It was done. They were married—Sophie was his wife.

Thomas’s stomach clenched at the word. How far had he come, from a Coast Guard chopper pilot content with his bachelor life to a man with a wife and ready-made family?

And how did Sophie feel about all of this? He couldn’t read her at all. She veiled her emotions behind a bright smile.

She looked radiant, lovely. Demure, in an un-Sophie-like way, like a spear of sunlight cutting through the water on a gray day.

For one crazy second, he wished this was a regular wedding, that they were two people in love preparing to begin their lives’ journey together. The fierceness of his desire startled him.

“She’s a beautiful bride,” someone murmured. “You’re a lucky man, Thomas.”

Lucky? He thought about the word. It shouldn't have fit, given the circumstances, but somehow it did.

He was lucky.

Freefall
RaeAnne Thayne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

RAEANNE THAYNE

lives in a graceful old Victorian nestled in the rugged mountains of northern Utah, along with her husband and two young children. Her books have won numerous honors, including several Readers’ Choice Awards from Romantic Times and a RITA® Award nomination by the Romances Writers of America. RaeAnne loves to hear from readers. She can be reached through her Web site at www.raeannethayne.com or at P.O. Box 6682, North Logan, UT 84341.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

Chapter 1

As final resting places go, the El Carmelito cemetery in Pacific Grove, California, was a beautiful place to spend eternity.

The wild sea off Point Piños crashed just a few hundred yards away, wind-gnarled Monterey cypress provided shade and serenity and a small herd of blacktail deer browsed among the grave markers.

Under other circumstances, Sophie Beaumont might have found some small comfort that her sister would be laid to rest here in exactly the kind of place Shelly had loved best. But she couldn’t find anything remotely resembling comfort. Not yet. Not when the shock and grief of losing her twin so abruptly raged through her like that fierce ocean battering the rocks.

She hated funerals, she always had, and this one was by far the worst. Sophie swallowed hard as she looked at those elegant matching coffins waiting to be lowered into the ground—one starkly, horribly empty, one containing Shelly’s battered remains.

She thought of the burial ritual she had seen a few months earlier in rural China, where mourners wore colorful clothing and celebrated the deceased’s life with an exuberant funeral parade. Or the Jamaican way, where the families of the deceased dressed in their Sunday best and feasted for nine days. Shelly would have vastly preferred that to this cold, solemn ceremony.

Two small, sniffly whimpers on either side of her dragged her from her thoughts. Poor lambs. Poor bewildered little orphaned lambs. Her sister’s own twins, Zach and Zoe, just five years old, didn’t know what to make of this somber service. All they knew was their mother and father were both gone and that their comfortable, secure world had changed forever.

“Shh,” their older sister, Alison, whispered to the twins. Her green eyes, far wiser than their ten years, looked at Sophie solemnly as if waiting for her to do something. Sophie gazed back helplessly, not sure what her niece expected of her. Finally, with a heavy sigh, Ali pulled her younger brother into her lap to console him.

Sophie winced. If she wasn’t so tired, she would have thought of that. Or at least she wanted to think so.

Following Ali’s example, she pulled Zoe into her own lap. The little girl snuggled against her with a few more sniffles, her cheek pressed against the black leather of the slim little blazer Sophie had picked up a few months ago at a market in Belarus. It was far too hot for leather, unexpectedly warm for a cloudy November day on the peninsula, but Sophie had had nothing else with her suitable for a funeral—and no time to find anything else—when Thomas had finally tracked her down two days earlier in Morocco. She’d been traveling nonstop since his call and barely made it to Monterey a few hours earlier, in time to shower and change out of her traveling clothes.

The preacher was droning on about walking through the valley of the shadow of death, about ashes to ashes, dust to dust. She wanted to listen but the words seemed hazy, surreal.

This couldn’t be Shelly he was talking about in that dry, lifeless tone. Her sister had been funny and bighearted, passionate about her children and deeply in love with her husband.

Whether the son of a bitch deserved it or not.

Loud, dramatic sobbing down the row of chairs cut through the minister’s words like a chainsaw, and Zoe sniffled louder in her arms. Though she felt small and mean for it, Sophie wanted to stalk down the row of mourners and give her mother a good, hard slap. Couldn’t Sharon tell she was upsetting the children with her wailing and carrying on?

Of course she couldn’t, she answered her own question. And even if Sharon knew, she probably wouldn’t care.

The minister droned on until Sophie wanted to scream at him to stop, that he obviously didn’t know anything about Shelly if he thought his words carried any meaning about her life.

Zach sniffled again on Ali’s lap and Sophie felt heat brush her shoulder. Not a touch, just a stirring of air. Automatically, her gaze shifted to the man sitting on the other side of her niece. Thomas Canfield, brother to Shelly’s husband Peter, had wrapped an arm around Ali and pulled her close, Zach and all.

He looked solid and reassuring, his shoulders impossibly broad in his Coast Guard dress blues, and for one insane moment she wanted nothing more than to burrow her head against his chest as if she were five years old just like the twins.

Over the childrens’ heads, their gazes met. Not a trace of warmth showed in those icy blue eyes. They were diamond-hard and so bitterly cold she shivered, despite her leather jacket and the heat of the afternoon.

She forced her attention back to the minister, willing herself not to think about how those wintry eyes had once blazed with hot need and breathtaking tenderness.

A few more words, another prayer, and it was done. As the last amen floated away on the sea breeze, mourners stood and began to talk softly among themselves. Sophie stayed seated, feeling numb, her limbs leaden, listless.

“Is it over?” Zoe asked, her lisp making the last word sound like “ov-oh.”

She hugged the little girl close. “Yes, sugar. It’s over.”

“I don’t want Mommy and Daddy to be in Heaven.” The small voice nearly broke her heart.

“I know. Oh, honey, I know.”

Someone with more experience around young children than she probably would have added something wise and comforting but Sophie drew a complete blank. She was still trying to figure out what to say when Sharon glided to them, weeping copiously. Not even her thick waterproof mascara could hold up under those conditions. Black splotches underlined her eyes, pooling in the wrinkles she fought so hard against.

“Oh, Sophie. Isn’t this the most terrible thing that’s ever happened? My poor girl. My poor baby girl. I never thought one of my girls would die before me. Oh, I don’t know how I’ll bear it.” Sharon began to weep again and the barrel-chested man she’d brought along—another Earl, wasn’t it?—handed her a handkerchief and patted her awkwardly on the shoulder.

Sophie should be more compassionate toward her mother. She knew it but still she fought a wave of resentment that even now Sharon couldn’t stand to have anyone else be the center of attention. Not even her dead child or her suddenly orphaned grandchildren.

The instinct to flee was almost overwhelming. For one wild moment, Sophie wanted to grab her equipment and her suitcase and hop a plane to any destination, particularly one on the other side of the globe. A place where nobody knew her, where she could be just another anonymous face in the crowd hiding behind a camera lens.

Since she couldn’t leave, at least she should be able to crawl into a bed somewhere—anywhere—and sleep for the next forty-eight hours until she lost this jet lag and could begin to cope with the storm of emotions that had buffeted her since Thomas’s late-night phone call in Morocco.

Ten years ago she wouldn’t have needed a phone call to tell her something had happened to Shelly. For most of their life, they had shared an invisible bond, one of those weird psychic twin connections that defied logic or words. When Shelly had broken her leg jumping off the swings in second grade, Sophie had crumpled to the floor of her classroom howling in pain. When Sophie had sliced a finger cutting vegetables in Home Ec, Shelly hadn’t been able to finish a test in English class because her own finger throbbed too badly to write.

But that was all in the past. In the last ten years, Sophie had done everything she could to sever that bond, to put as much distance as possible between her and her twin, psychic or otherwise.

