gaze was steady as he slipped his hands into his back pockets. “I’m sorry that you lost the job—”
“You made me lose the job, Mr. Napier.”
“Fair enough. I’m just sorry that it didn’t work out.”
“It didn’t work out because you chose not to let it,” Sandra snapped. “You’ve got your own ideas about who and what I am—”
“I got my ideas from what you told me.”
“And based on that you know who I am?”
“Based on what you told me, I’m making a guess.” Logan rocked slightly on his heels, still watching her with that unnerving gaze. “I don’t think I’m too far off. I have my nieces to think of.”
Sandra tried not to get defensive, but she couldn’t help it. Everything about him seemed to condemn her out of hand. “Implying that I’m not going to contribute to their well-being.”
“Why does this matter so much to you?”
Sandra wasn’t sure. It was more than needing the job. Maybe it was because Logan personified the very thing she had been running from, and his judgment stung her pride. Maybe it was because even after spending a couple of days with Brittany and Bethany she was getting attached to the two girls who had lost so much.
Or maybe it was panic at the idea that she had tried to live her life on her own and losing even this small job proved to her the magnitude of her failure.
But Logan didn’t need to have one more thing to judge her by. Didn’t need to know precisely how close to the bone she was living right now.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said quietly, turning away. She took a few steps down the boardwalk, then heard Logan call her.
She didn’t want to turn but couldn’t stop herself.
“Yes?” she asked, forcing a casual tone to her voice.
“Nothing,” he said, lifting his hand as if in surrender. “I’m sorry.”
Sandra just nodded and walked on.
“So now what are we going to do?” whispered Brittany as she and Bethany huddled beside each other on the floor of their bedroom. Their lights were out. Below them, they could hear the faint tapping of Uncle Logan’s computer keys.
“I thought for sure he would like her,” Bethany said wistfully. “And now we have to leave.”
Brittany flapped her hand. “So, we’ll just have to go ahead with Plan B, I guess.”
“What was Plan B?”
Brittany giggled. “Same as Plan A.”
“But Plan A was to get Mrs. McKee to leave.”
“I was just kidding. But we have to get him and Sandra together again. Just think how cool it would be to have her living with us. I mean Uncle Logan’s nice, but…” Brittany shrugged, lifting her hands as if to say, “You know what I mean.”
And Bethany did. “He’s just not a lot of fun.”
“And I’m not going to give up,” Brittany insisted. “Not this quick.”
Chapter Three
Logan got up from his computer, stretching his arms above his head. It was a nuisance working with this tiny screen when he was used to a much larger monitor at work, but in a pinch it sufficed.
He cocked an ear, listening, but it sounded like the girls had finally drifted off to sleep.
Logan sighed. He had spent most of the day on the phone and still hadn’t found a tutor for the girls. No teacher was willing to work for the summer, and no organization had any tutors available.
He saved his work then rubbed his weary eyes. He hadn’t gotten as much done as he had hoped between phone calls and trying to concentrate over the girls’ chatter. He couldn’t catch the concept he aimed for. The Jonserads’ vague ideas of light and space were difficult to translate onto a computer screen or paper. It was just a house, but the project was significant. Pass this test and other buildings put up by Jonserad Holdings would be his to design.
Condos, office buildings and gated complexes for senior citizens who didn’t want to have to face uninvited children.
A concept Logan could entirely sympathize with.
Logan rubbed the kinks out of his neck and dropped into his recliner. With a sigh he glanced at the clock. Midnight. He knew he should go to bed. Later, he thought. I just want to close my eyes for a few seconds.
A muffled thump jerked him awake. He sat up, confused and disoriented. The clock struck one.
“Must have fallen asleep,” he muttered. Yawning, he got up and stepped into his shoes, not bothering to tie them. He trudged up the stairs to check on his nieces, the tips of the laces ticking on the floor.
Carefully, so as not to wake them, he eased the door open and squinted in the half gloom at the beds.
He frowned at the lumpy outlines of his nieces. They looked odd. A faint breeze riffling through the open window caught his attention. Then he saw the chair. He pulled back the blanket on one of the beds and found rolled-up towels.
Logan stifled an angry sound and spun around. He ran out the door, stepped on a shoelace and promptly hit the hard floor chest first.
Groaning, angry and frustrated, he took the time to tie his laces, then jumped to his feet and took off. His ribs hurt, but his anger fueled him.
Sandra lay back on the prickly grass, pulling the blanket just a little closer around her. The utter quiet was broken by the occasional wail of a coyote in the night, answered in time by another. From horizon to horizon, stars were flung across the velvet black of the sky. Over the crest of the hill behind her lay Elkwater, its few lights faint competition for the glory overhead.
“I see you, Cygna,” Sandra whispered, reaching up to trace the cross of the constellation. From there she moved to the brightest stars. “And you, Deneb and Vega and Altair.” She let her hand drop and smiled as her eyes drifted over the sky, unable to take in its sheer vastness.
“When I consider the heavens, the works of Thy hands, the moon and the stars which Thou has ordained…” Sandra spoke the words of the Psalms aloud and shivered at how easily they came back to her. She had spent the past few years avoiding the God Who had made all this. Austere, judgmental and demanding.
She had last heard that quote from Brittany and Bethany the night they had sat out here looking at the stars. Sandra was working on astronomy with them, and what better way to study than to actually see it. So, with Florence Napier’s blessing, she had taken the girls out late at night to look at the stars.
Bethany and Brittany. Sandra’s satisfaction broke as she thought of the girls and, right on the heels of that, of their uncle.
