The Sweetheart Bargain (A Sweetheart Sisters Novel) (42 page)

Then he reminded himself that this sweet, sexy, feminine woman also had a sharp side that could level a man in seconds.

“What are you doing here?” Diana asked.

He started to stutter out an answer, but Jenny beat him to it. “We’re
bonding
,” Jenny said with a touch of sarcasm most kids didn’t master till puberty kicked in.

“Bonding?” Diana asked with a little scoff of disbelief. “You.”

It wasn’t a question, and the word made him wince a little. Maybe because the truth stung.

“We’re just grocery shopping. I’m staying out at Luke’s for a few weeks, with my daughters.” He gestured toward Jenny, who gave him another of her scowls, this one saying,
Please don’t think I’m with him
, and then toward Ellie, who still wore her look of tantrum triumph. His youngest daughter danced a circle in the aisle with her teddy partner.

Mike scowled before he blurted out another word. Diana had put him on the defensive. What was it about that woman that made him feel compelled to explain himself?

“Oh. Well. Nice to see you again.” She gave him a little smile, the kind people gave to relatives they tolerated only because of the DNA connection, then turned away. The little basket on her arm was filled with a single package of chicken, a single loaf of bread, and four of those frozen dinner things. It screamed “alone on a Sunday night.”

Something caught in his chest. The same thing that had caught inside him the first time he saw her, six months ago, when Olivia had brought her sister over to Luke’s for a barbecue. The same thing he’d ignored when he’d walked out of her house a few weeks later. He ignored it now, because if there was one thing Mike sucked at, it was the whole settling-down, being-responsible thing.

Case in point: Thing One and Thing Two.

Ellie marched up to Diana and raised her chin. “Are you a friend of my daddy’s?”

Diana gave Ellie a smile and bent at the knees to match Ellie’s eye level. Diana’s skirt danced against the tile floor, like a garden bursting from the dingy gray tile. “Sort of a friend.”

Four words that didn’t even begin to encapsulate the hot fling they’d had a few months ago. But he wasn’t going to explain
that
to his preschool daughter.

“Do you fly big he-wa-coppers, too?” Ellie asked.

Diana laughed. “No, I’m a veterinarian. Do you know what that is?”

Ellie nodded, a proud wide smile on her face. “A puppy doctor.”

“Exactly. Do you have a puppy or a kitty?”

“Nuh-uh.” Ellie shook her head and thrust a thumb into her mouth. She was still doing that? Mike thought Jasmine had said Ellie quit sucking her thumb a year ago. “I wanna see one. Can we go now?”

“Well . . . ” Diana shifted her weight, and shot Mike a glance.

“Ellie—”

“I wanna see one now.” Ellie crossed her arms over her chest, strangling her bear.

“Ellie, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Mike said.

She ignored him and lifted her chin toward Diana. “How’s come I can’t go? Aren’t you Daddy’s friend?” She popped her thumb back in her mouth.

The question hung in the air for a moment. The Muzak shifted from a jazz version of a Beatles song to a peppy instrumental.

Diana flashed Mike a look he couldn’t read, then gave Ellie a patient smile. “Well, maybe someday you can visit the place where I work. We have a cat in the office who just had kittens. And they love to play and cuddle.”

The thumb popped out. “Can my daddy come?”

The smile on Diana’s face became a grimace. “Sure.” Though she said the word with all the enthusiasm of someone volunteering for a colonoscopy.

“If I come ova there, can I have a kitty?”

Diana glanced at Mike, then back at Ellie. “Well, your mommy or daddy has to say yes first.”

“Neva mind. I don’t wanna see any stupid kitties.” Ellie’s face fell, and the thumb went back in her mouth.

Mike glanced at Jenny, but his eldest daughter had turned away. What was that about?

“It was nice to meet you, Ellie,” Diana said. “I—”

“I don’t wanna talk to you anymore.” Ellie spun toward her sister, and clutched the teddy bear tighter.

Mike cringed. “Sorry,” he said to Diana. “She’s . . . temperamental.”

A wry grin crossed Diana’s face and she straightened. “I have a fifteen-year-old, remember? He makes being temperamental a sport.” She let out a little laugh and, for a second, the tension between them eased.

Mike remembered Diana’s son. Good kid, overall. “How is Jackson?”

“Fine. Thanks for asking.”

Just like that, the ice wall returned. He should be glad. He should get the hell out of here, and put Diana out of his mind. He should do a lot of things, but didn’t do any of them. Because he couldn’t stop staring at Diana’s legs and wondering why she was so dressed up. “You, uh, headed to work?”

Lame, lame, lame. But there didn’t seem to be a good way to say,
Hey, I know I have no right to know, but you going out on a date?

“Daddy? I’s hungry,” Ellie said.

“I better let you get back to your shopping,” Diana said. A polite but firm
stay out of my business
.

Why the hell did her dismissal bother him so much? He had more than enough on his plate right now. An ex-wife who had run out of town, leaving him with kids that were more like strangers. A career that was hanging by a thread. And then there was his father—

A topic Mike didn’t even want to think about, never mind deal with. The last thing he needed to add to that mix was a stubborn veterinarian who made his head spin and wanted things from him that he had no business giving. Diana Tuttle was a settle-down, make-a-family, live-in-traditional-lines woman. Mike was . . . not. At all.