Obviously she had succeeded beyond her wildest dream. She hated that she had known nothing of the car accident that had killed Shelly—of that final terrible plunge off the soaring cliffs of Big Sur, of the impact so horrendous Peter had been flung from the Mercedes, his body dashed on the rocks below and then carried away by the violent sea.

Shelly had been dead three days before Thomas finally managed to learn what magazine she was on assignment for and could contact the photo editor and track her down.

Three days where she had been wandering from town to town, village to village. Eating, sleeping, laughing. Living her life just as always, with no clue her sister was gone.

She wanted to stand at that grave in this beautiful cemetery by the ocean and weep for the past and the physical and emotional chasm between them at the end.

“Can we go home now?”

Zoe’s question wrenched at her heart, filled her mouth with shame. She was no better than Sharon. How could she stand here feeling so sorry for herself when these children had lost everything?

Home. She thought of Peter and Shelly’s house on Seventeen Mile Drive, that huge estate in the gated Del Monte Forest that should have seemed elegant and cold.

For all its grandeur, Shelly had managed to make Seal Point feel like a home. That was just so Shelly. Her sister had plenty of experience building nests wherever they lived, from dingy apartments to run-down trailers and even the back seat of Sharon’s old Toronado when they had spent a summer living out of it.

There were mourners to greet, polite conventions to follow, but she realized the children were close to the breaking point. They were her responsibility now and nothing else mattered.

“Yes, sugar. I’ll take you home. Alison, are you ready?”

Her niece nodded tightly, and held on to Zach’s hand. She led the little entourage toward her rental car. They had almost reached it when Thomas slipped away from his father’s side and headed toward them.

“You’re leaving?”

How did he make those two words sound like an accusation, a denunciation?

She straightened her shoulders. “The children are tired. I think they’ve had enough. They need to be in their comfort zone.”

A muscle flexed in his jaw and he looked as if he wanted to say something, but he finally nodded. “I’ll be along as soon as I can.”

“That’s not necessary,” she answered coolly. “I’m sure the children and I will be fine.”

“I’ll see you at the house.”

She didn’t have the energy left to tell him he was the last person on earth she wanted to spend any time with today, so she just nodded and climbed into the rental car.

“It was a very nice service, don’t you think? I mean, as far as these things go.”

Tom glanced in the rearview mirror of the Jaguar. His father gazed silently out the window at the churning sea as they drove past Asilomar toward Country Club Gate. His Savile Row tie was slightly crooked, his silver hair a little mussed—things William Canfield never would have tolerated in better days. Maura McMurray sat beside him, solid and dependable as always, sympathy creasing her plump, no-nonsense features.

“Yes,” Tom answered the nurse. “Peter would have been pleased to see so many people there.”

Did that sound petty? he wondered. Yeah, probably, even though of course he didn’t mean it that way. He sighed. Nobody could say his and Peter’s relationship had been an easy one. He had loved his younger brother but they hadn’t seen eye-to-eye on many things.

They had always wanted different things. Peter, like their father, had thrived on the influence and power of being one of the Canfields of Seal Point. He had loved the social scene, moving and shaking with the other leading families of the peninsula.

Tom had no patience for the thin, transparent superficiality of it all. Maybe that’s one of the reasons he and his brother hadn’t exactly gotten along. Peter—and William, for that matter—had never been able to understand the choices he had made with his life.

For all the good those choices had done him.

“I was glad to see Mrs. Canfield’s sister made it in time for the funeral,” Maura cut through his thoughts. “Although I have to admit it gave me quite a start when I first saw her sitting there with the children. Uncanny, the way the two of them look so much alike, isn’t it?”

He made a noncommittal sound. It always surprised him when people made that observation. Certainly there were similarities between the sisters. They were twins, after all. They shared the same hair color, similar facial features, same slim, willowy build.

Both were strikingly beautiful, he had to admit, but his sister-in-law’s appeal had been soft, gentle, like some impressionistic watercolor. Sophie, on the other hand, was wild and sensual—bold, vivid colors splashed onto textured canvas. Long tousled blond curls and sinful eyes and kiss-me lips.

“The children seemed taken with her, considering how seldom they’ve seen her.”

“She stays connected with them,” he murmured. Whatever else her failings, he had to give credit to Sophie for that. No matter where she traveled, she had always tried to stay in touch by phone or e-mail and she sent the children small gifts from all the exotic locales stamped on her passport.

“I suppose she’ll be off again now.”

“I don’t know her plans but I’m sure she will.” Sophie was the queen of the hit-and-run visit.

“Well, I hope she stays a while for the children. The poor dears will need all the family they can find right now. How awful for them to lose both their mother and father at once.”

Maura’s sympathy didn’t seem to require a response. He glanced in the rearview mirror again and noticed his father playing with the power windows, rolling them up and down, up and down.

Maura competently distracted him with a pat on the hand and a small hand mirror she pulled from her bag, and William laughed and pulled a face at himself, his eyes scrunched up and his jaw sagging.

“Have you thought anymore about what you’ll do now?” Maura asked.

Tom could feel tension grip his shoulders again with bony claws. Just thinking about all the choices he would have to make in the coming days made his chest ache.

“No,” he answered tersely.

“I don’t mean to push you. I would just like to know if I’ll be needing to look for another position.”

He frowned at the nurse. “Another position? Why on earth would you look for a new position?”

Maura cast a sidelong glance at his father, who was oblivious to their conversation as usual, then she met Thomas’s gaze in the mirror. “You’re going to have a big burden on your shoulders in the coming months, caring for the children and all and taking over your family’s business concerns,” she answered quietly. “I thought you might want to reconsider Mr. Canfield’s living arrangements.”

He didn’t even want to think about this. Not today. “I’m not putting him in a nursing home, Maura. He’ll stay at Seal Point as long as he can. That’s his home, the place where he’s most comfortable. You won’t need to look for another position.”

“It won’t be easy for you, Lieutenant Canfield.”

That grim fact had been crystal clear the minute his team had responded to that rescue call and he had recognized Peter’s half-submerged Mercedes and Shelly’s lifeless body still inside.

“I’ll just have to try to do what’s best for everyone.” The trick was going to be figuring out what the hell that was.

The rest of the drive passed in silence and a few moments later they reached the curved iron gates of Seal Point, the home of his childhood and the place Peter and Shelly had lived with their children. With a press of the remote control, the gates slid soundlessly open.

Inside the house, he helped his father change out of his suit, unknotting his tie and unbuttoning his shirt as if William were a child.

“You’re a good boy, Peter,” his father said at one point, patting him awkwardly on the head as if he were ten years old again hitting a winning home run. Tom didn’t bother to correct him. What was the use? Despite the funeral service, his father probably wouldn’t even realize Peter—his golden son, the favorite—was gone.

Sometimes the injustice of it devastated him. His father, the brash and arrogant financier, was gone. In his place was this helpless, feeble man who couldn’t remember how to dress himself but who had rare, heartbreaking moments of lucidity.

While Maura settled William with a bowl of soup and a sandwich from the self-contained kitchen attached to his rooms, Tom changed from his uniform into the Dockers and polo shirt he’d brought along, then went in search of the children.

He found them all in the main kitchen Shelly had modernized a few years ago for entertaining, with its marble countertops, six-burner stove and subzero refrigerator. They had changed clothes, too, the children into shorts and Sophie into a T-shirt that was a bit too small and a pair of worn jeans with fraying hems.

With her feet bare and all that glorious hair tied back into a ponytail, she should have looked young and innocent. Instead, she made him think of rainy afternoons and tangled sheets and slow, languid kisses.

How could part of him still be foolish enough to want her? Disgusted at his weakness, he clamped down on the unwilling desire and walked into the kitchen.

