in it for a few days. Axell would never recover from the shock.
Maya shuddered at the first sight of the guest room. It looked like a hotel with its prints of English gardens and heavy draperies in polite mauve and blue pinstripes against a beige background. She supposed the cherry furniture was expensively tasteful but not the kinds of things one would let a child jump on.
"This was gonna be the baby's room," Constance said matter-of-factly as Matty stared in awe at the big bed with its stacks of pillows.
The baby's room? Maya would rather not get into that one.
Looking around at Axell Holm's ice palace, she could see rules and regulations written all over. No sirree bob, she was out of here first thing in the morning.
Constance tugged shyly at her hand. "I made a picture," she whispered.
Unable to accomplish the feat of crouching again, Maya sank onto an upholstered chair and turned Constance around to face her. "What kind of picture? May I see it?"
Constance nodded, pulled her hand free, and opened a dresser drawer. Maya caught a glimpse of a hidden treasure trove of childish objects: a battered stuffed rabbit, broken crayons, and chunks of what appeared to be plaster. Constance neatly closed the drawer before Maya could see more.
The child handed her a rumpled sheet of drawing paper. Maya could discern a baby's crib, a bassinet swaddled in lace, and a corner full of colorful toys. "How wonderful!" she cried in all honesty. For a child of Constance's age, it was a marvelously accurate piece of workmanship. "Is this what this room used to look like?"
Constance nodded.
The baby inside Maya's womb kicked in approval. Wistfully, she wondered what it would be like to have a sanctuary like this for her child. She'd hang a mobile of fairy-tale creatures over the crib, paint stars on the ceiling, stack wonderful books on the shelves...
Someday. She would do it someday. Smiling, she held the picture up against the cream-colored wall. "I think it would look good hanging right here, don't you?"
Constance's thin dark face beamed with relief. "I got tape." She ran to fetch it.
Matty crept over to hug her knee. "We gonna stay here?" he asked in awe.
She didn't believe in children sleeping with adults, but she didn't see an alternative for tonight. The bed was certainly big enough for two. She ran her fingers through his hair and smiled as bravely as she could. "Looks that way, buster. Do you think that bed's big enough for you?"
He eyed it with some trepidation but nodded slowly. "Can Muldoon sleep with us?" he asked. The cat had been sleeping in his room ever since she'd brought it with her from California.
How would she explain it to him if Muldoon never came back? How could she explain it to him if the social workers took him away?
"Muldoon's probably guarding your old room to make certain your toys don't get lonely. You're stuck with me tonight." She hugged his small body close, making mental promises to fix everything in the morning.
She wasn't a fixer by nature. That had been Cleo's role. The ever-present burden of doing everything herself swamped her, and loneliness slipped through all the cracks in her defenses.
She just needed to be strong. She had Cleo's child and the one about to be born to fill the emptiness. A life filled with children would be plenty more than enough.
Why then, did tears fill her eyes as she gazed around the antiseptic guest room and wondered how her life had come to this?
Chapter 7
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
Maya stared at the enormous stainless steel double doors of what had to be Axell's refrigerator. It looked as if it belonged in his restaurant. Where were the colorful magnets, the childish drawings, the memos of doctor appointments and whatnot that should clutter this magnificent expanse of empty steel? Her fingers itched to fill the space with color and life almost as much as if the doors were a piece of drawing paper.
All she'd wanted was a glass of milk to stave off the predawn lonelies. Painting a refrigerator wasn't on the agenda. Biting her thumbnail, she eased open the wider of the two doors. A brilliant white light illuminated the gloomy kitchen. She hadn't bothered turning on the overhead fixture because in her experience, with unexpected light creepy crawly things scattered across the floors. She preferred they scurry out of sight before she had to look