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If you’re reading a book you can’t put down—blame it on Jennifer Greene!

BLAME IT ON CHOCOLATE

“Written with a deliciously sharp sense of humour

and her usual superb sense of characterisation,

RITA® Award-winning Greene’s latest romance is a

sweetly sexy, thoroughly satisfying, and simply

sublime literary confection.”

—Booklist

“Ms Greene is a wonderful story teller who pulls

you into the lives of her characters…Blame It on Chocolate is intriguing, engaging and full of drama and wit.You’ll have a very hard time putting this story down.”

—CataRomance.com

“…terrifically likeable hero and heroine. The sexual

chemistry between them sizzles, the romantic plot is

emotionally compelling and the subject matter at

the heart of the story is interesting.”

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

“The characters are likeable, the plot is realistic,

and the book is fantastic. I highly recommend

Blame It on Chocolate.”

—Romance Reviews Today

“The characters are truly believable, the dialogue is

funny, and the situations this couple find themselves

in are ones anyone can relate to.”

—Romance Junkies

“A warmhearted romance with endearing

characters, simmering sensuality, and a very

interesting subject matter. A book to curl

up with on a cold night.”

—Rendezvous

Other works by

Jennifer Greene

BLAME IT ON CHOCOLATE

BLAME IT ON PARIS

Blame It
on Cupid
JENNIFER
GREENE

www.mirabooks.co.uk

To: Moose, Brody, Havi, Magic

It’s about the unconditional love.

Thanks, guys

CHAPTER ONE

NORMALLY NOTHING SCARED Merry Olson. People teased her about it all the time. On the same morning, you could throw her a flat tire, bad hair and burned eggs, and she’d still be perky. Her dad claimed she could find the silver lining in a tornado. But man, one look at the house and she felt rattled clear to the bone.

The trip from Minnesota to Oakburg, Virginia, had been tediously long, especially driving alone, so she expected to arrive exhausted. She just never expected to feel culture shock as if she’d landed on a completely alien planet.

Taking a huge, bolstering breath, she climbed from her snow-and-salt-crusted blue Mini Cooper and grabbed her cell phone. At twenty-nine, she was hardly tied by the emotional umbilical cord to her dad, but she knew darn well he’d worry himself crazy until he heard from her. She worried about him the same way when he traveled alone.

Waiting for her dad to answer, she glanced at her car. Merry never doubted that her Cooper could make it through anything—the car was far more reliable than she was—but right now, no question, the baby was sagging in the rear end and heaped to the gills.

Upending her entire life in a week had been a major challenge, but not impossible. For years friends and family had labeled her ditzy, but where they meant an affectionate insult, Merry secretly took pride in the tag. She lived life loose. That was a deliberate choice, not an accident. She’d never taken a job she couldn’t quit, never allowed herself to get so attached to a place that she couldn’t leave. She’d never settled long with anyone or for anything.

What other people called flaky, she called freedom. And maybe she had a few personal reasons why she was so zealously footloose, but that wasn’t the point. The point was now—when she’d needed to be able to change her whole life quickly, she’d been able to do so.

Her Mini Cooper did look a bit odd. The passenger seat alone was weighted down with two suitcases, a pillow and a jumbled collection of shoes—forty pairs, to be precise. The backseat was completely stuffed with a table-sized Christmas tree, already decked out with pink lights and pink satin ornaments, and a mess of various-sized boxes wrapped in pink and silver and gold.

Considering it was January tenth, a long way past Christmas, the tree especially had to look a little weird to a stranger. But Merry had her priorities, and she hoped to Pete that looking sane to other people was never one of them.

“Dad?” Finally, he answered on the fourth ring. “I got here, safe and sound. A mighty long drive, but really no sweat…”

A zingy ice sleet stung her face, but she didn’t mind. The chipper temperature was exhilarating after all those cramped hours in the car. Besides, she’d left two feet of snow in Minneapolis, so if this was the worst Virginia could hand out in the winter, living here was going to be a piece of cake.

When she glanced at the house again, though, she suffered another shiver chasing up her spine.

“No, Dad, I haven’t seen the lawyer yet. Or the child. There hasn’t been time. I thought I could drive it through, but I had to stop for a few hours sleep last night. So I literally just pulled in the driveway to get a look at the place…”

With the phone still tucked to her ear, she whirled around, hoping the look of the neighborhood would be more reassuring. Instead, she suffered another shuddersized shiver.

Apparently it wasn’t just the one house. There was a whole block of them. They were all minicastles, with sculpted yards and fancy architectural features and three-car garages. The only vehicles in sight were BMWs and Volvos and Lexus SUVs.

Her house wasn’t any worse than the rest, but it was pretty darn scary. To begin with, the size alone could have slept a small country. A cathedral ceiling and blue crystal chandelier was visible from a two-story-tall glass window. Carriage lamps graced the double oak doors. The flagstone walkway was landscaped within an inch of its life and the porch had pillars, for Pete’s sake.

Merry felt another clutch in her chest. There was just no denying the truth. This was upper-class suburbia. Desperate Housewives in the flesh. The land of swing sets and soccer moms and lawn mowers.

Come on, Merry. It’s not as if someone dropped you in the Amazon without bug repellent. Common sense rarely influenced her, but in this case, Merry was relieved to have her conscience show up with a little re-assurance—and of course it was true. Maybe the house was a shock, but it wasn’t as if she didn’t realize the suburb thing existed. It was just so remote from her life.

Naturally she’d thought about marriage now and then, but she couldn’t imagine falling for a guy who wanted 2.3 kids and the minivan deal. The only kind of guy who’d likely tempt her would have to be as free-footed as she was. If that never happened, no loss. Life offered no end of adventures and interesting possibilities just as it was.

As happy as she’d been with that philosophy, though, it gave her no clue now what a soccer mom was supposed to do all day. With the cell phone still glued to her ear, she squinted again at the chandelier visible from the tall window, wondering how the Sam Hill anybody cleaned that sucker. A fireman’s ladder? Maybe someone sprayed Windex from a helicopter? Maybe someone rented climbing gear and belayed down from the chimney?

“No, no, I was listening, Dad!” Swiftly she concentrated back on the conversation. “It’s still two hours before five, so I’m hoping to connect with the lawyer today, get the house key. I only wish I could get her out of that place tonight, but at least this way, I’ll have tonight to get some things done—like turning on the heat, bringing in some food, opening the place up and like that. But first thing tomorrow, with any luck…sure, Dad. Of course, I’ll call you as soon as I know more…the house? Oh yeah, you’d love the house.”

As she clicked off the phone, she thought wryly that her dad would most certainly love the place. She was the only one suffering from “suburb allergy.”

Her sisters teased that she was maturity-challenged, but they were all older, had all bought into the myth about adulthood being synonymous with mortgages and appliance ownership.

She’d just shoved the cell phone back in her purse when she heard a truck door slam from the next driveway.

After the last unsettling moments, she appreciated the distraction. Especially a distraction as riveting as this one. It was just a guy—but definitely a long, lanky hunk of a guy, arresting enough to put some kaboom back in her tired pulse.

He peeled out of a black pickup and immediately hiked around to the rear. Undoubtedly hustling because of the spitting sleet, he cracked down the tailgate and started hefting some long wooden boards. She didn’t think he’d noticed her until he suddenly called out, “You must be lost.”

It wasn’t the time, the moment, or the guy to murmur the old Campbell’s soup refrain—M’m! M’m! Good!— but she did think it. Just for a minute. Heaven knew, she had no time for silliness right now, but one good long look wasn’t hurting anything. He was so definitely adorable. Dark hair, worn a little roguish-long, dusted with snow. Dark eyes that glistened. A long angular face with a scrape of high cheekbones, a distinctly French nose, a chin carved out of granite. The thin mouth was the only soft thing about him, but she’d bet the ranch those lips knew how to kiss.

Maybe she didn’t own a ranch, but she happened to be extremely skilled in certain areas. Just because a woman wasn’t rabid about settling down didn’t mean she hadn’t tested out her share of the male population, particularly in the kissing department.

“No, honestly, I’m not lost,” she assured him. “But I did just come a long way to find the place. You knew Charlie Ross?”

“Yup. Neighbors for years.” He motioned with his head. “The house is locked up.”

She watched him unload several more boards—all gorgeous-looking wood. She didn’t know birch from beech, but she could see he was treating the boards as if they were precious cargo. “I know,” she said. “About the house being locked up, I mean. I just drove here from Minnesota…”

“Uh-huh.” He carted two boards at a time to the inside of his garage, then came back for more.

She realized he was hardly inviting more conversation—nor did she have time for chitchat. But a nextdoor neighbor was a potential ally. And certainly, someone who had to know Charlie and his daughter, so she offered, “I’ve never been here before. In fact, the last time I saw Charlie, he was still living in Minneapolis, years ago. I had no idea he’d died until the lawyer contacted me. I’m here about Charlene—”

“Yeah?”

“I have to get the house key from the lawyer. And I guess there’s a whole host of complicated issues to settle besides that. But with any luck, I’m really hoping to have Charlene back in her own home by tomorrow.”

She definitely caught his attention then. In fact, he suddenly stopped dead. “What? You’re the guardian?”

Okay, maybe his tone was a little insulting, as if the possibility of her being a guardian was as remote as the sky falling in, but Merry made allowances. He was probably cranky from carrying the weight of all those boards. And she’d been hard-core driving, which meant she wore no makeup and her hair hadn’t seen a brush in hours, not to mention that her red flowered slippers lacked a certain cachet. Cripes, she generally got more male attention than she wanted when she dressed up—but undoubtedly to this guy, she looked young. At least compared to him. Living in this neighborhood, he was undoubtedly on the married-with-kids side of the fence.

Not that he was decrepit. Merry had guy-shopped long enough to recognize real diamonds from the faux. He wasn’t just cute. He was sexy the way only men with some experience-lines could look. He was past the spoiled-boy stage, past the how-was-it-for-you tedium in the morning. More into the I-Know-How-To-Please-A-Woman era. Close to forty, for sure.

Still, he was definitely off her radar. Not because of his age, but because of the married thing.

She still hoped he’d like her, though. Having a friend next door would be a huge help, so quickly and warmly she produced her biggest smile—the smile that had been known to attract male favor since she was, oh, three and a half.

For a good two seconds, it seemed to work on him, too. Between the shiny sleet, the gloomy afternoon and the distance across the driveway, she couldn’t see his expression all that clearly…but he definitely stared back at her intensely for those few moments.

And that was about all the time Merry had to mess around. “I won’t bug you any longer—I can see you’re busy, and I’m in a real hurry as well. But I’m Merry. Merry Olson. So when you see lights turn on in the house later, you’ll know it’s me.”

“Jack Mackinnon here.” Swiftly he added, “Merry…you have actually met Charlene before, right?”

He sounded more incredulous than critical, but Merry didn’t figure it was the time or place to get into it. “Not yet,” she said cheerfully, and then waved as she climbed back in her car.

The look of him lingered in her mind—but so did his expression.

He wouldn’t be the first to call her crazy for taking off cross-country to take on an eleven-year-old girl she’d never even met. Hell’s bells, even she admitted it was crazy.

But crazy didn’t mean it was wrong.

Merry had long, devastating memories from the year she was eleven—so the little girl’s age had hugely, hopelessly touched her. The second factor was the poor kid had lost her dad on Christmas Eve—how impossibly devastating was that? On top of which, there were no relatives who could step in. Charlene was far beyond the usual adoptable age, and in an overcrowded fostercare system, the child was absolutely alone, had no one in her corner.

The way Merry saw it, one of the giant advantages to living footloose and fancy free was exactly an issue like this—she had the flexibility to take off and choose a different life path whenever she wanted to. No, she didn’t know the child. No, she didn’t have a clue if there were any special problems, but when push came down to shove—which it had—what did anything like that matter? How could she possible leave a lonely, griefstricken eleven-year-old girl when she had the power to do something about it?

And that was her plan. First, to just open her arms and love the kid. And then, to give her a Christmas—in her own home—to make up for the one she’d just lost. After that, well, she’d figure out what the child needed and wanted. There was no way to cross those bridges until they came to them. Together.

