Jennifer Greene: Single Dad

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Eleven

“Well, of course you’re shook up that this guy asked you to dinner, Jeanne. You spend all day with serial killers and werewolves. You haven’t been off that computer in so long that you’ve probably forgotten what a real, normal human male looks like....”

The shop bell tinkled. Hugging the telephone receiver to her cheek, Ariel Lindstrom glanced through the doorway of the back room, but she didn’t see any customers.

“...An invitation to dinner doesn’t mean you have to marry him, for Pete’s sake. Just go out and have fun. What’s so hard?...of course you don’t have anything to wear. You haven’t been shopping since the turn of the decade. Come on over. I’ll find you something in my closet...so my taste is a little wild. It wouldn’t kill you to break out a little....”

Ariel was on a roll—giving advice was so much fun—but her gaze still searched the main room of the shop. Someone must have come in. The bell only rang when the door opened—yet there wasn’t a soul in sight. The afternoon had turned blistering, broiling, butter-burn hot—unreasonably hot, even for a Connecticut July summer day. Everyone in Woodridge had holed up behind their air conditioners or fans. Her partner, Dot, had the day off and the shop had been as quiet as a tomb since lunch.

“...So what if he gets the wrong idea? I hope he does. When’s the last time you were kissed? The Civil War? It’s about that long since you pried yourself away from that book you’ve been working on....”

Ariel rose on tiptoe and craned her neck, but nothing seemed to be stirring in the shop. When the phone first rang, she’d been soldering the sterling clasp on a 1914 lavaliere. Old jewelry was the specialty of the gift store; the first two aisles of the shop were packed with nests of baubles displayed on velvet. The stock also ran to the gaudy, bright and whimsical. Crystal dragons and unicorns had a special niche in a sunlit corner. Stained glass doodads shot prisms of rainbow colors from another nook. Beyond the door, she’d set up a “magic corner” for kids, with crystal balls and wands and magic tricks.

There. Ariel’s gaze narrowed. She couldn’t see the body from this angle, but peeking out from the edge of the magic aisle was the tip of a tennis shoe. A laceless, orange fluorescent tennis shoe—distinctly a child-size. She almost chuckled aloud. “I’m not through with you, Jeanne, so don’t think you’re off the hook. But I’ll have to call you back. I have a customer.”

Her friend sounded enormously relieved to escape the conversation. Ariel hung up the receiver and headed straight for the telltale shoe.

The entire world knew she was a sucker for kids, but this one was a true heart stealer. The child raised huge, stricken, guilty eyes the instant she spotted Ariel. The urchin was maybe five. A girl, dressed in a Red Sox T-shirt and stringy cutoffs, with two straggly brunette pigtails jammed under a backward baseball cap. Her nose had a smudge. Both knees had healing scrapes. Her face was downright plain—except for those liquid chocolate eyes—but lack of cuteness certainly hadn’t affected her self-confidence. Her whole belligerent posture spoke of smart-aleck bravado.

It wasn’t hard for Ariel to relate. She’d never been short of attitude herself at that age. Ariel crouched down by the child. “Hi there. What’s your name?”

“Killer.”

“Killer, huh? Well, if that isn’t a great name, I don’t know what is. Are you shopping for anything special today?”

Those skinny shoulders pulled off a huge shrug. “I just wanted to look at stuff. Like the magic tricks and things like that. I wasn’t gonna take anything—”

“Hey, I never thought you were. It’s a great afternoon to mess with magic. I’ll show you a couple of tricks if you want. Too hot to be playing outside, isn’t it?” Ariel tacked on casually, “Where’s your mom, sweetie?”

The question was never meant to be complicated. The neighborhood kids often made Treasures into a pit stop on a lazy afternoon. It was a middle-class suburb; lots of moms worked, and the hillside shop was within easy walking distance from the schools. Ariel only asked about the missing mom because she wanted to make sure the little one had permission to be here. She never expected the child to take the question so literally.

“My mom split. She took off because she didn’t want us kids anymore. We all made too many messes and drove her crazy.”

The child’s tone was matter-of-fact, no bid for sympathy, yet Ariel felt an instant, violent tug of kinship. Divorces were so every-day common that another broken-home story was hardly headline news, but growing up, she’d had ample experience being shrapnel in the divorce wars. At twenty-nine, she had no faith in the institution of marriage and even less belief in “forevers.” Still she hated to see a mite-size urchin stuck learning those painful lessons so young.

And could the mite talk. Eek. Once the urchin began chattering, she barely stopped for breath.

Her real name was Patrice, but no one called her anything but Killer. Her last name was Penoyer. Her great-grandfather was Hungarian, but he’d been dead for just about forever. She was six. Her dad couldn’t braid hair worth squat. Her two older brothers couldn’t play any girl games. She was supposed to start first grade in the fall, but her brothers had filled her in about the boring school business. She wasn’t interested and she wasn’t going. Ever. Her best friend was Boober. Boober was nine feet tall and liked magic, which was a secret she was keeping from her dad. “Because my dad doesn’t believe in magic. At all. ”

“He doesn’t, hmm?” By then, Ariel had shown her the disappearing scarf trick and miraculously made a fifty-cent piece appear from behind the child’s left ear. She didn’t mind ignoring work and entertaining the little one. Give or take the unknown gender of the imaginary friend “Boober,” there didn’t seem to be any females in the child’s life, and she was clearly lonesome for some company. Only the clock over the antique cash register kept ticking, and the child showed no signs of winding down or leaving.

“Honey, are you sure it’s okay that you’re still here? No one’s expecting you at home, are they?”

Those liquid chocolate eyes turned stricken again. “Uh-oh. Can you read me the time?”

“It’s just after four o’clock,” Ariel told her.

“Oh, cripes. Oh, double cripes. I gotta go!

That was it. The child galloped for the door; the bell tinkled, and then she was gone, rounding the corner of the building down the alley and out of sight.

Ariel rubbed the back of her neck, amused and bemused by the whole encounter. It wasn’t hard to understand why she felt such a fast, fierce emotional bond with the gregarious little smart aleck. The child reminded her of herself at that age, but it would be silly to take the bond too seriously. Who knew if she’d ever see the urchin again?

And playtime was over. She’d brilliantly managed to avoid doing a lick of work all afternoon—no guilt there; she’d never been plagued by either ambition or practicality—but bills refused to disappear by osmosis. She pivoted on her heel and started walking toward the back room...when she suddenly noticed the missing unicorn.

The crystal unicorns had become a favorite with collectors. Because each tiny figure was unique, Ariel had decided to display each piece on its own tiny mirror. The mirror with nothing on it stood out like a beacon.