LITMIR.BIZ

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      “A lot of strain?” Sharon echoed, rising from the bench like a rocket in a slow-motion scene from a movie.

      “With the shop and everything,” Briana hastened to say.

      “Quarterly taxes,” Matt supplied.

      “And credit card billings,” added Briana.

      Sharon sagged back to the bench. “I don’t need you two to list everything I’ve done in the past two months,” she said. Her disappointment was out of proportion to the situation; she realized that. Still, she felt like crying.

      When Matt and Bri went off to watch television, she debated calling Tony for a few moments and then marched over to the wall phone and punched out his home number. He answered on the third ring.

      Relief dulled Sharon’s anger. Tony wasn’t out on a date; that knowledge offered some comfort. Of course, it was early….

      “This is Sharon,” she said firmly. “And before you panic, let me say that this is not an emergency call.”

      “That’s good. What kind of call is it?” Tony sounded distracted; Sharon could visualize his actions so vividly—he was cooking—that she might as well have been standing in the small, efficient kitchen of his condo, watching him. Assuming, that is, that the kitchen was small and efficient. She’d never been there.

      Sharon bit down on her lower lip and tears welled in her eyes. It was a moment before she could speak. “You’re going to think it’s silly,” she said, after drawing a few deep and shaky breaths, “but I don’t care. Tony, I was planning to take the kids shopping for their school clothes myself, like I always do. It was important to me.”

      There was a pause, and then Tony replied “Mama thought she was doing you a favor.”

      Dear Mama, with a forest of photographs growing on top of her television set. Photographs of Tony and Carmen. Sharon dragged a stool over from the breakfast bar with a practiced motion of one foot and slumped onto it. “I am not incompetent,” she said, shoving the fingers of one hand through her hair.

      “Nobody said you were,” Tony immediately replied, and even though there was nothing in either his words or his tone to feed Sharon’s anger, it flared like a fire doused with lighter fluid.

      She was so angry, in fact, that she didn’t trust herself to speak.

      “Talk to me, Sharon,” Tony said gently.

      If she didn’t do as he asked, Tony would get worried and come to the house, and Sharon wasn’t sure she could face him just now. “Maybe I don’t do everything perfectly,” she managed to say, “but I can look after Briana and Matt. Nobody has to step in and take over for me as though I were some kind of idiot.”

      Tony gave a ragged sigh. “Sharon—”

      “Damn you, Tony, don’t patronize me!” Sharon interrupted in a fierce whisper, that might have been a shout if two children hadn’t been in the next room watching television.

      He was the soul of patience. Sharon knew he was being understanding just to make her look bad. “Sweetheart, will you listen to me?”

      Sharon wiped away tears with the heel of her palm. Until then she hadn’t even realized that she was crying. “Don’t call me that,” she protested lamely. “We’re divorced.”

      “God, if you aren’t the stubbornest woman I’ve ever known—”

      Sharon hung up with a polite click and wasn’t at all surprised when the telephone immediately rang.

      “Don’t you ever do that again!” Tony raged.

      He wasn’t so perfect, after all. Sharon smiled. “I’m sorry,” she lied in dulcet tones.

      It was after she’d extracted herself from the conversation and hung up that Sharon decided to take the kids to the island house in the morning. Maybe a few days spent combing the beaches on Vashon would restore her perspective.

      She called Helen, her employee, to explain the change in plans, and then made the announcement.

      The kids loved visiting the A-frame, and they were so pleased at the prospect that they went to bed on time without any arguments.

      Sharon read until she was sleepy, then went upstairs and took a shower in the master bathroom. When she came out, wrapped in a towel, the kiss she and Tony had indulged in earlier replayed itself in her mind. She felt all the attendant sensations and longings and knew that it was going to be one of those nights.

      Glumly, she put on blue silk pajamas, gathered a lightweight comforter and a pillow into her arms and went downstairs. It certainly wasn’t the first night she’d been driven out of the bedroom by memories, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.

      In the den Sharon made up the sofa bed, tossed the comforter over the yellow top sheet and plumped her pillow. Then she crawled under the covers, reaching out for the remote control for the TV.

      A channel specializing in old movies filled the screen. There were Joseph Cotten and Ginger Rogers, gazing into each other’s eyes as they danced. “Does Fred Astaire know about this?” Sharon muttered.

      If there was one thing she wasn’t in the mood for, it was romance. She flipped to a shopping network and watched without interest as a glamorous woman in a safari suit offered a complete set of cutlery at a bargain price.

      Sharon turned off the television set, then the lamp on the end table beside her, and shimmied down under the covers. She yawned repeatedly, tossed and turned and punched her pillow, but sleep eluded her.

      A deep breath told her why. The sheets were tinged with the faintest trace of Tony’s aftershave. There was no escaping thoughts of that man.

      In the morning Sharon was grumpy and distracted. She made sure the kids had packed adequate clothes for the visit to the island and was dishing up dry cereal when Tony rapped at the back door and then entered.

      “Well,” Sharon said dryly, “come on in.”

      He had the good grace to look sheepish. “I was in the neighborhood,” he said, as Briana and Matt flung themselves at him with shouts of joy. A person would have thought they hadn’t seen him in months.

      “We’re going to the island!” Matt crowed.

      “For three whole days!” added Briana.

      Tony gave Sharon a questioning look over their heads. “Great,” he said with a rigid smile. When the kids rushed off to put their duffel bags in the station wagon, the car reserved for excursions involving kids or groceries, Sharon poured coffee into his favorite mug and shoved it at him.

      “I was going to tell you,” she said.

      He took a leisurely sip of the coffee before replying, “When? After you’d gotten back?”

      Sharon hadn’t had a good night, and now she wasn’t having a good morning. Her eyes were puffy and her hair was pinned up into a haphazard knot at the back of her head. She hadn’t taken the time to put on makeup, and she was wearing the oldest pair of jeans she owned, along with a T-shirt she thought she remembered using to wash the roadster. She picked up her own cup and gulped with the enthusiastic desperation of a drunk taking the hair of the dog. “You’re making an awfully big deal out of this, aren’t you?” she hedged.

      Tony shrugged. “If you’re taking the kids out of town,” he said, “I’d like to know about it.”

      “Okay,” Sharon replied, enunciating clearly. “Tony, I am taking the kids out of town.”

      His eyes were snapping. “Thanks,” he said, and then he headed right for the den. The man had an absolute genius for finding out things Sharon didn’t want him to know.

      He came out with a payroll journal under one arm, looking puzzled. “You slept downstairs?”

      Sharon

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