A Ring for Rosie. Maggie Wells

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СКАЧАТЬ cussin’,” Jamie, who’d never quite mastered any type of whisper, said.

      “I’m not cussing,” James shot back.

      “You said ‘carp, carp, carp.’”

      “Carp is a fish, not a cuss word. I was thinking about fishing.” An utterly ridiculous statement, considering they were in the dead of winter. But time wasn’t a rigid construct for his kids.

      “Will you take us fishin’?” Jeff perked up in his booster.

      “Sure,” James answered as he hooked a sharp right turn. “We’ll wait for warmer weather, though, huh?”

      Unlike time, comfort was a concept his boys grasped fully. When he glanced into the mirror he saw them both nodding like bobblehead dolls. James didn’t bother confessing he’d never been fishing in his life. Sure, he’d gown up with a great big lake practically at his doorstep, but his father hadn’t been the type to toss a line in. His dad was more the kind to chase his secretary around the desk for sport.

      And now, in a slippery move, despite years of careful and methodical resistance, James had proved the apple had dropped right at the foot of the old tree.

      He’d kissed Rosie.

      And the truly pathetic thing was, he hadn’t even given her a good one. Giving the steering wheel a thump of frustration, he braked for the stop sign at the corner of his block. He’d thought about kissing her for years, and now? He’d betrayed everyone—Rosie, his partners, his kids, and himself—with the world’s lamest peck.

      Wheeling into the alley leading to his detached garage, James gritted his teeth in frustration. All the promises he’d made, both silent and spoken, were broken by a kiss no more passionate than one a guy would give his grandmother.

      And he’d imagined so many kinds of kisses. How could he resist? Rosie Herrera was the definition of forbidden fruit. Of course he wanted a taste of her.

      He heard the unmistakable click of a seatbelt catch as they waited for the garage door to rise. Without checking to see who the culprit was, he issued a blanket order. “Click it. We’re not home yet.”

      “Almost,” Jamie argued.

      “Click it, or no Race-o-rama tonight.” He twisted in his seat.

      Jamie’s eyes widened as he clearly envisioned his precious screen time slipping away. “No.”

      “Click it. Now.” James kept his foot pressed firmly on the brake until the boy pulled the seatbelt back across his parka-puffed chest and secured the latch. “Thank you.”

      He let the car roll into the tiny garage and stopped with a jerk mere inches from the wall. The second he turned the motor off, the boys freed themselves from their restraints and started pulling at the door handles, even though they knew their efforts were futile. James sent up a prayer of thanks for the genius who’d invented the child safety lock and climbed out from behind the wheel.

      He freed Jamie first, then reached for his computer bag. Always impatient to keep up with his brother, Jeff climbed over James’s back to escape, rather than waiting for someone to come to the passenger side to open the door.

      While James lowered the overhead garage door, Jeff joined Jamie in his attempt to tug open the locked side door. No one could ever accuse his kids of lack of effort or optimism. James rolled his neck and waited until the automatic door touched down.

      The kids hated the garage, but he loved the shadowy, secretive silence of the detached building. The same creep factor that wigged the boys out appealed to him. His father’s garage had been lit with fluorescent bulbs and sported a painted concrete floor. In James’s, the corners were shadowy, and the few yard implements he kept on hand were cobwebbed over for the winter. The seventies-style overhead light was yellowed with age and littered with the carcasses of bugs that didn’t know better. More than once, James had thought it a fitting fixture for his life.

      Sighing, he reached over the jostling kids to slide the key into the lock. The area from the garage to the house was fully fenced, and therefore most likely safe for the boys to run ahead, but James didn’t allow them to. Not yet. This was still the city, after all, and these two hellions were the most important people in the world to him. What kind of a father would he be if he let them run willy-nilly into a darkened yard into an even darker house?

      Without having to be told, each boy grabbed a hunk of James’s sleeve and they started down the narrow walkway. The motion detection light caught them three steps into the trek, but the boys held firm. Smiling as the three of them bumped and stumbled up the steps to the wooden deck, James thought back to the days when he used to wrangle his way into a two-bedroom walkup in Wrigleyville. He had to have been quite a sight: one baby strapped to his back, the other to his front, and an armload of plastic grocery bags cutting off circulation to his hands.

      Somehow, he’d managed for almost a year. He bought this place not long after he’d realized his situation would not be miraculously changing anytime soon. He tried not to dwell too much on the other terrifying revelation he’d had in his first year of parenthood. He’d stopped hoping for his situation to change the minute Jeffie, always the more articulate twin, said ‘Da.’

      When his foot hit the top step, he shook the boys off and sent them scurrying to the door. Once inside, he disarmed the alarm, turned the locks again, and then reset the system. He’d been feeling out of sorts since his ex, the boys’ mother, showed up at Colm’s son’s birthday party unannounced. He thought Megan was a pain in the ass, but mostly he worried about the boys. They’d asked a few questions since the Mommy sighting two weeks before, but quickly moved on. Their lack of curiosity made him feel at once vulnerable and invincible.

      “Okay, we made it.” He said the same thing every night. And every night, he felt the same stab of awestruck wonder as the reality settled in.

      “We made it! We made it!” the twins chorused as they raced through the kitchen and down the hall to the living room.

      Shucking his coat, he tossed the parka onto one of the hooks by the door. He retrieved the boys’ scattered outerwear and stowed everything in the cubby cube organizer Rosie had suggested for these things. The thought of Rosie brought his movements to a jerky halt. Straightening to his full height, he closed his eyes and allowed the flood of feeling to come. The heat of blood rushing to his ears and cheeks reminded him that, despite the frigid temperatures, her mouth had been warm…and soft…and welcoming.

      The last thought made his temperature spike but not due to a surprising wave of desire or anything romantic. He’d known the desire would be there. Had been tamping down the low-voltage undercurrent between them for years. He had no idea what made him give in now. What made tonight different?

      Running his hand through his hair, James searched his brain for the answer but couldn’t come up with a concrete reason. Only he’d wanted to kiss her for a long time, and after waiting there, cold and alone in the deepening evening, he didn’t want to wait anymore.

      His phone buzzed in his pocket, pulling him from his thoughts. Checking the notification, he found a text message from Mike asking how his client meeting had gone. Guilt sliced through him. Not only had the meeting kept him from collecting his kids on time completely slipped his mind, but he’d betrayed his partners and closest friends.

      He’d kissed Rosie.

      Rosie, СКАЧАТЬ