Tender Loving Care Read online

  “Oh?”

  “And you’re obviously fond of them, too. The other half of the toys in their closet came from Uncle Rafe, and I saw you tussling with the two of them on the bed. They adore you.”

  “They adore you just as much.”

  Standoff. Zoe stirred her coffee and then fussed with her black button earrings. When she got around to looking at Rafe again, she found a deep groove wedged between his brows. His voice brushed her nerves with wet velvet. “I apologize,” he said quietly.

  “For what?”

  “For assuming it would automatically be easier for you to take on kids because you’re a woman.”

  “Maybe…with another woman…that might be a natural assumption,” she admitted. He just kept staring at her with that pensive frown. Silence lapped up the seconds; words wouldn’t come.

  “Would it be easier to talk somewhere else?” he asked finally. She’d barely nodded before he was reaching for his corduroy jacket.

  The night was bleak and cold. Clumps of gray-crusted snow clung to the sidewalks March-fashion; winter wasn’t quite ready to give up its hold. Cars hummed past them, tires sizzling on wet streets; streetlamps illuminated a city that needed the wash of spring rains.

  Zoe turned up her coat collar and jammed her hands in her pockets, vibrantly aware of the man’s long stride next to her. “I can’t have children,” she said quietly.

  “So you said. But, as I told you, I’m in the same boat.”

  Impatience surged through Zoe. This was so hard to talk about, and it was worse with a stranger. “I mean physically I can’t have them. Three years ago, I had an infection that got out of hand, and following that an operation. None of which is any of your business or your problem, but I know exactly why Janet wrote me in as a guardian in case anything happened to her. She knew her kids would be my only chance to have children-only she was terribly wrong, and in the best interests of the twins, I think I have to explain all this to you. You’ve got to understand why you’re the only one who can take them.”

  “Zoe…” Rafe stopped dead on the street. His voice was suddenly gruff and low, and somehow intimate.

  She kept on walking and talking, never once looking at him as she told him her story. The words came out blithe and brisk, emotionless. Water over the dam. No point in crying over spilled milk. All of the clichés were operative. When catastrophe hit, life didn’t end, and neither did sunlight or laughter. She’d had to keep that firmly in mind, because there’d been a time when she’d carelessly assumed that children would be part of her life. Didn’t most women want children? “But not anymore,” she said, bringing her explanation to a conclusion. “I’ve built a life that doesn’t include kids. I’m sure that sounds cold-blooded and selfish-”

  The presence of his hands on her shoulders forced her to stop walking. She felt cold, smooth fingers pushing back her hair, tugging her coat collar up against the snapping wind.

  She stared at his chin. “You know how people are about kids. A total stranger sees a baby and goes up and cluck-clucks and makes cooing noises. Well, I don’t cluck and I don’t coo anymore; I walk on by.” She said fiercely, “It took too damn long for me to accept the results of that surgery. I don’t want to be around kids, to be reminded constantly of what I’m missing. I just want to be left alone to live my life my own way. Maybe I am cold-blooded and selfish-”

  “Shut up, would you, Zoe?”

  He said it softly, as his thumbs brushed the moisture from her cheeks. His touch was as gentle as silk, but Zoe felt mortified. There was no excuse for allowing tears to well up in front of a relative stranger. There was a time when she’d cried herself dry, but that had been three years ago. Now she’d cultivated insensitivity toward children, and she couldn’t imagine where the tears came from.

  His hands dropped to his sides. She set the furious walking pace, more than a match for his lithe stride. Block followed block, all in the wrong direction, but he never said a word. When he did murmur something, it was completely unexpected. “There was a man in your life, wasn’t there?”

  “I’m twenty-six,” she said wearily. “Of course there was a man. And there’s probably a woman in your life right now, affecting how or when or if you could take on the kids.”

  He hesitated. “Yes.”

  She shot him a look. “A close relationship? Does she like children?”

