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“You must be very proud of him. Not many people get to make a difference every time they go to work.”
Ben seemed startled by her compliment, then he smiled slowly. “Yeah, I am proud of my dad.” Then the smile faded. Was he thinking of all the times his dad was gone?
“I don’t suppose he mentioned when he’d be home,” she said.
Ben shook his head. “There’s phone numbers on the wall.” He pointed to a bulletin board stuck above the telephone.
Jill walked over and stared at them. There was the number for the police station, a doctor, then a list of men. Travis, Jordan, Kyle and Austin.
“They’re my uncles,” Ben offered. “Except Austin. He’s not really, but we call him Uncle because we’ve known him forever.”
It must be nice, she thought, thinking of her own scattered family. She’d been an only child and her parents had split up while she was still in grade school. She’d spent the next seven years being shuffled between one household and the other, never really feeling settled or wanted in either.
“We’re done!” Danny announced.
She looked into the family room and saw four mountains of laundry. “That’s got to be twenty loads,” she said in awe.
“It’ll take forever,” Danny said.
“Maybe not forever. Maybe just until you’re in college.”
He giggled at the thought.
She made the boys soup and sandwiches for lunch. There was just enough food to get them through the day. She didn’t want to go grocery shopping without talking to Craig and finding out what her budget was. While the boys ate, she put in the first load of whites.
“I can do it loud,” C.J. said, then slurped his soup.
“That’s nothing,” Ben said, and proceeded to prove his point.
There was laughter and more slurping. She bit back a smile. These boys were different from her stepdaughters, but she liked them. They were alive and made her feel the same way. That was something she hadn’t enjoyed in a long time.
After a few minutes, the slurping became annoying. She didn’t want to tell them to just stop. Better to condition them into following the rules. Easier for everyone in the long run.
“Are you three having a slurping contest?” she asked as she closed the laundry room door behind her.
“I’m winning,” Danny said.
“Are you? Oh, that’s too bad. Whoever comes in last gets the largest serving of ice cream for dessert.”
Silence descended like night at the equator. Instantly and irrevocably. She had to fight back her smile. Ah, the power of dessert. It was a lesson she’d learned well. There was one last carton in the freezer, so she could make good on her promise. She looked at Ben and thought it might be better to get low-fat frozen yogurt next time.
C.J. glanced up at her. “You tricked us, Jill.”
“I know.” This time she allowed herself to grin. “Being a grown-up is pretty cool.”
* * *
It was nearly midnight when Craig opened the front door and stepped into the house. Jill’s car was still in the driveway. He’d forgotten to give her the garage door opener so she could park her Mustang inside. He’d also forgotten to discuss the details of her salary, give her money for food or talk about days off. He’d left in a hurry because he’d been late. And because he’d been afraid she would change her mind about taking care of the boys. Frankly, he couldn’t have blamed her.
He closed the door behind him. There was a night-light at the top of the stairs, and the house was quiet. Everyone had survived. Relief swept over him, and with it, guilt. Just because he didn’t know what to do about his boys didn’t mean he could avoid them. He had to take responsibility. Sometimes, though, it was hard being the only one they could depend on.
He glanced at the living room, then did a double take. Where there had been piles of junk sat only furniture. The dining room was the same. He moved to his right, down the small open hall and glanced into the kitchen. The counters were clear, the sink clean, the trash can empty. Beyond, in the family room, most of the toys and sports equipment had been picked up. The videotapes were off the floor and the few piles of laundry left had been sorted by color.
He moved farther into the room. The TV was off, but lights were on. Jill lay curled up asleep at one end of the sofa. All around her were piles of clean, folded laundry. He didn’t know whether to wake her up or leave her in peace. He’d never thought of the sofa as particularly comfy, but she was a lot smaller than he.
Before he could decide, she turned her head toward him and opened her eyes. The bright green color surprised him. He’d forgotten the intensity of her gaze. Then she smiled. His body reacted with all the subtlety of a freight train crashing into a brick wall. Blood flowed hot and fast. His breathing increased and an almost unfamiliar pressure swelled in his groin.
“You’re home,” she said, her voice low and husky. “I wondered if you would be. I almost called the station, but I didn’t want to bother you. Is everything okay?”
“Fine.” He motioned to the folded laundry. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you do all this work. I really was going to call a service.”
“You still are.” She sat up and stretched. The hem of her sweatshirt rode up, exposing the barest sliver of bare belly before descending and hiding all from view. “I don’t mind doing the laundry and cooking, but I’m scared to go into the boys’ bathroom. I think they’ve invented some new fungus, and I don’t want to have to battle it.”
“I’ll call on Monday,” he promised.
She shifted so she was leaning against the arm of the sofa and rested her chin on the back. “I already did. They’ll be here at ten. Are you hungry?”
His stomach rumbled at the question. “I guess I am. Come to think of it, I didn’t have time to eat today.”
She rose to her feet. She must have been asleep for a while. Her hair was all spiky, and it reminded him of their encounter that morning. When she’d been in her robe…and nothing else.
