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Jenny’s fingers on the cat stilled. In her position on her knees, her jacket was hiked up a notch, showing the fullness of her curves beneath. The fact that he noticed so…intently made him more uncomfortable than ever. Maybe he should have been the one to get down on the floor. But somehow today he had a hockey stick for a spine, and so he stood there like an idiot, looking down at them both.
“Well, then,” he said to Jenny when the silence got so long he couldn’t stand it. “We’ll pick up Crystal’s suitcase and be on our way a little early. The plane leaves in a few hours.”
A really heavy silence fell over the room. Mitch finally added, “I want to thank you for helping out until I could get here.” He really was grateful for that part. He tried a smile on her, though nothing about her manner encouraged one. “You…did a good job. You had things Kathy would have wanted. I knew she liked lilacs. She always did.”
Emotion flickered in Jenny’s eyes for the barest second, so quickly that he almost missed it. But he knew in that moment that his sister had meant a lot to this woman.
Crystal had been scratching the cat. Now she looked up from the floor. “I want to stay with Miss Jenny,” she whispered.
Oh, hell.
Instinctively now, he squatted. At his movement, the cat leaped up in the air and took off. Crystal jerked, wrapping herself around Jenny. Jenny hugged her, whispered something into her ear that Mitch couldn’t catch.
The social worker cleared her throat. “Your uncle is family, sweetie. He lives in a big house in Ohio, which is a very nice place to live, and you’ll have four cousins.” She spread her hands helplessly. “He loves you. He told me so.”
Mitch had told her that, over the phone when he’d got the shocking news of his sister’s death in an auto accident. Had that only been two days ago? Saying he loved his niece wasn’t really a lie. He was sure he would love her…just as soon as he got to know her.
Jenny gently disengaged from Crystal and stood. “Why don’t you find your kitty and see if she’s hungry? You know how hungry she gets, and how much she relies on you to take care of her.” Surprising Mitch again, she pulled a little plastic bag of cat treats from the pocket of that yellow outfit.
“Can we talk?” It was Jenny Litton again, her eyebrow raised in polite inquiry.
He nodded, out of his league. He wanted to do what was best for Crystal.
Jenny stroked Crystal’s hair. “Will you be all right with Mrs. Winters for a while? Just for a minute? I need to talk to your uncle Mitch.”
“Do I have to go with him?” she said, her eyes filling with tears.
Jenny hesitated.
Mrs. Winters said, “Sweetie, we’ve talked about this.”
Mitch seized on a sudden inspiration as the kitten munched on a cat treat. “I have a dog at home.”
A flicker of interest crossed his niece’s face.
“And ponies.”
“Ponies are big.” She frowned.
Mitch figured it was best not to mention that Face-off was about as big as one of the ponies. “I also have a hamster, and some fish. They aren’t big.”
Crystal no longer looked as ready to burst into tears as she had a moment ago. He was just mentally congratulating himself when Jenny Litton motioned him toward the door.
He got to his feet, too, but thought about not following her. He was in no mood to be ragged on for not being a better brother. But the alternative was for her to speak her mind in front of his niece, so he followed her out. The hallway was hot—the air conditioner in the social worker’s office didn’t cool the air out here. Hard to believe it was October.
Jenny motioned him toward the window, out of the way of the few passersby. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said politely. “Kathy—” She stopped and moistened her lips, and Mitch realized she wasn’t as cool about this whole situation as she pretended to be. “I was your sister’s best friend.”
“Like I said, I appreciate your handling the funeral.” He’d been camping with his sons in Colorado, when he’d got the news of Kathy’s death. It had taken a while to get to an airport and book the kids on a flight home with nineteen-year-old Luke in charge.
She smoothed back her already-smooth hair. The sun caught a little gleam from her round gold earrings. She had a nice chin and dainty ears—don’t look.
She said, “From what I know about you, your life is pretty complicated. Like you said at dinner last night, you’re a widower. You have three teenage boys and an eleven-year-old. I can make things easy for you. I’m prepared to take custody of Crystal today. She’ll have a good home, and your conscience will be clear.”
“I’m her uncle.”
