Teresa Hill - Single Mum Seeks…

“I am not lonely,” Lily insisted, clearing the table of halfeaten bowls of cereal and bread crumbs from the peanut butter sandwiches and half-empty glasses that seemed to multiply like rabbits all over the house when Lily’s back was turned. “At least not for…fudge. Now, a bubble bath, I could handle. Someone to cook dinner every now and then or a good book, plus enough time to read it without interruptions—that I could handle. But fudge is—”

Lily broke off as she straightened up, having put four cups in the dishwasher and found herself looking out the window above the sink, which faced the house next door, which had been empty for weeks.

It looked like it wasn’t going to be empty anymore, because in the driveway was a moving truck backed up to the garage, the big back door of the truck open, a pair of sun-bronzed, muscular arms handing a table out of the back of the truck to someone Lily couldn’t quite see because of an overgrown rhododendron bush.

“What?” Marcy asked. “Where did you go?”

“Right here,” Lily said, watching as the arms kept coming out, soon to be followed by a really nice, perfectly muscled shoulder.

First one.

Then the other.

Lily was afraid her mouth dropped open, and she just couldn’t seem to shut it.

Legs. Long, masculine legs, encased in well-worn jeans that hung just a tad low on a taut waist, above which was what looked to be the most beautifully formed washboard abs she’d ever seen, and above that, nice, broad, extremely capable looking shoulders.

“Oh,” Lily said, all the breath going out of her in a rush.

“What?” Marcy asked. “Are you okay?”

Lily felt like she’d been burned.

A wave of heat came over her, blossoming in the pit of her stomach and spreading like a flood to every cell in her body.

There was an absolutely gorgeous male creature at the house next door, muscles flexing beautifully, a little sweat on his brow, chest gloriously naked, and all of a sudden she got it. Everything her sister had been trying to explain to her about loneliness and needs and how some things were fine for a while and then, they just weren’t anymore.

Suddenly, they were urgent, burning, overwhelming.

“Oh, fudge!” Lily said and dropped the phone.

She was afraid he’d seen her watching him through the kitchen window or that somehow he’d heard her phone clattering on the hard tile floor. Which seemed impossible at this distance and with the walls of her house between them.

But his head shot around and he stared right at her before she gulped and dropped to her knees, feeling guilty and confused and hot all over.

Like she’d suddenly developed a fever in mere seconds.

Maybe she was coming down with something.

Lily touched her hand to her forehead to see if it felt hot.

A mother could tell those things just by the touch of her hand, after dealing with as many feverish kids as she had.

But she couldn’t tell this time. Not for sure.

Rattled, she stood back up and looked cautiously out the window once again, to see nothing but the open back of the moving truck and a few boxes.

No sign of him.

Had to be one of the movers, she told herself as she searched the cabinet above the stove, where she stored medicines to keep out of her girls’ reach.

Men in her neighborhood did not look that good without their shirts on. They didn’t have those kinds of muscles or those kinds of tans.

They were strictly suit-and-tie kind of guys.

Desk jockeys.

Pencil pushers.

A man didn’t get muscles like that in corporate America.

Lily found the thermometer and put it in her mouth, just as her phone rang stridently.

She must have dropped the phone just right to disconnect the call as it landed.

Which meant this had to be her sister calling back.

And Lily didn’t want to talk to Marcy.

Not that Marcy would really give her the option of refusing. She’d just keep calling until Lily answered. Either that or get in her car and drive the twenty minutes between their houses to make sure Lily was okay.

Marcy tended to be a tad overprotective since Richard had moved out.

“Oh, fine,” she muttered, picking up the phone, thermometer still in her mouth. “Hewwo.”

“What happened?” Marcy demanded to know.

“Sowwy. I dwopped d’phone,” Lily said as best she could.

“Huh?”

“Wait…” The thermometer beeped and she took it out. No fever. How odd. “I was just taking my temperature. I felt a little warm, and I dropped the phone.”

Not necessarily in that order, but Marcy didn’t have to know every little thing.

“You think you have a fever? From just talking about…fudge?”

Lily rolled her eyes. Marcy’s kids must still be there. They left for school about fifteen minutes later than Lily’s.

“No, not from just talking about it. I just felt…warm, that’s all.”

“You’re not telling me something,” Marcy insisted.

“There’s a lot I don’t tell you or anyone else,” Lily admitted, leaning every so slightly to the left, so she could see out the kitchen window again.

And there he was, unloading a kitchen chair.

Lily sighed heavily, unable to help herself.

“I knew it!” Marcy pounced on the sound. “What’s going on? Do you have a man there?”

“No, I do not have a man here, and I don’t want a man here. I just got rid of one, and he was enough trouble to last me a lifetime,” she insisted.

“Honey, we just talked about this. You are not off men for a lifetime. You think you are, but I promise you, you’re not. You’re just in deep freeze right now.”

“Deep freeze?”

“Yes. Where men are concerned. But you won’t always be there. One day, some man will come along and bam! No more deep freeze on your…fudge life.”

“Aunt Lily has a fudge life?” she heard Marcy’s youngest ask through the phone.

Lily started laughing.

“What’s a fudge life?” Stacy asked. “Do you just eat it and eat it and eat it all day?”

“No,” Marcy insisted.

“’Cause I like fudge. Could I have a fudge life?”

“No. No one spends her life eating fudge,” Marcy said, then hissed at her sister, “Fudge life? I will never hear the end of this. She’ll probably tell the other kids at school, and I’ll be getting calls from the other moms. All their kids will want a fudge life, and the moms will want to know what I’m doing, telling kids they can just eat fudge all the time. How am I ever going to explain this?”

“Sorry. Gotta go,” Lily said, hearing her sister growl at her before she hung up the phone.

A fudge life?

Lily laughed again.

At least she could do that now. Laugh at times.

She hadn’t for a while. It had been too hard, too scary, too overwhelming, to think of being mostly alone in the world except for two little girls depending on her for just about everything.

But it was getting less overwhelming as time went on.

She was down, but she wasn’t beaten.

Lily peeked out the window again, and he was still there, a big box perched on one shoulder, the muscles in his arm looking long and sleek and glistening with sweat.

Had to be a mover, she reassured herself.

Something looking that good would never move in next door to her.

And it was getting hot out.

They probably didn’t have anything cold to drink in that house, which had been empty for three months, since the Sanders got transferred to San Diego.

It would be neighborly to drop by and offer them a little something, and maybe the owners would show up while she was there. Or she could pump the moving men for information on the new family.

Her girls were always eager to have more friends to play with. The first thing they’d ask when they walked in the door after school would be whether the new neighbors had girls their age, and a good mother should be ready to provide the answers for her children, shouldn’t she?