“Exactly, Janey love,” Rachel said, brushing her finger across the little girl’s nose. “Lots of roses for Janey.”
“Well.” Sam beamed, sitting down on the top step of the porch so that Zach could take his freedom or leave it. “It looks like you’re all going to be plenty busy tomorrow. And roses, eh? I remember how Aunt Esther always had roses around her porch. Red and pink and yellow. You could tell you were getting close to Uncle Hal’s just by breathing in deeply on a summer’s night.”
When he stopped speaking, he found himself looking directly into Rachel’s face. Her lips were slightly parted. There was a wistful look about her eyes.
“This is going to be a real home, just like Hal and Esther’s was, Sam. I remember that place, too. It was wonderful, but I think that had more to do with your aunt and uncle than the flowers. Still, all those blossoms didn’t hurt.”
“Did you have roses at your house when you were a girl, Rachel?” Annie’s voice piped up, and Sam shifted over so she could sit beside him on the porch. He pulled Janey down on his other knee.
“Absolutely always,” Rachel agreed, laughing. “Even when we didn’t have food, my mother always made sure we had flowers. She tended her roses, and she saved the seeds from the other plants every year.”
“You didn’t have food?” Annie’s voice rose, clearly shocked at such a statement.
“Annie!” he admonished, but Rachel shook her head to stop him.
Sam was still gazing directly at Rachel, but at his daughter’s words, he noticed that she had shifted her focus slightly to the right so she was no longer looking directly in his eyes. She had stuffed her hands into her front pockets as though to keep them still. She looked absolutely uncomfortable, but after just a few seconds a small chuckle escaped her, and she looked down at him and shrugged impishly.
“Don’t censure her, Sam, when it was my own fault for walking right into that one. Besides, while it was true, you know, I can’t remember it mattering all that much. There was always something to eat, even if it wasn’t anything particularly tasty, and my mother—somehow she just always made everything bright for all of us. We knew she loved us so much and she was always encouraging us. It just didn’t always seem like we were poor. I’m not sure I can explain it.”
She was explaining it beautifully. Sam understood perfectly about a woman who could make things bright for everyone. He was looking at her right now.
“Daddy.” Annie was tugging on the leg of his jeans. “Can’t we plant something tonight? Just one flower?”
Sam looked down into his daughter’s eager eyes. “All right, after Rachel goes we’ll—”
“No. No, we have to have Rachel. She’s the one who knows how to plant the stuff. Uncle Hal says she has a magic green thumb.”
Sam looked across at Rachel, who had the grace to look embarrassed. She held up her thumb. “Uncle Hal exaggerates now and then, Annie, just to be nice, but I will stay awhile, Sam, if you don’t mind. You can’t go out and buy flowers and then not plant even one.”
She sounded almost as eager as Annie.
He looked down at the twins, hoping they were falling asleep. Nope. They looked like they were ready to eat dirt, too.
“All right. I’m outvoted,” he said, rising and placing the little ones on the porch. “Lead me to the shovels. I’m yours to command. Even though,” he said, cupping his hand around his mouth as though he was conveying a secret, “I have to tell you that I spent my growing years working with wood, the kind that was already out of the ground.”
“No magic green thumb?” Rachel asked sympathetically.
“Worse. All thumbs where gardening’s concerned,” he admitted, grinning broadly.
But when Rachel reached out to examine the hands he was holding out, when she touched just the tip of one finger to the pad of his thumb, Sam’s grin died an instant death. He didn’t know if the woman really had a green thumb, but he knew for sure that there was magic in her touch—and it was killing him, inch by painful inch as he fought back the urge to slide his hands forward, grasp her wrists and turn that tentative touch into solid sensation.
It was going to be a long evening, even longer than he had anticipated when he’d agreed to this project, Sam thought. Thank goodness Annie had insisted on planting only a few flowers.
The sun was almost a memory by the time Rachel and Annie patted the dirt down around the last marigold. Sam stood to one side, leaning on the shovel he’d been wielding all evening.
