Yours, Mine & Ours by Jennifer Greene Page A

faster. “I didn’t say what I wanted to say. I remembered that I was supposed to be good, so I said, ‘The room’s real nice. Thank you.’ And then I said, ‘But I’m not sleeping over. Ever.’ And you know what?”
    â€œWhat, sweetheart?”
    â€œThe lady called me a brat. Me. A brat! ”
    â€œOh, dear.”
    â€œSo then I told her she was ugly. Which she is. And I said she must be stupid, too, because she couldn’t even win at Candy Land. And she didn’t even know to cut the crusts off my sandwich, either!”
    Amanda had to zip her mouth closed. Obviously she couldn’t say what she really wanted to, such as that she’d like to whack Thom upside the head—and that went double for The Bitch. She’d particularly like to tear out The Bitch’s heart for trying to win over her daughter with material crap, and even more wanted to scream at her ex for not spending parenting time with his daughter himself.
    But she couldn’t just agree with Molly, because that would fuel her daughter’s unhappiness with Thom.
    So she just listened. And once they finished all the nail painting, she cuddled her daughter on the deck rocker until Molly was sleepy enough to fold into bed. Tomorrow, when the little one was less upset,Amanda figured she’d think of some positive, constructive things to say about the day’s debacle.
    Tonight, she wasn’t up for it.
    For a half hour, she cleaned up toys, threw in a wash load, wiped down the kitchen. The whole time she was building up a good serious brood.
    The whole evening had exemplified—painfully—why she had to quit playing attraction games with her next-door neighbor. The divorce was still fresh for her daughter. Molly had to be her one hundred percent primary concern. And just as relevant, Amanda knew perfectly well that her marriage, and divorce, established her stupid judgment about men.
    There was no trusting her feelings for Mike. The magic, the pull, the wonder…that was the fairy tale. The wanting to believe there was a hero, a knight, a good man just for her. The wanting to believe in “in love.”
    The feeling that she was already in love with the damn man.
    This was all exactly why she’d given up sex. Because she couldn’t trust herself. Because she wanted her daughter to grow up seeing a strong, self-reliant mother…not a dependent female who couldn’t get along without a man.
    She had to show her daughter that she was strong, not just tell her.
    Which meant she needed to just cool it with Mike. At least, for a much longer period of time.
    That all settled in her mind, Amanda started turning out lights, closing up, locking the doors. When she climbed the stairs for bed, at the top stair she glanced out the window.
    Night had fallen in a whisper of dew and stardust. Mike was upstairs, in his second-story window. He’d turned off his lights, too. He was probably enjoying just a few moments of peace and silence, probably no different than she was…but then he spotted her.
    She could have moved. Could have waved. Could have…done pretty much anything.
    But somehow heat transmitted across the driveways, through the closed windows, somehow past all the reasons she needed to get a serious brain.
    She didn’t just feel a pull toward him. She felt a force field.
    He put a hand on his window.
    Like a damn fool romantic idiot, she put a hand on her window.
    And then, before she could do anything more stupid, she whipped around and headed straight, no talking, no thinking, no deterrents, to her bed. Alone. The way she needed to be.

Chapter Six
    S ix hours later, Mike left the Dan Ryan—the expressway where faint-of-heart drivers were tortured at rush hour, a uniquely Chicagoan sport—and turned into the curve toward the western suburbs. They still wouldn’t be home for another twenty minutes.
    He didn’t want the day to end.
    He glanced