Harlequin Superromance February 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: His Forever Girl\Moonlight in Paris\Wife by Design (63 page)

CHAPTER NINE

G
RANT
GAVE
L
UKE
and Craig the whole weekend off. He was going to need them to work overtime the following week, just long enough to set the big boulders in the rock fountain and help with the trenching and plumbing. He'd already purchased treated cedar and metal joists for the benches that he and Darin were going to build on Sunday. And Saturday, he was going to get caught up with all of the regular mowing, irrigation checks, trimming and spraying for weeds so that he could devote the beginning of the next week, after his Bishop Landscaping work, completely to the Garden of Renewal.

The women at The Lemonade Stand needed their garden. He didn't want to keep them waiting any longer.

Lynn, dressed in scrubs, was walking from the main building, where she had her office and saw her patients, toward the cluster of bungalows at the back of the property. He'd mowed her yard. At least twice since he'd been there.

He just didn't know which one it was.

But he knew she had a cute ass. A distraction on this Saturday morning. He watched until it was out of sight.

“Hey, Mister...” The voice was close.

He'd been alone. Had just mowed around a small pond in one of the landscaped atriums between buildings, and had noticed that the intake line had not been flowing smoothly. He'd taken the metal cover off the grass-covered hole in the ground that housed the pond's motorized equipment.

“Kara, no!” He shouted the words as he lunged for the little girl, scooping her up just before she ran right into that hole in her eagerness to get to him.

Maddie...and
Darin?
...who obviously had no idea the cover was off the access hole, were walking not far behind, watching Kara, but Darin's head was bent toward something Maddie was saying.

Kara's shriek was cut off as her body slammed into his chest, probably knocking the air half out of her. And then little arms slapped him on both sides of his neck as the tiny body clung to him. Kara shook and it didn't take a genius to figure out that the child was sobbing. The arms that had clutched him were pushing against him.

He'd scared the crap out of her.

“It's all right,” he said, the words coming from somewhere he didn't know existed within him, trying not to drop the squirming little body, but not wanting to hurt her, either. “It's all right. I didn't want you to fall in the hole in the ground. See?” Turning, he tilted so that her gaze was facing the hole. “It's supposed to be covered, but it wasn't because there was a boo-boo on that machine down there and I had to fix it.”

A
boo-boo?
Where in the hell had he come up with that?

“Bwoken.” Kara hiccupped. And just as quickly as her emotional storm had started, it was over. Tears hung on her lashes. Her breathing still hitched. But she was looking at him with questions in those big hazel eyes, not fear. Her red-gold curls bobbed as she threw her body downward, trying to get a closer look at the hole—he presumed.

Thankfully, he had a secure enough hold on her.

“What happened, Grant?” Darin came running over with Maddie, her legs seeming to stumble over themselves a bit, not far behind him. And Grant wanted to ask his brother what he was doing with Maddie and her little girl again.

“Bwoken,” Kara repeated, sounding important now as she showed the new arrivals what she'd discovered.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Bishop.” Maddie reached for the little girl, who went to her willingly. Putting Kara down, Maddie took the child's hand. “This is why you don't run ahead,” she said. “Because we don't know what's in the grass.”

True. Though not quite what he'd have said. All kids should be able to run through the grass barefoot. Shouldn't they?

“Maddie and I just finished therapy and she picked up Kara from the day care and I was walking them partway home,” Darin explained, almost no child in his voice at all. “It's my fault, Grant. I distracted Maddie and put the little girl at risk and I'm sorry.”

“It's not your fault.” Grant saw a bad evening coming on. “If anyone's at fault it's me,” he said. “I left the cover off and turned my back. You know it's a rule never to do that.”

He'd turned to watch a beautiful woman who turned him on. Watched her until she'd completely disappeared from view.

“It was an accident, Darin,” he said.

