Tender Loving Care

Chapter One

“Snookums!” Thirty-four pounds of OshKosh overalls hurled himself at Zoe, effectively dislodging her ribs for all time. “What’d you bring me? Where’s your suitcase?”

Wishing she could protect them both from an exceedingly nasty world, Zoe Anderson simply held the recently orphaned little boy close. “I came here so fast that I didn’t have time to bring you a present, but we can shop for something together, okay?” Slowly, she unwound the sticky fingers from around her neck and let Aaron slide to the floor.

“Sure. Did you bring Mommy and Daddy?”

That fast, her heart jumped in her throat. For an instant, she couldn’t even speak. “No, honey.” She took a breath. “So where’s your brother? And your grandma?”

“Grandma’s in the kitchen, and Parker’s in the bathtub with Uncle Rafe. You don’t want to see my brother,” Aaron informed her. “You want to see me.”

“I want to see both of you,” Zoe said pleasantly, and gave him another quick hug.

“Grandma said she was going to have a really nice lady come to live with her here, did you know that? Are we going somewhere with you and Uncle Rafe? Guess what we had for dinner!”

“What?”

“Macaroni and cheese!”

“No kidding?” Feeling emotionally out of control and overwhelmed, Zoe swallowed. Belatedly noticing that the front door was letting in a cold March wind, she closed it, took off the rakish red felt hat that was one of her favorites and started unbuttoning her coat. Her gaze skimmed the living room. She’d been here for Christmas. At Christmas, Janet and Jonathan had been alive.

Janet had been compulsively neat-now two lampshades hung crookedly; toys were strewn from wall to wall; and a TV set blared, although no one was watching it. One of the twins-undoubtedly Aaron-had recently taken a magic marker to the wall by the stairwell.

“Zoe?” Mrs. Gregor appeared in the kitchen doorway, leaning heavily on her walker. The twins’ grandmother looked tired from the inside out. Her soft complexion was dangerously pale, and tears blurred her eyes when Zoe surged toward her for a hug. Loss and grief dangled between them for that moment; neither said anything.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here yesterday,” Zoe said fiercely. “I felt so bad, but I was out on the water. I never got the message until the night before, and then-”

“Zoe, I understand about your work, you know that. Just thank heavens you’re here now,” Mrs. Gregor said finally.

“You’re all right?”

“Of course she’s all right,” Aaron said irritably. “She’s Grandma. Now that Snookums is here, can we stay up late?”

Zoe glanced past Mrs. Gregor’s shoulder. Janet’s kitchen had always been spotless. Now debris littered every surface, and the counter was piled high with dishes, a measure of how impossible it was for a woman who used a walker to deal with two active four-year-olds. Despair racked her. Decisions had to be made quickly that she simply wasn’t prepared to make. “Mr. Kirkland-”

“Rafe?”

“Yes, Rafe. He managed to get here yesterday?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Gregor confirmed. “He spent most of the afternoon at the lawyer’s, Zoe. You’ll have to talk with him-he’s upstairs with Parker.”

“I told you that,” Aaron reminded her. “Parker will wait.”

Mrs. Gregor afforded her grandson one censoriously raised eyebrow. “You’re still in trouble with me, young man.”

“Uh-oh. What’d you do?” Zoe asked him.

“Slugged Parker.” Aaron shrugged. “He deserved it.”

“Aaron!”

“Come on, monster,” Zoe suggested. “We’ll go upstairs together, and you can show me where your brother is.”

“You know where the bathroom is,” he objected.

A piggy-back ride made Aaron willing to get out of his grandmother’s hair for a few minutes. Upstairs, Zoe winced at the look of the twins’ bedroom-sheets and blankets had been fashioned into a makeshift tent; clothes had been tossed every which way. Resolutely, she aimed for the sounds of splashing and laughter coming from the bathroom.

Letting Aaron down, she rapped on the door once, which earned her a bewildered stare from her godchild. The concept of privacy was about as interesting to him as spinach.

“Mrs. Gregor, there was no need for you to climb the stairs. I told you I could handle this…” The wet and weary man who pulled open the door abruptly stopped talking.

“Snookums!” Fast as a flash, Parker leaped naked out of the tub. Zoe dropped to her knees and braced herself just in time for the generous wet hug. Parker and Aaron both had stand-up-straight red hair and freckles and sassy blue eyes, but they had distinguishing characteristics. Parker was the sturdier twin while Aaron was the dreamer, “Gosh, you and Uncle Rafe are both here,” Parker breathed delightedly. “Are we going to have fun or are we going to have fun?”