Right now, though, driving demanded all her concentration. Lee Oxford—Charlie’s estate lawyer—had an Arlington address. The problem was that maps and Merry didn’t get along. And that she was already tired. And that Arlington and D.C. traffic was like a prehistoric reality play about the survival of the fittest.

Nobody wanted to play nice. Minneapolis rush hour was no cupcake, but either the drivers in this neck of the woods all had political agendas or were sociopath-wannabes.

She also had to pop into a gas station—not for gas, but to charge into the restroom for a fast cleanup. A little makeup, a brush and putting on some real shoes was all she had time for. Unfortunately, after that she had trouble finding the attorney’s address. Not for the first time, she cursed all her relatives for failing to pass on a direction gene, and after all that fiddle-faddling around, it was fifteen minutes to five before she managed to park and chase up the stairs to Lee Oxford’s office.

The receptionist took one look at her and sniffed, the little snot. Maybe receptionists on this side of the Mississippi could afford Ellen Tracy suits, but at least where Merry came from, people were familiar with some friendly manners. “It’s late, but I’ll see if he can fit you in,” was all the receptionist offered.

“I left a message on his cell that I was coming in early, but I don’t know if he got it. Please tell him it’s about Charlene Ross. I know we didn’t plan a meeting until tomorrow, I’m hoping he can still see me today.”

“Have a seat.”

Yeah, right, like she could relax at this point. She slugged her hands in her pockets and paced from window to window. She’d had mental images in her mind for days of the little girl, so young, alone, no mom, and then losing her daddy right before Christmas. It was easy to picture her. Granted, it had been years since she’d seen Charlie, but his daughter was undoubtedly built short and scrappy, because he’d been. Likely she’d be blond. Hopefully she wouldn’t have her daddy’s hook nose, but with any luck at all she’d have those wonderfully warm crinkle-in-the-corner blue eyes.

Naturally, without knowing her, Merry had had a hard time picking out Christmas presents—but not totally. Eleven was eleven. Whether Merry wanted to or not, she recalled every detail about that age. It was that era when you had to have a best friend. When you first started to notice boys, even if you were still a little worried they had cooties. It was that age when you first got hard-core interested in makeup and fashion styles, started hearing the appeal of the “in” music, talked on the phone nonstop.

And, yeah, it was an age when losing a parent was the worst thing in the universe—especially if the other parent had already deserted the ship.

Merry’s heart had been ripped up since she first heard the story. Still was. Still would be, she suspected, until she’d gotten her arms around the little girl. Whatever happened was going to be challenging, she knew. How could anything about this be easy, for her or for Charlene? But Merry didn’t really doubt that she’d get along with the child. Wherever this all ended up, love and caring and attention had to help the little sweetheart, and Merry was more than willing to open her heart to the child.

Finally the receptionist gave her the high sign, and Merry sailed into Oxford’s office with an eager smile and her hand outstretched. The terrier-sized, darkhaired man on the other side of the polished onyx desk stood up to return her handshake, but abruptly her optimistic spirits suffered a teensy drop.

Unlike everybody else, she usually liked lawyers. Some of her closest friends were lawyers. But most of them were of that earnest, honest breed fresh from law school, hot to make the world a better place, flagwaving hopeless liberals like…well, like herself. Lee Oxford looked about fifty, had a mega-watt diamond in his tie, elegantly styled brown hair—even for a city guy—and wore alligator shoes. He took one look at her and brightened as if she were the freshest meat on the hoof he’d seen in a long, long time.

It’s not as if she’d never had that response from a man before, but she’d really wanted to like this guy. Mentally she reminded herself that Charlie Ross would never have picked a jerk for a lawyer, so to just chill on that first reaction and give him a longer chance.

Still, Oxford held her hand more like a caress instead of a handshake, before slowly sinking back in his chair. He started out with, “I wondered what you’d look like. This is a highly unusual situation.”

“Believe me, it is for me, too.” She sank into the barrel chair across from his sleek black desk. “This is the fastest I could get here. I didn’t expect to be able to connect with Charlene still tonight, but I was hoping to get the key to the house. I’d like to open it up, make sure everything’s turned on, get some food in, just get to know the place a little. Try and make some things ready for her.”

“A good idea. But there’s a lot we have to go over first.”

Merry leaned forward. There was a ton she wanted to go over, too. And just because little guys tended to worry her—they always seemed to have a mean streak, need to prove their power and all that—she tried to quit pegging him in the negative. So the guy had looked her over a little close. What man didn’t?

“As I hope I explained on the phone…if the child’s mother happened to show up, or another blood relative who is capable of taking Charlene, they could make a legal claim. But right now, to the best of our knowledge, there’s no one.”

Merry nodded. “For her sake, I wish she had some family, too.”

“Regardless, you need to fully understand that you have no legal obligation to take her.”

“I do understand that. You explained on the phone.”

“The document you signed years ago isn’t binding.”

Again she nodded. She’d gone over that night numerous times in her mind. It was hard to explain to an outsider what a rare and special friendship she’d formed with Charlie. It just wasn’t like any other friend relationship.

He’d been newly divorced when she met him, living in Minnesota, not Virginia. There’d never been anything romantic between them. They’d met at some ghastly party that they’d both been conned into attending by friends, started talking and never stopped. He was just a totally great guy who’d needed a friend, and she’d valued being one for him. Over days and weeks of talking together, she shared more about her childhood than she’d ever told anyone. Likewise, he’d revealed his circumstances. The court had given him full custody of his baby daughter, but he’d been frantic about what would happen to Charlene if he died or was hurt. Even before his ex-wife had disappeared from the picture, she’d been attracted to anything she could smoke or sniff.

The two of them had written up an agreement on a legal pad in a restaurant. It wasn’t fancy, just said that Merry would take care of his daughter, as he’d take care of hers if she ever had kids who needed help. Even if it was just a pact between friends, she’d meant the words. He had, too. And yeah, unfortunately they’d lost track when he took the job in Virginia. He also must have wildly changed if he’d turned into Mr. Suburbia. But she’d never forgotten him. When the lawyer first called, she’d let out a helpless, keening cry on hearing Charlie was gone.

And that fast, Oxford told her that she was the only one listed as a potential guardian for Charlene. He’d also quickly informed her there was nothing legally binding about such a document, nothing to stop her from backing out.

He repeated the same thing now.

She answered him the same way she had then. “Maybe there’s nothing in this situation that’s legally binding. But morally and ethically is a whole different ball of wax. I have no idea if I can be a good guardian for Charlene. But she can’t possibly be better off in foster care, and for sure she needs out of the situation she’s stuck in right now. And I’m free. I can at least make sure she’s back in her own home, her own school, around her own friends again, before anybody has to make any decisions set in granite.”

“It’s a monumental thing you’re taking on.” Oxford picked up a pen, and terrier-fashion, started worrying it, poking it end to end. “If you don’t mind my saying, I find it odd if not a little suspicious that you’d be willing to take on a kid out of the blue.”

Merry tried not to take offense. He didn’t know her from Adam. She tried to answer with the same careful honesty she’d expressed to everyone else. “If you’re thinking that I easily said yes, I promise you I didn’t. But when you described the situation she was in…I couldn’t get it out of my mind. A little girl, right at Christmas, who had everything she knew and loved ripped away from her—”

He cut her short, as if he needed to hear an emotional argument like he needed another head. “Somehow I suspect you know there’s a sizable trust.”

She frowned. “Yes. You said Charlie had a trust set up for his daughter.”

“A sizable trust,” he repeated, and looked at her.

She opened her mouth, closed it. She told herself again that Charlie would never have chosen a lawyer who was a creep, but the tone of Oxford’s voice still stung. He clearly seemed to think she was motivated by money. Of course, he couldn’t possibly know that half the world tagged her Ms. Eternal Sunshine…and the other half accused her of being a hopelessly naive idealist. But greedy—sheesh. Of all the faults she’d picked up and excelled at, greed sure wasn’t one of them.

“I don’t know what you mean by sizable,” she said carefully. “But I admit I was shocked when I saw the house. When I knew Charlie, he was an engineer. A good one, making a decent salary. But when I saw the house, I figured it must have a heckuva mortgage—”

“The house is paid for. When Charlie’s dad died, he inherited a bundle. Which I suspect you knew.”

“No, I didn’t, actually,” she said evenly. “I never asked Charlie about money. It was never my business.”

“Uh-huh.” Oxford put down his pen. “I’m not trying to yank your chain, Merry. I wouldn’t take on a kid either, unless there was something in it for me. But if there hadn’t been that kind of money, the child would undoubtedly have been popped into foster care from the start. And if blood relatives do show up, you’d better believe they’ll fight for a chance at that size of pot.”

She felt a little like a goldfish stolen from a tank. Her mouth kept opening. She just couldn’t temporarily get any words out. She’d never take on a child for money’s sake, couldn’t imagine anyone who would. Bruising her even more, though, was that the attorney seemed to believe she was like him, now that they’d put some honesty on the table. At least his version of honesty.

“You need to understand though, Merry, that Charlie made that trust iron-tight. Or I should say I made the trust tight. No one gets their hands on that money, without verifying that any and all expenses are for the child.”

“Which is the way it should be,” Merry got in.

“Yeah, right. Naturally, there’s an allowance for the guardian.” He named a sum that almost knocked her off her chair. “But typical of such situations, there was an immediate guardian ad litem appointed by the court.”

“You used that term on the phone, but I don’t really know what it means.”

“Basically the court appoints a guardian ad litem, who functions as an impartial voice in decisions involving a minor or incapacitated person. In this case, obviously, the child. I have control over matters involving the trust and finances—but I have no power over custody details. She’ll check on Charlene’s progress with you. Evaluate how the relationship is working. She has the right to make home visits, to interview Charlene’s doctor or teachers or other people who know the child. And you need to understand that she can petition the court to have you removed from the guardian role if she feels Charlene isn’t thriving in your care…but she will have to prove it.”

“All that sounds like good sense. Fine.” Merry found herself wrapping her arms tight around her chest. A lump kept clogging her throat. These were facts she needed to know, no question. It was just that the attorney hadn’t said a single personal thing about the child. There was no hint he’d ever even met her. Maybe she was being oversensitive, but he kept striking her as having a heart colder than the Arctic. “Mr. Oxford—”

“Lee. We’ll be seeing a lot of each other. No reason to stand on formality.”

How ironic, she thought thickly. Because she never stood on formality with anyone in her life. But this was one person she wished she could. “If you don’t mind my asking…how did you happen to be Charlie’s attorney?”

He smiled, leaned back and cocked his alligator shoe against a drawer. “Actually, I was originally his father’s attorney, not Charlie’s. When Bartholomew and his wife died—unexpectedly, in a boating accident—I believe Charlie recognized right off that I’d done a good job of protecting his parents’ assets. I think he also readily realized that he wasn’t good with money himself. He used to say that he didn’t need to have a cutthroat bone because he knew I had plenty of them.”

Maybe she was supposed to laugh, but all she could think was that now she got it. How and why Charlie had tied up with such a cold-blooded machine.

“Anyhow…” Lee glanced at his watch and zoomed back to business. “The guardian ad litem’s name is June Innes. She’s already seen Charlene, and will undoubtedly be getting in touch with you shortly.” He started feeding her forms and papers far faster than she could possibly read or absorb the details. Maybe he thought she wouldn’t care about the information—or else he was just in a hurry to get out of there. Outside, night was falling faster than bad news.

Finally, he handed her the last form…several of which she’d had to sign…and got around to handing her the key to the house. “You’ve landed yourself a nice setup,” he said bluntly. “It’s a great house. A lucrative allowance. And for the record, I have no intention of being hard on you. As long as the kid’s well taken care of, there’s financial room for leniency if you need any kind of…flexibility.”

Minutes later, Merry tore out of the office as if being chased by bees, carrying a thick slug of papers and the house key. Her heart was pounding and her stomach roiling with acid. Oxford’s personality sure matched his alligator shoes. He was scaly and aggressive.

