A Match for

the Doctor

AND

What the Single

Dad Wants

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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About the Author

MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred books, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com

A Match for

the Doctor

Marie Ferrarella

Dear Reader,

Thought you were done with the series, didn’t you?

But … well, I’ve said it before. I’m not good at saying goodbye, so here we are again, watching Maizie Somers, full-time Realtor, full-time mom, weave her magic and come to the rescue of yet another concerned mother who cannot understand why her smart, pretty, vibrant daughter doesn’t have a ring on her finger and babies in her house. Lucky for the concerned mother—who just happens to be Maizie’s former sister-in-law—there are two motherless children in the background, as well, rooting for their dad to find the perfect mom to love them.

Kennon Cassidy is an interior decorator who takes houses and turns them into homes—for other people.

That is, until Maizie sells a house to Dr Simon Sheffield, a handsome, widower doctor who is emotionally adrift ever since he lost his wife. Isolated in his world of pain, he cannot even connect with the young daughters he loves. He doesn’t know how. Until Kennon shows him the way. And this time around, everyone, including Kennon, reaps the rewards.

Thank you for taking the time to read this book and, as ever, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

Marie Ferrarella

To Stella Bagwell,

for her sweetness,

her friendship,

and

her continuing patience with me

Prologue

Maizie Sommers leaned back in her chair, silently observing the somber-faced, stylishly dressed woman who had marched into her real-estate office, quite obviously on a mission.

Few things surprised Maizie these days, but this had. She hadn’t said a word since the woman entered and started talking. That was almost ten minutes ago, and she was still talking.

Ruth Cassidy, her senior by some three years, was not in the market either to buy or sell a house. She was in the market for a man. Specifically, for a husband. More specifically, a husband for her beautiful and exceedingly selective twenty-eight-year-old daughter, Kennon.

Although Maizie hadn’t seen the young woman very often in the last fifteen years, she had always been very fond of Kennon, who was her late husband’s niece.

As for being fond of Ruth, well, not so much. But that had been both Ruth’s choice as well as her fault.

Ruth had made it very clear, right from the beginning, that she didn’t approve of Maizie or think that she was good enough for her older brother, Terrence.

Ruth never called him Terry, the way she did, Maizie remembered.

As Ruth gave every sign of droning on, Maizie suddenly placed her hands on the padded armrests, pushed down and rose from the Italian leather chair she’d had specially made for her. It had been her first frivolous purchase. If she needed to put in long hours at her desk, she intended to be comfortable doing it.

Without a word, Maizie walked over to the front window. She looked out onto the main thoroughfare that passed by the office, searching for something.

Ruth twisted around to get a better view of her former sister-in-law. “What are you doing?” she asked sharply.

Maizie didn’t turn around but continued gazing out the window as she quietly replied, “Looking to see which of the horsemen is first.”

“What horsemen? What are you talking about?” On her feet now, Ruth stared out through the window herself at the usual midmorning traffic.

“The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” Maizie replied. She turned away from the window to face Ruth. Her sister-in-law still had her looks. And still retained that superior attitude. “The way I see it, since you’re here, talking to me, asking for a favor, either hell is freezing over or the end of the world is coming, and I can’t see hell from my window.”

Ruth glared at her, then exhaled loudly in exasperation. “All right, maybe I had that coming.”

“Maybe?” Maizie echoed softly, an amused eyebrow raising high over crystal-blue eyes.

Ruth threw up her hands in desperation. “All right, I did have that coming. That, and maybe even more.” The words seemed to burn on her tongue, but she pushed on. “I’m sorry, but I always thought you stole Terrence away from what would have been a very good match for him. Sandra Herrington was wealthy and her family went all the way back to the Mayflower.”

Maizie was well aware of her former rival’s pedigree—and the fact that her late husband always swore she’d saved him from an eternity of unspeakable boredom. But, for the sake of peace, she said enigmatically, “Yes, I know.”

Ruth frowned. “I was wrong, okay?”

Maizie had never thought of herself as a genius, but she was also far from stupid or gullible. “You’re only saying that because you want my help.”

About to deny Maizie’s assumption, Ruth finally shrugged in a helpless manner. “Well, it’s a start, isn’t it?” she asked. “I’m sorry, I made a mistake coming here. It’s just that I heard that you and your friends were running some kind of matchmaking service on the side—”

Maizie shook her head. It absolutely amazed her how rumors were born out of twisted half-truths.

“It’s not a ‘service,'” she corrected. “Since Theresa, Cecilia and I have our own businesses in very public-oriented fields,” she said, referring to her two very best friends, women she’d known and been close to since the third grade, “we just decided to keep our eyes open for possible suitable matches for our daughters.” She smiled, exceedingly pleased. Plumbing the depths of their client lists for eligible men had been her idea initially and it had succeeded far better than she’d ever dreamed. All three of their daughters, plus Theresa’s son, Kullen, had been gently nudged into relationships that now had every indication of lasting forever. “As it turned out, things went well.”

Ruth sank down in the chair again, her dark eyes riveted to her sister-in-law’s face. “I need them to ‘go well’ for Kennon. The way things are going, after that horrible man she wasted all those years on decided he loved someone else and just dumped her, Kennon has done nothing but work. She hasn’t gone out on a date even once in almost a year. I don’t want her to wind up alone,” Ruth concluded with sincerity.

“No dates at all?” Maizie repeated. God, did that ever sound familiar. “She told you this?”

“A mother knows,” Ruth informed her. She further relayed how she “knew” because she’d gone out of her way to draw Kennon’s assistant, Nathan, into her camp. She’d won the young man over with her coconut cream pies, exchanging them for information.

The wheels in Maizie’s head were already turning as inherent instincts, centuries old, rose now to the fore. “Does Kennon still own that interior decorating shop?”

“She all but lives there.” Seeing the look in Maizie’s eyes, Ruth slid to the edge of her chair, hope taking hold. “Why? What are you thinking?”

“As it happens, I just sold a beautiful, empty house to a newly transplanted widower. He needs a decorator badly.” Maizie hit several keys on her computer, pulling up the information she needed. “He just moved here from the San Francisco area. The man has two small daughters.” Maizie watched her former sister-in-law’s face to see her reaction.

It was apparent that Ruth saw potential here. “A jump start on becoming a grandmother. I can live with that.” She leaned in closer. “What does he do for a living?”

Maizie smiled. “He’s a cardiovascular surgeon.”

“A doctor?” Ruth cried. She began to glow with enthusiasm. “Maizie, I think I love you. All is forgiven.”

“Nice to know,” Maizie said dryly.

Sarcasm had always been wasted on her late husband’s sister. Now was no exception.

Some things never changed, Maizie thought as she looked up Dr. Simon Sheffield’s cell phone number.

Chapter One

“Good God, woman, have you been here all night?”

The partially perturbed, partially breathless question shot out of Nathan LeBeau’s mouth ten seconds after he’d flipped on the light switch in the back office and subsequently jumped when he saw something moving on the white leather sofa. Nathan’s thin, aristocratic hand was dramatically splayed over his shallow chest in the approximate region of his heart, presumably to keep it from leaping out of said chest.

“How am I supposed to impress you with my hard work when you keep insisting on being an overachiever and staying here until all hours of the night?” He went to the office’s lone window and drew back the light blue vertical blinds. “You’re lucky you’re not dialing 9-1-1 right now.”

“Why would I be dialing 9-1-1?” Kennon Cassidy murmured, trying to clear the cobwebs out of her brain, the sugary taste out of her mouth and the protesting kinks out of her shoulders. She had little success in any of the endeavors.

“Because you scared me half to death,” Nathan informed her with a toss of his deep chestnut mane. Blessed with incredibly thick hair, Nathan deliberately wore it long, in the fashion of a driven music conductor.

Nathan’s words were addressed to Kennon Cassidy, technically his employer, more aptly described as his friend and, initially, his mentor.

Kennon sat up on the sofa and looked up at her tall and more than occasionally judgmental assistant. “What time is it?”

Nathan scrutinized her attire. “I’d say way past the time when your carriage turned into a pumpkin, standing in the field next to your musically gifted pet mice.”

Kennon waved a dismissive hand in his direction. “You’ve been watching way too many classic cartoons, Nathan.”

“Not by choice,” he said defensively. “Judith insists that’s all I can let Rebecca and Stuart watch when I babysit the little darlings. Can’t wait until those two hit puberty and stage a revolt on my straitlaced sister.”

Nathan put his hand on his hip expectantly as he regarded the slender, slightly rumpled blonde who had taken a chance on him when he had bluffed his way into the office four years ago. “You really need to move on, you know.”

Her eyes met his. There was no way she was having this discussion. “No, I really need to get rid of this sugary taste,” she told him. “Apparently I fell asleep with a cough drop in my mouth.”

Rising, Kennon caught her reflection in the window. She shuddered. God, she looked like death warmed over. Barely warmed over.

The next second, she stifled a yawn while trying to remember when she’d fallen asleep. “I just lay down on the sofa for a minute to close my eyes.”

“Apparently you succeeded beyond your wildest dreams.”

“What time is it?” she asked Nathan, this time in earnest. “Really,” she underlined.

“It’s tomorrow,” Nathan answered. When she looked at him quizzically he backtracked for her benefit. “Tuesday. Eight-thirty a.m. May fourth. The year of our Lord, two thousand—”

Kennon threw her hand up in the air to stop him. Nathan had the ability to go on and on if she let him.

“I know what year it is, Nathan,” she informed him. “I’m not exactly Rip Van Winkle, you know.”

“I hear he started out by taking long naps,” Nathan told her dryly. He glanced at the open sketchbook she was currently using. “Were you working on the Prestons’ house?”

That had been her initial intent. But what she’d really been working on was her self-esteem. Although she loved Nathan like the brother she’d never had, she was not about to dwell on that point for him. It was bad enough that her assistant knew about her breakup with Pete, or rather, Pete’s breakup with her, since Pete had been the one to end the relationship and walk out. Granted, she hadn’t been head-over-heels, can’t-seem-to-catch-my-breath in love with the man, but it bothered her to no end that she hadn’t seen the breakup coming.

One morning, after living with her for two years, Pete announced that he’d fallen “out of love” with her. And in love with some big-eyed, bigger-breasted, conscienceless little blonde whom he had the absolute gall to marry six short weeks after blowing a hole in her world.

Since she’d been so drastically wrong about the man she’d assumed she was going to marry, Kennon began to doubt her ability to make any kind of a decent judgment call.

She was finally putting her life back in order when she heard that Pete and his wife were expecting. It had hit her harder than she’d thought. She had a real weak spot when it came to children.

“Yes, I was,” she replied, thinking it best just to go along with the excuse Nathan had just handed her. “I was working on the Preston home.”

He pushed the sketchbook aside, clearly indicating that he saw nothing worthy of her expertise. “Okay, let’s see it.”

The truth was, she had nothing to show for her efforts. She’d come up with better ideas her first year in college. “See what?” she asked vaguely.

“See what you’ve come up with,” Nathan said patiently.

“I think you’ve got this turned around, Nathan. I sign your checks, you don’t sign mine.”

“You also didn’t come up with anything, did you?” he asked.

She shrugged, looking away. “Nothing worth my time.”

“And that would apply to a broad spectrum of things,” he replied, circling her so that she could get the benefit of his pointed look.

She knew Nathan meant well, but he needed to back off for now. “Nathan, I’ve already got one mother. I don’t need two.”

“Good, because you don’t have two,” he told her briskly. “I’m just a friend who doesn’t want to see you wasting your time, missing a guy you shouldn’t have given the time of day to in the first place.”

She’d given Pete more than the time of day. She’d given him over two years of her life, she thought angrily.

“I don’t want to talk about him,” she said firmly.

Nathan nodded approvingly. “Good, because neither do I. Now splash some water in your face, put on some makeup and change your clothes,” he instructed. As he spoke, he opened a cabinet that ordinarily contained hanging files but now held a navy-blue pinstripe skirt and a white short-sleeved oval-neck top.

Whipping them out on their hangers, Nathan held the prizes aloft before her, even as he put one hand to the small of her back. He propelled her toward the bathroom. “We want you looking your best.”

Kennon stopped dead. “We? Exactly what ‘we’ are you referring to?”

“Why, you and me ‘we,’ of course,” he said, trying to sound innocently cheerful. “You always this suspicious this early in the morning?”

She took the clothes from him. “I am when you suddenly start acting like a social directing steamroller.”

“Fine.” Nathan held up his hands in surrender, backing away from her. “Look like an unmade bed and scare away our customers. See if I care. I can always go back to sleeping on my sister’s couch, having those little monsters jump up and down on me in those awful pajamas with the rubber bumps on the bottoms of their hard little feet.”

She capitulated. If she didn’t give up, the drama would only get worse. “I’ll splash water in my face, put on some makeup and change my clothes,” she sighed.

“That’s my girl,” Nathan declared with a grin.

She gave him an unsettled, puzzled look as she slipped into the pearl-blue-tiled bathroom and closed the door.

“By the way,” he addressed the door in a matter-of-fact voice that wouldn’t have fooled a two-year-old, “You’re meeting a client in Newport Beach in an hour.”

An hour? Nothing she hated more than being rushed.

And then she remembered.

“I didn’t make an appointment with a client for this morning,” she informed Nathan through the door.

“I know. I did.”

It wasn’t that Nathan couldn’t make appointments. But whenever he did, he always told her. Bragged was more like it. He took extreme pleasure in being able to say he carried his own weight and drew in clients.

“When?” she asked. “I was here all day yesterday—and last night. I didn’t hear you making an appointment and no one new called the office.”

“It’s a referral,” he told her.

Dressed, Kennon opened the door so she could look at Nathan. She began to apply her makeup.

“Oh? From who?” Kennon flicked a hint of blush across her pale cheeks. She needed to get some sun time.

“What does it matter?” Nathan said with a quick rise and fall of his shoulder. “One happy, satisfied customer is like another. The main thing is the referral.”

She put down her lipstick tube. Something was rotten in the state of Denmark. “From who?” she asked again. Nathan was being incredibly mysterious—even for Nathan.

“Initially, your aunt Maizie,” he said evasively.

“Initially,” Kennon repeated. He didn’t want to tell her. Why? “And the middleman would be …?”

