Authors: Julie Lessman
Yeah, temptation like that.
A nerve pulsed in his cheek as jealousy tightened his gut.
A good-looking pastor whose faith matched her own.
Glancing at his watch, Jack rose too quickly. Sam was a good friend, but not close enough that Jack had ever mentioned Lacey. Up until a few weeks ago, she’d been nothing more than a part of his distant past, and that’s how he intended to keep it, at least as far as his workplace was concerned. “Sorry, bro—gotta run. Got a Big Brother fundraiser tonight.”
Sam followed suit, but curiosity sharpened his features as he slowly slipped off his jacket. “So … about Jasmine …”
“Look, Sam, I know you and Jasmine are still good friends and that you care about her a lot, but the truth is, I do too, and I’ve been thinking lately that maybe …” He scrubbed the back of his neck, knowing he needed to fish or cut bait.
“Maybe what?”
Jack expelled a heavy sigh, glancing up at Sam beneath hooded eyes. “Well, that maybe it’s time Jasmine and I are exclusive, you know? Just to see where it goes.”
Sam nodded, his smile tinged with the slightest bit of regret. “Good. I’d like to see Jasmine happy, and right now as much as I hate to admit it, you’re the one she wants.” His gaze zeroed in on the frames at the edge of Jack’s desk, and he absently picked one up, letting loose with a low whistle while interest sparked in his eyes. “Wow, does Jasmine know about this little dish?”
Jack’s mouth swagged to the right. “That ‘little dish’ is my little sister Cat, so I suggest you back off because she’s off limits.”
“Now there’s something to make a grown man weep.” He cocked his head. “How old—twenty-one, twenty-two?”
Jack snatched the frame from Sam’s hand. “Twenty-five and off your radar, Cunningham, so keep the drool in your mouth.” He carefully set it back down next to the picture of his family. “Trust me, you’ll see a grown man weep if you ever mess with my sister, and it won’t be me shedding the tears.”
“Too bad,” he muttered while he picked up the next one, his eyes suddenly flaring wide. “Wait a minute—there’s
two
of them that look like that?” He slammed a palm to the right side of his chest, his forlorn expression downright comical and true to his name. “Be still my heart.”
Jack chuckled and hung his jacket on a hanger in the closet, delivering a warning grin over his shoulder. “That can be arranged, Ham—along with your pulse and your breathing—if you ever even flirt with my sisters.”
Chuckling, Sam followed Jack out the door. “A little bit of a double standard, Jack, don’t you think?” Hands in his pockets, he trailed him down the hall. “Taking your pick of the pool while you lock your sisters away in an ivory tower?”
“Yep.” Jack nodded at several techs as he gripped the exit knob at the back of suite, cuffing Sam’s shoulder while he led him out the door. “And that, Dr. Love, is how it’s gonna stay.”
Heat from the oven rippled the sunlight shafting into Tess’s cozy old-fashioned kitchen, her freshly laundered white eyelet curtains rustling with the hint of a marshy breeze. Dishtowel draped over her shoulder, she hummed while she peeked into the oven, the aroma of garlic, basil, and oregano making her mouth water. With Papa John’s less than a mile away, it had been too long since she’d made her family’s favorite—her famous homemade pizza from scratch—but today she would surprise them all. Both Jack and Davey had been begging for it for weeks, and even sweet, undemanding Shannon had hinted at a craving for those rare personalized pizzas that took hours of kneading, rolling, and chopping every ingredient known to man.
Jack and Matt always shared a meat-lover’s special, pure heartburn heaven with jalapenos galore while her girls preferred pineapple and bacon—Cat with onions and green pepper and Shan without, opting for black olives and mushrooms instead. Davey was the easy one with plain cheese, although Tess had no earthly idea how anyone could settle for something so flat and tasteless when one could have mountains of chopped veggies smothered in provolone.
With a quick glance at the clock, she removed Davey’s pizza and her own mile-high version from the oven, hers loaded with every vegetable she could find and more than her fair share of bacon and pepperoni. She popped Jack and Matt’s meat-lover’s pizza in next, figuring the girls wouldn’t be home from work until well after the guys had their showers following a sweaty hour of basketball. Closing her eyes, she paused to savor the sweet promise of a homemade dinner with
all
of her family, as rare as it may be with adult children who buzzed in and out as quickly as the honeybees that hovered over her garden.
“Okay, we’re off.” Jack barreled into the kitchen and skidded to a stop, Matt and Davey colliding behind him like stacked-up rail cars. All three stared, eyes gaping as wide as their mouths. “You made your homemade pizza?” Jack said, the pout in his tone sounding younger than Davey. “You didn’t tell us you were making pizza.”
Glancing up, she grinned at the look of shock on their faces. “It’s a surprise, silly, although I don’t know why with all the badgering you and Davey have been doing to bully me into it.” She retrieved a stack of plates from the cabinet and slid them on the kitchen table with a smile. “Here—make yourself useful, boys, and set the table.”
