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  As he watched his daughters shyly introduce themselves, Peter felt the familiar wash of pride and fathomless love that had on occasion moved him almost to tears. Abbie and Kate, the fair-haired holy terrors in pink shorts and sneakers. Delphina, dark-eyed and solemn like her mother. And Natalie who, he sadly recognized, needed more freedom to just be a child. They were his life, his universe. How could anyone not love them? He glanced at Edie, who had asked Natalie a question, remembering that Natalie had thought her haughty. He tried to see Edie through a child’s eyes. Haughty? Definitely less so now, but then he’d never seen her that way in the first place.

  “Daddy said we have to pull up weeds,” Abbie said. “But I don’t want to.”

  “Abbie.” Natalie shook her head. “We’re helping Mrs. Robinson. It’s nice to help people, right, Daddy?”

  “Absolutely,” Peter looked at Edie. “Where is Maude?”

  “The last I saw of her, she was squeezing lemons for lemonade. She whipped herself into quite a frenzy of activity for your visit.” Hands on her hips, Edie looked at the girls. “Do you like pineapple-upside-down cake?”

  The twins looked uncertainly at Peter. “I’m not sure they’ve ever had it,” he said.

  “Oh.” Edie thought for a moment. “Do you like pineapple?”

  They both nodded.

  “Do you like cake?”

  “Yesss,” they both chorused.

  “Well, I’m pretty certain you’ll like this. How about brownies?”

  “Yesss,” the twins said, clearly entertained now. “Auntie Sophia makes brownies,” Kate said. “And she melts chocolate on them.”

  “Hmm,” Edie said. “Seems like overkill, but hey, what do I know?”

  “Delphina. How about you? Do you like brownies?”

  Delphina nodded.

  “With or without melted chocolate?”

  Delphina blushed. “Melted chocolate’s all right.”

  “Really? Not too…sweet? Well then,” she said when Delphina shook her head, “I might have to try it that way myself. Ah…” She’d spotted Maude approaching from the kitchen. “And here’s my mother now.” She made an elaborate bow. “Lovely to meet you again, girls. Good to see you too, Peter. And now I have work to do.”

  And then she was gone and he was following Maude through the kitchen into the backyard, which he’d somehow forgotten was such a jungle. Enough so that he had to stop thinking about Edie in order to concentrate on the work at hand.

  “Good heavens.” He scratched his scalp, already starting to sweat. “You could lose an army in here.” In fact, the twins had already disappeared into the tall grasses, whooping and exclaiming. “This is… When was the last time anyone cleared your garden?”

  Maude cackled. “Pretty bad, isn’t it? My husband used to keep it up, but he’s been gone for years. Viv tries, but I stopped her because she kept cutting back the roses too far. Shouldn’t take too long, though, all of us working together. Don’t know where Edie is, said she had some work to do or something.”

  He looked at Maude. “Well, I suppose we have to start somewhere.” As he started working, he heard, from an open upstairs window, a telephone ring.

  AS MAUDE HUSTLED Peter and the girls into the backyard, Edie ran back upstairs and into her room, closing the door behind her just for good measure. It would have taken very little for her to be persuaded to join in the weeding party. Pretty amazing given that she didn’t interact well with children—although Peter’s girls were all very pretty and seemed well behaved—and wasn’t wild about gardening. What did that say about the way Peter had grabbed her heart?

  But she didn’t want Peter grabbing her heart. The whole thing was too complex, too fraught with obvious difficulties. Those, not so obvious now, would become glaringly apparent if she allowed this relationship to run its course.

  The phone rang. Edie picked up one of the three cordless phones that, over Maude’s protest that her old black phone was good enough for her, Edie had bought and plugged in about the house. It was Beth.

  Edie stood at the window, back far enough that Peter couldn’t see her watching. Maude in a straw hat and holding a plate of brownies was animated about something. Edie grinned. From the bedroom, she couldn’t hear what was being said, but her mother’s mouth hadn’t stopped moving for the past ten minutes. The younger girls were tearing around the yard, and the older two appeared to be making daisy chains. Peter, the only one actually working, was hacking away at a chest-high clump of something, while Maude looked on.

