Hard to Resist - By Kara Lennox Page 0,20
much pain, unable to help.
The ambulance took off, with mother and baby apparently fine. Ladder truck 59 stayed behind with the children until a couple of police cruisers were able to pick them up and figure out where they ought to go.
The oldest of the children, a little girl, latched onto Ethan for some reason. “Is my mama okay?” she asked.
“Sure, she’s great,” Ethan replied, hoping it was true. “And she’s gonna bring home a new baby brother.”
“Phooey, I wanted a sister. All I got’s brothers.” And she stomped off.
Tony, who’d been listening to the exchange, laughed. “Ever the charmer, Basque.”
“Yeah, I’m batting a thousand with the little ones.”
“Speaking of which, how’re things going with Kat—really? And who paid for the pizza?”
“We didn’t have pizza. She had to pick up Samantha, which meant I had to get lost.”
“The kid really doesn’t like you?”
“Looks that way.”
“Well, at least they’re living in your backyard. She’ll get used to you.”
“I don’t know. This situation is just temporary, until Kat can get back on her feet and find a better place.”
“So make sure her apartment is so nice, she can’t find a better place. Put in the new kitchen. Paint, wallpaper, install new curtains—do it all.”
Ethan had been planning to fix up the apartment anyway, but not all at once. Still, Tony had a point. The nicer he made Kat’s living space, the less likely it was that she would want to leave.
And it wasn’t just his attraction to Kat that made him want to keep her there. He liked the idea of being able to watch over the two of them. They seemed so alone in the world. Yeah, there was an ex-husband, but where was he when Kat and Sam had been in the hospital?
Ethan understood how hard it was for a single mom. His mother had lost her husband to cancer when Ethan had been just a baby, and she’d never remarried. She’d had little education and no particular job skills, but she’d worked her way up at a soft-drink bottling facility, leaving him with her parents and taking the night shift so she could be home for Ethan during the day. They’d lived in a shabby little neighborhood near an industrial park, but she’d kept their two-bedroom house neat and clean as a church.
Though she was now a senior manager and could afford to live somewhere else, she wouldn’t have dreamed of moving. She was the one constant in that shifting community, the one everyone went to for help and advice.
Gloria Basque would approve of Ethan’s determination to help Kat and her daughter.
* * *
“DO I HAVE TO GO to school?” Samantha asked the following morning, as Kat braided Sam’s hair into two long pigtails. “I want to stay with you.”
“You know how important school is,” Kat explained for the third time. She believed, and Virginia had agreed, that it was important to return Samantha to her regular routine as soon as possible. “And I have to work.”
“I could go to the office with you.”
“Oh, Samantha. I wish you could. But you already missed one day and you don’t want to get behind, do you?”
She sighed. “No. But I think you love the StrongGirls more than me.”
“You know that’s not true,” Kat said. “I love you more than anyone in the world. We’ll do something special together tonight, just us girls.”
“Can we get our nails done?” Samantha asked hopefully. A few months earlier, Kat had treated herself to a manicure, and the manicurist had painted Sam’s nails, too. Sam had enjoyed the attention.
Manicures weren’t really in the budget right now. But maybe Kat could buy some nail polish and they could play beauty shop and do their own nails. “I’ll see what I can work out. But right now, we need to hustle if we don’t want to be late.”
“But I don’t want to go to school.”
Back at square one. “Sweetie, sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to do. That’s just part of life.”
“But what if our house burns down while I’m gone?”
Aha. At last Samantha had gotten to what was really bothering her.
“Honey, that isn’t very likely.” She didn’t want to say it was impossible, because it wasn’t. “No one around here is going to leave a cigar burning.”
“But what if the school burns down?”
Kat hugged her daughter close. “Sam, I know you’re scared. But the school has fire alarms and sprinklers and, and…” She couldn’t think of anything else. “Can you try not to worry?”