He hadn’t said one personal word about the child! Not one! Her mind was still ranting when she climbed back in her car…until she glanced at the rearview mirror and saw her eyes spitting tears. Okay. So she tended toward overemotional. But that little girl needed someone who gave a damn.

Not just someone who wanted to administer her socalled estate from behind a black lacquer desk.

She couldn’t wait to get her hands on Charlene.

CHAPTER TWO

THE COMBINED ODORS of beer, cold pizza and cigars hovered in the air like nectar. There was a time for women, Jack thought, and a time when a guy just needed to relax.

A man could enjoy a woman, be challenged by a woman, love a woman. But for damn sure, he could never relax with one.

“Sorry,” he said, without an ounce of remorse in his voice, as he scooped up the heap of poker chips. The faces around the table reflected various degrees of aggravation.

“You’re damned lucky tonight, Mackinnon.” Robert, alias Boner to his guy friends, was the investment banker who lived two doors down.

“It’s not my fault I’m good.”

“You know what they say—lucky at cards, unlucky at love.” Macmillan was another neighbor. He worked at Langley, like Jack, and was the toughest poker competitor for the same reason he was great at his job—he knew how to keep his mouth shut and reveal nothing in his expressions.

“Yeah, but Jack here’s lucky at love, too. It’s not fair. Hell, his back door’s a steady stream of women leaving early in the morning. I should know, since I can see his back door from across the street.” Steve was his best friend in the neighborhood, and not just because he was suffering male-pattern baldness before the rest of them.

Still, Jack couldn’t let that dig pass. “Hey, you’re married, so you’re free to get it every night. A whole lot easier than being single.”

“What? You assume marriage means a guy gets it every night? Whatever gave you wild illusions about marriage like that?”

“I don’t have any illusions about marriage. Trust me. If I’m ever inclined to try the institution again, I hope one of you’ll be a good friend and give me cyanide.” He dealt the next round, already sucking it up because he knew he had to lose this hand. Years ago, he’d realized he had the strange problem of a photographic memory. It was a huge asset in his work, but hell on friends. At least if he was playing poker. Obviously no one would play with him if he won all the time. Jack couldn’t shut down his brain, but he did his damnedest to tune it out to make the game fair.

Most of the time, anyway.

He had to admit to a teensy competitive streak. He not only liked to win, but he hated to lose. At anything.

His house line rang. Rather than interrupt the game, he just took his cards with him and hooked the kitchen extension to his ear. The cord extended an ample distance for him to ante at the table. He’d drawn a slim pair of fours.

Steve and Boner, for damn sure, had nothing, because Boner was shooting back another beer and Steve was restlessly shifting his butt. Sometimes people were even easier to read than cards.

“Hey, Dad, how’s it going?”

Jack kept playing, but his “dad buttons” went on red alert. He knew his sons. Kicker, at fifteen, was already three inches taller than Jack, couldn’t make it through doors without bumping his head, planned on a football scholarship to get into college and had a theory that he didn’t need good grades. Kicker, thank God, put his whole personality out front where anybody could see it. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Totally nothing. Mom made me call, but I’m fine.”

So it was bad. “What happened?”

“Nothing, really. I’m home.”

“Home from…?”

“The emergency room.”

“Uh-huh. Break or sprain?” He swiveled the cord, anteed another two bucks, then backed up to the sink counter again.

“Neither one. Mom just insisted I go to the hospital. You know how she is. She freaks every time I play football. And we were just passing a few, you know?”

What Jack knew was that he didn’t want to get into another wrangle with his ex-wife. He was tired of losing skin, which was always how he felt after talking to Dianne. Unfortunately, he knew the boys played both parents against each other, so it wasn’t as if he could automatically take Kicker’s side without knowing more details. “Where exactly are you hurt?”

“Just a bump on the head. Nothing. But Mom’s on me again about quitting.” Jack heard out the whole tale. Kevin, alias Kicker, was his firstborn—by eleven minutes. Kevin was the jock, where Cooper was the brain, the quiet bookworm, the one who looked at him with those deep brown eyes and always made Jack feel as if he’d failed him as a dad. Girls chased after both boys nonstop. It’d help if the boys weren’t so damned good looking. Kicker attracted them with his charm and the sports-star thing, but just as many seemed to fall for Cooper’s loner brown eyes.

He could talk to his kid and play poker simultaneously any day of the week, but while he was leaning against the granite counter, he happened to glance next door. Charlie Ross’s kitchen window faced his. Actually, since neither man had ever lost a minute’s sleep about their lack of curtains, Jack could see in most of Charlie’s windows, and that was a vice versa as well.

The house next door, though, had been black as a tomb for two weeks, and suddenly lights blazed in every downstairs room. “Okay, Kicker. I agree, a concussion isn’t worth a federal case. It happens. But let’s talk in the morning. And try not to bounce any more balls off your head until the noggin heals, okay?”

Instead of hanging up the phone, Jack seemed to forget it for a moment. The view across the yard just…startled him.

He already knew the brunette was over there. He’d seen her zoom in the driveway past dark, slam on the brakes of her toy car, and run for the house. It wasn’t like he kept track—the guys had come over; he’d been busy—but as far as he could tell, she only had one speed. A boob-bouncing run. And he had to shake his head.

She was one gorgeous cookie, from those sleek long legs to the lustrous swing of chestnut hair. He had yet to notice a flaw, and Jack was good at noticing women’s flaws. In looks, she could make a monk perk up.

In personality, though, she did seem a little…floofy.

He leaned closer to the window, disbelieving his own eyes. The view into Charlie’s living room wasn’t as clear as the kitchen, so maybe he was mistaken—surely he was mistaken? Because there seemed to be a table-sized Christmas tree in that living room. A bonbon confection of a pink Christmas tree.

It was halfway through January, for Pete’s sake.

Not even counting the craziness of a holiday tree being baby-pink.

A shadow streaked past the window again. The brunette. She was charging around too fast for him to see much, but he still caught a delectable glimpse of a heaving upper deck in motion.

Not that looks were everything, but Jack was hard pressed to believe a man would ever need Viagra, even in his nineties, around a woman who looked like that.

“Hey, Jack. You’ve been called, you hustler. Show ’em.”

With a laugh, he hung up the phone and rejoined the game. By that time, he had three of a kind, ace high. The others took one look and made ugly hissing noises. Jack threw up his hands. “I can’t help it if I win,” he said, and this time it was dead true. He’d barely looked at his cards.

Between hands, he poured another round of beer—since everyone was walking home, no one had to fret intake—and shook out more chips for the salsa dip. They played the Wednesday night game as if it were Vegas. What was said there, stayed there. Not about the game. Whoever won likely broadcast that news through the neighborhood and beyond. But any private news was considered sacred.

“How many times you got laid this week, Jack?”

“More than you, that’s for sure.” Hoots naturally followed that insult. Jack folded, had a hand too lousy to waste a bluff on. Crazy, but he somehow found himself back at the sink, glancing out the window again.

And there she was. Not in the living room this time, but the kitchen.

Her back was to him. Jack could see her refrigerator door was gaping wide open—she was cleaning it out. Undoubtedly stuff was still in there from before Charlie died.

She was scrubbing like a fiend. And, God, what a butt she had.

Not that Jack was a fanny connoisseur, but, well, actually he was. And hers was whistling cute. Whatever she was wearing—sweats?—caressed the shape of that little butt just so. The farther she leaned inside, rubbing and scrubbing, the more fabric dipped down her spine. The swell of two fine, fine fanny cheeks were revealed. And…

Jack pressed his nose to the window.

A tattoo. By damn, she had a tattoo on one fanny cheek. And not a little one either. He—

“Jack, what the hell are you doing?”

“Nothing, nothing.” He hustled back to the card table and parked there, but that fanny tattoo was so ingrained in his head that he lost his entire photographic memory skill. And all the money that went with it.

Usually the game broke up by eleven—everybody had work the next morning—but tonight no one wanted to leave. They were having too much fun watching him lose.

“It does the heart good to see you suck, Jack,” Steve said affectionately.

“Does the heart good, hell. It does the wallet good. May you have a slump like this that lasts weeks,” Boner chortled, as Jack watched the last of his stash get cradled into the banker’s big fat hands.

“What is this? Does nobody have any sympathy?”

“For you in life, sure. For you in cards, never.”

They always played at his place. After the divorce, Jack told himself he needed this mountain of a house in the suburbs like he needed a spare ear, but he’d never put it on the market. It was so easy to have a guy function here, like the card game, because everybody else was married and the women all hated their messes. The real reason he kept it, though, was for his sons. When Dianne took off on him, she also uprooted the boys, stuffed them all in a city apartment in D.C.

Once the neighbors left, his mood nosedived. It was too darn easy to remember that whole divorce debacle—the custody war, his ex-wife’s selfishness, his feeling impotent and frustrated at trying to reason with a court system that catered more to moms than dads. Jack did not do helplessness well. And maybe the system should cater more to mothers, most of the time, but not in their case. And aw, hell, letting it all ooze back in his mind was like picking at a sore.

With the house yawning empty, the smells of stale beer and cigars weren’t quite so appealing as they’d been earlier. He cracked a window, started sweeping dishes into the dishwasher, then found himself stalled at the sink window again.

She was still up.

It was just a pinch away from midnight, but now all the lights were on, both upstairs and down. The preposterously pink Christmas tree had a visible mound of wrapped packages under it. In the kitchen, the fridge door was closed, but he could see heaps of stuff on the counters—fruit, bags, bread and what all.

He could also see the front doors—the double oak doors—gaping open.

In January. With snow drifting down like confetti, testimony to the temperature.

Maybe she wanted to chill the inside? Could she really be that flaky?

When he saw her breeze past another window, he turned off the sink light. Naturally he immediately suffered guilt for spying on her…but he could sure see better without the background light.

God knew what all the woman was doing, but she was sure doing it fast. Running. From room to room. Carrying things. Then vacuuming. And dusting. And then carrying more things.

Midnight passed. Then one.

By that time he’d long finished the cleanup, sanitized the chalk-and-granite kitchen, and was ready to hang it up for the night…but he couldn’t seem to resist one last look. She was still up. Still visible. He wasn’t sure what room she was in, because he didn’t know Charlie’s house that well, but she was still on the first floor—which meant she should have noticed the north wind blowing in her front door. She obviously hadn’t, though, because at some point she’d stripped off the bulky sweater he’d seen her in earlier. Beneath was a body-hugging tee, red as a raspberry, and a headline announcement that her front side was as exquisite as her damn-fine behind.

The boobs weren’t huge. Just perky. Firm. Not round-round, more…well, when it came down to it, nothing else was exactly like a perfect breast shape, so there was no point in trying to compare it to anything.

Jack vaguely realized he’d settled in, resting his elbows on the sink—and damn it, he had to work tomorrow!—but at that precise instant he couldn’t possibly move. She was peeling off that raspberry longsleeved tee. He saw a strip of black bra, but only from the back. Then he lost sight of her—until he picked up her moving around two rooms down, when she turned back into the Vacuum Queen.

Apparently she wasn’t stripping down to go to bed, like a normal human being past midnight on a weeknight. She was just peeling off clothes because she was hot from all that running.

He was definitely hot from all that watching.

With a sigh, he eased away from the sink, knuckled the sore muscles in his back, and grumped around until he located some shoes, then his jacket.

He hadn’t looked at a woman seriously in the last three and a half years.

There was a time he’d believed in honor, fidelity, loyalty and all the rest of that crap. There was also a time he thought he was different than his generation—because he really believed in marriage, in the vows, would never have gotten a divorce because of going through a stretch of trouble.

But that was then.

These days he took credit for being a commitmentphobic, allergic-to-rings kind of guy. If that made him irresponsible and selfish—well, he now wore those labels with pride. He’d done the honor thing and got kicked in the teeth. It was a “screw or be screwed” world. He had no intention of playing nice ever again.

Scowling and ticked off, he yanked open his back door and felt the prompt slap of ice air. Hell and more hell. All this voyeurism was going to completely ruin his workday tomorrow—he could already feel a lack-of-sleep headache coming on—and if he wasn’t still up, the hounds of memories wouldn’t have had a chance to chase after him.