“We’re going to have colds if you don’t pop back in the water,” she scolded teasingly. Corners, ceilings and walls were dripping. “What is this? You’ve turned the bathroom into a submarine!”

A throat was quietly cleared behind her. “I had the misguided notion that a bath was a relatively simple project.”

As Parker hopped back in the tub, Zoe stood up to take a good look at the man whose leg Aaron was hanging on to for dear life. Over the past few days, she’d talked to Rafe Kirkland on the phone three times, but she had only met him once-six years ago at Janet and Jonathan’s wedding. She still remembered the bold angular features, the natural assurance, the blue eyes that pounced on a woman.

Those eyes were pouncing on her now. Allowing two boys near water at the same time was an error in judgment that resulted in whoops of giggling and splashing confusion. For that moment, Zoe heard none of it. She felt Rafe’s gaze intimately slide over her from head to toe, and straightened.

The pregnant silence crackling between them echoed with man-to-woman vibrations. Perhaps she should have been prepared for that? At the wedding long ago, Zoe had been a frisky twenty, more than happy to indulge in champagne and exercise her flirting skills on Jonathan’s best man. She wasn’t about to apologize for being a carefree twenty once upon a time, but that wasn’t the image she wanted to convey to Rafe now.

Her appearance accurately reflected the capable twenty-six-year-old woman she had become. Her hair was a warm chestnut with streaks of copper; she wore it short and windswept-casual, the best style for her profession as an oceanographer. Her black sweater and white slacks accented her slim figure without being too tight-Zoe didn’t own clothing she couldn’t move in.

She never bothered with much makeup; her skin always had the blush of the sun, and lipstick was useless-she bit it off. Today, as usual, she’d brushed on a little mascara, conceding to vanity over her best feature-huge oval eyes that were the luminous green of the ocean on a clear day.

His eyes were definitely Paul Newman blue. She remembered that. She also remembered a man determined to follow his own rhythms on a crowded dance floor; she remembered him filling her champagne glass far too often. She remembered feeling out of her league as far as flirtation skills went, and exulting in a false sensation of danger where there really was none-at the time he was working in South America, and she never expected to see him again.

Neither the hazy memories nor the recent phone calls had prepared her for the impact of actually seeing him. He was too tall, and his shoulders were too big for a small bathroom. His jeans advertised virility and his rolled-up shirt cuffs showed off sinewed arms. He had the vitality of a man who valued the physical. The lumberjack physique was accented by a face that revealed a strong character. Sun-weathered skin stretched taut over angular bones; his eyes were sharp with intelligence and perception. No one was going to argue with that chin.

He would be a demanding lover, she mused, and immediately banished the thought. Sexy was fine. Not relevant and a little disturbing, but fine. That didn’t matter…it couldn’t.

She searched Rafe’s face for what did matter-signs of flexibility in him, hints of understanding and compassion. The slash of laugh lines around his mouth promised humor, but he wasn’t smiling now. She looked for any clues that would help her reach him, discovered a woman could get lost in those compelling blue eyes, and felt abruptly uneasy.

For Zoe, Rafe represented more trouble than she knew what to do with. He was a relative stranger. He was also the man who had been named to share the guardianship of the twins with her.

“This place suit you?”

Zoe shook her head. “Any place is all right by me.” Ten o’clock now, and the Detroit night was pitch black. At the Gregor household, Mrs. Gregor and the twins were finally asleep. Through the confusion of the past several hours, Zoe and Rafe hadn’t had a chance to exchange more than a few words, much less discuss the subject on both their minds. At the house, she’d simply taken over. So had Rafe. Neither had had any choice.

Both faces reflected strain and weariness as Rafe drove into the bar’s parking lot. Both of them had wanted to get away from the house, to a place where they could talk more freely.

The flashing sign said Leeds. Zoe only hoped the place was reasonably quiet. She opened the car door and wrapped her coat tighter around her against the biting March wind. Rafe walked at her side, both of them silent.

Inside, the bar was dark and nearly empty. Candles flickered from red jars on each table, and a ruddy-faced bartender was silently wiping glasses behind the counter. Several men played poker in a far corner; two women were drinking coffee at a small table; and a few couples were buried in booths against the wall.

Disorientation flooded Zoe. None of this was real. She didn’t know this place, this man, this town. Her best friend simply couldn’t be dead, not so fast, not so young. And the twins…there was no possible way she could take on the care and raising of two four-year-olds. She couldn’t take on any children. Ever.

