Читать книгу Plain-Jane Princess - Karen Templeton - Страница 10

“Mrs. Hadley—please.” Steve did some fancy shuffling through several half-dressed kids and a dog in order to plant himself in front of the bulldozer of a woman headed for his front door. “If you could just stay until—”

“Mister Koleski.” A pair of frigid blue eyes smacked into his. “I only took this job because the agency said you were desperate, so you knew from the beginning I was only here on a trial basis. Well, the trial’s over!” A pudgy hand swept him out of the way as the woman tromped through the old farmhouse’s uncarpeted living room, tugging her pale blue blouse down over hips that conjured up images of large, scary beasts.

Steve’s peripheral vision caught the six-year-old standing by the doorway, his eyes wide with confusion and fear. “For crying out loud, Mrs. Hadley—it wasn’t like Dylan meant to do it!”

The housekeeper spun around. “No six-year-old should still be wettin’ himself, Mr. Koleski!”

Dylan ran from the room, sobbing; frustration flared into a fury. Steve felt no compunction about turning on the woman standing in front of him with her chin jutted out to Wisconsin. Thank God Mac was out feeding the chickens. The fourteen-year-old was fiercely protective of his younger siblings, and he tended to fly off the handle if he even suspected that someone was hurting one of them. At the moment, Steve understood all too well how the teenager felt. “It’s only been eight months. And Dylan’s only six, in case you missed it. Six. He can’t help it if he still has nightmares.”

Now he noticed the twins, both still in their nightgowns, Bree with rollers in her short hair, sidling out to see what all the commotion was about. Mrs. Hadley turned again to leave; Steve caught her by the arm. “Just wait one blessed minute, all right?” he said in a low voice, then turned to the girls. “Guys, I know you hate to do this, but I really, really need you to get Dylan cleaned up and dressed this morning.”

Courtney, her long, dark hair a tangled mass around her slender face, groaned first. But Steve cut off her protest with a pointed glare he’d learned from his mother, and the two of them trudged dejectedly down the hall, calling for their little brother, while George—the brown-and-white half hound, half whatever mutt that had come with the house—trotted along happily beside them.

He turned back to Mrs. Hadley. “If you leave me in the lurch like this,” he said softly, “don’t expect me to give you any recommendations.”

Mrs. Hadley’s jaw dropped, closed, then flew open again. “I did my job, Mr. Koleski, you know darn well I did! You’re spoiling these kids, is what. Just because they went through a rough patch don’t mean they don’t need discipline and limits! They got you so tied up around their little fingers, it’s a wonder they haven’t set the place on fire!”

Her word choice couldn’t have been more deliberately cruel. Steve jerked one hand up to halt the tirade, then jumped slightly when he felt a tug on his jeans leg. Without even looking, he swept three-year-old Rosie and her lovey—the heart-patterned, and very ratty, crib quilt she always carried around with her—up onto his hip, swallowing hard when she tucked her head into his collarbone and poked her thumb in her mouth, conveying a trust both implicit and explicit that this big man would protect her almost as much as her lovey did.

A trust Steve took extremely seriously.

Bug-eyed and now dressed in nearly identical bell-bottomed jeans and scoop-necked tees, the twins, with a cleaned and dressed Dylan in tow, crept back into the living room, Bree with her arms locked around her ribs, Courtney twisting a lock of hair around her finger. Three sets of dark brown eyes all fixed on the scene, three already mangled hearts subjected to yet more stress.

“And that one’s far too big to be sucking her thumb, too,” the dour-faced woman in front of him said, and Steve lost it. Calmly, but he lost it.

“Mrs. Hadley?” he asked, smoothing a tangle of dark brown hair away from the baby’s face as she nestled more closely against him.

“What?”

“Why on earth do you hire out to care for children when you obviously dislike them so much?”

Thin lips pressed together until they nearly disappeared. Then the woman whirled around, banging back the screen door on her way out. Everybody including the dog wandered out onto the porch to watch her leave, which she did in a spectacular fashion, tromping down the drive to that old blue bomb of hers. She hurtled her impressive body inside and slammed the door, then gunned the car down the rutted dirt driveway in a cloud of dust, as if petrified the kids were going to turn into ten-foot monsters and eat her alive.

