“After the school bombing I...I just decided... I don’t know... When I first started my career, it was exciting to be in the thick of things—that’s why I chose photojournalism. But a few years of that and I wanted to look through my viewfinder and see more positive images—so I went to work with the Red Cross. But I was with them for almost six years and...” She shrugged as if the latest career alteration wasn’t a big deal. “Then I wanted to see and be a part of things that weren’t anywhere near the thick of anything. When I got home from Afghanistan, I just...stayed. Now I take mostly wedding photographs with a few engagement or retirement parties thrown in, and the occasional shoot for a new baby.”
“Pretty pictures.”
“That memorialize the happiest times in people’s lives rather than the—”
“Ugliest.”
Like everything else he’d said since yesterday, his tone was matter-of-fact. But still it somehow irritated Emmy, making her feel guilty and embarrassed. And weak.
She was on the verge of defending herself when Declan said, “Lucky for Trinity and Kit—now you’ll be around for them. Mandy probably wouldn’t have been able to make a guardian of someone like me, who’s halfway around the world for who-knows-how-long at the drop of a hat.”
So he hadn’t been judging her, she’d just done that to herself. She was glad she hadn’t launched into the justifications she’d been about to fire off.
Instead she merely muttered, “Yeah, lucky. If I hadn’t quit before, I would have had to now.”
“How do you feel about...you know, instant parenthood?”
“I’m okay with it,” she said succinctly. “It’s strange—I’ll admit that. But I love those little buggers and...” She shrugged again. “I’m adjusting. I’ll always do my best for them.”
“Just like that?”
“Yes,” she said with resolve. Not that it had been so simple to accept such a huge responsibility. But she’d promised her sister. So she didn’t allow herself to think about the way she used to envision her life.
“Even while Mandy was still alive, my course changed suddenly. Again...” she added. “I needed to...embrace that and make new plans—”
“For your career again?”
“No, for my personal life.” But she wasn’t about to say more on that subject. “Then this happened and...now the kids will be a part of everything I do from here on. And when it comes to them, now that Mandy and Topher are gone, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
She thought she could feel his eyes on her, and as she finished prepping to make the formula, she stole a glance to see if she was right.
She was. He was staring intently at her.
Then he said, “Thanks for that.”
There was genuine gratitude in his tone that surprised her.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she repeated, meaning it.
Then she turned to making formula and tutoring him, explaining that anything left after twenty-four hours—even under refrigeration—had to be thrown out when he asked why they didn’t make a larger quantity.
Once the bottles were filled, he put them in the fridge while she cleaned that mess and started the dishwasher, both of them silent again.
Into that silence he said, “Tomorrow is Sunday. I don’t know if you go to church or—”
“No, but if you want to, feel free.”
“Church attendance is an ‘only in the right time and place’ thing for me and Northbridge is never either of those,” he said acerbically.
“You don’t like Northbridge or you don’t like the church here?”
“Both.” His tone was flat again, definitive, but he didn’t explain why he disliked his hometown—and the church here. Instead he went on without revealing anything. “I need to see all the damage to the farm so I know what we’re up against. Why don’t we do that tomorrow?”
“Sure. But we’ll have to take the kids out with us—Sundays are the hardest time to get babysitters and Mom couldn’t set up one for tomorrow.”
He was back to making no comments, but he did raise an acknowledging chin.
That seemed to be the end of his efforts because he took a breath, exhaled and said, “If there’s nothing else to do tonight, then I think I’ll turn in.”
Emmy again gave what she was getting and only nodded, watching him as he went toward the door to the basement.
And while the first thing she thought was that he still had a great butt, the second thing to register again was his limp.
“Uh...” she said.
He stopped and turned halfway around to look at her.
“Are there things you can’t do around the farm?” she asked with a slight lowering of her gaze to his leg.
“No.”
Once more his tone was flat, definitive, and this time with a warning not to ask him that again.
So okay, she wouldn’t explore it.
She only said a curt “Tomorrow, then.”
And for that she received nothing, not even another raise of that sculpted chin of his before he went to the basement door and finally disappeared down the stairs.
Oh, this is going to be loads of fun, Emmy thought, trying all over again to resign herself to living and working with the guy she no longer had even the slightest illusion of any rapport with.
Which was good.
No illusions that he liked her was good.
So why did the reality of that rub her so wrong?
Chapter Three
“Em... Em... Em... Em...”
Emmy opened her eyes only a slit. “Oh, Trinity, it’s waaaay too early. Even Kit isn’t up yet,” she complained when her niece appeared at her bedside to wake her as the sun was only beginning to rise.
“The Decan-guy says he can gives me breaksfuss and you can sleep s’more. He says is it okay.”
“Declan is already up?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You could get into bed and sleep a little longer with me...” Emmy tempted.
“I wan breaksfuss.”
Emmy was sooo tired. Kit had kept her up walking the floors until 3:30 a.m. “Is it okay with you if Declan makes it for you?” she asked her niece, thinking that Trinity might not be comfortable enough with him yet to agree.
