“Can you survive that long?”
Harley ignored the sarcasm in the manager’s voice. “Things are pretty... tense... here.”
“I’m sure they are. Mr. Sheenan is very unhappy, as we are, too. You’ve put us all in quite a bind, and we’ve lost a great deal of credibility with Mr. Sheenan.”
“I understand,” she said, spotting Mack and Molly who’d just emerged from the barn with an old sled and were dragging it off toward a break in the pine trees. There must be a sledding hill somewhere back behind the trees.
“If we should find someone sooner, I will of course let you know.”
“Thank you.” Harley drew a quick breath. “And will you be able to find me another job in Marietta, or...?”
“No. I don’t think so. Forgive me for being blunt, but we’ve lost face, and I don’t think we can recommend you with confidence to any of our clients or accounts here. Now, if you could turn the situation around and find a way to make the job work, then maybe we will all feel differently.”
Back inside the house, Harley took off her coat, hanging it up on a peg in the laundry room and then went to the kitchen to figure out what she’d make for dinner.
For long moments she stared blindly into the refrigerator, trying to come up with a plan, but she couldn’t focus on anything, too much in a daze.
Everything had gotten so messed up, so fast.
“I thought you’d be packing,” Brock said shortly, entering the kitchen to refill his coffee cup.
Harley straightened, shut the refrigerator door, and faced him. “The agency can’t replace me until Saturday.” She drew a quick breath, tried to smile, but failed. “Looks like you’re stuck with me until the weekend.”
“You must be devastated,” he said, his expression hard.
His sarcasm stung. She struggled to keep her composure.
“Trapped here with children,” he added bitingly.
This time she couldn’t hide the hurt, her lips trembling, her eyes gritty and hot. “You’re making this something it’s not,” she whispered. “I don’t hate kids. I don’t dislike them.”
His fierce dark gaze met hers and held. “But the moment you found out I had kids you wanted to bolt. True?”
Her lips parted but no sound came out. How to tell him that she’d loved her children so much that when they died it’d killed her?
How to explain that even now, three years without her children, she still woke up in a cold sweat missing them? Needing them?
She gave her head the smallest of shakes. “It’s not what you think.” Her voice was all but inaudible. “It’s a... a... personal... thing.”
“Obviously.”
She struggled to add. “It’s more of a... grief... thing.”
He grew still. His dense black lashes lifted. He stared at her hard, searchingly. “You don’t have kids.”
“No.”
His gaze continued to hold hers. “You wanted them?”
She reached for a damp dishtowel by the sink. “Yes.”
He said nothing, just looked at her. But it was enough.
Terrified she’d cry or fall apart, she forced herself to action, swiping the dishtowel across the counter, mopping up the glisten of water on the counter. She dragged the dishtowel over another area, this one clean and dry, but activity was good. Activity would distract both of them. Or so she prayed.
But the silence in the kitchen was intolerable. It seemed to stretch on forever.
Finally he spoke. “So you’re here for the rest of the week.”
“Yes.”
“You can handle that?”
“Yes,” she said lowly.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
He turned to leave but stopped in the doorway. “Not that it makes a difference, but they won’t require much from you. Just meals, laundry, that sort of thing. I’ll keep them out of your way. That should help.”
She couldn’t look at him. She turned away, feeling naked, and bereft. Harley didn’t even know this family and yet she liked them... cared for them. How could she not?
Two freckle-faced eleven-year-olds who’d grown up without a mom.
A darkly handsome rancher who’d become Marietta’s recluse.
This big, handsome log cabin house that lacked the tenderness that would make it a home.
“You don’t have to tell them to stay out of my way,” she said hoarsely, keeping her face averted. “They’re fine. It’ll be fine. I promise.”
Brock nodded shortly and walked out, allowing the kitchen door to slam behind him, glad to escape the kitchen and the grief he’d seen in Harley’s face before she’d turned away from him.
He wished he hadn’t seen it. He didn’t like it, uncomfortable with sorrow and emotions, and already overwhelmed by the twins’ sudden arrival home.
The twins weren’t supposed to be here, and he was furious with the school and his kids and Harley Diekerhoff for stating the obvious last night—he was not paying his kids enough attention.
But his kids wanted the wrong kind of attention and he wasn’t about to reward them for bad behavior.
He grabbed his heavy coat from the hook outside the door, and his dogs came bounding through the snow, the Australian shepherds having deserted him earlier to trail after the kids.
The kids.
Brock’s jaw jutted, furious and frustrated. His kids were in so much trouble. Not only had they cut out of school a week early before the school holiday had officially begun, they’d taken two different Amtrak trains and a Greyhound bus to get back to Marietta.
He couldn’t even fathom the risks they’d taken, getting home.
He’d taught them to be smart and self-reliant so he wasn’t surprised that they could find their way home from New York—after all, they’d all traveled together to the school by train last August, taking the train from Malta to Chicago and then connecting to the Lake Shore Limited, with its daily service between Chicago and New York—but running away from school wasn’t smart, or self-reliant. It was stupid. Foolish. Dangerous.
Heading toward the barn, dogs at his heels, Brock shied away from thinking about all the different things that could have gone wrong. There were bad people in this world, people Mack and Molly had never been exposed to, and for all the twins’ confidence, they were hopelessly naïve.
Pushing open the barn door, Brock heard the scrape of shovel and rake. Good. The twins were working. He’d told them they couldn’t play until they’d mucked out the stalls, a job that would take a couple of hours, and when he’d checked on them twenty minutes ago, he’d discovered they’d cut out to go sledding.
Now they had to muck the stalls and clean and oil the leather bridles… and there were a lot of bridles.
Mack glanced up glumly as Brock came around the corner.
Molly didn’t even look at her dad.
“Looks good,” Brock said, inspecting the completed stalls. “Just the bridles and
you’ll be free for the day.”
“We really have to take all the bridles, all apart?” Mack asked, groaning. “We just can’t wipe them down with leather cleaner?”
“We already talked about this,” Brock answered. “I want every buckle undone, all leather pieces shiny with oil and then rubbed down so you get the old wax and dirt off. With a clean cloth, polish the leather up, use an old toothbrush on the bit, cleaning that too, and then put it back together... the right way. If you have to draw a sketch, or take a picture to help you remember how each bridle goes together, then do it, because the job’s not finished until the bridles are back hanging in the tack room.”
Molly glared at him. “That’s going to take all day.”
“You’re not on vacation, Molly. You were supposed to be in school.”
“I hate the Academy.”
“Then you should enjoy helping out around here. You’ll be working all week.”
Harley didn’t see the kids again until just an hour before dinner. It was dark outside when they opened the back door to troop dispiritedly through the kitchen. They’d forgotten to take their boots off and they left icy, mucky footprints across the hardwood floor before disappearing upstairs.
Harley paused from mashing the potatoes to run a mop across the floor. She was just finishing by the back door when it opened again and Brock stood there.
“Careful,” she said. “It’s wet. You don’t want to slip.”
“Why are you mopping now?” he asked, easing off his boots and leaving them outside.
“It’d gotten dirty and I didn’t want everyone walking through it, tracking mud through the rest of the house.”
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “The kids?”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. They know to take their boots off. That’s one of Maxine’s big rules. She’d throw them out if they tramped mud and snow through the house.” He walked into the laundry, flipping on the light. “Where are their dirty clothes?”