“I’m leaving!” About the Author Books by Anne McAllister Title Page PROLOGUE CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN Copyright

“I’m leaving!”

“You leave, and the twins go with you,” Finn said implacably.

“But I can’t stay! I have a life.”

“What life? What brought you to New York?”

“I’m going to get married,” Izzy said.

Finn looked her up and down with such obvious disbelief that Izzy wanted to smack him. He smiled. “Have you picked a groom yet?”

“Yes, I’ve picked a groom. And I intend on seeing him this evening.”

“You can’t. Not yet. At least help me get the twins settled. Read them a story. Get them to bed.” He was looking just a bit desperate!

We know you’re going to love

FINN’S TWINS!

so much that we hope

you’ll look out for the sequel,

FLETCHER’S BABY!,

in January 1998.

It’s fun, emotional and will keep you hooked

till the very last page!

FROM HERE TO PATERNITY—romances that feature fantastic men who eventually make fabulous fathers. Some seek paternity, some have it thrust upon them; all will make it—whether they like it or not!

ANNE MCALLISTER was born in California. She spent long lazy summers daydreaming on local beaches and studying surfers, swimmers and volleyball players in an effort to find the perfect hero. She finally did, not on the beach, but in a university library where she was working. She, her husband and their four children have since moved to the Midwest. She taught, copyedited, capped deodorant bottles and ghostwrote sermons before turning to her first love—writing romance fiction.

Books by Anne McAllister

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1060—TO TAME A WOLF

1099—THE MARRIAGE TRAP

1257—ONCE A HERO

1371—OUT OF BOUNDS

1459—ISLAND INTERLUDE

1620—CALL UP THE WIND

1680—CATCH ME IF YOU CAN

1769—THE ALEXAKIS BRIDE

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Finn’s Twins!

Anne McAllister

www.millsandboon.co.uk

PROLOGUE

THE phone was ringing—had been for longer than he wanted to think.

Finn ignored it.

He stood motionless, his entire concentration focused. on the developing tray where Angelina Fiorelli’s lips were beginning to emerge.

He’d been waiting all day to do these enlargements, to see if he could find the perfect come-hither look in the best of the shots he’d taken the day before. He wasn’t one of the world’s most creative and eagerly sought-after commercial photographers for nothing. When he had an idea, he pursued it. And all the ringing phones in the world weren’t going to interrupt him now.

He leaned closer and permitted himself a small smile as, in the dim red light of the darkroom, he made out the faintest hint of the luscious Fiorelli outline beginning to develop. Yes!

Another ring.

Finn gritted his teeth. Were the hell was Strong?

His matronly taskmaster of a studio manager shouldn’t have any of his high-strung, ruffled-feathered clients left in the office to appease by this time. It was already after five o’clock. Why wasn’t she answering it?

Angelina’s famous pouting lips were now fully developed. Perhaps just a shade too sulky. Carefully Finn lifted the enlargement out of the solution and placed it in the stop bath, then submerged another.

The phone rang again—a half ring—then stopped. At last. Finn concentrated as the next set of lips materialized. There was a sharp rap on the darkroom door.

“Go away.”

“Your sister’s on the line.”

He should have known. Meg had been calling him at inopportune moments since she was old enough to talk. “Tell her I’ll call her back.”

“I did. She needs to talk to you now.”

“I’m busy. Tell her I’m busy.”

There was a pause. “She’s crying.”

“Oh, hell.” It took no imagination at all for his mind’s eye to conjure up the vision of his younger sister Meg crying. He’d seen her—and heard her—often enough. Her sweet soft voice would quiver. Her freckled face would grow blotchy and her big blue eyes would swim with tears. Then she would hiccup as she tried to explain what latest crisis in her life had prompted her to call for help.

Finn knew the routine all too well. And Strong, alternately mother hen and Marine drill sergeant as the occasion demanded, was no better at turning Meg into a self-reliant human being than he was.

Finn sucked in a deep breath and snatched up the receiver. “Now what?”

“Oh, Finn!” came the breathless, teary quaver he’d expected. “It’s Roger!” And the end of the world from the sound of it.

“Who’s Roger?”

“Roger de Fontaine. You know! Roger!”

He didn’t have a clue. “Some guy you’ve been seeing?” Always a good bet.

“The man I love, Finn.” The teary voice wavered with an emotional vibrato. “Truly.”

“Uh-huh.” They’d been down this trail before. Plenty of times. Finn tucked the receiver between his ear and . his shoulder and went back to contemplating Angelina Fiorelli’s lips. This shot had possibilities, if only—

“If only I could convince him,” Meg said mournfully.

“Huh?” Finn was distracted. He dragged his attention back to his sister, away from Angelina’s mouth. “Convince him of what?”

“That I love him.”

“Tell him.” It seemed simple enough to him. He’d never fallen in love with anyone, so he’d never said the words. If he had, he would, not that he ever expected to. Why the hell did Meg have to complicate everything? Especially his life!

“I would, Finn, but—the girls are here.”

“Of course they are. Where else would they be?” Her daughters, she meant. Twins. Red-haired, freckle-faced look-alikes with the unfortunate names of Tansy and Pansy—a product of Meg’s airy-fairy period—they were five or six. Finn didn’t know for sure; he’d never met them. He’d never met their father, either—another of Meg’s true loves who had endured in her affections just long enough to impregnate her. The twins had been three before someone had bothered to tell Meg that he’d died windsurfing. Finn couldn’t even remember his name. He wondered if Meg could.

She lived in San Francisco. He lived in New York.

She pestered him to come visit several times a year. “You could come out here on location sometime,” she’d pointed out often enough.

He could have. He never did.

Keeping a continent between Meg and himself had always seemed the better part of good sense. And once she’d had her twin albatrosses, he’d found more reason to stay away. Finn didn’t do children.

He didn’t have to, he reasoned. He hadn’t had any. Meg had, so she ought to be responsible. He’d told her so more than once.

“I know, I know,” she said now. “But if Roger and I had a little time alone, everything would be fine. He’s getting so impatient. We could get married and then they’d have two parents.”

“Good idea.”

“But I need to convince him.”

“Hire a baby-sitter and go out for dinner.”

“We need more than dinner, Finn. We need time. Days. Weeks.”

“Weeks?”

“Only a couple,” she said quickly. “Just for the two of us. But now that the girls are out of school it’s harder than ever to get time alone.”

“Send them to camp.”

“Camp?” She sounded doubtful. “That costs a lot of money, doesn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“I suppose I could think about it—” the quaver was back “—but I do hate to ask Roger to pay for sending them before we’ve even...” She sighed. “And you know I can’t.” Meg lived hand-to-mouth, always had. The only times she ever got enough money to be even slightly ahead was when she talked Finn into providing it.

Like now.

Meg sniffled into the other end of the line. Finn ground his teeth. “You need to settle down, Meg,” he told her. “Grow up. Be responsible.”

She made a sound that was suspiciously like a sob. “I’m trying. I told you, Roger and I—”

“Just need time.”

“Yes. He’ll be a wonderful father, I know he will!” There was a little-girl eagerness in her voice now. “He’s strong and masterful and so very smart.”

“Good for him.” Finn didn’t say, then what does he see in you? Meg couldn’t help it because she was vague and flighty.

“I’ll send you a thousand,” he told her. “You can surely find a good camp to stick them in for a couple of weeks for that.”

“Oh, yes! Of course I can!” All the tears in her voice were gone. “I knew you’d help. You’re the best, Finn. The best brother in the whole world!”