But she surprised her. “Uh-huh.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay, then.”
The little girl padded out of her room and Emmy closed her eyes again, certain that she would fall instantly back to sleep.
But thoughts and images of Declan invaded her head. The same way thoughts and images of him had kept her constant company last night when she was up with Kit.
Wasn’t it bad enough that Declan was here, living in the basement? That she was going to have to see him every day? Work side by side with him? Eat her meals with him? Couldn’t he at least be out of sight, out of mind?
But no, apparently not, because even when she desperately needed more sleep, there he was. Again.
In her mental images of him, sometimes he was dressed in the combat gear he’d had on when they’d first met, looking rugged and powerful.
Sometimes he was in the dress blues he’d worn for the wedding—tall and broad shouldered, his narrow waist wrapped in that white belt, his wide chest adorned with ribbon bars and stars and medals.
Sometimes he was in the civilian clothes she’d seen him in the morning after the wedding—simple jeans and a gray hoodie that no one had ever looked as good in...
And that stupid face of his!
No one man should be that hot.
Somehow that broody thing he was sporting now only made it worse. It made him look all dark and mysterious, with that coarse, sort-of-wavy hair that cupped his head close. Staring out from under full eyebrows with eyes too blue to be re
al. His just-right mouth a straight line that was still intriguingly sexy. That mouth that he’d never even tried to kiss her with...
That should have been your first clue that he wasn’t interested, that you were reading him wrong, she told herself.
Luckily it hadn’t gotten as far as it had with Bryce, but with Declan and with Bryce, she kept trying to figure out why. Were they intentionally leading her down the garden path and she was too gullible to see it? Or had she been imagining things that weren’t really there?
She didn’t know.
But Declan and Bryce weren’t the only guys she’d ever dated—there was a feeling, a sense, an intuition when things were clicking with someone, and she’d been so sure with both of them that that had been the case. And then been wrong. Soooo wrong with Bryce.
So wrong that she didn’t trust her own instincts anymore.
Although with Bryce it hadn’t been only her instincts—he’d told her he loved her, had alluded to a long-term future for them.
With Declan she just didn’t know whether he’d been toying with her or whether she’d genuinely misunderstood.
All she knew was that ultimately with both Declan and Bryce she’d ended up feeling the same way—disillusioned and foolish. Hurt.
And she wasn’t going to let it happen again. Not with any man but certainly not with one she’d already learned to be wary of.
But given that newfound caution, why couldn’t she stop thinking about Declan?
It wasn’t as if she was interested in him. Sure, she recognized that he was hands down the hottest guy she’d ever laid eyes on. But that meant only that she wasn’t oblivious. It didn’t mean she cared. It didn’t mean she was attracted to him.
Was she failing so utterly at putting him out of her mind because his rejection of her made him a challenge?
She’d never been like that before. Why would she be that now?
Usually when she discovered she wasn’t someone’s type, she’d just accepted that. No one was every guy’s type.
And apparently Declan’s type was loud Brazilian bombshells in stiletto heels and Lycra dresses with plunging necklines that exposed four inches of cleavage.
And actually, the fact that someone like Mandy’s friend Tracy appealed to him made him not Emmy’s type.
She wanted substance in her men. And a guy who was on board for a one-night stand with a bombshell didn’t shout substance.
So again, why was Declan stuck in her head?
Could it be a rebound thing?
She’d had more than three years with Bryce—who she’d rebounded to when Declan had left her feeling about as attractive as a mud fence—and that relationship had only ended this last December.
Maybe she was ping-ponging, she thought, feeling as if she was finally getting close to understanding what was going on with her.
Thinking that she’d hit on an answer to why she was so fixated on him suddenly—that it was just a belated rebound from Bryce—she felt better.
And really, it was better that nothing had happened between them at the wedding. She’d still been reeling from the school bombing. She’d been drunk. If he had kissed her, she might have invited him into her room. She probably would have slept with him just to prove to herself that she was over her reaction to the sight of his face, that she was over the consequences she’d been fighting against for months.
And then she would have woken up the next morning—sober—and regretted it. And been ashamed of herself for a whole new reason.
So really, he’d done her a huge favor by not being interested in her.
And now that she had it all sorted out, she could just stop thinking about him.
She turned onto her side and tried to fall asleep again.
But her lengthy thought process had her too awake now.
Still, that didn’t mean she had to get up and go downstairs to him.
Trinity was okay having him make her breakfast. Kit was still asleep, and even if he woke up, helping with the kids was what Declan had volunteered for. So why not get up, take a leisurely shower, shampoo her hair, even put on a little makeup?
And not—absolutely not—because of Declan Madison. Only as the kind of confidence booster she should be indulging in so she didn’t find herself looking to a man for it.
And since they were going out only to tour the hail damage today rather than clear any of it away, she was going to wear what she might if she was in Denver, going for brunch with Carla—a pair of her good jeans and a lightweight high-necked pink sweater.