The mental image did nothing to alleviate his now-painful condition. Nor did he want it to. It had been far too long since he’d desired a woman. He didn’t have to do anything about it with Jill. In a way it was enough to still be able to feel something.
“Don’t be too impressed,” she said, leading the way into the kitchen. “It’s just pizza. There isn’t much here, but I didn’t want to go grocery shopping without talking to you first.”
“I’m sorry about that, too. I just took off and dumped everything on you. I’d meant to discuss some things, but I had to go in and…” He gave her a halfhearted smile and rubbed the back of his neck. The pain there was pretty constant, the sort of nagging ache brought on by too much stress and too little of everything else.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said. She opened a box on the counter and slid three slices of thin-crust pizza with everything onto a plate. Then she put it into the microwave oven to heat and opened the refrigerator. “Water, milk, soda or beer?”
“Beer.”
She took the bottle and untwisted the cap. “Have a seat,” she said, handing him the drink and motioning to the kitchen table. She poured a glass of water for herself.
He stared at it for a moment. “I’m trying to remember the last time I saw this kitchen so clean.”
“Judging from the number of dishes we put through the dishwasher, I would say some time last Christmas.” She held up her hand before he could speak. “Don’t apologize again. I understand. But we do have a few details to work out.”
He settled in the seat at the head of the table and gratefully drank his beer. She pulled the pizza out of the oven and gave it to him, then took the chair opposite his. While he ate, they discussed her salary, the grocery budget, the kids’ schedules for school and sports.
“Danny and C.J. need to be picked up but Ben takes the bus,” he said, then bit into the third piece of pizza.
She sat cross-legged on the kitchen chair. Just looking at her folded legs made his knees throb. She’d run her hands through her hair, but there were still spiky tufts sticking up. Most of the lights in the house were off. Only the lamp in the family room and a small light over the stove illuminated the kitchen. In the dim room, her pupils were huge, nearly covering her irises, and her eyes looked black against her pale skin.
Her small hands fluttered gracefully as she moved. She made notes on a yellow pad, detailing where to pick up whom and what foods made the boys gag.
“I’m not a fancy cook, but pretty much everything I put together is edible,” she said.
“That’s all we require.”
She glanced at him. “This has been hard on you, hasn’t it?”
“Yeah.” He took a swallow of beer and set the bottle on the table. “Since Mrs. Miller left there’s been four different women in here. I guess she spoiled us. I didn’t think it would be that difficult to replace her, but I was wrong.”
“Well, you’ve got another five weeks until you have to think about that.”
He raised his eyebrows. “What happened to our one-week trial?”
She shrugged. “I spent the day with the boys, and I think I can handle it. Unless they don’t like me, I can’t think of a reason why I can’t stay the agreed time. At least it will save you from having to look for someone instantly.”
“I think I’ve interviewed nearly every nanny in a fifty-mile radius.”
He supposed he could have put the boys in some kind of day-care program and then just hired sitters for the weekends, but that never seemed to work out. He had to coordinate meals, cleaning, food shopping. It was easier to find one person to do it all. He was fortunate enough to have the money to pay for outside help. Every day he saw people who survived on much less.
“Now you get a break,” Jill said. “Besides, staying here gives me some time, too. When Kim and her husband come home from their honeymoon, the last thing they’ll want is a houseguest. I was going to have to look for my own place anyway. I haven’t decided if I want to stay here or go back to San Clemente.” She looked at him and smiled. “Now I don’t have to.”
Intellectually he knew his boys were sleeping upstairs. There were neighbors across the street and next door. He and Jill were hardly alone. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling of the world having been reduced to just the two of them. In the brief silences of their conversation he could hear the soft sound of her breathing. Despite his best effort to keep his attention above her shoulders, his gaze was drawn again and again to her chest. Not just to stare at her breasts, although they stirred his imagination, but also to watch her breathe. She wasn’t like any woman he’d ever dated. Of course, he was getting old and there was a chance he couldn’t remember back that far.
He studied her hands on the glass. Her slender fingers made random patterns in the condensation. Her nails were short and unpainted, but still feminine. He couldn’t get over how small she was, every part of her perfectly proportioned, but little. Krystal had been tall, nearly five-nine. Most of the women he’d dated had been tall, as well.
“I didn’t know how you wanted to handle discipline with the boys,” she said.
“Ben’s already been a problem?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Why assume it was him?”
“C.J. is very charming and fun-loving. Like my brother Kyle. He prefers to get his way by cajoling. Danny is going to be shy for the first couple of days, which leaves only Ben.”
Ben had also been a problem in the past. Craig grimaced as he remembered the reports from Ben’s teachers. The boy was sullen and uncooperative. His grades continued to be good, but he didn’t participate in group activities.
“I did convince him to behave,” she said, then stared down at the table. “But I’m not sure you’ll approve of the method.” She glanced up, her gaze sheepish. “I didn’t know if you did time-outs or sent the boys to their rooms, and I was afraid if I demanded he do something, he wouldn’t. He’s even taller than me.”
“So what did you do?”
