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She shook her head and he set the bagel half back on his plate. “What do you want, Regan?” He wasn’t going to play guessing games when it came to food with her. He’d done that too many times before Darby had come to stay, and he wasn’t falling for it again.
“Waffles.”
“Then you’ll have to wait for Darby to get up so she can fix them for you,” he told her. “I don’t do waffles.”
She sniffed, and she was so much like Elise had been—all snooty and regal—that he felt irritation rise. He jabbed his fingers through his hair and focused on his niece, reminding himself to be patient. She was only four, and her world had violently changed only a week ago. “I can heat up a frozen waffle,” he offered.
“Frozen waffles aren’t real waffles,” she said.
He shrugged. He wasn’t going to take offense at a comment from a four-year-old waffle connoisseur. “Then you’ll have to wait for Darby. Where is Reid?” He leaned over to the counter and snagged the coffeepot to refill his mug.
Regan scooted out a chair and climbed up on it, sitting high on her knees and leaning over the edge of the table, anchoring his newspaper with her elbows. “I dunno. I don’t like you.”
“Why?”
Her eyebrows drew together. She poked at the edge of the newspaper with her fingertip, deliberately tearing it. “’Cause you’re mean.”
Garrett looked at her over his coffee. “And you’re rude,” he returned smoothly.
“No, I’m not. I’m a princess. My mommy told me so.”
“I’m sure she did. But even princesses have good manners.”
“They certainly do,” Darby commented from the doorway. She held out her hand for Regan. “Apologize to your uncle Garrett for what you said.”
“She doesn’t have to apologize for telling me what she thinks,” Garrett said. He held up the page of the newspaper that was ripped crookedly through the article he’d been reading. “You can apologize for doing this,” he told Regan.
She pouted. “It was a accident.”
“You can still be sorry for an accident,” Darby said. “Excuse us.” She didn’t look at Garrett as she led the girl out of the room.
He could hear them talking, then the temper-filled stomp of small feet going upstairs. Darby returned and headed for the coffee. She poured a cup and held it to her face, inhaling deeply. “Nectar of the gods,” she murmured.
He dragged his attention from her legs. But it wasn’t easy. Not with the thigh-length white sundress she wore. “Is Regan upstairs making a voodoo doll of me to stick pins into?”
“No. She’s just testing you, Garrett. To see where the boundaries are.”
“I’m not a complete idiot.”
Her lips parted. “I…know that.” She set aside her coffee cup and pulled a carton of eggs out of the fridge. “I expected you to be at work by now.”
“Disappointed?”
She whirled around, and he smiled faintly. Rolling her eyes, she turned back to what she was doing.
“I thought I’d take a crack at the plumbing,” he admitted. “The office won’t fall apart without me for a few hours.”
She was cracking eggs into a pan. “Why don’t you just hire someone? The owner should take care of it, anyway, just like all the other things wrong around here.”
“They should, but they haven’t. And I’m a hands-on guy, what can I say? Do you always wear white or tan-colored clothes?”
Her movements slowed for only a moment. “Yes. I’m a bland kind of girl. What can I say?”
“Hardly bland. More like a refreshing vanilla ice cream on a hot summer day.”
Her eyes were amused. “My, my. Poetry. What are you angling for now? Another ‘barely a week’ of child care?”
He shook out his paper and started reading again. There was another article about the accident. This time, instead of the usual focus about Elise’s family connections, the subject of the article was the other driver, who’d apparently had some pretty serious connections himself. To the kind of wealth and power that Caldwell could only dream.
“Just saying what I think. Like Regan does. Did you see this article? That Phil Candela guy was apparently some mucky-muck with Rutherford Transportation outta Kentucky. Wonder what he was doing in Fisher Falls.”
“Maybe he was on his way through to somewhere else,” she said abruptly. “What are you really doing here? Why aren’t you out conquering the world of construction?”
“Fixing the plumbing,” he assured. His coffee mug was empty again and he stood, reaching for the pot. What he was really doing was trying to follow Hayden’s suggestion that, if he wanted to win in court against Caldwell, he needed to show at least some makings of a family man.