“But … but …” Matt wandered over to stare at her pizza, both a groan and Davey trailing after him. “I can’t believe you fixed our favorite, Aunt Tess, and now we have to leave.”
“What?” Rifling through the utensil drawer, Tess dropped a fork as she spun around, eyes bugging while she scrambled to pick it up. “What do you mean you have to leave?” she said, clunking the utensils on the table with a little too much force.
Jack ambled over to her pizza and filched a pepperoni. “We told you we have the Big Brother basketball fundraiser tonight at Matt’s school, Mom, which is why we just spent the last hour practicing.”
“You most certainly did not,” Tess said with a stern heft of her chin, her Irish heating up more than the kitchen from the pizzas,
which
she’d just labored hours over for a special family dinner. Key word, “family.” She dashed to the pantry to study the calendar, then slapped today’s date box with the back of her hand, completely void of any red-ink entry. “And there’s nothing written here either unless it’s written in that invisible ink Davey is so fond of using for his homework.”
Jack glanced at Matt. “Didn’t you tell her about tonight?”
“No, I thought you did,” Matt said with a crinkle of brows. He plucked an olive from Tess’s pizza and tossed it in his mouth, frowning as if it were the olive’s fault.
“It’s
your
fundraiser, Coach.” Jack pilfered another pepperoni while Davey picked at the cheese on his pizza.
“Yeah, but she’s
your
mother, bro.” Matt absconded with a jalapeno.
“Whoa, these are hot!” Davey exclaimed after snitching a jalapeno that left a hole in Tess’s pizza.
Tess grit her teeth. “Ohhhhh, you haven’t
seen
‘hot’ till you try walking out that door without eating dinner.” She slapped Jack’s hand as he went for another pepperoni, her gaze burning hotter than the 400-degree oven. “I can’t believe you have the nerve to waltz in here and ruin my family dinner, and
then
you pick my pepperonis off my pizza?” She prodded and pushed him toward the table, pummeling him once or twice for good measure. “I suggest you park your butt in that chair, mister, or I’ll park it with my foot.”
“Ouch,” Jack said with a grin, disarming his mother with a wraparound hug from behind while he chuckle-kissed her cheek. “I haven’t seen you this riled since I tossed my red jersey into your load of white underwear.”
Squirming out of his hold, she refused to give in to the smile that tickled her lips, unwilling to let them off the hook so easily. She seared all three with a maternal glare, underscoring it with a stiff fold of arms. “Yes, well a rare home-cooked meal with my entire family,
whom
I love and slaved over pizza for, is far more important than any pink underwear, young man.” Brow arched, she tapped the back of the chair. “Sit, eat, and
then
you can desert your mother.”
“Dessert?” Davey said with a squeak in his voice, pizza sauce ringing his mouth.
Jack chuckled and swooped his brother onto his shoulders, groaning when Davey got sauce on his neck. “Wrong desert, champ. This one will only make you guilty. Here, clean your hands,” he said after wiping sauce from his neck, “then give our angel mother a smooch.” Sidling up to Tess, he hooked an arm to her waist to deposit a noisy kiss to her cheek that Davey duplicated perfectly. “Sorry, Mom, can’t—we’re late as it is, but I promise to make it up to you soon.” He waggled his brows. “Maybe next week with my famous ribs?”
“Yeah, and Jack and I will even go crabbing and shrimping one night to add to the grill,” Matt said, flipping a final olive into his mouth.
“Ooooh-ooooh …can I go too, please, please?” Davey hopped up and down on Jack’s back like a top-water lure.
“You bet, sport.” Matt gave his aunt a side hug on his way to the door, sliding his hand up and down her arm with remorse in his tone. “Don’t be mad, Aunt Tess—it’s for a good cause. And we’ll snarf your pizza down tomorrow, I promise. Jack and I are treating Davey and our little brothers to burgers after, along with the coaches, so we won’t be home till later, but we can’t leave till you forgive us because I gotta tell you— I feel like a real dog.”
“Not to mention looking like one,” Jack said with a crooked grin, eliciting a husky chuckle from Davey.
Shoulders drooping, Tess gave up the ghost and tossed in the towel—literally. Unleashing a sigh that came out more as a groan, she vented by pitching the dishrag onto the table before dropping into a chair. “I forgive you,” she muttered, deciding that surprises were best saved for little children rather than the grown-up kind, especially ones whose schedules sported more red ink than their mother’s.
“We’ll make it up to you, Aunt Tess, we promise,” Matt said with a sheepish wave, slipping out ahead of Jack and Davey as fast as his guilt could carry him.
“You’re the best, Mom—love you to pieces.” Jack’s voice trailed out the back door, increasing her gloom when she realized his departure from her house would soon be permanent.
“Love you, Mommy!” Davey called, his little hand flailing goodbye before the screen door slammed behind them, effectively sealing Tess in a funk.
Folding her arms on the table, she laid her head on top, lower lip jutting forth in a rare sulk while she stared out the oversized kitchen window. There Blue sat, perched on his favorite limb, which bobbed in the breeze as if he were giving her a soulful nod, commiserating with her plight as a mother deprived of her children.