The children greeted him with none of their usual exuberance. Zoe and Zach sat at the breakfast bar watching cartoons on the kitchen television and Ali was pouring milk from the refrigerator into four glasses. Usually they dropped whatever they were doing and jumped all over him like a trio of howler monkeys but now all three just gave him subdued smiles that just about shattered his heart into tiny pieces.

Sophie’s smile was just as subdued but several degrees cooler. It drooped at the corners, with exhaustion, he figured, since she had been traveling for days to make it in time for the funeral.

“Would you care for a sandwich?” she asked. “Mrs. Cope left cold cuts in the refrigerator but the kids were more in a PB&J mood. Nothing better than peanut butter and jelly when you’ve had a rough day like today.”

He shook his head, absurdly touched that she was fixing comfort food for the children. “Maybe I’ll fix one later.”

“It’s hard to work up much of an appetite, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he said grimly.

“How’s William?”

He thought about giving his usual glib answer. He’s fine. Just fine. Thanks for asking. But something in Sophie’s green-eyed gaze—a bright glimmer of genuine concern—compelled him to honesty. “He doesn’t really know what’s going on, although Maura and I have both tried to explain about Peter and Shelly. In this case I suppose Alzheimer’s can be a blessing.”

She was quiet for a moment, then sent a look toward the children to see if they were paying attention to their conversation. “Shelly wrote me about his condition,” she finally said. “I hadn’t realized he had regressed so quickly. I’m sorry, Thomas.”

He didn’t know how to deal with the compassion in her eyes so he focused on something else, the circles under those eyes and the hollows under her high cheekbones. “Why don’t you sleep? I’m here now.”

She shook her head. “I doubt if I could. Maybe in a few more hours.”

“You’re going to fall over by then. Go on and rest.”

Before she could voice that argument he could see her gearing up for, the telephone rang in the kitchen. Thomas reached for it and heard her mother on the other end of the line.

“Hello, Sharon.” In light of the loss they had all suffered, Thomas managed to conceal his dislike for the woman and handed the phone to Sophie.

If possible, Sophie’s voice dropped several more degrees as she greeted her mother. Tom took over the sandwich-making while eavesdropping without shame.

Her expressive features had been one of the first things to captivate him all those years ago. She seemed a little more composed, a little more controlled ten years later, but he could still clearly see the tension rippling through her, the frustration simmering below the surface.

“No, I understand,” Sophie said quietly. “Earl has a load to deliver and you’ve decided to cut your stay short and go with him. I didn’t expect you to stick around long. No, that wasn’t a dig, Sharon. Just an observation. Sure. Yes, I’ll tell them. Goodbye.”

Her mouth tightened for an instant as she hung up the phone but then her features smoothed out and she turned to the children. “Grandma Sharon is leaving this afternoon, kids. I’m sorry. But she says she’ll be back through in a few months.”

Ali and Zach barely looked up from the cartoon but Zoe gazed at her aunt, her eyes anxious. “Are you going, too, Aunt Sophie?”

Sophie must have caught that thin thread of fear in the little girl’s voice. She paused in the process of opening a bag of chips, then set it down and swept Zoe into her arms. “Oh, no, honey. No! I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”

Chapter 2

Thomas stared at her. How the hell could she look a child in the eye like that and utter such a bald-faced lie? Panacea or not, the children deserved the truth.

He waited just a few beats, until Zoe turned back to the TV then grabbed her arm. “Sophie, can you help me with something in the pantry?”

Those green eyes widened at the request and went even bigger when he yanked her into the six-foot by six-foot butler’s pantry then slammed the door shut behind them. In such close quarters, he was instantly overwhelmed by the scent of her, exotic and sensual, like a rainy afternoon in the jungle, so he went on the offensive.

“Where the hell do you get off saying something like that?”

She frowned and jerked her arm away from him. “What did I say?”

“That you’re not leaving.”

“I’m not leaving.”

His laughter was harsh. “That will be a first.”

“The children need me, Tom, and I intend to be here for them.”

“Until when? Your next assignment? Until you get the chance of a lifetime to shoot yaks in Nepal or whatever it is this time and off you go without giving a damn what you’re leaving behind?”

Incredibly, unbelievably, hurt flashed for an instant in those wide green eyes but she shielded them quickly. “That’s not going to happen.”

“That’s easy to say now. But what about a month from now? These are children, Sophie. Not pretty little toys you can put on the shelf when you’re bored with them. They are children who have just suffered a terrible loss. Right now they need all the stability they can find until their world settles again. You really think you can give them that? You, of all people!”

Again that hurt flared in her eyes but she jutted her chin into the air in typical stubborn Sophie fashion. “What they need is love and I have more than enough of that to give them.”

“Sometimes love is not enough.”

“Isn’t that the truth?” she muttered, an edge of bitterness to her voice.

He narrowed his gaze and studied her, trying to figure out if there was hidden meaning in her words. God knows, she had no reason to be bitter over their brief relationship. No, they hadn’t had a relationship, he corrected himself. Just fledgling, unspoken emotions and one steamy encounter on the beach that could still make his heart race when he remembered it.

Then she ran away, for the first time but certainly not the last.

This time Sophie folded her arms over her chest, her chin still lifted defiantly. “I’m staying, Tom. The children need me. If you want me out of their lives, you’re going to have to pry me out with a crowbar.”

“Must I remind you, I am the executor of Peter’s estate. His will specifically names me their guardian.” He knew he sounded like a self-righteous ass but he didn’t give a damn.

“And I have a letter from Shelly dated not two months ago where she asked me to care for her children if something happened to her.”

Tom frowned, unease slithering through him like a moray eel cutting across the ocean’s floor. Shelly had written Sophie? The timing seemed odd in the extreme. Why would a young, otherwise healthy woman write such a thing only weeks before her death? Did she have some impending premonition of danger?

“You can be as arrogant and domineering as usual,” Sophie went on, heedless of the direction of his thoughts, “but that’s not going to change my mind.”

“The children are my legal responsibility,” he repeated.

“They’re as much my responsibility as yours, if not legally than at least morally. I don’t care what Peter’s will says. They are my nieces and nephew, and I love them. I’m not going to abandon them when they need me. Anyway, if I don’t stay, who’s going to care for them when you’re out playing Rescue Ranger?”

Her scorn for his career shouldn’t bother him but somehow it did. He should be used to it after ten years of fighting to live the life he wanted. Nobody understood his passion for his job. Not his father, not Peter. They had thought him crazy for turning his back on the family fortune to enlist in the military—in the plebeian Coast Guard, no less.

They didn’t understand his passion for the service, for the unrivaled satisfaction of going after someone who needed help, the controls of his bird humming under his hands and adrenaline pumping like opium through his system.

That part of his life was over, he reminded himself. Peter’s death had accomplished what his brother had never been able to do in life. “I’m putting in for a discharge,” he murmured. “I’ll be taking leave while the paperwork goes through.”

Her expressive face softened instantly with sympathy. “Oh, Thomas.”

He looked away from her pity, focusing on the rows of cans and bottles that the housekeeper kept in ruthless order inside the butler’s pantry. “It’s the best thing for everyone. The details of Peter’s estate will keep me busy for weeks. In the meantime, I’m planning to hire someone to help Mrs. Cope with the children.”

“For heaven’s sake, you don’t need to hire someone! I’m family. I love the children far more than some stranger you hire will.”

For one crazy moment, the temptation to accept her help swamped him. With Sophie caring for the children, he might even be able to consider keeping his commission, just take a few months leave to handle the mess Peter had left behind at Canfield Investments.

He discarded the idea before it could take root. This was Sophie. Sophie, who had more stamps on her passport than Peter had neckties, who had made a successful name for herself traveling around the globe capturing whatever she found in her unique photographs.