  “…and I’m sorry to bother you at home,” Beth was saying. “But I know you talk to Jessie and I wondered if you’d heard from her lately.”

  “Not since you told her about the battered women’s shelter. What was that, a couple of days ago? Why?”

  “Because I don’t think she went to the shelter. One of her friends told me she saw her with Bobby last night at the Burger Barn and they were fighting. She hasn’t been at school and she hasn’t been bringing Roger. I’m a little concerned.”

  “I am, too.” Edie moved away from the window and sat on the bed. “You’ve called her home, I guess.”

  “The number’s disconnected.”

  “I could go by her house,” Edie said. “Just to see if she’s at home.”

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Beth said. “These situations can get pretty volatile and I’m not sure you should involve yourself.”

  “I don’t mind at all,” Edie said. “Just give me her address. I won’t stir up trouble, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Beth laughed. “No, that wasn’t what I was thinking at all. Listen, if she should call, just let me know. This sort of thing happens all the time. The only reason I’m involving you at all is that you’re a friend of Jessie’s.”

  “I hope she thinks so, too,” Edie said, pleased to hear Beth describe her that way. “It would make me feel good.” Downstairs, she could hear Maude calling her name. “Hold on, Beth.” She carried the phone out to the top of the stairs. “I’m up here, Mom.”

  “Come and have some brownies before they’re all gone,” Maude shouted.

  “I will,” she yelled back and returned to the bedroom. “Peter and his daughters are over,” she told Beth. “They’re helping my mom clear the yard. Or Peter is. Everyone else seems to be chowing down on brownies.”

  “Peter’s such a sweet guy,” Beth said wistfully. “How many guys would offer to do something like that?”

  “No others that I know,” Edie said. “Plus, he’s available. You love children and they apparently need a mother. It’s a match made in heaven.”

  Beth laughed. “Oh Edie, you’re sounding like your sister.” She sighed. “No, Peter’s one of those men I’m content to love from afar. I’m happy with that.”

  Edie returned to the window. Peter had taken off his shirt. “Speaking of loving from afar, right now I’m watching him from my upstairs bedroom window. Be still my heart, he’s now bare to the waist.”

  “Oh, be still my heart,” Beth said, still laughing. “Does he have a nice chest?”

  “Very nice.”

  “Edie, you’re a journalist. I’m sure you can do much better than that. Let me have the details. I want to live vicariously. Hair, no hair? Muscles? Tan? Please don’t tell me he’s flabby and pale with a potbelly—although perhaps if he was less than perfect, I wouldn’t feel quite so intimidated by him. Who wants to feel intimated as you’re being lowered to the bed? God, Edie. I won’t be able to look at Peter at school tomorrow. Pretend I didn’t say that.”

  “Consider it done,” Edie said. “Although, I have to tell you he looks pretty damn good. Just enough chest hair to be sexy, no flab that I can see. Right now, he’s turning to show my mom something he’s pulled up… Let’s see. Great back, long and lean. Ooh, he just crouched down, I see the top of his butt and…” She grinned. “God, Beth, I’m getting kind of hot myself.”

  “Butt doesn’t seem an appropriate word to use on
Peter,” Beth said. “How about derriere? I think that’s more suitable, don’t you?”

  “I have no problem with butt, myself,” Edie said.

  “Go down and ravage him,” Beth said. “I think you’d both enjoy it.”

  “I’m not sure his daughters and my mother would.”

  “Listen to us,” Beth said. “Two mature women and we sounds like the girls at the center. Seriously, though, Edie, are you…attracted to Peter?”

