And Baby Makes Six

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He put the dog in the laundry room, and Jenny quickly recovered her composure.

He came back into the kitchen. “Okay, time to talk. Would you like to sit down? Would you like a cup of coffee? Hey, how about some breakfast? I bet you didn’t have breakfast, and if the kids have left any cereal, or eggs, I could take a stab at frying a couple of eggs—”

Even the thought of something frying in the morning was enough to send her looking for the bathroom. “Thank you, but I’m fine.”

It occurred to her that Mitch might be nervous, too. But he had little reason to be. He had Crystal, and this incident, bad as it had been, would be hard to prove. The girl’s e-mail had arrived at Kyle Development yesterday, a few hours before the door had been shut on orders of the bankruptcy court. Lord only knew where her computer had gone. Besides, she was pretty sure this one incident wouldn’t be enough to get a judge to change custody.

“Would you like to sit here or in the family room?” Mitch asked now.

Was he stalling? “Here’s fine,” she replied.

“Oh, okay, now about that coffee…” His voice trailed off as he stood in the kitchen, looking around with a slightly bewildered expression on his face. “Did you clean up?”

“A little.”

He frowned. “You didn’t need to do that.”

“Somebody needed to.”

The frown got deeper. “I was going to handle it.”

She felt her eyebrow rising.

He noticed. “Okay, we’ll skip the coffee and get right to it.” He came over to the table and took the chair opposite hers. “You’ve obviously got your back up about this. I understand you were upset, and I know the trip up here isn’t easy—I just made it myself two weeks ago. I feel bad you felt you had to come, and I sure wish Tommy hadn’t left the phone off the hook all night long, or you could’ve called, and a five-minute conversation would have taken care of everything.”

His voice picked up speed. “The kitchen was a mess this morning. But we weren’t expecting visitors.” His back was straight, his broad chest rising above the table, his hands resting, palms down, on the surface.

She was very aware of him, but she forced herself to respond calmly. “It’s none of my business how you live, except that it has an impact on Crystal.” Her own voice was crisper than his. His had had a sort of reasonable, aw-shucks quality to it, as if he was inviting her to make light of what was a very serious situation. “This is a very serious situation,” she told him. She sounded good and prim, just like her mother, but good and prim was called for in a…serious situation like this.

A line formed between his eyes.

“I don’t think the kitchen was actually unsanitary, but added to the real problem here—”

“Crystal is okay,” he said quickly.

“This time, but that’s not the point. There are, as I see it, two points here. First, that the boys were too rough with her. Either they haven’t been told what the rules are for playing with a little girl, or they disobeyed them.”

He started to speak, but she lifted a hand and cut him off. “The other issue is more important. How is it Crystal got that upset and you didn’t know about it? She’s just lost her mother. She’s scared and vulnerable. Are you talking to her?”

“I talk to her.”

“Then how come you didn’t know that she was this upset? She was bleeding, she felt bad enough to send me an e-mail, of all things, and you didn’t even know about it.”

He got up abruptly. The chair skidded hard on the floor. He turned and walked a couple of paces toward the window. Instead of looking out, he turned to face her. She realized again just how tall he was.

“Look.” He shoved a hand into the pocket of his jeans. “It happened after school yesterday. Like most people, I work in the afternoons. It’s no different than if she got hurt after school and you were at work. It was such a nothing incident that she’d forgotten about it by the time I got home last night. She ate dinner, she did her homework, she didn’t mention a thing. I’m not a mind reader.”

“Was she quieter than usual?”

“Crystal’s always quiet.”

No, she wasn’t. Crystal was a chatterer. She chatted about Barbie and books, about the sunshine and the smell of a hot screen door after a rain, about lightning bugs and princesses with diamond tiaras. “Oh, Mitch,” Jenny said softly.

She saw him take in a breath before he turned quickly toward the window. In the little silence that followed, he noticed where she had replaced the drapery. His hand ran along the tieback in a gesture that seemed oddly vulnerable. And that vulnerability mixed her all up inside. One part of her wanted him uncaring, unfeeling, so that she’d have to find some way to take Crystal back with her.

