The Husband Recipe. Linda Winstead Jones

maybe the Grinch. Perhaps an ogre. All green monsters, she noted. She’d never looked good in certain yellowy shades of green, and she certainly wouldn’t look good if she were green. Wicked witches were never a nice teal or sea foam. No, they were pea-soup green. Not her color at all.

      She’d gone storming over there with that muddy baseball and her indignation, when that family had been through enough heartache for a lifetime. She checked the dates; it had been five years since Mary Donovan had died. The little one—Justin—must’ve been a baby at the time.

      And she’d lost it over a broken window and a little noise. Talk about putting things in perspective!

      She left her office a little sorry she’d looked Cole Donovan up online. There were some things that were better left unknown, unspoken, undone. But once those things were out of the box, it was simply too late to stuff them back in.

      Lauren’s mother and grandmother had trained her well. As she went into the kitchen and took the leftover lasagna from the refrigerator, she decided to make her new neighbors a nice meal as a peace offering. Lasagna and peach cobbler. Not the vegetable lasagna she preferred, but a nice, hearty lasagna with lots of beef. It was possible the children next door didn’t get enough protein. Most kids didn’t, since they were usually drawn to junk food. At least, that’s what everything she saw and read led her to believe. There were no children in her everyday life, no nieces or nephews, no little ones she saw regularly. Several of her friends had young children, but though she heard details of their lives, that didn’t mean Lauren saw them more than once or twice a year. Girlfriend lunches and the occasional margarita were not exactly child-friendly gatherings.

      Whether the Donovan children got enough protein or not, everyone liked lasagna, and her grandmother’s peach cobbler was to die for. That should suffice as a “sorry I made an ass out of myself” offering.

      While the vegetable lasagna was warming in the microwave, Lauren poured herself a glass of iced tea. She straightened the other single-serving-size containers of lasagna on the second shelf of the fridge. Like the cabinets in her kitchen, everything in the refrigerator had a place. The fridge and everything inside it was sparkling clean, and the bottled water was lined up neatly between the skim milk and the pitcher of tea she’d made last night.

      Her entire house was like the fridge. Everything had a place; disorder was not allowed. She wasn’t OCD, not by any means, but she liked everything to be clean, and if there were specific places for items then those items might as well be in those places. That made perfect sense to her.

      Lauren ate her lunch at the kitchen nook, overlooking her well-kept backyard. As she ate she mentally went over her schedule for the rest of the day. The edits, thirty minutes on the treadmill, then a shower. Dinner with Gran and Miss Patsy at six, and after that she’d stop by the grocery store. Tomorrow after she finished the edits and dropped them off at FedEx, she’d make the lasagna and peach cobbler.

      At the moment the neighboring backyard was as quiet as her own, and she had her schedule set for the next two days. All was well. For now.

      The kids had been quiet for a good half hour or so. They must really be feeling guilty about that broken window. Whatever the reason for the rare moment of silence, Cole would take it. He made a couple of phone calls—including one to a glass company to arrange for the neighbor’s window to be repaired—and then he sat in front of the computer. Hank had used the family computer last, and it was still on his favorite site for games. This particular favorite was a Dad-approved site, as Cole insisted they all be. He checked the history, to make sure none of the kids had wandered too far astray. While he tried to watch them when they were using the computer, it was impossible to keep an eye on the kids 24/7. One child, maybe, but three? He was constantly being pulled in all directions. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the kids, but these days you couldn’t be too careful. There were a lot of weirdos out there, and children were trusting by nature.

      Finding no offenders in the computer history, Cole went to Google and typed in his neighbor’s name. Lauren Russell. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, exactly, but these days it made sense to check up on the people who came to your door. No matter how cute they were. The kids were unerringly trusting; he was not.

      Even though he’d gone into the search with no expectations, he was surprised by what he found. First of all, the picture of Lauren that was at the top of the first page of her website was not at all flattering. Her hair had been pulled back tight, entirely out of her face, and she wore one of those fake picture-smiles, like she was literally saying cheese. Was that a turtleneck? Did they even make those anymore? She hadn’t been wearing enough makeup when the photo had been taken, and the harsh lights had washed her out. But it was her.

      He liked her better mad and in her pajamas, hair in a sloppy ponytail with bangs and escaping strands falling into her face, and eyes flashing. She looked better in natural light, with no makeup at all and fury coloring her face with a natural blush.

      If he hadn’t been looking for her specifically, he never would’ve found this site. It was all recipes and decorating and table etiquette. In the Donovan house they ate a lot of fish sticks and spaghetti out of a can, their decorations were almost all made by the kids—they’d outgrown the limited space on the fridge door long ago and had moved on to the walls—and proper etiquette at the table meant you didn’t stand on it while anyone else was eating.

      When they’d been living in Birmingham, Janet had provided a lot of their meals. She’d dropped by every weekend to stock the freezer with casseroles and homemade soup and chili. But they hadn’t relied on her entirely. Cole refused to let himself rely on anyone for anything. He could find his way around the kitchen, and for the past year Meredith had been learning to cook. He’d done his best to help her, but talk about the blind leading the blind …

      A couple days a week Meredith insisted on making supper. Alone. She saw herself as the woman of the house, and like it or not, she was. Cole didn’t want her to spend her youth taking care of her brothers—and him—and he did his best to make sure she was just a child for a while longer. But it wouldn’t hurt her to learn to prepare a meal or two. She was already a whiz at making coffee. Maybe because all the kids had learned that their dad wasn’t fit company until after he’d had his caffeine fix, and it made the morning much easier if the coffee was ready when he rolled out of bed.

      Lauren Russell’s website was mind-boggling and more than a little amusing. Apparently his cute neighbor was some kind of Southern Martha Stewart wannabe. She made Easter-egg dye out of onion skins and created elaborate handmade valentines for her friends and family. She’d posted recipes and detailed instructions for making fried chicken, biscuits and cornbread, as well as a multitude of fried vegetables. There were recipes for making candy bars, of all things, and homemade ice-cream treats—things easily purchased at the store, so why would anyone bother? Lauren didn’t leave out the health-conscious among her readers. There were also recipes for about a hundred ways to cook a chicken breast without frying it, and plenty of methods for cooking veggies without any fat.

      Not that he could get his crew to eat a vegetable, except for the household staple french fries. Maybe corn on the cob, if they were feeling adventurous.

      Cole closed the website and shut down the web browser. It didn’t matter how cute his neighbor—or any other woman—might be. It wasn’t that he was still in love with Mary, five years after her death. It wasn’t as if he compared every woman he met to his late wife, or idealized her after she was gone, or pined for what they’d had. No, he simply had no time for a woman.

      He had dated since Mary had died. After she’d been gone a couple of years, well-meaning friends had tried time and again to set him up with women they thought were suitable. He’d dated, leaving the kids with Janet or a babysitter for a couple of hours, but something always went wrong. He had no patience for airheads, no matter how pretty they were. Some of his friends seemed to think “hot” was enough. It wasn’t. And no matter how he’d tried, he hadn’t been able to entirely leave his home life behind. Babysitters called. Meredith called. While his dates droned on about shoes or movies or—heaven forbid—baseball, his mind had always been elsewhere.

      During