She had inherited the restless gene that seemed to have skipped over Shelly. Just like her mother, Sophie could never stand to stay in one place long enough to sprout.

And even if she did force herself to stay, he wasn’t sure he wanted her caring for the children. After she left ten years ago and the hurt had begun to fade, he had realized the Sophie he had known had been flighty and reckless, irresponsible and selfish.

He’d meant what he said earlier. The children needed structure, stability, while they tried to cope with the loss of their parents. He couldn’t risk their one safe harbor by introducing an alien species like Sophie Beaumont into the mix.

“Aunt Sophie? Uncle Tommy? Is everything okay?”

Ali’s voice sounded from the other side of the pantry door, the worry in it adding another couple bricks of guilt to his load. “Just fine, Al. We’re, uh, looking for more peanut butter.”

“There’s a whole jar out here.” Suspicion coated her voice in a thin, crackly layer.

“Don’t worry about it, Alison,” Sophie said calmly. “We’ll be out in a moment. We were just having a discussion we didn’t want the twins to overhear.”

“Are you sure?” Ali asked.

“Yeah, honey,” he answered. “We’re fine. Just go on back to the twins. We’ll be right out.”

Sophie opened the door as soon as they heard the girl walk away and he wondered if she was as uncomfortable in such close proximity as he was. “We don’t have to fight about this, Thomas. Not today. Let’s both sleep on it and give ourselves and the children a few days for things to settle down. We can talk about it again later.”

As far as he was concerned, the matter was settled. Whether she left this afternoon or a week from now, she would still leave. He had no doubt whatsoever.

The trick would be to make sure she didn’t break the children’s already fragile hearts when she went.

She could handle this, Sophie reminded herself hours later, up to her elbows in bathwater.

“Ow. That huwts, Aunt Sophie.” Zoe made a face beneath her crown of suds. “Mommy doesn’t go so hawd.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll try to take it easy.” This was a little girl’s head she was scrubbing, not a potato, Sophie reminded herself. This whole bath business was much harder than it appeared. Zoe insisted on everything just so—a water level exactly right, the precise temperature, her bath toys set out just where she wanted them.

She knew how vital it was for all of the children to keep to their usual routines as closely as possible, but she couldn’t help comparing Zoe’s elaborately complicated ritual with indigenous children she had photographed around the world who were perfectly content to perform their ablutions with a dirty puddle and a handful of leaves.

Maybe this wouldn’t seem such an insurmountable challenge if she wasn’t completely running on empty. She felt as wrung out as the washcloth Zoe was using and she wanted nothing more than to climb into that comfortable guest bed down the hall and collapse for a week.

But she could do this. She was strong, far stronger than Mr. Thomas Know-it-all Canfield believed her to be.

“Ow!” Zoe exclaimed again loudly and Sophie had to force herself to relax again.

“Almost done. Time to rinse.”

“I don’t like shampoo in my eyes,” the little girl informed her matter-of-factly.

“I’ll keep that in mind, honey.”

She hoped Tom was having just as challenging a time with Zach in another of the estate’s zillion bathrooms down the hall. After helping the nurse—Maura, she said her name was—settle his father for the evening, Tom had joined her to help with the children.

She found so much domesticity—the two of them working together at something so mundane and homey as putting the children to bed—unsettling. With any other man she probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but this was Thomas. Thomas, who had kissed her and held her and treated her with such aching tenderness. Playing house with him like this was bound to unnerve her.

She jerked her attention away from that precarious road and back to Zoe. “There you go. That should do it.”

“May I play for a while?”

It was past her bedtime but Sophie didn’t have the heart to say no, not when Zoe had spent the day solemn and confused. For the first time all day she seemed like a little girl again instead of a silent, sad little waif.

“For a few moments.” She rose on bones that creaked and complained with exhaustion, then made her way to the padded vanity bench across the bathroom. It didn’t take long for the steam in the bathroom in combination with the comfortable seat to relax her stiff muscles. After a few moments she even felt her eyelids droop.

She jerked them open. She couldn’t sleep! If Thomas came in and caught her dozing while Zoe splashed around amid so many possible water hazards, he would have all the proof he needed to show she was unfit to care for the children.

Not that he seemed to need any proof. He had made up his mind and changing it was going to be as tough as riding the Infierno Canyon rapids in Chile. She had to do her best to show him she could handle this, though. She couldn’t abandon the children when they needed her.

Not the way she had abandoned Shelly.

The thought slithered into her mind and Sophie opened her eyes, all temptation to sleep forgotten as she bleakly watched the tendrils of steam curl through the room.

There it was. The truth she’d been hiding from all day. Not only was she compelled to stay and care for the children because she loved them and they needed her but because on some level she supposed she was trying to atone for the pain she had caused Shelly these last ten years.

She hadn’t been there for her sister, but at least she would try for her sister’s children.

Shelly never understood why Sophie had begun to freeze her out. She had never said anything, but Sophie had seen the hurt in her eyes during the few visits she’d made over the years, had heard the unasked questions in her voice every time they talked on the phone.

She should have tried to explain, damn it. About Peter and William and Thomas and that terrible night. In her frenzied rush to escape, though, she had decided it was best to stay quiet, to allow Shelly her illusions. Her sister had been happy with her new life here at Seal Point—deliriously happy, with her husband and her brand-new baby and this elegant home by the sea. How could she destroy that joyful light in Shelly’s eyes by telling her about the den of vipers she had married into?

Now it was too late to explain anything to her sister. Grief and regret washed over her in cruel, unrelenting waves.

“Can we go to Point Lobos tomorrow and watch the otters?”

Sophie wiped at her eyes and found that her industrious niece had climbed out of the tub on her own and was wrapped in a towel, drying her hair. Chagrined at her own inattention, she hurried to help.

“That sounds fun.” She cleared the remaining emotions from her voice. “We can talk about it with Ali and Zach and see what they want to do tomorrow.”

“Talk about what?” Ali, her own hair wet from her shower, joined them in the bathroom wearing a pink cotton nightgown and matching robe.

“I want to go see the otters tomorrow.”

“We just did that with Uncle Tommy two days ago.”

“I want to go again.” A stubborn light flickered in the little girl’s eyes.

“I told her we would talk about it in the morning,” Sophie said to head off the argument she sensed could easily brew.

Ali shrugged and went to work helping Zoe into her pajamas. The gesture made Sophie want to cry all over again. In just a few days without their parents, Ali had taken over mothering the twins. She was still a little girl, whose childhood had been snatched away from her abruptly and hideously.

While Sophie took over the task, she vowed a solemn oath to herself that she would do everything she could to restore that childhood.

“When will I go back to school, Aunt Sophie?”

Oh dear. She had so much to learn about being a parent. She hadn’t given a single thought to them missing school. “Do you want to go back tomorrow?”

Ali’s dimple flashed. “Tomorrow’s Saturday.”

She supposed she’d lost track after six connecting flights and a dozen time zones. “How about Monday, then?”

“Okay.”

“Me, too,” Zoe insisted. “Zach and me go to kindergarten. Miss Lewis is my teacher. She’s pretty.”

The three talked quietly about school and the girls’ classes while Sophie brushed the tangles from Zoe’s curly blond hair.

“You’re all set now,” she finally said. “Cleaner than a baby kitten.”

“Will you read to us like Mommy does?” Zoe asked.

Sophie swallowed another damn lump in her throat. “Sure, honey.”

“Mommy usually reads to us in her bed since it’s bigger.”

“Okay. Why don’t you two find a book and I’ll round up Zach and we can meet you there?”

She found Thomas and Zach in a bathroom down the hall. Tom’s golf shirt was soaked and water covered the terra-cotta tile floor, she saw with amusement, but her nephew sported slicked-back hair and snazzy dinosaur pajamas.

