Plain-Jane Princess
Karen Templeton
Incompetent! She couldn't cook, clean or operate the dishwasher. But Steven Koleski had to admit the mysterious woman did have a way with his newfound family…and his lonely heart.It was the opportunity of a lifetime for Princess Sophie of Carpathia: two weeks of living like a regular person. On top of that, caring for children was her passion. But with five of them tugging on her heartstrings and their sexy guardian bestowing fiery kisses on her, how could she ever return to life as a princess when her fairy-tale ending was right here…right now?
He had no idea who this woman was, where she was from, why she was here or when she was leaving.
For all he knew she was married. Or had a boyfriend. Or was on the lam.
Besides, if his heart were a neon sign, it would be flashing No Vacancy. He had kids to raise. Crises to avert.
Lisa was holding out her hand, and, not wanting to be rude, Steve took it, grateful that electricity didn’t shoot up his arm from her touch. That happened only in those books his sister used to hide in her sweater drawer, anyway. But it had been a long time since he’d held a woman’s hand in his, and he had to admit, it felt pretty damn good.
And boy, did he like that smile.
And boy, did he have to get the hell out of there.
Dear Reader,
As always, Intimate Moments offers you six terrific books to fill your reading time, starting with Terese Ramin’s Her Guardian Agent. For FBI agent Hazel Youvella, the case that took her back to revisit her Native American roots was a very personal one. For not only did she find the hero of her heart in Native American tracker Guy Levoie, she discovered the truth about the missing child she was seeking. This wasn’t just any child—this was her child.
If you enjoyed last month’s introduction to our FIRSTBORN SONS in-line continuity, you won’t want to miss the second installment. Carla Cassidy’s Born of Passion will grip you from the first page and leave you longing for the rest of these wonderful linked books. Valerie Parv takes a side trip from Silhouette Romance to debut in Intimate Moments with a stunner of a reunion romance called Interrupted Lullaby. Karen Templeton begins a new miniseries called HOW TO MARRY A MONARCH with Plain-Jane Princess, and Linda Winstead Jones returns with Hot on His Trail, a book you should be hot on the trail of yourself. Finally, welcome Sharon Mignerey back and take a look at her newest, Too Close for Comfort.
And don’t forget to look in the back of this book to see how Silhouette can make you a star.
Enjoy them all, and come back next month for more of the best and most exciting romance reading around.
Yours,
Leslie J. Wainger
Executive Senior Editor
Plain-Jane Princess
Karen Templeton
KAREN TEMPLETON’s
background in the theater and the arts, and a lifelong affinity for love stories, led inevitably to her writing romances. Growing up, she studied art, ballet and drama, and wanted to someday strut her stuff on Broadway. She was accepted into North Carolina School of the Arts as a drama major, but switched to costume design.
Twelve years in New York City provided a variety of work experiences, including assisting costume designers at a large costume house, employment in the bridal department buyer’s offices of several department stores, grunt work for a sportswear designer and answering phones for a sports uniform manufacturer. New York also provided her with her husband, Jack, and the first two of her five sons.
The family then moved to New Mexico, where Karen established an in-home mail-order crafts business that she gave up the instant the family bought their first computer. Now writing romances full-time, she says she’s finally found an outlet for all that theatrical training—she gets to write, produce, design, cast and play all the parts!
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Chapter 1
“Please, Princess Sophie—just one more?”
“Oh, yes! Please…please…please…?” went up a chorus of soft voices from a sea of wide, eager, predominantly dark eyes.
“Oh, darlings, I’m so sorry…” Princess Sophie hugged the tiny chestnut-haired girl who’d sat on her lap while she’d read to the children, then set her gently on the playroom’s carpeted floor, laughing when the mite knocked her glasses askew. Since it was early evening, some of the younger ones were already in their pajamas, ready for bed. “I’d love to stay, I truly would. But my Baba would scold if I got home late tonight.”
She stood, only to immediately bend down, arms held wide, her heart both swelling and breaking as most of the children swarmed into her embrace.
“I have to use the toilet,” a tiny blond girl announced, holding out her hand expectantly, and Sophie laughed.
“Well, come on, then, Tiana—”
“Oh, no, Your Highness,” one of the staff intervened, snatching the child’s hand from Sophie’s. “You needn’t bother yourself with that.”
“It’s no bother, really….”
But off child and caregiver went, the little girl waving shyly to Sophie over her shoulder.
Ah, well…her grandmother would scold, indeed. Sophie said her goodbyes to a staff she’d more or less handpicked ever since the palace had set up the Children’s Home ten years ago. No one country—and certainly not one as tiny as Carpathia—could possibly see to the needs of the hundreds of children in the area orphaned each year due to the seemingly impossible-to-heal friction between various ethnic groups that regularly tangled just beyond Carpathia’s borders, but one did what one could. And she was proud, she thought as she mounted her bicycle for the ten-minute ride through the village’s narrow winding streets, then up the hill to the palace, of how many adoptions, both local and abroad, she’d been able to arrange as a result of her work on the children’s behalf.
And for those children not fortunate enough to find temporary refuge here, she spearheaded a half-dozen worldwide campaigns, through an equal number of charities, to secure their safety and happiness.
A never-ending and often thankless task, to be sure. And one, she now feared, that was finally taking its toll on her personal life.
Such as it was.
Dusk had a firm grip on the countryside when Sophie let the bicycle drop by the gate to the kitchen garden, then ran around to the side entrance, bounding up the granite steps two at a time, much as she’d done as a child. Servants curtsied or bowed as she raced through a succession of sparkling, lavishly appointed rooms, until, panting, her chignon disintegrating into a tangled, thumping loop against her back, she tore into her ivory-and-gold bedroom. Ripping off her jacket and blouse, she dived into her room-size closet.
“Sophie!”
“I know, I know,” she called out to her grandmother, Princess Ivana, Carpathia’s ruling monarch for the last forty-odd years. “I’m sorry!” Ignoring the array of glittering gowns in their plastic shrouds behind her, Sophie chose instead a simple, long-sleeved, dove-gray silk. Now overheated, she dashed across the Aubusson carpet, tossing the dress onto the bed’s ivory satin comforter. Out of the corner of her eye, Sophie took in her petite grandmother’s heavily beaded gown, the understated diamond tiara sparkling in a cloud of pearlescent white hair.
The exasperated set to the elder princess’s mouth.
“The only good thing about being eighty years old is that I can no longer say my grandchildren are driving me to an early grave. The guests have been here for nearly a half hour!”
Sophie avoided the pair of astute black eyes trained on her. “I’m sorry, Baba,” she repeated, carefully, dutifully, her loose hair hindering her movements as she wriggled into a pair of sheer tights, then a floor-length silk half slip. “The children all had something to show or tell me, it seemed. I just didn’t have the heart to disappoint them. Especially as I won’t be there again for some time.”
She slipped the dress over her head, reaching around to do up the short zipper on her own as she slipped on a pair of matching silk pumps. A moment later she plunked down at her dressing table, where she glowered at her reflection.
“All your mother’s beautiful gowns at your disposal,” Princess Ivana said softly behind her, “and still you dress like a little mouse.”
Concern, more than censure, colored her grandmother’s words, but Sophie still bristled. After all, the elder princess was still a beauty. As had been Sophie’s mother, Princess Ekaterina. And big brother Alek was no slouch, either. On him, the square jaw, the clefted chin, made sense. On her…well, it was hard not to wonder why, considering the genetic odds of her turning out at least reasonably attractive, she should now be facing great-uncle Heinrick’s reflection.
Sophie took a brush to her dust-colored hair, her overlarge mouth pulled into a grimace underneath a pair of unremarkable gray eyes—not even silver, like Alek’s—half-hidden behind a pair of round, tortoiseshell-framed glasses.
At least the children didn’t care what she looked like.