“Uh-huh,” Finn said dryly. “You don’t have to convince me. Convince Roger. Those daughters of yours need a strong, dependable father.” God knew they needed one responsible parent. And Meg needed someone else to dump her problems on—besides him.

“I know,” Meg said meekly. “You’re absolutely right.”

“So get them one.” Finn hung up. Satisfied that he’d averted his baby sister’s latest disaster, he went back to Angelina Fiorelli’s luscious lips.

CHAPTER ONE

HIS studio—at least Izzy assumed it was his studio and not his apartment—was on the fourth floor of an old brick building in Chelsea. She found his name on the wall directory just inside the heavy glass door: FINN MACCAULEY, PHOTOGRAPHER, it said in small white letters.

“He’s a wildlife photographer,” Meg had told her, smiling, as she’d packed them out the door.

“Hmm,” Izzy murmured now, glancing around, thinking that perhaps Meg had been misled. The fashion district was uptown, the Village was downtown. The city was all around. Horns blared, messengers whistled, brakes squealed, subway trains rumbled. There were buses, bikes, cars, cabs, and hundreds upon thousands of people everywhere she could see. No place for the buffalo to roam. And she’d be willing to bet there wasn’t a deer or an antelope for miles.

But whatever Finn MacCauley had told his sister wasn’t her problem. As soon as she’d done her duty, she’d be on her way to Sam’s. Izzy squared her shoulders against the weight of her backpack, picked up both the duffel bags she’d just set down and headed toward the elevator at the end of the hall. “Come along, girls.”

Two identical redheaded urchins fell in behind her.

“Is this it?” asked Tansy curiously as she gazed around the narrow, somewhat grimy-looking hallway. It smelled of stale tobacco smoke and other things Izzy didn’t want to think about. “Does Uncle Finn live here?” Tansy persisted.

“Of course not. I’m sure he lives somewhere very nice,” Izzy said with more conviction than she felt. She ushered the girls into the elevator and pressed the button for the fourth floor. The door rattled shut and the elevator lurched, then began to creak and rumble upward. “This must be where he takes his pictures. Of wildlife.” Rats, perhaps. She would believe rats.

Eventually the elevator wheezed to a stop. The door hesitated, then slid open onto a tiny foyer with a door and a doorbell. Ring for admittance, ordered the sign tacked beside it.

Izzy rang. An answering buzz sounded. She pushed the door open.

He shot wildlife, all right. Just not the sort she’d imagined. Immediately inside the studio door Izzy came nose to belly button with a seven-foot-tall full-length black-and-white photo of a sultry blond bimbo clad only in her Rapunzel-length hair.

Izzy’s eyes widened, then briefly shut in disbelief. She would have clapped her hands over the girls’, but there were four eyes and only two of Izzy’s hands.

“May I help you?”

Izzy’s eyes flicked open. At the far end of the narrow reception room behind a desk sat a complete counterpoint to the bimbo. This woman was fifty if she was a day, with iron gray hair cut in no-nonsense bowl fashion and dark brown eyes that seemed to widen a bit, too, behind tortoiseshell frames as she took in Izzy and her charges.

Izzy jerked the girls around so they would stop staring in openmouthed amazement at the photo. “I’m here to see Mr. MacCauley.”

The woman looked doubtful, and Izzy didn’t blame her. “You have... an appointment?”

“I’ve brought the girls.”

The woman goggled, her gaze dropping to look at the twins. Her professional demeanor slipped suddenly. “Oh, my, no, dear. They have to be much older.”

“They’re six.” Izzy started to argue. Then she realized that wasn’t what the woman meant—which implied that Finn MacCauley was as irresponsible as his sister.

“They’re not here to be photographed. These are his nieces.”

“Nieces?” Now the woman’s eyes were almost as round as her tortoiseshell frames. Her mouth pressed together in a disapproving frown. “You’re...Meg?”

Whatever the woman’s precise opinion of Finn’s sister, it wasn’t much better than Izzy’s own. “I’m a neighbor.”

“Whose neighbor?”

“Meg’s. She lives next door to us. In San Francisco. We’re not close friends or anything, Meg and I, I mean. The girls and I are,” she added as she dropped a fond glance on them. They nodded their heads in agreement.

The woman looked dazed.

Izzy decided to press on. “But when they told Meg I was coming to New York to meet my fiancé, she...asked me to drop them off.”

“Drop them...off?”

“At their uncle’s,” Izzy said firmly, in case there was any misunderstanding. “Mr. MacCauley.”

“Oh dear.” The woman contemplated the girls, then the phone. Finally she reached for it, then hesitated and pulled her hand back, apparently having second thoughts. “He’s not going to like this,” she muttered. “He’s not going to like this one bit.”

She reached for the phone again, but before she could punch in a number, the door behind her desk burst open. A wild man stalked out.

Izzy’s stomach clenched. Her heart kicked over in her chest. He reminded her of nothing so much as the illustration she’d seen in a children’s book her grandfather had once read her about a pirate.

A black-haired, clean-shaven pirate. His face was lean, all angles and planes. His nose was hawkish and had obviously once been on the wrong end of someone’s fist or foot. He wore tattered blue jeans and a chambray shirt with the top three buttons undone and the sleeves rolled up. He was probably six feet tall, though he seemed bigger. His energy—or irritation—took up a lot of space. Meg would have said he had an aggressive aura. Izzy thought that didn’t describe it by half. His straight hair was startlingly dark against the tan of his lean face and it looked as if he’d been raking his hands through it. As if to confirm her suspicions, he did so now, lifting it in spikes all over his head.

“Where are they?” he demanded. He stomped past the receptionist, then whirled and confronted her. “They’re late!”

“I was just about to—”

“Call Tony. If he thinks I’m going to stand around here all afternoon twiddling my thumbs while his dollies drift in here when they damned well please, he’s got another think coming!”

The receptionist started to nod.

“Now!” he barked. Then he shot past her back through the door, slamming it behind him.

“Was th-that—” Pansy began nervously, her hand strangling Izzy’s.

“Shh,” Izzy said.

The door burst open once more. The wild man snapped, “Tell him if they’re not here in five minutes, he can damned well forget it. I’ll shoot the next girls who come through the door.”

Tansy and Pansy both gasped audibly.

And that was when he noticed them.

The girls tried to melt right behind Izzy’s skirt. The pirate turned his stormy blue eyes on them. “Who the hell are you?” Then his gaze lifted to focus squarely on Izzy.

Izzy pressed her knees together to stop them knocking and raised her chin. “My name is Isobel Rule,” she said firmly. “You are, I presume, Mr. MacCauley? I’ve brought your nieces.”

She was past expecting that he’d welcome them with open arms. She at least hoped he’d stay, “Oh, right, they were supposed to show up today, weren’t they? I’d forgotten.”

He looked poleaxed. “Brought my... nieces.” He stared at the girls, his tan going oddly pale. “The hell you say.”

Izzy frowned. “Language, Mr. MacCauley. Language.”

He ignored her. His gaze narrowed as it settled on the children peeping out at him. “You’re...Meg’s kids?”

Izzy stared. “You don’t know?”

“Never seem ’em before in my life,” he said flatly. “What’re they doing here?”

“I’ve brought them to stay with you.”

The receptionist gasped.

The stormy look in Finn MacCauley’s eyes increased to near gale force. “To stay? With me? You’re joking.”