“Crystal doesn’t know you. And quite honestly, Kathy didn’t talk about you much. As far as I know, you never came for a visit.”
Guilt pinched him. “I didn’t have time.”
Her chin tilted in a sort of southern belle arrogance. “You didn’t have time?”
“No. I didn’t.”
“What makes you think you’ll have time now?”
“I’ll make time”
“I have the time. I live alone—” Abruptly, she bit her lip.
“Crystal is my family.”
“She doesn’t want to come with you.”
“As you said, that’s because she doesn’t know me. Yet. She’s family. I’m sorry if you had…plans to keep her. I don’t know how much time you actually spent with Crystal—”
“I’ve known her for three years. I’ve baby-sat. I’ve spent days at the beach with both Kathy and Crystal. I’ve had dinner at their house—I’ve had them over to mine. We’ve rented videos—I got her Mulan last week. Your interaction with Crystal was to send her a ball and glove that she’s never used.” Though her voice was carefully polite, he heard the criticism in it.
He told himself not to react—either to her tone or the fact that she knew a lot more about Crystal than he did. There must be a book or something out there on how to raise little girls.
She looked him full in the eye. “Kathy intended to change her will.”
“But she didn’t. Or are you going to try to prove in court that she did?”
Her mouth went slack. There was a long pause. “No,” she said softly, so softly it was almost a whisper. “Not now…” Her voice trailed off.
He was going to win. Suddenly, on what should have been a surge of satisfaction, Mitch felt like a bully. Jenny Litton cared about his niece and she knew about little girls. Mitch only knew about raising boys. On top of that, Crystal liked her.
“Look, I…” He shut his mouth before he could admit his insecurities aloud. “Listen, you don’t have to like me. But think of Crystal. It’s obvious she trusts you. If you tell her things will be okay with me, I think she’ll feel better.”
She shifted her little purse from one hand to the other, and there was a long, uncomfortable pause. “She loves the kitten. You’re going to let her keep her kitten, aren’t you?”
“Of course. I’m not a jerk, no matter what you think.”
She flushed a very becoming pink, a wash of color on her perfect, pale skin. “I can help you take her to the airport.”
He was impressed. The woman was a good loser. “Thanks.”
“I’m doing this for Crystal. Not for you. I mean—”
“I know exactly what you mean.”
She blushed harder. “I’ll give her my phone number. She can call me anytime. Collect.”
“She doesn’t need to call collect.”
“Collect,” she said firmly.
Whatever. “Okay. That sounds like a plan. Let’s go.” He turned to head back into the office to break the news to Crystal.
He held the door to the office open. As she passed by him on her way inside, she whispered, “Listen. If I hear there’s a problem, either from Crystal or the social worker in Ohio, I’ll be on the next flight to come and get that little girl. And believe me, if I have to, I’ll take you to court and fight you for her.”
They were almost in the office. She added, “I’m only giving her up because my lawyer and Mrs. Winters are telling me that’s what I have to do. But it won’t take much to push me into changing my mind.”
Her voice was soft, a drawling whisper, like a slow fall into dusk on a hot summer night. But her words were fighting words, and he respected that. “I wouldn’t have expected anything else, Miss Jennifer Litton.”
JENNY LITTON HAD BEEN true to her word, talking with Crystal, hugging her, reassuring her. If she resented Mitch, she didn’t show it in front of the girl.
When they were finally on the plane, Mitch let out a long breath of relief. So far, so good. There had been one bad moment when Crystal had discovered that her cat had to ride in the cargo area. But there’d been no crying from the little girl, which would have been bad, because then Jenny would have looked at him in that prissy, judgmental way.
But he didn’t like how quiet Crystal was now as she looked out the window of the plane. His kids always crowded around, making jokes about how small the cars down below looked, and talked loudly and happily about the prospect of aircraft trouble. This kid just sat there.
“Can you see the clouds?” he asked.
She didn’t answer. She didn’t even shrug.
“The trees looked real green when we took off. All pines, like Christmas trees, and now we’re so high we can’t see them at all.”
Nothing. Her head was turned away; he couldn’t read her expression.
