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Oh, sure, he was good-looking—if you were into the werewolf wannabe look—but that alone wasn’t enough to attract her to somebody. Anymore. Yeesh, she couldn’t even remember when she’d last gone stupid over a bunch of muscles and a cute smile. Not that Aidan’s smile—if he had one at all—was cute, although she dimly remembered that he’d sure smiled plenty when they’d first met, trying so hard to convince her he and June would be perfect parents for her baby…
Boom!
And that, boys and girls, was the sound of the reality boulder crashing into the middle of her very wayward thoughts. Because the bizarreness of her attraction to Aidan Black notwithstanding, his being her son’s adoptive father sure as heck called a screeching halt to that little fantasy, didn’t it—?
“Yes?” Aidan said beside her, his clipped response to his cell phone jarring her out of pointless musings. “I’m driving, Robbie, if a state trooper sees me, I’m screwed…No, Flo didn’t tell me, she mustn’t have known, either…Yes, of course, I’ll be right there.”
He tossed the phone into a cup holder and glanced over as a host of “uh-ohs” sprang to life in the pit of Winnie’s stomach. “Apparently Robbie neglected to tell anyone he had early dismissal today. Since Flo won’t be back until later, I need to pick him up.” He scratched his chin. “He’s already been waiting for fifteen minutes.” His fingers flexed on the steering wheel. “And the school’s on the way back to the property. If I drop you off first, it adds another ten minutes—”
“Not a problem,” Winnie said, her throat clenching much farther down than throats normally clench.
More flexing. “Are you sure?”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, Aidan. I put my big-girl panties on this morning, I can deal with it, okay?”
At least, she’d do her supercalifragilistic best.
Backpack thumping, hair flying, Robbie streaked toward them the instant they nosed into the school parking lot…only to come to a complete halt when he noticed Winnie. And, presumably, Annabelle, who’d thrust her head out Winnie’s open window to do her is-life-great-or-what? barking/quivering thing. Not until the kid got closer did Winnie notice the tear-tracked cheeks, his earlier upset now apparently forgotten in the combination of shock and apprehension at seeing Winnie again.
All of which he conveniently set aside long enough to hurl a very indignant, “How come nobody picked me up?” the moment he scrambled into the backseat with the dog.
“Because nobody knew they let you loose early today,” Aidan answered mildly, steering the truck back toward the road, and Winnie focused in front of her, hearing her child, smelling his father, trying not to combust.
“There was a notice and everything! It was in my backpack!”
“And you’re sure of that, are you? Because I certainly didn’t see it when I went through your backpack last night. But it’s all good now, right?” Aidan said, tossing Robbie a quick grin toward the back, which Winnie caught, nearly choking on her own sucked-in breath.
Oh, dear God—she’d totally forgotten the dimples.
While she’d been doing all this stealth breath-sucking, Annabelle had been concentrating on making it all better, as Annabelle was given to doing, and the boy’s indignation/apprehension had given over to peals of laughter. That’s how kids are supposed to sound, Winnie thought, and then Robbie said, through the giggles, “I thought you were s’posedta leave.”
“My truck had other ideas, honey. So I have to try again tomorrow.”
His head poked through the front seats, earning him a growled, “Robson! Seat belt!”
As he wriggled back to click his belt in place, though, he said, “Is it okay if Jacob comes over later, like around two? He said his mom said it was okay if it was okay with you.” And it occurred to her that Robbie loomed much larger on her radar—for obvious reasons—than she did on his.
She saw Aidan’s eyes jerk toward the rearview mirror, the shock scoot across his features. Winnie could practically hear the whirring in his head, that he’d already lost his morning, and now, with Robbie unexpectedly home from school and Florita gone, there went the afternoon, too. But he only nodded and said, “Sure. Why not?”
So much for the three-day grounding, Winnie thought, smiling, until Robbie said, “Winnie, too? Like right now, I mean, not later.” She wasn’t sure who stiffened more, Aidan or her.
“Um…” he said, and Robbie said, “Please?” and Winnie twisted around to say, “Oh, sugar…I don’t know…I’ve already taken up a lot of your father’s time, he probably needs to get back to work…”
“It’s okay,” Aidan muttered, and Winnie’s eyes darted to his face, silently pleading, Work with me here. A tactic that only works if the other person makes eye contact with you. Which, damn it all to hell, Aidan wasn’t doing.
