Dear Reader,

This month Silhouette Romance has six irresistible novels for you, starting with our FABULOUS FATHERS selection, Mad for the Dad by Terry Essig. When a sexy single man becomes an instant dad to a toddler, the independent divorcée next door offers parenthood lessons—only to dream of marriage and motherhood all over again!

In Having Gabriel’s Baby by Kristin Morgan, our BUNDLES OF JOY book, a fleeting night of passion with a handsome, brooding rancher leaves Joelle in the family way—and the dad-to-be insisting on a marriage of convenience for the sake of the baby….

Years ago Julie had been too young for the dashing man of her dreams. Now he’s back in town, and Julie’s still hoping he’ll make her his bride in New Years Wife by Linda Vainer, part of her miniseries HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS.

What’s a man to do when he has no interest in marriage but is having trouble resisting the lovely, warm and wonderful woman in his life? Get those cold feet to the nearest wedding chapel in Family Addition by Rebecca Daniels.

In About That Kiss by Jayne Addison, Joy Mackey, sister of the bride, is sure her sis’s ex-fiancé has returned to sabotage the wedding. But his intention is to walk down the aisle with Joy!

And finally, when a woman shows up on a bachelor doctor’s doorstep with a baby that looks just like him, everyone in town mistakenly thinks the tiny tot is his in Christine Scott’s Groom on the Loose.

Enjoy!

Melissa Senate, Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my son Marty and all the other dedicated teachers with the Inner City Teaching Corps who struggle so hard to bring the light of reading and knowledge to Chicago’s inner city.

says that her writing is her escape valve from a life that leaves little time for recreation or hobbies. With a husband and six children, Terry works on her stories a little at a time, between seeing to her children’s piano, cello and oboe lessons, their baseball and swim team practices, and her own activities of leading a Girl Scout troop and participating in a car pool. Her ideas, she says, come from her imagination and her life—neither one of which is lacking!

Dear Todd,

When you first came to live with me, I didn’t have a clue about fatherhood. And you weren’t much help either, being an eighteen-month-old with a limited vocabulary. Thank God for Rachel, huh? We were a couple of sorry cases until she came along.

I’ll always be grateful that when I crashed the wagon I was pulling you in, we were on Rachel’s front lawn and she came out to check out our injuries. Do you realize how many variables had to fall perfectly into place for things to have worked out the way they did? Talk about fate.

So you better be on your best behavior, kid, ‘cause I can’t do this parenthood thing alone. I mean, Rachel thinks you’re cute as a button, but that doesn’t mean she wants to spend her free time with a drooling toddler and a dad-in-training who just recently recovered from Teething 101.

So remember—no crying when Rachel comes over. And maybe Uncle Daniel will get a kiss….

Love,

Daniel

“My, oh my, would you look at that,” Rachel Gatlin commented as she propped her hip on the windowsill of her new apartment. Touching her cheek to the glass so she could get a better view down the street, she repeated, “My, oh my.”

Her sister, Eileen, on the other end of the phone and across town had no such opportunity to take in the view. “I hate it when you do that,” she informed Rachel. “Who’s there? What are you looking at? Tell me,” she commanded firmly. “It isn’t anything gross, is it? We should have done a better job of checking out that neighborhood before you signed the lease. I knew it.”

Gross? Not so’s you’d notice, Rachel thought before responding. The scene captivating her attention was anything but disgusting. “There’s this really cute guy, and I mean really cute guy—not that I’m swayed by externals any longer, you understand. Next time I’m going for substance—anyway, this really, really cute guy is coming down the block pulling a little red wagon loaded with two bags of groceries and a screaming toddler.” She paused, studying both man and child. “It’s so much funnier when it’s somebody else’s screaming toddler, isn’t it? And I just love it when the macho manly types have to play Mr. Mom and find out what it’s all about.”

“Yeah, I do, too. Hmm, did you say really, really cute? Two reallies worth of cute? Let’s think about this, Rachel. This could be your golden opportunity to start meeting the neighbors,” Eileen said, and Rachel could almost hear the wheels in her brain turning through the phone line. “Sooo,” she continued, “instead of sitting there admiring his body from a distance and gloating, why don’t you run down there and throw yourself in front of the wagon? Introduce yourself and promise not to sue if he’s willing to kiss you and make your owies all better.”

Rachel snorted inelegantly as she continued to watch the unfolding scene below. Mr. Macho had stopped the wagon in front of the two-flat next to hers. Little One had been trying to stand up. Looked like a boy from here. He was now being firmly placed back down on his little bottom. Even from two stories up, Rachel could see that the power struggle between adult and child was causing the grocery bags to list and the wagon to wobble a bit. She wanted to open the window and warn him of the impending disaster, but managed to refrain. One shouldn’t interfere in a domestic squabble, she reminded herself. Too dangerous—especially a battle of the wills involving a toddler.

“Maybe next time,” Rachel said noncommittally. “They’re already moving on, anyway.” Besides, the guy was probably married. He was out there with a kid, wasn’t he? And nobody with a backside like that—he was walking backward now in order to keep his eye on the child, so she was in a position to judge and it was good…Really good…Really, really good—could have survived all that long without somebody claiming him somewhere along the line. Rachel sucked in her breath. “Uh-oh. I’ve got to go, Eileen. Handsome just tripped over a big wheel he didn’t see. He’s flat on the ground right underneath my living room window.” She felt an odd sense of gladness that she was being forced to act. Rachel didn’t care to examine the feeling too carefully. It was simply an opportunity to meet a neighbor while performing a corporal work of mercy, that was all. It had nothing to do with his fantastic butt nor those exceptionally fine shoulders that were almost as wide as the strip of sidewalk he currently covered. She was immune to that kind of thing now.

She was sure she was.

“How can you not see a Big Wheel? What is he, blind?” Eileen asked.

“He was walking backward in order to keep his eye on the kid, all right?” Rachel said, defending the unknown man. “And right now he’s on his rear end. The wagon’s tipped over and there are apples and cans of something or another rolling down the sidewalk. From here, the kid looks like he’s screaming his cute little head off, although he, at least, got dumped into the grass and not on the cement sidewalk. I gotta go and make sure they’re all right.”

“While you’re out there, see if you can’t find out if he’s married—casually, of course,” Eileen immediately urged. “You never know. He might be just baby-sitting or something.”

“Yeah, right.” Men that looked like Greek gods did not baby-sit in order to make ends meet, at least not in Rachel’s experience. Rachel squinted and studied him more thoroughly. No, this was no male nanny. A man with a body like that could make a fortune modeling undershorts—the snug, close-fitting kind. He was up on his hands and knees now, clearly not in need of mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Rachel sighed in disappointment. “Even if he was free, I’m sure he’d be too young for me. I’m telling you, Eileen, I think I might have had a hot flash the other day. At the very least, it was a definite sensation of warmth.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, you’re not that old. Get a grip and stop with the self-pity. Pinch your cheeks on your way down the stairs so you’ve got a little color and get out in front so you can see how badly they’re hurt. If it’s anything serious, they’ll be half dead by the time you get your buns moving. Be sure to look at his ring finger when you check for broken bones. And find out where he lives. One never knows.”

