He was growing so quickly. It seemed like only yesterday that she’d nursed him, rocked him, snuggled him in her arms in the wee hours of the morning. Now she looked at the soft skin of his sleep-flushed cheek and imagined it covered with a wiry five o’clock shadow. She pictured his slender little body filled out with a man’s muscles, covered with a man’s hair. And she wished—as she had many times before—that there was a way to slow down the passage of time.
She knew it was selfish on her part, but she wanted to keep her children little for a while longer. Keep them to herself. Delay for as long as possible that inevitable time when they went off to lives of their own.
What would she have then? Who would she be when she was no longer a full-time mother to Mark and Maggie?
Impatient with the melancholy that she could feel settling in, she shook her head and stepped away from Mark’s bed. He was only ten years old, Maggie only eight. They had many years of mothering left. Just because Mark had spent a day away from her, enjoying an activity that held little interest for her, casually bonding with a couple of nice men who’d offered him much-needed masculine attention didn’t mean he no longer needed his mom. He was still a few years away from shaving and borrowing the car. She needed to savor every moment of his childhood and not waste it worrying about the future.
Leaving him to his dreams, she wandered down the hallway, stopping to check on Maggie, who’d kicked off the bedclothes again. Teresa covered her daughter’s tiny form, then picked up Maggie’s favorite doll from the floor where it had fallen and tucked it into the bed with her. She brushed a kiss across Maggie’s warm, soft cheek, then tiptoed out of the room.
A glance at her watch told her it wasn’t quite ten o’clock. A bit early for her to turn in, since she wasn’t at all sleepy. There was nothing interesting on television, and she’d finished the book she’d been reading last night.
The apartment was clean, the laundry folded and put away. For once, there was nothing that needed to be done. She wished there were some chores pending as she paced through her neat rooms with an uncharacteristic restlessness. She ended up in the kitchen, where she plucked a couple of Oreos from the cookie jar. Boredom eating, she thought with a sigh. She might as well rub them directly on her thighs.
She ate them anyway, standing at the sink and gazing through the small window at the moon-washed backyard. Though Indian summer was still dragging its heels, making the days warm, it would be winter soon. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and then another new year.
Darn it, she was dwelling on the passage of time again. What was with her tonight, anyway?
On an impulse, she opened the back door and stepped onto the flagstone patio. The air was still warm enough that she was comfortable in the denim shirt she wore with a pair of khaki slacks and leather loafers. Someone a couple of houses down had thrown a backyard barbecue party earlier that evening. Closing her eyes, she could still smell faint hints of charcoal, beer and citronella—like an aromatic echo of summer, she thought with a touch of whimsy.
“Having trouble sleeping?”
Though he’d spoken softly, the sound of Riley’s voice made her jump. She turned toward his yard, eyes open and one hand covering her heart. “I didn’t see you there.”
He stepped out of the shadows so his face was illuminated by the overhead security lighting. He’d changed out of the clothes he’d worn earlier, she noted automatically. He wore a white T-shirt and baggy plaid pajama pants with sandals. His longish hair looked damp, as if he’d just stepped out of the shower. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Even though a chain link fence separated them, she still found herself resisting a cowardly impulse to move backward as he stepped toward her. “I stepped out for a moment to enjoy the nice evening,” she said, feeling the need to fill the silence between them.
“It is nice, isn’t it? Hard to believe it will be winter soon.”
“I was just thinking the same thing.”
He crossed his arms on the top rail of the fence and leaned against it, one foot propped against the bottom. “Kids asleep?”
“Soundly. They’re both tired after their busy day. Mark had a wonderful time on the fishing trip. He hasn’t stopped talking about it since you brought him home.”
“I’m glad he had fun. Bud and I enjoyed having him with us.”
“I doubt that either of you got to do much fishing with Mark along, but he was thrilled that he managed to land a couple.”
“He learned quickly. Bud had him fishing like a pro within the first twenty minutes.”
“I, um, hope he didn’t talk your ears off.”
Riley chuckled. “That boy does like to talk.”
“I know.” She winced at the thought of what might have spilled from her son’s lips during the outing. She’d tried to warn him not to talk too much—specifically, not to talk too much about his family. Even as she’d stumbled through that little speech, she’d been afraid she was wasting her time.
“So you worked as a stripper in a men’s club before you moved here, hmm? I understand your stage name was Diamonds LeFlash.”
Teresa stared at Riley through the shadows. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“Oh, just repeating what Mark told us during the fishing trip. I found it very interesting.”
She sighed and shook her head. “He did not say those things.”
“Are you sure?”
“He doesn’t even know what a stripper is—I hope.”