Janice Johnson - The New Man

“You have glorious hair,” Kathleen said. “The way you yank it back looks…”

“Repressed,” Jo finished for her.

As sulky as a teenager, Helen just about snapped, If I want to be repressed, I will be!

Instead she muttered, “I don’t like hair in my face.”

The way Kathleen scrutinized her, Helen felt like a mannequin in a store window waiting to be posed and dressed.

“If you won’t wear it loose, we can do something to it that’s still softer.”

“Maybe.” And they wondered why she was ready to move out! Deliberately she changed the subject. “You’re sure you don’t mind watching Ginny?”

“She lives here. It hardly qualifies as baby-sitting.”

“No, but it does mean you and Logan can’t go out.”

“Unless Emma is home.” But they both knew that wasn’t likely. Emma, between her junior and senior years in high school and nearly eighteen, was dating a freshman at Seattle U. She was almost never home on Friday or Saturday nights anymore. “Besides—” Kathleen had a gleam in her eye “—I have every intention of being here when he picks you up.”

“So you can quiz him about his intentions?” Helen asked with deceptive tranquility.

Kathleen flashed a grin. “So I can satisfy my curiosity.”

Helen had to laugh. So, okay, they were busybodies. They irritated her sometimes. But the two women were her closest friends. No, they were family. Way more important to her than Alec Fraser ever could be.

ALEC PARKED his Mercedes on the street a few driveways down from Helen’s place. It was a nice brick house dating from the 1920s, if he was any judge. Big leafy maples and sycamores overhung the street, buckling sidewalks, while flowers tumbled over retaining walls. The flower bed above Helen’s wall looked new, the earth dark and the rosebushes spindly.

At six in the evening, the sun still baked the un-shaded pavement and the small, dry lawns. At midsummer in Seattle, night didn’t fall until nearly ten o’clock.

It was irrational but Alec felt better leaving the kids alone with the sun still shining. As if teenage boys only did stupid things in the dark.

He rang the doorbell. A woman he didn’t know answered. Beautiful and assured, she had honey-blond hair worn in a loose French braid.

“Hi. You must be Alec Fraser?”

“That’s right. I’m here for Helen.”

“I’m Kathleen Carr.” Smiling, she held out her hand. “Her housemate.”

He shook. “The Kathleen.”

“Of Kathleen’s Soaps, you mean? The same.” She stepped back. “Come on in.”

As he followed her, a slender teenage girl with an unmistakable resemblance to Kathleen came down the stairs. Her ponytailed hair was a shade lighter, and she had the impossibly delicate build of a ballerina, but her inquisitive blue eyes could have been her mother’s.

“Oh, Emma. This is Alec Fraser. Alec, my daughter.”

“Nice to meet you.”

He could see through an archway into the living room, where a dark-haired young man slouched on the sofa with a laptop computer open on his knees. From the other direction came music; Alec recognized the voice of a singer who recorded CDs for children. A man called for Kathleen from some other part of the house.

Who were all these people?

“In a minute, Logan,” Kathleen called back. “Helen, Alec’s here!”

He was reassured to hear her voice float from above, “I’ll be right down.”

A moment later, she appeared, coming down the stairs as lightly as the teenage girl had. Something squeezed in his chest at the sight of her in linen slacks and a rust-colored, sleeveless top that he thought must be made of silk. Her hair was drawn up in two tortoiseshell clips and then flowed, like rivers of dark molten lava, over her shoulders. She was…oh, hell, not beautiful, but something better. Not so artificial. Her eyes were a warm, smiling brown, her skin the creamy pale of a true redhead—although her cheeks and shoulders were rather pink—but she lacked the freckles. Instead, her nose was peeling.

“You got sunburned.” Way to go, he congratulated himself. Surely he could have thought of a greeting that was slightly more suave. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Kathleen and Emma agreed.

But Helen only smiled. “Yup. I always get sunburned. I’m incapable of tanning. If I don’t put enough suntan lotion on, I burn, over and over, all summer long.”

“It’s not good for you.” Oh, better and better.

“I know.” She wrinkled her nose, then winced. “Truly. I try.”

“Sorry. I bug my kids to wear suntan lotion, and…” He smiled crookedly. “It’s that parent thing. There’s a secretary at work always having to brush her bangs away from her eyes. I want to clip them back with barrettes in the worst way.”

Helen laughed. “Oh, dear. I know the feeling.” She started down the hall. “Let me go say good-night to Ginny.”

Ah. Well, at least there wasn’t yet another child in the house.

Alec turned to Kathleen. “I’m going to have to buy more of your soap. My son stole the bar Helen gave me. He’s at that stage where he showers three times a day. You wouldn’t know it from his hair or choice of clothes, but he really likes to be clean.”

“Helen said he’s fourteen?”

Alec nodded.

“Trouble with acne?”

He pictured his son’s face. “Uh…some.”

“I have just the thing for him.” She’d gone into saleswoman mode. “We’re not selling it yet because I haven’t made enough, but this soap has eucalyptus, aloe and peppermint. It’s really good for oily complexions.”

“I’d love to buy a bar.”

“Don’t be silly. I’ll get you one.” She flapped a hand and headed into what he presumed was the kitchen.

Emma looked at him. “It really works.”

Her delicate porcelain skin didn’t look as if anything as unsightly as a pimple would dare mar it.

“Devlin will appreciate it.” Alec had pretended to be irritated but had actually been amused when his soap disappeared and he found it in the kids’ bathroom. So, his son had taken to browsing Dad’s bathroom for personal hygiene products.

“The soap in our shower smells girly,” Dev had groused, when Alec mentioned the case of the missing bar.

“That’s good stuff, isn’t it?” Alec had asked, and gotten a surprisingly enthusiastic response.

“Yeah, it lathered great and it smells really cool.”

Maybe, Alec thought, he should suggest the boy star in a TV ad for Kathleen’s soaps. He could see it, Devlin scrubbing his underarms and grinning disarmingly at the camera.

“Smells cool and lathers great. Any guy my age would love it.”

Right. Nice picture, except Dev didn’t smile very often these days. He’d apparently forgotten how.

The two women returned from the kitchen, Kathleen with a grocery sack in her hand.

“Here’s several bars.” She handed it to him. “Compliments of the house.”

“Hey, thanks.”

“The green one is for your son.”

“He’ll appreciate it.”

“Shall we go?” Helen asked.

The heat hit them the minute they stepped outside.

“Doesn’t that feel good?” She raised her face to the sun. “I swear, I’m cold most of the time.”

“Maybe you should move to Arizona.”

“I’ve thought about it, but then I’d be freezing all the time because everyone cranks the air-conditioning up so high. Besides…I like a green landscape. So let me enjoy this rare summer heat wave.”

“And get sunburned,” he added.

Reaching the sidewalk ahead of him, she looked back with a guilty face. “I can’t resist basking just a little. Why can’t I have a skin that likes to brown?”

“Because—” he flipped one of her curls “—it wouldn’t go with this.”