Tender Loving Care

by Jennifer Greene

  She didn’t like that hum. In the past few days, she hadn’t had much time to brood about it though. Via long-distance calls to Washington, she had arranged for a leave of absence from her job and asked a friend to send some clothes and close up her apartment. Then there’d been all that packing to do, the legal rigmarole of Janet and Jonathan’s estate to attend to, and the need to hire a woman to care for Mrs. Gregor. Sexual vibrations were something Zoe simply hadn’t had time for, and she kept hoping they’d go away, like bogeymen in the daylight.

  A little attraction wouldn’t be nearly so upsetting if Rafe didn’t keep confusing her. Ever since that long talk of theirs on the first night, she’d caught him looking at her often-a pensive frown thrown in here, an intense studying look thrown in there, a lazy crooked smile tossed in at other times. And suddenly, he was more patient with her than he was with the twins.

  His patience was annoying. Both their worlds had been turned upside down because of the twins, not just hers. She’d never expected Rafe to be such a brick all the time. He’d made it darn clear from the beginning that kids couldn’t possibly enhance his lifestyle, and he certainly had every right to grumble a little. Didn’t the man ever feel any anxiety? Zoe was frantic, ever so anxious to do right by the twins. While Rafe was-well, frankly, remarkably cheerful for a man suddenly stuck with three unwanted houseguests.

  And then there was that hum she felt whenever he came near her.

  He’d mentioned a woman in his life; she should be taking care of all his hums. In fact, Zoe had in mind making damn sure he wasn’t deprived of his lady’s companionship for long just because of the urchins.

  She wished desperately that she were back in Washington state, safe and sound with her three-hundred-pound breaching babies, her whales. Those she knew she could handle. But Rafe’s gentle blue eyes, which kept settling on her-those she wasn’t at all sure she could handle.

  “Zoe, Montana isn’t as wild as it looks,” Rafe said carefully.

  “Did you hear me criticizing anything?” The thing was to concentrate on the boys and their relationship with Rafe. Only a fool would imagine a hum at a time like this. She clamped her chin over a bag so she could carry one more thing.

  “You like the house?”

  “Love it,” she said blithely.

  “You might if you looked at it. Try the view to the east.” His tone was dry.

  “I saw, while we were driving up that road…” Or she would have, if her eyes hadn’t been squeezed shut. While praying, Zoe always closed her eyes. Her boots crunched in the snow as she staggered with the weight of the packages she was carrying. Sun dazzling her eyes, she squinted to get her first glimpse of his tall A-frame home and then rhapsodized, “Lots of room for kids in there.”

  Juggling gear, she made the last of four trooping toward the door. Out of breath and feeling awkward-darn it, this was a strange man’s house-she stepped in. Where Rafe dropped his armloads, she dropped hers.

  “I’ll get the rest,” he told her. “You relax and look around. After lunch, I’ll go into town, get some groceries and see if your clothes have arrived yet.”

  “Fine.” She tossed him a whimsical, watch-me-cope smile. And as soon as he was back outside, she straightened and took her first look around. Over and above the twins’ whoops of enthusiasm, she could see at a glance that she had her work cut out for her.

  His distinctly single-man domain didn’t strike her as an ideal environment for nursery school-age boys. Not that she knew anything about that subject, but common sense was common sense. After quickly shifting the stack of men’s magazines face down on his desk, she narrowed her eyes on the wet bar. Somehow there had to be a way to lock that up? And his stereo system, too; it included at least a dozen knobs, unfortunately all bright and fascinating and at a height the little ones could reach.

  Convincing herself that her curiosity was only for the children’s sake, Zoe let her gaze skim the rest of the room. The living room had a cathedral ceiling with an arched wall of glass overlooking the mountains, and everywhere she looked, she saw the man’s particular brand of sensuality. Rafe liked blue, comfort and a variety of textures. A white rock fireplace begged for a roaring fire; his carpet was thick and plush and made for bare feet; and two seductively soft couches were cushioned in blue velvet corduroy.

  The kitchen was paneled in oak and accented with more of that cool blue he liked. She found Brie, steaks, apples and beer in the refrigerator. On the counter by the toaster, she discovered a lovely pair of black silk panties, which she casually stuffed in her back pocket before the twins could see them.