Most days, he wasn’t remotely bitter. He didn’t want Dianne back, was long over all that. He had a great time with his female friendships and sleep-mates. So did they. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. He just had no intention of putting himself in harm’s way ever again. Chivalry was very nice, but somebody else could do it. And if somebody thought that made him a cold, unfeeling creep, well, that was tough.

Still glowering, he crossed the yard, swore when the cold, wet grass sneaked into his shoes, hiked up her driveway and closed her damn front doors.

He didn’t do it to be nice.

He didn’t have a nice-bone left in him. He’d only done it out of plain old selfishness. He knew damn well he wouldn’t have been able to sleep, fretting that anyone in hell could have walked through those wide-open front doors. And if he didn’t catch at least some sleep, he was going to be completely worthless at work tomorrow.

He might enjoy looking at her delectable fanny, but he sure as hell was not going to enjoy living next door to such a witless woman.

MERRY WOKE UP TO the caterwaul of her traveling alarm clock. She slapped it off, then blearily opened one eye. Seven o’clock.

A god-awful hour for a girl who’d only made it to bed at four-thirty.

She stumbled off the couch, stretched, then forced both eyes open. She vaguely remembered trying to decide where to sleep, but then just pulling a blanket over her head in the living room. Everything about the house had seemed overwhelming at that point.

Still did, for that matter. She thought she knew Charlie Ross. And, of course, people changed when they matured. But where Charlie had been so warm and natural and likeable, his house seemed decorated by a robot. Almost all the surfaces were gray or stainless steel. The walls were filled with gargantuan canvases of scary modern art, and every room had technology so ultra-cool that she couldn’t even turn on the TV or set a clock on her own.

Okay, cookie, enough griping.

She stumbled toward the bathroom. Never mind all the looming crises ahead of her, she felt darn good about all the chores she’d accomplished last night.

When she’d first walked in the front door and looked around, she darn near panicked, but kept her mind on what mattered. Charlene. Getting the place prepared for the little girl to come home. So Merry’s first priority, obviously, was to put up the pink Christmas tree and presents—that little girl was going to get a Christmas come hell or high water!

And after that—well, the house had shaken her up on a zillion emotional levels, but just making it livable was the first challenge. Clearly no one had cleaned the house since Charlie died. There was a sock in the living room, a jacket hanging on a kitchen chair—nothing terrible—but reminders of her dad that Merry didn’t want Charlene exposed to the minute she walked in the door.

Once all that tidying was done, she’d recognized the ghastly smell in the kitchen as something rotting in the fridge. Hell’s bells, there went the rest of the night. She’d dumped the icky fridge contents, scrubbed and sanitized, chased out to an all-night grocery to bring in some milk and basics, then came back to do a dust and vacuum and bathroom-clean.

In the shower, shampoo streaming down her face, she admitted to herself that in real life, she didn’t mind being a slob. Or a relative slob. Far too many things were more interesting and important than dust, but Merry could justify her brief cleaning freak-out. It wasn’t about dirt. It was about trying to make Charlene’s coming home as painless and nontraumatic as possible.

After a fast blow-dry, Merry shimmied into jeans, a fuzzy yellow mohair sweater, socks. In the kitchen, she stared bleary-eyed at the fancy coffeemaker. It looked pizzazz-y, like something created in 2075. Shinier than lip gloss. And she could turn it on, she’d discovered last night. She just couldn’t figure out how to make it produce coffee.

It wasn’t fair to make a girl start the day without caffeine.

It wasn’t fair to make a girl start such a critical day without sleep, either.

She nabbed an apple—bought fresh last night—and reminded herself of the lawyer’s behavior the day before. Lee Oxford still grated on her mind. His mercenary thinking. His coldness. The fact that he’d never once even mentioned Charlene’s name.

Her resolve ballooned all over again. No matter how crazy anyone thought she was, there was no way—none in this universe—that Merry would abandon a kid. Ever.

She knew too well what abandonment felt like.

When it came down to it, maybe it was a good thing the lawyer had been such a barracuda. His attitude had hard-wired her determination. She bit a chunk of apple, grabbed her jacket, the directions to the rest home she’d gotten from the lawyer and then sprinted outside. A fresh skid of snow had fallen in the wee hours. Brushed with dawn light, the whole neighborhood looked pearl-soft.

Her neighbor was up, judging from the lights in his kitchen window, but she didn’t catch sight of him. More than once last night, she’d thought it’d be no hardship to have such a good-looking guy next door. So he was likely married. She could still look, couldn’t she? And he had a truck. He looked mechanical and handy. More things to love in a neighbor.

It looked as if she had lots of neighbors. Other cars were steaming in their driveways, warming up, the lineup resembling the start-up of the Indy 500—although this particular lineup was notably chunky gas guzzlers, suburbia getting ready to join the exodus to the freeways and work. A few waved at her.

She waved back, noting they all seemed to be in pinstriped suits—both the men and the women—and doing the wool-coat thing. Worry tried to rag her nerves again. She just felt like such an alien. She’d never owned a pinstriped suit, never wanted one. Still, she reminded herself that there wasn’t that big an age difference—she was joining the thirtysomething bracket as of her birthday next month.

She loved new experiences besides, right?

Her spirits zoomed higher as she turned on the freeway, the map crackled over the steering wheel in front of her. When push came to shove, it didn’t really matter whether she fit into the neighborhood or the house or not. Screw all that. This was about a little girl.

And she’d waited as long as she possibly could to get her arms folded around Charlene.

The directions to the place did seem a little tricky. She checked the map again, then eased to the right when another driver honked at her. Naturally she was concentrating on her driving. Mostly. But the appalling image of Charlene’s bedroom kept popping into her mind.

Nothing about the inside or outside of that darn house matched anything she ever knew about Charlie Ross, but the worst room—the absolute worst—was Charlene’s bedroom.

Another driver honked at her. She shook her apple at him. For Pete’s sake, was everybody cranky near D.C.?

Last night, there wasn’t anything she could do but put a couple fresh bouquets of flowers in Charlene’s bedroom. She couldn’t find a vase in the house to save her life, but she’d found big glasses, and the grocery store had thankfully sold cut flowers.

And once Charlene got home, Merry figured they could fix the room. In fact, it’d be a super bonding thing to do together. The poor kid had no spread, no curtains, no rugs. It just didn’t make sense. If her dad could afford that ghastly house, don’t you think he could have sprung for some nice, soft carpeting and pretty colors and girl stuff for his daughter? Merry pictured some Mary Eddy prints, maybe a canopy bed—the room was huge. They could throw out all that awful dark furniture, put in white. Maybe buy a little vanity.

Charlene had a fab stereo system, no question, ditto for the computer and all. But there were cute desks and centers to contain all that mess of wires these days, something with style and color. Maybe Merry knew zip about parenting—but she knew girls.

Her turnoff led her away from bustling suburbia. The last turn was into a remote old neighborhood with dignified shade trees and cracked sidewalks.

Where she pulled in, the big old frame house had been converted into an assisted-living facility.

Charlene’s one living relative was a great grandmother, who lived here—along with a dozen of her cronies over age ninety. It was no place for a child, but the foster-care system was predictably jammed up around the Christmas holiday, and the dietician who ran the home claimed they had a bed for Charlene—but only on an extremely temporary basis. Or that was the story Lee Oxford had told Merry when he’d first called.

The driveway was gravel, the only vehicle in sight an aging van. Merry hiked up the handicapped ramp, trying to rev herself up for this first meeting—not that she needed any revving. From the moment she made the decision to come, she’d been researching everything about eleven-year-olds she could think of. Her own memories of that age were intense, but obviously, trends and styles changed. She’d bought Bratz and Elle Girl magazines, listened to Ciara and the Click Five and the other groups the music store promised her were the “in” music for ‘tweens, hit the library, read some Blume and horse stories and tried to pick up on the writers the ‘tweens were into these days.

She rapped on the front door, and when no one immediately answered, rapped again. Abruptly a whitehaired charmer with a cane answered the door. The lady was dressed in a pink-and-green dotted sweater with purple pants and a huge red bow sagging over one ear. Lots of positive attitude. Just deaf as a rock.

“Well, aren’t you the pretty one, dearie-dear. Come on in…”

One step inside and Merry could smell urine. From the entry, she caught a partial view of a giant living room off to the right, where a wall TV did The Morning Show at screaming volume. Chairs and couches and wheelchairs cupped close to the set in a tight semicircle. At a glance, she counted around ten people in the cluster, but then she was distracted by a bony, hairless elderly woman barreling straight for her in a wheelchair, evidently bent on escape.

Quickly she closed the door behind her—which prevented the escape, but didn’t stop the wheelchair from clipping her in the knees. She winced, ducked, smiled for the charmer.

“Hi, I’m Merry Olson. I’m here for Charlene Ross. I don’t know if she’s around here or with her greatgrandmother? But I have papers—”

“Hey? You’re selling cookies, you say?”

“No, no. I’m not selling cookies. I’m looking for Charlene Ross—”

“Hey, Frank, I think she’s selling cookies!” the charmer bellowed and then blessed her with another warm smile. “I hope you’ve got those mint chocolate ones, honey, those are my very favorite—Wilhemma, quit ramming her with your chair, you old bitch—”

“Now, now.” A harried-looking man shot out of the kitchen, a dish towel over his arm. “We don’t use that language, Julia. I’ve told you that before—” A smile for Merry.

She was pretty sure he identified himself as Frank, and the caretaker of the place, but it was impossible to hear anything clearly over the eardrum-piercing volume on the TV.

She explained why she was here—or tried to—but she was so anxious to find Charlene that her attention kept straying to the living room. She didn’t expect to find a little girl in the middle of the geriatric set, but still, she wanted an impression of the place Charlene had been camping out in since the funeral.

Closest to the TV, she saw an old man, then an older man, then a man who’d clearly lived in the l700s and was just hanging on by a thread…then an old lady, who was holding hands with another old lady, followed by someone sprawled on the couch of indeterminate sex and drool drizzling down his chin…

There was only one face she couldn’t catch at all, someone in a big old Morris chair, and when she crooked her head forward she identified a young person. Her heart leaped—but only for a second. It was a boy, not a girl. The kid was bent down, playing some kind of computer game, but the clothes gave away his gender. He was wearing army fatigues—long tee and pants—with big boots, and had a brush cut as if he’d just signed up for the marines.

At least Charlene hadn’t been the only soul under ninety in the place. Almost everyone looked gentle and kindly, but still, the more Merry saw, the more she wanted to hustle Charlene out of there and get her home.

“Charlene,” she repeated again to the caretaker, worried that he hadn’t understood her because of the roaring television. “I have papers giving me permission to take her. Mr. Oxford should have called. The only reason she came here was because her great-grandmother was the only relative she had, until they found a guardian or—”

“Yes. Absolutely. We’ve been expecting you, like I keep saying. And she’s right there.”

He pointed at the kid, the boy.

Merry shook her head. God. In the last ten days, she’d argued with her dad and family and friends, quit a job, upended her whole life, packed up, suffered a god-awful two-day drive, landed in a terrifyingly highend suburb and then had to clean all last night. She wasn’t frayed exactly. She just needed one thing to go smoothly. “No. I mean a girl—”

But finally, over all the noise, the caretaker yelled “Charlene” loud enough to catch the child’s attention. When the child responded, Merry started to get it.

The skinny scrap of a kid—the one with the marine brush cut, the he-man fatigue shirt and forearm tattoo and combat boots—was actually her kid.

The child obediently put down the computer game, got up and hiked toward her. The caretaker ordered the kid to stick out a hand. The kid did. And though Merry desperately wanted to throw her arms around the child and hug her senseless, she found herself returning the polite, stiff handshake.

“Pleased to meet you,” Charlene said.

“I’m thrilled to finally meet you, too,” Merry said, but instead of the exuberantly warm, reassuring tone she had in mind, her voice came out faint as a whisper. The child looked like her dad, as far as the skinny build and small bones, the blond hair and blue eyes. But the all-guy outfit and the robotic walk and self-contained expression stunned Merry, and for damn sure, confused her.

