rent the air, slapping Max in the face like a stun gun.
“No! It’s mine. You stole it from me, you poo-poo doo-doo brain!”
“You’re not allowed to call me that! You’re a poo-poo doo-doo brain, you poo-poo doo-doo brain fart head.”
The arguing mounted rapidly in both urgency and volume. Max raised his hands as two small but surprisingly strong bodies hurled themselves at his legs with enough forward momentum to shatter his kneecaps. His breath hissed between gritted teeth as he held back the curse that wanted desperately to explode free. Small hands flailed about his legs. Max tried to grab at least one of them.
“Whoa!” he commanded when he trusted himself to speak without swearing. “Knock it off!” His demand went unheeded. Taking full advantage of his baritone, he hollered over the din. “What is going on?”
A pair of deceptively angelic faces surrounded by ruffles of blond curls looked up at him, for this one moment, silent. Then Sean’s hand shot out, pointing at his twin brother, James. “He did it!”
And the quarrel raged again.
Max clamped a hand over the mouth of each twin. “Where’s Mrs. Carmichael?” He’d hired the stalwart nanny three days ago because she had assured him that no domestic challenge was too daunting. She would easily—but with great love, of course—put order to the chaos that had become his life. Today was her first day, and upon waking this morning, Max had felt a degree of gratitude he’d never quite experienced before.
Slowly, with trepidation, he let go of James’s mouth first. James was generally the more amenable twin, but you couldn’t be too sure. Max looked at him with what he hoped was warning in his eye. Don’t mess with me, kid. Just give it to me straight.
“She’s in the kitchen, cleaning up the dinner.”
Cleaning up the dinner. Max’s brows swooped together. So, that’s what he smelled. “Did it burn?”
James shrugged.
“Where are your sisters?” Before the boy could answer, the steel-haired dynamo who’d promised him a miracle marched out of the kitchen.
“Good, you’re home.” Built like a small tank in orthopedic shoes, Mrs. Carmichael nodded once, sharply. Her hands went to the apron tie at her back. Pulling the garment over her head, she shoved it at Max’s chest on her way to the door. “Good luck.”
“What?” Caught off guard, Max stared at the wadded-up apron.
“The girls are trouble, but those two—” she stabbed a quivering finger at James and Sean “—will be the death of you.” Her hand grasped the doorknob.
Max felt the boys’ shoulders tense at the housekeeper’s harsh words, but he couldn’t afford to stop and soothe them. Peeling the twins off his legs for now with the order to “Stay put,” he followed the woman out the door, catching up with her on the front lawn. “Wait, wait!” When he touched her elbow, she whirled and glared at him. Promptly he let go.
“Dinner is burned,” she said. “Somebody turned off my timer. And I hope you don’t need clean shirts tomorrow, because the laundry never got done.” She raised her chin, daring Max to complain. He didn’t intend to.
“Obviously, this wasn’t the greatest day…for any of us.” From what remained of his humor, he summoned a smile. “I wouldn’t want to repeat it myself. I tell you, dealing with contractors is a lot like dealing with kids. Everything happens on their time frame, they get to pout, and you’re the one who has to pay for it all.”
Mrs. Carmichael crossed surprisingly muscular arms over her grandmotherly bosom. The curl of her lips said it all: tell me something I will care about.
Adrenaline pumped into Max’s system. He rubbed his hands together, warming up for the old college try. “All right. First of all, do not worry about the dinner. We’ll order pizza for the kids, and you and I can sit down and—”
“Dinner is the least of your concerns, Mr. Lotorto. Those two hooligans have been acting like wild animals all day.” She pointed behind him to the two boys who had obviously not stayed put. “First they dug a hole in the garden—”
“No, it’s a time capsule,” James asserted, evidently certain this tidbit of information would cancel any wrongdoing. “We’re puttin’ Sean’s dead lizard in it.”
Max lowered his brow. “Shh.”
“Then they put shaving cream on the windows—”
“Uh-uh, it was cleaning stuff. We were helpin’ clean them,” Sean whined in protest.
Max raised a finger to his lips. He could not afford to lose the only help he had. Returning his attention to Mrs. Carmichael, he tried to commiserate. Having lived with the twins for several months, it wasn’t hard. “I can see how irritating that must have—” he began.
“And then they tried to set fire to the house.”
“Fire?” Max knew these kids. They were boisterous, a bit too creative in their play, but ultimately they were good kids trying to find their way through circumstances that would have been difficult for anyone. They weren’t delinquents. They had never deliberately hurt anyone or anything. “If they were playing with matches, I’ll deal with them.” He turned briefly to shoot both boys a warning glare. “I will definitely deal with them. But I think we ought to be careful about suggesting they intended to burn down the house—”
“They made a fire in the middle of their bedroom.”
James ran forward, accompanied by his brother, and tried to speak again. Max pressed a hand over each boy’s mouth. All he made out was a muffled “…campout…”
His head began to throb, right between the eyes. There had to be a way to deal with this firmly but calmly, rationally. “Here’s what I suggest. I think we should all go back in the house, and—”
“They used a box of your cigars for kindling.”
“—talk about—” He halted. “Cigars? Imported cigars? With a little hut…and a palm tree on the box?”
Mrs. Carmichael shrugged eloquently. “How should I know?” She shook her head. “No more box.”
The throb expanded to the top of Max’s head. He wanted badly to yell, but how could he? He was failing these kids.
The thought made him furious and frustrated, but not at them. They were innocent victims, loved by a mother who, unfortunately, had never been able to give them stability. So many times they’d been unceremoniously dumped in Max’s life—a few days here, a couple of days there. But this time, they were here for good, and though they had known Max and loved him all of their lives, they probably sensed by now that the emperor had no clothes: Max knew how to be fun for a weekend, but he didn’t know jack about being a parent.
No way could he do this alone.
His mind raced as he groped for a way to plug the hole in this sinking ship. Before he could make another gambit, however, the woman he’d hoped would be his salvation put her hands on her hips and said, “You won’t like to hear it, people never do, but what those boys need is a good
