“What happened?” Ella asked, hurrying to Suzy’s side and kneeling down beside her.
“Paul...pushed...he pushed me off the swing...on purpose,” Suzy wailed, leaning into Ella.
The movement caught her off guard. Once again she was holding on to a little child and once again her heart contracted.
“I didn’t hurt her,” Paul protested. “She wanted me to give her a push.”
“You didn’t need to push so hard,” Suzy shouted back at him. She returned to Ella, wrapping her arms around her, sobbing.
In spite of her own reaction, Ella’s arms automatically slipped around the little girl’s narrow shoulders and held her close. To her surprise, it felt good to be wanted. To be needed. Even if it was by a slightly dramatic six-year-old.
Suzy seemed to be milking this for all it was worth. Ella could hear that her cries had turned from sincere to forced and she suppressed a smile.
Paul squatted in front of Suzy and touched her shoulder. “I’m supposed to say I’m sorry, right?”
“You’re supposed to be sadder,” Suzy said, her head buried against Ella.
Ella almost laughed aloud.
Then she heard Pablo bark and the kids sat up, looking past Ella, and scrambled to their feet.
“What are you kids doing here?”
Ella looked back to see Cord standing a few feet away, hands planted on his hips. He could have been intimidating with his broad shoulders and piercing eyes and stubble shading his lean jaw.
But the buttons of his blue-and-white shirt didn’t line up with the buttonholes and one of the tails of his shirt hung out of his wrinkled jeans. He looked like he had dressed in a hurry.
“Sorry, Daddy. We asked if we could come here when you were in the shower.”
“Did I say yes?”
Paul dropped his head, his one toe digging in the dirt around the swing set as he slowly shook his head.
“I thought you said yes,” Suzy said, her expression guileless, her hands folded demurely in front of her. Ella was impressed with how easily she shifted from brokenhearted to beguiling.
“I didn’t.” The tiniest note of hesitation slipped into his voice and Suzy seemed to jump on it.
“But I thought you did,” she said, leaning forward, her eyes wide, her expression pleading. “And these swings are way more fun than ours and you always like us to play outside. You say it’s healthy. So we thought we could come here. That was a good idea, right?”
Ella looked away so neither Suzy nor Cord could see her battle to repress her smile.
But Cord must have been subjected to his daughter’s machinations more than once and seemed to be unaffected.
“Wrong,” he said with a note of finality. “You know what Grandpa Boyce and I said about disturbing Miss Ella.”
Ella lifted a hand in a gesture of protest at the form of address. “Please. Let them call me Ella.”
Miss Ella sounded like she should be wearing a hoop skirt and drinking lemonade on a plantation.
“Did the kids come to ask you?” he asked, leveling his eyes at her.
Ella glanced over at Paul and Suzy and caught the little girl’s pleading look. She wasn’t going to lie and cover Suzy’s disobedience yet she felt sorry for them. No mother, and now no nanny and a father who seemed busy.
“We didn’t ask her,” Paul said, intervening. Then he turned to Ella, his expression serious. “And I’m sorry we bugged you. We didn’t mean to. We always played on these swings before ’cause we don’t have any by our house.”
His words sounded so sincere and, at the same time, so formal and so adult for his age.
But what was even worse was the notion that she was the Big Bad Neighbor taking away their fun.
The solitude had been what she signed up for, she told herself. However, as she looked down at their sad faces, she felt petty. What did it matter if the kids came to her yard to play on the swing set?
Was saving herself a few moments of discomfort worth making these kids feel restricted on their own ranch yard?
“You know what?” she said. “I go out for a run every day with Pablo at eight o’clock in the morning and after supper. Why don’t you come and play on the swings either of those times?” That way she would be satisfying Cord’s demands that her kids stay away from her dog, and the kids could come and play there while she was gone. She glanced at Cord as if to check with him but, for some reason, he was still frowning.
Suzy let out a cheer and then grabbed Ella’s hand, looking up at her with a wide grin. “Thanks, Miss Ella. That’s awesome possum.”
Her faint lisp made the words sound even more adorable.
“Okay, kids, over to the house,” Cord said. “You have to get ready for church.”
Suzy kept looking up at Ella, still held her hand. “Are you coming with us? To church?”
Ella wasn’t sure what to say or how to say it. And the pleading look on the little girl’s face tugged at her heart.
“Paul and Suzy, go to the house now and change, please. And go straight to the house. No stopping at Miss Ella’s porch to pet that dog.”
Cord’s voice was firm and the kids sensed they had already gotten as many concessions as they could.
“See you in church,” Suzy said, releasing her hand.
The assumption that she was coming hooked into her soul.
They walked past Cord but as they did he reached out and stroked Paul’s head, tucked a strand of flyaway hair behind Suzy’s ear, his casual gestures melting her resistance to him. It wasn’t hard to see he was a loving father. “Could you two wash up? And tell Grandpa I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He spoke softly, smiling at his children.
He watched them leave and once they were out of earshot he turned back to Ella.
“I’m sorry about that,” he said. “Paul was right. They played here all the time. The house used to be my dad’s. I’m sorry they bothered you.”
Before she could say that they hadn’t disturbed her, he carried on.
“And don’t feel like you have to let them come over. I know you’re not crazy about kids.”
She wanted to protest, realizing how things might have looked. But she stopped herself as she held his steady gaze. He was an attractive man and his interaction with his kids made him even more appealing.
She had to shut this down. There was no way she was going there again. Darren had taught her some harsh lessons about trust and relationships.
“If I’m gone when they come over I think it should work out fine,” she said, looking away from his blue-green eyes, reminding herself that she had other priorities, as did he. “Besides, they have school so I probably won’t see them much.”
Cord sighed and shook his head. “Unfortunately they have two weeks off for spring break starting Monday.”
Ella shot him a frown. “So they’ll be around all day?” What was he going to do with no nanny?
“I’m sorry if that’s a problem,” he said, his voice going hard and his hands going up in a gesture of defense as she realized that he had misunderstood her. “They’ll be out of your hair all day today because after church we’re visiting