My Three Girls (Harlequin Super Romance)

by Floyd, Susan

  Her face grew hotter when she realized she’d been clutching his arm. She abruptly dropped her hand and swung it behind her back.

  “Maybe you should explain a few things,” she suggested, glancing at the girls, all of whom were awake now.

  Instead of responding, he watched the girls get off the couch and move over to Dana—who tried not to appear startled when Ollie’s arm wrapped around her thigh.

  “So, who do we have here?” he asked. Apparently, he realized that his glowering wasn’t helping, because he crouched to give them a better look at him and kept his voice even and modulated. It sounded like a voice he used to calm, to hypnotize. Dana was impressed. She didn’t want to be, but she was.

  The same couldn’t be said for the girls. They didn’t say a word.

  “I’m your Uncle Brady.” He tried again with a smile, addressing Ollie but looking at Karen. “I’m sure you don’t remember me. You were just a baby when I last saw you. You sure have grown.”

  Silence.

  “I guess your mom is gone?”

  Dana had to give him points for trying. She prodded Karen, but the girl wasn’t going to talk. Her gray eyes were huge as she sent Dana a silent plea to intercede.

  “She went to a conference,” Dana said, looking at Karen for confirmation.

  Karen nodded and tugged on Dana’s arm. “Miss Ritchie,” she whispered.

  “Yes, Karen?” Dana kept her voice low, though she knew Deputy Moore could hear every word they were saying.

  “Don’t let him take us.” Her face had turned white.

  “He’s not going to hurt you, Karen. He’s family.” Dana’s soothing words had the opposite effect on the girl. All the stoicism Karen had shown earlier was suddenly replaced with deep and uncontrollable sobs. Jean quickly started whimpering in sympathy.

  The deputy looked at Dana for help, but she didn’t know what to do.

  “D-don’t let h-him take us, Miss Ri-ritchie,” Karen begged, her pleas coming out in an agonized rush. “We’ll be good. We’ll be so very good f-for you. We’ll do everything you say and we’ll help around the house. W-we won’t be any trouble.”

  Biting her lip, Dana reached out a hand and gave Karen’s shoulder an awkward pat. “Karen, I know this is a scary situation for you…” Even to her, her words were meaningless. When had she became so empty, so devoid of compassion that she couldn’t gather a scared child into her arms and comfort her? Dana felt as if she had a dry piece of bread stuck in her throat. This was how it started. It only took one hug to open a heart. No matter how much Dana wanted to make this situation right, she couldn’t.

  She backed away, feeling as alone as Karen looked. She whispered into Ollie’s ear. “I think Karen really needs a hug from you and Jean, don’t you?”

  Ollie let go of Dana’s leg and flung her short arms around her older sister. Jean followed suit and together, the three girls sobbed.

  “Can you keep them tonight?” a voice asked, low in her ear. She hadn’t even seen him move, but he was right next to her and Dana felt her face flush under his steady scrutiny.

  What a cold woman he must think she was. She turned away from him, not too numb to feel a tremendous amount of regret about that. She crossed her arms and pressed them closely to her chest to keep control of any feelings that threatened to erupt from within.

  “I think they’ve been through enough,” he continued, just for her to hear.

  Dana could only nod as those unwanted emotions easily made their way through her barriers.

  “You’ve been through a lot as well,” he observed.

  “I’m fine.” Dana made her tone brisk and stepped away from him. She straightened her shoulders.

  “You don’t look fine.”

  “I’m fine,” she repeated. “When you know me better, you’ll realize I look like this all the time.”

  BRADY STARED at the woman in front of him, her body so stiff that it seemed as if she would shatter with the smallest of impacts. No one could look this way all the time. Her jaw was rigid. Her face was pale, her hands clenched into fists that hardened the muscles on her forearms. It seemed to take everything out of her to simply nod.

  “It’s pretty late,” Brady said, projecting his voice in order to be heard over the crying. “I think it’s better if we found a place for the girls to sleep here. What do you think, Miss Ritchie?”

