LITMIR.BIZ

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sorry, it was only a guess.”

      “I don’t know,” he finally said, brushing off his pants. “It doesn’t really matter. All I can figure out is some woman dropped off her kids hoping I’d give them a better life. For all I know, Max and Maddie aren’t their real names.”

      Both children turned at those words. Kaitland laughed. “I’d say that’s their correct names, all right Now, as to their parentage—”

      “They’re not mine!” he said so forcefully that Kaitland’s eyes widened.

      “I wasn’t going to say that.”

      “You’ve already said it twice.”

      “No. I said the boy looks like you.” She smiled. “But if the shoe fits—”

      “Things aren’t always as they look,” he muttered.

      Kaitland suddenly lost her smile and even paled slightly. “Don’t I know that,” she murmured, the air in the room suddenly charged with memories, a time when things hadn’t been like what they’d looked.

      Max remembered that time with clarity, and remembered the irrefutable proof that he’d produced to show her he knew she had been lying to him. Pain that he thought long dead and buried resurfaced, grabbing his heart and giving it an unexpected squeeze. Longing swept through him. If it could only have been different. If you hadn’t lied to me, had even just trusted me a little. But that was in the past, the best place for it to remain. These children were the present. And Katie’s presence in his house.

      Kaitland walked over to the door where he only now realized Sarah stood. “Someone needs to sweep up here, Sarah,” Kaitland said. “Will you see to it?”

      “Of course,” his housekeeper replied, and with an infinitesimal nod turned crisply on her heel and strode off down the hall.

      “Thank you,” Kaitland called out and then returned her attention to the room as she surveyed it through narrowed eyes.

      “Wait a minute,” Max protested as Kaitland looked around as if the room were a bug under a microscope. “You can’t go ordering my servants around.”

      Max stepped away from the bed, attempting to disengage Bobby from where the child hung on to his pant legs. Looking down, he realized the child had drooled all over his trousers. “Aw, no,” he moaned. “These are two-hundred-dollar slacks.”

      Grimacing, he pulled the child away and then, not knowing what to do, he lifted the boy into his arms.

      “Have they had lunch?” Kaitland asked as she went around the room, picking up objects on lower tables and moving them to higher places and rearranging other things.

      Max stared in disbelief, unable to figure out just what she thought she was doing. The baby suddenly grabbed Max’s paisley tie and jerked. He tried to disengage the choke hold Bobby had on him. Looking distracted, he glanced away from the deceivingly cherubic bundle in his arms. “What?” he asked, already forgetting what Kaitland had said.

      “Lunch, Max? Have you fed the children yet?” Kaitland looked downright exasperated with him. “I don’t remember you having a memory or hearing problem. Has that changed lately?”

      Max growled low in his throat, managed to disengage the child’s unnaturally strong grip then snapped rather curtly, “No, Katie. That hasn’t changed. I’m a little overwhelmed at the moment. I’ve never been around kids before, and never two at once…Watch out!”

      He went running across the room to where Maddie had just grabbed a tablecloth and pulled. Potpourri spilled everywhere. “No, no, Maddie, che’rie,” he said. “Don’t put that in your mouth.”

      Kaitland strolled over and picked up the cute little girl, easily removing the dried rose petals from the child’s mouth. “This room is definitely not meant for children. Where are you keeping them?”

      “Um…” He looked around the room, then shrugged sheepishly.

      “Oh, Max. They can’t stay in here. They need baby beds, and there are no child protectors in the plugs—”

      “Child protectors?” He looked thoroughly confused.

      “And those lamps won’t last an hour. Kids tend to gravitate toward the forbidden. You need to get your staff up here and have them baby-proof this room right now. Get rid of all these tablecloths that hang down and replace them with shorter ones. The kids look to be about fifteen months, is that right?” Kaitland stared at him expectantly.

      “I don’t know.” He felt like a helpless green recruit in an army full of generals—or one general in particular, he thought sourly, eyeing Kaitland with a suddenly wary eye.

      She shot him a reproachful look, and he had the vague thought that she was thoroughly enjoying his discomfiture. This was the first time cool, debonair Max had ever been less than the perfect sophisticate in front of her.

      “Well, that’s about the right age,” she continued. “They can walk, but still use things to pull themselves up.”

      Bobby began to fuss and Max looked panicked.

      “Bounce him gently on your hip, like this,” Kaitland instructed.

      Max watched Katie bounce Maddie, then imitated her.

      Bobby immediately threw up. “Ugh!” Max hollered and thrust the child out at arm’s length.

      “What did you feed them for lunch?” Kaitland demanded, instantly setting down Maddie and gathering Bobby to her.

      Max looked at the brown stain with revulsion. “Cookies.”

      “And?” she asked when he didn’t say anything else.

      “And milk.” What did she want? A whole list down to the bug Maddie had tried to eat from the floor the last time she’d gotten out of the chair that he’d had to sit her in every two minutes.

      “That’s all?” Kaitland’s eyes widened.

      “They seemed to like it,” he added defensively, realizing belatedly that his mother had never allowed him cookies for any meal when he had been a child…or, come to think of it, as an adult, before she’d died.

      “They’ll both have tummyaches,” she warned.

      As if out of sympathy with her brother, Maddie suddenly tossed her own cookies, all over the green carpet. Kaitland gathered her up in her free arm. “There there, little one,” she comforted as the baby began to whimper.

      “Well, this room is definitely out for a while. Find me a nearly empty room for these two…maybe your library, and bring some blankets. It’s nap time. I need to put them down and then we’ll talk.”

      “Talk? About what?”

      “Why, their schedule. What else?”

      “Their schedule? You make them sound like army recruits.”

      “You really don’t know anything about babies, do you?”

      Max ran a weary hand through his hair. “You know I don’t. But I’ve sent for someone from the agency. I was assured they’d have someone out here by this afternoon.”

      Max’s eyes suddenly narrowed. “Which brings me back to the original question I was going to ask you before you sidetracked me. What are you doing here?”

      “Surprise,” Kaitland said brightly and headed toward the door.

      “Surprise? What does that mean?” he asked, grabbing the diaper bags and starting after her.

      “It means, Max, that I’m the new nanny.”

      The thud of the bags hitting the floor could be heard all the way out in the hall.

      

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