Tender Loving Care Read Free

from California to Guatemala—I’m on assignment in Montana right now, studying the relationship between avalanches and earthquakes. I work strange hours; I’ve never settled anywhere longer than a few years at a time. I’ve never even been around kids…”
    “Rafe, neither have I,” Zoe insisted. “You think I can’t understand what you’re talking about? My life is the ocean, my whales; I explained some of that to you over the phone. Just like your work, my job involves sporadic hours, responsibilities I can’t just wriggle out of. It’s not an environment that could possibly be good for young kids, and I know nothing about children.”
    Blue eyes snapped on green, somewhere between a rock and a hard place. “So…we’re in the same boat. But the kids have to be our prime consideration here.”
    “Oh, Lord. I agree.” Her eyes were luminous with emotion. “Believe me, if it were a simple matter of changing my lifestyle, I would do it. But it’s not that simple, not for me.” She took a breath. “Look, Rafe, there is just no chance I would make any kind of mother.”
    His brows quirked up in surprise and amusement. “I could see that you didn’t give a hoot about the boys,” he said gravely. “Parker jumped out of the tub stark naked to hug you, and half the toys in their closet came from Snookums. How did you manage to earn that nickname, by the way?”
    “A game called Sneak ’Em Up, which they called Snook ’Em Up, which somehow deteriorated into…never mind.” She waved her hand, dismissing the dratted nickname. “Anyway, that kind of thing is misleading.”
    “Oh?”
    “And you’re obviously fond of them, too. The other half of the toys in their closet came from Uncle Rafe, and I saw you tussling with the two of them on the bed. They adore you.”
    “They adore you just as much.”
    Standoff. Zoe stirred her coffee and then fussed with her black button earrings. When she got around to looking at Rafe again, she found a deep groove wedged between his brows. His voice brushed her nerves with wet velvet. “I apologize,” he said quietly.
    “For what?”
    “For assuming it would automatically be easier for you to take on kids because you’re a woman.”
    “Maybe…with another woman…that might be a natural assumption,” she admitted. He just kept staring at her with that pensive frown. Silence lapped up the seconds; words wouldn’t come.
    “Would it be easier to talk somewhere else?” he asked finally. She’d barely nodded before he was reaching for his corduroy jacket.
    The night was bleak and cold. Clumps of gray-crusted snow clung to the sidewalks March-fashion; winter wasn’t quite ready to give up its hold. Cars hummed past them, tires sizzling on wet streets; streetlamps illuminated a city that needed the wash of spring rains.
    Zoe turned up her coat collar and jammed her hands in her pockets, vibrantly aware of the man’s long stride next to her. “I can’t have children,” she said quietly.
    “So you said. But, as I told you, I’m in the same boat.”
    Impatience surged through Zoe. This was so hard to talk about, and it was worse with a stranger. “I mean physically I can’t have them. Three years ago, I had an infection that got out of hand, and following that an operation. None of which is any of your business or your problem, but I know exactly why Janet wrote me in as a guardian in case anything happened to her. She knew her kids would be my only chance to have children—only she was terribly wrong, and in the best interests of the twins, I think I have to explain all this to you. You’ve got to understand why you’re the only one who can take them.”
    “Zoe…” Rafe stopped dead on the street. His voice was suddenly gruff and low, and somehow intimate.
    She kept on walking and talking, never once looking at him as she told him her story. The words came out blithe and brisk, emotionless. Water over the dam. No point in crying over spilled milk. All