One Summer’s Knight

by Kathleen Creighton

  He swiped at it, a maneuver that only seemed to excite the tongue’s owner, who apparently viewed the slap as some sort of game. Tiny feet danced an eager tattoo on his belly and chest as Riley threw up his hands in a futile attempt to defend himself. But he was simply no match for that tongue, which feinted this way and darted that way and managed to hit its targets with unerring accuracy.

  Finally, somehow, he managed to sputter, “Umph-get…it…off.…of…me!” And just like that, the onslaught ceased.

  Then, for a few moments, Riley simply sat-or more accurately, lay-half in and half out of his favorite chair with his legs sprawled across the ottoman, the bathrobe he’d wrapped himself in just before settling down with his brandy so few hours ago hitched up around his neck and gaping open on his chest. He lay there, breathing hard and glaring at the three small faces, which had prudently moved back a step out of range.

  “We’re sorry we woke you up.” The voice came from the largest of the faces as it attempted to hide behind the perkedup ears of the smallest. It sounded apprehensive, and matched the worry crease that had dug itself in between the sky-blue eyes and childish brows. Riley realized that he’d seen eyes like those, and an almost identical pleat, before.

  He cleared his throat and managed to scoot into a more-orless erect position, just as the third face thrust itself brashly forward. Nothing scared about those eyes-uh-uh, no, sir. No sign of a worry crease there.

  “Beatle has to go outside,” the second voice announced. Helen-that was the child’s name. And why did that immediately make Riley think of hellion? “Mom said we have to ask you first, in case there might be a burglar.”

  “Burglar alarm.” That was the other one, the boy David.

  “That’s what I meant,” said Helen, scowling at her brother before turning her inquisitive gaze back to Riley. “Is there?”

  “Yeah, as a matter of fact.” Riley pushed himself upward and out of the chair and walked over to a small box on the wall beside French doors that opened onto a trellis-shaded patio, rebelting his robe as he went and silently blessing the foresight that had made him put on pajama bottoms under it. Both children shuffled their way into close formation right behind him, David still clutching the dog, who was apparently named after an insect, though in Riley’s opinion it bore a closer resemblance to a praying mantis than a beetle.

  “Is it real loud?” Helen inquired as Riley punched in the appropriate code and deactivated his security system.

  “Sure is.”

  “Can I hear it sometime?”

  Riley glanced down at the small, upturned face wreathed in pinkish-blond curls, pretty as an angel’s-and at the most unangelic gleam in those china-blue eyes. “In all probability,” he muttered as he pushed open the French doors and stepped out onto the patio. Children and dog tumbled after him, hard on his heels.

  The morning heat and humidity slapped him in the face and he inhaled a lungful of air that was like slightly cooled bathwater, perfumed with honeysuckle and roses. For some reason that image brought the thought of Summer to his mind. Summer Robey, that is. He wondered if she was still asleep, up there in his “guest room”; wondered even more at the small but unmistakable disappointment he’d felt when it had been the children rather than their mother who’d awakened him.

  Then, remembering the indignity of that awakening, he decided he was just as glad after all that there hadn’t been a beautiful woman there to witness it.

  “Where’s your mother?” He asked the question casually, checking the watch he hadn’t bothered to take off the night before. It was early yet-almost obscenely early. There was still plenty of time to go over some things-such as the ground rules for this arrangement, before he had to leave for work. “Still asleep?”

  He got no answer from Helen, who was already off exploring, stalking across the lawn with her hands firmly planted on her hips, like a new landlord surveying her most recent acquisition

  Meanwhile, David had put the dog down on the patio. Riley winced as the mutt ventured onto his pristine turf, promptly squatted, then moved on, one tiptoeing step at a time, ears alert, every muscle quivering.

  David glanced up at Riley, still wearing that worried frown. “She said she’d be down as soon as she finds something to put on.”

  Oh, Lord. The fact that his houseguests literally had nothing but the clothes on their backs had completely slipped Riley’s mind.