The silver-backed brush clattered to the table as Sophie gathered up her hair, deftly twisted it into a coil at the nape of her neck. “My wearing one of my mother’s gowns,” she said, “would be like putting weeds in a crystal vase.”
“Oh, honestly, child!” Her grandmother’s vexation crackled more than the flames in the marble fireplace across the room. Though the calendar said late May, evenings tended to be chilly in the mountains of Central Europe. “I do not understand why you put yourself down so! If only you’d wear a little makeup, your contact lenses…”
There was little point in commenting, so Sophie didn’t. A brittle moment or two passed before Ivana said, “Jason Broadhurst called for you this afternoon, so I invited him to join us, as well.”
“Jason? What on earth is he doing here?” Sophie inserted a pair of natural pearl studs in her earlobes. “I thought he was in Atlanta, seeing to the new store’s opening.”
“That was last month.”
Two princesses watched each other in the mirror for a long moment.
“He seems very fond of you, my dear.”
“We’re friends,” Sophie said, slicking a clear gloss—her only concession to makeup—over her lips. “Nothing more.”
“Since he’s asked you to marry him, one would assume his feelings have…changed.”
“He only wants a mother for Andy, Baba.”
“And many a marriage of convenience has led to a love affair.”
Sophie stared at her reflection, her mouth set, ignoring the burning sensation at the backs of her eyes as she yanked open her jewelry case, grabbed a string of pearls. “And beggars can’t be choosers?”
“Oh, don’t be perverse! That’s not what I meant!”
Sophie struggled with the necklace’s clasp for a moment, finally ramming it home. “In any case, marrying Jason would put a severe crimp in my work.”
“And working for the benefit of everyone else’s children is more important than having children of your own?”
Every muscle in Sophie’s back clenched. “No,” she said softly after a moment. “Not more important. But you know as well as I do how many of those children have no one else to champion them.”
And her charity work was the only aspect of her life over which she had at least some control, some choice, where she was respected for her drive, her efficiency, her brain, more than her position. Where her appearance didn’t matter. Once she married, however, she would be expected to not only continue fulfilling her royal obligations, which were onerous enough, but take on the social duties of a wife as well. And for what? A loveless marriage? Jason’s family business interests, including a chain of internationally renowned department stores, would naturally require a wife who was both viable and visible. For heaven’s sake—she barely had any life of her own as it was. Yes, marriage to the handsome widower would give her a child to love and help raise—though the prospect of giving Andy any siblings was apparently a slim one, since Jason had made it quite clear he did not wish a bedmate—but as much as she yearned for motherhood, this was one sacrifice she was loathe to make.
Sophie suddenly realized her grandmother had come up behind her to lay her almost weightless hands on her shoulders. She very nearly jumped: while she’d never doubted her grandmother’s affection for her or her brother, Alek, the elder princess was not known for her demonstrativeness. “You are very precious to me. You know that, yes?”
Startled, Sophie could only gawk at their reflections in the mirror. “Of course, Baba—”
“So it pains me, when you are unhappy.”
“I’m not—”
“You are. You and Alek both. You think I do not recognize the signs, that I cannot tell? First Alek, with his gallivanting hither and yon and his women and his race cars…” She sucked in a sharp, worried breath, shook her head. “And you.” Another head shake. “Yes, you do the monarchy proud, with your work. But I am also worried that you are perhaps…hiding behind your speaking engagements and conference calls and committee meetings?”
Knowing a con job when she heard one, Sophie eyed her grandmother again in the mirror. “And you think my marrying Jason would be a solution?”
“I think…sometimes you see only problems, instead of opportunities. Love can grow, child. If you give it a chance.”
“Grandmother—”
But the princess patted her shoulders, twice, an enormous pear-shaped diamond ring flashing in the light from the small Baccarat lamp on Sophie’s dressing table, then moved away. “We must go down.”
Despite a heavy weariness that seemed to rob her of even an interest in breathing, Sophie managed to rise from the bench, glared at her mirrored twin one last time, then followed her grandmother down the stairs, to once again do her duty, be where she was supposed to be, make sure she did nothing to upset the apple cart.
Perhaps her brother’s rebelliousness had been partially to blame for propelling her into her role as the “good” one. Or perhaps wanting to please, to do what was expected of her, was simply part and parcel of her nature, she couldn’t tell. The problem was, the older she got, the more those expectations seemed to be increasing. And whereas at one time she lived for the approval her obedience garnered, now she felt suffocated by it.
In other words, she didn’t want to play anymore.
“The World Relief Fund conference in the States,” Princess Ivana said. “That’s next week, isn’t it?”
They approached the drawing room where the guests were no doubt waiting. A pair of servants opened the carved double doors; one announced their presence:
“Their Highnesses, Princess Ivana and Princess Sophie.”
Dread coiled in the pit of Sophie’s stomach like a nasty, filthy beastie as she waited out the wave of helpless irony that washed over her, through her. That other little girls would wish to be princesses had always seemed so alien to the plain little princess who, even at the height of her approval-seeking mode, only ever wanted to be as ordinary as she looked, to have at least some say over her life. Her heart. How many times throughout her life had she been compelled to sacrifice her own desires for her position?
“Yes, Grandmother. Next week. And did I tell you—I’m on the short list for Director when Manuela de Santiago retires next month?”
And how many times would she be compelled to in the future?
“Oh? And…is this something you want to do?”
Sophie plastered a smile to her face as both the Italian ambassador and Jason swept across the room toward her like a pair of trout after the same fly.
“Yes, Baba,” she whispered. “I truly think I would. Certainly a bloody sight more than I want to be here right now.”
“Now, child,” her grandmother whispered back, “as the Americans would say, make nice.”
And the beastie shouted, Run!
Of course, she didn’t. Not then, at least. Being her stolid, staunch little self, Princess Sophie would no more have shirked her responsibilities than she would have danced naked in the palace fountain. In February. Except that, over the next several days, the beastie inside grew larger and nastier and hairier until she finally realized, two days into the conference in Detroit, that if she didn’t take some sort of drastic action to get her head screwed on straight again, said head was likely to explode.
So now, seated in the taxi with her bodyguard Gyula, on their way to the airport for the return trip to Carpathia, Sophie pressed one hand to her roiling stomach as she craned her neck to glower at the equally roiling clouds visible through the taxi’s smeared windows. Oh, she’d come up with a plan, all right. Now all she had to do was pull it off. Without throwing up. Sane people simply did not do things like she was about to do.
Which is precisely what everyone would say: Whatever had possessed that quiet, dependable young women to do something so…so…impulsive? And even now, as her heart jack-hammered underneath her serviceable taupe raincoat, she’d left little to chance. Except, perhaps, for opportunity, which not even she could control.
Her heartrate kicked up another notch as she lifted a leather-gloved hand and yanked down the end of the muted paisley silk scarf she’d turbaned around her head. Should anyone ask, she hadn’t had time to wash her hair. Thus far, no one had.
“You are well, Your Highness?”
Though spoken softly, the words ripped through the taxi’s muggy interior, prickling the skin at the back of Sophie’s neck.
“Yes, yes, Gyula—I’m fine,” she said in their native language over the whine and thunk of the taxi’s windshield wipers. Although her bodyguard spoke English, after a fashion, she could tell the effort strained him. “The rain is making me irritable, that’s all.”
Gyula nodded toward the large Macy’s bag at her feet. “You did some shopping this time, I see.”
“I couldn’t very well come to the States and not pick up a few things, now could I?”
She thought she saw a trace of bewilderment flutter across the bodyguard’s features. Not that it was any of his business if she chose to go on a shopping spree. It was just that she never had before. In fact, it was almost a joke among the other European royals not only how much the Carpathian princess loathed to shop, but how hopelessly unfashionable she was. Not that it was likely, considering her recent purchases, that opinion would change.
They reached the airport a few minutes later, after which Sophie stood huddled underneath her raincoat while Gyula paid the driver and checked through their minimal luggage, wishing like bloody hell her stomach would stop its incessant torquing. The bodyguard then reached for both the shopping bag and her oversize canvas tote.
