know why I’m edgy,” he said. “And I can understand why you might be annoyed with me about not making other arrangements for the fearsome five, but you’re about ready to jump out of your skin. Who is Dane?”
He didn’t know why he was making a big deal about it. If she had a secret or two, who was he to begrudge her of them? He had a whopper of one, himself. And because he did, his conscience needed to know that he was at least giving the kids a caretaker whom they actually liked. One who would stick around awhile. Not be lured off by some guy named Dane.
Darby’s face was pale. “My brother,” she finally said stiffly.
Surprised, Garrett let her go. She wrapped the hand he’d held in her other, rubbing it. He frowned. He hadn’t held her that tightly. “Why didn’t you just say so?”
“I…we don’t get along,” Darby said, turning away. “Do you want that chicken or not?” She took a plate out of the cupboard, and Garrett saw that her hand was trembling.
Hell.
He rose and put his hands around her shoulders, gently turning her to face him. The sight of her glistening eyes grabbed his gut and twisted hard. He took the plate from her and set it aside. “Hey. I’m sorry. Don’t do that.”
She blinked and averted her face.
He caught her chin and gently lifted. “I know all about family feuds,” he murmured. She looked up at him with those sky-blue eyes, and he clamped down on the heat that suddenly churned inside him. That was the last damned thing they needed.
Then she moistened her lips. Just a nervous, barely noticeable movement, and her soft lower lip glistened.
Ah, hell.
He drew his thumb over her chin. The hint of stubbornness in it saved her face from being perfectly oval. He could feel her pulse beating in her throat; rippling little beats that teased the heavy chug of his own pulse.
“Garrett.” She pressed her palms flat against his shirt, and he could have sworn that he felt the distinct shape of each one of those long, elegant fingers.
“Shh.” His thumb drifted over her lips and her eyes fluttered closed.
Beneath his thumb he felt her lips move. “I don’t know which is worse,” she whispered. “When you’re all cold and distant or when you’re…not.”
“I told you to shush,” he muttered. “Your voice. It’s—”
“Rough,” she finished.
“Husky,” he corrected. Like a brush of velvet over his nerve endings.
She suddenly stepped back, looking anywhere but at him. Her fingertips touched her throat for a moment before she picked up the plate and held it in front of her like a shield. “My vocal chords were, um, injured when I was a kid. I know. I sound like a habitual smoker or something.”
It was good she’d backed away. She had more sense than he did. “You sound like you,” he said. But listening to her talk was an exercise in erotic torture. She said his name, and he nearly lost the ability to reason. And the kitchen still seemed filled with tension.
Tension that he’d caused because he’d let himself forget, for just a minute, that he needed more from this woman than the taste of her lips. He needed Darby for the kids. Without her in his corner, he knew his chances in court against Caldwell were slim. It was only her word, after all, that Elise had wanted him to take her and Marc’s children. His attorney, Hayden Southerland, who had finally arrived from New Mexico, had confirmed it.
Actually what Hayden had said was that the only thing better than an unimpeachable nanny would be an unimpeachable wife. Since Garrett had no prospects on that score, he’d better remember to keep his hands off the one nanny he had in the offing here in Fisher Falls.
Once he got back home to Albuquerque, he’d see about hiring one of Carmel’s aunts; she seemed to have about twenty of ’em. They were all devoted to their grandbabies but Garrett figured once he was back home, he could convince at least one of them that it would be worth their while to watch a few more.
He gathered up the tubes of blueprints from the table. “Don’t worry about the chicken,” he told Darby. “I’ve got work to do, anyway.” Carrying the plans, he headed out of the kitchen for the den.
Just exactly like Dane, Darby thought, watching him go. Her brother would work 24/7 if he could, and it seemed that Garrett would, too.
She quietly prepared a plate, heating the chicken in the microwave before adding a gelatin salad and a buttered roll. Garrett didn’t particularly look the type to eat orange gelatin with bananas inside it, but Regan had helped Darby make it that afternoon, so that’s what he would get. She poured a glass of milk, prepared everything on a tray and carried it, along with the small first aid kit from beneath the kitchen sink, to Garrett’s den, turning off lights as she went.
He hadn’t exaggerated about the work, she realized when she stepped inside the small room. He’d unrolled some blueprints across his desk and was thoroughly focused on them. She set the tray on the small table next to the couch that he was supposedly unfolding into a bed each night. Frankly, she didn’t see how he could. The room was simply too cramped.
“Let me see that bandage.” She flipped open the first aid kit on his desk and held out her hand.
He looked at his hand, as if surprised to see the sloppy bandage still circling his finger. “It’s nothing.”
“The bandage is dirty. Whatever you’ve done, you wouldn’t want it to get infected, would you?” She wriggled her fingers, demanding.
His expression unreadable, he held up his hand and she unwrapped the tape and gauze, making a face at the cut beneath. “I thought you told people what to do at that construction company you run, not that you were out pounding nails with your own bare hands.”
“Wasn’t a nail.” He didn’t flinch as she cleansed the cut. “I was helping to install a window. It dropped. Made a helluva mess.”
“Made a pretty good cut, too,” she murmured. “You know you probably should have had a stitch or two.” She closed the edges with a butterfly bandage, then topped it with a cushy sterile pad.
“I was too busy getting on the horn to order another window. It was a custom job. It’ll take weeks to get another.”
“Figures you’d be more concerned with some window than your own health.”
“It’s just a cut, Darby.”
“Cuts can get infected,” she said smoothly. “Keep it covered.” She pressed the last bit of tape into place and gathered up the old bandage and the wrappings from the new one and left the room.
She put the first aid kit back in the kitchen, then went upstairs. In the second bedroom, she picked up Regan’s stuffed bear and tucked it back in bed with her. Reid had kicked off his blanket and Darby’s hand hovered over the edge of it, but she didn’t move it for fear that he’d wake. He slept so uneasily, poor sweetheart.
Finally Darby let him be. It wasn’t cold in the house, after all. She went into the master bedroom and checked the triplets. Tad’s face still felt a
