and reached for the syrup. It was in a tidy little pitcher, not the entire bottle stuck in the center of the table the way his mother’s cousin would have done it. He dumped the warm syrup on his waffle and watched Darby wipe sticky hands and faces. “But you don’t need to cook for me.”
Her eyebrows rose as she glanced at him. Then she turned her pretty eyes away again. “I have to feed them and myself. You’re just one more,” she said evenly.
Which put him nicely in his place. Just one more. Nobody special. No surprise there.
Over his fork he watched Darby pluck Keely from the high chair and settle her on the floor. He thought it was Keely, anyway. She didn’t do anything but crawl speedily out of the kitchen.
“I think I should get a big old black marker and write their names on their shirts,” he said. “Easier than counting teeth or checking under the diaper.”
Darby smiled faintly as she wiped up another sticky little face.
Regan and Reid were watching him from their seats across the table. Finding him wanting, no doubt. He smiled at them and received the glorious response of Regan, immediately followed by Reid, scrambling out of their chairs and racing from the room. He gave up the smile and found Darby looking at him.
“They need time.”
“They need their parents,” he countered grimly. “Unfortunately, that isn’t gonna happen.”
Darby’s eyes looked wet. She blinked and turned away, then with the other two babies propped on both hips she followed the children who’d already escaped.
He thought about following, too. But the restored-to-order kitchen seemed to mock him. In just a short time Darby had cooked, fed and cleaned up. Even the living room had been restored to some semblance of order. She was utterly competent, just as he’d known she would be. And the kids hadn’t looked at her with anything but trust despite the spilled water across her shirt.
He might be the uncle, but just as Regan had said, he was the stranger here.
Appetite gone, he finished eating, anyway, then rinsed his dishes and added them to the dishwasher that Darby had left all ready to go. He flipped the switch, and it groaned to life.
Upstairs, thanks to walls he considered miserably thin, he could hear the children talking and the lower murmur of Darby’s husky voice. He stood at the base of the staircase and listened for a moment. He wrapped his hand around the plain wood banister. Put his foot on the first step.
But he went no farther.
Then the telephone rang and he went to answer it, using the phone in the downstairs den that also served as an office. It was one of his subcontractors calling from Dallas, wanting to go over some details of a shopping center project there. By the time he finished with the call, it was nearly ten and he’d managed to put away whatever it was that had stopped him from going up the stairs earlier.
The sight of Darby sitting on the lumpy couch in the living room reminded him, though. What had she said at Smiling Faces?
I can’t live with you.
He’d glossed over it at the time. But now, it was all he could think about. Six days or not, she was staying under his roof.
She saw him, and if anything, seemed to draw even more tightly into the corner of the couch. She’d replaced her tan T-shirt with a white one. Big and baggy and eclipsing.
“I’m not the bad guy, you know,” he said. He sat down on the fake-leather recliner with a rip in the arm.
Surprise widened her eyes. “Did I say you were?”
“It’s not exactly cold here in the house, and you’re huddling there like you expect to be devoured by the wolf.”
She immediately straightened out her legs from beneath her. “Wolves have never been interested in me,” she demurred.
Sleek thighs, curving calves, narrow ankles hidden beneath little, white folded-down socks. He was better off with her legs hidden beneath the folds of that gigantic T-shirt.
He looked at the empty fireplace, thinking she’d met some mighty stupid wolves. “The kids asleep?”
“Yes. Where did you get the cribs for the triplets?”
“From Elise’s house. Laura managed to arrange it. Yesterday after the funeral.”
She fell silent. Her fingers pleated the hem of her shirt. “The, uh, the master bedroom is pretty full, up there. What with the cribs. And the…bed.”
“Wall to wall,” he agreed absently. She really did have pretty knees. And in the light from the lamp behind the couch her skin looked like cream.
“And the other room with the twin beds. Regan and Reid seem very comfortable there.”
“Except Reid doesn’t seem to sleep through the night any better than the triplets do.”
She chewed her lip and looked away. “Well.”
Then it dawned on him, and amusement unexpectedly hit him. “You can use the master,” he said. “I’ll use the pullout in the den.”
“Oh. I don’t want to put you out of your bed.”
“You just don’t want to sleep in the same room as Bridget, Tad and Keely.”
Her cheeks colored. “No, of course I don’t mind that. I mean, I’m here to take care of them, after all.”
“But?”
“Perhaps we could put the triplets in the, uh, the den. And I’ll sleep there with them.”
“The den is smaller than the second bedroom upstairs. The simplest solution is for you to take my bed.” He watched her closely. “Unless sleeping in my bed is a problem?” He knew exactly how that sounded. And damned if he didn’t care. No, that wasn’t right. He did care. And he wanted to hear her answer.
“It’s not as if you will be there with me.”
He smiled faintly. Her cheeks were fiery-red, but her husky voice was as tart as vinegar. “Then we have no problem. You take the bed. I’ll make do. Elsewhere.”
She blinked. “You were teasing me.”
“Maybe a little,” he allowed. Better that she think that. “My intentions are honorable.” Sort of. “I’ve already moved some of my stuff out. Put on clean sheets. There’s an attached bathroom with a shower that almost works. Clean towels and all.”
Her cheeks reddened all over again. Charming him. Making him feel a hair guilty for involving her in his plan. Just because every time Darby looked at him with that energy that seemed to crackle about her, and every time she opened her mouth to speak in that husky, rich voice, making his brain short-circuit and turn from the business at hand to hot afternoons, tangled sheets and throaty moans didn’t mean he couldn’t control himself. He’d hired Darby to do a job. She would be well compensated. Double her normal pay.
Speaking of which—
