Gaby and Anna grinned at the idea of eating outside. “Can we have juice boxes?” Gaby asked.
“Yes, I brought a few over from our house and put them in the fridge. Pick the kind you want.”
She helped them carry their bounty out to the table in the fenced backyard then set it out for them.
“Mommy, can you have a picnic with us, too?”
She hesitated. Her patient might need her. But judging by the exhausted pain lines on his face when he first showed up with his friends, he would probably be sleeping for hours. Anyway, she should be able to hear him through the screen door if he called out for help.
“Let me go check on Mr. McKinnon, then I’ll come back out and have lunch with you.”
She walked back through the small house with its floor plan similar to hers—two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a good-size living area, a small dining room and a comfortable, efficient kitchen. At McKinnon’s bedroom door she drew in a steadying breath and pushed it open.
His chest rose and fell evenly as he slept, with the blanket she had tucked in so carefully earlier riding down nearly to his narrow waist now. The network of pain lines around his mouth were more faint now, she noticed, and he seemed as comfortable as possible given the two thigh-high casts on his long legs.
As she watched him, the fear in her stomach gave way to something far more treacherous. He was so gorgeous. Lean and dark, with sculpted features and that dangerous-looking stubble on his cheeks.
She shivered, hating this attraction stirring around inside her. She didn’t want to notice how his lashes looked so long and spiky there against his skin, how his shoulders spanned nearly the width of the hospital bed, how his big hands on top of the blanket looked strong and blunt-fingered, capable of all kinds of delicious things.
She shouldn’t be noticing any of those things, shouldn’t be feeling this low sizzle of awareness. Not for any man, and especially not for this one, who could so easily destroy her.
Jaime had been gone only two years. Building lurid fantasies around another man’s hands somehow seemed grossly disloyal to her late husband. How could she even think about having this man she didn’t even know—and didn’t particularly like all that much—touch her the way only Jaime ever had?
She had loved her husband fiercely. He had been her first and only lover, and their physical relationship had been rich and rewarding, filled with laughter and tenderness and passion. Maybe that’s why she missed it so much, because it had been such an important part of their life together.
Still, missing the intimacy she shared with her husband didn’t explain how she could have such an instantaneous response to this man she didn’t know at all.
It was there, though, simmering under her skin with a steady, bubbling heat. His attraction wasn’t diminished at all by the fact that he was lying in a hospital bed with two painful-looking casts on his legs. If anything, just that hint of vulnerability made him even more appealing.
She couldn’t do this job. She absolutely couldn’t—not only because he posed such a risk to her freedom and the girls’ future but because of this, the low heat seething through her.
She would just have to tell Ruth she had made a mistake to take the job in the first place and hope her landlady would let her return to cleaning houses. If she started now, she could probably find a new caregiver for the girls by the end of the week.
She returned to the patio and found Gaby and Anna had abandoned their half-eaten lunches. One of the neighbors’ cats had made the mistake of wandering into the yard to find a snack and he was far more exciting than peanut butter sandwiches.
The girls were chasing the bewildered animal around the yard, laughing with joy every time they came close enough to touch the cat, which wasn’t very often.
“Kitty, kitty, kitty,” Anna chanted, her chubby legs working hard to keep up with her older sister.
Just when Allie was about to open her mouth and tell them to stop tormenting the poor thing, the cat finally clued in that any morsels he might chance upon in this backyard simply weren’t worth the trouble.
He sprang to the top of the redwood fence and sat watching with an amused feline look while the girls hopped and jumped and squealed, trying in vain to reach him.
After a moment the cat tired of the entertainment and pounced down the other side into what was undoubtedly safer territory.
Unfazed by losing their prey, the girls flopped down onto their stomachs in the grass. Sunlight flashed off their dark curls as they laughed together.
“Mama, there are two ladybugs in the grass,” Gaby called. “Come and see!”
She joined them and bent at the waist for a closer look. “I see four ladybugs.”
Anna frowned. “No. Only two.”
“Let’s count them.” She pointed to the bugs with a grin. “One and two.” Then she pointed to her daughters. “Three and four.”
Gaby giggled. “We’re not really ladybugs. We can’t fly and we don’t have black spots.”
“But you’re my ladybugs,” Allie said, tickling them both until they were shrieking with glee.
She had loved these last two days with her daughters, having them close while she and Ruth readied the FBI agent’s house for his return. It had made her realize what precious little time she’d been able to spend with them since Jaime’s death. She had been so busy sorting through his affairs, working twelve-hour shifts at the hospital, fighting the custody battle, struggling with her own health.
They were growing up so fast, right in front of her nose. Gaby should be starting kindergarten in the fall, which was just another thing to add to her worry list. How would they be able to stay in one place long enough for her daughter to complete the school year?
They couldn’t stay here. She had acknowledged that days ago. Without the FBI agent’s presence in the neighborhood she might have been able to stay in Park City all summer, maybe even all year. But it was just too risky having him living next door.
That was one of the reasons she’d taken the job, so she could save a little extra to tide them over wherever they moved. That reason still held, she reminded herself. She could take a few weeks to work for Gage McKinnon while she made arrangements to leave. Surely she deserved a few weeks to simply enjoy her girls.
Besides, McKinnon wasn’t working because of his injuries. If the authorities were looking for her, how would he possibly know? If he had seen her picture and recognized her, what difference would it make whether she worked for him or simply lived next door?
As to the attraction part, she could handle that, too. She just had to remember all the reasons why giving in to that attraction would be wholly, unequivocally disastrous.
Chapter 4
Geez, couldn’t a guy get any sleep around here?
Through the thick fist of nausea and pain that had him in a chokehold, Gage blinked awake to the sound of girlish giggles carried through the window screen on the warm breeze.
They sounded like a couple of miniature laughing hyenas out there. Charlotte must have one of her obnoxious little friends over again. Did they have to titter and cackle right outside his window?
He was sick. Really sick. He couldn’t remember when he’d ever felt so lousy. Was he dying? He figured he had to be pretty badly off or he wouldn’t be stretched out here in bed in the middle of the day with pain racking his whole body.
Mom really ought to put her foot down and make the little brats play on the other side of the house so he could