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СКАЧАТЬ she jogged back down the steps, opened the car door then unhooked the girls from their boosters. “Come on. You can wait inside while I gather some things.”

      She shouldn’t care what some broodingly handsome, interfering FBI agent thought. Besides, the man seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth. Probably undercover somewhere, she thought, sticking his nose into some other poor woman’s business.

      She had seen no signs of him over there since her birthday the week before when he had come knocking at her door, accusing her of being an unfit mother.

      He hadn’t really, she reminded herself. She had reacted far out of proportion to what had no doubt been well-intentioned advice. When she’d had time to cool down—and time for her terror to fade—she appreciated his warning and the reminder to be more careful with her daughters.

      Later that evening over birthday cake and pizza she had reminded both girls about their family’s safety rules. Don’t ever talk to strangers; don’t ever give your name to a stranger; don’t ever take rides from strangers; report any strangers to an adult. She had to walk the same fine line every parent confronted, between scaring the girls to death and instilling a necessary sense of self-preservation in them.

      They seemed to have gotten the message without destroying their natural gregariousness. The night before, Gaby had even started to strike up a conversation with a woman in the grocery line then stopped in midsentence and asked her mother if she knew the other woman or if she was a stranger, and if she was a stranger, could Allie please find out her name so Gaby could finish telling her about the baby kittens she’d seen outside the store?

      She supposed she owed Gage McKinnon an apology for reacting so strongly to his advice, even though her own sense of self-preservation warned her she should stay as far away as possible from such a dangerous man.

      But how could she apologize to him if he was never home? His late-model SUV hadn’t been parked in the driveway since that morning a week earlier and his windows were tightly closed, even though a warm spell had hit Utah in the last few days. Not only had the windows not been opened but the curtains hadn’t so much as twitched an inch in seven days.

      She didn’t want to be curious about his whereabouts but she had to admit she found herself watching out for his tall, muscular frame wherever they went. She didn’t know if that funny flutter in her stomach at the idea of seeing him again stemmed from fear or anticipation.

      She wrenched her mind from her dratted neighbor and focused on the girls. “Find a few things to take with us today while I call Ruth, all right?”

      She watched them go, Gaby chattering with excitement about all the things she was going to take and Anna trailing dutifully along behind, as usual.

      Love for these two sweet children crept up on her and completely took her breath away, as it sometimes did. She would have died if she lost them, literally would have shriveled up and faded away into nothing. They were her heart, her soul, her life. Everything.

      She wanted to hate Jaime’s parents for what they had tried to do. At first when she had awakened in the hospital and been served with the paperwork petitioning for custody of the girls because of her condition, she had been both livid and terrified. For a long time her emotions had seesawed between fury and fear as the case had worked its way through the courts.

      But now she couldn’t manage to summon much emotion toward them but pity. Joaquin and Irena DeBarillas had failed miserably with their only son, had lost him long before he decided to come to the States to study medicine and had met and married her when he was a resident at the hospital where she worked.

      Did they really think they could regain through their granddaughters what they had destroyed with Jaime?

      Over her dead body.

      She pitied them, knew they were lonely. But she would still be damned before she let them get their hands on her little girls.

      Allie dialed Ruth’s office number and waited through eight rings before hanging up. The answering machine must be busted again. She’d learned Ruth had little patience with gadgetry and didn’t check her messages often anyway. She also didn’t carry a cell phone, so now what was Allie supposed to do?

      She had to drop by the office on her way to the first property anyway to pick up the master key. If Ruth wasn’t there, she could always leave her a note, she supposed.

      She went to prod Gaby and Anna along just as she heard the doorbell. For one crazy instant, she thought it might be her neighbor and her heart began a low, urgent drumming.

      It wasn’t Gage McKinnon, she saw as soon as she opened the door, but her employer who stood on the porch, thin and brisk and competent.

      “Ruth! I just tried to call you. I’m so glad you stopped by!”

      “Oh?”

      “Yes.” Suddenly she felt nervy presuming on her employer’s kindness this way. But she also couldn’t bear the thought of sending Anna and Gaby to a place they didn’t feel comfortable, not when their life was in such tumult anyway.

      “Um, I’m afraid Dora Cochran is not working out. Would you object if I took the girls with me to the houses I’m cleaning today since they’re all empty? They can be very well behaved and won’t get in my way or slow me down, I promise.”

      Ruth looked thoughtful. “I don’t see why not. Actually, that’s one of the reasons I stopped. I wanted to ask if you’re interested in another job, one where you might not need day care for the girls.”

      “What kind of job?” she asked warily. She didn’t necessarily enjoy cleaning houses but it paid the rent with a little left over, and Ruth hadn’t asked any questions about her background.

      “You told me you’ve had some medical training.”

      “Yes.” She would love to find a nursing job but she would have to be licensed to legally work and she didn’t know how to go about that while living under a false name.

      “A renter of mine was in an accident last week. He’s coming home from the hospital in a wheelchair the day after tomorrow but won’t be able to get around on his own for a while. He asked me if I knew anybody who could cook and clean for him, run him around to physical therapy, that sort of thing. I thought of you.”

      “I’m not a licensed nurse in Utah, Ruth.”

      “I know that. A home care nurse will stop by to check on him, so you would only have to be around to help if he needs it. Pay’s a few dollars more an hour than you get now and you could keep the girls with you.”

      Excitement pulsed through her. If she were making a few dollars more an hour and didn’t have to pay for day care, she could add even more to her small security cushion. And it would be so wonderful to spend all day with Gaby and Anna.

      She was almost afraid to hope things could work out so well and felt a pang of guilt for benefiting from some other person’s misfortune.

      “What happened to the poor man?” she asked.

      “Job-related injury. He was hit by a truck. Crushed against a concrete wall, really, by a man he was trying to arrest.”

      A terrible suspicion slithered to life, and Allie glanced over the hedge again at the cottage next door. “He’s СКАЧАТЬ