  “Yes.” The demons she was fighting were gone, and she was back to business. She reached out to the children. “You’ll be fine here tonight.”

  Brady watched the schoolteacher stretch tentative fingers toward Karen’s hair. Her hand trembled as if she was afraid she would be burned from the contact. To help her, Brady knelt next to Ollie and put gentle hands on her tiny shoulders. She looked up, tears still in her eyes, but she wasn’t afraid of him.

  “I’ll show you where the spare bedroom is,” the schoolteacher said.

  Ollie shook her head and hung on to Karen tighter.

  With ease, Brady extracted the youngest girl from the trio and lifted her up.

  “Oooh!” Ollie exclaimed with a delighted smile.

  “Let go of her!” Karen jumped up, trying to grab Ollie. “You’re not taking her anywhere.”

  “It’s late,” Miss Ritchie said. “Your uncle is just taking Ollie to bed.”

  Karen stopped jumping, uncertain. “Bed? Here?”

  “Yes. Where you should have been hours ago.”

  “So does that mean we’re not going with him?”

  Brady tried not to feel stung by the relief in Karen’s tone.

  “For now. It’s too late for you to go with your uncle. Your mom may make it back by tomorrow. So it’s probably better for you to be here tonight.”

  Karen looked relieved and then turned to Brady with her arms open. “Give her to me. We can put ourselves to bed,” she said. After he complied, Jean held on to the back of Karen’s shirt, and the trio made their way down the hall. Ollie looked back over her sister’s shoulder at him.

  “G’night.” She gave him a small wave with her fingers.

  “Good night. I’ll see you in the morning,” he promised.

  Karen turned in front of a bedroom door. “That’s okay. We’ll be fine. You don’t have to come back.” With that announcement, she and her sisters went into the room, Miss Ritchie behind them.

  While he waited, he called dispatch and let them know the situation was taken care of, but that he would be at the residence for a while gathering information. He looked at his watch. He only had two hours left on this shift. The call complete, he took a more careful look at the small house. He studied the walls that were filled with a variety of construction-paper artwork. Lopsided snowmen shared equal space with tissue-paper mosaics. In the corner, there was a neat stack of egg and milk cartons. There was also a full box of cans stripped of their labels. He wouldn’t have to be told that a teacher lived in this house.

  He heard a sound behind him and turned to find the schoolteacher standing in the doorway. Her hands were behind her back and she stared at him with those dark eyes of hers. There was a pain in them that he couldn’t understand and, for some reason, wanted to. He’d noticed there was no ring on her finger and remembered that the girls called her “Miss Ritchie.” Why was such a young woman holed up in such an isolated place?

  She seemed to be waiting for him to say something, so he cleared his throat. “Well, thank you.” It didn’t hurt to start with a thank-you.

  “I can’t keep the girls.” The words were surprising in their bluntness.

  Before he could discover what had motivated her to say them, Brady had to know what had happened to Bev. “Do you mind going through how the girls happened to be in your care in the first place?”

  “Would you like some coffee?” she asked, obviously realizing this wasn’t going to be a quick process.

  “Yes,” Brady answered easily. The task would give her something to do. Then she might relax enough to give him the kind of information he neede
d.

  Brady watched her measure the coffee and put it into a filter, her movements careful and precise. He tried not to smile when she pulled from the cupboard the smallest coffeemaker he’d ever seen. He could down that much coffee at break fast alone. She obviously wasn’t addicted. She glanced up and their eyes met just for a split second. Brady swallowed hard. For a complete stranger, this schoolteacher had the oddest way of looking right through him.

  She hurriedly plugged the coffeemaker into the wall before walking from behind the counter. “Why don’t you sit down,” she offered as she pointed to the table that separated the kitchen from the living room. “The coffee will only take a few minutes.”

  Brady sat, and she joined him, placing her forearms on the wooden table. She looked ready to answer questions.

