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Tommy stood behind her and held her arms and showed her how to hold the football. The football was big and hard. Then Tommy showed her how to pass the football. He stepped away and Crystal tried it. The football went up sorta high and then it squiggled and fell down not very far from her. The boys laughed. Crystal thought about saying cut the crap again, but decided once a day was enough.
They told her the rules, which didn’t make sense. But that almost didn’t matter—now they weren’t laughing at her any more and they were playing with her. She felt better than she had since she came here. The sun was shining even though it was cold, and the sunshine felt good, making the top of her head warm.
Ryan and Jason went into what they called a huddle, and then Ryan came running. Before Crystal could blink her eyes, Tommy had touched him, which was a tackle when you played touch football. Well, Tommy did more than touch—he grabbed Ryan on the arm and twirled him around.
Football was rough.
They played some more. Once Crystal got the football and she held it to her stomach even though it was covered in mud, and ran as fast as she could. It took a long time until Jason touched her and she had to stop. That felt good, especially when Tommy said, “All right, kid. You gained us some yards.”
Then the football was up in the air, and it was spinning, spinning down toward her. Tommy yelled, “Catch it,” and Crystal held up her arms.
Wham!
Something hit her hard in the shoulder. She fell and went skidding along the stiff, frozen grass. She finally stopped and was lying on her side, her cheek in the grass, staring across the yard.
All these feet were coming toward her. Big feet, running.
“Are you okay?”
“Are you all right?”
“Hey, kid, are you hurt?”
She sat up, though she felt weird, like shaky inside.
Tommy was looking down at her. “Ryan hit you.”
“Well, I was trying to get the ball, you dork. Not hit the kid.”
Jason got down by her. “Are you hurt?”
She looked where he was looking, and saw that the sleeve of her sweatshirt had come up and her arm was all full of cuts. When she touched them, they hurt.
“Oh, man, Dad’s gonna be pissed this time.” Ryan stood there, and he was shaking his head at Tommy. “You knew she was too little to play football. How could you have been such an idiot?”
“Well, you wanted to play, too.” They went on arguing, and Jason said what Ryan said, that his dad would maybe get mad. Crystal just sat there on that horrible rough grass in the cold. All she wanted in the world was to be back home.
“She’s not hurt that bad,” Jason said, pushing at her arm and making it hurt more. “See? She can bend her elbow.” He bent it back and forth.
They all looked at her, all those big boys, and she thought of saying cut the crap again, but she didn’t feel as though she could right now because it was so hard not to cry.
“I want my momma,” she said instead, and her voice didn’t sound like it had when she’d said cut the crap. Now it sounded tiny.
“Listen.” Jason got down beside her. “You aren’t hurt that bad. We were only playing. The thing is, we might get in trouble if you tell Dad.” He stopped for a second. “You don’t want us to get in trouble, do you?”
She didn’t care. She wanted her momma. She wanted Miss Jenny!
Tommy got down by Jason, and he had this kind of frown on his face. “Jason’s right, kid. There are things Dad doesn’t have to know, and we don’t rat on each other. We just get even when we can. If you live here, you’ve got to learn the rules.”
That was a bad rule. “He’ll find out. My sweatshirt is all torn.” She was not going to let them see her cry!
“Nah,” Ryan said. “Just throw it out. Dad’ll never notice.”
That was maybe true; some lady came in and washed the clothes and put them away. But Crystal didn’t know what to do. If she told Uncle Mitch, he would maybe get mad, and she didn’t know what he’d do if he got mad. He was big; she didn’t want to find out. Would he maybe blame her for playing with the boys? Or would he be mad at the boys, and then they’d get even with her?
She looked down at her arm, and now the most terrible thing was happening. The red scratches were starting to bleed. Did that mean she was really hurt?
She started crying, and she jumped up and ran to the house. They followed her, so she ran up to her room and shut the door. Her door shut fine. The boys stayed outside the door, calling to her, but she sat on the bed and watched her arm bleed. Finally she said, “Go away! I won’t tell!” and after a while they went away. In a few minutes, she looked out the window and saw them out in the pasture by the ponies. Face-off was out there, and she saw her kitten sneaking around the bushes.
She felt so alone. Everything was quiet, and she didn’t think it had been quiet since she got here. She almost wished the boys were still outside her door. She touched her arm and blood came off on her finger.