Rachel rolled her eyes, but rather than get involved in another discussion, she bit her tongue and kept her mouth shut.

“Call me back. I’ll want all the gory details.”

“In your dreams. Goodbye, Eileen.”

“I mean it. Now hurry up, before somebody else beats you to him. Go.”

“I’m gone. Bye.” Rachel hung up the phone in defeat. Eileen was only two years older than Rachel, but Rachel had never come out on top of an argument yet. She shrugged philosophically—in the long run, she’d be proven right this time. Handsome was married and the screaming meemie down there was his, she just knew it. She grabbed the keys to her apartment from the end table over by the sofa. Then she took off out the door to check on Handsome and his little progeny, but it was only because she was a Good Samaritan and her First Aid Certificate had another six months before it expired, that was all.

By the time Rachel bounded down the steps and out the entrance of the two-flat, the object of her concern had picked himself up and was trying to comfort the toddler he now held to his chest. Little One was still exercising his vocal cords at top volume. Handsome alternated between awkwardly patting him on the back with his free hand and covering his ear—the one closest to the tyke’s mouth. With his feet, he was attempting to corral cans and apples into a smaller area near the overturned wagon.

“Hi,” Rachel said, breathless from doing the stairs and not from the realization that up close, the man truly was drop-dead gorgeous—not that her interest sprang from anything other than the purely aesthetic appreciation such an outstanding example of male perfection of form deserved, of course. “I saw your mishap from my window. What can I do to help?”

The man looked at her, frustration evident in his body language and written all over his face—but even so he was still as gorgeous as they came. Hair encompassing at least five different shades of color ranging all the way from white blond to brown fought to ignore the strictures of his last haircut and enjoy the light breeze. Shoulders as wide as the red wagon was long greeted Rachel at her eye level. Eyes the color of a pale blue sky hypnotized her so that she barely noticed when the man actually blushed.

“I didn’t realize anyone had seen me,” he said, his words barely audible over the child’s carryings-on.

“Oh. Well, I just happened to be looking out the window. I’m sure nobody else did,” Rachel reassured him. “My name’s Rachel. I just moved in here.” She waved at the gray stucco two-flat behind her. “I could use a break from unpacking boxes. Why don’t you let me give you a hand for a minute or two until you’ve got everything back under control?”

Even though she was long past the diaper stage in her own life and she’d have little in common with the father of a toddler, the four walls of her apartment upstairs were already starting to get to her. So, she’d help him out for a bit and start meeting some of the neighbors. It was a good plan. And maybe, just maybe his wife would rent him to her for the next event she and her ex-husband, Ron, had to attend as Mark’s parents. Wouldn’t Ron’s mouth just drop to the floor if she showed up with this hunk of masculinity at her side? The thought of there having been even a remote possibility of performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on this specimen practically had her mouth watering. She swallowed hard and made a stab at conversation. “Where do you live?” she asked as she averted her eyes and surveyed the wreckage.

“What? Oh, down on the corner.” He gestured vaguely down the block in the direction he’d had the wagon headed before he’d crashed it.

“Well, that’s not so bad then,” Rachel declared optimistically. “It’s what? Three houses? We can handle that. What’s Little One’s name?

“Todd.”

“Uh-huh, and yours?”

He grimaced. “Sorry, I’m not myself at the moment. My name is Daniel. Daniel Van Scott. I’m very pleased to meet you, Rachel.”

Daniel Van Scott was a gentleman, Rachel decided. With dirt smudges on his chin, grit embedded in his hands and Todd still screeching his sweet little head off two inches away from his ears, poor Daniel would be justified in being less than pleased with anything life had to offer right then, but there he stood wiping his free hand carefully on his jeans before offering it to Rachel. Rachel elected to take pity on him. “Here, let me hold Todd while you gather up the—no, that wouldn’t work. Small children hate to go to strangers. He’d probably cry even harder.”

Daniel looked doubtful. “I don’t think that’s possible.

Rachel laughed. “Maybe not, although he does seem to be winding down a bit. I know he just had a scare, but I was watching you come down the block and he was already crying before you took your spill. What’s the problem? Is he tired? Is it naptime?”

Daniel’s eyes widened as he stared at her. Could it be that simple? For a man who’d effortlessly flown through school and his first accounting job while maintaining, if he said so himself, a, um, satisfying social life, he’d crashed big-time with the entry of Todd into his life. Daniel knew next to nothing about children. Truth be told, he was rapidly developing an inferiority complex—something he’d never suffered from in the past. “He’s been unhappy for the last hour and I haven’t got a clue. You know anything about little kids?” he questioned eagerly.

Rachel shrugged in surprise. God, his eyes were blue. Through dint of sheer will, she managed to respond to his question. “I had one that I managed to get through this stage without inadvertently killing him,” she admitted. “But it was a long time ago. Mark’s eighteen now.” And gone away to college. She’d be lucky if she heard from him once a week. He’d probably join a fraternity and stay out drinking all night. He’d insisted on a coed dorm. What if his roommate had girls in till all hours? What if Mark had girls in till—

Daniel interrupted her worn-out thought pattern. “You think putting him to bed would make the crying stop? I thought maybe he was hungry since I was starting to feel a few hunger pains myself.”

Didn’t he know his own son’s schedule? Rachel eyed the man dubiously, beginning to wonder about Daniel Van Scott. What kind of father was he? Her mother had explained to her once—this was before Ron had come on the scene and taken an interest in Rachel strictly, Rachel was convinced, so her mother could say I told you so— that the super good-looking ones weren’t always such a great catch. Girls were so grateful when the handsome ones displayed any interest that they never required anything of the hunks but to be seen with them. Now Rachel wished she’d listened to her mother, but who could tell a seventeen-year-old anything?

Who could tell a thirty-seven-year old anything? ‘Cause even though Momma’s words had already borne fruit once, Handsome here was too darn beautiful to throw back and waste if he wasn’t already spoken for. She glanced at the watch on her wrist. “It’s one-fifteen now. Todd hasn’t eaten lunch yet?”

Daniel shook his head eagerly. “No, that’s why we went up to the store. To get some food. You think that’s part of the problem, too?”

Rachel eyed him askance while she tried to figure out if he was serious. He certainly appeared sincere. Had Daniel’s genetic code worn itself out creating his truly spectacular exterior? “All I know is that if Mark didn’t eat by noon and crash in his crib by twelve-thirty every afternoon, all hell would break loose. Hungry, tired babies are cranky and decidedly unfun individuals to be around.”

Daniel suddenly felt reenergized. This woman was a godsend. He’d pick her brains and maybe he wouldn’t have to wade through all the child care books he’d bought yesterday. Galvanized into action he thrust Todd at Rachel “Here, you hold him for a minute while I throw this stuff back into the wagon. I thought he’d like the ride up to the store and back. Boy, was I ever wrong. He wouldn’t even stay seated in the wagon. I’m amazed we made it this far without a major catastrophe.”