She clutched them to her, almost too late remembering not to let her eyes widen behind her glasses. “No, no—I’ve got them.” Then, silently, she and Gyula trooped through a sea of damp, harried bodies to the gate, only to discover their flight had been temporarily grounded due to the weather.
And if that wasn’t fate giving her the nod, she didn’t know what was.
“Shall I hold your coat, Miss?” Gyula asked after they wriggled through a horde of passengers to the waiting area. “We may be here for a while—”
“No!” She swallowed. Smiled. “No, thank you, Gyula. I’m fine, really. Except…” She scanned the waiting area, her stomach taking another tumble when her gaze lit on the international ladies’ room symbol across the way.
Blood whooshed in her ears. “I just need to…” She nodded in the direction of the rest rooms.
Gyula nodded in reply.
Sophie’s legs shook so badly as she crossed the crowded floor she could barely feel her feet. Once inside the ladies’, she ducked into a far stall, sending up a silent prayer of thanks that there were at least twenty other women in the rest room, which lessened the likelihood of any one of them noticing that the woman who’d gone into the stall wasn’t the same person who’d be coming out.
Her breath coming in short, fevered pants, she peeled off two layers of clothes to uncover a cropped, beaded sweater and a pair of scandalously tight Capri pants. From the depths of the tote bag, she retrieved a pair of black platform wedgies which would add a good five inches to her five-foot-four, a small makeup bag, and another tote, larger than the first and a different color, folded into quarters, into which she transferred…everything. Somehow.
Dodging a boisterous toddler streaking away from his mother, Sophie tottered across the rest room to a sink where she shakily managed to put in a pair of dark blue contact lenses, then applied the makeup she’d practiced putting on for two hours last night. Nothing remarkable about any of it, she told herself as she spritzed styling gel into what was left of her hair, willing it into spikes. Just an ordinary airline passenger freshening up after her journey.
Then the contacts settled in enough for her to get a really good look at herself.
Oh, my.
She’d seen Mardi Gras floats less gaudy than this. Her startled gaze darted from the daffodil-yellow sweater that seemed to be taking inordinate delight in clinging to her breasts, to her sparkling, ruby nails, her crimson mouth, her smoky-teal eyelids, her…hair. Only the truly desperate—or the truly mad—would have butchered it like that. And then bleach the remnants Barbie blond.
Unfortunately, now she looked like great-uncle Heinrich in drag.
She twisted slightly to get a look at her profile in the tight pants and let out a soft gasp at the rather pert little backside winking back at her.
Goodness—where had that come from?
Well, never mind. While it may have seemed more sensible to become as inconspicuous as possible, in this case she had thought it far more prudent to divert attention away from her angular, and possibly familiar, face to other, not quite as well known, parts of her anatomy. So men would leer and women would roll their eyes and point out how tacky she looked to their daughters, but what was a little indignity compared with losing one’s grip?
Ferris-wheel size earrings, sunglasses, perfume—she told herself it was strictly coincidence that the women on either side of her simultaneously left the rest room—a stick of chewing gum…and she was ready.
Stomach quivering, legs quavering, Princess Sophie Elzbieta Vlastos of Carpathia—aka Lisa Stone, Bimbette Extraordinaire—made her unsteady way out of the rest room and right past Gyula, who was alternately frowning at the rest room and his watch. Oh, but it was everything she could do not to break into a run—except she would have surely done herself a mischief in these shoes!—but she knew her only chance in pulling this off lay in her ability to feign nonchalance. And so, chomping her gum and feigning her little heart out, she strolled through the terminal, stopping at a newsstand just long enough to collect several paperbacks and at least one leer, and out to the taxi queue.
She sucked in the damp, heavy air like a newly freed prisoner.
Oh, she’d undoubtedly be tracked down, eventually—any first-year detective could follow her Visa card’s glowing trail—but it would still take a while to find her. Undoubtedly, the palace would assume she’d gone much farther than a Michigan township barely sixty miles away.
If she ever got there, that is, since none of the first half dozen or so drivers she queried had the slightest notion where Spruce Lake was. As the minutes ticked by, the nerves she’d managed to quell long enough to get to this point renewed their assault, blasting her nonchalance—timorous to begin with—to smithereens. Her mouth dry as dust, she darted a furtive glance over her shoulder as she approached the next taxi. By now, surely Gyula would realize she’d gone missing—
“Excuse me?” She bent over to speak to the driver, swiping a collapsed spike of hair out of her eyes. “Do you know how to get to Spruce Lake?”
The driver, the human equivalent of a bulldog, eyed her for a moment, obviously taking in her lack of luggage, her jitters, her getup. Her accent, which, due to a number of factors, was more English than Prince Charles’s.
“You from Australia or somethin’?”
“Or something. Well?”
“Yeah, I know Spruce Lake,” the driver said. “Had a cousin lived out that way some years ago.” He adjusted his ample form in the seat, scratched his chin. “Takes close to an hour to get out there, though. And then there’s my time gettin’ back…I dunno…”
“Name your price.”
He squinted at her. “A hundred bucks.”
“Done.” She yanked open the door and scrambled into the back. Even Sophie knew a gouge when she heard one, but haggling could wait until the other end of the journey.
Where she’d be free.
Steve Koleski could feel the music teacher’s worried gaze through the back of his denim shirt. “It’s okay, Mr. L.,” he said, frowning himself at the tangle of wires that had vomited forth the instant he’d removed the plastic cover from the outlet behind the refrigerator. Whoever had done this job—he used the term loosely—should be shot. “It looks worse than it is.”
“I may be old, Steffan, but I am not blind. That is too many wires for such a small area, yes?”
“Shoot, Mr. L.—this is too many wires for Detroit. Damn good thing that outlet sparked on you when it did.” Steve pulled out the mass, which reminded him uncomfortably of his brain that morning, began untangling it. “Coulda been a lot worse.” A shaft of sunlight sliced across the all-white room, warming a shoulder stiff from far too much yard work the day before, as low music with a lot of violins trickled in from the living room. At his feet, one of a trio of fat, black cocker spaniels whined for attention.
Mr. L. snapped his fingers. “Susie, come over here and stop bothering the man.” Then to Steve, “Could I get you a cup of tea while you work? It’s a good forty-five minutes before my next student.”
Steve stopped the grimace just in time. “Yeah. Sure. That’d be great.”
As the old man shuffled to the other side of the kitchen, Steve pulled his wire cutters from his belt, then set to work sorting out the mess as his thoughts drifted, for the hundredth time that morning, to the near blowup he’d had with his housekeeper before he’d left. No matter how many times he explained that things in aquariums go hand in hand with fourteen-year-old boys, Mac’s latest acquisition had nearly sent Mrs. Hadley off the deep end. Nor did he suppose Rosie’s penchant for falling asleep in strange places was sitting any too well, either. The poor woman nearly had apoplexy when she’d turned on the basement light and seen the three-year-old curled up at the foot of the stairs, fast asleep. Of course, she’d assumed she’d taken a tumble and that it would be all her fault and she just couldn’t take that kind of pressure at her age….
So why’d you take the job? Steve had wanted to ask the pinch-faced woman. But he didn’t dare. He needed Mrs. Hadley, even if he—or the kids—didn’t exactly get all warm and fluttery thinking about her. She was the fourth housekeeper they’d had in eight months at a time when the kids desperately needed stability. Something was going to have to give, and soon.
Steve frowned at the wire cutters in his hand. Trying to make everybody happy was a real bitch, you know?
He swiped his forearm across his eyes to sop up a bead of sweat: the instant the rain had stopped, the temperature had begun to climb. “You want a regular two-gang outlet, or four?”
