No Ordinary Child

“Of course she is. It’s just a matter of persistence.”

“We’ll talk about it later.” He went back to checking the mail, but inside, he was battling a rising anxiety. He didn’t want Meggie attempting anything dangerous or difficult. But why? Because Andrea was already in danger? That wouldn’t be fair to Meggie.

Christy finished gathering her stuff. “Well, I’m off.”

“Where is my daughter, by the way?”

“Asleep.”

He stopped sorting the mail and frowned. “Asleep? So early?”

“It’s only a short nap. I think part of the reason Meggie is cranky is because she doesn’t get enough sleep. I’m trying to get her to take a short nap at the same time every day. She watches her favorite TV show when we get home from speech therapy and then she drifts off. It’s working. I was thinking the two of you could have dinner together when she wakes up.”

“I see.” He quirked an eyebrow and, without thinking about what he was doing, looked her up and down.

She tugged at her patchwork broomstick skirt and fiddled with the drawstring of a hideous red georgette peasant blouse, then raised her chin.

“Before you go, would you mind telling me—” he tilted his head at the fish bowl “—what is that?”

Christy bent down to look at an orange fish swimming around in a small, cheap glass bowl. “I think it’s a man-eating shark, but I’m not sure.” She grinned.

Sam frowned.

“This is Mr. Charlie.” She peered into the side of the bowl, addressing the fish. “Say heh-woe to Sam, Mr. Char-wee.”

“I hope you don’t talk like that around Meggie.”

Christy straightened and faced him, looking puzzled. Her startled, defensive expression seemed to ask if she’d said something wrong.

“Meggie’s speech certainly isn’t going to improve if you use baby talk around her.”

Christy bent to address the fish again. “But Mr. Char-wee is a baby. Baby talk is the only wang-widge Mr. Char-wee understands.” She glanced up, this time with a slightly defiant gleam in her eye.

Sam Solomon didn’t favor her with even the hint of a smile. Meggie was his daughter, and though it was a small thing, this baby talk concerned him.

“Okay,” the woman sighed. “No more baby talk. Mr. Charlie—” she bent to speak to the side of the fishbowl again “—as of this moment, we shall speak nothing but proper Queen’s English in this household. Understood?”

Sam managed a wan smile. She was kind of cute. “Christy,” he said as he finished sorting the mail. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. It’s nice that you bought Meggie a fish. And I also want you to know—” he tossed the last letter onto the table “—that I appreciate everything else you’ve done for my daughter these past three weeks. And you can do whatever you want with the house as long as it benefits Meggie.”

“I appreciate it that you appreciate it.” Christy smiled, but then her expression grew serious. “I enjoy my work.” She dug around in her bag for her keys.

“I can see that,” he conceded. She had done many small things to make Meggie’s life better. She certainly fed the child well. She deserved to hear a compliment. He rotated his head toward the kitchen. “Something smells good.”

“It’s my secret spaghetti sauce. The pasta is cooked and drained, dressed with a little olive oil. There’s a magic salad chilling in the fridge.”

“Magic salad?” Maybe he should have chosen something other than her culinary skills to compliment.

“I call it magic so that kids will eat it. Orange Jell-O with carrots and cottage cheese stirred in.” She smiled brightly again.

Carrots and cottage cheese? Sam eyed her and decided Christy Lane’s smile was almost reflexive. Why did she smile so much?

“And then,” she went on as if it mattered, “I fold in a little Dream Whip to disguise everything. That’s the—” she made quotation marks with her fingers “—magic part.”

Sam suppressed the urge to say, “I’ll pass.” He sensed that he’d probably come on a little too strong about the baby talk and he didn’t want to hurt this sweet young woman’s feelings again. He tilted his head at her. “Magic, huh? My mom used to call it orange-Jell-O-with-carrots-and-cottage-cheese salad. Guess that explains why I never ate the stuff. Maybe if she had called it magic, I would have scarfed it up.”

She smiled again, almost a laugh. A bit self-consciously, he thought. Unsure. Maybe she thought he was being sarcastic. He was actually trying to be nice. Had he become such a drudge that he’d forgotten how to just be nice? What was the matter with him, anyway? A mess a minute out at the Moonlight Grove site this week, that’s what was wrong with him.

