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rude before. “What?”
    She opened her mouth but then appeared to catch herself. “Look, I appreciate your . . . thoughtfulness but this isn’t going to work.”
    “It’s not?”  
    “No, it’s not. I mean . . .” her voice trailed off as she looked at her son, coloring inside the lines as if his life depended on it. “I can’t see how it’s going to work,” she went on in a much lower voice. Clarence had to move a step closer to her to hear her. “I don’t have anything to offer you. I live with my mom and my sister. I have a part-time job and a mountain of debt and a child. I have to put him first. Whatever this is, I just . . . can’t .”
    She said that last part with so much defeat in her voice that he forgot about the part where she was telling him to stop making her coffee and to stop giving her kid presents. Instead, he acted on instinct—the instinct to make it better, somehow.
    “Mikey,” he said as he started pulling Tammy toward the Clinic, “I’m gonna talk to your mom for a second. When we come back, I want to look at your pictures, okay?”
    “Okay,” Mikey said without looking up. He started coloring even harder.
    “What are you doing?” Tammy demanded as Clarence all but dragged her through the dividing door. “Clarence?”
    He didn’t even try to answer her, not in words. Instead, he kissed her—hard. Not the tentative asking of permission that’d happened yesterday.  
    Today, he kissed her like a man kissed the woman he wanted. Because he wanted her and he’d be damned if he let her talk herself out of it.
    He wrapped his arms around her waist and pushed her up to his mouth. He swept his tongue into her mouth and tasted the salty sweetness of Tammy.  
    There was a painful moment where she didn’t kiss him back and he was sure that she’d already made up her mind and he was just making it worse.
    But suddenly her arms were around his neck and she sighed into his mouth and the kiss became something deeper, something more.
    He could kiss her all damn day, but they didn’t have that much time. He had to make every single second count.  
    “ Oh ,” Tammy said when the kiss ended. Her eyes were closed and her brow was creased, although he couldn’t tell if it was in disgust or happiness or what. She looked like she was deep in thought.  
    “Just because you can’t see how this is going to work doesn’t mean it won’t,” he told her. He kissed her forehead, right on the crease. “You have to put the boy first, I get that. But let me put you first, Tammy. Let me at least try . Because I like you and I think you have a lot to offer me and I hope I have something to offer you. Something more than coffee,” he added.  
    She sort of sagged in his arms. “You do, Clarence. You do . But I don’t want to be played for the fool again. I’ve had quite enough of that in my life.”
    He gaped at her. “You think I’d—what, that I’d use you?”
    She opened her eyes and he saw a world of pain before him. No wonder her sister referred to Mikey’s father as ‘that dickbag.’  
    “I wouldn’t do that, Tammy. That’s not what I’m here for. I want . . .” He leaned down and put his mouth against her ear. “I want something more than that . I want you. All of you.”
    She gasped and jolted in his arms, pressing every part of her against a few really important parts of him. Inwardly, he groaned in pain. Then she said, “But Mikey . . .”
    “Bring him,” Clarence said, even though that wasn’t his first choice—especially not if Tammy didn’t want him to spoil the boy. “Come have dinner with me on Saturday, you and Mikey.”
    She opened her mouth like she was maybe going to say no but then paused and nodded her head. “I don’t want to bring him. I don’t want him to get attached if . . .”
    If this didn’t work.  
    Clarence kissed her again, trying his damnedest to push that thought right out of her mind. He’d barely gotten started. He wasn’t going