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Rachel looked down at her arm in surprise then at Daniel, then back at her arm. It had tingled when he’d touched her to make her hold—what was his name?— Todd. That kind of electrical impulse upon contact sort of thing hadn’t happened to her since early high school. How bizarre. If it hadn’t been August and humid as all get-out, Rachel would have been convinced Daniel had been scuffing his feet and had zapped her with static electricity.
Her eyes narrowed. No wonder he knew nothing about caring for small children. If Daniel could do that to a relative stranger, he’d probably fried his wife’s brain out making love to her ages ago. No doubt she was nothing but a shell of her former self by now, unable to think for herself and doing anything and everything Daniel bid. How disgusting.
Daniel, meanwhile, began to grab cans and toss them haphazardly into the wagon as quickly as he could. He’d never realized how freeing it was to have two hands for a task—not until two days ago. “Don’t be silly. I’ve never been married in my life. I lived with a girl briefly right out of college, but nothing permanent came of it, certainly not a child.”
Rachel cringed as Daniel flipped the apples in after the cans. Didn’t he know they’d be so bruised from the rough treatment as to be inedible? “Todd’s not yours then?”
Daniel straightened and wiped his forehead with the inside of his arm. “He is now.” He stood and absentmindedly brushed his hands off on his pants, then grimaced as the grit-embedded scrapes on his palms made contact with the fabric. Thoughtfully he examined the gift from God in front of him. The woman-Rachel, wasn’t it?—had shifted Todd onto one softly padded hip and gently bounced him there. For the first time in forty-eight hours the child looked—if not happy, close enough to it for government work. He’d definitely stopped wailing and was staring, fascinated at Rachel’s silken tresses. Daniel snapped his fingers and pointed. “It’s the right color,” he said.
Rachel frowned at him as she twisted her head to one side to keep Todd from reaching her hair and pulling it. “What is?”
“Your hair.”
“The right color for what?”
“For Todd. It’s the right color for Todd,” Daniel said, apropos of nothing as far as Rachel could determine. Evidently he’d burnt out his own brain as well as his former girlfriend’s.
“Fine,” she said, determined to hand Todd back to Daniel and get out of there. The child was absolutely darling—when he wasn’t yodeling at top volume, but as far as Rachel could tell, the situation was rapidly deteriorating. So much for meeting the new neighbors. She’d think long and hard before getting involved with strangers—emphasis on strange—next time.
Daniel took a step backward while shaking his head. He wasn’t taking Todd back on a bet. Not while this woman with the magic touch was here. “Listen, just carry him down three houses. That’s not so much, is it? Just three houses. Keep showing him your hair, it’s just like his mother’s was.”
Was? Past tense? Rachel looked down on the child in her arms with newfound empathy. “If he accidentally gets a hold of it, he’ll pull it out,” she warned.
And that would be a shame, Daniel couldn’t help thinking. Rachel had gorgeous dark sable hair shot through with threads of some very light color. She wore it shoulder length, turned under in a gentle bob. Under ordinary circumstances he’d—but no, these were not ordinary circumstances. He couldn’t afford to digress or get distracted—some things transcended mere incidentals like bald spots on otherwise beautiful women. “I’ll buy you a wig,” he promised, then rashly went on, “I’ll buy you anything you want if you’ll just stick with me for the next half hour or so.”
The man was pathetic, Rachel decided then and there. Absolutely, totally, one hundred percent pathetic. It was her moral responsibility, her civic duty even, to make sure this poor child happily tugging on the extremely low carat gold chain around her neck—whomever he belonged to—was fed, changed and put down for a humor-restoring nap.
Daniel read her wavering in her eyes. Wanting to consolidate any ground he might have just gained, he decided to start walking. She’d have to follow, wouldn’t she? What would he do if she didn’t? He was a desperate, desperate man. It would be a mistake—a sign of weakness to turn and look. Daniel pulled the wagon another two feet. He couldn’t stand it. He turned and looked anyway. Rachel was reluctantly following. Todd still straddled her hip and he was still complaining, but the greatly lowered volume showed that the sincerity of the complaints was now in serious question. “Thank you,” he breathed. “Thank you very much.” The first was directed to the heavens, the second to the angel in human disguise following him down the sidewalk.
