Kate Fortune’s Journal Entry

I’m so happy Adam and Jake are finally reconciling. I watched them have lunch together the other day. I knew that when Adam flipped through the family heirloom photo album, he would see that he was following too closely in his father’s footsteps. Though Adam always resented that Jake worked a lot and was away from his family, Adam was doing the same thing with his children. But now, at last, they both realize the importance of family.

I wish that I could come out of hiding. But I still haven’t figured out who tried to kill me and who is out to destroy the Fortunes. I hope some clue is discovered soon and this mess is resolved so we can all get back to our lives.

A LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR

Dear Reader,

It is my privilege to bring you Book Six of the Fortune family saga. This project has been a joy for several reasons, chief among them the fact that it is truly a family exercise. The Fortune family, with its variety of interesting characters, has proven to be an exciting but comfortable group with which to spend many an enjoyable hour for author and reader alike. However, another family is involved: the family of writers and editors at Silhouette.

Writing is usually a solitary enterprise. That’s why it has been such fun talking to and working with other FORTUNE’S CHILDREN authors as we coordinated details, descriptions and new ideas, enriching the basic plot of the series.

In the same vein, I must compliment all the editors involved with this project. Organizing and editing a twelve-book series is a complicated, detailed endeavor requiring much patience, latitude and a firm, shared vision.

The heart of it all is a common purpose: to provide you with the finest reading entertainment possible. My sincere hope and expectation are that we’ve done our jobs well. If we have, the Fortune family will become as dear to you as it has to me. Family, after all, is everything in this life.

If you’re a new reader, allow me to welcome you to the Silhouette family. If you’re a faithful fan, allow me to express my gratitude for your support. You are what it’s all about for the rest of us.

God bless.

Single with Children
Arlene James

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Jim,

in honor of twenty good years

with a singularly good man.

I love you still…

D.A.R.

ARLENE JAMES

Growing up on a small ranch in Oklahoma made adjusting to the suburban lifestyle of Dallas, Texas, rather difficult, but once the move was made, she couldn’t seem to stop. Her oldest son was born in Florida. In Oklahoma she met and married the wonderful man who has been her partner and joy for the past twenty years. They’ve spent almost all of that time in the Dallas area, where they produced a second son and helped raise a dear niece.

Her children have been her focus in her life, and as she sends her youngest off to college, she says, “The rewards of motherhood have indeed been extraordinary for me. Yet I’ve looked forward to this new stage of my life.” Her need to write is greater than ever, a fact that frankly amazes her as she’s been at it since eighth grade! She also expects to indulge her favorite hobbies of cooking, sewing and amateur theater, as well as her husband’s love of travel and the nurturing of their many friendships.

Meet the Fortunes—three generations of a family with a legacy of wealth, influence and power. As they unite to face an unknown enemy, shocking family secrets are revealed…and passionate new romances are ignited.

ADAM FORTUNE: The ex-army officer is a clueless single father raising three small, rowdy children. Finding a nanny hasn’t been easy…until a pretty young waitress offers to lend a hand.

LAURA BEAUMONT: Her dreams of having a family to love come true when she becomes the nanny of Adam’s kids. But her happiness is threatened by the past she is running from….

TRACEY DUCET: She is the heart-stopping image of Lindsay Fortune. Is it possible that the missing Fortune twin has been found? Or is this a clever deception?

JANE FORTUNE: Single mother. Would an old clapboard New England home inherited from her grandmother give Jane the chance to build a new life for herself and her son?

LIZ JONES—CELEBRITY GOSSIP

As I predicted, a big bombshell has dropped on the Fortune family!

The long-lost heiress has been found. Over thirty years ago, Lindsay Fortune’s twin was kidnapped. Now, the twin, Tracey Ducet, has come home to claim her rightful place in the family. Everyone seems to be overjoyed by her unexpected arrival.

I’ll bet she’s a gold digger! After all, who wouldn’t want a piece of the Fortune pie? I wonder if there are any other long-lost relatives that I could masquerade as? But I must admit, she does know her facts about the family, and maybe I’m just being cynical.

Whatever the truth is, it’s bound to come out sooner or later. The family is having Ms. Ducet thoroughly investigated. And if she’s got any skeletons in her closet, they’ll find them….

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

One

Adam swiped his hand over the flat, bristly top of hair the color of mahogany. It was a classic gesture of frustration for a retired military man used to sweeping a service cap off his head. He pushed his shoulders back and took a deep breath, trying to keep his voice carefully reasonable. Mrs. Godiva took offense at the tone of command, and pride would not allow him to succumb to the desperation of pleading.

“Now let’s just talk this out calmly,” he said. “I’m sure the snow in your slippers was just a little prank. They wouldn’t understand the…the depth of your shock. They’re only three, after all.”

“And wouldn’t have dreamed this up all by themselves!” the woman retorted, drawing herself up to her full rawboned height. “That Wendy is behind this! She had those scamps put snow in my slippers because I put her in the corner this morning for refusing to eat her prunes.”

“Wendy doesn’t like prunes, Mrs. Godiva,” Adam pointed out tersely. “I’ve asked you time and time again not to—”

“Prunes are good for them!” the middle-aged widow insisted. “If you’d just let me guide you, we’d have both fared better, but like your daughter, you just won’t listen to reason! Well, I’ve had it. Not only did she put her little brothers up to filling my brand-new house slippers with snow, she then cried out for me in the night, knowing my feet had only just warmed and that I’d thrust them trustingly into…into…” Her upper lip trembled in outrage.

Adam bowed his head, a dull ache setting in behind his eyes. She was undoubtedly correct. Everyone knew that cold feet were the bane of Godiva’s existence, but the twins would not have dreamed up this particular act of vengeance—and it was vengeance, Wendy-style. Still, the blasted woman knew that Wendy loathed cooked prunes. Adam sighed.

“Couldn’t we just forget about this?”

“We could not!”

“I’ll make certain that it never happens again.”

“Ha! You have no more control over that child than you have over the weather! It’s beyond me how a man with your experience of command could allow that trio of miscreants to rule this…this house of chaos!”

“Mrs. Godiva, they lost their mother only eighteen months ago—”

“And you’ve lost seven nannies in that time!”

“Six,” he corrected offhandedly.

“Seven!” she snapped, dipping low to grasp the handles of her bags. “You may forward my pay to my sister’s in Minneapolis. I believe you have the address!” With that, she turned, struggled furiously with the handles of her luggage and the doorknob, and marched out into the night.

“Mrs. Godiva!” Adam called after her. “At least wait until the morning!”

His plea fell on her ears with no more effect than the fat flakes of snow that melted into the garish scarf tied about her head or the icy crust that crunched beneath her sturdy feet, presumably warm inside her clunky fur-lined boots. Within seconds, he heard the muted sounds of her car doors opening and closing, then the engine being gunned as headlights swung in an angry arc over the drifts of snow banking the drive.

Adam closed the door quietly, resisting the urge to lay his head against it and moan, but only just. Behind him, he heard the bumps and rustles of little bodies moving, encased in flannel pajamas. His spine seemed to straighten of its own accord, and his shoulders to level themselves and draw back. He executed a turn with all the precision of a soldier on review and scowled down at the three little faces that peeked around the corner of the foyer and the front hall.

“Is she gone?” Wendy whispered. Her freckled nose wrinkled in ill-disguised hope as her chubby fingers pulled at a thin reddish brown braid.

“She is.”

“For good?” Robbie asked, his voice all little-boy innocence, the illusion abetted by the tousle of curly blond hair around his plump, squarish face.

“Afraid so—no thanks to you three.”

Ryan, a slightly smaller version of his minutes-older brother, flashed a triumphant smile at Wendy before breaking out in whoops of sheer delight. Instantly the other two joined him, all attempts at feigning regret abandoned. Adam rolled his eyes, and in that short space of time, they bolted down the hall and erupted into the living room, where he found them, seconds later, gleefully jumping on the furniture.

“Gone! Gone! The witch is gone!”

Adam took a militant posture in the middle of the room. It was a cold, colorless room, one he particularly disliked, but in all the months since his wife’s death, he had made no effort to change it. Nor did he intend to. “That’s enough!” he barked in his best commander’s voice.

Robbie turned an awkward cartwheel on the couch and tumbled to the floor with a thunk, howls of glee instantly becoming cries of pain and shock. Ryan crawled down to join him, giggling, and Robbie abruptly switched to laughter, one hand rubbing the back of his head as he sat up. Wendy ignored them all, dancing in place on the seat of an armchair. “Gone! Gone! The old prune’s gone!”

The boys laughed all the harder at that, while Adam’s face turned red and his temper frayed. “Stop that this instant, and go to bed!” What his bark had not accomplished, his roar did, as all three children went still and silent, their attention at last on their father. Not that they actually obeyed. The boys merely lay down on the floor and regarded him curiously, while Wendy slid down into a sitting position on the chair, her face set mutinously.

“I hated her. She was mean and ugly and—”

“You did everything in your power to drive her away!” he accused. “You know we need the help, but still you—”

“We don’t need no help!” Wendy cried in a thin voice. “Mommy always took care of us with just Cook.”

“Cook is part-time!” Adam exclaimed. “And I am not Mommy! I have to make a living for us, I can’t stay home all day long to take care of you!”

“Mommy did!”

“Because I was off making us a living!”

“In the army,” Ryan said accusingly, and something in his tone robbed Adam of all his anger.

“That’s right,” he muttered, swamped by the odd confusion that always came with that hint of resentment. Diana had never seemed to mind his career with the military. She had, in fact, on occasion during a long leave, seemed anxious to send him on his way. Maybe that was why he had always felt relieved to go. Maybe the kids had sensed his relief and felt it had to do with them, and that was at the root of their resentment. And maybe Diana had complained from time to time that he wasn’t around. He would have been ashamed to admit that he hadn’t really known his late wife well enough to say with any uncertainty what she might have said or done concerning his absences. He was depressingly irritated to know that the same was true of his children, and in the eighteen months since a traffic accident had taken Diana’s life, that somehow had not changed. Adam sighed, too tired and too deflated to wrangle with his unruly children. How much easier it had been to deal with tough adult men! He made a sweeping gesture with one hand. “Get on to bed, all of you. It’s late.”

Robbie and Ryan sat up and folded their legs, watching their sister to see how she was going to respond to their father’s order. Wendy stuck out her plump pink bottom lip and glared at Adam with his own light golden-brown eyes. “Who’s gonna tuck us in, with Nanny Godiva gone?”

“You should have thought of that before you filled her shoes with snow, little Miss Ringleader. Now get to bed before I start smacking bottoms.”

Wendy folded her arms stubbornly, but just as Adam felt his temper go, she suddenly bounced up off the chair and tore out of the room, her little arms swinging stiffly at her sides. The boys scrambled up and ran after her, singing, “Hey! Gone, the witch’s gone. Hey, hey, witchy’s gone…”

Adam put a hand to the back of his neck. What on earth was he going to do now? He had an important meeting tomorrow afternoon, with an auto lube franchiser from Minneapolis, and another on Friday, with a real estate agent. Surely Rebecca or Natalie could watch the kids for a few hours tomorrow. He’d worry about Friday later. He supposed he could always cancel, but only as a last resort. He was tired of living in limbo. He had to find something to do now that his retirement from the military was official. He needed a career, a business, a focus of some sort, but how could he concentrate on that, when the kids had just managed to drive off yet another nanny? Sometimes he wondered if those little rascals were actually trying to trap him here in the house—an unlikely scenario, since they seemed to actively dislike him much of the time.

