The Trick To Getting A Mom

“No wildlife.” Kit smiled. “A chain-link fence.”

Sean rose stiffly to his feet. He hadn’t managed a clean change of clothes either since they’d shared a mud bath. “You should get that arm looked at.”

“Well, duh, Dad!” Alex rolled her eyes. “She’s in a hospital. I think she already has.”

Sean’s ears turned pink as the three other children, now seated around a table littered with the remains of a meal, stared wide-eyed from Alex to Kit to Sean.

“We’re waiting for Aunt Emily to have her baby.” Alex seized Kit’s uninjured arm. “Come meet my cousins.”

Kit had never met anyone who accepted her so unconditionally, who championed her so exuberantly as Alex did.

“Maybe Kit was on her way somewhere, scout,” Sean cautioned, as if he wished Kit would take off. The hungry look in his eyes, however, belied his gruff tone. “Let her be.”

The corners of Alex’s mouth turned down.

“I’d like to meet your cousins,” Kit replied, slipping her hand into Alex’s. She tried to ignore Sean’s inhospitable words and her empty stomach. A round of introductions was the least she could do for the little girl who so openly accepted her.

Sean watched his daughter lead Kit toward Nina, Noah and Olivia.

“Hey, guys! Meet Seafaring Cecil.” Sean winced at the hero worship in her voice.

His daughter loved new words, but he didn’t know if she understood the meaning of transience. As in Kit’s life. The McCabes were a rooted lot. They might venture out on the tide, but they came back in on it as well. How would his daughter feel when Kit eventually took off—as she would, oh, yes, she would—without a backward glance?

“So tell them about your favorite trip,” Alex insisted, clearly intent on showing off her prize.

It surprised Sean that his daughter had to draw Kit out. He would have expected more swagger from Seafaring Cecil. From a woman who’d hit the road at fifteen. But she stood, holding Alex’s hand, and looked almost shy.

“My favorite trip is one I’ve never taken.” She smiled and her smile was sweet and far away. “Kathmandu.”

Could it be? Kathmandu was the trip she and he had mapped back in senior year when they were supposed to be researching the effects of geography on the Russian revolution instead. Their mutual passion for the freedom travel promised was what had led him to ask her out.

She glanced at him, then quickly looked away, blushing. “So maybe you’d rather see some tricks I picked up from a street performer in Montreal.”

“I like tricks!” six-year-old Olivia chimed in. “But not mean ones.”

“Can you saw a person in half?” Alex asked, her uninjured eye saucer-large.

“No tricks that complicated.” Kit winked. “But I can juggle and do card tricks and read palms and pick pockets—”

“Pick our pockets!” Alex exclaimed as the children leaned forward as one.

Slapping her hands over her miniature backpack, eight-year-old Nina appeared shocked. “Do you keep what you take?”

“No, no!” With a predatory feline grace Kit moved around the small group. “This is just for fun.”

Her twin brother, Noah, danced from foot to foot, but Nina wore a pruney expression. “Picking pockets—”

Alex reached out and clamped her hand over her cousin’s mouth.

“You’ve got to pick a pocket or two,” Kit crooned, with a mischievous grin. “I give it all back afterwards to prove how clever I am. Cleverer than the people whose pockets I pick, whose belongings I snitch.” Waggling her fingers, she looked into the children’s eyes.

The kids giggled—except for Nina—and hugged their pockets.

“Who thinks they’re cleverer than me? Who thinks they’d know if I fingered their valuables?” Kit twirled an imaginary mustache. At ease now. Lost in the game. Impish. And irresistible. “Who?”

“Me!” A spontaneous chorus of four. They were McCabes, after all. Sure of themselves.

When the hands shot up, Kit made her lightning quick move. Sean saw Olivia’s bead bracelet disappear off her tiny wrist, noticed because Olivia had made such a big deal of finding that bracelet before coming to the hospital. Twisting to keep her eye on Kit, Olivia, however, seemed not to have felt a thing.

Sean examined Kit’s moves more closely. Not an unpleasant task.

“Who thinks their young eyes are sharper than my old fingers?” she asked.

“Me!” The four craned their necks to keep their eyes on Kit prowling the perimeter of their rapt group.

As Nina wriggled uneasily, Kit slipped a bow from the cousin’s hair, then palmed it out of sight. Nina didn’t flinch, as the others squirmed and protected their own pockets.

Sean took note, however. He took note of every sensuous move Kit made. How the vine tattoo on her uninjured arm rippled over svelte muscle as Kit swiped then pocketed the children’s little treasures. How intense and childlike her own expression turned as she wove a sense of magic with her voice and her movements. How her red cowboy boots clicked on the hospital’s tiled floor as she moved around the group, holding their attention as a snake charmer would a snake.

In fact, he was so mesmerized that he failed to get out of her way on one of her turns. She bumped into him. Hard. But she wasn’t hard. She might have the enthusiasm of a child, but she had the soft curves of a woman.

Patting him solicitously, she said, “Sorry.”

He wasn’t.

“You’re all so clever,” she remarked, returning her attention to the children. “A tough crowd. Protecting your pockets so well.” She reached down and pulled a coin from behind Noah’s ear. “I’ll never put anything over on you.” She held it up to the delighted giggles of her audience.

She handed the quarter to Alex. “Hold this between your hands.” She adjusted Alex’s hands to a prayer position, and his daughter’s Seafaring Cecil compass ring instantly disappeared. “And I’ll try to move Noah’s money from here—” she tapped Alex’s fingers “—to there.” She tapped the pocket on Sean’s shirt.

Her touch left a warm spot on his chest.

She threw her hands into the air. “Alakazam!”

Alex opened her hands, and the coin fell to the floor.

The group groaned its disappointment.

“You couldn’t do it,” Nina said, her face a stiff little smirk.

“But I could do this!” With a flourish, Kit held the pilfered goods aloft. One bead bracelet. One hair bow. One compass ring. And one very familiar wallet.

Sean’s wallet. How the devil had she done that?

“Now who wasn’t paying attention?” Kit crowed.

He’d seen her lift all the other stuff, but not his own. Obviously, that enjoyable bump she’d given him had scrambled his brain. She certainly had that power.

Alex rolled on the floor, her face contorted with glee.