This was Charlene?

The sweet young girl she’d bought sparkly bangles and pink socks for?

CHAPTER THREE

IT WASN’T EVEN ten o’clock, yet already the morning had managed to turn into one nonstop nightmare after another.

On the drive home, Merry discovered that Charlene was capable of speech. So far, though, the only words she’d freely offered were—“You’re taking me home, right?”

And that was the last sign of animation she’d gotten out of the girl. They’d collected a suitcase of stuff, stashed it in the back of the Mini, had the caretaker sign a form releasing Charlene to her care, and started out.

After that, the kid locked herself in the passenger seat and sat there like an obedient machine. She wasn’t rude. She just volunteered no smiles, no conversation. She sat with the literal posture of a marine—boots clomped on the ground, posture straight, eyes focused ahead.

Merry kept glancing over, trying to reconcile that stupid brush cut on the face of a little girl with big blue eyes and fragile features and a tiny rosebud of a mouth. It was like trying to pair peanut butter with pickles. The darn kid was tucked inside that seat belt as if she didn’t have a fear or emotion or worry in her life—and for darn sure, wouldn’t admit to one.

Merry felt so rattled she forgot what road signs she was supposed to be watching for. In fact, she was pretty sure she’d turned the wrong way out of the driveway from the get-go.

This silent business just couldn’t go on. “Charlene—” she started to say.

“If you don’t mind, I’d rather be called Charlie.”

“Okay. Charlie, then.” Merry smiled, thinking, Oh God, could an eleven-year-old girl be suffering from gender issues? Or transgender issues? Or whatever it was called when one gender wanted to be another? “Charlie, I don’t know if anyone told you who I am.”

Well, that at least forced a little more dialogue. “Of course people told me. Mr. Oxford told me I couldn’t go home until there was someone to take me. Then Mrs. Innes came to talk to me, and I heard that you were coming. So I could go home for a while.”

“More than for a while, Charlene—Charlie.” Cripes, she almost zoomed through a red light. And her hands on the wheel were slick as slides. She thought landing in suburbia was confounding, but this…she desperately wanted to help this little girl…only so far she hadn’t even caught a glimpse of a little girl inside those big, scruffy combat boots.

“We don’t know for how long,” Charlene said matter-of-factly. “Things may not work out. You don’t know me.”

“And you don’t know me. But we can both try fixing that, starting right now, okay?”

“Sure.” The child said “sure,” but her voice and posture said I don’t believe you. I don’t believe anyone.

Merry fumbled. She’d always been so gregarious that she figured she could talk to a wall, but how to get a conversation going with a youngster who didn’t seem to want to talk back? She said, “Maybe I can share something about myself, and then you can tell me stuff about you, all right?”

No answer.

“Okay! I’ll start!” God, had she ever seen that street corner before? She turned right. “I love dark chocolate. Bubble baths. Can’t stand peas. I never wear shoes if I can help it and tend to scream if I see a mouse…”

Okay, no response from the other side of the car, so trying to be cute wasn’t working. She tried a different tack. “I grew up in Minnesota, mostly in the country around Rochester—where the Mayo Clinic is. My dad’s an anesthesiologist. We never lived in a suburb like you do. We had a place on a lake, lots of woods. I have two sisters, but they’re both more than ten years older than me, so growing up, it was pretty much just me and my dad…”

Merry thought it might help for the child to know their circumstances were the same, the daughter-and-dad-living-alone thing, but Charlene showed no response to that either. Merry considered shutting up, but surely the more the child knew about her, the faster she’d start to feeling comfortable, right? So she bumbled on.

“I can’t say I was a great student. Mostly got Bs and Cs. Just couldn’t seem to stick with the books. Did the cheerleading thing…” Definitely didn’t add the promqueen type of history. Not to a girl wearing army fatigues. “I did a couple years in college, but just didn’t really have a career in mind…”

She tried to think, what to say, what not to say. “So I just started working. Worked as an assistant DJ for a radio station—that was fun. Worked in an insurance office—actually, that was kind of interesting, too. A way of helping people, hearing about their lives. Was a management trainee at Ann Taylor for a while…”

Finally, a voice piped up from the passenger seat. “You don’t have any idea where you’re going, do you?”

“Huh?” How many times had her dad asked her that in real life? Was she ever going to get a clue where she was going, find a job she wanted to stick with, a place she was willing to stay?

But apparently Charlene meant something else entirely. The child said patiently, “You keep driving in the wrong direction. I mean, I don’t know where you’re trying to go. But you’re headed the wrong way if you’re trying to drive toward home. My home.”

“We are headed toward your home. Um, I don’t suppose you know the way, do you?”

“Sure.” Finally, some conversation. Precise, clear directions.

Well, hell. They were only seven or eight miles out of the way. God knew, Merry had done worse. “You do want to go home, right, Charle—Charlie?”

“Yes.”

There. The first sign of emotion she’d seen so far. An honest yes. A desperate yes. A yes that captured Merry’s heart and made her determined to reach the child no matter what it took. And she reminded herself of the obvious. They were just getting started. No one ever promised her this was going to be easy, and she hadn’t expected it to be.

“What was it like,” she asked, “being with your great-grandmother this last week?”

Charlene scrunched up her nose. “Is that a trick question?”

“No. You were staying there, so I figured—”

“When we first moved to Virginia, I was really little, but I can remember my dad saying that was why. I mean, why Virginia. Because his grandmother was here and there was no one to take care of her. Only that was ages and ages ago. She doesn’t know who I am anymore. She doesn’t know who anyone is. Everybody there was nice enough. I just really, really want to be home.”

“You missed some school?” Merry already knew the answer to that question, but Charlene had finally started talking; she wanted to keep it going.

“Yeah, I know. That’s freaking everybody out. But I think that’s pretty stupid. I only missed a week or so, because it was still Christmas vacation before that. And I was already getting all As. And I could keep up just as well from the books as from classes anyway.” Her face suddenly turned toward Merry. “I’ll bet you’re thinking that I’m going to be a big problem. But I won’t be. I promise. If you just take me home, I won’t bother you. I won’t bother anybody. I don’t need anybody to take care of me.”

“Charlene, I wasn’t worried about that at all—”

“Charlie.”

“Charlie, then. I—”

“You’re lost again, aren’t you.” This time, the squirt didn’t waste time phrasing the comment like a question.

Merry said, “Looks like. Feel like a burger or an icecream cone or anything?”

“No.”

“Do you, um, know which way to turn from here?”

Merry zealously obeyed the eleven-year-old’s instructions. Left at the first light, then four blocks later and so on. It was a new experience, actually paying attention to directions, but it still didn’t seem to win her any brownie points.

She rashly assumed it might help warm up the waters if she tried talking about Charles. “I knew your dad back when you were just a toddler, when you two lived in Minnesota. We were really good friends. I thought the world of him.”

“Come on.”

“Come on?” She heard the disbelief, but had no idea where it was coming from.

“If you were such good friends, how come I never heard your name before? How come we never saw you?”

“We were good friends at the time of your parents’ divorce, Charlie. Maybe your dad didn’t talk about it because it was such a painful time for him—and it wasn’t something he wanted you to remember, either.”

Zip. Silence.

She pushed on. “But at the time, your dad talked about you all the time. How much he loved you. All his parenting ideas, how he wanted to raise you, how much he wanted you to be happy…”

When they finally pulled into the driveway, the kid bolted out of the car as if jet-propelled to get away from her. Merry hadn’t felt this wrung out since she’d paid for a fitness trainer—a foolish move she’d never repeated.

The culmination of the impossible morning, though, was when she got inside the front door, and found Charlene standing in front of the tree. “What is this?”

“Now I realize it’s past Christmas, but I knew you missed out on the holiday. I just thought it might help to try and make up.” Hell’s bells, back in Minnesota when she’d thought of this, the idea had seemed brilliant. Only now Merry realized the kid could think she was trying to buy her. Or trying to imply that a bunch of silly presents could make up for her dad’s death. How could a nice intention turn out so rotten wrong?

And Charlene kept looking at her as if she were from another planet. “That’s real nice of you,” she said politely. “But…it’s pink.”

“I know, I know. It was the only tree I could find this late after Christmas,” she lied.

“That’s okay,” she said.

But obviously nothing was okay. The kid sat down by the presents as if waiting for a shot at the dentist’s. She gingerly opened each gift and produced an obligatory “thank you” even when she didn’t have a clue what the item was.

Merry knew—knew—this was going all wrong, yet it was like changing your mind about a permanent in the middle of a hairdresser appointment. It was just too late, once they got that chemical going.

Charlie wasn’t trying to be difficult. She was so clearly trying to do anything Merry asked her, anything Merry wanted, whatever it took to be home. But everything Merry had chosen, from the Juicy Couture purse with the rabbit’s foot, to the tweed hat with the bumblebee pin, to the spangly beads, to the Ashton Kutcher poster…oh, God. Each thing was worse than the last.

The rock-bottom worst, though, were the pink cashmere socks with the butterfly motif.

“Wow,” Charlie said. The word hung in the air like a cooking odor.

When it was over, Merry perked up—because, hey, there was no place to go from rock-bottom but up, right? How could anything more ghastly happen that day?

GOD KNEW, HE LOVED his job, but as Jack pulled into the driveway, he was hungrier than a bear in spring.

No one had twisted his arm to skip lunch or work late. He just forgot the time. When people asked him what he did, he always responded “desk jockey” because that answer worked like a charm. No one ever asked him further questions. They just assumed he was some kind of bureaucrat—no surprise, since there were a lot of white-collar pencil pushers running around Langley and Arlington.

The label had an element of truth besides. Once he “retired” from the navy—Special Ops—he’d settled into a non-dangerous job. Truth to tell, he thought he made more of a difference now than when he’d fought for his country with a weapon in his hand, but whatever. He loved it.

Right now, though, he was conscious that he’d completely forgotten the clock, and he had one of those stomachs. The kind that went with a six-one, hundred-and-ninety-two-pound man. The kind that needed filling or he got real, real cranky.

Whistling up a storm, he took the porch steps two at a time, grabbed the mail, and shucked off his shoes inside the door. He flipped on lights, shocked to discover no one had done the laundry or picked up after him this morning. Of course, he had Hire-A-Wife coming on Monday, but somehow it always seemed a surprise, what complete chaos the house could turn into before they got here.

After the divorce, he’d changed some things in the house—like redoing the kitchen in chalk and stone. Maybe it wasn’t “decorating” on a woman’s terms, but smooth surfaces sure seemed easier to clean up. Still whistling, he flipped on the kitchen light and opened the freezer. Ages ago, he figured he needed both a fridge and freezer in the kitchen, because almost everything he ate came out of the freezer. Today that meant lasagna, garlic bread, and a cherry-berry pie with—he checked—half a container of Cool Whip to put on top.

Of course, it all had to be cooked—but that just meant throwing it all in the oven—except for the Cool Whip. Baking Cool Whip was not a good idea. It was the kind of lesson a guy only had to learn once. He got it all going, then scrounged around for some cashews to stave off imminent starvation. He punched on the kitchen TV and had just popped the lid on a soda—hadn’t had a single bite of food or sip yet, not even one!—when he saw her.

It had to be past ten. The night was a pitchy, witchy black, with one of those moaning winds that whispered through the trees. A full moon kept sneaking around the clouds now and then, though, so he could see her clearly enough.

She was sitting on her back porch. On the cold cement. She had her head in her hands, in a posture that sure looked as if she were crying her heart out.

She’d left the back door gaping open behind her. What was with that woman and doors?

He chomped down on the salty cashews, chewing furiously. Moonlight shined on her head as if her profile were illuminated with silver dust. Even though she was outside, it was unlikely anyone could see her but him. All the bushes and landscaping around the house sheltered the back porch from view.

But he was stuck being able to see her. Far, far too clearly. None of his business, he told himself, and chewed another handful of cashews even more furiously. He didn’t do the white-knight thing, not for anyone, not anymore. How could it possibly be his problem, that a stranger decided to have a boo-hoo fest in his vision?

