Oh, she really hoped she wasn’t making a terrible mistake by agreeing to help him out. She couldn’t afford the distraction. Money wasn’t everything—or so she tried to tell herself, anyway.
She probably would have stuck to her guns and continued to refuse him, if not for the phone call she’d received that morning from Angel Herrera, the inaptly named attorney representing her in the adoption process. She had found nothing angelic about him from the moment they met. Though he had come recommended by the local representative from the Colombia national adoption agency, he was loud, abrasive, and made her feel stupid every time she talked to him, either because of her halting command of the Spanish language or because she struggled to understand the complicated and unwieldy international adoption process.
It didn’t help that he constantly seemed to approach her with his hand out.
The latest conversation had been the same. He had insisted he needed an extra two thousand dollars because of unexpected costs associated with filing some of the necessary paperwork.
She didn’t understand. How much could it cost to make duplicates of her adoption petition and run them to the adoption office? Did he have to cut down the trees and mill his own paper or something?
After working with him for three months, she was beginning to understand the meaning of the word extortion. Angel knew how desperately Katrina wanted to adopt Gabi, knew that she would pay any cost, try to conquer any obstacle.
She felt completely out of her depth, trying to negotiate the complex process and receive approval from two countries to bring Gabi to the United States.
Herrera made her feel like she was eight years old again, forced to repeat the second grade because of a combination of missed classes and the strong medication that mostly controlled her epilepsy making it tough to focus.
StupidKat. TwitchyKat.
The weirdo.
You can’t invite her to your birthday party. What if she has a fit or something?
No. I’m sorry. My mom says you can’t stay overnight because of your medical condition.
My nana says kids who have seizures shouldn’t be allowed in school with normal kids because you could hurt somebody.
She had spent most of her life trying to quiet those damn voices, with varied levels of success.
She didn’t want to continue playing Angel Herrera’s game, but she didn’t know what else to do. At least with Bowie’s help, she would feel a little more secure if the attorney came to her again with his hand out.
“Wow, that was a good sandwich,” Bowie said, wiping away a little grape jelly at his mouth with a napkin. “I haven’t had one of those in years. Thanks.”
“See? I told you,” she said to Milo. “You’ve got mad PB&J skills, kiddo.”
The boy just gazed at her, obviously not impressed with her assessment. Bowie, on the other hand, smiled for a moment, then looked uncomfortable. “Uh, I know this is a lot to ask, especially on such short notice, but I need to run into the office and sign a few papers that resulted from our meeting today. I was going to take Milo with me, but if I can avoid it, I would rather not. He doesn’t like it there.”
She thought about the check in her pocket and the peace of mind it provided. “I can stay with him the rest of the afternoon. No problem.”
“Are you sure?”
She ought to say no so he didn’t completely take advantage of her. Begin how you want to go on, right? But Bowie looked so relieved, she didn’t have the heart to disappoint him.
“Sure. I can stay until six. After that, I’ve got a thing.” She didn’t really. She just didn’t want him to think she had nothing better to do than get him out of a bind.
“Thanks. Hey, mind if I take that other sandwich you and Milo made? I’m still hungry, and it tasted delicious.”
“It’s yours.”
His smile was sweetly genuine and made her toes curl inside her sandals.
Oh, she did not want to be attracted to him. That was exactly the sort of thing that always seemed to lead her into trouble.
Something told her it was going to be a long three weeks.
* * *
BIG SURPRISE, BOWIE wasn’t back by six.
Katrina glanced at her watch for about the twentieth time in the last five minutes and tried not to let her annoyance filter through to Milo.
They sat on the floor of his bedroom with a whole fleet of little cars in every color scattered around them like little shiny insects. They were his favorite toys, apparently, at least judging by the purple race car that was obviously his favorite. Most of them looked shiny and new, but the purple one he pulled out of the pocket of his shorts was battered, dented in places with the paint worn off.
He lined all twenty-five cars on the floor, then drove the purple car through them, scattering the others in all directions.
“That purple car is tough,” she observed. “Does it have a name?”
He ignored her, driving it in circles around the carpet mat.
“What other car do you like?” she asked. “Do you like this blue race car or this red pickup truck?”
He looked at them briefly, then continued driving the purple car around the floor with a low humming sound that resembled a car engine.
He could make sounds. The afternoon had amply demonstrated that. So why couldn’t he form words? Katrina needed to know his background and any actual diagnoses so she could do a little research to find out the best way to reach him.
Yes, Bowie had hired her simply to be a nanny to the boy, not come up with an individualized education plan for him, but she was a trained elementary education teacher. It was second nature to her to want to find solutions.
Before taking off with Carter, she had actually been working on her special education certification. Probably because of her own learning difficulties, she had always been drawn to the children who struggled more than their classmates. While she cared for all her students, Katrina found a greater degree of satisfaction in helping those who had to work harder to learn.
It was one of the things that had first drawn her to Gabi when Katrina first decided to volunteer at the orphanage near the school where she found a job teaching English after she had been stranded in Colombia. Some of the children had been apprehensive around Katrina, but Gabi had come right up to her, handed her a flowering weed she’d plucked from the garden and started jabbering away in a combination of Spanish and her own Gabi-speak. Katrina had fallen in love instantly.
Now she watched Milo make sounds with the car, then hold another car, headlight-to-headlight, against the purple one as if they were talking to each other.
He had receptive language skills, he could make sounds and he understood the concept of language. Why didn’t he speak? What she really needed was a long conversation with Bowie so she could figure out how best to help his brother during her time with him.
As if her thoughts had conjured him, she suddenly sensed movement by the door, and she glanced up in time to see Bowie walking into the room.
Again, her stupid heart rate kicked up a notch and her palms went clammy with nerves. Her thoughts seemed to scatter like those cars Milo had plowed through.
Her instinctive reaction to him both embarrassed and dismayed her as she rose to her feet, needing to be on a little more equal level.
So the man was gorgeous. She wasn’t in the market for gorgeous anymore, especially since it usually came hand in hand with arrogance and conceit.
His mouth twisted into a regretful frown. “I told you six and it’s half past. I’m