“He’s not going to come to a stranger,” Rachel argued, leaving Todd dangling between them. “Why don’t you let me run upstairs for a washcloth so you can clean yourself up and some empty bags and then I’ll pick this stuff up while you cuddle him? Your bags ripped when the wagon turned over.”

“Listen,” Daniel said, still holding Todd out to her even though Rachel’s arms remained at her side. “You’re no more a stranger to him than I am.”

She should have minded her own business. She should have stayed up in that new empty-feeling apartment of hers and sulked for a few more days. Who cared if she never met her new neighbors? This one at least, was obviously a weirdo. She questioned him suspiciously. “How can you be a stranger to your own son? You’re not one of those people you read about who are divorced and kidnap their own children, are you?”

Daniel set Todd against Rachel’s chest and propped him there with one hand while he reached down with the other and grabbed her arm. He brought it up and wrapped it around Todd’s back before letting go.

Rachel looked down at her arm in surprise then at Daniel, then back at her arm. It had tingled when he’d touched her to make her hold—what was his name?— Todd. That kind of electrical impulse upon contact sort of thing hadn’t happened to her since early high school. How bizarre. If it hadn’t been August and humid as all get-out, Rachel would have been convinced Daniel had been scuffing his feet and had zapped her with static electricity.

Her eyes narrowed. No wonder he knew nothing about caring for small children. If Daniel could do that to a relative stranger, he’d probably fried his wife’s brain out making love to her ages ago. No doubt she was nothing but a shell of her former self by now, unable to think for herself and doing anything and everything Daniel bid. How disgusting.

Daniel, meanwhile, began to grab cans and toss them haphazardly into the wagon as quickly as he could. He’d never realized how freeing it was to have two hands for a task—not until two days ago. “Don’t be silly. I’ve never been married in my life. I lived with a girl briefly right out of college, but nothing permanent came of it, certainly not a child.”

Rachel cringed as Daniel flipped the apples in after the cans. Didn’t he know they’d be so bruised from the rough treatment as to be inedible? “Todd’s not yours then?”

Daniel straightened and wiped his forehead with the inside of his arm. “He is now.” He stood and absentmindedly brushed his hands off on his pants, then grimaced as the grit-embedded scrapes on his palms made contact with the fabric. Thoughtfully he examined the gift from God in front of him. The woman-Rachel, wasn’t it?—had shifted Todd onto one softly padded hip and gently bounced him there. For the first time in forty-eight hours the child looked—if not happy, close enough to it for government work. He’d definitely stopped wailing and was staring, fascinated at Rachel’s silken tresses. Daniel snapped his fingers and pointed. “It’s the right color,” he said.

Rachel frowned at him as she twisted her head to one side to keep Todd from reaching her hair and pulling it. “What is?”

“Your hair.”

“The right color for what?”

“For Todd. It’s the right color for Todd,” Daniel said, apropos of nothing as far as Rachel could determine. Evidently he’d burnt out his own brain as well as his former girlfriend’s.

“Fine,” she said, determined to hand Todd back to Daniel and get out of there. The child was absolutely darling—when he wasn’t yodeling at top volume, but as far as Rachel could tell, the situation was rapidly deteriorating. So much for meeting the new neighbors. She’d think long and hard before getting involved with strangers—emphasis on strange—next time.

Daniel took a step backward while shaking his head. He wasn’t taking Todd back on a bet. Not while this woman with the magic touch was here. “Listen, just carry him down three houses. That’s not so much, is it? Just three houses. Keep showing him your hair, it’s just like his mother’s was.”

Was? Past tense? Rachel looked down on the child in her arms with newfound empathy. “If he accidentally gets a hold of it, he’ll pull it out,” she warned.

And that would be a shame, Daniel couldn’t help thinking. Rachel had gorgeous dark sable hair shot through with threads of some very light color. She wore it shoulder length, turned under in a gentle bob. Under ordinary circumstances he’d—but no, these were not ordinary circumstances. He couldn’t afford to digress or get distracted—some things transcended mere incidentals like bald spots on otherwise beautiful women. “I’ll buy you a wig,” he promised, then rashly went on, “I’ll buy you anything you want if you’ll just stick with me for the next half hour or so.”

The man was pathetic, Rachel decided then and there. Absolutely, totally, one hundred percent pathetic. It was her moral responsibility, her civic duty even, to make sure this poor child happily tugging on the extremely low carat gold chain around her neck—whomever he belonged to—was fed, changed and put down for a humor-restoring nap.

Daniel read her wavering in her eyes. Wanting to consolidate any ground he might have just gained, he decided to start walking. She’d have to follow, wouldn’t she? What would he do if she didn’t? He was a desperate, desperate man. It would be a mistake—a sign of weakness to turn and look. Daniel pulled the wagon another two feet. He couldn’t stand it. He turned and looked anyway. Rachel was reluctantly following. Todd still straddled her hip and he was still complaining, but the greatly lowered volume showed that the sincerity of the complaints was now in serious question. “Thank you,” he breathed. “Thank you very much.” The first was directed to the heavens, the second to the angel in human disguise following him down the sidewalk.

Rachel stepped up onto the front stoop of the corner brick bungalow and waited for Daniel to unlock the door. It had been a long time ago and she’d been a younger woman when she’d last carted a heavy toddler around in her arms. They ached and she wished Daniel would hurry. Finally he got the door opened. Daniel’s manners at least couldn’t be faulted. He held it while she preceded him over the threshold.

“This is nice.” Rachel said as she took in the decorating with surprise. Not that it was totally feminine— although a woman’s touch was evident—it just wasn’t ultramasculine. No sofa made of leather cushions slung over shiny metal frames. No ultramodern framed graphics on the wall. And no heavy generic male-on-his-own brown and black against white walls color scheme.

Where was Daniel’s bachelor-on-the-loose decorating statement? And where, oh where, did Todd fit in to all this?

This house screamed of a married couple, not a single dad. It was a home Rachel could be comfortable in, decorating she might have chosen herself. Cream painted walls with cream-colored sheers and window scarves softened the views of the street. A sofa and love seat at right angles to each other were done in an eye-pleasing sherbet-toned tapestry fabric. Both pieces sat in front of a fireplace with a beautiful carved stone mantel and surround.

Rachel shook her head in bemusement. Daniel didn’t seem like the type to collect antique lace and have it framed on sherbet-colored matt boards. And the dusty rose carpet set off the sofa and accessories to perfection, but—well, suffice it to say no man she knew would have ordered it. Weirder and weirder still.

“The kitchen’s through here,” Daniel said, taking the lead.

Rachel followed. “Did you, um, have somebody do the decorating for you?” And did you pay the bill after you saw what they’d done?

“What? Oh, my sister did the decorating. She even reupholstered the sofa herself. I still can’t believe it. All that work and for what—?” Daniel shook his head, grief and sadness showing briefly in his eyes before determination once again glinted there. “Here’s the high chair.”