Rachel tilted her head back, looking up at him from the place where she was kneeling on the ground.
“Just a few flowers, Rachel?” he asked.
She held both hands out, palms up, with a helpless shrug. “I guess we did get a little carried away,” she admitted. “But there’s just something wondrous about planting a flower. Knowing that that little seed, that small plant, will come out of hiding, rise up and stretch to the sun, reaching for what it needs and wants, always amazes me no matter how many times I see it happen.”
~ ~ ~
Rachel shrugged, a bit embarrassed at her own enthusiasm. “Still, I can see that maybe we shouldn’t have planted quite so many this late at night,” she agreed, looking over the newly seeded flower beds.
But the truth was that Annie had been so excited that Rachel just couldn’t have spoiled the little girl’s fun by calling a halt to things. She’d shaken off Sam’s attempts to get her home at a decent hour several times as she and Annie discussed the merits of planting things in rows versus a more random pattern.
Annie had fluttered around like a dirty little butterfly, rotating between making sure that Janey and Zach were okay and losing herself in the fun of fostering life in the earth.
Since Janey and Zach were perfectly content to wallow in dirt and bunch the wet soil between their chubby fists, Annie soon forgot everything but the plants and seeds.
And that was the way it should be, Rachel thought. Annie was, for once, acting like a child.
Now as the little girl gathered up the spades and carried them to the shed behind the house, Rachel started to attempt to rise after being on her knees for several hours.
“Here. Let me help.”
Looking up, she saw Sam’s hand outstretched to grasp her own. For long seconds she just looked. After foolishly touching him earlier this evening and feeling the kick of desire deep within her, she was reluctant to have physical contact with him in any way. But they’d worked together side by side for hours, it was late, the kids were hungry and tired and—she was holding up the show by being silly.
Carefully she placed her hand in Sam’s much bigger one. The warmth closed around her as Sam tugged and she came up, pitching forward against his chest.
For three whole seconds she lay there, her breasts pressing into the hard muscles she remembered all too well. She breathed in the scent of Sam, she felt her head begin to swirl—and then she was standing on her own feet as he carefully placed her away from him.
“Thank—thank you,” she whispered.
“I’d do it for anyone,” he said, and for some reason she thought Sam sounded a bit angry. But she must have been mistaken, for in the next breath, he was lifting the twins high into his arms.
“We’d better get you home, Rachel. It’s late. I shouldn’t have let this go on so long. You’re probably dead on your feet.”
Dead wasn’t the word for what Rachel was feeling. It was the way she’d felt only seconds ago—before her encounter with Sam’s warm body. Now she felt awake, alive—confused.
This was not supposed to be happening again. For days now she’d been concentrating on remembering Don. She’d already decided he had been right. When they’d met for the first time, it had been too soon after her mother’s death. Her emotions had been numb. She wouldn’t have responded to any man. Even Sam couldn’t have stirred her then, and things would be different when Don came back. She’d thought about calling him once or twice; she’d known that he would come if she did. But she had to be sure. She
would never want to hurt someone as sweet as Don had been. Still, in spite of her hesitation, she was sure he must have been right. Her emotions had just been numb last time.
They weren’t feeling numb at all right now, Rachel thought, looking at Sam’s broad back as he walked away from her with a twin in each arm. He was a strong man, yet he held those babies like precious china. He rubbed his cheek up against their baby skin lightly, so as not to hurt them. He listened to their cooing noises and talked back to them as if he understood every word.
Rachel closed her eyes quickly. She tried to concentrate on Don.
“This was fun, Rachel.”
Annie’s tired little voice sounded behind her, and Rachel turned to see the child looking wanly up at her, her legs almost wobbling.
Quickly Rachel reached out. She forgot her cardinal rule of not touching a shy child until she had been asked. Drawing Annie near, Rachel braced an arm around the little girl’s shoulders, encouraging her to walk, holding her up and taking most of the child’s weight upon herself.
