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“This small one. The big ones you’re carrying are the girls’. I’ll take mine back down.”
She had just started down the steps when Tansy said, “Wow! Lookit this!”
All of a sudden Finn’s hand reached out and snatched the little girl out of the room and shut the door abruptly. “In here,” he said, steering her into the other bedroom as Izzy stared. “For now.”
Izzy looked closely. Was that a flush deepening on Finn MacCauley’s tanned cheeks? A smile quirked the corner of her mouth.
Finn dropped the girls’ duffels in the smaller bedroom at the end of the hall. “Back downstairs,” he commanded, herding them all in front of him. Izzy gave him an arch smile, which he determinedly ignored.
Once they were back downstairs, though, his battery seemed to run out. He stood and stared at them mutely, then looked at Izzy in silent appeal.
“Dinner?” she suggested. “You must be hungry, girls?”
Tansy and Pansy nodded.
Finn latched onto the suggestion like a drowning man tossed a life preserver. He headed toward the refrigerator with alacrity, opened the door, stooped and stared. And stared some more.
The girls edged over to stand next to him. Finally Tansy ventured, “You don’t got much. Milk an’ beer an’ what’s that?”
“Pickles.” Finn straightened, sighed and shut the refrigerator door. He flicked Izzy what might have been an apologetic look. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
“How about take-out?”
Both girls jumped up and down. “Ooh, yeah!” Pansy exclaimed. “Moo goo gai pan! Kung Fu Pork and Beans!”
“Kung Fu what?” Finn gaped.
Izzy shrugged lamely. “There was this weird Chinese take-away down the street from us. Sort of...nontraditional.” A grin flickered. “They specialized in dim sum and barbecue. Meg used to get supper there pretty often.”
Finn didn’t look surprised. “Whatever you say.” He fetched a stack of take-out menus from a drawer in the kitchen and handed them to the girls. “Take your pick. I’ll be right back.”
While Izzy read the hard words to them, Finn disappeared back upstairs. Izzy was beginning to wonder if he’d vanished out the fire escape when at last she heard his footsteps clattering back down the wooden stair treads. She turned just in time to see him paste a smile on his face. “All right, let’s get moving. Ready to go, girls?” he said briskly, heading toward the door.
Pansy shrank back, but Tansy came after him and thrust a bright pink paper menu into his hand. “This place.”
Finn glanced at it. “Good choice.” He opened the door. Tansy preceded him. Pansy hung back. Izzy didn’t move at all. He looked back at her. “Well?” he said sharply.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather have them to yourself for a few minutes?”
“Damn sure.”
“Mister—”
“I know. I know. Don’t swear. Come along. They’re hungry. Who knows what six-year-old girls do when they’re hungry?” He looked at them as if they might take a chunk out of his ankle at any moment. He made a growling sound deep in his throat.
Pansy, mistaking the tone for an indication that he just might take a bite out of her, skittered nervously past him. Tansy merely giggled. Izzy, seeing that he wasn’t moving unless she did, sighed and brushed past him out the door.
The walk to and from the Chinese restaurant, though it was only three blocks away, was the final straw for two very tired little girls. The early morning trip to the airport, the long transcontinental flight, the taxi ride into Manhattan followed by their traumatic meeting with their uncle and another long ride uptown had done them in.
They barely touched the moo goo gai pan. They nibbled at the five-spice chicken wings, and they all but fell asleep in the bird’s nest soup. It was a good thing the four of them carried all the food home to eat it, Izzy thought.
When Tansy’s head dipped and jerked up, then dipped again and finally hit the table, Izzy said, “I think they’ve had it.” Pansy had already been asleep in her chair for the past ten minutes.
Finn, who had been shoveling in food silently since they’d sat down, now said, “Thank God. Shall I carry them upstairs or will they wake up?”
The way he said it told her how much he wanted to avoid that. She wondered if he planned to spend the next two weeks ignoring them completely. He’d certainly done his best during dinner.
“I think you can carry them. Once they drift off, they’re usually dead to the world.”
“Had a lot of experience with them, have you?”
Izzy shrugged awkwardly. “They’ve stayed with us a few times.” She stood up and carried her plate to the sink, then came back to pick up the girls’ plates. Finn was still sitting at the table, watching her. She averted her gaze, focusing entirely on clearing the table.