Gratefully Rachel tucked her burden into the seat and fastened the lap strap before pushing the tray snuggly against his little baby potbelly. She rolled her shoulders in relief. “Okay, so what did you buy to feed monster man here?” Rachel asked.

“Hot dogs,” Daniel announced. “Hot dogs and cheese. What kid could turn up his nose at that?” With a flourish he reached into the bottom of a bag, which was ripped down both sides, and handed her the plastic shrink-wrapped packages of hot dogs and a brick of cheese.

And he couldn’t have figured out Todd was hungry? “They have bite marks in them,” she said. “Both packages. Right through the plastic.”

“Yeah, well Todd’s got a real long arm reach for such a little kid. When he gets older I’m going to look into basketball camp for him, I think. Natural-born ball stealer, I bet. He got a hold of them and put up such a fuss every time I tried to take one away, the lady at the checkout told me not to bother. Said she’d seen it before. In fact, she acted like she thought it was kind of funny.”

“I’m sure she did,” Rachel responded drolly as she unwrapped the cheese and began to cut it into itsy bitsy cubes a toddler couldn’t choke on. “After all, it wasn’t her kid sucking on a wrapper that’s been handled or sneezed on by eight thousand unknown food handlers and shoppers with colds. Got a bib?”

Daniel blanched at that while he reached into a drawer. “Here. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with him. He’s sick. Maybe I should call the pediatrician.” Rachel snapped the bib around Todd’s neck, took the hot dog out of Daniel’s hand and began to dice it up. “I doubt it. Not that fast. Here, put this in the microwave and heat it up, but not too hot. Are there any vegetables we can give him?”

“Uh, yeah, sure. I think I saw a can of beans here someplace…here we go.”

Todd was stuffing bits of cheese into his mouth as fast as he could. He banged his fist on the tray and laughed when more went flying into the air. Rachel took the plate with the dismembered hot dog on it out of the microwave when it beeped and shoveled that onto the tray. Then she found a small handled cup and filled it with half an inch of milk. This, too, she gave the boy. Thirstily Todd drained it with only a small portion dribbling down his chin. Rachel gave him another half inch in the bottom of the cup before going to work on the beans.

Daniel was impressed. “Wow, you’re like an old hand at this.”

“It’s probably like riding a bicycle,” Rachel replied, knowing Todd was done when he began to throw the food on the floor. She began the washup procedure. “It’s been a while, but it does seem to be coming back to me.” Rachel held Todd’s cup up in front of the boy. “Look, Todd. This is your cup. See? Your cup is yellow.”

“Lellow.”

Rachel smiled, pleased. “That’s right. Yellow. Where’s his bedroom?” she asked Daniel.

Daniel pointed. “Right through there.”

She nodded. “Okay. How about if you finish cleaning up in here? I’ll change his diapers and see if I can get him settled down.” Feeling only slightly guilty—after all, it wasn’t her child who’d made the mess, was it?—Rachel left the kitchen area and headed for the nursery. There, she found a box of disposable diapers and replaced Todd’s soggy one and played with his toes briefly while he lay on the changing table.

“This little piggy went to market—” The room had been lovingly prepared by someone who hadn’t wanted to know the sex of their child beforehand. Someone who liked surprises had chosen a lovely but nonsexist pale lime tint for the walls. The woodwork was a crisp contrasting white.

“This little piggy stayed home—” A border of rainbows hung up high where the walls met the ceiling. Did Daniel ever stop and point them out to Todd?

“This little piggy had roast beef—” A big, fat, stuffed fabric rainbow splayed itself across the wall next to the crib. She’d used a similar theme in Mark’s nursery, Rachel remembered. Impossible as it seemed, it had been nineteen years ago when she’d decorated that nursery. Nineteen years. Rachel had been eighteen, practically a baby herself, she now realized.

Rachel sighed. “This little piggy had none—” She reminded herself that she was done being melancholy as of that morning.

“And this little piggy cried—”

Daniel popped his head in the doorway. “All cleaned up. How’s it going in here?”

“Wee, wee, wee all the way home.” Rachel brushed the bottom of Todd’s foot with a light ticklish motion and smiled when Todd grinned up at her and jerked his foot back. She picked up his other foot and blew a raspberry on the bottom of it. That got a laugh. Finally Rachel looked up. “Fine. I’m going to rock him for a minute to settle him down before I put him in the crib.”

“Fine, great, whatever. You get me a couple of hours of peace and quiet and I’ll be your slave forever.”

Rachel snorted at that. “Yeah, right.” But it was an interesting idea. A body like that, her slave? My, oh my. That certainly got the old heart valves pumping. She picked Todd up and noticed a framed birth announcement hung on the wall. Todd Michael Malone? Sarah and Michael Malone proudly announce the birth of their son, Todd Michael? “Daniel, who does Todd really belong to? Are you baby-sitting for a relative or something?” She’d just die if Eileen turned out right once again. But this Sarah and Michael must have been really hard up to leave their pride and joy with a man who knew next to nothing about children.

But Daniel’s indulgent smile immediately disappeared. His face tightened. “Todd’s mother, Sarah, was my sister. Her husband won a cruise as a prize in a sales contest where he worked. It was the first time they’d ever left the baby.” Daniel sighed. “There was a fire on board the ship. Barely big enough to make the papers up here, but Sarah, Michael and a couple of other passengers died of smoke inhalation. Todd stayed with Mike’s parents while I got my own life straightened out, but they’re well into their seventies and in a retirement complex with no children allowed. My mother has Alzheimer’s. Caring for her takes up all my dad’s time. That leaves Todd and me as a team.”

Rachel, gaped at him as she seated herself in the rocker. And she’d thought she’d had troubles. “Oh. I’m so sorry. How awful.”

Daniel ran a hand back through his hair. “Yeah, well, it’s been a little rocky the past couple of days, I have to admit.” He eyed the picture Rachel made there in the rocker with Todd happily sucking his thumb while, resting his head on her shoulder. “But I think maybe God just opened a window.”

Rachel continued to stare at him. “Excuse me?” she finally said while absently rubbing Todd’s little back. His body already felt half limp. Another minute or two and he’d be conked out cold.

“I said—”

“Shh, not so loud. He’s almost asleep.”

It was comical how quickly Daniel lowered his voice. Now she could barely hear him. “You know the old saying about God always opening a window when he closes a door?” he whispered.

Warily Rachel nodded.

“Well, when Sarah and Michael died, that was a heavy-duty door to get slammed in poor Todd’s face.” Daniel leaned against the nursery door frame and raked his hand through his hair. “I’m sure not the open window. I’m trying as hard as I can, but all I remember of parenting is that my dad used to play ball with me. Todd’s too little to throw a baseball let alone catch one. It was a disaster when I tried the other day. The ball kept going right through his legs.”

Rachel arched a brow at him in disbelief. He hadn’t really pitched a baseball ata toddler, had he?

