“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 Janet and Jonathan. And in the meantime, we’d both be in a better position to make long-term decisions about what’s best for them.”
“Wait a minute,” Zoe said desperately. And Rafe obligingly waited while she struggled for something to say. “I don’t see…I mean, obviously we can’t…” She took a breath. “There’s no way that arrangement would work, and anyway, wherever you live has to be better for kids than where I live.”
He shrugged. “Where we go isn’t the point. Sticking together is, for the kids’ sake.” He climbed out of the car and then peered back in. “I can see from the look on your face what you think of the idea. You think I feel any different? But dammit, do we have any other choice?”
Chapter Two
At three minutes past six the next morning, Rafe leaned against the open doorway to Zoe’s bedroom. He watched as thirty pounds climbed on her back, and then another thirty pounds tried hard, giggling, to climb on top of him.
“Aren’t you awake yet, Snookums? Uncle Rafe is!”
“Wonderful,” she murmured groggily.
“Uncle Rafe said you’d tell us about the big jet we’re going on. Come on, Snookums! We let you sleep in forever!”
“I can see that by the clock. Good heavens, what time did you wake up Uncle Rafe?” Carefully, she dislodged both of the imps.
He didn’t mind that she hadn’t noticed him yet. Fresh from sleep, her skin had a rosy blush, and morning sunshine tossed gold in her tangled hair. She’d slept in a man’s baggy green T-shirt, so loose at the throat that it bared almost all of one slim white shoulder. Her lazy stretch made him smile…and also made him conscious of every lithe curve of her body.
“So you already talked to your Uncle Rafe, did you?”
“Does Parker have to go, or is it just me?” Aaron asked hopefully.
“I’m going, too, you twirp. We’re going to Uncle Rafe’s house, right, Zoe?”
“First,” she agreed sleepily. “First we’re going to spend a few weeks at Uncle Rafe’s house, and then a few weeks at my house. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
He heard the effort she made to put enthusiasm in her voice. Last night, she’d done her best to talk him out of the idea. And last night, she hadn’t been as relaxed as she was now. Rolling on her stomach with her little rump in the air, she rested her chin in her hands as she talked to the urchins.
Everything about her seemed to touch him. He couldn’t remember being moved by any other woman in the same way. To look at Zoe was to see a lover, a woman who spilled over with her own unique brand of feminine warmth and sensuality, an intriguing blend of fragility and strength.
They’d battled until nearly three this morning…a gentle battle. Children were a painful subject for Zoe-she was so sure she wanted nothing to do with them. One look at her with the kids and Rafe couldn’t fathom how she could imagine herself as uncaring. From bits and pieces, he’d guessed that a man she loved had broken off with her when he’d discovered she was barren.
Maybe it was at that exact point that he’d known he wanted her with him. Why really made no sense. He didn’t love her, didn’t know her well enough to love her, but there was something there. Something haunting in her green eyes when she talked about children, something fragile that made him want to protect her, something in her smile that made him want to bask in more of those smiles. He couldn’t let that something go.
She hadn’t backed down until he’d agreed they’d go to Montana first. He knew why. She was sure he’d become attached to the boys when he saw them on his own turf. He was supposed to see that the kids belonged with him-she’d been perfectly honest about it.
Rafe hadn’t been quite so honest with her, and figured he’d better not be. Not that he needed his life turned upside down by the advent of two children, but he’d have taken them by himself if he’d had to. Deserting the kids was no more of a possibility for him than it was for Zoe. To let her know that, though, would mean watching the fragile nightingale fly away. He’d had to make it very clear he wouldn’t take them at all unless she came along, too, and that even then, he would do so unwillingly.
Maybe it was crazy to act on that first overpowering surge of attraction and compassion and simple fascination for a woman. He’d never been impulsive. He’d never acted purely on instinct. Rashness wasn’t even part of his character.
At least it hadn’t been until last night.
“When do we go, Zoe? Today?”
“Not quite that fast, Aaron. It’ll take us a little time to arrange things.”
“Do I get to take my X-Men?”
“Yup.”
“Do we get to have macaroni and cheese?”
“Yup.”
“Do we get to stay up until nine?”
“Nope.”
“Where do we get to go after we go to your house?” Parker wanted to know.
Zoe wasn’t sure what made her turn her head, but she was suddenly aware of the man in the doorway. His dark hair rumpled, Rafe was wearing jeans but nothing else. If he were any kind of normal human being, he’d have the courtesy to look as terrible as she felt after a sleepless night.
Instead, his eyes were a wide-awake blue, and his body looked all sexy and warm and compellingly touchable. The eyes, the body and the man disturbed her. She figured as soon as he opened his mouth, his voice would disturb her, too. Rafe talked in a slow, easy drawl that could wear a woman down like erosion. That voice had worn her down last night. He’d made it seem as though the only choice they could make was to take on the kids together.
Maybe it was their only choice, and maybe all they’d been talking about the night before was the kids. Now, though, he was staring at her in such a different way, as if…
Parker anchored both of his pudgy palms on her cheeks and firmly turned her face in his direction. “You are not answering my question, Zoe,” he said irritably.
“Pardon, honey?”
“Where are we going after your house?”
“We’ll talk about that later,” Rafe said from the doorway. “First, we thought you guys might like a vacation at both our houses. Okay?”
“Sure,” Aaron agreed. “Is Mommy going to be there?”
“I’ve told you and told you,” Parker said testily. “Mommy is in heaven. She’s with Daddy. I don’t know why you’re so stupid.”
“I am not stupid.”
Zoe leaped out of bed in time to grab Parker. Rafe took Aaron. En route to averting the slugging match, her T-shirted fanny bumped into his jeaned thigh. Both jumped. Zoe was startlingly, disastrously, sinkingly aware of the one critical drawback to all their carefully argued-out plans.