  Edie felt the smile fade from her face. “Seriously attracted. More than just that, in fact, and it’s scaring the hell out of me. I think he’s wonderful.” I still think you’re wonderful, Edie, he’d said. “Kind, caring, compassionate. Intelligent, involved with what he does.” She moved over to the bed, lay down on her back. “I haven’t said this aloud to anyone, Beth, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention it to Viv or—”

  “Of course not,” Beth said. “It sounds as though you’re in love with him.”

  “I think I might be.” Tears stung the back of her nose and she didn’t try to fight them. “I’ve dreamed of meeting a man like Peter. I just didn’t dream of him coming with four small children.”

  “Does he know how you feel?”

  Edie sighed. “I doubt it. My cool, aloof persona is quite a practiced act. Although he may. I don’t know. He took me to a concert—”

  “Mahler?”

  “He’s invited you, too.”

  “No, no. He plays Mahler in his office.”

  “Beth.” Edie switched the phone to her other ear. “Did he have to explain that it was Mahler, or did you actually recognize it?”

  “I know nothing about classical music,” Beth said. “I went in one day when it was playing and I noticed this little refrain that sounded for all the world like Frère Jacques. You know, that little song we all sing as children? He went into a very detailed explanation of how the First Symphony is like a walk in the woods and, I swear, after five minutes he’d completely lost me…”

  Smiling as she listened to Beth, and thinking of Peter’s complete absorption in the music at the concert that night, Edie felt engulfed by a wave of tenderness so intense it wracked her insides. “I don’t know what to do, Beth.”

  “Are you asking me for advice?”

  “Do you have some?”

  “I have some observations.”

  “And?”

  “You strike me as extremely capable and confident, Edie. Fearless, really. Peter has four small children, something you hadn’t bargained for. And I would imagine your job is also a huge consideration. But if you love him, these aren’t insoluble problems. We set our own terms, Edie, that make problems insoluble.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  AS HE AND THE GIRLS worked in Maude’s yard—he considerably more than the girls, who after thirty minutes or so had accepted Maude’s invitation to dig out the old toys and bicycles still stored in the toolshed—Peter also worked through a spectrum of emotions regarding Edie. Disappointment during the first hour when she didn’t come down, then anger. No matter what her feelings about children, or about him for that matter, it struck him as rude and unfriendly that she’d just absented herself. If nothing else, she could have helped out.

  Anger gradually gave way to resignation. Edie hadn’t extended the invitation, Maude had. And Edie had made no secret of her lack of maternal instinct. When Sophia called him unrealistic, she was probably right. Edie, the jet-setting foreign correspondent, intrigued and excited him. But he also wanted the type of woman who would want to make a home for his girls. And the two images seemed incompatible.

  Since he was deep in thought, Edie’s voice over his shoulder startled him.

  “Aha.” She handed him a beer. “Caught you napping. Where is everyone?”

  “The last I saw of the twins,” he said, “Kate was riding off on a tricycle with Abbie screaming blue murder. Your mother went after them. Natalie’s watching TV and Delphina is reading.”

  He picked up a clump of what he’d thought was a weed, but on closer inspection was possibly an extremely overgrown geranium. “What do you think?” He held it out to her. “Geranium officialis, or…”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea. Come on, take a break.”

  He swiped his hand across his forehead and carried the beer to the shade of the back steps. Edie followed him, opened her beer and sat down beside him. “There’s still plenty to be done,” he said. “You’re more than welcome to pitch in.”

  “Do you think I’m horrible and antisocial for sequestering myself?”

  “I’m not sure how I feel about that,” he said. “I’ve already worked through the horrible and antisocial bit. Now I’ve just decided that you are who you are.”

  Edie laughed. “God, that sounds terrible. ‘You are horrible and antisocial, Edie, but you can’t help it. You are who you are.’”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.” Peter drained half his beer. Edie disconcerted him to the point that he found himself wishing she’d go back upstairs.

  “Did my mother drive you crazy?”

  “Well, she’s certainly quite a talker, but overall the experience has been quite pleasant. And she’s obviously enjoying having us all here.”

  Edie shot him a long look.

  “What?”

