Forever Grace (8 page)

She’d called him Sean.

He was still absorbing that—and trying to wipe a second silly grin off his face—when Josh and Annabelle came down the hallway. Annabelle spotted Sean and broke into a trot, making a beeline for him.

“Raff owie,” she announced, holding a stuffed toy aloft.

Sean looked to Grace for translation.

“Her giraffe is hurt,” Grace said. “She wants you to look at it.”

Sean accepted the animal and chuckled. One entire foreleg was covered in adhesive bandages sporting Spiderman in varying poses. He glanced at Josh. “Your handiwork?”

Josh ignored him, looking sideways at Grace. “She kept saying
big owie
,” he said. “It took six bandages before she was happy.”

“A small price to pay for peace,” Grace assured her nephew, tugging him in to drop a kiss on his head. “Especially this early in the morning. Thanks for looking after her for me.”

“Raff owie,” Annabelle said again.

Sean handed the bandaged critter back to her. “Giraffe has a very nice owie,” he agreed. “Josh did a good job.”

“Man owie.” Annabelle patted his cast, then pushed aside the pant leg flapping along its length. Blue eyes gazed up sadly. “Man owie. No spyman.”

“She’s sad because you don’t have—”

“Spiderman,” Sean finished. “Yes, I got that.”

“Josh can draw one on your cast for you,” a new voice offered. “He’s really good at it.”

Lillian, the pig-tailed girl from the night before, climbed up on the stool beside Grace. Her other sister—Sage, he remembered—hid behind her, peering at him with those great, dark-fringed eyes. They both wore expectant expressions. Josh, on the other hand, retreated to a position behind his aunt, who stepped in smoothly to cover his obvious discomfort at the suggestion—and to rescue Sean from having to find a polite way of declining the offer.

“Maybe another time, Lilly,” she said. “Right now, Mr. McKittrick needs to sit down and put his leg up while Josh and I try to get his cottage unlocked for him.”

Saved by a break-in operation. Sean reached for his crutches.

“I’ll come with you.”

Grace snorted. “And what, watch? In your bare feet?”

Damn. He’d forgotten about the barefoot thing.

“Besides, I need Josh’s help and I can’t leave the girls alone,” she pointed out, “So you’ll be far more help if you stay here to watch them for me.”

She downed the rest of her coffee in one long swallow, set down the cup, and added dryly, “That way I know you’re
all
safe.”

“Funny,” Sean muttered.

“Truth.” She slid off the stool and nudged Josh. “How about it, kiddo? Feel like crawling through a window for me?”

Sean followed them to the mudroom, hampered by the unforgiving throb in his leg—and by Annabelle’s insistence on clinging to one of his fingers as he gripped the crutches. Grace shot him a sympathetic look as she slipped into her jacket.

“We’ll be as quick as we can,” she said. “I’ll bring back your pain meds for you, and then we’ll get you home where it’s quiet.”

He nodded. He had no more argument left in him. “That would be nice.”

She tugged open the door, and she and Josh stepped outside into the early morning light.

“Side window,” Sean called after them. “The small one. It opens onto the bathroom.”

Grace responded with a wave of one hand. Then Lilliane closed the door and the gazes of all three girls turned to him.

Annabelle produced a second small stuffed creature from the pouch on the front of her pajamas. She held it up hopefully. “Bunny owie?” she asked.

“AUNT GRACE?” JOSH’S VOICE CAME
from behind her as they trudged along the path to Sean’s cottage. “Do we have to move again?”

Grace stopped walking. She took a deep breath and turned to her nephew. Meeting his worried gaze, she wrestled with the desire to protect him from more worry—and the knowledge that she couldn’t. With all Josh had been through, all he’d known, he’d see through false reassurances in a heartbeat. She couldn’t afford to have him question her honesty. But she could—and did—weigh her words with care.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I hope not, and I’ll do everything I can to make sure that doesn’t happen, but I can’t promise anything, Josh. You know that.”

His wire-framed gaze slid away from hers, dropping to the path between them. Grace reached out to squeeze his shoulder.

“As soon as we get Mr. McKittrick back into his cottage, I’ll call Luc. He’ll know what we should do.”

“Will you tell me what he says?”

“Of course. No more secrets, remember?”