Finally he shoved back his chair and went around the table to pick up Tansy. He looked awkward and more than a little tentative as he did so. When he straightened he looked at Izzy. “Come with me and pull back the covers.”
Izzy followed him. Whatever Tansy had seen on the bedroom wall he had obviously removed while she and the twins were deciding on dinner. All she could see now was a king-size bed with a navy blue duvet, a teak dresser completely devoid of anything at all, and a couple of rather whiter-than-the-walls spots where two pictures had obviously hung.
He saw Izzy’s glance go to the bare spots and gave her a steely look, then settled Tansy onto the bed. While Izzy turned down the covers on the other side, then brought in the girls’ bags, he went back downstairs for her sister.
Izzy was just slipping Tansy into a thin cotton gown when he got back with Pansy cradled in his arms. He laid her on the far side of the bed, then stood silently by and watched while Izzy removed her shirt and shorts, then put a gown on her as well. Then she pulled the summer-weight duvet over them.
“Probably should have made sure they brushed their teeth,” Izzy said as she bent to drop a kiss on each girl’s forehead. “But I guess they’ll survive one night without. Their toothbrushes are in their bags. I’m sure you won’t have any trouble finding them.” She flicked a reassuring smile in Finn’s direction, then stepped back and waited for him to give them each a kiss as well.
He didn’t move. He just stood in the doorway, looking down at the two small bodies in the very big bed. His expression was unreadable. Finally he sighed, raked a hand through his hair, and turned and walked away.
Izzy watched him go.
The girls wouldn’t care that he hadn’t kissed them. Probably Pansy would be relieved. But still...
It’s not your business, Izzy told herself firmly as she shut out the light. You did your part. And that was true, but she wished she felt better about leaving the girls with him. She wished he had at least kissed them.
He was standing by the French doors staring out into the waning summer twilight when she came down the stairs. His hands were jammed into the front pockets of his faded jeans, his shoulders were slightly slumped. A swath of dark hair fell across his forehead. He didn’t look particularly piratical now, unless he was a pirate whose ship had just been boarded and sunk.
Izzy would have liked to say something cheerful. She didn’t think the words had been invented yet. She cleared her throat. “I...really do have to be going now.”
He turned. “A rat abandoning the sinking ship?” he said, his mouth twisting wryly. The metaphor was so close to her own that she blinked.
“You’ll be fine,” she assured him.
He snorted. “Yeah, right. They look like they expect me to kill them.”
“They’re nervous. They’ll calm down. It won’t happen all at once. You can’t expect it to. But you were a little...nicer over dinner.”
“I didn’t say anything at all over dinner.”
“Which was a distinct improvement,” Izzy said tartly. “But,” she went on, determined to give him his due, “I understand what a shock this was for you. I had no idea Meg hadn’t told you she was sending them.”
“Yeah, well, that’s Meg. A shock a minute.”
“Surely you know someone who can keep an eye on them for you?”
He grimaced. “Strong. Though I don’t think it really comes under the heading of office management.”
“No,” Izzy agreed. “Maybe she has a daughter.” She paused. “But you wouldn’t know that, would you?” He didn’t seem to know anything else.
Finn shoved his hair back. “No, I wouldn’t know that.”
“It’s only for two weeks. Take a vacation.”
“Just like that? Drop everything and—”
She picked up her bag and began to rummage through it. “I almost forgot. Meg gave me a letter for you.” She tugged out the slightly crumpled envelope. It had been slightly crumpled when Meg had given it to her, so she hadn’t worried about simply stuffing it in her bag. Now she held it out to him. When he took it, she zipped up her bag and shouldered it, then moved toward the door.
Finn slit the envelope and began to read. He said a rude word. A very rude word. And then another.
Izzy’s head snapped around. He was staring at the letter in his hand, then he crushed it in his fist. “She can’t do this! Damn it! She can’t! I won’t let her!”
Izzy blinked, then realized that Meg must have used the letter to inform him that she was planning to marry Roger. “Maybe it won’t be so bad. Marriage might be the making of them.”
“Marriage?” He stared at her. “They’re only six.”
“I meant Meg. Isn’t that—Didn’t Meg tell you she was marrying Roger?”
“I wanted her to marry Roger!”
“You did? I can’t imagine why,” Izzy said with perhaps more bluntness than absolutely necessary.
“Neither can I now.”
“Then what are you fussing about?”