As her car sped toward the end of the driveway, though, Steve caught movement out of the corner of his eye—a cyclist coming down the road from the main highway. The road curved a bit, right before it got to the foot of his drive, the entry partially obscured by a forest of volunteer elms he’d been meaning to take out ever since he bought the place. His heart bolted into his throat when he realized the cyclist and Mrs. Hadley, who clearly wasn’t even thinking about slowing down, might not see each other in time—

“Hey!” he shouted, taking off down the steps and out toward the road, Rosie laughing and bouncing in his arms, the other kids hot on his heels, George barking his damn fool head off. “Hey! Slow down! Slow down!”

But of course, the older woman couldn’t possibly hear him. And he doubted she was looking at her rearview mirror—

Oh, hell! Steve ground to a halt, his heart hammering painfully at the base of his throat while the twins and Dylan jumped up and down beside him, shrieking and waving. And now he saw Mac streaking toward them from the back, making more noise than any of them. Steve silently swore at himself for letting them out, because if anything happened, if they saw—

His stomach heaved as Mrs. Hadley took the turn at full throttle, spinning out onto the road at the same moment the cyclist rounded the curve. The kids screamed even louder as car and bicycle swerved to avoid each other, the car quickly straightening out and rocketing down the road. The bicycle, however, wobbled for a second or two, then toppled over into the brush.

The word that rang out a moment later from the bushes was one he regularly gave Mac hell for using.

Sophie was reasonably sure she’d live. Whether she wanted to was something else again.

The ground seemed to vibrate beneath her battered body—pounding footsteps, she realized, intermixed with a dog’s frantic barking. A second later, she found herself surrounded by a herd of short people, all with brown hair and eyes, all shouting, “Are you all right?” and looking both extremely worried and extremely relieved to find her conscious. The dog, a large, rather smelly mongrel, got to her first, whimpering in her face as if to ask where he—at this level, his gender was not in question—should kiss first to make it all better.

“For the love of Pete…! George, kids—get out of the way!”

Oh, dear God in heaven. Tell her it wasn’t…

After judiciously determining her arm wouldn’t fall off if she moved it, Sophie shielded her eyes from the early morning sun and looked up into a pair of familiar gold-flecked green eyes set above a shocked grimace.

It was.

“Judas Priest, lady!” Steven carefully untangled limbs from bicycle, letting it fall with a loud clatter off to the side before squatting beside her. “What the Sam Hill are you doing way out here at this time of the morning?”

She thought, briefly, of sitting up, decided against it. “Are you always this solicitous when people land in a heap in your bushes?” She tried moving the other arm, peered up at him. “Or aren’t these your bushes?”

“These aren’t anybody’s bushes. They’re squatters. Lie still, for godssake.”

Sophie suddenly realized Steven’s brusqueness stemmed from concern, not rudeness. He’d transferred the youngest child, an adorable little thing with long dark hair and bangs that practically fell into her equally dark eyes, to a taller, more slender girl on the cusp of adolescence, then set about gently feeling for broken bones. Or so she assumed.

All four children, she realized, looked remarkably like each other. And absolutely nothing like Steven.

“These your children?” she asked.

His glance was nearly as brief as his answer. “For all intents and purposes.”

She angled her neck to watch his deft progress down one leg, determined not to react. Right. The sexiest man she’d ever met with the strongest, gentlest, most efficient hands she’d ever felt was taking his time skimming those hands over her flesh and she wasn’t going to react? A bit worse for wear, she might have been, but she wasn’t dead, and the parts that weren’t shrieking in agony were very aware that this man in a white, tight T-shirt was something definitely worth waking up the hormones for. Just to look, unfortunately, but it had been a looooong time since her eyes had been anywhere near such a feast.

Perhaps focusing on his face would distract her from his hands.

Oh, all right—so it had been a long shot.