“You know, Annie, I think you just might have a magic green thumb yourself,” she whispered as they neared the house. ‘ ‘Come on, I’ll whip up something real quick for you to eat, and then we’ll get you cleaned up and in bed. It’s been quite a day.”
“I liked it,” the child confided. “Did you?”
Rachel tried not to notice that Annie’s voice wobbled a little on her question. Her own answer was inevitable.
“I loved it, Annie. Every minute.”
A shy smile crept onto the little girl’s face as she breathed out what could only be relief. The next time Rachel looked down the little girl’s head was bobbing down to her chin. Rachel slid her arm tighter around the child’s body and lifted her off her feet. Annie was asleep before they made it inside.
Swinging the child up into her arms, Rachel put her foot on the first tread just as Sam stepped back out the door.
“Let me,” he whispered. “A six-year-old is quite a handful.”
Rachel would have argued, but Sam already had Annie half in his grasp. She nodded, dragging her own feet up the steps.
Inside the living room, the twins still babbled away, but with a little less vigor than before.
Sam was looking down into his daughter’s face. Annie was smiling in her sleep.
“You’re a heck of a woman, Rachel,” he said. “But then I suppose plenty of people have told you that.”
“Why? Because I managed to send your daughter to sleep without dinner? And the twins’ feet! Just look at those crusty little toes.”
Sam chuckled low as he stared at where Rachel was pointing. “Don’t worry, Rachel. It’s mud. I’ll throw them in the tub in a moment. And you can’t say that any of them went to bed unhappy tonight. Annie had a blast. She’s never done anything of this magnitude before.”
“Yes, well, digging in the ground is very elemental, I guess,” she said. “The ground is solid. Immovable. It’s security of a sort. And you can just forget about plopping those babies in the tub and sending me home until I’ve given them at least a little something to eat. I can’t send them to bed hungry.”
Sam shook his head. “I’ll take care of everything.” He frowned menacingly.
Rachel frowned right back.
She stood there holding her ground for long seconds, trying to look stern in the face of Sam’s objections to her staying.
“I’m not charging you overtime for the extra time, Sam.”
“As if I wouldn’t pay you, when you’ve beat your tail off.”
The thought dug in. She’d been hiring out as a sitter for years. Somehow she didn’t want money for this night, for Annie’s triumph.
“No money for tonight,” she said stubbornly.
“They’re my children,” he insisted.
“They’re my—I—it would hurt to take money for tonight,” she ended lamely. “It was fun for me, too, anyway.”
She saw that Sam was studying the situation, trying to decide what was the right thing to do.
“And while you’re giving in,” she said, grasping the opportunity, “why don’t you go start the bathwater. I’m already making something for them to eat.” And without letting him have the chance to object, she slipped out the door and into the kitchen, safely away from the lure of Sam and his babies. With the night closing around than, binding them, she felt somehow shut off in a world where there was only Sam and his children. It was an alluring world, warm and enticing—and off-limits. It was important to remember that this was only one night, not a lifetime. In less than an hour she’d be back in her own apartment—far away from all this temptation.
Chapter Six
Standing in the twins’ bedroom, Rachel smiled in the darkness. A low, muffled chuckle came from Sam. Zach had just flipped over, hoisting his bottom in the air. Janey was snoring with Baby crushed in her arms.
It had taken both her and Sam to get everyone fed, bathed and in bed. For the sake of speed and the children’s much-needed rest, not to mention the fact that she had latched on to the idea like a pit bull, Sam had agreed to let her help him with the nighttime routine.
Now it was pitch-black as they both tiptoed outside, shutting the twins’ door behind them.
“They’re wonderful children, Sam,” she said quietly.”Absolutely adorable.”
“You mean I don’t feel that way just because I’m their father?” he asked, smiling in the low lamplight he’d clicked on.
“Guess not, because they’ve got me eating out of their hands,” she confessed.
“Not when they’re muddy, I hope,” Sam said, raising his brows.
