One Summer’s Knight

That was when it had first come to him, the question she’d suggested to him, the question he’d been asking himself ever since: What in the world was he getting himself into?

Riley knew evil very well. He knew what it was to be stalked by it, to he hidden and chilled while evil hunted him through the long, dark night. But it had been a long time since he’d made a solemn vow to himself that he would never live in that kind of fear, or in the proximity of evil, ever again-thirty years, as a matter of fact. Ironically, thirty years almost exactly. He’d conducted his life ever since with that vow as his guiding light, had chosen to go into civil instead of criminal law because of it. Because he had no desire to rub shoulders with the criminals and predators of this world, he’d seen enough of those. Not that civil law didn’t provide him with ample opportunity to witness more than his share of wrongdoing and shady dealings and other shabby aspects of human nature. But in his practice, those generally had more to do with avarice and greed than with pure, out-and-out evil. And as it happened, other people’s greed had provided Riley with the means to insulate himself against evil. He’d done a damn good job of it. Until now.

What had he done? And why?

There in his study, in the blessed silence of the wee hours of morning, Riley sipped his brandy and thought about it. But the only answer he could come up with hung in his mind like a pale oval moon. Summer Robey’s face. Summer Robey’s eyes…

For the first time in many years, Riley awoke with his skin prickly and clammy, breath thick in his throat, heart pounding. Danger! Something was there-right there, surrounding him. He could hear it rustling…feel its warm, moist breath.

Already charged with adrenaline, he opened his eyes. His fingers digging deep into the arms of the chair were all that kept him from exploding out of it. There before him, inches away, a face hung like a small, oval moon.

Voices whispered hoarsely. “See? I told you he was awake.”

“Well, he is now.” A second moon appeared beside the first, this one a little farther away. “You woke him up, that’s what you did.”

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

“Uh-uh-Beatle did. See?”

At that point Riley realized that something was prodding him-very lightly-in the groin. Then on his abdomen… belly…ribs…chest. A third face appeared, a goblin face-dark, almost black, with huge, round buggy eyes. It was much smaller than the first two but so close to his own it eclipsed them both. Something cool and wet-a tongue!- slapped across Riley’s lips…then his nose. Aagh-into his nostrils!

He swiped at it, a maneuver that only seemed to excite the tongue’s owner, who apparently viewed the slap as some sort of game. Tiny feet danced an eager tattoo on his belly and chest as Riley threw up his hands in a futile attempt to defend himself. But he was simply no match for that tongue, which feinted this way and darted that way and managed to hit its targets with unerring accuracy.

Finally, somehow, he managed to sputter, “Umph-get…it…off.…of…me!” And just like that, the onslaught ceased.

Then, for a few moments, Riley simply sat-or more accurately, lay-half in and half out of his favorite chair with his legs sprawled across the ottoman, the bathrobe he’d wrapped himself in just before settling down with his brandy so few hours ago hitched up around his neck and gaping open on his chest. He lay there, breathing hard and glaring at the three small faces, which had prudently moved back a step out of range.

“We’re sorry we woke you up.” The voice came from the largest of the faces as it attempted to hide behind the perkedup ears of the smallest. It sounded apprehensive, and matched the worry crease that had dug itself in between the sky-blue eyes and childish brows. Riley realized that he’d seen eyes like those, and an almost identical pleat, before.

He cleared his throat and managed to scoot into a more-orless erect position, just as the third face thrust itself brashly forward. Nothing scared about those eyes-uh-uh, no, sir. No sign of a worry crease there.

“Beatle has to go outside,” the second voice announced. Helen-that was the child’s name. And why did that immediately make Riley think of hellion? “Mom said we have to ask you first, in case there might be a burglar.”

“Burglar alarm.” That was the other one, the boy David.

“That’s what I meant,” said Helen, scowling at her brother before turning her inquisitive gaze back to Riley. “Is there?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact.” Riley pushed himself upward and out of the chair and walked over to a small box on the wall beside French doors that opened onto a trellis-shaded patio, rebelting his robe as he went and silently blessing the foresight that had made him put on pajama bottoms under it. Both children shuffled their way into close formation right behind him, David still clutching the dog, who was apparently named after an insect, though in Riley’s opinion it bore a closer resemblance to a praying mantis than a beetle.

“Is it real loud?” Helen inquired as Riley punched in the appropriate code and deactivated his security system.

“Sure is.”

“Can I hear it sometime?”

Riley glanced down at the small, upturned face wreathed in pinkish-blond curls, pretty as an angel’s-and at the most unangelic gleam in those china-blue eyes. “In all probability,” he muttered as he pushed open the French doors and stepped out onto the patio. Children and dog tumbled after him, hard on his heels.

The morning heat and humidity slapped him in the face and he inhaled a lungful of air that was like slightly cooled bathwater, perfumed with honeysuckle and roses. For some reason that image brought the thought of Summer to his mind. Summer Robey, that is. He wondered if she was still asleep, up there in his “guest room”; wondered even more at the small but unmistakable disappointment he’d felt when it had been the children rather than their mother who’d awakened him.

Then, remembering the indignity of that awakening, he decided he was just as glad after all that there hadn’t been a beautiful woman there to witness it.

“Where’s your mother?” He asked the question casually, checking the watch he hadn’t bothered to take off the night before. It was early yet-almost obscenely early. There was still plenty of time to go over some things-such as the ground rules for this arrangement, before he had to leave for work. “Still asleep?”

He got no answer from Helen, who was already off exploring, stalking across the lawn with her hands firmly planted on her hips, like a new landlord surveying her most recent acquisition

Meanwhile, David had put the dog down on the patio. Riley winced as the mutt ventured onto his pristine turf, promptly squatted, then moved on, one tiptoeing step at a time, ears alert, every muscle quivering.

David glanced up at Riley, still wearing that worried frown. “She said she’d be down as soon as she finds something to put on.”

Oh, Lord. The fact that his houseguests literally had nothing but the clothes on their backs had completely slipped Riley’s mind.

“Oh,” he said, when he realized he’d been scowling at the poor kid for several seconds without saying anything, thereby causing the worried look to intensify to one approaching alarm. “Well-”

But just then Helen came skipping back around the comer, making her way toward them and looking like the cat that had stumbled on a whole nest of canaries. She gave Riley a sideways look, then sidled up to her brother and tugged on his shirttail.

David squirmed away from her, then reluctantly bent a little to allow his sister to whisper in his ear. And went absolutely still. He gave a small gasp, the lines between his eyebrows vanishing as his eyes opened wide. “Really?” The word was an airless squeak. “Oh, boy…” His head snapped toward Riley as if operated by levers and springs instead of muscle and sinew. His ears were pink and his eyes glowing. Breathlessly, worshipfully, he said, “You have a pool…”

“Yeah,” Riley allowed, “I do.”

“Ask him, ask him,” Helen hissed, hopping up and down at her brother’s elbow.

The boy tried, but the words seemed to have formed a logjam in his throat. The effort it cost him to sort them out and get them moving again made him go even pinker, but in the end he managed to whisper, “Can we…