Daniel was different from any other man she’d ever known

He was kind. Patient. Funny. Appealing. Watching him play with the boys, she noticed the graceful way he moved, as if he were comfortable in his own skin.

Her gaze lingered, and a tingle ran through her. Well, of course, it was hard to be a female and not tingle at the sight of him. He was great to look at, but he wasn’t just a pretty face. He radiated energy and life, and when he smiled, he could take her breath away.

There was danger here.

He must have sensed her looking at him, because suddenly he stopped, and then, slowly, sent her that smile of his. Lilah felt attraction dance down her spine like a caress, and without thinking, she found herself smiling back.

MILLS & BOON

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Dear Reader,

For most of us, family means everything. It’s especially important to Daniel, Mike and Ian—the heroes of this three-book series—who grew up on their own, struggling to survive, until they met each other.

Becoming brothers by choice, they created the family they’d never had. By supporting and encouraging each other, the Foster brothers overcame their pasts and built new lives in Serenity Valley, an isolated community that has gradually accepted these newcomers.

This is Daniel’s story. We hope you enjoy it and the two stories to follow, set in the beautiful Vermont countryside among people who cherish family above all. We love to hear from our readers. Feel free to drop us an e-mail at DalyThompson@aol.com.

Happy reading!

Barbara and Liz

One of a Kind Dad
Daly Thompson

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Daly Thompson is a collaboration between Barbara Daly and Liz Jarrett, both multipublished authors. Barbara brings to this joint effort her passion for reading, the characters she’s collected from the diverse places she’s lived and jobs she’s held, and a firm belief in happy endings. She began writing when she discovered she’d need a mobile career in order to follow her academic husband from coast (the Atlantic) to river (just across the Mississippi), and at last found her own happy ending in writing romance.

Liz has been writing stories since she was a child. After graduating from college, she was a technical writer for twelve years before she decided to stay home with her children. During their naps, she started writing her favorite type of stories—romances. This enjoyable pastime is now her full-time career.

Thanks to Johanna Raisanen for her expert

guidance…and to my Vermont friends and

neighbors. I wish I could have named

a town after each of you.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

Nick’s screams jolted Daniel into action before he was entirely awake. Barefooted, with his pajama bottoms flapping around his ankles, he raced down the hall, pausing outside Nick’s room to take a deep breath and will his heartbeat to settle down. Not until he’d accomplished that did he step into the room.

“Nick,” Daniel said softly. “It’s okay. I’m here.” He switched on the bedside lamp, a figure of a baseball player in a Red Sox uniform. In the subdued glow of the light, he saw the boy sitting up in bed, eyes wild and face drained of color, his screams still bouncing off the walls.

Daniel sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed Nick’s tousled red hair. It was wet with perspiration. “It’s okay,” he said again. “I won’t let anything hurt you.”

Gradually, the screams faded into sobs, then to gasps for air. Nick didn’t reach out his arms to be hugged until his terror passed. He’d been one of Daniel’s foster boys for almost two months now, and still didn’t trust him enough to seek him out for comfort. What could have happened to a boy so young to make him close his heart so completely?

No one knew. A woman in a larger town nearby had found Nick, all alone and unable to give his name or his parents’ to Child Services. How old was he? The pediatrician who examined him had put his age at seven. Daniel’s hands clenched. He’d solve the mystery of Nick one day, and when he did, the responsible parties would deeply regret what they’d done to this child.

“What’s wrong?” Daniel asked, gently rubbing Nick’s bony shoulder. “Tell me about it.”

With one final gasp that ended on a sigh, Nick mumbled, “It was just a bad dream.”

“What about?”

“Nothing.”

“You’d feel better if you told me. We could talk about it.”

“I don’t remember. Sorry I woke you up.”

Nick always said, “I don’t remember.” He was calm now, safe behind the invisible wall that protected him from the demons he couldn’t confront.

“How about a little bedtime reading, then?” Daniel suggested. “What would you like to hear?”

“The Swiss Family Robinson?” It was not a statement so much as a question. Is that okay with you—or am I asking too much?

“Terrific,” Daniel said. “My favorite.”

In less than a minute he was back in Nick’s room with the book, an old copy with yellowing pages. The Swiss Family Robinson, in which the father was able to solve any problem that threatened his family’s survival.

If only. The book offered a dream world in place of a nightmare world, and Nick clearly needed a glimpse of a dream world.

That’s what Daniel had needed at Nick’s age, as well. Routinely beaten by his father as his mother cried and wrung her hands, often before being knocked unconscious in her attempts to protect her son, Daniel had finally appeared in the local emergency room one time too many. Based on the testimony of medical staff and neighbors, he’d been taken from his parents and placed in a foster home.

But not a good foster home like the one he was giving Nick. In a series of miserable places, he’d slept on sofas, cut school to take care of younger children in his foster families, gone hungry, worn dirty clothes and been whipped for any infringement of a rule or shirking of a duty.

Daniel ran away from each of these homes, getting picked up, every time, only to be turned over to another family.

He lost his trust in human beings, thinking that no one would ever love him or even be kind to him. Still in his teens, he ran away again, and this time he was determined to run so far that no one could find him. He stole a bicycle and what little money his foster parents had around the house, grabbed a jar full of coins donated to charity from the general store counter and rode north as fast as he could. When he made the mistake of trying to cross over the border into Canada with a fanciful story but no ID, the border guards detained him for questioning. He could still feel the rage and frustration that made him fight back, injuring one of the guards before they could get him under control. Cuffed and helpless, he was sent back to Vermont and placed in juvenile detention. It was the best thing that could have happened to him, because there, at last, he’d found a family.

He and two other boys, Mike and Ian, discovered they had the same goal, to leave their unhappy pasts behind and become law-abiding and productive citizens. Slowly but surely, he’d learned to trust them. The three formed a strong bond, and when they were released from the facility they became “brothers,” changing their surnames to Foster, and set out to change their lives.

Knowing he had people he could trust absolutely had been the turning point in Daniel’s life. It had led him to taking in foster children—he had that one thing he could teach them, that in him they had someone they could trust, and that trust could eventually extend to other people, too.

So far, each of his foster kids had come to do that. And someday Nick would, too. But when? How could Daniel break through the boy’s silence? Weekly visits to a psychiatrist hadn’t worked any better than Daniel’s own efforts.

