Single in Suburbia (20 page)

Amanda attempted to pry Meghan out of bed at noon on Sunday. The extraction did not go well.

“Come on, sleepyhead.” Amanda stood next to the bed and spoke softly. “It’s time to get up. You don’t want to sleep the whole day away.”

“Yes, I do.” The words were muffled by the layer of sheets and blanket under which Meghan burrowed.

Walking to the bank of windows opposite the bed, Amanda opened the drapes. May sunshine spilled in, illuminating the piles of discarded clothing that covered the floor. “Well, I need you to pick up your room and help me with the laundry. Then we’ll straighten the rest of the house. It’s a beautiful day. If we get everything done inside, we can plant the annuals I bought.” Amanda kept her tone purposefully cheerful, but she was starting to feel impatient.

There was a groan from the bed. “Sorry. Can’t do it.”

“Yes, you can.”

“I’m sleeping!”

Amanda crossed to the bed and stared down at the talking lump under the covers.

“And when I’m done sleeping, I’m meeting Sandy and Angie at the mall.”

“No, you’re not.” Amanda reached over to grasp the covers. With a decisive pull, she yanked them off exposing Meghan curled in a knot, her eyes tightly shut.

Meghan didn’t reach for the covers, but she didn’t open her eyes either. “Yes, I am.”

“I need your help, Meghan. Now.”

The sad truth was that the more houses she cleaned, the less time and energy she had for her own. Like the shoemaker’s children who went barefoot, hers were going to have to pitch in around the house.

Amanda sat down on the side of the bed and waited for Meghan to open her eyes, but vision evidently wasn’t a prerequisite to whining.

“I’m not going to waste my day off cleaning and…planting!” Meghan uttered the last as if it were some sort of unnatural act.

“Yes, you are.” Amanda felt her own anger build. She was turning herself inside out to try to make things OK for her children. It wouldn’t kill either of them to help.

Meghan opened her eyes. Still clouded with sleep, they were nonetheless hostile and belligerent. “Why?”

“Because now that I’m working I need your help.” Amanda stared down into Meghan’s face. She’d told them that she was working on a consulting project with Candace and neither of her children had pressed for details. “And because I thought it would be nice to spend the afternoon together.”

Her daughter looked at her like she was a magazine salesman who’d unexpectedly materialized at her front door.

“Well I already have plans.” Meghan sat up and huffed her back against her pillows then pulled the covers up to her chin like a shield.

A flash of the conversation she’d overheard between Candace and her mother slipped into Amanda’s head, but she shook it off.

“Then you’ll have to change them.”

Meghan’s face darkened. Amanda was extremely sorry she’d come in at all, but it was clear she could not back down now.

“Why do I have to do laundry? Why can’t Consuela do it?” Meghan named the maid who hadn’t set foot in their home since the day her father left. “Everyone else I know has a maid. Lucy Simmons and Samantha James have a
French
one. Why do I have to spend my Sunday cleaning?”

“Because we can’t afford a maid right now. And because I asked you.” Amanda tried to keep her voice calm. “Surely you’re old enough to understand what’s going on.”

“I don’t want to understand what’s going on!” Meghan jumped out of bed, all too awake now. “I hate what’s going on.” She squared off in front of Amanda, her dark eyes blazing with pain and fury. “I hate that Daddy doesn’t live here and that he’s with that stupid Tiffany.” Her voice rose with every word. “And I absolutely hate that we don’t have money.”

She stomped past Amanda and stormed toward her bathroom. “And I hate you most of all for screwing everything up!” She slammed the bathroom door behind her.

Amanda stood alone and shaken while the words Meghan had shouted at her reverberated off the walls and echoed in her head. Then she did some stomping of her own. She stomped to Meghan’s bedroom door and yanked it open with all her might.

Wyatt stood in the hallway, already dressed in his practice clothes, a look of horror frozen on his face.

Amanda felt the anger and hurt drain out of her. She closed her eyes and attempted to regroup, searching for words that would somehow make things OK, but it was her son who spoke.

“I’ll help you with the flowers when I get home, Mom,” Wyatt said so softly it made her want to cry. “And I’ll help Meghan, too, if she wants. I bet if we all work together, it won’t take any time at all.”

chapter
17

C
lose your eyes and don’t look.” Candace took hold of Amanda’s arm and led her through the back hallway of her home toward the garage.

It was eight thirty on Tuesday morning and Amanda, already dressed as Solange, was afraid she was going to be late for Hunter James’s.

They stepped down into the garage and Candace moved her into a final position. She pressed a button and the garage door went up, flooding the three-car garage with daylight. “OK, you can open them,” Candace said, real excitement in her voice.

Amanda did as instructed then blinked and looked again, certain her eyes were playing tricks on her.

“What is it?”

“It’s Solange’s new ride.”

Amanda stared at the car. It was a shiny new yellow Volkswagen Beetle, the paint job so bright she could see their reflections in it.

The words
Maid for You
with a phone number beneath them had been painted on both sides. The
pièce de résistance
was the huge cutout of a vacuum cleaner affixed to the roof.

“It’s so…yellow.”

“Yes, isn’t it a hoot?” Candace was positively glowing. “It’ll be fabulous advertising and perfect camouflage.”

“Camouflage?” Amanda was having a hard time imagining getting behind the wheel of anything that…eye-catching. “How can you call something that shouts, ‘Look at me, I’ve got a vacuum on the roof of my car!’ camouflage?”

“Well, I figure everybody will be looking at the car. They may feel sorry for the person driving it, but I can guarantee they’re not going to be paying much attention to her face.”

Amanda took a step closer to the vehicle. “But Solange can’t afford a company car. Not even this lovely…vacuummobile.”

