Forever Grace (13 page)

“And just whom would you suggest?” Grace scowled back. “The guy who’s laid up on crutches, recuperating from a major injury? Or should I call out the forest gnomes?”

Sean regarded her with raised eyebrows. “Forest gnomes?”

She grimaced. “Sorry, that was unnecessary.”

“Maybe,” he allowed. “But it was still pretty funny.”

Unexpected gratitude flashed through her eyes, and she muffled a snort. “It was more snarky than anything, but thank you for being so nice about it. I guess I
am
a little tired.”

“Then let me—”

A shake of her head cut him off. “As much as I appreciate the offer, I really will be fine.”

“Pigheaded,” he muttered a second time. Then he heaved an exaggerated sigh, taking the sting from his words. “I’ll get those keys for you.”

Grace put a hand out to his bare forearm. “Let me.”

Sean stared down at her fingers, and she snatched them back. Damned good thing, too, because it turned out that skin on skin—hers on his, anyway—had a rather odd effect on his balance. He lifted his head.

“Table beside the bed,” he said, and then he tried not to watch the sway of her hips as she crossed the living room.

As predicted, removing Annabelle from the premises wasn’t an easy job. The instant Grace scooped her up from the couch, the toddler’s bottom lip gave an ominous quiver, and Sean braced himself for the ear-piercing screech he knew was coming.

The little girl didn’t disappoint.

Grace grimaced as she rejoined him by the sliding glass door, shrieking toddler in arms and keys clutched in hand.

“Sorry for the commotion,” she yelled above the noise buffeting between them. She started to pry the nature magazine from Annabelle’s clutches. The toddler’s volume doubled.

Sean shook his head. “Keep it,” he yelled back. “It’s an old issue.”

“Are you sure?”

“Annbell s’ay
here
!”

He grimaced. “Quite.”

Grace tried and failed to hide a smile. She blocked a small hand headed her way. “We’ll leave you in peace, then,” she shouted, “and I’ll try to keep us out of your way from now on so you can get that rest you came out here for.”

“Annbell s’ay man!” The toddler threw the magazine on the floor and out both hands to Sean, her blue eyes overflowing with tears and genuine, heart-wrenching sadness. “S’ay man!”

Grace adjusted her hold, tucking the little girl into her side even as Sean wrestled with the urge to reach for the child. To add his insistence to hers—albeit more quietly, perhaps—that they stay and let him help ease the lines of strain etched around her aunt’s eyes.

“Not today, sweetie,” Grace told Annabelle. “The man needs to rest.”

The toddler’s howls resumed. Grace sent Sean a rueful look and raised her voice again. “Still think we’ll have a bear problem around here with all this noise?”

He made himself smile. Kept his hands locked on the crutches. “More likely she’ll keep every bear in a hundred-kilometer radius at bay.”

“That’s what I figured, too.” Grace stepped out of the cottage and onto the deck. “Well. Thanks again, Sean. Look after yourself.”

“You, too,” Sean said. He leaned against the doorframe to watch their departure. The slender aunt who had taken on so much, the toddler still wailing to stay with the man. When Grace looked over her shoulder from edge of the woods, he raised his hand in a last farewell, then slid the door closed and turned back to his cottage.

His empty, deafeningly silent cottage.

Damn.

GRACE LEANED HER HEAD BACK
against the sofa cushions and closed her eyes. Thank God Annabelle had finally fallen asleep this afternoon. Last night had been the third in a row of dealing with teething, and Grace didn’t know how much longer her body would hold out. It felt as if her brain had detached from the rest of her, watching from a distance as she went through the motions of caring for Julianne’s family. How in the world had her sister managed all those years? How would
she
manage if—

The usual mental door slammed closed on the thought. She couldn’t go there. Not yet.
Deal with Barry first, the rest of your life after that.
It was the only way she might stay sane.

Might.

Lifting her head with more effort than should have been necessary, she peered suspiciously at the huddle of children at the kitchen table. The three of them were supposed to be working on a writing exercise, but they’d been whispering between themselves for the last five minutes, casting furtive glances in her direction whenever they thought she wasn’t looking. Something was up. The question was, did she have the energy to figure out what?