  “Why don’t you tell me what happened?” He made his voice as friendly and conversational as he could. The tone worked, because he could sense that she relaxed a little once she realized he wasn’t going to grill her.

  She said, her words stark, “Their mother came by after school today and told me she didn’t have a baby-sitter. She had to attend a conference this weekend and asked me to look after the girls. I told her no.”

  “Is that something you did often for Bev?”

  She shook her head. “Never. I don’t baby-sit my students. I have them from seven forty-five to two-thirty. That’s all. No other parent has ever asked me to.”

  “But you have the children.” He sat straighter. He could see a thin shield of defensiveness creep over her.

  “Yes.”

  “So why don’t you tell me how you came to take care of the children?”

  The question was straightforward enough, but the schoolteacher took a long time to answer. “I found them.”

  Brady felt a chill run down his spine. “Where?”

  “Sitting on the picnic table.” Her arm gestured in the general direction of the schoolhouse. “I didn’t finish working until nearly nine o’clock.”

  “On a Friday?” he asked skeptically.

  She flushed. “I have a lot of work to do. I’m not just the teacher. I’m the principal, too. I’ve got a ton of forms to fill out.”

  “No offense,” he apologized hastily. “I just thought an attractive woman like yourself would have plans on a Friday night.”

  Her lips twisted into a wry smile. “There’s not a lot of action around here after hours. What man in his right mind would drive an hour for a date with a woman who spends her day talking to children?”

  Brady would consider it. If those eyes asked him, he’d consider doing almost anything for her.

  “The children were sitting out there, waiting for me,” she continued. “Thank goodness, it’s a fairly warm night and that it was me. There’s not a lot of traffic, but those girls were unsupervised for several hours. Anything could have happened to them.”

  DANA CLOSED HER EYES as the realization struck her. Anything. Anything could have happened to them and she wouldn’t have known. Some stranger could have abducted them while they waited for her. Guilt pulsed through her.

  “That isn’t your fault,” the deputy said.

  She lifted her eyes to his as she felt slapped by terrible images from the evening news. There was no censure in his face, just empathy.

  He continued on in that deep, rumbling voice. “Anything else?”

  She didn’t want to like talking to him. She didn’t want to like the fact that this strange man at her kitchen table made her more comfortable than anyone else she’d met since coming to teach here.

  She started to feel sick. She’d been awake too long and she desperately needed sleep, but she was so keyed up that she knew she wouldn’t be able to. She swallowed, pressing her hands together so hard she saw the veins pop out on her forearms. She told herself to relax, but then jumped out of her chair to pour the coffee.

  “Cream or sugar?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “That’s easy,” Dana commented. She held out the cup.

  He wrapped his large hand around it and her hand as well. The cup nearly disappeared in his palm and her fingers felt engulfed by his. Dana couldn’t stop looking at his hand, the unyielding, tanned skin and the prominent veins that traveled up his forearm to disappear in the dark hair. She tugged her hand away and sat down, pushing the chair back a foot or two to give herself some breathing room. Suddenly, it was very hot in the house.

  “Any idea whether she would go north or south?” His eyes were fixed on her forearms. A small crease appeared between his eyebrows, but his expression remained pleasant.

  Dana ran her tongue over her teeth. “I don’t think you understand. I don’t know enough about Mrs. Moore to really know where she went. I’m not sure anymore if it was a conference she had to attend. Maybe it was a meeting.”

  “Do you remember what Bev was wearing?” He wasn’t writing, but Dana was certain that he would remember every word.

  Dana looked at him in surprise. “Yes.”

  “Good.” Dana’s heart thumped as he flashed an even set of teeth at her. He prompted her again, “What was she wearing?”

  Dana tried to remember and spoke slowly. “A really nice suit. She had high heels and perfume on. Lots of makeup.”

  “Do you know the color of the suit?”

  “Taupe.”

  “Taupe?”

  “Taupe linen, with a cream silk camisole.”

  “Oh.” His expression was puzzled.

