Tender Loving Care

ocean, my whales; I explained some of that to you over the phone. Just like your work, my job involves sporadic hours, responsibilities I can’t just wriggle out of. It’s not an environment that could possibly be good for young kids, and I know nothing about children.”

Blue eyes snapped on green, somewhere between a rock and a hard place. “So…we’re in the same boat. But the kids have to be our prime consideration here.”

“Oh, Lord. I agree.” Her eyes were luminous with emotion. “Believe me, if it were a simple matter of changing my lifestyle, I would do it. But it’s not that simple, not for me.” She took a breath. “Look, Rafe, there is just no chance I would make any kind of mother.”

His brows quirked up in surprise and amusement. “I could see that you didn’t give a hoot about the boys,” he said gravely. “Parker jumped out of the tub stark naked to hug you, and half the toys in their closet came from Snookums. How did you manage to earn that nickname, by the way?”

“A game called Sneak ’Em Up, which they called Snook ’Em Up, which somehow deteriorated into…never mind.” She waved her hand, dismissing the dratted nickname. “Anyway, that kind of thing is misleading.”

“Oh?”

“And you’re obviously fond of them, too. The other half of the toys in their closet came from Uncle Rafe, and I saw you tussling with the two of them on the bed. They adore you.”

“They adore you just as much.”

Standoff. Zoe stirred her coffee and then fussed with her black button earrings. When she got around to looking at Rafe again, she found a deep groove wedged between his brows. His voice brushed her nerves with wet velvet. “I apologize,” he said quietly.

“For what?”

“For assuming it would automatically be easier for you to take on kids because you’re a woman.”

“Maybe…with another woman…that might be a natural assumption,” she admitted. He just kept staring at her with that pensive frown. Silence lapped up the seconds; words wouldn’t come.

“Would it be easier to talk somewhere else?” he asked finally. She’d barely nodded before he was reaching for his corduroy jacket.

The night was bleak and cold. Clumps of gray-crusted snow clung to the sidewalks March-fashion; winter wasn’t quite ready to give up its hold. Cars hummed past them, tires sizzling on wet streets; streetlamps illuminated a city that needed the wash of spring rains.

Zoe turned up her coat collar and jammed her hands in her pockets, vibrantly aware of the man’s long stride next to her. “I can’t have children,” she said quietly.

“So you said. But, as I told you, I’m in the same boat.”

Impatience surged through Zoe. This was so hard to talk about, and it was worse with a stranger. “I mean physically I can’t have them. Three years ago, I had an infection that got out of hand, and following that an operation. None of which is any of your business or your problem, but I know exactly why Janet wrote me in as a guardian in case anything happened to her. She knew her kids would be my only chance to have children-only she was terribly wrong, and in the best interests of the twins, I think I have to explain all this to you. You’ve got to understand why you’re the only one who can take them.”

“Zoe…” Rafe stopped dead on the street. His voice was suddenly gruff and low, and somehow intimate.

She kept on walking and talking, never once looking at him as she told him her story. The words came out blithe and brisk, emotionless. Water over the dam. No point in crying over spilled milk. All of the cliches were operative. When catastrophe hit, life didn’t end, and neither did sunlight or laughter. She’d had to keep that firmly in mind, because there’d been a time when she’d carelessly assumed that children would be part of her life. Didn’t most women want children? “But not anymore,” she said, bringing her explanation to a conclusion. “I’ve built a life that doesn’t include kids. I’m sure that sounds cold-blooded and selfish-”

The presence of his hands on her shoulders forced her to stop walking. She felt cold, smooth fingers pushing back her hair, tugging her coat collar up against the snapping wind.

She stared at his chin. “You know how people are about kids. A total stranger sees a baby and goes up and cluck-clucks and makes cooing noises. Well, I don’t cluck and I don’t coo anymore; I walk on by.” She said fiercely, “It took too damn long for me to accept the results of that surgery. I don’t want to be around kids, to be reminded constantly of what I’m missing. I just want to be left alone to live my life my own way. Maybe I am cold-blooded and selfish-”

“Shut up, would you, Zoe?”

He said it softly, as his thumbs brushed the moisture from her cheeks. His touch was as gentle as silk, but Zoe felt mortified. There was no excuse for allowing tears to well up in front of a relative stranger. There was a time when she’d cried herself dry, but that had been three years ago. Now she’d cultivated insensitivity toward children, and she couldn’t imagine where the tears came from.

His hands dropped to his sides. She set the furious walking pace, more than a match for his lithe stride. Block followed block, all in the wrong direction, but he never said a word. When he did murmur something, it was completely unexpected. “There was a man in your life, wasn’t there?”

“I’m twenty-six,” she said wearily. “Of course there was a man. And there’s probably a woman in your life right now, affecting how or when or if you could take on the kids.”

He hesitated. “Yes.”

She shot him a look. “A close relationship? Does she like children?”

His sudden grin was inscrutable. “Sorry to disappoint you, Zoe, but marriage is not in the offing.” He added wryly, “I’ve never been opposed to marriage or to kids, but settling down has never come into the picture, because my job takes me from here to Timbuktu in search of earthquakes. My work’s only part of it, though. During what little time I’ve spent around those two devils, we got on fine, but that’s not the same thing as being qualified to raise them as a single parent. There’s no way I could tackle them alone.”

They turned back, and in time she recognized the bar’s lights and the all-but-empty parking lot. Huddled on the freezing car seat a few minutes later, she waited for Rafe to start the engine, and found herself studying him.

His strong profile was shadowed, the expression in his eyes hidden beneath the shelf of his brows. His rumpled hair brushed his coat collar; she could smell the faintest hint of citrus and sandalwood, and she was not surprised in the least that he already had a woman in his life. She could still feel the impression of his thumb brushing her cheek, the strength of his hand on her shoulder, the warmth and compassion in his eyes when he’d listened to her.

They didn’t talk again until they pulled into the Gregor driveway. Only the porch light gleamed from the dark house; the quiet neighborhood was asleep. Rafe turned off the engine and pocketed the key, and then just sat there. “Solutions aren’t appearing out of the woodwork,” he mentioned dryly.

That fast, the only thing on her mind was the children. “No.” She sighed. “I’ve done the best I can to explain why I can’t take them, but they’re still Janet’s children. We’ve got to decide what’s best for them…”

“I’m not exactly in line for a potential parent of the year award. But I’ll be damned if I could live with myself if I turned them over to someone they didn’t know.”

“I know,” she agreed unhappily. “Especially now, Rafe. I don’t think either child understands what’s happened yet. Aaron seems particularly confused. They need someone familiar in their lives, someone they already care about and trust, someone who had first-hand knowledge of their lives with Janet and Jonathan.”

“So they go with one of us,” Rafe murmured, and turned to face her. His eyes glinted with a speculative light, and his tone was thoughtful. “Or both of us.”

“Pardon?”

“We don’t have to come up with a permanent solution this instant, just a temporary one. You feel you can’t handle the kids, and so do I, but we agree we’re not about to leave them with strangers.”

“Yes…”

“They’ve just had their world rocked to hell. They need two parents.”

“Yes…” Why did she have the feeling that a slow-rolling rock was picking up momentum on its course down a darned long hill?

“I don’t know how I can manage to get time off, but I will. If we took them to your place in Washington, you could keep your job, and I could watch over the boys. For a short time only, of course. But they’d have both of us there, and we’d have the chance to live with them, know them, get them through these rough first weeks without