And Baby Makes Six. Linda Markowiak

eyes. She remembered those eyes. As deep and rich as dark, polished wood, set in that arresting face of strong features. She looked away quickly.

      Mitch said, “Face-off doesn’t bite, but he doesn’t seem to know how big he is, either. If he gets the chance, he’ll knock you down and lick your face.”

      She shuddered, and he gave her an odd look. “You don’t like dogs?”

      “Well, I’ve never owned one.”

      She was close now, and she could see the weave of Mitch’s sweater, revealed in the open vee of his partially unzipped jacket, and her traitorous mind conjured that bare chest. Quickly, she bent toward the dog, put out her hand. The dog made her nervous. That’s why her stomach was doing double flip-flops now.

      Mitch said, “Every kid should have a dog.”

      “Oh, I don’t know.” She gave Face-off a tentative pat. At the contact, the dog quivered, sniffed. She forced herself to pat his head again. Her hand was close to Mitch’s now. Oh, yes, the dog was making her nervous, all right. “Dogs are so messy.”

      “Messy is okay sometimes.”

      I guess you’d know.

      She continued to pat Face-off. Slowly, Mitch relaxed his grip. The dog started to surge; she jerked back. Mitch pulled him back in line.

      Face-off submitted to the restraint. But he looked up at her with a droll expression on his face, as if ready to make friends in the only way he was permitted, given Mitch’s hand on his collar. His tongue came out, pink and wet and soft-looking, and something in Jenny went suddenly, unexpectedly soft in response. The tongue looked twice as wide as his face; despite her unsettled stomach and the close proximity of a very large, attractive man, that lolling tongue was suddenly comical. She looked down into the dog’s round, friendly eyes. “Is that dog…” She hesitated. “Is that dog smiling at me?”

      Mitch looked up, obviously startled. “You see it, huh? It’s the weirdest thing, a dog smiling, but he does. When we were looking around at the shelter for a pup, I didn’t really want this one—I knew with those paws, he was going to be huge. But he smiled at the kids, and that was all it took for them to want him, so…” His eyes met hers, and he was suddenly grinning.

      Oh, he had a great smile, sure and confident, with strong, square white teeth. It set off the regularity of his features, sent lines arcing from the corners of his eyes. Caught by that grin, she started to smile back. Another little skitter of nerves, of awareness of his closeness, brought her up short. “We need to talk about Crystal,” she said quickly.

      “Sure. Right.” Mitch’s smile disappeared. “Let me lock up Face-off again.”

      “If you don’t mind.” The animal might be smiling, but she didn’t need paws on her good silk blouse.

      He put the dog in the laundry room, and Jenny quickly recovered her composure.

      He came back into the kitchen. “Okay, time to talk. Would you like to sit down? Would you like a cup of coffee? Hey, how about some breakfast? I bet you didn’t have breakfast, and if the kids have left any cereal, or eggs, I could take a stab at frying a couple of eggs—”

      Even the thought of something frying in the morning was enough to send her looking for the bathroom. “Thank you, but I’m fine.”

      It occurred to her that Mitch might be nervous, too. But he had little reason to be. He had Crystal, and this incident, bad as it had been, would be hard to prove. The girl’s e-mail had arrived at Kyle Development yesterday, a few hours before the door had been shut on orders of the bankruptcy court. Lord only knew where her computer had gone. Besides, she was pretty sure this one incident wouldn’t be enough to get a judge to change custody.

      “Would you like to sit here or in the family room?” Mitch asked now.

      Was he stalling? “Here’s fine,” she replied.

      “Oh, okay, now about that coffee…” His voice trailed off as he stood in the kitchen, looking around with a slightly bewildered expression on his face. “Did you clean up?”

      “A little.”

      He frowned. “You didn’t need to do that.”

      “Somebody needed to.”

      The frown got deeper. “I was going to handle it.”

      She felt her eyebrow rising.

      He noticed. “Okay, we’ll skip the coffee and get right to it.” He came over to the table and took the chair opposite hers. “You’ve obviously got your back up about this. I understand you were upset, and I know the trip up here isn’t easy—I just made it myself two weeks ago. I feel bad you felt you had to come, and I sure wish Tommy hadn’t left the phone off the hook all night long, or you could’ve called, and a five-minute conversation would have taken care of everything.”

      His voice picked up speed. “The kitchen was a mess this morning. But we weren’t expecting visitors.” His back was straight, his broad chest rising above the table, his hands resting, palms down, on the surface.

      She was very aware of him, but she forced herself to respond calmly. “It’s none of my business how you live, except that it has an impact on Crystal.” Her own voice was crisper than his. His had had a sort of reasonable, aw-shucks quality to it, as if he was inviting her to make light of what was a very serious situation. “This is a very serious situation,” she told him. She sounded good and prim, just like her mother, but good and prim was called for in a…serious situation like this.

      A line formed between his eyes.

      “I don’t think the kitchen was actually unsanitary, but added to the real problem here—”

      “Crystal is okay,” he said quickly.

      “This time, but that’s not the point. There are, as I see it, two points here. First, that the boys were too rough with her. Either they haven’t been told what the rules are for playing with a little girl, or they disobeyed them.”

      He started to speak, but she lifted a hand and cut him off. “The other issue is more important. How is it Crystal got that upset and you didn’t know about it? She’s just lost her mother. She’s scared and vulnerable. Are you talking to her?”

      “I talk to her.”

      “Then how come you didn’t know that she was this upset? She was bleeding, she felt bad enough to send me an e-mail, of all things, and you didn’t even know about it.”

      He got up abruptly. The chair skidded hard on the floor. He turned and walked a couple of paces toward the window. Instead of looking out, he turned to face her. She realized again just how tall he was.

      “Look.” He shoved a hand into the pocket of his jeans. “It happened after school yesterday. Like most people, I work in the afternoons. It’s no different than if she got hurt after school and you were at work. It was such a nothing incident that she’d forgotten about it by the time I got home last night. She ate dinner, she did her homework, she didn’t mention a thing. I’m not a mind reader.”

      “Was she quieter than usual?”

      “Crystal’s always quiet.”

      No, she wasn’t. Crystal was a chatterer. She chatted about Barbie and books, about the sunshine and the smell of a hot screen door after a rain, about lightning bugs and princesses with diamond tiaras. “Oh, Mitch,” Jenny said softly.

      She saw him take in a breath before he turned quickly toward the window. In the little silence that followed, he noticed where she had replaced the drapery. His hand ran along the tieback in a gesture that seemed oddly vulnerable. And that vulnerability mixed her all up inside. One part of her wanted him uncaring, unfeeling, so that she’d have to find some way to take Crystal back with her.

      She shook her head to clear her thoughts. Mitch wasn’t about to give up the child, so Jenny had to set him straight.