She heard the conviction in his voice, and she was puzzled. He had everything money could buy, he had three teenagers and a younger son, a life that might be easy materially but was hard in other ways. Surely he didn’t need a little girl.
What drove him to insist on claiming Crystal? Despite herself, she couldn’t help admiring his unexpected commitment when it came to Crystal.
He turned from the window and shrugged, as if he hadn’t been white-knuckled on that tieback after all. “If it would make you feel better, why don’t you stay a few days?”
“If that would make me feel better.”
“Yeah.” He put a hand back in his pocket, a casual pose again. “I don’t think this is a big deal. But you do, so why don’t you stay a few days and look us over? Maybe you’ll see we aren’t that bad.”
Everything about this place was that bad. Worst of all was that she was so conscious of him as a man. Conscious in a way she didn’t remember feeling about Delane, or even about her first love as a teenager. That puzzled her, too. She’d always been attracted to the smoothly handsome type, the kind who knew how to dress and what wine to order. She had a feeling Mitch would be happiest with a beer.
He gave her a grin and said, “After all, we’ve got a dog that smiles, so how could we be that bad?”
He paused, but before she could speak, he added, “You could spend time with Crystal. I know she’d really like it if you stayed. I realize you have a job with a lot of responsibility, but maybe you could get a few days off, now that you’re up here.”
She decided she didn’t want to tell him she was out of a job. “Sure. I could set things up. While I’m at it, if I could use your telephone, I could make reservations at the nearest hotel.”
That would cut into her suddenly constricted budget, but Mitch was right; she should stay. Crystal had been traumatized, whether he wanted to admit it or not. The social worker was supposed to be submitting her report, but Jenny would just as soon see with her own eyes how things were really going in this household.
Mitch said, “You could stay here.”
“Here? At your house?”
“Why not? It’s big enough. And there’s the whole guest wing, with Crystal using only one of the bedrooms.”
Somehow, she couldn’t imagine staying in his house. And he certainly couldn’t want her here, toting up stray Froot Loops in order to be able to tell the judge what pigs the Oliver men were. What was his game?
But he was looking right at her, straight and sincere, and she thought maybe it was no game, that he wanted her here for the reason he’d told her: for Crystal. She had to admit that staying here would be better for her finances. Besides, if she wanted to, she could tote up the Froot Loops, in case this custody issue wasn’t really settled after all.
“Thank you. I’ll stay, perhaps for a week or so if that’s all right.”
He nodded, one graceful nod from a handsome, athletic man. He let out another long breath, and she found herself doing the same, as an odd sort of prickle went up her spine.
A quick vision formed, of him rumpled and sleepy-eyed, in his sweatpants and nothing else, goose bumps highlighting muscles that were toned and…sexy.
Did he look that way every morning?
As he’d said, the house was big…but perhaps not big enough.
CHAPTER FOUR
THAT NIGHT Mitch brought home fried chicken and coleslaw, and discovered Jenny had set the table already. “Jason helped me, showed me where everything was,” she explained. “Crystal helped, too.”
“You didn’t have to do this.”
“Well, I figured you wouldn’t mind.”
Wouldn’t mind? He sure didn’t mind. When was the last time he’d come home to find the table set? Really set, with the napkins folded, with a fork on the left, and a knife and spoon on the right, and glasses that all matched? Not very many times since Anne had died. They went to restaurants for things like that.
Jason said, “It wasn’t that hard. I remembered where everything went.” When they sat down to eat, Mitch noticed that the boys had better table manners than usual.
It made him feel a bit warmer toward the cool blonde who sat across from him, eating her fried chicken.
When dinner was over and the twins were loading the dishwasher, Jenny waylaid him on his way to the study, where he was taking the paperwork he’d brought home.
“It occurs to me,” she said quietly, “that we didn’t resolve one point this morning.”
Mentally, he groaned, but he made sure to smile at her. “What point was that?” Ma’am.
“Are you going to punish the boys for playing so rough with Crystal?”
He kept up the smile, though it was hard. He pressed his back to the hallway wall. The hallway seemed narrower than usual. Everything seemed a little odd, a little different with a woman in the house.
“I talked to them. I told them not to play so rough with Crystal.”
“And that’s all you did?”
He nodded.
“You aren’t going to discipline them?”
Discipline wasn’t his strong suit, and he certainly didn’t see the need for it in this case. “I don’t think so.”
She pursed her lips as prissy as could be. “It was fortunate that Crystal wasn’t badly hurt, but it could be a whole lot worse next time.”
“I talked to them, okay?”
“But some sort of consequences—”
He lost patience. “When did you get to be an expert on parenting?” Wrong approach, because her lips got tighter than ever.
“I’ve spent a lot of time with Crystal—”
“But you don’t have kids.”
There was a kind of charged silence. He felt bad, then, and added, “I know that not having kids doesn’t mean you can’t have an opinion, but believe me, I’ve learned in the past four years that parenting day in and day out gives you a whole different perspective.”
She spoke finally. “You’re right, of course. They’re your children, and I’m only visiting. You know best.”
He felt an urge to explain. To tell her that his kids had been through too much for him to be a heavy-handed parent. He could have said that it was easier, too, to ruffle their hair, to throw an arm over their shoulders, to just love them the way she did Crystal. But he didn’t. If she was going to judge him, he didn’t owe her anything.
Instead, he said, “Well, okay, if we’ve got all that straight, I’m going to the rink. I promised Luke’s coach that I’d help with the drills. Tommy’s in charge of the kids tonight.”
“I’ll be here.” But she said it a little timidly. As if being left with the boys was more than she’d bargained for. He winced as he heard a loud crash from the kitchen.
He made good his escape then, to the hockey rink, where it was definitely a man’s world.
THE ZAMBONI CAME OUT and started circling the rink as slowly as a street cleaner, smoothing the ice after a full practice session of the Northern Lights. Though it was nearly midnight, a youth league of smaller boys would be