seat belt.”
“But—”
“It’ll have to do,” he said shortly. “The streets of Fisher Falls are all rolled up now. Traffic is nil.”
Still, she shook her head. “I think we should split up. Some in my car, some in her—” She turned her head just in time to see the Social Services woman drive away, taking with her any chance of creative carpooling. “Well, fudge.”
Garrett felt pretty much the same, though he wouldn’t have couched it in such genteel terms. Obviously the Social Services people hadn’t felt any qualms about leaving five kids with him. As if the fact that he was their mother’s half brother was enough evidence of suitability.
It angered him, suddenly. For all any of them knew, he could be a monster. A hideous parental figure. And this Darby was a child-care worker. Not even an official representative of Social Services. “This is crazy,” he muttered, staring at the keys in his hand.
“I know it’s little comfort at a time like this, but you will adjust to your loss,” Darby said. Her voice was still husky, and Garrett realized that it wasn’t just tears that put that velvety-soft rasp in it. “You and Elise must have been very close.”
“Close?” He snorted softly. “No, I wouldn’t say that.” He couldn’t begin to figure why he’d even responded to that statement. He’d never been one to speak freely. Not with the few people he considered his friends, and sure as hell not with strangers, even when they came equipped with sympathetic blue eyes and mile-long legs.
Dammit. His sister was dead, he’d actually agreed to take responsibility for five kids who didn’t know him from Adam and he was leering at Darby White.
She wasn’t even his type. He preferred tall blondes with some curve around their bones. This pint-size woman looked as if she’d poke him with the sharp angles of her shoulders if he got too close.
He realized he was still watching her. Saw the way her eyes widened a bit, the way her lips parted for breath, as if she’d caught his thoughts. She looked shocked.
And why wouldn’t she be?
He turned his back on her and went inside the building, where he picked up a padded bag patterned with little blue and yellow ducks. It was stuffed with disposable diapers and brightly colored plastic toys and God knew what else. He carried it to the car and stuck it on the floor in the backseat.
Darby was still standing in the same spot on the other side of the car from him. Now she just looked puzzled. “Then why?”
“Why what?” But he knew.
She moistened her lips and shook her head, looking away. “It’s really none of my business.”
Since he agreed with her there, he left it at that.
Only she didn’t.
She followed him into the center and stood beside him, looking down at the children sleeping on their mats. Across the spacious room, three well-padded little bottoms stuck up in the air from three cribs where they, too, slept.
“If you weren’t close,” Darby asked in a soft voice, “why would your sister want you to raise her children?”
Chapter Two
Why, indeed?
Garrett had no idea. Elise couldn’t possibly have known what she’d been saying. Or, in the chaos of the moment, Darby had somehow misunderstood. All he knew was that he was going to take full advantage of the situation.
“Well,” she finally said, when it became clear that he wasn’t going to answer, “I’m sure that it will all work out. When your dad returns, you can—”
“I don’t have a dad.”
“Oh. But, I thought—Laura indicated that you—”
“Caldwell Carson was Elise’s dad. To me he was just the married guy who knocked up my mother. Everybody in this town knew he was responsible, but he’s the only one to pretend it never happened. And the only thing I need to work out is loading these guys into the car and getting them back to my place. So are you going to help or not?”
Her soft lips closed. Without looking at him, she knelt down beside Reid and gently gathered up the boy into her arms and carried him out into the night.
Garrett blew out a breath and crouched next to Regan. She jerked and blinked and stared at him through eyes that were as brown as her mother’s had been.
He felt a swift and unexpected knot form inside him. Grief. Where the hell did it come from? He didn’t like it. So he shoved it back into oblivion and warily eyed the little girl. As warily as she regarded him, he noticed.
“Who’re you?” Suspicion vibrated from her small person.
“I’m your uncle Garrett.”
Her face became fearful, and she pushed away from him, yelling, “Stranger!” over and over again. She ran to Darby, who’d reentered the building, and practically jumped into her arms. She twined her legs around Darby’s waist and buried her blond head against Darby’s shoulder.
“Maybe you could get the triplets,” she suggested calmly. “I’ll wait in the car with Regan and Reid.”
Sure. Get the triplets. No sweat.
Right.
There was nothing for him to do but agree, so he turned toward the cribs lining the wall. Cheerful balloons and kites had been painted above the cribs, and he focused on them as he walked closer.
If he was a drinker, he’d be thinking about now that this was all some alcohol-induced hallucination. Some nightmarish fog that he would wake up from, sooner or later. But when he stood next to the cribs and looked down at two scrunched-up butts and one wide-eyed baby, who was now chewing on the corner of a blanket, Garrett knew there was no waking from this nightmare.
He was thirty-five years old, for God’s sake. Why did looking into the round little face of a nine-month-old tot with a head nearly as bald as the cue ball on his pool table back home in Albuquerque make him want to head in the opposite direction? Fast.
The baby’s mouth parted in a grin, baring several stubby little teeth. He…she?…stood up and wrapped little starfish hands around the edge of the crib and bounced its little knees. Garrett’s unease wasn’t going anywhere, he knew, so he just reached out and picked up the kid, holding it at arm’s length as he strode outside to the car. The kid didn’t seem to mind. It grinned, drooled and wriggled its legs as if Garrett was some longtime friend.
Darby was standing by the car, and he pushed the baby at her. She had little choice but to accept, and Garrett went back inside, leaving her to fasten the child into one of the safety seats crammed into the backseat.
The other two babies were still sound asleep. Garrett scooped them both up, hoped they wouldn’t wake and start screaming at him, too, and took them outside.
By the time he pulled into his driveway next to his pickup, all of them having been packed into Darby’s car so snugly that he felt some real