“Four, I think,” he heard over the sound of water thrumming into a teakettle. “A kitchen can’t have too many places to plug things in.” The pipes groaned when Mr. L. turned off the water. “Plumbing’s next, I suppose,” he said on a sigh. The old man’s boiled wool slippers scuffed across worn linoleum; the kettle clanked onto the old gas stove. Then he made a sound that was a cross between a chuckle and a wheeze. “This house and I, we’re a lot alike, you know? Keep patching things up, get another couple years out of us. Speaking of which…after you finish in here, would you mind taking a look at the ceiling fixture in the guest bedroom? I think it’s coming loose.” The kettle’s shrill whistle was cut off nearly before it began. “You like sugar?”
“No. Thanks,” Steve said, taking the mug of steaming tea from the prim little man in his gray slacks, white shirt and brightly patterned bow tie quivering at the base of a chicken-skin chin. “The guest room, huh?” He took a sip of the tea, just to be polite. “You got a taker?”
The old man laughed. For fun, he’d registered his spare room with the local bed and breakfast association last year, although, since tourism wasn’t exactly Spruce Lake’s claim to fame, he rarely had guests. Every once in a while, though, somebody’s cousin needed a place to stay while in town for a wedding, or some family would find his listing on the association’s Web site on the Internet and spend a night in town on the way from somewhere to somewhere else. “Yes, Steffan, I got a ‘taker,’ as you put it. A nice young woman who called yesterday, said she needed someplace quiet for a few days, maybe longer.”
A mild tremor of curiosity moseyed on through but didn’t stop. “It will be nice,” the old man continued, “having a little company, especially at night. During the day, I have my students, I can go out…but at night…” He shook his head. “The nights are hard.”
Refusing to believe that sharp right hook to his midsection was some sort of agreement—it wasn’t as if he was ever alone at night—Steve looked down to discover he’d finished off his tea. So he walked over and rinsed out his mug.
“This young lady,” Mr. L. went on. “She sounded maybe…a little lonely?”
Steve shook his head, swallowing down a weary laugh. Honest to Pete—one drawback to living in a small town was that everyone knew your business. Ever since the divorce, no less than a half-dozen people had tried to steer him in the direction of assorted cousins, unmarried daughters, and best friends’ sisters. A half grin tugging at his mouth, he turned around, wiping his hands on a dish towel. “Mr. L.? Just for the record? If things get so bad I’m reduced to being fixed up with a total stranger, just shoot me, okay?” Over the old man’s chuckle, he added, “And how the devil does someone sound lonely?”
A pair of exuberantly bushy brows lifted over the tops of Mr. L.’s glasses. “Just listen to yourself, Steffan. Then you’d know.”
Steve went rigid for a moment there, then traipsed back across the kitchen to the nest of wires jeering at him from the wall, yanked out a pair to tape them off, crammed them back in, then slapped the outlet plate into place and screwed that sucker back on so hard, he cracked the plastic and had to go get a new one from his truck.
“Something the matter, Steffan?” Mr. L. asked when Steve returned.
“Not a blessed thing,” Steve grumbled, screwing on the new plate. Then, scowling, he gathered his toolbox and headed up the stairs, fighting off a herd of wriggling cocker spaniels…and even the slightest suggestion that the old man was right.
Like he didn’t have enough stress in his life, what with worrying about the kids, trying to figure out how to balance a million and one obligations. The last thing he needed was some woman who wanted him to make her happy, too. And no, he didn’t feel this way just because love had dragged him into a back alley and left him for dead. He was over Francine. Had been for some time. It was just…well, he just didn’t have time for lonely.
Let alone the aggravation that invariably accompanied the opposite.
“Steffan?” wafted up the stairwell a few minutes later, “I need to run to the store. I should be back in plenty of time for my student, but if I’m not, would you mind letting her in?”
“No problem,” Steve called back, watching out the window a minute later as, like an overfed hamster, the old brown Datsun stuttered out of Mr. Liebowicz’s driveway and crept down the street.
He’d just finished changing out the fixture when the doorbell’s chime made him jump. Before he could move, though, it rang again, accompanied by a faint, frantic, “Hello? Mr. Liebowicz? It’s Lisa Stone!” followed by the bell being leaned on until Steve thought his head would explode.
He barreled down the stairs and jerked open the door, only to be nearly knocked over by a streak of overly perfumed blonde shrieking “Bathroom!” on her way past.
“Straight back, first door to the—”
“Found it!”
The bathroom door slammed hard enough to shake the whole house.
Chapter 2
Steve and the dogs stood in the open door, staring down the hall, waiting until the aftershocks died down. The blonde wasn’t the only thing that had to go. So did that perfume. Whew.
“Hey!”
Distracted, Steve finally noticed the taxi waiting at the curb, the mastifflike driver glowering at him from his window. In what could only be called a daze, Steve wandered out onto the porch, allowing an oblique, disinterested glance at the stuffed shopping bag and canvas tote lolling against one of Mr. Leibowicz’s Kennedy rockers. “You payin’ the fare?” the driver asked.
But before he could answer, the blonde whooshed back past him and down the porch steps, trailing the scent of about a million flowers in her wake. Shoot, Steve didn’t know a woman could use the bathroom that fast.
“Of course he’s not paying the fare! Keep your shirt on!”
For some reason, Steve became transfixed with the way her short hair, like feathers, shifted and twisted in the breeze as she sailed past. The way the soft, sparkly sweater and black pants molded to her figure without strangling it.
The way she was about to fall off her shoes.
She glanced over her shoulder at Steve, then blinked a pair of the deepest blue eyes he’d ever seen on a human being, the color of the evening sky just before it swallows the sunset…
“Miss?”
“What?” Her head jerked back to the waiting driver. “Oh, right.” She shifted, clumsily, to balance the tote on her knee—when had she picked it up?—in which slender hands, tipped in ruby red fingernails, rummaged for several seconds before extracting a wallet.
Hel-lo…major ephinany time: long red nails made him hot.
He felt his brows do that knotting thing again.
For crying out loud, she wasn’t even pretty, not in any conventional sense—deeply set eyes with thick, natural brows, a high forehead, squarish jaw with a dimpled chin, a wide mouth. But what Steve saw—underneath several strata of makeup—were the unapologetically strong lines of good, solid peasant stock, a handsomeness he’d seen innumerable times in the faces of the women with whom he shared a common ancestry. He told himself the hitch of interest in his midsection stemmed purely from aesthetic considerations, a desire to photograph her, to catch the light playing across those compelling features.
She yanked out a wad of bills, then crammed the purse between her arm and her ribs. “Now…how much did you say?”
The driver glanced at Steve, then the blonde, knuckling up the bill of his ball cap. He cleared his throat, then mumbled something. Unfortunately, the man hadn’t counted on Steven having hearing like a hound dog.
“A hundred?” Steve was down the stairs in two seconds flat, in full macho protective mode. “Where’d you pick her up? Cincinnati?”
“It doesn’t really mat—” whatever-her-name-was began, but the suddenly obsequious driver stepped in with, “Ya know, come to think of it…it wasn’t as hard to find the place as I thought. Whaddya say we make it—”
“Fifty,” Steve supplied, just for the hell of it. For all he knew, maybe the man had picked her up in Cincinnati. Judging from the driver’s reaction, however, he’d apparently called the man’s bluff. There were, at times, definite advantages to having been a linebacker in a previous life.
A bunch of folds rearranged themselves into something like a smile. “Just what I was gonna say. How ’bout that?”
The woman looked from one to the other, her mouth open. When it finally snapped shut, Steve noticed her narrowed gaze had come to rest on him.
Huh?
Her mouth twisted, she peeled off five tens and handed them to the driver, who, with a wave and a impressive squeal of the tires, left.
Steve turned to introduce himself, extending his hand. “Hi, I’m—”
“Excuse me, but do I strike you as being a complete air-head?”
Somehow, Steve figured pointing out that she wasn’t exactly dressed like the CEO of a Fortune 500 company wouldn’t go over so good. “Hey—that guy was about to take advantage of you!”