  “Oh,” he said, when he realized he’d been scowling at the poor kid for several seconds without saying anything, thereby causing the worried look to intensify to one approaching alarm. “Well-”

  But just then Helen came skipping back around the comer, making her way toward them and looking like the cat that had stumbled on a whole nest of canaries. She gave Riley a sideways look, then sidled up to her brother and tugged on his shirttail.

  David squirmed away from her, then reluctantly bent a little to allow his sister to whisper in his ear. And went absolutely still. He gave a small gasp, the lines between his eyebrows vanishing as his eyes opened wide. “Really?” The word was an airless squeak. “Oh, boy…” His head snapped toward Riley as if operated by levers and springs instead of muscle and sinew. His ears were pink and his eyes glowing. Breathlessly, worshipfully, he said, “You have a pool…”

  “Yeah,” Riley allowed, “I do.”

  “Ask him, ask him,” Helen hissed, hopping up and down at her brother’s elbow.

  The boy tried, but the words seemed to have formed a logjam in his throat. The effort it cost him to sort them out and get them moving again made him go even pinker, but in the end he managed to whisper, “Can we…please, Mr…um…”

  “Riley.”

  “Please, Mr. Riley, can we go swimming? We’ll be careful, I promise. We’re real good swimmers-I’m even on a team. And we won’t run on the deck, and we won’t splash…much. Can we? Please?”

  “Yeah,” Helen echoed, “can we?”

  Riley stared down at the two upturned faces, one flushed with hope, the other squinched up with what he could only have described as glee. Oh, Lord, he thought. These two blueeyed urchins squealing and splashing in his beautiful pool, which he’d had designed, situated and landscaped to create the most harmonious and tranquil environment possible? He hadn’t planned for such a circumstance-hadn’t considered it would ever come up. Couldn’t even imagine it.

  And how could he possibly say no?

  Fully aware that he was stalling for time, he folded his arms on his chest and said sternly, “Well. It appears you’ve already answered most all of my objections-except for one big one. Don’t you think you should ask your mother?”

  “She’d just tell us we have to ask you,” David said quickly, as Helen’s head bobbed in rare agreement.

  “Hmm…” Riley rubbed his chin. “Okay, what about suits?” He was rather pleased to have thought of that; of course all their clothing would have been burned in the fire. Naturally, buying replacements, including bathing suits, was one of the first items on his list of priorities, but right now what he needed most was to buy himself some time. Time to get used to this…invasion. Time…

  “We have suits,” said David eagerly. For an exclamation point, Helen added a jubilant little hop. “They’re in our backpacks. We were gonna go swimming at Jason’s, but then stupid-head here, had to go and squirt him with grape juice-”

  “Am not a stupid-head! You are!”

  “-and then our house burned down.” For once even Helen had no punctuation to contribute. Both children gazed at Riley in round-eyed silence.

  Seconds ticked by while Riley gazed back at them. Dammit, he didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t account for the fact that his chest suddenly felt as if it had been filled with gravel. Finally he cleared his throat. “Well, okay, then. Go put your suits on. You can swim after breakfast. But only if someone’s with you. And if your mother says it’s okay…”

  But the children were already beyond earshot as they rocketed through the French doors
and into the house, their gleeful shouts flung back at him like pebbles from under a spinning tire. “Mom! Mom! Mr. Riley said we can go swimming! He said we can go in his pool! Where’s my bathing suit? Mom-where’s my backpack? Mom-”

  All the noise and excitement, of course, brought the dog at a dead run. She came in at warp speed, carrying a golf ball in her mouth, and skidded to a stop on the flagstones. Finding herself left behind and apparently forgotten, she stared intently for a moment or two at the closed French doors. She looked over her shoulder at Riley. Then, on paws so tiny and delicate they hardly seemed to touch the ground, she trotted over to him and dropped her trophy at his feet.

  Even Riley had to admit that was pretty cute. “Well, okay, thank you very much,” he said magnanimously, and was bending down to retrieve the golf ball when, to his annoyance, the little mutt snatched it up in her jaws and pranced away with it, stopping just beyond his reach.