His expression was earnest and focused, she was reasonably sure, solely on her skeletal structure. So she followed suit. Cheeks. Jaw. High, broad forehead. His brows and lashes were as pale as his hair, which for some reason she’d always found off-putting before this.

“I suppose—” She swallowed, tried to reestablish saliva flow. “I suppose you know what you’re doing?”

“Well enough.” Apparently satisfied, he started in on the other leg.

“The lady gots lots of boo-boos,” the littlest one pronounced in a voice that, in twenty years or so, was going to rival Greta Garbo’s.

“She sure does, honey,” Steven said, never taking his eyes off Sophie’s leg.

“C’n I give her some of my bandy-aids?”

“Sure thing…what?” This last was directed at Sophie, who’d feebly raised one hand.

“I realize I might regret dispensing this tidbit of information, but I didn’t land on my, um, legs.”

His hands stilled as he slowly twisted to face her, allowing her to see that, judging from his terrible attempt at keeping his expression blank, he understood. “I see.” And then the smile blossomed, wicked and sweet and just this side of cocky. And if she hadn’t already had the wind knocked out of her, the smile would have done it for sure. “And I don’t suppose I need to check that out for broken bones, huh?”

Oh, dear, but that grin was deadly.

And just like that, her imagination conjured up a very brunette woman with remarkably dominant genes who’d undoubtedly helped create all these children.

“A very astute observation,” Sophie said, deciding the time had come to haul herself upright and be on her way.

“Wow, lady—” This from an older child she hadn’t noticed before, a youngish teenager with close-cropped, nearly black hair. Which meant there were five children. And also meant that Steven had gotten a very early start in the reproductive phase of his life, since the kid looked at least fourteen or so, and Steven, she surmised, couldn’t be more than in his mid-thirties. The kid was inspecting her bicycle, which she could tell, even from this angle, wasn’t going to be transporting anyone, anywhere, anytime too soon. “You like totally demolished this.”

She silently swore, then began the arduous task of gathering together assorted body parts and convincing them to work together just long enough to get upright. She’d tackle actual movement at a later date.

“What are you doing?”

Clutching the splintery post-and-rail fence for support, Sophie shot Steven a glance, then decided, no, she needed every scrap of effort she possessed to accomplish this one task. “Standing up, if everything will cooperate long enough to accomplish my objective.”

The initial excitement over, the children had begun to drift back toward the house. Steven crossed his arms over his chest, clearly waiting.

“Hold on, hold on,” she said, feebly swatting in his direction. “I’m working on it.” She tried not to let him see her grit her teeth as she forced Leg One in front of Leg Two. Oh, for heaven’s sake—she wasn’t seriously injured. So why did it hurt so bloody much?

“Got any idea when you might be planning on taking a second step, here?”

She fought down the urge to laugh, if for no other reason that she was sure that would hurt, too. “Oh, you are just a paragon of patience, aren’t you?”

“Got me a bumper sticker that says just that,” he said without missing a beat, then announced, “Let me carry you to the house—”

“Like bloody hell!”

“Lady, if this is part of your I-gotta-be-me routine, I don’t have time, okay? I’ve got four kids to get to school, my housekeeper just drove away in her huff—”

She swatted a hank of hair out of her face. “That was your housekeeper who nearly did me in?”

“Up until ten minutes ago, yeah. Number four in a series. Which means now I’m going to have to sweet-talk my mother into baby-sitting for the little one so I can go to work. So, right now, I’m not in the best mood, okay?”

“Baby-sitting?” Sophie blinked, confused, then said, “Oooh…your wife works, too, then?”

A frown pleated his brow for a moment, as if he was wondering how she’d made such a bizarre leap in the conversation. “Wife?” Then his expression cleared. “Oh. Because of the kids. I get it.” Then he shook his head. “Nope. No wife. Now let’s go.”

He took a step toward her; her hand shot up even as her brain tried to force this latest information into a slot marked Of No Consequence. “Mr. Koleski, it’s not that I don’t appreciate your situation, really. It’s just that—” She bit her lip. “It’s going to hurt.”

His expression softened, as did his voice. “It’s going to hurt just as much to walk. At least this way will be quicker. And I’ll try to be as careful as I can, okay?” He came around to her side, held out his arms.