“Want more?” He held up the pot. She shook her head, and he realized her cup was still brimming full. “Still too hot to drink?”
“Oh, I don’t drink the stuff. Tastes horrid. I just like the smell.”
“Sacrilege,” he grumbled, pouring the rest of the pot into his cup. “Heresy.”
“Good taste.” She slid two fried eggs onto a plate and handed them to him, shutting off the stove in the same motion. “Eat your eggs. I’m going to get the kids now, so if you don’t want to get in the way of flying food, you’ll eat them quickly and escape.”
He took the plate. “Darby.” She paused in the doorway, looking back at him. “About last night. In here.”
Her skin turned pink. “It was late,” she dismissed.
He hadn’t quite known what he’d been going to say. But he knew it wasn’t that. “Yeah, right,” he said blandly. “Late.”
Four hours later he was cursing the idiot who’d installed the pipes, the idiot inspector who’d approved them and the idiot corporation that owned the house and probably a dozen others just like it. He’d hunched into crawlspaces, climbed through the sloppily insulated attic, torn out a good piece of wall and dug a ditch near the foundation deep enough to swim in.
“Having fun?”
He looked up at Darby from hosing off his muddy hands. She’d brought the kids out to the backyard and they’d all been chasing a bright beach ball around the grass. In fact, Darby had several grass stains on her sundress, which wasn’t a dress at all, he’d realized. The skirt of her dress was actually shorts, as he’d seen when she’d been trying to teach Regan how to turn cartwheels.
She seemed almost driven to show the kids a fun time.
“There’s a leak that could sink a ship,” he muttered.
“No ship could sink in this much mud.” She gestured toward his jeans. Mud caked them up to the knees. “The children have been begging to play in it like their uncle Garrett has been.”
“Hell, yeah. It’ll be one big game to replace the entire section of pipe from the main to the house.”
The ball bounced their way, and Darby caught it, laughing when her bare foot slipped in the mud. She barely caught herself from falling on her rear. “You said you were a hands-on guy. If you don’t want to fix it yourself, hire someone. You run a construction company, for heaven’s sake!” She tossed the ball at him and it bounced off his chin before he dropped the hose and caught it in his muddy hands.
Actually, he owned the construction company, but he didn’t correct her. He tossed the ball back at her, and it left a muddy mark against her white outfit, right over the enticing thrust of her breasts. She stared down at herself, her expression surprised. Then her lashes lowered.
His eyes narrowed at the sly look she cast him. Suddenly she struck, reaching the hose just before he did, and turning it full on in his face.
Ignoring the streaming water, he hooked his arm around her waist and tipped her off her feet, holding her easily over the mud bath below them.
“No, no, wait,” she gasped, giggling so hard her face was red. “I’m sorry. Really. That was…was completely inappropriate of me.”
He squinted through the water she was still squirting in his face. “Inappropriate?” He finally managed to redirect the hose. Right at her. “I’ll show you inappropriate.”
She shrieked and wriggled, her hands pushing at him.
Garrett laughed. And it struck him then that it had been a long time since he’d done so. Water soaked his shirt, soaked her clothes. The children were watching them, agog. He laughed so hard his chest hurt.
He laughed so hard, his hold on Darby loosened. She twisted free, her feet tangling with his legs, and down they went.
Mud splattered.
Water gushed.
“I can’t believe you did this!” Darby tried to sit up and ended up only spreading more mud. She planted her hands on Garrett’s chest for traction.
“Me? I didn’t trip us,” he pointed out. He was sprawled on his back, half in the muddy trench, half on the grass. There were streaks of mud on his cheek. “Besides, you started it all with the bouncing ball.”
He lifted his head to look at her. “You know, I don’t think I’ve laughed in this town since I was five years old.”
Darby’s throat tightened. She realized her hands were still pressed against his chest. It might as well have been bare for all the protection his soaking-wet T-shirt provided. “I didn’t laugh a whole lot in my childhood, either,” she admitted.
“You need a bath.” Regan stood beside them, her nose wrinkled.
