black hair would make heads turn in their thriving summer town.
But not hers, because people whose main goal was amassing wealth annoyed her. How could he be thriving in New York and ignoring his mother’s failing business and health in the Finger Lakes? What kind of person did that?
This couldn’t possibly be happening, and yet—it just had. Cruz Maldonado didn’t look too happy. Well, neither was she, but she understood that Lily and Javier were in need. Their plight took precedence.
“Miss Rory?”
Lily’s plaintive voice melted Rory’s heart. She bent low and snugged an arm around the girl’s thin shoulders. “What’s up, darling?”
“Javi might be scared.” Lily kept her voice soft, her gaze down, not looking up at Cruz. “Like, not much, but...” She leaned in close. “Just a little bit. Maybe.”
Three-year-old Javier didn’t look scared.
If anything he looked energized, while Lily looked nervous. “There is no reason to be scared, my little friends, because we are going to have ourselves...” She paused, building their anticipation. “An adventure!”
“A ’venture?” Javier’s smoke-toned eyes opened wide. “For weal? I wuv ’ventures so much!”
“With him?” Lily glanced up at Cruz and scrunched her face, clearly unconvinced.
“So it would seem.” Rory took Lily’s hand, then stood and took Javier’s on the other side. “Lily, Javier.” She stood as straight and tall as a five-foot-three-inch person could and faced Rosa’s tall, broad-shouldered, successful son. “This is your cousin Cruz.”
“Hey, guys.” He crouched down to meet the kids at their level. “I was friends with your mommy when we were little.”
“You know our mommy?” Excitement heightened Lily’s voice, as if finding someone acquainted with her mother wasn’t the norm. “You played with her?”
“We climbed trees and played in the big barn, and fed goats and chased kittens and trimmed a lot of grapevines in our time,” he told her.
“Our mom was wittle?” Javier eyed him with frank suspicion, as if the words didn’t quite compute.
“Everybody is a little kid at one time,” Rory reminded them. “We start as babies, then we grow to be kids.”
“Then big kids,” added Lily.
“And then we get to be moms and dads!” Javier added that last with all the excitement he could muster. “I’m Javier and I’m th-this many.” He held up five fingers, then forced his thumb down with his other hand. “Four.”
“Almost four. In three months,” Rory reminded him.
“Th-that’s right. Free months.”
Lily pointed up at the clock on the wall. “Can we go back to be with Mimi now?” She looked from Steve to Rory, ignoring Cruz. “I just want to be back with her and I think it’s time.”
“Me, too.” Javier’s voice choked slightly. “I miss my Gator so much.”
Rory caught Cruz’s sympathetic expression, and acted quickly. Something about these kids seemed to touch a nerve in him. A nerve that said the hard-jawed, grim-faced man might actually have a heart.
She bent between the two kids and kept her voice teacher-firm as her brother-in-law entered the room. “You can’t go back and live with Rosa right now.”
“Is she in trouble?”
Leave it to Lily to get straight to the point, but Rory wasn’t about to explain all of the legal issues to the kids, so she opted for plan B. “You know she hasn’t been feeling well.”
Both kids knew that firsthand. They nodded, solemn.
“While the doctors figure out what to do, she needs some extra rest, so you guys are going to stay at my house. You can help me get things ready for school each day, and help me take care of my dog, okay? As an added bonus, we get to walk all over town together. And, Javier, we’ll have someone bring Gator over to my house.” She aimed a reassuring look his way. “And anything else you guys need.”
“You live in the village?” Cruz asked.
She raised her eyes to his. “On Creighton Landing, just beyond The Square.”
“It’s late,” he went on. He swept the kids a quick look before he turned his attention back to her. “Can we meet tomorrow and talk this through? I’m a little unprepared and that’s not my norm.”
She was pretty sure it wasn’t his norm, because no one rose to the heights of financial security that quickly without being prepared for everything, all the time. “I’m done with school at noon, so the kids and I should get back to my house by twelve thirty or so.”
“And they’re okay with you for the day?”
Was he missing the basic meaning of shared custody? She bit back words of protest because anything was doable for a day. “For tomorrow, yes.”
“Thank you, Miss Gallagher.”
“Rory.” She let go of Javier and put out her hand. “As their teacher I’m a mandated reporter. A circumstance which brought us to this moment. I’m afraid your mother is very angry with me right now.”
“As her only child, I’m familiar with the feeling,” he told her. “And I think it’s highly possible that you are as confounded as I find myself by this sudden change in affairs.” He took her hand in his.
She wasn’t sure what she expected. A cool, hard handshake, quick and businesslike? Or a quick touch of fingers, as if too busy?
She got neither.
He wrapped her hand in his and studied her for long, slow seconds. Did he like what he saw, or was he assessing an adversary? She couldn’t tell, and that didn’t sit well with the youngest Gallagher sister. She hadn’t been gifted with the business acumen her mother and older sister Kimberly possessed, a talent they used to run a mega-successful wedding and event-planning business.
And she didn’t have the stage presence and eye for fashion of her middle sister Emily, now a bridal shop owner.
Rory had gotten Gram Gallagher’s help-for-the-downtrodden heart, but right now her goal might be ruined by lack of time and available real estate. With her mother away, and Kimberly’s baby due soon, she would most likely be adding time spent at Kate & Company to her jam-packed days, further dwindling her grant application period.
She couldn’t let that happen. Kids were depending on her, counting on her to provide strong early education for needy families tucked within the hills surrounding Grace Haven. She’d put things off while her dad fought brain cancer in Houston for the past year. Now that he was in remission, her time had come.
Or so she’d thought.
She held Cruz’s gaze.
He’d read the reaction she tried to hide. Rory wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. She had been taken by surprise, but would she have refused to help?
No.
For now she was going to drive home and get these two kids tucked into bed.
Then she’d sit down and start praying, because her life just got put on hold once more. And to tell the truth, Rory Gallagher was tired of having decisions jerked out from under her. “It’s not the first U-turn I’ve made.” She addressed Cruz with a cool tone. “And I expect it won’t be the last.” She slanted a smile to the children and gave a light squeeze to their linked hands. “But it might just be the most fun.” She turned to her brother-in-law, the new Grace Haven chief of police. “Drew, feel free to catch me up on things as they develop.”
“Drew Slade?” A look of recognition lightened Cruz’s face as he turned