So, because Robbie was now promising to make lunch himself if his Dad had stuff to do, Winnie sighed and thought, What could another few hours hurt? and said, “I’d love to,” and Robbie let out a “Yes!!!” behind her that both warmed and nearly broke her heart, all at the same time.
What’s going through your head? Aidan mentally directed to Winnie, as he followed her and Robbie from room to room. If nothing else, he was impressed by her ability to roll with the punches. To smile and laugh when he sincerely doubted she felt much like making merry.
He should take notes, he grumpily mused, at the same time thinking there’s nothing like a surprise guest to make you see your house through fresh eyes. The kitchen was Florita’s domain; beyond that, although she did her best to keep the dust bunnies from achieving world domination, she’d long since given up the good fight against the clutter.
Not that Aidan and June had been slobs, exactly, as much as obsessing about housework simply hadn’t been high on their list—hence their decision to hire a housekeeper. Although the great room, and June’s studio loft above it, were no longer command central for whatever causes June had been championing at the time, the space still had that air of perpetual upheaval about it, toys and magazines and June’s vast folk art collection spread out helter-skelter over furnishings that seemed to go out of their way to not match.
And his unexpected guest wasn’t missing a thing.
It startled Aidan to realize how much it mattered, what she thought. That she’d undoubtedly be seeking reassurance, even if only subconsciously, that she’d chosen well.
Especially when they came to Robbie’s room. Would she see the overflowing bookshelves and massive dinosaur model collection and constellation-decorated ceiling as evidence that they had, indeed, given him advantages she could never have afforded…or that they’d overindulged him? That they’d kept him safe…or isolated?
Did she see Aidan’s desire to spare Robbie the truth of her identity as rightly protective…or lamely suffocating?
Was she thinking, Oh, good…I did the right thing?
Or, Oh, God…what was I thinking?
“Dad!” Robbie said, startling him. “Do you have to follow us everywhere?”
The dismissal smarted out of all proportion to its intent as a red-faced Winnie muttered, “You know, honey, your daddy probably isn’t comfortable with leaving you alone with me, since I’m still basically a stranger.” As then her gaze swerved to Aidan’s, her brows lifted as if to say, Entirely your call, buddy.
Then Aidan saw in his son’s eyes a plea he didn’t entirely understand. Or like, frankly. Because somewhere along the line, things had slipped completely out of his control…even if on some deeper, undefined level Aidan understood that the more he tried to hang on to that so-called control, the more it would elude him. June had always been the one disposed to take life as it came, to trust events to unfold as they should…the very character trait that had drawn him to her to begin with. And, perhaps, the one he’d missed the most since her death.
So he was more than a little startled to hear himself say, “Not a problem, I’ll be off then to start lunch. Are grilled cheese sandwiches and soup from a tin all right? I’m not exactly a wizard in the kitchen.”
And in Winnie’s eyes he saw an unsettling blend of gratitude, compassion and a determination to stay strong that wrenched something loose inside him. “Soup and grilled cheese’ll be just fine and dandy,” she said, smiling and kind and forgiving and patient and flexible.
In other words, a right pain in the arse.
Chapter Six
It was some time after Aidan went off to tend to their meal before Winnie really tuned in to whatever Robbie was saying. Clearly, Aidan was anxious about what might happen, that maybe she’d slip up, or that Robbie might blow. Heaven knows he had nothing to worry about on the first score, despite the near-constant ache in the center of her chest. But she knew there was no way of predicting a child’s reaction to a recent—or even not so recent—loss, what might set him off. Which was why there was no way she’d disrespect Aidan’s wishes, whether he trusted, or believed, her or not.
One more day…
“And up there on those shelves,” Robbie said, “are all the Lego sets I built. Cool, huh?”
Her gaze lifting to the high shelf that hugged the ceiling along two whole walls, Winnie nodded. “Very cool,” she said, thinking, Boy, kiddo—you really, really lucked out. Light poured through a pair of huge windows into a child’s dream of a room, three times the size of hers at home, a cross between a video arcade, museum and library. Not that she imagined Robbie had a clue how fortunate he was, since he had nothing to compare it to. Nor, it occurred to her, would he have known what he’d been missing, if she’d—
Uh, uh, uh.