Nick didn’t want to be found by his real parents, and that told Daniel the whole story.

When the boy’s eyes closed in spite of his attempts to stay awake, Daniel went back to his own room and fell into bed, emotionally drained, to struggle with his own nightmares.

“WE’RE GOING TO BE FINE, honey. I know it’s scary to leave home for a new place, but I wouldn’t bring you here if I didn’t know it was the right thing to do, would I?” Lilah Jamison slid a sidelong glance at her son. Jonathan was scrunched down in the passenger seat, looking smaller and younger than usual, scared to death by this sudden upheaval.

Was it the right thing to do? She had $290, three-quarters of a tank of gas to get her from Whittaker, her hometown in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, to Serenity Valley, many miles south, a cooler packed with the contents of her refrigerator and not even an inkling of what she would do to support the two of them. But they’d be safe there. She’d researched every corner of Vermont before deciding that Serenity Valley was the perfect place to hide.

She had to hide, had to protect Jonathan and herself from her ex-husband, Jonathan’s father. He’d been imprisoned for defrauding investors who’d trusted in him. Only a few people knew he’d also abused her. And now he was being released from prison. She’d been the one to blow the whistle on him, and she knew he was going to come after her as soon as he had the opportunity. Her muscles tightened, and her hands balled into fists on the steering wheel.

“Where will we live?” Those were the first words Jonathan had spoken in the past hour.

“We’ll start by finding a special, secret place to park the car and set up housekeeping,” Lilah said in a conspiratorial whisper.

“Are we hiding out from the bad guys?” Jonathan turned toward her for the first time, looking interested.

She couldn’t tell him the only “bad guy” in their lives was his father. She said, “Hmm. I was thinking we’d be more like The Boxcar Children.” It was one of his favorite books. She hoped it would conjure up a positive image in his mind, even if it was less exciting than escaping from “the bad guys.” “As soon as I get a job, we’ll find a real house.”

Or a one-room apartment like the one they’d lived in after she’d sold their three-bedroom cottage in Whittaker and used the money to pay off Bruce’s remaining debts.

“What kind of work will you look for?”

“Well, I used to be a nurse,” she reminded him. “Then, when you came along, I stayed home with you and did your father’s bookkeeping.” She could hardly bear to say the words. “And you know what I’ve been doing the past three years.”

“Home care,” Jonathan said. “For a nice, old lady.”

“So I can look for several kinds of jobs. And you’ll like your new school,” she went on. “I just know it, because you make friends easily and you’re a great soccer player.”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “Are we almost there?”

“The exit’s coming up now. We’ll take Route 30 for a few miles, and then we’ll start looking for our hideout.”

DANIEL WASN’T A CHURCHGOER himself, but he firmly believed in Sunday school for children. The boys griped and dragged their feet sometimes, but many of their best friends were kids they’d met at the Churchill Congregational Church, where they learned more about kindness than they did about any particular religion.

He’d finally herded the four of them, their hair still damp from showering and a few hands undoubtedly still sticky from pancake syrup, into the van. “Are we gonna have breakfast at the church?” Will asked.

“You just had breakfast,” Daniel said, glancing into his rearview mirror to catch the eleven-year-old’s eyes. “Seven pancakes, I think. A personal best.”

“I know,” Will said, “but sometimes they have real good stuff.”

“I should hope so,” Daniel said. “If you guys were ever ready in time to get there thirty minutes early, instead of eating breakfast at home in ten…”

“Yeah, yeah.” Mutters came from the backseat. Daniel smiled. Kids who arrived thirty minutes before Sunday school began were served a hot breakfast. It had been his idea, and he still supported it financially. So much poverty existed in and around Churchill that he’d thought it would be a valuable service to the community. Besides, he owed the church something in return for suffering through an hour a week with his unruly gang. The program had been a big success.

As he pulled into the yard, he saw a small car, many years old, parked at the curb well away from the entrance to the building. It was dusty, as all Vermont cars were after negotiating the dirt farm roads into the town center, but otherwise it looked as if it had been well cared for.

A woman sat at the wheel, probably waiting for one of the children the breakfast program was intended to benefit. He could see little of her, just blond hair hiding her face as she bent over the steering wheel, reading, maybe, or just resting. His boys had already tumbled out of the van and gone on their way to rattle the cages of their long-suffering teachers.

Daniel thought about going to speak to her, offering to drive her child home after Sunday school so she wouldn’t have to wait, but he decided against it. If she’d wanted company, she’d have gone into the church for the adult class.

Besides, he had a whole hour to himself, and what was he going to do with it? What any normal, virile, macho man would do. Go to the grocery store.

LILAH SAW THE CHILDREN begin to stream out of the church and looked anxiously for Jonathan. When she saw him, he was in deep discussion with a freckled redheaded boy about his age. Her muscles tightened. What she hated most about her situation was that she and Jonathan had to lie about themselves. But what if someday he forgot?

She got out of the car. She had to end the conversation before Jonathan became too chatty. When he saw her, he gave the other boy a wave and came running toward her, his eyes bright. She forced a big smile. She had to calm herself down—she couldn’t start quizzing him about his conversation right away. “Did you have fun?” Lilah asked as they pulled away from the curb.

“Yeah.” Jonathan looked happy.

“How was breakfast?” As she’d searched the grocery store bulletin board for job possibilities the day before, she’d seen a flyer inviting children to come for “breakfast and Bible study.” Feeling desperately shy, she’d taken him into the church this morning, where he, to her relief, was greeted warmly.

“Great. We had pancakes and sausage and chocolate milk.”

Lilah’s stomach growled. “That does sound good,” she said. She felt terrible about asking someone else to feed her child, but he hadn’t had a hot meal in more than a week.

“And I made a friend.”

“Now that is wonderful. What’s his—or her—name?”

“His,” Jonathan said, directing a brief “I hate girls” scowl at his mother. “Nick. He’s nice.”

“Tell me about him.” Please tell me you asked all the questions and didn’t answer any.

“He told me he’s a foster child. What’s a foster child?”

“Well, sometimes,” Lilah said, dreading the inevitable consequences of giving Jonathan a definition, “parents can’t take care of their own children. They have to let other people take care of them until they can get their lives in order.”

“Is your life in order?”