  Her spirits promptly improved. Not that it wasn’t easy to believe there really was a woman in his life, but the panties were such nice proof. He certainly couldn’t be looking for another lady friend if his kitchen was already stocked with panties, so worrying about those thoughtful glances he kept shooting her was obviously unnecessary.

  She found a bottle of women’s cologne in the bathroom off the kitchen, another nerve soother; then she poked her head into the last two downstairs rooms. One was a laundry filled with piled-high clothes and heavily laden coat hooks. The other was a game room with a pool table all set up to play and a television with a huge screen. The kids would love it.

  The upstairs wasn’t as large. The first bedroom she peeked into would do for the twins, she decided, and evidently they’d already discovered it: The plain brown spreads on the twin beds had already been well trampled. Zoe wandered past the bathroom until she came to what was apparently the only other bedroom.

  Rafe’s room had its own balcony, a corner fireplace and a wall of mirrored closet doors. The king-sized bed was built on a pedestal and flanked by stereo speakers. He obviously liked music. In this setting, she could already hear Ravel, and promptly felt another vague attack of nerves.

  Ravel and Rafe together struck her as a dangerous combination…and life was not going to go too smoothly if there were only two bedrooms. Maybe he could sort of camp out permanently at his lady’s house? Except that Zoe needed Rafe here, if he was ever going to form a bond with the kids.

  Only how, exactly, was she supposed to convince the man that he loved children when his whole lifestyle was clearly set up for nightly romps with a woman who wore black silk panties?

  “Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful,” she exclaimed to Rafe when she found him crouched at a low cupboard in the kitchen. The four-year-olds were perched on the counter, heels swinging.

  “You like the place? Zoe, what the hell-heck are we going to give them for lunch?”

  “Macaroni and cheese!”

  “We can’t have that until we’ve been to the store, guys.” Rafe pushed back from the counter. “How about mushroom soup?”

  “Yuck.”

  “Double yuck.”

  He nodded weakly. “You like cheese?” he asked them.

  He got a matched set of shaking heads.

  “French onion soup?”

  “Nope. Snookums, we’re hungry.”

  “Scrambled eggs?” she suggested.

  “That’s for breakfast!”

  “Well, it just turned into a lunch dish,” she said brightly, and gave Rafe a look that said See how easy it is to get along with them? Aren’t they adorable? Don’t you just love them? Before their banging feet drove her nuts, she lifted the boys off the counter and urged them to try out the TV in the game room.

  At about the same instant they vanished, she felt Rafe’s hand sliding intimately into the back pocket of her jeans. Heat curled instantly around the curve of her hip. She turned so fast that his hand ended up on intimate territory. It took him a moment to remove it; and then, dangling from his fingers were the black silk panties.

  “Now, don’t be embarrassed,” she said in a rush. “I just didn’t think the kids should see them. I mean, you’re entitled-”

  “I’m not embarrassed,” he interjected.

  Well, Zoe was! She turned abruptly to the refrigerator, where nice cold air
fanned her cheeks as she reached for the eggs. “Any time you want to go out for an evening, I’ll stay here with the kids,” she assured him.

  “Nice of you to offer.”

  “Yes. Well, you already told me you were involved with someone…”

  “It was never that serious a relationship, Zoe.”

  Her thumb bit into a shell. Sticky egg oozed over her fingers, and now she’d have to pick out the bits of shell. Where she came from, a woman didn’t leave her panties around unless it was a damned serious relationship.

  “Why don’t I scramble the eggs while you make out a grocery list? I haven’t any idea what to buy for two growing boys.”

  Neither did Zoe. “I’ll cook. You write the list. Meanwhile, what are we going to give them to drink?”

  “Iced tea?”

  She shook her head. “Caffeine. They’ll make do with water, I guess, until we can get some milk.” She winced. The boys had clearly discovered the volume control on the television. “I’ll take the couch,” she said casually.

  “No, you won’t. You’ll sleep in my room; I’ll be comfortable enough downstairs.”

