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Her keys jangled when she pulled them from the pocket of her pleated shorts and she started toward her car. The green paint was beginning to peel and the engine occasionally backfired, but the tires were sound and it held more passengers than the cab of his pickup truck.
“Darby.”
She stopped and looked back at him. He hadn’t moved one step.
“It is Darby. Right?”
She was glad for the darkening twilight. And for the distance between them. “Yes. Darby White.” After three months now, she’d gotten to the point where she no longer stumbled over the name each time she used it. Yet the way he was watching her made her feel as if there was a giant warning light flashing on her forehead.
“The driver of the other car.” He crossed the small patch of grass that was his front yard. “Phil something, I think Ms. Malone said. He didn’t make it, either.”
Her fingers closed around the jagged edges of her keys. “No. He didn’t.”
“His family has probably been notified, too.”
Darby swallowed and turned to her car. “I have no idea,” she murmured. The lie sat heavily, for she knew that Phil Candela had no family. He’d been too devoted to his job. “I think I heard someone say he was from out of town.”
Garrett watched Darby round the aging sedan, purpose in her leggy stride. It was a lot easier to focus on her than think about the news she and the social worker had delivered.
Elise and her husband were dead.
And for reasons only Elise could have explained, she had managed to tell Darby that she wanted him to take care of her kids, before she’d slipped from life.
Him. Garrett Cullum. Caldwell Carson’s bastard son who’d been shipped out of Fisher Falls nearly twenty years earlier when he’d been only fifteen years old. The half brother Elise had always gone out of her way to avoid, unless she had some specific purpose in tormenting him.
He pulled open the car door and folded himself into the front seat beside Darby. He watched Darby fumble with her keys for a moment, then the engine rumbled reluctantly to life. Maybe her car had more room than his truck, but he had a serious doubt as to whether the engine would survive the trip into the center of town, where he remembered the child-care center was located.
She shifted into gear and set off with only a small jerk, and stared fiercely through the windshield as she drove through the neighborhood. He’d chosen it because it was on the outskirts of town and was one of the few developments around that Caldwell’s company, Castle Construction, hadn’t built.
Most importantly, though, nobody on this side of town was likely to remember him. He’d come to Fisher Falls with a definite purpose, but the idea of constantly running into people he’d once known hadn’t been particularly appealing.
Just as it hadn’t been particularly delightful running into Elise the first week he’d arrived. He’d gone into the deli near the temporary office he’d set up, and there she’d been. Sitting alone at a table looking just as pampered and spoiled as she’d been when he was fifteen and she only a year younger.
If she hadn’t popped out of her seat and stood in his way, he would have been happy to have pretended not to know her. But she had, and she’d acted as if she was delighted to see him. When he had cynically asked what she wanted, she’d laughed gaily and waved her hand, as if to dismiss his question. But when she’d asked why he was in town, he’d told her. Her smile hadn’t wavered at all at his clear statement that he was establishing a new branch of his construction company in Fisher Falls, even though she had to know that he would be in direct competition with their father.
And for reasons that still confounded him, he’d ended up giving her his address and phone number here in town when she’d handed over to him a linen business card imprinted with her name and number in gold script.
As if they were likely to call each other up for a chat or something, for Christ’s sake.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, remembering that his half sister wouldn’t be calling anyone ever again.
“Are you all right?”
He dropped his hand and looked at Darby. “No, I’m not all right.” He saw her bite her lip as she focused again on the road ahead.
But he wasn’t feeling impatient with her—only with himself. He stifled an oath and tore at his collar again, finally yanking his tie free and pulling it off. He balled it in his fist and looked at her.
The light was gradually fading, but it had been light enough to see her when he’d opened the door to find her and the social worker standing outside. Unlike Laura Malone, who’d been wearing a navy blue suit, Darby White wore tan shorts and shirt. The shorts were neither too long nor too short, and the legs they revealed were shapely and firm and way too long for someone whose head barely reached his shoulder. Her blue eyes had been moist, and she had a short mop of reddish hair that stuck out at all sorts of angles around her head.
Neither carrot-red nor auburn nor blond, but somewhere in between, the choppy, wavy feathers had captured the setting sun, causing each strand to gleam with fiery light, and she’d looked oddly appealing. Now, in the car’s interior, her hair looked like licks of flame against her pale face, and he added vulnerable to the mix.
“The kids. What have they been told?” He watched her slender hands tighten even more around the steering wheel, and felt his stomach tighten, too.
“Um, nothing,” she said huskily. “We kept them from seeing the cars through the front windows at the center. Laura thought the news might be better coming from you or Mr. Carson.”
He exhaled roughly. Great.
She pulled into a well-lit parking lot beside the cheery-looking building, and Garrett couldn’t help himself—he looked toward the corner. There was nothing remaining to indicate that a tragedy had occurred there earlier that day. The traffic signal still turned yellow, then red, even though there were no cars there to stop.
