Julie Hogan - Tangled Sheets, Tangled Lies

That was Day One of Lauren’s yearlong sabbatical from men. Three hundred and sixty-five days of no distractions, of peace and quiet to spend with her son, building a new life and a thriving business.

Lauren straightened and gazed out at her front yard that lay beyond the living room’s ancient leaded glass windows. Where in heaven’s name had her control gone? Where was that familiar, dependable control that had practically been her shadow since she was about Jem’s age, living a chaotic life in home number five with that hardhearted alcoholic couple? Her experience with them had been awful, but it had taught her to be pleasant, even-tempered and totally in control, no matter what life threw at her.

Don’t get too close and don’t rely on anyone. Those were her rules. Unfortunately, she’d broken them not only for Miles, but also for a few other handpicked jokers—and she’d lived to regret it. Oh, they’d all seemed normal at first but each and every one had turned out to be jerks or philanderers, and one had been struggling with his sexual identity. When she was twenty, it was a photographer; at twenty-one, she’d taken a chance on a much older magazine editor; at twenty-three, it’d been a fashion designer and a professional baseball player; then, at twenty-five, the coup de grâce, Miles.

And now there was Cole Travis. She had to hire him, even though when he smiled at her, or argued with her, or basically stood within ten feet of her, she felt so damned powerless she wanted to run into the streets screaming. He was a man who threatened everything she’d worked so hard to reconstruct—and he was a man who was leaving in six weeks, she reminded herself sternly, and she’d best remember that every time she got her priorities mixed up.

It was time to get some real advice, she thought as she grabbed her car keys, got in her enormous, brand-new SUV and drove to pick Jem up from his playgroup at the Bouchard’s house a few blocks away.

As she strapped the seat belt over him, she asked, “You want to go check the sign with me before we go home, honey?”

“Yeah!” he said, clapping his hands.

She smiled and tousled his unruly mop of hair. Never in her life had anyone supported her eccentricities the way her son did. And this quirk of hers, in particular, was a pretty hard one to swallow.

Lauren looked for signs. Not the mystical, “Ooh, I think that’s a sign!” kind of sign, but actual, real signs that bore messages for the masses. In the course of her life, she’d found them at shopping malls, car dealerships, churches, restaurants, high schools and civic centers. Sometimes they were old-fashioned signs that were changed manually by a human being and sometimes they were electronic signs that were changed every day—which made things so much easier because some of the most important decisions in her life had been resolved by signs.

In fact, the reason she’d known that they had to settle in Valle Verde was that the local ice-cream shop, the Frosty King, had a nice, old-style sign. And the first day they’d driven into town, it had had a message that read, Put Down UR Baggage. Home Is Just Where U R. Underneath it had said, Double Dips, 99 Cents, and she and Jem had taken advantage of both pieces of advice. And when they were done with their ice cream, they’d driven straight to the real estate office.

“Can I have a Rainbow Bar, Mom?”

Lauren signaled and made a left turn onto the main street. “You haven’t even eaten dinner yet, mister.” She looked over at his crestfallen expression and chuckled. What an actor.

As they approached the Frosty King, the familiar fluttering in her stomach revved up. When she went to look for a sign, she usually knew what she wanted it to say. But today, she had no idea. She told herself she wanted it to say, Don’t Give Up, but deep down in her bones she knew it was more like, The Answer Is Right Under UR Nose.

Suddenly the sign came into view and her heart sank and soared simultaneously at its advice. Don’t Waste UR Energy, it read. Take The Path Of Least Resistance.

She stopped the car on the road’s graveled shoulder and gripped the steering wheel so tightly she thought it would snap in two. Was Cole Travis the path of least resistance?

Jem peered out the windshield, then looked over at her for an explanation. “What’s it say, Mommy?”

“It says,” she answered, her eyes still fixed on the huge red-and-white sign, “that we have found our handyman.”

As she prepared dinner that night, Lauren sighed and sliced the three-inch high lump she’d baked in her new bread machine. She was still trying to expand her very small cooking repertoire and the loaf was a bit flat, but she’d improve. The sign had said as much a few weeks back when she was deciding whether to hire a full-time housekeeper. Do It URself, it had said. Pride Is In The Accomplishment.

She smiled as she threw the bread in a basket, then called Jem and her future handyman—who she’d asked to stay for dinner—to come inside. In five minutes, the three of them were gathered around her big, nineteenth-century farmhouse table.

Cole had changed into a clean denim shirt and his collar lay open at the neck, revealing only some of the dark-golden curls that lay beneath it. She tore her gaze away but not before her pulse had kicked up to a hot, salsa rhythm. What was it about this guy? she thought as she continued to fill her son’s plate and her own. A denim shirt and a peek at his chest hair was all it took to raise her blood pressure? Get a grip, Lauren.

As they passed the food around and Jem chattered away, she noticed that Cole asked questions and answered them in language her son could understand—something Miles had never quite mastered—and she wondered with a sudden flash of concern if her son might grow attached to Cole. Jem hadn’t mentioned Miles in ages, so maybe not, but she added it to her growing list of things to worry about anyway. She’d just have to make sure that attachment didn’t happen. And she’d start by making sure she didn’t get too close to Cole herself even though just having the man at her dinner table was making her feel melty in all the wrong places.

Cole hefted a forkful of the very tasty but very lumpy potatoes and, as he chewed, thought about how much his mother would love to pass on a few bits of potato lore to Lauren. But that wouldn’t happen because his mother was never going to meet Lauren, he reminded himself. And he’d do well to remember that before he complicated this thing further.

The dinner passed quickly in a buzz of companionable chatter, mostly stemming from Jem. Cole was amazed by how the smallest things in Jem’s day—catching a pollywog, finding a really nice stick to hit rocks with, rolling lemons from their tree down the street—took on a mythic quality in the boy’s retelling.

But as the narration went on, Cole couldn’t help but reflect on his own life—and what might have been if Kelly hadn’t left him one rainy Seattle morning with nothing but an envelope full of divorce papers to show for their marriage. If things had been different, he thought as the familiar tension tightened inside him, perhaps they, too, could have brought up a child like this.

The possibility that Jem might be his son overwhelmed Cole for a moment but he snapped out of it quickly when the boy’s face lit up in rediscovery of something that he’d forgotten.

“I found a snail shell by that big tree!” He fixed his excited gaze on Cole. “Wanna see it?”

“Sure I would,” Cole said as he laid his napkin beside his plate.

Lauren reached over and touched her son’s arm and her hair, that silky curtain that kept tempting Cole to bury his hands in it, swept forward over her cheek. “Why don’t you bring it downstairs in a few minutes, honey. Cole and I have something to discuss.”