“You and I are together and we always will be,” Lilah said with a forced steadiness. “That’s what I call having your life in order.” How long could she keep up this pretense? A week of job-hunting had netted her nothing. But tomorrow could be different. Would be different. Because she’d never lose Jonathan to foster care, no matter how good that care might be.

“Who are Nick’s foster parents?”

“He lives with a guy named Daniel. A vet…veternar…”

“Veterinarian,” Lilah said.

“Vet-er-in-ar-ian. Some other boys live there, too, and a sort of grampa. His name is Jesse. Nick says they’re all real nice.”

“Really nice,” Lilah said automatically.

“Yeah. But he looked real tired—really tired—and I asked him why, and he said he’d had another nightmare last night.”

“Another nightmare?”

“He says he has ’em all the time.”

“That’s terrible,” Lilah said, her heart going out to this child she didn’t even know.

“Remember when I had those bad nightmares?”

How could she ever forget? Jonathan hadn’t had one since he was three, when his father went to prison. Her child might be living in a car, eating cereal and sandwiches, but every night, when she’d tucked him into the backseat, he slept like Rip Van Winkle.

“I told him you made me a dreamcatcher, and I didn’t have ’em anymore. I told him maybe you’d make one for him.” He looked at her, the question in his eyes.

“Of course I will,” Lilah said. “You could give it to him at Sunday school next week.” She couldn’t tell Jonathan the dreamcatcher had nothing to do with his nightmares going away. Even at three, he’d been far too aware of his father’s brutality. He’d even tried to shield her from Bruce’s fists with his small body. His father was his nightmare, and hers, but he’d left his nightmares behind with their source. Lilah still had a few. She hadn’t found a job, and now she was down to $215.

“What color do you think he’d like?”

“Red and white. He likes the Boston Red Sox.”

“Just like you.” Lilah smiled. “Okay, red and white it is. Wow, that was quite a talk you had with Nick.” Now, the quizzing. Lilah’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Um, what did you tell Nick about yourself?”

“What you told me to. My father’s dead and we moved here. And Mom, guess what the Sunday school lesson was about.”

“What?” She was so relieved she could barely breathe.

“Telling the truth.”

God, forgive me.

LOOKING OUT HIS WINDOW, Daniel saw the woman get out of the car and watched the boy run toward her. He might have called her pretty if she hadn’t been so painfully thin and drawn. Her clothes were wrinkled, and her hair, although it was neatly combed, was dull and lank. But her posture was confident—determined was more like it—and it was clear that she and the boy loved each other. He was curious about her.

“Okay, spill it,” he said to his passengers as they moved away from the curb. “How was Sunday school?”

Jason, almost sixteen and the oldest of his boys, spoke up first. “Not bad.”

“The usual.” Maury, a few weeks younger, was Jason’s sidekick. “Another life lesson.”

“Which life lesson?” Buzz words irritated Daniel, even when they came from the mouth of a Sunday-school teacher.

“Being honest.”

“Us, too,” Nick piped up.

“Ah,” Daniel said. “A coordinated curriculum.”

“Whatever,” Nick said. “So this new kid asked me a question and I told him the truth.”

A breakthrough! Had Nick told this boy the truth about where he came from?

Act casual. “What’d you tell him?”

“He said I looked tired, and I told him about my nightmares.”

“What they were about?” The other boys had fallen silent, as if they were all holding their breath.

“I told you,” he said. “I don’t remember.”

Hopes dashed, Daniel asked for and got a full report, not on the sin of lying but the inefficiency of it. And then they were home. Home to the scent of braising pot roast, to the comforting sight of Jesse carefully removing an apple crisp from the oven, to the racket of four boys shouting, arguing, laughing, racing up and down the stairs of the huge, creaky old Victorian house and the family dog, Aengus, barking, delighted they’d come back.

To Daniel, it sounded like the sweet strains of the Westminster Abbey boys’ choir.

“LILAH JAMISON?”

“Yes.” Lilah gave the portly manager of the Ben Franklin dime store a confident smile. Don’t be modest. Sell yourself. You have to, for your sake and Jonathan’s.“I saw that you’re looking for a person to handle your crafts section. I’m a crafter myself, and…”

“Already filled,” the woman said. “Retha, she’s one of our cashiers, says her daughter wants the job.”

It wasn’t the first time she’d gotten this response. Jobs in Churchill went to relatives of current employees. Lilah wanted to say, But have you interviewed Retha’s daughter? Does she know anything about knitting? Or decoupage? Or tole painting? But it wouldn’t matter. All that mattered was that she was Retha’s daughter.

“Well,” Lilah said, forcing another smile, “thanks for talking to me.” She couldn’t ask the woman to call her if she had another opening. She hadn’t been able to afford a cell phone since Bruce had gone to prison. Her address, at the moment, was CWC 402, her license plate number. “While I’m here, I’d like to look at yarn.”

Now that Lilah was a customer rather than a job applicant, the woman was all smiles. “You picked the right day,” she said. “We’re having a sale.”

Lilah fought the tidal wave of discouragement threatening her belief that leaving Whittaker had been the right thing to do. First, she’d gone to the hospital to look for work as a hospital nurse or a home caregiver. “No openings in nursing,” said the head of personnel, looking at her warily.

“I also have bookkeeping experience,” Lilah said. “Would you have anything in Accounting?”

“No, but if something comes up, I’ll give you a call.”

But, of course, Lilah didn’t have a phone number.

Since she’d arrived in Churchill, she’d followed up on every job offer on the grocery store bulletin board and in the classified ads of the local newspaper. There weren’t many. Apparently Churchill folks didn’t hire cleaning ladies. And the school didn’t need cafeteria workers or teachers’ aides.

She dropped in at the local diner. “My husband’s the short-order cook, my daughter and I are the waitresses, and we hire the intellectually challenged to bus tables and clean up,” the woman at the counter told her. “Sorry.”

Before she picked up Jonathan at the park, where she’d discovered the town ran an informal, drop in, drop out, day care in the summer months, Lilah took one last look at the grocery store bulletin board. No job offers, but a brightly colored poster caught her eye:

Fair Meadows Soccer Camp

Attention, future soccer stars aged five to sixteen!

Coach Wetherby and the Town of Churchill offer you this opportunity to sharpen your skills for competitive team play!

Nine to noon, Monday through Friday at Friendship Fields.

