Authors: Sherryl Woods
“She’s fine,” Hank said tersely.
“Are you sure?” David persisted.
Tracy shot a knowing look at Hank. “I think she’s in love.”
“Mom!” The chorus of voices was incredulous. Hank could feel his skin burn.
“Tracy, I don’t think this is a topic that needs to be discussed just now.”
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Not now, Tracy.”
Jason stared from one to the other before finally sending his chair flying as he got to his feet, scowling fiercely at Tracy. “You think Mom’s in love with him? You’re crazy! She’s not out of her mind.”
“Just because you and Hank don’t get along doesn’t mean Ann can’t like him,” Tracy retorted. “Don’t be such a jerk.”
“You’re the jerk.” He slammed out of the house.
“If you and Ann fall in love does that mean you’ll be our dad?” Paul asked. “I think that’d be neat.”
Hank felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. “Whoa, everybody. Let’s slow down a minute. First of all, the way Ann and I feel is nobody’s business but ours.”
“Hey, we live here, too,” Tracy protested.
“My point is that this is something she and I have to
work out and we can’t do that if you all are watching and questioning every move we make.”
Tracy was nodding knowingly. Hank didn’t trust that smug expression one bit. “You’re in love all right.”
“Tracy!”
She grinned unrepentantly. “Sorry. I got carried away. What can we do to help?”
“Keep your opinions and your guesswork to yourselves,” he grumbled, knowing that was about as likely as shutting down the lurid speculation in the national tabloids. He began to have some sense of what celebrities went through when their personal lives got turned inside out in public.
As soon as the kids had all gone off to school, including Melissa, who was attending a nearby nursery school in the mornings, Hank left the house and walked slowly across the highway to Dolphin Reach, where Ann had her office. Though he knew all about the innovative treatment she was involved in there—it was where Todd had brought Kevin for help with his dyslexia—this was the first time he’d entered her professional domain.
A young receptionist looked up and smiled a harried greeting as she continued handling phone calls. When she was finally free, he asked for Ann’s office.
“It’s the second one on the left, but she’s not there. I think she’s down with the dolphins.”
“Is she with a patient?”
“Nope. Her first one’s not till ten.”
“Thanks.”
As he walked through the grounds and headed for the dock, his curiosity about her work mounted. What had ever given her the idea of using dolphins as a part
of her psychological counseling? Then he spotted her at the end of a dock and thought he knew.
She was kneeling on a platform that stuck out into the protected harbor, her skirt swirling around her. A brisk wind tousled her hair. Dolphins surrounded her, their built-in smiles impossible to resist as they bobbed in the water. Seeing Ann’s laughing response to their antics and knowing full well how troubled she’d been when she left the house, he began to see how the dolphins might be the perfect intermediary for a hard-to-reach patient.
“Annie.”
Her laughter died at the sound of his voice and her gaze grew troubled. “Why are you here?”
“I thought we needed to talk.”
“Not now. I’m busy.”
“You don’t have a patient scheduled for another hour. I’m booking this time.”
“Sorry. I don’t take clients with whom I have a personal involvement.”
He grinned. “That won’t work. You helped Kevin.”
He saw her fighting a smile. “Okay, so I made one exception.”
“Make another one.”
“Why should I?”
“Because the kids just made me face up to something I’ve been avoiding.”
Curiosity obviously overcame her reluctance to hear him out. “What’s that?”
“I’m in love with you.”
Ann looked stunned. And skeptical. But once the words were finally out of his mouth, Hank knew without a single lingering doubt that he meant them
and that he would do anything he had to do to prove it to her. He dropped down beside her.
“Well?” he said finally.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Aren’t you supposed to say what you feel? That’s what all those pop psychology books advise.”
She searched his face for several long seconds before she finally spoke. “I think you’re crazy.”
“Now that’s a nice professional analysis,” he taunted, amused by what even he could recognize as denial. She didn’t want it to be true, so therefore he was crazy.
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not. And, despite that panic I can see in your eyes, I’m not expecting you to admit that you’re madly in love with me, either. I’m just letting you know where I stand.”