“Of no interest to you,” Nathan assured her.

“Nathan.” There was a dangerous note in her voice. “Who is this ‘mystery’ person and why are you acting like a poor man’s would-be espionage agent?”

Nathan surrendered, knowing he couldn’t win. “The middle ‘man’ is your mother,” he mumbled. “Satisfied?”

“My mother,” Kennon repeated, stunned. “And Aunt Maizie? They talked? They actually talked?”

It didn’t seem possible. Her mother never spoke to her aunt. And she definitely never sought Aunt Maizie out, on that Kennon was willing to stake her life. From what she and Nikki—her cousin and Maizie’s only daughter—could piece together, it had something to do with the fact that Kennon’s aunt had married her mother’s brother, and her mother had not thought that Maizie was good enough for him.

Her mother was the only one who felt Maizie wasn’t good enough. As for Kennon, she adored her aunt and had told Nikki more than once that she envied her cousin’s relationship with such a forward-thinking woman.

“Anytime you want to trade, just let me know,” Nikki had said to her. At the time Nikki was somewhat upset because she claimed that her mother was forever trying to play matchmaker and set her up with someone.

These days, Nikki was no longer complaining, especially since, according to what Kennon had heard, Aunt Maizie was the one who had set Nikki up with the sensitive, handsome hunk she had just recently married.

Kennon supposed that was one thing in her mother’s favor. Ruth Connors Cassidy didn’t play matchmaker, at least not anymore, she thought with a smile. Not since all the eligible sons of her mother’s friends had been taken off the market.

But Aunt Maizie was making matches like gang-busters. What if her mother had gone to Aunt Maizie and asked her to …?

No. She was allowing her imagination to run away with her. Her mother wouldn’t do that. Besides, she was through with men. To hell with all of them—except of course for Nathan, she amended. But then, he was more like a brother than a man anyway.

Kennon frowned into the small oval mirror over the pedestal sink. “Since I look like something that the cat dragged in, why don’t you go in my place?” she suggested.

Nathan shook his head. “A, you no longer look like something that the cat dragged in. And B, the client said he only wanted to deal with the owner. In case your brain is still a little foggy, that would be you.”

“Since you took the referral, what else do you know?” she asked him.

“Only that your aunt sold him the house and the man has no furniture. He wants you to furnish his house.”

There was no point in fighting this, she thought. And maybe this was what she needed, a new project. Decorating a whole house could come to a tidy little commission. “All right, get me the address and I’m on my way.”

“Got it right here,” Nathan told her, taking a folded piece of paper out of his vest pocket. “Printed out a map for you and everything,” he added, opening up the paper and handing it to her with a flourish. “Since I know how GPS-challenged you are.”

“I’m not GPS-challenged,” she corrected him. “I just don’t like a machine telling me where to go.” Kennon looked at him pointedly. “I already get enough of that from you.”

Nathan took no offense. “You know you love it.”

“Keep reminding me,” Kennon instructed wearily.

She was still thinking that long after Nathan’s voice had faded away and she had made the quick seven-mile trip to her destination. Right now, she felt like thirty miles of bad road. The last thing she wanted to do was meet a new client. But the economy being what it was, no job was too small at this point. And Nathan did say the man wanted enough furniture to fill his whole house. Hopefully, the man was not living in a one-bedroom house.

Dear God, Kennon, where’s your optimism? Where’s your hope? How could you have let that creep get to you this way? Nathan’s right. The breakup was a godsend. It saved you from making a stupid mistake. You didn’t love Pete, you loved the idea of him. Now get over it, damn it!

Following Nathan’s map, she made another turn to the right. A few yards from the corner stood a magnificent two-story house.

Getting out of her vehicle, Kennon didn’t bother locking the door. She walked up to the huge front door and rang the bell. The next second, the beginning notes of the Anvil Chorus sounded throughout the house.

Well, at least it wasn’t taps, she thought.

Chapter Two

Simon Sheffield frowned as he tried to hurry into his clothes. His alarm hadn’t gone off. Or, if it had, he’d shut it off in his sleep, instinctively attempting to escape from the annoying sound.

Uneasiness arrived the moment he was awake. The same question he’d been grappling with for the last week assaulted him again. Had he made a colossal mistake by uprooting the girls and moving here?

But then, what choice had he had? Seeing all those familiar surroundings in San Francisco had slowly ripped him to pieces. The entire city was fraught with memories for him and while some people could take comfort in memories when they’d lost someone, Simon found himself haunted by them.

Haunted to the point that he was having trouble focusing in order to function properly. And focusing to the exclusion of everything else was crucial in his line of work.

Time and again he’d find himself frozen in a moment that whispered of Nancy and all the things they had once had, all the plans they had once made. Nancy, who was the light of not only his life but the lives of everyone she came in contact with. Nancy, who was the embodiment of optimism and hope, who could almost heal with the touch of her hand, the warmth of her smile. Nancy, for whom nothing was impossible.

Except coming back from the dead.

And she was dead because of him.

Dead because his urgent sense of duty and ethics had prevented him from keeping his prior promise to Doctors Without Borders. A much sought-after and gifted cardiovascular surgeon, Simon had willingly signed up to donate fifteen days of his service, going to a wretchedly impoverished region on the eastern coast of Africa. But when the time came for him to go, one of his patients, Jeremy Winterhaus, had suffered the collapse of one of the new valves that had been put in during his emergency bypass surgery. Always a man who saw things through, Simon hadn’t felt comfortable about leaving Winterhaus in the care of another surgeon. Nancy, a general surgeon herself, had immediately stepped in and told him not to worry. She’d urged him to see to his patient, and she’d happily taken his place in the program.

And died in his place when the tsunami, born in the wake of the 8.3 earthquake that had ripped through Indonesia, swept away her and more than two dozen other people less than three days later.

Edna had been the one to break the news to him, tapping on his door the morning that the tsunami had hit, her eyes red-rimmed from weeping. Edna O’Malley had once been Nancy’s nanny and was now nanny to their two daughters, Madelyn and Meghan. She had come into his bedroom and in her soft, quiet voice said the words that ended the world as he knew it.

“Our Nancy was swept out to sea by a tsunami, Doctor.”

He’d stared at her in disbelief, then felt as if he’d been repeatedly stabbed in the gut with a rusted serrated knife.

Thirteen months later, he still hadn’t healed. He knew that if he had a prayer of moving forward and providing for their girls, he needed to start somewhere fresh and lock away all the memories until such time as it wouldn’t hurt so much to be confronted by them.

Because of her ties to Nancy, he’d almost left Edna back in San Francisco, as well. But he needed someone to look after the girls while he was away at the hospital, someone he trusted. As a cardiovascular surgeon he couldn’t lay claim to an average nine-to-five existence, and he needed someone to be there to fill in the gaps. Finding a new nanny was much too time-consuming.

Besides, Edna needed something to keep her going, as well, a reason for waking up in the morning. Simon was well aware that in her own way, Edna had loved Nancy as much as he did, as much as a mother did. And she loved the girls, as well. To lose all three of them in thirteen months would have destroyed the woman, and God knew he didn’t want someone else on his conscience.

Simon felt he already had more than enough guilt to deal with.

He had to get moving, Simon upbraided himself. It was late. Getting out of bed in the morning was still unbelievably difficult for him. Especially when, for just a glimmer of a moment, when he first opened his eyes in the morning, he didn’t remember.

And then he did.

The full weight of remembering oppressed him to the point that he had trouble breathing. But it was slowly getting easier. Not easy, but just easier, and that, he knew, was all he could logically hope for.

If he was going to be of any use to his patients and the hospital where he would be working, Simon knew he needed to get back to the business of living.

Which was why being late for his first meeting with Dr. Edward Hale, the chief of surgery at Blair Memorial, was not a very good idea.

When the doorbell rang with its odd, teeth-jarring chimes, it was just one more thing for him to be annoyed about.

Now what? he wondered impatiently as he shrugged into his jacket. The obligatory necktie was stuffed into his pocket, knotted and ready to be pressed into service should he need it. As a rule, he hated ties and saw them as an unnecessary evil.

A sneeze in the distance told him that Edna was making her way to the front door. The last couple of days, she seemed to be coming down with a bad cold despite her protests that she was fine.

When it rained …

“I’ll get it, Edna,” he called out. Edna already had more than her hands full, Simon thought, just getting Madelyn, eight, and Meghan, six, ready for school.

But even though he’d just told her that he would open the front door on his way out, he knew Edna was too stubborn to retreat.

Sure enough, there she was, hurrying to the door. Dedicated right down to the soles of her excessively sensible shoes, Edna O’Malley appeared a bit older than her sixty-seven years and was, to the undiscerning eye, the epitome of the comfortable, capable British nanny of decades past. Not exactly plump, but far from thin, at five foot ten Edna cast a considerable shadow.

“I’m not dead yet, Doctor,” Edna told him firmly, refusing to tolerate being coddled in any manner. She struggled to stifle the deep cough that insisted on rumbling inside her chest.

Simon shook his head. “You will be if you don’t take it easy,” he warned her.

Edna spared him a reproving glance. “If that’s the kind of medical advice you’re dispensing, Doctor, it’s a surprise to me there’s no wolf at our door. But wait, perhaps that’s him now,” Edna amended glibly as she opened the massive door. Lights danced in through the beveled glass, casting multicolored bursts on the wall. “No, no wolf. A waif instead,” the nanny pronounced after giving the slender young woman standing on their doorstep a quick once-over.

The next moment, Edna quickly turned her head toward the door and sneezed loudly enough to befit a person twice her size and girth.

“Bless you,” Kennon said automatically. “I have an appointment to see a Dr. Simon Sheffield.”

Edna sneezed a third time, sighed heavily as she dug into her deep pockets for her handkerchief and blew her nose before giving the young woman another critical once-over.

Sniffling, she wadded the handkerchief back up and shoved it into her pocket again. “I’m afraid the doctor doesn’t do house calls, miss—even from his own house. You’ll have to see him during office hours in his office.”

Okay, this was obviously a misunderstanding. “But I’m not sick,” Kennon began. She got no further.

“Good for you,” the nanny declared. “That makes one of us. Me, I’m feeling rather poorly,” she went on to confide as she lowered her voice.

Kennon tried to look sympathetic while wondering what any of this had to do with her appointment. She pressed her lips together. Had there been a mistake?

The next moment, before she could speak further to the sneezing woman who stood in her way, she caught a movement out of the corner of her eye.

A man, undoubtedly the poster boy for the description of “tall, dark and handsome,” came to the door. In his wake came two very lively little girls, obviously his. Each had the man’s bright blue eyes and thick hair, except that his was dark and theirs was a lighter shade of brown and curly. And, unlike their father, the little girls weren’t scowling. They were just eyeing her curiously.

“Who’s that, Daddy?” the younger one asked, staring up at her with the bluest eyes Kennon had ever seen.

“A lady who’s selling something,” he assumed. With a careful movement, he edged both Edna and his daughters back behind him and stood facing the woman on his doorstep. Attractive though she was, whatever the woman was selling, he had no time to hear her sales pitch. “I’m sorry but I’m in a hurry,” he apologized politely, “and I don’t have time to buy anything.”

“I wasn’t planning on pressuring you into buying anything in five minutes flat,” Kennon assured the good-looking physician.

Furnishing a house took time and while she always accompanied a client when he or she went out to purchase an item, even subtly guiding them toward certain things, the ultimate choice was always theirs. After all, they were the ones who had to live with whatever they wound up selecting.

Kennon wasn’t prepared for the puzzled, somewhat annoyed look that came over the man’s face.

The woman was trying to sell him something. Subscriptions? he guessed, glancing at the rather large, square briefcase in her hand.

Or did she represent some pharmaceutical company, wanting to snare his attention before any of the others got to him? He knew all about how competitive sales reps could be, but until now, he’d always had someone shielding him. One of the receptionists or office managers would field the calls, make appropriate comments and promise that “someone” would be getting back to them.

Had they taken to trying to corner physicians before they got to the office? It seemed unusual, but not out of the question. Competition, he’d heard, was steep and cutthroat.

Obviously, they’d sent their most attractive saleswoman. He couldn’t help wondering if she had a brain, as well, or if chutzpa was all she was gifted with. That and possibly the longest legs he’d ever seen.

“Wow,” he murmured, “and I thought that the companies in San Francisco were pushy.”

“That’s just the point, Doctor. I’m not pushy,” Kennon quietly corrected him. “The ultimate choice in what you decide to buy or not buy is yours. All I do is just make a variety of suggestions.”

She had, he thought, the closest thing to a perfect figure he’d ever seen. But it still wasn’t enough to make him promise to advise his patients to take one drug above another, just because her packaging was better than some other company’s. He had to believe in a medication before he prescribed it.

He needed to get this woman out of here—and himself, as well. Suppressing a few exasperated words that rose to his lips, Simon took hold of the petite blonde’s arm and firmly moved her across the threshold, back to his doorstep. “Look, I’m sure whatever you’re pushing has a market, but right now, I’m not interested.”

Aunt Maizie, you’re really going to have to test these guys for sanity before you send them on to someone, Kennon thought.

She saw the man’s little girls standing directly behind him, their blue eyes as big as proverbial saucers as they peered out at her. The little one smiled shyly at her.

The girls were adorable. Hopefully for their sake they were adopted, since insanity could run in the family, she thought.

Kennon glanced back at the doctor. “Look, Dr. Sheffield, I can’t just do this hit-and-run. You’re obviously too busy right now and I need some time in order to do my job properly.” He stared at her as if she’d suddenly started speaking pig Latin, so she tried to make him understand her approach. “I usually try to get to know a few things about my client before I really get started.”

The man still appeared stunned, not to mention somewhat bemused.

“It’s very important to me that you wind up liking what I do, not just for a referral for future jobs, but because I like leaving satisfied clients in my wake.”

He’d heard that drug reps were pushy, getting information about doctors so they could appeal to them on a friendly level, approach them like old friends instead of potential markets for their employer’s product. This one was in a class by herself. He was almost tempted to ask her who she represented, but that would only be opening the door for her and he had a feeling that she could go on and on.

“I really don’t have time for this.”

Kennon looked past the doctor’s rather broad shoulders and into the heart of the house. It was a beautiful house. Beautiful and barren. He really did need some furniture. If only to give his daughters a feeling of stability.