All Serenity Valley students welcomed.

Sign up now!

Registration fee includes…

Lilah’s eye stopped at “registration fee.” Jonathan excelled at soccer. He could make friends at the camp, and then he wouldn’t have to enter second grade as the “new kid.” The fee wasn’t much, but she couldn’t afford a fee of any size.

It was the last straw. “Go team,” she whispered. They’d have to go without Jonathan. His mother had missed one goal too many.

She hurried out of the store before she fell apart. What was she going to do? Would she have to move to a larger town outside the valley, where she’d find more job opportunities?

“I have an idea,” she told Jonathan when she picked him up, giving him a smile that took all the optimism she could muster. “Let’s blow it all out at the diner—hamburgers, French fries, the works—and then we’ll drive back to our secret hideout and make Nick a dreamcatcher.”

Chapter Two

Daniel eyed the mountain of laundry on the basement floor, started a load, stalked up the steep stairs and said, “Jesse, we need a housekeeper.”

“Last thing we need’s a woman around here,” Jesse said. “They don’t have their priorities straight. Want things to look pretty before they really do anything.”

A typical reaction from Jesse O’Reilly. A long-retired marine and a widower for many years, he’d been renting the apartment over the carriage house when Daniel bought the property. Because any income to offset Daniel’s investment was a plus, he’d encouraged Jesse to stay.

Then, when Daniel took in his first foster child, Jason, a rebellious, fighting-mad fourteen-year-old at the time, Jesse had told Daniel if he ran into a problem, he should just call and he’d keep an eye on the boy. And slowly, Daniel had begun to trust Jesse. He took in more boys, and Jesse became even closer to the family, somehow having dinner ready before Daniel got back from picking up the kids after school, somehow producing stacks of laundered clothes, a full cookie jar.

Last year Jesse had fallen down the apartment stairs, and Daniel had talked him into moving into the house. Now he was chef, chauffeur, child-sitter, homework supervisor—and Daniel’s best friend, next to his brothers. More like a father than a friend. A grumpy father with a heart of pure homemade spaghetti sauce.

“Let me put it another way,” Daniel said. “You work sixteen hours a day, the boys have their chores, we all help clean on Saturday, but if you could see the condition upstairs you’d have us court-martialed.” He was exaggerating, but not by much.

Jesse, who was even now engrossed in dinner preparations while the boys—Jason and Maury, Will and Nick—did their homework at the kitchen table, spun around from his stovetop. “It’s dirty?” he gasped.

“Criminally,” Daniel assured him. “If Child Services came around, they’d take the kids away.” Thinking that might scare the younger boys, he gave them a wink, and they gave him a thumbs-up. “Then there’s the laundry. Imagine Mount Everest.”

“You’re the one won’t let me go down those stairs any more,” Jesse grumbled.

“For good reason,” Daniel said. “The housekeeper doesn’t have to be a woman, but whoever it is, I won’t let him or her get in your way.”

“Well, okay, look around.” His nose in the air, Jesse turned back to the stove. “Just don’t let anybody mess with my kitchen.”

“Why would I do that?” Daniel asked. “It’s the cleanest room in the house.”

“THIS IS A FUNNY WAY to wash clothes,” Jonathan said.

“But it works,” Lilah told him, smiling brightly and trying to hide the sickness she felt inside. “The sun dries them, they smell fresh and sweet…This is the way the pioneers did their laundry. How about a bologna-and-cheese sandwich before I take you to the park?”

Their hideout hadn’t been easy to find. After scouring the back roads of the three towns that made up the valley, Lilah had found, just outside Churchill, a lumber road that led up to a forested area, beautiful and serene, with no heavy equipment around to indicate that the trees were marked to be cut any time soon. This is where she and Jonathan were living. They slept in the car, bathed in the icy stream and washed their clothes there, leaving them to dry in the dappled sunlight.

They ate cereal and milk, sandwiches made of the least expensive sandwich meat and cheese, or peanut butter and jelly, with a piece of fruit for Jonathan each day. Lilah ate as little as she could without making herself feel faint, saving everything possible for her son. They’d been living like this for almost two weeks now. She couldn’t hold out much longer. It wasn’t fair to Jonathan.

“What do you think about the dreamcatcher?”

“It’s great,” Jonathan said, his face lighting up.

Together they admired her handiwork. She’d cut a circle out of a cereal box and had painted it with scarlet nail polish she’d found among the things she’d hastily thrown into garbage bags when they left Whittaker. When had she ever worn bright-red nail polish? Long years ago, when she was still in love with Bruce and had no idea what he would eventually do to her, to their lives? The love hadn’t lasted long. The bottle of polish had been almost full.

When the polish dried, Lilah filled in the circle with the yarn she’d bought, a twisted red and white, and then she attached red-painted twig arms and legs, crocheting fanciful feet and hands to fit over the twigs.

In a moment of whimsy, she crocheted a baseball cap and attached it to the top of the circle. A Boston Red Sox dreamcatcher. And then, giving it one last critical look, she decided it needed a catcher’s mitt.

“Is Nick right-or left-handed?” she asked Jonathan.

Jonathan looked at her as if she’d asked a pretty dumb question, but then he thought about it. “Left,” he said suddenly, “because when there’s a new kid at Sunday school everybody writes himself a name tag, and Nick was sitting over here,” he gestured to his right, “so our elbows kept bumping and we thought it was funny and that’s when we started talking.”

“You’re a great detective,” Lilah congratulated him. So she’d crocheted the mitt onto the left toothpick hand, smiling to herself as she worked.

Making the dreamcatcher had been as good for her as she hoped it would be for Nick. It was the first time in ages she’d found anything humorous to think about her in life.

“Okay, kiddo,” she said, giving him that forced bright smile. “Off to the park.”

And back to her desperate job search. This week, she didn’t even have to buy the Valley News. Someone had left a copy on a park bench, which she spotted after dropping Jonathan off at the soccer field. In the classified ads section, she read, “Single father is seeking housekeeper. Call 802.555.4432. References essential.”

It was as if an angel had left the newspaper for her to find. She felt a glimmer of excitement, and then the glimmer began to shine. It would be a perfect job for her.

She had no references, however. If she asked for one from the son of the woman she’d cared for these past three years she’d be letting him know where she was, and she didn’t want anyone in Whittaker to know where she was. She raised her chin resolutely. She’d have to convince this single father that she’d be the housekeeper of his dreams, references or not.