“And you don’t think I knew that?” One hand swiped back a feather. Underneath five-pound eyelashes, heat smoldered. And what was with that accent? “I knew what the taxi should cost.”
“Then why—?”
Oh, he’d seen that look before. His mother was a master at it.
“Look, Mr. Liebowicz—”
Steve shook his head. “Koleski. Steve Koleski. Mr. L. had to go to the store. I was doing some electrical work for him.”
A flicker of what Steve could only assume was relief passed over her features before she wagged one hand, dismissing his unwanted explanation. “Look, Mr. Koleski, it was no easy feat finding a taxi willing to come all the way out here, so when I finally got this one, I would have bloody well promised the man my firstborn child if it meant getting me where I wanted to go. But I’m not stupid, believe it or not. The plan was, I’d pretend to agree with this man’s ridiculous fee, wait until I was here, then tell him he was full of it.”
The laugh fairly burst from his lungs. “Full of it?”
She glared at him for a millisecond before twirling around, unsteadily, then taking off toward the house, feathers bobbing, fanny twitching.
“Hey!” Steve bounded after her and up the porch steps just as she made a grab for the listing shopping bag, inertia propelling him into her as she attempted to shoulder her way inside. Bodies and bags tangled for a sizzling two or three seconds, during which Steve found himself seriously reconsidering his earlier position on women and loneliness and aggravation.
“Do you mind?” she said, wrenching herself, and the bags, inside.
“I was only trying to help, for the love of Mike! Why on earth are you so fired up about this?”
The woman’s gaze glanced off his, as fleeting as an electric spark, before she twisted around and noticed the dogs. With a soft oh!, she dropped the bags and fell to her knees in one motion, burying herself in unbridled canine euphoria.
Steve, on the other hand, was doing well to simply catch his breath.
“Oh! Aren’t you the most wonderful things!” she said to the panting, licking creatures, laughing as each one in turn tried to crawl into her lap. After a moment, she hauled herself back up, wiping dog spit off her face with the heel of her hand as she took in the high-ceilinged entryway, the sunlight-drenched living room off to the left. She wasn’t exactly smiling as much as she simply seemed…pleased.
“So—Mr. Liebowicz isn’t here?” she suddenly said, not looking at him.
“Uh…no.” At some point, he was going to have to figure out why watching this overly cosmeticized, perfume-marinated, smart-mouthed stranger wallowing in dog slobber was doing all the wrong things to his libido. “He had to go to the store. He didn’t expect you until later.”
She shrugged, but there seemed to be something oddly nervous about the gesture. “I wasn’t sure, when I talked with him, what my…schedule would be like.” She hesitated, as if about to say something else, then turned, picked up the bags again. “Do you know where my room is?”
Eyes locked. Bad move.
Bad, bad move.
“Uh, yeah,” Steve said at last. “Upstairs.”
She nodded, then clomped up the stairs, chattering to the dogs. Steve followed, frowning at the sea of undulating dog butts in front of him. “First door to your left,” he said when she paused at the landing. “What did you say your name was?”
“Lisa Stone,” she said after a beat or two, then disappeared inside the room, followed by her entourage. “Oh…were you working in here?”
“Oh, right.” Steve hustled inside the room and squatted to gather up his things, clanking them into the metal toolbox. “I’d just finished up when you knocked on the door. Since it sounded urgent—” he glanced up at her, fighting the urge to grin, not fighting the urge to tease “—I figured cleaning up could wait.”
A blush swept up her neck. Then that generous mouth stretched into a breath-stealing smile that was completely at odds with the globbed-on makeup and the awful perfume and the hideous shoes. And something snapped between them. What, he didn’t know, didn’t want to know, but damned if the tension didn’t just evaporate.
“I, um, didn’t realize I had to go until I got into the taxi.”
One kind of tension, anyway. Another kind—more insidious and five times more deadly—mushroomed between them so fast he nearly choked.
Ordering everything to back off, cool down, and generally get a grip, he stood, letting the grin win out. “Bet that was the longest ride of your life, huh?”
Something like startled delight lit up her eyes before she laughed, and if he thought the smile knocked him for a loop, the laugh just about sent him into another realm entirely.
Psst. And she likes dogs, too.
Right. And maybe he should check his head for faulty wiring. For one thing, he had no idea who this woman was, where she was from, why she was here, or when she was leaving. For all he knew she was married. Or had a boyfriend. Or was on the lam.
And the perfume was making him dizzy.
And—and—for another thing, his life was more crowded than a Tokyo subway. He had kids to raise. Crises to avert. Gardens to tend and chickens to feed and about a million photos to develop and wounds to help heal.
If his heart were a neon sign, it would be flashing NO VACANCY.
Lisa was holding out her hand. “I do apologize for my earlier behavior. I get cranky when I’m overtired.” And Steve, not wanting to be rude, heaven knows, took her hand into his, grateful that—their brief, earlier tango notwithstanding—electricity didn’t shoot up his arm from her touch. That only happened in those books his sister used to hide in her sweater drawer, anyway. But it had been a long time since he’d held a woman’s hand in his, and he had to admit, it felt pretty damn good. Warm and soft and all that nice stuff.
And, boy, did he like that smile.
And, boy, did he have to get the hell out of there.
“I thought I heard voices!” Panting a little, Mr. L. came into the room, extending a knotted hand. “Miss Stone, yes?”
Lisa nodded, the feathers wafting around her face. One of those non-hairdos, like whatsername wore in You’ve Got Mail. “Thank you for taking me on such short notice,” she said.
“It was my pleasure. The room will be suitable, I hope?”
“Oh…” She looked around the sunny, airy room, nodding enthusiastically. “It will be perfect.”
“And you won’t mind my music students?”
“Oh, no! Not at all! I adore music, almost any kind, really…”
Well, all this was just too copasetic for words, but Steve had other things to do with his life than just stand around and watch Lisa Stone grin.
He picked up his toolbox, muttering, “I’ll just be going, then,” while backing out of the room, only to startle the be-jesus out of himself when he banged the box on the doorjamb. Chagrined, he steadied the box, then turned to leave before he gave any further demonstration of his poise and grace.
“Mr. Koleski?” he heard behind him. Now, he knew damn well what would be there, when he turned around, waiting to trap him…yup. There it was. That smile. And a wistfulness—that’s what it was, he realized—that prevented the smile from fully reaching her eyes. She speared her hand through her hair, then said softly, “Thank you for playing the White Knight earlier.”
He cocked his head. “Even though you didn’t need it.”
An eyebrow lifted. “But that wasn’t the point, was it?”
Oh, hell. No, that wasn’t the point. Nor did he have any intention of trying to figure out too hard about what the point was, because he doubted he was going to like what he came up with.
“Hope you enjoy your stay,” he muttered, then left before she had a chance to toss another one of those smiles his way.
She’d shooed the sweet old man out of her room shortly after Steve’s exit, citing the need to unpack and rest. And shower, rid her skin of that horrendous perfume that had seemed innocuous enough in the department store. Instead, her thoughts spinning, she simply sat on the edge of the double bed, fingers skimming the hobnailed bedspread, and stared out the second-story window at the profusion of flowering fruit trees in Mr. Liebowicz’s tiny backyard. It had been spring then, as well, she remembered, when she’d last visited the Detroit area with her parents, more than twenty years ago—
On a moan, she cupped her face in her hands. Never, ever before had she done something so…so illogical. Crazy. Rash.
Her hands dropped to her lap.
Exhilarating.
Not that her sense of responsibility had completely deserted her. Once safely away from the airport, she’d made the driver stop somewhere so she could call and leave a message on her grandmother’s private voice mail—Carpathia might be small, but technology-wise, it was cutting edge—telling her she was safe and not to blame Gyula, who had been undoubtedly tearing apart the airport by that point, and that if Baba needed her, to contact her via e-mail.