Darby chuckled. “You’ve certainly got that right, peaches.”
“I’m not a peach. I’m a princess.”
Garrett reached out and dashed his fingertip across her nose, leaving a streak of mud. “A princess with mud on her nose.”
Reid ran up beside his sister, sticking out his face. “Do me. Do me.”
Darby watched Regan’s expression. The little girl didn’t know whether to laugh or be insulted. But when Reid giggled wildly at the dollop of mud Garrett deposited on his button nose, she finally grinned. She crouched down and gathered up a handful of the slick stuff and turned on her heel, running toward the triplets who were corralled in the playpen.
Darby groaned. “Too much of a good thing,” she decided quickly and scrambled to her feet. She caught up to Regan and redirected the girl. In minutes Regan and Reid were making mud pies, and the toddlers had escaped their own “anointing.”
She had muddy handprints all over her dress, and her legs and feet were coated. Garrett was hosing himself off again. She started across the yard toward him, stopping short when he suddenly yanked off his shirt and dropped it on the ground beside him before turning the hose over his head like a shower.
Regan tugged on her shorts, and Darby dragged her gaze from the sight of water streaming off Garrett’s broad shoulders.
“Uncle Garrett’s getting naked.”
“No, sweetheart.” Her voice felt strangled. “He just took off his shirt because he’s all muddy from working on the plumbing. See? He’s just cleaning up a little.” She couldn’t keep from looking back at him and felt her stomach jolt at the sight.
She brushed her wet hair back from her face and focused on the much safer sight of her miniature charges. “While you guys are making mud desserts there, I’m going to make our main course. We’ll eat out here. Have a picnic. Sound good?”
Enthusiastic cheers followed her as she walked toward Garrett. He’d turned the hose on an assortment of tools. “Mind if I use the hose there for a little rinsing myself?”
He pointed the hose at her legs, and she shivered a little as the cold water washed away the mud. But it was a good shiver because the day was almost unbearably hot. “So, are you going to be able to fix the leak you found?”
He didn’t look at her as he nodded, and Darby stifled a sigh. For a while there he’d laughed. The sound had delighted her just as much as when she’d heard Regan and Reid giggling in the bathroom that first night.
Now, however, he’d apparently put his sense of humor back on ice.
“I’m going to fix some lunch. Would you like some?”
“No. I’m gonna pick up some materials to get this mess taken care of.” He bent over, hooking his fingers through the handle of his red toolbox.
Darby folded her arms, looking anywhere but at the play of muscles across his smooth, hard back. You’d think she’d never seen a male torso before.
You haven’t. Not one like this.
She ignored the voice. “You’ve got to eat,” she said to him.
“I’ll grab something while I’m gone.” He straightened, hefting the heavy box with ease.
“But—”
“Darby.” His jaw looked tight. “Let me take care of the plumbing and my stomach, and you take care of the five minis. Deal?”
She frowned, glancing at the children. They were perfectly occupied in the yard. Safely fenced in. The only dangers were squishy, messy mud and grass stains. She followed Garrett around the side of the house, latching the gate behind her. “Have I upset you? I know I’m just the nanny and you’re the boss, but it was just so funny. I couldn’t resist.”
“Some things I can’t resist, either,” he said roughly. “And dammit, Darby, you’re soaking wet.”
She ran her hands through her wet hair. “So are you.”
“I’m not wearing white.” He ran his finger along the narrow strap over her shoulder. “You are.”
She flushed, hastily crossing her arms over her chest. “I didn’t realize.”
“I did.”
“I’m sorry.”
Garrett exhaled in a thin stream and stepped in her path when she turned to go. “I’m not. But that’s a problem I’m just gonna have to deal with.”
Her chin angled. “There’s no problem. I wasn’t throwing myself at you.”
“No, you were throwing mud and—”
“I said I was sorry.”
“You were throwing smiles and laughter, too. And the kids loved it. So stop apologizing.”
Her mouth closed. But only for a moment. “Is the water turned back on inside the house, then?”
“Yeah.”