  He swore under his breath. The dog looked at him, then opened her mouth and once more let the ball drop. It made a small “pock…pock…pock” as it bounced on the patio flagstones. The dog-Beatle-watched it until it had stopped rolling, then cocked her head and looked up at Riley. Her eyes were huge and round, and every muscle in her body seemed on hair-trigger alert, as if she were about to speak.

  Riley, however, was not about to be suckered a second time. He folded his arms on his chest and growled, “Okay, what do you want, a medal?”

  “A simple ‘good girl!’ would absolutely make her day,” Summer said with a soft laugh as she stepped out onto the patio.

  Riley turned, a whole string of stock “good morning!” phrases in his mind. But the words seemed to hang somewhere between there and his lips, run aground on the shoals of feelings he hadn’t know were there, lurking just beneath the smooth-flowing surface of his conscious thoughts.

  She did look like summer personified, all right, standing there in his old blue bathrobe-a former favorite of his, coincidentally, which had become so threadbare and worn he’d banished it some time past to one of the guest room closets. Now he wondered why. It didn’t look like a ragbag candidate, not on her. It matched her eyes. It draped softly over her body. She looked like blue sky and sunshine, fresh breezes and flowers. And her eyes had a misty look.

  She said softly, “I hope you know you just made their day.”

  Riley cleared his throat. “Oh, yeah?”

  She nodded. “I don’t know if I mentioned it, but David was on a swim team in California. It was so good for him-he’s not a naturally active child, you know, like Helen is. It was good for his self-esteem, too. I know he’s been worried about keeping it up…keeping fit…” Her voice trailed off, and she gave herself a little shake. “Anyway, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Riley said absently. He was watching her as she bent down to scoop up Beatle, who had gone into raptures at her appearance, dancing on her hind legs and frantically jabbing the air with tiny front paws. He frowned as Summer endured, with eyes and lips firmly closed, the same treatment he’d gotten earlier from that lightning-quick tongue, then gave the dog’s ears a scratch and set. her back on the flagstones. He frowned because, for what may have been the first time in his adult life, he felt ill at ease with a woman.

  The problem was, he couldn’t place her, not here, not in this setting. Something like running into your dentist’s receptionist in the grocery store-he couldn’t quite figure out who she was. Summer Robey in court had been one thing to him-the adversary. In his office yesterday morning she’d been something else-the prospective client. He was well-experienced in dealing with those. A little less experience with last night’s incarnation, the traumatized client, perhaps, but still a role he was reasonably comfortable in. But who in the hell was she now, standing here barefoot and sun-kissed in his old bathrobe, on a morning that smelled of honeysuckle and roses? His houseguest? Well…yes. And still his client, too-he couldn’t let himself forget that. But somehow, it seemed to him, more than either of those. As hard as it was to admit it to himself, he didn’t have the faintest idea how to treat her.

  Talk about the children, he decided. That was usually safe. He cleared his throat and remarked, “Seems to me that boy worries a lot.”

  The words hadn’t been meant as a criticism, Summer knew, but they pricked her heart just the same. Instead of answering, she scooped up the golf ball and tossed it onto the lawn, then watched with Riley as Beatle bounded after it, keeping her smile firmly in place. When she glanced at Riley, she saw that he hadn’t bothered to make even that effort.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” she said, hunching her shoulders and plunging her hands deep into the pockets of the blue flannel robe-movements that felt stiff and unnatural to her as a puppet’s. “I found this in the room next to mine. I thought, since-”

  “No, of course I don’t mind-you’re welcome to it.” His tone was polite but aloof, and his gaze slid only briefly toward her before returning to Beatle, who, having run down his “quarry,” was now growling and shaking it violently to insure a quick “kill.” “I’m sorry-I should have thought to find something for you last night.”

  “No, no-that’s all right. We were all tired.”

  Once more silence fell between them and was instantly filled with the hum of morning… and miniature canine snarls. Summer listened to it all for a few moments, then forced an unsteady laugh. “You have no idea,” she said in a low voice, “how awkward this feels.”