He grabbed the soda bottle, then chunked it back on the counter. It was colder than ice out there. She didn’t even have a hat on, for Pete’s sake.

As far as he could tell, she didn’t have the sense God gave a goose.

He yanked on a jacket and stomped outside. The closer he got, the more the view deteriorated.

She wasn’t a good crier. She was one of those throw-her-whole-self-into-it criers. Yesterday, he’d adjusted to the idea of having a flaky neighbor on the grounds that she was damn beautiful, and a guy was generally willing to tolerate a lot when the view was soothing.

But that deal was off. Her face was all blotchy. She was gasping for air. Eyes getting all swollen.

And that was before he was stuck seeing her up close.

“Hey,” he said. And then wanted to wince. Maybe he wasn’t feeling particularly happy, but he hadn’t meant to sound like a bear growling at her.

Her head jerked up as if someone had slapped her. “Oh. You. Good grief. I didn’t realize anyone could see me. I’m fine—”

Yeah, right. She was “fine” like cats flew. He wanted to suggest that she go back inside to cry her eyes out—after closing the damn door. But it seemed even he couldn’t be quite that coldhearted.

“You sick?” he asked bluntly.

She lifted her hands. Apparently the simple question turned on a new blubbery tears switch, because out they came. “She hates me!”

He could have asked her who in God’s name she was talking about, but that was pretty silly, when the only conceivable subject of the problem had to be Charlie’s daughter. “I take it you met her today.”

“Yes. And I expected it to be tough, but not like this. This is so way beyond a mess. She hated the pink tree—”

“No kidding?”

“Her problems are beyond anything I know how to cope with. I don’t even know where to start. She doesn’t want to start—not with me. She doesn’t want to talk to me, doesn’t want me around—”

He sank on the cement next to her, not because he wanted to continue this conversation, but because if he was trapped listening, it’d just been too long a day to stand indefinitely in the cold. “You don’t think you could be jumping to conclusions? She doesn’t even know you, Marta.”

“Merry, not Marta. And it’s Merry as in M-e-r-r-y, not as in M-a-r-y.”

He dug in his pocket for Kleenex. Because he often jogged on cold mornings, he tended to carry a bunch. Apparently the last time he’d run out and ripped off some paper towels. Whatever. They enabled her to blow her nose. To give her credit, she didn’t waste time apologizing for crying or make it out like it was a big to-do that he’d seen her.

When she quit blowing, she said, “You said you knew Charlie. So you had to know his daughter, right?”

“Well, sure. I mean, she was around all the time, but I can’t say how well I knew her. Charlie and I were great buddies, good neighbors together. Shared a beer often enough, bitched about yard work, did some fence talk about raising kids, life, ex-wives. Neither of us pried. We just got along. I liked him.”

“I did, too. From the first time I met him, there was just this…click. Not a sexual click. Just a friendly one. He was straightforward and funny and bright. And caring—”

“You liked him so well you never saw him once in the last five years?”

“I take it that’s how long he lived here.” The faucet had almost quit dripping, but now it gushed again. “No, I never saw him here. And I never imagined that he’d live in a place like this.”

“Okay.” He washed a hand over his face. “The whole neighborhood’s been asking the same questions. You hadn’t seen him in years. You never met his daughter. You didn’t know anything about his current life, apparently. So how did you end up being Charlene’s guardian?”

“Well, I’m not ‘the guardian’ exactly. More a guardian trainee. And if I can’t make this work a lot better than it did today, I’ll be flunking the course for sure. Which would be fine, if it was just about me. But darn it, it’s about what happens to Charlene. And the thing is—”

She seemed to do a lot of emotional talking with her hands, which meant she almost smacked him in the nose. He ducked. “The thing is…what?”

“The thing is that everyone was against my doing this. My dad. My sisters. My friends. They all kept telling me I was being crazy impulsive to just up and quit my job. Sublet my place. Put all my stuff in storage, except for what I could fit in the car, and just move—”

So there were intelligent people in her life, Jack thought, but it was the same old story about being able to lead a horse to water. “And you did all this for a stranger? A girl you didn’t know from Adam?” She looked at him, with a fresh bout of diamonds in her eyes. “Hell, I’m not trying to upset you more. I’m trying to understand why you did this.”

“I did it because she had no one else!”

“That may be, Merry. But that should have been her father’s problem. Not yours.”

“Maybe so. But Charlie kind of made it my problem by not handling it himself. After his divorce, he went to the trouble of making a will. That was when I knew him, when he was making that first will, trying to plan for Charlene in case something happened to him. I have no idea why he didn’t change the will in all this time, but as far as I can tell, there simply was no one else he could leave her with.”

“But that doesn’t make it your problem, Merry.”

“But it does. Because I can’t imagine abandoning a child to foster care if there’s any choice. And I am a choice. I’m free, no husband or kids, no ties, no job I couldn’t shake loose from. I love people and I love kids. And to tell you the truth, I just assumed that I’d love her, but…” She made an emotional gesture. “I think she sees me as an alien from another planet.”

He squinted at her. “Trust me, you don’t remotely look like a Klingon.”

“I’m not kidding! She thought I was talking a foreign language. I couldn’t do anything right, or anything that made any sense to her.” Out poured more froth. “She didn’t even know what a hair scrunchie was.”

“You’re kidding.” He didn’t have a clue what a hair scrunchie was either, but he finished the last of the mop-up with the edge of his glove. Might be a few tears still glistening from those thick, soft eyelashes, but she was definitely starting to dry up.

“I put some fresh flowers in her room. She took them back to the kitchen. I got her to open the other presents, but when she saw the rhinestone tee, she looked at me as if I’d sprouted a third head. Apparently she doesn’t listen to music. At least not ‘tweenie music. And I happened to get lost driving from the rest home this morning. She thinks I’m dumb. She thinks I’d get lost in a closet. And you know what?”

“What?”

“I do. Get lost in closets. I admit I’m not the most logical card in the deck, but that doesn’t make me a cream puff, Jack. She looks like a marine.”

The way she said “Jack” triggered a buck in his pulse. A sexual buck.

He felt the first fringe of fear.

She was not a woman he wanted to feel that buck for…but he couldn’t seem to help it. She was talking to him as if she knew him. As if they were friends. As if she inherently assumed he was someone she could be honest with. He couldn’t think of way to respond except straight. “She’s grieving.”

“Oh, God. I know that. But that’s also the terrifying part. Because I want to help her, and I’m afraid if we don’t get along, that I could make it worse.”

He’d waited as long as he could, but now he motioned to the back door. “You want me to close the door there?”

“No, no. I deliberately left it open. She fell asleep. But I’m afraid she could wake up, think no one was there, that she’d been abandoned. I want to be able to hear her.”

So at least this time there was a reason why they were heating the entire outdoors, even if he didn’t buy it as a logical choice himself. He cut back to the chase, understanding that she needed direct information. “About the clothes she’s wearing…first off, the uniform’s army, not marine. But to put a general frame on that picture, when Charles first died, a teacher of hers came over to stay at the house until the funeral. Authorities had already figured out that she had no one, got the lawyer and court system involved. I don’t know exactly how it all went down, but when the funeral was over, a social worker had become part of the story, and had decided that she could camp out for another week at the rest home where her great-grandmother is. The idea was to buy enough time for the lawyers to do their thing. Hell, I’m bogging this down with the side details, but I’m just trying to explain the timetable of how things happened—”

“And I want to know. In fact, I’d like to know anything you’re willing to tell me. I’ve really been batting in the dark.” The tears had definitely stopped now.

“Well, getting back to the issue of the army uniform business. After the funeral, the social worker went in the house with her, waited while she packed some things. I was at the funeral, although honestly, I don’t remember what she wore. I can’t say I ever paid any attention to her clothes or things like that. I mean she’s just a child, so whatever. But the thing is…when she came back outside, she was wearing her dad’s clothes. Not straight army, but army reserves.”

Merry brightened up as if a lightbulb dawned in her head. “So,” she said thoughtfully, “She’s wearing her dad’s clothes. Not hers.”

“Yeah. At least, that’s what it sounds like.”

“And the brush cut? Did she always wear her hair in a brush cut?”

“Um, no. Truthfully, I don’t remember how she wore her hair. Kind of short, I guess. But not buzz-cut short.” He had to think. “But, Charlie—”

“He wore it military short? I never saw it that way.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think guys change their hairstyles the way women do. They kind of stay with what they start with. But a few years back—well, I guess he got fed up, was annoyed because his hair tended to curl or something, said it was just easier to shave it off.”

“So her hairstyle is mimicking his, too.” Merry’s mind appeared to be racing now. Jack wasn’t sure if that was a good idea—not when her mind was already on the capricious and unpredictable side. “And she wants to be called Charlie. Not Charlene. Like her dad was called Charlie. So…it’s all starting to add up. Of course, that doesn’t make her behavior any less serious. But at least it’s better than worrying the child wants a sexchange operation at age eleven.”

He wanted to laugh. “Um, I don’t think you’ll find she was ever on the girly-girl side.”

“That has to be the understatement of the century.”

“She adored her dad. They did tons of stuff together. He really enjoyed time with her. And she just loved him from here to hell.” With alarm he saw her eyes well again, and chose a different topic at jet speed. “Hey, for the record, I don’t know what a scrunchie is, either. Is that some kind of code? Vocab or intel for a specific kind of initiation or something like that?”

She laughed. It wasn’t a big laugh, more on the tepid side, but it was obviously a mood changer for her. She was over the crying.

And something else changed at that moment. He didn’t know what. But until that instant, he’d just been sitting there, on the cold cement porch step, the heat from the house reaching his back, the streetlights down the neighborhood the only real illumination except for moonlight.

Suddenly, he was conscious of sitting close to her. Not hip-bumping close—not intrusive close, exactly, but close. She suddenly turned, facing him eye to eye, and abrupt as a slap he realized something else.

Possibly he’d recognized there was chemistry before this. Why wouldn’t there be? She was gorgeous. And he’d always had a hefty dose of testosterone. It didn’t matter if she was on the flaky, ditzy side; his body was always going to respond to a beautiful woman. Still, a guy on the experienced side of thirty-five knew enough to ignore the bulge in his zipper.

Like in her case.

One look and he’d known she was trouble clear through. Nothing he’d seen or heard from her since had changed his mind.

So he wasn’t looking at her that way. She was the one who was suddenly looking at him. Her expression changed. A quick frown furrowed her brow, almost gone before it started, as if she’d discovered something curious that she wasn’t expecting. And then, swift as a spring breeze, she suddenly leaned closer to him. Suddenly put a hand on his shoulder to brace herself. Suddenly tilted her head.

Suddenly kissed him.

Hell, was a guy ever prepared for Armageddon? Her mouth was satin-soft, the scent of her dizzying. His body perked up as if he hadn’t been laid in a blue moon. His heart abruptly remembered that it was lonesome. Beyond lonesome. And she was exactly the one it’d been lonesome for all this time.

More mortifying yet, she wasn’t coming onto him. It was just a kiss. A kiss where she touched his shoulder, then cupped his head, then simply laid those irresistible lips on him for a single miraculous second. Maybe two.

Then she eased back, still looking at him. “Thank you, Jack,” she said quietly, and then stood up, smiled. And simply went in the house. Even closed the door.

Hokay, he told himself. Hokay. But it wasn’t okay or hokay. Slowly he lurched to his feet and hiked back to his place. He told himself there was nothing wrong with what just happened, no reason to make more of that kiss than it was. She’d just apparently been trying to express a thank-you for talking to her. And that was just fine.

It was just…he’d never expected to feel anything honest and real with her.

He stomped in through his back door, hung up his jacket and abruptly caught the smell of his burned dinner. His very burned dinner. His inedible—very burned dinner.

Eventually the smoke cleared out, but Jack stayed fuming a while longer.

The new neighbor wasn’t working out at all well.

CHAPTER FOUR

THE INSTANT SHE HAD a spare second, Merry wanted to analyze the confounding range of emotions her neighbor had aroused in her. Last night, she’d mused quite a while about that kiss. About the kind of man who went out in the cold to help a stranger. About how honest he’d come across. And, yeah, how sexy.