Gathering change from the bottom of her handbag, knowing every penny had to be spent carefully, she sought out the pay phone on Main Street and dialed the number. If no one answered, she’d just have to call again and again. In her mind’s eye she saw dollars and dollars clinking through that slot…

“’Lo.”

She blinked. She hadn’t expected such a gruff, grumpy voice. “I’m calling to apply for the housekeeping job,” she said. The assured voice she’d planned on using came out timid and shaky.

“He’s working now,” the voice said, skipping several conversational steps. “What’s your number? He’ll call you back tonight.”

This time, Lilah got her voice to cooperate. “I don’t have phone service just now,” she said. “Is there a time I could drop by?” She held her breath and crossed her fingers.

Silence. Then, “Ay-uh. Might talk to you around five. In his office.” He gave her the address. “Side door,” he added.

Limp with relief, Lilah almost slid to the sidewalk. She had an interview. At five o’clock this afternoon she would get that job. She had to.

“ANOTHER APPLICANT,” Jesse told Daniel.

Daniel blew a breath into the hands-free mouthpiece of his cell phone. “When can I talk to her?”

“She made an appointment. I told her five—figured that would work.”

Daniel sighed. “I didn’t realize how much time it would take just to hire a housekeeper. What’s your take on that first one I talked to last night?”

“She gossips. Everybody knows it.”

“Hmm. The next one had an excellent reference.”

“From Shaw’s Supermarket, yes. If you were needing a butcher, then she’d be your woman.”

Daniel had disliked the other two he’d met after five minutes with each of them. “You’re not much help,” he grumbled.

“I’m not too excited about this housekeeper idea.”

“Duh,” Daniel said, and frowned. “Well, okay, I’ll make the decision about the one who’s coming in this afternoon. I’m not even going to let you see her.”

“Humph,” Jesse said, and hung up.

It was a busy afternoon. Jesse had caught Daniel on the way to the Dupras farm to check on Maggie, a prizewinning pig who should be delivering her piglets in the next few days. After he’d seen Maggie, he went back to the office to see two cats, a dog, a mynah bird who called him “pond scum” in a radio announcer’s voice and a boa constrictor that kept wrapping itself around Daniel’s arm.

He was still a little rattled by the snake’s fondness for him when Mildred, his receptionist—actually, she did everything except practice medicine—put her head through his office door and said, “Your five o’clock is here. No pet.” She gave Daniel a quizzical look.

“Housekeeper applicant,” he said.

“Hmm,” she murmured. “Can you see her now?”

“Sure. Whoever she is, she can’t be worse than the snake.”

Mildred shuddered and went back to the waiting room.

A minute later, he heard a timid knock on the door. The woman who stepped in wasn’t what he expected, not at all like the other applicants. She couldn’t be more than thirty, but her face looked old with worry. She was tall, or at least not short. Her sedate dress was clean but wrinkled, and her blond hair hung limply around her shoulders…

Hadn’t he said the same thing to himself about some other woman recently? Yes, she was the woman he’d seen at the church, the one whose little boy had made friends with Nick.

She hadn’t seen him there, he thought, so he wouldn’t mention it. He stood and held out his hand. “Daniel Foster,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, shaking his hand, “Lilah Jamison.”

Her hand was damp, and she was trembling. “Good of you to come by,” Daniel said. “Have a seat. So you’re new in town?”

“Yes.” Her voice grew firmer. “My husband died, and my son and I needed a fresh start.”

He nodded. “You have references?”

She flushed, but she looked him straight in the eye. “I’m afraid not. I’ve never worked as a housekeeper but I’ve always kept a spotless house, even though I worked full-time.” She stared him down as if she expected him to say, Sure you did.

“What sort of work did you do?”

When she told him she’d been a nurse doing home care, it occurred to him that it wouldn’t be bad having a nurse in the house to deal with four risk-taking boys. But his attention was distracted by how desperate she looked.

She wasn’t merely thin, but haggard. The half-moons under her eyes, which were dark blue, indicated sleep deprivation and worry; lusterless hair suggested a poor diet. A modest sundress showed off arms that were too thin. Ivory skin that might once have been beautiful was now dry and lifeless. Her husband’s death must have thrown her a knockout punch. Either he had been much older than she, or he’d died tragically young.

And she had a little boy. His blood suddenly ran cold. How could she take care of a child in her condition?

This was hitting him too close to home. The boy—what kind of life was he living? Nick had liked him. Nick was scared of his own shadow, so her son couldn’t be a bully or a troublemaker. But still, Daniel was looking for a housekeeper for his kids and he was taking no chances.

“Why didn’t you take a nursing job?” he asked, keeping his voice gentle. “The Churchill hospital is—”

“Filled with nurses already.” He saw her face tighten, but she didn’t sound bitter.

“I understand,” he said, and he did. “Nepotism” wasn’t in the local vocabulary. It was simply understood that jobs were passed down from generation to generation. “You seem like a pleasant person, which is important to me, since you’d be keeping house for four foster children. But without references—”

She seemed to sag in her chair.

“Tell you what,” he said, starting to think that perhaps because this woman needed help so badly he could trust her to do the job well. “Give me your address and phone number and I’ll call you with my final decision. I’ve had several applicants,” dreadful ones, he reminded himself, “and I need to think things over.”

“As you said, we’re new here. No phone service yet.” He could tell she was trying to be matter-of-fact, but he could also see the pain in her eyes. “I’ll come by the clinic in a few days. You could leave a message with your assistant.”

She stood up, too, and just as Daniel held out his hand to shake hers again, he heard a familiar sound, one of the boys coming to tell him about some wonderful—or terrible—thing that had just happened.

“Daniel!”

“Mom!”

His job applicant rushed toward the boy who’d yelled, “Mom,” and said, “Honey, you were supposed to stay outside…”

But Nick drowned her out. “This is Jonathan, the one I was telling you about. I saw him in his car, and he said he had a present for me. Look what his mom made!”

Daniel, not as rattled as he had been about the snake but close to it, moved around his desk to stare at the weird thing Nick held in his hand. It could be a voodoo doll. No voodoo in his house. Or it might be a Satanic totem.

A Satanic totem that looked like a Red Sox baseball player?

