Page 3 of Playing With Temptation

“Are you excited to meet all your new friends next week?” my mom asked.

“I guess,” Lucas mumbled.

And the guilt was back in full force.

“Since when does my grandson speak with marbles in his mouth?” My mom gently chided. “New school. New friends. New adventure.”

I wasn’t sure if my mom was trying to convince me or Lucas.

Barbara Cross had a way with innuendo. She was also a strong, lively woman who had raised me by herself without missing a step. I’d never caught the barest hint that she was struggling. Nor had I fully understood how hard it was being a single mother because my mom had made it look easy.

“That’s what Mom said,” Lucas told his Gigi without mumbling.

My mom’s gaze slid to mine, and she lifted one brow as if to say, See? “Of course she did.” Yep, she was trying to convince both of us. “Do you need help unloading the moving truck?”

My back was already aching just thinking of unloading all of our household belongings. Thankfully, the new house was a one-story.

“Nope. I think we’re good.”

“You sure? I could call Allen.”

Allen was my mother’s ‘companion’ as she called him. A better way to describe him would be to call him her boyfriend. They’d been seeing each other for nearly a decade. They were committed and totally in love, but both of them were happy living separately. And marriage was completely out of the question. For my mom, it had to do with the way my father had left us. For Allen, it had to do with his late wife. At first, I didn’t like Allen’s reasons, but the more I got to know him and came to understand that the love he’d always carry for his first love didn’t take away from what he gave my mother, I let it go.

“Please don’t bother Allen. The movers will help bring everything inside.”

It was the unpacking of the boxes that would be a bummer.

“Carl’s single,” she told me.

Carl was Allen’s eldest son. He was a good-looking guy with a wicked sense of humor. He was also my mother’s boyfriend’s son, and I was never, ever going there. Not to mention, I didn’t have time to date.

“Mom,” I warned.

“What? You’re a beautiful thirty-five-year-old woman. You should be dating.”

“My mom dates,” Lucas put in.

Um…what?

Simultaneously, my mom and I looked at Lucas.

“She does?”

“No, I don’t,” my mom and I said at the same time.

“Yeah, I heard her talking to Aunt Zoe. His name is Bob. I never met him, but I think they go out on dates.”

Bob?

B.O.B.

Battery-operated boyfriend.

I felt my face flame molten hot while at the same time my heart shattered at the mention of my best friend.

“Bob?” my mom queried. “When did you start seeing him?”

Oh, about nine months after Lucas was born and my sex drive came back on station, but the thought of getting involved with a penis attached to a walking, talking, real man was never going to happen.