Rachel stepped up onto the front stoop of the corner brick bungalow and waited for Daniel to unlock the door. It had been a long time ago and she’d been a younger woman when she’d last carted a heavy toddler around in her arms. They ached and she wished Daniel would hurry. Finally he got the door opened. Daniel’s manners at least couldn’t be faulted. He held it while she preceded him over the threshold.
“This is nice.” Rachel said as she took in the decorating with surprise. Not that it was totally feminine— although a woman’s touch was evident—it just wasn’t ultramasculine. No sofa made of leather cushions slung over shiny metal frames. No ultramodern framed graphics on the wall. And no heavy generic male-on-his-own brown and black against white walls color scheme.
Where was Daniel’s bachelor-on-the-loose decorating statement? And where, oh where, did Todd fit in to all this?
This house screamed of a married couple, not a single dad. It was a home Rachel could be comfortable in, decorating she might have chosen herself. Cream painted walls with cream-colored sheers and window scarves softened the views of the street. A sofa and love seat at right angles to each other were done in an eye-pleasing sherbet-toned tapestry fabric. Both pieces sat in front of a fireplace with a beautiful carved stone mantel and surround.
Rachel shook her head in bemusement. Daniel didn’t seem like the type to collect antique lace and have it framed on sherbet-colored matt boards. And the dusty rose carpet set off the sofa and accessories to perfection, but—well, suffice it to say no man she knew would have ordered it. Weirder and weirder still.
“The kitchen’s through here,” Daniel said, taking the lead.
Rachel followed. “Did you, um, have somebody do the decorating for you?” And did you pay the bill after you saw what they’d done?
“What? Oh, my sister did the decorating. She even reupholstered the sofa herself. I still can’t believe it. All that work and for what—?” Daniel shook his head, grief and sadness showing briefly in his eyes before determination once again glinted there. “Here’s the high chair.”
Gratefully Rachel tucked her burden into the seat and fastened the lap strap before pushing the tray snuggly against his little baby potbelly. She rolled her shoulders in relief. “Okay, so what did you buy to feed monster man here?” Rachel asked.
“Hot dogs,” Daniel announced. “Hot dogs and cheese. What kid could turn up his nose at that?” With a flourish he reached into the bottom of a bag, which was ripped down both sides, and handed her the plastic shrink-wrapped packages of hot dogs and a brick of cheese.
And he couldn’t have figured out Todd was hungry? “They have bite marks in them,” she said. “Both packages. Right through the plastic.”
“Yeah, well Todd’s got a real long arm reach for such a little kid. When he gets older I’m going to look into basketball camp for him, I think. Natural-born ball stealer, I bet. He got a hold of them and put up such a fuss every time I tried to take one away, the lady at the checkout told me not to bother. Said she’d seen it before. In fact, she acted like she thought it was kind of funny.”
“I’m sure she did,” Rachel responded drolly as she unwrapped the cheese and began to cut it into itsy bitsy cubes a toddler couldn’t choke on. “After all, it wasn’t her kid sucking on a wrapper that’s been handled or sneezed on by eight thousand unknown food handlers and shoppers with colds. Got a bib?”
Daniel blanched at that while he reached into a drawer. “Here. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with him. He’s sick. Maybe I should call the pediatrician.” Rachel snapped the bib around Todd’s neck, took the hot dog out of Daniel’s hand and began to dice it up. “I doubt it. Not that fast. Here, put this in the microwave and heat it up, but not too hot. Are there any vegetables we can give him?”
“Uh, yeah, sure. I think I saw a can of beans here someplace…here we go.”