She stopped in front of an eight-by-ten photo of Robbie and his parents, taken a few years ago. Like those Russian nesting dolls, a grinning Aidan had June wrapped in his arms from behind; an even more broadly smiling June held an obviously giggling Robbie the same way. Winnie’s gaze touched each one in turn, lingering a little too long on Aidan’s image.
“That’s my mom,” Robbie said beside her, holding some sort of flying contraption built out of a gazillion interlocking plastic bits.
“I figured. How old were you?”
He shrugged. “Dunno. Like five? She wasn’t sick then, I know that.” He spun and sank with a bounce on his bed, the twin-size mattress covered with a wool blanket ablaze in a bold geometric pattern of bright oranges and yellows and reds. As the scent of browned butter drifted into the room from downstairs, he said, “Mom painted the stars and stuff on my ceiling all by herself.”
Winnie dutifully looked up. “Wow. That must’ve taken her a long time.”
“I guess. I was in the hospital with ‘pendicitis, she had it all done by the time I got back.”
A dull knife twisted in her own belly, that he’d had appendicitis and she hadn’t known. That if she hadn’t turned chicken, she would have. Annoyance churning around the knife, she looked over at his bookcases. “That’s a lot of books. Have you read them all?”
“Some. Mom and Dad read the others to me. Mom, mostly.” He paused. “Even when she was too sick to get around very much, she still read to me.”
The ache of loss in his voice brought tears to Winnie’s eyes, even as it hit her what this was all about. “It feels good to talk about your mom, huh?”
Turning the plane or whatever it was over and over in his hands, Robbie finally nodded, further confirming her suspicions when he said, “Dad doesn’t like it when I talk about her.”
“What makes you think that?”
The boy’s shoulders jerked. “I just know, that’s all.”
Winnie lowered herself to sit beside him. “What about Flo?” she said gently. “Or…maybe somebody at school?”
“Flo always looks like she wants to cry. And at school it’s like…” On a pushed breath, he set the plane down and looked at her. “Ever since Mom died, nobody treats me normal anymore. The grown-ups all act like I’m gonna go weird on ‘em or something, and the other kids…sometimes I think they’re scared if they say something to me about Mom dying, it could happen to them, too. It sucks,” he added on a long sigh.
“Yeah. It does.” It had been a lot like that for her, too, after her own parents died. Especially the part about not being treated normally, when the one thing a child most craves is exactly that—for things to start feeling normal again, as much and as soon as possible. She hesitated, then folded her arms across her midsection. “You really should talk to your daddy about how you feel.”
“I can’t.”
“Sure you can.” She ducked her head to look into his face. “Would you like me to say something to him for you? Would that help?”
A shrug.
“But if you can talk to me—”
“That’s diff’rent.”
“Can you tell me why?”
Another shrug. From downstairs, Aidan called them to lunch. “Robbie,” she said gently, getting to her feet. “I’m not…” She stopped, cleared her throat. “I’m not gonna be around much longer. You’ve gotta find somebody to talk to, okay? And maybe, now some time’s passed, your dad’s more ready than you think?”
“He’s calling, we better go,” Robbie said, tossing the plane onto the mattress and sprinting toward the door, leaving Winnie behind.
In more ways than one.
Ladling out the soup into three brightly painted bowls, Aidan glanced up when Winnie came into the kitchen. Alone.
“Where’s the lad?”
“Washing up,” she said, clearly avoiding his gaze.
“So…how did it go?”
“Give me a minute,” she said softly, picking up the sandwich plates from the counter to set them on the plank wood table taking up most of the room, then reaching over to fiddle with the dried flower arrangement that had been there forever. On a sigh, she straightened, her hands stuffed into her sweatshirt pockets, her gaze drifting toward the patio doors and the forest beyond. “Great house.”
“Is that your attempt at steering the conversation into safer waters?”
He heard a short, humorless laugh. “Right now I’ve got a hole the size of Montana in my chest. And I have no earthly idea how to fix it. So humor me. I say, Great house. And you say, Thanks. Or whatever, I don’t care.”