He tried to clear his head. “That was kind of you,” he said to the mysterious Lilah Jamison, who had an arm around her son. “What is it?”

“A dreamcatcher,” she answered for Nick. Then she relaxed her hold on Jonathan and turned her attention to Nick, her voice soft and musical. “It captures bad dreams before you dream them. You told Jonathan you have nightmares, but if you really and truly believe in it, we’re sure this dreamcatcher will bring an end to them.”

“I do believe in it,” Nick said reverently. “Jonathan told me it worked for him. Look at it, Daniel,” Nick said. “It even has a catcher’s mitt on its left hand!”

Daniel admired this thing they called a dreamcatcher, then gazed at Lilah’s son. He was a little taller than Nick, with his mother’s blond hair and deep-blue eyes. But he didn’t have his mother’s look of despair. Whatever had befallen them, Jonathan was a happy child.

His gaze moved toward Lilah, and she must have had that feeling of being watched, because she looked up at him at once. “I think you’ve just provided your reference,” he said, ruffling Jonathan’s hair, “and he’s an excellent one.”

Her eyes widened. “Thank you,” she said.

He’d decided he could trust her to be good with the boys. Even if she wasn’t a perfect housekeeper, any assistance would be an improvement. He needed help, she needed help—they could help each other and everybody would be better off.

“I’d like the rest of the family to meet you before I make a final decision, and you should meet them so you know what you’d be getting into,” he said. “Stay for dinner. It’s the best way to catch them all at once.”

He saw Jonathan’s gaze turn on her, but she gave him a quick glance and said, “Oh, I’m not sure we should…”

“It’s some kind of chicken stew, it smells great, and there’s apple pie for dessert.”

“Mom?” The look in Jonathan’s eyes was a dead giveaway.

“Well, I…” She was wavering.

Then she turned to Daniel. Her determined expression made him sure she’d say no, but she surprised him. “Thank you for your invitation,” she said formally. “We accept.”

Nick and Jonathan sped away, cheering. Lilah looked limp. “Thank you for seeing me,” she said. “I know you’re busy, so I’ll just wait outside.”

“Look around, if you want to,” Daniel said. “I’m warning you. It’s a big place.” He opened the back door of the clinic, which led into the house.

She gave him a slight smile. “I’m not afraid of hard work.”

You’re afraid of something, Daniel thought as she ignored the open door and went instead through the waiting room into the yard. He shook his head. She was running scared, and he wished he could figure out why.

IN THE YARD, LILAH tried to still the trembling of her hands. She wanted and needed this job so badly. But she hadn’t intended to become a member of Daniel Foster’s family. She’d imagined herself slipping in at nine and out at five, a human vacuum cleaner, nothing more. This situation might be too intimate. She’d wanted to stay invisible. But she had to have a job. For Jonathan’s sake. And this one was her best bet.

Worry was wearing her out. To distract herself, she studied the house. The patterned wood shingles were painted lavender, with the molding details picked out in dark purple and turquoise. It was an enormous place, with a turret rising into the sky. She’d entered the clinic through a separate entrance that had its own stoop and overhang, with a discreet brass plaque on the door that read, Serenity Valley Veterinary Clinic, Daniel Foster, DVM. and in front of it, the small graveled parking area where she’d left her car.

She gazed back at the fancifully painted building. The man she’d just met didn’t look like a lavender, purple and turquoise kind of person. She’d read his name on the door plate, wondered if he could be the Daniel who was Nick’s foster father, and was expecting to see an old, fatherly country vet, not someone close to her own age, undeniably masculine, tall, lean and muscular. She’d felt a moment of fright when she walked into his office, and she wondered—would the sight of a large, powerful man always have this effect on her?

The thought was enough to dim her mood, her hopes, the illusion of confidence she’d been able to maintain after that first uncomfortable minute. If Daniel offered her the job, she’d stay as far away from him as she could.

He seemed to be a kind person. His sandy hair, which fell across his forehead, made him look boyish. His eyes were an interesting color—mocha, she’d call it. They were thoughtful eyes, assessing, analyzing her while they talked.

But you never knew. Bruce had been attractive, too. And she’d let herself become dependent on him; too dependent to run away from his abuse, too afraid she couldn’t raise Jonathan on her own.

His years in prison had changed her. Now, even though she had no money, she was independent. Confident in her ability to give Jonathan the important things—love, support, emotional security. She’d never again let a man take control of her life. But just being a housekeeper wouldn’t be taking a risk, would it?

Daniel appeared at the back door. “Come on in,” he said. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

Here we go. My future and Jonathan’s depend on the next few hours.

DANIEL HADN’T CALLED THE boys to dinner yet. He wanted them to barrel in one or two at a time, as they usually did, so Lilah wouldn’t grab her son and run screaming from the chaos.

The fact that the kitchen was relatively empty seemed to unnerve her for a second, but then he saw her face as she took in her surroundings. The old-fashioned maple cupboards, which rose high enough so that even he needed a stepladder to reach the upper ones, the big range and the even bigger refrigerator. The old brick floor, worn smooth by the feet of several generations of occupants. The round table that sat in the middle of the room surrounded by mismatched chairs. The table centerpiece: a bicycle helmet instead of flowers.

He couldn’t read her expression. Was she thinking it wasn’t quite as clean as a kitchen should be for a houseful of children? Was she appalled by the oilcloth cover on the table? If that was it, was she out of her mind? Did she have any idea what laundry problems real tablecloths and napkins would cause?

He reminded himself to postpone showing her the laundry piled in the basement until after she’d accepted the job.

“Jesse, meet our job applicant, Lilah Jamison. She and her son are staying for dinner.”

Jesse, stirring something in a gigantic pot, wheeled around on his good leg. “Major Jesse O’Reilly at your service, ma’am.” Having done his duty, he whirled back to the stove. Jesse didn’t want a housekeeper, and he’d spoken pretty crisply. Then he stopped stirring, and slowly turned back to take another look at Lilah. His expression changed. Daniel could tell that now he was seeing her not as a potential interloper, but simply as a nice-looking young woman who needed feeding.

Jesse dipped a spoon into the pot and held it aloft. “Mind tasting this stuff?” he asked her. “Might need more salt.”

She joined him at the stove, instantly looking comfortable with the situation she’d walked into. “It’s just right,” she told him, licking her lips.