Todd was stuffing bits of cheese into his mouth as fast as he could. He banged his fist on the tray and laughed when more went flying into the air. Rachel took the plate with the dismembered hot dog on it out of the microwave when it beeped and shoveled that onto the tray. Then she found a small handled cup and filled it with half an inch of milk. This, too, she gave the boy. Thirstily Todd drained it with only a small portion dribbling down his chin. Rachel gave him another half inch in the bottom of the cup before going to work on the beans.
Daniel was impressed. “Wow, you’re like an old hand at this.”
“It’s probably like riding a bicycle,” Rachel replied, knowing Todd was done when he began to throw the food on the floor. She began the washup procedure. “It’s been a while, but it does seem to be coming back to me.” Rachel held Todd’s cup up in front of the boy. “Look, Todd. This is your cup. See? Your cup is yellow.”
“Lellow.”
Rachel smiled, pleased. “That’s right. Yellow. Where’s his bedroom?” she asked Daniel.
Daniel pointed. “Right through there.”
She nodded. “Okay. How about if you finish cleaning up in here? I’ll change his diapers and see if I can get him settled down.” Feeling only slightly guilty—after all, it wasn’t her child who’d made the mess, was it?—Rachel left the kitchen area and headed for the nursery. There, she found a box of disposable diapers and replaced Todd’s soggy one and played with his toes briefly while he lay on the changing table.
“This little piggy went to market—” The room had been lovingly prepared by someone who hadn’t wanted to know the sex of their child beforehand. Someone who liked surprises had chosen a lovely but nonsexist pale lime tint for the walls. The woodwork was a crisp contrasting white.
“This little piggy stayed home—” A border of rainbows hung up high where the walls met the ceiling. Did Daniel ever stop and point them out to Todd?
“This little piggy had roast beef—” A big, fat, stuffed fabric rainbow splayed itself across the wall next to the crib. She’d used a similar theme in Mark’s nursery, Rachel remembered. Impossible as it seemed, it had been nineteen years ago when she’d decorated that nursery. Nineteen years. Rachel had been eighteen, practically a baby herself, she now realized.
Rachel sighed. “This little piggy had none—” She reminded herself that she was done being melancholy as of that morning.
“And this little piggy cried—”
Daniel popped his head in the doorway. “All cleaned up. How’s it going in here?”
“Wee, wee, wee all the way home.” Rachel brushed the bottom of Todd’s foot with a light ticklish motion and smiled when Todd grinned up at her and jerked his foot back. She picked up his other foot and blew a raspberry on the bottom of it. That got a laugh. Finally Rachel looked up. “Fine. I’m going to rock him for a minute to settle him down before I put him in the crib.”
“Fine, great, whatever. You get me a couple of hours of peace and quiet and I’ll be your slave forever.”
Rachel snorted at that. “Yeah, right.” But it was an interesting idea. A body like that, her slave? My, oh my. That certainly got the old heart valves pumping. She picked Todd up and noticed a framed birth announcement hung on the wall. Todd Michael Malone? Sarah and Michael Malone proudly announce the birth of their son, Todd Michael? “Daniel, who does Todd really belong to? Are you baby-sitting for a relative or something?” She’d just die if Eileen turned out right once again. But this Sarah and Michael must have been really hard up to leave their pride and joy with a man who knew next to nothing about children.
But Daniel’s indulgent smile immediately disappeared. His face tightened. “Todd’s mother, Sarah, was my sister. Her husband won a cruise as a prize in a sales contest where he worked. It was the first time they’d ever left the baby.” Daniel sighed. “There was a fire on board the ship. Barely big enough to make the papers up here, but Sarah, Michael and a couple of other passengers died of smoke inhalation. Todd stayed with Mike’s parents while I got my own life straightened out, but they’re well into their seventies and in a retirement complex with no children allowed. My mother has Alzheimer’s. Caring for her takes up all my dad’s time. That leaves Todd and me as a team.”
Rachel, gaped at him as she seated herself in the rocker. And she’d thought she’d had troubles. “Oh. I’m so sorry. How awful.”
