Chapter Thirty-Five

Indistinct voices carried to her from the living room. Connie Sorenson chimed with the low, graceful tones of a charm school graduate, but Audrey couldn’t hear her words until she drew closer.

Dennis’s voice carried. “But, Connie, I told you, I don’t handle individual investment accounts.”

“Oh, surely for a friend.” Ms. Sorenson accented the last word with innuendo.

Audrey rounded into the living room. Dennis was wedged against a corner of the couch, his arms folded across his chest. Ms. Sorenson sat beside him in the middle, twisted slightly to face him. One of her manicured hands touched his forearm flirtatiously.

Dennis saw Audrey and relief spread across his dark features. “Ah, there you are.”

Ms. Sorenson swept Audrey up and down with a glance that missed no detail. Her perfectly drawn eyebrows arched slightly.

She knows. She took one look at me in Dennis’s clothes, and she figured it out. The thought made Audrey’s belly flutter.

Well, who cared if anyone knew. This wasn’t some sordid affair. She and Dennis had nothing to hide.

“Miss Turner, how delightful to see you. Again.” Ms. Sorenson’s tone dripped with scorn.

“Hello, Ms. Sorenson.”

“What on earth are you wearing? You’ve changed.”

Audrey clasped her hands at her waist to keep from balling them into fists. It didn’t matter what Connie Sorenson thought about her. Even so, Audrey would have liked more than three minutes between getting out of bed and facing the moment when her intimacy with Dennis became known to outsiders.

She glanced at Ms. Sorenson’s expensive designer dress and noticed dirty fingerprints smeared on the skirt. “Oh, no, look at those stains. It seems we’re both a bit worse for the wear.”

She was rewarded with a haughty sniff.

“Miss Turner!” two little voices piped in unison. Audrey hadn’t seen the kids playing on the kilim rug. Audrey dropped onto the floor. She told herself she wasn’t using the kids as a shield, but that was untrue.

“Hey, monsters. Did you have fun at the park?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Cole said, and Olivia launched into a complicated story about the big slide. Cole dug deep into his pockets to pull out some rocks he’d collected and dumped them in Audrey’s lap.

Both kids spoke at once, competing for her attention. She did her best to respond to them each in turn, but the adult conversation on the couch made her attention wander.

“I confess,” Ms. Sorenson was saying, “it troubles me, some of the things Cole said about Miss Turner. I never would have thought she could be so lax.”

“What do you mean?” Audrey didn’t have to look at Dennis to know that he was frowning.

“Well, all that about how Cole has been getting in trouble, and she won’t correct him. He came right out and told me that she ought to be fired.”

“Really?” Dennis spoke up to get everyone’s attention. “Cole, is this true? Have you been causing trouble for Miss Turner? Did you say she should be fired?”

Cole refused to look up. He focused on trying to build a tower with his rocks as if nobody had spoken to him, but Audrey could tell he’d heard everything.

“No, Mommy, that’s wrong,” Olivia said reasonably. “Cole told you that he threw his fruit snack in the fish tank, and made summer snow in the hall, and cooked his own face. And then you said that Miss Turner should be fired.”

“Cooked his own face?” Dennis’s voice held a trace of laughter, and Audrey dared a glance at him. One corner of his mouth had quirked up. The dimple flitted in and out of his cheek, but his brows were drawn down in a predictable scowl.

“Well, I’m sure I don’t recall the exact particulars of the conversation,” Ms. Sorenson said. “But if she were my nanny, I would replace her with someone made of sterner stuff.”

“Audrey?” Dennis said. “Did Cole cook his own face?”

“You mean to tell me you didn’t know?” Ms. Sorenson’s hands flew up, palms out, in a pantomime of horror and surprise. “You mean to say that not only has she lost control, but she hasn’t even kept you informed? How shocking.”

Audrey and Dennis locked eyes. His face was a blank mask, his dark eyes cool as he seemed to be re-evaluating her. But she sensed he wasn’t angry. Merely perplexed. Maybe his blank expressions weren’t quite so blank, after all. He spoke without taking his eyes from hers. “Connie, would you be so good as to leave us now? I think we have some things to discuss.”

“Of course.” Ms. Sorenson again laid her hand on Dennis’s forearm. “How distressing for you. You can rely on me, Dennis. I’ll do whatever I can to get you through this crisis.”

“Thank you, Connie.” Dennis rose, dislodging her hand from his arm, and walked toward the front door. His gait was a little stiff. Audrey wondered if the afternoon’s exertions were making him take such tight, shuffling steps.

Olivia leaned toward Audrey. “Are you in trouble?” she whispered.

“Come, Olivia,” Ms. Sorenson called. “Don’t dawdle. Say good-bye to Cole.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Audrey whispered to the little girl. Never mind that she was a bit worried herself. Maybe she ought to have told Dennis about Cole’s antics, but really, she’d thought she’d been doing the right thing. Protecting the boy. From his stern father.

Who wasn’t really all that stern, after all.

Boy, had she been wrong all around.

Olivia scampered away and left Cole and Audrey alone on the carpet. Cole lined up his rocks on the rug’s red stripe between them. He acted as if Audrey wasn’t there.

“Cole,” she whispered, and his eyelashes flickered. “Why did you tell? You didn’t have to.”

He was silent, poking at his rocks.

“I didn’t want you to get in trouble,” she whispered.

To her surprise, a sly smile darted across his round face. “Maybe you’ll get in trouble.”

This time, Audrey couldn’t keep her hands from clenching into fists. “Are you saying you wanted me to get in trouble?”

Cole’s smile deepened, but he continued to look anywhere but at her.

From the hall, Ms. Sorenson’s voice carried. “You poor man. But we single parents have to stick together. You will call me, won’t you?”

“Connie, thank you for your concern.” It sounded to Audrey like a brush-off, but Ms. Sorenson persisted.

“Perhaps you and Cole would like to come over for dinner some night? The children would like that, I’m sure. They get along just like brother and sister.”

Oh, please.

“Really?” Dennis said mildly. “I used to fight like crazy with my brothers and sisters.”

Audrey stood up so she could see past the couch to the front door. Dennis held the door open, his face a chiseled mask of bored patience. Olivia had a firm grip on her mother’s fingers and was leaning out the door, trying to pull with all her fragile might. Ms. Sorenson alone seemed unwilling to recognize that it was time to leave. She gazed at Dennis with longing, her eyes misty, her lashes fluttering.

“Mommy!” Olivia whined. She stomped her little feet, seeking traction, and her cherub curls bobbed with the effort. “I want to go now!”

“How embarrassing.” Ms. Sorenson stumbled through the open door. “Very well, Olivia. Dennis, call me!”

And with that, she finally left.

Dennis closed the door and walked into the living room, his eyes locked on Audrey. “She is some piece of work.”

“Dennis,” Audrey started, and found herself wringing her hands at her waist. She didn’t know why Cole would deliberately try to get her in trouble, but that was something Dennis needed to know. And she couldn’t guess what effect it would have on their relationship. Cole was so important to Dennis. If the little boy disapproved of her presence enough to act up on purpose, Dennis was likely to end things.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” Dennis said. “I don’t find that woman the least bit attractive.”

He flopped into the corner of the black couch, relaxed this time instead of wedged against the padded arm. He patted the leather beside him and lifted his eyebrows at Audrey.

“Maybe we should talk about Cole,” Audrey said.

“You’re going to get fired, you’re going to get fired,” Cole taunted in a singsong.

“That’s enough, Cole,” Dennis said. “But I would like to know more about what’s been going on here. How exactly does one cook one’s own face?”