He shook his head as he walked barefoot toward his bedroom, hitting light switches along the way. He groaned when the thought occurred to him that Godiva was likely to crack up her car on the snowy, icy roads and sue the pants off him. Wouldn’t that just cap the New Year! He ignored the whispers coming from behind Wendy’s door and trudged into the cold confines of his bedroom. Not even the blaze flickering in the fireplace could warm up the place, decorated as it was in shades of white and ice blue, but he crawled gratefully beneath the dark red coverlet—the one change he’d taken the initiative to make—and settled down to a happily blank sleep.

A little thumb pulled his eyelid up and back, nearly gouging out his eye in the process.

“Ow!”

Adam yanked away and surveyed his son with dismay and exhaustion. How many times could one little boy wake up in the space of a single night?

“God, Robbie, don’t you ever sleep?”

“Ryan,” corrected a petulant voice.

“Oh.” The boys were alike enough to confuse, if one didn’t look too closely, but Wendy claimed that their mother had never gotten them mixed up, and Adam could not quite squelch a spurt of guilt that he had, however seldom, done so. Sighing, he rolled onto his back and laid an arm across his eyes. “What is it now?”

“Ah hun-wy,” said Ryan, his slight speech impediment exaggerated by the three fingers he had thrust into his mouth. Adam’s aunt Lindsay, the family pediatrician, had told him that there was no reason for concern, but he worried anyway—when he had the energy, which he didn’t at the moment.

“Ryan,” Adam groaned, “it’s the middle of the night.”

“Na-a-aw. Id maw-ning!”

Surely not. It couldn’t possibly be morning. He hadn’t slept two full hours yet. Oh, God, don’t let it be morning, he thought, carefully lifting his arm and slitting open his eyes. Oh, God, it was morning. Adam made a whimpering sound in the back of his throat and resigned himself to the inevitable, even as he rolled onto his side and craned his neck to read the time on the digital alarm clock beside the bed. Seven-forty. The alarm would screech in five more minutes. Five minutes was not worth fighting for.

“All right,” he said, sitting up and yawning. “What’s for breakfast?”

Ryan shrugged and popped his fingers out of his mouth. “I don’t know.”

Adam swung his legs over the side of the bed and reached for the T-shirt he’d left lying on the floor the night before. “Well, go see what Nanny’s making, and come tell—”

“Nanny’s gone,” Ryan reminded him.

Adam closed his eyes. Gone, gone, witchy’s gone. Godiva had left them the night before, and Cook didn’t come in until just before lunch. Heaven help them. Well, surely there was something he could dish up…cold cereal, perhaps, doughnuts… He’d have given a thousand bucks to put on his fatigues and jog down to the mess hall just once more. But things were bound to look better after he’d gotten down a cup of coffee. Coffee. He groaned again, realizing that there wouldn’t be any coffee, not this morning. The civilian world was hell.

Ryan scrambled off the bed and attached himself to Adam’s leg, tugging with all the might in his little limbs. Adam laughed at the senselessness of it and got awkwardly to his feet, reaching for the bathrobe that hung over the bedpost. He threw it on and belted it over the fleece pants he’d worn to bed and the T-shirt he’d just donned. His shoes were around here somewhere, if he could just see around the bunched body of his son.

“Okay, okay, Ryan,” he said, patting the boy’s back. “I’m on my way.”

Ryan let go and ran to the door, where he paused and called back. “Better huwwy.” He shook his finger at Adam in a perfect parody of his older sister. “Wendy say if you don’t come, she gonna make breakfast herself.”

Adam’s eyes widened in alarm. Forgetting his shoes, he pelted toward the kitchen, bawling, “Wen-dy!”

He burst through the louvered swinging doors in time to see his daughter standing on a chair that she had pulled up to the counter and dumping flour into a glass bowl from a sack. The flour hit with a whump and rose in clouds around the bowl, which wobbled ominously near the edge of the counter. Adam threw himself across the cooktop island and snatched Wendy off the chair, just as the bowl shattered into a thousand pieces on the floor. Flour and glass sprayed the narrow aisle between the counter and the island. Wendy immediately burst into loud wails. Adam pulled her up onto the island, expecting to see blood running down her legs. He sagged with relief when all he saw was flour dusting her legs. At that moment, the boys pushed through the door, Robbie first, then Ryan, his hand in his mouth.

“Out!” Adam barked. Neither of them moved a muscle. “There’s glass all over the floor! Get out of here!”

Eyes wide, they backed through the swinging door, but then Robbie pushed them open again and stuck his head inside. “Wendy, you hurt?”

Wendy’s wails had subsided to sobs now, but she made no effort to answer. Adam answered for her, still miffed—pained, if he was to be honest—that his children always seemed to need a reason to obey him. “She’s not hurt, she’s just scared,” he said gruffly, pulling her to him and beginning to inch his way across the floor toward the door, on the lookout for the telltale sparkle of glass splinters.

Once safely on the carpet of the dining room, he set Wendy on her feet, went down on one knee and grasped her by her solid little shoulders. “What on earth did you think you were doing?” He hadn’t meant to shout, and he hadn’t meant to shake her, but the thought of glass embedding itself in her plump child’s body both horrified and angered him. She went off into screeching wails again, her face scrunched up and her braids shuddering, but Adam noted that her eyes were dry. He guessed she was more embarrassed than frightened. Truth to tell, he was somewhat shaken himself. He let her go and wiped a hand across his brow. “All right,” he muttered. “It’s all right, but don’t you ever do anything like that again. Do you hear me?” She nodded her head, sniffing phonily. Adam ignored the sham and schooled his tone to patience. “What were you doing anyway?”

“Making pancakes,” she said challengingly, sticking out that lower lip.

“Pancakes!” Robbie echoed, jumping up and down. “Yeah, yeah, pancakes!”

Ryan immediately picked up the chant, clapping his hands together.

Adam winced. They would settle on something as difficult as pancakes for breakfast. Even if he could find a recipe, he couldn’t begin to put together an edible batch of pancakes. Who was he kidding? He’d be lucky to get the milk in the bowl with the cereal—if he could find any. He wasn’t about to go looking in his bare feet, not now. He made a sudden decision. He was good at decisions. In fact, deciding was what he often did best, and this decision let him off the hook in several ways. For one thing, they’d actually get to eat, and for another, he wouldn’t have to face cleaning up the mess in the kitchen on an empty stomach. He pushed up to his full height. “All right, let’s get you dressed. We’re going out for pancakes.”

That elicited paroxysms of delight. Robbie danced around, whooping in circles, knees knocked together, lower legs flying out at odd angles. Ryan took a look at his brother’s improbable dance and settled for stomping up and down and hoo-hooing like a train. Wendy merely looked up at her father in that solemn way of hers, nodded sharply and spun away to drag her noisy brothers from the room. Adam smiled to himself. He might actually have scored some points with this one.

An hour later, Adam asked himself how a good idea could have gone so bad as he grabbed for the syrup pitcher yet again. He snatched it out of the way just as Robbie fell, chest forward, into his plate, his arms stretching out to knock salt and pepper shakers into ashtrays and ashtrays into toast baskets. Wendy snickered, one hand over her mouth, the other waving a fork bearing a speared piece of dripping pancake. Robbie giggled, looking down at the sticky mess on his shirt, and Ryan immediately went up on his knees, preparing to duplicate his brother’s antics. “Oh, no, you don’t!” Adam jumped up, trying to balance the syrup pitcher with one hand and grab Ryan’s shoulder with the other. His hip hit the table, and coffee sloshed out of the cup, over the rim of the saucer and onto his khakis. “Damn!”

The children descended into loud laughter. Adam felt the syrup pitcher lifted out of his hand. An instant later, it was replaced by a damp white towel. “Allow me,” said a soft voice. Adam caught a flash of pale blue uniform and brown hairnet as he bent to wipe at the stain on his thigh. He looked up in time to see a slender young woman tugging Wendy’s leg down into place and sliding her chair farther under the table, situating the hand with the fork over her plate. She smiled down at the girl, then moved on around the table, putting Ryan back into his booster seat and pushing his milk glass away from the edge of the table. She leaned down and whispered something to him before moving on to Robbie, and Ryan instantly picked up his fork and began to eat. Robbie required a bit more attention.

“Well, now, handsome, you’ve made quite a mess of yourself, haven’t you?” she said, going down beside his chair and ruffling his hair. “The food’s supposed to go in your tummy, not on it.” She dipped a paper napkin in his water glass and began carefully dabbing the worst of the syrup off his shirt. “What beautiful eyes you have,” she said, smiling into moss-green eyes mottled with yellow and tiny spikes of blue. Robbie grinned, clearly besotted, and when she turned her smile on Adam, he understood the sentiment completely.

She was really quite astonishingly lovely, with an oval face built of high, delicate cheekbones, a broad smooth forehead and a slightly blunted chin. The straight, thick bangs that brushed the peaks of naturally arched brows were the palest gold, and fine as corn silk. Her lips were wide and rather spare, but perfectly shaped and rosy pink beneath a small, patrician nose with two small depressions high up on the narrow bridge, indicating that she wore, or used to wear, glasses. But her eyes were her dominant feature. Large ovals, widest at the inner edge, they were a clear, brilliant green spiked and veined with rich blue and thickly fringed with tawny lashes. Heavy lids gave them a sultry look, and Adam suspected that she was somewhat nearsighted. Perhaps she wouldn’t notice that his mouth was hanging open. He snapped it shut and formed it into a smile.

“I think you’ve just averted a major disaster,” he said, bowing himself down into his chair. “Thank you.”

She turned the napkin in her hand, dipped it in the water once more and continued cleaning Robbie’s shirt. “No problem.” Her mouth quirked up at one corner. “You looked like you had your hands full.”

Adam amazed himself with a warm chuckle. “You could say that, yes. Our nanny quit last night, and I’m sorry to say I haven’t quite gotten the hang of this single-father thing yet.” Had he really said single?

She shot him a look that was part disdain and part curiosity. “What happened to your wife?”

“She dead!” Ryan announced at the top of his lungs.

Mortified, Adam felt the weight of gazes turning his way as colored heat climbed his neck and face. He shot his son a quelling glare and quickly looked back to the pretty blonde. “My, um, wife was killed in an auto accident eighteen months ago,” he said softly. “The boys were only about a year and a half old, and you know how kids are. They don’t always grasp the significance of—”

“You poor darlings,” she said, standing to loop an arm around each of the twins’ necks. “You’re so sweet, I could just eat you up!” She bent to kiss first Ryan and then Robbie. They soaked it up as if it were sunshine, gazing up adoringly and laying their heads back against her arms. She rubbed noses with each of them in turn, making them giggle, before gazing across the table at a thoughtfully watching Wendy. “You probably remember everything, don’t you, sweetheart?” Wendy nodded, round-eyed, but Adam would have bet a small fortune that she had only the scarcest notion what the waitress meant. “I bet you miss her awfully, too,” the woman whispered, and Wendy’s lower lip trembled, more in empathy with the woman’s tone than from anything else. The blonde glided with a dancer’s grace around the table to loop her arms around Wendy’s shoulders. “What an angel! You must have loved her very much.” Wendy nodded solemnly as the young woman hugged her to her bosom—a firm and bountiful bosom, Adam noted.