“Even then,” she confessed. “Do they ever hear from their mother—at all? I mean, it’s none of my business, but—”
“Shh,” he said, touching her lips with one finger. “Of course it’s your business when you’re with them all the time. But no, she never writes, she never calls. I don’t really understand how—” He flattened one hand against the door frame and blew out a breath, voicing his frustration without words.
“Maybe—” Rachel stopped, then tried again. “Maybe she’d like to, but she just can’t begin to explain to them how she could have gone in the first place. Maybe she doesn’t understand it, either.”
“You’re excusing her?”
Rachel shook her head. “No, not at all. Walking out the door without a word, leaving her children alone without any answers to their questions—there can’t be any excuse for that. I guess it’s just natural to want to make some sense out of the situation. I never really knew much about Donna. She was two years older than me, and we didn’t travel in the same crowd. All I remember is that she was pretty, the prom queen. Maybe she was just too young to be married. Maybe she didn’t really know what she wanted.”
Sam hooked his thumbs in his front pockets. He blew out a deep breath, then looked up, out into the darkness beyond the window. “I don’t know—hell, I don’t know anything, and obviously knew even less back then.”
When he turned to her, Rachel froze. The memory of a day ten years ago when she’d walked off the dance floor with no explanation, leaving Sam alone in the midst of a crowd, slipped into her mind. And, looking up into Sam’s suddenly dark eyes, she wondered if he was thinking the same thing. Of course, he wouldn’t be.
He took a step forward.
Rachel opened her mouth as though to speak, then closed it again as Sam stepped closer still.
She looked for words but they disappeared in Sam’s dark blue eyes. And after all, it was only her own guilty imagination suggesting that he even wanted an explanation, that he even cared why she had deserted him that day.
It had been a simple, small incident ten years ago, nearly forgotten. Best forgotten.
The only thing to remember was right here, right now, who she was, who he was, when there was no possibility for more. A safe relationship, uncomplicated, with no need for explanations or emotions.
As Sam stepped forward, holdi
ng out his hand as though he meant to slip it along her waist and take that long-ago dance, Rachel held her breath. But at the touch of his fingers claiming her, wooing her, making her mind whirl like a speeding carnival ride, she took a small step back. She pulled into herself, turned and made her escape, hunting in her pocket for her keys.
“It’s awfully late, Sam,” she said, her voice strained and husky, her lips stiff, barely functioning. “Tomorrow will be here before we know it.”
A long silence followed her words. She risked a glance back over her shoulder to where Sam was still watching her.
“Yes,” he said, frowning and shoving a hand back through his hair. “It’s much too late, I guess.”
~ ~ ~
Rachel lay in her bed, trying to shove Sam Grayson back into the corners of her mind where he rightfully belonged.
She counted sheep, she did advanced algebra problems in her head, but the man just refused to be shoved. No matter how hard she tried, she could still see him pushing that Stetson back on his head and staring her up and down just as clearly as if he was standing before her. She could still feel the heat of his hand at her waist.
“Come on, stop acting like a total doofus, Rachel,” she told herself, punching her pillow for the fiftieth time as she rolled over once again, staring into the darkness. Heavens, the man was her employer. He’d made no attempt to even get close to her again since she’d run out into the night over a week ago. If she was smart, she’d definitely put him out of her mind.
But when she closed her eyes, she saw Sam trying to put Zach’s socks on, Sam carrying Annie into the house. She felt Sam’s lips on her own and groaned. Sitting up, she gave up on sleep entirely. There was just something about that man that nagged at her, and she wished to heck he’d just stop.
Unfortunately, Rachel thought, dragging out a book on floristry as a business, she wasn’t sure what it was that she wanted Sam to stop. He hadn’t touched her since that night a week ago, hadn’t even tried. He’d allowed their relationship to become strictly business. There wasn’t a thing she could think of that he could do to change things—except disappear into thin air. Even then, she’d probably sit up nights wondering what had happened to him. She was just going to have to give time a chance to work its magic. In a month or two or three, she probably wouldn’t even notice Sam anymore.
Babies and a Blue-eyed Man Page 9