that she was in a hustle to change the subject, but the winning horse at the Derby couldn’t have hustled any faster. “Did you have a good day? Market some good business deals?”
“Had a great day. Marketed up a storm. So...did you have any time today to shop for some Victoria’s Secret underwear?”
“Beg your pardon?”
“Last night...” He frowned, as if trying to recall her exact words. For a man who’d been salivating for chocolate seconds before, suddenly he seemed to have forgotten all about the brownie bowl. “You were talking about turning over a new leaf and becoming ‘reckless.’ I’m pretty sure you mentioned that a shopping trip to Victoria’s Secret was part of that agenda... whoops. Has Gwen disappeared on me?”
He reached over to peek under the kitchen towel she’d flopped over her head.
“Nope. She’s still here,” he announced gravely.
“She’s hiding under the towel because she’s dying of embarrassment,” Gwen said dryly. “I was counting on you to be a gentleman and forget everything I said last night. I never meant any of it—”
“I thought you made all kinds of good sense.”
“Good sense?” She pulled the towel off then, if only to see his face. She assumed he was pulling her leg, yet his expression—bewilderingly enough— seemed sincere and serious. “I dipped into half my supply of cooking rum for the annual rum cakes I make around the holidays. Far as I recall, I barely swallowed the first sip before I quit making any sense.”
“Well, I guess I came over for nothing, then, because that was exactly what I wanted to talk with you about. I thought maybe we could help each other.”
“Help each other?” Gwen didn’t mean to keep parroting him, but so far—beyond feeling eternally grateful that he hadn’t brought up that blasted kiss—she seemed to be having a major problem following the conversation.
Spence pushed aside the bowl and lazily propped his long legs on the opposite kitchen stool. “You sounded... trapped. I understand how that feels, Gwen. My life is my daughter right now—and I don’t want it any other way. But besides her and work, there doesn’t seem to be any free time in a day. Single parenting is a twenty-four-hour-a-day job.”
“You’re not kidding,” she agreed.
“But even loving it, you can feel trapped. At least I do, sometimes. I imagine you feel just as buried under the same mountain of single-parent responsibilities.”
“I do,” she agreed again, still unsure where he was leading.
“Well, I don’t think it’s selfish—or weird—that you feel like you need to break out sometimes. Maybe you were teasing about doing something ‘reckless.’ But I think it’s a pretty human, healthy need to crave some time to yourself. And it occurred to me...”
“What?”
He lifted a hand in a boyish gesture. “It just occurred to me that we’re both in the same boat. It’s really hard for a single parent to pull off any free time-without a fellow conspirator. I’m guessing you don’t hire many baby-sitters?”
“No.”
He nodded. “Me, either. I’ve got Mary Margaret during the day for April, but I really hate leaving her with strangers in the evening just because I selfishly need some time off. I mean... I want to give my daughter that personal time, or at least know she’s with someone who really cares about her. Strangers don’t cut that mustard.”
“I feel exactly the same way,” Gwen said honestly. “I hate leaving the boys with baby-sitters. Even though I’m home, I’m either working—or running hard—during the day. It’s not the same as real time with them, and especially because of the divorce I feel they need that time in the evenings. I just feel really selfish and guilty if I leave them.”
“Yeah. I understand. But I kept thinking about how our kids play together all the time, have a good time with each other, so it’s not like any of us are strangers. If we combined resources, it seems to me it could help us both. Which is to say—if you want an ally, I’m volunteering to be one.”
“Well, Spence, you’ve got an ally right back. But I don’t know exactly what you’re thinking about doing....”
“I never had any set plan. I was just thinking... why don’t we try something?” He shrugged his shoulders, and then as if the idea had just popped in his head, suggested, “I’ve got an early workday tomorrow, should be home by four. How about if you just plan to take off, do whatever you feel like doing. I’ll take the kids, do dinner, keep ’em busy until bedtime.”
The thought of four hours free—actually free—danced in her head like a vision of sugarplums and gaily wrapped packages at Christmas. But a lot of years had passed since she believed in Santa. “I can’t possibly ask you to do that,” she informed him—and herself—firmly.
“You’re not asking me to do anything. I’m offering. And you can offer back the same way. Hey, if it doesn’t work out for the kids in a good way, we just won’t do it again. But I can’t see how we’ll know unless we try out an experimental run, do you?”
“No,” she said hesitantly.
“So we’re on for tomorrow? I’ll pick up your boys around four?”
“Well...okay, I guess. As far as I know, there’s no reason why that timing wouldn’t work out....”
She’d barely, hesitantly, agreed before Spence up and left. It was late, of course. Time for any parent of young children to be packing it in, and Spence never visited for more than a few minutes. Still, Gwen found herself at the kitchen window, hands on her hips, until he disappeared into the night’s shadows.
She felt... odd. Her pulse was charging, her nerves kindling awareness—but that was just hormone nonsense, she suspected. Even a woman in a coma would probably notice those liquid brown eyes and that slow, wicked grin of his, and the kiss last night had naturally upped her sexual awareness quotient around Spence. No man had ever made her feel wicked before.
If she hadn’t been