The woman went down on her knees, her full attention focused on Wendy. “I remember something Sister Agnes used to say about a mother’s love. Do you want to know what it was?” Wendy nodded again, and the woman went on. “Sister Agnes said that a mother’s love never dies. It lives on and on in the hearts of her children, and if you close your eyes and stay very still, you can feel it beating there, strong and happy and comforting.”

Wendy said, “Who’s Sister Agnes?”

“The nurse at the place where I went to live after my mommy went to heaven. She was a nun—Sister Agnes, I mean. It was a Catholic place, you see.”

“How come you had to go to a Catholic place?” Wendy wanted to know.

“Because, you see, my daddy went to heaven even before my mommy did.”

Wendy looked at her father with wide, surprised eyes. “My daddy went to ’Rabia,” she said, “but he came home.”

The blonde smiled at Adam. “Well, you’re very lucky then, aren’t you?”

“He did the army,” Robbie said, tired of being left out.

A blond brow lifted at that. “Did he now?”

Adam cleared his throat. “I was in Saudi Arabia when my wife…had the accident. I hurried home to find my children with my aunt.”

“My grandma died, too,” Robbie announced.

The blonde gasped, a hand going to her chest. “Oh, my!” She looked to Adam for confirmation.

A shaft of pain speared through him. He resolutely pushed it aside. “Great-grandmother, actually,” he said tersely. “Plane crash.”

The waitress pulled in a deep breath, tears sparkling in her astonishing eyes. “Gosh, I’m sorry.”

Adam, you’re a scoundrel, he told himself, even as he bowed his head and swallowed noisily, wringing every possible ounce of compassion out of her.

“My heart just goes out to you all,” she said, adding briskly, “Stop that right now, young man. We don’t allow our food to be thrown.”

Adam looked up in time to see Robbie drop a handful of soggy pancake onto the table. He rolled his eyes, leaning forward. “That’s it, Robbie Fortune. You are going to get it just as soon as we get home!”

The waitress chuckled, getting to her feet. “You really don’t know anything about children, do you?”

Just then a bald, portly man appeared at her elbow. “Laura, you have customers waiting.”

“Oh. Sorry, Mr. Murphy, I was just trying to help this gentleman—”

“I told you when I hired you,” the man said sternly, interrupting her, “no flirting with the customers!”

“But I wasn’t—”

Adam cut in. “She wasn’t flirting! She was trying to clean up after my son when he—”

The man pointed a finger at Adam. “I’ll thank you to stay out of this. We have rules here, and as manager, it’s up to me to enforce them. You don’t see the other girls ignoring their own customers to bat their eyelashes at married men.”

“I’m not married!”

“He’s not married!” she cried at the same time.

The manager smirked. “Not flirting, huh? You’ve already determined his marital status, but you weren’t flirting. I’m disappointed in you, Laura, very disappointed.”

Laura’s mouth fell open. “He was just telling me how his wife—his late wife—was in an accident while he was in Saudi Arabia.”

The manager glared at her. “I don’t like argumentative employees. You have five seconds to get back to your station or you’re fired. Five. Four.”

Adam got to his feet. “This is absurd! She hasn’t done anything to warrant this kind of heavy-handed bullying.”

“Three. Two.”

“Don’t bother!” Laura ripped off her hairnet, freeing a sleek cascade of hip-length blond silk. Adam’s breath caught. She threw the net on the floor. “I quit!”

The manager sneered. “I knew you wouldn’t last the day!”

“You’re just mad because the owner made you hire me!”

“It obviously wasn’t for your waitressing skills,” he returned snidely.

Adam threw his napkin on the table. “Mister, you’re asking for a broken nose!”

Laura gasped and threw up a protective hand. “No, don’t! I don’t want the job, honestly, and I can’t stand fighting. Please.”

Adam looked at the mixed desperation and hope on her face and felt his heart lurch inside his chest. He swallowed down the anger and glanced around the table. “Get your coats on, kids,” he ordered brusquely, digging into his pocket. “We’re getting out of here. And we won’t be back,” he added for the manager’s benefit.

The odious man snorted. “Now that’s a real tragedy.”

Adam fixed him with a narrow glance. “Tell your boss that he’ll be hearing from Adam Fortune.”

At the mention of the Fortune name, the man went pale. Adam nodded with satisfaction and helped Robbie down from his chair, while the woman named Laura hurriedly did the same for Ryan. Adam stepped to her side, reached out and grasped her by the arm. “Where’s your coat?”

Her eyelids lifted with surprise. “I-in the back, but—”

“Get it,” he said flatly, leaving no room for argument. “You’re going with us.”

“B-but I can’t just—”

“Look, you were just trying to help out an inept father when this jerk came storming over and fired you.”

“He didn’t fire me, I quit,” she pointed out, lifting her chin.

Adam smiled. Oh, he liked this woman, a lot. “Fine, you quit, but you wouldn’t have had to quit if it hadn’t been for us. So, in my book, that means I owe you. Now get your coat.” He turned her toward the back of the little café, then counted money out onto the table. “That should do it.” He looked up at her. “Go on!”

“I—I’ll have to change out of the uniform,” she told him over her shoulder, hurriedly threading her way through tables full of gaping diners.

“We’ll warm up the car,” he said, grabbing Ryan by the hand as he reached for a milk glass. He snagged the collar of Robbie’s coat as he dropped toward his knees, intending to crawl under the table.

“Uh, n-no need for this,” the manager stuttered nervously, scooping up the money and shoving it into Adam’s coat pocket. “Breakfast is on the house…sir. S-sorry for the, um, misunderstanding.”

“Nice try,” Adam said through perfect white teeth, “but I still think I’ll speak to the owner.”

The man gulped and mopped his brow with a shaking hand. “M-Mr. Fortune, c-couldn’t we, ah, discuss this?”

“No.” Adam hauled Robbie to his feet and moved him bodily toward the door, dragging Ryan behind him.

Wendy stuck her tongue out at the man and ran before them to hold open the door. It hadn’t even closed behind them when she launched into speech. “I like her, Daddy! Don’t you? Wouldn’t she be a good nanny? Wouldn’t she?”

Adam grinned down at his astute young daughter. Maybe she understood more about everything than he realized. Her happy, expectant doll’s face sent a surge of love through him. “Yeah,” he said, “I think she might at that, but she has to agree, hon, so don’t get your hopes up just yet.”

“Oh, but she needs the job!” Wendy assured him sagely.

Adam cocked his head. “Maybe so, but she might not want it. We’ll see. Now get in the car. It’s cold out here.”

He opened the driver’s door, and Wendy scrambled inside. “Back seat,” he said, flashing her a grin, “just in case.”

Nodding, she crawled over and squeezed in between the twins’ car seats. Adam went through the laborious routine of getting the boys into their seats and buckling them in. Robbie hated being restrained in any way, but he stopped fighting when Adam told him that he had to check on her. Adam glanced at the front of the café, but he had learned a few things in the past eighteen months. Before he stepped away from the car, he fixed each one of the little heathens with a stern glare. “Don’t touch a thing!” Three little heads nodded eagerly. He closed the door and trotted over to the front of the café, flailing his arms against the brutal cold.

Just as he suspected, the manager had waylaid her to plead for clemency. Fat lot of good that would do him. Adam pushed the heavy glass door open and leaned inside. “Laura?”

She looked up in surprise at the mention of her name. “Coming.”

She threw on her coat and left the manager massaging his temples. Adam watched her graceful, long-legged glide with a dry mouth. She looked taller in those skinny blue jeans than she had in that dumpy uniform. And that hair! His fingers itched to get into it. His heart whammed in his chest as she slipped through the door and by him.

“It’s Laura Beaumont,” she said huskily, her smile suddenly shy.

“Laura Beaumont,” he repeated dumbly.

“And you are Adam, I think you said?”

He realized abruptly that he was staring and stuck out his hand. “Adam Fortune.”

The name didn’t seem to mean a thing to her. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Fortune.”

Her hand felt delicate and weightless and utterly feminine in his. “Call me Adam.”

“Yes, of course, if you’ll stick with Laura.”

“Oh, I will,” he mumbled absently, warmed by the bright golden droplets of laughter that filled the cold February air. “Indeed I will.”

It suddenly seemed no burden at all to be single with children.

Two

“I’ll make a deal with you,” he was saying. “I won’t call the owner of the diner if you’ll come to work for me. You see, we need a nanny.”

Laura pulled her gaze in and tamped down her excitement. He was entirely too good to look at, and if she had learned anything, it was to be leery of good-looking men. And yet… She shook her head. “I don’t have any experience or training in that area.”

He looked at her, momentarily taking his eyes off the road. “No? Well, maybe that’s a good thing. You sure seem to have a way with them, and maybe that’s more important.”

She sucked in her bottom lip, wavering. Something good could happen once in a while, couldn’t it? Her luck didn’t have to be all bad. What did she have to lose, anyway? She tried to think. “I, um, don’t have a car.”

“Oh? Well, that doesn’t matter, really. It’s, um, a live-in position. Room, meals, salary.” He shot her a grin. “And I think we can do better by you than that pancake house back there.”

Laura caught her breath. Room, meals, and a salary? He went on talking.

“Breakfast is the sticking point. Trained nannies don’t like to cook. However, our cook doesn’t like to live in. She’s married, you see, and by the time she can feed her husband and get him off to work, straighten her house and get out to ours, it’s time to fix lunch. And since I’m about as useful in a kitchen as a coat hanger, the nanny has to fix breakfast. Think you can handle that?”

Laura had to smile. As if making breakfast were a problem. She’d once thought that she’d gladly do without just to escape kitchen duty at the group home where she spent the majority of her childhood. Once again, however, the home had proved its value, home being the operative word. It would be nice to have a home again. She frowned. If she did this thing, she mustn’t let herself fall into the trap of considering Adam Fortune’s home to be her home. Still…Room, meals, and a salary—it was just too good to pass up. She took a deep breath. “You have to understand, it would only be temporary.”

His brow wrinkled at that. “How temporary?”

“Well…” She thought quickly, looking for a fair way to protect herself. It was February. March, April, May, June… School would be out, summer would come, traveling would be easy… School. Yes, that could work. She winced inwardly at how easily the lie came to her. “The thing is, I promised, um, Sister Agnes that I would finish my college degree. I had help the first year, sort of a scholarship, but the rest is up to me, so I’ve been working and saving my money, and now I almost have enough to go back to school.”

He nodded. “Okay. Can’t argue with that. So what you’re saying is that you’d be leaving us in the fall.”

“Well, maybe sooner. It—it all depends.”

He sent her a quizzical look, and for a moment she thought he’d demand a firm date of departure, but he only inclined his head, shifted in his seat and said, “About your salary, shall we say…”

He named a dollar amount that made her mouth drop open. When she recovered, she very nearly told him that it was too much, but then she thought about how far she could go on such an amount, how well she could hide. She could save almost every penny of it, since she wouldn’t have to pay rent or buy groceries. She closed her eyes and silently gave thanks. Perhaps God had not abandoned her after all. Perhaps she had finally atoned for the past, and the long nightmare was over. Her eyes popped open. No, that was dangerous thinking. She dared not let down her guard, especially now. She was responsible for the care and safety of three precious children now, and she would protect them, as God was her witness, with her very life.

