Cry Uncle (22 page)

When he’d found her note for him, though,
he’d regretted his cowardice. He’d regretted it even more as he’d
taken a quick walk through the house and seen how neatly everything
was arranged. She must have worked her tail off to tidy the place
up. And he’d promised she wouldn’t have to take care of the
house.

The least he could do was make sure she
wouldn’t have to solo in the morning, too. When his alarm clock had
buzzed, he’d wrestled against the urge to bury his head under the
pillow, and he’d gotten himself properly enough put together not to
send the social worker off in a huff.

He shook her hand as she gave him her name,
and then casually slipped his arm around Pamela’s shoulders. He had
thought his only challenge would be pretending he was a true
husband to Pam. But the real challenge was going to be acting like
her husband—for instance, putting his arm around her shoulders, the
way husbands did—without responding to the sexy angularity of them,
and the soft fragrance of her hair, and the glittery silver in her
eyes. “Is the coffee ready yet, honey?” he asked, sounding so
natural he very nearly frightened himself.

“
The kitchen’s a disaster,”
Pamela murmured through clenched teeth.

He chuckled. “The kitchen’s always a
disaster. If Ms. Whitley wants to deduct points for sloppiness,
we’re in big trouble.” May as well own up to it, not try to hide
what couldn’t be hidden.

He released Pamela and sauntered down the
hall to the kitchen, refusing to let his apprehension show. He
found the Liz Monster sitting on the floor, scooping up spilled
cereal and tossing it into her mouth—although her aim wouldn’t win
her any try-outs with the Miami Heat.

Keep it
light
, Joe coached himself.
Don’t let the social worker see you
sweat
. “Oink, oink,” he addressed Lizard.
“You’re a pig this morning, aren’t you.”

Lizard leaped to her feet and threw herself
into his arms. “Uncle Joe! You got up!”

“
Of course I got up.” No
sense letting the court lady know his usual hours.

“
Pamela tried to make me eat
burnt toast,” Lizard wailed. “And this yucky stuff, some kind of
grapefruit that she said was pink but she was lying,
and—”

“
Well, that is pink
grapefruit,” he argued gently, hoisting Lizard higher in his arms
and glancing over his shoulder at the fruit on the counter. “I know
it’s got a kind of peculiar flavor, but I bet Pamela thought you
were so mature you could handle it. Now do me a favor, Lizzie, and
get the broom, and we’ll get this place all spiffed up.” He shot an
affable grin toward Ms. Whitley, who was watching from the doorway.
Little did the lady know, but his kitchen had rarely been as
spiffed up as it was right now, even with all the cereal on the
floor.

He would have to thank Pamela for the unusual
cleanliness of the place. He could have flowers delivered, or take
her out to dinner—but then she might think he was making a pass at
her, putting pressure on her. And he wasn’t exactly sure that
assessment would be wrong.

She materialized next to Ms. Whitley, looking
worried. That she should be so eager to make a good impression on
the social worker touched him. She had her own problems; she didn’t
have to carry the full weight of his as well.

“
You know what?” he asked as
Lizard handed him the broom. “I bet Ms. Whitley would like to see
your herb garden. Why don’t you take her out in the yard and show
her around while Pam and I get the floor swept?”

Lizard would have agreed to anything not to
have to help clean up. “Okay,” she obeyed happily. With a skip in
her step, she led the way out onto the screened porch and from
there into the back yard.

Pamela watched, her lips pressed together,
her eyes a bit too bright. “She listens to you a lot more than she
listens to me,” she muttered.

“
She’s known me a lot
longer,” he pointed out, handing her the dustpan and then setting
to work sweeping up the cereal.

“
Besides which, you let her
have her way. She made this mess; she should have cleaned it
herself.”

“
And if we didn’t have that
spy in our midst—” he angled his head toward Ms. Whitley’s business
card, still in Pamela’s hand “—I would have crazy-glued the broom
to the little beast’s hands before I’d let her off the hook. I just
didn’t think this was the time or place for a
show-down.”