Daniel continued, “The thing is, right before this all happened I’d just quit the accounting firm I’d been with since graduating from college. I was all set to go out on a limb and out on my own. Do you know how much work that entails? The time commitment? I’ve got to get this thing set up and going—make it viable or Todd and I are cooked geese. There’ll be no income. I want to save the insurance money for his college fund. Even if I could take a crash course in child raising and was instantly expert at it, I haven’t got the time to lavish on him the way he needs and deserves, do you understand what I mean? I can’t stick him in day-care now. For crying out loud, as far as he’s concerned both his parents just deserted him. What does he understand about death? So what am I supposed to do? I’m no Mr. Mom.”

Todd snored gently in her ear. Rachel slowly rose and walked quietly over to the crib. She eased the boy off her shoulder and laid him in his bed. She picked the blanket with the satin binding to lightly cover him and made sure he’d be able to feel that comforting edging against his cheek and hand while he slept. Daniel followed right behind as she crept from the room. He spoke his next words as softly as the rest, but he might as well have shouted, they jarred her so.

“If God’s trying to open a window for Todd, it sure as all heck ain’t me. I barely constitute a crack in the glass or a missing piece of weather stripping. So I have to ask myself, Where’s the open window?” Then he sort of studied her out of the corner of his eye.

Oh, no. Oh, no. The last time she’d let some fasttalking male open her window, it had been eighteen years before she’d managed to get it shut again, and even then it hadn’t been without a kick start from her supposed loving husband—the very one who’d insisted on opening the damn thing in the first place. Uh-uh. No way was she going to go through any of that again, although he was absolutely right about one thing, Rachel thought as she walked as quickly as possible back down the hallway. Daniel Van Scott was definitely cracked.

Daniel followed her closely. “Don’t you think it’s a little bit odd you picked that exact moment to look out your window? You could have just as easily been, I don’t know, in the kitchen or the bathroom. Even in the living room, for crying out loud, but with your back to the window. You fit into this equation somehow, I just know it.”

“No,” Rachel stated emphatically, knowing she needed to be firm here. She did not like the way this conversation was headed. She was done with being dutiful. It was now officially her turn to play in the sun. Being footloose and fancy-free was supposed to be one of the few advantages of the empty nest stage. “I hate to be the stereotypical female, but I was never much good at math. Especially quadratic equations. They always threw me for a loop.”

Daniel caught Rachel’s arm and halted her flight. He thought fast. “All right. Okay. You probably work and can’t help me out yourself. But you’ve got a real way with little kids. Maybe you know somebody else with your knack?”

Rachel stopped and looked up at him. Those blue eyes of his were killers, especially the way they appeared now, both serious and sincere. She was in big-time trouble here and she was just bright enough to know it. She was not about to disabuse him of his faulty notion that she worked. “Daniel, what is it that you want from me?”

“Help,” he stated simply. “Either yours or somebody you could recommend. I know I haven’t known you long, but somehow I feel like I can trust you. I’m dying here.”

Her arm tingled where he touched it. Rachel knew it without a shadow of a doubt. That spark she felt was plain old sexual attraction, no getting around it. You’d have thought that by thirty-seven her body would have forgotten all about that special tingle. It was discouraging, downright undignified that it hadn’t. Imagine, at her age she was being suckered in by a pair of broad shoulders, blue eyes and a sob story that had absolutely nothing to do with her. If she didn’t get out of there, she’d do something stupid—like agreeing to do what he wanted whether it was in her own best interest or not. Shades of the past! This was ridiculous. It was mortifying. It was an insult to her intelligence. Hadn’t she learned anything over the past eighteen years? “Daniel, no one comes to mind off the top of my head, but I’ll think about it and call you if I come up with a name. But for now, I’ve got to get going. All those boxes aren’t going to unpack themselves, you know.” There was a hint of desperation in her voice and she hoped Daniel didn’t pick up on it.

He ran his hand up her arm and her arm broke out in goose pimples. Eighty degrees outside, and she had goose bumps, oh, puh-leeze!

“Rachel, don’t leave yet. Let me at least give you lunch. Come on, have a hot dog with me. It’s the least I can do.”

Rachel thought about those hot dogs with the bite marks she’d fixed for Todd. He was right. It was the very least he could do. “I don’t know—”

“Please?”

Oh well, what did she have at home? Low fat peanut butter and reduced sugar strawberry jam. Yummy. “Oh, all right.”

“Great! Good! Come on back to the kitchen.”

Daniel’s smile lit his face and Rachel knew without a doubt she’d just made a grave tactical error. She hadn’t agreed to anything other than lunch, darn it. Daniel’s problems were his. Rachel had enough of her own without borrowing more. She’d just have to keep telling herself that until she’d choked down her premasticated hot dog. Maybe she could still get out of there relatively unscathed.

Daniel steered her back into the kitchen and pulled out a chair at the round oak kitchen table. “Here. You sit down. I’ll handle this.”

Rachel refused to feel badly about letting him. For too many years she’d had meals waiting on the table and clean socks and underwear in her men’s drawers. For what? Her son had eagerly left for college without even a backward glance and shortly thereafter her husband had just plain left. Besides, anybody could boil a hot dog.

Even Daniel. Within a very few minutes he served her up a plate with not only the promised main course, but apple sauce and potato chips. Then he really went all out and dug the mustard and pickle relish out of the refrigerator as well. He poured her a glass of milk. Rachel couldn’t remember the last time she’d drunk milk. Oh well, at her age wasn’t osteoporosis just around the corner? Maybe the milk would hold it at bay a little while longer. Surprisingly Rachel enjoyed the meal. “This is good,” she told him, touched that he’d taken the trouble to find her a hot dog Todd hadn’t sampled in the store.

“Thank you.” Daniel said, and smiled at her praise.

His grin almost blinded her. Rachel quickly lowered her head and studied the mustard smear on her plate. So much for that conversational gambit. “Well, I guess I ought to—”

Daniel jumped up and grabbed the plates off the table, startling her. “No need to rush,” he said. He suddenly realized he was starving for a little adult conversation. How did young mothers do this all day every day? He glanced at the watch bound to his wrist. “Rachel, how long do you think Todd will be out?”

“What? Oh, if he’s anything like Mark, maybe two hours.”

“Two hours,” he repeated after her and his face assumed an expression similar to the one she wore when she came face-to-face with a piece of maple fudge with her name on it. “That’s fantastic, two whole hours. I can get a lot done in one hundred and twenty uninterrupted minutes. Let’s see, first I’ll dump in a load of laundry real quick like. Let’s say, oh, ten minutes for that, another fifteen for these dishes. That leaves—hey, I just might have enough time to get my computer and maybe even the printer set up before Todd rejoins the land of the living. I can’t do it when he’s up, you know. That kid is murder on floppy disks.”

She believed it. Rachel remembered this stage all too well. “I really should be going. I’ve got boxes of my own—”

“Oh, that’s right. I wish you could stick around. It would be nice to talk to another adult for a while.” Daniel shrugged philosophically. “But if you can’t, you can’t. I really appreciate everything you did do for me this afternoon, though, Rachel. I want to be sure you know that.”