Adam supposed that he should be pleased with himself. He hadn’t had to cancel his appointment or call on his sister or his aunt. Granted, all he had accomplished with his meeting was to cross another prospect off his list. Auto lube was definitely not his thing. The problem was that he was no closer to finding his thing than before. He would have to draft a letter for his secretary to type informing the franchise people that he wasn’t interested in lubing cars. He shook his head. He had an office. He had a secretary. He just didn’t have anything to do. Well, at least he’d solved the problem of the nanny—hopefully. He was feeling a little less sure of that decision now.

It had seemed so right at the time, but what did he know about Laura Beaumont, really, besides the fact that she was beautiful? He supposed that was part of it. What had a woman like her been doing living week to week in a seedy motel on a poorly traveled road and slinging hash in a pancake house? She might be just what she seemed, a rootless young woman without family or friends, trying to make her way in the world alone, saving up tuition for college, but it seemed preposterous that she wasn’t attached to someone by now. She wasn’t the sort men passed by without a second look. It just didn’t add up. She didn’t add up.

He opened his front door with more than a little trepidation, uncertain what he was going to find. The place was silent, almost ominously so, given that his children were in residence. Had she gagged and bound them? Locked them in closets? Tied them to their beds? He hung up his coat, the hair standing on the back of his neck as he silently surveyed the area. He stepped across the hall and into the living room.

“Wendy? Rob? Ryan? I’m home.”

Nothing. He stepped back into the hall and moved swiftly toward the bedrooms. He turned the knob on Wendy’s door and thrust it open, stepping aside, as he’d been taught to do in the army. The room was empty—and neat. The bed was made, the clothing was put away, the toys were stashed out of sight. What was going on here?

He crossed the hall to the boys’ room. The place was neat as a pin, and Robbie was lying on his bed, looking at a book. A book! Adam walked over and slipped his hands in his slacks pockets, noting that an egg timer from the kitchen was ticking away on the dresser.

“What’re you doing, Rob?”

The boy dropped the book. “I’m it,” he announced.

It. “Uh-huh. How come?”

He looked not in the least repentant as he confessed, “’Cause I spitted on Ryan.”

Nothing surprising in that. Adam sat down on the edge of the bed. “You shouldn’t spit, Robbie. It’s not nice.”

“I know. Laura told me.”

Adam glanced at the timer on the dresser. “Is this your punishment for spitting on Ryan?”

Robbie nodded. “I got to lay on the bed and read this book till it dings, then I’m it.”

It again. Adam nodded as if he actually understood what the boy was saying and stood, unbuttoning his collar and stripping off his tie. Obviously he was talking to the wrong person, if he wanted to know just what was going on here. “Where’s Miss Laura?” he asked nonchalantly.

Robbie shrugged. “I dunno.”

“You don’t know?”

He shook his head, all innocent eyes. Adam frowned. “Where are the other kids?”

“She hided them.”

“Hided? Hid them?” Oh, God!

Robbie nodded, smiling when the timer dinged. He tossed the book aside, threw his chubby legs over the edge of the bed and scooted over to drop down onto the floor. “I’m it!” he called, running out of the room. “Look out! I coming!”

It. They were playing hide-and-seek. Glory be. He hung his head, silently laughing at himself. In the distance he heard a sudden burst of laughter, followed by squeals and cries of dispute. He walked down the hall, back the way he’d come, past the bath and Wendy’s room on the right, the storage closets and the foyer on the left, then on past the living room and, finally, the formal dining room. The hall turned right, coming to an end at the expansive den. It was his favorite room, big and warm, with brick walls and a rock fireplace, comfortable, slightly worn furniture, a TV, bookcases, framed photos on the walls. This room had been a gift from Kate. Diana had assured him that his grandmother had been insistent on decorating it herself when they first built the house. Dear Kate. How he missed her! More, even, than his very proper, very patient, very aloof wife. The house had been nearly a year old, this room included, before he first saw it, but he’d never walked into this room without feeling his grandmother’s hand. Had he ever adequately thanked her for it? He couldn’t remember.

He caught movement from the corner of his eye and turned his head in time to see Laura crawl out from behind the big green suede couch, all three kids hanging on to her. They were giggling and wiggling and having a ball. Laura flipped her hair out of the way, then, with a dramatic groan, collapsed on her belly.

“I give! You win!”

Wendy, whose fine hair had pulled free of her pigtails to fall into her face, laid her head next to Laura’s and sprawled on the floor close at her side. The twins began clapping their hands and chanting as they piled all over Laura Beaumont. “We win! We win! We win!”

Suddenly Laura surged up into a sitting position, tossing her hair back and steadying wiggling boys with her hands. “All right, all right! Do your worst!”

To Adam’s intense amazement, his children began attacking Laura Beaumont with smacking kisses all over her lovely face, shoulders and arms, giggling as she made disdainful sounds. “Uck! Pooh! Yuck! Ick! Phooey! Oh, it’s awful! Torture! Torture!” Ryan wrapped his arms around Laura’s neck and gave her a larynx-crushing hug. She gagged appropriately, and the other two promptly followed suit. She collapsed back against the side of the couch, overcome by the sheer weight of their affection. Adam could not remember ever receiving more than a quick, dry peck from any of his children. He didn’t know who he envied more, Laura or the kids.

He knew the instant Laura realized he was in the room. Her smile faded, and she stiffened, communicating silently that the fun was over. The giggles died away. Little arms loosened. Small feet found purchase on the thick, sand-colored rug. Four pairs of eyes looked upon him with all the welcome of condemned prisoners awaiting the hangman.

“Hi,” Laura said, getting to her feet amid small bodies. She smoothed a hand over her hair, sweater and jeans. “We were playing.”

Adam allowed himself a tiny smile. “I noticed that.”

She seemed uncertain. Afraid, perhaps? He looked closely then, and saw it in all their faces—the fear of his disapproval. He made himself relax, picked up the newspaper from a table and dropped down onto his favorite chair. “How was your day?”

“Fine.” Laura sat on the couch. Wendy climbed up to sit next to her, her head leaning against Laura’s arm, while each of the twins picked a leg and wrapped himself around it. “Wendy’s kindergarten teacher called to ask why she wasn’t in school this afternoon. I didn’t know what to tell her.”

School. How could he have forgotten that? Adam forced a smile. “I’ll, um, call and explain tomorrow.”

Laura nodded and folded her hands.

He opened the newspaper and tried to read, but he couldn’t seem to find a single word on the whole page. His mind was reeling. Already they loved her. He didn’t know anything about this woman, but already his children loved her. And school. What was he going to do about that? Could she even drive? He put down the newspaper. “Do you drive?”

She seemed momentarily stunned. “Yes.”

He nodded. “It’s just that I prefer that Wendy be driven in to school rather than ride the bus. It’s so dangerous to wait out in this cold.”

Laura nodded, her brow creased. “That’s fine, except…”

He waved away the obvious concern, remembering that she had no car. “Oh, that’s no problem. You can take the station wagon. I prefer the truck, anyway.”

She almost visibly relaxed. “Well, that’s settled, then.”

He smiled and opened the newspaper again, but his mind just wasn’t on local news. “When’s dinner?”

“Any time now, I imagine. Beverly—uh, that is, Cook—said about six.”

Beverly, was it? Even the cook was on a first-name basis with the new nanny. He couldn’t remember that ever happening before. “Fine,” he said from behind his paper, uncertain why this was so difficult. He needed to draw her out, get to know her. He was getting nowhere fast this way, and yet he couldn’t seem to put that paper down. What would he say? What could he ask her without making her feel that he was interrogating her? To his relief, she took the matter out of his hands momentarily.

“Well,” she said, getting to her feet, “time to wash up. We can’t go to the dinner table with dirty hands and faces, now can we?”

Adam hummed noncommittally behind his paper as they exited the room. He heard one of the boys whine something about not getting soap in his eyes, and heard Laura’s low assurance that it wouldn’t happen. Adam shook his head and put the paper aside. What was wrong with him? The woman was wonderful, just as he’d instinctively known she would be. He had nothing to fear, nothing at all, and yet…

“Dinner in ten minutes, Mr. Adam.”

He looked up at the quiet, efficient middle-aged woman who had been cooking his meals for the past eighteen months. “Thank you…Beverly.”

Her eyebrows flew up, and she paused in the act of drying her hands on her apron, and then she smiled, tentatively at first, and then with a blinding show of white dentures. “I’ll be leaving a little early this evening, sir, if that’s all right. My husband, he wants to see a movie, and Laura, she said she’d put the plates and flatware in the dishwasher for me. I’ll wash up everything else before I go…if I may.”

Adam nodded. “Certainly. Ah, tell me, what do you think of our Miss Laura?”

Beverly the Cook beamed. “Oh, she’s a treasure, that one! Took things right in hand, and do you know, I think she actually likes children? Why is it, do you suppose, that so many nannies don’t like children? You’d think they’d do something else, wouldn’t you?”

A very astute observation. Adam smiled. “Enjoy your movie.”

“Thank you. I will, and, um, Mr. Adam, sir, if I may say so, I think she’s just what those young ones need.”

Her eyes said something more, but he wasn’t very good at reading unspoken messages, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what she was thinking, anyway. Man, planning war-game strategies and mass mobilizations had been a walk in the park, compared to this life he led now. But maybe it was going to change for the better now, temporarily, anyway. He frowned. Temporary just wasn’t good enough. He couldn’t be hiring a new nanny every two or three months. The children’s lives were continually overset by such changes, and one day—soon, please!—he was going to have a new career to dedicate himself to, not that his search for a compatible business had yielded much so far. He was feeling a new sense of pressure about that, too. His military retirement wouldn’t put children through college or allow the kind of upkeep on a home that winters in Minnesota required, especially as that home grew older. And he couldn’t just sit, day in and day out, perusing the newspaper. He put that aside for good just as Laura returned to the room.

“It’s ready,” she told him, crossing to the sofa.

He nodded and got up out of his chair at the very moment Laura sat down. “Aren’t you coming?”

She sent him a sheepish look. “I wasn’t sure what was…proper in my situation.”

“Well, it’s proper to eat,” he said blandly.

She stood, smoothing her hands over her bottom and the backs of her thighs, as if straightening a skirt. “I just wasn’t certain if I ought to be eating at the table with you and the children.”

In truth, several of the nannies had preferred to take their meals alone. Often, mealtime had been the only time they could get away from the children. He made a sudden decision not to tell Laura that, though. Maybe if they treated her like family she would stay longer. On the other hand, maybe he needed to find out more about her before he pushed her to stay. That, too, could be accomplished at the dinner table. He lifted an arm in invitation. “We’re pretty informal around here. Come on.”

She nodded and bit at her lower lip, and her head was bowed almost shyly as she stepped up next to him. His arm just seemed to sort of naturally curve around her, of its own volition. He didn’t remove it until they reached the dining room.

The kids were giggling when they came in—not a good sign. Sure enough, Robbie had reached into a bowl of mashed potatoes with his hand and was squishing the pulp between his fingers. Adam opened his mouth to snap an angry order, but something in Laura’s demeanor gave him second thoughts. He glanced sideways at her. She had drawn herself up tall and folded her long, slender arms. Her face was impassive, not censuring, not smiling, her gaze as steady as time. Robbie slowly pulled his hand back. Laura moved to the chair opposite him, pulled it out and sank down upon it gracefully, her gaze now studiously averted. Adam sensed a method behind her behavior and calmly copied her. Once carefully ensconced in the chair at the head of the table, he looked around, mentally noted the uncomfortable expression on Robbie’s face as he eyed his potato-encrusted hand and smiled at Laura.

