She was always teasing him about being too serious,” she said fondly, remembering. And then she looked up at Kennon, as if appealing for her help. “This is way beyond that, and he needs to laugh again.”
Again. So the man was capable of actually laughing, Kennon thought. That was good to know. It meant that there was something for her to work with.
“Well, I don’t know if I can make him laugh, but we’ll really try to get him to smile again,” she promised Edna.
At that moment, Madelyn burst back into the room and headed straight toward them. Madelyn looked at Kennon pointedly. “Anything else?” the little girl asked.
Right on her sister’s heels, not to be outdone, Meghan echoed in a louder voice, “Yeah, anything else?”
For tonight, Kennon thought, she just wanted to immerse herself in the interactions of the family. Since the good doctor wasn’t down here with them, the girls—and memories of their mother—would just have to do.
Immersing meant blending in.
“Now I’m going to go and wash the dishes,” Kennon informed the girls as she got up off the arm of the sofa where she’d perched while talking to Edna.
“You wash dishes? By yourself?” Madelyn questioned, looking at up her uncertainly. “We’ve got a dishwasher that does that.”
“Don’t you have a dishwasher?” Meghan asked her, pity in her young voice.
Kennon laughed and put her arm around the younger girl’s shoulders, pulling her in for a quick hug. “Yes, I do, but I never like to have things pile up in the sink so I wash them before there’re too many. Besides, running the dishwasher for one person just seems sort of wasteful to me. Don’t you agree?” she asked Meghan.
Thrilled to be asked for her opinion, Meghan nodded her head vigorously. Kennon had a feeling that the little girl would have easily agreed to anything that she suggested.
“You really have a way with them,” Edna told her with genuine sincerity. She looked from one little girl to the other. There was approval in her voice as she said, “You seem to bring out the best in them. Do you have any children of your own?” the older woman asked, curious about this new person in their lives.
Kennon shook her head. “No.”
Not that she wouldn’t have wanted to have children. Several children. But before there were children, there had to be someone who could be a good husband, a good father. And if he could actually make her heart skip a beat or two, well, so much the better. If she was going to dream, she might as well go all the way.
“I never met the right man,” she told Edna. And with that, she closed the subject.
“Were you the oldest in your family, then?” Edna asked. “The one your mother depended on to look out for the others?”
There were no others. Her parents were divorced before she could get any siblings. She had always regretted that. A lot of her time as a child had been spent imagining what having a brother or sister would have been like. Even inventing an imaginary one when she was very young.
“Sorry to disappoint you, Edna,” she said with a smile, “but I’m an only child.”
“Then it’s a true gift you have,” Edna pronounced. “You’ve been blessed.”
She didn’t know about being “blessed”—it was just something that came rather naturally to her. Maybe it was even born out of that desire for a sibling. But before she could say anything to the contrary, Madelyn had caught her by one hand while, not to be left out, Meghan took hold of the other.
“Then we’ll help you do the dishes,” Madelyn declared.
Amused, Edna laughed. “Like I said, Miss Cassidy, you’ve got a gift. You’re not all that bad at healing, either.”
Kennon looked at her quizzically over her shoulder as she was about to be pulled away.
“I’m feeling much better, thanks to you and your chicken soup,” Edna told her.
“If that’s the case, that would be more due to the chicken than to me,” Kennon told her. She wasn’t one to take praise unless she believed she really deserved it. All she’d done in this case was try to make the woman feel a little better—and comfort food had always accomplished that for her.
The next moment, Kennon found herself being taken off to the kitchen again by her pint-size helpers. It was time to address the dishes in the sink.
“And modest, too,” Edna said to herself with an approving nod. “I think you’d like her, Nancy,” she said softly under her breath.
When Simon came down from his study an hour later, he expected to find the kitchen in darkness and his daughters either in their room for the night or in the family room, taking advantage of the fact that he wasn’t around. He was rather strict about the amount of time they could spend watching television.
He was rather strict about most things when it came to his children.
Instead, he found the kitchen ablaze with light. Not only that, but he heard the sound of laughter coming from there, as well.
Curious, he went to the source. And discovered that the woman he’d just hired as his decorator was there, sitting at the head of the table, with his daughters flanking her on either side.
Schoolbooks were spread out on the surface of the table and, from what he could discern as he drew closer, the girls were doing homework—with a little help from the overly effervescent blonde.
Laughter, he realized as he listened and allowed it to warm him, was a sound that had been missing from their lives for much too long.
He’d been right in his earlier assessment. Apparently he’d not only hired a decorator but a sorceress, as well.
Chapter Seven
Out of the corner of her eye, Kennon saw Simon walking into the kitchen.
Even if she hadn’t, she could tell he’d entered the room because of the way Madelyn and Meghan reacted. They became a little more subdued, a tiny bit less relaxed. A little more anxious to please. It was obvious to her that they loved their father, but were hemmed in by not quite knowing how to behave around him. As for the good doctor, he wasn’t exactly cold—she could sense that he did care about his daughters—but he was reserved, as if he was following some sort of a strict code that only he was aware of.
Meghan saw him first. “Daddy, Kennon’s teaching me to write,” she declared proudly.
Simon was paying a none-too-shabby tuition so that Meghan and Madelyn would receive the best parochial education possible. Even so, he’d been debating getting a tutor for the younger one because Meghan was having a harder time learning than her sister ever had. Apparently all he’d had to do to insure her improvement was get his house decorated.
He looked at the woman who had burst into his life like an unforecast hurricane. “Master chef, gifted teacher, instant nanny and, oh, yes, a top-flight decorator.” There was a touch of sarcasm