She spotted the phone jack on the opposite wall where she could plug in her modem. So she could check her e-mail anytime she liked….
Sophie blew out a sigh. She truly loved her country, as well as the power for good her position gave her. It wasn’t that she wanted to give up what she had. She didn’t. It was just…just that, somewhere along the way, she’d lost herself in the process. And then had come Jason Broadhurst’s proposal, which had muddled everything even more.
Not that there was anything wrong with Jason. Quite the contrary. In fact, he and Sophie served on the boards of several charities together, so she knew his sympathies even lay in the same direction as hers. And she truly ached for the loss of his wife so soon after their son’s birth two years ago.
And, frankly, Jason’s offer was by far the best she’d ever had. Oh, to be sure, there’d been suitors aplenty, from the time she was sixteen. But she wasn’t a fool: her mirror told her, quite bluntly, that most men were only enamored of her position or money, or both. At least she and Jason got on together well enough. And she had to respect his honesty in proposing the alliance.
But it still came down to the same thing, didn’t it? Men had pursued her because she was royal, because she was wealthy, or because she was convenient, but not one man had ever pursued her because he loved her.
Her future loomed in front of her, both a yawning void and a mountain of “musts”—her appointment as Director of the World Relief Fund was all but assured, a responsibility she both anticipated and dreaded—and she blinked back tears of what she realized were stark terror. She would do what she had to do, she knew that. Her sense of responsibility was far too ingrained for her to do otherwise. But what if this didn’t work, this stealing of a few weeks for herself? What if, at the end, she was still as conflicted as she was right now? What if she couldn’t reconcile her needs with those of the people who depended on her?
Shoving aside whatever this anxiety was, Sophie forced herself to stand and begin to put away her few new belongings in the paper-lined chest of drawers that smelled faintly of lavender sachet, her gaze flitting around the simply furnished room. She’d be anonymous here. And what could be safer than staying with an elderly gentleman?
An elderly gentlemen who hired handsome, protective, all-American male electricians?
Ah. She’d wondered how long she’d be able to stave that one off.
My goodness, she’d had quite a reaction to Steve Koleski, hadn’t she? But why? Why now? And, for heaven’s sake, why him? It wasn’t as if she’d been locked in a convent her entire life.
Exactly.
Well…what did she see in him?
Green eyes flecked with gold and mischief, that’s what, his short-cropped hair the innocent blond of a child’s, a startling contrast to tanned skin stretched taut over lean, sharp features that were anything but childlike. An expressive mouth that a woman—well, this woman, at least—ached to touch, just to see if it was as soft and smooth as it looked. To see if it was real. A mouth that twitched, she noticed, just before it burst into a rather endearingly slanted smile.
She saw—felt—kindness. Protectiveness. Trustworthiness.
All nicely packaged in enough muscles to make one’s mouth go dry.
Twirling a hunk of her butchered hair around her finger, she stared outside at the little flower garden below, her brows tightly drawn. What was it about the man that produced that tingling sensation in the odd body part whenever he grinned at her? Lust? Perhaps. After all, she didn’t suppose she was immune to the things like that, strange and unfamiliar though they might be. But it was more than that. It was…she bit her lip in concentration, then let out a sigh. It was more like…excitement. Anticipation. The sudden, euphoric feeling a child gets when she sees a bicycle in a shop window and realizes she wants it more than anything in the world.
Except it was like wanting the plain, sturdy, reliable three-speed model instead of the flashy ten-speed.
Oh. Oh…dear.
She grabbed the tote, unloading the paperbacks onto the nightstand, her eyes burning.
Popular opinion to the contrary, being a princess didn’t mean she could do whatever she wanted, even in disguise. In fact, just the opposite was true. She couldn’t even take that nice, reliable three-speed out of the window, could she? Not even for an innocent—yes, innocent—little test drive?
No. She didn’t think so.
She heaved another sigh, stacked the books on the nightstand, then dropped onto the bed, looked up at the light fixture Steve Koleski had just fixed.
There went the tingling again.
She sat up again to yank off the blasted shoes, tossing them across the room. Rubbing one aching instep, she fought—with remarkably little success—the memory of how Steve had smelled when they’d tangled in the doorway, all spicy-musky and just plain good, and how she’d let her ego out of its cage just long enough to let herself think that, just maybe, he was flirting with her. But in a slightly panicked kind of way, as though he wanted to but thought he shouldn’t, for whatever reason.
But then…even if he was attracted to her, he wasn’t attracted to her, but to the blowsy blond product of a weary princess’s brush with hysteria. In two weeks, perhaps less, Lisa Stone would vanish into the same nothingness whence she’d been spawned.
And Princess Sophie would resume her tidy, orderly, dull life, one which held no place for ingenuous, handsome, protective American electricians.
She flopped onto her side, her head propped in the palm of her hand, just as the sun shifted enough to glance off something shiny peeking out from underneath the dresser. Curiosity lured her off the bed, then across the floor to pick up what turned out to be a screwdriver. Steven Koleski’s screwdriver, no doubt.
For the briefest of moments, she was tempted to stab herself with it.
Fortunately, things seemed remarkably more clear the next morning. Plainly, her reaction to Steven the day before had been due to nothing more than an adrenaline overload, a sense of danger heightening her sensory awareness. What she’d felt hadn’t been attraction—on any level—but simply reaction. Stimulus/response, nothing more.
However, in all the excitement of actually carrying out her harebrained plan, she’d forgotten a fundamental fact of life in a small town: strangers’ appearances begat curiosity. So it behooved her to offer some sort of explanation in order to prevent inevitable, and tiresome, speculation.
At least, as far as the people in her “real” life were concerned, she was accounted for. Perhaps few of them understood, much less approved of, her actions, but nobody was worrying about her well-being. Her physical well-being, at least. Her mental state was something else again.
As far as those in her temporary hideaway went, however, best to tell just as much of the truth to satisfy inquiring minds and hopefully bore the nosy into forgetting all about her. And she figured she might as well start with her host, who, in his position as the town’s music teacher, undoubtedly had a direct feed into the main gossip artery.
Sophie found Mr. Liebowicz deadheading early roses in his sun-speckled, lushly planted back garden, laughably quaint in bright red plastic clogs and a big-brimmed straw hat secured with a cord underneath his flabby chins.
“Oh! Good morning, my dear,” the old man said with a short wave. “Are you ready for breakfast?”
“No, no…no hurry.” She tucked her thumbs in the pockets of her white cotton Capri pants, inhaled the perfumed, early morning air. “I’m rarely hungry this early. Besides—” she grinned “—you weren’t supposed to feed me last night.”
“I was doing the roast anyway, it was no trouble.” He took his clippers to a climbing rose spanning a latticework archway. “But whenever you’re ready, just let me know.”
Still not sure how best to broach her subject, Sophie reached out to cup an exquisite rosebud the color of fresh butter. “You coax life from the ground every bit as well as you coax music from your violin.”
That merited her a bright, surprised grin from underneath the enormous hat. “You are very kind, my dear,” Mr. Liebowicz said. “But how did you know it was I who was playing?”
She shrugged. “You had several students yesterday. It wasn’t difficult to tell when the teacher was demonstrating for the student.”
The old man sighed, eyeing his liver-spotted hands. “These poor old things aren’t very reliable these days, I’m afraid. But I suppose they still have their moments.”
Sophie laughed, then bent to smell another rose, this one fully open, an intense, deep pink tinged with coral. “I’m sure you must be dying to know why I landed on your doorstep yesterday,” she said quietly.
A finch warbled overhead. Then: “As someone forced from my own home in Poland fifty years ago by a certain German dictator’s policies, I understand that people often have valid reasons for keeping secrets. But I will admit wondering about your accent…?”
Smiling, she straightened, then folded her arms across a light blue cotton sweater, watching Mr. Liebowicz clip and prune and coddle his precious flowers. “I was raised in Europe,” she said, remembering her vow to herself to lie as little as possible. “But my father was English. As was my schooling.”