“Would you serve the children, please?”

She sent him a look of approval, nodded and reached for the bowl of potatoes. “Wendy, would you care for potatoes?”

“Yes, please,” Wendy replied in a small voice, and Laura duly dispensed them.

“Ryan?”

Ryan crossed his eyes and waggled his tongue. “Yes, pwease!”

Laura smiled ever so slightly at his antics and spooned creamy potatoes onto his plate. She then turned to Robbie.

“Robbie, would you care for potatoes?”

Robbie nodded and bowed his head, frowning. Adam hid a grin, knowing that his scapegrace son was wondering how such a brilliant prank had turned into a embarrassment. Laura doled out the serving and set down the bowl. Utter silence followed, and then Adam heard the sound of sniffles. He looked at Robbie, whose head was practically in his plate now, then at Laura. Her expression of compassion for Robbie put a sudden lump in his throat. He had to look away.

“Adam,” Laura said quietly, “would you clean Robbie’s hand for him so he can eat?”

Brilliant. She was brilliant. Adam slipped out of his chair and knelt at Robbie’s side, using his napkin to clean Robbie’s little fist. “You know, Rob,” he said gently, “there are reasons for rules. Dining wouldn’t be a very pleasant exercise if everyone helped themselves with their hands, would it?”

Robbie shook his head. Adam followed instinct and patted the boy’s shoulder before moving back to his chair. Laura beamed as she reached for the dish of baked pork chops.

“Robbie, would you care for a pork chop, dear?”

Robbie wiped his nose on his wrist and nodded. Tacitly agreeing to overlook that little faux pas, Laura shared a tiny smile with Adam as she forked a chop onto Robbie’s plate.

Before long, the table was alive with the muted sounds of a pleasant family dinner, the most pleasant in memory, in fact. The giggles that erupted on occasion were not of the mischievous sort, but rather a happy sound. Adam marveled. It was only with effort that he remembered he had reason to question Laura, and only with effort that he found the means to do it.

“So tell me, Laura,” he began with costly aloofness, “what were you studying?”

“Studying?” she echoed blankly, and Adam thought, A-ha. His thoughts must have shown in his face, for she blanched, then recovered swiftly. “Oh, you mean what was I studying in college.”

“Yes. In college.”

She smiled grimly, concentrating her attention on what remained of her food. “Early childhood development.”

“Ah.” Perfect answer, but he’d already determined that she was brilliant.

“Although,” she went on hesitantly, “I hadn’t declared a major yet.”

“Um. When do you expect to return to school?”

She shrugged uncomfortably.

“In the fall?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Then again, I might want to start with summer school, sort of ease back into it, you know.”

Summer. He worked his frown into a smile. “Where were you thinking of going?”

She gulped. “I—I haven’t decided yet.”

He made an understanding sound, utterly convinced that she was lying to him. “Well, no rush,” he said.

She smiled. “Right. No rush.”

He steeled himself for the killing thrust. “Where did you go before?” She yanked her gaze up to meet his, and in the instant before she covered it, he saw what she hadn’t wanted him to see: fear.

“No place you’ve ever heard of,” she murmured.

“Out of state?” he asked pointedly.

She folded her napkin and laid it beside her plate. The gaze she leveled at him was implacable, unapologetic. “Yes,” she said flatly, pushing back her chair to stand. She swept the table with a look. “Excuse me.” Then she turned and left the room without another word.

Adam took a deep breath. She had lied to him, and she was afraid that he knew it, which he did. The question now was why, and what he was going to do about it.

“Bedtime, my lovelies.”

Adam looked at the crew on the couch and chuckled to himself. Bedtime, indeed. Not one of them could keep his or her eyes open. Laura’s change in the evening schedule had been a wise one. Instead of putting off baths until right before bedtime, she had played with the kids for a while after dinner, then bathed them early and cuddled them on the couch, reading. They had slipped, one by one, into a relaxed stupor. Bed undoubtedly seemed delicious right about now. Laura was urging first one and then another twin to his feet when the doorbell rang. Adam got up immediately to answer it, suspecting who would be stubborn enough to call at this time on a cold February night.

Sure enough, he opened the door to find his father flapping his arms on the stoop.

“Adam.”

“Father.”

It was the standard greeting.

Jake moved inside without waiting for an invitation and closed the door behind. “Frigid out there.”

“Some might even be inclined to stay inside,” Adam commented lightly.

“All right, all right, don’t give me any of your attitude. I have a couple of important reasons to be here.”

Adam knew very well what at least one of those reasons would be. He put his hands in the pockets of his pants. “What’s up?”

Jake grimaced. “It’s your sister.”

“Caroline?”

“No. Caroline’s fine.”

Adam was glad to hear it. “Married life seems to agree with her.”

Jake nodded and suddenly grinned. “Who’d have thought it? The career woman has definitely softened. I’ve never seen her so happy.”

At least you’ve finally noticed, Adam thought uncharitably. He said, “Well, that leaves three. Natalie’s the levelheaded one, so it must be one of the twins.”

Jake’s grin abruptly turned to a grimace. “Can we sit down?”

Adam could tell that Jake was genuinely concerned about something, so he led him across the hall to the living room. Laura was herding the kids down the hall toward them, and they brightened predictably at the sight of their grandfather. Instantly they were pelting after them and swarming over Jake the moment he dropped onto the sofa.

Adam squelched a flash of irritation as Jake patted and hugged his children. He was actually relieved when Laura appeared.

“Sorry,” she said.

“No, that’s all right. Laura, I’d like you to meet my father, Jacob Fortune.” Again Adam noted that the Fortune name meant nothing to Laura. Ever the gentleman, Jake stood. She stuck her hand out.

“Hello.”

“Dad, this is Laura Beaumont, our new nanny.”

Jake’s eyebrows went up at that, but he smiled almost flirtatiously at Laura as his big hand swallowed her delicate one.

“My pleasure.”

She smiled apologetically at Jake. “We were on our way to bed.”

“Oh, well…” Jake kissed each child in turn and sent them back to Laura.

“Thank you.”

She smiled at Adam as they exited the room. Jake watched with undisguised curiosity.

“She’s worlds more attractive than that Godiva creature,” he said, reclaiming his seat.

Adam had to laugh. “Yes, well, she’s that much and more a better nanny, too.”

“Truly?”

Adam nodded and wandered over and dropped onto a stiff chair. “She’s accomplished more with those kids in one day than Godiva and all the rest of them put together.”

Jake frowned. “You’ve never understood children.”

Adam gaped. “I’ve never understood—? You’re one to talk!”

“That isn’t fair, Adam. At least I tried—”

“I believe,” Adam said, interrupting firmly, “that you were going to tell me which of my sisters has done the unforgivable.”

Jake’s face turned red, but, to his credit, he gritted his teeth until his anger abated. “Rachel,” he said flatly.

Adam rolled his eyes. He should have known. “Look, Rocky has a right to live her life her own way. I knew you might not approve of Luke Greywolf, but he seems like a decent fellow to me. He’s a doctor, for pity’s sake!”

“She’s pregnant,” Jake told him. “Did you know she’s pregnant?”

Adam kept his face carefully impassive. “Good thing you’re a better grandfather than you were a—” He stopped, feeling the color drain from his face. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“Didn’t you?” Jake curled his hands into fists.

Adam sighed. “I know you’re worried about her,” he said placatingly, “but honestly, I don’t think you have to.”

“You know how careless she is,” Jake pointed out.

“Not careless,” Adam replied. “Adventurous, maybe, independent, definitely, but not careless.”

Jake made a face. “When I spoke with your mother she said that Rocky really loves him.”

“I’m sure she does,” Adam said, “or she wouldn’t have agreed to marry him, baby or no baby.”

“But what about him?” Jake’s voice rumbled dangerously. “That’s what I want to know.”

“Well,” Adam said, sliding his hands into his pockets once more, “I’d say you have to trust Rocky for that.” But Jake Fortune had a hard time trusting any of his children. Adam lifted a hand to the back of his neck. “Look, as independent and stubborn as Rocky is, do you honestly believe she’d settle for anyone who wasn’t absolutely wild for her?”

Jake looked up at him with something very near gratitude. “You’re right. Yes, you’re exactly right.” He sat back and smiled. “I hadn’t looked at it that way.”

Adam smiled to himself, feeling inordinately proud. Maybe there was hope for them, after all.

“Your mother wants to give them a party, sort of a family reception.”

Adam shook his head, grinning again. “Are we welcoming him or disemboweling him?”

Jake scowled. “Your mother means to welcome him, but frankly, I’m not sure it wouldn’t be the other way around, given the current climate.”

Adam folded his hands. “You’re talking about the Monica Malone thing now.”

Jake’s face instantly closed up. “The less said on that subject, the better.”

Adam shrugged. “Fine with me.”

“I only wish my brother and his crew agreed with you.”

“That’ll be the day.”

“I suppose so.”

Adam fingered the crease in his pants silently, sure they weren’t through. He didn’t have to wait long.

Jake drew himself up and put on a stern face. “Now,” he said, “when are you are going to give up this ridiculous search and come to work for the company?”

“Oops!” Adam shot up to his feet. “Time to go. Sorry you can’t stay longer, but for once I’d like to part without daggers drawn.”

“Damn it, Adam, I’m being serious!”

Adam swept a hand over his head. “Will you drop it? I don’t want to have this conversation again.”

Jake came to his feet. “Why can’t you see that you belong with the family company?”

“No.”

“Adam, please, I need you now. The cosmetics company is in dire need of leadership. You’re a natural. You could—”

“No! Damnation! Why do you always do this to me? I won’t step into the great maw of the Fortune companies!”

“Then just what are you going to do?” Jake demanded. “Sell cars? Install central heating?”

“No! I don’t know! But I’ll find something, something right for me.”

“But this job is right for you!”

“No!”

“Won’t you even hear me out?”

“No.”

Jake balled his hands into fists, obviously struggling with his temper. “I don’t understand you.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“You’ve never understood what being part of this family means.”

“It’s not the family,” Adam told him firmly. “It’s the family business that I want no part of.”

Jake looked to be gathering himself for a real explosion when Laura meekly interrupted.

“Can I get you gentlemen anything before I call it a night?”

Jake swallowed whatever he had been about to say and shook his head.

“My father was just leaving,” Adam said, pointedly but quietly. “Thank you anyway.”

“No problem. It was good to meet you, Mr. Fortune. Be careful out in that cold, won’t you?”

Jake nodded and buttoned up his coat. “Good evening, Miss Beaumont.” He started forward, then stopped and passed a look from Adam to Laura. “It is ‘Miss,’ isn’t it?”

Laura blinked, then blushed. “Yes.”

“I thought so,” he murmured. “A pleasure to meet you.” He sent a hard look at his son. “Adam.”

“Father.”

He stormed out of the room, muttering that he could see himself out.