“I challenged him to an arm-wrestling match. If I won, he had to do what I said. If he won, he got to watch TV for the rest of the weekend.” She paused and took a sip of water. “I don’t know if it’s right or not, but when kids get old enough, I like to work out a compromise with them. Time-outs, then removing privileges. I make deals, because that’s a part of life. No one gets everything all the time.”
He was intrigued. And impressed. “Did you win?”
She smiled slowly. “Yes, but at first I was afraid I wasn’t going to. For what it’s worth, he was a very gracious loser.”
“That’s something.” The pain at the back of his neck got worse. He rubbed it, wondering when it was going to go away. Probably about the time he got his life together. Like in the next century or so.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing. Just stress.”
“Do you want some aspirin?”
“That would be great.”
She walked across the family room and into her bedroom. When she returned carrying two pills in the palm of her hand, he felt another flash of pain that had nothing to do with the tightness of his muscles. This one involved his soul.
He missed being a part of someone’s life. He missed the day-to-day sameness of married life. He didn’t miss being married to Krystal, but he missed being emotionally committed to a woman.
He looked at Jill, at her pert features and her bright green eyes. She smiled as she handed over the medication. Their hands barely touched, yet he felt the jolt all the way to his groin.
He’d hired Jill for the boys, to make their lives stable. He hadn’t known inviting her into his home was going to cause him to want all the things he knew he could never have.
Chapter Four (#ulink_86d46fb7-de24-5417-9f15-4abaeceec8b0)
“How was your day?” Jill asked as Craig took the aspirin and swallowed.
He hesitated, not sure how to answer her question. A lot of his special project was confidential. Before he could decide what to tell her she settled in the seat opposite him and wrinkled her nose.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said briskly. “I understand you’re involved in something secret. I wasn’t asking to get privileged information, I was just being polite. You know. How was your day? My day was fine. That sort of thing.”
She tugged on a sleeve of her sweatshirt, pulling the cuff until it was up near her elbow. As she repeated the procedure on her other arm, he noticed how small and delicate her wrists were.
“I’m not used to someone asking,” he said at last, mostly because it was the truth. Lately no one had been around enough to bother. He leaned back in his chair and studied the bottle of beer in front of him. “It was…difficult. Every time I think I’m immune to the scum of the world, they manage to surprise me.”
She scooted forward and rested her elbows on the table. “What are they doing now?”
“I can’t talk about the specifics of the case, but I’ll tell you what was reported in the press.” He grimaced. “Not on the front page, of course. Someone ripping off the elderly isn’t exciting enough.”
“Is that what’s going on?”
“Yeah. There’s a ring of three, maybe four people who get in accidents with senior drivers. They’ll stop suddenly so they get rear-ended, or they turn left on a yellow light and drive slow enough to get hit. Anything to make the victims think the accident is their fault. Then they pretend to be concerned, talking about how an aging parent lost his or her license because of an accident. They mention increased insurance rates. It’s based on truth, which makes it more frightening for the victims. Often they convince the senior drivers to pay in cash for damages to the car.”
“The price of which is several times what it’s supposed to be, right?” Jill asked, her green eyes flashing with anger. “How horrible. I don’t understand people like that. It’s cruel and ugly. I’m glad you’re doing something to stop them.”
Craig stared at her, surprised by the vehemence of her reaction. Sometimes he talked to his brothers about his work. Except for Jordan, they were cops and they understood. Krystal never had. When he’d tried to talk about his work, she’d gotten bored. In her opinion the fools of the world got what they deserved.
Now, with the perfect vision of hindsight, he wondered what he’d ever seen in her. But he already knew the answer to that question. At twenty-two she’d been stunningly beautiful with a body that could tempt a saint. She knew how to use her best assets to her advantage, and for some reason, she’d set her sights on him. He hadn’t been thinking with his head when he’d proposed. The worst of it was, he couldn’t even regret what had happened between them. Marrying Krystal had been a mistake, but he would do it all over again if given the choice. The reward of his children wasn’t something he could wish away.
“It’s slow going,” he said, and shrugged. “I’m working with a team of elderly citizens. We’re mounting a sting operation.”
She grinned. “I bet they’re great to work with.”
“They are,” he agreed. “There’s this one woman, Mrs. Hart. She lives alone. She’s got to be seventy, but you’d never know it. She’s been begging me to let her wear a wire.” He glanced at Jill. “A microphone and tape. She keeps cruising around the seniors center and the bingo halls, hoping they’ll pick her. I keep telling her she’s seen too many movies.”
“She sounds terrific.”
“Yeah.” His smile faded and he hunched over his beer. “I hope they don’t get her. A couple of the accidents didn’t go as planned. The timing was off, or the jerks doing this stopped too soon. A woman was killed.”
“Oh, Craig.” She reached across the table and touched his hand with her fingers. The light brush wasn’t erotic. Nor was it meant to be. Instead, the caring gesture offered comfort and he accepted it.
“We’ll get ’em. I don’t usually do this kind of work, but the detectives needed some assistance and I volunteered. When the hours keep me away from the kids, I try to justify it by telling myself I’m doing the right thing.”
“You are,” she assured him. She pulled her hand away and laced her fingers together on the edge of the table. “Why a cop?”
