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She tucked a length of hair behind her ear and looked away, as if the personal subject made her uncomfortable. She adjusted Andrew on her hip and the boy’s hand dropped from her breast. Mitch made himself look at her eyes. Equally as disturbing.
“About twenty-five minutes, then?” she asked.
He refocused on their conversation. “I’ll be there.”
Almost an hour later she carried two frosted glasses of iced tea out to the porch and they settled on the weathered furniture. She crossed her smooth, distracting legs. She had to know what a distraction that was, but she seemed to not notice his perusal. Her toes peeked from her sandals, revealing delicate nails painted a pale pink.
Mitch purposely studied one of the barn cats that lay in a sliver of sunlight. The feline gave him a disinterested blink and flicked his tail against the porch floor in a rhythmic beat.
“First, it’s important that you know I’m under time pressure to get this done and get back home,” Heather told Mitch.
“I understand.” He’d never met anyone who wasn’t in a hurry to get a construction project finished. “There’s quite a bit I can do on my own,” he said. “But the more help I can hire, the faster it’ll go. But since money is tight, we can’t bring in too many workers.”
“How many will speed things up?”
“Even two or three would help a lot.”
“Can I afford them?”
“I’ll contract them. That way they’ll be getting paid as the work progresses, even though I won’t get paid until the sale goes through. How’s that?”
She looked surprised. “That’s more than I expected. You wouldn’t survive a week in San Francisco, doing business this way.”
“You can get ripped off by paying for services ahead of the finished work,” he replied, thinking she was biting the hand that fed her if that had been criticism.
“Noted,” she said with a nod.
“Let’s decide how extensive you want this renovation, and make a budget.”
Again she looked surprised, as though she hadn’t expected him to be this professional. After seeing his ineptitude with his kids, her surprise might be justified, he thought wryly.
She walked him through the house, and he took notes and made lists on the tablet in his black folder. He asked her questions and made suggestions until their ideas for the project were compatible.
They entered the wood-floored living room where the kids were sprawled on sleeping bags, watching a cartoon.
“Do you have a computer?” he asked.
She nodded. “I brought it with me so I could work.”
“Good. I have a program for designing kitchens and baths that you can play with. You give it the specs, lay out the requirements, and it designs the blueprints. Saves a lot of money and the plans are easy to work from. I’ve used it dozens of times. Let’s go outside.”
She nodded and they walked out to survey the house and outbuildings together.
“The house is good and solid, and the land is valuable. Your father had a nice operation going here at one time. I would think it would be hard to sell and leave it all to strangers.”
She glanced at the cloudless blue sky, then down the length of the drive. “I have a good job waiting for me.”
Not an explanation. Not a word about any sentimental ties or feelings of regret at selling. Nothing personal at all. He’d been neatly kept at a distance. Her impersonal treatment shouldn’t have bothered him; he was a professional. But it did. For some reason what she thought of him mattered. And she obviously didn’t think him worthy of her thoughts or feelings.
He took her cue and stayed on the subject of the work. Another hour later he climbed into his truck, praying it would start again, and gave her a salute when the engine turned over and he drove off.
Beneath the plastic sheeting the seat was wet, and the once-blue carpeting was green and slimy. The whole cab smelled like skunky water. He’d called around and found a place willing to clean the interior, but it wasn’t going to be cheap. There was still the matter of the creased fender, too.
Taylor and Ashley would never make enough allowance in their combined lifetimes to pay for this fiasco, and he still wasn’t sure how to handle their behavior. Last night, he’d given them each a stern lecture and grounded them to their room. He and the girls shared a room in Garrett’s house, which Mitch had twin-proofed, so there had been no way to separate them. Since they’d had each other, he wasn’t sure just how effective the evening’s confinement had been.
Besides, he thought, pulling into the drive, taking them to Cade and Leanne’s today had given them another reprieve.
He found the three of them on the side lawn, engaged in a chaotic game of croquet. Cade merely shook his head, rubbed his shin, and turned the girls over to their father.
“Thanks, man,” Mitch said. “I owe you one.”
“You owe me two,” his half brother replied with a wry grin.
Mitch agreed with a laugh, belted the girls into the borrowed ranch truck, and drove to his grandfather’s ranch.
“Daddy, we’re bored,” Ashley said, jumping out of the truck and bouncing on the balls of her feet.
“I have to take my truck to get it cleaned, and you two are grounded.”
“But you left us all day!” Taylor said, wide-eyed.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t have a good time with Uncle Cade.”
“But we want to go get some ice cream. It’s boring here.”
As usual, Mitch couldn’t bring himself to be harder, because he felt sorry for them. They had no mother. Somehow these incidents just never seemed important enough to disrupt life more, to make his girls even more unhappy.
Ashley pouted and plopped herself on the lawn, her grass-stained knees drawn up to her chin. Taylor took his hand and pumped it persistently. What had happened to those darling, angelic babies? When had they become manipulators?
“All right. Let’s go get some ice cream.”
“And rent a movie, Daddy?” Ashley begged.
He wasn’t doing the right thing, but he didn’t know what to do, and he didn’t know how to change this cycle of behavior. The twins were confused. This was another new situation, and they’d been faced with so many adjustments in their short lives.
He hoped that once the work started at the Bolton ranch, his girls wouldn’t make the days miserable for all of them. He just had no idea how to ensure that.