“No, actually I’m not.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment. He shoved both hands through his hair again, spiking it further. Then, “Yeah, right,” he said at last. He took a steadying breath and then gave her look of tolerant amusement. “So where’s Meg? Hiding in the elevator waiting for me to flip out completely?” A corner of his mouth lifted.

“She’s in Bora Bora,” Izzy said.

All his amusement vanished in a flash. “What?”

Izzy took a step backward, almost toppling over when the twins’ clinging made her lose her balance for a second. She steadied herself, cursing Meg for having stuck her in this mess. She shrugged helplessly. “She left last night with her fiancé. She said you’d encouraged her to go,” she added accusingly.

“That conniving, sneaky, two-faced little—”

“Mis-ter MacCauley!” It wasn’t all that far off Izzy’s view of her ditzy neighbor, but she would never say so in front of the woman’s daughters.

He bit off the rest of the sentence, jammed his fists into the pockets of his jeans and stormed around the receptionist’s desk. She watched him warily from within the eye of the hurricane.

There was a sudden buzz from the doorbell. Automatically the receptionist responded. The door burst open and two chestnut-haired buxom bombshells in Day-Glo miniskirts trooped in.

“Oh, Finn, dear, sorry we’re late! So much traffic coming down Seventh Avenue you just wouldn’t believe!” the taller one said breathlessly.

They both brushed past Izzy and the twins as if they were pieces of furniture, skittering up to press kisses on Finn MacCauley’s tan cheeks and ruffle his already ruffled hair with their long fingernails.

“Tony sends his love. He says thanks so much for the favor. Where do you want us?” The shorter one was already tugging her skimpy scoop-neck shirt over her head as she headed through the door Finn had emerged from. The taller one paused long enough to bat her lashes at him, then followed her friend.

No one moved in their wake. Then Finn rubbed a hand over his mussed hair in a vain attempt to comb it. He fixed the twins with a hard stare. “Sit there,” he commanded, his gaze flicking from them to the bench alongside the seven-foot Rapunzel. They gulped audibly, then scurried to obey.

“You, too,” he said to Izzy.

“I have to go,” she objected. “I was only supposed to deliver—”

“Sit there and wait or take them with you.”

Izzy’s chin jutted. “I’m not taking—”

“Then you’ll wait, damn you.” Finn MacCauley’s chin stuck out even farther. They glowered at each other. Izzy’s glare turned decidedly mutinous.

“If you don’t,” Finn said, apparently no stranger to mutiny when he saw it, “I’ll find you if I have to track you to the ends of the earth.”

And he would, too, damn it, Finn thought savagely as he fumbled with one of the lights he was aiming at a pair of shapely almost bare backsides.

“Aren’t you finished yet?” one of the girls whined. “I’m tired.”

“You’ve been fiddling with those lights for hours,” the other one complained. “It’s late. Tony was expecting us at six.”

“Tough.” It hadn’t been much over an hour. It just seemed like forever. Finn finished setting the light and stepped back. “Stop wriggling around, for heaven’s sake.”

“But it’s hot.”

“Tony never said it would take so long... or be so boring,” the shorter one said grumpily. “The lights hurt my eyes.”

“Too bad.” Finn stamped back to the camera.

Tony’s girls were still wriggling—and pouting. He sighed. He’d probably got as much work out of them as he was going to. He never would have used them at all, except he owed Tony a favor for talking Angelina Fiorelli into spending an entire afternoon of her very busy New York jaunt in his studio. Of course it looked like the shots he took would end up being profitable for both of them, so Angelina was happy. But he still owed Tony, and shooting a couple of eager wannabes for a sunscreen ad that only required lots of honey-toned skin and absolutely no expression seemed an easy way to accomplish the payback. That was before he’d spent the last hour with them.

But they were preferable to what was waiting for him once he was done.

Damn Meg anyway! How could she have done this to him? What did she think he was going to do with a pair of five- (or were they six?) year-old girls while she went off blithely to Bora Bora?

It was patently clear what she thought—that he’d take care of them, just like he took care of everything else in her life. She had only to dump them on his doorstep and good old Finn would have no choice—he’d come leaping to the rescue once more.

He scowled fiercely through the lens. “Sucker,” he muttered.

Both girls started. “I will not!” one exclaimed, jumping up and giving him an outraged glare. The other looked at him in consternation.

Finn straightened and raked a hand through his hair. “Oh, hell. We’re done. Go on, get out of here.”

They left, shooting him wary, worried glances over their shoulders as they went. Finn sorted and finished labeling the used rolls of film for Strong to send to the lab. Then he straightened the set, put away the pillows, moved the baffles, the lifts, the lights. Did whatever he could to delay the inevitable—the twins.

At least their minder was still there—this woman who’d brought disaster to his doorstep. He could hear her even now. There were piping childish voices prattling on while he wound up an extension cord, then Isobel Rule’s soft voice in reply.

She sounded mature enough, but she didn’t look much older than the twins. Maybe it was the clothes she was wearing. They looked like she’d found them in a thrift shop—or a dustbin. They were the sort of vaguely dowdy, slightly hippyish togs that he’d thought went out in the 70s.

She looked like some sort of out-of-work folk singer with her long springy brown hair, parted in the middle, and her fresh scrubbed face. She did have nice skin, rosy with just a few freckles and otherwise absolutely flawless. Probably too young to get zits yet, he thought grimly. What the hell had Meg been thinking of sending the twins with a child like her? What had Meg been thinking of sending the twins at all?

And how dare the hippyish Isobel Rule look down her freckled nose and chastise him for his language in front of them?

It was mild compared to what he was thinking!

Maybe Strong would take them home with her until he could figure out how to drag his sister and her presumably new fiancé back from their Polynesian paradise.

Yeah, that was it. Strong was a family woman. She had a husband. At least he thought she did.

It didn’t matter, Finn decided, making up his mind. With his connections, it shouldn’t take him longer than a day or two to move enough heaven and earth to get Meg back to face the music.

In the meantime, he could stick them with Strong.

She was gone.

“Where’s Strong?” he demanded, glowering down at Isobel Rule.

His receptionist was certainly nowhere in sight. In fact one of the little redheads was sitting in her chair—or had been until he’d opened the door. Then she’d taken one look at him and had scurried to duck behind Isobel Rule once more.

The apparently unflappable Isobel was sitting in a straightback chair next to the larger-than-life portrait he’d done of last year’s supermodel, Tawnee Davis. It had graced the cover of the upstart glamour mag, Hi Society, and had won him industry acclaim for what he’d accomplished with Tawnee’s lovely curves, a few shadowy angles and some artfully arranged blond hair.

Isobel Rule was a complete counterpoint. Rounded where Tawnee was curvy, covered where Tawnee was bare. Her curly brown hair not the least bit artful, her unlined eyes bespeaking innocence rather than seduction.

Not that she seemed to care. Her gaze met Finn’s. “I sent her home.”

“You...sent her home?”

“Well, it’s after seven.” She stood up and set aside the book she’d been reading. “The poor woman said she had been here since eight. She has a life—unlike you, apparently. So, I told her to go on. We all shouldn’t have to suffer. She has to cook for Tom.”

“Who’s Tom?”

Isobel gave a long-suffering sigh. “Her husband.” She shook her head. “Poor man, on his feet all day. I didn’t know they still had beat policemen in New York City. I’m glad to know they do. It makes the city seem a much friendlier place.” She looked at him brightly. “Don’t you think?”

Finn’s mouth opened and closed. He felt like a grouper, hooked, beached and gasping for air.