“Whoa. Was there a tidal wave in here?”

Zach giggled. “I was showing Uncle Tommy how to dog paddle and some water splashed on the floor.”

“And on your uncle, by the looks of it.”

Tom made a wry face, which sent Zach giggling again. She had to admit, the sound was terribly sweet. “Aunt Sophie, did you know Uncle Tommy used to take a bath in this very tub when he was five? And he used to sleep in my room, too.”

The idea of Thomas as a five-year-old boy was just too difficult to fathom, especially with that soaked cotton showing every ripple of powerful, very grown-up muscles in his chest.

She sneaked a look at him under her lashes and couldn’t help a quick intake of breath when she met his gaze, his blue eyes glittering with some expression she couldn’t immediately identify.

“No, I didn’t know that. Aren’t you lucky that he lets you use it now?” Her voice came out breathless as she answered Zach.

Just tired, she assured herself. Surely she wasn’t still foolish enough to be attracted to the man. Not when she knew exactly how little Thomas Canfield thought of her.

“The girls and I are going to read a story before bed.” She ignored the fresh surge of melancholy. “Are you interested?”

“Yeah!”

“Okay, cowboy. We’re reading in your parents’ room.”

The fleeting animation on Zach’s pointy little features slid away and he instantly sobered. Oh, sweetheart. Her heart ached all over again for the crushing loss these poor children had endured and she pulled him into her arms for a quick, comforting hug.

Unlike his sisters, Zach wasn’t big on hugs, she was discovering. He pulled away after a moment and headed down the hall in search of Ali and Zoe. She watched his rounded shoulders for a moment, then turned back to find Thomas studying her again, his eyes gleaming in the bright fluorescent light of the bathroom.

“How are the girls?” he asked.

“About the same as Zach. Fine one minute, on the verge of tears the next. It’s going to take them a while to adjust to life without their parents.”

“I think we’re all going to need time to adjust.”

She thought of the sudden, radical changes in his life from bachelor military pilot to father-figure businessman overnight. He must be close to overwhelmed but he seemed to be adjusting in typical competent Thomas fashion.

“Look, I can handle storytime so you can sleep,” he began.

She shook her head. “I don’t mind. I’m sure you have things to do.”

“Only one or two million.”

“Go on, then.”

“Are you sure? You look exhausted.”

She didn’t know whether to be warmed by his concern or offended by the implication that she looked like hell. “I’ll be fine. Once we’re done reading, I’m sure I’ll drop like a rock.”

They stood for a moment in awkward silence, two people who were all but strangers, linked only by a brief, sketchy past and by their shared love for the three children. Still, they had made it through the first evening together without coming to blows, she thought. Maybe they could somehow figure out a way to make this complicated arrangement work.

She gave him a tentative smile, then turned and followed Zach down the hall.

Chapter 3

Some odd, discordant sound wrenched her from sleep. She blinked back to consciousness, to that first shocky awareness of her surroundings. It never took her long, probably because she’d spent her whole life waking up in different beds.

Narrow, lumpy cots in a seedy Russian hotel, grand ornately carved beds in a haunted Irish castle, communal woven mats on the floor of a grass hut in Samoa. She’d slept in them all and many, many more.

This time she was in a big, comfortable four-poster, the bed Shelly had shared with her husband.

She listened to try to determine what had awakened her but heard only soft, childish breathing. She was surrounded by warm shapes snuggled against her like puppies in a cardboard box, she realized.

How had that happened? She and the children had been reading, she remembered, some sweet, silly book about a kindergartner and her wild adventures.

Ali had taken a turn reading slowly and carefully, her brow wrinkled in concentration like Shelly’s used to do.

Her sister would be so proud of her daughter. It was the last thought Sophie remembered.

Had she nodded off right in the middle of the story? She didn’t doubt it, she’d been so exhausted. They all must have fallen asleep, exhausted by the ordeal of the day.

There were worse things in life than snuggling with three sleeping children. She smiled in the darkness and wiggled her toes.

Someone had covered them with a quilt, she discovered. Ali? she wondered, with a pang of regret for a child who carried the weight of too many responsibilities on her narrow shoulders.

It must have been. Who else?

She suddenly knew the answer. Not Ali. Tom. Somehow she knew without a doubt he was the one who had covered them.

Heat thrummed through her at the thought of Tom coming to look for the children and discovering them all nestled together. Of him standing by the bed, kissed by moonlight as he watched her sleep when she was vulnerable and exposed.

She shouldn’t have this reaction to him, this trembling in her stomach, this slow surge of blood through her veins. He was just so damn beautiful, lean and dark and predatory like a panther she’d once been lucky enough to photograph in Punjab.

How were they ever going to make this work? In the darkness, all her doubts rushed back to pinch and poke at her. They both wanted custody of the children.

He would never let her take them away from here and she wasn’t sure she had the strength to stay here on the peninsula and deal with him day after day.

She sighed softly into the darkness and listened to the big house settle and creak around her. Shelly’s house. Her sister had adored this huge, elegant villa with its dozen bedrooms and immaculate gardens. It wasn’t the grandeur of the house that mattered. Shelly had never been like that—her twin would have been happy in a two-room trailer as long as she could stay in one place with the family she loved.

Their mother’s wanderlust had always been much harder on Shelly than Sophie. Shelly wanted nothing more than to live in one place long enough to make friends, to put her name on the mailbox, to plant tulip bulbs and be there to see them break through the earth in the spring.

While Sharon worked as a cocktail waitress at some sleazy bar or other, Sophie and her sister had talked long into the night, spinning dreams about their futures.

Hers had been about finding fame and fortune, about saving the rain forest and seeing more of the world than just about every armpit of a town between the Atlantic and the Pacific.

All Shelly had ever wanted out of life was a man to love her, children to nurture, a home with a garden. She wanted to think her sister had found far more than she’d ever dared dream, here in this elegant, graceful home by the sea.

Too bad she had to take Peter Canfield as part of the package.

Her sister had been happy, though. She comforted herself with that knowledge. She had pressed—and pressed hard—to make sure Shelly was being treated right. Either her sister was a far better actress than she gave her credit for, or Shelly had never been unlucky enough to see the darker side of the man she married.

The side Sophie had seen.

A low, mournful wail cut through the night, jerking her out of her thoughts. The sound scraped along her nerves, raised gooseflesh on her arms. That’s what had awakened her, she realized now. It was raw, unearthly, a supernatural kind of keening.

She rolled her eyes at herself. You, who have slept with villagers telling tales of the chupacabra of Puerto Rico and the giant bat of Cameroon ought to know better than to let a little wind bother you.

Still, her heart pounded an uneasy rhythm as she carefully picked her way through the maze of sleeping little bodies and padded to the sliding door that led to a small balcony overlooking the sea.

She unlocked it, disengaged the security system with the code Thomas had given her, and walked outside.

The night was cloudy and cool with a thick, ghostly mist curling up the cliffs through the coastal pine and cyprus. She leaned against the railing and peered into the darkness. All she could hear now was the crash and throb of the sea fifty feet below.

She heard nothing but the surf and her own breathing for several moments. Had she imagined it, then? She was about to chide herself for her overactive imagination and go inside to the children again when she heard it again, almost like a howl of pain.

Sophie peered into the darkness. Beyond the pool and back gardens, a long flight of wooden steps led down the steep slope to a small private beach. The sound seemed to have come from there. Clouds obscured the half moon but she thought she could just make out something huddled on the steps. A crouched silhouette.

The clouds shifted slightly and her gaze sharpened. It was a man out there wearing blue-striped pajamas, his shock of silver hair gleaming a pale, spectral white in the moonlight.