Rafe steered her to a corner booth. “You want a drink?”

“Maybe coffee.” As Rafe strode toward the bar, she pushed her coat off her shoulders and cupped her chin in one hand, bracing her nerves for the confrontation she knew was coming.

Over the past few hours, she’d learned all kinds of things about his character that she would never have guessed. He was completely unfamiliar with kids-that was obvious from the state of the bathroom after Parker’s bath. Still, with his slow, lazy baritone, Rafe had a way of soothing tempers and averting the skirmishes that the little boys were so good at starting. Patience flowed in and around him while Zoe’s nerves were jangling. She’d discovered that he was capable of being in three places at once, that he did it without ever moving fast, and that nothing deterred him from a course once he’d decided what he wanted to do.

Rafe was a rock, which was very nice for anyone who wasn’t disagreeing with him. It counted heavily in his favor that he was good with the boys, but Zoe hadn’t noticed any of those easy smiles of his directed toward her.

Carrying a tall stein of beer and a steaming mug of coffee, he maneuvered around tables back to their booth. Pushing the coffee toward her, he eased his long body into the opposite side. She took a sip of the acid brew; he took a long draft of his beer. That ended that. “What the hell,” he said slowly, “are we going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“They had no right to do this to us.”

She nodded. “I agree.”

He was quiet a long time. His gaze wandered over the poker players, then the two women, but when his eyes focused back on Zoe she felt disturbingly pinned. “I spent the afternoon talking to the attorney for the estate,” he said. “We’re not legally obligated to make a home for the twins. Neither of us signed anything. Ethically, morally and legally, being guardians simply means supervising the caretaking of the children.”

“Yes.” She understood. Unfortunately, it didn’t matter. Two small children had lost both their parents and had their entire world turned upside down in less than a week. Zoe couldn’t have cared less about legalities.

“One option would be to hire a woman to live full-time with Mrs. Gregor and help her take care of them.”

“An option,” Zoe echoed, but she knew that Mrs. Gregor couldn’t assume even a supervisory role for the kids. Her health was just too precarious.

“So,” Rafe said slowly, “are you willing to look at any of the alternative options?”

She shook her head. “No.”

He clipped out a swear word, conveying his frustration. “Neither am I.”

More silence. The bartender stopped wiping glasses long enough to lean on the bar and speak to a woman who had just walked in. The lady wore a sapphire-blue dress with a long slit in the skirt that showed her thigh when she slid onto the bar stool. Zoe wondered vaguely if they were on the wrong side of town.

Her eyes swung back to the man across from her. Every time she looked at him, she could easily picture him climbing out of a woman’s bed. But she couldn’t imagine him handling two volatile, energetic four-year-olds on a permanent basis.

Unfortunately he had to, because she couldn’t. For a moment, Zoe concentrated on making swirls in her coffee with a plastic spoon.

She’d loved Janet like a sister…more than a sister. For the past few days, grief over her friend’s death had alternated with anger and frustration. If Janet had asked her to be guardian for the twins, Zoe would have said no. Janet knew exactly why Zoe would never have agreed to take on any children…just as Zoe knew there’d been no relatives on whom Janet and Jonathan could depend.

If both she and Rafe declined the guardianship, the little ones could end up in an orphanage or foster home. The thought made Zoe ill.

She pushed back her hair, leaned her chin in her palm and stopped fussing with her coffee. “I have a good job,” she said quietly. “I could save money by moving to a smaller apartment. I’m not trying to get out of my financial responsibilities here-I wouldn’t. If you take the twins, I’ll foot the bill for a full-time babysitter, and I’ll pay for their schooling. They could visit me during vacations and on holidays, and-”

He swiftly interrupted her. “There’s no possible way I can take them. I told you that on the phone.”

“Well, there has to be, because I can’t,” she said desperately.

Rafe took two long slugs of beer and leaned back. “Are we going to leave them with strangers?”

“No.”

“Then they’ll have to live with one of us, Zoe.” His eyes seemed to burn into her face. His tone was as vibrant and low as a slow-building storm. “Look-Jonathan never mentioned this guardianship to me, any more than Janet discussed it with you. I’ve asked myself why over and over…but the answer is obvious: They knew exactly what they were doing. They knew damn well we wouldn’t stash their kids in a foster home, and I don’t think they felt one ounce of guilt for putting us both on this emotional hot seat. So…I understand why they chose us as guardians, but as far as solutions go…” He shook his head. “I’m in no position to raise children, dammit. I’d like to believe I’m not acting out of total selfishness, but hell…maybe I am.”