That scared her, and she went down the hall to the phone and tried to call Miss Jenny even though she always called Miss Jenny at night before she went to bed. Nobody answered, and her arm kept bleeding. Wasn’t it supposed to stop?
Her momma had been in a car wreck and been so hurt she died.
Something squeezed her in the chest then, and she started crying harder and tried to think what to do.
Miss Jenny would come and get her. She just knew it, and if Uncle Mitch and the judge knew that she was almost dying they would let her go home, wouldn’t they? If she could just talk to Miss Jenny!
Then she had an idea. She went down to the kitchen and got this piece of paper off of Uncle Mitch’s desk. The paper was Miss Jenny’s paper from work. It had her address on it, and then some stuff at the bottom that had never made sense until today. Now she looked at it again. Just what she thought. It was an address like Jason’s friend had.
She took the paper and went to Jason’s room. His computer was still on. She did everything he’d told her to do. She thought about how e-mail was kind of like magic, and she wished you could send e-mails to heaven. But instead, when the square came up, she carefully typed in Miss Jenny’s address. Then it got to the part where you could write the message.
Mis Jenny they hurt me. im bleeeding From Crystal.
Then she found the Send button and pushed.
CHAPTER THREE
MITCH WAS running late again. He had an eight-thirty appointment this morning with one of the high-school coaches to discuss the possibility of Serious Gear supplying all the sporting equipment for next year’s football program. Setting the meeting so early this morning had seemed like a good idea when the guy had called yesterday. Mitch had figured to get a jump start on the day, make a good sale before he’d even opened for business.
But last night, he’d been out until after 2:00 a.m., working on Luke’s slap shot and helping Luke’s minor league team, the Northern Lights, with practice.
Now he stood in his kitchen and raked a hand through his hair and tried to shut out the sounds of his kids. They were arguing again—or goofing around—who could tell the difference?
“Gotcha, Squirt.” Ryan put another Froot Loop on his spoon and flicked it at Jason. The bit of cereal hit Jason on the nose.
“I’m gonna get you for that.” Jason jumped off the counter stool and grabbed the open box of cereal. Dancing away, he held the box out temptingly, then snatched it to his chest when Ryan made a grab. “I’ve got the ammo.”
Ryan dodged Tommy, who was going to the refrigerator for another gallon of milk. Ryan grabbed Jason by the shoulder and swung the younger boy around. Jason kept up the taunts.
Mitch had finally had enough. “Cut it out,” he said at the same time Luke said, “Quit that.” Mitch looked up from where he was loading the dishwasher and shrugged at his eldest son as Jason and Ryan kept at it. Neither Mitch nor Luke were big on mornings; too many late-night practices at the rink had done in mornings long ago.
The kitchen floor was sticky; Mitch had felt it on his bare feet. The kids must have spilled milk again. Someone must have turned down the furnace; the air in the house felt chilly on his bare chest.
Weren’t millionaires supposed to live better than this?
Jason was still teasing Ryan. When Jason’s elbow hit Tommy’s cereal bowl and sent the empty bowl skidding across the counter, Mitch finally said, “That’s enough!” He marched over and held out his hand for the cereal box.
“Aw, Dad, I was finally getting to him,” Jason pleaded. Face-off was begging at his feet. Face-off loved Froot Loops.
Mitch ruffled the hair on his youngest. “You’ll get him next time.”
Ryan did a sneak attack and grabbed the box. Cereal flew. Face-off gleefully chased the windfall. Crystal’s kitten—which had been observing the shenanigans from the safety of a chair back—puffed out her tail and took off.
Mitch turned to Ryan. “Give me the box. Now.” After a couple of moments to see if Mitch really meant it—why did they always do that?—Ryan finally handed it over.
He peered inside. “You guys are done here. You’ve eaten your way clean through two boxes, and you’re going to be late for the bus. Luke doesn’t have time to drive you, and neither do I.” Absently, he scooped up the crumbs of cereal from the bottom of the box and fed them to Face-off, who’d finished his vacuum routine and sat before Mitch with his big wet tongue hanging out. Then Mitch crumpled the box and tossed it toward the trash.
As he started for the stairs, it dawned on him that Crystal was missing. “Hey, where’s Crystal?”