Pamela nodded. She looked suddenly weary. “I
guess I’m not very good at parenting.”

“
You’re fine.” He propped
the broom against the table and planted his hands on Pamela’s
shoulders. “You’re better than fine, Pam. Okay?”

She peered up into his eyes. He recalled the
anguish he’d seen in her face the first time she’d come to his
house, when her tears had seeped inside his soul and softened him
up. He really hoped she wasn’t going to get weepy on him again. If
she did, he’d have to hug her, and if he hugged her he’d kiss
her.

“
I tried to dress nicely for
Ms. Whitley—”

“
You look great.”

“
And I tried to neaten up
the house—”

“
This house hasn’t been so
neat since the last owner moved his stuff out. Really, Pam—you’re
terrific. Okay?”

Instead of tears, he saw something else in
her eyes—a glint of anger. “If I’m so terrific, why are you
treating me as if I had leprosy?”

He smothered a groan. “If you had leprosy,”
he argued, giving her upper arms a reassuring squeeze, “would I be
touching you?”

“
This is the first time I’ve
seen you in days, Jonas.”

“
I work lousy hours,” he
rationalized. “You know that.”

“
I also know when someone is
avoiding me. Where were you yesterday morning? Why did you sneak
out of the house the minute my back was turned?”

It occurred to Joe that her words could be
taken as good, old-fashioned shrewishness, the stereotypical
nagging-wife stuff. He didn’t have to account for himself or his
whereabouts, did he? Even if this were a real marriage—especially
if it were a real one—he wouldn’t tell his wife where he was going,
or when, or why.

Yet the way Pamela put it made it sound as if
he was stepping out on her or something. She had to understand that
the only reason he was avoiding her, sneaking out of the house and
all, was because if he hung around he would start treating her the
way a wife should be treated, and that would destroy their
arrangement.

He took up the broom and started sweeping. “I
don’t suppose you’d believe me if I said it was for your own
good.”

The anger spread from her
eyes to encompass her entire body. Her spine stiffened, and she
brandished the dustpan as if she wanted to whack him with it. “My
own good? What am I, another little child you’ve taken custody
of?
My own good
?”

He shot a quick look toward the window above
the sink, which overlooked the back yard. “Can we talk about this
some other time?” he asked quietly.

“
No, we cannot.” She knelt
down where he’d amassed a pile of cereal and held the dustpan so he
could sweep the cereal into it. “I thought we were equal partners
in this, Joe. Equal means, you don’t make decisions for me. If it
were for my own good never to see you, I wouldn’t have married
you.”

There was a compliment embedded in her rage:
she wanted to see him sometimes.

The trouble was, all she
wanted was to
see
him. When he saw her, he wanted a whole lot more.

He heard a gale of laughter, Lizard’s and Ms.
Whitley’s, through the screen in the window. If he could hear them,
they could probably hear him and Pamela. This was no doubt the
worst time in the world for them to be quarreling. Tactics demanded
that he concede for now.

“
All right,” he said. “I’ll
try harder to wake up early.”

“
Don’t do me any favors,”
Pamela retorted.

Oh, swell. She really was a wife, wasn’t she.
Here he’d swallowed his pride and given in, and Pamela refused to
accept his surrender. The woman was asking for a fight.

Joe would love nothing more to give her one.
If she wanted to argue both sides, he would gladly argue right
back. He was nimble; he could take anything she said and throw it
back in her face. She wanted to be equals with him? He didn’t pull
his punches with his equals.

But that damned social worker was here. “Make
up your mind,” he grumbled. “You want me to wake up early? Say so.
You want me to sleep late? No problem. Just make up your mind.”

“
I want you to treat me like
your partner, not a pariah.”

Whatever the hell she meant by that. “Fine,”
he said, just to be done with it.

“
Because it’s ridiculous
that I should have to leave you notes, for heaven’s sake. If I need
to talk to you, I should be able to.”

“
I said fine,” he repeated,
a quiet growl.

“
This is important, Jonas. I
don’t want to be brushed off.”