“I wasn’t accusing you of that.”

He didn’t want the interruption. “Finances aren’t the real problem. Whatever the insurance won’t cover, I can handle. But raising them-no.” He dragged a hand through his hair. “I’m a seismologist; I think I told you that. My work’s taken me everywhere from California to Guatemala-I’m on assignment in Montana right now, studying the relationship between avalanches and earthquakes. I work strange hours; I’ve never settled anywhere longer than a few years at a time. I’ve never even been around kids…”

“Rafe, neither have I,” Zoe insisted. “You think I can’t understand what you’re talking about? My life is the ocean, my whales; I explained some of that to you over the phone. Just like your work, my job involves sporadic hours, responsibilities I can’t just wriggle out of. It’s not an environment that could possibly be good for young kids, and I know nothing about children.”

Blue eyes snapped on green, somewhere between a rock and a hard place. “So…we’re in the same boat. But the kids have to be our prime consideration here.”

“Oh, Lord. I agree.” Her eyes were luminous with emotion. “Believe me, if it were a simple matter of changing my lifestyle, I would do it. But it’s not that simple, not for me.” She took a breath. “Look, Rafe, there is just no chance I would make any kind of mother.”

His brows quirked up in surprise and amusement. “I could see that you didn’t give a hoot about the boys,” he said gravely. “Parker jumped out of the tub stark naked to hug you, and half the toys in their closet came from Snookums. How did you manage to earn that nickname, by the way?”

“A game called Sneak ’Em Up, which they called Snook ’Em Up, which somehow deteriorated into…never mind.” She waved her hand, dismissing the dratted nickname. “Anyway, that kind of thing is misleading.”

“Oh?”

“And you’re obviously fond of them, too. The other half of the toys in their closet came from Uncle Rafe, and I saw you tussling with the two of them on the bed. They adore you.”

“They adore you just as much.”

Standoff. Zoe stirred her coffee and then fussed with her black button earrings. When she got around to looking at Rafe again, she found a deep groove wedged between his brows. His voice brushed her nerves with wet velvet. “I apologize,” he said quietly.

“For what?”

“For assuming it would automatically be easier for you to take on kids because you’re a woman.”

“Maybe…with another woman…that might be a natural assumption,” she admitted. He just kept staring at her with that pensive frown. Silence lapped up the seconds; words wouldn’t come.

“Would it be easier to talk somewhere else?” he asked finally. She’d barely nodded before he was reaching for his corduroy jacket.

The night was bleak and cold. Clumps of gray-crusted snow clung to the sidewalks March-fashion; winter wasn’t quite ready to give up its hold. Cars hummed past them, tires sizzling on wet streets; streetlamps illuminated a city that needed the wash of spring rains.

Zoe turned up her coat collar and jammed her hands in her pockets, vibrantly aware of the man’s long stride next to her. “I can’t have children,” she said quietly.

“So you said. But, as I told you, I’m in the same boat.”

Impatience surged through Zoe. This was so hard to talk about, and it was worse with a stranger. “I mean physically I can’t have them. Three years ago, I had an infection that got out of hand, and following that an operation. None of which is any of your business or your problem, but I know exactly why Janet wrote me in as a guardian in case anything happened to her. She knew her kids would be my only chance to have children-only she was terribly wrong, and in the best interests of the twins, I think I have to explain all this to you. You’ve got to understand why you’re the only one who can take them.”

“Zoe…” Rafe stopped dead on the street. His voice was suddenly gruff and low, and somehow intimate.

She kept on walking and talking, never once looking at him as she told him her story. The words came out blithe and brisk, emotionless. Water over the dam. No point in crying over spilled milk. All of the clichés were operative. When catastrophe hit, life didn’t end, and neither did sunlight or laughter. She’d had to keep that firmly in mind, because there’d been a time when she’d carelessly assumed that children would be part of her life. Didn’t most women want children? “But not anymore,” she said, bringing her explanation to a conclusion. “I’ve built a life that doesn’t include kids. I’m sure that sounds cold-blooded and selfish-”

The presence of his hands on her shoulders forced her to stop walking. She felt cold, smooth fingers pushing back her hair, tugging her coat collar up against the snapping wind.