It had been their special pact, hers and Josh’s, when Juli brought the kids to live with her. She’d seen how damaged Josh was, then, and how much he needed to talk. As much as she’d needed to hear what had been kept hidden from her. No secrets. Not if she’d wanted to help her sister.

And even that hadn’t been enough.

Her nephew nodded. He lurched forward and slid his arms around her in a fierce embrace, his face buried against her shoulder. Grace hugged back, equally fierce, and swallowed against the lump lodged in her throat—a tangle of grief, worry, responsibility, and overwhelming love. Josh stepped back.

“I’m good now,” he said, blinking too fast.

Without comment, Grace dropped a kiss on his forehead and then turned back to the path.

Getting Josh into Sean’s cottage turned out to be remarkably easy. The bathroom window consisted of double-paned vinyl sliders, loose enough in their tracks to be pushed up with the flats of Grace’s hands and then wiggled free. Josh was light enough for her to boost, and in short order, he had his head and shoulders through the opening. The toughest moment came when the rest of him disappeared with an ominous, hollow thud.

“Josh? Josh, are you all right?”

No answer.

Grace stretched up on tiptoe, clinging to the windowsill and straining to peer inside. “Josh!”

“I’m okay,” came a muffled response. “I just fell into the tub.”

“Are you hurt?”

“I don’t think so. No. I’m fine.”

Relief made her arms shaky. She released the ledge and settled back on her heels again. “All right. Good. Now go open the door for me, and then we’ll get Mr. McKittrick.”

She replaced the windows in their tracks, and then went around to meet Josh at the door. He sported a large, purpling goose egg on his forehead. Grace swept his hair back to examine it, wincing.

“Ouch. That has to hurt.”

Her nephew shrugged. “Not too much.”

“Still. Put some ice on it when we get home, all right?” Grace stepped into the cottage and found what she was looking for just inside the door. She scooped up the single, untied running shoe, then hesitated. Should she get a sock, too? He’d be more comfortable…

She shook her head at the idea of going into his room and through his personal things. Not a chance. He’d endured an entirely shoeless journey last night; he’d survive a sockless one today. His pain meds, however, were another story.

“I’ll be back in a second,” she told Josh, who waited on the deck, rubbing his forehead.

As she’d suspected she would, she found a pill bottle sitting in the open on the kitchen counter. With no kids in the house, Sean had no reason to hide it. She returned to the door, checked to be sure it remained unlocked, and as a last thought, took the key from the hook above the light switch. She needed Sean McKittrick out of their cottage and into his own, and she was taking no chances on any more delays.

“Success!” Grace called out as she and Josh stepped back into their cottage. She slipped off her shoes and headed for the giggles she could hear in the living room. “You can finally go home and get that rest you came for, Mr. McKitt—”

She stopped short, surveying the room in dismay mixed with a tinge of horror, taking in the collection of stuffed animals scattered across the floor and piled around Sean on the couch. Lilliane and Sage followed her gaze and exchanged looks. Their smiles faded. The mound of toys beside Sean shifted as Annabelle wriggled out from under them. There were so many, Grace hadn’t even seen her niece in their midst.

So many, in fact, that it looked as if every stuffie the girls collectively possessed was there. And that was a
lot
of stuffies.

Seventy-two of them, to be exact. Of every size and type imaginable. Grace knew, because she’d counted them when she’d packed the entire lot for transport to the cottage, not having had the heart to deprive her nieces of that small comfort in the midst of the chaos they’d faced.

“Bunny owie.”

Annabelle joined her, holding up a yellow rabbit in one hand. Grace took it from her. A neat cast of masking tape covered one of the hind legs.

“Fwog owie.”

The toddler pressed a smiling green frog into Grace’s other hand. It, too, wore a cast.

Grace’s gaze went back to the living room disaster area. Little bits of masking tape decorated the coffee and end tables. She looked at the animals piled around Sean. Then at him.

“
All
of them?” she asked. Behind her, she heard Josh smother a laugh into a snort.

“Ahh…” Sean cleared his throat, guilt sliding across his expression. “Things kind of got away on me.”

“You think?”

“And I may owe you a roll or two of masking tape.”