“When’s dinner?” Nick and Jonathan shot through the door, Nick yelling the question at Jesse.

“Hold on, hold on,” Jesse grumbled, and focused his attention on Jonathan.

“This is Jesse,” Nick said to Jonathan.

“And this is Jonathan, Lilah’s son,” Daniel explained.

Jesse gave Jonathan the same thoughtful gaze he’d given Lilah. “I need a junior opinion on this stew,” he said, and handed spoons to the boys.

Daniel wondered if Jesse was starting to look a little obvious. At just the right time, Will raced in through the door. “Brunswick stew,” he shouted. “I could smell it all the way upstairs.”

“Hey, Will, you almost knocked Nick over.”

Daniel smiled at Jason, noticing how his voice had deepened even more in the past few weeks, seeing how he ruffled Will’s hair and smiled even as he scolded him.

“You said four boys?” Lilah murmured, looking stunned by the sudden frenzy of activity.

“Yeah, it just feels like more. That’s why we do a lot of yelling around here. Have to, if you want anybody to hear you. Meet Jason, he’s the blond one—and Maury, the one who looks like a football player, which he is. This is Lilah, and this is Jonathan. Did anybody let Aengus in?”

“I’ll do it,” Jason said.

“We’re moving in on it, kids,” Jesse said. “Grab a couple of those round loaves of bread out of the pantry, Sergeant Jamison. Step lively. It’s that door over there.” He pointed with his stirring spoon and juices dripped on the floor.

“The rest of you boys get that table set and everybody sit down. You’re startin’ to make me dizzy.”

NOBODY’S LIFE COULD BE this good. The boys threw cutlery and plates haphazardly onto the table and sat down at once, including Jonathan. Shyly, Lilah joined them.

“What can I get you to drink? Water? Wine? Beer from my secret stash?”

“Water, please,” she said, “and thank you.” Secret stash? He was a closet drinker? While he harbored a houseful of foster boys, he drank himself into oblivion night after night?

“Good choice,” he said. “I was down to my last beer—I have one every Saturday night after I get the kids to bed, and the wine is the stuff Jesse uses for his fancy beef stews. The alcohol boils off,” he explained, as if he thought she might be planning to report him for serving wine to children.

So. Not a big drinker. He had to have a different fatal flaw. All men had a fatal flaw.

Or maybe just the ones who’d had some impact on her life.

Already stretched as tight as a bungee cord, every bone in her body went stiff when the biggest dog she’d ever seen leapt into the room and ran directly toward Jonathan. She gasped, jumping up so rapidly she knocked over her chair.

Before she could rescue her son, if it was possible to rescue him from a beast this huge, the dog had set to work licking Jonathan’s face. Jonathan was giggling uncontrollably, hugging the animal.

She picked up her chair and sat down. “I see he’s friendly,” she said, feeling limp as a frozen celery stalk. “What—is he?”

“An Irish wolfhound,” Daniel said, “who’s way too big to be way too friendly.” In a quiet tone, he said, “Aengus. Sit.”

Aengus sat.

“Stay,” Daniel said.

Aengus stayed.

Jason came back and Jesse called out over the cacophony of voices, “Chow’s on!” He put a huge serving of stew in front of Lilah and another in front of Jonathan, then began serving the rest of them, including a plate for the dog, who didn’t move until Daniel said, “Okay.” A basket of hot bread and a stick of butter in a plastic refrigerator container followed, then a huge plastic bowl of salad. The noise level was deafening as the boys ate and talked at the same time.

The stew was delicious, a rich combination of chicken and vegetables. Lilah tried to eat slowly, signaling to Jonathan not to gobble his food. But all the kids were eating as if they hadn’t eaten in months.

“Everything okay?” Daniel said.

She turned to look at him. “It’s excellent. Thank you,” she said, hearing the faintness of her voice. She felt overwhelmed by…

By what, she wasn’t sure. When she turned back to her plate, she saw that Jesse had refilled it. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him putting not one but three pies into the oven to warm.

What overwhelmed her was the realization that this was a happier family than either she or Jonathan had ever known. Her parents had been poor and they’d resented it, never showing her the love they must have felt for her, their only child. They’d never shared a meal like this one, gathered around a table and laughing together. As for Jonathan’s life with her and Bruce…Lilah’s throat tightened, and she rose from the table.

“This has been wonderful, but we should go now,” she managed to say before Daniel leapt up just as rapidly.

He took her arm and turned her away from the boys, saying, “I’d like to talk to you for a few minutes. You guys get on with it. Save us some pie.” He closed the door on the chaotic scene and began to hurry her down the hall.

“No!” she said, tugging her arm away from him. “I’m fine. Let me go back to the kitchen.”

Taken aback, Daniel halted and turned to look at her. She glared back at him. “Why?” was all he could think of to say.

“I don’t want to leave Jonathan alone.”

“Alone with four other boys and a retired marine?”

“Alone without me. And I don’t want to be alone with you.”

He spoke as soothingly as he could. “Look, something upset you in the kitchen, and I thought you might like some privacy.”

“I would,” she said. Her voice was strained. “I really appreciate your hospitality, but now I want to take my son home.”

“As soon as we talk.” Lilah was chewing off her own foot, taking herself and her child away from something they’d both obviously enjoyed.

“All right. We’ll talk.” Stiffly, she followed him into the living room. And that was the right word for it—signs of living were everywhere, with books, games, bats and balls, this and that dropped here and there.

“Have a seat. How about some coffee? Relax a minute and I’ll bring you some.” Daniel knew she wouldn’t leave without her son, but he hurried out anyway, leaving her sitting straight as a fencepost on the cracked leather sofa. When he came back she was still sitting there, looking slightly less combative.

He handed her one of the coffee mugs, stretching out his arm as far as it would go and not coming any closer to her than he had to, as if she were a feral cat. Then he sat down in the chair that was farthest from her chosen corner.

“I suppose this means I’ve lost my chance to get the job,” she said as if she’d rehearsed the lines in his absence. “I did get a little…upset. I guess I’m tired and overemotional.”

He nodded. “Moving is stressful. But, no, you haven’t lost your chance. In fact, you seem to be exactly the housekeeper we’ve been looking for.”

It was painful for Daniel to see the relief that flooded her face. “So give me your address, and I’ll drop you a note.”

