Sarah Mayberry - Within Reach

He soaped himself down and allowed himself to enjoy the simple pleasure of warm water and well-used muscles. His thoughts drifted to the afternoon. The odds were good that Charlie would be awake any second now. Maybe they could go to the park. Charlie could run around to his heart’s content and afterward Michael might take a look at the plans Dane had sent over last night.

Michael was still feeling his way toward the whole going-back-to-work thing. He’d spoken to a nanny agency and they were lining up interviews for him for next week and Mrs. Linton had offered to help in the interim, but a part of him was holding back for some reason, not quite ready to commit to the complete resumption of his life. It was one thing to get a haircut and clean the house. It was another thing entirely to draw a line under the past few months and let the world in again.

Dane had clearly taken his imminent return as a given, however—Michael had checked his email last night and found a sizable file waiting for him, complete with brief and draft plans for a luxury beach house the firm had been commissioned to design. One of many projects, apparently, that his fellow partners were happy to hand over the moment Michael returned.

After dressing in jeans and a T-shirt and hooded sweatshirt, he took Charlie to the local park where they swung and climbed and played peekaboo endlessly. There were a couple of other parents hanging around with their kids, one of whom he recognized as a member of Billie’s mothers’ group. He chatted to her politely for a few minutes before Charlie once again demanded his attention. He walked away feeling woefully rusty at the whole small-talk thing.

Later, he was folding the last of the washing when he heard the door open and the sound of Eva’s footsteps pounding along the hall.

“We got the bestest present ever,” she announced as she burst into the kitchen. She held what looked like a set of butterfly wings.

“Wow. They look pretty cool,” he said as Angie followed Eva.

“We had trouble deciding between fairy and butterfly wings. So we got both.” Angie brandished her own shopping bag. “Eva’s going to decide which ones she thinks Imogen would prefer.” Angie’s deep blue eyes were shining with laughter. They both knew that Eva’s choice would be more about which pair of wings she didn’t want.

“Sounds like your mission was achieved.”

“We had a great time. Auntie Angie took me to get my nails done, and we had coffee and bisgotty.”

“Biscotti,” Angie said easily. “Which is a fancy-pants way of saying biscuit in Italian.”

“Biscotti. Bis-cotti,” Eva repeated to herself.

Michael didn’t even try to hide his smile this time, and neither did Angie. He met her gaze again.

“Stay for dinner?”

“Sure. If you’ve got enough to go around.”

“It’s nothing fancy, just pasta. And there’s always enough pasta.”

“No,” Eva groaned. “We always have spaghetti.”

“I think you might be exaggerating a little there, sweetheart.”

“We had it last night, and Wednesday night, and Monday night.”

Michael frowned, ready to correct her. Then he realized she was right. “Those were all different pastas.” He sounded lame, even to himself. The truth was, he was a competent cook, but not a very imaginative one.

“Have you made anything yet?” Angie asked.

“No. I was about to start on the sauce. Which will be different from the other sauces we had during the week,” he said for Eva’s benefit.

She gave him a skeptical look, as well she might. There was only so much a man could do with tomatoes, onion and ground meat.

“If you want to take a break from the kitchen for the night, I could make us Mexican. I picked up a few groceries while we were out so I’ve got a taco kit and the makings for a salad in the car,” Angie said.

“Yes!” Eva jumped up and down on the spot, hands in the air.

“Mexican it is, then,” Angie said.

The dinner prep passed quickly, punctuated with lots of laughter. The Mexican feast elicited loud approving noises from his children—a hint, in case he’d missed the earlier message, that he needed to add a little more variety to their weekly menu.

Charlie was rubbing his eyes by the time they had finished eating and Michael took a chance and settled him in his bed. Miraculously, Charlie’s eyes shut after only ten minutes of story.

When Michael returned to the kitchen, Angie was seated at the counter, her chin propped on her left hand as she sketched rapidly in a notebook.

“Guess who’s already asleep?”

She glanced up, her blue eyes unfocused for a few seconds as she dragged herself back from whatever creative space she’d been in.

“Really? He’s down already?”

“The magic of the park.”

“Wow. They should put that in a can. It would sell like hotcakes.”

“You want a coffee?”

“Sure.”

He glanced to the living area and saw that Eva had crashed out on the couch, too. Unusual for her, but maybe the shopping had worn her out. He pulled mugs from the cupboard and grabbed the French press. He turned to check if Angie wanted some chocolates with their coffee and saw that she was once again absorbed in her notebook, this time writing small, neat notes to herself in the margin.

She was so self-contained, one of the calmest people he knew. In fact, he could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he’d seen her really agitated or distressed. She approached everything with an interested, open-minded curiosity and an unfailing, quiet sense of humor. She was good company, good to spend time with.

All of which made her apparently perpetual single status baffling to him. It wasn’t as though she was hard on the eyes. She might not be conventionally beautiful, but her long, oval face and deep blue eyes were very appealing. She had a sleek, subtly curved body that was more athletic than va-voom, but there was no denying that she was an attractive woman. Very attractive.

He knew through Billie that Angie’s love life was hardly a barren desert—there were men, not too many, but enough—yet none of them seemed to stick. He also knew via his indiscreet wife that there had been one man years ago who Angie had been crazy about. Was she still holding a candle for him? Or was it simply a matter of her not being interested?

Behind him, the kettle clicked to announce it had boiled. He started to make the coffees as the doorbell rang through the house.

He frowned. It was nearly eight-thirty, and the days of people dropping in unannounced had gone with Billie.

“I’ll finish this. You get the door,” Angie said.

“Thanks.”

He made his way up the hall and opened the door to find the woman he’d run into in the park earlier on his doorstep, a piece of paper in hand.

“Michael. Hi. Remember me? Gerry.” She gave a self-conscious laugh.

“Of course,” he said, even though he’d forgotten her name the moment she’d reintroduced herself this afternoon. He simply didn’t have room for that sort of thing in his head right now.

“Sorry to show up on your doorstep like this, but I was thinking about Charlie this afternoon and I realized that you’ve probably been out of the loop a bit since we all used to contact Billie for things… Anyway, I thought you might be interested in this.”

Gerry thrust the piece of paper at him and he saw that it was a flyer advertising a sing-and-dance event at the local indoor play center.

“A bunch of us are going to make a day of it, take a picnic, that sort of thing.” Gerry smoothed a hand over her deep red hair.

“Thanks. I’ll see if we can make it. Charlie thinks he’s a rock star, so it’s all about singing and dancing for him.”