Arranging bids and hiring his helpers took most of the week, but by the following Monday, work was under way. Mitch had pulled a lot of strings and taken advantage of small-town kindness to hasten the progress, and Heather appreciated his efforts.
He and the three men he’d hired had been tearing off the back porch and the shingles most of the morning. Heather figured she’d better get used to the racket; this was only the first day.
She’d shopped in Billings and ordered via the Internet to acquire materials to teach and entertain five children for several weeks. Organization was the key to keeping things running smoothly, so she’d scheduled their days on a calendar with classes and crafts and playtime.
This morning, Taylor slumped in her chair and refused to participate. She glared at Heather. “You can’t make me.”
“You’re right, I guess. I can’t make you. You’ll just have to sit there and be bored.”
Taylor folded her arms over her chest and belligerently raised her chin. “I want to watch a video.”
“It’s not video time until after lunch.”
Taylor scowled and kicked the table leg with her swinging foot.
Heather took a deep breath and turned back to the table. A few minutes later, while showing Patrick how to connect the numbered dots on a page, she heard Taylor jump up from the table.
The child ran for the back door—the door they’d all been warned not to use—twisted the bolt and threw open the door. A scream ripped from her throat as she disappeared from sight.
Heather reached the opening and stared four feet down at the pile of boards and rubble where the girl had landed. “Taylor! Are you all right?”
Mitch scrambled down the ladder from where he’d been ripping off boards and bounded over the debris to his daughter. Crying indignantly, the child sat and raised her bleeding knee.
“Honey, didn’t you hear me tell all of you not to come out that door?” he asked.
Heather stared down at the top of his head. “She heard you, all right.”
He glanced up. “What happened?”
Taylor wiped hair away from her eyes and glared at Heather. “She’s mean. I don’t like her. I wanna go back to our grampa’s ranch.”
“Taylor, Heather is not mean. You can’t go back until we all go back together tonight. Heather is taking care of you during the day while I work. I explained that.”
She managed to make her chin quiver. “She tried to make me draw pictures I don’t want to color.”
Mitch propped a small ladder from the ground to the doorway above. He picked up Taylor. “Let’s get this cut cleaned and bandaged.”
Heather moved back and watched him enter the kitchen and sit his daughter on the chair she’d earlier occupied.
“Look what I made, Daddy.” Ashley held up the picture she’d drawn.
Mitch praised her artwork and accepted the plastic first-aid kit Heather supplied. He paused in cleaning his daughter’s knee to survey Heather’s expression.
Feeling helpless, she merely raised a brow. He must feel this way all the time.
Taylor immediately started to cry again. “My leg hurts!”
Mitch met Heather’s gaze, his confusion obvious. “Here, let me get a bandage on, and you can go rest for a while.”
“Can I watch a video?”
“Sure, as long as you’re sitting quietly.”
Over his shoulder, Taylor gave Heather a smug look and allowed her tears to subside.
Heather did a slow burn. “It’s still lesson time,” she said. “I planned videos for after lunch.”
Mitch straightened. “Couldn’t we bend the schedule just a little to accommodate today’s problems?”
“May I have a word with you alone?” she asked.
“Can I have a cookie, too?” Taylor asked.
Mitch glanced from his daughter to Heather.
“They haven’t had lunch yet,” she supplied.
“Excuse us for a minute,” Mitch said. “Girls, you sit here while I talk to Heather.”
Wondering all the while what she’d gotten herself into, Heather followed him into the living room. He led the way, as though he’d taken charge of this situation, and his assumption ruffled her.
“It seems to me that constantly bending the schedule—and the rules—is the main problem here,” she said in a low, controlled voice.
His expression darkened. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I know they’re not angels. I haven’t known what to do with them most of the time. But I think they need a little flexibility.”
“Maybe it’s stability they need.”
His eyes seemed to soften. And his voice, when he spoke again, was laced with a combination of vulnerability and tenderness. “Can’t there be both?”
Four
H eather took a deep breath. She was a stickler for details, she knew that. She functioned best with order and discipline. Her children had always done fine under her leadership. But they had seemed to blossom more since they’d been at the ranch—since their days weren’t consumed with rigorous schedules. Perhaps there was a compromise.
She drew herself up and looked Mitch in the eye. “All right.”
She led the way back to the kitchen. “We’ll take a break and have some free time,” she said to the children. “You can watch a video or draw or anything you want until lunch.”
The kids looked at each other and grinned cheerfully.
Mitch gave her a grateful smile, then turned to have a few words with his girls. Within minutes he headed back outside.
By lunch Heather’s nerves were still on edge. She prepared sandwiches and sliced fruit and ushered the children out the front door for a picnic on the side lawn, where they could be entertained watching the workers.
“I don’t like tuna,” Taylor complained, peeling back her bread and wrinkling her nose.
“Me neither,” Ashley agreed. “I want skettios.”
“I’ll get some skettios for later in the week, but for now, we’re having tuna.”
“I don’t like it,” they chorused.
“Then don’t eat it.”
They looked at one another and blinked. Taylor looked back. “You’re not gonna make us eat it?”
“Nope.”
Taylor nestled onto the checkered tablecloth as though she’d won a battle. “What do we get, then?”
“There are chips on your plate and apple and orange slices.”