Rachel had never realized it before, but evidently she really was a sucker for blue eyes. Ron had had blue eyes, but not like Daniel’s blue eyes. It would be very easy to make a fool of herself with this man. It would be no hardship at all to talk herself into spending the afternoon talking to Daniel while he set up his office. Heck, she’d probably even pitch in and help. When would she learn?

Rachel told herself she was simply in the middle of a major empty nest syndrome crisis in her own life. That’s why she wanted to adopt these two. Fill the nest back up. She was just a natural born caretaker, a nurturer.

Natural born masochist was more like it.

But no, she’d get through this thing on her own, without any placebos. It was simply a case of hardening her heart and walking out his front door. She’d already done more than any other woman who’d come across that scene she’d witnessed out on her front sidewalk would have—well, maybe not, considering Daniel’s shoulders and butt—but still, she’d done her corporal work of mercy. “You’re more than welcome,” she said. “But now I’ve really got to go.”

With that, Rachel made her escape. There wasn’t a shadow of doubt in her mind that it had been a close one, too.

Rachel spent her afternoon organizing her cupboards. She unpacked her silverware and placed it all neatly in a new silver separator she’d bought for the drawer closest to the sink drain board. Then she stacked the dishes in the cabinet up above the silverware and the pots and pans—what few she needed to cook for one— in the cabinet below the rangetop.

By the time she broke for dinner, Rachel was out in the hall and mostly done with unwrapping the new linens she’d bought for her fresh start in life. The linen closet looked good, she decided as she stepped back and examined it. Towels that actually coordinated not only with each other but the bathroom as well, sat folded in the same direction and in neat piles on the shelf in front of her. Combined with the sheets, blankets and pillows she’d bought, it looked like a well-done department store display, Rachel thought.

She took another step back. It appeared just the way she’d always wanted her old linen closet to look and the way it would have looked if she’d ever gotten any cooperation from her son and former husband. But no, they’d always rooted through her neat piles and then walked off, leaving the disaster behind them. Well, no more. This closet would win homemaking awards—only there was nobody left to make a home for. Again Rachel lectured herself. “Buck up. You can’t win any homemaking awards if there are people living in the house. It’s just one of life’s poorer jokes. Oh well, maybe Mark will come home for winter and spring break. Possibly even part of the summer. He can mess up the towels then.” She hoped so, but basically Rachel just had to recognize she was all alone now. That was simply the way it was. Her stack of towels would remain neat forevermore.

On that rather melancholy note, Rachel returned to her small kitchen and baked a frozen, premade chicken potpie and pulled a handful of salad out of a pretossed bag of greens.

She ate it all by herself with nothing but the radio for company. Rachel wondered what Daniel and Todd were eating for dinner. More hot dogs?

Rachel washed her plate and fork and set them on the drain board. Her days of needing a dishwasher were over, she mused as she contemplated the lonely utensils. The phone rang as she turned away from the sink.

“Mom? It’s me, Mark.”

Alarm bells rang in Rachel’s maternal mind. “Mark? What’s wrong?”

“Chill out, Mom. Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to see what was going down on the maternal home front. You know, see how you were doing and stuff.”

Rachel barely controlled her snort of disbelief. Yeah, right. In other words, her best beloved son wanted something from her. “I’m fine, Mark, just fine. I spent the day organizing my new apartment and guess what?”

“What?”

“It’s been four whole hours since I put the silverware away and it’s all still in the right compartments! No teaspoons mixed in with the soup spoons, no forks stuck up so the drawer can’t close, no knives left with the cutting edge up. It’s like a miracle, Mark, an honest to God miracle.”

“Very funny, Mom. When the guys here ask about my parents, one of the first things I mention is my mother’s great sense of humor. Of course then I have to break it to them that you still use snail mail because you are, like, the most totally computer illiterate person I know and couldn’t use e-mail if your life depended on it. It wrecks the image, Mom, like totally destroys it.”

Rachel laughed. “You’ll be happy to know I’m thinking about taking a computer class.”

That surprised her son. “Really? What for?”

“So I can get a job. Gotta support myself now, you know. Dad only pays alimony for the next six months. After that I’m supposed to be back on my feet and self-supporting.”

Mark’s response sounded disconcerted, as though they’d strayed into territory he’d just as soon avoid. “Oh, yeah. Right. That, um, sucks. So, uh, what else is happening?”

Rachel understood her son’s reluctance to be caught up in adult problems. She thought back over her day. Really, only one item of import stuck in her mind. “I met a guy,” she reported. “He’s going to try to raise his little nephew all by himself. He crashed his nephew’s little red wagon right in front of my new place. The little boy was crying and groceries were everywhere. I had to go out and save them. Todd—that’s the child—is a little pistol, but Daniel—that’s the guy—seemed real nice. Sincere, but in over his head, if you know what I mean.”

“A guy with a wagon? Sounds like a dork.”

“He’s not a dork!” God, no. Daniel Van Scott was anything but dorky. Oh, man, here it was hours later and Rachel got the shivers just thinking about him. She was going to give herself high blood pressure if she didn’t watch out. End up on medication like her mother, for crying out loud. “He just tripped, that’s all.”

“Like I said, sounds like a dork.”

“Well, he’s not.” Not by a long shot. “Now, what’s new with you, Mark? Your classes going okay? You’re studying enough? Are you meeting any nice girls?” Ones that still go to church?

Her son’s voice came back sounding entirely too casual for a mother’s peace of mind. “Yeah, I’ve met a few. Most of them are sorority tools, if you know what I mean, but this one’s pretty cool. She’s vegetarian. I had no idea meat was so totally bad for you and the environment, too. I’m never eating it again, man.”

Oh, God. “Mark, how will you get enough protein in your diet? How will you—”

“Chill out, Mom. I’ll be fine. But what I need is one of those small refrigerators for my room. You know, so I can keep yogurt and stuff like that on hand.”

Rachel walked into her living room with the cordless phone and sank into the sofa. She tucked her feet up underneath herself. “So go get one.”

“Mooom.”

Her son’s disembodied voice came back at her and she had no trouble imagining the despairing look on his face.

“They’re expensive, you know? I’d need like, eighty or ninety dollars put into my checking account. Think you could do that for me?”

Ah, they’d reached the crux of the phone call. Money. She’d been warned about this from friends with older children. “Mark, you had three hundred dollars when your father and I dropped you off at school just a very short time ago.”

“Yeah, but I bought this totally awesome game for my computer and I had to have a good bike for getting around campus ‘cuz nobody uses the campus bus, so I turned in the pass you guys bought me and spent the cash on a bike helmet, you’ll be glad to know. And I bought this unbelievable mountain bike. It was on sale and everything, so how could I go wrong?”

Rachel put her hand over her eyes and collapsed back into the sofa. “You’ve already gone through all your money? Mark, that should have lasted you a couple of months!”