“But your house is empty,” she protested. “You need furniture.”

“What does that have to do with it?” he asked.

“Everything,” Kennon insisted. Okay, maybe she should start all over again, she told herself. She’d obviously lost the man somewhere. “I’m Kennon Cassidy.” She put her hand out. When he didn’t take it immediately, she added, “The decorator.” She waited for the light to dawn in his incredibly beautiful, piercing blue eyes. It didn’t. Maybe the man had a short attention span and needed more input. “Maizie Sommers told you I’d be coming.” She took a breath. Still nothing. She added a coda. “She said you had an empty house that was badly in need of furnishing.”

That was when the bells finally went off in his head. “Oh. Maizie,” he repeated, recalling the savvy, attractive woman who had helped him find what she’d referred to as “the right house for your girls.” He’d been completely at a loss when he’d gone to the Realtor. She’d all but reshaped him with her bare hands. For a moment he clung to the familiar name like a drowning man clung to a life preserver that had suddenly drifted within his reach.

Simon nodded, feeling more than a little like a fool for having made the mistake. If he’d let her talk instead of cutting her off at every sentence, maybe this misunderstanding wouldn’t have taken up so much time.

He intended to make it up to her by giving her decorative services a try. But right now, he had someplace he needed to be. A cardiovascular surgeon wasn’t much good to anyone if he didn’t have the backing of an accredited hospital where he was allowed to perform his surgeries.

“I’m afraid that I’m going to have to reschedule our meeting. I have another one to go to right now at Blair Memorial Hospital.” He felt after everything that had just gone down, he owed her a little bit of an explanation. “I’ve been invited to join the hospital’s staff, but I have a feeling that if I don’t show up for my first meeting with the chief of surgery, that invitation just might be rescinded.”

Now, that at least was beginning to make sense. Kennon nodded.

“Of course. I understand completely. I run into time conflicts all the time.” Opening her purse, she riffled through a few things in her wallet before finding her card. She handed it to him. “Feel free to call me whenever you find you have the time to reschedule. If I’m not in the office, the call will be forwarded to either my cell or my home phone, depending on where I am.”

Simon closed his hand over the card. The corners of his generous mouth curved ever so slightly. “Thanks for being understanding about this,” he apologized. “Things have been up in the air lately and we’ve just relocated to the area—”

Kennon nodded, wanting to spare him having to go over things needlessly. “No need to explain, Dr. Sheffield. My aunt filled me in on the details.”

Simon eyed her a little uncertainly. “Your aunt?”

Her smile swiftly traveled into her eyes. “The woman who showed you the house you just bought,” she prompted.

After Nathan had told her that her aunt had actually made the appointment for the client, Kennon made it a point to call her as she drove to the Newport Beach house. She never liked walking into something completely unprepared, so she had called Maizie and asked for background information on the client.

Maizie had told her that the man was a surgeon and that he had two small daughters, Madelyn and Meghan. She’d also mentioned that he’d moved here from San Francisco. As a P.S. she’d thrown in at the end that he was a widower. What her aunt had neglected to tell her, Kennon thought, was that he was breathtakingly good-looking.

Aunt Maizie probably thought that was the cherry on the sundae, Kennon reasoned.

Poor Aunt Maizie didn’t know about the new leaf that Pete had made her turn. She was no longer in the market for anything but peace and quiet. Men did not fit under that heading. Not in any manner, shape or form. Ergo, she was no longer in the market for one.

“Oh,” Simon was saying. “You aunt is a very nice woman.”

He’d get no argument from her. “Yes, she is,” Kennon agreed.

From behind him the nanny’s rather reedy voice called out to him. “Dr. Sheffield.”

“Just a minute, Mrs. O’Malley,” he responded formally without turning in the woman’s direction. “Again, I just wanted to explain that it was an honest mistake. I’m told that sales reps for pharmaceutical companies can be very devious and almost ruthless—”

She picked up the cue. “And you think I’m devious and ruthless?” she asked, tongue in cheek.

Cut from a serious cloth these days, Simon didn’t realize she was kidding and instantly protested. “I didn’t mean to imply that I thought you were, I mean—” He was tripping over his own tongue, trying to apologize for the insult he hadn’t actually given.

Kennon was more than happy to absolve him of blame and free him from the awkward moment. She laughed lightly, feeling sorry for the man’s distress. Who would have thought that anyone this handsome could also know how to apologize.

“Please, Doctor, don’t give it another thought.”

“Dr. Sheffield,” Edna called again. This time her voice was even reedier than before. It broke and faded toward the end.

And then there was a loud thud, as if a large suitcase had been dropped on the floor. At the same moment, Madelyn, his eight-year-old, suddenly screamed and cried out, “Daddy!” in a frightened, high-pitched voice.

Swinging around, Simon saw that his children’s nanny was lying facedown and prone on the floor.

“Hurry!” Madelyn implored, frantically beckoning him over with both hands. “Hurry, Daddy,” she said again. “Edna’s dead!”

Beside her, Meghan covered her eyes and began to scream. Loudly.

Chapter Three

Whirling around, Simon immediately hurried over to the fallen nanny. Crouching over Edna, he checked her pulse and was relieved with his findings. The pulse was going fast, but it was strong.

“She’s not dead, Madelyn,” he told his daughter, indicating Edna’s chest area, which was rising and falling rhythmically.

Nonetheless, Madelyn didn’t appear to be completely convinced. “Then why are her eyes closed?”

“'Cause she’s sleeping.” Meghan emphasized the last word with feeling. She looked at her sister as if Madelyn should have known that.

“That’s not a bad explanation,” Simon observed, surprised with his younger daughter’s assessment. Meghan took it as praise and preened before her sister.

Other than a few words of greeting each day, Simon hadn’t been accustomed to actually talking with his daughters. That had been a domain reserved for Nancy. Since her death, he’d found himself in a whole new world with little to no clue on how to navigate in it. Children were for the most part a mysterious breed to him.

Aware that both his daughters were looking at him expectantly, he explained, “Edna fainted. She hasn’t been feeling well these last couple of days and she probably just turned too quickly.” He’d been too busy getting ready this morning to notice, but now that he reflected, Edna had been coughing and sneezing a great deal more today than yesterday.

Madelyn still didn’t look convinced, or at ease. Her eyes still wide, she asked her father in a halting voice, “Is she—Is Edna going to be all right?” She stood there, nervously waiting for an answer. “She’s not going to—well, you know.” She lifted her small shoulders, as if the word on her tongue was too heavy to bear or utter. “Like Mama,” she finally whispered, trusting her father to make the connection.

He’d been desperately trying to put a lid on his grief this past year, but he hadn’t been oblivious. He had noticed that of his two daughters, Nancy’s death seemed to have affected Madelyn more than it had Meghan. The latter had cried when she’d been told, but she also recovered a great deal sooner than Madelyn had, transferring her affection and loyalty to Edna almost effortlessly.

But then, Meghan was only six and she hadn’t realized yet just how hard life could knock you down when you were least expecting it.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” the soft voice behind him asked.

Simon realized that he’d all but forgotten about the decorator. Probably the first man who ever had, he judged, given how attractive she was.

“Yes, you can hold the girls back,” he instructed. He didn’t want either of them getting underfoot, even if it was eagerness to help that propelled them.

Scooping the unconscious nanny up into his arms, Simon struggled to his feet.

Edna was a decidedly solid woman, he thought, as his arms strained and a rather odd pain cut across the tops of his thighs. The woman was strong for her age. The downside of that was she was also heavy.

As she heard him take a deep breath that suggested he was glad he’d risen without embarrassing himself, Kennon watched the man in silent amazement. Not many men could have done that so smoothly. Ordinarily, they would have either left the woman on the floor until she regained consciousness or asked for help in getting her up and onto a more comfortable surface. He’d just squatted and had done what amounted to a dead lift, an exercise favored by dedicated bodybuilders.

Kennon continued to keep a light but restraining hand on each of the girls’ shoulders, holding them back until their father began to walk. And then, still resting a hand on each of their shoulders, she gently guided Madelyn and Meghan into the living room, behind their father.

It was then that she noticed that the doctor actually did have one piece of furniture downstairs—a sofa that appeared completely out of place in the wide, cathedral-ceilinged room. The maroon, oversize sofa was sagging in a number of places and definitely did not look as if it belonged in the house.

A loaner?

She remembered that on occasion her aunt would make use of one of those companies that rented furniture out by the month. She did it to give the property she was showing a warmer look. Obviously that hadn’t been the goal here. Rather than bright and cheery, the sofa just looked worn and ready to be retired.

Still, it had to be more comfortable than the floor, she reasoned. And the object here was Edna’s comfort, even if she was still unconscious.

Troubled, shifting from foot to foot, Madelyn gave no indication that she’d been placated by her father’s answer. “Are you sure she’s not dead?” the eight-year-old asked anxiously.

Kennon smiled into Madelyn’s face, fielding the question for him. “Your father’s a doctor, honey. I’m sure he knows the difference between someone being dead or alive. Besides—” she leaned in closer to the girl “—if you look very carefully, you can see Edna’s chest rising and falling. That means she’s breathing. Breathing is a very good indication that your nanny’s alive.”

With a sniff that told Kennon Madelyn was doing her best not to cry, the little girl solemnly nodded her head. “Okay,” she said, accepting the explanation. Even so, her eyes were shining with unshed tears. “It’s just that Mama—”

“Never mind,” her father said, cutting her off briskly. He had no desire to have his personal life spread out before a total stranger. Turning from the sofa, he looked at the decorator his Realtor had sent. She seemed at ease, standing between his daughters like that, he noted. Something he hadn’t quite been able to manage yet. “Miss—” He stopped short, realizing that he was missing a crucial piece of information. “What did you say your name was?”

“Cassidy. Kennon,” she added, supplying her first name without being asked. She smiled at the girls. “I know it’s not the easiest name to remember.”

The doctor frowned slightly, or was that his normal expression, Kennon wondered. If it was, it was a shame, because he was too good-looking a man to detract from his features by perpetually frowning.

“Ease is not always of tantamount importance,” the doctor told her. “But manners are.”

He was a disciplinarian, Kennon guessed. She wondered if he realized how hard that could be on his daughters.

Her own father had been a Marine colonel who lived and breathed the service long after he retired from it. He was quite possibly the most distant man she’d ever known. Growing up with him had been like growing up with a disapproving stranger. Maybe it was her need for acceptance and affection that had made her pick the wrong man to love in the first place.

She heard Simon sigh in obvious exasperation.

Kennon’s attention was immediately drawn to the woman on the sofa. “Is something wrong?”

Simon’s frown deepened. “You mean other than the fact that I need to be at a meeting at the hospital with the chief of surgery in less than half an hour, my girls are due in school and my housekeeper is ill and presently unconscious?” he asked with barely suppressed sarcasm. “No, nothing’s wrong.”

Well, that tongue of his wasn’t about to melt butter anytime soon, Kennon thought. Still, with all that on his plate, she supposed she couldn’t really fault his less than sunny disposition. A lot of men were lost without their wives and he was one of them. She found that oddly appealing.

“You wouldn’t happen to know where I could find a capable young woman to take my daughters to school and then come back to keep an eye on my housekeeper until I can come home, would you?” His tone indicated that he wasn’t actually expecting an answer. He was just blowing off a little steam as he searched for a solution to his overwhelming dilemma.

Kennon paused for a moment. She had cleared her entire morning to give Dr. Sheffield the proper amount of time for a first decorator-client meeting. She wasn’t due anywhere, which meant that she was free to ride to his rescue. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t hesitate, but this situation was a little different.

Kennon couldn’t quite make up her mind whether she thought of Simon Sheffield as exceedingly businesslike or a martinet just this side of stuffy and rude. But she’d always had a soft spot when it came to children, and his daughters were adorable. The man was obviously in need of help. If she came to his aid, maybe the man would feel obligated to engage her services and hire her to decorate his house.

No, she reconsidered, he didn’t strike her as the type who felt obligated or believed in the eye-for-an-eye theory. Not unless it involved pistols at ten paces.

Still, he did need help, she did have the time and she had an affinity for children. She’d always had a weakness for the short set, Kennon thought fondly. And it was obvious to everyone. An only child, she’d started babysitting at a young age and had loved kids as far back as she could remember.

Her mother frequently told her that she had the makings of a wonderful mother. This observation was always accompanied by a plaintive lament that it was such a shame that she hadn’t started a family yet.

Maybe someday. And if her “clock” ran out as she waited for “someday” to come, adoption for single mothers was getting easier.

Oh, what the hell? What did she have to lose by volunteering? Kennon made up her mind.

“Me,” she said.

There was confusion in his deep blue eyes. “You what?”

“The capable person you’re looking for,” Kennon told him. “I can be her. I mean, I am her.” What was it about this man that made her talk as if she had a speech impediment? Kennon blew out a breath and started from the top again. “I can take your girls to school if you tell me which school they’re attending, and then I can come back and stay with your housekeeper until you get back.” The doctor didn’t appear to be won over by her proposal. “If you’re worried about Mrs. O’Malley being alone while I take the girls, I can call my assistant. Nathan will stay with her until I get back.”

“Why?” Simon asked, not attempting to hide the fact that he was scrutinizing her as he asked. He might have gotten along well with her father. Too bad her dad hadn’t stayed in touch after her parents divorced.

Kennon wasn’t sure exactly what Simon was asking. She had volunteered a lot of information just now. “Excuse me?”

“Why would you do that?” he asked her. “Take my daughters to school and have your assistant babysit Edna?” Where he came from, people kept to themselves, they didn’t volunteer to help, especially not essential strangers.

He certainly was the uptight, suspicious type. She was really beginning to feel sorry for his daughters. “Because you just said—”

He waved his hand at her explanation, dismissing it. “I know what I just said, but we’re strangers.”

Was that it? She laughed. “Not for long if I’m going to decorate your house.” She’d already told him that she needed to get to know him in order to do her job—or hadn’t he been paying attention at all? “I can’t think of a better way to get to know you, Dr. Sheffield, than jumping feet first into your life.”

The image obviously captivated the younger of his two daughters. Meghan started giggling. “Can I watch you jump?” she asked.