  His sudden grin was inscrutable. “Sorry to disappoint you, Zoe, but marriage is not in the offing.” He added wryly, “I’ve never been opposed to marriage or to kids, but settling down has never come into the picture, because my job takes me from here to Timbuktu in search of earthquakes. My work’s only part of it, though. During what little time I’ve spent around those two devils, we got on fine, but that’s not the same thing as being qualified to raise them as a single parent. There’s no way I could tackle them alone.”

  They turned back, and in time she recognized the bar’s lights and the all-but-empty parking lot. Huddled on the freezing car seat a few minutes later, she waited for Rafe to start the engine, and found herself studying him.

  His strong profile was shadowed, the expression in his eyes hidden beneath the shelf of his brows. His rumpled hair brushed his coat collar; she could smell the faintest hint of citrus and sandalwood, and she was not surprised in the least that he already had a woman in his life. She could still feel the impression of his thumb brushing her cheek, the strength of his hand on her shoulder, the warmth and compassion in his eyes when he’d listened to her.

  They didn’t talk again until they pulled into the Gregor driveway. Only the porch light gleamed from the dark house; the quiet neighborhood was asleep. Rafe turned off the engine and pocketed the key, and then just sat there. “Solutions aren’t appearing out of the woodwork,” he mentioned dryly.

  That fast, the only thing on her mind was the children. “No.” She sighed. “I’ve done the best I can to explain why I can’t take them, but they’re still Janet’s children. We’ve got to decide what’s best for them…”

  “I’m not exactly in line for a potential parent of the year award. But I’ll be damned if I could live with myself if I turned them over to someone they didn’t know.”

  “I know,” she agreed unhappily. “Especially now, Rafe. I don’t think either child understands what’s happened yet. Aaron seems particularly confused. They need someone familiar in their lives, someone they already care about and trust, someone who had first-hand knowledge of their lives with Janet and Jonathan.”

  “So they go with one of us,” Rafe murmured, and turned to face her. His eyes glinted with a speculative light, and his tone was thoughtful. “Or both of us.”

  “Pardon?”

  “We don’t have to come up with a permanent solution this instant, just a temporary one. You feel you can’t handle the kids, and so do I, but we agree we’re not about to leave them with strangers.”

  “Yes…”

  “They’ve just had their world rocked to hell. They need two parents.”

  “Yes…” Why did she have the feeling that a slow-rolling rock was picking up momentum on its course down a darned long hill?

  “I don’t know how I can manage to get time off, but I will. If we took them to your place in Washington, you could keep your job, and I could watch over the boys. For a short time only, of course. But they’d have both of us there, and we’d have the chance to live with them, know them, get them through these rough first weeks without Janet and Jonathan. And in the meantime, we’d both be in a better position to make long-term decisions about what’s best for them.”

  “Wait a minute,” Zoe said desperately. And Rafe obligingly waited while she struggled for something to say. “I don’t see…I mean, obviously we can’t…” She took a breath. “There’s no way that arrangement would work, and anyway, wherever you live has to be better for kids than where I live.”

  He shrugged. “Where we go isn’t the point. Sticking together is, for the kids’ sake.” He climbed o
ut of the car and then peered back in. “I can see from the look on your face what you think of the idea. You think I feel any different? But dammit, do we have any other choice?”

  Chapter Two

  At three minutes past six the next morning, Rafe leaned against the open doorway to Zoe’s bedroom. He watched as thirty pounds climbed on her back, and then another thirty pounds tried hard, giggling, to climb on top of him.

  “Aren’t you awake yet, Snookums? Uncle Rafe is!”

  “Wonderful,” she murmured groggily.

  “Uncle Rafe said you’d tell us about the big jet we’re going on. Come on, Snookums! We let you sleep in forever!”

  “I can see that by the clock. Good heavens, what time did you wake up Uncle Rafe?” Carefully, she dislodged both of the imps.

  He didn’t mind that she hadn’t noticed him yet. Fresh from sleep, her skin had a rosy blush, and morning sunshine tossed gold in her tangled hair. She’d slept in a man’s baggy green T-shirt, so loose at the throat that it bared almost all of one slim white shoulder. Her lazy stretch made him smile…and also made him conscious of every lithe curve of her body.