Adam sighed. Would it never change? His gaze went almost involuntarily to Laura. Or had change already begun? She had certainly derailed a shouting match with her timely, gracious interruption. Had she meant to do just that? he wondered as she said good-night and slipped away. Yes, he believed she had. Now if only he could decide how he felt about that and just how important the truth about her was.

Three

Adam used a piece of toast to wipe up the last of the egg on his plate, popped it into his mouth, chewed, swallowed, and followed it with a mouthful of coffee, his pleasure evident. He touched his mouth with his napkin, then laid it on the table in the large, welcoming kitchen, where he sat with Laura.

“Tell me again why these are low-cholesterol eggs?”

Laura balanced her chin on an upturned palm, smiling. “It’s really very simple. Say you want to scramble a dozen eggs. You just whisk up nine egg whites and three whole eggs, add a drop or two of food coloring, heat a nonstick pan, put the eggs in and stir them around. It makes enough for us and the kids.”

“You put something else in these,” he accused teasingly.

She inclined her head. “You can add almost anything to them. I used some of the leftover mashed potatoes from last night—any are okay, as long as they’re already cooked—and some fat-free cheese I found in the refrigerator. It’s a real high-protein, low-fat, low-cholesterol breakfast, especially with toast and a little apple butter—which isn’t butter at all, actually.”

“So that’s how you keep that marvelous figure,” he said, eyes crinkling at the edges with his grin.

Laura felt heat sweep upward from her chest. For Pete’s sake! What was wrong with her? She’d been told that she had a nice figure before—but not by him. Dismayed at her own reaction to a simple compliment, she quickly averted her gaze. “Th-thank you. Uh, now, if you would stop by the grocer’s today and pick up some turkey bacon, we could have that, too.”

He wiped his mouth with his napkin and tossed it on the table, then got to his feet, shaking his head and reaching into his back pocket. “Not today. Sorry. But the roads are clear, so you might as well go and take the kids.” He opened his wallet and extracted a bill, which he thrust at her. “Get whatever you need.”

“Oh, no, it’s not…” Mechanically she glanced at that bill, and then she stared. “A hundred dollars! For turkey bacon?”

“For whatever you need,” he said, laying the bill beside her plate.

She looked up at him with her mouth hanging open. “You can’t go around handing out hundred-dollar bills like that!”

His mouth twitched and his eyebrows rose. “Oh? And why not?”

“It’s too much money!”

He shrugged. “So you have some left over for the next time you need something.”

She shook her head. “I don’t need anything, and if I did, I wouldn’t let you pay for it.”

“No? Okay, then use it for things the family needs, like turkey bacon.”

Laura gulped. “I don’t know if I should.”

He put his foot up on the seat of his chair and leaned over it, his arm crossed over his knee. “What’s the matter, Laura?” he asked lightly. “Can’t I trust you with cash? Is money some kind of great temptation for you?”

She knew then that it was a kind of test. He was willing to pay a hundred dollars to find out whether she was honest or not. In other words, he didn’t trust her, and that hurt more than it should have.

“I’ll give you an accounting,” she said softly, picking up the bill and folding it until it fit snugly in her palm.

He neither moved nor spoke for a long moment, and Laura kept her gaze stubbornly averted, not wanting him to see the sheen of disappointment in her eyes. Well, what had she expected? This whole thing had been an impulsive move on his part, and he would understandably regret that, given time to think about it. She shouldn’t be so bothered by it. She hadn’t been trusted by very many people in her life—and she knew better than to trust anyone else, especially with the truth. If he knew about her…

He took his foot down from the chair and straightened. “Look, you have to go into town anyway. Wendy’s school starts at nine, and I need to be in the office before then. Do you know where it is? The school, I mean.”

“Yeah, I think so. Anyway, I can find it. St. Cloud’s a pretty small town, after all.”

“Right. You can use the station wagon. We keep the boys’ car seats in it. I prefer to drive the truck, anyway. It’s four-wheel-drive.”

“Fine.” Laura nodded without looking up.

“You can drive, can’t you?” he asked, his voice teasingly light, and yet she knew he had reason for concern.

“Certainly. I had driver’s training in high school, and I’ve never had an accident or ticket of any kind.”

“How old are you, Laura?” he asked gently, surprising her into looking up and blurting the truth.

“Twenty-two.”

He smiled apologetically. “I knew you were young.”

She bit her lip, but she couldn’t keep from asking, “How old are you?”

He laughed, his eyes sparkling fondly. “Thirty-one.”

“That’s not exactly ancient.”

“No, it isn’t. To hear my father tell it, I’m practically a teenager still.”

She heard the faint tone of bitterness. There was definitely trouble there, and she hated fighting or discord of any kind, especially between family members. She remembered what she’d overheard the night before, and it occurred to her that she might owe Adam an apology. “Um, about last night… I wasn’t eavesdropping on your argument with your father. I was just coming down the hall, and I couldn’t help hearing.”

“Yeah, well, as to that,” he said lightly, withdrawing eye contact, “we always wind up shouting, and your timing was excellent. Thanks. You didn’t have to step in.”

“I didn’t mean to, actually,” she admitted. “I’m afraid I did it without thinking. I hate conflict, just hate it.”

“Well, conflict’s about all there is between me and Jake,” he said.

That was so sad to hear that the awfulness of it nearly choked her. She closed her eyes and whispered, “I never knew my father.”

“Oh, say, I’m sorry.” He sat down again. “It’s not that we don’t care about each other, Jake and I,” he said after a pause. “It’s just… I don’t know, maybe we’re too much alike. The big thing is, though, he got pushed into the family business, when what he really wanted to do was be a doctor. He was firstborn, and it was like this huge family-responsibility thing, you know? I don’t think he even tried to fight it, and I’ve seen what it’s done to him. Well, I made up my mind a long time ago that it wasn’t going to happen to me, even if I am firstborn of the firstborn, and he just can’t accept that.”

“I see. It’s just a shame that you can’t avoid the issue or something.”

Adam chuckled. “Avoid the issue with Jake Fortune? That’ll be the day.”

Laura bit her lip. “It’s none of my business, anyway. I have this thing about family, that’s all. You know how it is, when you don’t have something that everyone else does, it seems like the most important thing in the world to have.”

Adam nodded. “My grandmother was like that. She was raised in an orphanage back before the Second World War.”

“They don’t call them orphanages anymore,” Laura said slowly. “They call them group homes or halfway houses, but they’re still the last stop for a kid with no one and no place to go to.”

Adam seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “Isn’t there any family?”

She shook her head. “Nope. Both of my parents were only children. My grandparents were already gone when I was born. My dad died in some kind of farming accident when I was just a baby, and my mother…” She was surprised how difficult it was to broach the subject. “Well, we never knew if she took too many pills by accident or on purpose. Anyway, I was five then.”

“Wendy’s age,” Adam mused solemnly.

“Just about.”

“And you went to one of those group homes?” he asked.

“Not at first.” She sighed. “I was shuttled around from one foster home to another for so long I’ve forgotten how many there were. I lived in a group home during my early teens, then I applied at this Catholic boarding school for state wards, and I was accepted, because my grades were pretty good, and that’s where I actually met Sister Agnes.”

“She was special to you,” Adam surmised.

“Yes, she was.”

“So do you still keep in touch?” he asked.

Pain clouded her eyes. “Sister Agnes died when I was a senior. She was very old, and—” She broke off, then said, too briskly, “Well, I’d better check on the kids.”

“Oh. Yeah, and I better get going.” He got up again, saying, “I’ve got research to do.”

She wanted to ask what kind of research, but she didn’t. They’d talked long enough, and she’d already told him more than she intended to. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d mentioned her mother’s death to anyone. She didn’t like to think about it, because the truth was that, despite all the counseling and the self-help books and Sister Agnes’s thoughtful instruction, she still couldn’t shake the feeling that she had mattered so little that her own mother had checked out without a second thought. She got up and followed Adam into the den to find the kids lolling in front of the morning cartoons in their pajamas.

“I’m going, kids,” Adam announced, reaching for the briefcase he’d left on the coffee table earlier. “Be good for Laura. See you later.” They didn’t so much as glance in his direction, but he seemed to find nothing amiss as he turned away. “There’s a card with my office number pinned next to the telephone in the kitchen,” he told Laura, “and my mobile phone number’s written on the back of it in case of emergencies.”

“We’ll be fine,” Laura assured him.

He nodded briskly. “Be careful on the roads.”

“I promise.”

“See you for dinner.” He walked away with a wave of his hand.

Laura watched him move into the hallway, then studied the kids sprawled on the floor in front of the television. Shouldn’t there be goodbye kisses and words of affection between a parent and children taking their leave of one another? If she was lucky enough to have children of her own someday, she’d never leave them without hugs and kisses and reassuring words, not even for a single day. It bothered her that this family seemed to take one another so much for granted. Something wasn’t right about it. She walked over to the sofa and sat down, close to where Wendy lay against it. “Dad’s gone,” she said lightly.

Wendy shrugged. “He’s always gone.” Something in the way she said it made a chill of unease sweep over Laura. Well, it wasn’t any of her business. And yet… She shook her head, got up again and walked into the kitchen, calling over her shoulder, “I’m going to clean up after breakfast, kids, then we have to get dressed and take Wendy to school. That means the TV has to be shut off.”

There were whines and grumbles about that, but they ceased as soon as she left the room. Laura smiled to herself. The Fortune children weren’t ones to waste their energy complaining when no one was around to pay attention. The thought that followed, however, was one to give even the most formidable nanny pause. No, the Fortune kids wouldn’t waste energy complaining; they’d much rather be dreaming up mischief.

Laura sighed. Ten minutes late already, and she didn’t even have them in the car yet! As if reading her thoughts, Ryan wiggled out of her grasp at the last instant, bounced off the edge of the bench seat, shoved her aside, kicking her shin in the process, and ran shouting gleefully down the drive. Two pairs of nylon stockings, the thick black leggings that she wore over them, a pair of wool socks and the tops of her tall insulated boots cushioned the blow, but Laura groaned and laid her forehead against the edge of the car door anyway. Robbie giggled inside the car, alerting Laura to his own escape from his car seat, but it was Wendy at whom she leveled her gaze after he shoved by her and ran to join his brother. Sitting backward in the front seat, her hand clapped over her own grinning mouth, she was the picture of innocence, but Laura knew better.

“I’ll have to write you a note for being late, Wendy,” she said apologetically. “Do you want to know what it’s going to say? It’s going to say that you and your brothers misbehaved so badly that I couldn’t do my job. I guess I’m not a very good nanny, after all.”

Wendy blinked, putting all that together. “Well, when I’m very late, Godiva just always says I might as well not even go, and she lets me stay home…to help with the boys.”

Laura seemed to consider that. “Hmm…well, I did promise your father that I’d do some shopping this morning. If—if I could just get the boys into the car…” It was pretty sneaky, but she figured a dose of her own medicine was just what Miss Wendy needed at this point.

Convinced that she’d won, Wendy opened her car door and awkwardly climbed down to the garage floor. She walked to the edge of the drive, put her chubby fists to her hips, stomped a foot and bawled, “Cut it out, you guys, and get back in the car!”

The little miscreants actually stopped in their tracks and looked at their sister, their faces a study in puzzled surprise. Wendy smiled the smile of the supremely victorious. “Get in the car,” she said again. “Laura’s taking us shopping.”