Kennon couldn’t resist running her hand along the little girl’s soft cheek. Meghan was nothing if not adorably squeezable, but she refrained, knowing from firsthand experience and her mother’s annoying great-aunt, that children didn’t like being squeezed.

“It’s just an expression, honey,” Kennon told her with a laugh. Then she looked at Simon, still waiting for his response. “Offer’s still open.”

He was not in a position to be picky and he supposed that if this overly friendly decorator came with the real-estate woman’s recommendation—Maizie Sommers had reminded him of his own late mother—at least that was better than finding someone in the classified section and taking his chances.

Resigned—his back was up against the wall—he nodded and took out his house key. He held it out to the decorator—he’d forgotten her name again. “Thanks. I appreciate this. By the way, there’s no need to call in your assistant.”

He almost sounded as if he meant what he said about thanking her, she thought. Of course, it might have helped if he’d smiled when he said it, but she had a feeling that Simon Sheffield didn’t do much smiling. Pocketing the key, she asked an all-important question. “And the name of their school?” she asked him.

“Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton,” Edna murmured weakly.

“Edna, you are alive!” Madelyn cried, overjoyed. She threw her arms around the woman, giving her a fierce hug. Meghan piled on top of her.

“Let her breathe, girls,” Simon warned sternly. The next moment he moved his daughters back, away from their nanny. “How are you feeling?” he asked the woman. He took her pulse again. It was still rapid, but not as reedy as it’d been. The beat was stronger now.

“Embarrassed,” Edna replied in a voice that still had very little strength behind it.

“Nothing to be embarrassed about,” he dismissed crisply. “I want you to rest here for at least a few hours—until I get back.”

Edna looked dismayed. She tried to sit up, but was too weak for the moment to follow through. “But the girls—” she began to protest.

“Are being taken care of,” Simon assured the nanny. He turned to the woman who seemed to be a godsend—if he actually believed in things like that. “The girls’ school is on—”

Kennon held up her hand to stop him. “I grew up here,” she told him. “I know where Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton School is.” She began to usher the girls toward the front door. “By the way, the hospital you’re going to, you said that it was Blair Memorial—”

“Yes,” he cut in suspiciously. “Why?”

Definitely not the most trusting of men, she thought. Did the distrust come naturally to him, or had something caused it, she wondered.

“Nothing. I just wanted to say that Blair has a great reputation. My cousin is a pediatrician and she’s affiliated with Blair. Dr. Nicole Connors,” she supplied. She saw him raise a brow at the surname. “As it happens, she’s your real-estate agent’s daughter.” The moment she filled him in, she could guess at his next thought. “Yes, it really is a small world around here.” She turned her attention back to her temporary charges. “Okay, girls, we need to hustle if we’re going to get you to the school before lunch.”

“Lunch?” Madelyn cried, clearly dismayed. “Are we that late?”

Okay, she was going to have to tone down her humor, Kennon thought.

“Just another figure of speech,” she explained. With a hand once more on each girl’s shoulder, she ushered Madelyn and Meghan out the door. And then she looked over her shoulder at the doctor before hurrying off to her vehicle. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she promised in case he thought she was going to dawdle before returning to the nanny.

Simon nodded. “So will I,” he replied.

As the woman with the rapid-fire mouth left, closing the door behind her, Simon had the unshakable impression that he had just been in the company of a grade-five hurricane.

But at least he was still standing, he told himself, and that had to be worth something.

Blair Memorial Hospital was absolutely everything he’d been led to believe it was when he had first gotten in contact with Dr. Edward Hale. First-rate in all fields, it was state-of-the-art when it came to cardiac surgery. The hospital even boasted of having a Gamma Knife available. A Gamma Knife afforded surgeons a virtually unobtrusive method of operating that their brethren of the last century could have only dreamed about. For the most part, it had been regarded as science fiction—until it crossed over and became real.

At one point not that long ago, Simon would have gotten very excited about the possibilities that lay ahead of him. Except that these days he felt exceedingly guilty about allowing himself to feel anything but a profound sense of loss and sadness.

Nancy wouldn’t have wanted you to feel that way, the voice in his head insisted. The voice sounded a great deal like Edna at the moment because the woman had known his wife almost better than he had.

He knew that the voice—and Edna—were probably right. Nancy would have wanted him to move on. But he couldn’t. His body, his entire psyche felt as if it was stuck in molasses, in the past, unable to move, unable to blink. Unable to think of life without his partner, his helper, his soul mate.

Remember the girls. They need you.

This time, the voice in his head sounded a great deal like Nancy.

He realized that the chief of surgery was shaking his hand, a pleased expression on the older man’s broad, kind face.

“Well, I’ve got nothing further to say right now except welcome aboard, Doctor,” he told Simon. Eminently satisfied, the older man added, “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” Flashing an almost perfect set of teeth, he identified the quote. “That’s from Casablanca. You’ll forgive me, I’m a big movie buff. My wife, bless her, has another term for it, but I like movie buff better. Wives, God love ‘em, they’ve all got our number, don’t they?”

Hale chuckled as he looked at the face of Blair’s newest surgeon on staff. And then the chief of surgery suddenly grew somber.

“Oh, my God, I’m sorry. I forgot that your wife passed,” he said delicately, falling back on the squeaky-clean euphemism for death. “I’m sorry, Doctor. That had to have sounded very callous of me.”

Simon shook his head, doing his very best to detach his consciousness from his surroundings. He’d been doing that for a year now, whenever his thoughts or the conversation veered toward Nancy.

“No, that’s all right,” he demurred, hoping the matter would be dropped.

Not likely. Hale didn’t appear to be finished just yet. Concerned, he laid his hand on Simon’s shoulder and peered into the other man’s eyes.

“How are you getting along?” Hale asked, adding kindly, “Do you need anything?”

Yes, I need my wife back.

Stoically, Simon shook his head. “No, I’m fine. But that’s very kind of you.” Simon glanced at his watch. Three hours had gone by. Had the meeting taken that long? He didn’t feel as if it had, but it obviously must have. “If you don’t mind, my housekeeper’s ill and I’d like to check in on her.”

“Of course, of course.” Hale rose, pumping Simon’s hand again. “Let me know if there’s anything we can do for you here at Blair Memorial. Otherwise, we’ll be looking forward to seeing you at the hospital, say, on Thursday?” he suggested hopefully. He knew that most places began their people on a Monday, but he had another philosophy. “We’ll let you get your feet wet slowly,” he added with a chuckle. “I always found that was the best way. I don’t like overwhelming my doctors by having them start with a full week. Even a state-of-the-art hospital takes some getting used to,” he theorized.

“Thursday will be fine.”

“Remember,” Hale said, walking Simon to the glasspaneled door, “if you find you need anything, or just want someone to talk to, please don’t hesitate to give me a call. My door—and phone—are always open.” He clapped the new surgeon on the back. “I operate by a simple rule—Happy doctors are good doctors. I want to keep you happy, Dr. Sheffield.”

“I appreciate that, chief.” But you’re thirteen months too late for that. “Thank you again, sir.” And with that, Simon took his leave.

The second he turned down the corridor, Simon picked up speed.

He needed to get home to make sure that Edna was all right and that he hadn’t made a huge mistake by opening his doors to that decorator.

Granted that this Kennon Cassidy did seem to have an engaging manner about her, but from what he’d heard, so did the more successful con artists. Although he had nothing in the house that could be taken, still he would feel a great deal more at ease once he was back, attending to Edna himself.

And reclaiming his solitude.

Chapter Four

Even though he had traveled behind the woman’s vehicle for part of the way to Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton School and had subsequently called the principal, Sister Therese, to make sure that his daughters had arrived and each was in her proper classroom, the bottom line was that Simon was more than a little annoyed with himself for having actually relied on a woman he really didn’t know from Adam.

Well, maybe not Adam, he amended. Didn’t know from Eve would have been the more appropriate description, given that no one in their right mind would ever mistake Kennon Cassidy for anything but an exquisite example of womanhood.

His observation caught him off guard, completely surprising him. Where had that come from?

Ever since the tsunami had taken Nancy and swept away his life, he’d caught himself sleepwalking through his life on more than one occasion.

He needed to maintain a grip on his life.

If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be any good to anyone, least of all himself. And there were not just his patients—his future patients—to think of, but his daughters, as well.

He’d been an absentee father at best, but it had never preyed on his conscience because Nancy and especially Edna were there to take up the slack. Nancy’s death had changed all the ground rules. He had to ante up, despite the fact that he didn’t know how.

It was for Madelyn and Meghan’s sake that he had deliberately left everything behind and come here in an attempt to finally shake free of the malaise that Nancy’s death had created. And to some extent, he had succeeded. He’d applied for a position at the hospital, actually bought a home in an amazingly short amount of time and had gotten the girls enrolled in a top-ranked school, although the last was more Edna’s doing than his own.

But if someone were to ask him what color his shirt was, or to even hazard a guess as to what either of his daughters was wearing this morning, he’d have no answer. For the most part, he’d always been rather unaware of his surroundings, but it had only gotten worse in the last thirteen months.

So he was rather stunned he’d actually noticed what could politely be referred to as Kennon Cassidy’s “attributes.”

He supposed that just meant he wasn’t dead yet. Maybe that represented a sliver of hope that he would eventually be able to come around—in about a thousand years or so.

* * *

When he took the freeway off-ramp that would eventually lead him to his house, Simon glanced at the clock on the dashboard. It had taken him less time to drive back than it had to reach the hospital. The realization meant that his subconscious was apparently back online. He had always had the ability to commit things to memory after seeing them only once. This included driving directions. But even that had been less than fully operational these last thirteen months.

Pulling up into his driveway, Simon noted that the decorator—Kennon, was it?—had parked her pearl-blue sedan at the curb. She’d come back after dropping off the girls, just as she’d promised.

All right, so he’d lucked out. She’d kept her word. He still shouldn’t have trusted her so readily, he silently lectured himself. With his dry cleaning, maybe, but not his daughters. What had he been thinking?

That was the problem; he hadn’t been. All he knew was that he couldn’t cancel his meeting. First impressions were infinitely important. There were no “do overs.”

In his own defense, Simon thought, getting out of his car, the woman had come recommended and his back had been against the proverbial wall….

Simon cut himself a little slack.

The second he unlocked the front door and walked in, he became aware of it. It was impossible not to be. The aroma embraced him like a warm hug. For a moment, he stopped to inhale deeply and savor it. Then he began to walk briskly, following the enticing aroma to its source, the kitchen.

But to get to the kitchen, he had to walk through the living room. Edna, he found, was still there. But now her head rested on a pillow and a crisp, light blue fleece blanket was spread over two thirds of her torso.

She looked better, he thought. He was relieved to see color in her cheeks and that she appeared to be fully conscious and lucid. Edna smiled at him as he walked over to her.

“How are you feeling, Edna?” he wanted to know.

“Much better now, thank you, Doctor.” The color in her cheeks deepened as a touch of embarrassment passed over them. “I’m sorry I created such a fuss,” she apologized, then confided, “It’s the first time I’ve fainted since I was a young girl, and we all know how long ago that was.”

The woman didn’t have a vain bone in her body, but every woman needed to be reassured that she was attractive, he thought. Nancy had taught him that.

Simon took one of his housekeeper’s weathered, capable hands in his own. “Not that long ago,” he contradicted. Simon had examined Edna and satisfied himself that her fainting episode had been brought on by her cold, coupled with dehydration due to her failure to replenish the lost fluids. In other words, Edna was being typically Edna and neglecting to take the time to take care of herself. A little bed rest, as well as drinking plenty of liquids, and he was confident that she would be back to her old self in no time. “And I’m sorry I had to leave you alone like that—”

“It couldn’t be helped, sir. I quite understand. And you didn’t leave me alone,” Edna pointed out politely. “That very lovely young woman came back after taking the girls to school. Been fussing over me as if I was a blood relative of hers since she returned.” Edna shook her head in amazement. “She insisted on making me ‘comfortable,’ by bringing down some of my bedding.” She nodded toward the sheet. “And she’s in the kitchen right now, making some chicken soup for me to eat.” Edna smiled. It was obvious that she was enjoying this. “She’s a rare one, she is, sir.”

Simon glanced in the direction of the kitchen. The aroma grew stronger, more enticing. Or was that because he was hungry?

“You mean she’s heating up a can of soup.” Since he’d donated their microwave to charity and had yet to purchase a replacement down here, he assumed that the decorator had emptied the contents of a store-bought can of soup into a saucepan and was in the process of heating it up now, hence the aroma.

“No, I mean she’s making it,” Edna insisted, coughing at the end of her sentence. After a moment, Edna regrouped and continued, her words coming out in a more measured cadence, as if she was fearful of irritating her throat. “She came in with a whole bag of groceries stuffed with all the ingredients to make an old-fashioned bowl of chicken soup. Heard her chopping celery and carrots like a pro,” she related to him, approval wrapped around each word. “I thought all the girls her age just assumed that soup came from a can.” Edna told him. And then she smiled.

“I’m feeling better just smelling it. Reminds me of home when I was a little girl. Mother always made me chicken soup whenever I was sick. Claimed it had healing properties. Whether it did or not I wouldn’t be able to say, but everyone always felt better after Mother made chicken soup.”

“Except the chicken,” Simon speculated dryly. “Maybe I’d better see what this decorator’s up to,” he decided out loud.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t grateful for the woman’s efforts, especially for the way she had just pitched right in, doing whatever needed to be done for his daughters and for Edna, but he really just wanted to be alone, to feel that he had the house to himself. Granted, Edna was here, but Edna was always around and he regarded her much the way he did the air and the warmth of the sun, undemanding integrals of his life.

He had no desire to be put in a position where he had to carry on a conversation beyond a few necessary words. With the girls in school and Edna apparently feeling better, all he wanted to do was to entertain silence until such time that he had to go pick up the girls again.

With Kennon here that wasn’t possible.

Standing in the doorway, he observed this invading woman for a couple of beats. And came to the conclusion that she looked more at home here than he did.

“Why are you making chicken soup?” he asked her without any sort of preamble.

Lost in thought, Kennon felt her heart suddenly lunge and get all but stuck in her throat. He’d startled her. Kennon tried her best not to show it.

