“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…please, Mr…um…”
“Riley.”
“Please, Mr. Riley, can we go swimming? We’ll be careful, I promise. We’re real good swimmers-I’m even on a team. And we won’t run on the deck, and we won’t splash…much. Can we? Please?”
“Yeah,” Helen echoed, “can we?”
Riley stared down at the two upturned faces, one flushed with hope, the other squinched up with what he could only have described as glee. Oh, Lord, he thought. These two blueeyed urchins squealing and splashing in his beautiful pool, which he’d had designed, situated and landscaped to create the most harmonious and tranquil environment possible? He hadn’t planned for such a circumstance-hadn’t considered it would ever come up. Couldn’t even imagine it.
And how could he possibly say no?
Fully aware that he was stalling for time, he folded his arms on his chest and said sternly, “Well. It appears you’ve already answered most all of my objections-except for one big one. Don’t you think you should ask your mother?”
“She’d just tell us we have to ask you,” David said quickly, as Helen’s head bobbed in rare agreement.
“Hmm…” Riley rubbed his chin. “Okay, what about suits?” He was rather pleased to have thought of that; of course all their clothing would have been burned in the fire. Naturally, buying replacements, including bathing suits, was one of the first items on his list of priorities, but right now what he needed most was to buy himself some time. Time to get used to this…invasion. Time…
“We have suits,” said David eagerly. For an exclamation point, Helen added a jubilant little hop. “They’re in our backpacks. We were gonna go swimming at Jason’s, but then stupid-head here, had to go and squirt him with grape juice-”
“Am not a stupid-head! You are!”
“-and then our house burned down.” For once even Helen had no punctuation to contribute. Both children gazed at Riley in round-eyed silence.
Seconds ticked by while Riley gazed back at them. Dammit, he didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t account for the fact that his chest suddenly felt as if it had been filled with gravel. Finally he cleared his throat. “Well, okay, then. Go put your suits on. You can swim after breakfast. But only if someone’s with you. And if your mother says it’s okay…”
But the children were already beyond earshot as they rocketed through the French doors and into the house, their gleeful shouts flung back at him like pebbles from under a spinning tire. “Mom! Mom! Mr. Riley said we can go swimming! He said we can go in his pool! Where’s my bathing suit? Mom-where’s my backpack? Mom-”
All the noise and excitement, of course, brought the dog at a dead run. She came in at warp speed, carrying a golf ball in her mouth, and skidded to a stop on the flagstones. Finding herself left behind and apparently forgotten, she stared intently for a moment or two at the closed French doors. She looked over her shoulder at Riley. Then, on paws so tiny and delicate they hardly seemed to touch the ground, she trotted over to him and dropped her trophy at his feet.