“As I said earlier, I’ll come to the clinic in a few days to find out what you decided.”

Daniel’s chest tightened. “You don’t have a phone, you don’t have an address—you’re homeless, aren’t you?”

She flushed with embarrassment. “That’s none of your business.”

“Lilah,” he said, “look around you. Making sure kids are being taken care of is my business.”

“I’m taking very good care of Jonathan,” she said. Her voice shook and her eyes glittered with tears. “He’s the most important thing in my…”

“Mom!” Jonathan ran into the room, so excited he looked as if he might pop. “Can I spend the night with Nick? He thinks I’d help the dreamcatcher work better.”

Aengus bounded in right behind Jonathan, and Nick followed with a precariously loaded tray holding wedges of apple pie. He pushed aside the things that already littered the coffee table and set down the tray. “Please?” Jonathan said. His eyes were shining.

Daniel desperately wanted Lilah to say yes—for Nick, who looked so happy, and for Jonathan, her homeless son. “That sounds like a great idea to me,” he said, raising a hand to warn Aengus against stealing the pie.

“Jonathan, we’ve imposed ourselves on these people long enough. It’s time to go home. So say goodbye and thank you and we’ll—”

“But Mom, we don’t—”

Lilah stiffened, and Jonathan grew quiet.

“Tell you what,” Daniel said easily, “your mom and I will discuss it. You guys can find something to do for five minutes, right?” He’d had a brilliant idea.

When the boys had left, he faced Lilah, whose face was pale and rigid. “You do understand that what I need is a live-in housekeeper,” he said.

Her expression changed. “Sure,” she said bitterly. “I knew there was a catch. No, thank you. I don’t need a job that badly.”

“Not living in this house,” he said. Exasperation rose in him, too, in response to her implication. “There’s an apartment over the carriage house—Jesse used to live there. You can stay there tonight and check it out.”

“I’d be very glad to take the housekeeping job,” she said. Her lips were drawn and white. “But not a live-in job.”

“I’m afraid,” he added, even more determined now, “that I’ll have to insist on the housekeeper living on the premises. With all these kids, she can’t help but be a housemother, too.”

“Thank you, but I’m going home, and tomorrow I’ll look for a job that won’t require us to live in.” She started toward the door.

“Think about Jonathan. Do it for him.”

She spun toward him and pushed back her hair. “I think about nothing but Jonathan,” she said. “And I think about how I’m never going to let him fall under the spell of a man who’s all nice and charming at first and then…”

When she pushed back her hair, Daniel saw the scar on her forehead—a jagged scar than ran from her temple to just above her eyebrow. It wasn’t a fresh wound, but it was too recently healed to have been the result of a childhood accident. A car wreck, maybe, or a serious fall on the ice, but somehow he didn’t think so. A blow from her deceased husband? A recent boyfriend? Daniel’s protective instincts boiled up inside him. Where had her son been when this happened to her?

“Then what?” he asked, saying it as casually as a shop clerk might say, “Anything else?” And all the while, his gut clenched and twisted, just as if the young, suspicious Daniel was struggling to get loose.

Her lips tightened. “Nothing. Goodbye.”

“The carriage house door has a lock. The apartment door has a lock. You’ll be safe, and Jonathan will be right next door. A night in a good bed, a hot shower, one of Jesse’s breakfasts, and you’ll be in much better shape for job-hunting.”

She hesitated, turned back, searched his face, and thank God, she must have seen only the calm adult Daniel. Or she’d thought about the good bed, the hot shower, a big breakfast. But he had a feeling she was seeing it for Jonathan, not for herself.

She loved her son, and he loved her. She could have faked it, but a child couldn’t. That, to Daniel, was the key to what she was as a person—a caring human being, a woman who’d somehow lost control of her life.

All at once she seemed to deflate. The embarrassment and anger were gone, and resignation took their place. “One night,” she said. “And Jonathan may spend the night with Nick.”

Daniel’s face still felt tight. “Fine,” he said. “Jesse has the carriage house keys. You can give Jonathan the good news. I’ll stay out of your way.” He stalked toward the door, then turned back to face her. “The job is yours if you want it.” He glanced at the coffee table. “Don’t forget your pie.”

It was a relief to turn his back on her startled face. When he got to his room, he sank onto the bed. It hadn’t been a pretty scene, but he’d gotten the result he wanted. Lilah would spend the night in the carriage house instead of her car, and Jonathan would be safe and warm and surrounded by boys who were delighted to have him there, especially Nick, who needed one more little leap of faith to help the dreamcatcher do its work.

Lilah’s scar lingered in Daniel’s thoughts, entered into his dreams and then kept him awake until the midnight call that meant he had to throw on clothes, alert Jesse that it was his watch and speed to the Dupras farm, where Maggie, the prize sow, had gone into labor.

A woman in distress always got him up and running, even when she was a pig.

WITH A FEELING THAT she was falling into a trap, Lilah made her way through the darkness to her car to retrieve the big trash bag into which she’d thrown her clothes before leaving Whittaker. She took note of the silver van and bright red pickup parked where a carriage would once have sat, then slowly climbed the stairs to the living quarters.

She unlocked the door, stepping inside to find a self-contained apartment, clearly a man’s world, but neat and clean. No coachman had ever lived in such splendor. Lilah set down her modest bag of possessions and put the wedge of pie next to the bed. She was stunned by all that had happened in just a few hours. She’d broken her own promise to herself and had put her life and Jonathan’s into someone else’s hands, even if it was only for a night. What had she been thinking?

Slowly she went toward the door that had to lead to the bathroom, opened it and looked inside. For the first time in two weeks, she could take a shower!

Giddy with excitement, she dug out her toiletries and arranged them on the granite counter, stripped off her clothes and turned on the water. She stepped under the steaming spray and let out a deep sigh of pleasure.

The water streamed through her hair, over her shoulders, down her back. She reveled in it, washing away all her worries, if only for a few minutes. She poured shampoo into her hand and lathered it into her hair. It smelled faintly of flowers. Flowers in the rain. She wanted to stay in the shower until everything was all right again.

The bathroom was warm when she stepped out, wrapped herself in a towel and looked in the mirror. She looked different, she felt different. Something buzzed through her body, making her feel alive again. With a start, she realized that what she was feeling was hope.

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