“Because it won’t make itself,” she answered glibly, then gave him the real reason. “I always find that sipping soup when I’m coming down with a cold makes me feel better. Turns out that Edna feels the same way.”

That still didn’t explain why she’d felt compelled to make the damn thing from scratch. “Supermarkets have whole aisles devoted to chicken soup.”

He saw her wrinkle her nose. It made her look intriguing—and rather cute.

“Chicken soup in cans,” she pronounced disdainfully. “Not the same thing.”

Coming closer, Simon glanced over her shoulder to see what she was actually stirring. He saw carrot shavings on the cutting board as well as an opened wrapper that told him she’d pressed a whole chicken into service for this undertaking. These ingredients didn’t just magically appear.

“We didn’t have any of this in the refrigerator,” he said, indicating the wrapper and the carrot shavings. He knew that for a fact. He’d opened the refrigerator this morning, looking for the tin of coffee in order to properly kick-start a day that had already promised to go badly. The only thing in the refrigerator besides coffee, and milk for the girls, was one leftover container of Chinese food from last night’s take-out dinner.

“Yes, I know,” she told him, opening a drawer as she searched for a spoon. It took her two more tries before she located any silverware. She needed to sample the results of her efforts. Salting the soup was always tricky. She didn’t want it to be bland, but she definitely didn’t want it to be oversalted, either.

“You bought all this?” It was a rhetorical question, but he was nonetheless surprised.

She nodded, stirring the contents a little more. “It seemed easier than waiting for the supermarket fairy to make a drop.”

He made no comment, other than to think that she obviously favored sarcasm. He took out his wallet and pulled out several bills. “How much do I owe you?”

The ingredients had cost her little. She could certainly afford to spring for the tab. She waved her hand at his question.

“Why don’t we see if Edna likes the soup first before we talk about owing anything,” she suggested.

Opening the cupboard to the right of the stove, she found it all but bare. There were four dinner plates, four cups and four bowls all huddled together like the weary survivors of a shipwreck. Beyond that, there was nothing in the cupboards, not even dust.

“How long ago did you move in?” she asked him as she took down a bowl.

“A week ago,” he told her, dispensing the information rather grudgingly.

“Well, that explains why the house is so barren.” She placed the bowl on the counter beside the pot she was using. “How long before the moving van is supposed to get here?”

This was exactly what he hadn’t wanted. A conversation. Other than being completely rude and ignoring her, he saw no option open to him but to answer her question.

“It isn’t.”

She looked at him, confused. She couldn’t have heard right. “Excuse me?”

“There’s no moving van,” he said stoically. “At least not in the sense you mean. Some of the girls’ things are being shipped out and Edna has some things coming, as well.”

When he had first mentioned leaving everything behind, putting a few things in storage while donating the rest of the things to charities, the girls had been so upset he’d given in. But if he’d had his way, everything that reminded him of Nancy would be gone, or at the very least, stored out of sight until he could handle the memories. And the sorrow.

“The furniture is all going to be brand-new,” he informed her. “Which is where you come in.”

“If you don’t mind my asking, did you have a fire?” Kennon asked.

His face appeared to close down. “No,” he replied flatly, “I didn’t.”

If she was going to be of any use to this man, she needed to have the avenue of communication open, not sealed. He needed to talk to her.

“Then why—”

“And I do mind your asking,” he told her, answering what she’d assumed was the rhetorical portion of her question.

It took Kennon a second to collect herself. “Okay. Then I won’t ask,” Kennon replied gamely, moving on. “When are you free?”

It was his turn to look at her blankly. Just what was the woman asking him? “For what?”

“To come shopping with me.” She held her breath, waiting. Nothing was going to be easy with this man, was it?

He looked at her as if she’d just suggested that he go out for a run over hot coals while barefoot. “I’m not going shopping.”

“All right, then I’m going to have to ask you some questions.” A lot of questions. She resigned herself to the fact that it would probably be like pulling teeth. “Not about what happened to your things,” she clarified quickly in response to the sharp look he sent her way. “But about your tastes, what you have in mind, how you see a particular room, like, let’s say the family room.”

“I see it as empty,” he told her flatly. “I want to see it filled.” That wasn’t strictly true, so he amended his statement. “Actually, the girls and Edna want to have the rooms furnished. As for me, I don’t care,” his tone was devoid of any emotion, any feeling. “All I require is a bed, a table and some illumination at night in case I have some reading to do.”

She stared at him for a moment, the spoon she was using to stir the soup suddenly frozen in midmovement. He was serious, wasn’t he? “And nothing else? No sixty-inch HDTV set? No entertainment unit?”

Things like that had never been important to him. “No.”

She laughed softly in disbelief. “I’m surprised some museum hasn’t snatched you up and placed you under glass for viewing by the public. I’ve known men who’ve had to have their remote control surgically removed from their hand.”

When Nancy and he had been dating, he could remember the two of them curling up on a sagging sofa, watching TV together. He’d done it mainly because Nancy enjoyed the programs. Since she was gone, he’d lost all interest in being vicariously entertained. Occasionally, one of the girls would drag him over to the set and attempt to get him to watch a show. He’d pretend to watch because it obviously meant something to his daughters, but usually his mind was far away. If anything, it was his work that grounded him. His work and his obligation to his daughters.

Pressing the dinner plate into service as a large saucer, Kennon placed the bowl onto it and then gingerly carried it out of the kitchen to the living room, where Edna sat, waiting.

“Are you going to give me any hints as to what you want?” she asked the doctor before she reached the older woman.

“For you to do your job,” he replied simply. He saw the skeptical look in her eyes. “I promise I won’t be difficult to please.”

Too late for that, though she decided that it was wiser to keep the comment to herself. She did, however, want to set him straight about the job that was before her.

“Without a hint as to what direction your tastes run—country, modern, French provincial, eclectic, et cetera—my job is going to be pretty difficult.”

“I thought this was what decorators dreamed of, a client who gives them free rein to do what they want.”

The homes she decorated were extensions of her clients, not of herself.

“I have nothing to prove, Doctor, no ego to feed. My main objective is to please the clients, to have them walk into their house and feel as if they’d entered not just their sanctuary but their dream home. I can’t succeed in creating that kind of feeling unless I know exactly what you’d like—and what you don’t like,” she emphasized.

He came to the only conclusion he could from her statement. “So you’re turning down the assignment?” he asked.

“I never turn down work,” she informed him. “But this is going to be a huge challenge.” Not that she wasn’t up to challenges. She would just have to pick up hints from his behavior. And hopefully from his daughters and the nanny. “It’s a little like being asked to paint something beautiful on a canvas and then someone blindfolds you just before you begin.”

Feeling as if she’d ignored the housekeeper long enough, Kennon stopped talking about work and smiled at the woman who appeared to be taking in every word that had just been said. “How are you feeling, Edna?”

“A little shaky,” she confessed.

“Well, this will help,” Kennon promised. Since there was no table for the bowl, Kennon volunteered her services instead. “Here, I’ll hold the bowl and plate up for you while you eat—unless you’d like me to feed you,” she offered.

“I haven’t had to be fed since I was in a high chair,” Edna told her, slowly pulling herself up into a sitting position and trying to get comfortable. “I’ll do this myself, thank you.” With that she took the spoon from Kennon.

The woman looked exceedingly weak to her. “I’ll still hold the bowl,” Kennon told her cheerfully. Anticipating Edna’s protest, she was quick to add, “It’s no problem.”

About to say something, Edna stopped and then shifted her eyes to Simon. Shaking her head, she said, “She’s a stubborn one.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Simon replied dryly. He looked at Edna, debating whether to remain down here with the woman or not. Right now, he felt like a fifth wheel—or, technically, a third one. “You’ll be all right if I leave you alone?”

Kennon cleared her throat. “In case you haven’t noticed, Doctor, she’s not alone. I’m here.”

“I’m assuming that you’ll be going home, or to your office, or wherever it is that you go to, soon,” he emphasized.

“Eventually.” Business was slow and if something came up, Nathan would either handle it, or call her. Either way, she was covered.

A smile began to curve the corners of Edna’s mouth. “It appears that I am in good hands, Doctor. Thank you for your concern, but I’m sure that I will be just fine.”

With a nod, and not wanting to get drawn into another conversation, Simon withdrew. His intention was to go up to his room. He had no plans beyond that. His days and nights were still comprised of a myriad of tiny, disjointed pieces, glittering, winking mosaics that made up patterns with no rhyme or reason.

But his intentions were abruptly arrested as he passed the kitchen once again. The strong aroma wafting from the large pot on the stove reminded him that he hadn’t eaten breakfast. Nor could he really remember if he’d had dinner the night before. He’d ordered out for the girls and Edna, but hadn’t eaten with them. Or alone, either.

His stomach reminded him that it did need tribute occasionally.

He supposed there was nothing to be lost by sampling a little of what that decorator with the smart mouth had made.

Pausing, he put a little of the soup into one of the remaining bowls. It amounted to barely more than a couple of large spoonfuls. He sipped a small spoonful. It was followed by a second. And then a third. By then he decided that he should have a proper serving.

No sense in wasting her efforts, he told himself just before he set the filled bowl down on the counter and dug in.

He didn’t hear her come into the kitchen, but he saw her reflection in the black oven door, which was just above the stove and at eye level. He braced himself for another assault of rhetoric.

But she didn’t cross to him. Instead, she quietly withdrew from the room, leaving him in peace to eat her soup.

Maybe the woman was intuitive after all.

But he doubted it.

Chapter Five

“Is she going to be coming back, Daddy?”

Madelyn’s questions came right on the heels of the quick greeting she’d given him when he picked her and her sister up from school that afternoon. She looked at him pointedly after she scrambled into the backseat and sat down beside Meghan.

“Is who coming back?” Simon asked absently as he helped Meghan fasten her seat belt and then tested it to make sure it had snapped into place.

“Kennon,” Meghan piped up. She smiled broadly as she gave the absent woman her seal of approval. “I like her, Daddy.”

He glanced at his younger daughter. Meghan was the warm and sunny one. She took after Nancy, while Madelyn was more like him. Cautious. At least, until today, he amended.

He laughed shortly, shaking his head. “You like everyone,” he told her.

“But Kennon’s nice,” Madelyn insisted. Her tone said that she usually agreed with her father, but in this one instance, Meghan was actually right. “So, is she?”

“Is she what?” Simon asked, getting back into the driver’s seat. He quickly strapped himself in, then started up the vehicle.

Madelyn sighed loudly. “Is she coming back?” she repeated her initial question. “Daddy, aren’t you paying attention?” she asked in exasperation.

Now she sounded like her mother, the few times that Nancy had lost her patience with him. Even Madelyn’s inflection was the same. He had to stop doing this, Simon silently lectured himself.

“Sorry,” he apologized, easing away from the curb and waiting for his turn to enter the flow of snail-paced traffic. “My mind was wandering.”

“Where did it go, Daddy?” Meghan asked. At six she was a walking mass of question marks. “I didn’t see it go. Is it really little?” she asked, trying to lean forward. The seat belt restrained her and she wriggled in her seat.

“No, stupid,” Madelyn said impatiently. “Daddy just means he was thinking of something else.”

Which led Meghan to another question. “What, Daddy? What were you thinking of?” the little girl asked him eagerly.

Madelyn joined forces with Meghan and added her voice to her sister’s. “Yeah, what, Daddy?”

He glanced over his shoulder at their inquisitive, lively little faces. God, he wished he could be that young again. That young and able to bounce back from anything.

He couldn’t tell them that he was thinking about their mother, couldn’t chance bringing them down because he was a stickler for the truth. So he lied. It was kinder all around that way.

“I was just thinking about what two little girls might want for dinner.”

“Us, Daddy? Are the two little girls us?” Meghan asked eagerly, her green eyes shining.

“Yes,” he replied. Finally out on the main thoroughfare, he glanced at Meghan in the rearview mirror. The flow of traffic picked up. “The two little girls are you and your sister.”

“You still didn’t answer my question, Daddy,” Madelyn reminded him.

Madelyn was like a bulldog when she got hold of something, he thought. She didn’t let loose until she had what she wanted. In this case, it was answers to her question. This time, he needed no prompting to recall the topic.

“You really liked this woman?”

It was Meghan who piped up first. “Oh, yes, Daddy. She smells good.”

“Not an unimportant quality,” he agreed, amused. The light turned yellow. Alone he would have sped through. But he had the girls with him, so he slowed down and waited. The light turned red a beat later. “Anything else?”

“She talked to us,” Meghan added brightly with enthusiasm.

“All right.” He had already gathered that. So far, he wasn’t sure he understood what the girls’ excitement about the woman was. At least, not on the junior level. Had they been teenage boys instead, he would have easily understood the attraction. Petite, she appeared to have a shapely form and her facial bone structure was such that a plastic surgeon would have wept with envy.

His powers of observation had obviously become more acute.

When had that happened?

Madelyn, his resident little wise woman, apparently had picked up on the fact that he didn’t fully understand what her sister was telling him.

“No, Daddy, she talked to us,” she emphasized. “Not at us, to us. She treats like us people. Like Edna does,” she added in an effort to make him understand what she meant.

And as he didn’t, Simon thought. He knew he was struggling and somewhat remiss in his job as a parent.

As their only parent.

This was tough going. It wasn’t that he didn’t love them—he did, but he just couldn’t show it, didn’t know how to show it or how to express it. Moreover, although they were his blood, he had trouble relating to them.

His own parents had been distant while he was growing up and thus he had no real clue how to talk to his own children, not in the way he felt that Madelyn meant.

That sort of communication had been up to his wife and Edna. They had both dealt with the day-to-day business of the girls’ lives. He had never developed the knack. Work became his sanctuary, his excuse, his very validation. His contact with them heretofore was cursory. He only interacted with them on occasion, making sure that they were fed and clothed and thriving, at least physically. As for how they were faring emotionally, well, that was something else again, something he felt that he wasn’t equipped to handle. But that was all right as long as they’d had their mother.

But now they didn’t have her.

He knew that he had shortcomings. He’d never pretended otherwise. Serious shortcomings, highlighted by the fact that a complete stranger, practically walking in off the street, was better at interacting with his daughters than he was.

