the few steps to the waiting couple and was already smiling and shaking hands before she could protest. As large drops of rain began to fall, accompanied by a low rumble of thunder, she herded the other three boys toward the limo with her free hand.
The driver, a rotund older man with a cheerful expression, opened the door for them and held Ringo for her while she climbed inside. Then he handed the toddler in.
The boys were immediately pushing buttons opening and closing windows and the privacy panel, turning on the small television, discovering the wine decanter and glasses.
Since she’d arrived in their home, Susan had learned that a mother of four boys should be equipped with eight arms.
She was still trying to reclaim control when Aaron climbed into the limo and sat opposite her. He took the crystal stopper from Paul, replaced it in the decanter, closed the windows, turned off the overhead light, then found cartoons on the television.
The boys were instantly glued to it. Susan scrambled around to buckle seat belts. Aaron glanced at his watch. “Nearly noon,” he said. “Should we go to lunch?”
“Uh…” She had an instant image of the ordeal mealtime had been during the past few days. John ate nothing, Paul ate everything, George made designs with his food, and Ringo preferred to see his food on the floor. And while all this was going on, the boys harrassed each other mercilessly. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Socially, I mean.”
“We’ll go to a fast-food place,” he countered, “where they’re used to dealing with messy kids. And the kids might enjoy the playland thing, get to blow off some steam.”
That was true. “All right.” She glanced at his expensive raincoat. “But you might want to cover yourself in plastic. There’s food over everything when they’re finished eating.”
He shrugged off the warning. “Winston,” he called through the open privacy screen, “Find us a Burger Hut.”
“You got it, Mr. Bradley.”
The boys made a pretext of eating, but once they spotted the maze of wide plastic tubes through which other children chased each other, food was secondary to the desire to join them. Ringo, mercifully, had fallen asleep in Susan’s lap.
“Can we go now, Uncle Aaron?” John pleaded. The other two boys jumped up and down in anticipation.
Aaron deferred to Susan. It was a diplomatic gesture she could appreciate in sentiment, but considering the boys seemed suddenly to revolve in his orbit, it was an empty concession.
But she would have to deal with them when he was gone, so she took control. “Yes, you can, but no punching or kicking or you’ll have to come in. I’ll be able to watch you through the window.”
They nodded in unison, pushing and shoving each other before they even got to the door that led to the covered play area.
AARON STUDIED the young woman across the table from him as she shifted the child from the crook of her arm to lean against her breast. Where her silky black blouse plunged into a V neck, her skin was alabaster in contrast. Her eyes were dark and soft, with shadowy patches under them as though she was very tired. Her cheeks were pink, her lips the color of Chianti, and the whole berries-and-cream look of her was set off by thick dark hair that was caught back in a knot.
She didn’t like him. He’d sensed that the moment he stepped up to her at the church. He smiled privately at the realization that Dave and Becky had probably told her that he didn’t visit often enough, didn’t keep in close enough touch.
“When I expressed concern for the children last night on the phone,” he said without preamble, “you told me that Dave and Becky’s will makes you the children’s guardian.”
She met his eyes directly. “That’s right. I hope that doesn’t offend you.”
He suspected she added that as a concession to good manners.
He shook his head. “Not at all. I wish I was equipped to care for four children, but I’m really not. I travel a lot, I work long hours…” He laughed. “And my housekeeper swears.”
“A man?” she asked.
“No, a woman. Heart of gold, but a strong opinionated lady. Beebee likes to think she runs my life. And the lives of whoever comes in contact with me. Anyway, I know how much my brother loved his family. If he and Becky put the boys in your care, I know you have to be a model of motherhood.”
She made a scornful sound. “Hardly. But I have a house and a steady job and I made a promise to Becky.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a carpenter,” she replied.
He was sure he’d misheard her. “A carpenter. Like on a construction site?”
“Not anymore.” Ringo stirred and she patted his back until he resettled himself, his lips open in an oval like a little fish’s mouth. “Now I have a weekly-TV cable show for women on how to use tools, do small repairs, simplify difficult or heavy jobs. I’m sponsored by Legacy Tools on the Crafters’ Channel.”
He found that fascinating. He wasn’t much of a handyman himself. “Well, good for you. But that must take a lot of time. What’ll you do about the boys? Can you afford to hire help?”
She raised an eyebrow, her expression at once indignant and imperious. She opened her mouth to reply but he cut her off before she could.
“I wasn’t questioning your household management or your ability to care for them. I was just wondering if there was something I could do to help.”
“Thank you,” she said, “but I understand you’re pretty busy with your business and your…your…”
He might have helped her had he known what she was trying to say. Since he didn’t, he simply waited.
“Your…life-style,” she finally finished with a slightly aggressive tilt to her chin.
“My life-style,” he repeated trying to remember when he’d last had time to have one.
“You know,” she said looking a little uncomfortable, though she seemed determined to ignore such a feeling as she went on intrepidly, “Your parties. Your women. Your nude sunbathing with Mariah Havilland.”
He laughed. “Now, I wouldn’t have taken you for a subscriber to the Reporter. And if you were, I still wouldn’t have taken you for the kind of woman who’d stare at a grainy photo of a man’s backside to determine who it belonged to.”
“It was identified,” she said coolly, “in the caption.”
“So you saw the naked backside,” he said, “and then stopped to read the caption? I wonder if Dave and Becky knew you could be titillated by such things. And then I suppose you read the whole story.”
“No, I didn’t read—”
“That’s too bad,” he interrupted, beginning to enjoy this exchange, “because you’d have discovered that in the nature of their deceptive headlines and captions, it wasn’t my backside at all, but that of her personal trainer.” He grinned. “I was flattered, though, to have been mistaken for an athlete.”
She heaved a long-suffering sigh. “I was simply trying to turn down your offer of help because I know that your life isn’t…conducive to…”
He loved watching her struggle for the right words. It took the edge off her duchesslike demeanor and added a fluster that she hated and he found amusing.
“Yes?”
“To a wife,” she said a little loudly.
“But I wasn’t asking you to marry me,” he said seriously. “I was offering to—”
“I know that!” she said in a harsh whisper. She swallowed and said icily, “I mean that you’re