  She shook her head firmly. “I have no intention of putting you out of your bed.” He needed his sleep. Anybody was grouchy without sleep, and being grouchy wouldn’t help him form a strong emotional bond with the boys.

  Suddenly looming over her shoulder, Rafe said gently, “Don’t you think that’s a bit much food?”

  She glanced down at the frying pan. A dozen egg yolks stared back at her. Had she really cracked all the eggs? “I’m starving,” she said weakly.

  “Ah. For a minute there, I thought you were nervous.”

  “Not at all.” She scrambled, fast.

  He leaned back against the counter, watching her. “Because there’s no need to be nervous. This whole situation’s tough on both of us, and maybe you especially. We barely know each other, and neither one of us knows a darn thing about kids…We can just take it one thing at a time, Zoe.”

  “Of course we can.”

  He paused. “And I do understand that it’s extra rough on you, feeling about children the way you do…”

  “It’s not that I dislike them. It’s just-”

  “I understand.”

  “I can’t help it, Rafe. I know it must sound cold and uncaring to admit flat-out that I can’t handle being around them, but…” Her tone turned to a whisper. Parker was shuffling toward the doorway. He’d lost a shoe, and his lower lip was trembling. Zoe sent the spatula flying and rushed over to him. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”

  “Where’s blankie?”

  “Blankie?”

  “My blankie. My yellow blankie. You promised you wouldn’t forget to pack it!”

  “Oh, the blanket! We’ve got it, honey. Just a minute.” She hustled into the front hall, where their gear lay in untidy piles, looking like storm-shelter debris. When she finally found the ragged blanket, she hurried back to the kitchen. Parker folded his arms around it, his grin monumentally huge. She couldn’t help but drop a kiss on his forehead, and then he pattered off back to the television.

  Rafe was slowly finishing her egg-scrambling project. He lifted his head, let his eyes dawdle over her face until she flushed. “As I was starting to say, I understand why you don’t want to be around children. Although I really think you don’t need to worry too hard that they’re going to sense your ‘cold and uncaring’ attitude,” he said gravely.

  Too gravely. She stiffened. “Look, that was completely different, for heaven’s sake. They’ve just lost their parents. Naturally, I’m going to do everything I can to make sure they feel loved! That doesn’t mean-”

  “Of course it doesn’t, Zoe,” he said smoothly, and changed the subject. “If you don’t want to stay here alone with the twins, we can all go to town together.”

  “Unnecessary. The boys and I will get along here just fine.” His leaving struck her as the next best thing to chicken soup. She needed some time to gather her addled wits in privacy. And she could make a few careful changes in his house, get the kids’ gear all neatly put away, change into some other clothes and relax away from those thoughtful blue eyes.

  Four hours later, Rafe turned the knob on the front door. Behind him stood a briefcase filled with work he’d collected, a package of Zoe’s clothes delivered by UPS and six bags of groceries.

  He’d barely reached for the first bag when Zoe came flying toward him from the kitchen.

  “You’re home!” she said jubilantly.

  His eyebrows lifted as he straightened. A few hours earlier, he’d gotten the definite impression she’d been glad to see him go. Now she was looking at him as if he were a god. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing, nothing at all! I’ll help you carry all that.”

  The hallway still looked like an obstacle course. Not that he’d expected her to do all the unpacking, but she’d certainly led him to believe that was her goal for the afternoon. “All right. Where are they?” he said patiently.

  “The twins?” Zoe smiled brilliantly. “They’ve been little angels, Rafe. You’re not going to believe how easily they’re going to fit in your life; they’re absolutely no trouble!”

  “What did they do, Zoe?”

  “Nothing. Nothing!” Carting two grocery bags, she turned into the kitchen, out of his sight. He peered into the living room to find king-sized sheets stretched between the two couches. Giggling could be heard from within the makeshift tent. “I’ll unpack these,” Zoe called back to him, “and start dinner.”

  He followed her. He’d noticed that she was usually excessively well groomed. At the moment, however, her blouse was hanging out, her hair looked as if she’d been hit by a hurricane, and her eyes shone on the glassy side of exhaustion. “I’ll do that. You sit down.”