“Are you hungry, Kara?” Maddie, looking college-campus cute in black leggings and a short T-shirt, her slim body almost perfectly proportioned, hadn't taken her gaze from the little girl since she took her out of Grant's arms. Her weight shifted from foot to foot and she was biting on her lower lip.

Grant had no idea what she was thinking. Or feeling.

But like a good mother, she was focused on her child.

“Yes!” Kara chortled with childish glee.

“We have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch today,” Maddie said, her expression so serious it almost hurt to watch her. Because she had to concentrate so hard to complete the simple mothering tasks?

Was that why Maddie lived at The Lemonade Stand? So the ladies there could help her watch Kara? Help raise Kara?

“It's not your fault, Maddie.” Darin's voice came out soft and slow. “You take excellent care of her, you know.” Innocence shone through every word. An inability to adjust his words to fit adult social mores, but an adult awareness of his surroundings.

Or something like that. “He's right,” Grant said, taking his cue from Darin as he saw the look of guilt cross over his brother's face. “The only big deal here is that I didn't follow safety protocol when I turned my back on the opened hole. Kara should be allowed to run in the grass and there's no way either of you could have known that the hole was uncovered.”

“Yeah, Maddie, Grant's right. You couldn't have known.”

Still watching Kara, Maddie nodded. “We have to go,” she said. “Come on, Kara.”

“Bye, Mister, and Dawin, see you soon I love you....” The little girl pulled Maddie toward the bungalows.

Maddie glanced up then. Once. At Darin. “Bye,” she said.

But never cracked a smile.

“I think she's mad at me.” Darin's gaze followed the other woman.

Grant, kissing extra work on his lunch hour goodbye as he realized he was going to have to accompany his brother to the cafeteria where he'd expected Darin to be already, bent to the grate and said, “She's not mad at you, bro. She's scared. Women get scared in times of crisis. You taught me that.”

The time he'd crashed his motorcycle out in front of their house, barely scratching either it or himself, and Shelley had come running out of the house, screaming, embarrassing the heck out of him in front of his friends.

“I guess,” Darin said.

And Grant was happy to let the entire incident pass.

* * *

A
LL
THROUGH
LUNCH
Lynn heard about the incident with Grant and Kara. Her three-year-old, apparently, was quite taken with “Mister,” pronounced with
r
s that sounded like
w
s.

Maddie was too sick to eat, and it took Lynn a good twenty minutes to get the other woman to agree to stay alone with Kara while she napped and Lynn went back to the clinic. She had only a couple of afternoon appointments, but needed to get her charting done.

“What if I screw up again, Lynn?” the woman asked, her eyes wide and filled with pain. She'd chewed her lip so much in the past hour Lynn was surprised it wasn't bleeding. “What if she gets hurt? I'd rather die than that.”

“So would I.” Lynn turned from the sink where she'd been rinsing her glass and the knife she'd used to make sandwiches. “I also trust you with Kara. And we do our very, very best to see that she's safe and healthy and happy.”

Sitting at the table, watching Kara finish her last bit of goo-smeared bread on her paper plate, Maddie gnawed at her lip, her knees bobbing up and down.

“Watch this!” Kara grabbed a handful of bread and put her fist up to her mouth.

“Uh-uh, little girl,” Maddie said, reaching out to pull Kara's hand down. “You know we don't put too much in our mouths at once or we'll choke,” she said. She gently pried Kara's fingers apart to take away half of the bread.

“You see,” Lynn said softly, hanging the towel she'd just used to dry her hands. “You take very good care of her, Maddie. Accidents happen. To moms and dads and babysitters. They wouldn't let you help in the day care if anyone thought the kids weren't safe with you.”

“But I got distracted and...”

They went around and around the issue for the next hour. But by the time Lynn left, assuring Maddie that she wouldn't be doing so if she thought for one second that her daughter was in any danger, Maddie was smiling again.

But Lynn couldn't get the incident out of her mind. As soon as she finished with her patient, she called Maddie's cell to make certain that everything was fine.

