any more,” Cora pointed out.
He slanted her a telling look. “Didn’t you say there are gaps of several months between the volumes you found?” She didn’t respond. “Has it been your experience,” he pressed, “that journal writers allow months to pass between writings?”
Cora had no answer so she shrugged.
“I’m this close—” his thumb and index finger measured the inch “—are you really going to deny me?”
The sight of him in passionate discourse twisted her stomach. Forcibly she dismissed the thought. Nothing good would come of picturing him in passionate anything. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Dr. Adriano,” she said softly, “but my answer is still no.”
His face registered his frustration. He planted his hands on her desk and loomed over her. The sunlight glinted off the tiny hoop in his left ear, and in that moment he looked truly barbarous. Cora tested the description, then rejected it. No, not barbarous. Glorious, perhaps. Her gaze dropped to his long-fingered, bronzed hands. Large. He had large, beautiful hands. Damn him.
“I’m not giving up so easily,” he warned her. “You should know that.”
She looked at his face. A mistake, that. He was too close, his hard-angled features at eye level with hers and mere inches away. She clenched the edge of her chair and hoped he wouldn’t notice. “I’ll consider myself warned. But whatever Jerry told you, I seriously doubt you can change my mind. I have to consider—”
She broke off when the door of her office slammed open. Leslie, Cora’s baby-sitter of less than six hours, rushed into the office with a harried look in her eyes. Cora abruptly stood, filled with the oddest sensation that she’d been discovered and compromised. “Leslie—” she started.
Leslie frantically shook her head. “I’m sorry, Dr. Prescott. I can’t. I thought I could take it, but I can’t.” Without sparing Rafael a glance, she dropped a wad of keys on Cora’s desk. “I just can’t take care of them for you.”
Cora held out a beseeching hand. “Leslie, I’m sure if we—”
A loud crash sounded from the outer office. High-pitched voices mingled with the distinct sound of a barking dog. “I can’t do it. I’m sorry. I quit.” The girl fled the room.
Rafael stepped back a scant second before Melody, Cora’s large but exuberant collie, vaulted into the room and onto her desk.
“Melody,” she chided. “Get down.”
“Aunt Cora, Aunt Cora. Don’t let her get away.” Kaitlin rushed into the room holding a leash. “We chased her all the way from the parking lot.”
“Kaitlin,” Cora looked at the nine-year-old as she struggled to get the dog off the desk. “What happened? What are you doing here?”
Before the glowering Kaitlin could answer, Jerry Heath ushered six-year-old Molly and four-year-old Liza into the room. Each had liberal splashes of black ink staining their hair, faces and clothes. “They’re destroying the copy machine,” Jerry announced. “That’s what they’re doing.”
Melody barked in affirmation. With a frustrated oath, Cora pulled on the dog’s collar. “Down, Melody. Get down.”
She wouldn’t budge. Rafael chuckled, then held out his hand to the dog. He whispered a few words, and Melody obediently leaped to the floor where she flopped at his feet. Cora gave him a disgruntled look. “How did you do that?”
“I’ve had a lot of experience with temperamental females,” he said, and sat back in his chair. Melody thumped her tail on the floor.
Exasperated, Cora rubbed her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. She’d been right the first time. He was obnoxious. “Jerry,” she said, “what’s going on?”
Jerry guided the two girls toward Cora’s desk. “As far as I can tell, your nieces decided to help Becky make some copies. Somehow that led to an investigation of the toner cartridge.”
Cora’s nieces were high-energy kids. Since their arrival three weeks ago, they’d run off six different baby-sitters.
While Cora visibly searched for her patience, Rafael studied her tense expression.
Jerry had mentioned the nieces. At the time Rafael had brushed off his less-than-complimentary description as typical of Jerry’s intolerance of childhood antics. Watching the three girls in action, however, Rafael decided that Jerry had underestimated them—just as he’d underestimated Cora. Her nieces had evidently mastered the tag-team approach in dealing with their aunt. Soon they’d have her surrounded. It was beginning to look as if he’d arrived just in time.
The oldest girl, the one Cora had called Kaitlin, immediately staked a position against Jerry’s accusations. “That’s not what happened, Aunt Cora. It was Leslie’s fault.”
Cora looked at the next-oldest girl. “Molly, how did you get into the toner?”
Molly pointed at the dog. “We were chasing Melody.”
Cora waited. When no additional explanation was forthcoming, she pressed harder. “Why are you all even here? I thought Leslie was taking you to the park today.”
Liza spoke up. “We has gonned to the park, but I forgot Benedict Bunny. I wanted to go back and get him.”
“And Leslie wouldn’t turn around,” Molly supplied.
“Liza kept begging,” Kaitlin added.
Liza nodded, her eyes wide. “I didn’t want to leave him at home.”
Kaitlin picked up the thread of the story. “Leslie kept telling Liza to quit crying and she wouldn’t.”
“I want Benedict Bunny,” Liza insisted.
Kaitlin continued, “Leslie got really mad. So she whipped the car around and came here.”
“Yeah,” Molly said. “She let Melody out of the car before us. When Melody took off running, we had to chase her.”
Kaitlin added, “She almost plowed Becky down in the hall. Liza—” she swatted her younger sister with the back of her hand “—was trying to catch up.”
“Becky was changing the cartridge,” Molly supplied.
Liza, whose face probably looked angelic when it wasn’t covered in black ink, nodded adamantly. “I tried to catch it when it fell.”
Rafael had to suppress a laugh. Standard operating procedure, he supposed. They’d blame it on the baby. She was less likely to get eaten. If Liza survived, then they knew they were in the clear.
Cora’s gaze swung to Jerry once more. “Did you see what happened?”
“No. I heard the noise.”
“Is there any damage other than the mess?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Fine.” She glared at Kaitlin. “Take your sisters and