“It won’t work. You want to be in love with me because it would take away some of the guilt.”
“What guilt? I haven’t done anything to feel guilty about.”
“But you want to.”
“Annie, if mere lust doomed us all to hell, no one would ever get to heaven. I assure you I do not feel guilty for wanting you.”
“What you really want is a short-term challenge. I can understand that. A man of your sexual appetites and past experience can hardly be blamed for following the same old predictable pattern.”
Hank felt a sense of outrage building inside him. Here he was spilling his guts, admitting to an emotion he’d never expected to feel and he was getting dime-store psychoanalysis. He was tempted to pull her into his arms and kiss that silly, crooked mouth of hers until
she couldn’t come up with another ridiculous argument, but he had a hunch she would only see that as proving her point.
He reached over and ran his finger along her jaw, then down the pale column of her neck. He watched the pulse jump as his finger drifted onto her breast, circling and teasing until the peak was pebble hard. His eyes never left hers. Desire overcame doubts in their wary depths.
“What if this isn’t a game?” he said, still caressing.
“Of course it is,” she said in a choked whisper.
He leaned forward then and kissed her, very gently, holding himself back, making her want him as badly as he wanted her.
“But what if it’s not, Annie?” he said when her breathing was ragged. “What then?”
With the question lingering to torment her, he stood and walked away.
Chapter 9
L
ove?
Hank Riley, the inveterate skirt chaser, was in love with her? No way. Uh-uh. Forget it. She doubted he even knew the definition of the word. Hell, she dealt with all sorts of permutations of love every single day and even she wasn’t sure she’d recognize it when it hit her, so how could he be so sure?
Despite her denials, though, Hank’s unexpected proclamation reverberated through Ann’s head all day long. By the end of the afternoon, her patients—even the littlest ones—were beginning to ask her if
she
was okay.
The honest answer, of course, was a resounding no. It wasn’t the one she gave them. She tried to concentrate on their problems, tried to work up some enthusiasm for the small successes she was seeing in their treatment, but all she could think about was Hank’s crazy, impulsive, misguided declaration of love.
It was absolutely the last thing she’d expected him to say when he’d come chasing after her that morning. She’d thought, despite his innumerable flaws, that he was too honest, too straightforward to use powerful words like that as part of an obvious seduction technique. Besides, the man had to know he could get her into his bed anytime he wanted her there. That was part of the problem. She was willing. He wasn’t. He seemed to have this crazy idea that he was protecting her by maintaining his physical distance, while he closed the emotional gap. At the rate he was going he would soon have her snared so tightly she’d never escape. Then when he realized his mistake, there’d be hell to pay—for both of them.
Well, it wasn’t going to happen that way, she resolved. She wasn’t interested in a commitment. She liked her life just the way it was. Taking care of six unruly, troubled children was more than enough to keep her life filled to overflowing. And, for all of his crazy protestations, she knew Hank was no more seriously interested in her than he was in having tea parties with Melissa and her dolls. Right now, living in their chaotic household was a novelty, but the fascination of family life would wear off soon enough. She was going to prove it to him.
That decided, she began to feel infinitely better. In fact, by the time she had dinner on the table, she was feeling downright cheerful and on top of things again. She felt in control.
Then Hank came in, smiled and her resolve melted. Just the sight of the man curled her toes. When he dropped a casual, husbandly kiss on her forehead, her knees went weak. When he lifted the lid on the pot
of soup simmering on the stove and murmured some appreciative comment, she went all mushy inside. This was far more serious than she’d realized. What was happening to them? Hank was the one supposedly in love. She was simply coming unglued.
With five speculative faces looking on—plus Jason’s sullen one—dinner was an uncomfortable affair. Hank did try his best to make everything seem perfectly normal. She had to give him that. She felt suddenly tongue-tied, while he asked all the right questions about school, doled out all the right bits of praise, saw that the after-dinner cleanup was organized. For a man who only weeks ago had been frozen solid at the mere thought of dealing with a bunch of children, he was doing awfully well. In fact, he was a natural. They might actually make a pretty good team.
