of the neighbors had heard the ruckus and would have the good sense to call for help.
“Patricia?” he called. “Patricia Marsh? It’s Daniel Riverton, your neighbor from downstairs.”
He heard that little whimper again. The layout of the apartment was identical to Kevin’s, so he got his bearings, moved swiftly past the kitchen and down the short hallway. He burst into the living room. His every step seemed to stir clouds of something off the floor.
The children, obviously identical twins, sat in complete darkness on a brightly patterned sofa by the window, peering at something they held between them.
“Don’t be frightened,” he said. One of them glanced up at him with a look that appeared defiant, not the least frightened.
He wasn’t sure about kids’ ages, since children were the segment of the population that, thankfully, he had the least to do with. He thought maybe these little girls were four or five.
They were dressed in identical white nighties, but that was where any perception of innocence ended. Their hair was black, wildly curly, long and tangled. They looked like children who had been raised by wolves.
As if to underscore that perception, one lifted up her bright red hand, berry-stained like her face, and licked it.
“Where’s your aunt?”
Despite the fact the layout of the apartment was identical to Kevin’s, Daniel found himself feeling disoriented by the mess. It seemed as if it had snowed inside. That white fluff was everywhere. It covered the floor, and floated in little clumps. A closer glance showed him dozens of envelopes were scattered, like so much debris, among the disarray.
Just off the living room, in the dining room alcove, in the middle of that sea of mail and white fluff, was an overturned dining chair.
With a mummy attached to it. Again, the scene was so surreal, he felt disoriented, his mind grappling with what was going on.
Then mummy whimpered.
Daniel raced over and dropped to his knees. All that was visible through one tiny slat in layers and layers of white—toilet tissue?—were the most incredible eyes he had ever seen, as midnight blue as the heart of a pansy, fringed with dark lashes that had teardrops that sparkled like diamonds clinging to them.
He said a word out loud that he was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to say in front of children.
Even ones who looked like little ruffians straight off the set of Oliver Twist.
CHAPTER TWO
TRIXIE MARSH SAW his shoes first. They were, without a doubt, the most beautiful sight she had ever seen. And it wasn’t just because the shoes were Berluti either.
And Trixie knew shoes. She had knelt in front of thousands and thousands of pairs of very good quality men’s shoes, patiently pinning the hemlines of trousers, handmade by her former employer, Bernard Brothers—Miles’s family’s business—one of the most sought after makers of custom men’s clothing in Calgary.
Daniel Riverton—she would have known it was him, because of the shoes, even if he hadn’t announced himself at the door—crouched down beside her.
This was a first! Reality better than a dream! Because she had dreamed of being rescued by Miles, and really there was no comparison. None at all.
Miles, was, well, ordinary. Daniel Riverton, was, well, not ordinary.
His eyes intensified her feeling that she was experiencing beauty as she never had before. They were a color deeper than sapphire, the astounding blue of deep, deep ocean water.
But it was the fact they were tinged with concern, and a certain take-charge expression, that made her gasp—muffled as it was by the bindings over her mouth—with heartfelt wonder. Just as she had been contemplating death, the knock had come on the door. It was like a fairy tale: a knight rescuing a maiden from an ignoble fate.
“Hey, don’t cry. It’s going to be all right.”
Again, her feeling of being in an altered state, where everything glowed from within, intensified. His voice was astounding, deep and sexy and a little rough around the edges. And it wasn’t because she knew it belonged to one of the most up and coming businessmen in Canada, either!
It was because she had spent the past half hour contemplating all the dreadful possibilities that could result from the pickle she had found herself in.
It was only because he was her rescuer, her knight, her prince, that her every sense was on high alert, that she found his voice so unbelievably sensuous. Wasn’t it?
As she lay there, helpless to do anything but try to blink back tears, wrapped head to toe in tissue and gauze that held her fast to her overturned chair, Daniel Riverton put his arms underneath her. She could smell the crisp, clean scent of him, and even through the thick layers of tissue, she could feel the banded muscle of his arms as he slid them beneath her. With easy strength he righted the chair.
For a moment, Trixie had to shut her eyes against a wave of dizziness. When she opened them, she expected she would have a more realistic perspective of her rescuer.
Instead, her first impression deepened. Now, she could see him fully, and he really was the most mouthwatering man she had ever seen.
She knew he really was incredibly, heart-stoppingly handsome. Add to that her every sense tingling with that blissful awareness of life’s glories that a close brush with catastrophe could bring? Daniel Riverton was irresistible.
“Please stop crying. I’ve got you.”
Again, the words seemed to shine, to be illuminated, as beautiful as any she had ever heard.
I’ve got you.
It wasn’t just that she had felt in way over her head since the arrival of her nieces. Even before that, she had been blindsided by Miles opting out of her dreams for the two of them.
She could still picture him frowning at her new bedroom curtains, soft white lace, saying This just isn’t what I want.
What isn’t to want? Trixie had cried. Begged as he packed his things, something grimly determined on his face, They’re only curtains.
But it obviously had not been about the curtains.
So, Trixie was trying to adjust to single life, trying get her fledgling business off the ground, feeling like she was back to square one, as alone as she had been since her parents died.
But this time determined to see her independence as an asset.
“I’ve got you,” Daniel said again, and the words were a shameful relief to someone who was determined to see independence as an asset!
His hand rested on her mummified shoulder, but even through all the layers and layers of padding, Trixie could feel something faintly electrical in his touch, something beyond strength and confidence.
She nodded, and willed the tears to quit spilling, but they wouldn’t. She saw her nieces sitting on the sofa, and the tears spilled harder. She had unwittingly
