alone and responsible for a young child, it’s horribly easy to let someone else take care of you, and when that someone is a man like Wallis Revere, well, you find yourself being taken over completely. You start to lose yourself, and when that happens, you start to lose even the will to go on. I let that happen to myself a long time ago, but when I realized that it was happening to my son, too…” She lifted her chin. “I’m fighting him every way I know how, and I’m trying so hard to fight smart, to pick my battles and approach them from the position of greatest strength. But it isn’t easy. I have to weigh every situation carefully and be absolutely certain that if I take a position opposite Wallis that it is because it is the right thing to do. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”
He stifled the very inappropriate impulse to applaud the woman! Instead, he sat forward, forearms aligned atop the blotter on his desk, and mentally tamped down the absurd elation he was feeling. “I not only understand,” he said carefully, “I also approve, for what that’s worth.”
The smile she presented him this time was brilliant. “It’s worth a great deal!” she told him. “It means I can trust you to consider my wishes over those of my father-in-law should the two conflict.”
He was a little shocked. “But that goes without saying. You are, after all, the boy’s mother.”
He thought he saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes before she dropped her gaze to her lap, but when she lifted her head abruptly a moment later, she was very much in control of herself. She crossed her slender legs at the knee, tugging gently at the hem of her skirt.
“I’m a little surprised at how this has gone,” she said. “I wanted to be honest with you, and you’ve made that very easy. Now I must ask that you be honest with me.”
He sat back again, liking her more and more. “By all means.”
She sat forward, her whole posture suddenly intense. “Were you coerced into this arrangement with my son? Isn’t it an inconvenience to be saddled with someone else’s little boy? Wouldn’t you rather not go through with it?”
Bolton couldn’t help grinning. “No. In fact, I’m looking forward to it. Very much.”
She seemed pleased, very pleased. She relaxed. Her face softened, her eyes seeming to grow quite large and doelike. “Oh, how easy you make it for me. I can’t tell you how grateful I am! Trenton really does need a man’s guidance, Reverend Charles, and I couldn’t be more pleased with my father-in-law’s choice. But you mustn’t let us become a nuisance. Promise me that you won’t let us take unreasonable advantage of your time or generosity.”
Us. A happy glow spread through the reverend, at once oddly familiar and utterly foreign. He heard himself saying, “I promise, provided you’ll call me Bolton.”
She gave him that brilliant smile again. It forced him to gulp down a sudden lump in his throat.
“Of course,” she said, “and you must call me Clarice.” Then, getting to her feet, she held out her hand again. “Thank you, Bolton, for everything.”
He scrambled up and around the desk, grasping her fingertips. “Uh, about Trent…that is, your suggestions for activities of interest to…us, him…and me, that is.”
She laughed at him. It was a most companionable laugh, almost affectionate. “I’m sure you’ll do very well in that area all on your own. Why don’t we take a clue from Wallis in this instance? Why don’t I bring Trenton around for a short visit, and the two of you can decide how you want to begin. All right?”
He nodded, feeling patently ridiculous for having babbled so. “Fine. This evening perhaps? Or tomorrow morning. Whatever is most convenient.”
“We are completely at your disposal. Choose a time.”
He couldn’t think for the life of him. Finally he just snatched a time out of thin air. “Nine-thirty.”
She shook his hand. “Nine-thirty tomorrow morning it is.”
Tomorrow morning. Of course. Nine-thirty at night would hardly be the time to begin such a project. “Right,” he said, hoping he didn’t sound like the idiot he felt at the moment.
She smiled at him benignly. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
“Right. I mean, yes. Tomorrow, definitely.”
“At nine-thirty.”
“Ri—uh, uh-huh.” He was starting to sound like a broken record, for pity’s sake!
She gently extracted her hand from his and left, that smile upon her face.
Bolton sank down upon the corner of his desk, mind awhirl. Well. He felt as if he’d been hit between the eyes. She was not at all what he’d expected. This woman was no cipher, no colorless, defeated little wren. She was gentle, yes, and sensitive—even delicate—yet intelligence and determination had lit a bright spark of vivacity in her—and struck sparks off him. Oh, yes, sparks were flying everywhere. He laughed aloud, eager to see her again, to feel those sparks again, which he would do at nine-thirty the next morning. Suddenly he smacked himself in the forehead with the flat of his hand. Quickly he leaned across the desk and slapped the button on his intercom machine.
“Cora?”
“Yeah?”
“Do I have anything scheduled for nine-thirty tomorrow morning?”
“Tomorrow?”
“Nine-thirty tomorrow morning,” he repeated forcefully.
A lengthy silence followed, then, “Hey, Bolt, tomorrow’s Saturday.”
Saturday! He gaped, then he snapped off the machine and started to laugh. Saturday. Apparently his mind had gone out to lunch the moment Clarice Revere had walked through the door! Could it be, he wondered, that Wallis Revere, of all people, had actually introduced him, finally, to the woman his own beloved Carol had promised him existed. If so, that old saw about God working in mysterious ways had just proven a serious understatement. Why, the mind boggled. He shook his head. Wallis Revere. Miracles, apparently, did still happen.
He was waiting in the outer office when they arrived, long legs crossed at the ankles as he leaned against the corner of his secretary’s desk. He looked uncommonly handsome and surprisingly at ease in loafers, crisp white jeans and a sky blue polo shirt. His short, dark hair was combed casually to one side from a straight part, and his mouth was curved upward in a welcoming smile that deserved a like response. She could not deny the urge to give it to him, and so moments later found herself standing in the middle of the floor grinning like an idiot while his dark winged brows slowly lifted. The realization brought on a fit of giggles, which she stifled with less than complete success. Trenton, solemn little man that he was, stared up at her with undisguised curiosity. The look on his face said it all: his mother never giggled. Clarice cleared her throat and schooled her expression.
“Reverend Charles,” she said decorously.
Those winged brows pulled down into a frown. “I
