features which didn’t make her look much older than the cherub standing at her side.
Bethany smiled at the knowledge of just how wrong he was. Looks could be deceptive. She might look young, but she was actually—
‘I asked who you were,’ he reminded her harshly. Her smile seemed to have infuriated him even more as he glared down at her from his superior height, dark brows meeting frowningly together across those steely grey eyes.
‘And I answered you, Mr Rafferty,’ she replied evenly, turning to smile at the little girl at her side as a tiny warm hand slid into hers. ‘Heavenly Angels—’
‘Which tells me precisely nothing,’ Nick Rafferty interrupted impatiently. ‘You look absolutely nothing like an angel to me!’
Her smile became wistfully sad at the correctness of that statement. He wasn’t the first person to mention that fact. Angels were reputedly golden-haired and blue-eyed—ethereally beautiful creatures. Her green eyes and freckles certainly didn’t lend themselves to beauty, and, though she had tried to rectify the colour of her hair once, it had turned out purple, which hadn’t gone down too well with the powers that be.
‘I like her, Daddy Nick,’ the little girl next to her said, smiling up at Bethany with that toothless grin.
Nick’s mouth twisted disgustedly. ‘I’m sure that’s a great recommendation, Lucy—’ his tone implied that it was the opposite ‘—but—’
‘It certainly is,’ Bethany agreed happily, deciding to ignore his caustic tone as she bent down on one knee so that she was on the same level as the little girl. ‘As it’s you and your brothers I’ve been sent here to care for.’
‘You have?’ The cherubic face brightened as she turned to the tall man towering gloweringly over them. ‘Daddy Nick, did you hear what the angel said? She’s—’
‘I heard, Lucy,’ he rasped dismissively. ‘And I would like an explanation of that remark.’ He turned to Bethany. ‘You don’t look like a friend of their mother’s,’ he added scathingly. ‘But if you are,’ he continued, before Bethany could make any reply, ‘I can assure you I don’t need one of Samantha’s cronies to— Lucy, will you stop pulling on the young lady’s arm like that!’ he thundered as the little girl did exactly that to Bethany’s coat-sleeve.
Lucy gave him a reproachful look from under lashes that were long and golden. ‘I only wanted to know if the angel can make jam sandwiches,’ she muttered petulantly, her bottom lip starting to tremble precariously.
Bethany, spotting the tell-tale tremble, picked the little girl up in her arms, cuddling her close. ‘Of course I can, darling,’ she crooned comfortingly. Couldn’t Nick Rafferty see that he was upsetting Lucy with his aggressive attitude?
‘Now?’ Lucy prompted hopefully.
Bethany smoothed back the tumbling golden curls. ‘Well, maybe not now—it will ruin your tea. But—’
‘We haven’t had any lunch yet,’ put in the younger of the two boys hopefully.
‘You haven’t?’ Bethany nodded understandingly. That explained a lot.
It was usually her experience—and, contrary to Nick Rafferty’s belief, she did have quite a lot of experience with children!—that children either became bad-tempered or hyperactive when they were hungry. The latter she had never quite understood, when it was food for fuel that they were in need of, but she had always been told she asked too many questions anyway, and, to be honest, that par-ticular one hadn’t seemed as important as some of the others she had wanted answers to.
‘No wonder you’re all a little—over-excited. Could you point me in the direction of the kitchen, Mr Rafferty?’ she enquired brightly.
‘It’s this way.’ The younger of the two boys again took charge, taking hold of Bethany’s hand to lead her in the direction of a doorway to the left of this main room.
‘I— But— Josh! Jamie!’ Nick Rafferty thundered at them again.
Neither boy took any notice of him, but he sounded rather desperate, so Bethany was the one to take pity on him and briefly halt their progress to the kitchen, turning to look at him enquiringly.
‘We don’t even know who this young lady is!’ Again he directed his words to the two boys.
Bethany smiled in sympathy with his agitation. ‘Children are like that, Mr Rafferty; they rarely bite the hand that chooses to feed them. They also,’ she went on firmly as he seemed about to explode once again, ‘instinctively know who they can trust. And who they can’t,’ she added pointedly, before entering the kitchen with two hungry boys trailing after her and an angel—if not quite a heavenly one!—in her arms.
NICK thought of following them, of demanding answers from the ‘heavenly angel’, but as peace descended over the room for the first time in the last chaotic twenty-four hours he thought better of it. After all, what harm could come to the children when they were only a few feet away from him in the kitchen? And they were finally quiet. And being fed…
Damn it, he had forgotten all about giving the children lunch. He so rarely ate that particular meal himself, he just hadn’t thought—
Goddamn it, he didn’t know how to look after children for any length of time! What the hell Robert had thought he was doing bringing them here, he had no idea. What had made it even more difficult was that it had been the first time he and Robert had spoken more than abrupt words of greeting and parting in over five years.
Robert, who had been his best friend, his business partner—and who had taken Nick’s wife and children from him five years ago!
And now, through necessity, he had brought the children back. But Nick had never had any idea of how to look after the children—had always left that part of their marriage to Samantha. Oh God, Samantha… Was she going to be OK? Was she going to live? They had left so many things unsaid between them, so much bitterness, so much pain. And now she had been seriously injured in a car accident, might die from her injuries. Why was it, Nick agonised, that people never felt remorse for past hurts until it was possibly too late? Why—?
‘Mr Rafferty?’
He looked up blankly, blinking as he focused on the angel. A red-haired angel! Whoever had heard of such a thing? And yet, as he looked up at her, he could almost swear that he saw a glow about that red hair. A little like a halo…?
‘Your lunch, Mr Rafferty.’ She held out a plate, pushing it into his unresisting fingers before turning away to return to the children in the kitchen. Children now quietly eating the lunch she had prepared for them…
Nick shook his head in self-disgust. A halo! He was losing his mind. The woman had merely been standing with the light behind her, giving a glow to the deep red of her hair. Almost twenty-four hours of caring for the children had obviously started to affect his judgement.
The woman was no angel, was only flesh and blood—rather pretty flesh, he decided as he watched the gentle sway of her bottom as she returned to the kitchen. She was a little young for his tastes, probably only in her early twenties, but nevertheless