Before she could decide, Lilliane broke away from the group and came to stand before her, hands folded in the prim manner she had when she was about to ask for something.

“Aunt Grace, may I please bake cookies?”

Normally, Grace wouldn’t have hesitated to give permission. Lilly might only be eight, but she was already an accomplished baker—far better than Grace herself—and required only minimal supervision around the stove. But still…all that huddling for the sake of cookies? She raised an eyebrow.

“Is there some special occasion I should know about?”

Lilly’s soft gaze slid away. “Noo…we just want cookies. Raisin ones.”

“I see. Do we have all the ingredients?”

Pigtails flopped enthusiastically in response. “I made sure they were on your list the last time we went to town.”

“And you’re equally sure there’s nothing else I need to know about these cookies?”

Hesitation, and then a negative shake of Lilly’s head.

“We’ll help her make them,” Josh offered, urging Sage forward. “And we’ll clean up, too. You can even take a nap, if you’d like. I know you were up again last night. You can use my bed, and I’ll look after Annabelle if she wakes up.”

Understanding dawned, curving Grace’s mouth into a smile that pushed away some of the weariness. They were trying to put together a surprise for her. How like them—and how awful of her to suspect anything. She should know better. She did know better, because not a single one of the three had so much as stepped near their boundaries in the entire month they’d been with her.

Apart from the stuffed animal incident, that was, and they’d had help with that one. She smiled at the memory of Sean—

She halted that line of thought, too, and focused instead on the bone-deep craving for the feel of a pillow beneath her head, and blissful, uninterrupted sleep…

“You know what, Josh? I’m going to take you up on that.” Grace levered herself up from the couch. “But wake me in an hour, all right? I don’t want to nap too long or I won’t be able to sleep tonight.”

That should give them enough time to put a batch of cookies into the oven and tidy up after themselves.

Josh and Lilly exchanged a glance, and then he nodded. “Sure, Aunt Grace. One hour.”

When Grace woke on her own to long shadows across the ceiling, she knew, instantly and without a doubt,that she’d slept longer than the specified timeframe. Far longer. She groaned at the thought of how much difficulty she’d have getting to sleep that night, then snorted. Really? Given the probability she’d be up another dozen times
during
the night, she was worrying about the getting-to-sleep part?

She sighed and swung her feet to the floor, then straightened out the covers to her nephew’s high standard of neatness. She could just picture them out in the kitchen, shushing one another now that they’d heard her stir, waiting for her to come out and see their surprise. She smiled.

But when she opened the door, absolute silence reigned. No voices, no toddler’s feet thudding across the floor. Grace’s smile faded. She peered down the hallway to where all the other doors stood ajar. Annabelle was definitely up, and it was definitely too quiet in the cottage for that.

She padded down the hallway to the living room. Empty.

The kitchen beyond was equally deserted. It also looked as if a minor tornado had blown through, opening cupboard doors and scattering bowls and various baking ingredients across the counters in its wake. She crossed to the sliding glass doors. No one on the deck. No one on the lawn that stretched down to the lake. Concern prickled along the back of her neck. What the—

Barry
.

Her knees buckled under the weight of the thought, and her brain shattered into a million fragments of fear and fury. Christ. Barry had found them. Come in while she was asleep and taken them. Taken the kids.

Leaden limbs wanted to fold beneath her. She forced them to carry her into the kitchen. Swept the cell phone off the top of the fridge. Headed for the mudroom and her rubber boots, the quickest footwear she could don.

Maybe she could still catch him. Maybe if she drove fast enough and he didn’t have too much of a head start—

Luc. A touch of her thumb on the cell phone’s touch screen brought up the contact list. Luc would know what to do. She reached for the door and then jumped back as it swung open for Josh, narrowly missing her nose.

She stared. Her nephew’s eyes widened behind his wire-framed glasses. In his arms, Annabelle grinned a wide, toothy grin and held out her hands to Grace.

“Mama!” she shouted.

“A-Aunt Grace,” Josh stuttered. “You’re up.”

Grace didn’t answer. She couldn’t. She was too busy wrestling with equal desires to sweep both children into a hug, collapse in sheer relief, and tear a broad strip off Josh for taking at least a decade off her life.