  “Taupe’s like a khaki brown without the green. Tan, with more gray,” she explained.

  “Anything else?”

  The pause extended for much longer than she expected. He was giving her time to think, but she was only drawing a blank. She wasn’t a very good witness. “I can’t think of anything.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Except for the occasional parent interviews, I don’t speak to Mrs. Moore beyond hello, how are you.” Dana stood up, feeling agitated, and then, realizing that her behavior was rude, sat right back down and clasped her hands together.

  “I thought this was a small school.”

  “What does that have to do with it?” She was starting to get irritated, as if he held her responsible for his sister-in-law’s disappearance.

  “I thought at smaller schools pretty much everyone knew everyone else’s business. The schoolteacher especially.”

  She felt her back stiffen. “I am not a gossip.” She was beyond irritated. She unclenched her hands and noticed bright red marks on her hands. She crossed her arms.

  “I’m not asking for gossip. I’m asking for anything about Bev that could give us some insight into where she might have gone. Would you say that she was a devoted mother?”

  Dana had to admire the finesse with which he spoke. Anyone could have been missing by the tone of his voice. Not a close family member. She cleared her throat. “Um, do you want the truth or the politically correct answer?”

  BRADY STARED at the schoolteacher. She was alternately vulnerable yet fierce. Compassionate yet so reserved. However, it was the troubled look in her eyes that disturbed him the most.

  “What’s the difference?” he asked, making his tone light enough to match her dry one.

  “The politically correct answer would be that she allows her children to be very independent.”

  “And the truth?”

  “She forgets them. They’re here really early and are always the last ones to get picked up. I’ve had to take them home a couple of times, when I wasn’t able to get Mrs. Moore on the phone…” Her voice trailed off and she avoided making eye contact, telling him she thought she’d said too much.

  “Is there more?”

  Dana studied her nails for a moment before answering. “No.”

  “Are you sure?” There was something in her voice that made him press her.

  “Yes.”

  Brady waited. He knew there was more, probably more than she wanted to articulate. When another minute passed and she s
till hadn’t spoken, he braced himself. This wasn’t a good sign.

  Finally she said carefully, her eyes still on her hands, each word precise, “The children are neglected. I can’t prove it, but there’s something about them that makes me think their home life is less than secure.” She looked up at him. “Their clothes aren’t clean. They aren’t clean. They look neat, but they’re not clean. I don’t have anything to support my feelings, though I’m sure that if I were to put them in the tub, it’d be the first bath they’d had in a long time.”

  Brady didn’t want to hear this. He didn’t want to know that Carson’s little girls were neglected. He felt a familiar stab of guilt that he’d used layers of rationalizations to dull. It didn’t hurt any less.

  “Do you think Mrs. Moore has abandoned them?” Dana asked, leaning forward. Her dark eyes were intense and Brady felt as if they saw into the deepest, ugliest part of him. He looked away. She couldn’t know. Besides, she had her own secrets. Who was she to probe?

  But he had to tell her something. How much?

  She continued, “I don’t know anything about their father. Out of state?”

  He was embarrassed for Bev, for the girls, for himself. Bev had made it abundantly clear that when Carson “left her,” as she put it, she didn’t want anything more to do with his family. But knowing that didn’t stop him from taking this personally. If Dana Ritchie was right about the girls being neglected, he was responsible.

  “My brother is in prison.” The words came out more bluntly than he intended. This schoolteacher was the first person who’d ever heard him utter those words, and he felt shame course through his body. Brady wasn’t his brother’s keeper, but he should have helped Carson more.

  Dana didn’t blink. “Oh.”

  He emptied the coffee cup and studied the pattern on it. Apples.

  “That explains some things about the children. How long has he been in prison?” Her voice was matter-of-fact. She didn’t react with the horror that he expected.

  IT TOOK SO LONG for the man sitting across from her to answer that Dana began to wonder if he ever would. But she knew she had to be patient. This clearly wasn’t easy for him.