Strong’s husband was called Tom? He was a policeman? He’d never known any of that. In fact all he’d learned about her in the seven years she’d worked for him was that she was never sick and she made things run smoothly in the studio even when the rest of the world was going to hell in a handbasket all around him.

He glanced around, trying to get his bearings. One of the twins was peering at him through the lens of a turn-of- the-century Kodak camera he kept on a shelf by the door. “Here now,” he snapped. “Put that down.”

This twin didn’t seem nearly as skittish as the other one. She set the camera down, but she didn’t dodge behind Isobel Rule’s skirt. Instead she regarded him solemnly. “Why?”

“Because it isn’t a plaything.”

“I wasn’t playing.” Unblinking green eyes met his.

“What were you doing?”

“Framing ogres.”

“Tansy!”

Finn’s gaze flicked up at Isobel’s dismayed exclamation. He saw a deep rose color suffuse her face, blotting out the freckles. And what a color it was.

“It’s what you told me to do,” the one who was presumably Tansy protested, looking indignant. “You said to iso—islo—”

“Isolate,” Isobel supplied resignedly.

Tansy bobbed her head. “Uh-huh. Isolate scary things and they wouldn’t be so scary anymore,” she finished, slanting a glance in Finn’s direction. “You’re right.”

He felt like baring his teeth at her. “Don’t scare you anymore, huh?” he said to the child.

Tansy shook her head resolutely.

He turned his gaze on the twin peeping out from behind Isobel. “What about you? Are you scared?” He saw Tansy fix her sister with a hard look.

“N-no,” the other one, obviously Pansy, replied.

“You ought to be.”

“Mr. MacCauley!” Isobel’s blush deepened: Or was it anger causing that color?

He turned a bland smile in her direction. “Yes?”

“Stop trying to frighten them! You should be ashamed of yourself, flaunting your ferocity before small children!”

“Flaunting my ferocity? Is that what I’m doing?”

Isobel Rule pressed her lips together. Then she turned to the children. “He’s teasing,” she told both girls firmly.

Finn frowned. “Now, wait a minute—”

“You were quite right to frame him, Tansy,” Isobel went on, ignoring him. “You were clever to see that he’s not really fierce at all.”

“The hell I’m not!”

All three of them turned their gazes on him, the twins with jaws sagging, Isobel with her brows drawn down in obvious displeasure at his language. He scowled at her. But even as he pretended he didn’t care, he felt the hot tide of embarrassment creeping up his neck and rued a complexion that, even tanned as it was, would allow Isobel Rule to see his blush.

He muttered under his breath and turned away. That was when he came face-to-face once more with Strong’s empty chair and remembered he didn’t have anyone to stick the twins with.

Except—and here his gaze slid sideways—Miss Isobel Rule.

Was she a miss? He looked a little harder, trying to see if she was wearing a ring, but she had her hands in the pockets of that circus tent he supposed she called a skirt. Their gazes met.

“Well, I can’t keep them,” Finn said abruptly.

“Meg said—”

“Not for the first time, Meg is wrong.” He waved hand around the studio foyer. “Do you see any dolls? Any blocks? Any puzzles or playthings? No, you don’t. Why? Because this is not a day-care center. I repeat, hot a day-care center! I can’t take them.” He did a quick lap around Strong’s desk for emphasis, stopping square in front of it to face Isobel Rule and her two worried-looking charges. He didn’t let his gaze linger on them.

“You’re their uncle,” Isobel said quietly. “They have no one else.”

“They have you.”

“Me?” she squeaked.

“Why not you? You brought them.”

“Because I got shang—because Meg asked me to,” she amended with a quick apprehensive glance at the girls.

Which meant that she was as much one of Meg’s victims as he was. That, in ordinary circumstances, would have made him feel sympathetic toward her. In the present situation, he wasn’t above taking whatever advantage he could get. “You should have said no.”

“I thought you were expecting them.”

He snorted. “You thought I agreed to baby-sit? You thought I said, sure, just drop ’em off, they can sit in the foyer and watch me shoot all day?”

“She said you shot wildlife,” Isobel replied faintly.

Finn’s hands tightened in a strangling motion. “She’ll burn in hell—”

The girls gasped.

Isobel shot him a furious glare. “That’s enough. Now you’ve terrified them. She’s not going to burn anywhere, girls,” Isobel assured them. “She’s fine. And you’re going to be fine, too. Your uncle is simply upset. Obviously he isn’t as flexible as one might like.” Another accusing glare sailed in his direction. “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t love you and want you—” here she nailed him with a look that promised instant death if he contradicted her “—he just needs to get used to the change in his life.”

“Our lives,” Finn said, determined to salvage whatever he could of the mess she was making of his life.

A tiny frown line appeared between Isobel’s dark brows. “What do you mean?”

“You want things fine? You want the girls calm and settled and reassured? Fair enough. But it isn’t just my life that’s changing. If they’re mine for two weeks, they’re yours, too, Isobel Rule.”

CHAPTER TWO

SHE went with him.

Only because the twins—even Tansy who was by far the braver of the two—looked horrified at the slightest hint that she might abandon them to the questionable mercies of their uncle Finn. And because she felt morally obliged to make sure Finn MacCauley’s bark really was worse than his bite.

And wasn’t it nice someone involved had a moral or two? Izzy thought irritably as she hurried to keep up with him as he strode along Amsterdam Avenue.

Like his piratical forebears, Finn MacCauley had done considerably more barking and bossing on the way uptown. He’d snapped at the girls when they dawdled. He’d grumbled about having to herd them all into a taxi when the subway was so much faster and cheaper.

“Not with luggage,” Izzy had argued. And then he’d groused about having to manhandle their bags in and out of the cab when he’d finally managed to flag one down. They had to disembark two blocks from his Upper West Side apartment because they were caught in a hopeless traffic jam, and now he was complaining about having to walk slow enough that six-year-old legs could keep up.

Izzy glanced around now, made sure the girls weren’t looking, then kicked him in the shin.

“Sh—eee!” Finn hopped on one foot and bit off something she was sure would have singed childish ears. “What the hell—heck—are you doing?”

“Shutting you up.” She gave him a saccharine smile. “How’m I doing?”

Finn looked nonplussed, then faintly guilty. He glanced back at the twins who were gawking at a boy on in-line skates weaving at breakneck speed through several lanes of still stalled traffic. “They aren’t paying any attention,” he muttered.

“They were. And you weren’t making them feel welcome.”

“They aren’t.”

She kicked him again.

“Ow! Damn it!” He bent to rub his shin and glowered at Izzy’s sneakers. “Have you got steel-capped toes in those things?”

“Don’t I wish,” Izzy murmured. She fell into step beside him as he turned the corner and slowed his pace considerably. “I’m sure you’re upset,” she said, feeling a little guilty now herself at what she’d done. “But you don’t have to take it out on the girls. It’s not their fault their mother’s a—” She cast about for a suitably polite word.

“Flake?” he supplied. “Ditz? Irresponsible idiot? Or would you like me to think of something stronger?”

Izzy tried to hide a smile. “Well, I wouldn’t have put it quite that way, but...”

“I would,” Finn said darkly.

Izzy knew the voice of experience when she heard it. “She doesn’t mean to be quite so irresponsible. Meg is a dear, really,” she offered. “Sweet, funny, eager...”

“Generous?” Finn suggested ironically.

This time Izzy couldn’t suppress the smile. “In her way.”