For a second, the boys, arguing about something, didn’t seem to hear him. Then the room got very quiet.
Not a good sign. He looked at the boys, who were looking at each other.
Luke said quietly, “Okay, what happened?”
“Nothing.”
“No clue.”
“How would I know?”
They were looking everywhere but at Mitch or Luke. From the bottom of the steps, Mitch bellowed, “Crystal!” She didn’t answer, and alarm ran through him. Before he even realized where he was going, he was halfway up the stairs.
She appeared at the top of the stairs. Slacks and a flowered sweater, a toothbrush in her hand.
He stopped dead. She looked so normal. “Are you all right?” he asked foolishly.
She nodded, but she had this fearful, pinched look on her face, the one she often got around him.
“Oh. I just wondered—” She was still looking at him. He said, “You’re running late.”
Her face crumpled. “I slept too long,” she said in a small voice, and Mitch had the horrible thought that she was going to cry.
“That’s—uh, okay.” Don’t cry. “Listen, I can drive you if you miss the bus.”
“You’re not mad? You yelled.”
“I didn’t yell at you.”
“Yes, you did. I heard it from the bathroom. You yelled real loud. Crys-tal. I dropped the toothpaste.” Her lower lip wobbled.
“That was to see if you were okay,” he tried to explain. She didn’t look convinced, and he didn’t know what else to say—they seemed to have no conversation, no common ground at all, and she was so sensitive.
The doorbell rang.
Barking from Face-off, a call to the dog, the closing of the laundry-room door. Heavy, clumping feet heading for the hall. Then one of the boys called, “D—aaa—d.”
He was so relieved to have a reason to escape his niece’s scrutiny, he didn’t even consider the oddity of someone at the door at eight in the morning. He turned and headed back down the stairs.
“It’s some lady,” Tommy called as Mitch passed the kitchen doorway on his way to the front hall.
He had an appointment with a woman who was applying for the job of full-time housekeeper, but that interview was supposed to be at the store later. The door was agape a fraction. He pulled it open.
Jenny Litton stood on his doorstep, a small carry-on bag in her hand.
He froze, his hand on the doorknob.
“Is she all right?”
He blinked. “Huh?”
She said impatiently, “Crystal. Just tell me, is she okay? What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing’s wrong with Crystal.” Hadn’t he determined that not two minutes ago? What in hell was Jenny Litton doing on his doorstep?
“Was she in the emergency room? What did the doctor say?”
Her southern drawl was hurried. He realized belatedly that the woman looked white as a ghost, and that her eyes were round and intent. That previously smooth-as-glass hair of hers was in tumbled disarray. She was wearing a suit, but the jacket was unbuttoned, and a silky scarf had come loose from some mooring or other and fluttered in the breeze. She looked like a pale butterfly.
A pretty butterfly. A sexy butterfly, if butterflies could be sexy.
An angry butterfly.
She was so pretty. That made him suddenly conscious of the fact he was bare-chested and bleary-eyed, and that he needed a shave. Besides, he didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.
“Please.” She held out a hand. “I won’t get you in trouble with the court. Just let me see her.”
When he didn’t immediately respond, Jenny seemed to make up her mind about something. Then she…charged him. She marched on him like a rookie defenseman, determined to send him flying into the boards. Stunned, he held open the door, certain that if he hadn’t, she would have shoved him aside.
Once in the doorway, she called, “Crystal. Crystal!”
“Miss Jenny!”
There was clatter through the house. Commotion. Then his niece was in the hallway, running so fast she skidded on the hardwood floor.
Jenny dropped her bag and knelt and grabbed her, hugging hard. “Oh, my Lord, you’re all right. Oh, my Lord…”
Mitch raised his eyes. All four of his sons were in the hallway now, and all of them were watching Jenny and Crystal. Jenny was rocking her, and there were tears on her cheeks. “Oh, sweet baby, I was worried sick. The phone was busy all night…I almost called the police…I caught the first plane I could…You’re okay…”
There was something about the scene that gave Mitch a stab of pure guilt. “Of course she’s okay,” he said gruffly. “You didn’t seriously think we’d hurt her, did you?”
She looked up at him, her blue eyes capturing his. “I didn’t think so, but when I got her e-mail—”
“E-mail. Crystal sends you e-mail?”
