a quivering finger at James and Sean “—will be the death of you.” Her hand grasped the doorknob.
Max felt the boys’ shoulders tense at the housekeeper’s harsh words, but he couldn’t afford to stop and soothe them. Peeling the twins off his legs for now with the order to “Stay put,” he followed the woman out the door, catching up with her on the front lawn. “Wait, wait!” When he touched her elbow, she whirled and glared at him. Promptly he let go.
“Dinner is burned,” she said. “Somebody turned off my timer. And I hope you don’t need clean shirts tomorrow, because the laundry never got done.” She raised her chin, daring Max to complain. He didn’t intend to.
“Obviously, this wasn’t the greatest day…for any of us.” From what remained of his humor, he summoned a smile. “I wouldn’t want to repeat it myself. I tell you, dealing with contractors is a lot like dealing with kids. Everything happens on their time frame, they get to pout, and you’re the one who has to pay for it all.”
Mrs. Carmichael crossed surprisingly muscular arms over her grandmotherly bosom. The curl of her lips said it all: tell me something I will care about.
Adrenaline pumped into Max’s system. He rubbed his hands together, warming up for the old college try. “All right. First of all, do not worry about the dinner. We’ll order pizza for the kids, and you and I can sit down and—”
“Dinner is the least of your concerns, Mr. Lotorto. Those two hooligans have been acting like wild animals all day.” She pointed behind him to the two boys who had obviously not stayed put. “First they dug a hole in the garden—”
“No, it’s a time capsule,” James asserted, evidently certain this tidbit of information would cancel any wrongdoing. “We’re puttin’ Sean’s dead lizard in it.”
Max lowered his brow. “Shh.”
“Then they put shaving cream on the windows—”
“Uh-uh, it was cleaning stuff. We were helpin’ clean them,” Sean whined in protest.
Max raised a finger to his lips. He could not afford to lose the only help he had. Returning his attention to Mrs. Carmichael, he tried to commiserate. Having lived with the twins for several months, it wasn’t hard. “I can see how irritating that must have—” he began.
“And then they tried to set fire to the house.”
“Fire?” Max knew these kids. They were boisterous, a bit too creative in their play, but ultimately they were good kids trying to find their way through circumstances that would have been difficult for anyone. They weren’t delinquents. They had never deliberately hurt anyone or anything. “If they were playing with matches, I’ll deal with them.” He turned briefly to shoot both boys a warning glare. “I will definitely deal with them. But I think we ought to be careful about suggesting they intended to burn down the house—”
“They made a fire in the middle of their bedroom.”
James ran forward, accompanied by his brother, and tried to speak again. Max pressed a hand over each boy’s mouth. All he made out was a muffled “…campout…”
His head began to throb, right between the eyes. There had to be a way to deal with this firmly but calmly, rationally. “Here’s what I suggest. I think we should all go back in the house, and—”
“They used a box of your cigars for kindling.”
“—talk about—” He halted. “Cigars? Imported cigars? With a little hut…and a palm tree on the box?”
Mrs. Carmichael shrugged eloquently. “How should I know?” She shook her head. “No more box.”
The throb expanded to the top of Max’s head. He wanted badly to yell, but how could he? He was failing these kids.
The thought made him furious and frustrated, but not at them. They were innocent victims, loved by a mother who, unfortunately, had never been able to give them stability. So many times they’d been unceremoniously dumped in Max’s life—a few days here, a couple of days there. But this time, they were here for good, and though they had known Max and loved him all of their lives, they probably sensed by now that the emperor had no clothes: Max knew how to be fun for a weekend, but he didn’t know jack about being a parent.
No way could he do this alone.
His mind raced as he groped for a way to plug the hole in this sinking ship. Before he could make another gambit, however, the woman he’d hoped would be his salvation put her hands on her hips and said, “You won’t like to hear it, people never do, but what those boys need is a good horsewhipping. I’d have done it, too, but they locked themselves in the bathroom.”
Against his legs, Max felt the boys stiffen. Anger pumped more adrenaline into his veins. With her elbows sticking out and her slivered eyes spitting threats, Carmichael, the self-avowed übernanny, looked startlingly like Miss Gulch in The Wizard of Oz just before she took Toto away from Dorothy.
“Mrs. Carmichael,” he warned in a low, cautionary voice, “try to remember what I told you.”
She nodded. “Exactly. Bad blood breeds bad blood, and from what you said about their mother, those two are likely to be in prison before they’re ten.”
“Mrs. Carmichael—”
“You’ll be doing yourself a favor if you let Social Services handle them.”
Sean squeezed tightly against Max’s knee. Max felt his anger reach frightening proportions.
Tightly controlling himself, he leaned down and murmured to James. “What did you call your brother?” James whispered in reply, eliciting a nod before Max straightened. “Mrs. Carmichael,” he said, “you are a poo-poo doo-doo brain.”
The woman’s mouth opened and closed like a baby bird trying to feed.
“And just so that you and I completely understand each other, do not ever mention Social Services in connection with my children again, not even if you’re standing on the other side of town in a soundproof booth.”
“I quit!” the woman snapped, face growing redder with each second.
Maxwell smiled grimly. “Just when I thought we were getting along.”
Mrs. Carmichael’s nostrils flared, but she spun without another word and stalked to the maroon Buick she’d parked at the curb.
Max didn’t wait to watch her get in. He turned the boys around, nudging them toward the house. On the porch, ten-year-old Anabel stood somberly with her arm around Livie, their baby sister. Garbed as usual in her thrift-store fairy princess costume, she had what appeared to be either makeup or strawberry jam all over her face. Her huge, worried eyes swallowed her face.
Max ground his teeth. Terrific. So much for setting a good example. They’d heard everything.
Tossing his ex-nanny’s apron onto the sofa, Max clapped his hands with forced joviality. “So, who’s starving? I’ll order pizza.”
Anabel was the only one who spoke. “We had pizza last night.”
Fatigue pulled Max’s body like gravity. Very little frightened him in life. He hardly ever panicked, and he hardly ever prayed. Hard work, truth, loyalty—those were the values he believed in. They ought to be enough to bring a man through most difficulties. Now he stood in his living room, with four pairs of worried eyes watching him, and directed this message heavenward: SEND HELP.
Chapter Two
Daisy June Ryder liked fashion. Before the business had started gasping for breath, and she’d opted to pay the past month’s utility bills plus as much of the back rent as she could—which wasn’t much, really—from her personal checking account, clothes and shoes had been her number-one material indulgence.
So when she dressed for success as a prospective