“Why don’t you go on ahead and I’ll catch up later?”

“Why don’t you just grit your teeth and let me help you?” he said, squatting slightly, then scooping her up into his arms. She sucked in a sharp breath as tears stung her eyes.

“Damn, I’m sorry,” he said against her temple. “You okay?”

No, she was definitely not okay. But not because she hurt, which she did, but because the last thing she needed was to have some man who looked like this and smelled like this and smiled like this carrying her around like this.

“Just…don’t dawdle,” she said under her breath, and he chuckled.

He carried her in silence for a couple of seconds, his athletic shoes crunching against the dirt driveway as they approached the tree-shaded, two-story house that seemed to be growing with much the same abandon as the out-of-control lilac lunging halfway across the front steps. Not to mention the herd of profusely blooming rose bushes in a drunken tangle off to one side of the house. But the lawn had been recently mowed, and even though the house could use a new coat of white paint, the deep green shutters were all perfectly aligned, the screens in the windows obviously new. A frenzied squawking erupted from the back of the house, only to just as immediately subside. A second later, the dog came trotting out from behind the house, tongue lolling, looking inordinately pleased with himself. A giggle of pure delight bubbled up from Sophie’s chest.

“You have chickens?”

“Not to mention several rabbits, God-knows-how-many cats and a pygmy goat. So tell me something.”

She carefully twisted her neck to look up at him, only to realize how close their faces were. He’d just shaved, obviously, his skin the smoothest it would be all day, still tingling a bit, no doubt, from his aftershave…

“W-what?” she managed, clicking back to the right channel.

“Where’d you get that accent?”

“From my father,” she said simply, tightening her hands a little more around his neck, breathing in his scent a little more than she had any right to. “Where’d you get those children?”

They’d nearly reached the porch by now; the scrapes and bruises groused a little when he shifted her weight to carry her up the few steps, giving the lilac a wide berth. “I’m their guardian,” he said, his soft words conveying the weight of all that word implied. “Think you can make it into the house on your own?”

“What? Oh, yes, I’m sure I can.”

He gently let her down, bracing one hand on the screen door handle a moment before opening it. “Ted MacIntyre, their father, was my best friend all through school.” He shook his head, his breath escaping in a slow sigh as he looked out over her head for a moment, then back to her. “Sometimes, you just do what you gotta do, you know—?”

The door pushed open, knocking Steven out of the way. The littlest one stood there—still in her nightgown, Sophie now noticed—holding out a small, colorful box. “I found ’em, Unca Teev. My bandy-aids. For the lady.”

Touched more than she could say, Sophie reached out and took the box from the child. “Oh, my goodness—” She clutched the box to her midsection, smiling for the little girl. “Are these your very special bandy-aids that nobody else can use?” The baby nodded. Sophie hesitated, then touched the silken hair. “Thank you, love. Thank you very, very much.”

The little girl gave her a shy smile, then ran back inside the house. “What’s her name?” Sophie asked, then looked up to find Steven’s gaze riveted to hers, his expression unreadable, but intense all the same.

A second passed before he answered. “Rosie. Well, Rosita, actually. The children’s mother was Honduran,” he added with a hint of a smile as he finally led her inside, the screen door slamming shut behind them. From the depths of the house, she heard what sounded like a small battle. Seemingly oblivious, Steven led her through a very cluttered, minimally furnished living room to a hallway off to one side. “I’ve got a first-aid kit in the bathroom down here,” he said, only to halt when he realized Sophie wasn’t exactly zipping along behind him. “Sorry—”

“No, no.” She made herself smile, only to flinch when the wall shook underneath her hand. “It’s all right, really. Do you need to—?” She carefully nodded in the direction of the fracas.

“I’ve probably got another thirty, forty seconds before things get seriously out of hand,” he said. But still, she caught the tension hardening his features, as he showed her into the bathroom, turned on the light, then stepped inside only long enough to pull a first-aid kit out of a cupboard over the toilet. She managed not to gasp when she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror over the sink; between her still not having the hang of how to use the hair gel and the events of the morning, she looked like the Bride of Frankenstein. And did she have a comb on her person? She did not.