Crystal looked up at him fearfully, but when she spoke, she sounded just a touch defiant. “You never said I couldn’t send e-mail.”
He stared at her.
“It was only because I thought I was dying,” Crystal explained.
Dying?
He said, “Uh, Jenny, why don’t you come in and we’ll talk about this.”
Even as she straightened, he saw Ryan and Tommy start to slink away. “All of us.”
Before he could suggest the living room, which was the cleanest room in the house because nobody used it, Tommy motioned Jenny Litton into the kitchen.
He followed his sons, Crystal and Jenny, and then stood behind Jenny in the doorway. He was standing so close to her he could see the distinct colors of gold in her hair. Its disarray had exposed part of her neck. He saw the clasp of her pearls on skin that looked tender and white.
Quickly, he raised his eyes. That was a mistake, too, because he found himself seeing his kitchen through her eyes. A kitchen that probably horrified Miss-Perfect-Pearls. There was a scratching sound intermingled with whines as Face-off begged to be let out of the laundry room.
Six cupboard doors were open. Four bowls of milk were on the counter. Splashes everywhere. Errant Froot Loops. A crumpled cereal box. Two teaspoons, upside down in little puddles of milk. An empty cardboard box that had held last night’s pizza—it was too big to fit in the trash can, so the boys always waited for him to carry it to the garage. Schoolbooks, backpacks on the table. Lunch fixings—peanut butter and an open jar of jelly, chips, yogurt—he’d learned that it was best to pack the kids’ lunches the night before, but who could remember? One of the cords that held the draperies back on the big sliding doors in the eating area had come loose, and the draperies just…hung there on that side. When had that cord come undone?
Jenny moved into the kitchen, and any minute now those high heels of hers would hit the sticky patch…
He was going to mop the floor as soon as he had a chance. He was going to make the boys pick up after themselves. He really was going to make lunches the night before, from here on out.
But first he had to find out why Crystal had thought she was dying.
Jenny refused his offer to sit. He introduced her to the boys as a friend of Crystal’s. They hovered around the fringes of the room like groupies hanging out at the locker room after a game, looking everywhere but at Jenny and Crystal.
Mitch lounged against the counter, a deceptively casual pose. “Okay,” he said quietly. “Why did you think you were dying, Crystal?”
She took another look at Jenny, who squeezed her shoulders.
In a small voice, she told about the football game of the day before.
“It was touch,” Ryan said quickly, and Mitch made a slicing motion with his hand to cut his son off before he could explain further.
“It was touch,” Crystal agreed. “But they touched real hard. They made me bleed. Then they made me promise not to tell. But before dinner, my arm stopped bleeding. I sort of forgot I sent the e-mail. But before I went to bed I wanted Miss Jenny to come. I want Miss Jenny to come before I go to bed every night.”
That guilt came again, along with pressure in his chest. She still wanted Jenny to come and take her away? Crystal called her every night, but Mitch hadn’t known she went to sleep wanting anybody other than her mom, and he couldn’t bring back Kathy.
He raked a hand through his hair again. Where was that absolute certainty that he was doing the right thing that had gripped him all the way to South Carolina, the sensation that had gotten him through his sister’s funeral and the decisions that followed?
“Let me see your arm,” Jenny said in her slow southern drawl, a drawl that by its very slowness seemed comforting. She sat Crystal in a chair and knelt beside her as she carefully pulled up the girl’s sleeve.
“It’s scratched,” she said in the same tone he imagined she’d use for “It’s broken.”
He peered down.
“It bled and bled,” Crystal said earnestly. “Or I wouldn’t bother Miss Jenny.”
Jenny gave her hand a quick squeeze. “Sweetheart, you’re never bothering me.”
Mitch looked the boys over real good. “Okay, which one of you had the lamebrained idea of playing football with a little girl?”
“It was touch,” someone said again.
“Touch or not, which one of you came up with this one?”
Tommy pointed at Ryan, Ryan pointed at Tommy. Mitch sighed and said, “I thought I told you to be nice.”
Tommy said, “We were nice. It’s how we’re nice. We play with the Squirt, we play with the kid.”
