She couldn’t possibly live with a man she barely knew.
Slinging one kid over his shoulder and carrying the other on his hip, Rafe called from the doorway, “Want me to make coffee, Snookums?”
“Zoe,” she corrected him irritably, but he was already gone from the door.
She tried to convince herself that everything would be all right when they got to Montana. Rafe was so sure he wasn’t single-parent material, so sure he couldn’t handle the urchins alone. But he’d be wonderful with them; she knew he would.
And as soon as he saw that, she could get out of their lives. Away from the children, and the pain and helplessness that being around kids always brought on her. And away from a man who already disturbed her far too much.
As soon as her teeth unclenched and her stomach dropped back down from the roof of the Jeep, Zoe unfastened her seat belt and turned to the boys. “Wasn’t that an exciting ride?” she said heartily.
“Yeah! All those bumps.” Aaron giggled. “I thought one time we were going to drop off the mountain for sure!”
So had Zoe. Her nerves still did. The last zigzag of jagged road was enough to make geographical shock sink in. Montana was supposed to be flat, wasn’t it? With a few buttes and lots of cows?
Rafe’s square of Montana was entirely vertical. The snow-covered slopes were a blaze of diamonds under a brilliant winter sun, and the pine woods looked weighted down under swirls and whorls of white cotton candy. A pale-blue sky stretched on forever, and the air was so fresh it burned her lungs. Silence, solitude and space stamped the area as a man’s country. Rafe had told the kids they’d see elk, deer, fox and an occasional cougar or wolf if they were lucky.
Zoe favored a different brand of luck. She liked the sea, neighbors and the ability to drive to a grocery store without risking her life on a spine-jarring roller-coaster track that Rafe called a road. Wolves were not her personal cup of tea, and the mountains gave her vertigo.
“Wonderful place for the boys!” she murmured to Rafe. “All this terrific space, things to climb, open air…” As soon as the two boys tumbled outside, she started gathering their gear from the backseat. “I can’t think of a better spot on earth for kids to grow up.”
Perhaps after ninety trips, the Jeep would be empty. Two suitcases had taken care of the kids’ clothes, but then came the Play-Doh, books, X-Men action dolls, a sacred rock collection, approximately five billion unleaveable stuffed animals, Parker’s blanket…
“What are we having for lunch, Zoe?”
“We’re starving,” Parker reminded her, which she wasn’t likely to forget. He’d told her that at least fifteen times in the past twenty minutes.
She paused long enough to softly ruffle his hair. He could remind her another forty times about lunch, and she still wouldn’t care. Anything was better than that horrible moment on the plane when he’d suddenly started crying for his mommy. Rafe had miraculously come up with a pack of watermelon-flavored bubble gum.
If she could have guaranteed Aaron would never cry again, she’d have bought a life’s supply of watermelon-flavored chewing gum.
“Where are we going to sleep?”
“Where’s your sled?”
“Where’s the TV?”
Zoe’s quick glance at Rafe was filled with wry humor. Four-year-old boys never seemed to stop talking, and they excelled in asking questions that adults had no answers for. Still, her ready smile suddenly hovered in no-man’s-land. Rafe was slowly but surely tackling all the boy’s questions, but his eyes were fastened on her. On her mouth. On the sweep of a blush across her cheeks. On the yellow tam perched frivolously on her head.
Rapidly, she looked away and started piling gear in her arms at the speed of sound. Next to her, Rafe did the same. Dressed in a fisherman’s sweater, jeans and boots, he looked the part of a tall, strong mountain man, and her diametric opposite in every way. She couldn’t imagine why something hummed between them every time their eyes met.
She didn’t like that hum. In the past few days, she hadn’t had much time to brood about it though. Via long-distance calls to Washington, she had arranged for a leave of absence from her job and asked a friend to send some clothes and close up her apartment. Then there’d been all that packing to do, the legal rigmarole of Janet and Jonathan’s estate to attend to, and the need to hire a woman to care for Mrs. Gregor. Sexual vibrations were something Zoe simply hadn’t had time for, and she kept hoping they’d go away, like bogeymen in the daylight.
A little attraction wouldn’t be nearly so upsetting if Rafe didn’t keep confusing her. Ever since that long talk of theirs on the first night, she’d caught him looking at her often-a pensive frown thrown in here, an intense studying look thrown in there, a lazy crooked smile tossed in at other times. And suddenly, he was more patient with her than he was with the twins.
His patience was annoying. Both their worlds had been turned upside down because of the twins, not just hers. She’d never expected Rafe to be such a brick all the time. He’d made it darn clear from the beginning that kids couldn’t possibly enhance his lifestyle, and he certainly had every right to grumble a little. Didn’t the man ever feel any anxiety? Zoe was frantic, ever so anxious to do right by the twins. While Rafe was-well, frankly, remarkably cheerful for a man suddenly stuck with three unwanted houseguests.
And then there was that hum she felt whenever he came near her.
He’d mentioned a woman in his life; she should be taking care of all his hums. In fact, Zoe had in mind making damn sure he wasn’t deprived of his lady’s companionship for long just because of the urchins.
She wished desperately that she were back in Washington state, safe and sound with her three-hundred-pound breaching babies, her whales. Those she knew she could handle. But Rafe’s gentle blue eyes, which kept settling on her-those she wasn’t at all sure she could handle.
“Zoe, Montana isn’t as wild as it looks,” Rafe said carefully.
“Did you hear me criticizing anything?” The thing was to concentrate on the boys and their relationship with Rafe. Only a fool would imagine a hum at a time like this. She clamped her chin over a bag so she could carry one more thing.
“You like the house?”
“Love it,” she said blithely.
“You might if you looked at it. Try the view to the east.” His tone was dry.
“I saw, while we were driving up that road…” Or she would have, if her eyes hadn’t been squeezed shut. While praying, Zoe always closed her eyes. Her boots crunched in the snow as she staggered with the weight of the packages she was carrying. Sun dazzling her eyes, she squinted to get her first glimpse of his tall A-frame home and then rhapsodized, “Lots of room for kids in there.”
Juggling gear, she made the last of four trooping toward the door. Out of breath and feeling awkward-darn it, this was a strange man’s house-she stepped in. Where Rafe dropped his armloads, she dropped hers.
“I’ll get the rest,” he told her. “You relax and look around. After lunch, I’ll go into town, get some groceries and see if your clothes have arrived yet.”
“Fine.” She tossed him a whimsical, watch-me-cope smile. And as soon as he was back outside, she straightened and took her first look around. Over and above the twins’ whoops of enthusiasm, she could see at a glance that she had her work cut out for her.
His distinctly single-man domain didn’t strike her as an ideal environment for nursery school-age boys. Not that she knew anything about that subject, but common sense was common sense. After quickly shifting the stack of men’s magazines face down on his desk, she narrowed her eyes on the wet bar. Somehow there had to be a way to lock that up? And his stereo system, too; it included at least a dozen knobs, unfortunately all bright and fascinating and at a height the little ones could reach.