Then it hit him: they’d forgotten Kerin already. They told him about her death like an item they’d watched on the news, only anxious to know he didn’t blame them for anything Kerin did.
His gaze met Lissa’s. She nodded and touched her finger to her lips. Counselor, she mouthed.
He’d never wanted to kiss her more than now. The love he’d counted on for so long was there for his sons. She knew what his fear had been, the shadows of old ghosts still stalking him, and she’d led him to the sunlight with a single word. She wasn’t fostering Matt and Luke. His boys were loved, an integral part of her family.
His heart whispered in delicate hope, She did it for me.
He couldn’t fool himself for long. Lissa, his lovely, open-hearted girl, would have done the same for any child in need. As she’d done for him once—until he blew it.
Thank you, he mouthed back.
“Sorry, kids. I couldn’t get away from work,” he answered Matt’s question. “The brass wouldn’t let me off until yesterday. I couldn’t even quit a day early.”
Luke’s mouth twisted. “Cityfellas.”
Mitch chuckled and ruffled his son’s tousled mop of curls. “I see Lissa’s been passing on some of her ideas about the city. She used to call me that, until I’d been here a year or two.” He grinned at her. As a kid, he’d loved the way she’d called him Cityfella, poking her tongue out, wrinkling her nose in cute teasing. There was never any malice intended, no offence taken. Being a cityfella had given him the sort of glamorous mystique he’d never had as a plain unwanted foster kid—and it gave him undivided attention from the girl whose angel-faerie face haunted his dreams, night and day.
Lissa’s smile was slow in coming, but when it did, her soft, dove-gray eyes twinkled. She bit her lip, then poked her tongue out and wrinkled her nose. “You still stink with it—cityfella.” She snorted. “Buying a house at Bondi Beach. What a yuppie!”
Matt wriggled. “Wanna come see our room, Dad? It’s mega cool. It’s got pics of Mick Doohan and Wayne Gardner—”
Luke jumped off Mitch’s hip. “And Luke Longley, Andrew Gaze, Michael Jordan and the Shaq—”
He laughed. “I see you two are as alike as ever.”
The boys grinned. “Basketball. Kids’ stuff,” Matt snorted. “Who’d wanna waste time playin’ with balls, just runnin’ up and down and dribbling, when you can burn rubber at 220 an hour?”
“Bikes are all right, I s’pose,” Luke retorted with lofty condescension, “but I’d drink the grog if I won. Who wants the good stuff poured all over your head?”
“Hey, mithter, do you like Barbieth?”
Belatedly, Mitch noticed someone was tugging at his shirt. He looked down to the source of the little, lisping voice.
Oh, dear God. Living proof of Tim and Lissa’s love. A sweet sprite gazed hopefully at him, a child with Tim’s riotous blond curls and an angel’s face. Lissa’s face.
“You must be Jenny.”
Jenny rolled her eyes, reminiscent of her mother. “Mithter, I thaid, do you like Barbieth?”
Oh, yeah, this was Lissa’s daughter all right—with her one-track mind. The boys were sniggering already. “Watch out, or she’ll get you into the dollhouse.”
Jenny’s brow lifted; she stared Matt down, her childish lisp adorable and impatient. “You play with me all the time, so don’t you talk!” She turned back to Mitch. “You gonna play or not?”
“Jenny.”
The quiet word brooked no denial. Jenny sighed dramatically. “Sorry, Mummy. Sorry, Mister. Please are you gonna play with me?”
Lissa put a hand on Jenny’s pigtail. “Jenny, this is Mitch. He’s Matt and Luke’s daddy.”
“No!” Jenny’s sweet, flushed face drained white; those lovely china doll’s eyes filled right up with tears and spilled over. “Don’t take my bruvers. Don’t take Matt and Lukey away from me!”
“Jenny.”
The little girl’s tiny, flower-like face lifted, drenched with tears. “No, Mummy, no!” she sobbed. “Don’t let him take them, Mummy! Make him go away!”
Lissa squatted before the sobbing child as Matt and Luke stood either side of her, patting her in awkward affection. “Mitch is a friend of mine, and Matt and Luke’s father. Would you like it if Matt and Luke told your Daddy to go away?”
Jenny sniffed and gulped. “But he’s gonna take them away from us, Mummy! Stop him, stop him!”
“No, I’m not, Jenny,” Mitch cut in quietly, aching for the child’s pain. So much like her mother…
Jenny’s eyes grew round. “You’re goin’ away? Yay!”
But the twins gasped, forgetting Jenny’s grief in an instant. “Dad?” Matt’s voice quivered.
“D-don’t you want us?” Luke whispered.
Oh, damn. This was a delicate minefield he had to walk—especially with Luke—and he wasn’t any good at careful balance with words. Or with saving people’s feelings.
There was too much at stake here. Either way he could lose. How the hell could he explain the situation—what he wanted for them all—without either betraying Lissa’s trust, making the boys resent her, or looking like he wanted to dump Matt and Luke with the first available caregiver?
Just like Kerin—even after she went to the trouble of stealing them from me.
“Of course he wants to be with you both,” Lissa answered for him, caressing Luke’s curly mop of hair with exquisite tenderness. “He wouldn’t have come for you if he didn’t. He means that he’s moved here, to Breckerville, so he can be near us all. And you guys have the choice. You can go with your Dad, or keep living here if you want to, and he’ll be—”
Watching her founder, he supplied the first words that came to his mind: “Right next door.”
Lissa whirled to face him. “N-next door? You bought Old Man Taggart’s place?”
“All two hundred and fifteen acres of it, rotting fences and all.” Well, he would by tomorrow. He’d be the master of the place he’d once worked at for nothing. The For Sale sign he’d passed was so rusted and sagging he knew he’d get a bargain—and guaranteed a quick sale. Old Man Taggart must’ve died ages ago. The house and land were in such a state of disrepair—
He saw the flash of anger in Lissa’s gaze before she looked away. “You have it all worked out, don’t you?”
He shrugged, hiding the quick spurt of pain. Was she making it hard for him because she resented his manipulating the situation to his advantage, or because she didn’t want to know about marrying him? “It seemed like a good idea at the time. And it’s not as if I don’t know the land, is it? I know every inch of it. Seems fair to get something out of it this time, instead of Old Man Taggart getting it all.”
He was right. After all the years of thankless effort he’d put in, Old Man Taggart treating him like a slave instead of an honest worker, it was right he finally reap the rewards from the land he’d always loved to till. Still, Lissa shook with primitive anger at his blatant maneuvering of her life.
Join families. Join the land while we’re at it. The perfect solution for everyone…except me.
But the fury melted into heart-deep guilt when she saw the radiant joy in the boys’ faces.
“So