William! He must have wandered out of his apartment! Fear spurted through her. He could easily tumble down the steps, disoriented in the darkness. She paused for just an instant, then without another thought she hurried down the spiral ironwork stairs of the terrace and rushed across the wet grass, heedless of her bare feet.

When she reached him, William looked at her out of dazed eyes the same silver-blue as his son. The agonized grief on his face filled her with pity. The bitterness she had nurtured for so many years against this poor shell of a man seemed foolish now, so much wasted energy.

“I saw him,” he mumbled. “Peter came to my room. Where’s my son?”

He clutched at her T-shirt. “Shelly, where’s my boy? They said he was dead but I know he’s not.”

Despite the shiver down her spine, she managed to gently disengage his hands. The poor man was delusional. He had mistaken her for Shelly—not so unusual since they were identical twins. “It’s cold out here, Mr. Canfield. Let’s get you back to bed.”

After a moment he let her take his hand and lead him back to the house like a child. Just as they reached the door, Thomas burst through it, his hair messy and wild panic blazing in his eyes. He jerked to a stop when he saw them.

“What the hell are you doing out here with my father?”

Sophie bristled at his suspicious tone, his narrowed gaze, and slipped her hand from William’s grasp. “I saw him at the top of the steps leading to the beach. I was afraid he would tumble down. But I suppose if you don’t mind your father wandering around in the dark by himself, next time I see him I’ll mind my own business.”

“That’s impossible! There’s no way in hell he could unlock the doors without tripping the alarm.”

“You’re right,” she snapped. “I’m lying, you caught me. The truth is, I decided to wake up a frail old man and take him for a stroll around the garden at midnight, just for kicks.”

“Stop fighting,” William said suddenly, his voice sharp and clear. “Peter, I’m tired. I’m not in the mood for any more of your nonsense. I’m going to bed.”

He walked into the house, leaving them gaping after him. Tom raked a hand through his dark hair, messing it even more. “I’m sorry, Sophie. I shouldn’t have lashed out at you. It’s just been a hell of a day. I fell asleep in the study and when I woke up, I went to check on him before going to bed and panicked when I found him gone.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Look, I need to make sure he’s settled back in bed. Will you wait here for me?”

She studied him. “No. My feet are freezing. But I’ll wait for you in the kitchen.”

She was heating milk on the stove when he came in ten minutes later looking tired and dispirited.

“Would you like some hot cocoa?” she asked.

He leaned against the work island. “I haven’t had hot cocoa made the old-fashioned way since my mother died.”

“It’s much better this way.” It had always been her and Shelly’s comfort treat, something they shared on the nights when Sharon forgot to come home. She had been touched to find all the ingredients in a cupboard by the stove, as if Shelly used them often.

“It should only take a moment for the milk to heat. Is everything okay with your father?”

“Yes. He fell asleep as soon as I tucked him back in his bed. I can’t for the life of me figure out how he got out. His room has a double lock and an alarm that’s supposed to go off whenever the door is opened. He managed to work both locks and disengage the alarm. I suppose I’ll have to figure out a better system.”

“Does he do this often?”

“Not so much anymore. After he was first diagnosed, Peter and Shelly used to have to hide all the car keys or he would just take off and drive around all night. They wouldn’t have the first idea where to find him. That’s when we hired Maura to look after him.”

“It must be terrible for him.”

His shrug rippled the soft navy cotton of his shirt. “Strange as it seems, it’s been a little easier the more his disease progresses. The first few years were tough but he doesn’t really have an awareness anymore about what’s happening to him.”

He paused and turned his attention to her. “Look, I am sorry about snapping at you out there. I was acting on raw fear. I don’t know what might have happened if you hadn’t gone to his rescue. Thank you. It was lucky you happened to see him out there.”

“I heard him first. He was weeping, Tom. Horrible, wrenching sobs. He thought I was Shelly and he said something about seeing Peter in his room. He was out looking for him.”

“He thinks I’m Peter half the time. You heard him. Maura and I tried to explain about the accident but I don’t know how much is getting through. Maybe it’s better this way.”

How terrible it must be for Thomas to lose a little more of his father each day. With Peter’s death, the responsibility of caring for his father now fell completely on his shoulders.

She longed to comfort him but didn’t know how—and she wasn’t sure if he would welcome her efforts anyway—so she busied herself with beating the cocoa to a froth.

When it was finished, she poured a mug for him and one for herself and the two of them sipped their hot drinks in silence for a few moments.

Thomas finally broke the silence. “I saw your work on Costa Rica in Go! magazine this month. You really brought the country and the people to life with your photos.”

A compliment? From Thomas? Pleased and embarrassed—and unsure how to react to the unexpected comment—she focused on the murky cocoa in her mug with its swirls of lighter froth. “Thank you,” she murmured. “It’s a beautiful place. One of my favorites.”

“I imagine you have many favorites.”

She glanced up and found him watching her out of those silvery blue eyes. She managed to smile despite the little tug of awareness in her stomach. “It changes all the time. Usually, wherever I’m hanging my gear is my favorite.”

“Do you ever get tired of the wandering life?”

Once more she wasn’t sure how to answer him. She had found incredible success at her chosen field and she did love the thrill and adventure of discovering new places.

She enjoyed her life but she had never been able to imagine herself spending the rest of it constantly moving around like Sharon, never content to spend more than a week or two in one zip code.

If she thought about the future at all, eventually she saw herself settling down, maybe working for a newspaper or teaching photography at a liberal arts college somewhere.

All that had changed with Thomas’s late-night phone call to her hotel in Morocco. Now she had three children to think about.

“I’ve never known anything else,” she finally answered his question. “But I’m going to learn for the children’s sake.”

Thomas wanted to argue with her again about her complete conviction that she was staying here to care for Ali and the twins but he bit back the words. Not now, when they had achieved this tentative, fragile peace here in the stillness of the night.

She had rescued his father and it seemed churlish to pay her back by more bickering. As she had said earlier in the evening, there would be time to discuss the future when things settled down.

Besides, the few hours of sleep she must have found snuggling in Peter and Shelly’s room with the children didn’t look to be enough. She gave a huge yawn suddenly, then blinked at him, a faint, appealing brush of color on her fair cheeks.

“Sorry. It’s not the company, I promise.”

“Don’t worry about it. Get some rest. Come on, I’ll walk up with you and help carry the children back to their own beds.”

He followed her up the stairs, trying like hell not to notice the way the faded material of her jeans hugged her very shapely rear end. At Shelly and Peter’s master suite, they found the children still cuddled together under the covers, Ali in the middle with a twin on either side.

He remembered how Sophie had looked sleeping peacefully surrounded by children when he had checked on them earlier in the evening. She had made a soft, innocent picture, her gold-blond hair tangled on the pillow in a wild, sensuous cloud.

“I don’t think we should move them,” Sophie said quietly at his side. “If they can find some comfort here together, I don’t see the harm in it. I’ll sleep over there on the sofa in case they should wake.”

“There are a half-dozen guest rooms in this mausoleum where you would be far more comfortable.”

“The sofa looks fine. I’ve slept on worse. Anyway, I’d hate for them to wake up and not know where to find me.”

She smiled softly at him and for one astonishing moment, Thomas was overwhelmed by a wild urge to catch that smile with his mouth, to taste that smudge of cocoa at the corner of her lips.

He almost leaned forward but checked himself just in time, appalled at his idiocy where Sophie was concerned. “Good night,” he muttered stiffly, then stalked down the hall.

No, it definitely wasn’t going to work having her here. The sooner she figured that out, the better for both of them.

Chapter 4

His to-do list had taken on a life of its own.

Tom stared grimly down at the handwritten notes he had begun making soon after Peter’s death. He was up to a half-dozen pages of tasks and counting. If he started this very moment and worked twenty-four hours a day, he was afraid it would still take him several weeks to tie up all his brother’s loose ends.

