Finlay Donovan Is Killing It(Finlay Donovan #1)(2)

“He uses duck glue,” Delia insisted, following me around the kitchen as I scraped the breakfast scraps into the trash and dumped the plates in the sink along with my sanity.

“You mean duct tape. We can’t fix your hair with duct tape, sweetie.”

“Daddy could.”

“Hold on, Delia.” I shushed her when my ex finally picked up. “Steven?” He sounded hassled before he even said good morning. On second thought, I don’t think good morning was actually what he said. “I need a favor. Vero didn’t show up this morning, and I’m already late for a meeting with Sylvia downtown. I need to drop Zach with you for a few hours.” My son flashed me a syrupy grin from his high chair as I used the damp rag to mop the sticky spot from my slacks. They were the only decent pants I owned. I work in my pajamas. “Also, he might need a bath.”

“Yeah,” Steven said slowly. “About Vero…”

I stopped patting and dropped the burp rag in the open diaper bag at my feet. I knew that tone. It was the same one he’d used when he broke the news that he and Theresa had gotten engaged. It was also the same tone he’d used last month when he told me his landscaping business had taken off because of Theresa’s real estate contacts and he was flush with cash, and oh, by the way, he’d talked to a lawyer about filing for joint custody. “I was meaning to call you yesterday, but Theresa and I had tickets to the game and the day just got away from me.”

“No.” I gripped the counter. No, no, no.

“You work from home, Finn. You don’t need a full-time sitter for Zach—”

“Don’t do this, Steven.” I pinched the blooming headache between my eyes while Delia tugged on my pant leg and whined about duct tape.

“So I let her go,” he said.

Bastard.

“I can’t afford to keep bailing you out—”

“Bailing me out? I’m the mother of your children! It’s called child support.”

“You’re late on your van payment—”

“Only until I get my advance for the book.”

“Finn.” Every time he said my name it sounded like an expletive.

“Steven.”

“It might be time to consider getting a real job.”

“Like hydro-seeding the neighborhood?” Yeah, I went there. “This is my real job, Steven.”

“Writing trashy books is not a real job.”

“They’re romantic suspense novels! And I’ve already been paid half up front. I’m under contract! I can’t just walk away from a contract. I’ll have to give it back.” Then, because I was feeling particularly stabby, I added, “Unless you want to bail me out of that, too?”

He grumbled to himself as I knelt to sop up the puddle of grounds on the floor. I could picture him at their spotless kitchen table in her immaculate designer town house over a mug of French-pressed coffee, pulling out what was left of his hair.

“Three months.” His patience sounded as thin as the hair on the crown of his head, but I kept that to myself because I needed a babysitter more than the satisfaction of whittling away at his fragile male ego. “You’re three months late on the mortgage, Finn.”

“You mean the rent. The rent I pay you. Cut me a break, Steven.”

“And the HOA is going to put a lien on the house if you don’t pay the special assessment bill they sent you in June.”

“And how would you know that?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer. He was banging our real estate agent, and his best friend was our loan officer. That’s how he knew.

“I think the kids should come live with me and Theresa. Permanently.”

I nearly dropped the phone. Abandoning the wad of paper towels, I stormed from the kitchen and lowered my voice to a harsh whisper. “Absolutely not! There is no way I’m sending my kids to live with that woman.”

“You’re hardly earning enough in royalties to pay for groceries.”

“Maybe I’d have time to finish a book if you hadn’t just laid off my babysitter!”

“You’re thirty-two years old, Finn—”

“I am not.” I was thirty-one. Steven was just bitter because I was three years younger than he was.

“You can’t spend your whole life shut up in that house, making up stories. We have real-life bills and real-life problems you need to deal with.”

“Jerk,” I muttered through a thin breath. Because the truth hurt. And Steven was the biggest, most painful truth of them all.

“Look,” he said, “I’m trying not to be a jerk about this. I asked Guy to hold off until the end of the year, to give you time to find something.” Guy. His frat-brother-turned-divorce-lawyer. The same Guy who’d done too many keg stands and puked in the back seat of my car back in college was now the attorney who golfed with the judge on Saturdays and had cost me my weekends with my kids. On top of it, Guy had conned the judge into taking half of my advance for my last book and giving it to Theresa, as recompense for the damage I’d done to her car.

Okay, fine.

I concede that getting drunk and stuffing a wad of Delia’s Play-Doh in the exhaust pipe of Theresa’s BMW may not have been the best way to handle the news when he’d told me they were getting engaged, but letting her walk away with half my advance and my husband felt like salt in the wound.