  “So you already talked to your Uncle Rafe, did you?”

  “Does Parker have to go, or is it just me?” Aaron asked hopefully.

  “I’m going, too, you twirp. We’re going to Uncle Rafe’s house, right, Zoe?”

  “First,” she agreed sleepily. “First we’re going to spend a few weeks at Uncle Rafe’s house, and then a few weeks at my house. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”

  He heard the effort she made to put enthusiasm in her voice. Last night, she’d done her best to talk him out of the idea. And last night, she hadn’t been as relaxed as she was now. Rolling on her stomach with her little rump in the air, she rested her chin in her hands as she talked to the urchins.

  Everything about her seemed to touch him. He couldn’t remember being moved by any other woman in the same way. To look at Zoe was to see a lover, a woman who spilled over with her own unique brand of feminine warmth and sensuality, an intriguing blend of fragility and strength.

  They’d battled until nearly three this morning…a gentle battle. Children were a painful subject for Zoe-she was so sure she wanted nothing to do with them. One look at her with the kids and Rafe couldn’t fathom how she could imagine herself as uncaring. From bits and pieces, he’d guessed that a man she loved had broken off with her when he’d discovered she was barren.

  Maybe it was at that exact point that he’d known he wanted her with him. Why really made no sense. He didn’t love her, didn’t know her well enough to love her, but there was something there. Something haunting in her green eyes when she talked about children, something fragile that made him want to protect her, something in her smile that made him want to bask in more of those smiles. He couldn’t let that something go.

  She hadn’t backed down until he’d agreed they’d go to Montana first. He knew why. She was sure he’d become attached to the boys when he saw them on his own turf. He was supposed to see that the kids belonged with him-she’d been perfectly honest about it.

  Rafe hadn’t been quite so honest with her, and figured he’d better not be. Not that he needed his life turned upside down by the advent of two children, but he’d have taken them by himself if he’d had to. Deserting the kids was no more of a possibility for him than it was for Zoe. To let her know that, though, would mean watching the fragile nightingale fly away. He’d had to make it very clear he wouldn’t take them at all unless she came along, too, and that even then, he would do so unwillingly.

  Maybe it was crazy to act on that first overpowering surge of attraction and compassion and simple fascination for a woman. He’d never been impulsive. He’d never acted purely on instinct. Rashness wasn’t even part of his character.

  At least it hadn’t been until last night.

  “When do we go, Zoe? Today?”

  “Not quite that fast, Aaron. It’ll take us a little time to arrange things.”

  “Do I get to take my X-Men?”

  “Yup.”

  “Do we get to have macaroni and cheese?”

  “Yup.”

  “Do we get to stay up until nine?”

  “Nope.”

  “Where do we get to go after we go to your house?” Parker wanted to know.

  Zoe wasn’t sure what made her turn her head, but she was suddenly aware of the man in the doorway. His dark hair rumpled, Rafe was wearing jeans but nothing else. If he were any kind of normal human being, he’d have the courtesy to look as terrible as she felt after a sleepless night.

  Instead, his eyes were a wide-awake blue, and his body looked all sexy and warm and compellingly touchable. The eyes, the body and the man disturbed her. She figured as soon as he opened his mouth, his voice would disturb her, too. Rafe talked in a slow, easy drawl that could wear a woman down like erosion. That voice had worn her down last night. He’d made it seem as though the only choice they could make was to take on the kids together.

  Maybe it was their only choice, and maybe all they’d been talking about the night before was the kids. Now, though, he was staring at her in such a different way, as if…

  Parker anchored both of his pudgy palms on her cheeks and firmly turned her face in his direction. “You are not answering my question, Zoe,” he said irritably.

  “Pardon, honey?”

  “Where are we going after your house?”

  “We’ll talk about that later,” Rafe said from the doorway. “First, we thought you guys might like a vacation at both our houses. Okay?”

  “Sure,” Aaron agreed. “Is Mommy going to be there?”

  “I’ve told you and told you,” Parker said testily. “Mommy is in heaven. She’s with Daddy. I don’t know why you’re so stupid.”

