Reuniting His Family. Jean Gordon C.

smiled with what looked to him like relief, but he dismissed the thought. She’d never seek his approval.

      “I don’t have anything else,” Pastor Connor said. “Do either of you?”

      Renee shook her head.

      Rhys had in the ballpark of one hundred questions, but none to be answered here.

      “Let’s close in prayer, then.”

      Rhys folded his hands in his lap before he caught the motion of Pastor Connor reaching across the desk to them. He took Connor’s hand and reached for Renee’s, wishing he’d wiped his against his jeans first. Joining hands in prayer took some getting used to. The Bible study group he’d participated in with Pastor Connor at Dannemora hadn’t been as demonstrative as his church congregation’s. He bowed his head and blocked out the soft grip of Renee’s hand on his, along with memories of what it felt like to hold a woman’s hand not in prayer.

      “And bless Renee and Rhys in Your service. Amen,” Pastor Connor said in closing.

      “Amen,” he and Renee said, dropping hands.

      Renee rose. “We’re meeting in my first-and-second-grade Sunday school room. Upstairs.”

      Rhys stopped halfway between sitting and standing. “You’re Dylan’s Sunday school teacher?”

      “I will be when classes resume in a couple of weeks.” She paused by the door while he straightened. “We can go right up. I already put the box of materials for the meeting and the snacks in the room.”

      “I could have carried them for you.” Rhys hated how his voice had the same overeagerness he often heard in Owen’s.

      “No problem.”

      Rhys walked beside her in silence down the hall to the stairs, his mind swimming with potential problems. He cleared his throat. “Out of curiosity, did you know that I’d volunteered to work here with the kids?” He forced himself to breathe in and out evenly while he waited for her answer.

      “I knew before I came today.”

      She must not have known, then, when they’d talked on Saturday.

      “I think it’ll be great for the kids,” Renee said.

      But not for her, at least according to what he remembered about body language from the one psychology course he’d taken. She held her leather bag like a shield between them.

      “You don’t have any problem with us, uh, working together, do you?”

      “No.” She opened the first door at the top of the stairs and led him inside. “Why should I?”

      Right, why should you?

      * * *

      Renee tucked the doorstop under the door as she waited for his answer—if he was going to answer at all. She understood how he might have seen her as an adversary in her position at CPS. But he didn’t need to carry it over to the Bridges program. They were both here for the kids.

      “Hi, Miss Renee.” A little girl with long blond braids skipped past her into the room. “Mrs. Hill let me walk upstairs by myself, since this is my Sunday school room.”

      “Hi, Emma. You’re right on time to help us set up.” Now that Emma was in the room, Renee let her question to Rhys drop, even though she would have liked to hear his answer. Any insight into the man would help them work together better, which could benefit both them and the kids.

      The little girl looked at Rhys. “Who’s he?”

      “He’s my helper, Mr. Ma—”

      Rhys frowned, and Renee remembered him asking her to use his first name at the home visit she’d supervised at the Hills’ house.

      “Mr. Rhys.” She corrected herself.

      “Hi, Emma,” he said.

      His face broke into a welcoming smile that charmed Emma. It also calmed some of the apprehension Renee had had about Rhys working with her and the children, while filling her with a wistful emptiness. Okay, the rational professional in her said. So he never smiles that way at you. Why should he?