get a notebook, because I think you’re going to want to be writing some of this down.”
“Okay,” Grant said, rising from his seat. “I’ll take charge of that.”
“Splitting up everything is a good idea,” Claire said, while Grant rummaged for a pencil and paper. “I meant what I said upstairs about each of you taking a child. More than anything else, a baby needs a sense of security. If each of you more or less adopts one child as his own, each baby will get that sense of security.”
Or things could actually fall apart, Evan thought, studying her carefully. He knew he didn’t trust her because he suspected she was involved in Arnie’s scheme to take the kids. He also believed that by bringing her into their home, he and his brothers had opened the door for her to continue aiding Arnie.
He knew his brothers didn’t agree with him and thought he was being paranoid. But he also realized that he had more to lose than his brothers did. They might love these children in a generic way that mixed responsibility and a sense of family, but if something happened and they lost custody, Grant and Chas would get on with the rest of their lives. For Evan much, much more was at stake, because raising these children was his only chance at being a father.
“How did it go after I left last night?”
Though the question was perfectly innocent, Evan turned and glared at Claire. The insides of his eyelids felt like sandpaper, he was so tired he could have dropped where he stood, and his head hurt.
Between the cuddling and crooning, feeding and changing, Evan figured he’d gotten about two and a half hours’ sleep. And since all three brothers awakened for every baby incident, he knew Chas and Grant hadn’t fared any better than he had. But because the triplets couldn’t be left alone, Chas and Grant got to stay home while Evan set off to handle the second half of their responsibility, running the local lumber mill.
“Kids wake up much?”
Another innocent question. Another narrowing of Evan’s eyes.
“My head hurts. I desperately need sleep. I never realized how difficult it is to care for babies.”
“Oh, come on,” Claire said, following Evan into his father’s old office. “Babies are great. And believe it or not, this is a wonderful stage in their lives…except for the teething, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Evan fell into his father’s chair. “Teething. How delightful.”
“Trust me,” Claire insisted, sitting on the corner of the desk as if it was an old habit. “You’re going to love this.”
Evan’s gaze trailed from the curve of her buttocks on the corner of the mahogany desk, down the line of her thighs to the length of leg that currently dangled over the side of his father’s desk. She wore a chaste navy-blue suit, the skirt loose and sufficiently long, the blazer buttoned. She obviously wasn’t trying to draw attention to herself, but because he wasn’t at his professional best from lack of sleep, Evan found himself staring. Claire was a stunning woman, a naturally beautiful woman with glossy black hair, eyes as wide and as blue as the summer sky, and absolutely perfect legs.
When she saw him looking at her legs, she quickly jumped down and maneuvered herself into the chair across from the desk. As if her movements finally brought him completely awake, he realized he wanted the truth about her and he wanted it now. He refused to work with someone he couldn’t or didn’t trust.
“I think you and I need to have a little talk.”
In an unpretentious way she smiled at him, and Evan got a jolt of something that felt very much like attraction again, only this time laced with rightness. He wasn’t merely attracted to this woman. He felt drawn to her. He sensed a sudden, overwhelming appropriateness about her being in his life, and he knew damned well that was foolish. Even if she wasn’t a part of the Arnie Garrett scheme, he couldn’t be involved with her. He couldn’t be involved with anyone. He wouldn’t tie a woman to a life without her own children, so there was no “right” woman for him.
“Three things happened yesterday,” he said, steepling his fingers at his chin. “We buried my father and stepmother, my siblings and I inherited almost half of everything in this county, and I became a parent.”
This time Claire raised her eyebrows. Without as much as a word from her, he knew she wanted to contradict him about “who” had become parents. He also knew that when the time was right, she wouldn’t hesitate to correct him.
Evan swallowed—and not because she’d caught that inadvertent slip. The very fact that she had caught him, and wouldn’t be afraid to tell him so, and the way she was absolutely comfortable in the chair across from him once again made it seem more than fitting that she was not only here in this office, but here in his life. And that bothered him. He could understand being attracted to her—any man over the age of twelve would be attracted to her—but the little jolts of rightness had to be a mistake of some sort.
Determined to ignore them, he cleared his throat. “Do you realize you were there for all three things?”
“Yes. I worked very closely with your father.”
“Very closely,” he agreed with a nod, glad she’d given him an opening to get to the topic that kept getting blotted out by chemistry or sexual awareness or some other damned male-female thing Evan didn’t have time to deal with. “So close that I’d wager you know this business inside and out. And you know how to care for kids. Logically, Ms. Wilson, my brothers and I can’t survive without you.”
“Sure you could,” Claire protested casually. “You could hire a nanny or something.”
“Really? Overnight? On this tiny, sparsely populated piece of the mountain? I don’t think so, and neither do you.”
At the abrupt hardening of the expression in his eyes, Claire shifted uneasily on her seat. She didn’t know what the heck he was driving at, but she had more than a sneaking suspicion she wasn’t going to like it.
“If I were Arnie Garrett and I were trying to coerce custody of the triplets, there is only one person in this world who could help me.”
Claire felt her mouth fall open in surprise. “What?” she said before she could stop herself. “I hope you don’t think that I had something to do with Arnie Garrett trying to get you to sign over custody of the triplets!”
“That’s exactly what I think,” Evan said coolly.
“How dare you!” she gasped, angry in a way she didn’t believe she’d ever been angry before. Most of that outrage came from her loyalty to this man’s father and what she knew Norm would want for his children. “Those babies need to be raised by family. I’d never condone them being raised by anyone but you and your brothers. I’d have gone in search of you and insisted you take them before I’d let Arnie Garrett or anybody else have them, if only because I know that’s what your father wanted.”
“That is what my father wanted,” Evan agreed, waving her back down when Claire sprang from her chair as if to storm out of the room. “I apologize for questioning you, but I had to know whose side you were on.”
“Who says there are sides?” she demanded, furious. “You’re the only person I see making trouble. Everybody else seems perfectly happy with this situation.”
“I
