“Tannoh owie?”
Caroline looked down and found the youngest one had followed them into the small bathroom. Within fifteen seconds, she wasn’t sure what held more interest to him—his brother’s owie or the lid of the toilet, which he repeatedly flipped up and down with a nerve-racking clatter each time.
Her repertoire of distractions was severely limited but she thought maybe she could tell him a story or something, just to keep him away from the toilet and away from his brother.
“Hey, kiddo,” she began.
“His name is Cody,” Tanner informed her, his sniffles momentarily subsiding. “He’s two and I’m five. I just had a birthday.”
“Five is a fun age,” she started, but her words were cut off by a loud and angry voice from outside the room.
“Tanner Michael Dalton! Where are you? Get in here and help me clean up the mess you made!”
Caroline took an instinctive step closer to the boy. What a disagreeable man, she thought, until she remembered that he likely knew nothing about his son’s injuries.
“We’re in the bathroom,” she called down the hall. “Do you think you could come in here for a moment?”
Silence met her request for a full five seconds, then Wade spoke in an annoyed-sounding voice. “What is it? I’m kind of in the middle of something here.”
Suddenly there he was in the doorway, two hundred pounds of angry male looking extremely put-upon, as if she’d pulled him away from saving the world to ask his opinion on what shade of lipstick to use.
This was his own son and she wouldn’t let him make her feel guilty for her compassion toward the boy. Caroline tilted her chin up and faced him down.
“We’re in the middle of something, too. Something I think you’re going to want to see.”
He squeezed into a bathroom that had barely held Caroline and two young boys. Throw in a large, gorgeous, angry rancher and the room seemed to shrink to the size of a tissue box.
“What is it?” he asked.
She pointed to Tanner’s soaking hand, a vivid, angry red, and watched the boy’s father blanch.
He hissed an oath, something she gauged by Tanner’s surprised reaction wasn’t something the boy normally heard from his father.
She had to admit, the shock and concern on Wade’s features went a long way toward making her more sympathetic toward him.
“Tanner!” he exclaimed. “You burned yourself?”
“It was an accident, Daddy.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
Tanner shrugged his narrow shoulders. “I was trying to be a big boy, not a b-baby.”
The sympathy from his father was apparently more than Tanner’s remarkable composure could withstand. The boy’s sniffles suddenly turned to wails.
“I’m sorry, Daddy. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again. I won’t, I promise. It hurts a lot.”
Wade picked up his son and held him against his broad, denim-covered chest. “Okay, honey. Okay. We’ll take care of it, I promise. We’ll find your Uncle Jake and he’ll fix you right up.”
Cody looked from his crying brother to their father’s obvious concern and started wailing, from fear or just sympathy, Caroline wasn’t sure. Soon the small bathroom echoed with loud sobs.
After a moment of that, Wade’s eyes started to look panicky, like he’d just found himself trapped in a cage of snakes—except she had the feeling he would have preferred the snakes to two bawling kids.
Finally Caroline took pity on him and picked up the crying toddler. He was heavier than she expected, a solid little person in a Spider-Man shirt. “You’re okay, sweetie. Your brother just has an owie.”
The curly blond cherub wiped his nose with his forefinger. “Tan-noh owie.”
“Yep. But he’ll be okay, I promise.”
“Uncle Jake will make it all better,” Wade said, a kind of desperate hope in his voice. “Come on, let’s go find him.”
He led the way out of the room. Once free of the bathroom’s confining space, Caroline could finally make her brain function again. She considered the ability to once more take a breath a nice bonus.
Wade carried Tanner toward the front door and she followed with the younger boy in her arms.
“Look, you’re going to have enough on your hands at the clinic,” she said. “Why don’t I stay here with Cody while you take care of Tanner?”
It took a second for Wade’s attention to shift from his injured son to her, something she found rather touching—until she saw suspicion bloom on his features.
“No. He can come with us to the clinic.”
“Are you sure? I don’t mind watching him for you.”
She didn’t need to hear his answer—the renewed animosity in his eyes was answer enough. “Lady, I don’t know you from Adam,” he snapped. “I’m not leaving my son here with you.”
“Would you like me to come with you and then watch him in the clinic while you’re occupied with Tanner’s hand?”
He frowned, obviously annoyed by her persistence. Good heavens, did he think she was going to kidnap the child?
“No. He’s fine with me. I’m sure there’s somebody in Jake’s office who could watch Cody while we’re in the exam room.”
With Tanner in one arm, he scooped up the toddler in the other and carried both boys out the door, toward a huge mud-covered silver pickup truck parked in the circular driveway.
Not sure what to do next, Caroline stood on the broad porch of the ranch house and watched as he strapped both boys into the truck. Wade seemed to have forgotten her very existence. In fact, a moment later he climbed into the driver’s seat and drove away without once looking back at the house.
Now that the first adrenaline surge from the fire and dealing with Tanner’s burn had passed, Caroline was aware of a bone-deep exhaustion. She had almost forgotten her long night of traveling and the worry over Quinn’s whirlwind romance with one of her clients. Now, as she stood alone on the ranch house porch with a cool October wind teasing the ends of her hair, everything came rushing back.
Since she was apparently too late to stop her father from eloping with Marjorie, she should probably just drive her rental back to the airport and catch the quickest flight to California.
On the other hand, that kitchen was still a mess, she was sure. She could scrub down the smoke-damaged kitchen while Wade was gone, perhaps even fix a warm meal for their return.
It was the least she could do, really. None of this would have happened if her father hadn’t run off with Marjorie.
She wasn’t breaking her vow, Caroline told herself as she walked back into the house and shut the cool fall air behind her. She wasn’t cleaning up after her father’s messes, something she had sworn never to do again. She was only helping out a man who had his hands full.
She tried to tell herself she wasn’t splitting hairs, but even as she went back into the smoke-damaged kitchen and rolled up her sleeves, she wasn’t quite convinced.
“There you go, partner. Now you’ve got the mummy claw of death to scare Nat with when she comes home from school.”
Tanner giggled at his uncle Jake and moved his gauze-wrapped hand experimentally. “It still hurts,” he complained.
“Sorry,