Finn snorted. He cut in front of her, bounding up the steps to a brownstone halfway up the block, then dropped the duffels on the stoop and fished a key out of his pocket. The twins pressed against either side of Izzy, watching him as he unlocked the door and held it open. “Third floor,” he told them. “Forward march.”

His apartment, Izzy saw when he ushered them in, stretched from the front of the brownstone all the way to the back. Once she was sure it had been a warren of dark tiny rooms. Now it was one huge airy expanse with tall windows at the front and French doors opening onto a small terrace at the back. The kitchen area, on the street end, was small but efficient, with stark white cupboards and dark green tile countertops above which hung a rack with a row of well-used copper-bottomed pots and pans. In the center area, where they had come in, was a wide general living space with a gleaming hardwood floor accented by bold geometrical design, black and white area rugs and a huge modern black leather sofa and matching chairs and photos, not of seven-foot technicolor bimbos, but black-and-white studies of loons on a quiet lake, deer eating quietly in a clearing, and one lone wolf howling at the moon. Izzy stared, her attention caught.

“Move it or lose it, lady,” Finn grumbled behind her and pushed her farther into the room with the duffel bags, then kicked the door shut. He dropped the bags and straightened, wincing dramatically.

“They weren’t that heavy,” Izzy said tartly. “I carried them all the way through the airport.”

Finn muttered under his breath.

Izzy ignored him, continuing her perusal of his apartment, never having seen anything quite like it. She’d lived in the same San Francisco Victorian since she’d been orphaned and gone to live with her grandfather when she was seven. It had been cluttered and tumbled and homey. Nothing at all like this.

Against the corner provided by the back of some kitchen cabinets and nearly hidden by, heaven help her; a tree, she spied a steep wood and steel circular stairway ascending. At the terrace end of the room Izzy saw a warmer, more intimate arrangement of furniture with color this time—imagine that. There was a daybed, overstuffed chair, a bentwood rocker and several book-shelves—though it was clearly all high quality, not the mishmash of old and new, battered and worn, that still sat in her grandfather’s house. Beyond the French doors, a terrace, with a small table and two chairs, overlooked the back gardens of the block. Not much, perhaps, but considerably more aesthetically pleasing than the row of dustbins she saw from her bedroom window every morning.

It was, all in all, quite out of Izzy’s league.

“Finished gawking?” Finn asked. His arched brows mocked her.

Izzy felt her color deepen. “It’s what you get when you invite bumpkins home with you.”

Finn’s deep blue eyes gave her a once-over, making her wish the floor would conveniently open and swallow her up. Then he turned to the girls. “You’ll be sleeping upstairs,” he said as he hoisted the duffel bags up once more. “Come on.”

Izzy hung back until Finn turned, halfway up the stairs, to bark, “You, too. You’re not sleeping down there.”

“I’m not sleeping anywhere,” she said. “I’m leaving. I—”

“You leave, they go with you,” Finn said implacably. “I told you that.”

“But I can’t stay! I have a life.”

“So did I.” Past tense.

They stared at each other, neither speaking for a long moment. Then Finn asked, “What life? What brought you to New York?”

“I’m going to get married,” Izzy said.

“You?” He looked her up and down with such obvious disbelief that Izzy wanted to smack him.

“Yes, me,” she said flatly. “Want to make something of it?”

He smiled. “Have you picked a groom, yet?”

Which was what, his way of saying he didn’t think any man in his right mind would marry a girl like her? Izzy ground her teeth. “Yes, I’ve picked a groom. And I intend seeing him yet this evening. So if you’ll excuse me...”

Now it was Finn MacCauley’s turn to grind his teeth. “You can’t,” he said. “Not yet,” he added. “At least help me get them settled. Have dinner with us. Read them a story. Get them to bed.” He was looking just a bit desperate.

Izzy chewed on her lower lip. She wanted to get to Sam’s before it got too late in the evening. He wasn’t even expecting her. She hadn’t told him for sure what day she was coming. She’d wanted it to be a surprise. But she felt a certain obligation to the girls, too. Even if Finn MacCauley had been the best uncle in the world she’d have felt a little apprehensive about leaving them with a man she didn’t know. And as much as she might like to discomfit a man as arrogant as Mr. Wildlife MacCauley, well...it was wrong to take her irritation out on the girls.

“Until they’re in bed,” she said.

Finn let out a pent-up breath. He looked at the two little girls who stared up at him in unblinking fascination. “Follow me,” he told them and led the way up the curve of the stairs.

Izzy stared after him, heard him growl something at the girls, and hurried to join them. “Be kind,” she said.

“Nobody’s being kind to me.” Finn pointed the girls toward one of the bedrooms. “Which of these bags is yours?”

“This small one. The big ones you’re carrying are the girls’. I’ll take mine back down.”

She had just started down the steps when Tansy said, “Wow! Lookit this!”

All of a sudden Finn’s hand reached out and snatched the little girl out of the room and shut the door abruptly. “In here,” he said, steering her into the other bedroom as Izzy stared. “For now.”

Izzy looked closely. Was that a flush deepening on Finn MacCauley’s tanned cheeks? A smile quirked the corner of her mouth.

Finn dropped the girls’ duffels in the smaller bedroom at the end of the hall. “Back downstairs,” he commanded, herding them all in front of him. Izzy gave him an arch smile, which he determinedly ignored.

Once they were back downstairs, though, his battery seemed to run out. He stood and stared at them mutely, then looked at Izzy in silent appeal.

“Dinner?” she suggested. “You must be hungry, girls?”

Tansy and Pansy nodded.

Finn latched onto the suggestion like a drowning man tossed a life preserver. He headed toward the refrigerator with alacrity, opened the door, stooped and stared. And stared some more.

The girls edged over to stand next to him. Finally Tansy ventured, “You don’t got much. Milk an’ beer an’ what’s that?”

“Pickles.” Finn straightened, sighed and shut the refrigerator door. He flicked Izzy what might have been an apologetic look. “I wasn’t expecting company.”

“How about take-out?”

Both girls jumped up and down. “Ooh, yeah!” Pansy exclaimed. “Moo goo gai pan! Kung Fu Pork and Beans!”

“Kung Fu what?” Finn gaped.

Izzy shrugged lamely. “There was this weird Chinese take-away down the street from us. Sort of...nontraditional.” A grin flickered. “They specialized in dim sum and barbecue. Meg used to get supper there pretty often.”

Finn didn’t look surprised. “Whatever you say.” He fetched a stack of take-out menus from a drawer in the kitchen and handed them to the girls. “Take your pick. I’ll be right back.”

While Izzy read the hard words to them, Finn disappeared back upstairs. Izzy was beginning to wonder if he’d vanished out the fire escape when at last she heard his footsteps clattering back down the wooden stair treads. She turned just in time to see him paste a smile on his face. “All right, let’s get moving. Ready to go, girls?” he said briskly, heading toward the door.

Pansy shrank back, but Tansy came after him and thrust a bright pink paper menu into his hand. “This place.”

Finn glanced at it. “Good choice.” He opened the door. Tansy preceded him. Pansy hung back. Izzy didn’t move at all. He looked back at her. “Well?” he said sharply.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have them to yourself for a few minutes?”

“Damn sure.”

“Mister—”

“I know. I know. Don’t swear. Come along. They’re hungry. Who knows what six-year-old girls do when they’re hungry?” He looked at them as if they might take a chunk out of his ankle at any moment. He made a growling sound deep in his throat.

