The Perfect Mum. Janice Johnson Kay

to her feet. But, wait— She’d come from work. She’d been driving. Walking away in the hospital parking lot, she had had her keys in her hand. Kathleen remembered seeing the silly hot-pink smiley face attached to a key ring that Ginny had given her mother for her birthday dangling between Helen’s fingers.

      Mind working sluggishly, Kathleen was already in the act of opening the door before she had reached this point in her recollections, or she probably wouldn’t have answered the doorbell at all. She didn’t want to see anybody, even her brother, Ryan.

      But the man standing on her doorstep wasn’t Ryan. In fact, he was a total stranger. One who…wasn’t scary exactly, but could be.

      At a little over six feet, he wasn’t unusually tall, but he was broad. Big shouldered, stocky, with strong legs and powerful arms and neck. His hair was dark and shaggy, his eyes some unnameable color but watchful, and his face was blunt-featured, even crude, but somehow pleasing, the only reason Kathleen didn’t slam the door in a panic.

      He was the kind of man she couldn’t picture in a well-cut suit, the antithesis of her handsome, successful ex-husband. This man had to work with his hands. Like her brother’s, they were nicked, callused and bandaged, the fingers thick and blunt-tipped. In one hand, he held a gray metal contractor’s clipboard.

      He seemed to be waiting patiently while she appraised him from puffy eyes.

      “May I help you?” she asked finally, warily, her hand on the door poised to slam it in his face if he lunged for her.

      “I’m Logan Carr.”

      He said his name as if it should mean something to her. Maybe it did, she thought, frowning. Somewhere in the back of her mind, it niggled.

      Buying time, she said, “Um…I’m sorry. This isn’t a good time.”

      “We had an appointment.” He looked expectant, adding when she didn’t respond, “I’m the cabinetmaker.”

      “Oh, no!” That was it. On Ryan’s recommendation, she’d called Carr Cabinetmaking and arranged to dash home during an early lunch hour so that he could look and measure and give her a bid. She, of course, had completely forgotten.

      “Are you all right?” He sounded kind.

      Somehow this was the last straw. One more thing to have gone wrong, one more thing to think about when she couldn’t.

      “I’m…I’m…” Suddenly he was a blur, and she was humiliated to realize she was crying in front of this stranger. “Fine,” she managed to say.

      “No,” he said, stepping forward, taking advantage of her nerveless hand to come uninvited into her house and to close the door behind them. “You aren’t.”

      The next thing she knew, she was engulfed in powerful arms and flannel shirt, smelling this stranger’s sweat and deodorant and aftershave, her wet cheek pressed to his chest.

      And did she, dignified, gracious but reserved, wrench free and demand he leave?

      No. She buried her face in that comforting flannel and let herself sob.

      CHAPTER TWO

      LOGAN CARR MADE SOOTHING sounds while he held the gorgeous blonde.

      What in hell? he thought with wry amusement. His face wasn’t pretty, but didn’t usually inspire women to burst into tears.

      When she didn’t quiet down, he became worried. Should he be calling the cops? An ambulance? “Can you tell me what’s wrong?” he finally asked.

      She wailed something about her daughter hating her. Logan assumed she was Ryan Grant’s sister. There’d been an indefinable something about her that reminded him of Ryan. Logan didn’t know her brother that well, but now he tried to remember what Ryan had said about her.

      She was divorced, or at least separated. Logan remembered Ryan banging around one day on a work site, growling under his breath about his goddamn stubborn sister who was buying a house that would fall down on top of her idiotic head any day. Logan had paused, a screwdriver in his hand, and asked why she was buying the place. The gist, as he recalled, was that she’d left her bastard of a husband and she claimed this was all she could afford without asking for help either from him—or her own brother—which she refused to do.

      “I wouldn’t give a damn,” Ryan had concluded viciously, “except that the roof will fall on my niece’s head, too. Why couldn’t she buy a nice condo?” he had asked in appeal.

      Personally, Logan didn’t blame her. He liked the looks of this place. It was worth a little work.

      He kept patting her back and waiting while her sobs became gulps and then sniffles. Logan knew the exact moment when she realized she was crying all over a man she didn’t know.

      Her body went very still, stiffened, and then she all but leaped back. “Oh, no! I must look…” She scrubbed frantically at her wet cheeks. “I’m so sorry!”

      “I invited myself in,” he reminded her. Sticking his hands in his pockets, he ostentatiously glanced around, admiring the French doors leading into the living room, the staircase, the arched doorway to the kitchen. “Nice place,” he added.

      “If you’ll excuse me a moment, I’ll just, um…”

      The doorknob rattled behind them, and the door swung open.

      “Helen!” exclaimed his bedraggled blonde. “Thank goodness! This is Mister, um… The cabinetmaker. Will you show him the kitchen while I…” She was already fleeing up the stairs.

      The redhead who’d come in with the child gazed in surprise after her…friend? Sister? Roommate? He had no idea.

      “I didn’t beat her,” he said, trying to look harmless.

      She gave him a distracted look. “No, she’s… It’s been an awful day. We should have called you, but we forgot you were coming.”

      “Logan Carr,” he said, extending his hand.

      “Helen Schaefer.” She shook his hand. “This is Ginny.”

      “Ah.” How did you politely say, And who the hell are you?

      “Ginny, did you want to watch television while I show Mr. Carr the kitchen?”

      The waif shook her head hard, her big eyes fixed suspiciously on him.

      Helen Schaefer didn’t look so hot, either, he noted, which made him wonder anew what had happened to upset both women so much. Her face was too pale under skillfully applied makeup, the shadows beneath her eyes purple. He’d felt the tremor in her hand, saw the gentleness with which she stroked her daughter’s head.

      “Lead on,” Logan said, wishing the classy blonde hadn’t skipped. He picked up his clipboard from the step where he’d dropped it earlier.

      The kitchen had potential and not much else. The vast floor space was wasted, as was typical for a house of this era. Cabinets had been added in about the 1940s, if he was any judge. Which meant drawers didn’t glide on runners, cabinets were deep spaces where you could lose a kid the size of this Ginny, and they stretched to the ten-foot ceiling, the upper ones useful only for stowing stuff that ten years later you were surprised to discover you still owned.

      “We can’t afford to replace those,” the redhead told him. “What we’re thinking is that we can make use of this corner.” She gestured.

      One area held a table, set with pretty quilted placemats. The corner she had indicated currently had a cart and oldish microwave, an extra chair and a lot of nothing.

      Logan considered. They didn’t want to replace their crappy, inadequate kitchen cupboards. Instead, they had in mind him building something that didn’t match in this corner.

      Go figure.

      “Make use in what way?” he asked politely.

      Apparently