LITMIR.BIZ

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over her head. “I’m sorry the pipes are so bad. When it was just me here, it was no big deal. I’ll see what I can do about fixing it.”

      She lifted her shoulder, feeling uncomfortable. “After Wednesday, it won’t make any difference to me,” she reminded and promptly felt like a shrew for doing so. “I’m sorry. That sounded harsh.”

      “It sounded honest,” he said evenly. “Good night, Darby.”

      She watched him walk back into the den where he closed the door. She blew out a breath and trudged up the stairs to the room she shared with the triplets. Brilliantly handled, Darby.

      She hung the towel in the bathroom and checked Tad’s forehead once more before sitting on the far side of the enormous bed. She pulled a clean outfit from the small chest situated beside the bed and the wall and set it out for the morning, but didn’t close the drawer. Under the neatly rolled socks and undies, she could see the edge of the magazine she’d brought.

      It was stupid to carry it with her, of course. There was no need. Every word was etched in her memory.

      Yet she took it with her wherever she went. A talisman? A warning reminder?

      Still, Darby pulled the slick, colorful periodical from beneath her clothing. It was two years old and easily fell open to the article. On one page was a collage of photographs. Some were old black-and-whites. Most were more recent. Fuzzy distance shots, painfully clear close-ups.

      Sighing a little, Darby sat back against the pillows. There was Dane when he’d finally been promoted to president of the company. She ran her fingertip along the image of his face. Seven years her senior, he was impossible and overbearing. And she didn’t like admitting that she missed him even the slightest little bit.

      But she did.

      For a long time they’d been a team. Until he took his place alongside their father, and Darby had once again been alone.

      She turned the page to another set of photos. Her graduation. The front of the Schute Clinic in Kentucky where she’d had her first nursing job. The formal engagement photograph. The caption—Intriguing Debra White Rutherford To Wed Media Mogul Heir Bryan Augustine. Only there had been no marriage. No happily ever after. Only a yearlong engagement that ended in humiliation.

      One of the triplets snuffled, and Darby looked over at the cribs. She knew why she was looking at the magazine. Looking at the chronicle of her family’s life; each memory a stabbing little wound.

      In the kitchen with Garrett, breathing in his warm scent, feeling his heartbeat beneath his gray shirt, she’d forgotten. For a moment. And she couldn’t afford to ever forget. Now, since the accident with Garrett’s sister, she didn’t deserve to forget.

      She climbed off the bed, shoving the magazine back in its hiding place beneath her socks and went over to the cribs. She looked down at the sweetly scented babies. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “If I could undo it all, I would.”

      They slept on.

      And Darby snapped off the small table lamp and forced herself to climb into the bed that belonged to the man downstairs. She only wished she could close off thoughts of that man as easily as she’d closed the drawer on the magazine.

      Instead, she lay there, wakeful for a long while. Staring into the dark, trying to convince herself that the pillow beneath her head didn’t smell wonderfully of Garrett.

      Chapter Six

      “I’m hungry.”

      Garrett lowered the newspaper he was reading to the kitchen table and looked at his niece. Her hair stuck out in tangles and the pink-striped sundress she wore looked as if it was on backward. It was only seven in the morning. “Do you want a bagel?” He held up his own.

      She shook her head and he set the bagel half back on his plate. “What do you want, Regan?” He wasn’t going to play guessing games when it came to food with her. He’d done that too many times before Darby had come to stay, and he wasn’t falling for it again.

      “Waffles.”

      “Then you’ll have to wait for Darby to get up so she can fix them for you,” he told her. “I don’t do waffles.”

      She sniffed, and she was so much like Elise had been—all snooty and regal—that he felt irritation rise. He jabbed his fingers through his hair and focused on his niece, reminding himself to be patient. She was only four, and her world had violently changed only a week ago. “I can heat up a frozen waffle,” he offered.

      “Frozen waffles aren’t real waffles,” she said.

      He shrugged. He wasn’t going to take offense at a comment from a four-year-old waffle connoisseur. “Then you’ll have to wait for Darby. Where is Reid?” He leaned over to the counter and snagged the coffeepot to refill his mug.

      Regan scooted out a chair and climbed up on it, sitting high on her knees and leaning over the edge of the table, anchoring his newspaper with her elbows. “I dunno. I don’t like you.”

      “Why?”

      Her eyebrows drew together. She poked at the edge of the newspaper with her fingertip, deliberately tearing it. “’Cause you’re mean.”

      Garrett looked at her over his coffee. “And you’re rude,” he returned smoothly.

      “No, I’m not. I’m a princess. My mommy told me so.”

      “I’m sure she did. But even princesses have good manners.”

      “They certainly do,” Darby commented from the doorway. She held out her hand for Regan. “Apologize to your uncle Garrett for what you said.”

      “She doesn’t have to apologize for telling me what she thinks,” Garrett said. He held up the page of the newspaper that was ripped crookedly through the article he’d been reading. “You can apologize for doing this,” he told Regan.

      She pouted. “It was a accident.”

      “You can still be sorry for an accident,” Darby said. “Excuse us.” She didn’t look at Garrett as she led the girl out of the room.

      He could hear them talking, then the temper-filled stomp of small feet going upstairs. Darby returned and headed for the coffee. She poured a cup and held it to her face, inhaling deeply. “Nectar of the gods,” she murmured.

      He dragged his attention from her legs. But it wasn’t easy. Not with the thigh-length white sundress she wore. “Is Regan upstairs making a voodoo doll of me to stick pins into?”

      “No. She’s just testing you, Garrett. To see where the boundaries are.”

      “I’m not a complete idiot.”

      Her lips parted. “I…know that.” She set aside her coffee cup and pulled a carton of eggs out of the fridge. “I expected you to be at work by now.”

      “Disappointed?”

      She whirled around, and he smiled faintly. Rolling her eyes, she turned back to what she was doing.

      “I thought I’d take a crack at the plumbing,” he admitted. “The office won’t fall apart without me for a few hours.”

      She was cracking eggs into a pan. “Why don’t you just hire someone? The owner should take care of it, anyway, just like all the other things wrong around here.”

      “They should, but they haven’t. And I’m a hands-on guy, what can I say? Do you always wear white or tan-colored clothes?”

      Her movements slowed for only a moment. “Yes. I’m a bland kind of girl. What can I say?”

      “Hardly bland. More like a refreshing vanilla ice cream on a hot summer day.”

      Her eyes were amused. “My, my. Poetry. What are you angling for now? Another ‘barely a week’ of child care?”

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