Free What a Woman Needs by Judi Fennell

it, and felt like a bad mother for taking advantage of it, but it was a lot easier to let the two of them sleep most of the day while she dealt with the three younger ones’ schedules. She’d managed to set up carpools most of the time so that she only had one day of running everyone around. Nothing else got done that day, but that was okay. She enjoyed the time she spent with the kids and their friends. Life went by too fast to miss those precious moments.
    Plus, Kelsey had had friends over last night. Beth had let the paltry excuse for a reason pass—Kelsey wanted to show Bryan off to a new set of friends, and while Beth wasn’t in favor of it, her daughter did deserve to have sleepovers. The Bryan-ogling was going to happen; might as well get it over with.
    “Tommy took Sherman out.” Maggie hopped off the bed, dragging the comforter with her. That was Maggie, one disaster after another. And she was totally oblivious to all of it, which explained how she could live in the heap she called a room.
    Beth never quite reached the same level of acceptance as her daughter.
    She sighed and tossed the comforter back onto the bed. Maggie did have a point—why bother to make the bed when you were going to climb right back into it that night?
    And maybe someone else would climb in, too
 . . .
    Beth picked up a pillow off the floor and tossed it on the chair beside her bed. Great. Bad enough she was having erotic dreams about the guy, now her subconscious was inviting him into the room?
    “Mom!” Mark hollered up from downstairs in the tone that could set Beth’s mothering instinct on red alert in one second.
    “Coming!” She patted Maggie’s thigh. “Come on, sweetie. Tommy’s in trouble.”
    “How do you know that, Mommy? From your third eye?”
    Beth bit her lip. The kids had bought that story for as long as they’d believed in Santa. She’d miss the day Maggie grew up. “Yes, sweetie. So let’s hurry.”
    She shoved her feet into her sneakers. Sherman’s trip to the vet had left him with an overactive digestion problem—probably still recovering from the shock—and she wasn’t about to run into the backyard without shoes on.
    She did a double take as she passed Maggie’s room.
    “Maggie?” She leaned against the doorframe and poked her head farther into the room.
    “Yes, Mommy?” Maggie poked her head around the doorframe under hers.
    “Your room.”
    “Yes, Mommy. It is.”
    “It’s neat.”
    “That’s ’cause you painted it, remember?”
    “No, I mean, it’s all cleaned up.”
    “That’s ’cause Bryan did it.”
    “Yes, but that was yesterday.”
Neat
didn’t stick to Maggie. It slithered off and shriveled up in a corner within ten minutes of making an appearance.
    “Yes,” said Maggie so matter-of-factly, Beth had to remember that this was
Maggie
she was talking about. Tornado Maggie. Messy Maggie as Jason called her out of Mom’s earshot—or so he thought. Maggie didn’t know the meaning of the word
neat
unless it meant
cool
.
    “Is something wrong, Mommy?”
    Maggie’s erstwhile little face was turned up at hers with a smile so big Beth curbed her gut reaction—namely to ask if Maggie was feeling well.
    “It looks very nice.”
    “Thank you, Mommy. Bryan said little girls who take care of their rooms grow into very successful women. You must have had a really clean room when you were little, right, Mommy?”
    Chalk up one more reason Beth wanted to kiss Bryan Manley.
     • • • 
    A NOTHER one was added to the list when she got to the backyard and saw Bryan removing the slat in the wood fence that was pinning Sherman in place, Tommy on one side, Mark on the other, both ready to grab the hyperactive dog the minute he was free.
    “This end of the hammer is used for removing nails. See this V here?” Bryan slid the curved end of the hammer along the wood and pried out a nail. “Be careful with it once you remove it. Rusty nails mean a trip to the ER.”
    “Yeah, you