“How was I supposed to know something else would come up that I’d need?” Mark asked, his logic clear, at least in his own mind. “I mean, you should see the graphics on this computer game I got. It was going to be my entertainment for the semester. But now, with this girl and all, she’ll probably want to go to the movies and stuff. And I really need that refrigerator—actually, a small microwave would be cool, too. A lot of the guys here have them. And at least I’m better than my roommate. He never takes his girlfriend anywhere! All they do is fool around. One of these nights that top bunk is going to crash right down on top of me—probably kill me.”

Rachel just about collapsed. “Your roommate and his girlfriend are…doing that while you’re in the room?” she squeaked. Oh, God. Oh God, oh God, oh God.

Mark paused in his spiel, evidently aware he may have gone too far. “Well, yeah, but it’s no big deal,” he quickly assured his mother. “I mean, you probably can’t remember back to when you were interested in sex, but it’s pretty normal for my age group, you know.”

Oh God, oh God, oh God. She should have had a talk with Mark before he’d left for school. She should have bought him some condoms, made sure they’d gotten into his suitcase. She’d gotten pregnant with Mark on prom night, her senior year in high school. It had been her first foray into the mysterious world of male-female—looking back on it, boy-girl—sex stuff. It had changed the direction of her entire life and Mark was only a few months past that point in his life. He needed at least another three or four years before he took a chance like that. It could change your life completely. Rachel knew.

She’d given Mark an eleven-thirty curfew on his prom night. Ron had smirked, but Rachel had been unwilling to take any chances. Was Mark making up for lost opportunities now?

And her son didn’t think she remembered the pull of sexual feelings? All she had to do was think about the rush she’d gotten just looking at Daniel Van Scott this afternoon and Rachel knew she wasn’t dead yet. Not by a long shot.

Mark cleared his throat. “Uh, Mom, you still there?”

Maybe, maybe not. This could all be some kind of strange out-of-body type experience. She wasn’t really having this bizarre phone conversation with her own, carefully raised son. “Mark, I’m afraid you’re going to have to talk to your father,” Rachel heard herself say. “Going through all your spending money in a little over a week was a choice you made. I guess as far as I’m concerned, my feeling is now you have to live with that decision. Either that or get a part-time job. At any rate, it’s something you’ll have to deal with.

“By the way, I found some of your old Tonka trucks when I was packing. I couldn’t help keeping them when your dad and I cleaned out the old house. I was thinking I’d give them to that little boy I was telling you about. He’s the perfect age for them.”

“What? You’re giving away my Tonkas? Not on your life. I still want those. That kid’ll just have to get his own toy trucks. Those are mine.”

Rachel shook her head and tried to organize her thoughts. Her collegiate, urbane son who talked about sex ever so casually refused to be parted from his toy trucks. Life was strange. Her son was strange. Heck, in all probability, she was strange. “Mark, I’m hanging up now. Let me know if you have any luck with your dad and call me again some time. But just to talk, you know? It would be nice to hear from you when you didn’t necessarily need something from me.”

Rachel hung up the phone after a series of motherly admonishments about studying hard and making sure he kept his new bicycle tethered with a lock through the bike’s frame, not just the tire. She thought about broaching safe sex, but Mark cut her off, which, when the phone call was all done, left her pacing the living room.

“Now I know how my own mother felt,” she muttered to the walls as she circled the room. “This is like a nightmare and he hasn’t even gotten anybody pregnant yet!” Maybe she should go out in the morning and by a box of condoms. Send them to him, just in case.

For some reason, condom shopping brought to mind Daniel and the idea hit that maybe she could confiscate a few out of the box before she sent it and keep them for herself.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Rachel immediately chastised herself. “The poor man’s got his hands full without having to deal with your midlife sexual identity crisis as well.” Again she circled the room, gesturing with big sweeping movements of her hands as she lectured. “Besides, didn’t you learn anything from your experience with Ron? For crying out loud, the man talks you into bed—well, actually the grass in that corner of the football field under the scoreboard, but that’s just details— gets you pregnant, graciously marries you so you can work your fingers, hands, heck, your arms to the bone putting him through school and then the jerk sticks around barely long enough to get the kid out the door, before clearing out himself so fast I’m surprised he didn’t get something vital caught in the door when it swung shut after Mark.” Rachel paused and thought about that. “Actually it’s kind of too bad he didn’t.”

She shook her hand in the air. “Anyway, whatever, the point is, I thought we’d made our marriage work. Yes, it had gotten off to a rough start, but I thought we’d worked through all that and made it. What a fool I was. I don’t want Mark to have to get married, have this carry on to the second generation. And certainly, certainly I couldn’t live through it a second time myself.”

And Daniel Van Scott was simply too attractive for her peace of mind. Right then and there, Rachel made a vow to keep her distance. There was some kind of very odd, no doubt, chemical attraction at play here. She hadn’t felt it, well, in eighteen years, and she’d at least managed to convince herself it had been true love rather than adolescent hormones back then. She no longer wore the blinders of youth, and in a way, it hurt.

No, there was no point in making a fool of herself a second time.

Rachel slept, but not well. In the morning, she cooked a single egg and matched it up with a solitary piece of toast. She washed the one plate she’d dirtied, then took herself out for a walk to explore her new neighborhood. There was a small park a block and a half up. Rachel could see a bank of stores another block after that.

Rachel glanced at the park once more and thought. The sun was shining, the few clouds in the sky were on the run, and although it was September now, summer was still in the air. She walked up to the stores and bought a paperback novel at the drugstore and a foam cup of take-out coffee at the corner restaurant. Carting both items back to the park, Rachel made herself comfortable on a green wooden bench. Most of the toddlers surrounding her were happily playing and provided a pleasant white noise while she basked in the warm sun and read her book.

“Hey, what’s this, another day off? Or do you work nights?”

Rachel instantly knew who had settled on the bench next to her. That low-timbred voice had played a major part in her restlessness last night. “Hi, Daniel,” she said. “I assumed you’d be spending the morning getting your office set up.”

“Hey, Todd, no pushing. That other little boy was on the horsey first. You’ll have to wait your turn.” Daniel yawned and draped his arms along the bench back.

The tips of his fingers were very close to touching Rachel’s shoulders and she’d never been more aware of a man. Not even when she’d been sixteen.

“I got up early,” Daniel admitted, more pleased than he was comfortable with to find Rachel in the park. “Worked for a couple of hours before the champ woke up. I found a playpen in the back of his closet and set it up in the study. He played pretty happily in there for a little while, too. I figured we both deserved a break before lunch. I’ll get more done during his nap. Did you see that kid hit Todd? Where’s his mother? Why isn’t she watching that monster more closely?”

“Todd took his truck.”

“Oh, well, uh, Todd,” Daniel called out, “give the little boy’s toy back. I guess next time I better bring a couple of our own sand toys for him, huh?”

Rachel shrugged more casually than she was feeling. “You seem to be getting the feeling for this pretty quickly. It sounds like you managed just fine this morning.

