The Mummy Makeover / Mummy for Hire. Cathy Gillen Thacker

taking comfort from food to ease the sadness, and admittedly some latent anger over being left alone to raise her daughter. She’d basically remained in emotional limbo for almost six years, even if that wasn’t exactly logical. But neither was her fascination with the beautiful stranger who wandered around the room while she squirreled away the money in the desk drawer and rummaged for a pen, without success. No doubt her offspring had pilfered the last one.

      “Mom! I need your help!”

      Speaking of offspring…“I’ll be with you shortly, Stormy.” She sent a sheepish glance at Kieran, who’d paused his pacing to stand near the sofa. “When she wants something, she only knows one tone of voice—loud.” Like he hadn’t noticed that.

      He sent her a curious look. “Is that how she came by her name?”

      She leaned back against the desk and folded her arms across her midriff. “Actually, we were under a thunderstorm warning in Oklahoma the night she was born.”

      “Mom, if you don’t come help me, I’m going to throw my math book out the window!”

      “Hold your horses, Stormy! And bring me a pen.” She shrugged. “As it turned out, the name fits her well.”

      A few moments later, Stormy walked into the room from the hall, her lopsided ponytail swaying back and forth like a pendulum. After smiling again at Kieran, she strode up to Erica and pointed a pencil at her. “Now can I get some help with my math?”

      “I can try, Stormy, but I have trouble balancing a checkbook.” She did know enough, though, to realize her finances were rather slim these days.

      “I’m pretty good at math,” Kieran said.

      Stormy glanced back at Kieran, her eyes wide with wonder. “You are?”

      “Believe it or not, I was an honor student in high school,” he said. “I was also a business major in college. I know math. Give me a shot and I’ll prove—”

      “That you’ve got brains to go along with the brawn?” Erica blurted without thought.

      He grinned. “Something like that.”

      “My homework’s in the kitchen,” Stormy tossed out before skipping into the hallway. Apparently she had no qualms about taking Kieran on as a tutor.

      Erica offered Kieran the pencil and an apologetic look. “You really don’t have to do this.”

      “Not a problem,” he said as he jotted down his number on the card with the pencil and laid both on the desk.

      “You don’t have any pressing issues awaiting you?” Like pressing his killer body against some willing woman.

      “I have to meet my parents for dinner in about an hour, so I have some extra time.”

      This man was much too good to be true. “What about your wife?”

      “No significant other right now,” he said, seemingly undisturbed by her semi-interrogation.

      Very interesting information, and somewhat problematic for Erica. If he’d been involved in a serious relationship, she could easily ignore him. Absurd. She could still ignore him. “If you insist on helping my child, I won’t complain. It will save me a lot of grief, but you’ll probably receive some in return.”

      “I’m tough enough to handle a ten-year-old. And like I said, she seems like a good kid.”

      We’ll see about that after the homework process, she wanted to say but instead led him into the kitchen where Stormy sat behind the small dinette table, rapping her pencil impatiently on her open book.

      Erica tried not to stare when Kieran shrugged off his jacket and draped it over the back of the chair that he then turned around and straddled. She tried not to ogle his prominent biceps. Tried not to gawk at the size of his hands, which he rested casually on the table before him. To say he met her expectations would be wrong. He more than exceeded them. What she wouldn’t give to get her paws on all that incredible muscle mass. Professionally speaking, of course.

      Jerking herself back into hostess mode, she said, “Since you don’t drink coffee, is there anything else I can get you?” She’d offer him a brownie, but she’d already eaten the last one of the batch she’d made two nights ago.

      He scooted the chair closer to the table. “I’m fine.”

      She wouldn’t argue that point. “Just let me know if you need anything. I’ll be right over here.” Engaging in busywork while sending covert glances his way.

      Erica absently swiped at the countertops with a damp cloth while Kieran went over a few problems with Stormy. Amazingly, her daughter hadn’t issued one complaint. On the contrary, she actually remained silent and listened for a change.

      After wiping her hands on a dish towel, Erica turned and said, “You missed your calling, Kieran. You should have been a teacher.”

      He looked up from the book and trained his dark eyes on hers. “No thanks. I’m better with weights.”

      “And I’m finished,” Stormy said, then sat back and sighed. “If Mom would’ve helped me, we would’ve been sitting here until midnight.”

      Erica playfully slapped Stormy’s arm with the towel and then checked the clock on the wall. “Time to wash up for dinner since the pizza should be here any minute. But first, you need to thank Mr. O’Brien.”

      “Thanks, Kieran,” she said, as if she had the right to call him by his given name.

      He pushed back from the table and stood. “No problem, Stormy. Good luck on the quiz.”

      “I’m sure I can pass it now,” Stormy replied with clear confidence, topped off with a look of gratitude aimed at her new hero. “I’ll let you know how I did when I come with Mom to the gym.”

      Unable to voice a response, at least not one that her daughter would care to hear, Erica ushered Kieran back into the den and once there, he paused at the shelves beside the fireplace to study a framed photo taken during her gymnast days. A picture depicting a much, much thinner version of herself. “That was my senior year in high school,” she said, feeling somewhat self-conscious. “I competed for a year in college before I got pregnant with Stormy.”

      He turned his attention from the photo to her. “You were young when you had her.”

      “Barely twenty,” she said. And ill-prepared for Stormy’s congenital heart defect, the reason she and Jeff had moved to Houston—to be closer to her doctors. She briefly wondered if Stormy had mentioned the condition to Kieran, then decided she probably hadn’t. Out of respect for her daughter, who wanted badly to be viewed as perfectly normal, she wouldn’t mention it, either. “I married the summer after I graduated high school, in case you’re like most people and believe the baby came before the nuptials.”

      “My sister married young and she wasn’t pregnant, either,” he said. “Unfortunately, her marriage didn’t last long.”

      “Mine didn’t, either.” Through no fault of her own. “My husband died in an industrial accident when Stormy was four.”

      “She mentioned that,” Kieran said as he glanced at the picture of Jeff set out not too far away. “I’m sorry.”

      So was Erica. Sorry that she’d had so little time to know her husband. Sorry that her daughter had had even less time to know her father. “Sometimes things happen we can’t control.”

      He streaked a hand over the back of his neck. “Guess you’re right, but it’s still got to be tough to deal with.”

      Erica decided to move past the sad subject. “Anyway, I intended to teach gymnastics after college. Circumstances forced me to find a more lucrative way to make a living, which is how I ended up as a massage therapist.” A decision she had made in the two-year delay in receiving Jeff’s employer’s minimal settlement, most of which had gone to