Merry believed in listening to her instincts. Believed that it wasn’t impulsiveness, but natural good sense, to be aware when her body perked up near a certain man. It wasn’t as if she’d slept with hordes. But every time her body sent out warning signals—and she’d talked herself out of listening—it turned out that the guy was a dog and her initial instinct had been correct.

Last night there had been none of that dog stuff. It had been all lights-turned-on, whew-where-did-that-heat-come-from, this guy is unbelievably-good-news instinct stuff.

Right now, though, God knows, she had to shake him completely from her mind.

Charlene had just joined her in the kitchen. So far things weren’t going too stellar. Partially Merry blamed the gray breakfast counter between them, because the gray counter/black sink kitchen décor was enough to depress anybody. The modern art all over the place was even worse—not just depressing but weird enough to give a girl the willies.

Right now, the chicklet sitting across from her was the scariest problem, though.

Charlene had emerged from the bedroom this morning, ostensibly ready for her first day going back to school, wearing the combat gear again. The newlywaxed brush cut looked awful silly on that tiny, feminine little face. The pants had been cuffed up a half dozen times, but the shirt collar was still buttoned tight enough to choke the throat. The clothes dwarfed her skinny little frame—especially the combat boots—but the saddest part was that closed-in, closed-up expression.

Merry had started out with a bubbly, “Hey, g’morning, cupcake!” But that went over like a double homework assignment, and since then, the silence in the kitchen had built up to deafening proportions.

The differences between them, Merry realized, were a lot more complicated than just combat boots versus rhinestone-studded flip-flops. For breakfast, Charlie had chosen a bowl of Wheaties—no milk, no sugar—and an apple. A tidy paper napkin was folded with the edges just so.

Merry was eating breakfast, too, but she’d chosen a gooey cinnamon roll, tomato juice with a bit of pepper, two Oreos, and a highly sugared cereal with fresh blueberries on it.

It was unnatural to eat that healthily, Merry fretted, and even more frighteningly unnatural to be so damned quiet and obedient. The other differences contrasting them were even more pronounced. She was wearing comfortable old frayed jeans with a hole above the knee. The kid had actually ironed her khakis. Repeat, ironed. Whoever ironed unless threatened at knifepoint?

And the child’s brush cut might look goofy, but it was certainly ultra tidy compared to her own tumble of dark chestnut hair that hadn’t even seen a brush yet.

Charlie looked ready to run the world.

Merry didn’t figure anyone should be expected to seriously wake up until midmorning. On the other hand, she might not be thinking clearly yet, but she was definitely cheery enough for two. Good thing, since ole stone-face on the other side of the counter looked as if a smile might crack her cheeks.

“So,” Merry said, starting a conversation for maybe the fourth time in the last ten minutes. “You need to be at school by eight-fifteen. How do you usually get there—walk, bus, what?”

Charlie didn’t look up from her fascinating bowl of Wheaties, but at least she answered. “My dad drives me. It’s on his way to work, so he always said it was no trouble.”

“Is there a bus, though?”

“Probably. I don’t know. It’s like a mile. I could walk it.”

“I’ll take you, Charlie. I just wondered if there was a regular school bus in case there was a day I was sick or something.”

“Yeah, I guess there is. I’ll find out. You don’t have to do anything about it.”

Merry heard the unspoken message. I won’t bother you. Just let me be home. You don’t have to even pretend I exist. Darn kid was breaking her heart even when she said nothing at all. “What time do you want me to pick you up after school?”

“No reason to pick me up. There’s a car pool thing. Because my dad worked. So, like there are four moms. He always paid the gas. They rotate who’s driving. Mrs. Sheinfeld picks me up today. The phone numbers are all in the Rolodex.”

“Okay. And then you get home by what time?”

“Depends on the day. Usually before four. Unless there’s soccer practice or something like that. Until I was ten, my dad had, like, a babysitter here until he got home, but that was stupid, I told him. There’s always somebody around the neighborhood if I needed something. And he trusts me.”

Merry felt her heart lurch. Her heart had been regularly doing that lurching thing since she got here. The military looks and the taciturn expressions were worrying and disconcerting, for damn sure, but somewhere under all that attitude was an awfully miserable kid. Tight as a drum. She sure didn’t seem to want nurturing—at least not from Merry—but Merry couldn’t help feeling that she’d never met a kid who needed more plain old loving affection.

On the legal pad next to her—and Merry was not one into making lists—she was on the third page just this morning. She needed the names of the moms who drove Charlene, besides today’s Mrs. Sheinfeld. And they needed to know her. Cripes, maybe she was supposed to be part of that car pool now? How many kids was she supposed to be able to fit in her Mini Cooper? Who was the kid’s doctor? Her dentist? Who picked up the trash?

Truth to tell, the list thing was scaring the hell out of her—but at least yesterday’s overwhelming panic was gone. She was up and ready to boogie, all renewed and charged to take this on again, all because of Jack, she thought. It helped so much to have another adult to talk to. To vent on.

To kiss.

Between bites of blueberry and cinnamon roll, her mind wrapped around that kiss from last night yet again. She tested her conscience, but nope, there wasn’t a lick of guilt. He’d been a brick. There was nothing wrong with expressing thanks and affection. It’s not as if she laid up against him in some way he could have construed as a come-on.

Even if she’d thought about doing just that.

Still. She readily recognized that he rang her chimes—and that was the whole scale of chimes. But it was the wrong time in her life to finally find a diamond. She just couldn’t be thinking about a man right now, couldn’t be curious about one, couldn’t allow hormones to color anything about her judgment, either.

She couldn’t let anything matter right now but Charlene.

So far she’d carefully refrained from saying anything about how the child was dressed, but it was just too hard not to express a teensy hint of honest worry.

“You’ll feel okay going to school in those clothes, right?” she asked casually. “There isn’t a dress code in your school?”

“Yeah, there’s a code. Girls have to cover their stomachs. And you can’t have bra straps showing. Like I’d be worried about that.” A noisy snort effectively expressed Charlene’s opinion about budding breasts. “Oh. No dirty words on T-shirts. And no face jewelry.”

Merry had to translate what face jewelry meant. Nose and lips rings, she assumed. “Those rules don’t sound too bad.”

“Yeah, well, nobody’s gonna tell me what to wear.” It was the first time Charlene had met her eyes—not just with some life but a full splash of belligerence.

Merry was delighted to see some normal kid rebellion, and warned herself not to blow it. “Hey, if you’re waiting for me to criticize your choice of clothes, it’ll never happen. If you’re okay with your choice, then so am I.” Well, she was almost okay. Or trying to be okay. Well, maybe she thought the military thing was over the top—and worrisome besides—but she was a ton more concerned about creating some trust than superficial nonsense like clothes. “Charlie…you haven’t said anything about the classes you’re taking. Are there any subjects you have a hard time with? Or any teachers you really like?”

“Burkowitz.”

Not an answer exactly, but Merry had something. “Yeah?”

“He teaches math. And computers. He’s definitely frantic.”

“Frantic?”

“Frantic. Like, he rocks. He’s cool. Frantic,” she repeated, as if the meaning should be obvious.

“Got it. Frantic.”

The kid, unlike her, tidily rinsed her bowl and put it in the dishwasher, then pulled on a jacket and stood at the door. Merry scrambled after her, searching for shoes and her own jacket, which seemed to have thrown itself on a chair in the living room.

“While I’m at school, you’re not going in my dad’s room, right?” Charlene reminded her as they walked outside.

“Right.”

“And you’re not gonna touch my dad’s stuff. Any of it. Nothing in his study either, right?”

“Stop worrying, Charlie. I told you I wouldn’t.” They’d been through this last night, when Charlene had brought up the issue, her fingers twisting themselves into anxious knots and her mouth all but trembling. She seemed to be a little obsessed about any of her father’s things being moved or disappearing. Either way, Merry couldn’t think of a reason on the planet not to cater to her. Sooner or later the raw edge of grief had to wear off. And then there’d be plenty of time to figure out what to do with Charlie’s stuff.

It took less than ten minutes to be parked at the school. Merry didn’t walk in with her—how mortifying would that be? It’s not as if she’d forgotten how ghastly it was to be a sixth-grader—the lowest rung on the middle school social ladder. Besides which, girls in that preteen age were meaner than bobcats.

Once Charlene disappeared inside and the school bell rang, though, Merry figured it was safe to go inside. She took a quick look around before aiming for the office. The principal turned out to be a woman, Mrs. Apple, a name that was distractingly appropriate because of the dark red color on her cheeks. Merry couldn’t fathom why the woman would have chosen such a wildly bright blusher, when it didn’t remotely go with her olive skin.

“I just wanted to meet you.” Merry extended a hand, explaining how she’d become Charlene’s guardian, how Charlene had just lost her father. The principal swiftly interrupted her.

“We know. Very sad situation.”

The whole school was kind of a sad situation, Merry personally thought. Maybe she’d only walked down one long hall, but that single hall had been telling. There was no graffiti, no banged-up lockers, no noise. The bell had only rung a few minutes before, yet the kids were all sitting in their seats like model children. Not only was it a prep school with a capital P, but the classrooms were carpeted—besides which, half the girls she saw were already wearing cashmere sweaters. This was just middle school, for Pete’s sake.

“Well, I just wanted you to know I’m here, that you can call me. Charlene and I are just getting to know each other, so I’m afraid that right now I’m just another big change in her life. If there’s anything I can do, as far as the school or any activities she’s involved in—”

“Oh, yes.” Mrs. Apple abruptly perked up. “We’re always in need of a field mother. Someone to go with the children on bus trips. Field or sports trips.” And then there was the PTO. And the bake sales. And the sports equipment fund-raisers. And Brownies. “We have a middle school dance coming up on Valentine’s Day—the first one for the sixth-graders. We’ll need parents to chaperone that.”

“I’d be happy to,” Merry said, but on the inside, she was gulping to beat the band. In principle, she was willing to do anything that would help Charlene, but reality was that it was pretty full-scale transition to somehow immediately turn herself into a suburban soccer mom. “I was hoping you would let Charlene’s teachers know what she’s been going through. I know she missed more than a week of school, for one thing—”

“We’re not concerned. Charlene, as you know, is an unusually gifted student. We know she’ll catch up quickly.”

Well, that had been a little hair-raising but it had basically gone okay, Merry thought as she drove back to the house. Her next priority was conquering the coffee machine. And—after calling her dad to check in—her second priority of the day was finding a place to sleep.

The two obvious choices were the master bedroom or Charlie’s study—both of which were nice, big rooms. But the first night, she’d camped on the couch because she’d fallen asleep there from exhaustion, and then last night, she’d just glanced in the master bedroom when Charlene saw her and went into that anxiety attack about her dad’s stuff. So those rooms were out, and normally Merry wouldn’t mind camping out indefinitely. Half the time she felt as if she were camping out in her own life, always ready to move on and move out…but this situation was different.

This time she had to try to settle down. To stay.

There was no reason she couldn’t change. Her life and job hopping had never been about character. It had been about her mother. Which would seem to suggest that this was an ideal time for her to come to grips with that old tediously upsetting history, but right now, she just had too much to do.

Because the coffee machine won the technology battle with her—again—she hauled around a mug of instant. She’d looked around and cleaned the place that first night, but now, she conducted a major search—not just to pin down a place to sleep, but to get a stronger feeling for Charlie and the kind of man and dad he’d been.

The living room, at least, had flashes of the whimsically fun man she’d once known in Charlie. The couch was shaped like a dog bone—a huge, gray dog bone in a swelty-soft suede. And in the entranceway, he’d hung a dartboard—the kind that used felt darts, not the sharp kinds, and it showed signs of wear, so it was obviously something dad and daughter played together. A heap of pillows on the floor indicated they both tended to watch the tube sprawled out.

But the strange modern art all through the house continued to spook her.

