Jennifer Greene: Tender Loving Care

“Snookums!” Thirty-four pounds of OshKosh overalls hurled himself at Zoe, effectively dislodging her ribs for all time. “What’d you bring me? Where’s your suitcase?”

Wishing she could protect them both from an exceedingly nasty world, Zoe Anderson simply held the recently orphaned little boy close. “I came here so fast that I didn’t have time to bring you a present, but we can shop for something together, okay?” Slowly, she unwound the sticky fingers from around her neck and let Aaron slide to the floor.

“Sure. Did you bring Mommy and Daddy?”

That fast, her heart jumped in her throat. For an instant, she couldn’t even speak. “No, honey.” She took a breath. “So where’s your brother? And your grandma?”

“Grandma’s in the kitchen, and Parker’s in the bathtub with Uncle Rafe. You don’t want to see my brother,” Aaron informed her. “You want to see me.”

“I want to see both of you,” Zoe said pleasantly, and gave him another quick hug.

“Grandma said she was going to have a really nice lady come to live with her here, did you know that? Are we going somewhere with you and Uncle Rafe? Guess what we had for dinner!”

“What?”

“Macaroni and cheese!”

“No kidding?” Feeling emotionally out of control and overwhelmed, Zoe swallowed. Belatedly noticing that the front door was letting in a cold March wind, she closed it, took off the rakish red felt hat that was one of her favorites and started unbuttoning her coat. Her gaze skimmed the living room. She’d been here for Christmas. At Christmas, Janet and Jonathan had been alive.

Janet had been compulsively neat-now two lampshades hung crookedly; toys were strewn from wall to wall; and a TV set blared, although no one was watching it. One of the twins-undoubtedly Aaron-had recently taken a magic marker to the wall by the stairwell.

“Zoe?” Mrs. Gregor appeared in the kitchen doorway, leaning heavily on her walker. The twins’ grandmother looked tired from the inside out. Her soft complexion was dangerously pale, and tears blurred her eyes when Zoe surged toward her for a hug. Loss and grief dangled between them for that moment; neither said anything.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here yesterday,” Zoe said fiercely. “I felt so bad, but I was out on the water. I never got the message until the night before, and then-”

“Zoe, I understand about your work, you know that. Just thank heavens you’re here now,” Mrs. Gregor said finally.

“You’re all right?”

“Of course she’s all right,” Aaron said irritably. “She’s Grandma. Now that Snookums is here, can we stay up late?”

Zoe glanced past Mrs. Gregor’s shoulder. Janet’s kitchen had always been spotless. Now debris littered every surface, and the counter was piled high with dishes, a measure of how impossible it was for a woman who used a walker to deal with two active four-year-olds. Despair racked her. Decisions had to be made quickly that she simply wasn’t prepared to make. “Mr. Kirkland-”

“Rafe?”

“Yes, Rafe. He managed to get here yesterday?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Gregor confirmed. “He spent most of the afternoon at the lawyer’s, Zoe. You’ll have to talk with him-he’s upstairs with Parker.”

“I told you that,” Aaron reminded her. “Parker will wait.”

Mrs. Gregor afforded her grandson one censoriously raised eyebrow. “You’re still in trouble with me, young man.”

“Uh-oh. What’d you do?” Zoe asked him.

“Slugged Parker.” Aaron shrugged. “He deserved it.”

“Aaron!”

“Come on, monster,” Zoe suggested. “We’ll go upstairs together, and you can show me where your brother is.”

“You know where the bathroom is,” he objected.

A piggy-back ride made Aaron willing to get out of his grandmother’s hair for a few minutes. Upstairs, Zoe winced at the look of the twins’ bedroom-sheets and blankets had been fashioned into a makeshift tent; clothes had been tossed every which way. Resolutely, she aimed for the sounds of splashing and laughter coming from the bathroom.

Letting Aaron down, she rapped on the door once, which earned her a bewildered stare from her godchild. The concept of privacy was about as interesting to him as spinach.

“Mrs. Gregor, there was no need for you to climb the stairs. I told you I could handle this…” The wet and weary man who pulled open the door abruptly stopped talking.

“Snookums!” Fast as a flash, Parker leaped naked out of the tub. Zoe dropped to her knees and braced herself just in time for the generous wet hug. Parker and Aaron both had stand-up-straight red hair and freckles and sassy blue eyes, but they had distinguishing characteristics. Parker was the sturdier twin while Aaron was the dreamer, “Gosh, you and Uncle Rafe are both here,” Parker breathed delightedly. “Are we going to have fun or are we going to have fun?”

“We’re going to have colds if you don’t pop back in the water,” she scolded teasingly. Corners, ceilings and walls were dripping. “What is this? You’ve turned the bathroom into a submarine!”

A throat was quietly cleared behind her. “I had the misguided notion that a bath was a relatively simple project.”

As Parker hopped back in the tub, Zoe stood up to take a good look at the man whose leg Aaron was hanging on to for dear life. Over the past few days, she’d talked to Rafe Kirkland on the phone three times, but she had only met him once-six years ago at Janet and Jonathan’s wedding. She still remembered the bold angular features, the natural assurance, the blue eyes that pounced on a woman.

Those eyes were pouncing on her now. Allowing two boys near water at the same time was an error in judgment that resulted in whoops of giggling and splashing confusion. For that moment, Zoe heard none of it. She felt Rafe’s gaze intimately slide over her from head to toe, and straightened.

The pregnant silence crackling between them echoed with man-to-woman vibrations. Perhaps she should have been prepared for that? At the wedding long ago, Zoe had been a frisky twenty, more than happy to indulge in champagne and exercise her flirting skills on Jonathan’s best man. She wasn’t about to apologize for being a carefree twenty once upon a time, but that wasn’t the image she wanted to convey to Rafe now.

Her appearance accurately reflected the capable twenty-six-year-old woman she had become. Her hair was a warm chestnut with streaks of copper; she wore it short and windswept-casual, the best style for her profession as an oceanographer. Her black sweater and white slacks accented her slim figure without being too tight-Zoe didn’t own clothing she couldn’t move in.

She never bothered with much makeup; her skin always had the blush of the sun, and lipstick was useless-she bit it off. Today, as usual, she’d brushed on a little mascara, conceding to vanity over her best feature-huge oval eyes that were the luminous green of the ocean on a clear day.

His eyes were definitely Paul Newman blue. She remembered that. She also remembered a man determined to follow his own rhythms on a crowded dance floor; she remembered him filling her champagne glass far too often. She remembered feeling out of her league as far as flirtation skills went, and exulting in a false sensation of danger where there really was none-at the time he was working in South America, and she never expected to see him again.

Neither the hazy memories nor the recent phone calls had prepared her for the impact of actually seeing him. He was too tall, and his shoulders were too big for a small bathroom. His jeans advertised virility and his rolled-up shirt cuffs showed off sinewed arms. He had the vitality of a man who valued the physical. The lumberjack physique was accented by a face that revealed a strong character. Sun-weathered skin stretched taut over angular bones; his eyes were sharp with intelligence and perception. No one was going to argue with that chin.