“Daddy! I want ice cream! Now!” Ellie stomped her feet and made her mad face. “I’s hungry and you
promised
!”

Case in point.

“We have to finish shopping first, El, then we can get—”

“Now!” The word exploded in one over-the-top Mount Vesuvius demand. Thirty days, he told himself, thirty days, and then Jasmine would be back and he’d be free to return to Alaska.

Yeah, that’s what he should be looking forward to. The problem was, he didn’t want his kids to go back to living with Jasmine. Mike might rank up there close to number one crappiest dad on the planet, but when he’d picked up the girls, he’d finally seen what he’d been blind to for so long. The dancer he’d married in Vegas was a distant, hands-off mother who had blown his monthly child support checks on parties and shoes. While his daughters went around in too-tight, too-short hand-me-downs and ate store-brand cereal three meals a day. That had pissed him off, and when he’d gone through the house to help the girls pack, it had taken every ounce of his strength to stop himself from exploding at Jasmine.

Because truth be told, it was his damned fault they lived this way, and if he’d been the kind of man and father he should have been from day one, then none of this would have happened. Yet another chalk mark in the failure column.

“Ice cream!” Ellie screamed. Several people turned around in the aisle, giving Mike the glare of disapproval.

Diana backed up a half step. “I’ll let you go. Have a good vacation with your daughters.”

He swore he heard a bit of sarcasm in the last few words. Mike told himself he should let her leave but a part of him wondered about that dress. And wondered if she’d thought about him in the last six months. Plus, she seemed to have a way with Ellie, a calming presence that he could sure as hell use right now. At least until he figured out what the heck he was doing. “Do you want to get some ice cream with us?”

“Ice cream! Ice cream!” Ellie jumped up and down, the teddy bear flopping his head in agreement.

“Just what she needs, sugar,” Jenny muttered.

Diana began to back away. “Uh, it seems you have—”

“Come on, it’s ice cream,” Mike said. “Everyone deserves ice cream at the end of the day.” He nodded toward the basket in her hands. “Unless you have somewhere you need to go.”

Could he be more pathetic or obvious? Somewhere she needed to go?

“Please?” Ellie said. “Please go with us? I like you and Teddy likes you and Daddy is grumpy.”

Diana laughed, and seemed to consider for a moment. In the end, she was won over by Ellie’s pixie face. “Well, who can resist an invitation like that?”

Ellie jumped up and down again, then ran back and forth in the aisle, nearly colliding with other shoppers, singing, “We’re getting ice cream, we’re getting ice cream.”

“Ellie, quit,” Mike said.

Ellie kept going. Jenny studied a hangnail.

“Ice cream, ice cream, ice cream.” Ellie spun in a circle, almost crashing into an elderly woman in a wheelchair. “Teddy loves ice cream, Jenny loves ice cream, Ellie loves ice cream.”

“Ellie, quit it!” Mike said again, louder this time.

Ellie kept going, like a spinning top on steroids. Her song rose in volume, her dancing feet sped up. She dashed to Mike, then over to Diana. “Ice cream, ice cream!”

Diana bent down and put a light touch on Ellie’s arm. “If you want ice cream, you have to be good for a little while, and help your daddy finish the shopping.”

“I wanna sing my ice cream song!”

Diana gave her a patient smile. “I’m sure everyone wants to hear your ice cream song”—an exaggeration, Mike was sure—“
after
the shopping is done. Because if we stop to listen now, it’s going to be a long time till anyone gets ice cream.” Diana picked up the teddy bear’s floppy paw. “And that might make Teddy sad.”

Ellie stopped spinning and whirring and singing, and stood still and obedient. “Okay,” she said.

Mike stared at his Tasmanian devil child, who had morphed into an angel. She slipped into place beside Jenny, standing on her tiptoes to place the teddy bear in the child seat, and turned back to Mike. “Daddy, we need to do shopping. Jenny says we need peanut butter.”

Mike turned to Diana. His gaze connected with her deep green eyes and something dark and hot stirred in his gut. He remembered her looking at him with those eyes as the sun set and the last rays of the day lit her naked body like a halo. She’d slid down his body, taken him into her mouth—

Mike cleared his throat. “Thanks.”

Diana shrugged. “No problem.”

“Are we shopping or what?” Jenny said, with a sigh of frustration.

“One sec, Jen.” He turned back to Diana. “I only need a few more things. Do you want to meet over at the Rescue Bay Ice Cream Shop in, say, fifteen minutes?”

“And then what?” she asked.

“Then nothing,” Mike said. “It’s just ice cream, not a date. No expectations.”

Diana glanced at Ellie and Jenny, then back at Mike. “You know, I’m going to take a rain check after all. Ellie, I’m sorry.”

“Diana—”

She met his gaze and the warmth he had seen there six months ago had been replaced by an icy cold. “No expectations, remember?”

Then she was gone. Ellie started to cry. Jenny marched off with the cart. And a part of Mike wondered if it was too late to make his flight to St. Kitts.