The boys looked at each other, then at Wendy, before breaking out in whoops that froze on the cold morning air. Making sounds like screeching tires, they tore up the drive and practically knocked Laura down getting inside. With a wealth of other sound effects, they both climbed into their seats and waited to be buckled in. Laura obliged, her lips pursed against a secretive smile.

Fifteen minutes later, they pulled up in front of Wendy’s school. Wendy turned a mutinous face on Laura, but Laura shook her head. “I never said you didn’t have to go to school,” she pointed out.

Wendy’s bottom lip poked out. “You t-tricked me,” she accused.

“Yes, I did,” Laura admitted smoothly. “It feels bad when somebody you trust, somebody you care about, tricks you, doesn’t it?”

Wendy merely narrowed her eyes.

“I know you put the boys up to misbehaving this morning,” Laura told her softly, “so you’d be late for school, so late you wouldn’t even have to go, but that won’t work with me, Wendy. All it does is make my heart hurt because it’s so disappointed that you would try to trick me and make my job so difficult.”

Wendy abruptly burst into sobs. “I just wanted to stay home with you and the boys!”

Laura nodded in understanding. “Yes, I know, but it’s not good for you to miss school, Wendy. My job is to take care of you and your brothers. How can I look your father in the eye and tell him that he can trust me to take care of you if I don’t see to it that you do what is best for you? How can I even call myself your friend if I let you do things that are going to hurt you in the long run?”

“I don’t knooow!” Wendy wailed.

“Well, I do know,” Laura said evenly. “That’s what makes me the adult here, Wendy. That’s why I make the decisions. Well, some of them. Your father makes most of them. The point is, school is important, and even if you aren’t big enough to know that, you still have to go. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I let you stay home any time you felt like it, and if I can’t do this job the way I should, well, then I’ll just have to find something else to do. Now I’m going to make you a promise.”

“A promise?” Wendy echoed, wiping her eyes. “What kind of promise?”

“We’ll do something fun this afternoon when you get home,” Laura said. “Something special.”

“Something special?” Wendy repeated. “Like what?”

“Well… How about if we make a snowman in the front yard? No, wait! A snow castle! We’ll build a snow castle in the front yard! How would that be?”

“A castle? Really?”

“Sure, why not? As long as it’s dry out and we bundle up real warm, we can build anything we want in the snow!”

“Okay!” Wendy said, smiling. “Oh, boy! Godiva wouldn’t ever let us play in the snow! She said we’d catch new money and die!”

Laura laughed. “We won’t let anybody catch pneumonia, I promise. Now, you’d better go inside. Can you find your room by yourself?”

Wendy nodded eagerly. “Uh-huh.” She opened her door. Laura leaned over and released her belt. “Bye!” Wendy said, swiveling in her seat to get her feet outside.

Laura suddenly thought of that sterile leave-taking between Adam and his children earlier that morning, and she found that she couldn’t let Wendy go without some gesture of affection. “Wait!” Wendy turned back, and Laura wrapped her arms around the girl’s small body. She gave Wendy a brief hug and kissed her silky temple. “Bye, sweetheart. See you later.”

Wendy’s golden eyes glowed happily. “Don’t do no other job, Laura,” she whispered. “Stay with us.”

Hot tears pricked Laura’s eyes. She wanted to promise this little girl forever, but she knew that it wasn’t in her power to do so. Sooner or later, she’d have to go. If Doyal should find her here… She shuddered at the thought of what he could do to this already troubled family. She couldn’t let that happen, and going away before he found her was the only way she could protect them. But she couldn’t tell this little girl that. She couldn’t tell anyone. She smiled and brushed the rusty brown hair from Wendy’s eyes. “We’ll see. Go on now.”

Wendy wiggled out of the car, grabbed her backpack from the floorboards, then slammed the door. Without looking back, she ran up the walk and into the building. A pleasant-looking woman in a heavy skirt and sweater stepped outside to wave Laura on. Laura eased the car away from the curb. How long? she wondered. How long before she had to leave them all?

Laura crawled on her hands and knees through the narrow opening, scrunched her body into the tiny space left over by the other three occupying the small chamber and smiled broadly.

“It’s warmer than I’d have thought.”

Wendy giggled. “Snow isn’t warm!”

“No, of course it isn’t, but a snow castle is…sort of.”

“Oh, I love my snow castle!” Wendy sighed.

Robbie punched her in the arm. “It isn’t yours! It’s all of us’s. Isn’t it, Laura?”

“Yes, but you mustn’t hit your sister. Hitting isn’t acceptable behavior. Make apology please.”

Robbie had “made apology” several times already that day, and he screwed up his face at the effort it took to make another. “Sor-ry.”

Wendy patted him companionably on the head. “That’s all right, Robbie. It didn’t hurt, anyway. Tomorrow,” she said to Laura, “can we play knights and princess in our castle?”

Laura laughed. “If the weather’s clear, but we’ll have to be very well bundled up knights and princess. Okay?”

“Okay.”

They sat hunched together on a piece of cardboard on the cold ground. Laura had drawn planks on it to represent a wooden floor. She shivered, knowing they would have to go into the house soon, but wanting to give them as long as possible. With luck, Adam would be home before they had to go in and would be able to look over their handiwork and make appropriate noises of praise. At least she hoped he would. She decided to gauge the likelihood. “Won’t Daddy be impressed with our snow castle?” she asked no one in particular.

Robbie and Ryan looked at Wendy, who shrugged. “Dunno. He might not notice.”

“Well, sure he’ll notice.” How could he not notice an eight-foot-tall snow sculpture in his front yard? “I bet he’ll be sorry that he wasn’t here to help us.”

Wendy shook her head. “No, he won’t.”

“No, he won’t,” Ryan echoed.

Laura swallowed a lump in her throat and put on a smile. “Why, sure he will. Um, h-hasn’t he ever…played in the snow with you?”

Wendy dropped her gaze. “Daddies don’t play,” she said. “’Sides, he wasn’t never here for snow before.”

“Never here for snow?” Laura mumbled. “I don’t understand.”

“He didn’t never live with us,” Wendy said, “until Mommy went away.”

“No?” Laura tried to bite back the question, but it tumbled out before she could. “Were they divorced?”

They were clearly confused by the question, looking to one another for clarification. Finally Robbie threw up his arms and said, “No! Daddy, he lived with the army!”

“The army? You mean, he was a soldier?”

“Yes, with the awmy!” Ryan said, clearly exasperated with her lack of understanding.

Well, that explained the haircut and his superb physical condition. But it didn’t explain why he’d never spent a winter with his own children. She looked to Wendy for answers. “Why didn’t you all go with him?” Wendy merely shrugged. Laura tried again. “Well, I’m certain he came home often. I mean, he wouldn’t have missed your birthdays or the holidays…would he?”

“Daddy was home Chwistmas!” Ryan said, adding with relish, “he and Gwandpa Jake got in a fight!”

A fight. At Christmastime. Laura gulped. “That’s too bad,” she murmured, “but it was just one Christmas in many.” She looked at Wendy. “Wasn’t it?”

That shrug again. “I don’t know.”

She didn’t know. She didn’t remember whether her father had spent other Christmases with her. What was wrong with that man? Laura blinked to cool hot eyes, and tried to put the best face on the situation. “Well, he’s here now, and I’m sure that he spends every minute with you that he can.” Wendy made no reply, but her little face was simmering with suppressed anger. Oh, Adam, Laura thought, what are you doing to your children?

Ryan said, “I’m cold!”

Laura snapped out of her reverie. “I bet a cup of cocoa would warm you up, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah! Cocoa! Cocoa! Cocoa!”

Laura flipped over and led the way out of the snow structure. The temperature had dropped in direct proportion with the descent of the sun, which had now dipped beneath the horizon. Adam’s four-wheel-drive was nowhere to be seen. Laura swung a shivering Ryan up onto her hip, then took Robbie and Wendy each by a hand. Together they went into the house, stopping in the entry to let tingling body parts adjust to the sudden warmth and divest themselves of a whole closetful of outer garments. The next stop was the big bathroom, where everyone washed up. Then it was on to the den for the kids, while Laura went into the kitchen.

“Hi,” she said to Beverly, who was stirring a pot at the stove and flashed her a smile over her shoulder. “Is that cocoa ready?”

“It is, but so is dinner.”

“Smells great. What is it?”

“Stew. Should I serve it up now?”

Laura shook her head. “We’ll wait on Mr. Fortune.”

Beverly shot her an odd look. “Oh, I forgot. He called a little while ago. He said not to wait for him. Something came up.”

Laura’s spirits plummeted, but it wouldn’t do to let the children see that she was upset. She closed her eyes and made herself think. “We’ll have the cocoa first, anyway,” she decided. “Why don’t you put the stew pot in the oven to keep warm, and go on home? We’ll serve ourselves when we’re ready.”

Beverly was untying her apron strings before Laura finished speaking. “Well, if you’re certain.”

Laura nodded. “Absolutely.” The cook was gone before Laura got the cocoa poured into cups.

Laura put the cups on a tray, sprinkled them with small marshmallows and carried them to the door, where she put a determined smile on her face. No one should know that inside she was grieving, grieving for the father she’d never known, grieving for what Adam’s children should but did not have, grieving and beginning to get angry.

Adam walked tiredly down the hall and into the kitchen. Beverly had promised to leave him some dinner in the oven. Not that he was hungry, really. He’d eaten earlier, with an old friend from high school and his wife, but it was politic not to offend the household help, especially when one depended upon that help for survival. He swallowed a few bites of the stew at the kitchen sink, then put the rest down the garbage disposal and rinsed out the bowl. It was good stew, but he just wasn’t hungry. He went to the cabinet, took down a bottle of brandy and poured a measure into a small snifter, which he warmed with his hands as he walked into the den.

Laura was sitting on the sofa, her legs folded beneath her, poring over the family photo albums. Adam felt a quickening that he could only have called interest. “Hello,” he said, stopping in the middle of the floor to sip his brandy. She was amazingly attractive, her long blond hair swept onto a shoulder bared by the droop of the wide collar of her pale yellow nubbly-knit sweater. The slender length of her legs was not diminished either by her position or by the thick black leggings she wore. Likewise, heavy wool socks in no way disguised the delicate turn of her ankles or the petite perfection of her feet. Her graceful hands abandoned the book to her lap. She sat upright and folded long arms beneath breasts almost too ample for her slender frame. When she turned her face up to him, his first thought was that not even anger could make her seem less than pretty. Anger. The realization was secondary, but correct nonetheless.

She dropped her gaze once more to the pair of photo albums overlapping on her thighs. “You aren’t in any of the pictures,” she said. Her oddly husky voice took on a hint of challenge. “Have you noticed that you aren’t in any of the pictures?”

He didn’t know what she was talking about, or why it affected him as it did. He only knew that something clutched at his heart, sending rills of panic surging through him. Instinctively he stepped into the firm, indifferent role that had served him so well in the military. “I don’t recall giving you permission to go through my family keepsakes.”

The gaze she jerked up at him was first wide with shock, then lax with contrition, and finally narrow with hurt. She closed the books gently, the glossy gold-embossed navy blue one first, then the ragged hemp-colored one. “My apologies,” she muttered softly, sliding the books onto the coffee table. “I didn’t think you’d mind.” She got swiftly to her feet and weaved her way past the table, a displaced footstool and him. He couldn’t help noticing that, though her grace rivaled that of a ballet dancer, she managed to stub her toe twice.