Daniel ran a hand back through his hair. “Yeah, well, it’s been a little rocky the past couple of days, I have to admit.” He eyed the picture Rachel made there in the rocker with Todd happily sucking his thumb while, resting his head on her shoulder. “But I think maybe God just opened a window.”
Chapter Two (#ulink_e1444539-d05c-51e3-81f1-e34d3944a2cc)
Rachel continued to stare at him. “Excuse me?” she finally said while absently rubbing Todd’s little back. His body already felt half limp. Another minute or two and he’d be conked out cold.
“I said—”
“Shh, not so loud. He’s almost asleep.”
It was comical how quickly Daniel lowered his voice. Now she could barely hear him. “You know the old saying about God always opening a window when he closes a door?” he whispered.
Warily Rachel nodded.
“Well, when Sarah and Michael died, that was a heavy-duty door to get slammed in poor Todd’s face.” Daniel leaned against the nursery door frame and raked his hand through his hair. “I’m sure not the open window. I’m trying as hard as I can, but all I remember of parenting is that my dad used to play ball with me. Todd’s too little to throw a baseball let alone catch one. It was a disaster when I tried the other day. The ball kept going right through his legs.”
Rachel arched a brow at him in disbelief. He hadn’t really pitched a baseball ata toddler, had he?
Daniel continued, “The thing is, right before this all happened I’d just quit the accounting firm I’d been with since graduating from college. I was all set to go out on a limb and out on my own. Do you know how much work that entails? The time commitment? I’ve got to get this thing set up and going—make it viable or Todd and I are cooked geese. There’ll be no income. I want to save the insurance money for his college fund. Even if I could take a crash course in child raising and was instantly expert at it, I haven’t got the time to lavish on him the way he needs and deserves, do you understand what I mean? I can’t stick him in day-care now. For crying out loud, as far as he’s concerned both his parents just deserted him. What does he understand about death? So what am I supposed to do? I’m no Mr. Mom.”
Todd snored gently in her ear. Rachel slowly rose and walked quietly over to the crib. She eased the boy off her shoulder and laid him in his bed. She picked the blanket with the satin binding to lightly cover him and made sure he’d be able to feel that comforting edging against his cheek and hand while he slept. Daniel followed right behind as she crept from the room. He spoke his next words as softly as the rest, but he might as well have shouted, they jarred her so.
“If God’s trying to open a window for Todd, it sure as all heck ain’t me. I barely constitute a crack in the glass or a missing piece of weather stripping. So I have to ask myself, Where’s the open window?” Then he sort of studied her out of the corner of his eye.
Oh, no. Oh, no. The last time she’d let some fasttalking male open her window, it had been eighteen years before she’d managed to get it shut again, and even then it hadn’t been without a kick start from her supposed loving husband—the very one who’d insisted on opening the damn thing in the first place. Uh-uh. No way was she going to go through any of that again, although he was absolutely right about one thing, Rachel thought as she walked as quickly as possible back down the hallway. Daniel Van Scott was definitely cracked.
Daniel followed her closely. “Don’t you think it’s a little bit odd you picked that exact moment to look out your window? You could have just as easily been, I don’t know, in the kitchen or the bathroom. Even in the living room, for crying out loud, but with your back to the window. You fit into this equation somehow, I just know it.”
“No,” Rachel stated emphatically, knowing she needed to be firm here. She did not like the way this conversation was headed. She was done with being dutiful. It was now officially her turn to play in the sun. Being footloose and fancy-free was supposed to be one of the few advantages of the empty nest stage. “I hate to be the stereotypical female, but I was never much good at math. Especially quadratic equations. They always threw me for a loop.”
Daniel caught Rachel’s arm and halted her flight. He thought fast. “All right. Okay. You probably work and can’t help me out yourself. But you’ve got a real way with little kids. Maybe you know somebody else with your knack?”