During his three-year tenure as president and CEO of Canfield Investments, Peter had been fiercely aggressive, substantially expanding the family’s financial interests. It was going to take Tom weeks to unravel all the tangled threads.

Weeks of paperwork and meetings and conference calls. He couldn’t imagine anything worse.

Overwhelmed and disheartened by the job ahead of him, Tom gazed out the wide French doors of Peter’s ground-floor office. In one of the peninsula’s notoriously mercurial weather shifts, the unseasonable warmth of the last few days had vanished like the tide, leaving behind stormy gray skies and thick banks of coastal fog interspersed with heavy rains.

Even with the inclement weather, he couldn’t deny the view through the rain-streaked window was still appealing. The gardens of Seal Point were lush year-round thanks to the efforts of Manny Reyes and his sons, who had taken care of the grounds as long as Thomas could remember.

In the steel-gray light and slanting rain, the flowers burned with saturated color—purples and blues and reds that waved on the stiff sea breeze. He had always found peace here, even when he was a wild, rebellious teenager butting heads constantly with his father.

He frowned suddenly as something disturbed the pleasing scene. What on earth? A parade of umbrellas darted through the gardens, bobbing and weaving through the plants.

He stared in disbelief. What was Sophie doing, dragging the children outside on such a grim day? It was definitely her, though, under a bright yellow umbrella and leading a precession of smaller umbrellas like a mother duck with her babies.

What kind of lunacy was she up to this time? He stood at the window frowning as he studied them. He had his answer soon enough when Sophie and her entourage trotted into the poolhouse and emerged a few moments later without their colorful umbrellas but wearing terry-cloth robes and bathing suits.

He watched dumbstruck as all four of them—Sophie, Ali, Zach and Zoe—ran for the pool then leaped in, heedless of the rain pockmarking the surface.

She was crazy. She had to be.

Temperatures were probably only in the low fifties. It was a better day for curling up with a good book by the fireplace than for splashing around in a swimming pool.

The pool was heated, he had to admit, at a comfortable eighty degrees. Regardless, he still couldn’t imagine how she thought it would be good for the children to be outside in this rain. All he needed were three sick kids on his hands when Sophie decided to leave.

They were all going to catch their deaths.

This was just like Sophie, he fumed, thrusting open the door and marching outside.

She lived only for the moment and never bothered to think through the consequences of her actions, never thought about who would suffer those consequences.

While she had been flitting around the world taking her pictures, she likely had never given a single thought for her sister, or how Shelly might have worried herself sick sometimes about her twin traveling the globe alone.

It might be fine and dandy to take foolish risks when it was her own safety at stake. But she was supposed to be caring for three innocent children here—children who were ultimately his responsibility. He couldn’t sit by and let them suffer because of her thoughtlessness.

He hadn’t thought to grab an umbrella and the hard slap of the rain did nothing to cool his anger. It suddenly seemed terribly unfair of her to force him into the role of the bad guy. With each step, his temper flared higher until by the time he reached the pool, he was surprised steam wasn’t sizzling off his skin with each raindrop.

The delighted smiles of the children when they saw him didn’t help matters. They looked more light-hearted than he’d seen them all week. Instead of calming him, their obvious delight in this little adventure only added fuel to his ire.

“Hi, Uncle Tommy,” Zoe called out. “Want to go swimming with us? It’s fun!”

“No,” he said shortly. “I think everybody needs to go back inside and dry out.”

“But we just got in!” Zach protested. “We needed exercise. We’ve been cooped up all day. Sophie said so.”

“You can exercise inside where it’s warm and dry.”

“We won’t stay out here long,” Sophie said. “Just long enough to burn off a little energy.”

At her words he glanced over at her, treading water with Ali. Big mistake. She wore what on anyone else would probably be considered a perfectly respectable one-piece black bathing suit. But Sophie somehow made it look sleek and sensual. Even from the edge of the pool he could see her slim, curvy body straining the material of the suit.

If possible, he was even more attracted to her than he had been a decade ago, he realized with considerable chagrin.

She had been so young then, just coming into her beauty. The years had stamped strength and self-assurance onto her features, had turned a very lovely girl into a stunning woman.

He hated his own weakness where she was concerned. She had rejected him, made it quite clear she regretted their brief passion. Why else would she have left so suddenly?

And what kind of fool could still hunger for a woman who treated him like a pair of shoes she decided didn’t fit after all?

“In case it’s escaped your attention, it’s raining.”

She laughed. “Yes, I believe we’re aware of that. If we weren’t before, your drenched clothes probably would have given us a good clue. But we figured, what’s a little rain when we were just going to get wet out here in the swimming pool anyway? Right, guys?”

The children agreed with her, Ali with a quiet nod and the twins with giggles he hadn’t heard in days.

The sweetness of the sound made him bite back his sharp retort. He didn’t want to fight with her in front of the children. They didn’t need to see contention between the two people they had left. They were already uncertain, uneasy, about their future.

He gazed at them paddling in the water—if not happily then at least with more enthusiasm than they had shown toward anything else since their parents’ deaths.

Part of him wanted to let them continue to splash and play, to work off some of their tangled emotions in the water. But he knew he couldn’t jeopardize their health and safety just because they seemed to be having a good time.

He was trying his damnedest to think like a parent and he couldn’t imagine his own parents ever letting him or Pete swim in the rain on a day like this.

“Time to get out.” He used the same tone of voice he would with a recalcitrant subordinate under his command. “Everybody. Come on, time to get back into your robes and head inside. You can swim tomorrow if it stops raining.”

Unused to that stern tone from him, the children looked to Sophie for guidance. Her gaze flickered toward them and then back to him, cool challenge in her eyes.

“We’ll be out in a few moments. No more than fifteen, I promise.”

Why did she have to be so difficult? This would be much easier if she didn’t insist on being stubborn about having her way. Maybe it would be better if she left sooner rather than later. As long as she decided to stick around, he feared she would fight him at every turn.

He wanted to argue with her but he was hamstrung by the pleading in the children’s eyes. Thomas groaned at himself. He was going to have to become a hell of a lot tougher if he was going to do a halfway decent job as a father-figure.

But maybe the week after their parents died wasn’t the best time to be a hardass.

“Fifteen minutes, then you all need to go inside the house to get warm. Sophie, I would like to speak with you in the library when you’re finished here.”

The nod she gave him in reply was just as curt as his own voice had been.

“Are you sure you don’t want to swim, Uncle Tommy?” Zach asked eagerly. “You’re already wet. All you need is a swimming suit.”

Despite his annoyance with Sophie, he managed a smile for his nephew. “Another time, bud. I have work to do.”

The sooner Sophie decided to hit the road again, the better for all of them, he thought again as he marched back into the house, his shoes sloshing with every step.

Once she was flitting around the world with her cameras, he and the children would be able to establish a routine that didn’t involve afternoon swims in the middle of a rainstorm or whatever other crazy scheme she might come up with.

And once she left, he should have no problem shaking this ridiculous attraction seething under his skin.

His temper still smoldered and hissed long after he changed into dry clothes and returned to the library Peter used as an office. He tried to immerse himself in the piles of work demanding his attention but he felt too prickly to make much headway.

Instead, he watched the four of them play in the pool through the rain-streaked glass. They seemed to be involved in a game of tag that had all of them grinning as they darted through the water.

Sophie seemed to be spending an inordinately long time being It, he noticed. She did little but pursue the children, her lithe body cutting through the water with grace and agility.

He couldn’t hear them from inside but he was certain Ali and the twins were all laughing, genuinely enjoying themselves.

