“You said you’re divorced?”
His gaze landed on her hand. No ring there. “Yes, I’m divorced. Two years now. You’d think I would have gotten used to being mother and father by now.”
Emma shook her head. “I don’t think it works that way. I lost my mom to cancer when I was twelve. I’ll never forget those last six months or the years after, when I missed her so much I didn’t know what to do. I still miss her.”
They’d jumped into heavy waters awfully fast, and it was time to back up. Except, when he tried to remove himself emotionally, he got caught up in Emma’s beauty—those dangling curls, her pert nose, her full lips. Backing away from her would be downright difficult.
Clearing his throat, he nodded to the newspaper. “You looked serious when I came over.”
“I’m looking for a job. I have a business degree. In Pennsylvania before I moved here, I was an office manager. I’m hoping that the grapevine surrounding the shelter will reveal a position somewhere nearby. Lots of folks go in and out of there in a day.”
“I imagine so. I thought maybe you were training to be a vet tech since you were working at the shelter.”
“Oh, I love animals. But I don’t think vet tech is in my future—the medical side isn’t for me. During my shift I help out wherever’s necessary. What I like most is giving the animals attention. They are so much like children. When neglected, they act out. If we play with them to release energy, and they know someone’s caring for them, they behave much better.”
When he was at the shelter with his daughters, he could easily see that Emma had a soft spot for children and animals. He took a few sips of his coffee. “Have you been in North Carolina long?”
“About a month now.”
“You said you worked as an office manager in Pennsylvania. Did you come here looking for work?”
Appearing uncomfortable for a moment, she brushed her curls behind her ear before answering him. “Not exactly. It’s a very long story. My trip down here ended up being a little different than I expected. Now I’ve decided to stay for a while to see if Spring Forest is where I might want to settle. It is a beautiful little town.”
Emma sipped more of her coffee. It was about half-finished. It must have still had foam because it edged her upper lip. He smiled.
“What?” she asked, probably because he was studying her so intently.
What he wanted to do was touch that foam and find out exactly how soft her skin was. The notion was absolutely crazy. So instead he took his forefinger and edged his own upper lip.
She laughed and caught on right away. “You don’t have to worry about that with espresso.”
She wasn’t at all embarrassed and he liked that about her. She was natural, unaffected, genuine.
The lawyer in him took the other side of the argument. You don’t know her. You have barely spent any time with her. How could you possibly know she’s all those things?
Yes, how could he possibly know, and why would he want to know? He had a full plate as it was. He didn’t need an entanglement to upset an already rocky boat.
Although he was reluctant to leave, he made a point of checking his watch. Then he said, “I hope you find what you’re looking for. I really need to go now. I have a client coming in first thing this morning.”
She nodded, “I understand. You have a good day.”
He stood, even though something was telling him to stay. He waved his hand at her coffee cup. “Enjoy the rest of your latte.”
She was smiling at him when he left. That smile stayed with him all the way to his office.
* * *
Tied up with clients who wanted to make out a will, close on a house sale or draw up powers of attorney, Daniel hardly had time to breathe the rest of the morning. At some point the espresso would let him down, but hopefully not until the end of the afternoon. Raina knew he liked to see clients in the morning and deal with paperwork later in the day.
He’d started reading the history of a neighborly dispute over land boundaries between two properties when his cell phone buzzed. Cell phone rather than office phone meant it was a personal call.
“Hello,” he said. “Busy lawyer here.”
“Oh, Dad, you’re always busy,” Paris complained. “I have a problem. Aunt Shannon wants me to eat a sandwich and a salad. I don’t want to. She’s so vehement about it, I’m afraid she’ll force-feed me.”
Just where had Paris learned the word vehement? She wasn’t studying for her SATs yet, he thought wryly. However, when Paris was in a snit he did his best to calm her. “Do you want me to talk to your aunt? You can put her on the phone.”
“No. You have to come home. I’ve got to lose weight before school starts in September. She doesn’t understand that. Oh, and Penny missed her last soccer game of the season this morning because you didn’t tell Aunt Shannon about it.”
Daniel rubbed his hand over his brow. “Why didn’t Penny tell her about it?”
He could almost hear the shrug in Paris’s voice when she answered, “I guess she forgot, too. It was scheduled at the last minute.”
He had a decision to make—whether to be honest or patronizing. Paris didn’t take patronizing well. “I do have to work. Are you sure you can’t settle this yourself?”
“I didn’t tell you the worst part.”
Now Daniel held in a breath, then let it out. “The worst part?”
“Um...” Paris hesitated. That was unusual and worried Daniel even more.
“Just spill it, Paris. It won’t get any easier if you turn it around in your mind ten times.”
“Pippa got into something you’re not going to like.”
“Is this going to be twenty questions?” He really was losing patience. Maybe he should take up meditation.
“There was this shoebox in your closet. It had all of mom’s makeup in it. Now it’s all over Pippa’s face.”
Pushing aside the papers on his desk, Daniel faced the problem head-on. When Lydia had left, he’d hoped she’d return to her family, so he’d kept all of her things. When she hadn’t, he’d packed everything up and then forgotten about that box in the deepest recesses of his closet.
“What made Pippa go in there in the first place?” he asked Paris.
“I don’t know. Honest. Maybe she saw you put it in there and she remembered.”
More than once Pippa had asked why her mommy had left. He’d never been exactly sure what to tell her. Lydia sent the girls birthday cards and she’d written them a couple of short notes, but that had been the extent of her communication since the divorce. No wonder they felt abandoned.
What had Emma said just this morning? Animals are so much like children. When neglected, they act out.
So much for working at his office on a Saturday. “I’ll be home in about ten minutes, Paris. Do you think the three of you would like to visit Fiesta at Furever Paws?”
“Dad’s coming home,” Paris announced to her sisters, who must have been standing right there.
He heard the “yay” that filled the kitchen. Then Paris asked Pippa and Penny, “Do you want to go visit Fiesta at Furever Paws?”
Their yeses were loud and clear. So were their needs. Shannon was great with them but they needed somebody full-time who concentrated just on them. They needed a nanny.
An