LITMIR.BIZ

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with her schedule laid out, and finally to the corkboard where she’d affixed dozens of pictures of children holding toys.

      Her office was at the front of the house on the second floor. Caroline called it the tower room. The windows looked out over a landscape that included the woods full of snow-covered pines, a lake, and in the distance, mountains that looked tall enough to scrape the sky.

      The room wasn’t very big, but she didn’t need a massive office since there was no one to impress. She had a desk with a computer, an easel and paints, and space enough to pace when she needed to think. But right now, Isabelle wished for a much bigger space, because her office seemed to have shrunk the moment Wes walked into it.

      “What is all this?” he asked quietly, turning at last to look at her.

      “My work. It’s what I do now,” she told him and stood up from behind her desk. She didn’t want to be seated while he loomed over her. “I set up a nonprofit that provides toys to hospitalized children. I call it Caro’s Toybox.”

      She didn’t look at him, instead focusing on the pictures of the smiling kids she kept in her office as inspiration. “I do the design work and the manufacturer produces the toys, then we distribute them.”

      He looked at those smiling faces in the photographs, too, and asked, “How’d you get into this?”

      Isabelle walked up to stand beside him so that both of them were looking at those happy faces staring back at them. “When Caro was so sick, and then diagnosed, we spent a lot of time in the local hospital. We saw ill, scared children, and I realized that stuffed animals, or dolls, or even a toy plane could bring comfort to those kids when no one was around.”

      She sighed as memories rushed into her mind—sharing waiting rooms with other worried mothers, hearing the muffled cries of children, punctuated by an occasional wail of pain.

      “I held Caro on my lap as doctors poked and prodded her. She was scared, but she had me there to try to comfort her,” she said sadly. “But there were a lot of kids on the ward who spent too much time alone in their beds. Their moms and dads had other kids to take care of, and jobs, too. Nurses are amazingly great, but they’re frantically busy and can’t always take the time to try to ease a child’s fear.”

      “I wish I’d been there. For Caro. For you.” His voice was low, soft and tinged with regret.

      Isabelle looked at him and saw his features soften and felt closer to him than she ever had. Whether he’d been there or not, he was Caroline’s father, and only the two of them could really understand what it was like to have a sick child you couldn’t help.

      “I wish you had been, too.” She looked up at him. “I know it’s my fault that you weren’t, and for that, I’m really sorry.”

      He looked down at her, and his clear aqua eyes shone with emotion that he couldn’t hide. “Thanks. For saying that. For meaning it.”

      Isabelle’s heart thumped hard in her chest. Her stomach swirled with anticipation, expectation and a jolt of nerves that only increased with every breath she drew. “I do, Wes,” she said. “If I could do it all over…”

      He shook his head, reached out and laid one hand on her shoulder. “We can’t do any of it over. But we can do it differently from here on.”

      The heat of his touch drifted down, sliding into her chest and filling her with a kind of warmth she hadn’t known in five years. Staring into his eyes, she was drawn in by that magnetic pull she’d always felt around him. It took everything she had to keep from moving into him, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him. But that would only make this moment even more confusing than it already was.

      So she only reached up to cover his hand with her own. “We can do that.”

      He released her as his eyes warmed and a half smile curved his mouth. “Good.” He shifted his gaze back to the faces on her board. “So you decided to try to take care of all of those kids,” he said.

      “To do what I could, yes.” She too looked at the board where smiling children were caught in a moment of time. “We set up a toy room on the pediatric floor—” She broke off and chuckled. “Nothing fabulous, of course, usually a maintenance closet that we take over. We add shelves, paint and stock it with toys. Then every new patient gets to choose a toy for themselves.”

      She smiled a little, remembering the excitement of the kids when they were given the chance to go toy shopping right in the hospital. “It’s a good feeling, watching children go into the room and inspect everything there before making their choice.”

      “Yeah,” he said softly, “I bet it is.”

      She felt him looking at her, and she turned her head to meet his gaze. He was giving her a quizzical look, as if he was trying to figure her out. “What is it?”

      He shook his head. “Nothing. I’m just…impressed.”

      “And surprised?”

      “No, not really,” he said, tipping his head to one side to look at her more deeply. “You always had a big heart.”

      Now she was the one shocked. And a little off balance. These few moments with Wes had fundamentally changed how they were dealing with each other. Which was good for Caroline, but dangerous for Isabelle. Old feelings were awakened and new ones were jolting into life. “Well, it’s getting late, and I need to pick up Caro at school.”

      “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll go with you. But first…” He paused, looked down at her and said, “I’d like to help you. With this.”

      “What?”

      “If you had more toys available, you could get into more hospitals, right?” He studied each smiling face on the board as if committing them each to memory.

      “Well, yes,” she said, watching him. “We’ve been moving slowly, running on donations and what we can produce. It’s taking longer than I’d like.”

      “Then let me help,” he said, and this time he turned to her and reached out to hold her upper arms in a soft, firm grip. “What you’re doing is something special. Something important, and it makes me proud that you started it all. So let me in, Belle. Let me be a part of what you do.”

      Her heart jumped into a fast, heavy rhythm. His eyes on hers, she saw his sincerity. Saw how much he wanted this and what it meant to him. She was touched more deeply than she’d expected. With Wes’s help she could grow her program faster than ever before. They could reach more children. Offer more comfort. That he wanted to do this meant more to her than anything else he could have done.

      “I’d like that very much,” she said.

      A slow, satisfied smile curved his mouth, and his eyes gleamed. He rubbed his hands up and down her arms, creating a friction that kindled the heat already building inside her.

      “Thanks for that,” he said. “I think we’ll make a great team.”

      Isabelle smiled, but her heart hurt a little, since five years ago, she’d thought the same thing.

       Six

      If anyone had told Wes a month ago that he’d be sitting front row center at a four-year-old’s dance recital, he would have called them crazy. Yet, here he was. And most amazing of all, he was having a good time.

      Isabelle sat beside him, and next to her were Edna and Marco. On Wes’s right, Chance, Eli and Tyler sprawled in the too-small chairs, trying to get comfortable. The elementary school auditorium was packed with parents, grandparents and kids of all ages. The room was big, the chairs were uncomfortable and in the corner beside the stage, an elderly woman was playing a piano that looked as if it could have been one of the first ones ever made.

      Smiling to himself, he shook his head and leaned in when Isabelle whispered,

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