  “I’m wondering if I should call you St. Peter. It’s hotter than hell and humid to boot, and you’ve just spent the better part of an afternoon hacking away at an overgrown jungle while an old woman you barely know yammers away, and you describe it as ‘quite pleasant.’”

  “It was.”

  “I don’t get you. I can’t believe that there weren’t a dozen other things you could have been doing instead. So what gives? She doesn’t have a huge fortune, I promise you.”

  Peter got up and started gathering the tools that lay scattered around. Hot, tired and irritated by her arch cynicism, and even more by his unfathomable attraction to her, he wanted just to finish the work in the backyard, gather the girls and leave.

  “That was, of course, my motivation,” he said, picking up a rake. “It seemed such a brilliant plan too—convince her to make me the beneficiary of her palatial estate, then quickly finish her off by ensuring she gets sunstroke.”

  Edie, still on the steps drinking beer, laughed. “Very funny.”

  He handed her a long wooden-handled rake. “If you gave me a hand, we could probably finish this off today. I’m sure your mother would appreciate it.”

  “At the risk of confirming your probable belief that I’m completely without redemption, I have to tell you that earning my mother’s appreciation is not a really high motivating factor.”

  “Please yourself then.” He turned away, feeling close to taking her by the shoulders and shaking her. “Quite honestly, I couldn’t care less.”

  A moment later, she tugged the rake out of his hands. “Give me that damn thing. I might be all the awful things my family claims I am, but I’m not lazy.”

  Peter eyed her a moment but said nothing, and for the next forty-five minutes or so they worked in silence, broken only by occasional grunts from Edie followed by muttered announcements that she needed her head examined. Occasionally, he’d glance over at her, red-faced and determined, and have to stop himself from throwing down his shovel and taking her by the shoulders, but no longer out of irritation. Again, he resisted. When they were through, he collected the girls, who all hugged Maude but looked shyly at Edie, said goodbye and left.

  “I like Grandma Maude,” Natalie said as they drove away.

  Peter glanced at her. “Grandma Maude?”

  “She said that’s what she wants us to call her. She said she likes having children around because it makes her feel young again.”

  “She put my butterfly poem on the fridge,” Delphina said from the back seat.

  Peter stopped himself from asking Delphina whether she’d shown the poem to Edie. He wanted not to think about Edie. But Edie was like a song he couldn’t get out of his head; an e
ndlessly repeated refrain. He could still feel her in his arms as they’d danced to her mother’s scratchy gramophone records.

  “I’ll be looking at the moon, and I’ll be seeing you.”

  “HE’S SWEET ON YOU,” Maude announced that night as they sat in front of the TV watching Frasier. “It’s a rerun,” she complained for the third time. “Don’t know why they have to show them over and over. It’s not like those actors are overworked, all the money they make. He kept looking up at the window. I told him you were up there. She’s working, I told him. Edie’s always busy. Look at that, I’ll tell you what happens, Frasier brings a girl home—”

  “Mom, if you’ve seen this program, put something else on. I don’t care.” She’d played and replayed the conversation with Peter, and with each repetition she got angrier and more frustrated with herself. What the hell was wrong with her? Talking to Beth, she’d imagined walking outside to where Peter was working. Her arms around him, she would tell him that, frightening and amazing as it was to hear herself say it, she loved him. And if he felt the same way…

  But then what had she done instead? Given him her idiotic, jokey-sarcastic shtick. And the more she dug in, the more difficult it became to stop. And then the girls had hugged Maude but not her. Well, why would they want to hug her, for God’s sake? If she were eight years old, she wouldn’t hug her adult self.

  “Look, now Daphne’s going to tell Niles she’s going out,” Maude said.

  Edie stood. “I’m going to bed, Mom.”

  Maude glanced at her. “I’ll have some, if you’re going to make it.”

  Hours later, Edie had given up on sleep altogether and was reading when the phone rang just after two in the morning.

  “May I speak to Edie?” a young voice asked, so softly Edie could barely hear it. “It’s kind of an emergency.”