across the child’s neck with such tenderness that Amy felt a longing rise in her.
Do that to me.
The young girl giggled and hid her face against his shirt.
When Hank removed his big hand from the back of the child’s head, Amy gasped.
From beneath the girl’s baseball cap, a bare skull peeked out above a baby-chick neck. A cancer survivor.
Her brief moment of peace shattered. Amy rubbed her chest.
She’d known that the Sheltering Arms ranch took in poor, inner-city kids who were recovering from cancer, and she thought she’d prepared herself for them.
So wrong.
They all wore ball caps with no hair peeking out below. Nothing but more of those delicate bare necks.
The hands Amy wiped on her thighs shook.
The girl turned her face toward Amy. Sallow skin, dark circles under her eyes, thin to the point of pain.
Gulping deep breaths, Amy washed herself with icy aloofness. Rise above it. Come on, you can do it.
She turned away and stared hard at the fields, digging deep for strength.
Amy’s glance returned to the children against her will, like a tongue probing a sore tooth to see whether pain lingered.
It did.
A boy sitting on Hank’s foot pointed to her and asked, “Who is she, Hank?”
HANK’S TONGUE stuck to the roof of his mouth. What was this curvy female, the most beautiful one he’d ever seen, doing on his ranch?
Blond hair. Green eyes. Perfect body. Made a man want to…what? Where were his treasured words when he needed them?
“Exquisite,” he whispered. His favorite word. Damn. Hadn’t meant to say it out loud.
For a second, he thought she might be mother to one of the children, but he’d met them all in the city a few weeks ago.
“Can I help you, ma’am?” He tried to clear the battery acid out of his voice.
“Are you Hank Shelter?” she asked and her voice washed over him like a Chinook melting February snow. Awareness hummed along his nerve endings.
“Yes, ma’am, I am.” Nerves—or the kid clinging to his throat—made him sound rougher than usual.
“I’m Amy Graves, Leila’s friend. How do you do, Mr. Shelter?” She extended her right hand toward him.
Leila’s friend? “You’re the accountant?”
Leila was in her early fifties. Amy didn’t look a day over thirty. Didn’t that just knock the wind out of him?
He realized his mouth was hanging open and he clamped it shut.
His fingers tingled and his heart pounded. Slow down, he warned his treacherous libido.
His body wanted to jump a few fences, but his heart balked at the gates.
He set down the two girls hanging from his right arm, then wrapped his fingers around Amy’s hand. It nestled as soft as a calf’s ear in his big-galoot palm and started long-forgotten urges. He dropped it like a hot cow pie.
He cleared his throat. “Ma’am, if you’ll give me your keys, the kids and I will get your luggage.”
The woman nodded.
She’s fragile these days.
She looked fit, but he understood what Leila meant about the fragility. Emotional, maybe.
Take care of her.
Uh-uh. No can do. He set his jaw hard enough to hear his teeth grind.
He walked away from her to get her bags, the children following him like a line of baby ducks.
He opened the trunk of her car and pulled out a suitcase and an overnight bag. There was one more bag, supple brown leather with a brass closure. A laptop. Right, common sense reminded him. She’s here to work, on the books.
Too bad, his libido whispered.
Use every trick in the book to get rid of her, his common sense answered. He needed an attraction to the woman who was here to look at his books like he needed a root canal. Not.
He planned to have her hightailing it back to the city by tomorrow morning.
CHAPTER TWO
AMY ENTERED the house and let the screen door butt her back. Her lungs wouldn’t expand enough for the air she needed. Maybe coming here hadn’t been such a great idea. Sure, she needed to face her fears of illness and dying, but spending time with these children was definitely trial by fire.
She had to do this. Simply had to.
She ran a hand over her face, pulling herself under control. The darkness and cinnamon scent of the foyer helped.
Hank entered the house behind her.
“Kids,” he said to the children following on his heels, “go wash up. Hannah should have lunch on the table any minute.”
They ran down the hall to a room at the far end. Seconds later, someone had the water running.
“That bathroom is across the hall from your bedroom,” Hank said. “It’ll be your own early mornings and late evenings. The rest of the time, the kids have to use it.” He shrugged his apology.
The lemon and soap scent of him drifted by her. Too nice. Her nerves went on high alert. She was here to test herself with the children. Being attracted—okay, very attracted—to Leila’s brother was not in the plan.
Amy followed Hank down the hallway, past a wide staircase leading to the second floor on one side and a closed door on the other. Pastoral landscapes dotted the walls, with not a single abstract in sight. He entered a room at the back of the house, the last one opposite the bathroom the kids were using.
Hank set one of her suitcases onto the floor and the other onto its side on the bed.
“Ma’am, if you don’t mind, I’m going to get those kids settled down for lunch. Join us when you finish freshening up.”
No. She needed to take exposure to those kids in baby steps.
“I’d like to go straight to the office,” she replied. “I’m not hungry.”
Her traitorous stomach chose that moment to grumble.
Hank’s smile looked smug. “That door leads to the kitchen, where you’ll find our housekeeper, Hannah.” He pointed behind himself. “The one down the hall is the dining room.”
The children ran down the hall away from the bathroom.
“You can’t miss it,” Hank continued. “Just follow the sound of those kids. They make enough noise to rouse the dead.”
Amy flinched away from that image.
She put on a smile but knew it didn’t reach her eyes. The psychic pain she’d been carrying for two years wouldn’t quit.
“Dolorous,” Hank whispered, then his gaze flew away from hers.
He backed out of the bedroom, bumping into a small table. He caught a vase of lilacs before it fell but not before water sloshed onto his hand. His shoulder bumped into the door frame when he stepped through it. With the vase still in his grasp, he disappeared into the hall.
Well, he couldn’t be more different from Leila than chocolate from vanilla. Hard to believe they were related. Hank must be fifteen, sixteen years younger than Leila. Funny. Was Hank a late baby? A midlife surprise for his mother?
No, wait. Leila had mentioned that her mother had died when she was young and her father had remarried. Maybe