A Forever Family

“It’s okay, Tavia,” she whispered against the doll’s hair. “I’ll look after you. I won’t let Uncle M. yell at you no more.”

But Tavia just kept crying, wishing for Mommy and Daddy to come down from heaven instead of staying up there and helping God all the time.

She didn’t like them being angels. She wanted them to be people like Shanna and Grammy. Even like Uncle M.

Jenni wouldn’t let Tavia tell her to say mean things to Uncle Michael, either. That wasn’t nice. She really didn’t hate him. She just didn’t want him to throw Mommy’s things away.

“’Cause,” Jenni whispered. “If he throws Mommy’s clothes away, he might throw mine away. Maybe he’ll even throw me away.”

She bit her lower lip and palmed her nose. If Uncle M. threw her away, then she and Tavia would just go and live with Shanna or Grammy. Sniffing, she swiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Yeah, that’s what they’d do. They’d live with Shanna. Shanna was fun and showed her things like the chick’bees.

Stroking Tavia’s hair, Jenni rocked back and forth, singing softly. She and Tavia felt better.

He’d been a jackass.

Again.

If she called him worse names when she opened her door, he’d bow his head and take them in stride.

All day he’d kept watch on the white log house through the trees. The battered two-toned pickup, parked in the narrow driveway, meant she hadn’t left as he’d feared during the hour he’d been to Blue Springs. Shortly after lunch his grandmother had called to announce her return from her six-week visit to her brother in Anaheim, and she’d demanded to see her great-granddaughter. Grateful for an excuse to get out of the house, he took the tyke into town. After this morning, he had no delusions about Jenni’s eagerness to leave him for a few hours.

Damn. They should be drawing closer. Bonding, not pulling apart. They shared a loss. As the adult, and a doctor, he knew how to lessen the trauma for Jen and for himself.

Except, he couldn’t.

Shanna’s right, he thought, walking the pathway toward the employee quarters. As a stand-in parent he was a bozo.

Shanna. The name hummed through his blood. He didn’t understand the attraction. She wasn’t his type. Tall, slim to the point of being gangly. He preferred women with hourglass figures. Soft. Yet, a glimpse of her had his jeans in an uncomfortable fit.

He regarded the cabin, then the ridiculous marigold in his hand, and scowled. Seven months without so much as a dinner date was more than any normal red-blooded American man should endure. The last, with a divorced radiologist, had evolved into a date of ear tonguing and crotch palming—from her—that he would rather forget.

Not Shanna. He’d be the one tonguing and palming. Lean limbs, that skin slick and damp…

Booting a pinecone off her stoop, he raised a hand to knock. No use denying it. The sight of her spun something between them.

The door flung open.

Her sapphire eyes were cool. Cool as the jewel they emulated. “Hey, Doc. Come to see if I’ve cut and run?”

Michael shoved off a flicker of displeasure. So she held grudges. He understood. Grudges held off pain. Thumbs catching his jeans pockets, he asked, “May I come in?”

“Why? As you see, I’m not going anywhere. I realized I do need this job.”

“I’d like to talk.”

“About what?” Her tone dipped below ice-blue, like the blouse she wore. “We said it all this morning. I stay out of your hair, you stay out of mine. When it’s over we’ll say adios and that’ll be that.”

“Dammit, Miss—”

“Drop the formalities, Michael. I’m just the hired help not one of your associates at the clinic, not a patient.”

He’d have preferred Mike—and the way it seared the air from her lips. Shifting, he stared down the hill at the barns. “I shouldn’t be taking my problems out on you.”

“Better me than your niece.”

He looked at her. She had such pretty eyes. “You don’t mince words, do you?”

“Seldom.”

Again he observed the barns and fields. “I never used to be like this.”

“Tragedy changes us in ways we don’t expect.”

And the tragedy I’ve seen in your eyes? “You’re different.”

“From who?”

“Most people.”

“Is that good or bad?” Her tone gentled.

He studied her soft mouth. “Good. Very good.”

“Well, that’s a first. Come in. I’ll put on a pot of tea.” She gestured to his hand. “That poor marigold needs water.”

She headed for the kitchen, leaving him to close the door—and to watch her backside in cropped denim pants. Baked chicken and a medley of spices hailed him. She could cook.

“Supper at three in the afternoon?”

“I skip lunch.” She pulled down the oven door and checked the meal. “So I try to eat early.”

He wandered around the tiny living room. “Next to breakfast, lunch is the most important meal of the day. There’s a saying that goes: king, prince, pauper. It’s how you should treat daily meals.”

This time her laughter was rich and a little smoky and floated into his belly. “I hate to put a crimp in your diet plans, Doc, but I eat when the growlies arrive. For me that happens twice a day.”

“You’re too thin.”

“Well,” she huffed. “Sorry if that offends you.”

“It doesn’t.” He liked her frame just fine. In fact, inordinately so. But he couldn’t snub his observations—from a medical viewpoint.

He looked around. It was the first time he’d been in the cabin since long before Leigh died. What he saw shamed him. The place was old. The walls needed painting.

“Would you like some chicken?” She tossed oven mitts on the Formica and readjusted one of the two barrettes holding back her hair. Her arms were graceful as a figure skater’s. He imagined them around his rib cage, his neck.

“You can’t live here.”

“Beg pardon?”