Even though there was no reason to feel even remotely sorry for her—after all, none of this would be happening if she’d stayed in Texas—some rusty, unused part of him did, anyway. At least enough to play along. For the moment. “I’m afraid it’s a bit messy—”
“Forget it, it just looks lived in, that’s all. Miss Ida’d have a hissy fit if her house wasn’t spotless at all times, but all that cleaning and polishing and straightening up always seemed like a huge waste of time and energy to me. What’s the point of putting things away if you’re just gonna use ‘em again in a few hours?”
“Exactly,” Aidan said, feeling better. Over the sound of running water from the hall bath, Robbie started singing at the top of his lungs. Winnie smiled.
“He always do that?”
“He used to,” Aidan said, pouring milk for Robbie, tea for them. “All the time. What he lacks in talent he makes up for in enthusiasm.”
Winnie quietly laughed, then fiddled with the end of her sleeve for a moment before saying, “Um…if it’d help, I’d be glad to hang around while Robbie has his friend over. Just until Flo gets back, I mean. To free you up so you can get back to work?”
“I couldn’t ask you—”
“Just to make sure the boys stay out of trouble. Believe me, they won’t want some dumb girl getting in their way. So there’s no ulterior motive here, I swear,” she said, her cheeks pinking. “And anyway, it’s the least I can do after all your help with my truck.”
Aidan watched her for a moment, then said quietly, “This is the first time since June’s death Robbie’s asked to have a friend over, didya know?”
“Ohmigosh…no. I didn’t.”
“So it won’t bother me to have another child in the house. Still…”
“Let me guess. June had always been the one to entertain the kids.”
His cheeks warmed. “I never really know what to do with them, y’see. So actually…I’m very grateful for your offer.”
“Then we’re all set. And it’s not like I’m trying to keep what Robbie and I talked about a secret or anything. It’s just…” She pulled back a chair from the table and plunked into it, pushing up her sleeves. “He says he can’t talk to you about June.”
“What?” Aidan’s brows slammed together. “Of course he can talk to me!”
“Well, he doesn’t think so. Kids are real sensitive, Aidan,” she said gently. “If it makes you uncomfortable to talk about her, he’s gonna pick up on that. I know, I know…I’m sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong,” she said, looking miserable. “But it was either that or not tell you at all. And anyway, it’s not a criticism, believe me.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Of course not. Everybody deals with grief in their own way. I clammed up, too, after my parents died. I had to work things out by myself. And my grandmother…” She huffed out another one of those mirthless laughs. “It seemed the only way Ida could deal with losing her daughter was to keep reminding herself what a disappointment she’d been.”
One hand reached over to straighten out a spoon. “But Robbie’s different. He needs somebody to listen to him. To share the memories. If that’s too painful for you, then maybe you need to think about finding somebody—”
“Wait a minute…are you sayin’ he’s talking to you about his mother?”
After a moment, she nodded. “How’s that for irony?’
“But I’m his father, for God’s sake!”
“My point exactly,” Winnie said over the sound of Robbie’s sneakered feet pounding down the hall, turning to smile for the lad as he burst into the room.
The light in the studio had nearly faded beyond usefulness when Aidan heard Flo’s heels clack-clacking behind him, followed by, “So what’s up with Winnie makin’ pizza in my kitchen with Robbie and some kid I don’ know from Adam?”
“About damn time you returned,” he groused, half to her, half to the painting as he wiped his brush on a rag. “And that’s Jacob. Who I know you’ve met before, because I have.”
“They all start to look the same after a while,” Flo said, the clacking—and her perfume—getting closer. “The red over here,” she said, flapping her hand at the right side of the painting. “It’s out of whack with the rest of it.”
“And you’re forgettin’ our agreement.” Aidan detested having people around while he was working, commenting on a piece that wasn’t finished yet. He had a hard enough time taking criticism after he’d wrestled the bloody things into submission—at which point it was moot, anyway—but editorial remarks while the work was in progress were absolutely verboten. Even June, who had actually let a filmmaker hang around her studio for a week—a thought that gave Aidan heartburn—had respected that Aidan did not work by committee. His housekeeper, however, had yet to evolve that far.
In fact, she shrugged and said, “An’ how is it that the woman you were ready to ship to another planet yesterday is cooking your dinner and watching your kid today?”
“Her car died. I said I’d fix it but the part won’t be in until tomorrow.”
“An’ that’s reason enough to leave her alone with Robbie? You trust her that much, that fast?”
“Yes.” Aidan frowned at the painting. “You really think there’s too much red?”