Mitch quelled the urge to throttle him. Then Jenny got a tight-lipped look about her that irritated him. He’d just bet that Miss Jenny Litton didn’t like his kids any more than she liked him. In a flash, he went from wanting to throttle his sons to wanting to defend them in front of this judgmental woman. If she walked across that sticky spot on his floor and dared to say anything—
“Dad? There goes the bus.” Luke, who’d been silent up till now, pointed out the window.
Damn. “Luke, can you drive the boys? I’ll take Crystal to the elementary school before I head for the store. I’ve got a meeting there, but I’ll ask the guy to reschedule. I won’t be long,” he said to Jenny. “Then I can come back and we’ll talk.”
She seemed to perk up a little at that. He tried not to sigh. His experience with women was limited, but he remembered how Anne had always liked to talk about stuff like this. He went up to grab a sweater, deciding he’d have to shave when he got home. He swiped a hand across his chin and felt the stubble there. Great. He sure hated mornings.
When he got back downstairs, Jenny was helping Crystal into her coat. “Will you be here when I get home from school?” Crystal asked Jenny, her eyes bright with hope.
Jenny looked up at Mitch. He nodded.
“Sure. You bet I’ll be here.” Crystal threw her arms around Jenny’s waist, and Jenny bent and hugged her tight, before releasing her to Mitch.
“Can you manage to get her to school in one piece, or would that be too much to ask?” she whispered as he was walking out the door.
“The boys were just playing.” But he shut up after that. He understood that she was upset. The e-mail must have really scared her. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Oh, by the way, don’t open the door to the laundry room. The dog’s in there. He’ll probably just go to sleep.”
As he turned the key in the Jeep, he thought of how Jenny looked, pretty and fragile. But that was deceptive. She had a will and a mouth to follow up on that will. He was going to have to do some real smooth talking.
He frowned and looked in the rearview mirror at Crystal. She was sitting in the back seat, and she was smiling a little, looking out the window.
When had he last seen her smile? Not since she’d left South Carolina, he realized.
JENNY THOUGHT briefly about trying to create some order in this kitchen, but quickly changed her mind. Cleaning up here would be…presumptuous, not that she guessed that would be a word they’d use in this house. Not that she’d bet Mitch would even notice. He hadn’t even noticed that Crystal had cut herself playing football. Football! So what if he hadn’t been home? He should have seen that Crystal was upset when he’d got back last night.
She looked around the kitchen. What had they had here, anyway? A food fight?
She was still fuming about Crystal, about the scare that had brought Jenny halfway across the country without much more than the clothes she wore. She picked up a sponge and squirted some soap on it, then began to attack the kitchen counter with short, vehement strokes. She was probably going to ruin her nails on his kitchen counter. And her stomach was doing the usual morning flip-flops.
And she couldn’t stop thinking about a certain man’s bare chest, those clearly defined muscles, the dark hair that glistened and curled, about the goose bumps on all that bare skin. He looked so…physical. Male.
Not her type, of course.
Her sponge knocked a piece of cereal off the counter. Glad for the diversion, she picked it up and threw it into the disposal.
Over the past two weeks, she’d tried to picture Mitch Oliver’s house. He’d described it to Crystal. An old farmhouse that’s been added on to a lot. She’d had her own mental picture of that house—white and meticulously cared for, a green roof and shutters, kind of like the houses rich people had in the Hamptons. Pretentiously unpretentious.
Jenny’s mother had been a maid in a house that was pretentious, a little Tara, big white pillars and all. It was fake, just as these rambling farmhouses were fake in their own way.
Fake, she told herself. Fake.
She hadn’t had a really good look at the outside of Mitch’s house. She’d been too worried about Crystal, too afraid that she’d miss the turn, that the directions she’d got at the gas station were wrong.
But she’d got a bit of a look. The house was big, and it was white, and the green shutters were surely there. But there was something so unpretentious about it that it hadn’t registered until now that Mitch’s house appeared to be the genuine article—a big old farmhouse.
Okay, it wasn’t pretentious. But it was a mess. Why would someone with all his money want to live like this? She forced herself to stop picking up bits of cereal. Let him clean his own kitchen.
She tossed the sponge into the sink and took a look around. It was very odd, being alone in a house of a man she hardly knew. There was a hush. The dog in the laundry room must be sleeping; she didn’t hear so much as a sigh.