“Because she’s marrying Roger, all right, but she’s decided she was wrong about him. He isn’t stable enough or responsible enough for fatherhood.” Once more his blue eyes bored into Izzy’s and he waved the letter in her face. “She’s given me permanent custody of the girls!”
It wasn’t her fault.
Nor was it her responsibility. They weren’t her responsibility. None of them. Not Tansy. Not Pansy. Not the black-haired pirate.
Going to Sam’s was her responsibility. Seeing Sam. Being with her fiancé, beginning a real engagement together at last.
But she couldn’t get Finn MacCauley and his nieces out of her mind. What would happen when the girls woke up? Would they have nightmares? Would Finn know how to deal with them if they did?
As the taxi whizzed through Central Park toward Sam’s Upper East Side apartment, Izzy found herself worrying more and more.
It wasn’t until the cab pulled up outside an elegant Fifth Avenue apartment building that Izzy let another worry enter her head.
Should she have told Sam she was coming?
Should she have called him? Should she have at least written?
But then, Sam appeared out of the blue on her doorstep often enough. He had never warned her. In fact every time he’d appeared in her life, he’d come unannounced, appeared on the doorstep, daisies in hand, a beguiling smile on his face, determined to whisk her away on some crazy, romantic outing. That was one of the things she loved about him.
Well, now it was her turn.
But as she peered out the window at the marble facade of the building, she began to have second thoughts. She’d never quite thought about where Sam lived until this moment. When Finn had led her into his brownstone, she’d thought it was the sort of place Sam might call home and she was pleased.
This building wasn’t a brownstone. There didn’t seem to be a multitude of brownstones on Fifth Avenue. Actually there didn’t seem to be any. All the buildings seemed to be bigger and fancier, with exquisite wrought-iron gratings over tall windows, and heavy double doors set back beneath awnings. And they all seemed to have doormen.
Surely Sam didn’t have a doorman!
But the driver said, “This is it, lady,” and she knew, just as surely, that Sam did.
She fumbled in her purse for cab fare. Then, clutching her duffel bag against her chest, she climbed out. The cab sped away, leaving her standing on the curb, staring at the heavy oak and glass doors above which in gold numerals—maybe even gold leaf, Izzy thought with dismay—was the address to which she had sent all her letters to Sam.
Izzy ran her tongue over her lips. In all the time she’d envisioned Sam as her Prince Charming, she’d never ever thought he lived in anything remotely like a castle. Why hadn’t he told her?
Because it hadn’t mattered to him. She was what mattered to him—not the fact that he lived in splendor and she lived in a slightly seedy-looking old Victorian monstrosity that had far in the past seen more paint and better days.
She approached the doors hesitantly, two steps, then three, then stopped. She reached up and tried to judge just how messed up her hair was. Why hadn’t she thought to comb it before she left Finn MacCauley’s? She started to fish around in her bag for a comb when she was suddenly jostled aside as two very elegant young women swept past her, heading for the door.
Their hair was combed. In fact, not a single strand was out of place. Probably never had been. Izzy touched her own again, feeling the tangles and frizz. She bit down on her lip. They were wearing lipstick, too. She could see it as they turned to each other and smiled.
“It was gold. Sam saw it at Tiffany’s. He told me so,” she heard one of them say.
“No! Not really!” the other replied and gave a musical laugh. There was no other word for it—it was musical . And Tiffany’s? Sam went to Tiffany’s?
Then the door opened—not because they had deigned to lift a hand to do it but because the doorman—just as she’d feared—pushed it and held it open so they could enter. “Good evening, Miss Talbot, Miss Sutcliffe.” He very nearly bowed.
Izzy goggled.
The door shut once more. But not before the doorman gave her a very hard stare. It was almost as if he’d looked at her and said, “Move along. Move along now. No riffraff here.”
Izzy bristled. Doorman or no doorman, she wasn’t turning tail and running now. Just because it wasn’t exactly what she had expected, still it was where Sam lived. All she had to do was ask for Sam.
She marched up to the door.
It didn’t open. The doorman just looked at her. She opened it herself. Halfway. And then the doorman grabbed the handle on the other side and held it there. “Yes?”
“I’ve come to see Sam Fletcher, please.”
He looked down his nose at her, but he was too well bred to sniff. “Mr. Fletcher is away.”
“Away? Where away?” God, why hadn’t she called?
The doorman didn’t reply. Discretion was probably his first name. And last and middle.
“For how long?” she asked.
Another dead end.
