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“What are you doing here?”
“I invited him,” Lucy piped up. “I knew you wouldn’t mind.”
Nealy turned on him. “When did you see her?”
Lucy didn’t give him a chance to answer. “He came to my school today.”
That legendary self-control couldn’t hide how much she wanted to take him apart for approaching Lucy without her permission, but she wouldn’t attack in front of the girls.
Her restraint made him even more aware of the perilous ground he was treading. Although he was prepared to fight to his last breath convincing Nealy he loved her, he’d live the rest of his life alone before he’d hurt the girls.
“I told the principal who I was. She let me talk to Lucy for a few minutes.”
“I see.” Icicles dripped from her words.
“I have presents for everybody out in the car,” he said quickly, “but the Service wanted to go through them before I brought them in.” He gazed at Nealy. “I didn’t know what color roses you liked, so I brought you an assortment.” An assortment of six dozen roses, in shades ranging from vermilion to a peach-tipped white. He’d hoped to use them as a distraction when he’d walked in the door, but the Secret Service had spoiled that.
Her lips barely moved. “How thoughtful.”
A ginger-haired woman in her forties poked her head around the corner. “Dinner’s on.” She regarded Mat curiously.
“This is the friend I told you I invited to eat with us tonight,” Lucy told her.
The woman smiled. “You high school kids get bigger every day.”
He smiled back. “Hope I didn’t disrupt anything.”
She flushed. “No . . . no, of course not. Come on, everybody, before the chicken gets cold.”
Lucy grabbed his arm and steered him past Nealy toward the kitchen. “Wait till you taste Tina’s chicken. She cooks it with all this garlic.”
“I love garlic.”
“Me, too.”
“Did you ever eat jalapeños?”
“Plain?”
“Yeah, plain. What are you, some kind of a wimp?”
Nealy listened to their chatter as Mat disappeared through the family room with an arm around each of her daughters. Both of them were looking at him as if he’d hung the moon and stars just to entertain them. She realized she was shaking and drew a deep breath before she headed for the kitchen.
He was lowering Button into her high chair as she came in. He looked completely at home in the cozy kitchen with its cherry cabinets, shiny copper, and collection of bright orange pumpkins on the counter. The round table sat in a bay overlooking the garden at the side of the house. It was set with pottery plates, chunky green goblets, and Button’s special Alice in Wonderland dishes.
“Sit here, Mat!” Lucy indicated her own chair, directly to Nealy’s right. “Usually Andre and Tamarah eat with us, but Andre got his shots this afternoon, so he’s cranky, and Tamarah’s trying to study for a math test.”
“I’ve got a hockey stick for Andre out in the car,” he said. “And some skates.”
Nealy stared at him. He’d bought a six-month-old baby hockey equipment?
“Cool.” Lucy sat on the other side of Button’s high chair, safely out of spill range. “Since Button’s so messy, we don’t eat in the dining room unless we have important company.” She pulled a face. “Like you-know-who.”
“No, I don’t.”
Lucy rolled her eyes. “Graaaandfather Liiiitchfield. He calls me Lucille. Doesn’t that blow? And he calls Button Beatrice, even though she hates it. She threw up on him once. It was hysterical, wasn’t it, Mom?”
Nealy watched Mat’s expression change as he heard Lucy call her Mom, but she couldn’t identify exactly what she saw there. “It was definitely one of Button’s finer moments,” she managed.