“Would you like Miss Cassidy to come back?” He asked the question to humor them. He assumed they’d say yes, but he wasn’t prepared for the loud chorus of “Yes!” that assaulted his ears. For two rather small girls, they had powerful vocal chords when they were motivated.

“Is she going to be our new nanny?” Meghan asked.

Madelyn frowned, instantly thinking ahead. “Doesn’t Edna like us anymore?”

He felt like Pandora several seconds after opening the legendary box. “Of course Edna likes you. She’s just not feeling well and, no, Miss Cassidy isn’t going to be your new nanny.”

“Then what is she going to be?” Madelyn wanted to know.

More than likely, a pain in my butt.

Simon had no idea where that had come from or why he was so certain that it was true, but he was. There was something about the determined look in the woman’s eyes as she had left the house that had put him on notice, telling him he was about to, willingly or otherwise, enter a heretofore undiscovered region.

He hoped he was wrong.

But the girls did like her, as apparently did Edna. The bottom line was that he did need to have the house furnished and he had no time to get involved in doing the job himself. Like most males over the age of five, he hated shopping. This was an additional, overwhelming chore he didn’t want to burden Edna with. She had enough to handle, taking care of the girls. And besides, the woman was getting on in years.

“Miss Cassidy is going to decorate our house,” he told them simply.

“You mean like for Christmas?” Meghan asked breathlessly.

“No, Christmas is in December. This is May,” Madelyn informed her sister haughtily with a sniff. “Don’t you know anything?”

Undaunted, Meghan shot back, “I know lots of stuff. Don’t I, Daddy?” she asked, looking to her father for backup.

“Yes, you do. You both do,” he added quickly. The one thing Nancy had managed to impress upon him was the need to treat the girls equally and to maintain neutrality whenever possible. “Miss Cassidy is going to be buying new furniture for the house.”

“Can we help her buy the furniture?” Meghan asked eagerly.

“Well, I can’t see why not. Sure, by all means, help her,” he agreed.

This way, the woman would be way too busy dealing with the girls to try to rope him into coming along on any of her shopping trips. He viewed it as a win-win situation.

* * *

The moment she walked in the door, Nathan put down the bolts of cloth he was working with and sent a scrutinizing look her way, curiosity rising up in his large, brown eyes.

“So? How did it go?” he prodded.

Kennon felt not unlike someone who had just endured a marathon and was close to being out of breath, except that she hadn’t run a marathon and she had absolutely no reason to feel that way.

Dropping her purse onto her desk, she sank down in her oversize, incredibly soft leather chair. “Strangely, very strangely.”

“You’re going to have to be a little clearer than that,” Nathan told her. He pulled up a chair and planted himself beside her, a vacant vessel eagerly seeking to be filled.

Kennon began with the basic information. “The doctor has—”

“Wait, he’s a doctor?” Nathan repeated the vocation as if it was one step removed from king.

“Yes, he’s a doctor,” she pressed on. “And he’s got a brand-new two-story house that’s completely empty, except for a couple of pieces of furniture here and there.”

Nathan’s appetite was completely engaged and in high gear. Though he only leaned forward, she could visualize him rubbing his hands together. “Great, depending on his tastes and what he wants, that should keep you busy for the next couple of months.”

She frowned and shook her head. “That’s just it, I don’t know his tastes or what he wants.”

Nathan didn’t see the problem. “Ask,” he all but commanded.

She looked at him incredulously. Did he think she was some shrinking violet, afraid to open her mouth?

“I did.”

“And?”

“And he said I should use my judgment.”

Nathan looked two steps removed from dancing around her desk with glee.

“Even better,” he enthused. “He gave you carte blanche,” he said, savoring the term. “Carte blanche, Kennon,” he repeated, unable to understand why she wasn’t overjoyed the way he was. “That means that he won’t be getting in the way or underfoot and you can create the house of your—his dreams.”

That was just the problem. How would she be successful at that if she hadn’t a clue of what the man’s “dreams” were?

She knew that business had been slow and Nathan was visualizing profits, but that wasn’t all there was to consider here.

“I have a feeling that Dr. Simon Sheffield is a very opinionated man and if I don’t guess right about what he likes and doesn’t like, this venture isn’t going to turn out well at all.”

Nathan looked at her knowingly, as if he expected her to make a rabbit materialize without the benefit of even a hat.

“Have a little faith, Kennon,” he coaxed, his eyes locking with hers. “I do. Work a little of your magic. Talk to him a little, get the man to come out of his shell.” He beamed at his mentor. He’d had his pick of people to apprentice with and observe. He’d picked her for a reason, not by chance. “I never knew anyone who could pick up on people’s vibes the way you can. That’s why you’re so good.”

A little stunned, Kennon wondered if she should be checking the parking structure for signs of a pod. “Why, Nathan, is that a compliment?”

One of his thin shoulders rose and fell in an absent shrug. “It could be construed that way,” he allowed vaguely, then warned, “But if you tell anyone, I’ll deny it.”

Kennon smiled at him. Just when she thought she could read him like a book, down to his last disgruntled comment, Nathan surprised her. It kept things fresh, she mused.

“As long as I know, that’s all that matters.” His words replayed in her head and she paused abruptly, thinking.

Because she’d stopped talking, Nathan looked at her, his eyes narrowing as if he was trying to hone in on her thoughts.

“I can hear the wheels turning in your head,” he told her. “What’s going on in there?”

“Maybe a little strategy,” she replied, considering her next move.

Nathan grinned from ear to ear. “That’s my girl,” he declared with feeling. The next moment, Kennon rose to her feet again and tucked her bag strap over her shoulder. “Where are you going?”

“Back to the battlefield,” Kennon replied, tossing the words over her shoulder. “I intend to get to know the subject whether he likes it or not.”

She had more in mind than just that, but this wasn’t the time to fill Nathan in on her game plan. First she would see just how entrenched she needed to get into Dr. Sheffield’s life.

And that was the Kennon Cassidy he knew and loved, Nathan thought. “You go get ‘im, boss,” he called after her.

Kennon didn’t bother turning around. She had work to do.

I fully intend to, Nathan. I fully intend to.

Simon glared and willed the doorbell to be silent.

But it rang again.

Because the girls were within earshot, he swallowed the oath that rose to his lips. He didn’t feel like putting up with anyone. Moreover, he wasn’t expecting anyone. There wasn’t anyone to expect, especially since they were new to the area and, other than the chief of surgery and the principal of the girls’ school, neither of whom had any reason to be ringing his doorbell, he didn’t actually know anyone yet.

Just then, Meghan ran by him like a shot, her focus, the front door.

“Hold it, Meghan!” he called out, exasperated as he came to life and ran after her. “I told you never to let anyone in.”

Looking crestfallen, his younger daughter halted mid-dash, her mission suddenly aborted. “Sorry, Daddy. I was just trying to help.”

He was on the verge of lecturing her that there was a right way and a wrong way to “help,” but she seemed so sad and so earnest at the same time, he found he hadn’t the heart to reprimand her. Instead, he decided to make no comment, feeling it might be better that way.

These days, he operated with a shorter fuse, much shorter than usual, and he didn’t want to risk saying anything in anger that would upset either one of his daughters. Their feelings were particularly fragile and he wasn’t given to apologies. He would have no idea how to reinstate himself into their favor should he ever do anything to bruise their feelings and cause them to look upon him with either fear or a childish sort of disdain.

By the time the doorbell rang for a third time, he’d reached it. Yanking the door open he all but shouted, “Yes?” only to find Kennon Cassidy standing on his doorstep. Again.

A definite sensation of déjà vu washed over him. As did an unexpected, warm feeling he immediately banked down. He did his best to collect his temper and lower his tone. “Did you forget something?”

Now here was a man whose very voice could scare off burglars, she thought. Lucky for her she wasn’t faint of heart. “Yes, that you had no actual pots and pans beyond the one I used for soup.”

And what did that have to do with anything? he wondered. He glanced at the large box she held. By the way she boosted it, he figured it had to be heavy. “And what? You bought a set for us?”

“No, I’m lending you a set.”

As she confirmed his suspicions, Simon took the box from her. He was right, these were heavy. The woman was stronger than she looked.

“These are mine,” she told him, following him into the house. “You can use them until we start outfitting your kitchen.”

Hearing her voice, Madelyn came hurrying into the foyer to join her sister. Both girls wiggled in ahead of him, Simon noted, in their efforts to get closer to this woman who was obviously some sort of modern-day female Pied Piper.

Either that or she’d cast some kind of hypnotic spell over his daughters. He’d never seen them take to anyone so quickly. Or so eagerly.

“You came back!” Meghan cried happily, her eyes shining.

Kennon grinned at her and tousled the girl’s dark hair affectionately. “Yes, I did.”

“Are you going to come in?” Madelyn asked in a sophisticated tone, though it didn’t hide her feelings about Kennon’s return.

Kennon looked up at the girls’ father. He appeared almost stoic, standing there with the box of pots in his hands.

“I don’t know. Am I, Dr. Sheffield?” she asked the man.

He feigned surprise. “You’re actually asking my permission?”

Her expression said that was a given—he had no idea if she was sincere or merely putting him on. He had a feeling that his decorator got her way a lot.

“It is your house, Dr. Sheffield. You can invite anyone you want, or bar them from your property just as easily.”

He supposed, all things considered, it could be that easy—if he weren’t dealing with wistful, turned-up little faces.

“Lucky me.” And then he stepped back, giving her some room. “Come on in. The girls have already invited you. Who am I to stand in your way?”

As if it were that easy, Kennon thought. If the good doctor didn’t want her here, she’d be gone in a heartbeat and they both knew it.

Even as he invited her in, he saw her turn toward her vehicle. Now what?

“Just let me get the rest of the pots and pans out of the car,” she told him.

There were more? Who did she expect Edna to be cooking for? A reserve branch of the marines?

“Can we help?” Meghan asked eagerly.

Kennon paused. “That’s up to your dad, but I would love some help if he says it’s all right.”

How had she done that? Simon wondered. How had she lobbed the ball back onto his court and stolen his team at the same time? He wondered if that was part of her business training or if executing sleights of hand like that just came naturally to her. In either case, this was not the simple, fluffy-looking woman she appeared to be at first encounter.

“Fine.”

Balancing the box she’d given him and shifting it to one side against his hip, he silently gestured for his daughters to go ahead and help the woman retrieve whatever else she’d decided to bring along to “lend” him.

For once, neither Madelyn nor Meghan needed to be told twice.

Chapter Six

The next half hour was a whirl of activity. Aided and abetted by her two pint-size assistants, Kennon took over the kitchen and within exactly twenty-eight minutes produced a small pork loin that tantalized with an aroma that whispered of Italian herbs and various grated cheeses. There was a side dish of brown rice, initially cooked in chicken broth, that had been mixed with shredded asparagus, shredded carrots and shredded zucchini, to mention only the three main vegetables that had been added to it.

His daughters, avowed vegetable haters both, couldn’t dig in fast enough.

Simon began to think he’d opened up his house to a sorceress. She had definitely charmed his daughters and his housekeeper within an inch of their lives. Edna was still in the living room, eating the same dinner that was being served in the kitchen. Kennon had seen to that, bringing out a full plate for the woman before finally sitting down at the table herself.

There was conversation at the table, something that had been seriously lacking in the last year. Both girls were eager to snare the sorceress’s attention. For her part, the woman was equal handed, giving both the same amount of attention.

No doubt about it, she was good. And, he supposed, he could learn from her. Meghan, and especially Madelyn, looked happier than he remembered them being in a long time.

“You know, if this decorating thing doesn’t work out for you …” Simon began after he realized that he had cleaned his plate not once, but twice. Only the fear of settling in for an evening nap rather than doing the work he’d brought home had kept him from taking a third helping. “… you could always get a job as a chef,” he continued.

Or as an all-round whirling dervish, he added silently.

Humor highlighted her face, fluidly moving from her lips to her eyes. She looked very pleased with herself. He supposed she had every right to be.

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Her eyes captured his. He had no idea what she was thinking, nor why he felt so intrigued by her.

“Could I count on a letter of recommendation from you?” She asked so straight-faced he actually thought she was serious for a moment. Until the slight telltale curve of the corners of her mouth returned and subsequently gave her away.

Simon shrugged. “Why not?” he replied.

“High praise, indeed,” she quipped dryly. “Don’t worry, the only recommendation I’m interested in has to do with decorating.” She had no intention of doing anything else, ever. “I’ve been in the decorating business for a number of years and I’ve ridden out a lot of highs and lows. This dip in the economy is all part of that.”

Although she had to admit it would be nice to get back to the point where she was juggling assignments, looking for a way to squeeze yet another one in, rather than waiting for the phone to ring so that she had something to do. Until this assignment—if indeed it actually was one—had come along, she’d quietly begun paying Nathan out of her personal account because the business account was close to flatlining.

“And speaking of references,” she threw in, switching gears back to his initial comment, “my references are available for viewing anytime you’d like to look them over.” She had a website, plus an actual physical file where she kept her letters of reference, all of which were glowing.

But Simon waved away her offer, uninterested. “No need,” he told her.

She looked at him in surprise. He struck her as a belt-and-suspenders kind of man, taking precautions, making sure everything was on the up-and-up—and then devising a backup plan just in case. Did this mean he’d changed his mind about hiring her for the job?

“You don’t want to see my references?” she asked, wondering why he’d suddenly switched courses. Had she said something to offend him?

“Recommendations from people I don’t know don’t impress me,” he told her. “An enthusiastic one from someone I know or have dealt with—like Ms. Sommers—does. She seemed to be very high on your ability to, in her words, turn a ‘sow’s ear into a silk purse.'”

Since Maizie was her aunt, the endorsement could be misconstrued as nepotism. But while Maizie would never bad-mouth anyone, she would never praise anyone if she felt their work was lacking in any way. She was far too honest to lie.

“Nothing quite that drastic,” Kennon assured him. “But I have been able to turn some pretty awful rooms into lovely extensions of the client’s home, bringing up the total value of the house.” Warming to her subject, she rose from the table, ready to make a quick run to her vehicle. “I’ve got an album of my work in the car that I can show you.”

His words stopped her in her tracks.

Wiping his mouth, Simon retired his fork. “You can save yourself the trouble, Miss Cassidy. I don’t have time to handle the job myself and I certainly don’t have time to conduct any more lengthy interviews.”