She shook her head to clear her thoughts. Mitch wasn’t about to give up the child, so Jenny had to set him straight. “You’ve got to be talking with her. You’ve got to try to understand her, give her a chance to express herself. You work, but you’ve got to make time for her, you’ve got to make sure the boys aren’t making so much noise that you can’t check on her.” Her voice started to shake. “You owe her that, after bringing her here and changing her life, and if you can’t see that, or if you can’t handle that—”

“I’ll handle it. I am handling it.” His grip tightened on the tieback. “This whole thing has been blown way out of proportion. The kids didn’t mean anything. Crystal will adjust, she’ll see that the kids just play a little rough.”

She heard the conviction in his voice, and she was puzzled. He had everything money could buy, he had three teenagers and a younger son, a life that might be easy materially but was hard in other ways. Surely he didn’t need a little girl.

What drove him to insist on claiming Crystal? Despite herself, she couldn’t help admiring his unexpected commitment when it came to Crystal.

He turned from the window and shrugged, as if he hadn’t been white-knuckled on that tieback after all. “If it would make you feel better, why don’t you stay a few days?”

“If that would make me feel better.”

“Yeah.” He put a hand back in his pocket, a casual pose again. “I don’t think this is a big deal. But you do, so why don’t you stay a few days and look us over? Maybe you’ll see we aren’t that bad.”

Everything about this place was that bad. Worst of all was that she was so conscious of him as a man. Conscious in a way she didn’t remember feeling about Delane, or even about her first love as a teenager. That puzzled her, too. She’d always been attracted to the smoothly handsome type, the kind who knew how to dress and what wine to order. She had a feeling Mitch would be happiest with a beer.

He gave her a grin and said, “After all, we’ve got a dog that smiles, so how could we be that bad?”

He paused, but before she could speak, he added, “You could spend time with Crystal. I know she’d really like it if you stayed. I realize you have a job with a lot of responsibility, but maybe you could get a few days off, now that you’re up here.”

She decided she didn’t want to tell him she was out of a job. “Sure. I could set things up. While I’m at it, if I could use your telephone, I could make reservations at the nearest hotel.”

That would cut into her suddenly constricted budget, but Mitch was right; she should stay. Crystal had been traumatized, whether he wanted to admit it or not. The social worker was supposed to be submitting her report, but Jenny would just as soon see with her own eyes how things were really going in this household.

Mitch said, “You could stay here.”

“Here? At your house?”

“Why not? It’s big enough. And there’s the whole guest wing, with Crystal using only one of the bedrooms.”

Somehow, she couldn’t imagine staying in his house. And he certainly couldn’t want her here, toting up stray Froot Loops in order to be able to tell the judge what pigs the Oliver men were. What was his game?

But he was looking right at her, straight and sincere, and she thought maybe it was no game, that he wanted her here for the reason he’d told her: for Crystal. She had to admit that staying here would be better for her finances. Besides, if she wanted to, she could tote up the Froot Loops, in case this custody issue wasn’t really settled after all.

“Thank you. I’ll stay, perhaps for a week or so if that’s all right.”

He nodded, one graceful nod from a handsome, athletic man. He let out another long breath, and she found herself doing the same, as an odd sort of prickle went up her spine.

A quick vision formed, of him rumpled and sleepy-eyed, in his sweatpants and nothing else, goose bumps highlighting muscles that were toned and…sexy.

Did he look that way every morning?

As he’d said, the house was big…but perhaps not big enough.

CHAPTER FOUR

THAT NIGHT Mitch brought home fried chicken and coleslaw, and discovered Jenny had set the table already. “Jason helped me, showed me where everything was,” she explained. “Crystal helped, too.”

“You didn’t have to do this.”

“Well, I figured you wouldn’t mind.”

Wouldn’t mind? He sure didn’t mind. When was the last time he’d come home to find the table set? Really set, with the napkins folded, with a fork on the left, and a knife and spoon on the right, and glasses that all matched? Not very many times since Anne had died. They went to restaurants for things like that.

Jason said, “It wasn’t that hard. I remembered where everything went.” When they sat down to eat, Mitch noticed that the boys had better table manners than usual.

It made him feel a bit warmer toward the cool blonde who sat across from him, eating her fried chicken.

When dinner was over and the twins were loading the dishwasher, Jenny waylaid him on his way to the study, where he was taking the paperwork he’d brought home.

“It occurs to me,” she said quietly, “that we didn’t resolve one point this morning.”

Mentally, he groaned, but he made sure to smile at her. “What point was that?” Ma’am.

