Serenity Harbor

“Wow, that was a good sandwich,” Bowie said, wiping away a little grape jelly at his mouth with a napkin. “I haven’t had one of those in years. Thanks.”

“See? I told you,” she said to Milo. “You’ve got mad PB&J skills, kiddo.”

The boy just gazed at her, obviously not impressed with her assessment. Bowie, on the other hand, smiled for a moment, then looked uncomfortable. “Uh, I know this is a lot to ask, especially on such short notice, but I need to run into the office and sign a few papers that resulted from our meeting today. I was going to take Milo with me, but if I can avoid it, I would rather not. He doesn’t like it there.”

She thought about the check in her pocket and the peace of mind it provided. “I can stay with him the rest of the afternoon. No problem.”

“Are you sure?”

She ought to say no so he didn’t completely take advantage of her. Begin how you want to go on, right? But Bowie looked so relieved, she didn’t have the heart to disappoint him.

“Sure. I can stay until six. After that, I’ve got a thing.” She didn’t really. She just didn’t want him to think she had nothing better to do than get him out of a bind.

“Thanks. Hey, mind if I take that other sandwich you and Milo made? I’m still hungry, and it tasted delicious.”

“It’s yours.”

His smile was sweetly genuine and made her toes curl inside her sandals.

Oh, she did not want to be attracted to him. That was exactly the sort of thing that always seemed to lead her into trouble.

Something told her it was going to be a long three weeks.

* * *

BIG SURPRISE, BOWIE wasn’t back by six.

Katrina glanced at her watch for about the twentieth time in the last five minutes and tried not to let her annoyance filter through to Milo.

They sat on the floor of his bedroom with a whole fleet of little cars in every color scattered around them like little shiny insects. They were his favorite toys, apparently, at least judging by the purple race car that was obviously his favorite. Most of them looked shiny and new, but the purple one he pulled out of the pocket of his shorts was battered, dented in places with the paint worn off.

He lined all twenty-five cars on the floor, then drove the purple car through them, scattering the others in all directions.

“That purple car is tough,” she observed. “Does it have a name?”

He ignored her, driving it in circles around the carpet mat.

“What other car do you like?” she asked. “Do you like this blue race car or this red pickup truck?”

He looked at them briefly, then continued driving the purple car around the floor with a low humming sound that resembled a car engine.

He could make sounds. The afternoon had amply demonstrated that. So why couldn’t he form words? Katrina needed to know his background and any actual diagnoses so she could do a little research to find out the best way to reach him.

Yes, Bowie had hired her simply to be a nanny to the boy, not come up with an individualized education plan for him, but she was a trained elementary education teacher. It was second nature to her to want to find solutions.

Before taking off with Carter, she had actually been working on her special education certification. Probably because of her own learning difficulties, she had always been drawn to the children who struggled more than their classmates. While she cared for all her students, Katrina found a greater degree of satisfaction in helping those who had to work harder to learn.

It was one of the things that had first drawn her to Gabi when Katrina first decided to volunteer at the orphanage near the school where she found a job teaching English after she had been stranded in Colombia. Some of the children had been apprehensive around Katrina, but Gabi had come right up to her, handed her a flowering weed she’d plucked from the garden and started jabbering away in a combination of Spanish and her own Gabi-speak. Katrina had fallen in love instantly.

Now she watched Milo make sounds with the car, then hold another car, headlight-to-headlight, against the purple one as if they were talking to each other.

He had receptive language skills, he could make sounds and he understood the concept of language. Why didn’t he speak? What she really needed was a long conversation with Bowie so she could figure out how best to help his brother during her time with him.

As if her thoughts had conjured him, she suddenly sensed movement by the door, and she glanced up in time to see Bowie walking into the room.

Again, her stupid heart rate kicked up a notch and her palms went clammy with nerves. Her thoughts seemed to scatter like those cars Milo had plowed through.

Her instinctive reaction to him both embarrassed and dismayed her as she rose to her feet, needing to be on a little more equal level.

So the man was gorgeous. She wasn’t in the market for gorgeous anymore, especially since it usually came hand in hand with arrogance and conceit.

His mouth twisted into a regretful frown. “I told you six and it’s half past. I’m sorry. I was helping one of the software engineers work out a problem and we both lost track of time. It won’t happen again, I promise.”

Somehow she doubted the veracity of that particular statement. Most gorgeous men of her acquaintance seemed to think the world existed for their convenience—though, okay, that might be a gross generalization. She didn’t know Bowie Callahan well enough to automatically make that assumption.

“It was fine this time,” she said. “We had fun, didn’t we, Milo?”

The boy ignored both of them, busy lining up all his cars again in the same carefully ordered row.

“How did it go?” Bowie asked.

With a careful look to make sure Milo was still occupied, she rose and walked out into the hallway, out of earshot.

“Fine, for the most part. He seemed happy to have me there for the first few minutes and then ignored me most of the afternoon. We had one meltdown when I tried to have him leave his car out with the other toys when he had to use the bathroom, but we made it through.”

“He doesn’t do anything without that stupid, manky purple car. I tried to give him a bunch of new cars with no luck. That’s still his favorite. I don’t have actual proof of this, but I’m guessing he loves it because Stella gave it to him.”

“Stella. Is that your mother?”

“Yeah. That’s Mom.”

A hundred questions flashed through her mind at his sudden hard tone. Why did merely the mention of his mother’s name upset him? And why hadn’t he known about his brother until the last few weeks?

“I’m puzzled about why he doesn’t speak,” she said slowly. “Do you know what sort of speech therapy he’s had in the past?”

Bowie shook his head. “That seems to be the big mystery to the specialists we’ve seen. To be honest, I’m not sure whether he’s had any therapy. Knowing Stella, I highly doubt it.”

Katrina frowned at the bitterness in his tone. What sort of history did those seemingly casual words conceal?

“What about since you became his guardian?”

“I have an appointment next week with one in Shelter Springs but was thinking about postponing it. I’m thinking maybe we should wait until the autism specialist arrives before we start any intensive therapy, so she can be involved at the outset.”

The frustration and weariness in his voice pulled at her. She could only imagine how difficult it must have been for him to take over guardianship of a child with Milo’s kind of developmental challenges.

“It makes sense from an outsider’s perspective,” she assured him.

“Thanks. I appreciate that.” He smiled, and she was vaguely aware of her toes curling again.