Any more? Kennon bit her tongue to keep from echoing the last part of his statement incredulously. Did this qualify as a lengthy interview in his mind? On what planet? He hadn’t asked her for any kind of information, any backup statements, nothing. This didn’t qualify as an interview. It didn’t even make the grade for a run-of-the-mill conversation.

Don’t antagonize the gift horse, Kennon, she cautioned herself.

Putting on her brightest smile, she asked, “So then I’m hired?”

Simon raised his deep blue eyes to hers, silently asking what part of his statement she didn’t understand. Of course she was hired—unless she had a comprehension problem.

“That’s what I just said.”

Not really. Her smile never shifted.

The man needed to work on his communication skills. She wondered if he was just as obscure and distant with his patients when he spoke to them. Heart patients, she would think, would want to have their hands held, would want to be comforted and put at their ease. They would want to know that their surgeon cared. There was absolutely nothing about this exceedingly handsome, exceedingly sexy, reserved man that came close to even hinting that he cared about the people he operated on. Was it a protective device? A mechanism he employed so that he couldn’t get close to anyone, just in case they didn’t make it?

Focus on what’s important. You’ve got bills to pay, Kennon. “Thank you,” she told him. “I can start tomorrow. Tonight if you like.”

He shook his head. Her eagerness made him feel tired. It was almost as if her energy was growing only because it was sapping his.

“What I’d like,” he informed her, “is to go to my study and get back to the paper I was working on yesterday. The paper with the quickly approaching deadline.”

She backed away quickly. It did no good to get a client stirred up about anything except color schemes. “Of course. So when can I speak with you?” she asked so she could plan accordingly.

“You just did,” he pointed out, rising from the table. “This was very good,” he told her, as if he was measuring out each word carefully, taking them out of some invisible bank account and leaving a deficit in their wake.

Kennon watched him leave the room, heading for the stairs. She did her best not to let her frustration show in her face. No matter what he thought, she was really going to need to speak to him about the house. Decorating was a matter of personal taste—in this case, his. She wasn’t about to impose her own aesthetics on him. Aside from perhaps a fondness for blue, she had a feeling that their individual preferences would most likely clash fiercely.

“He doesn’t mean anything by it, Miss. He’s just hurting.”

Edna’s voice floated in from the living room, cutting into her thoughts. Giving the girls a quick, fleeting smile, Kennon cocked her head and looked around the side into the living room.

Edna was sitting up on the sofa, propped up exactly where she and the girls had left her. The plate Kennon had brought out to her earlier lay on top of the black-lacquered folding TV tray, which she’d brought with her expressly for Edna’s usage until the nanny was literally back on her feet.

After first encouraging the girls to have another serving, she left them to finish their dinner and crossed over to the living room and Edna.

“I understand,” Kennon said, lowering her voice so that it wouldn’t carry. “But I need to know what Dr. Sheffield wants me to do with the house besides just ‘fill’ it.”

The girls had heard her anyway. “I’ve got pictures,” Meghan volunteered happily.

Kennon’s attention instantly shifted. Something was far better than nothing. “You mean pictures of your old house?”

Ignoring her older sister’s pointed scowl, Meghan nodded. “Daddy said to pack away our pictures, but I wanted them with me so I could look at them. Mama gave me the album. I didn’t want to throw it away or lose it,” she explained.

Gutsy little thing, Kennon thought with admiration. Simon Sheffield seemed as if he was capable of casting a large shadow over his children. Secretly defying the man took courage.

“Daddy didn’t want you to throw it away, stupid,” Madelyn chided. “He just wanted to put everything we wanted to keep into that big storage place.” Seeing that her sister still didn’t grasp the concept of what she was saying, Madelyn explained what storage was. “It’s a big room for all our stuff, but it’s not in the house.”

Meghan didn’t look as if she believed what she was being told. “Then where is it?”

“Someplace else,” Madelyn told her, this time letting her shortened fuse show.

Pictures would definitely help, Kennon thought. But she wasn’t sure just how much they’d help until she had a basic question answered. Did the surgeon want to get away from everything that reminded him of the life he’d lost, or would he want to recapture that feeling? Or would it be a blending of old and new?

She definitely needed help in coming to the right conclusion.

“Why don’t you two carry your plates to the sink?” she suggested.

The two were instantly on their feet, grabbing up their plates as well as the silverware they’d used. Both acted as if bussing a table was a treat rather than a chore. Kennon couldn’t help wondering if the doctor knew how lucky he was.

She turned toward Edna. She’d given the girls the chore so that she could talk to the nanny privately. The questions in her head were multiplying. “You said that Dr. Sheffield was still hurting. Over his wife’s death?” Kennon guessed.

“Yes.”

She could see by the look in the older woman’s eyes that this was not an easy subject for her either. The doctor’s wife must have been a very special person to merit such fierce love and loyalty.

“He blames himself,” Edna told her simply.

“Why?” Kennon could think of only one reason. “Was he to blame?”

“No!” Edna cried with feeling. “It’s because she took his place.”

“His place?” Kennon echoed. She tried to make sense of the answer. “You mean like on a plane?”

Taking a deep breath, Edna started at the beginning. “Dr. Sheffield belongs to Doctors Without Borders. He joined because Dr. Nancy wanted him to. He was supposed to go to Somalia but at the last moment, his last triple-bypass patient took a turn for the worse a few hours after the surgery. The doctor didn’t want to leave the man in someone else’s hands, so Dr. Patterson—that was Mrs. Sheffield’s professional name—told him not to worry. She said she’d go in his place.”

“Dr. Sheffield’s wife was a cardiovascular surgeon, too?” Kennon asked incredulously.

Edna smiled with pride, tears shimmering in her eyes. “My Nancy was a general surgeon. In a pinch, she could perform almost any kind of regular surgery that needed doing.” Edna’s voice grew very quiet as she added, “When the tsunami hit, she was one of the ones who was swept away.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry to hear that,” Kennon told her, genuinely feeling the woman’s pain. But Edna had caught her attention with what she’d said before recounting the abilities of the doctor’s late wife. “Excuse me, you said ‘your Nancy …'” Kennon’s voice trailed off as she waited for a clarification. The girls’ nanny couldn’t mean that the surgeon’s wife was her daughter. Could she? Dr. Sheffield wouldn’t be treating his former mother-in-law like one of the servants, would he?

The tears that shone in Edna’s eyes threatened to come spilling out. She blinked them back with effort, but a few fell, sliding down her cheek.

“I raised that girl from the time she was an infant. Both her parents were busy earning a living—much the way Dr. Sheffield and Dr. Patterson were,” she added. “Because we had such a close relationship, when her own two little ones came along, she asked me to take care of them.” She did her best to collect herself. “I was thrilled to be of use to her. I love those girls as if they were my own.”

Kennon didn’t doubt it. “I take it that by moving from San Francisco to Southern California, Dr. Sheffield felt that he needed a fresh start?”

Edna nodded her head. “He never said so in so many words, but that’s what I think, yes.”

Kennon was already processing what she’d been told. “Then what we’ll probably need is only the slightest touch of the past, with the main emphasis being on the future.” Having voiced her thoughts out loud, she looked at Edna to see if the older woman agreed with her.

The nanny took another deep breath, as if to push herself forward.

“I think that would be for the best. Miss Nancy would have wanted Dr. Sheffield to move on. She wouldn’t have wanted him to be this unhappy. She was always teasing him about being too serious,” she said fondly, remembering. And then she looked up at Kennon, as if appealing for her help. “This is way beyond that, and he needs to laugh again.”

Again. So the man was capable of actually laughing, Kennon thought. That was good to know. It meant that there was something for her to work with.

“Well, I don’t know if I can make him laugh, but we’ll really try to get him to smile again,” she promised Edna.

At that moment, Madelyn burst back into the room and headed straight toward them. Madelyn looked at Kennon pointedly. “Anything else?” the little girl asked.

Right on her sister’s heels, not to be outdone, Meghan echoed in a louder voice, “Yeah, anything else?”

For tonight, Kennon thought, she just wanted to immerse herself in the interactions of the family. Since the good doctor wasn’t down here with them, the girls—and memories of their mother—would just have to do.

Immersing meant blending in.

“Now I’m going to go and wash the dishes,” Kennon informed the girls as she got up off the arm of the sofa where she’d perched while talking to Edna.

“You wash dishes? By yourself?” Madelyn questioned, looking at up her uncertainly. “We’ve got a dishwasher that does that.”

“Don’t you have a dishwasher?” Meghan asked her, pity in her young voice.

Kennon laughed and put her arm around the younger girl’s shoulders, pulling her in for a quick hug. “Yes, I do, but I never like to have things pile up in the sink so I wash them before there’re too many. Besides, running the dishwasher for one person just seems sort of wasteful to me. Don’t you agree?” she asked Meghan.

Thrilled to be asked for her opinion, Meghan nodded her head vigorously. Kennon had a feeling that the little girl would have easily agreed to anything that she suggested.

“You really have a way with them,” Edna told her with genuine sincerity. She looked from one little girl to the other. There was approval in her voice as she said, “You seem to bring out the best in them. Do you have any children of your own?” the older woman asked, curious about this new person in their lives.

Kennon shook her head. “No.”

Not that she wouldn’t have wanted to have children. Several children. But before there were children, there had to be someone who could be a good husband, a good father. And if he could actually make her heart skip a beat or two, well, so much the better. If she was going to dream, she might as well go all the way.

“I never met the right man,” she told Edna. And with that, she closed the subject.

“Were you the oldest in your family, then?” Edna asked. “The one your mother depended on to look out for the others?”

There were no others. Her parents were divorced before she could get any siblings. She had always regretted that. A lot of her time as a child had been spent imagining what having a brother or sister would have been like. Even inventing an imaginary one when she was very young.

“Sorry to disappoint you, Edna,” she said with a smile, “but I’m an only child.”

“Then it’s a true gift you have,” Edna pronounced. “You’ve been blessed.”

She didn’t know about being “blessed”—it was just something that came rather naturally to her. Maybe it was even born out of that desire for a sibling. But before she could say anything to the contrary, Madelyn had caught her by one hand while, not to be left out, Meghan took hold of the other.

“Then we’ll help you do the dishes,” Madelyn declared.

Amused, Edna laughed. “Like I said, Miss Cassidy, you’ve got a gift. You’re not all that bad at healing, either.”

Kennon looked at her quizzically over her shoulder as she was about to be pulled away.

“I’m feeling much better, thanks to you and your chicken soup,” Edna told her.

“If that’s the case, that would be more due to the chicken than to me,” Kennon told her. She wasn’t one to take praise unless she believed she really deserved it. All she’d done in this case was try to make the woman feel a little better—and comfort food had always accomplished that for her.

The next moment, Kennon found herself being taken off to the kitchen again by her pint-size helpers. It was time to address the dishes in the sink.

“And modest, too,” Edna said to herself with an approving nod. “I think you’d like her, Nancy,” she said softly under her breath.

When Simon came down from his study an hour later, he expected to find the kitchen in darkness and his daughters either in their room for the night or in the family room, taking advantage of the fact that he wasn’t around. He was rather strict about the amount of time they could spend watching television.

He was rather strict about most things when it came to his children.

Instead, he found the kitchen ablaze with light. Not only that, but he heard the sound of laughter coming from there, as well.

Curious, he went to the source. And discovered that the woman he’d just hired as his decorator was there, sitting at the head of the table, with his daughters flanking her on either side.

Schoolbooks were spread out on the surface of the table and, from what he could discern as he drew closer, the girls were doing homework—with a little help from the overly effervescent blonde.

Laughter, he realized as he listened and allowed it to warm him, was a sound that had been missing from their lives for much too long.

He’d been right in his earlier assessment. Apparently he’d not only hired a decorator but a sorceress, as well.

Chapter Seven

Out of the corner of her eye, Kennon saw Simon walking into the kitchen.

Even if she hadn’t, she could tell he’d entered the room because of the way Madelyn and Meghan reacted. They became a little more subdued, a tiny bit less relaxed. A little more anxious to please. It was obvious to her that they loved their father, but were hemmed in by not quite knowing how to behave around him. As for the good doctor, he wasn’t exactly cold—she could sense that he did care about his daughters—but he was reserved, as if he was following some sort of a strict code that only he was aware of.

Meghan saw him first. “Daddy, Kennon’s teaching me to write,” she declared proudly.

Simon was paying a none-too-shabby tuition so that Meghan and Madelyn would receive the best parochial education possible. Even so, he’d been debating getting a tutor for the younger one because Meghan was having a harder time learning than her sister ever had. Apparently all he’d had to do to insure her improvement was get his house decorated.

He looked at the woman who had burst into his life like an unforecast hurricane. “Master chef, gifted teacher, instant nanny and, oh, yes, a top-flight decorator.” There was a touch of sarcasm in his voice as he ticked off the talents she’d displayed today. “Anything you can’t do, Miss Cassidy?”

Yes, fathom why I seem to annoy you so much, Kennon thought. She wasn’t about to say this out loud and merely rose to her feet. “I’ll let you know if and when it comes up.” Aware that she had stayed far longer than she’d intended, and most likely in the doctor’s opinion had more than overstayed her welcome, Kennon looked at her self-appointed assistants and said, “I’ve got to be going now.”

The girls both looked disappointed that she was leaving. “Oh, do you have to?” Meghan pouted. “I want to write some more.”

“Practice for me,” Kennon encouraged. “And yes, I really do have to go now. But I’ll be back tomorrow,” she promised the sisters. When she saw the uncertain look in their eyes, she sensed that they’d had promises made that had been broken. It wasn’t much of a leap for her to guess who had broken them. She tried to reassure the girls. “We have work to do, remember?”

Clearly surprised at how quickly his daughters had taken to this almost total stranger, Simon asked, “What kind of work?”

Kennon gathered her things together and deposited them in her purse. She snapped the lock. “The girls and I are going to look over a few catalogues I’m bringing over for them so we can get some ideas on how to decorate their rooms.”

He hadn’t planned on seeing the woman again so soon. They hadn’t even worked out the terms of her fee yet. Not that money was a problem. That was definitely at the bottom of his list of concerns. “I suppose I’ll have to pay you extra for that.”

