“What?” Aidan’s brows slammed together. “Of course he can talk to me!”
“Well, he doesn’t think so. Kids are real sensitive, Aidan,” she said gently. “If it makes you uncomfortable to talk about her, he’s gonna pick up on that. I know, I know…I’m sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong,” she said, looking miserable. “But it was either that or not tell you at all. And anyway, it’s not a criticism, believe me.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Of course not. Everybody deals with grief in their own way. I clammed up, too, after my parents died. I had to work things out by myself. And my grandmother…” She huffed out another one of those mirthless laughs. “It seemed the only way Ida could deal with losing her daughter was to keep reminding herself what a disappointment she’d been.”
One hand reached over to straighten out a spoon. “But Robbie’s different. He needs somebody to listen to him. To share the memories. If that’s too painful for you, then maybe you need to think about finding somebody—”
“Wait a minute…are you sayin’ he’s talking to you about his mother?”
After a moment, she nodded. “How’s that for irony?’
“But I’m his father, for God’s sake!”
“My point exactly,” Winnie said over the sound of Robbie’s sneakered feet pounding down the hall, turning to smile for the lad as he burst into the room.
The light in the studio had nearly faded beyond usefulness when Aidan heard Flo’s heels clack-clacking behind him, followed by, “So what’s up with Winnie makin’ pizza in my kitchen with Robbie and some kid I don’ know from Adam?”
“About damn time you returned,” he groused, half to her, half to the painting as he wiped his brush on a rag. “And that’s Jacob. Who I know you’ve met before, because I have.”
“They all start to look the same after a while,” Flo said, the clacking—and her perfume—getting closer. “The red over here,” she said, flapping her hand at the right side of the painting. “It’s out of whack with the rest of it.”
“And you’re forgettin’ our agreement.” Aidan detested having people around while he was working, commenting on a piece that wasn’t finished yet. He had a hard enough time taking criticism after he’d wrestled the bloody things into submission—at which point it was moot, anyway—but editorial remarks while the work was in progress were absolutely verboten. Even June, who had actually let a filmmaker hang around her studio for a week—a thought that gave Aidan heartburn—had respected that Aidan did not work by committee. His housekeeper, however, had yet to evolve that far.
In fact, she shrugged and said, “An’ how is it that the woman you were ready to ship to another planet yesterday is cooking your dinner and watching your kid today?”
“Her car died. I said I’d fix it but the part won’t be in until tomorrow.”
“An’ that’s reason enough to leave her alone with Robbie? You trust her that much, that fast?”
“Yes.” Aidan frowned at the painting. “You really think there’s too much red?”
“Are you kidding? It looks like you slaughtered a pig in here. And I don’ know what you’re thinking, boss, but it don’ take no crystal ball to predict there’s gonna be broken hearts in your future. Or did you miss the way she was looking at Robbie?”
Of course he hadn’t missed it, that combination of amazement and regret that made his grilled cheese curdle in his stomach. And he didn’t know why he trusted her, why he was willing to take that risk. But the thought had come…if she had the courage to give herself this one day, what skin was it off his nose to do the same? To share with her what she’d so generously given to him and June?
“So how’s Tess?” he now said, getting up and turning his back on the painting. “Due pretty soon, isn’t she?”
“Two weeks. I helped her get the baby’s room set up, she was hoping maybe Rico’d get leave by now so he’d be here when the baby comes, but now it’s not looking good for him to get home before sometime in the spring. Amazing, with cell phones and computers and everything, how he can call home almost anytime he wants, all the way from Iraq. Not like when my Jorge was in ‘Nam, it’d be weeks, sometimes, between letters—”
“Does Robbie ever talk to you about June?”
Flo shut her open mouth. Opened it again to say, “I tried to goose him into talking about her—in the beginning, you know, even though it was hard for me, too—but he wouldn’t bite. I finally figured when he wanted to talk, he would. Why?”
“Just wondering,” Aidan said, staring distractedly at the painting. “Maybe you could make a salad to go with the pizza?”
“Yeah, boss,” Flo said in a funny voice. “I’ll go do that.”
Aidan frowned after her, thinking, What the hell…?
There’s not a woman alive, Winnie thought as she oversaw two pairs of little hands as they liberally sprinkled black olives and sliced peppers over the sauce-drenched pizza crust, who would’ve missed Flo’s you’re-encroaching-on-my-territory vibes. Although whether they were due to Winnie’s being with Robbie or being in Flo’s kitchen, she couldn’t say. Probably a bit of both.
“Oh, don’t do that,” Winnie now said as the woman went behind them with much sighing and eye-rolling and jewelry-jangling, scraping off cutting boards and wiping up flour and putting things back in the refrigerator. “We were gonna clean up our mess as soon as the pizza went in the oven.”
“It’s no bother, it’s my job,” Flo said, somehow managing to not look directly at her while keeping an eye on her at the same time.
Honestly.
“Is it ready?” Robbie said, radiating pride, and Winnie’s heart turned over in her chest.
“It’s ready.”
The pizza in the oven, Winnie sent boys and dog off to play while it was baking, then grabbed a sponge to clean the one spot the housekeeper had somehow missed. “Didn’t mean to step on your toes, but it was getting late and the boys were hungry—”
“And jus’ what do you think you’re doing?”
Winnie blinked. “Making supper?”
“Don’ you play that game with me,” Flo said, jabbing a long-nailed finger in Winnie’s direction. “Why are you making Robbie fall for you, when you know you’re only gonna leave an’ break his heart?”
When Winnie found her voice again, she said, “What on earth are you talking about? I’ve been here exactly one afternoon! I hardly think—”
“Then maybe you should think more. Especially before you act.”
Winnie folded her arms over her whumping heart. “It wasn’t like I planned on being here today! In fact, I was all set to leave this morning, only then my stupid truck broke down, so I came up here for a freakin’ phone book because there isn’t one in the house and where else was I supposed to go? Only Aidan said he didn’t know where it was—”
“It’s right there!” Flo said, exasperated, pointing to something that sure looked like a phone book, right underneath the telephone on the wall next to the fridge. “Where it’s been ever since I came to work here!”
“I’m only tellin’ you what he said,” Winnie said, thinking, Men, honest to God. “Anyway,” she continued while she was on her roll, “so then he took it on himself to play mechanic, which resulted in him taking me into Santa Fe, only