Maddie, answering on the first ring, assured her that all was well. Kara had gone down for her nap right on schedule and was still asleep.

“I'm just worried that you're mad at me,” Maddie tacked on in a rush at the end of the report.

“I'm not mad.” But she called Sara as soon as she hung up the phone, asking the other woman to find time for a talk with the upset woman. Maddie's biggest challenge was learning how to rein in her agitation and she was afraid that the morning's incident could cause a setback from the several months' worth of progress Maddie had made.

She also told Sara about Maddie's interest in Darin.

She was just hanging up the phone when her emergency pager went off. A 9-1-1 from Angelica, the Stand's physical therapist. She'd turned to grab a towel for Darin and he'd picked up a heavier weight than she'd instructed, apparently determined that she wasn't moving him along quickly enough. He'd dropped the weight, which hit his shin and split the skin wide open.

“It looks bad....”

Her bag of emergency supplies sat by her office door and, grabbing them, Lynn was on her way before Angelica finished that last sentence.

* * *

D
AYS
WERE
SUPPOSED
to go as planned. It was one thing Grant could usually count on. Because he thought ahead, planned for eventualities, left margin for plan's error. And other than Luke, and in a small way Maura occasionally, Grant didn't rely on anyone but himself. He didn't open his life to outside sources that could waylay him.

And that Saturday was waylaying him all over the place. First the pond's irrigation system had been clogged. He'd just done maintenance on all the water features the week before and everything had tested fine.

Then there'd been the incident with Maddie's little girl, Kara, which had upset Darin to the point that Grant had to accompany his brother to lunch when he'd planned to eat granola bars and keep working through the hour or two Darin normally spent at the Stand's cafeteria.

Darin had been different, strangely upset, not
predictably
upset, all through lunch. Over such an apparently simple thing.

Maybe because in the past seventeen years he'd had very little contact with strangers, other than medical personnel. He knew Luke well, and now Craig. Maura was like family to him.

And that was all.

Grant didn't have time to think on it any further at the moment.

After lunch, his lawn mower had run out of gas—a stupid lapse of paying attention on his part because he'd been distracted by Darin's distress over a woman he hardly knew—and he'd had to walk the two blocks to his fuel source, load up and walk back.

And he'd spent the entire time looking for any sign of the beautiful nurse who'd taken up residence in his subconscious and who tortured him with fantastic odysseys every night in his dreams.

Waking up wasn't quite as great as it used to be.

And then later, when he was wheeling a load of debris to the trailer, the star of his nighttime fantasies called just as he was contemplating a particularly athletic move she'd made in his dreams the night before. He'd actually been trying to figure out if there was a way to actually physically do what his mind had conjured up. So when he heard her voice on the phone he got instantly hard.

Which embarrassed the shit out of him.

“Your brother asked me to call you.” Her words stopped him in his tracks. Literally. Wheelbarrow balanced in the grasp of one hand he stood in the middle of the front commons, his phone to his ear.

“You're with Darin? What's wrong?” He shouldn't have gone back to work. He'd known Darin was agitated over the morning's incident with Maddie's little girl.

His brother had as little experience with children as Grant did. Maybe that was it.

“He's fine.” Lynn's tone was reassuring. “I'm taking him to my house.”

Oh. Well, he wasn't entirely displeased by the knowledge. A little jealous, maybe. He'd been wanting to know which place was hers for over a week, and Darin was just going to stroll right on over with her.

“Why?” He asked the question that hadn't occurred to him immediately. It should have.

“He dropped a weight during therapy. It hit his shin and broke the skin. Angelica called me.” Her tone was reticent.

“Why would his therapist call you because of a little broken skin?”

“It wasn't actually a little.” Lynn's reply didn't surprise him as much as it might have. “I had to stitch it.”

Wheeling the barrow with one hand because he had to get the thing over to the trailer and get his ass over to his brother, he said, “How many stitches?”

“Eight. He'll need to have them for a week to ten days.”

“Let me talk to him.”