“Three rolls,” Lilliane corrected. “Because Annabelle wanted all her animals to have casts like Mr. McKittrick, and then she wanted to do ours, too.”

“All of them,” Grace said again. A statement this time.

“I take full responsibility,” Sean said. Then, with a grimace, he added, “I had no idea two-year-olds could be so loud when they don’t get their own way.”

Staring down at the frog and bunny in her hands, Grace tried to wrap her head around the idea of seventy-two casted animal legs. Or rather, how she was ever going to get that much masking tape
off
seventy-two animal legs. Fuzzy ones. Her lips twitched. She pulled them straight, digging deep for the modicum of severity the occasion seemed to require.

“Right,” she said, directing a pointed gaze at the three main culprits, each in turn. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’m going to take Mr. McKittrick back to his cottage before he causes any more trouble—”

Lilliane and Sage giggled, and Grace’s heart melted a little. Sage? Giggling? In the presence of a virtual stranger, and a male one at that? That alone was worth seventy-two masking tape casts. She blinked back a sudden sheen of tears and made herself frown—but not too deeply.

“And you two,” she continued, “will put all the animals back where they belong and then pick up every little bit of tape. Before breakfast. Understood?”

Both girls nodded, and Lilliane sighed. “Yes, Aunt Grace.”

She turned to Josh, who looked like he might burst if he held in the laughter much longer. “You’re in charge. Oatmeal for breakfast.”

Valiantly maintaining a semi-straight face, Josh nodded. “Yes, Aunt Grace.”

Grace handed the frog and bunny back to Annabelle, then took the shoe from Josh that he’d carried back from the other cottage. As the two older girls scrambled to gather up armloads of stuffies, she dug the pill bottle out of her pocket and dropped it on Sean’s lap before she cleared a spot on the coffee table for herself.

“I really didn’t mean for it to get so out of hand,” he said.

“Uh huh.” She sat down.

“Hold on.” He narrowed his eyes. “You’re not nearly as put out as you’re letting on, are you?”

She nodded at the bottle in his hand. “You might want to take one of those before we head out. Assuming you didn’t take more of the codeine?”

“You’re very good, you know. You had me fooled. And no, I didn’t take anything.”

“More importantly, I have
them
fooled.” Grace tipped her head toward the cleanup operation. “Can you imagine the mayhem if they knew how funny I thought they were?”

Sean chuckled, a warm sound that wrapped the two of them in an intimate cloak of shared conspiracy. Grace sat a little straighter and gave the pill bottle another pointed look.

He twisted off the cap and dumped two tablets into a palm. She raised an eyebrow. He recapped the bottle and held it out for her inspection.

“Up to two,” he said, pointing to the directions. “Given that I’m about to make a second hike through the woods, the two idea seems wise.”

He downed the tablets before she could speak. She sighed.

“And given that you’ve just taken two heavy-duty painkillers on an empty stomach,” she observed in a dry voice, “we should make that hike sooner rather than later. Before you have to crawl home.”

“Damn.” Sean made a face. “Didn’t think that one through, did I?”

Grace handed his shoe to him as she studied the fatigue lining his face. “I don’t imagine you’re thinking about much at all besides sleeping in your own bed right now.”

He gave her a wan smile. “The thought may have crossed my mind once or twice.”

He crossed his good foot over the cast to put the shoe on. A muscle quivered at the corner of his jaw. Grace put a hand over his and took back the shoe. Without speaking, she lifted his foot and guided it to her lap, then slipped on the shoe and laced it up.

“Thank you,” Sean said.

She set his foot on the floor and reached to retrieve his crutches. “Give me a few minutes to look after the kids, and then we’ll leave.”

“You still sure it was wise to take two of those things?”

Sean swayed on his crutches, trying to bring one Grace into focus out of the three before him. They weren’t very cooperative.

“The instructions said one or two,” he reminded her. Them.

He blinked twice. The three Graces stayed.

They sighed. “Yes, but it might have been better to wait until you were home before taking the second,” they suggested.

Sean considered the idea. Then he grinned. “Too late.”

“You are so hammered, it’s not even funny.”

He giggled, disproving the latter part of her statement.

The Graces rolled their eyes. “Come on. Let’s get you into the cottage before you keel over. I don’t have a hope in hell of getting you off the ground in this condition.”