Pansy, mistaking the tone for an indication that he just might take a bite out of her, skittered nervously past him. Tansy merely giggled. Izzy, seeing that he wasn’t moving unless she did, sighed and brushed past him out the door.

The walk to and from the Chinese restaurant, though it was only three blocks away, was the final straw for two very tired little girls. The early morning trip to the airport, the long transcontinental flight, the taxi ride into Manhattan followed by their traumatic meeting with their uncle and another long ride uptown had done them in.

They barely touched the moo goo gai pan. They nibbled at the five-spice chicken wings, and they all but fell asleep in the bird’s nest soup. It was a good thing the four of them carried all the food home to eat it, Izzy thought.

When Tansy’s head dipped and jerked up, then dipped again and finally hit the table, Izzy said, “I think they’ve had it.” Pansy had already been asleep in her chair for the past ten minutes.

Finn, who had been shoveling in food silently since they’d sat down, now said, “Thank God. Shall I carry them upstairs or will they wake up?”

The way he said it told her how much he wanted to avoid that. She wondered if he planned to spend the next two weeks ignoring them completely. He’d certainly done his best during dinner.

“I think you can carry them. Once they drift off, they’re usually dead to the world.”

“Had a lot of experience with them, have you?”

Izzy shrugged awkwardly. “They’ve stayed with us a few times.” She stood up and carried her plate to the sink, then came back to pick up the girls’ plates. Finn was still sitting at the table, watching her. She averted her gaze, focusing entirely on clearing the table.

Finally he shoved back his chair and went around the table to pick up Tansy. He looked awkward and more than a little tentative as he did so. When he straightened he looked at Izzy. “Come with me and pull back the covers.”

Izzy followed him. Whatever Tansy had seen on the bedroom wall he had obviously removed while she and the twins were deciding on dinner. All she could see now was a king-size bed with a navy blue duvet, a teak dresser completely devoid of anything at all, and a couple of rather whiter-than-the-walls spots where two pictures had obviously hung.

He saw Izzy’s glance go to the bare spots and gave her a steely look, then settled Tansy onto the bed. While Izzy turned down the covers on the other side, then brought in the girls’ bags, he went back downstairs for her sister.

Izzy was just slipping Tansy into a thin cotton gown when he got back with Pansy cradled in his arms. He laid her on the far side of the bed, then stood silently by and watched while Izzy removed her shirt and shorts, then put a gown on her as well. Then she pulled the summer-weight duvet over them.

“Probably should have made sure they brushed their teeth,” Izzy said as she bent to drop a kiss on each girl’s forehead. “But I guess they’ll survive one night without. Their toothbrushes are in their bags. I’m sure you won’t have any trouble finding them.” She flicked a reassuring smile in Finn’s direction, then stepped back and waited for him to give them each a kiss as well.

He didn’t move. He just stood in the doorway, looking down at the two small bodies in the very big bed. His expression was unreadable. Finally he sighed, raked a hand through his hair, and turned and walked away.

Izzy watched him go.

The girls wouldn’t care that he hadn’t kissed them. Probably Pansy would be relieved. But still...

It’s not your business, Izzy told herself firmly as she shut out the light. You did your part. And that was true, but she wished she felt better about leaving the girls with him. She wished he had at least kissed them.

He was standing by the French doors staring out into the waning summer twilight when she came down the stairs. His hands were jammed into the front pockets of his faded jeans, his shoulders were slightly slumped. A swath of dark hair fell across his forehead. He didn’t look particularly piratical now, unless he was a pirate whose ship had just been boarded and sunk.

Izzy would have liked to say something cheerful. She didn’t think the words had been invented yet. She cleared her throat. “I...really do have to be going now.”

He turned. “A rat abandoning the sinking ship?” he said, his mouth twisting wryly. The metaphor was so close to her own that she blinked.

“You’ll be fine,” she assured him.

He snorted. “Yeah, right. They look like they expect me to kill them.”

“They’re nervous. They’ll calm down. It won’t happen all at once. You can’t expect it to. But you were a little...nicer over dinner.”

“I didn’t say anything at all over dinner.”

“Which was a distinct improvement,” Izzy said tartly. “But,” she went on, determined to give him his due, “I understand what a shock this was for you. I had no idea Meg hadn’t told you she was sending them.”

“Yeah, well, that’s Meg. A shock a minute.”

“Surely you know someone who can keep an eye on them for you?”

He grimaced. “Strong. Though I don’t think it really comes under the heading of office management.”

“No,” Izzy agreed. “Maybe she has a daughter.” She paused. “But you wouldn’t know that, would you?” He didn’t seem to know anything else.

Finn shoved his hair back. “No, I wouldn’t know that.”

“It’s only for two weeks. Take a vacation.”

“Just like that? Drop everything and—”

She picked up her bag and began to rummage through it. “I almost forgot. Meg gave me a letter for you.” She tugged out the slightly crumpled envelope. It had been slightly crumpled when Meg had given it to her, so she hadn’t worried about simply stuffing it in her bag. Now she held it out to him. When he took it, she zipped up her bag and shouldered it, then moved toward the door.

Finn slit the envelope and began to read. He said a rude word. A very rude word. And then another.

Izzy’s head snapped around. He was staring at the letter in his hand, then he crushed it in his fist. “She can’t do this! Damn it! She can’t! I won’t let her!”

Izzy blinked, then realized that Meg must have used the letter to inform him that she was planning to marry Roger. “Maybe it won’t be so bad. Marriage might be the making of them.”

“Marriage?” He stared at her. “They’re only six.”

“I meant Meg. Isn’t that—Didn’t Meg tell you she was marrying Roger?”

“I wanted her to marry Roger!”

“You did? I can’t imagine why,” Izzy said with perhaps more bluntness than absolutely necessary.

“Neither can I now.”

“Then what are you fussing about?”

“Because she’s marrying Roger, all right, but she’s decided she was wrong about him. He isn’t stable enough or responsible enough for fatherhood.” Once more his blue eyes bored into Izzy’s and he waved the letter in her face. “She’s given me permanent custody of the girls!”

It wasn’t her fault.

Nor was it her responsibility. They weren’t her responsibility. None of them. Not Tansy. Not Pansy. Not the black-haired pirate.

Going to Sam’s was her responsibility. Seeing Sam. Being with her fiancé, beginning a real engagement together at last.

But she couldn’t get Finn MacCauley and his nieces out of her mind. What would happen when the girls woke up? Would they have nightmares? Would Finn know how to deal with them if they did?

As the taxi whizzed through Central Park toward Sam’s Upper East Side apartment, Izzy found herself worrying more and more.

It wasn’t until the cab pulled up outside an elegant Fifth Avenue apartment building that Izzy let another worry enter her head.

Should she have told Sam she was coming?

Should she have called him? Should she have at least written?

But then, Sam appeared out of the blue on her doorstep often enough. He had never warned her. In fact every time he’d appeared in her life, he’d come unannounced, appeared on the doorstep, daisies in hand, a beguiling smile on his face, determined to whisk her away on some crazy, romantic outing. That was one of the things she loved about him.

Well, now it was her turn.

But as she peered out the window at the marble facade of the building, she began to have second thoughts. She’d never quite thought about where Sam lived until this moment. When Finn had led her into his brownstone, she’d thought it was the sort of place Sam might call home and she was pleased.