They were acting like children, for the first time since he’d had to break the news to them about Peter and Shelly. Despite his best efforts, since that day he hadn’t been able to coax more than those heartbreaking, sad little half smiles out of them.

Just as the clock ticked down the fifteen minutes she had said they would remain outside, he watched her gather the children around and say something to them, then the four of them climbed out of the pool and rushed toward the poolhouse for robes and umbrellas.

A few moments later they headed for the house, their faces bright and rosy—from the cold or the exercise, he couldn’t tell.

With a frown, Thomas turned back to the papers spread across the desk and pretended to concentrate while the ormolu clock on the mantel ticked down the moments.

Thirty-three minutes later—not that he was counting or anything—a knock sounded at the door.

Without waiting for a reply, Sophie opened it and walked into the office dressed in jeans and a soft rose-colored sweater, her hair captured in a still-damp ponytail.

His reaction to her was as instant and powerful as it was unwelcome.

She made a big show of giving an elaborate curtsy. “I believe you rang for me, my lord.”

He glared at her pert tone. That was exactly her problem. Sophie thought she could laugh her way through life, that the world was one big adventure created only for her.

Ten years ago she had glowed with enthusiasm for life, wanting to taste every delicious morsel of excitement the world had to offer. She had been hungry to explore, to embrace, to experience.

Had he been just another of those little adventures of hers? The thought didn’t sit well with him. Not well at all.

“I’d like to know something. Can you tell me how in the hell you have survived on your own all these years with absolutely not one smidgeon of anything resembling common sense?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Dumb luck?”

“I believe it. What were you thinking, Sophie?”

With complete disregard for the paperwork spread across it, she perched on the edge of the desk, far too close for his comfort.

He was furious with himself for the instinctive way he leaned back—and even more so when he thought he saw a hint of amusement play at the corner of her mouth, as if she enjoyed making him uncomfortable.

“I’m assuming this lecture has to do with our little swim party.”

“This has to do with you not giving a thought to the consequences of your actions, as usual. This has to do with the complete irresponsibility of taking three young children out in a cold, hard rain to swim without giving a single thought to their health and welfare.”

“Are you finished?” she asked, her voice icy.

He paused long enough to look at her and realized with some shock that she was angry, too. He had never seen her mad. Amused, entranced, aroused, but never mad.

He sat back in Peter’s chair. “Not even close.”

“Too bad. You’ve had your say. Now I get a turn. You’re completely wrong, Thomas. Believe it or not, I did consider the wisdom of taking them out in the rain and I did consider the possibility they might catch cold.”

“But you took the risk anyway.”

“I took the risk. And it was worth every moment. You were watching them. I saw you in here standing at the window. You must have seen the same thing I did. They were laughing. Smiling and laughing and behaving like children instead of quiet little wraiths.”

He couldn’t deny the truth of her words. “Yes, I saw them. But they won’t be laughing when they all are sick in bed with pneumonia. What will you do if they get sick?”

“I’ll make them chicken soup and tuck them into their beds and read them every story in the house. But I’d rather see them laugh and splash and catch cold than shrivel away into quiet, spiritless little mice.”

All right, so maybe he had been a little more angry than the situation demanded. Perhaps she hadn’t been completely irresponsible after all. He sighed heavily, reluctant to admit he might have overreacted. “Couldn’t you have found another way to raise their spirits?”

“Maybe. But that was the first thing that came to me. They were restless and upset this morning. I don’t know if it was the rain or reality finally sinking in that Peter and Shelly are truly gone but they needed something to distract them, some way to work off that snarl of emotions. Swimming seemed like a good idea. But perhaps next time I’ll try to think of something else. Jumping on the beds, maybe, or timing which of us can slide down the bannister the fastest.”

He shuddered, imagining the mayhem she could wreak if let loose. Sophie only gave one of those low, sexy laughs of hers he remembered so well, one of those laughs that always used to strum through him.

“I’m doing my best, Tom,” she said, sobering. “I’m sorry for everyone’s sake that I’m not better at this, that I don’t really know what I’m doing with the children. But I am trying.”

For how long?

The question burned in his mind but he didn’t voice it. How long before she packed up her gear and caught a plane away from Seal Point, leaving the children with yet another loss to struggle through?

He couldn’t ask, not when she gazed at him with such earnest entreaty in her green eyes.

“Fine,” he said tersely. “But no more swimming in the middle of a rainstorm.”

She gave him a mock salute. “Aye-aye, captain.”

“That’s lieutenant.”

“Right. Sorry.” She smiled and for a moment the usual tension that writhed between them was gone.

He wanted to bask in that smile for a while and forget the past and all his unanswered questions.

But he also wanted to think he wasn’t quite the idiot he’d been a decade ago. He forced himself to lean back farther in Peter’s leather chair. “How are the children now?” he asked with studied casualness.

“Grand. At least they were when I left them. Mrs. Cope popped a big batch of buttery popcorn and they’re eating it while they watch an old movie. Swaddled in plenty of warm blankets, I might add.”

“Now that sounds like just the thing for a stormy Saturday afternoon like this one.”

She studied him for a moment and he wondered if she could tell the effort it cost him to pretend indifference to her. “Why don’t you join us, Tom? The children would be thrilled to make room for you on the couch. You look as if you could use a break.”

Was it that obvious how much he dreaded dealing with the thousand details awaiting his attention? Her invitation held undeniable appeal. It was far too tempting.

He glanced at the small mountain range of paperwork. “Thanks, but I’ve got to put some order to at least some of this chaos by Monday when I’m meeting with Peter’s attorney.”

She straightened from the desk, her lithe body unfurling like one of Manny Reyes’s flowers. “Okay. But we’ll save some popcorn for you if you change your mind.”

To his vast relief, she headed for the door.

“Thanks,” he said before she reached it. “Oh, and I’m, uh, sorry for jumping on you like that earlier.”

Her eyebrows lifted a little at his apology, then she offered him another swift, dazzling smile and walked out.

He gazed at the closed door for a long time after she left. For a moment there, she had reminded him so painfully of the woman he had known a decade ago. The girl, really. She hadn’t been much more than that, barely twenty.

He had been twenty-four, new to the Coast Guard and stationed in Juneau, Alaska. His two-week furlough happened to coincide with Ali’s birth so he’d flown to the peninsula to meet his new niece and spend a few days at Seal Point.

He had expected a quiet, uneventful trip home.

Instead, he’d found Sophie and had fallen for her like a Sikorsky with a bent rotor.

He hadn’t expected the instant and fierce attraction between him and the sister of his kid brother’s sweet new wife. But she had been completely irresistible—fresh and exuberant and intoxicating.

He had fought his attraction to her for days, reluctant to start what he knew could only be a fling. What else could it have been? She lived in New York, he’d been stationed in Alaska. Besides the five thousand miles between them, he wasn’t looking for a relationship, especially not with a twenty-year-old kid just beginning to explore the world.

But then he’d kissed her on a dawn-drenched cliff overlooking the Pacific and all the arguments he had spent days constructing collapsed like a sandcastle at high tide.

He had fallen for her hard, hadn’t been able to help himself.

He thought she had returned his feelings. She had kissed him and laughed with him and shared her dreams, her soul, her body.

And then she had left him without a word, only hours after they made love for the first and only time.

Tom jerked his mind away from that particular memory, of silky skin and soft sighs and eager kisses. He didn’t need to dwell on something so transitory, so ephemeral.

Their moments together had been one tiny slice of time. Something that obviously had little meaning to her or she wouldn’t have walked away so abruptly or offered excuse after excuse not to talk to him when he tried to contact her after she returned to New York.

He should be doing his best to keep a safe emotional distance between them, not dredging through the murky waters of their past.

It wouldn’t be easy, he was very much afraid. Not when something about Sophie Beaumont still called to him as strongly as ever.

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