“She doesn’t have to. I picked it up for next to nothing from a cleaning business that folded. All I had to do was change the phone number.”

Amanda eyed the new vehicle. “It’s very…cute.” It just didn’t happen to be the Jaguar she had pictured for Solange.

“I’ve started booking up, just like you wanted, and I was afraid I wouldn’t always be available to drive you where you needed to go.” Candace dropped the keys into Amanda’s hand and added a remote for the garage door. “Consider this your bat cave; you drive in with the van as Amanda Sheridan and zip out in the vacuummobile as Solange.”

“I can’t just let you give me a car.” It was so hard to believe that a woman she hadn’t even known three months ago had become such an integral part of her life.

“Yes, you can.” Candace smiled and gave her shoulder a squeeze.

“Why are you doing all this? I know your life would be a lot simpler without my problems planted in the middle of it.”

Candace shrugged, flippant as always, but her tone was dead serious. “I’ve been alone between marriages. But alone with children to take care of and no money to fall back on?” She shook her head. “No woman should have to go through that by herself.”

“You’re something, Candace Sugarman.” Amanda opened the driver’s door and contemplated the leather interior and gleaming wood trim. She breathed in the new car smell. “Really something. And as I told you the other day, neither Solange nor I will ever forget it.”

The first couple of blocks Amanda felt completely ridiculous. A group of teenagers in a Jeep pointed at the vacuum and hooted with laughter. A toddler in a car seat pointed too. “Look, Mommy,” Amanda heard him say through their open car windows. “It’s a Wellwoh Bakyoom.”

It certainly was.

She did her best to ignore the stares, horn toots, and laughter, and it didn’t take her long to notice that Candace was right; while almost everyone she passed stole at least one look at the car, almost nobody seemed to be looking at her.

“Nice car.” Hunter James stood in the doorway and smiled. “Though I kind of pictured you in a Jaguar.”

He was dressed in business casual, a pair of khakis and a chambray blue button-down shirt, but his cheeks looked freshly shaven and he had that clean male just-out-of-the-shower smell.

“Merci.”
She patted her dark curls sending Solange’s new silver earrings swinging and sashayed into the house. She had on a new uniform too. It was still white polyester and two-piece, but it was a little more formfitting and the pants were bellbottom. A zipper ran down the front of the top.

She fingered the zipper pull as she followed Hunter into the kitchen. Feisty was the only word she could think of to describe Solange’s mood today. Maybe the yellow vacuummobile was rubbing off on her?

“Would you like some coffee?” Hunter asked as she set down her supplies.

“Oui, merci.”
She smiled at him, much bigger and broader than Amanda ever would. “I would like eet very much.”

“Good,” he said. Smiling, he motioned her to the coffeemaker where an empty mug already sat.

While she poured and stirred in creamer and sugar, Hunter cleared his plate and mug from the counter and set them in the sink. “So,” he said conversationally, “how long have you been in the United States?”

“It feels like forever,” she hedged. “Sometimes I feel as if I were…born here.” She flashed him another smile, wishing she could ask him the things she really wanted to know. Had he been happily married? Was he as attracted to her as she was to him? And which one of her did he like better—Amanda or Solange?

Before she could stop herself, she was offering more information.

“I am zo sankful my cheeldren were born in these country.” Oops!

“You have children?” He smiled at her again, that sudden wonderful flash of white teeth in tanned skin. “That’s great. How old are they?”

OK, she definitely didn’t need to be inventing a fictional family or giving out too many details. She really didn’t need to be yammering away at all. Standing here chatting with Hunter James was a disaster waiting to happen. And she shouldn’t like the way he kept studying her while she talked, either, as if it was just a matter of time until he figured her out.

She almost wished Fido would charge in and poke at her crotch, just to shut her up.

She glanced toward the laundry room, but the door was open and the room was empty. Fido barked, a faraway sound that came from the direction of the backyard. She was not going to be saved by the dog—not that
wanting
a dog to poke his nose in your crotch was a sign of mental stability.

If her charade was discovered, she’d be humiliated and jobless. But did Solange care? No, she did not. Solange liked talking to Hunter James, make that flirting with Hunter James, despite the very real risk of exposure.

Solange appeared to be both lonely and horny. Solange was going to have to get over it.

“I have two boys, twins. They are now ten years old,” she caught herself saying. “Very acteeve. They have too much, what is the word, testosterone.” OK, she was starting to sound like Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle. The accent was easier to maintain when she kept her sentences short. Nonexistent sentences would be even better. This was not a night at the Improv. This was her life.

“And your husband?” Hunter James asked. “What does he do?”

“No husband.” She shook her head adamantly, sending her curls flying. “I don’t have one. He’s gone. Poof! Gone to Hell.” She gestured dramatically. This, at least, was true.

Solange fingered one of the new hoop earrings. She needed to get out of this kitchen and away from Hunter James before Solange said another word. Or did something they’d both regret.

“Monsieur,”
she said carefully, “if you will excuse me, I weel begin.”

“Of course.”

She worked quickly and efficiently, eager to be out of there before she said something too revealing. Or allowed Solange to jump Hunter James’s bones.

Being in disguise was oddly freeing, but if Amanda was attracted to Hunter James,
she
should act on it and not leave the task to the oversexed Solange. Not that she or Solange were in a place in their lives where a relationship with a man was a good idea.

After all, Amanda had her children to protect, a home to hold on to, and a secret life to hide.

And Solange had those adorable twin boys to raise.

Candace was in her home office the next evening when her doorbell rang. Not expecting anyone, she padded to the door in her stocking feet. Dan stood on the welcome mat with a smile on his face and a bouquet of flowers in his hand, a pretty much irresistible combination.

“I have a floral delivery for one Candace Sugarman,” he said as she opened the door.