“I see.” He turned to her, his expression partially muted by the hat’s shadow. “But—” his thin lips twitched into a kindly smile “—nobody comes to Spruce Lake without a reason, Miss Stone. We have no tourist attractions, no views to speak of, nothing to lure someone seeking excitement, or even diversion. Nothing except…sanctuary, perhaps?”
All she could do was stare at him.
“You came with little luggage, and the clothes you have are obviously new. You are in hiding, Miss Stone. If that is indeed your name.” The old man shrugged, then returned to his task. “Are you running from the law?”
Her laugh was startled. “No.”
“Then it is of no concern of mine why you are here.” He moved on to the next bush, squinting at a bud, from which he removed a layer of aphids. “Although you may find me a good listener…?”
She hesitated, then said, “It’s nothing, really. I just suddenly realized I desperately needed to take some time for myself. To relax. To perhaps think through a few things.”
“Ah. One of those, what do they call them? Workaholics?”
“I suppose, yes.”
He tilted his head, resembling a flower himself in the silly hat. “Too busy to take time to smell the roses?”
She laughed again, then, hugging herself, made her way over to a small wooden shed tucked away in one corner, the stupid shoes clumping on the brick path. “Except,” she tossed over her shoulder, “I find I really don’t know how to relax. I’ve already gone through two novels, just since yesterday.” Like a small child, she peered inside the darkened shed which smelled of damp wood and earth and other vague, gardeny things. “I do need the time away, but—”
“What you need is a change, then. Not a rest.”
She turned then, one hand on the door frame. “Yes. Yes, I suppose that’s it.” On a sigh, she added, “I find idleness doesn’t suit me very much.”
The old man waved his clippers at her in agreement, and she chuckled. Then her gaze lit on the bicycle, leaning against the shed’s back wall. “Oh! Does the bicycle work?” she called out to him, already halfway inside.
“It was my daughter’s,” Mr. Liebowicz said, closing in on her. “It’s been years since anyone’s ridden it. Here—” He motioned for her to bring it out. “Let’s have a look.”
So she did, divesting the poor thing of its cobweb shroud. The tires were flat, but otherwise it looked in decent condition. “Would you mind if I borrowed it while I was here? After I got it fixed up, of course.”
“No, not at all. There’s a bicycle shop not six blocks away, in town, that can fix those tires for you. I’ll be happy to pay for getting it in shape—”
“Nonsense. If I’m going to use it, the least I can do is foot the repair bill.”
“Well, then—take it, with my blessings. The countryside is beautiful, this time of year. And a half hour in that direction—” he pointed west “—takes you to a stretch of woods and farmland that may remind you of home.”
She blinked at him, questions fluttering like moths in her brain.
“Your accent may be English, my dear,” Mr. Liebowicz said with a smile, “but your features are pure central Europe.”
After a moment, she hugged the dear old man, clearly startling him, then knelt by the bike, checking the chain. “Perhaps a few nice, long bike rides will clear out the old brain, you know?”
Mr. Liebowicz stroked the dulled silver handlebars, then nodded. “Perhaps so, my dear. Perhaps so.”
Chapter 3
“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.
Chapter 4
The little girl’s resumed chatter as they returned downstairs momentarily obscured the fact that Steven was in the middle of a very heated argument with someone on the phone.
“Look, Ms. Jefferson, I appreciate Family Services’s position.” His voice at once soft and feral—Papa wolf protecting his pups, Sophie realized—Steven shifted to haul Rosie up into his arms, cradling the phone between his jaw and shoulder. “But consistency, they’ve got. I’m the constant in their lives, okay? Maybe I can’t help it that the Fairy Godmother hasn’t been doing so hot when it comes to doling out housekeepers who have a clue how to handle a batch of kids, but nobody—nobody—is going to take them away from this place. From me.”
Brittle silence followed, during which Sophie was afraid to breathe.
After a moment, Steven said, “I’ve been warned, in other words…yeah, I understand. Two days.” He came within a breath of slamming down the phone, then jerked to attention when he realized Sophie was standing there.
“You ever feel like the world’s pulling you in seventeen different directions?”
Her heart knocked in recognition. “Often,” she said, earning her a curious glance. But before that curiosity had a chance to form a question, she formed one of her own. “And which direction is yelling the loudest?”
He shifted the baby in his arms. “Guess.”
The phone rang; he snatched it up, leaving her to survey the living room.
Despite the messiness, she liked it. She liked it very much. It was a crazy house, she’d decided, the rooms rather stuck onto each other as need, not any sense of design, dictated. The floors creaked, and the wind probably seeped through like water through a sieve in the winter, but who cared? The furniture was basic and well-worn, the kind that invited you to go ahead and eat in the living room if you wanted to, it didn’t mind. A person—a woman—could feel very much at home here.
Not that she could be that woman, but still.
She brushed back her hair from her face as a breeze, soft as a toddler’s kiss and scented with roses and new-mown grass, floated in through the open, curtainless windows. A thousand watts of sunlight flooded in as well, bouncing off unevenly-plastered walls the color of vanilla custard.
It was then that she noticed the photographs, mostly black-and-white and framed in simple white mats and dull silver frames, lining the far wall of the room. Portraits, mostly. But not just of people. Of life. Family life. She recognized Steve’s brood in several of them, although most were of people she didn’t know. In one, a pretty blonde laughed at a man with a ponytail and earring as he tossed a little girl in the air. In another, water droplets sparkled like frozen diamonds across the shot as a family with two tall teens and a pair of toddlers splashed each other in a swimming pool.
But the one that most caught her attention, at which she simply stared for a full minute, was one in which a man, his dark hair mussed like a bad wig, sat slouched in a restaurant booth with his chin in his hand, the light from the window slashing across his handsome face as he watched a woman and a little girl “talking” to each other a few feet away, their hands flying so fast, part of the picture was a blur. The pair were signing to each other, she realized. But the love shining from the man’s eyes, the adoration tilting his lips into a gentle smile as he watched who Sophie assumed were his wife and daughter so leapt from the photo, she almost felt like a voyeur.
She could feel Steven watching her.
Sophie turned, her eyes stinging, to see him buttoning up a blue-and-green plaid cotton shirt over the white T-shirt. “These are incredible,” she said softly. “Anybody can take pictures, but these…” She gestured toward the photos, shaking her head. “It must be very difficult to capture the emotion behind a photo.”
His fingers stilled on the buttons, his gaze bouncing off hers before it floated over to the photos as if he’d forgotten they were there. “It always amazes me, what the camera sees. How incredible the everyday stuff can seem, you know?”
She smiled. “Did you study with someone?”
“I minored in photography in college.” He finished up the buttons, then tucked the shirt into his pants. Frowning. As if there was more he wanted to say.
“Minored? So it’s a hobby, then?”
The colors in the shirt, the wash of sunlight trembling in the air, turned his eyes into a pair of glittering tourmalines when he looked at her. “No. It’s a passion,” he said quietly, and she wondered if she imagined the frustration vibrating beneath his words. “Come on,” he said then. “We can go, if you’re ready.” Before she could even nod, he’d called Rosie, who came skipping to him, the dog nearly knocking her over in his determination not to be left out.
“Yeah, you mangy mutt, I guess you can go, too,” Steven said, striding to the front door and swinging open the wooden-framed screen. Minutes later, all of them piled into his extended cab pickup truck—a minivan sat on the other side of the driveway, she assumed for family outings—Rosie and the dog in the back seat, the bike in the truck’s bed, Sophie carefully strapped in on the passenger side. Which, as luck would have it, put her far too close to both Steven’s scent, which wasn’t even identifiable enough to put into words, and his mood, which she had no trouble identifying at all: rotten.