  His eyes flicked back to her, and this time, before he could veil them with his usual grace and faultless courtesy, she caught a look of surprise-surprise, and a glimpse of something darker, something that told her how wrong her statement had been. Not only was Riley Grogan feeling the same awkwardness she was, but it was a state he abhorred. Naturally, she thought, remembering the way he’d faced her in a courtroom and in his office, with the quiet confidence that had made her think of jungle cats. The way he’d faced down the FBI man on his own turf and promptly taken charge. Riley Grogan was not a man who would ever be accustomed to feeling at a loss.

  She smiled, making it a hopeful invitation to him to do the same. “Just yesterday I hired you as my attorney. And today…”

  Today, she was standing barefoot on his patio in the soft, sweet-smelling morning, dressed only in one of his old bathrobes. And the man she’d envisioned last night as Cinderella’s Prince was facing her not ten feet away, not armored in elegant evening clothes, but rather endearingly rumpled and unshaven in a navy blue robe that she knew must be silk, with his hair falling over one patrician eyebrow in the sort of disarray she thought novelists must be describing when they employed the word rakish.

  Poor Cinderella, she thought as she swallowed, drymouthed. What a shock it must have been for you, waking up that first morning in the Prince’s palace, to see your polished and graceful royal suitor for the first time as…a man. Did your heart pound like this? Did your mouth suddenly taste like dust?

  She took a deep breath and just managed to hold on to the smile. “This seems…really, really strange.”

  Yes, and what was this sudden preoccupation with Cinderella, anyway? It never had been one of her favorite stories-oh, well, except for when she was a little girl and had identified so strongly with the way she’d taken care of the animals, and those adorable little mice… But now that she was grown up-well, actually, she did have a cat who looked an awful lot like old Lucifer…

  “Strange…” Riley’s voice rumbled, bringing her back to the here and now with a start. He gave a snort of irony and looked away, scrubbed a hand over his face, then shook his head. She was more than relieved when he finally faced her again, this time wearing his version of her own smile-a bit wry, more than a little bemused. “Yeah, I guess it is, at that. Well, I don’t imagine either one of us planned on this happening. Since it has…as I said last night, I don’t see we had any other choice. For right now, anyway. You’ll be safe here until we can come up with a more comfortable arrangement for you. Meanwhil
e-”

  He was interrupted by a bloodcurdling scream.

  Chapter 6

  Bloodcurdling. Earsplitting. And hair-raising. Riley could actually feel the goose bumps rising up on his arms and the back of his neck.

  He exclaimed “Good God!” just as Summer was murmuring in heartfelt dismay, “Oh, no…” She heaved a sigh and closed her eyes. Riley said acidly, “I take it that’s…” and held up his bandaged finger.

  She nodded, then winced as two more screams shattered the morning’s peace, issuing from almost directly overhead. “I’m so sorry-the children must have uncovered her carrier. She’s just feeling left out. Parrots need a lot of attention. And they tend to vocalize when they’re unhappy. As soon as I find a nice central location for her, I’m sure she’ll settle down.”

  A nice…central…location. A dark cloud seemed to drift across Riley’s sun. Which one would that be? he wondered, gloomily running several possibilities through his mind. The morning room, just off the kitchen, full of light and flowering plants, where he so enjoyed taking his morning cup of coffee? Or maybe the informal living room that opened onto the pool and waterfall with its shade plants and cool green ferns, and the soothing sounds of water, so relaxing after a tense day in court. Not the kitchen! God help him if Mrs. Abernathy should arrive to find a bird in her immaculate domain!

  “Ah,” he said, and left it at that, then raised his voice several notches. “Perhaps if we go inside…?” And he nearly tripped over Beatle, who was trying her best to crawl inside his pajama legs. “What the hell?”

  The pink in Summer’s cheeks darkened as if he’d slapped her. “Oh, gosh-I’m sorry. Here-let me.” She dropped to her heels at his feet. He felt her hair brush his knees as she rose again, cradling the trembling dog in her arms, breathlessly trying to explain. “I’m so sorry-she’s terrified of Cleo.”