Linda Jones - The Husband Recipe

As she was attempting to place herself in a magic bubble of silence, a loud crash jerked her back to reality. A loud crash accompanied by shards of glass that flew into her office, landing on the area rug and her grandmother’s occasional table and into the vase of fresh flowers there. Lauren’s heart almost jumped out of her chest. She screamed—just a little—and then, a split second later, she realized that all screams and laughter from next door had gone silent.

When she’d gathered her composure she stood carefully, stepping over the pieces of glass on the floor, glad that she wasn’t working barefoot as she often did. And there, on top of her edits, sat a baseball. The offending, intruding, destructive and muddy baseball, which was now perched on top of the once-pristine top page of a once-perfectly-aligned stack.

Lauren had heard the term her blood boiled, and now she knew exactly what that felt like. She experienced an intense physical response to the sight of that baseball on her work, to the broken glass and the ruined papers. That was it. She literally couldn’t take any more.

She snatched up the baseball and stalked to the back door, bursting onto her small stone patio like a woman on a mission. In her fury she noted—not for the first time—the crushed flowers and the broken tomato stalk. The trampled grass and the discarded juice box. The juice box was new, tossed into her backyard as if this were the city dump. Like her office, the backyard had been in perfect condition before the new family next door had moved in and disrupted her life.

In the neighboring yard—where the recently added trampoline and soccer net marred the landscape—the sprinkler continued to spurt a jerking stream of water this way and that, but the children were nowhere to be seen. For once, all was quiet. Lauren cut in between the two houses, glancing at her broken window as she walked by on her way to the front door. She’d never before really noticed how close the two houses were. Little more than an alleyway separated her home from the one next door.

The Garrison house, which wasn’t the Garrison house any longer, was larger than her own. Some years ago, long before Lauren had bought her home, Mr. Garrison had built an addition that consisted of two bedrooms and another bath. At one time he’d had children of his own living there, and they’d needed the space. Once the children moved out, that extra space had been unnecessary. Helen Garrison had happily told Lauren all about the small condo they’d bought in Phoenix. The older woman was thrilled to have less house to clean, no yard to tend.

Ringing the doorbell would be too passive for Lauren’s mood, so she knocked soundly on the front door. She knocked so hard her knuckles stung. As she waited for an answer she shook out her hand and studied the mess on the small porch. A baseball glove, Frisbees, a Barbie doll with one leg and a frighteningly original haircut, and a skateboard. It could be such a cute porch, with a couple of white wicker chairs and a pair of hanging ferns, but instead the space was messy, untended and chaotic. She imagined whatever lay beyond the door was no better.

No one immediately answered her knock, so she rang the doorbell. Twice. Inside she heard whispering. The heathens were ignoring her. Heaven above, surely those kids weren’t in there alone! No, the family car, a white minivan that had seen better days, was parked in the driveway. It was the only vehicle she’d seen in front of the house since the new family had moved in, not that she spent her time watching the neighbors. She couldn’t help but notice a few details, as she collected the mail or drove into her own driveway. For all she knew there was another vehicle parked in the one-car garage.

All was quiet now. She didn’t even hear whispering. She rang the doorbell for the third time and then lifted her hand to knock once more. Harder this time around.

The door swung open on a very tall, broad-shouldered man who held a cell phone to his ear. Obviously distracted, and also obviously not in a good mood, he held up one finger to indicate that he needed another minute.

The heathens’ father needed a lesson in manners as much as his children did. It was all she could do not to snatch the cell phone out of his hand! What she really wanted to do was grab the offending finger and bend it back. That would get his attention.

But of course, she did no such thing. The hand holding the offending baseball dropped, and some of the wind went out of her sails. She’d never been very good when it came time to confront a man—especially a good-looking one. In most situations she was confident and in command, but most situations didn’t require her to look up quite so far.

He who had spawned three little devils was much too tall for her tastes, which didn’t help matters at all since Lauren was barely five foot three. Her new neighbor was six feet tall, at least, which meant she was at a serious disadvantage when it came to talking to him face-to-face. A step stool would come in handy right about now. The man needed a shave; he didn’t have a beard, but that face hadn’t seen a razor in a day or two. He had shaggy-ish dark brown hair which wasn’t long but wasn’t freshly cut either, fabulous bone structure, a perfect nose—Lauren always noticed noses—and big hands with long fingers. Dressed in jeans and a plain, faded gray T-shirt, he still managed to give off an “I’m in charge” vibe.

Great. Maybe she should’ve tacked a scathing note to the front door.

“Look, I’ll have to call you back.” For the first time, the man who’d shaken his finger at Lauren really looked at her. And he smiled. “A woman in bunny slippers and her pj’s is on my doorstep holding a muddy baseball and looking like someone spit in her Cheerios this morning, so she must be here about something important.”

Lauren tried not to be obvious about turning her gaze downward, but yes—she was still in her pajamas. Long, soft cotton pants and a matching tank just a touch too thin for someone who wore no bra. Not for the first time, she thanked her lucky stars that she didn’t have much to brag about in that department.

But still … she loses her temper in the first time in forever, and this is where it gets her. Embarrassed. No, mortified.

And she was still holding the damn baseball.

Her new neighbor, the father of the heathens who were tearing Lauren’s neat schedule to pieces, ended his phone call and looked at her. He really looked at her, his gaze cutting to the bone. He had blue eyes. Not just a little blue, either, but wowza blue. Cut-to-the-bone blue. His eyes were the color of a perfectly clear spring sky shot with disturbingly piercing shards of ice. Lauren shifted her own gaze down and stared at his chin, which was perfectly normal and not at all eye-catching like his nose or his eyes or any of the rest of him. It was just a stubbly chin, thank goodness, not at all out of the ordinary.

Lauren handed over the baseball, which he took, then she crossed her arms over her chest in a too-late attempt at modesty. She had quite a few things to say, and she’d played a few of them through her mind as she’d waited. But suddenly she lost her nerve. “Is your wife at home?”

Cole had been amused, but with a few words that amusement died entirely. He should be used to the question by now, but he wasn’t. He’d given up beating around the bush long ago. “She’s dead. You’ll have to deal with me. Sorry.”

He was accustomed to the change in expression, the shift from annoyance to pity.

“I didn’t mean to … I apologize.” The pity turned to confusion. “I saw a woman carrying in suitcases when you moved in, and I just assumed …”

“That was my sister-in-law. She helped us move.” Grudgingly, yes, but Janet had helped.