  “I am not stupid.”

  Zoe leaped out of bed in time to grab Parker. Rafe took Aaron. En route to averting the slugging match, her T-shirted fanny bumped into his jeaned thigh. Both jumped. Zoe was startlingly, disastrously, sinkingly aware of the one critical drawback to all their carefully argued-out plans.

  She couldn’t possibly live with a man she barely knew.

  Slinging one kid over his shoulder and carrying the other on his hip, Rafe called from the doorway, “Want me to make coffee, Snookums?”

  “Zoe,” she corrected him irritably, but he was already gone from the door.

  She tried to convince herself that everything would be all right when they got to Montana. Rafe was so sure he wasn’t single-parent material, so sure he couldn’t handle the urchins alone. But he’d be wonderful with them; she knew he would.

  And as soon as he saw that, she could get out of their lives. Away from the children, and the pain and helplessness that being around kids always brought on her. And away from a man who already disturbed her far too much.

  As soon as her teeth unclenched and her stomach dropped back down from the roof of the Jeep, Zoe unfastened her seat belt and turned to the boys. “Wasn’t that an exciting ride?” she said heartily.

  “Yeah! All those bumps.” Aaron giggled. “I thought one time we were going to drop off the mountain for sure!”

  So had Zoe. Her nerves still did. The last zigzag of jagged road was enough to make geographical shock sink in. Montana was supposed to be flat, wasn’t it? With a few buttes and lots of cows?

  Rafe’s square of Montana was entirely vertical. The snow-covered slopes were a blaze of diamonds under a brilliant winter sun, and the pine woods looked weighted down under swirls and whorls of white cotton candy. A pale-blue sky stretched on forever, and the air was so fresh it burned her lungs. Silence, solitude and space stamped the area as a man’s country. Rafe had told the kids they’d see elk, deer, fox and an occasional cougar or wolf if they were lucky.

  Zoe favored a different brand of luck. She liked the sea, neighbors and the ability to drive to a grocery store without risking her life on a spine-jarring roller-coaster track that Rafe called a road. Wolves were
not her personal cup of tea, and the mountains gave her vertigo.

  “Wonderful place for the boys!” she murmured to Rafe. “All this terrific space, things to climb, open air…” As soon as the two boys tumbled outside, she started gathering their gear from the backseat. “I can’t think of a better spot on earth for kids to grow up.”

  Perhaps after ninety trips, the Jeep would be empty. Two suitcases had taken care of the kids’ clothes, but then came the Play-Doh, books, X-Men action dolls, a sacred rock collection, approximately five billion unleaveable stuffed animals, Parker’s blanket…

  “What are we having for lunch, Zoe?”

  “We’re starving,” Parker reminded her, which she wasn’t likely to forget. He’d told her that at least fifteen times in the past twenty minutes.

  She paused long enough to softly ruffle his hair. He could remind her another forty times about lunch, and she still wouldn’t care. Anything was better than that horrible moment on the plane when he’d suddenly started crying for his mommy. Rafe had miraculously come up with a pack of watermelon-flavored bubble gum.

  If she could have guaranteed Aaron would never cry again, she’d have bought a life’s supply of watermelon-flavored chewing gum.

  “Where are we going to sleep?”

  “Where’s your sled?”

  “Where’s the TV?”

  Zoe’s quick glance at Rafe was filled with wry humor. Four-year-old boys never seemed to stop talking, and they excelled in asking questions that adults had no answers for. Still, her ready smile suddenly hovered in no-man’s-land. Rafe was slowly but surely tackling all the boy’s questions, but his eyes were fastened on her. On her mouth. On the sweep of a blush across her cheeks. On the yellow tam perched frivolously on her head.

  Rapidly, she looked away and started piling gear in her arms at the speed of sound. Next to her, Rafe did the same. Dressed in a fisherman’s sweater, jeans and boots, he looked the part of a tall, strong mountain man, and her diametric opposite in every way. She couldn’t imagine why something hummed between them every time their eyes met.