“I’m thirty-four.”
“I know. Cook has been here thirty years and she said you were four when she started working for your mom.”
He glanced over again. “Really? She remembers?”
“She said you were a cute kid.”
He laughed and checked Cindy’s bottle. “I could be a holy terror.” He glanced over again. His eyes narrowed as if he were considering something, then he said, “How about you?”
How about her? He wanted to know about her? Good grief, they were back to talking? She couldn’t remember the last time someone asked about her and not Jason, or the accident, or her leg. And she didn’t want to talk about any of those.
She told her heart to settle down. Told herself he was simply making conversation. It was no more serious than when he told Cindy he liked her bear. “Well, I wasn’t a holy terror.”
“I bet you were one of those good girls who never bothered anybody.”
“I certainly didn’t bother the cook since we didn’t have one.”
He chuckled. She glanced down at Sam’s bottle, saw it was half empty and burped him before she let him have the bottle again. Following her lead, Chance burped Cindy and gave her the bottle and the room grew quiet again.
Chance said, “So what did you do?”
“What did I do about what?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. As a kid. Did you like history? Did you have a part in the school play? Did you chase boys?”
Her heart flip-flopped again. His attention made her all tingly. Which took them back to the bad place. The place she wasn’t supposed to let them get into. “You should be talking to Cindy.”
He glanced down at the baby then laughed. “She’s spellbound. She wants to hear about you too.”
With her heart beating frantically, she said, “Honestly. There’s nothing to tell.”
He peeked over. “Nothing? You had a totally uneventful childhood, teen years, early adulthood?”
Her face reddened. She wished with all her heart she had a story to tell him, but she didn’t. She dated Jason through high school, went with him to the prom, was injured with him on the motorcycle—
Then spent the next five years either in hospitals or visiting Jason. Not finishing college. Losing her friends. It was like she’d spent those years tumbling down a black hole.
And she finally figured out why she didn’t want to talk about this with Chance or his kids. She wanted a little space in time to forget about it. To be with people who didn’t know. With people who treated her normally, not with pity or a million questions.
He rose from his rocker. “She’s asleep.”
She glanced down and gratefully realized Sam was too. She wouldn’t have to answer Chance’s question.
She hoisted herself out of the rocker. They both put the babies into a crib. Then he said, “Good night,” and she said, “Good night.”
But neither turned away.
Staring into his sapphire eyes, a spark of something flickered to life in her chest. Could he be curious about her because he was interested in her? She’d suspected that her first day here, when they stared at each other after he’d assembled the swings and she’d put the twins in. She’d seen a certain glow in his eyes that she’d never seen in another man’s eyes.
But that was wrong.
So she turned.
And he turned.
They opened their respective bedroom doors and went their separate ways.
* * *
The next day, Chance came out into the kitchen dressed in a suit again. “Good morning.”
Tory smiled at him before she slid a spoonful of cereal into Sam’s mouth. After a ten-minute talking-to when she went to bed, she’d gotten herself back under control. He’d only been making conversation. He wasn’t really interested in her.
She’d made way too much of a few innocent looks and questions because she was lonely. It was hard talking to someone who didn’t talk back. Harder still to talk to parents who wanted her to move on. She didn’t need to fall victim to an attraction. She just needed some friends.
He walked directly to the coffeepot. After he poured himself a cup of coffee, he turned from the pot and leaned against the counter. “You and I need to talk again.”
Her breath stuttered. She hoped with all her heart he wasn’t about to bring up the question she hadn’t answered the night before.
She peered at him, her face red. “About?”
“Day after tomorrow’s Saturday.”