Beneath the identical sets of hazel eyes—they must have got those from their late mother—both boys sported dark, weary smudges and overly pale skins. Poor things.
‘Mmm hmm. I haven’t had a monster sandwich for ten thousand years.’ She cut the sandwich into four enormous pieces and crammed as much as she could of the first piece into her mouth, chewing in feigned ecstasy. Actually, it wasn’t too bad, given the raw materials. ‘All this needs is some milk to wash it down.’
A half bottle of the stuff being the only thing of note now left in the fridge, she helped herself to a plastic mug, which was miraculously still clean and secure in the cupboard, and swilled some down.
‘Brilliant. My tummy is starting to feel better already.’ She rubbed it appreciatively. ‘But then, not just anybody can eat a big monster sandwich like this. Only really brave people can, and people who drink milk as well to wash it down properly in the monster-honoured tradition.’
She glanced at Max and almost laughed at the expression of pure outrage on his face. Didn’t he know what she was doing?
Given that he hadn’t said anything, she assumed he was so appalled he was speechless. ‘Thanks for the food, Max. I’m sure you didn’t mind that I helped myself like this.’ She grinned at him through her milk moustache.
Inside, she silently warned him not to blow it. The boys were close to capitulating. She could feel it. But if Max went off at her now, goodness knew what would happen.
She wished he would put a shirt on, too, drat it. How could the man be so comfortable in his own skin, and so oblivious to the effect of the sight of that skin on others? Her, for example.
She stuffed more sandwich in before the thought could tumble out of her foolhardy mouth, and rolled her eyes at the boys as she slurped more milk from her mug.
Any moment now they would drop their guards fully and let her start to help them.
And any moment now Phoebe would get past wanting to run her hands all over Max Saunders’s bare chest. Sandwiches she could handle. But that other kind of craving was pure trouble.
CHAPTER TWO
‘DO YOU suppose we could give some consideration to my sons at some point?’ Max glared at the interloper in his kitchen and marvelled that he could want her so badly. His desire to throttle her was as strong as the desire had been earlier to kiss her! The first was perfectly normal. It happened to him all the time. The second was a shock.
This was Phoebe. His sister’s untamed and untameable best friend. Normally, the sight of her simply made him want to grind his teeth. He was, in fact, grinding them right now. Well, just look at her, for heaven’s sake!
Wild, coarse-looking hair in every shade from blonde to middle brown crowned her head like an unruly mop. In the centre of this display of hairdressing disaster rested an enormous pink bow with a pair of black eyes imprinted on it. When Phoebe moved he got the impression of two sets of eyeballs darting this way and that, instead of just one.
She had an elfin face, with a pointy chin that always seemed to be angled to challenge him. Right now, the normally lean cheeks were distended with sandwich and milk coated her upper lip.
‘Mmph.’ Phoebe chewed, then mumbled something around her sandwich that sounded like, ‘We are considering your sons.’
‘Not in my reality, we’re not.’ Max’s gaze moved from her face to her outrageous clothing. Her overalls were such a bright shade of pink they made his eyes ache. The green shirt she wore underneath clashed abominably. And here she was, calmly eating him out of house and home while Jake and Josh stood watching, starving. How was that helping the boys?
‘Calm down, Max.’ Phoebe had finished her mouthful of food and looked ready to take another enormous bite.
She claimed to be here to help. What a joke that was.
‘I need round the clock, competent childcare,’ Max informed her in a tone that would have made icicles sprout in a scorching desert. ‘Not some wraith-like fairy creature with nothing to share but silly monster talk that will probably make my boys cry in the night.’
As if Max needed any more of that. He wasn’t cut out for this parent thing. Just look at the mess he had made of trying to raise Katherine after their parents had died. After a few weeks of Max trying to involve himself in her life, his twelve-year-old sister had begged him to go back to working long hours. Jake and Josh’s advent into his care hadn’t met with any better success.
Max might be great at money but he stank at family. The sooner he got his sons into organised care and returned to his normal way of life, the better it would be for everyone.
First up, he had to get rid of the eating machine, namely Phoebe. Guilt pinched him briefly. Maybe she was eating because she was hungry. She did look thinner than the last time he had seen her—what, six months ago? Did she not have enough money?
That thought simply made him angry all over again, for hadn’t he tried to ensure her financial security in the past, only to have her toss his efforts back into his face in no uncertain terms?
She was Katherine’s friend, Max had plenty of funds and didn’t see the problem, but Phoebe was ever Phoebe—stubborn, cantankerous and totally unwilling to listen, even to the most reasonable of ideas.
Like accepting a permanent loan from him to set herself up in a home and get some formal training. Instead she flitted from one poorly paid assistant’s job to the next as the mood took her.
‘What was Katherine thinking, to encourage you to come here now?’
And why was he still standing here, allowing this farce to go on?
‘She was thinking smart. Something you appear to have lost the ability to do at the moment.’ Phoebe licked a drop of milk from the corner of her mouth and Max’s stomach contracted.
He recognised the feeling. He just didn’t understand why it was happening to him. This was Phoebe. The bane of his life. He did not find her desirable. He simply couldn’t.
Liar, liar, his libido chanted.
‘I’m not scared of monsters.’
‘I’m not, neither.’
Jake and Josh strode towards Phoebe on sturdy small legs, hands fisted on hips, chins stuck out.
‘I eat monster s’wiches.’
‘I eats ’em too.’
Since they’d arrived a week ago, his sons had alternately played up, cried inconsolably, sulked, and mashed and smashed his house to pieces. Max wondered what form the next outbreak would take, and how many seconds of peace remained until it started.
Phoebe may have got his sons to speak, but her methods were unorthodox and bound to lead to trouble. It would be best if he dispatched her now.
He fixed her with a glare and gestured towards the living room. ‘If you’re quite finished demolishing my kitchen, we need to talk.’
‘Not right now.’ She smiled back at him blandly, but with the threat of daggers in her pale blue eyes. Even the spare eyes on her bow seemed to be glaring. ‘A person can’t simply leave a monster sandwich sitting around the place. It might jump up and run away.’
‘Don’t make yourself any more ridiculous than you already are.’ Max had had more than enough of her silly talk. Monster sandwiches, indeed.
But the boys giggled at her suggestion. Actually laughed. Their faces crinkled and they chortled for a full few seconds.
Something tugged at Max, deep down in his gut. How was he going to do this? They were so vulnerable, so completely dependent on him. How could he raise them or, rather,