What a Man's Gotta Do by Karen Templeton Read Free Book Online

feeling swelled inside him, vaguely familiar but definitely unwelcome. He got up, trying to shake it off, but it followed him right into the bathroom like an overloyal puppy.
    â€œGo away,” he actually said out loud, but it didn’t. He looked over at the sink as he draped the thick, soft towels over the bar next to the john, saw the new bar of soap she’d left out for him.
    The emptiness torqued into an sharp, nasty ache.
    â€œYou can’t,” he said to his reflection. “ She can’t.”
    He yanked open the cupboard door under the sink, found a whole mess of cleaning supplies. Dumping a thick layer of cleanser into the tub, he set to scrubbing it, thinking it’d been a long time since he’d entertained the idea of wanting something he couldn’t have.

Chapter 3
    T he Monday before Thanksgiving, Mala lay in bed, half-asleep, trying to fight off that itchy, icky feeling you get when Something Bad is about to happen.
    â€œMama! Guess what!”
    She burrowed down farther into the pillows. “Unless there’s a van outside with balloons all over it,” she said, “go away.”
    â€œMa- ma! ” Like Tigger, Carrie boing-boinged up the length of the bed, and it occurred to Mala that the only time her bed shook these days was when small children were jumping on it. Which, while a dispiriting thought, didn’t qualify as the Something Bad because that wasn’t something that was going to happen. It already had. “It’s a snow day!”
    That, however, definitely made the short list. But after marshalling a few more brain cells, Mala decided that, nope, that wasn’t quite it, either.
    Not that this wasn’t bad enough—if it were true—since that meant, being as the kids were already off for Thanksgiving Thursday and Friday…and Saturday and Sunday…she’d only have two kid-free days to do five days worth of work. Swiping her hair out of her face, Mala hiked herself up on one elbow,trying to get a bead on Carrie’s beaming, bobbing face. Her curls were a radiant blur in the almost iridescent glow in the many-windowed, converted porch she used as her bedroom.
    â€œYou’re kidding, right?”
    â€œUh-uh. We got like a million feet of snow in the yard! You can go look! I already listened to the radio and they said the Spruce Lake schools were closed! We don’t have any scho-ol, we don’t have any scho-ol!”
    Mala suppressed a groan as she glanced at the clock radio by her bed. Seven-ten. Far too early for so many exclamation points.
    In footed, dinosaur-splashed jammies, Lucas unsteadily tromped across the bed, dropping beside Mala with enough force to rattle her teeth. “I’m cold,” he said, wriggling underneath the down comforter next to her, his beebee—as he’d christened his baby blanket at eleven months—firmly clutched to his chest.
    â€œIt’ll warm up in a few minutes,” Mala said.
    Carrie skootched down on Mala’s other side, planting her ice-cold feet on Mala’s bare calf.
    â€œCripes, Carrie!”
    â€œThe heat’s not on.”
    Damn. The furnace pilot must’ve gone out again. That made the second time this week. Not that it was that big a deal to relight it, but she supposed she couldn’t put off having somebody come out to give the ancient furnace a look-see any longer. Especially as she had a tenant. A tenant who, bless him, hadn’t yet complained about freezing his butt off in the mornings.
    A tenant who, bless him, had made himself scarce since the night he moved in.
    Except in her dreams.
    Lucas snuggled closer, smelling of warm little boy and slightly sour jammies. Ah, yes…reality. As in, kids and clients and recalcitrant furnaces and laundry and meals to fix and mother’s and brother’s and well-meaning friends’ worried looks to dodge. And vague, itchy-icky feelings of impending doom.
    Running away sounded