a widow.”
He said the polite thing. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged.
“Well,” he said. “I was depositing the rent directly into Enid’s account. Let me know how you want me to handle it now.”
“All right.”
The boy crawled back out from beneath the rhodies, followed by the dog. The boy had acquired a few scratches and quite a bit of dirt. The dog—well, his coarse, rusty coat probably never looked clean. Spotting Niall, the dog tore across the lawn, the boy following at a trot. Niall braced himself for possible impact.
“Sit!”
The dog sat.
“How do you do that?” Rowan asked, eyes wide with astonishment. “Super Sam and I went through an obedience course, and it didn’t do a speck of good.”
“I mean it, and he can tell.”
She glowered at the dog, who was obviously desperate to leap up. His tail was swinging furiously, his butt waggling with it, and his big brown eyes, a deeper brown than his mistress’s, were fixed on Niall’s face.
With resignation, Niall said, “Okay, boy,” and submitted to a fervent greeting. The boy hung back shyly, but looked as if he, too, would have liked to bound at Niall.
“I have a goldfish.”
He looked down to see the girl had abandoned her sandbox to come stand beside him. Her head was tilted back to allow her to stare up at him.
He cleared his throat. “Do you?”
“Uh-huh. You wanna see?”
No. Hell, no! He was going to be so sorry if he let these kids think he wanted to be buddies. He shot a helpless look at Rowan, who was smiling softly at her daughter, apparently oblivious to his discomfiture.
“Uh…I’ve seen goldfish.”
“My goldfish is named Goldie. ’Cuz he’s gold.”
“Goldfish are really orange,” Desmond said importantly. “You should have named him Orangie.” He cackled at his humor.
His sister ignored him. “I won Goldie.”
“At the school carnival,” the boy said. “She threw a quarter into a jar.” His tone suggested it had been an accident. “She picked Goldie, ’stead of one of the stuffed animals.” His gaze slid to Rowan. “Mom wasn’t very happy. She tried to talk Anna into trading Goldie in for a panda bear, but she wouldn’t.”
“Goldie’s alive,” Anna informed him.
Niall’s sense of humor was apparently alive and well, too, in defiance of his recent crappy mood. He was trying to hide his smile when he met Rowan’s, rueful but beautiful.
A small hand crept into his and tugged. Niall started.
“Come see Goldie.”
“Anna…” her mother began, but he shook his head.
“It’s okay.”
Desmond stuck close as they went in the house. Super Sam let out a pitiful whine when the screen door slammed shut in his face. As he allowed himself to be pulled through the house and upstairs, Niall heard Rowan talking to the dog.
The family was far from unpacked, but Anna’s bed was covered by a pink-and-purple comforter imprinted with unicorns and princesses and a castle. Her white-painted dresser had pink ceramic drawer pulls. Goldie lived in a glass bowl atop the dresser. A very small castle sat on the bottom of the bowl, and a couple of strands of fake seagrass waved in the water as he swam hopeless circles around the perimeter.
Niall learned that Goldie liked being talked to. Desmond fed the fish a few flakes; Mom wouldn’t let Anna feed the fish, he said, because she dumped in too much food, which wasn’t good for him.
“I get to feed Sam, too. He’s my dog.”
Anna’s lower lip shot out. “Is not!”
“Is, too.”
“Is not! He’s our dog. Mommy said so.”
“Well, I take care of him.”
She wanted to argue about that, but evidently couldn’t. She contented herself with a scowl, unnatural on her small, elfin face.
Niall took a look at Desmond’s room, too, where a spaceship was under construction with Lego bricks. Plastic as well as stuffed dinosaurs seemed to be the dominant theme. He resisted their invitation to look at Mommy’s bedroom, too. That was a picture he’d just as soon not have in his head.
Rowan studied him narrowly when the three of them came back outside.
“You’ve made some changes,” he observed.
“I plan to make more. Gran hadn’t painted or remodeled in forever.”
Probably never, was his guess.
“We’re keeping most of her furniture for now, though. I didn’t keep most of ours when…” She didn’t have to finish.
He nodded.
“We lived with our grandparents,” Desmond said.
Niall turned his head to look at the boy. There had been something in his voice. Reserve. For a kid as outgoing as him, that was unusual. Rowan was watching her son, too, a few lines marring her forehead, but she didn’t say anything. It seemed there was a good reason for her hasty move to Enid’s house.
“Desmond having to change schools?” he asked casually.
Rowan shook her head. “My in-laws live only about a mile away. Walking distance, really.”
She didn’t sound altogether happy about that. Given his job, Niall was used to listening for undertones, and there were plenty here. But they weren’t his problem, he reminded himself. In no way, shape or form.
“I need to be going. Grocery shopping,” he decided, impromptu. He hesitated, his inner jerk doing battle with nice-guy Niall, who won the tussle. He said reluctantly, “If you need me to pick anything up for you…”
She beamed at him. “That’s really nice of you. But not today, thanks.”
Oh, this was going to come back to bite him in the ass. They all thought he wanted to be friends now. And he so didn’t.
He did like that smile, though. It had something in common with the bright, cheerful flowers she was planting. It was a happy smile.
The realization that she hadn’t looked happy the rest of the time gave him momentary pause. There were as many shadows in her eyes as he saw in his own every morning when he shaved in front of the mirror. He wondered when her husband had died and how. Why she’d moved in with the husband’s