“If you can just get started,” Steven began, apology swimming in his eyes.

Sophie laughed over her wince as she first lowered the toilet lid, then herself down onto it. “I doubt whether there’s anything here that requires triage. Go ahead.” She shooed him out with one hand, already surveying the contents of the well-stocked kit. With five kids, she didn’t wonder. “I’ll be fine….”

When she glanced up again, he was gone.

Twenty minutes later, he’d somehow gotten the right sandwiches, drinks and fruit—Bree only ate Gala apples, Courtney golden delicious, Dylan bananas—into the right bags, all shoes located and on the correct feet, all permission slips signed and trip money dispensed, and all the kids out the door in time to catch the school bus. With a weary sigh, George flopped down on the worn linoleum at Steve’s feet.

“Yeah, that was a rough few minutes, wasn’t it, boy?”

George managed, barely, to thump his tail in agreement.

And the murk cleared from Steve’s brain long enough for him to remember he had an accident victim in his bathroom. He strode down the hall, knocked on the closed door. “How you doing in there? Need any help?”

“Not at all,” came the chipper reply. “Only three more wounds to go. But I’m afraid I’ve put a severe dent in your iodine supply.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He thought a moment, then said, “I’ve got a couple of calls to make, then I can drive you back into town on my way into work. That okay?”

“Yes, that would be lovely.”

He wandered back out toward the living room, hand on back of neck.

Yes, that would be lovely?

Nope. Something was way off, here. The clothes and makeup did not jibe with that accent. Or her manner. Even in black bicycle shorts and a tank top, even made up like Elvira’s sister—and what was with that hair?—she was classier than any woman he’d ever known.

And maybe when he had a spare couple of minutes—ten, twenty years from now—he’d try to figure it out. Now, however, he had about a million phone calls to make, and so was extremely grateful that Rosie, still in her nightgown, he realized, had plopped herself down in the middle of the debris-strewn living room floor, giggling at Mr. Noodle’s antics on Sesame Street.

Sighing, he glanced around the room. The house was a lot like the dog: sorta this, sorta that. Somebody’d decided to add a few rooms to the original two-story structure, probably ten years before Steve’s birth. The result was not what one would call aesthetically pleasing. Or particularly well built. Floors slanted, door didn’t always shut tight, that kind of thing. But he could afford the payments, it was out in the country, and it had six bedrooms.

The house was furnished, if you could call it that, with whatever anyone had seen fit to foist off on him. On them, now. All donations were welcome, as long as they didn’t smell like someone’s basement or weren’t too pukey a color. It wasn’t as if he didn’t like places that were all fixed up and nice-looking, as much as he simply didn’t have the energy to be bothered. If someone wanted to give him their cast-off sofa, and it was still in reasonable condition, well, that saved him from having to go to some furniture store and pick one out, didn’t it?

Not to mention having to buy one. Ted and Gloria had both had life insurance policies, but those had gone into a trust fund for the kids’ education. And Steve had quickly discovered just how fast five kids could eat up the cash. Still, between his working for his father and his steadily increasing income from his photography, they did okay.

Ignoring yet another twist to the old gut, Steve walked back to the kitchen and called his folks, both to ask his mother to baby-sit and to tell his father he’d be late. Then, leaning with his back against his tornado-stricken kitchen counter so he wouldn’t have to look at it, he picked up the phone to call—yet again—the employment agency. He’d just gotten through to the director when he saw Lisa make her way slowly down the hall, her legs and arms pockmarked with assorted bandages and Pokemon “bandy-aids,” but otherwise moving fairly well for someone who’d just done a forward vault off a moving bicycle.

He lifted a hand in acknowledgment, then pointed to the phone. With a little smile, she nodded, then lurched off toward the living room. In sensible little white sneakers, he noticed.

