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“All right. So Mike suggested I start a public Facebook page detailing what the nonprofit is about. Pictures of the toys we give to these kids. Maybe pictures of the toy closets in the hospitals themselves. I’d like to add pictures of the kids with their toys, but I’d have to get their parents to sign releases...”
“They probably would,” he said.
“You think so?”
“You should know better than me what a parent of a sick kid would be feeling. What would you have done if someone had given Caro a brand-new doll or stuffed animal when she was miserable in the hospital?” He looked at her briefly.
“I’d have kissed them,” she admitted. “So, okay, maybe you’re right about that. I can check with some of the parents at the hospital when we go home next week and—”
“About that...”
She looked at him for a long second or two before saying, “What?”
“Well,” he said, shifting position slightly in his seat, “I was just thinking that maybe one week here won’t be enough time. I mean, for Caroline. To get to know me, my place—hell, Texas.”
Isabelle frowned, and her stomach jumped with a sudden eruption of nerves. “We agreed on a week, Wes. I have work. Caro has school. We don’t live here.”
“You could.”
“What are you saying?” Her heart jumped into her throat and the hard, rapid beat thundered in her ears. Was he saying what she thought he might be saying, because if he was, driving down the freeway doing eighty miles an hour was an odd time to be saying it. “You want us to live here?”
“Sure. The house is huge, plenty of room, Caro could go to school in Royal and—”
He kept talking, but Isabelle had stopped listening. There was no mention of love or commitment or anything else in that little speech. He wanted them in his house, her in his bed, but he was no closer to intimacy than he had been five years ago, so Isabelle did them both a favor and interrupted him. “Wes, it’s really not the time to talk about this.”
His mouth worked as if he were biting back words clamoring to get out. Finally though, he said, “Okay. But you can think about it.”
She could practically guarantee she wouldn’t be thinking about anything else. The fact that he could just bring up the idea so casually, though, told Isabelle more than she wanted to know. He wasn’t looking for family. For love. He wanted her and Caro to be a part of his life without strings. Without the ties that would make them a unit.
Maybe she’d been fooling herself from the beginning.
“Okay,” he said, still frowning, “we’ll table that discussion for now. Instead, you can tell me if you got a chance to look through the toy catalog I gave you yesterday.”
He went from frowning to facile in the blink of an eye. She’d forgotten he could do that. Isabelle used to be fascinated by the way he could switch gears so easily. If he saw himself losing one argument, he’d immediately change tacks and come at it from a completely different direction, and pretty soon, he had exactly what he’d wanted all along.
Now, he was doing it to her. Isabelle was going to keep her guard up around him, because he was her weakness. She couldn’t let him see that she loved him, because one of two things would happen—he’d either back off as he had five years ago. Or, worse yet, he’d look at her with pity.
She wasn’t interested in either.
“I did,” she said, deliberately cheerful. “You’ve got some great things, Wes. If you’re serious about donating, we’d love to add anything you can spare.”
He reached over and took her hand, holding it in his much larger one. The heat of him swept up her arm to puddle in the center of her chest, wrapping her heart in the warmth of him. God, she wasn’t going to be able to protect her heart, because it was already his.
“Just tell Robin what you need. She’ll take care of it.”
“Thanks.” She couldn’t stop looking at him. Maybe she was storing up memories, Isabelle thought. Maybe a part of her knew that this couldn’t last and was instinctively etching him into her mind so that years from now, when she was still missing him, she could pull these images out and remember.
She only hoped it would be enough.
* * *
The following evening, Wes realized that he was in the middle of the very situation he’d been avoiding for years. He had a woman and a child in his home, and instead of feeling trapped, he felt...good.
But then, this wasn’t permanent, was it? That thought didn’t bring him the rush of happiness he would have expected. When he’d suggested to Belle that she and Caroline could stay with him, she hadn’t jumped at it, had she? So he was still looking at saying goodbye to them all too soon. His guts twisted into knots. Isabelle had only agreed to be here for a week, and four of those days were already gone.
And instead of being at home with them right now, he was here at the Texas Cattleman’s Club for a meeting. Shaking his head, he lifted the crystal tumbler in front of him and took a small sip of his scotch. Usually, he enjoyed coming into town, sitting in the lounge, talking with friends, joining in on plans for the future of the club. But tonight, he knew Isabelle and Caroline were back at the house, and he caught himself constantly wondering what they were up to while he was stuck here.
“Your head’s not in this meeting,” an amused voice noted.