“Maybe I should pay you,” she countered. When he looked at her quizzically, she said by way of an explanation, “Your daughters are charming, Dr. Sheffield, and a lot of fun to be around.”

And I have an idea that you would be, too, if you gave yourself half a chance.

She raised her voice so that it would carry to the living room. “Good night, Edna. I’m glad you’re feeling better.” Turning to her younger pupil, she said, “Remember, Meghan, practice your F’s. They need just a tiny little bit of work before they’re perfect.”

Meghan clearly lapped up the praise. The spark in her eyes showed a determination to follow the instructions to the letter. “Yes, ma’am,” she agreed cheerfully.

“See you tomorrow, Madelyn,” Kennon said warmly. “Good night, Doctor,” she murmured with a nod toward him, then, picking up her purse, she headed toward the front door.

For a moment, Simon stared after her, feeling a little disoriented and bemused, like someone who had survived a sudden, unexpected attack of unseasonable weather. He supposed, in the final analysis, it was a lucky thing that the woman had just happened by here this morning instead of, say, next week. It had made things a lot easier for him.

He thought of Edna. It was doubtful that the nanny would be completely well by morning. And he would have to get down to the hospital early. Tomorrow was the day he would meet with the other members of the Newport Cardiovascular Group.

He needed someone to take care of Madelyn and Meghan. Again.

Coming to life, Simon hurried after Kennon. “Miss Cassidy—”

Surprised to hear him calling her, Kennon turned at the front door and looked behind her. The doctor crossed to her with some alacrity. She waited until he was almost next to her, then said, “It’s Kennon.”

Why was she telling him that? “I know your first name.”

All this formality on his part definitely made her feel uncomfortable. “And if I’m going to be working here for you, I’d like you to use it.”

“'If?'” he questioned. Was she having second thoughts? Was this going to turn into a ploy for more money after all?

“Figure of speech,” Kennon conceded. “I think I can do your house justice, Dr. Sheffield.”

The different ways a house could be decorated was not even remotely high on his list of priorities. His main requirement was that it didn’t stir up any memories for him—and that it didn’t wind up being too cluttered.

“Yes, I’m sure you’ll do a fine job.” He was about to let it go at that, then decided to give her the only rule he wanted her to adhere to. “As long as the decor isn’t Early American.”

Finally, she thought triumphantly, an opinion. “You don’t like Early American?”

Actually, he didn’t. But because his late wife had favored Early American, everything in their house had been decorated in that style. There were four-poster canopied beds both in the master bedroom and the girls’ bedroom, and distressed tables served as accents in the various rooms. The kitchen table and chairs looked as if they could have come straight out of George Washington’s home. So had everything else in the house. He had wanted something more modern, but had kept his peace.

“No, I don’t,” Simon said, answering her question truthfully. He wondered if Edna had mentioned their decor in San Francisco to Kennon. He had no desire to get into any sort of discussion as to why his previous house had been decorated in Early American. Granted, Kennon Cassidy had probably the most sympathetic blue eyes he’d ever seen, but he didn’t want her sympathy, or anyone else’s for that matter.

“Good to know,” she said, looking as if she meant it. “We’ll definitely go another path,” Kennon promised. And then she flashed a pleased smile at him. “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it, Doctor?”

“What wasn’t so hard?” he asked, unclear as to what she meant.

“Telling me what you like—or in this case, what you don’t like. That’s all I need,” she reiterated. “Just a few well-placed words. Hints, if you will. I’ll bring you photographs tomorrow.”

He was about to tell her that he had no interest in seeing any photographs, that as long as the furniture was functional and above all, new, that was all he required. But if it made her happy to think she had to show him photographs, so be it. There was a far more important detail to discuss.

In the background, Edna sneezed three times in succession, as if to underscore what he was about to ask and the urgency with which it needed to be regarded. “How early can you be here tomorrow?”

Kennon had no difficulty in putting two and two together quickly. Okay, so he didn’t want her for her decorating talent—something he actually hadn’t seen for himself yet—he wanted her for her other attributes. She could live with that. It was something to build on. Every relationship she had with a client was different and unique, and this definitely went straight to the head of the line.

Instead of giving Simon a direct answer, her reply told him that she understood his dilemma and would take care of it. “I can take the girls to school again for you if you like.”

Simon didn’t like being second-guessed, especially not so accurately. But since Kennon Cassidy was making herself available to him in ways that went above and beyond her job description, he decided it was a small price to pay in exchange for bailing him out. “Good,” he said. “Thank you.”

Just then, she caught her new client looking at her the way a man didn’t look at his decorator. As if she was affecting things that were far from cerebral. Something inside of her responded and suddenly felt extremely warm.

She recognized the sensation. She’d had it before. She didn’t want it again.

She needed, Kennon thought, to take precautions so that it didn’t happen again.

“Don’t mention it,” she murmured. “I’ll see you tomorrow at eight.” With that, Kennon turned abruptly away before this warm feeing inside her could multiply and spread—like any typical disease.

“Right. Thanks,” he called after her even as he wondered if he was taking the first step in a direction he shouldn’t be going. A direction he might very well live to regret eventually.

He couldn’t put his finger on it. He wasn’t the kind of man who put any faith in so-called gut feelings because, to his recollection, he’d never experienced any that had actually panned out.

But an unsettled feeling undulated through him right now as he watched the woman walking away. It gave him more than a little pause.

He’d actually noticed her. Not as an entity, not as just another human being sharing a given space on this planet with him, but as a woman. An exceedingly compelling, enthusiastic, beautiful woman.

He wasn’t comfortable with that.

Wasn’t happy that traits such as attractiveness or sensuality, both of which she seemed to have in spades, were slowly, insidiously, seeping into his world, making themselves known. Bringing colors into his current black-and-white life.

As he did with most things that disturbed him, Simon shut the thoughts away and went back to working, this time on his paper.

In the morning, he might be able to see things differently, placing them in their proper perspective.

It was something to hope for, even if he didn’t really place any stock in hope.

* * *

Almost a week had gone by.

Five whole days and she was no closer to understanding the enigma that was Dr. Simon Sheffield than she’d been that first morning when she’d rung his doorbell.

Granted, they had gotten around to working out the terms of the fee for her services, but those services involved decorating, not ferrying the girls to and from school or sticking around to help them with their homework or whipping up dinner for them and Edna.

Not that she would have charged him for that, but they hadn’t gotten around to her doing anything that he would be paying her for. That had to change.

She made up her mind to talk to the reclusive surgeon when he came home that evening. With that in mind, she gathered the girls to her and got to work. There was a dinner to make—and a cheering section to employ.

“You know, if I’d wanted to be a housekeeper, I would have applied for that job,” Kennon told Simon the moment he walked in and shut the front door behind him.

Taking her literally, Simon said, “There wasn’t anything to apply for. I wasn’t looking for a housekeeper.” Guessing that this might be about money and her concern that she hadn’t done anything “professional” to earn it, he took out his checkbook. “How much do I owe you?”

This was coming out of left field. “For what?” she asked, mystified.

“For your time,” he said, feeling as if he was stating the obvious.

“I charge by the hour,” she informed him. They’d been all through this earlier this week. “When I’m decorating, not when I’m grating cheese.”

What did grating cheese have to do with it? “Come again?”

She smiled. Kennon had a feeling that he liked to focus on one thing at a time. “Dinner is chicken parmesan,” she told him.

The patient list he’d acquired from the retiring partner in the medical firm had proven to be heavy. He’d skipped lunch to catch up on extraneous work, organizing things his way. The mention of food had his stomach all but sitting up and begging. He nodded, tempted to ask how soon before dinner would be on the table.

“Sounds good.”

Back to the point, she thought. A point she obviously was going to have to hit him over the head with. “Doctor, I’d like to begin working on your house.”

“Then go ahead,” he told her with a wave of his hand. Since she was making no reference to the check, he slipped his checkbook back into his pocket. “I’ve already told you that you have the job.”

“And you really won’t accompany me to any of the furniture stores?” Rather than answer, he gave her a look that told her what he thought of spending time shopping for anything, much less furniture. “Not even one store?” she pressed, holding up a single finger in front of him.

Her index finger was so close to his face that he reacted instinctively, wrapping his hand around it to move the digit away. He’d intended to push her finger down. Instead, something strange, fast and hot seemed to zip through him, not unlike an electric current, the moment his hand touched hers.

A beat later, he recovered himself, pushed her hand down and shook his head. “I don’t have the time,” he informed her.

Kennon looked over her shoulder and fell back on her secret weapon. She cleared her throat, and suddenly Madelyn and Meghan came running into the room to greet him.

Meghan, the live wire of the duo, grabbed her father’s hand, tugged on it and immediately begged, “Please, Daddy, come with us.”

“Come with you where?” he asked, confused.

He loved them both—how could he not? But he had never been a demonstrative kind of man, nor was he really very vocal. With nothing to fall back on as an example and no one to defer to, Simon hadn’t a clue how to really relate to either one of his daughters. They were little people, visitors from a world he was completely unfamiliar with. His own childhood seemed as if it had happened eons ago and nothing stood out—nothing could be singled out as an occurrence to remember forever.

“To the furniture store,” Madelyn told him, picking up the thread from her sister. “Kennon’s taking us with her tomorrow to see what we like.”

“I’ve decided to start with their rooms first,” Kennon explained, since the girls at least were eager to give their input.

“Come with us, Daddy,” Meghan begged. “We want you there.”

“Yes, please, Daddy,” Madelyn chimed in. And then came the crowning touch. Guilt. “We never do anything with you.”

He raised his eyes to Kennon’s face. This seemed a bit too organized to him.

“This your idea?” he asked.

It was a rhetorical question. Why else would his daughters suddenly begin pleading for him to go with them to a furniture store, of all places? They’d never behaved like this before.

“What?” Kennon asked innocently. “That the girls want to spend some time with their father?” She mentally crossed her fingers behind her back. “No, they came up with that all by themselves.”

“Most kids ask for trips to amusement parks, not furniture stores,” he pointed out.

“What can I say? Your girls are exceptionally mature for their ages.” And then she dropped the teasing tone. “Besides, I suspect that it’s a matter of taking what they can get.” When he looked at her, a question entering his dark eyes, she elaborated. “Amusement parks are all-day commitments. A furniture store is an hour and a half, tops. Maybe they’re trying to break you in slowly.”

Simon was surprised when she moved in closer to him.

Kennon glanced over to the girls and said, “Excuse us for a minute, girls.” Taking hold of Simon’s arm, she guided him over to one side of the room. She knew she was crossing a line and that he probably wouldn’t appreciate her doing so, but he had to be made to understand before it was too late.

“I think it’s pretty clear that your daughters want you in their lives, Doctor. I’d say that makes you pretty lucky and I’d suggest that you take them up on it.” She saw a flicker of annoyance entering his eyes. This would be where most people would back off. But most people didn’t have her ability to empathize with children. She plowed on. “It won’t be long before they’ll just be streaks across a room as they dash out the door to go off with their friends. After that’ll come boys and college, and all this will be just a memory. A memory you won’t have,” she emphasized, “if you don’t do anything with them now.”

He was a private man and he didn’t like anyone meddling in his life. But he supposed the woman did have a point, and she knew it, too.

“You’re going to keep talking until I give in, aren’t you?”

Her mouth curved just enough to tell him that he was right. “Just thinking of you—and them,” Kennon added deliberately.

Right, he thought sarcastically. And while she was thinking, she wasn’t above manipulating the situation and the players to get what she wanted. Him at the furniture store. Still, he was forced to admit that he hadn’t been as available to the girls as he should have been. But that was, for the most part, because he didn’t know what to say.

“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Kennon was telling him. “You do have the time to spare.”

How did she know that? He frowned. “Now you’re psychic?”

“No,” she said simply. “Just resourceful.”

Edna had been the one to tell her that Simon had become part of the Newport Beach Cardiovascular Group, which was housed in a very modern-looking two-story building located two blocks away from Blair Memorial Hospital. It took nothing for her to call the office and ask if Dr. Sheffield was going to be on call this Saturday. The woman scheduling appointments at the front desk had informed her that Dr. Champion was on call the entire weekend. It was all Kennon needed to know.

“Resourceful,” Simon repeated, scrutinizing the dynamo before him. “I’d ask you what that meant, but I have a feeling I’m better off not knowing.”

Simon sighed inwardly. Though he wouldn’t admit it out loud, the woman had made a valid point. And there was the fact that he had made a silent vow to Nancy at her funeral to become more actively involved in their daughters’ lives. So far, he’d only managed to live up to his word in the most marginal sense. He supposed that spending a few hours with them on Saturday, even if it was in the pursuit of furnishing their bedrooms, would be a decent start.

He capitulated.

“What time?” he asked Kennon.

She had anticipated at least another round of going back and forth, if not more, before she wore him down. This was almost too easy. Maybe he was a reasonable man after all.

“Then you’ll come?” she asked, relieved that she could stop playing at being his conscience.

Damn, but the woman had one hell of a radiant smile, he thought. It was one of those rare smiles that seemed to instantly pull you in and made you feel that all was right with the world.

He caught himself looking at her left hand, wondering why there wasn’t a wedding band, or at least an engagement ring, on her finger. For the first time since she had steamrolled into his life, he found himself wondering about her backstory.

As if to deny the very thought, Simon replied in a voice devoid of all emotion, “That would be the natural supposition for my asking you about the time.”

Kennon was tempted to tell him that he needed to loosen up a little, for the girls’ sake as well as his own, but for now this was enough progress for one day. One step at a time, that was all she could logically hope for. Every journey began with a single step and ended with another one many, many steps later.

Dr. Sexy Mouth had just taken his first, Kennon thought with satisfaction. Now the trick was to keep him going until he reached the destination where he needed to be.

“Girls,” she called out, turning around to face them again. “Your dad’s going to be coming with us tomorrow.”

He wasn’t prepared for the enthusiastic squeals and cheers, nor did he expect to have two overjoyed little girls rush up and, for all intents and purposes, effectively “surround” him.

No, he wasn’t prepared for it, but he had to admit he rather liked it. Liked, too, the wide, satisfied smile he saw on his decorator’s face. A man could easily get lost in that face.

The next moment, he turned away from Kennon and focused only on Madelyn and Meghan. It was a lot less unsettling that way.

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