“Are you going to punish the boys for playing so rough with Crystal?”

He kept up the smile, though it was hard. He pressed his back to the hallway wall. The hallway seemed narrower than usual. Everything seemed a little odd, a little different with a woman in the house.

“I talked to them. I told them not to play so rough with Crystal.”

“And that’s all you did?”

He nodded.

“You aren’t going to discipline them?”

Discipline wasn’t his strong suit, and he certainly didn’t see the need for it in this case. “I don’t think so.”

She pursed her lips as prissy as could be. “It was fortunate that Crystal wasn’t badly hurt, but it could be a whole lot worse next time.”

“I talked to them, okay?”

“But some sort of consequences—”

He lost patience. “When did you get to be an expert on parenting?” Wrong approach, because her lips got tighter than ever.

“I’ve spent a lot of time with Crystal—”

“But you don’t have kids.”

There was a kind of charged silence. He felt bad, then, and added, “I know that not having kids doesn’t mean you can’t have an opinion, but believe me, I’ve learned in the past four years that parenting day in and day out gives you a whole different perspective.”

She spoke finally. “You’re right, of course. They’re your children, and I’m only visiting. You know best.”

He felt an urge to explain. To tell her that his kids had been through too much for him to be a heavy-handed parent. He could have said that it was easier, too, to ruffle their hair, to throw an arm over their shoulders, to just love them the way she did Crystal. But he didn’t. If she was going to judge him, he didn’t owe her anything.

Instead, he said, “Well, okay, if we’ve got all that straight, I’m going to the rink. I promised Luke’s coach that I’d help with the drills. Tommy’s in charge of the kids tonight.”

“I’ll be here.” But she said it a little timidly. As if being left with the boys was more than she’d bargained for. He winced as he heard a loud crash from the kitchen.

He made good his escape then, to the hockey rink, where it was definitely a man’s world.

THE ZAMBONI CAME OUT and started circling the rink as slowly as a street cleaner, smoothing the ice after a full practice session of the Northern Lights. Though it was nearly midnight, a youth league of smaller boys would be playing soon.

Mitch sat on the bench and shoved his hands in his pockets. It was cold out here so close to the rink.

Once upon a time, it hadn’t been cold around a hockey rink. Once, he’d been so warmed by each ninety-second session of play that his hair had been soaking wet, and he’d trickled sweat under his arms and on the inside of his palms in their gloves.

Once, sitting with the other first liners on a bench like this had been all he’d ever wanted out of life.

“Hey, guy, how’s it going?” The Northern Lights coach, Buddy Campbell, put a hand on Mitch’s shoulder and squeezed lightly before flopping into the seat beside him. A little puff of air escaped him as he sat.

“It’s going,” Mitch said briefly. The Zamboni was finishing now, lumbering almost silently off the ice. Some of the younger boys—kids Jason’s age, began to take the ice for their session.

“Can you sign this?” Mitch looked up. Most of the kids were used to seeing him here, but this one was new. A boy of about twelve was holding out his sleeve and a marker.

“Sure thing,” Mitch said, signing his name on the kid’s sleeve—the kid turned bright red and breathed Wow—and giving him a thwack on the shoulder.

The boy blushed again. “Thanks.” He took off, over the boards instead of through the doorway, hitting the ice with a burst of speed that ended in an ice-churning dead stop.

“They never ask me for my autograph,” Buddy grumbled good-naturedly. “I’m too damn old. Finished my career before most of these kids were born.”

“Sooner or later we’ll all be too old for these young guys to remember.” Regret pierced him. Five years ago he’d been well on his way to becoming a hockey legend. Then he would’ve been remembered.

That was the same time they’d discovered Anne’s cancer, and there’d been no question about playing hockey. His family had needed him home. There had been a hardship clause in his contract. The team owners had argued, but legally he’d been able to leave.

After Anne’s death, he’d longed to bury himself in the sport, pounding out his grief on the ice, numbing his sharp sadness with a fierce concentration on hockey, hockey, hockey. But there had been the boys to consider. He’d known the day she died that he wasn’t returning.

If only he didn’t miss the game so damn much! If only he hadn’t lost them both.

“Dad?”

It was Luke, with his friend, David Chandler. Luke was the star shooter for the Lights; David was a talented defenseman. They’d grown up together playing on the ice on Mitch’s pond. “Ready to go?” Mitch asked.