Another Man's Children

The metal latch clinked as she pushed it in, cold air rushing inside as she pulled open the heavy door. The damp chill raised goose bumps on her skin, sent them racing down her back—and seemed to freeze her welcoming smile in place.

The person blocking her view of majestic fir trees and the sheltered inlet was definitely not the middle-aged, part-time yoga instructor and nanny she was expecting. As her glance moved up a row of buttons on a blue, plaid, flannel shirt, she found herself faced with six feet of obscenely attractive, dark-haired male in denim and a down vest.

His rich sable hair swept back from lean, chiseled features and covered the back of his collar. His cheekbones were high, his mouth firm and he looked more guarded than uncertain when the dark slashes of his eyebrows merged over eyes the same silver gray as the stormy sky.

“You’re Sam’s sister?”

His voice was low, deep, disturbing. The sound of it rumbled through her like the ominous approach of distant thunder as he swept an assessing glance from the sleek style of her hair to the tailored fit of the suit she never would have been able to afford if she’d had to pay retail.

She hadn’t a clue who this man was. But there wasn’t a doubt in her mind that he had just mentally stripped her right down to her beige lace bra.

“I am,” she returned, unconsciously crossing her arms. Her brother was big and dark-haired and definitely the outdoor type. She was short, fair and definitely…not. Given those comparisons, she could understand why this man, big and looking like an outdoor type himself, might question the relationship.

Yet it wasn’t confusion or surprise she sensed in him. It seemed more like displeasure.

“And you’re…?” she cautiously prompted.

“Zach McKendrick.”

The sound of his name was as hard as he looked in the moments before his eyes narrowed on her protective stance. He seemed to realize he’d put her on the defensive. Suddenly looking as if that hadn’t been his intention, he forced the edge from his tone. “Sam said you were trading places with your mom for a while.”

“Zach….”

“Sam’s business partner.”

She knew that. The name anyway.

“Look,” he said, his brow tightening again as he glanced at his watch. “I’m in kind of a hurry. Is he here?”

“He went into town about ten minutes ago. To pick up Jason from preschool,” she explained, trying to be helpful. Impatience fairly leaked from his pores, but he was her brother’s partner, a man she knew to be his friend. “Do you want me to have him call you when he gets back?”

“I can’t wait for that. I need a manifest he took.” A muscle in his jaw twitched as his glance slid over her shoulder. “It’s probably in his den.”

There was no denying the tension filling his lean, powerful body as he waited for her to invite him in. It radiated from him in waves, restive, chafing, yet ruthlessly restrained.

Feeling his tension knot her stomach, totally disconcerted by the effect, she stepped back, as much to escape the unnerving sensation as to grant him entrance.

“Thanks,” he muttered and walked right past her.

Her brother’s living room was a large open space with overstuffed leather furniture, rustic pine end tables, braided rugs and a wall of male-fantasy-quality electronics that her sister-in-law had softened by blending the elements with knickknacks and books on the floor-to-ceiling shelves. Zach’s powerful strides had already carried him past the big-screen TV when she closed the heavy door. By the time she turned around to ask him what a manifest looked like so she could get it for him, he was heading into the hall.

Her first thought was to ask what he thought he was doing. Her second was that this was her brother’s house and, since Zach was his partner, she was hardly in a position to stop the man from going wherever he wanted to go. Especially since he seemed to know exactly where he was headed.

“Don’t wake the baby!” she hurriedly called to the back of his navy-blue vest.

Without breaking stride, he lifted one hand in acknowledgment and disappeared through the first doorway on his left.

Feeling steamrolled, Lauren stared into the empty space.

If anyone were to ask her what she thought of Zach McKendrick, she would be hard-pressed to come up with anything positive, much less anything complimentary. Considering that Sam and Tina had both spoken of him as if he were the salt of the earth, she couldn’t help but wonder what they saw that she was so obviously missing.

Blowing an uneasy breath, she turned from the empty hall. She didn’t really know much about the people in her brother’s life. Their worlds were both so busy and so different. But she remembered Sam and Tina mentioning Zach during holidays at their parents’ home, which were the only times the family had all been together in the last several years. Holidays at Mom and Dad’s were mandatory and nothing short of the Second Coming was considered excuse enough to miss them.

The exception was New Year. They didn’t usually spend that day together. Yet, they had the last one. And, then, there had been no celebration. They had all spent the dawn of the new year in Tacoma, because that was where Sam, Tina and the kids had been visiting her father when Tina had been killed by a speeding driver the day before New Year’s Eve. Because Tacoma had been her hometown, and because her mother was buried there, that was where Sam had insisted the services be held.