True, she barely knew Steven Koleski, but she’d never met anyone she’d felt deserved a leg up more than this man did. Not that she thought money was that much of an issue—poverty was easily identifiable by the sense of hopelessness in its victims’ eyes—but this was clearly a man with far too many plates up in the air. Thus far, she guessed, he’d been able to keep them from crashing—through sheer bullheadedness, if nothing else—but for how long?
And, typically, she found herself desperately wanting to help.
But how? As Princess Sophie, she had any number of resources at her command. For one thing, she could easily procure a housekeeper for him, even if it meant “borrowing” one of the palace staff for a few weeks. She could even, with her connections, have his photographs placed in a London or Paris or New York gallery like that. But revealing her identity might cause more problems than it would solve. For one thing, she’d lay odds that Steven Koleski had more pride than blood running through his veins. While she doubted he’d be adverse to any avenue of help that would enable him to keep these children, somehow she suspected he’d eat worms before he’d accept anything he could even remotely construe as charity.
Especially from a princess.
But, as Lisa Stone, what did she have to offer?
Sophie dared to sneak a glance at the set features of the man sitting barely two feet away, an ordinary man with the extraordinary power to capture some part of her that no man ever had before. He made her feel…connected, somehow, to the rest of the human race. She frowned down at her bloodred fingernails, then shifted her gaze out the window.
When she’d come up with this crazy idea, she hadn’t really thought about whatever personal benefits she might enjoy as a “regular” person. She hadn’t known how much fun it could be to be treated as an equal, to have someone tease her, even laugh at her, as if she were “one of the guys.” That felt good. Extraordinarily good. And she’d be kidding herself if she didn’t admit that she had no desire to jeopardize these stolen moments of anonymity by revealing a truth which might cause more harm than good.
But her yearning to help this man, these children, stemmed from something far deeper. For all her dedication to children’s issues, her involvement thus far had always been peripheral, if not downright theoretical. Yes, she’d helped set up the Children’s Home, and she’d done the usual hospital visits, the de rigueur tours of refugee camps, but she’d never been actually involved. Suddenly, here she was, faced with the first real opportunity she’d ever had to personally make a difference in five children’s lives, even if only for a couple of weeks. And she didn’t exactly find the prospect of perhaps being able to help ease the stress lines in Steven Koleski’s handsome face wholly unpleasant, either.
She was taking a tremendous risk, letting herself get close enough to care. But this was an opportunity that might never come her way again.
He’d known Lisa Stone for, like, five seconds, and already he knew to be leery when she got too quiet.
Of course, he wasn’t being exactly loquacious, either. Steve wasn’t sure which of them itched to asked questions more, although he was sure neither of them had a clue how to go about it. And it rattled him the way this complete stranger could sear through his defenses with a pointed question, an astute observation, a simple smile.
No woman, he realized with a little jolt, had ever looked at him like that before. Not so’s he’d remember, anyway. As if she saw…him. Not who she imagined she could eventually turn him into, but who he was.
And as if she genuinely liked what she saw.
Take the business about his photography. It was nuts to think she really had any idea what it meant to him, but something in her eyes sure made him think she did.
But how could she? Nobody did. Nobody knew how often he’d shoved his ambition behind him in the name of family loyalty, practicality, logic. Duty, in other words. Nobody was a free agent in this world. Not really. Everybody’s lives and ambitions were inevitably and inextricably intertwined with everyone else’s in their circle; peace was rarely achieved without compromise.
And he done more than his fair share of compromising over the past few years.
So when Lisa had asked about the photography, he’d been shocked to discover just how poorly he’d handled his disappointment over having to, once again, put his own ambition on hold. To discover a seed of selfishness at his core he’d thought long since eradicated.
But not nearly as much as he’d been to realize how desperately he wanted to confide in her. How desperately, despite all the hard evidence accumulated over the past little while that proved his desire not just foolish, but futile as well, he wanted to be able to trust a woman. Any woman.
This woman.
And the sheer force—not to mention the idiocy—of that desire was making it very difficult to breathe. He could only believe—could only accept, for his sanity’s sake—that he felt so impelled to spill his guts to Lisa because she was a stranger, someone who’d only be around for a short time.
At least, that had better damn sight be the reason.
“What did you say the dog’s name was?” she suddenly asked, when the mutt stuck his pointed snout over the back of the seat to slurp her face.
He glanced over, not in the least liking his reaction to her low, throaty chuckles as she squirmed—but not really—away from the dog. “George. At least for the last couple of years. If he had a name before I got him, I wouldn’t know.”
“George,” she said, ruffling his fur, then gently shoving him back. She remained twisted around, her brow pinched in concentration. She’d chewed most of her lipstick off, leaving her expressive mouth a soft rose color. “What, exactly, is he?”
“Caninus Godonlyknowsis,” Steve said. She laughed, and Steve felt the fist of tension in the pit of his stomach unfurl, just a little. As if, just for this moment, maybe life didn’t suck. That maybe, somehow, things were going to work out. “Day I closed on the house,” he said, “I came up here with the keys, and there he was. Lying on the porch like he was waiting for me to come home and let him in.”
He could sense, more than see, her grin. “And you did.”
“I didn’t seem to have much choice. He’s dumber than dirt, but he worships me unconditionally.” Steve tossed a glance her way, then back to the road. “There’s a lot to be said for that.”
For some reason, he wasn’t the least bit surprised when she pretended to be offended for the dog’s sake. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her twist around to the panting dog. “Did you hear that? You’re not dumb at all, are you?” George barked. Which wasn’t surprising, either. One thing you could say about old George, he was real good at keeping up his end of the conversation. “No, I didn’t think so.” She turned back around, her arms crossed. “Rather cheeky thing to say, don’t you think, considering that unconditional worship business?”
Steve considered this for a minute, then said, “The chickens might have something to say about that.”
“Excuse me?”
“He chases chickens. Cats, no. A cat could come up to him and blow raspberries in his face—nada. But chickens drive him nuts.” He turned to her. “Like I said. Dumb.”
The breeze coming in the truck’s windows was blowing her feathery hair every which way. Which was very sexy, he realized with a light but firm kick to the gut. She didn’t seem to give a damn, either, which was even sexier, for some reason. “On the contrary,” she said, her eyes sparkling like sapphires. “He’s just smart enough to pick on a species with a lower IQ than his.”
A chuckle spread out from the center of his chest as that fist uncurled just a little bit more. “Huh. Never thought of it like that.”
Looking inordinately smug, Lisa pivoted back around to face front, which is when Steve realized that the cautious, prickly young woman he’d met two days before seemed to have taken a hike, as well. Despite her assorted wounds, her less-than-pulled-together appearance, she seemed to be completely enjoying herself.
And damned if Steve’s woebegone ego didn’t decide to take at least some of the credit for that.
A minute or so passed in comfortable silence, interrupted by Lisa’s occasional question about something they passed. Then, obviously content in the back seat, Rosie started singing softly to herself behind them.
“What are you going to do?” Lisa asked quietly. “About the children?”
His moment of quasi-serenity popped like a bubble. “At the moment, I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“I take it there’s some question about your being able to keep them?”
“According to Family Services, yeah.” He turned to her, his heart hitching at the concern in her eyes. “Not according to me.”
She nodded, then looked out the windshield, frowning as she braced one hand through her hair to keep it out of her face. “But…if you’re the legal guardian, how could they take the children away from you?”
“Because I haven’t been granted full custody. Not yet.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Ted and Gloria didn’t have a will, see. So even though it was always understood that I’d take care of the kids if anything happened to them—both their folks have been gone for some time—there was nothing in writing.”
“I see. And there was no other relative?”
“There’s one cousin on Gloria’s side. She seemed nice enough, the one time I met her at their wedding fifteen years ago, but she’s got four kids of her own. There was no way she could take on another five. So the choices were, split up the kids into separate foster homes, since, again, not many families could take on five at once, or grant me temporary custody, even though I’m not married. And they only did that because I promised to have a full-time housekeeper, at least until Rosie started school.”
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