Rachel stopped and looked up at him. Those blue eyes of his were killers, especially the way they appeared now, both serious and sincere. She was in big-time trouble here and she was just bright enough to know it. She was not about to disabuse him of his faulty notion that she worked. “Daniel, what is it that you want from me?”
“Help,” he stated simply. “Either yours or somebody you could recommend. I know I haven’t known you long, but somehow I feel like I can trust you. I’m dying here.”
Her arm tingled where he touched it. Rachel knew it without a shadow of a doubt. That spark she felt was plain old sexual attraction, no getting around it. You’d have thought that by thirty-seven her body would have forgotten all about that special tingle. It was discouraging, downright undignified that it hadn’t. Imagine, at her age she was being suckered in by a pair of broad shoulders, blue eyes and a sob story that had absolutely nothing to do with her. If she didn’t get out of there, she’d do something stupid—like agreeing to do what he wanted whether it was in her own best interest or not. Shades of the past! This was ridiculous. It was mortifying. It was an insult to her intelligence. Hadn’t she learned anything over the past eighteen years? “Daniel, no one comes to mind off the top of my head, but I’ll think about it and call you if I come up with a name. But for now, I’ve got to get going. All those boxes aren’t going to unpack themselves, you know.” There was a hint of desperation in her voice and she hoped Daniel didn’t pick up on it.
He ran his hand up her arm and her arm broke out in goose pimples. Eighty degrees outside, and she had goose bumps, oh, puh-leeze!
“Rachel, don’t leave yet. Let me at least give you lunch. Come on, have a hot dog with me. It’s the least I can do.”
Rachel thought about those hot dogs with the bite marks she’d fixed for Todd. He was right. It was the very least he could do. “I don’t know—”
“Please?”
Oh well, what did she have at home? Low fat peanut butter and reduced sugar strawberry jam. Yummy. “Oh, all right.”
“Great! Good! Come on back to the kitchen.”
Daniel’s smile lit his face and Rachel knew without a doubt she’d just made a grave tactical error. She hadn’t agreed to anything other than lunch, darn it. Daniel’s problems were his. Rachel had enough of her own without borrowing more. She’d just have to keep telling herself that until she’d choked down her premasticated hot dog. Maybe she could still get out of there relatively unscathed.
Daniel steered her back into the kitchen and pulled out a chair at the round oak kitchen table. “Here. You sit down. I’ll handle this.”
Rachel refused to feel badly about letting him. For too many years she’d had meals waiting on the table and clean socks and underwear in her men’s drawers. For what? Her son had eagerly left for college without even a backward glance and shortly thereafter her husband had just plain left. Besides, anybody could boil a hot dog.
Even Daniel. Within a very few minutes he served her up a plate with not only the promised main course, but apple sauce and potato chips. Then he really went all out and dug the mustard and pickle relish out of the refrigerator as well. He poured her a glass of milk. Rachel couldn’t remember the last time she’d drunk milk. Oh well, at her age wasn’t osteoporosis just around the corner? Maybe the milk would hold it at bay a little while longer. Surprisingly Rachel enjoyed the meal. “This is good,” she told him, touched that he’d taken the trouble to find her a hot dog Todd hadn’t sampled in the store.
“Thank you.” Daniel said, and smiled at her praise.
His grin almost blinded her. Rachel quickly lowered her head and studied the mustard smear on her plate. So much for that conversational gambit. “Well, I guess I ought to—”
Daniel jumped up and grabbed the plates off the table, startling her. “No need to rush,” he said. He suddenly realized he was starving for a little adult conversation. How did young mothers do this all day every day? He glanced at the watch bound to his wrist. “Rachel, how long do you think Todd will be out?”
“What? Oh, if he’s anything like Mark, maybe two hours.”
“Two hours,” he repeated after her and his face assumed an expression similar to the one she wore when she came face-to-face with a piece of maple fudge with her name on it. “That’s fantastic, two whole hours. I can get a lot done in one hundred and twenty uninterrupted minutes. Let’s see, first I’ll dump in a load of laundry real quick like. Let’s say, oh, ten minutes for that, another fifteen for these dishes. That leaves—hey, I just might have enough time to get my computer and maybe even the printer set up before Todd rejoins the land of the living. I can’t do it when he’s up, you know. That kid is murder on floppy disks.”
