Mom Over Miami Read Online Free Page A

“Nobody move!”
    Tessa heaved the bottle to the floor.
    Squirrel cowered.
    “Okay, change of plan. Move . Everybody into the kitchen!”
    The boys started to do as she said, but about that time the dog, who was crouching at the back of the line, noticed the bounty of chips on the plastic floor covering. Just as the group did as Hannah had asked, sixty-two pounds of long, strong, determined greyhound decided to begin belly-walking between the boys’ feet.
    The few bowls that had not fallen to the floor were goners, and so were the boys holding those bowls.
    Down in a pile they all went like…like…like a load of broken chips poured from God’s greatest corn chip bag.
    Hannah groaned.
    Then the doorbell rang.
    “Oh, great.” She checked the clock. Still too early for parental pickups.
    At least that was on her side.
    She could deal with the door, get the boys cleaned up, tend to Tessa and pull up the ruined plastic drop cloth before any of the other mothers saw what a big fat failure she was at handling even the most simple of mommy duties.
    “Bye, Aunt Phiz, I’ve got to go,” Hannah hollered at the receiver lying on the floor.
    Aunt Phiz, never missing a beat, went right on chattering in Chinese.
    “Hang that up, Sam,” Hannah said as she hoisted Tessa on her hip and headed for the door.
    Whatever they were selling or soliciting donations for, she would get rid of the caller, then get this household back under control. She had three years of college journalism under her belt. She had lived with a nutty father in a small-town fishbowl. She had even recently survived discovering that the mother she had lived a lifetime hoping to find had died not long after the family broke up. Hannah had run a rural pediatric clinic. She had overcome disappointment and infertility, begun motherhood at an age when a lot of women were done with that sort of thing, and still managed to meet the standards of the Foster Parent program.
    Hannah could handle anything.
    She flung open the door. “I’m sorry but…”
    The boys crowded forward around her, pressing cheese-smeared hands to the doorjamb and Hannah’s jeans.
    Amend that. Hannah could handle anything except…
    Stilton slid under her arm and beamed up at her. “When you said you needed divine in-inner…intention, I knew just what to do, Mrs. Bartlett.”
    “Why…” Hannah’s shoulders slumped. Her heart sank. The corners of her mouth tightened into a smile as she strained a pleasant tone though clenched teeth, “Thank you, Stilton, but you shouldn’t have. Really .”
    “Oh, no trouble,” her guest gushed. “That’s why we got Stilton a cell phone—so he could use it in case of emergency.”
    Hannah forced a weak, empty laugh. “Emergency? Oh, this hardly qualifies as an—”
    One of the boys shoved the phone toward Hannah.
    “I don’t know what this guy’s problem is, Mrs. B.” A man’s voice, probably one of Aunt Phiz’s fellow travelers, blasted out through the receiver a Cantonese cootchie-coo.
    The dog rolled over on her back, rubbing greasy orange cheese residue on two boys’ new soccer shoes at once.
    And Tessa sneezed, spewing bright red juice directly into the face of none other than Lauren Faison—aka Stilton’s mom.
    “Oh, who am I trying to kid?” Hannah motioned the world’s most perfect mom into the chaos of her home and said, “Come on in, and heaven help us all.”

3
    Subject: Good News/Bad News
    To: ItsmeSadie, WeednReap
    CC: Phizziedigs
    Hi, there y’all—
    The good news: They’ve found our furniture!
    The bad news: I think I’ve lost my mind.
    What other explanation can there be for Payt and me standing at our back door just after dawn on Saturday, wadding up sliced cold cuts into little ham and salami bombs and lobbing them into the garage to lure Squirrelly Girl in there? You know, that dog might not be quick on the uptake, but as a greyhound she’s not slow. That’s one thing she had over us in our scheme to get her