“Hey, Mom,” David said, drawing her attention away from her own chaotic thoughts. “Is what Hank said right? Are we all going to Miami next weekend?”
She blinked and stared at him. Where had that idea come from? She looked at Hank, who seemed particularly pleased with himself.
“We’ll have to talk about it,” she said evasively.
“I think it’d be really neat,” Tracy said. “Just think of all the stores and movies to choose from.”
“And the Miami Heat,” Paul said of the basketball team. “Maybe they’ll have a game. Could we go to that, Hank?”
“If Ann agrees,” he said with unexpected and untimely deference.
She glared at him. While she’d been woolgathering, he’d gotten their hopes up. Now he’d tossed the ball into
her court. The tactics were unfair, but effective. She’d been neatly trapped.
“If Hank doesn’t mind taking all of you,” she began, but he deftly put a stop to her one hope for a reprieve before she could even voice it.
“We’ll
all
go,” he said, watching her pointedly. “We can’t go off and leave you here alone.” It sounded very noble.
“Yeah, Mom,” David concurred. “You need a vacation, too.”
“Come on, Ann. It’ll be better than a zillion miles of running,” Tracy said. “You’re always saying that even a little break is good for reducing stress.”
Ann sighed in the face of all that well-calculated concern. She was even having her own advice thrown back at her. She supposed she ought to feel flattered that Tracy had even heard her. “We’ll see. We’ll have to check everybody’s schedules to see when it would work out.”
She glimpsed the triumphant look on Hank’s face just as David said, “Oh, my gosh.”
“What?” Ann said.
“The schedule. I almost forgot to tell you. There’s a parents’ night at school.” He avoided looking directly at her when he asked, “Will you come?”
“Jeez, why do you care about a dumb old parents’ night?” Jason said with derision. “All it is is a chance for the teachers to shoot off their mouths.”
“Jason,” Hank warned in a low voice.
Ann scowled at Jason as well. “If it’s important to David, that’s all that matters.”
“Well, excuse me,” Jason said, glaring at Hank
and ignoring Ann. He took off without another word, knocking his chair into the counter in the process.
Hank looked ready to explode, but she managed to silence him with a slight shake of the head. For once, he actually listened to her. Ann vowed to have a talk with Jason later. In the meantime, though, she needed to reassure David, who was shifting in his chair, his expression embarrassed. He considered Jason to be the big brother he’d never had. Jason’s criticism had obviously hurt. He looked as though he wished he’d never made the request.
“Never mind him. I’ll be there,” she promised, reaching for the family calendar she kept posted on the refrigerator. “When is it?”
“Day after tomorrow,” he said, the enthusiasm gone from his voice.
“David!”
“I’m sorry. I forgot.”
Ann knew better. He’d probably been afraid to bring it up before now. Although David had been with her a year now, he’d been shuttled through so many foster homes that he expected this one to be short-term as well. Despite her reassurances, he still wasn’t convinced he had a permanent place in her heart. She ruffled his hair. “It’s okay, sport. It’s not a problem.”
Hank stood. “Okay, guys, everybody scoot. You all have homework, I’m sure.”
The kids scattered, but not before Tracy shot a knowing look at the two of them. Ann caught the thumbs-up signal she directed at Hank as she left.
“Nicely done,” Ann said with an unmistakable edge of sarcasm.
He grinned unrepentantly. “Do you think they suspected I wanted to be alone with you?”
“Tracy certainly did. The others were probably just grateful that you let them off from doing the dishes.”
He stared at the messy table in dismay. “Whoops. I knew there was something I’d forgotten.” He stood and dropped a kiss on her cheek.
It was casual, she told herself. Perfectly meaningless.
It set off fireworks deep inside her.
“Don’t worry,” Hank was saying as she tried unsuccessfully to ignore the sparks he’d just ignited. “I’ll get this parenthood stuff down before too long.”
“Hank, we need to talk about this.”
“About what?” he said with apparent innocence.
“Parenting,” she said determinedly. “You and me. Trips to Miami.”
“What about it?” he inquired as he ran water into the sink.