Freefall

He couldn’t hear them from inside but he was certain Ali and the twins were all laughing, genuinely enjoying themselves.

They were acting like children, for the first time since he’d had to break the news to them about Peter and Shelly. Despite his best efforts, since that day he hadn’t been able to coax more than those heartbreaking, sad little half smiles out of them.

Just as the clock ticked down the fifteen minutes she had said they would remain outside, he watched her gather the children around and say something to them, then the four of them climbed out of the pool and rushed toward the poolhouse for robes and umbrellas.

A few moments later they headed for the house, their faces bright and rosy—from the cold or the exercise, he couldn’t tell.

With a frown, Thomas turned back to the papers spread across the desk and pretended to concentrate while the ormolu clock on the mantel ticked down the moments.

Thirty-three minutes later—not that he was counting or anything—a knock sounded at the door.

Without waiting for a reply, Sophie opened it and walked into the office dressed in jeans and a soft rose-colored sweater, her hair captured in a still-damp ponytail.

His reaction to her was as instant and powerful as it was unwelcome.

She made a big show of giving an elaborate curtsy. “I believe you rang for me, my lord.”

He glared at her pert tone. That was exactly her problem. Sophie thought she could laugh her way through life, that the world was one big adventure created only for her.

Ten years ago she had glowed with enthusiasm for life, wanting to taste every delicious morsel of excitement the world had to offer. She had been hungry to explore, to embrace, to experience.

Had he been just another of those little adventures of hers? The thought didn’t sit well with him. Not well at all.

“I’d like to know something. Can you tell me how in the hell you have survived on your own all these years with absolutely not one smidgeon of anything resembling common sense?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Dumb luck?”

“I believe it. What were you thinking, Sophie?”

With complete disregard for the paperwork spread across it, she perched on the edge of the desk, far too close for his comfort.

He was furious with himself for the instinctive way he leaned back—and even more so when he thought he saw a hint of amusement play at the corner of her mouth, as if she enjoyed making him uncomfortable.

“I’m assuming this lecture has to do with our little swim party.”

“This has to do with you not giving a thought to the consequences of your actions, as usual. This has to do with the complete irresponsibility of taking three young children out in a cold, hard rain to swim without giving a single thought to their health and welfare.”

“Are you finished?” she asked, her voice icy.

He paused long enough to look at her and realized with some shock that she was angry, too. He had never seen her mad. Amused, entranced, aroused, but never mad.

He sat back in Peter’s chair. “Not even close.”

“Too bad. You’ve had your say. Now I get a turn. You’re completely wrong, Thomas. Believe it or not, I did consider the wisdom of taking them out in the rain and I did consider the possibility they might catch cold.”

“But you took the risk anyway.”

“I took the risk. And it was worth every moment. You were watching them. I saw you in here standing at the window. You must have seen the same thing I did. They were laughing. Smiling and laughing and behaving like children instead of quiet little wraiths.”

He couldn’t deny the truth of her words. “Yes, I saw them. But they won’t be laughing when they all are sick in bed with pneumonia. What will you do if they get sick?”

“I’ll make them chicken soup and tuck them into their beds and read them every story in the house. But I’d rather see them laugh and splash and catch cold than shrivel away into quiet, spiritless little mice.”

All right, so maybe he had been a little more angry than the situation demanded. Perhaps she hadn’t been completely irresponsible after all. He sighed heavily, reluctant to admit he might have overreacted. “Couldn’t you have found another way to raise their spirits?”

“Maybe. But that was the first thing that came to me. They were restless and upset this morning. I don’t know if it was the rain or reality finally sinking in that Peter and Shelly are truly gone but they needed something to distract them, some way to work off that snarl of emotions. Swimming seemed like a good idea. But perhaps next time I’ll try to think of something else. Jumping on the beds, maybe, or timing which of us can slide down the bannister the fastest.”

He shuddered, imagining the mayhem she could wreak if let loose. Sophie only gave one of those low, sexy laughs of hers he remembered so well, one of those laughs that always used to strum through him.

“I’m doing my best, Tom,” she said, sobering. “I’m sorry for everyone’s sake that I’m not better at this, that I don’t really know what I’m doing with the children. But I am trying.”

For how long?

The question burned in his mind but he didn’t voice it. How long before she packed up her gear and caught a plane away from Seal Point, leaving the children with yet another loss to struggle through?

He couldn’t ask, not when she gazed at him with such earnest entreaty in her green eyes.

“Fine,” he said tersely. “But no more swimming in the middle of a rainstorm.”

She gave him a mock salute. “Aye-aye, captain.”

“That’s lieutenant.”

“Right. Sorry.” She smiled and for a moment the usual tension that writhed between them was gone.

He wanted to bask in that smile for a while and forget the past and all his unanswered questions.

But he also wanted to think he wasn’t quite the idiot he’d been a decade ago. He forced himself to lean back farther in Peter’s leather chair. “How are the children now?” he asked with studied casualness.

“Grand. At least they were when I left them. Mrs. Cope popped a big batch of buttery popcorn and they’re eating it while they watch an old movie. Swaddled in plenty of warm blankets, I might add.”

“Now that sounds like just the thing for a stormy Saturday afternoon like this one.”

She studied him for a moment and he wondered if she could tell the effort it cost him to pretend indifference to her. “Why don’t you join us, Tom? The children would be thrilled to make room for you on the couch. You look as if you could use a break.”

Was it that obvious how much he dreaded dealing with the thousand details awaiting his attention? Her invitation held undeniable appeal. It was far too tempting.

He glanced at the small mountain range of paperwork. “Thanks, but I’ve got to put some order to at least some of this chaos by Monday when I’m meeting with Peter’s attorney.”

She straightened from the desk, her lithe body unfurling like one of Manny Reyes’s flowers. “Okay. But we’ll save some popcorn for you if you change your mind.”

To his vast relief, she headed for the door.

“Thanks,” he said before she reached it. “Oh, and I’m, uh, sorry for jumping on you like that earlier.”

Her eyebrows lifted a little at his apology, then she offered him another swift, dazzling smile and walked out.

He gazed at the closed door for a long time after she left. For a moment there, she had reminded him so painfully of the woman he had known a decade ago. The girl, really. She hadn’t been much more than that, barely twenty.