Lauren hadn’t seen Zach there, though. She remembered that her brother had talked to him several times on the phone, but his friend hadn’t attended the funeral. She would have remembered seeing him. No woman with a pulse would forget eyes like that.

The thoughts caught her smoothing the folded afghan draped over the arm of the butterscotch leather sofa. Ceasing her restless motions, she crossed her arms to keep from fidgeting. She didn’t want to wonder what had kept Zach away, especially when he could have flown himself in and out of town in a matter of hours. She didn’t want to think about how the bottom had been ripped out of Sam’s world. She especially didn’t want to consider how empty the house must feel to her brother without his wife’s vivacious laugh and bright, cheerleader smile. She just wanted to help.

At the moment, however, all she could do was wait for the man she could hear rummaging around her brother’s desk.

He was an ex-military test pilot. She had no idea why she remembered that just then, but the detail had impressed the heck out of their father when Sam had told him several years ago that he and Zach were going into business together. According to Sam, who rarely spoke in superlatives, Zach had retired from the military and was now the hands-down best bush pilot in the entire Northwest.

The man can set a float plane down in a puddle, her brother had claimed, and take off in winds strong enough to knot a plane’s wings.

Since Sam was a bush pilot himself, a job that had prematurely grayed their mother and probably his wife, that was undoubtedly high praise.

She had also heard that he was divorced. That, she’d learned from Tina because her sister-in-law had once mentioned how often Zach showed up for meals at their house. It had been Tina, too, who had mentioned that the man was like a brother to Sam, which, Lauren supposed, accounted for his familiarity with the house and his lack of hesitation entering it.

“It’s not in there.”

Lauren whirled around from where she stood by the sofa. It didn’t seem possible that a man his size could move so quietly, but she hadn’t heard a single board squeak when he’d walked back up the hall.

With his hands jammed on his lean hips, his wide brow furrowed, he scanned the toy-cluttered surfaces in the room. “Have you seen it?” he asked, not bothering to look at her before turning away to check the credenza behind him. “What I’m looking for is in a file. Manila. Eight-by-ten. There’s a green label on it that says To Be Shipped.”

“I haven’t seen anything like that. Why is this so important?” she asked, leaning down to check through the stack of newspapers, magazines and children’s books on the coffee table. She was more than willing to help. The sooner he found what he was looking for, the sooner he would leave.

“Because we have a pilot who can’t take off without it. We’re losing money every hour that plane sits on the ground.”

His hurried search of the credenza proved fruitless. Though he didn’t swear, he looked as if he were about to when he turned to the kitchen to check the table and counters in there.

“I can’t figure out why he even took it with him,” he muttered, stepping through the doorway. “The man isn’t paying attention to anything he’s doing anymore.”

Lauren’s spine snapped straight. He was talking to himself. Not her. But she couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. “I would imagine that if Sam is preoccupied it’s because he just lost his wife.”

The sound of movement in the kitchen came to an abrupt halt. In the sudden quiet, she heard nothing but the rattle of a loose vent as the furnace kicked on and the methodical tick of the antique grandfather clock guarding the wall beside the front door. Her heart bumped to that heavy rhythm as Zach’s imposing frame filled the kitchen doorway.

He stood like a dark sentinel, unmoving, ready to challenge. “There is no one more aware of that than I am,” he informed her tightly. “And his preoccupation is only getting worse, which isn’t helping any of us right now.”

“Isn’t it us who should be helping him?”

The quicksilver gray of his eyes turned chill. “I’m doing what I can,” he informed her, his tone heavy with restraint. “I’ve covered for him as much as I can. But I’m not in a position to cut him any more slack.” His voice dropped like a rock in a well. “Until he gets himself together, I’m going to have to ground him.”

Lauren stared in disbelief when he left her standing there to resume his search of the kitchen. She knew that the only things holding Sam together right now were his children and his job. Sam loved to fly. He lived for it. It was all he’d wanted to do since he was five years old. She didn’t understand his obsession at all, but she didn’t have to understand it to know how much of an escape it could offer. No one knew better than she did how pain could be anesthetized by the demands of work. And she was unable to imagine how her brother would cope if his arrogant, insensitive, stone-for-a-heart partner denied him the lifeline his work provided.

The heavy ache in her chest was for her brother as she headed through the kitchen doorway. The pressure behind it was caused purely by the man who’d just managed to push every protective button she possessed.

“I was under the impression you were his friend.”