He closed his eyes for a moment, thinking of all that hadn’t been. And all that wouldn’t be.
When he opened them, Darby with her rusty hair and brimming eyes filled his vision. She touched his hand. “It’ll be all right.”
He doubted it. But still he found his hand turning over, closing around hers. For a lingering moment it helped.
Then she drew away. She ducked her head, but he still saw her swipe her fingers over her cheeks. They went inside through a door that jingled merrily, where the lights were bright and cheerful. Where five little kids waited.
Slept, actually.
The girl with blond curls streaming over her shoulders lay facedown on a blue mat and was obviously the oldest. That would be Regan. And sleeping on a mat beside her, equally blond, but with hair cut short must be Reid.
Garrett shoved his hands in his pockets and stood at a distance as he watched Darby greet the matronly woman who’d been sitting in a rocking chair with a magazine on her lap. The other woman was from Social Services, he assumed, when she shut her magazine with a snap and gathered up a bulging briefcase.
He was glad when Darby quickly and quietly went about gathering up two car seats and pushed them into his arms. Action had always been his preference to inaction.
But when they’d fastened three seats into the backseat and one into the center of the front bench seat, Darby stood back from the car and frowned. “I’m sorry. I should have had you follow in your truck. We’re going to be more crowded than I’d thought.”
“I’ll drive,” he said and smoothly plucked the keys she was worrying between her fingers away from her. “You and Regan can fit in one seat belt.”
“But—”
“It’ll have to do,” he said shortly. “The streets of Fisher Falls are all rolled up now. Traffic is nil.”
Still, she shook her head. “I think we should split up. Some in my car, some in her—” She turned her head just in time to see the Social Services woman drive away, taking with her any chance of creative carpooling. “Well, fudge.”
Garrett felt pretty much the same, though he wouldn’t have couched it in such genteel terms. Obviously the Social Services people hadn’t felt any qualms about leaving five kids with him. As if the fact that he was their mother’s half brother was enough evidence of suitability.
It angered him, suddenly. For all any of them knew, he could be a monster. A hideous parental figure. And this Darby was a child-care worker. Not even an official representative of Social Services. “This is crazy,” he muttered, staring at the keys in his hand.
“I know it’s little comfort at a time like this, but you will adjust to your loss,” Darby said. Her voice was still husky, and Garrett realized that it wasn’t just tears that put that velvety-soft rasp in it. “You and Elise must have been very close.”
“Close?” He snorted softly. “No, I wouldn’t say that.” He couldn’t begin to figure why he’d even responded to that statement. He’d never been one to speak freely. Not with the few people he considered his friends, and sure as hell not with strangers, even when they came equipped with sympathetic blue eyes and mile-long legs.
Dammit. His sister was dead, he’d actually agreed to take responsibility for five kids who didn’t know him from Adam and he was leering at Darby White.
She wasn’t even his type. He preferred tall blondes with some curve around their bones. This pint-size woman looked as if she’d poke him with the sharp angles of her shoulders if he got too close.
He realized he was still watching her. Saw the way her eyes widened a bit, the way her lips parted for breath, as if she’d caught his thoughts. She looked shocked.
And why wouldn’t she be?
He turned his back on her and went inside the building, where he picked up a padded bag patterned with little blue and yellow ducks. It was stuffed with disposable diapers and brightly colored plastic toys and God knew what else. He carried it to the car and stuck it on the floor in the backseat.
Darby was still standing in the same spot on the other side of the car from him. Now she just looked puzzled. “Then why?”
“Why what?” But he knew.
She moistened her lips and shook her head, looking away. “It’s really none of my business.”
Since he agreed with her there, he left it at that.
Only she didn’t.
She followed him into the center and stood beside him, looking down at the children sleeping on their mats. Across the spacious room, three well-padded little bottoms stuck up in the air from three cribs where they, too, slept.
“If you weren’t close,” Darby asked in a soft voice, “why would your sister want you to raise her children?”
Chapter Two
Why, indeed?
Garrett had no idea. Elise couldn’t possibly have known what she’d been saying. Or, in the chaos of the moment, Darby had somehow misunderstood. All he knew was that he was going to take full advantage of the situation.
“Well,” she finally said, when it became clear that he wasn’t going to answer, “I’m sure that it will all work out. When your dad returns, you can—”
“I don’t have a dad.”
“Oh. But, I thought—Laura indicated that you—”
“Caldwell Carson was Elise’s dad. To me he was just the married guy who knocked up my mother. Everybody in this town knew he was responsible, but he’s the only one to pretend it never happened. And the only thing I need to work out is loading these guys into the car and getting them back to my place. So are you going to help or not?”
