few tablespoons of it at the most? The baby, focused on his sister, started to cry, too. Loudly.
He was going to take the phone and disappear into his den with it, but somehow he couldn’t leave Dannie to deal with this mess. He sighed.
Regretfully he said, “I’ll have to call you back. A few minutes.”
He went and took the baby back from Dannie, and sat on the couch, never mind that the baby was like a pizza sauce squeeze bottle. His shirt was pretty much toast, anyway.
“I want my mommy,” Susie screamed. And then again, as if he might have missed the message the first time. “I want my mommy!”
He didn’t know where the words came from.
He said, “Of course you want your mommy, honey.” He probably spoke with such sincerity because he dearly wanted her mommy right now, too. Here, not soaking up the sun in Kona, but right here, guiding him through this sticky situation.
Something in his voice, probably the sincerity, stopped Susie midhowl. She stared at him, and then she came and sat on the couch beside him.
He held his breath. The baby took his cue from his sister, quieted, watched her intently, deciding what his next move would be.
Susie leaned her head on Joshua’s arm, sighed, popped her thumb in her mouth, and the room was suddenly silent except for the sound of her breathing, which became deeper and deeper. Her eyes fluttered, popped open and then fell shut again. This time they didn’t reopen.
The baby regarded his sleeping sister, sighed, burrowed into his uncle’s chest and slept, too.
“What was that?” Joshua whispered to Dannie.
“Two very tired kids,” she said. “Susie has been acting up a bit ever since she heard her parents were planning a vacation that did not include her.”
His fault. Sometimes even when a guy had the best of intentions, things went drastically wrong.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I actually think it’s good for them to experience a little separation now and then. It’ll help them figure out the world doesn’t end if Mel and Ryan go away.”
“What now?” he said.
“Well, if you don’t mind a few more pizza stains, I suggest we just pop them into their beds. I can clean them up in the morning.”
She held out her arms for the baby, who snored solidly through the transfer. Then he picked up his niece.
Who was just a little younger than his son would be.
And for the first time in his life, he put a child to bed. Tucked clean sheets around little Susie, so tiny in sleep. So vulnerable.
Who was tucking his son in tonight? Was the family who adopted him good enough? Kind? Decent? Fun-loving? People with old-fashioned values and virtues?
These were the thoughts he hated having, that he could outrun if he kept busy enough, if he never let himself get too tired or have too many drinks.
He left Susie’s room as if his feet were on fire, bumped into Dannie in the hall outside her room where she had just settled Jake.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Oh. Sure. Fine. Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
She regarded him with those huge blue eyes, the eyes that expected honesty, and he had the feeling if you spent enough time around someone like her, you wouldn’t be able to keep the mask up that kept people out.
“You just look,” she tilted her head, studied him, “as if you’ve seen a ghost.”
A ghost. Not quite.
“A kind of a ghost,” he said, forcing lightness into his tone. “I’m remembering what my home looked like before pizza.”
She smiled. “I tried to warn you. I’ll have it cleaned up in a jiff.”
“No, we’ll clean it up.” In a jiff. Who said things like that? Probably people with old-fashioned values and virtues.
A little later he tossed a damp dishcloth in the sink. He was a man who had trekked in Africa and spelunked in Peru. He had snorkeled off the coast of Kona and bungee jumped off the New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia.
How was it something so simple—tracking down all the stains and moving all the items that were delicate and breakable—seemed oddly fun, as if he was fully engaged, fully alive for the first time in a long time?
Is that what a woman like her would make life like? Fun when you least expected it? Engaging without any trinkets or toys?
Was it time to find out?
“Do you want that glass of wine now?” he asked her, when she threw a tomato-sauce-covered rag into the sink beside his. “You’re off duty, aren’t you?”
“I’m never off duty,” she said, but not sanctimoniously. Still, she was treating the offer with caution.
Which was smart. As his niece had pointed out to him earlier, he wasn’t smart. Plain old dumb.
“It’s more than a job for you, isn’t it?” he asked, even though he knew he should just let her get away to do whatever nannies did once the kids were asleep.
She blinked, nodded, looked away and then said in a low, husky voice, filled with reverence, “I love them.”
He felt her words as much as heard them. He felt the sacredness of her bond with his niece and nephew and knew how lucky his sister was to have found this woman.
But how had it happened that Dannie loved the children enough, apparently, to put her own college-professor dreams on hold, her own dreams for her life, her own ambitions?
He wanted to say something, and he didn’t. He didn’t want to know anymore about what she was giving up for other people’s children.
“I think we should go tomorrow,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I know your intentions are good, but the children really need to be someplace where they can romp. Someplace not so highly vulnerable to small hands, pizza sauce, the other daily catastrophes of all that energy.”
Her eyes said, I need to be away from you.
And he needed to be away from her. Fast. Before he asked more questions that would reveal to him a depth of love that shone like water in a desert, beckoning, calling.
“I’ll go make the arrangements,” he said coolly. “I have to return a phone call, anyway.”
“I’ll say good-night, then, and talk to you in the morning.”
He nodded, noticing she did not go back to her room but slipped out onto the terrace. He watched her for a moment as she stood looking out at darkness broken by lights reflecting in the water, stars winking on overhead. The sea breeze picked up her hair, and he yearned to stand