This building wasn’t a brownstone. There didn’t seem to be a multitude of brownstones on Fifth Avenue. Actually there didn’t seem to be any. All the buildings seemed to be bigger and fancier, with exquisite wrought-iron gratings over tall windows, and heavy double doors set back beneath awnings. And they all seemed to have doormen.

Surely Sam didn’t have a doorman!

But the driver said, “This is it, lady,” and she knew, just as surely, that Sam did.

She fumbled in her purse for cab fare. Then, clutching her duffel bag against her chest, she climbed out. The cab sped away, leaving her standing on the curb, staring at the heavy oak and glass doors above which in gold numerals—maybe even gold leaf, Izzy thought with dismay—was the address to which she had sent all her letters to Sam.

Izzy ran her tongue over her lips. In all the time she’d envisioned Sam as her Prince Charming, she’d never ever thought he lived in anything remotely like a castle. Why hadn’t he told her?

Because it hadn’t mattered to him. She was what mattered to him—not the fact that he lived in splendor and she lived in a slightly seedy-looking old Victorian monstrosity that had far in the past seen more paint and better days.

She approached the doors hesitantly, two steps, then three, then stopped. She reached up and tried to judge just how messed up her hair was. Why hadn’t she thought to comb it before she left Finn MacCauley’s? She started to fish around in her bag for a comb when she was suddenly jostled aside as two very elegant young women swept past her, heading for the door.

Their hair was combed. In fact, not a single strand was out of place. Probably never had been. Izzy touched her own again, feeling the tangles and frizz. She bit down on her lip. They were wearing lipstick, too. She could see it as they turned to each other and smiled.

“It was gold. Sam saw it at Tiffany’s. He told me so,” she heard one of them say.

“No! Not really!” the other replied and gave a musical laugh. There was no other word for it—it was musical . And Tiffany’s? Sam went to Tiffany’s?

Then the door opened—not because they had deigned to lift a hand to do it but because the doorman—just as she’d feared—pushed it and held it open so they could enter. “Good evening, Miss Talbot, Miss Sutcliffe.” He very nearly bowed.

Izzy goggled.

The door shut once more. But not before the doorman gave her a very hard stare. It was almost as if he’d looked at her and said, “Move along. Move along now. No riffraff here.”

Izzy bristled. Doorman or no doorman, she wasn’t turning tail and running now. Just because it wasn’t exactly what she had expected, still it was where Sam lived. All she had to do was ask for Sam.

She marched up to the door.

It didn’t open. The doorman just looked at her. She opened it herself. Halfway. And then the doorman grabbed the handle on the other side and held it there. “Yes?”

“I’ve come to see Sam Fletcher, please.”

He looked down his nose at her, but he was too well bred to sniff. “Mr. Fletcher is away.”

“Away? Where away?” God, why hadn’t she called?

The doorman didn’t reply. Discretion was probably his first name. And last and middle.

“For how long?” she asked.

Another dead end.

“Look,” she said desperately, “I know he travels. I just didn’t realize he’d be traveling now. We’re...old friends.” She didn’t think for a minute Mr. Starched Shirt would believe she and Sam were engaged. “I’m from San Francisco. He stops by unannounced to see me when he comes through the city and—” She stopped abruptly, realizing what he might think about that!

Before he could remark a well-dressed—weren’t they all? Izzy thought desperately—older woman came out of the elevator. She gave Izzy an inquisitive glance, then apparently decided that curiosity was rude and her gaze fixed on the doorman.

“Could you get me a taxi, Travers?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He held the door for her, then kept holding it, obviously waiting for Izzy.

Reluctantly she followed. The doorman flagged a cab and held the door while his tenant got in. “Good evening, Mrs Fletcher,” he said as the taxi pulled away. Then he turned and looked at Izzy.

“Mrs. Fletcher?”

He dipped his head. There was the barest hint of a supercilious smile on his face.

“A relative of Sam’s?” Thank God she hadn’t said they were engaged—even if it was true.

“His mother. May I get you a taxi?”

Izzy felt as if she had swallowed her duffel bag. She stared at her toes peeking out the ends of her sandals.

They suddenly seemed very bare. Very out of place in this world that was Sam’s.

It occurred to her how little she knew about Sam. He was the grandson of her grandfather’s beloved friend, the man whose life he had saved during World War II. They had corresponded for years. That was why Sam had looked Gordon Rule up on his way through San Francisco five years ago. He’d wanted to meet the man who’d saved his grandfather’s life. “I owe him mine, in a manner of speaking,” he’d said to Izzy.

It was the first of a dozen meetings—all at the end of business trips to the Far East—during which they’d fallen in love. So Izzy didn’t know much about Sam’s life in New York. She’d simply expected he lived much the same way she did.

It didn’t take a genius to see how wrong she’d been.

Maybe it was just as well she hadn’t found him at home, she thought now. She could imagine him being embarrassed if she showed up on his doorstep—no, in his marble foyer—unannounced. She didn’t want to embarrass him. She was suddenly very worried.

“Miss?”

She glanced up to realize the doorman was still waiting for her answer. “No, um, thank you,” she said faintly. “I’ll walk.”

Finn contemplated his liquor cabinet for a long time before he decided that booze wasn’t going to solve his problem.

Only a fairy godmother who would wave her magic wand and turn his nieces into mice would solve his problem. Or one who would whisk them back to San Francisco and provide them with a stable, devoted mother who loved them.

He rubbed his hands down his face and slumped on the sofa. No, their mother loved them. He didn’t doubt that. She had just finally come to terms with her limitations and, because she loved them, gave them to him.

He supposed there was a skewed sort of logic to her behavior.

I know you think they need stability, she had written in her letter to him. I agree. And you must see that I’m not the one to give it to them. I’ve tried, God knows. But so far I don’t even seem to have managed it for myself. I think I might be able to do it with Roger, but I don’t want to give the girls hopes that I might destroy again. That’s why I’m giving them to you. I know how you feel about being responsible. You never let me down. I know you won’t let them down either. Thanks, big brother. I love you all. Meg.

Quite a testimony.

How the hell was he ever going to live up to it?

He’d been too afraid of their unstable background to ever consider marriage himself. He hadn’t wanted kids for precisely the same reason. And now Meg had dumped into his lap responsibilities he never would have chosen in a million years.

But she was right about one thing—she knew him—and she knew he’d bust himself trying to take care of them. If only he knew where to start.

The doorbell sounded, startling him. He glanced at his watch. It was after eleven. He frowned and hauled himself to his feet, then turned on the intercom.

“Who is it?”

“Izzy,” the voice said. It was faint and slightly tremulous, and for a moment the name didn’t register.

Then it did, and he pushed the button to unlock the door downstairs and jerked open his own door at the same time. Then he went out into the hallway to peer down as Isobel Rule made her way slowly up the stairs.

“What happened?” he demanded, looking her over, half certain she’d been mugged.

Then sanity reasserted itself. No one would mug someone who dressed like a thrift-shop reject.

She gave him a faint smile. “He wasn’t home.”

He dumped you? That and several equally uncomplimentary questions leapt into his head. He suppressed them, stepping back to usher her into the apartment. She stopped just inside the door and stood, still holding her duffel bag. He took it out of her hand. Earlier she probably would have fought him for possession of it. Now she let him take it. She looked as if she was about to cry.

Finn, used to the vicissitudes of emotions in the models he photographed daily, was no stranger to tears, although he was more than a little surprised to see the previously unflappable Isobel Rule coming close to them. “Tell me what happened,” he said gruffly. He steered her into the kitchen and put the kettle on.