Her soft lips closed. Without looking at him, she knelt down beside Reid and gently gathered up the boy into her arms and carried him out into the night.
Garrett blew out a breath and crouched next to Regan. She jerked and blinked and stared at him through eyes that were as brown as her mother’s had been.
He felt a swift and unexpected knot form inside him. Grief. Where the hell did it come from? He didn’t like it. So he shoved it back into oblivion and warily eyed the little girl. As warily as she regarded him, he noticed.
“Who’re you?” Suspicion vibrated from her small person.
“I’m your uncle Garrett.”
Her face became fearful, and she pushed away from him, yelling, “Stranger!” over and over again. She ran to Darby, who’d reentered the building, and practically jumped into her arms. She twined her legs around Darby’s waist and buried her blond head against Darby’s shoulder.
“Maybe you could get the triplets,” she suggested calmly. “I’ll wait in the car with Regan and Reid.”
Sure. Get the triplets. No sweat.
Right.
There was nothing for him to do but agree, so he turned toward the cribs lining the wall. Cheerful balloons and kites had been painted above the cribs, and he focused on them as he walked closer.
If he was a drinker, he’d be thinking about now that this was all some alcohol-induced hallucination. Some nightmarish fog that he would wake up from, sooner or later. But when he stood next to the cribs and looked down at two scrunched-up butts and one wide-eyed baby, who was now chewing on the corner of a blanket, Garrett knew there was no waking from this nightmare.
He was thirty-five years old, for God’s sake. Why did looking into the round little face of a nine-month-old tot with a head nearly as bald as the cue ball on his pool table back home in Albuquerque make him want to head in the opposite direction? Fast.
The baby’s mouth parted in a grin, baring several stubby little teeth. He…she?…stood up and wrapped little starfish hands around the edge of the crib and bounced its little knees. Garrett’s unease wasn’t going anywhere, he knew, so he just reached out and picked up the kid, holding it at arm’s length as he strode outside to the car. The kid didn’t seem to mind. It grinned, drooled and wriggled its legs as if Garrett was some longtime friend.
Darby was standing by the car, and he pushed the baby at her. She had little choice but to accept, and Garrett went back inside, leaving her to fasten the child into one of the safety seats crammed into the backseat.
The other two babies were still sound asleep. Garrett scooped them both up, hoped they wouldn’t wake and start screaming at him, too, and took them outside.
By the time he pulled into his driveway next to his pickup, all of them having been packed into Darby’s car so snugly that he felt some real sympathy for sardines, his head was pounding with the force of jackhammers.
And the fun was just beginning.
“Mr. Cullum?” Darby was looking at him over Regan’s sleeping form. “I think we should get the children inside.”
He shoved open the car door and unfolded himself. “I’m gonna need a van,” he muttered, and nearly cringed at the notion.
Getting the children inside the house proved to be nearly as much work as getting them settled inside the car. But finally the job was done. The triplets were situated in the center of his wide bed—the only piece of furniture he’d acquired new when he’d moved into the rental. It was king-size, extra-long and fit him to a T. Right now his long, fat pillows were lined around the edges like some puffy corral, to keep the sleeping triplets in the center, and the likelihood of him getting a decent night’s sleep grew even dimmer.
Tad, Keely and Bridget. One boy and two girls.
“They look like three peas in a pod,” he muttered, staring at the sight from the doorway. Darby had put Regan and Reid in the second bedroom. Fortunately, it had come furnished with twin beds.
“You’ll get used to them,” Darby assured. “And you don’t have to dress them alike that way just because their—” Her voice broke off awkwardly.
“Because their mother did,” Garrett finished flatly. Trust Elise—pretty, proper, pampered—to dress her triplets alike. “You don’t have to avoid her name.”
“I wasn’t.” But her distressed expression told a different story. “You’ll be able to tell the triplets apart before long,” she reassured.
“Sure,” Garrett agreed abruptly. “When it’s time to change a diaper, I’ll know whether I’ve got Tad in hand or not.”
Her lips twitched the moment before she turned away. “If it helps, Keely is the only one with eight teeth already.”
“Great. Another clue.” Garrett followed Darby down the narrow stairs, back into the living room, where they’d already dumped the diaper bag and the assortment of other items she’d filched from the child-care center.
She glanced around. “I must go. Did you put my car keys somewhere?”
He slowly drew them out of his pocket and held them up in the air. “You’re responsible for this situation, Darby White. You don’t think I’m gonna let you go all that easily, do you?”
Responsible.
Darby felt the blood drain from her head, and her knees wobbled. She stared at Garrett. How could he know? How could anyone know?
He was swearing under his breath and pushing her into a chair, nudging her head down between her knees. She pushed at his hands, but he held her firm. She squirmed. “What are you doing?”
“You looked like you were gonna pass out.”