O-kay. He was getting a little desperate when he had a sudden thought. “I’ll buy you a dog.”
She turned to him. “A dog of my own?”
“Sure.” Although he was elated that she’d spoken at last, he groaned inside. Another dog. Yeah, that was sure an inducement to get a housekeeper to stay more than a week.
Crystal said, “When you get me my dog, I want one of those with a ball of fur on its head and little balls on her ankles.”
That stumped Mitch for a second. Then he said, “A poodle?”
She wrinkled her nose, thinking. “Yeah, a poodle. A white one, one of those little ones. The real tiny kind.”
“Ah, honey? I think you might want a bigger kind of dog. Our house is sort of rowdy—”
She got a fierce frown on her face, and he stopped.
An awkward silence fell. Mitch searched desperately for things to say. She’d put on a pair of jeans, and sneakers had replaced the sandals in preparation for the colder Ohio weather. But even in these clothes she seemed small and frail.
They traveled in silence, and by the time they landed, Mitch felt so uncomfortable his throat ached. Maybe he should have left her with Jenny Litton.
No! He’d make this work, he wouldn’t take the easy way. Never again. He’d promised Anne he’d take care of everyone, and that meant taking care of them all.
Luke had used Mitch’s Jeep to take his brothers home from the airport. So Mitch rented a car for the short ride. As they climbed the hill to his house, he said, “There’s where you’re going to live.”
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, and he saw her bite her lip.
“It’s big.”
He didn’t know if that was good or bad in the eyes of this kid. The old, rambling farmhouse, white with green shutters, had seen many additions by the time he and Anne purchased it. The land hadn’t been farmed in years, and had been seeded to grass. Behind, out of view, was the pond where he’d learned to skate as a kid. If you stood in the backyard and looked across the pond, you could see the small house where he and Kathy had grown up.
In the front, the yard sloped down to a huge old red barn that he’d had converted into a garage and stable, with a new tack room attached to it. In the pasture were the kids’ ponies.
Crystal said, “Those are your horses?”
Thank God for animals, Mitch thought. “They’re not horses. They’re the ponies I told you about. I can teach you to ride them.”
“No thank you,” she said in that southern drawl. “They look too big.”
“Maybe when you get used to them—”
“They’re too big.”
“Okay,” he said quickly.
As they pulled into the driveway, the boys spilled out of the house. Jason was first, eleven, with dark hair like Mitch, an anomaly in that he was small and wiry in a family of big men. Behind him were the fifteen-year-old twins, Ryan and Tommy. The twins were blonder, like their mother had been. The oldest, Luke, was dark, too.
Jason jogged up to the car, Ryan right behind him.
Crystal scrunched up in the seat.
Mitch reached over to ruffle her hair and stopped at the last minute. He settled for a pat on the shoulder.
“They’re big,” Crystal said. Tommy and Luke, who was big by anybody’s standards, had followed Jason and Ryan. All four boys came to a halt in front of the car. There was some shoving as they peered into the car. Without looking, Ryan reached behind him and put an elbow in Tommy’s gut. Then Ryan tried to push Jason aside. Crystal scrunched up even farther.
Mitch sighed. At least there was no sign of Face-off.
He touched his niece’s arm again. “They’re nice boys, once you get to know them.”
“I don’t like boys.”
“I live here, honey. We can sit in this car for a while, but sooner or later you’ve got to get out and meet your cousins.” At that moment, Jules let out a mew from her cat carrier in the back seat. “Jules needs to get out of that carrier and explore. It’s not good for a cat to be locked up too long.”
Crystal bit her lower lip and nodded. Then she reached around and pulled the carrier toward her. She got the little wire door open and scooped the cat into her arms. “Okay. I’m ready.”
“It’s going to be fine.” Mitch reached over to her side and flipped her door handle open.
He got out of his own side of the car as Crystal opened the passenger door. “Listen, guys,” he said to his sons. “Give the kid a break. No roughhousing for a minute, you hear?”
“Sure, Dad.” As usual, Luke, his oldest, was quick to size up the situation. He said to his brothers, “Now shut up and make nice for your cousin.”