He was tempted to take the broom and brush
her into the damned dustpan. But Lizard and Ms. Whitley came
waltzing back into the kitchen, denying him the chance. “Well,” the
social worker said grandly, “Elizabeth certainly knows a lot about
weeds.”

“
She’s a smart kid,” Joe
grunted, relieved to have someone other than Pamela to think
about.

“
I also told her we’re gonna
ock-attack Birdie’s house as a project.”

“
You are?” This was news to
Joe—and garbled news at that. He sent Pamela a questioning glance.
Her answer was a smug look, as if to say his ignorance about this
so-called project was just one more thing he didn’t know about
because he’d been treating his wife like a leprous
pariah.

Lizard nodded vigorously. “With a tree house
in the living room, right, Pamela?”

“
We still have to run that
concept past Birdie,” Pamela said, smiling at Lizard with a warmth
he wished she felt toward him, even if at the moment he wanted to
throttle her.

“
Birdie is your neighbor?”
Ms. Whitley asked.

“
Also Liz’s baby-sitter,”
said Pamela, then gazed around the room. “I think we’re done here.
Liz, would you like something to eat?”

“
Yeah. Pink
cereal.”

Pamela pursed her lips but didn’t refuse
Lizard her choice. Even though he would rather not do anything for
Pamela, Joe courteously filled a cup of coffee for her, asked Ms.
Whitley one last time if she wanted some, and when she declined
filled a cup for himself. Then he excused himself and walked
outside to get the newspaper.

The morning was hot, the grass soaked with
dew and the air dense with the fragrance of greenery and sun-kissed
flowers. His footsteps crunched on the gravel as he ambled halfway
to the street and picked up the paper. He stood in the driveway for
a long minute, the paper tucked under his arm and his mug balanced
in his hand. The sky was cloudless, the palm trees motionless. A
single cricket played a lazy tune somewhere to his left.

As riled as he’d been indoors, out here he
felt surprisingly buoyant. He wasn’t the sentimental sort who got
all mushy at the sight of a butterfly, but the butterfly he saw
flitting above his azaleas made him smile. And the lawn was so
green, the heat enhancing its tangy scent. Inside the kitchen he’d
been in turmoil. Out here, the turmoil was gone.

When was the last time he’d actually stood in
his front yard and appreciated a summer morning? Did the
tranquillity seem greater than usual because of what had preceded
it? Or did Joe simply feel it more deeply because, for some reason,
he was feeling everything more deeply lately?

So much was on the line: Lizard. Pamela. A
marriage. A court battle. His sex life, or lack thereof. His
future. Behind him his house held challenges, responsibilities, the
life he’d somehow stumbled into.

Yet without that life, without those
challenges and responsibilities, he might not have felt the golden
heat of the sun on his cheeks so keenly. He might not have
recognized the distinct perfumes of the rhododendrons and lime
trees, the wisteria and the magnolias. Without the spilled cereal
and the heated tempers, he might never have realized what a
gorgeous morning he’d awakened to.

Maybe it was the contrast between inside and
out, maybe his suppressed male urges, maybe the fear that he was
about to lose a little girl who meant the world to him. But
suddenly everything seemed precious, worth fighting for. Suddenly
Joe Brenner felt as if everything mattered.

With a bemused smile, he turned and went back
into the house, more than ready to face off with the social worker,
his niece and his wife.

Chapter Ten

HER OWN
GOOD
?

The nerve of him, patronizing her that way!
Acting as if he knew what was best for her! Pamela Hayes was a
mature adult. She was intelligent, well educated, the mistress of
her own fate.

Well, not exactly. For the time being, she
had to lie low and keep her cool—and for the time being, she had to
be Pam Brenner, the happy housewife. She had to make this marriage
work.

She would begin by playing her
surrogate-mother role as best she could. She doubted Mona Whitley
would be thrilled by Pamela’s attempts at maternal behavior thus
far: dragging Lizard through the bureaucratic tedium of the motor
vehicle department, measuring the rooms in Birdie’s dilapidated
house, bickering over the color of salmon.