you have any more weapons on you?”
“No.”
“Do I have to check?”
“No.”
He glanced at Tomas, and saw truth there. He arrived at Hacienda de Alegria, Joe and Meredith Colton’s lavish ranch, and shook his head. There were kids everywhere, spilling across the lawns and out of the big sprawling house that dominated the scene.
Meredith Colton, who really should have been enjoying her retirement, was running frantically with a homemade kite, kids on all sides of her, running and laughing, their faces lifted to the sun.
Joe had a little fat pony saddled and a small girl had a death grip on the saddle horn and a huge smile on her face as Joe led her around the yard. Another dozen or so kids were hopping along on either side of them, excited to have a turn.
Blake shook his head. He’d been worried about imposing on his foster parents when they had offered to take the kids from Hopechest. But when the logistics of keeping the ranch open by bringing in water and supplying bottled water for drinking had proved impossible, he had accepted their gracious offer.
He realized now he had never seen two people look less imposed upon. The pair of them looked like they were in all their glory.
“What is this place?” Tomas asked, his eyes wide, his nose pressed to the window.
“It’s a temporary home for the kids who were displaced from the ranch.”
“No kidding?” he breathed. “I kind of imagined heaven looking like this.”
“That’s kind of how I felt when I first saw it, too,” Blake confessed. Tomas was way ahead of where Blake had been, though, if he could admit something like that. Blake, at that age, would have considered such an admission soft.
A half hour later Tomas had been reunited with his sister, and Joe, with his knack for trusting those who had never been trusted, had put Tomas in charge of pony rides.
“What’s his story?” Joe asked quietly, as he and Blake sat on comfortable cushions on the bent willow chairs in the deep shade of the porch.
“I don’t know yet,” Blake said, taking a sip of his iced tea. Just the way he liked it. Tea and lemon, no sugar. Trust Meredith to be watching the sugar intake of all these kids. “I just found out from him he pulled a knife on my secretary.”
“Really?” Joe said mildly. “Surprised he has any teeth left.”
“I don’t hit kids.”
“Well, none of them ever pulled a knife on Holly before. Meredith and I are very taken with that girl.”
Holly was making several trips a week between Hacienda de Alegria and the Hopechest Ranch with paperwork. But Blake suspected many of her trips were just because she missed the kids so much.
He did, too.
He noticed a twinkle in Joe Colton’s eye that seemed to encourage a confession that Blake, too, was quite taken with his new secretary.
Blake had a desperate need to deny it. “I would have been ticked if it happened to anybody, and not enough to be smashing heads, either.”
“Well, maybe you wouldn’t have been that ticked if it had happened to Mrs. Bartholomew,” Joe guessed.
Blake had to chuckle. “Okay, maybe not her. Joe, I don’t have any kind of interest in Holly Lamb, aside from the fact she’s the most wonderful secretary I’ve ever had.”
Joe looked skeptical.
“For God’s sake, it would be totally unprofessional.”
“I don’t recall saying a word about your relationship with Holly, professional or otherwise. But let an old man share some wisdom with you.”
“Do you have to?”
“Yes. She’s the kind of girl men pass up. She doesn’t catch the eye, like a piece of tinfoil in the gutter. She’s more like gold. Gold doesn’t shine much when you first find it. You have to look hard for it.”
“I’m not involved with my secretary. And I don’t plan to be. Joe, I have an example to set. My behavior has to be exemplary in every way.”
“Who are you trying to convince you’re perfect—the rest of the world or yourself? You’ve got to quit lining up those paper clips in neat rows and live a little.”
An annoying statement, uncomfortably close to the one Rory had made recently. Something insulting about him polishing his stapler.
Of course, Rory was all buoyance and light and unpolished staplers now that Cupid’s arrow had found him.
Joe could still make Blake feel like an awkward kid, still ask all the right questions.
He also knew precisely when to drop something.
“Look, Meredith and I have set our party for a week from Saturday. We think its about time to have some fun.”
Blake looked at the three-ring circus happening around him and wondered glumly how much more fun it could get.
“This whole thing has been terrible on the morale of the whole town. We’re going to have a good old-fashioned barn dance. Get people laughing again, give these kids a chance to see there are wholesome ways to have fun. Can I count on you to come?”
“Oh, yeah, like you need me to have fun.” Blake had an independent nature that did not lend itself well to social functions, which he detested. His job required him to attend some, but he rarely attended any voluntarily.
“I don’t need you, but I sure like it when you’re around, Blake. You know Meredith and I consider you as much our son as Rand and Drake. Meredith wants you to come, too. Plus, of course, it would be setting a good example to your staff, showing them it’s time for a change in mood, time to move forward.”
“I’d feel better about doing that when whoever is behind the contamination of the water system is found.”
“Maybe he’ll never be found,” Joe said. “It’s important to move forward now, past the fear and tensions of the last couple of months. You can poison kids like these without ever touching their water.”
“He’ll be found,” Blake said. “I won’t rest until he’s found. Sinclair from the FBI, and Rafe feel the same way.”
Joe nodded. “Well, since we’ve got the three of you on it, the rest of us might as well start relaxing, hmm?”
Blake grinned. “Okay, I get your point.”
“Good. Are you going to come?”
“Okay. I’ll come,” he agreed reluctantly.
“Feel free to bring somebody with you.”
Blake squinted at Joe suspiciously, but there was not a flicker in the older man’s face to suggest he thought that someone should be Holly Lamb. As if.
“Can Tomas stay here for a day or two? Until I find out where he’s supposed to be, and if he needs to go back?”
“Oh, sure,” Joe said easily as if one more kid was a joy.
That was what Blake had felt here, for the very first time in his life. That his presence in this universe was a joy to someone, instead of a burden.
“Well, don’t forget he pulled the knife.”
“Blake, look at him. He hasn’t let go of his little sister’s hand since he arrived. He’s been helping snotty-nosed kids on and off that pony for the better part of half an hour. I like the cut of his jib.”
“Well, you always see it first, Joe.”
“Don’t I?” Joe said happily. “Go home and make sure that secretary of yours is okay. Though she looks to