Just as he noticed that the bicycle shorts left little to the imagination—

“Mrs. Anderson! Hi!” He tore his gaze away from things he had no right to be gazing at and concentrated on the subject at hand. “It’s Steve Koleski…”

The conversation went straight down from there. Five minutes and a great many sighs later, all he had was a half-assed apology for Mrs. Hadley’s behavior and the possibility of a wonderful woman (an adjective Mrs. Anderson used with great frequency and with scant regard to reality) in her mid-fifties whose employer’s youngest child was graduating from high school and thus would be seeking a new position in about two weeks. Other than that, though, Mrs. Anderson was sorry to say, she had no one. No, she insisted, no one.

Steve hung up and groaned loudly enough to make George lift his head. Two weeks? How the hell was he supposed to work full-time and manage five kids on his own for two weeks? Granted, the older kids still had a month of school, so at least they were otherwise occupied most of the day, but he couldn’t impose on his mother to sit for Rosie that long. Not that she minded, but Rosie wasn’t his parents’ responsibility. She, and her siblings, were his. A responsibility he’d willingly accepted when he’d told Ted and Gloria he’d be thrilled to be the children’s godfather, even though, like most people, he never dreamed—

“Excuse me?”

Lisa’s perky accent jarred him out of his musings. She stood at the kitchen doorway, holding Rosie’s hand, a pair of creases nestled between her heavy brows. “Are you all right?”

Between the gentle, obviously genuine concern in Lisa’s voice and the way she and Rosie had clearly bonded in such a short period of time, it was everything Steve could do to keep himself together. But he did. He had to. “More or less,” he said with a shrug. “It’s just been a doozy of a morning, that’s all.”

Lisa quirked her bright red mouth. “And having a cycling casualty to tend didn’t help matters any, I’m sure.”

“That wasn’t your fault,” he said softly, and the quirk twitched into a smile.

“No, I don’t suppose it was. Well, except for being foolish enough to not think anyone else might be on the road, at least. Anyway,” she said on an exhaled breath, “if you tell me where sweetie’s clothes are, I can get her dressed for you.”

Steve was around the counter in three strides, shaking his head. “Forget it. You…sit somewhere. I’ll get her dressed—”

A tiny glower met his attempt to pick Rosie up. “No.”

Now down to his last milligram of patience, Steve squatted in front of her, matching her glower for glower. “Lisa’s not feeling very well, honey,” he tried, except, naturally, Lisa pulled the rug right out from under him by announcing in that prim little way she had that she was feeling just fine, thank you, and if he’d simply tell her where the child’s clothes were, they could get on with it.

“See?” Rosie said, and Steve gave up.

“Fine, fine.” He got to his feet. “She and the twins share a room, upstairs. Her clothes are in the small, white dresser under the window. Her shoes, however, could be in Alaska for all I know—”

“No, silly!” the child said, yanking her sandals up to her shoulders. “They’re right here!” Then she strutted out of the room, shaking her head.

They both followed the baby out into the hall, standing at the foot of the stairs and watching her ascent for a moment before Steve heard himself say, “Their parents were killed in a fire, last August.” He felt Lisa’s gaze zip to his face, heard the soft “oh” of surprise and sympathy fall from her lips. “I got this call, two-something in the morning. Mac, in hysterics, calling from the hospital.”

For the rest of his life, he’d remember that night. That call. The devastating feeling of utter helplessness that swept through him when he tore into the ER to find a scared, filthy, thirteen-year-old boy trying to keep it together for the sake of his younger brothers and sisters, a kid refusing to let the social worker the police had quickly gotten on the case take them away, insisting his Uncle Steve would be there, his Uncle Steve would take care of them….

“Steven?”

He glanced over, nodded. Continued. “They’d just bought this old house, over in another township. We knew the wiring was bad…” He paused, collected himself. “I was supposed to go up there the next weekend, start working on it. The fire started in the wall between the kitchen and Dylan’s bedroom, in the middle of the night. Ted and Mac—he’s the oldest boy—woke up first, got the twins and the baby out, then realized Gloria had apparently gone in to Dylan sometime during the night and fallen asleep on his bed. Ted tried to get to them, but a wall collapsed, trapping him.”