She took a breath. Then another. Then a third. Only then, her entire body quivering, did she reach to take Annabelle.

Chubby arms rewarded her with a choke-hold on her neck that Grace had to fight not to return. She shifted her niece to one hip and planted a kiss on a cool cheek that suggested the little girl had been outside for a substantial time. Then she turned her gaze on her nephew.

“You scared the life out of me.”

She tried to keep her tone neutral, but her nephew’s already thin frame shrank into itself a little more.

“I didn’t mean to. I thought you were still sleeping.”

“When I woke up and couldn’t hear any of you, I thought—I thought—” Grace’s words choked off, her throat tightening against the mere idea. She blinked back tears.

Josh’s eyes widened and filled with his own tears. He put a hand on her arm. “No. No, Aunt Grace, we’re fine. We’re all fine.”

She nodded. Annabelle squirmed in her too-tight grip, and she forced herself to relax. “I’m glad. But you know the rules. No one goes outside without telling me, if only so I don’t have heart failure, all right?”

Josh’s gaze slid away. Grace frowned.

“Josh? What’s going on?”

“Nothing!” Seeming to realize his denial was too vehement, Josh lowered his voice and gave a shrug. “I was just coming in to clean up the kitchen, that’s all.”

“Me down,” Annabelle demanded. “Me down, Mama!”

Grace set the wriggling bundle on the floor. Was it her imagination, or was Josh deliberately keeping himself between her and the open door? She stepped to the right. He shuffled sideways. Nope. He was blocking her, all right.

She put her hands on his shoulders. He resisted, then, ducking his head, allowed her to move him to the side. She stepped into the opening and looked out. Sage sat on the top step, wrapped in a blanket from the living room, her eyes wide with guilt as they met Grace’s. Lilliane was nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Lilly?” she asked.

Neither Josh nor Sage answered.

Grace swiveled on one heel and fixed Josh with a glare. “
Now
, Joshua Alexander Walsh. Where is your sister?”

Josh swallowed, looking miserable. “At Mr. McKittrick’s,” he whispered. “She took him cookies.”

“She
what
?”

“She took him cookies. To ask him a favor. But it’s okay, because I checked for bears first, and then I watched her go all the way along the path. Enough leaves are gone to see his cottage now. Look! And Sage is waiting for her to come back. She’s going to call me when she sees her again.”

Grace reached inside and snatched her coat from its hook. She tugged it on. Poised to head out the door, she gave her nephew the fiercest look she had ever directed at him, hardening her heart when the poor boy nearly collapsed in on himself.

“I want that kitchen cleaned by the time I get back,” she said. “And keep Annabelle out of trouble. Sage, inside.”

Her middle niece jumped up and scurried past her, pressing against the far doorframe to avoid contact. Grace set her jaw, resisting the urge to draw both kids in for a quick, reassuring hug. She closed the door with a distinct bang behind her and went in search of Lilly.

BALANCED ON HIS CRUTCHES AND
wiping away the last of his shaving cream with the towel he’d looped around his neck, Sean looked through the sliding door. The beaming, pigtailed girl on the other side of the glass waved at him with one hand. In her other hand, she clutched a foil-covered plate. Sean lifted his gaze to search beyond the deck, but no one else stood within sight. He pulled the heavy door aside.

“Hello, Mr. McKittrick,” Lilliane said cheerfully. “Is your leg feeling better?”

Sean raised one eyebrow and furrowed the other. He rubbed a hand over his freshly shaved jawline. “Umm…a little bit, I suppose.”

“That’s good. I brought you cookies.” Lilliane held aloft the plate. “They’re still warm. May I come in?”

Sean backed out of the way without comment, and she stepped inside. She shoved the plate at him.

“Could you hold this for a moment, please?”

Sean did as requested, and she stooped to remove her shoes. She straightened again.

“Thank you,” she said, taking back the plate. “Do you want me to put them in the kitchen for you?”

“That would be fine,” he heard himself say as he peered outside again. Still no one. He frowned. Surely Grace hadn’t let her come on her own after his bear warnings.

The little girl carried the cookies through the dining area and set them on the counter, the plate connecting loudly with ceramic tile.