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СКАЧАТЬ before she batted his hand away.

      “So tired,” she whispered.

      “Okay, let’s get you to bed.” He carried the bowl to the sink to wash it, but his dad took it from him.

      “Take care of her,” he said with a jut of his jaw toward Emily.

      Salem led her upstairs to his bedroom and left her there while he went to the closet in the hallway to get fresh sheets. When he returned to his bedroom, Emily had stripped to her underwear—plain white cotton panties and bra.

      He could probably wrap his fingers around her waist. There was a time when he’d craved her tight little body, but not tonight. Every part of Emily had been stripped down to bare essentials.

      “Do you have a spare T-shirt?” She pulled back the covers.

      “Of course.” He took one out of his dresser then turned his back while she finished undressing. He heard her climb into bed.

      “Wait.”

      She stopped with her knee on the mattress and watched him warily, her strange blue eyes with the odd hazel rings huge in her drawn face.

      “I need to change the sheets.”

      She made a sound—a cross between a raspberry and an old-fashioned pshaw—and finished scrambling under the blankets.

      The second her head hit the pillow, she closed her eyes.

      By the time Salem returned the clean sheets to the closet and came back to the bedroom, Emily was asleep.

      He grabbed a T-shirt and flannel pants, and washed up and changed in the bathroom. When he finished, he laid a fresh towel and facecloth on the counter beside the sink and hoped neither of the girls used them in the morning before Emily got up, or before he could warn them he had a visitor.

      From his supply of spare toiletries he kept under the counter—toothpaste, deodorant, tissues—he grabbed a toothbrush, unwrapped it and did a double-take. He held a child’s toothbrush in his hand. With a sick sensation, he realized he was still buying his girls small toothbrushes when they were no longer children. They were adolescents.

      He placed the foolishly small brush onto the facecloth. He also needed a fresh bar of soap, but couldn’t find any under the counter. They were all out. He headed toward his younger daughter’s room. She owned a collection of small soaps.

      The light bleeding around the partially closed door of his older daughter’s bedroom caught his attention. He pushed it open and said, “Hey, kid, time for lights-out.”

      Aiyana slept in a tight fetal ball on top of her bedsheets, her fingers curled over her shoulders—an egg with hands and feet. Where were her blankets?

      “What the heck?” They were a tangled mass in the corner. He picked them up, straightened them and covered her, tucking them close around her body until they cocooned her, as he used to do when she was little.

      She used to giggle and say, “Make me a mummy, Daddy.”

      She didn’t laugh with him these days. She no longer called him Daddy, but he still thought of her as his little baby, a child who was growing up too fast.

      He stared down at his daughter. No, she wasn’t a child. She was becoming a woman, too quickly. He thought of those children’s toothbrushes he’d been buying. He knew Aiyana went to the store and bought her own feminine products. Yes, she was becoming a young woman.

      He’d missed turning points in his daughters’ lives, and that made his chest ache.

      When had he gotten so out of touch with them? With life around him?

      Salem’s ambition to be an architect, and his part-time school studies, were admirable, but his children had grown up while he’d had his head buried in one book after another, studying for tests and writing papers. Had his ambition harmed his children?

      When he finished tucking her in, he kissed her forehead and said softly, “Good night, Eternal Blossom.”

      “Night, Daddy,” she whispered, but as asleep as she was, probably had no idea that she had. She would certainly forget by morning when she’d be prickly as a porcupine again, as she’d been for the past year.

      He had no idea how to deal with her. All he could do was give her the creature comforts—food, clothing, a roof over her head—and hope it was enough.

      Satisfied that she was warm and safe for the night, he left the room, turning out the light and closing the door behind him.

      He checked in on Mika, who slept as though she hadn’t a care in the world. A turtle-shaped lamp on her bedside table sent a soft glow around the room, highlighting her collection of raccoon statues that friends and family had given her every birthday and Christmas since she was old enough to talk, to express her desires, which had been early.

      There was nothing shy about his Mika. Intelligent Raccoon.

      On her dresser, she kept a bowl of tiny soaps and bubble bath capsules in different shapes and sizes. Mika wouldn’t mind if he gave one to Emily. She’d inherited a generous spirit from her mother. Annie had been screwed up in many ways and her drug use was out of control at the end, but her generosity had been amazing.

      For a split second, to his astonishment, he missed Annie, especially the good parts. Sure, she’d been neurotic at times, but she’d had a heart of gold. They hadn’t loved each other, but they had tried hard for respect.

      For Emily, he chose a pink heart-shaped soap, because he was just that foolish. In case she might want a bath instead of a shower, he also took a gold bubble bath bead in the shape of a star.

      Emily Jordan. His shooting star, here today and gone tomorrow.

      He leaned forward and kissed Mika’s forehead. She still smelled like a kid, not like the perfume he’d detected on Aiyana.

      He turned off the light before he left. She liked to fall asleep with it on, but she was a heavy sleeper. She wouldn’t need it for the rest of the night.

      Salem smiled. No trouble with Mika yet, but then, she was only thirteen. Maybe adolescent hormones hadn’t kicked in yet.

      Back in the bathroom, he placed the soap and bath bead beside the ridiculous toothbrush. Was it enough? It had been years since there’d been a grown woman in the house—four years since Annie’s death, and many more years since they’d had a guest. This wasn’t really a guest, though. It was only Emily.

      That thought brought him up short. There wasn’t, never had been, and never would be anything only about Emily.

      With one finger, he touched the pink heart soap that smelled like roses, and imagined her using it. He shook himself out of his foolish, romantic reverie, turned out the light and stepped into the hallway. Romance and Emily in the same thought? Dangerous.

      “You sleeping downstairs?” His dad stood on the landing.

      “Yep.”

      “Good night, then.” His father entered the bedroom next to Salem’s.

      Salem СКАЧАТЬ