“Are you kidding? It looks like you slaughtered a pig in here. And I don’ know what you’re thinking, boss, but it don’ take no crystal ball to predict there’s gonna be broken hearts in your future. Or did you miss the way she was looking at Robbie?”
Of course he hadn’t missed it, that combination of amazement and regret that made his grilled cheese curdle in his stomach. And he didn’t know why he trusted her, why he was willing to take that risk. But the thought had come…if she had the courage to give herself this one day, what skin was it off his nose to do the same? To share with her what she’d so generously given to him and June?
“So how’s Tess?” he now said, getting up and turning his back on the painting. “Due pretty soon, isn’t she?”
“Two weeks. I helped her get the baby’s room set up, she was hoping maybe Rico’d get leave by now so he’d be here when the baby comes, but now it’s not looking good for him to get home before sometime in the spring. Amazing, with cell phones and computers and everything, how he can call home almost anytime he wants, all the way from Iraq. Not like when my Jorge was in ‘Nam, it’d be weeks, sometimes, between letters—”
“Does Robbie ever talk to you about June?”
Flo shut her open mouth. Opened it again to say, “I tried to goose him into talking about her—in the beginning, you know, even though it was hard for me, too—but he wouldn’t bite. I finally figured when he wanted to talk, he would. Why?”
“Just wondering,” Aidan said, staring distractedly at the painting. “Maybe you could make a salad to go with the pizza?”
“Yeah, boss,” Flo said in a funny voice. “I’ll go do that.”
Aidan frowned after her, thinking, What the hell…?
There’s not a woman alive, Winnie thought as she oversaw two pairs of little hands as they liberally sprinkled black olives and sliced peppers over the sauce-drenched pizza crust, who would’ve missed Flo’s you’re-encroaching-on-my-territory vibes. Although whether they were due to Winnie’s being with Robbie or being in Flo’s kitchen, she couldn’t say. Probably a bit of both.
“Oh, don’t do that,” Winnie now said as the woman went behind them with much sighing and eye-rolling and jewelry-jangling, scraping off cutting boards and wiping up flour and putting things back in the refrigerator. “We were gonna clean up our mess as soon as the pizza went in the oven.”
“It’s no bother, it’s my job,” Flo said, somehow managing to not look directly at her while keeping an eye on her at the same time.
Honestly.
“Is it ready?” Robbie said, radiating pride, and Winnie’s heart turned over in her chest.
“It’s ready.”
The pizza in the oven, Winnie sent boys and dog off to play while it was baking, then grabbed a sponge to clean the one spot the housekeeper had somehow missed. “Didn’t mean to step on your toes, but it was getting late and the boys were hungry—”
“And jus’ what do you think you’re doing?”
Winnie blinked. “Making supper?”
“Don’ you play that game with me,” Flo said, jabbing a long-nailed finger in Winnie’s direction. “Why are you making Robbie fall for you, when you know you’re only gonna leave an’ break his heart?”
When Winnie found her voice again, she said, “What on earth are you talking about? I’ve been here exactly one afternoon! I hardly think—”
“Then maybe you should think more. Especially before you act.”
Winnie folded her arms over her whumping heart. “It wasn’t like I planned on being here today! In fact, I was all set to leave this morning, only then my stupid truck broke down, so I came up here for a freakin’ phone book because there isn’t one in the house and where else was I supposed to go? Only Aidan said he didn’t know where it was—”
“It’s right there!” Flo said, exasperated, pointing to something that sure looked like a phone book, right underneath the telephone on the wall next to the fridge. “Where it’s been ever since I came to work here!”
“I’m only tellin’ you what he said,” Winnie said, thinking, Men, honest to God. “Anyway,” she continued while she was on her roll, “so then he took it on himself to play mechanic, which resulted in him taking me into Santa Fe, only nobody there had the part I needed. Then we picked Robbie up from school because apparently Aidan had no idea it was a short day and you weren’t around, and the kid wanted me to come to lunch and I would’ve backed out but Aidan said it was okay, okay? Not me. So once I was here I offered to watch the kids so Aidan could get some work done since he’d already lost half a day on account of that damn part, and then it got late so I went ahead and made supper because it seemed the logical thing to do. So if that makes me some kind of, I don’t know, manipulative hussy or something, well, ex-cuse me for living!”