His indifference fled, and he didn’t have time to question why. He only knew that he didn’t want her to go, and his body reacted to that desire. Stepping back and to the side and throwing out an arm, he managed to block her path and catch her against him at the same time.

“I, um, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bark. It…it’s been a long day.”

She bowed her head, standing very still in the curve of his arm. “Yes, I know.” The gaze she lifted to him this time glittered with accusation. “They waited until after nine o’clock.”

They? His children, of course, though why they would bother to wait up for him, of all people, was pure mystery. Most of the time, they ignored everything about him, including his commands. He dropped his arm, put his head back and swallowed his brandy in one hard gulp that burned all the way down and hit his belly with the force of a fist. He inhaled cooling air through his mouth, bit down on the fiery aftertaste and sighed with satisfaction. He immediately felt better. “Suppose you tell me what they wanted,” he said smoothly, loosening his tie with one hand. Suddenly her anger was back. It leaped like bolts of clear blue lightning in bright green eyes.

“They wanted their father!” she told him sharply. “We built a snow castle in the front yard today, and they wanted to be told what an amazing structure they’d made, what brilliant children they are.”

“A snow castle,” he repeated dully. He hadn’t noticed. He stepped over to his chair and sank down upon it, all at once weary beyond bearing. “I’ll tell them in the morning,” he said, pressing the brandy snifter to the ache beginning between his eyes.

Laura shook her head slowly from side to side, but he was too tried to ask what it was all about. This time, when she muttered, “Good night,” and stalked away, he let her go.

After a while, the pounding in his head seemed to lessen, and he sat forward, trying to work up the energy to get up and go to bed. His gaze fell on the photo albums on the table. Leaning far forward, he could just reach them. He pulled them into his lap, stacking one on top of the other. He ran a hand over the ragged cover of the first and wondered again why his grandmother had left him this shabby piece of memorabilia in her will. You could never tell about Kate. Her mind had seemed to work in several arenas at once, weighing seemingly unrelated matters and reaching often amazing conclusions. He missed her. He was surprised at how much he could miss her after all those years away in the military.

What were you doing, Kate, flying off to the Amazon alone, leaving your family to fend for themselves? He had the lowering feeling that he wasn’t doing too well on that score himself. After eighteen months, his children seemed hardly to know him, and he was still drifting, still looking for an anchor.

Slowly he opened the cover of the photo album and looked once more upon his parents’ wedding picture. They had been the perfect couple, the heir apparent and the unspoiled beauty. It was difficult to think of them apart now, despite the reality of their separation, and yet, when he thought of home and his youth, he thought of his mother and her apologetic explanations for his father’s continual absence.

“He has the whole weight of the family business on his shoulders,” she would tell him. “So many are dependent on him. He’s doing the best he can.”

He thumbed through the photos, watching himself grow from infant to toddler to mischief-maker to rebel to man. Here were the hallmarks of his life—first steps, birthday parties, eighth-grade graduation, the football championship, hockey play-offs, proms. In these pictures the family grew, too, from first and only son, to Caroline, then Natalie, and finally the twins, in precise two-year intervals.

Laura was wrong. He was in nearly every one of these pictures. The only person missing here was, as always, his father. Who did that woman think she was, scolding him for not coming home in time to compliment his kids on a silly snow castle? He came home, didn’t he? When they needed him, he was here, wasn’t he? He was doing his level best, and that ought to count for something. Shouldn’t it? He pushed the photo albums back onto the table and set the brandy snifter on top of them. Then he got to his feet and dragged himself to his bed. He never even opened the second album, the pictorial journal—navy blue, leather-bound, embossed in gold—so painstakingly put together by his late wife, the one that chronicled the years of his own young family’s lives—the one from which he was missing.

Four

She expected him to shout at her, or at least to tell her to mind her own business. Instead, he came in to breakfast all smiles. His only reference to the evening before was a pointed glance in her direction before he heaped lavish praise on the snow castle on his front lawn. To Laura’s dismay, his children merely traded looks among themselves before the twins followed Wendy’s lead and hunched over their cereal bowls in damning silence. An obviously crestfallen Adam sat at the table and erected the dreaded newspaper barrier before him. Laura got up and poured him a cup of coffee, then pulled a toasted English muffin and a bowl of creamed wheat from the oven to set before him. He smiled distractedly, murmured his thanks, and went back to his paper. The children finished their breakfast and were herded from the room by Laura. She cast a last wistful look at Adam, shook her head in frustration and followed her charges through the door. He left before she could get the children’s clothing laid out and return to him.

That became the pattern for mornings in the Fortune household. Adam was always last to the table. He and the children paid only nominal attention to one another, and despite Laura’s best efforts, he always left without saying goodbye. His saving grace was that he regularly came home early to share dinner with his children, and with Laura’s calm direction, the family had begun to evolve their own good-night ritual.

It wasn’t much to brag about initially. She merely marched the children past him, one by one, for a solemn good-night. Before long, however, he was leaning forward to give clumsy pats on the shoulder, and the children, Wendy first, were tentatively reaching out to him for more, and now they were actually hugging. Laura eagerly awaited the evening when one or the other of them would pucker up and the kissing would begin. It would only be a small step on a long road to wellness and normalcy for this family, but Laura felt that it would be a very important step.

Sometimes she told herself that if she could only stay until she saw that first good-night kiss between father and child, she would be content, but the truth was that she was more content at the moment than she had been in a very, very long time—except for those instances of sheer terror when she thought about what would happen if Doyal found her here. She never intended to actually contemplate such hideous thoughts, but on occasion they took her unawares.

Late at night, while she lay in her bed and pondered the day to come, plotting games and treats and subtle teachings, Doyal would flash into her head, his ruggedly handsome face smiling, then sneering, and finally bearing down on her with rage distorting every feature. She would feel his hands around her throat and know that she was going to die, and then, in her mind’s eye, she would see Wendy or one of the boys charge at him, tiny fists flailing. She would sit up straight and shake herself out of it before she could form that last grotesque picture, but it was always there in the back of her mind, the specter of a small body collapsed in trauma. She couldn’t let that happen. She wouldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t just walk out and leave Adam and the children in the lurch, but she had to leave before Doyal found her. She would leave before Doyal found her. She comforted herself with that thought. It became her litany, her mantra. She would go before it was too late—just not yet.

The terror was never far below the surface, however. She would wake in the black hours of morning, drenched in sweat and trembling with fear and disgust, having witnessed again the daming scene that had confirmed Doyal’s guilt. She could almost laugh, had she not feared that hysteria would overwhelm bitterness as she thought of how she’d followed Doyal that day over seven months ago in a jealous pique, believing that he was seeing another woman, only to find that his destination was a run-down house on the rough side of town. She had watched in horror, concealed by a Dumpster and a tree, as a wide spectrum of humanity breezed in and stumbled out of that old house. Some of them hadn’t come out for hours. Some of them had come out right away, the house barely behind them before they were gobbling their pills, snorting their powders or jabbing needles into their veins. Most of them had been so desperate that they ignored the gun brandished by Doyal’s “friend” Calvin, whom Laura now realized was nothing more than an armed goon. She had stumbled away from that scene to vomit, knowing now that the money showered so generously on her by her first serious boyfriend was not the result of his enigmatic investments in the stock market, but of the drug trade that crippled whole neighborhoods and shattered so many lives.

Her mistake had been in confronting him. When she demanded to know how he could live with himself, he had laughed at her naiveté. Still, she had not understood her situation until she proceeded with the grand exit she had planned. He had grabbed her and vowed that she was going nowhere. He was not through with her, he had said, and when he was, he would make sure that she could never tell what she knew about him and his “business.” Angry and outraged, she had demanded her release, and he had beaten her senseless. Afterward, he had sworn that she would never be free of him. No one, not even the police, could protect her, for if she dared implicate him, he vowed that both he and Calvin would swear that she, too, was involved.

Going to the police seemed impossible; yet she had known that the worse thing she could do was to stay. Fleeing might result in instant death at any unguarded moment, but staying would have meant dying by inches. She had chosen the former. It had taken three weeks of hell, and another, even worse beating, before she was able to slip away. He had assumed that she was too badly injured to run and briefly left her unattended. She had literally crawled out the window and down the ivy lattice of their second-story apartment with nothing more than the clothes on her back and a wallet with less than a hundred dollars in it.

She had been running ever since, from city to city, town to town, state to state, for more than six months. Twice he’d nearly caught her—the last time over five months ago—but in all her dreaming, asleep and awake, she had never dared to entertain the fantasy that he might have given up, that he wouldn’t come for her. The guarantee that he would come, the certainty that she must go before that could happen, was all that gave her hope of seeing tomorrow. But beyond the next day she dared not look with more than longing.

That was exactly what she was doing, looking at the future and longing for a place in it, when Adam’s voice took her completely unawares.

“Penny for your thoughts.”

She nearly leaped up onto the kitchen counter. Her heart was beating wildly, even as she placed the voice and turned to face him. It was late. The children were in bed. The evening news was over, and she had delayed turning in herself only long enough to make a hot cup of cocoa to sip on her way. Adam had disappeared into other parts of the house as soon as the children went to their beds, saying that he had some material to read before an appointment the next day. That was the first thing that came to mind.

“You finished your reading,” she said lightly, ashamed of her reaction, her fear, of even having known a man like Doyal Moody.

Adam rubbed his hand over his head. “Not really. I just got incredibly bored with it. I don’t think insurance is for me.”

“No? Well, you’ll find something,” she told him offhandedly.

He shook his head, his golden eyes dull with worry. “I don’t know. I…”

She could tell he wanted to talk, and the idea that he had sought her out to do so was flattering in a way she hadn’t expected. She took another cup from the cabinet and reached for the cocoa mix. “Sit down. I’ll make you a cup.”

He nodded with poorly disguised relief and pulled out a chair at the kitchen table. She joined him a minute later, and they sat in companionable silence for a bit, sipping and stirring cocoa. Finally she thought to ask, “What is it you want to do, Adam? Have you given it any thought?”

It was as if she’d struck at the root of his frustration. He pushed his cup away and ran his hands over his hair, sighing deeply. “I don’t know. I feel like I’m stumbling around in the dark, trying one door after another, but none will open for me! I’ve never known anything but the military. Without that, I don’t quite know who I am.”

Laura understood how he felt. She said, “It must have been difficult to give up your career.”

He folded his arms and perched his chin on them. “It’s so blessedly simple in the army. Here is the day’s objective. Here are the rules. You’ve had your training. You know your role. Now go and do it.” He turned his face down, sucked in a deep breath and straightened, leaning back in his chair. “These days, I know my objective, but that’s where it ends. There are no rules, and no training can prepare you for a role without definition. I’m lost! I’m trapped in the dark, where the only door I know will open for me is the one that I came through, but I can’t go back.”

Laura trailed a finger around the rim of her cup, choosing her words carefully. “It’s not the children’s fault that they need you, Adam.”

He closed his eyes, but not quickly enough to hide the flash of anger in them. “I know that. Don’t you think I know that? It’s just— If only Diana hadn’t been in that awful accident!”

Laura clamped a hand over his wrist, ignoring the intense awareness that she seemed always to feel in his presence. “Adam, don’t you see that your children have always needed you? That didn’t change when Diana died. You just couldn’t ignore it any longer.”

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