He stopped, tried unsuccessfully to quell the nausea that swamped him everytime he had to explain. “He never had a chance. But before the fire department got there, Mac…Mac went back in. He managed to get Dylan out through a window, but his mother…” He shook his head. “That ratty old quilt Rosie drags around? That’s about all that was left, only because she took it with her when Ted grabbed her from her crib.”

“Oh, God,” Lisa whispered. When he dared to look at her, he saw something in her expression that soared far beyond compassion. Light from the living room windows slashed across features he could only liken to the stark, pure beauty of a desert landscape as emotion, naked and raw, writhed in her enormous blue eyes. “How horrible for them. For you.”

And in that moment, even though he didn’t know who the hell this woman was, he was sorely tempted to believe he could trust her with his life.

A temptation that scared the hell out of him.

Deliberately looking away, Steve leaned against the wall at the foot of the stairs and let out a sigh. “It’s been…hard, to say the least. Hell, my life has been about as uneventful as a human’s can be, I suppose. Oh, there’ve been the usual disappointments and heartaches, but nothing like…”

He lifted his hand, let it fall with a slap to his thigh. “Criminy, Lisa, I’m in so far over my head with this, it isn’t even funny. Dylan nearly died, too, from smoke inhalation. And even though he won’t talk about it much, I know Mac blames himself for not being able to save his mother. Each kid reacted, is still reacting, differently. Some days seem fairly normal, you know? And I think, okay, maybe we’re moving on, maybe the worst is over. And then, bam! We’re right back where we started and all I know is if there was any way in God’s earth I could take away their pain, I would. But I just don’t know how. And why the hell am I telling you all this?”

She’d been standing apart from him, just listening, her arms folded underneath her breasts. Now those breasts rose with the force of her sigh as she shook her head. “Because you needed to,” she said, just as a very indignant little girl appeared at the head of the stairs, demanding to know where “lady” was.

For at least a full minute, Sophie barely heard Rosie’s chatter.

Her work brought her into constant contact with human trials. Yet, for all the horror stories she’d heard, the aftermaths she’d witnessed, none had pierced her heart more than this. But why? Certainly, as tragic as this situation was, the plight of these particular children was no more poignant than the thousands of others she’d been privy to over the years.

But it was, she realized, much more personal, somehow. And rekindled memories she’d thought long since faded and worn and harmless.

Not to mention stirred all sorts of highly inappropriate feelings for the man who’d taken all this on, feelings she had no business entertaining, even for a few minutes. Still, when was the last time she’d met a man strong enough to admit he didn’t have all the answers?

And who would have guessed that masculine vulnerability could be so appealing?

Seated on Rosie’s toddler bed—which was so close to the girls’ bunk beds, there was barely any room to move—Sophie took in the heaps of scattered clothes, the open, jumbled closet, the pop star posters covering most of the wall space, the PC set up on somebody’s desk. Her closet was twice the size of this room, she thought in amazement as she helped the toddler into a pair of patterned shorts and a bright blue T-shirt. She imagined the cramped quarters bred a fair number of fights, whether the girls had chosen to live like oysters in a tin or not. But she also imagined, despite everything the girls had gone through, there was a lot of giggling in here at night when they were supposed to be asleep, a lot of secrets shared and promises made. A sense of normalcy Sophie had always craved but never known.

And never would. Not really.

Tenderness stirred languidly through Sophie as Rosie showed off an obviously new collection of stuffed animals, snapping into something no less tender but far sharper when she remembered the fierceness of Steven’s gaze when he spoke of the children, the haunted, hungry shadows in his eyes whenever he looked at her. Oh, she doubted he had any idea of the shadows’ existence, that anyone else could see them, but they were there all the same.

It was, however, not her place to even begin to identify those shadows, let alone attempt to dispel them. Because if she let herself get close enough to do either, they would surely suck her in.

So she smiled instead for her new little friend, tentatively touching her sleek, dark hair even though she knew just how dangerous it was to allow herself that simple luxury of touching, of making a connection which would, inevitably, have to be broken. “Shall we go find Steven?” she said, and Rosie nodded, spinning around to grab the drab, precious little quilt off the bed.