A life-sized painting took up one entire wall in the living room. The artist had signed it “Red Dominance,” and it looked as if an extremely crabby person had swathed on big, violent slashes of red and black and yellow, let it dry and put it in a frame. Turn the corner toward the kitchen, and there was an oil of a long, surreal naked body. It wasn’t a sexy nude, or remotely pornographic, nothing inappropriate for Charlene to see. The figure was all huddled up, showing mostly knees and elbows, its head bent at a crooked angle, leaving Merry the impression of a living skeleton—one that jumped out at her every time she turned the corner.

Another new-age-y nude took up wall space in Charlie’s den, but that one happened to be green. The green woman appeared to be screaming, although the only identifiable body part for sure was her mouth. Every time Merry passed by it, she wanted to tiptoe.

Okay, so maybe Merry wasn’t precisely a connoisseur of valuable art. Her taste ran more toward big yellow smiley faces. But she couldn’t seem to reconcile the Charlie she knew with the one who’d picked out these scary, ugly pictures.

She kept thinking that there had to be an important clue here. Something she needed to know. Something that would help her understand Charlene and her relationship with her dad and their lives together—if she could just grasp it.

Eventually she gave up trying to analyze the impossible and settled down to the plain old chore of picking a room for herself. The upstairs was pretty much a huge, cavernous space that had potential in the long run, but for now, Merry didn’t want to be that far removed from Charlene. So she picked the spare room past the master bedroom. It had clearly been used to stash stuff no one knew what to do with, from out-of-season sports equipment to luggage to spare coats. But it had a lumpy couch bed already there. The walls were an ugly muddy taupe, but whatever. There was a bathroom across from Charlie’s and a view of Jack’s backyard.

Her thoughts strayed back to Jack and the kiss last night, but she ruthlessly reined them in. After she did the fresh-sheet thing, organized her makeup in the back bathroom, and carted the seasonal debris upstairs to an out-of-sight closet, it was already late morning. She still had the long, three-page list of things to tackle—only abruptly, the phone rang.

It was the school calling. The vice principal. The man sounded decent, had one of those patient, gentle voices that made Merry think he was a kid lover, but he sure had nothing but trouble to deliver.

He claimed that Charlene had slugged another kid. Because Charlie was a girl and the boy she’d punched was a foot taller than her—and because she’d never been in trouble before—the school had decided not to punish her with the usual automatic suspension. They’d also taken into account her father’s death and how much school she’d already missed. But she was being sent home for the day—Merry had to pick her up immediately—and she’d have detention every afternoon for the next two weeks.

So much for calling all the carpool mothers and looking into grief counseling and figuring out the washing machine and checking out what clothes Charlie did and didn’t have in her closet and calling the guardian ad litem woman to see what she was like and trying to figure out where the house finances stood…the finances especially had her worry beads jiggling, because she didn’t have the first clue what it cost to maintain the place, much less how the bills were supposed to work with the estate and all.

But all that was just life crap. Nothing that mattered.

She made it to the school in less than three minutes, charged in the front door, and immediately came to a dead stop. The woebegone figure sitting alone in the hall, head bent, dejection painted in her rounded shoulders and sunk-in posture was unquestionably Charlie. It was all Merry could do not to sweep her into her arms. But then Charlie looked up, and faster than spit, her face took on a cold, defensive expression.

“I suppose you’re going to yell.”

“Actually, what I’m going to do is tell the principal I’m here, so that we can go home.”

“Yeah, right.”

The VP was about what Merry had expected from the phone call—a tall reed with a quiet voice, who had a lot of things to say about violence never being an answer, and certain rules and controls being important, and about Charlene needing to rethink her actions and how they affected others.

He was ponderous and wordy, not mean, yet from the way Charlie slammed out of the school and slammed the car door and slammed into the house, you’d think somebody’d whipped her kitten.

Merry said nothing, just aimed for the kitchen, rolled up her sleeves, and faced off with the coffeemaker again. It was such a gorgeous machine. Obviously the crème de la crème. Probably cost more than she had in her savings account. But there had to be some doohickey to make the thingamabob come out so you could put the grounds in? And she couldn’t find it.

Minutes passed. Then more minutes. Than Charlene said from the doorway, in a voice so disgusted it was amazing she could survive it, “What are you trying to do?”

“Oh, I’m so glad you’re here. Is there any chance you know how to make this work?”

“Of course.” The kid came over, touched something, and the thingamabob opened like magic.

“Thanks,” Merry said, and immediately started pouring in fresh grind. It was possible she could survive an hour longer without real coffee, but she wasn’t dead sure.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?” Ms. Attitude had gone back to the doorway to park, clearly leaving herself an easy exit.

“Say anything about what?”

“Gimme a break. You know about what.”

Merry glanced up—once she was positive the machine was going to come through and percolate for her. “Naturally, I want to know what happened. But I figured you’re probably still feeling really upset, so you’d tell me about the fight when you felt you could.”

Mentally holding her breath, she turned around, dug out the bag of Oreos from the new stash of groceries. When she turned back, Charlene had moved one foot farther into the room, but no more. More carefully than she’d treat a python, Merry cracked open the package and set it in the middle of the breakfast counter. Then she went searching for a mug. Not that she wasn’t willing to guzzle the coffee straight from the machine, lapping it up like a dog if she had to, but a standard mug type container would be nice.

“He’s in eighth grade. His name’s Dougall. Dougall Whitmore. He asked me what was with the hair.”

Aha. Words. Merry was careful not to do any kind of victory dance—but man, it was sure tempting. “And you said…”

“I said nothing.”

“Right,” Merry murmured, believing that like she believed in the tooth fairy. Which, come to think of it, she had believed in until she was past puberty.

“But then he said I looked queer. Then I said if looking queer meant being like my dad, then I was happy to look like this. Then he said, well, maybe I was just a lesbo and trying to be honest about it.”

“And then?”

“Then I punched him.” It took a moment, but Charlene finally risked putting half of her skinny hip on the stool, getting close enough to reach the Oreos.

“Is your hand okay?” Merry asked.

“Are you kidding? No. It hurts really, really bad. I’m never hitting anybody again. It’s not worth it. I thought it was broken. My whole fist.”

“Let’s see…Eek! We’d better get some ice on that.” As she scrounged for a plastic bag and ice, she said, “Now, Charlie, you realize the guy’s gonna be humiliated because a girl hit him. So you might want to strategize about how you want to handle that before going

back to school tomorrow.”

“Huh? That’s all?”

“What do you mean?” Merry gently put the ice bag on her hand, letting Charlie determine how hard or light she wanted to press it. The brush cut was starting to flop, she noted. It was the first time she’d been close enough to see that under all that wax stuff was a headful of wispy, baby-fine, to-die-for blond hair.

“You’re not going to yell at me? Hand out some punishment?”

Merry sucked in a breath. This was a serious test, she knew. Maybe even a make it or break it test. She opened her mouth to respond—but just then, the phone rang.

Could one thing go smoothly today? Even the smallest thing? Was that really asking too much?

JACK PUSHED OPEN the back door, buzzed to beat the band. What a great day. He plucked a beer from the fridge, a fork from the drawer and promptly carted two white containers of Chinese to the red leather chair in the living room.

He was starving—seeing as it was past nine. And he’d groused with his colleagues about the mighty long work day, but he didn’t mean it.

It always seemed crazy to be paid so much to do something he loved. Back in college, he’d aimed for a degree in Geography because he’d wanted to be a cryptographer. Some idealistic cause had led him into the navy, then Special Ops, but even then the military got the idea that he should get a master’s in math. No hardship. Special Ops was for the physically fit youngsters. The master’s enabled him to get out and end up working for the government, getting paid lots and lots of money to do puzzles.

Codes. He loved breaking them. Some said he was the most brilliant code breaker around—and that was mighty ironic, considering he’d never decoded the mystery of his own marriage. Sometimes he went to work with two different colored socks on. Sometimes—even though he had plenty of money—he bounced a check because he forgot to add up his checkbook.

But give him a puzzle, and he was over-the-moon happy.

That he was doing something for his country gave him pride, too, but people’d think he was corny if he said that. So he tried to complain about his long hours and the tediousness of his desk job. It was better than his friends thinking he was a dork—even though he was.

Heaving a loud, lazy sigh, he scooped up the remote, cocked his feet on the coffee table and gobbled the first forkful of War Sui Gui. He’d TiVo’d a good old Steven Seagal the night before. It was a perfect end to a perfect day, Chinese takeout and a relaxing couple hours of blood and guts.

Only then his cell rang.

“It’s Patty, Jack. I’m back from vacation, had a fabulous time. But I couldn’t wait to call you!”

“Um—”

“Paris was incredible. Just incredible. But I have admit, I just kept thinking about how great that night was…”

The more she giggled, the more she talked, the more Jack got a tight feeling in the back of his throat. He couldn’t recall anyone named Patty. Had no memory of sleeping with anyone named Patty. For damn sure, he didn’t remember any blue scarves tying her up.

Hell.

He couldn’t remember tying anyone up with blue scarves. Not that he was unwilling.

He weaseled out of making a date that weekend, claiming he had to work, which wasn’t true. But even a casual sexual relationship was a little too weird if he couldn’t place the woman.

A little less ferociously, he dove back into his War Sui Gui—only to have the damn cell phone sing again. He glared at the phone, scratched his neck. He really didn’t want to risk another call right then. The one had spooked him.

But knowing it could be one of the boys, he had to answer. And he was right, because it was Kev. “Dad!”

“You got me,” Jack affirmed.

“Well, hey.”

“Hey, back.” So it was going to be one of those conversations.

“Cooper thinks we should get a car.”

“Your brother thinks that, huh? I always find it amazing, how Cooper’s name comes up whenever you want something, but it’s never Cooper who calls me about it.” Jack heard his son sigh heavily and with great patience.

“Cooper is the one,” Kevin reminded him, “who never does anything wrong. Who always gets the grades. Who never causes any trouble. So isn’t it obvious why I use him, Dad? He’s got pull with you.”

“Ah.” When Kicker was bored, these conversations could tend to go on forever. Not that Jack minded. He pushed the stop button on the movie and climbed to his feet. Might as well get some nuisance chores done. Still listening to Kicker’s exuberant arguments, he wandered into the kitchen, sifted through the day’s mail, carted a bag of trash to the garage, then opened the dishwasher. Only, damn. There were clean dishes in there. How come a guy could never open a dishwasher and find the thing empty? Ever?

“Although this time I’ve got some dirt on Cooper.”

“What kind of dirt?”

“Good dirt. My brother,” Kevin said dramatically, “has a girl.”

“Yeah?” That was interesting enough to make Jack stop with the chores for a minute.

“You know me. I play the field like you do, Dad. Why settle for one when there’s no end of women out there? But Coop…I’ll tell you, he’s just not as smart as you and me. You’d think he’d pick someone shy like him, wouldn’t you? That he’d go for a brain like he is? But, no. Instead she’s a looker. Boobs out to here. A cheerleader.” Kevin sighed again, one of those man-to-man exhausted sighs. “She’s my kind, not his. And who can figure women? I’m right here. I’ve got the charm. The moves. The looks—”

“Um, Kev? You’re twins, remember? You have the same looks.”

“Yeah, but he’s a nerd. He doesn’t dress right, doesn’t move right. Yet she’s all over him. Anyways, back to the car. I was thinking, you know, used. Just not too used. And red…”

“Uh-huh…” Only half-listening, Jack opened the fridge for another beer. Just as he flipped the tab, he caught a flash of color in his kitchen window.

He froze, thinking it couldn’t be her. Not again.

“So I said to the guys, I said like…”

“Uh-huh,” he said to his son, and bent closer to the window. Damn it and double damn it. It was her again. Sitting on the porch again. Her head in her hands again.

This time, though, he was butting out. No discussion, no guilt. If she wanted to sit outside bawling her eyes out, that was her problem.

He’d tried to be nice before, hadn’t he? And look where it had gotten him. Kissed within an inch of his life, and by a woman who should have a T for Traumatic Trouble inked on her forehead. No one in hell could expect him to get involved again.

He was just going to finish talking to his son, go back to his Steven Seagal movie, put his feet up. Ignore her completely.