  “No, no, I’m fine. Everything’s fine.” Zoe didn’t dare meet his eyes. Her nerves had something in common with limp lettuce. She’d grossly underestimated the difficulty of handling two small boys for a few hours. The twins had decided to turn on the washing machine for her. Their choice of dials had resulted in a full hour’s cleanup, and mountain reception was so poor that they’d deserted the television in favor of making rubber-band sling shots, which they loaded with pellets of Play-Doh. Aaron had gotten hit in the nose. He’d bitten Parker, and they’d both cried. She’d tried hide-and-seek-didn’t all kids like hide-and-seek? Except that she’d made the mistake of being the one to hide, and no one had come looking for her. By the time she’d discovered Parker poised on the mantel, prepared to risk an Incredible Hulk-type leap…

  “What happened, Zoe?” Rafe’s voice was as smooth as melted butter. For no reason at all, he was setting a glass of red wine in front of her.

  She shook her head. “I don’t think we should drink in front of the kids.”

  “I don’t think seeing you sip a glass of red wine will corrupt them for the rest of their lives.”

  “Well…” She gulped it, smiled at him and then resumed unpacking the groceries. “Macaroni and cheese. Thank God,” she murmured, and then awkwardly confessed, “I didn’t get quite as much done this afternoon as I’d planned.”

  “No? Well, I’ll tackle the unpacking after dinner. And the kids. You can just relax.”

  Relax? She had already failed at being any kind of positive influence on the kids. She was not comfortable in a man’s house where she was terrified of tripping over another woman’s lingerie. She had an attack of vertigo the minute she stepped outside, and the awkwardness she felt around Rafe was increasing instead of letting up.

  Relax? Maybe…maybe by the next century.

  Chapter Three

  Zoe sank into bubbles up to her chin, closed her eyes, sighed…and immediately tensed. Something had dropped with a deafening clatter in the twins’ bedroom. She heard the thundering of little feet, then Rafe’s firm, quiet voice, then the sound of the boys’ bedroom door closing.

  Silence. Relaxing again, she tried out an
other blissful sigh, languidly raised a washcloth and let the water dribble over her raised knee. Laziness felt sublimely wanton, even if she only had in mind a five-minute bath. After dinner, Rafe had insisted that she disappear and let him handle the boys for a while, but she didn’t want to push that. Until he formed a really strong attachment to them, she figured she’d better shield him from discovering they weren’t quite the well-behaved angels she’d led him to believe.

  Still, she had absolutely nothing to do for a few minutes but watch steam rise from the blue bathtub. She liked her baths wrinkle-hot and pore-opening. Leaning back against the cool porcelain, she felt her tense muscles gradually loosen in the hot water.

  Through half-shuttered eyes, she studied her body. All the parts, however distorted by water, looked basically female, basically normal. Exercise gave her skin a healthy tone and suppleness. Her breasts were firm, white, proportionate. Her stomach was flat, and when not exposed to chocolate-chip cookies, her hips behaved. Her thighs were slim; she had terrific calves; and except for her big toes-both of them annoyed her-she had nice small feet.

  It was a darn good body, and her pelvis was never going to have stretch marks, her breasts were never going to sag from nursing a baby, and her stomach was never going to turn into Jell-O from carrying a child.

  The problem was that she wanted the stretch marks, the sag, the Jell-O.

  She squeezed her eyes closed, furious with herself. After all this time, she should have gotten over it. And exactly when was she going to manage to completely forget Steven?

  Being around the children had brought it all back. Aaron and Parker were the image of the kids she’d wanted to have with Steven-a mixture of scamps and innocents, love and trouble. Loving a man, she’d discovered, meant desperately wanting to bear his children. If that was basic human instinct, Zoe had learned it as basic pain.

  She should have told Steven when she first met him that she couldn’t have kids. She hadn’t. Maybe because she’d met him at that vulnerable time right after the operation. A time when she’d desperately needed to know that she could be loved, that she was still a whole woman capable of filling a man’s life. She’d loved him so much! And when she had told him, when he’d walked out of her life, she’d died inside. It wasn’t Steven’s fault. All the blame was hers, for not telling him earlier, for hurting him, for being less than adequate as a woman…