LITMIR.BIZ

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Elizabeth died, by opening the nearest drawer or cupboard and shoving everything inside. Any normal man would have fired her months ago. But he was fond of her, and loyalty worked both ways.

      The telephone sat on a built-in pine desk by the window; the green light on his answering machine was flashing twice. His scowl deepened. One of those flashes, he would be willing to bet, was Janine, wanting him to confirm their date this weekend. Janine was nothing if not persistent. He didn’t want to know who the other one was. He sometimes felt as though every woman in Halifax under the age of fifty was after him, each one certain that all he needed was a wife, a mother for his son, or a lover. Or a combination of all three, he thought with a twist to his mouth.

      They were all wrong. He was doing a fine job bringing up Scott on his own, so why would he need to remarry? As for the needs of his body, they were buried so deeply he sometimes thought he should apply to the nearest monastery.

      The telephone rang, breaking into his thoughts. Warily he picked it up and said hello.

      ‘Teal? This is Sheila McNab, do you remember me? We met at the board meeting last week. How are you?’

      He did remember her. A well-packaged brunette whose laugh had grated on his nerves. They chatted a few minutes, then she said, ‘I’m wondering if you’d be free on Saturday evening to go to a barbecue in Chester with me? A friend of mine is celebrating her birthday.’

      ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible, Sheila; I already have plans that night,’ he said truthfully.

      ‘Oh...well, perhaps another time.’

      ‘Actually I’m very busy these days. My job’s extremely demanding and I’m a single parent as well...but it was nice of you to think of me, and perhaps we’ll meet again some time.’

      He put down the phone, feeling trapped in his own kitchen. Maybe he should shave his head and put on thirty pounds. Would that make the women leave him alone?

      He heard Scott’s footsteps thump down the stairs, followed by a swish that meant his son had taken to the banisters. The boy landed with a thud on the hall floor and came rushing into the room, waving a sheet of paper in one hand. ‘Guess what, Dad?’ he cried. ‘There’s a home and school meeting on Thursday, and you’ll get to meet Danny’s mum because she’s going, too.’

      Teal’s smile faded. The last thing he needed was one more woman to add to the list. Especially such a paragon as Danny’s mother. ‘I thought home and school was finished for the year,’ he said temperately, rumpling his son’s dark hair.

      Scott ducked, sending out a quick punch at his father’s midriff. Teal flicked one back, and a moment later the pair of them were rolling around the kitchen floor in a time-honored ritual. ‘Is that your soccer shirt?’ Teal grunted. ‘It needs washing in the worst way.’

      ‘It’ll only get dirty again,’ Scott said with unanswerable logic, bouncing up and down on his father’s chest. ‘The meeting’s so you can see our art stuff and our scribblers before school gets out; you’ll come, won’t you, Dad? Maybe we could take Danny and his mum with us,’ he added hopefully. ‘She’s real nice; you’d like her. She made chocolate-fudge cookies today, I brought a couple home for you; she said I could.’

      Janine, who had marriage in mind, had sent Teal flowers last weekend, and Cindy Thurston, who wanted something more immediate and less permanent than marriage, had tried to present him with a bottle of the finest brandy. He didn’t want Danny’s mother’s chocolate-fudge cookies. ‘I’d rather we went on our own,’ he said. ‘And you must change your shirt before we go out for supper.’

      Scott stuck out his jaw. ‘She’s beautiful—like a movie star.’

      Teal blinked. What eight-year-old noticed that his best friend’s mother was beautiful? Feeling his antipathy toward the unknown woman increase in leaps and bounds, he said, ‘There are clean shirts in your drawer. Move it.’

      ‘She’s prettier than Janine,’ Scott said stubbornly.

      Janine was a ravishing redhead. Teal sighed. ‘I’m sure we’ll meet her at the school,’ he said.

      And I’ll be polite if it kills me. But just because her son and mine are fast turning into best friends it doesn’t mean she has to become part of my life. I’ve got problems enough as it is, he added silently.

      ‘Her name’s Julie.’ Scott tugged on his father’s silk tie. ‘Can we go to Burger King to eat, Dad?’

      ‘Sure,’ said Teal. ‘Providing you have milk and not pop.’

      With a loud whoop Scott took off across the room. Teal followed at a more moderate pace, loosening the knot on his tie. A sweatshirt and jeans were going to feel good after the day he’d had. He’d better phone for a sitter and drink lots of coffee with his hamburger so he’d stay awake tonight.

      He was going to ignore both his phone messages until tomorrow.

      * * *

      Julie Ferris turned her new CD player up another notch and raised the pitch of her own voice correspondingly. She was no match for John Denver or Placido Domingo, but that didn’t bother her. At the top of her lungs she sang about the memories of love, deciding that if even one of the men currently pursuing her could sing like that she might be inclined to keep on dating him.

      Not a chance. On the occasions when her dates came to pick her up at the house, she sometimes contrived to have this song playing, fortissimo. Most of them ignored it; a few said they liked it; the odd one complained of the noise. But none burst into ravishing song.

      It was just as well, she thought. She really didn’t want to get involved with anyone yet; it was too soon after the divorce. Anyway, if the men she’d met so far were anything to go by, the options weren’t that great. She was better off single.

      ‘...dreams come true...’ she carolled, putting the finishing touches to the chicken casserole she was making for supper. The sun was streaming in the kitchen window and the birds were chirping in the back garden. The garden was so painfully and geometrically orderly that she was almost surprised any self-respecting bird would visit it. On Friday she was going to find a nursery and do her best to create some colour and confusion among the right-angled beds with their trimmed shrubs and military rows of late red tulips.

      Technically, her landlady had not forbidden her to do so. She had merely made it clear that she expected the house and the garden to be maintained in apple-pie order. An odd phrase, apple-pie order, Julie mused. A phrase she intended to interpret liberally.

      The phone rang. Wiping her hands on the dishcloth, she crossed the kitchen to answer it, chuckling as Einstein the cat swiped at the cord with one large paw. She and Danny had only lived here for six weeks and already she had acquired a stray cat, an unkempt gray male who for the first week had eaten voraciously and virtually ignored them. Now, however, he was intent on running the household. She had called him Einstein because, despite his mass, he could move with the speed of light. ‘Hello?’ she said.

      ‘Julie? Wayne here.’

      She had had a date with Wayne last Saturday night; he was an intern at the hospital where she worked. They had seen an entertaining film she had enjoyed, had had an entirely civilized conversation about it over drinks at a bar, and then Wayne had driven her home, parking his sports car in her driveway. Before she had realized his intention he had suddenly been all over her, as if she were a wrestler he was trying to subdue. His hands had touched her in places she considered strictly off-limits, and his mouth had attacked hers with a technical expertise she had found truly insulting. She had pulled free from a kiss whose intimacy he in no way had earned and had scrambled out of the car, her lipstick smeared and her clothes disheveled. She had not expected to hear from him again.

      ‘Julie—you there? Want to take in a film Friday night?’

      Julie had, unfortunately, she sometimes thought, been well brought up. ‘No, thank you,’ she said.

      ‘That film we talked about

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