She believed it. Rachel remembered this stage all too well. “I really should be going. I’ve got boxes of my own—”
“Oh, that’s right. I wish you could stick around. It would be nice to talk to another adult for a while.” Daniel shrugged philosophically. “But if you can’t, you can’t. I really appreciate everything you did do for me this afternoon, though, Rachel. I want to be sure you know that.”
Rachel had never realized it before, but evidently she really was a sucker for blue eyes. Ron had had blue eyes, but not like Daniel’s blue eyes. It would be very easy to make a fool of herself with this man. It would be no hardship at all to talk herself into spending the afternoon talking to Daniel while he set up his office. Heck, she’d probably even pitch in and help. When would she learn?
Rachel told herself she was simply in the middle of a major empty nest syndrome crisis in her own life. That’s why she wanted to adopt these two. Fill the nest back up. She was just a natural born caretaker, a nurturer.
Natural born masochist was more like it.
But no, she’d get through this thing on her own, without any placebos. It was simply a case of hardening her heart and walking out his front door. She’d already done more than any other woman who’d come across that scene she’d witnessed out on her front sidewalk would have—well, maybe not, considering Daniel’s shoulders and butt—but still, she’d done her corporal work of mercy. “You’re more than welcome,” she said. “But now I’ve really got to go.”
With that, Rachel made her escape. There wasn’t a shadow of doubt in her mind that it had been a close one, too.
Rachel spent her afternoon organizing her cupboards. She unpacked her silverware and placed it all neatly in a new silver separator she’d bought for the drawer closest to the sink drain board. Then she stacked the dishes in the cabinet up above the silverware and the pots and pans—what few she needed to cook for one— in the cabinet below the rangetop.
By the time she broke for dinner, Rachel was out in the hall and mostly done with unwrapping the new linens she’d bought for her fresh start in life. The linen closet looked good, she decided as she stepped back and examined it. Towels that actually coordinated not only with each other but the bathroom as well, sat folded in the same direction and in neat piles on the shelf in front of her. Combined with the sheets, blankets and pillows she’d bought, it looked like a well-done department store display, Rachel thought.
She took another step back. It appeared just the way she’d always wanted her old linen closet to look and the way it would have looked if she’d ever gotten any cooperation from her son and former husband. But no, they’d always rooted through her neat piles and then walked off, leaving the disaster behind them. Well, no more. This closet would win homemaking awards—only there was nobody left to make a home for. Again Rachel lectured herself. “Buck up. You can’t win any homemaking awards if there are people living in the house. It’s just one of life’s poorer jokes. Oh well, maybe Mark will come home for winter and spring break. Possibly even part of the summer. He can mess up the towels then.” She hoped so, but basically Rachel just had to recognize she was all alone now. That was simply the way it was. Her stack of towels would remain neat forevermore.
On that rather melancholy note, Rachel returned to her small kitchen and baked a frozen, premade chicken potpie and pulled a handful of salad out of a pretossed bag of greens.
She ate it all by herself with nothing but the radio for company. Rachel wondered what Daniel and Todd were eating for dinner. More hot dogs?
Rachel washed her plate and fork and set them on the drain board. Her days of needing a dishwasher were over, she mused as she contemplated the lonely utensils. The phone rang as she turned away from the sink.
“Mom? It’s me, Mark.”
Alarm bells rang in Rachel’s maternal mind. “Mark? What’s wrong?”
“Chill out, Mom. Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to see what was going down on the maternal home front. You know, see how you were doing and stuff.”
Rachel barely controlled her snort of disbelief. Yeah, right. In other words, her best beloved son wanted something from her. “I’m fine, Mark, just fine. I spent the day organizing my new apartment and guess what?”
“What?”
