went through a dry cereal stage,” she told him. “Except for Rice Krispies, because they ‘talk’ when you put milk on them.”
“And this—” he said, scraping the remnants of a pot into the garbage can “—is what’s left of the mac and cheese they all had for lunch.”
“Well, that’s a score,” she noted. “Pleasing all three of them with the same food.”
“Except that Charlotte likes hers with ketchup mixed into it, Emily doesn’t like it with ketchup at all and Hanna’s ketchup has to be squirted on top of the pasta in the shape of a smiley face.”
Tristyn smiled at that image, too. “And how long are they staying?”
“Eight to ten weeks.”
Her brows winged up. “What are you going to do with them for two months?”
He wiped his hands on a towel, then folded it over the handle of the oven door. “I’m thinking I should talk to my grandparents, to see if they’re willing to take them for the summer.”
“Didn’t your grandmother just celebrate her eightieth birthday a few weeks back?”
He nodded.
“And your grandfather’s a couple of years older than she is,” Tristyn pointed out.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “But they both play golf several times a week.”
“Which is impressive,” she acknowledged, “but still not as physically demanding as chasing after three kids. And considering that your sister entrusted you with the care of her children, I don’t think she’d be too happy to learn that you dumped them on someone else.”
“So what am I supposed to do? Hire a sitter to take care of them when I’m not here? Which is most of the time during race season,” he reminded her.
She shook her head. “That’s not an ideal situation, either.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“Not off the top of my head,” she admitted, closing the dishwasher.
“Well, let me know if you think of something,” he said. “They’ve hardly been here twenty-four hours, and I’m desperate enough to consider almost anything.”
* * *
As Tristyn watched the last half hour of the movie with Josh’s nieces, she tried not to think about the fact that she was in Josh’s bed. On Josh’s bed, she hastily amended. As if that clarification made any difference.
She wondered how many women had passed through that same doorway, laid on this same bed. Then pushed the question aside, deciding she didn’t want to know. Still, she felt as if she shouldn’t be here. She knew now why he hadn’t shown up at work today, and why he would be juggling his schedule for the rest of the week—and possibly the rest of the summer. And now that her questions were answered, there was no reason for her to stay.
No reason except that she’d made an impulsive promise to a little girl. A little girl who was even now pressed against her side, her face turned away from the screen as the Shadow Man’s spirit was taken away by the demons. But truthfully, her promise to Emily was only part of it. She was also intrigued by the opportunity to glimpse a corner of Josh’s personal life and curious to see him interact with the little girls.
She vaguely remembered Lucy Slater from Hillfield Academy. Josh’s younger sister had been two years behind Tristyn—a popular girl who liked to party more than study. She got kicked out midway through her sophomore year and wound up pregnant a couple years after that. By that time, Tristyn was mostly keeping her distance from Josh, so any information she had was secondhand from her cousin Daniel. There had apparently been a hasty wedding, and an even hastier divorce.
Obviously Lucy had gone on to have two more children and was now the mother of three beautiful girls. Three beautiful girls who were in Josh’s care for the summer. Tristyn smiled a little at the thought of how the responsibilities would put a crimp in his usually active social life. Maybe she could offer to help with the girls, because it might be fun to have a front-row seat to the fireworks while he figured out how to mesh his life with the needs and demands of his three nieces.
Except that spending too much time in close proximity to Josh was a risk. Sure, they were friends—or at least friendly—most of the time, but there was also that uncomfortable friction that occasionally reared up between them—seemingly more frequently in recent years.
As Daniel’s best friend and business partner, Josh was almost an honorary Garrett. Because his parents traveled a lot to oversee the various offices and interests of Slater Industries—a multinational investment company—he was often on his own for national holidays, and Daniel’s mom, Jane, always included him in whatever plans the Garretts made. As a result, Tristyn had spent a lot more time with him over the past two decades than she’d sometimes wanted to.
In many ways, Josh had been like another cousin, and almost as bossy and annoying as most of her cousins were—at least from the perspective of a ten-year-old girl who hated to be excluded from their activities because of her age and her gender. She didn’t look at him any differently than she looked at Daniel or Justin or Nathan or Ryan. Not until the summer after she’d turned thirteen, when suddenly being around him made her heart beat just a little bit faster. And she would blush and stutter in response whenever he spoke to her.
Her sisters teased her about her crush on Daniel’s best friend, which she vehemently denied. He was just an idiot boy like the rest of their idiot cousins and all the other idiot boys she knew. Of course, Lauryn and Jordyn didn’t believe her denials. And when Tristyn saw Josh making out with Missy Harlowe (aka Missy Harlot) beneath the bleachers of the football field, she felt as if she’d been stabbed in the heart. This unexpectedly fierce reaction forced her to acknowledge the truth of her feelings, if only to herself. She was in love with Josh Slater.
Later, she’d realized that what she’d thought was love was only an infatuation. Regardless of what she called it, there was no denying that he’d been her first real crush. And seeing him with other girls—and there were a lot of other girls—had broken her heart each and every time. She cried when he graduated from Hillfield Academy, because she would no longer see him at school every day. And she cried again when he went away to college, certain that her broken heart would never heal.
By the time Josh came home with Daniel for Thanksgiving, she had a boyfriend. Mitch Harlowe—Missy’s younger brother—was a varsity athlete and an honor roll student with curly brown hair and eyes the color of melted chocolate. And he looked at her in a way that Josh never had—as if she was the most beautiful girl in the world and he was the luckiest boy in the world just to be with her.
She dated Mitch for more than a year and a half, but they never went “all the way.” She was tempted, but she didn’t want to be one of “those girls.” They did a lot of other things, and Mitch was mostly patient with her—and undeniably relieved when she suggested that, maybe, after prom, they could finally “do it.” He was first in line the day prom tickets went on sale.
She smiled a little at the memory, but her smile faded when her thoughts skipped ahead to that night—and an ending that neither of them had planned.
“You were right,” Emily said, drawing Tristyn’s attention back to the screen where the human-again