Between funeral clothes for Topher’s services, end-of-the-relationship-grieving sweats after Bryce, more funeral clothes for Mandy, then work-on-the-farm clothes and clothes that could withstand spit-up, it had been a long time since she’d worn anything that had made her just feel cute and feminine. And not only did she think she’d earned it, she decided it had medicinal value to put her on the road she should be on to healing any ego bruises left by both Declan and Bryce.
A little self-pampering was exactly the right thing to do for her own sake.
And not because afterward she’d be going out to some hot, dark, mysterious man who she’d just love to show what he’d missed.
* * *
“Oh geez, you went all over me!”
Emmy had had her shower, done her hair, dressed, applied makeup and was finally coming out of the master bedroom when she realized there was activity in the nursery. She stepped into the doorway just in time to hear Declan’s exclamation.
And to see what had prompted it.
She couldn’t help laughing. “I warned you about boy babies...” she said in a bit of a singsong.
“I didn’t even get the diaper partway off and he got me.”
“He got you good,” Emmy observed.
“It’s even on my chin,” Declan said in horror. One big hand was on Kit’s stomach to keep the infant safe even as Declan reared back to a full arm’s length, his appalled and revolted expression making Emmy laugh again.
“Can you finish this so I can take another shower?” he asked.
“I can,” she said, stepping up to take over.
Her not-so-adept helper rushed out of the nursery, calling along the way, “Trinity is in the kitchen. She’s supposed to be eating, but I can’t make any guarantees.”
Emmy wasn’t sure what that meant. But once he was out of earshot she bent over, kissed the baby good morning and whispered, “Atta boy!”
Thinking about Declan’s over-the-top response made her smile again as she diapered Kit and replaced his pajamas. Then she picked up the fussing baby, who was gnawing at his fist, hoping that Declan had thought ahead to take a bottle out of the refrigerator to warm.
But not only hadn’t he done that, he’d also turned the kitchen into the kind of disaster that stopped her in her tracks.
When she’d finally gotten Kit down in the middle of the night, the only thing out of place in the kitchen had been the baby bottle she’d left soaking in the sink.
Now it looked like a cyclone had hit the place. There were pans on the stove top, dishes and bowls in the sink, eggshells, cereal boxes, uneaten toast and crumbs on the counters. The butter dish was out, and Trinity was sitting on her booster seat at the kitchen table with a little of everything all around her, along with an overturned glass of orange juice.
“I spilt juice,” the three-year-old confessed matter-of-factly when she saw her aunt surveying the damage. “I wan some milk.”
“Oh dear...” was all Emmy could say.
Carrying Kit in one arm, she started a bottle warming, then she took one of Trinity’s plastic cups with a lid and straw and filled it with milk. After bringing it to the three-year-old, she did just enough damage control to keep the juice mess from spreading to the floor. Where there was already cereal and crumbs.
�
�Your poor grandma worked so hard to leave this place clean and now look at it,” Emmy said more to herself than to Trinity. Then to her niece, as she tested Kit’s bottle and sat at the kitchen table to feed him, she said, “Have you actually eaten anything?”
“I wanna mossed egg.”
“Let me feed Kit and I’ll make you one.”
But she’d learned that the little girl could be—and needed to be—occupied with small jobs, so when Trinity started to entertain herself by slapping at the puddle of juice, Emmy said, “Look at all those cereal boxes... Can you maybe put them back in the pantry for me?”
The three-year-old slipped down from her booster seat and went to do Emmy’s bidding.
Luckily Kit took the first bottle of the day the fastest, so it wasn’t long before Emmy had him fed and burped and could set him in the bouncy seat on the floor.
About that time a freshly showered Declan came up from downstairs, a nice soapy smell coming with him.
“I was going to clean all this before you could see it,” he said, casting a discomfited glance around.
Gone was the sweat suit that Kit had anointed, replaced with a pair of jeans and a short-sleeved dark green crew-neck T-shirt. And his hair was damp.
But Emmy didn’t want to pay enough attention to him to note details like that, so after a quick look she, too, let her eyes follow the line of kitchen destruction. “Yeah...what happened in here?”
“I don’t know,” he said, sounding frustrated. “When I was a kid, I ate cereal for breakfast, so I thought that would work for Trinity. I got out the cereal boxes so she could show me which one she wanted. She started eating out of the boxes and said she wanted a mossed egg. I got the egg part, but mossed? I tried to figure out what that was—”
“It’s a scrambled egg—it took Mom and me a while to translate. We think maybe it’s the way she says mashed and she might be saying she wants a mashed egg...”
“I went through the whole list of eggs—boiled, fried, scrambled—she just kept saying mossed. So I started cooking eggs—including a scrambled one—but she wouldn’t eat any of them. Then she said she wanted cereal. But the cereal was right there—well, it was also all over the table and the chair and the floor by then. But I thought maybe she wanted it in milk. Wrong again. I finally figured out that she wanted hot cereal. But she wouldn’t eat the malto-something-or-other she said she wanted—”
The Marine's Family Mission Page 4