Still, he couldn’t stand the idea of hurting this sunny young woman’s feelings, even unintentionally. She had been working so hard, making amazing progress with Meggie. And managing his household in unconventional ways he hadn’t counted on. He was astounded at the amount of food she’d managed to purchase with the money he’d given her. Pasta, beans, croutons, cereal, whole-wheat crackers. Three kinds of rice. Salmon, chicken, peanut butter. Flavored vinegars. Olive oil, canola oil, real butter. Tortillas and bagels. Fresh garlic, basil and cilantro. Yogurt and cheeses and fruit spreads and even a jar of carrot juice. The truly amazing thing was, Meggie apparently relished Christy’s simple cooking. Her color had improved and she looked less thin lately.

Magic, indeed.

“It was nice of you to cook for her again tonight. Thank you.”

CHRISTY WONDERED WHY Sam Solomon acted so amazed every time she prepared a little simple food for the evening meal. She only wanted Meggie to start eating something besides McDonald’s. It wasn’t as if she was trying to impress him. She doubted Sam Solomon had even noticed that his pantry was now well stocked.

In any case, for Christy, cooking was no trouble. Preparing a meal simply added more zest, more creativity, to her day. For her, it was as natural as breathing.

In her hand she had already singled out the key to her little Ford Contour. She clutched it between thumb and forefinger, staring down at it.

She glanced up and saw that he was frowning at her outfit again. Christy got the distinct impression that Sam Solomon did not approve of the way she dressed. She never discounted these intuitive vibes of hers. But who was Sam Solomon to judge? A man who lived in a cold black house? Sam Solomon had been an easygoing, fun guy in high school. What had happened to make him so dour?

He was still handsome. If anything, he had grown more handsome, more interesting, with the years. And every time Christy looked into Sam Solomon’s deep-blue eyes, she felt like biting her lip. But she didn’t. She stood there, smiling calmly like a good nanny.

He loosened his tie. “Can you stay a minute? I’ve been so busy the past few weeks that I haven’t had time to get to know you at all. I know it’s Friday night, and you’ve probably got plans.”

“Not really. In the summer, I usually try to go for a run before the sun goes down.”

“Then why don’t you stay for dinner? In fact, would you join me for a little glass of wine? We can discuss Meggie’s schedule.”

“Uh, sure.” Christy shrugged, surprised by his invitation.

As chance would have it, she didn’t have a date with Kyle tonight—her boyfriend was on duty—but she couldn’t imagine that a man as good-looking as Sam Solomon was content to sit here without a date on a Friday night. She supposed with Meggie around maybe he’d been forced to alter his lifestyle a bit.

He led the way into the kitchen and removed a bottle of red wine from a small wrought-iron—black, of course—wine rack. “This okay?” He held the label out for her inspection. It read pinot noir, which meant nothing to Christy.

She shrugged again. “I don’t drink much wine. Anything’s fine.”

“Have a seat.” He indicated a high black leather bar stool pushed up under the counter. He reached into a tall cabinet with glass doors and took out some crystal stemware.

She climbed onto the stool and slid her lumpy red calico bag off her shoulder and onto her lap, gripping the thing to her front. She told herself not to act nervous. He was only being nice to the baby-sitter who had worked so hard to make his busy, high-powered architect’s life a little easier these past weeks. It wasn’t like he was really interested in her as a person, or anything.

“So. How was your day today?” he asked as he drove the corkscrew into the cork with brisk, muscular twists.

Sheesh, Christy thought. He hadn’t bothered to ask that all week. And now, today of all days, he decides to ask how their day was. Of course, she could conceal the truth from him, gloss it over. But that wasn’t Christy’s style. She held firm to her policy that the parents of her charges deserved the truth about every detail of their children’s daily lives. The absolute truth, the good stuff and the bad stuff, the cute and the worrisome stuff. “Uh. Well, actually we had a little…an incident.”

“An incident?”

“Yeah. I took Meggie to an art showing—they had some cute black-and-white photographs of animals at the Philbrook—and…and she…well, she got upset and knocked over a small statue.”