She stared at his chin. “You know how people are about kids. A total stranger sees a baby and goes up and cluck-clucks and makes cooing noises. Well, I don’t cluck and I don’t coo anymore; I walk on by.” She said fiercely, “It took too damn long for me to accept the results of that surgery. I don’t want to be around kids, to be reminded constantly of what I’m missing. I just want to be left alone to live my life my own way. Maybe I am cold-blooded and selfish-”

“Shut up, would you, Zoe?”

He said it softly, as his thumbs brushed the moisture from her cheeks. His touch was as gentle as silk, but Zoe felt mortified. There was no excuse for allowing tears to well up in front of a relative stranger. There was a time when she’d cried herself dry, but that had been three years ago. Now she’d cultivated insensitivity toward children, and she couldn’t imagine where the tears came from.

His hands dropped to his sides. She set the furious walking pace, more than a match for his lithe stride. Block followed block, all in the wrong direction, but he never said a word. When he did murmur something, it was completely unexpected. “There was a man in your life, wasn’t there?”

“I’m twenty-six,” she said wearily. “Of course there was a man. And there’s probably a woman in your life right now, affecting how or when or if you could take on the kids.”

He hesitated. “Yes.”

She shot him a look. “A close relationship? Does she like children?”

His sudden grin was inscrutable. “Sorry to disappoint you, Zoe, but marriage is not in the offing.” He added wryly, “I’ve never been opposed to marriage or to kids, but settling down has never come into the picture, because my job takes me from here to Timbuktu in search of earthquakes. My work’s only part of it, though. During what little time I’ve spent around those two devils, we got on fine, but that’s not the same thing as being qualified to raise them as a single parent. There’s no way I could tackle them alone.”

They turned back, and in time she recognized the bar’s lights and the all-but-empty parking lot. Huddled on the freezing car seat a few minutes later, she waited for Rafe to start the engine, and found herself studying him.

His strong profile was shadowed, the expression in his eyes hidden beneath the shelf of his brows. His rumpled hair brushed his coat collar; she could smell the faintest hint of citrus and sandalwood, and she was not surprised in the least that he already had a woman in his life. She could still feel the impression of his thumb brushing her cheek, the strength of his hand on her shoulder, the warmth and compassion in his eyes when he’d listened to her.

They didn’t talk again until they pulled into the Gregor driveway. Only the porch light gleamed from the dark house; the quiet neighborhood was asleep. Rafe turned off the engine and pocketed the key, and then just sat there. “Solutions aren’t appearing out of the woodwork,” he mentioned dryly.

That fast, the only thing on her mind was the children. “No.” She sighed. “I’ve done the best I can to explain why I can’t take them, but they’re still Janet’s children. We’ve got to decide what’s best for them…”

“I’m not exactly in line for a potential parent of the year award. But I’ll be damned if I could live with myself if I turned them over to someone they didn’t know.”

“I know,” she agreed unhappily. “Especially now, Rafe. I don’t think either child understands what’s happened yet. Aaron seems particularly confused. They need someone familiar in their lives, someone they already care about and trust, someone who had first-hand knowledge of their lives with Janet and Jonathan.”

“So they go with one of us,” Rafe murmured, and turned to face her. His eyes glinted with a speculative light, and his tone was thoughtful. “Or both of us.”

“Pardon?”

“We don’t have to come up with a permanent solution this instant, just a temporary one. You feel you can’t handle the kids, and so do I, but we agree we’re not about to leave them with strangers.”

“Yes…”

“They’ve just had their world rocked to hell. They need two parents.”

“Yes…” Why did she have the feeling that a slow-rolling rock was picking up momentum on its course down a darned long hill?

“I don’t know how I can manage to get time off, but I will. If we took them to your place in Washington, you could keep your job, and I could watch over the boys. For a short time only, of course. But they’d have both of us there, and we’d have the chance to live with them, know them, get them through these rough first weeks without Janet and Jonathan. And in the meantime, we’d both be in a better position to make long-term decisions about what’s best for them.”

“Wait a minute,” Zoe said desperately. And Rafe obligingly waited while she struggled for something to say. “I don’t see…I mean, obviously we can’t…” She took a breath. “There’s no way that arrangement would work, and anyway, wherever you live has to be better for kids than where I live.”

He shrugged. “Where we go isn’t the point. Sticking together is, for the kids’ sake.” He climbed out of the car and then peered back in. “I can see from the look on your face what you think of the idea. You think I feel any different? But dammit, do we have any other choice?”