Daddyhood

Did she know how incredibly sexy that gesture was?

What it did to him?

He dragged a hand through his hair and struggled for his voice. “Don’t tell me you got the twins successfully bedded down on the first try,” he said, his words coming out surprisingly steady. It was more than he felt on the inside.

Sabrina smiled. “They tried to egg me into one more story, but I resisted the little charmers.”

“Good,” he said, taking a step closer. “I wouldn’t want them to get spoiled or anything.”

One soft, winged eyebrow arched attractively. “As a student of child behavior, I have to tell you it may already be too late for that, Gabe Lawrence.”

He laughed.

Sabrina met his gaze. “While you’re in a good mood, I have something I want to ask you,” she said, her voice hesitant.

“Yeah, what’s that?”

She studied his features, trying to decide how best to phrase her request.

His mouth curved up in a slow smile, his stance easy, one elbow resting against the mantel, his blue eyes probing her softly.

Sabrina drew in a steadying breath. “I would like your permission to study the girls.”

“What?”

“Their personalities, behavior modes, adaptability to the changes in their life—”

“No!”

While she’d been explaining, Gabe’s features had hardened. The sapphire of his eyes took on the color of an impending storm. In contrast, an enraged mountain lion looked tamer.

Sabrina took an instinctive step backward. “Perhaps I didn’t explain well.”

“On the contrary,” he said. “I’m sure I understood you perfectly.”

Sabrina wasn’t so sure that was true. “It would be a harmless little project. The twins would do what they do naturally and I would—”

“Dissect their every action, their every word.”

She blinked at his interpretation of what she did on a daily basis, her scientific methodology. “You make it sound so—”

“Cold?”

“I was going to say…disciplined.”

“A softer word for the same thing,” he returned, not giving an inch in his demeanor. He dragged a hand through his hair. “Those two little girls have been through a lot lately. They lost their mother,” he bit out. “All they have is each other. And a single dad who’s desperately trying to do the work of two parents.”

“Precisely why I want to do this study,” she said determinedly.

She wasn’t unsympathetic to the girls’ loss. Sabrina knew what the death of a parent could do to children. It was never easy to lose a mother—and her heart went out to the two little girls.

She would never do anything that would harm them or cause them pain. And she hated it that Gabe thought she might, however unintentionally.

On occasion Sabrina had had other parents refuse her—and that was their right, of course. Her research was important—but not if there was a price to pay.

She felt Gabe’s gaze bore into her with the coldness of a laser beam, his shoulders squared, as if for battle.

“My work could be invaluable, a benefit both to Hannah and Heather, as well as for other children. Please tell me you’ll at least think about it,” she said as her final salvo.

With that she turned and started toward the front door.

“Sabrina.”

She paused near the entry. She would almost think he’d reconsidered—except that she remembered the hard glint in his blue eyes and knew he hadn’t changed his mind.

Still she turned around.

“I know what’s best for the twins,” he said flatly.

Sabrina drew in a breath. “Of course,” she answered, and let herself out through the front door.

Gabe heard the decisive shut of the door and knew she was gone. He pounded on the mantel. Hannah and Heather had been doing so well, settling in here with him, making new friends. They’d begun to feel like a family together, which was what Gabe wanted for them all.

Oh, there were still times, sometimes late at night, when the twins cried for their mother, not fully understanding why she couldn’t be there with them, why she couldn’t hold them or kiss away their pain.

That was when Gabe would hold them, brushing away their tears, smoothing back their curls with his big ungentle hands and telling them everything would be all right, when he knew, without their mother, that would never totally be true.

Gabe went in to say good-night to his daughters and found them snuggled into the sheets on their big double bed. Their world was still too fragile for Sabrina to upset it.

But he wasn’t sure she understood that.

He probably owed her some sort of apology for barking at her the way he had. Her research was important, he supposed. But Gabe just wasn’t sure he dared risk two vulnerable little girls to whatever study the scientific Dr. Moore had in mind.

She’d asked him to at least consider what she’d proposed, and short of an apology, he supposed he could give her request a fair consideration.

Chapter Three (#ulink_852407f0-cefc-5e80-b42c-3f8bc7f3c46b)

Sabrina had just returned from observing a group of four-year-old triplets in the Play Lab and she had a major headache.

“I don’t want to be disturbed unless the building’s on fire—and perhaps not even then,” she told her secretary, Violet Franz, as Sabrina whizzed past the older woman.

Violet peered over her glasses at her. “Are you ill, child? You don’t look well at all.”

Alerting the motherly Violet to an illness of any magnitude would risk bringing on chicken soup—or Violet’s equivalent of such.

And Sabrina didn’t want that.

She needed to be alone in her office where she could forget her afternoon with the unruly triplets. The Nelson trio were adorable—during nap time. At play they could only be termed little hellions.