be heaven.”
“They’re that much trouble?”
He hadn’t been talking about the girls.
“They’re a handful, at least when I’m around.” And the way he remembered it from high school, he’d always felt stronger, more capable of coping when Ellie was there. She just had a way of making things seem manageable, and, Lord knew, he could use managing.
“They’re different when you’re not around?” she asked, homing right in on the problem, as Ellie always had.
“So I’m told.” So he knew. He could hear Charlie in the kitchen already, pouring cereal. Which meant the girls were in their high chairs, right where they belonged.
“Why?”
Sinking into the big leather chair behind his desk, Sloan turned and looked out the picture window at his ranch. Cattle, tornadoes, squatters, he could handle. Baby girls, he could not. “That’s what I really need your help on,” he admitted. “I need you to teach me how to be a father, or a mother, or any kind of parent at all.”
The admission should have been humiliating, but with Ellie, it wasn’t.
“I’m hardly an expert,” she warned.
“I took them to the zoo.” Sloan heard himself recounting one of his worst nightmares. “Neither of them would sit in their stroller. But when I tried to carry them, they kicked and squirmed to get down. I put them down—they’re both walking now—and they wouldn’t hold my hands. Thankfully they were distracted by a cotton candy vendor. I bought some for them, but they refused to sit down to eat it. Ariel threw hers and hit me in the chest with it. Alisha just cried all over hers. The animals ran scared, and everyone was looking at me like I was some kind of demon. I finally had to leave with them screaming so loud all the way out to the car, I’m surprised someone didn’t call protective services.”
He wasn’t sure, but he thought Ellie was laughing. “It wasn’t funny,” he said, breaking out in a sweat just thinking about the awful day.
“Ever thought of not giving them everything they ask for?” she finally said, her humor, if it had been there, under control.
“I don’t.”
“Okay, so when do we start?”
Wanting to pin her down before she had a second to change her mind, he asked, “Is tomorrow too soon? We have eighteen-month well-baby checks, and I won’t even bother to tell you how awful the last doctor visit was.”
“What time?” Ellie asked, all businesslike.
Sloan looked up the appointment on his calendar, and Ellie said she would take a late lunch to accommodate him.
He hung up as soon as he’d made plans to pick her up at the clinic shortly after one. And the only reason he suddenly felt fifty pounds lighter was that he finally had some help with his burden. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that he had Ellie Maitland back in his life again.
He was an adult now, his self-control well and truly tested. He wouldn’t make hash of the friendship as he had in high school. Wouldn’t tarnish it, or Ellie, by giving in to his baser appetites. She was going to help him with his girls. Period.
He wasn’t going to repeat old mistakes.
ELLIE OFTEN RETURNED to her office at the clinic after dinner, and, that’s exactly where Lana Lord found her that night.
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