She sniffled and perched herself on one of the kitchen chairs, propping her elbows on the table. “He’s gone—and I don’t even know for how long. I should have let him know I was coming.”

“You didn’t?” He’d been reaching into the cupboard for mugs. Now he simply stared at her.

“He never told me!” Isobel protested. She sighed and ran her hands through her hair distractedly. “It’s hard to explain,” she mumbled.

“Try me.” He was intrigued. Besides, it took his mind off his own problem.

“Sam Fletcher is the grandson of my grandfather’s best friend. They fought together in the Second World War and my grandfather saved his grandfather’s life. I used to hear stories about it when I was growing up. My grandfather raised me,” she explained. “My parents died when I was seven and I went to live with him.”

Finn set out the mugs and leaned against the counter, watching her, waiting for the water to boil.

“I met Sam when I was nineteen. He was twenty-four. His grandfather had just died and Sam was taking over a lot of the nitty-gritty work in their family import-export business.”

“They own Fletchers’?” Finn’s eyes widened. Fletchers’ was one of the best-known import-export businesses in the country. While it might not have the household name recognition of a Tiffany’s or Neiman-Marcus, in its own sphere it was legendary. People with incomes like Tawnee Davis bought their household furnishings and knickknacks from Fletchers’.

“You’ve heard of it?”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“They must make a lot of money,” Izzy said glumly.

“You could say that.”

“I didn’t know it,” she said in a small voice. “I thought Sam wasn’t any different than me.”

“And he is,” Finn guessed, beginning to get an inkling of what she must have unexpectedly walked into.

She looked morose. “He has a doorman. And a crystal chandelier. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Waterford.”

“It is,” Finn said.

Izzy looked at him, eyes wide. “How do you know?”

The kettle whistled and he poured water into the mugs for tea. “Because I shot a layout in his apartment building last year.”

“You know where he lives?” Izzy considered that. “It’s pretty fancy. It’s very fancy,” she corrected herself. “Sam never seemed fancy.”

“Maybe he’s not.”

“You don’t know him?”

“No.” Finn hobnobbed with the recently rich and famous. The Fletchers had had money since they’d got off the Mayflower.

“I think I’m out of my league,” Izzy said after a moment.

“But if he intends to marry you—”

“That’s what he said. He gave me a ring.” She flashed it briefly. It was a rock almost the size of a pea. “I thought it was a zircon,” she said. “It must not be.” She sounded even more miserable at that.

“Probably not.” Finn thought she was the strangest girl he’d met in his life. Most of the women he knew would have killed for a diamond of that size. He shoved a cup of tea in front of her, hoping to forestall the tears he saw threatening.

Izzy wrapped her hands around the mug and stared into the steaming tea. “Thank you.” She sipped it. “His mother looked at me like I had a social disease.”

“What?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t even know it was his mother at first. This lady came out while the doorman was rejecting me, and she gave me this look...it wasn’t really snotty exactly, just aware, you know, like she was registering that I didn’t belong.”

“Maybe you’re imagining things.”

Izzy shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She sighed. “I don’t think she has the faintest idea Sam and I are engaged.”

“Not every guy tells his mother about the woman he’s going to marry. Anyway,” he said briskly, “he’s a grown man. He doesn’t need her permission.”

“I just don’t want to...embarrass him.”

“You won’t embar—” he started to say, then his voice faltered because there was just so far assurances could go, and assuring Isobel Rule that in her present state of slightly hippy shambles she wouldn’t embarrass Sam Fletcher was too far.

Finn’s eyes narrowed and he studied her closely, assessing point by point the woman he saw.

She wasn’t tall and willowy like the models he shot every day. She didn’t know the first thing about how to move with their sinuous grace. But she did have assets. Her shiny brown hair, if someone cut it and styled it and tamed all that riotous curl, might actually be lovely. Her skin was freckled, but not unattractive. In fact it had a sort of peachy-rosy glow that, if she wore the right colors, would be stunning. Slate blue, drab gray and burnt umber were not the right ones. A change of clothes would help, too. Something that didn’t shriek Haight-Ashbury with an underlying hum of thrift-shop grabbag for a start.

Her features were actually quite nice, not that she’d done the slightest thing to enhance them. She had wide brown eyes flecked with green and amber, a nice straight nose. And her mouth... he looked more closely. There was something almost akin to Angelina Fiorelli’s about her mouth.

He could turn Isobel Rule into a woman who would knock all the Fletchers’ socks off.

A slow smile spread across his face. “Izzy,” he said, “have I got a deal for you.”

CHAPTER THREE

“YOU want to make me over?” She echoed Finn MacCauley’s words, trying to sound offended or at least indifferent. She didn’t do a very good job.

He shrugged. “You’re the one who just finished saying you didn’t think you were playing in his league. I only offered to fix that.”

“For a price,” she reminded him.

“You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Besides, where are you going to go if you don’t stay here?”

She didn’t know. She knew actually that his offer was close to life-saving. At least it was face-saving. She couldn’t imagine going home now and reporting to Pops and Digger and Hewey, the old sailors who shared the house Grandad had left her at his death two months before, that she couldn’t get past Sam Fletcher’s front door. They’d come storming out en masse and throw him overboard. They’d fuss and fume and get all overprotective and cosset and coddle her to within an inch of her life.

It had been all she could do to convince them she was capable of coming clear across the country alone to see him. If they’d known for a minute that she hadn’t told him she was coming, well, it didn’t bear thinking about!

No, she had to dig in and stay in New York. And Finn MacCauley’s offer was clearly the best way to do it. All he wanted in exchange was that she take care of the girls. What sort of hardship was that? She enjoyed the girls.

So what was the problem?

The problem, Izzy finally got around to admitting to herself, was Finn MacCauley himself. She’d never met anyone like him in her life. Sam, who was apparently wealthy beyond all her wildest dreams, seemed somehow more ordinary, more commonplace, than Finn.

Sam was easygoing, casual, lighthearted. There was nothing intense about Sam—unless it was the romantic spark he had fired in Izzy five years before. Finn, on the other hand, positively radiated passionate energy. She’d seen it in him the moment he’d burst out of the door to his studio. She could see it now as he prowled the confines of his kitchen.

It was a sort of intense singularly masculine energy that made her more than a little nervous. She found that surprising when she thought about it, because heaven knew she’d been raised around men. Since the age of seven, she’d been raised by men—Grandad and his sailor pals. But not one of them had she been as aware of as she was Finn MacCauley.

Did she want such a man to, as he put it so very bluntly, “shape her up”?

Did she have a choice?

Well, yes. She could say no thank you to his deal. But then where would she stay? And who would he get to take care of Tansy and Pansy?

“For how long?” she asked warily.

“How long is Fletcher going to be gone?”

“I don’t know.” She didn’t relay any more of the ignominious details of her encounter with the doorman.

“I’ll find out tomorrow,” Finn said.

He acted as if it would be no big deal. Probably for him it wouldn’t be. No doubt she could learn a lot from him.

If she dared.

Visions of Pops and Digger and Hewey looking after her for the rest of her life—or theirs—rose again in her mind. She lifted her gaze and met his piratical one. “All right,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

She was awake at first light, surprised, in fact, that she’d slept at all. But the previous day’s events had been tiring enough so that it wasn’t long after her head hit the pillow that Izzy was out like a light. The sounds of the city woke her again when it was scarcely dawn. She didn’t know why sirens and rattling trash cans should sound different in New York than they did in San Francisco. She only knew that she was awakened very early.

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