“Why do things have to change, Blue?” she whispered, lost in a moment of malaise that harkened back to when Adam had abandoned her to run away with her neighbor and friend. After he’d left, God and her children had been her saving grace back then, the glue that held her together during the most painful time of her life. “And soon they will all leave,” she said sadly, heart aching that both Jack and Matt would be gone by summer’s end, living their own lives outside of the haven she’d tried to create for them all. “First the older boys, and then my girls.” A sheen of tears glazed her vision as her gaze lagged into a faraway stare, quite sure she would blink one day and Davey would be gone too. “All alone,” she whispered, the sound as melancholy as the distant hoot of an owl seeking a mate.
No, never alone.
The thought bolted her upright, piercing her heart with the truth from the One Who
was
the Truth, the Light, and the Way. A peace purled through her as always when she needed it most.
His peace.
A smile wended its way across her lips. “Okay, Lord … it’s You and me.” Her gaze flicked toward the hall where the tromp of footsteps could be heard on the front porch. “
And
my girls,” she said with a sudden grin.
The squeal and slam of the front door signaled Cat and Shan were home right on time, sending Tess scurrying for napkins and glasses to finish the table. Her heart did a little flip as she chewed on the edge of her smile, the idea of a girl’s pizza night recharging her mood.
“Oh, wow, something smells to die for,” Cat said with a noticeable moan as the twins stood in the doorway of the kitchen like bookends, the deep pucker of brows a mirror reflection of each other. “Oh, Mom, you made your famous pizza? On a night we’re not home?”
Tess whirled around with the salad bowl in her hands, her mouth slacking open like her daughters’. “What? What do you mean on a night when you’re not home?”
“We have a planning meeting for the fundraiser at Camp Hope tonight, remember?” Shan side-stepped her sister to hook an arm to her mother’s waist. She pressed a kiss to Tess’s cheek, then plucked a grape tomato from the bowl and popped it into her mouth.
“No … no, that’s tomorrow night.” She hurried over to the calendar hanging in the pantry and tapped a finger to the day. “See? It says so right here—your meeting is Thursday, not tonight.”
Cat sauntered over to the calendar, giving her mom’s neck an affectionate squeeze. “Uh, hate to break it to you, Mom, but I think you lost a day. Today
is
Thursday.”
“Oh, no!” Tess plunked the salad bowl on the table and kneaded the bridge of her nose, shoulders slumping in disappointment. “I knew I shouldn’t have taken Monday off—my days have been off-kilter ever since. Showed up on Tuesday for my Wednesday appointment with Mrs. Tucker and threw the poor woman into a tizzy.” She glanced up with a weighty sigh. “I am so sorry, girls.”
“Not as sorry as us,” Cat said, strolling over to the oven to take a peek inside, a look of longing on her face. “Oh, well, at least I love cold pizza for breakfast.”
Tess shot a look at the clock on her way to the oven. “Oh, no you don’t—I can put your pizzas in right now, and they’ll be ready in no time. So just sit down, and I’ll get you something to drink.”
“Wish we could, Mom,” Shan said, eyes soft with regret, “but we’re already late. We just came home because we forgot our notes from the first meeting.”
“Because
somebody
rushed us out the door this morning.” Cat draped an arm around Tess’s shoulder, drawing her close with a side hug.
“Oh, crud … I just didn’t want you to be late,” Tess said with a grimace, making a mental note to purchase a bottle of the Ginkgo Biloba she’d read about for improved memory and focus. Good mood deflated, her hopes for a lovely family meal puffed out with a weary sigh. “Well, at least you can eat a piece on the way …” She snatched two paper towels and bustled over to retrieve Jack and Matt’s pizza, the blast of heat from the oven wilting her as much as her keen disappointment.
Shan moved to the door, her tone contrite. “Sorry, Mom, but Miss Myra’s ordering pizza for everyone, and there’s no way I’d be able to stomach that after tasting yours. I’d rather save it for tomorrow when I can really give it my all.”
Cat kissed her mother’s cheek. “Me, too, Mom—cold pizza for breakfast is one of my faves, so wrap that puppy up.” She darted to the door in her sister’s wake, the two of them blowing kisses. “Oh, and it’s okay if I take your car, isn’t it? I’m meeting friends downtown after, and Shan has some errands to run.”
“Sure, sure, have a good time.”
Don’t worry about your lonely mother—I have plenty of pizza to keep me company.
Tess offered a half-hearted wave—her evening and her pizza growing colder by the moment.
Cold pizza. Cold dinner.
Cold, lonely life without family or friends.
“No!” Palm slapping the table, Tess shot to her feet, determined she wouldn’t give self-pity a chance. After all, it wasn’t like she was really alone. She was a blessed woman with four beautiful children, two best friends who were also her prayer partners, tons of good friends at work with whom she played bunko and what not, and a Bible study of great ladies at church, many of whom were very dear friends. What more could she want?
Perhaps a crotchety but formally wonderful neighbor with a penchant for pizza?