Balancing Act. Lilian Darcy

eaten a woman’s home-cooked meal in so long he could hardly remember what it was like.

      Mom used to slap together a few easy recipes several nights in the week when he was a kid, but she’d stopped altogether when Dad had died ten years ago. She ate strange little evening meals now, like cottage cheese and sliced banana on toast, or canned soup in a mug. She was a big fan of the drive-through window at the local fast-food chain, too. Now that Scarlett had outgrown jars of baby food, so was Brady.

      Burgundy beef, on the other hand… Shoot, but that sounded good!

      “We could have one of them tonight, if you don’t have anything planned,” Libby offered.

      Uh, no, he didn’t have anything planned.

      He told her so, while realizing that he should have planned a whole lot of things. So that they didn’t have to confront the weird reality of their new situation. If either of them made too many mistakes at the beginning, their commitment to putting their daughters’ relationship first might show up as impossibly naive and unworkable.

      They could end up in court, hating each other. That guilty wish—Libby had admitted to it, as well—that his mom had never seen Colleen’s photo in that magazine might turn into a bitter, lifelong and reasoned regret.

      “I’ll put two of these in the freezer and leave the third to thaw,” Libby said.

      “Burgundy beef sounds good,” he suggested, a little embarrassed at the eagerness that immediately crept into his voice.

      She smiled. “Burgundy beef it is, then.”

      The sun struggled through a thin patch in the low, smoky cloud at that moment and the kitchen lit up, striking her blond hair, giving that melted-candy look to her pretty mouth. His blood slowed and his groin stirred again.

      He was hungry. Not burgundy-beef hungry, but candy hungry, hungry for a woman’s sweet, melting mouth, hungry for her soft skin, for the touch of her fingers and the press of her breasts. Hungry for this woman. Just because she was here?

      “I’ll go pick up Scarlett,” he said abruptly. Libby was staring at him, lips parted, eyes startled and swimming with heat. “Please make yourselves at home.” He grabbed his keys from a pocket, headed out the side door and let out a sigh of relief as soon as he reached the steps.

      Chapter Four

      “Make yourselves at home?” Libby muttered, after Brady had gone.

      For how long would they need to do that? A week? A month? There was a pile of newspapers on the table in the breakfast nook, and she realized that he must have been collecting and saving the real estate section from the Columbus Dispatch for her, for the past three or four weeks. Flipping through the top copy, she saw that he’d circled a few places with a yellow highlighter pen.

      Thoughtful.

      Or was he just trying to get rid of her fast? She supported that plan. Standing in the kitchen together just now, the current between them had almost glowed. Her spine still tingled. Her breasts still ached. When she wrapped her arms around herself, it was his heat that she felt.

      Colleen tugged at her skirt. “Fir-sty,” she said.

      “You’re thirsty, honey?”

      “’N hundwy, too.”

      “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

      There was milk in the fridge. Not a lot else.

      She remembered some packets of peanut butter crackers in one of the pantry boxes and dug them out, looked around and discovered Colleen’s own high chair sitting beside Scarlett’s in a corner of the big kitchen. Libby slid the high chair out from the wall and lifted Colleen into it, and Colleen seemed quite happy to accept that it was here.

      Hello, chair.

      Libby peered through to the living room. There was none of her stuff in here. In the end, she’d rented her house out partly furnished to some friends who were renovating their own place, and she’d only brought enough to furnish a modest apartment here in Columbus. It was part of the not-burning-her-boats strategy she and Brady had both agreed on. She’d have to fly home in a couple of months to make a more long-term arrangement, but she didn’t want to think about that yet.

      Brady’s living room was very masculine, furnished with brown leather sofas—a two-seater, a three-seater and an armchair—a large, low, heavy-looking coffee table made of dark wood, a square of Persian carpet on the hardwood floor, an open fire-place and a series of framed, limited edition photos of spectacular moments in sport.