Daniel stretched his legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankle. He gave an expansive, contented sigh. “Yeah. I even had a couple of inquiries already from former clients who knew I was going out on my own.” He gave Rachel a sidelong glance. He must have been more harried than he’d thought yesterday. This woman was positively beautiful. And he hadn’t noticed? He was slipping, definitely slipping. But she was here now and so was he. He—

“Really? That’s terrific.”

“Yeah, I just wish I could get my system up a bit faster so I could get some estimates out to people, but it’ll probably take a few more days. No, Todd, keep your shoes on. There might be broken glass or sharp stones in the grass.” After that admonishment, Daniel turned his head and studied Rachel through narrowed eyes. Whoa. Nice eyes. Big and a gorgeous warm brown. “You on vacation?”

Rachel cleared her throat. “Well, actually I’m sort of between positions at the moment, I guess you could say.” Was she ever.

Daniel perked up at that. Maybe persistence could pay off? “Yeah? Well, I haven’t had time to get an ad into the paper, let alone have anyone answer it. I know you said you didn’t want to take a job baby-sitting Todd full time, but what about a kind of temporary thing? You know, help me out until I can get somebody else. When you can, of course. It doesn’t have to be forty hours a week or anything. I’d appreciate whatever help I can get. Like this afternoon, if you’re not busy I could pay you to get my filing cabinets set up while I try to hook up my new printer. I wasn’t able to get to it yesterday.”

He looked at her so hopefully, and once the full force of those sky blue eyes was turned on her, Rachel knew she was lost. She’d probably agree to sell her own grandmother if Daniel asked her to. She took a sip of her coffee and burnt the roof of her mouth. Great. Just terrific. Well, might as well get this over with. “I might come down after lunch. For a couple of hours during Todd’s nap” she cautiously allowed. Cautious? Hah! Rachel began to despair whether she knew the meaning of the word.

Daniel was no fool. He cemented the deal quickly, before she had any opportunity to change her mind. “Great!” Then, evidently afraid to let her out of his sight, he hastened to offer, “You could eat lunch with us, if you wanted. I was going to make grilled cheeses.”

Oh, no. Rachel was determined to limit her exposure to Todd’s sunny smiles and cute toddler ways. Right now, she was bent on damage control and would eat low fat peanut butter and reduced sugar strawberry jam if it killed her. Rachel stood and tossed her foam cup into a nearby dark green metal trash barrel. “Thanks for the offer, but I have a few things to do before I come down.” Like sit down and weep for a while over her own stupidity. “I’ll be down around one o’clock or so.”

Daniel stood, too, unable to believe his good fortune. This was one fine-looking woman and she obviously had a tender heart. She was going to take pity on him. Daniel, the former lady killer, was both humble and grateful. Also extremely attracted to Rachel, although he knew enough to sit on that. He wasn’t about to do anything stupid and scare her off. ‘One o’clock. I really appreciate this, Rachel.” He snapped his fingers. “Todd will be down by then, so don’t ring the doorbell, just knock, okay? Or better yet, I’ll leave it unlocked and you can just come right in.”

“Sure, fine,” Rachel said and waved to Todd as she went to leave the park. But it wasn’t fine, not really. Entering a home without knocking bespoke a certain intimacy Rachel would really like to avoid, especially since she seemed so bent on self-destruction.

Daniel left the park shortly after Rachel. It was still a bit early for lunch, but Todd had decided that dumping fistfuls of sand on top of his head was nothing short of hysterically funny. When the first two explanations of how he could scratch his cornea, possibly go blind, have to go to the hospital and wear a patch over his eye for the rest of his life failed, Daniel packed in the logic. He simply picked the child up, tucked him under his arm and removed his nephew from the source of temptation.

“You’re going to regret your precipitous course of action, little buddy,” he advised as he strode down the street. “Every bit of that dirt has to come out of your hair before you take your nap. It could still get into your eyes, you know. I wasn’t kidding about that patch. At the very least you’ll have sand in your bed and you’ll hate it.” And so would Daniel, who in order to get a peaceful, quiet naptime out of Todd was now going to have to shampoo the little one’s head, a thankless task Todd took as a personal affront. Daniel fully expected his eardrums to shatter someday during one of Todd’s bath times.

Daniel stood out on his front lawn and held Todd as if he were a football. Todd’s body was horizontal and his head projected out in front of Daniel at waist level. Then Daniel ruffled his hand through the tot’s hair, gently massaging his scalp as he tried to dislodge as much of the sand as possible before going into the house. Todd thought it was pretty funny and spent his time squirming around as he attempted to grab Daniel’s leg and hang upside down and whoop. From that, Daniel assumed he’d managed to keep the gritty particles out of his eyes, thereby successfully avoiding any trips to the emergency room.

“That’s about as much as I can take care of out here,” he finally told Todd. “We’re going to have to hit the tub to get the rest.” He went into the house, Todd still tucked under his arm and let the screen slap shut behind him.

“Shoot,” he said and reversed himself, reopened the screen and swung Todd upright so he could reach his sneakers. Holding Todd’s feet just outside the front door, he pulled off his shoes and dropped them out on the porch into the small pile of sand that had poured out of the offending articles when Daniel had removed them. “Thank God I thought to do that,” he muttered as he reentered the house. “I wouldn’t want Rachel to see a mess like that inside the house. She’d think I was totally inept.” And he never thought to question why he cared one way or the other.

Daniel got thoroughly soaked during Todd’s bath and shampoo. All he could think about was how his life had changed in two short months. “I was engaged to be married, made good money, had job security, decent insurance coverage and probably would have made partner by the time I was thirty-five.” Daniel shook his head. “How the mighty are fallen.” Hard to believe it had only been June when he’d decided to strike out on his own and excitedly so informed his fiancée. He’d thought she’d find it a great adventure—the two of them as a team working their way together, side by side, shoulder to shoulder, through thick and thin—including those lean years that tempered every new business. They’d have eaten a lot of inexpensive pasta and cheap red wine at first, but they’d have done it with panache—by candlelight.

Wrong.

“If Marie couldn’t handle the idea of my giving up a secure job with nobody but two adults to worry about feeding, what the heck would she think of this situation?” In retrospect it was obvious Marie had only been interested in him when his future was firmly in place. “But she sure had me fooled for a while there,” Daniel admitted as he towel-dried Todd’s hair and wriggling little body. “She’d have probably had a heart attack and died if I’d asked her to help out with raising you, you little pill-face.”

Todd took the slander with a sunny smile and wrapped his arms around Daniel’s neck.

“Hey, lighten up,” Daniel protested as he loosened the child’s arms. “I’m glad you’re starting to adjust, but you’re going to choke me.”

Todd laughed out loud at that and Daniel rolled his eyes as he carried Todd out to the kitchen and deposited him in the high chair. “Real funny, champ. So funny I forgot to laugh.”

Daniel assembled a cheese sandwich and dropped it into a skillet. While it browned, he poured Todd half an inch of milk. Remembering how Rachel had taken pains to describe everything to the child the day before, he said, “Some good white milk, Todd,” as he handed the tumbler to the child. “Your milk’s in a green cup today. Green, got it?”

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