Free Stealing Home by Sherryl Woods

his concentration back, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Now that I understand what’s going on, hopefully I can come up with some way to get him back on track. Maybe this is none of my business, but is the divorce final?”
    “The paperwork’s done, but we don’t have the decree yet.”
    “Are things settling down some at home, though?”
    “Some,” she said in a tone that conveyed the opposite.
    “They will,” he said, feeling a sudden need to reassure her. It was almost as powerful as his desire to get Tyler back in his pitching groove. “I’ll be in touch soon, Mrs. Townsend.”
    “Call me Maddie, please. I’d just as soon not be reminded of anything Townsend right now,” she said, giving him a wry smile. “Besides, it makes me feel ancient.”
    Cal laughed at that. “You’re hardly ancient. If I didn’t know you have a sixteen-year-old son, I’d swear you were my age.”
    Her cheeks turned pink. “Flattery won’t get you much more than an extra batch of chocolate-chip cookies next time it’s my turn to bake for the team.”
    “I’ll take the cookies, but it wasn’t flattery,” he told her.
    In fact, for the first time since his own divorce from a woman who’d married a baseball celebrity, not a has-been, he was actually feeling a stir of real interest in a woman, and age was the very last thing on his mind. Of course, given the multitude of complications involved, he’d have to be out of his ever-loving mind to do anything about it.

5
    T he meeting with Cal Maddox had shaken Maddie more than she wanted to admit. Until now, Ty had been a near-perfect kid. He’d never given them any trouble. He’d made good grades and excelled at baseball. Now all of that was at risk. It made her see that building some sort of bridge between Tyler and Bill was more important than ever, but how could she possibly do that without further alienating her son, who claimed to be dead set against his father being in his life?
    Maybe she was going to have to swallow her pride and go to Bill and plead with him to take the initiative and make more of an effort to understand his son’s point of view. Perhaps if he realized what was at stake, he would keep Noreen out of the picture, at least when he was spending time with Tyler. Right now Bill seemed stubbornly determined to unite them into one big happy family, no matter how his children—especially Ty—resisted the idea. Maybe she could make Bill see how desperately Ty needed some one-on-one time with his dad.
    Determined to fix things for her son’s sake, she headed for Bill’s medical office in a small brick complex he and a business partner had built several years ago. Its professional suitesalso housed a dentist and an orthopedic surgeon, as well as an outpatient rehab facility for the surgeon’s patients.
    She used her key and slipped in through the back door. It was the only way to avoid the waiting room and all the curious glances she was bound to receive there. Instead, however, she ran smack into Noreen, who was coming out of Bill’s office with her lipstick smudged and her uniform mussed. Maddie had to wonder how the patients would feel if they’d witnessed the same thing.
    “Maddie!” Noreen said, looking dismayed as she smoothed the wrinkles in her uniform. “What are you doing here? I had no idea you still had a key.”
    Maddie bit back an angry retort. The truth was that Noreen had more of a right to be here than she did and that grated.
    “I need to see my husband. I gather he’s in his office,” she said and brushed right past Noreen without further comment.
    When she firmly closed the door behind her, Bill looked up from the files on his desk and regarded her with uncertainty. “Maddie, I wasn’t expecting you.”
    “Obviously,” she said, noting the fact that his tie was askew and his thick blond hair was messed up. “You know, if you keep this up, your reputation in this town is going to suffer.” She leveled a look into his