Lord, it was killing her not to gather the little guy into her arms and hug him to pieces. But even if doing so wouldn’t spook the poor kid, she had a real strong feeling it would take a lot more than a hug or two to ease the deep, deep sadness weighing down his small shoulders. She glanced back at Joe long enough to catch his puzzled expression. “Didi told me about you, said you’d probably be bringing Seth this morning.”
The child shifted closer to Joe, his long, spiked eyelashes canopying blatant distrust before he scrubbed away his tears with the hem of his T-shirt. That got another borderline anxious glance from his father, although Taylor gave him megapoints for not fussing at the boy or telling him to stop being a sissy, that big boys weren’t supposed to cry, like a lot of the men around here were inclined to do with their sons. And maybe because of that, or the humidity, or because her libido had nosed open the door and slipped out again, she picked up a whiff of aftershave-soaked male pheromones that damn near shorted out her brain.
Joe looked back at her, sunlight slashing across prominent cheekbones to create some very interesting shadows on his face, sharply defining a mouth straight out of an Eddie Bauer catalog. “We might have a problem here,” he said.
You have no idea, Taylor thought, only she said, “I can see that,” because she imagined the man had more pressing things on his mind than her wayward hormones. And God knows, she did. So she thrust out her hand, hoping like heck the man’s would be clammy and limp when she shook it.
As if. Still, she smiled and said, “I’m Taylor McIntyre. I run the day camp with Didi.” Then she let go of the not-clammy, not-limp, extremely male hand and smiled down at the little boy, who wore the cautious expression of someone on the lookout for fangs. “How old are you, Seth?”
Long pause. Then: “Eight.”
She squatted in front of him, trying to look as unthreatening as possible. A gust of hot, humid wind yanked a strand of curly hair out of her ponytail, tangling it in her eyelashes. “I know how scary new situations are,” she said gently, “but it sounds to me like your daddy’s got a lot of work to do—”
“Joe’s my brother,” the boy said. “Not my dad.”
Taylor’s eyes shot to Joe’s, only to meet with a guarded expression. Seth’s brother? He looked to be around Taylor’s age—in his early thirties at least—which would make the child more than twenty years younger. However, she could tell from the look on Joe’s face that whatever questions she might have would have to wait. If he would ever be inclined to answer them at all. Not that Taylor was any expert on the male thought process, God knew, but in her experience, men with stony expressions like Joe Salazar’s didn’t tend to be the most forthcoming souls in the world.
Then again, the frustrated-hand-through-the-hair gesture said plenty. “I’m sorry,” he said with what Taylor was going to accept as genuine regret, “but I’ve got a crew waiting for me, I really need—”
“Got it.” She smiled at Seth, steeling herself against the wobbly lower lip. “Okay, sweetie, let’s go inside—”
“No!”
But Joe swung the kid up into his arms and started for the building, his cowboy boots pounding the sun-baked earth. Over the standard “It’s gonna be okay, buddy” noises, a veritable swarm of pheromones drifted back to Taylor on the warm, muggy breeze.
She mentally stood aside and let them play on through, then followed Joe and Seth inside.
The place was crawling with kids.
No, seething, Joe silently amended. Like ants on a melting Popsicle. Sweat trickling down his back, he watched, vaguely horrified, as many, many short people pinballed around the dozen or so tables dotting the large, bright room’s flecked industrial carpeting. They were laughing and shrieking their heads off, acting like normal kids, making him uncomfortably aware of just how unused he was to being around kids anymore.
Just as he was uncomfortably aware of the fresh-faced, soap-scented, round-hipped redhead beside him.
“Is it always like this?” he asked.
“Actually, no,” she said, although she had to raise her voice to be heard. And step closer. Closer was not good. A paper airplane soared over their heads; a half dozen little boys swerved around them to retrieve it. Seth huddled closer to Joe’s hip, vibrating like a plucked guitar string. “Once we officially start at nine,” she said, “things calm down quite a bit.”
Joe could feel a scowl burrow into his forehead. “I don’t see a lot of adults.”
Taylor turned, her entire face lighting up into a smile that easily made it into Joe’s top ten female smiles. Maybe even the top five. “That’s probably because the kids’ve tied them up outside.”
The scowl burrowed deeper. Because it was killing him to leave Seth when he knew the kid wasn’t ready to be left yet, because the trio of lazy overhead fans weren’t doing squat to stir the hot, sullen air, because this woman and her damned top-five smile reminded him how long it had been since there’d been a woman in his life for more than ten minutes and because his body apparently had no qualms about bringing that lamentable fact to his attention.
“Just kidding,” she murmured. Dammit, she wasn’t even all that pretty, really, with her spice-colored hair yanked back into that ponytail and her pointy little nose and wide mouth and not a speck of makeup that Joe could see. But the way she looked at Seth, like it was everything she could do not to wrap her arms around him, was seriously messing with his head. And if all that wasn’t bad enough, then she glanced up at Joe, and he saw something in copper-fringed eyes that couldn’t decide if they were green or gold or gray that made him suspect she might be thinking about wanting to hug him, too. And, well—he looked away—it made him mad. At life in general and his life in particular. But most of all at himself, for half thinking he wouldn’t mind being hugged right now. Especially by a pretty—okay, fine, he’d been kidding himself about that part—lady who looked soft and smelled sweet and whose smile, it pained him to notice, edged damn close to number one every time she looked at his baby brother, as if she could see straight through to his battered soul.
“Didi—that’s the woman you talked to yesterday, the pastor’s wife?—is always here, plus me, plus at least one parent volunteer for every ten kids, and several teenagers as junior counselors. Didi and I are CPR-trained, and three of the teens have their Red Cross lifesaving certificates. For the aboveground pool outside. Building’s up to code, you don’t want to light a match for fear of setting off the sprinklers, and no chips, candy or soda allowed. How’s that?”
An exasperated breath left his lungs. “That’s fine,” he said, because it wasn’t as if he hadn’t given Mrs. Meyerhauser the third degree yesterday when he’d called, for one thing. And for another, it seemed everyone he talked to either had their own kids in the camp or knew somebody who did. Hank Logan’s own daughter was even one of the counselors. So he had no doubt Seth would be safe and well cared for here. It was just—
A whistle blast nearly stopped his heart as every kid in the room froze. “Okay, y’all,” Taylor’s surprisingly strong voice rang out as the whistle bounced back between her breasts. “Seems to me you should’ve burned off most of the excess energy by now. So Blair, Libby, April…why don’t you guys take your groups outside for a bit? And Blair, take mine, too, would you?”
The noise level sank considerably as the kids all scrambled over each other like puppies and out the two open doors at the back of the room.
“Impressive,” Joe said.
“Thanks,” she said, and she turned that smile on him, just for an instant. Just long enough to singe him right down to his…toes.
Seth tugged on his arm. His lashes were all stuck together in little spikes, and he still didn’t exactly look thrilled about being here, but at least there seemed to be a lull in the hysterics, for which Joe was extremely grateful.
“I gotta go.”
This