Everybody's Hero

“Then why are you?”

Taylor saw Joe gently set the boy on his feet, then stoop to look him in the eye. “I don’t have any choice, Seth,” he said softly, massaging one frail-looking shoulder. “You know that. I’ve got work I can’t put off anymore. Lots of people are depending on me to do my job, which I can’t do if I’m worried you might get hurt. It’s not safe, letting you hang around a construction site, you know? Besides, you’ll be bored out of your mind—”

“I don’t care! And I won’t get hurt, I promise! I’m big enough to take care of myself! I used to stay home alone all the time!”

Taylor’s stomach clenched at the child’s admission as Joe stood, his body language reeking of displeasure. “Maybe so. But things are different now. And I could get in a lot of trouble if I didn’t make sure you were looked after properly while I was at work. So let’s go—”

But the boy saw Taylor again and backed away, shaking his head and whimpering. Joe turned and saw her, too, the help me expression on his face undeniable.

And undeniably dangerous for someone whose sorry libido piddled on the carpet at the mere sight of wide shoulders and a nice butt. However, the guy was obviously in a bind, and Taylor was obviously going to help him because that’s what she did. Either that, or the heat was already getting to her.

“Let me guess,” she said with a smile, slipping her hands into the back pockets of her white denim shorts. “Somebody’s not exactly hot on the idea of day camp.”

She caught a flash of annoyance in eyes even darker than the boy’s, the tensing of a jaw already hard enough to break something over, both of which seemed at odds with the tenderness he’d shown the child just seconds before. And an immediate, second flash of what she guessed was guilt. “We came by yesterday, talked to the pastor’s wife,” he said. “I’m Joe Salazar. And this—” he touched the boy’s curly hair “—is Seth.”

“Yes, I know,” Taylor said softly, tearing her gaze from those treacherous, conflicted eyes and back to the child’s wary, wet ones. Lord, it was killing her not to gather the little guy into her arms and hug him to pieces. But even if doing so wouldn’t spook the poor kid, she had a real strong feeling it would take a lot more than a hug or two to ease the deep, deep sadness weighing down his small shoulders. She glanced back at Joe long enough to catch his puzzled expression. “Didi told me about you, said you’d probably be bringing Seth this morning.”

The child shifted closer to Joe, his long, spiked eyelashes canopying blatant distrust before he scrubbed away his tears with the hem of his T-shirt. That got another borderline anxious glance from his father, although Taylor gave him megapoints for not fussing at the boy or telling him to stop being a sissy, that big boys weren’t supposed to cry, like a lot of the men around here were inclined to do with their sons. And maybe because of that, or the humidity, or because her libido had nosed open the door and slipped out again, she picked up a whiff of aftershave-soaked male pheromones that damn near shorted out her brain.

Joe looked back at her, sunlight slashing across prominent cheekbones to create some very interesting shadows on his face, sharply defining a mouth straight out of an Eddie Bauer catalog. “We might have a problem here,” he said.

You have no idea, Taylor thought, only she said, “I can see that,” because she imagined the man had more pressing things on his mind than her wayward hormones. And God knows, she did. So she thrust out her hand, hoping like heck the man’s would be clammy and limp when she shook it.

As if. Still, she smiled and said, “I’m Taylor McIntyre. I run the day camp with Didi.” Then she let go of the not-clammy, not-limp, extremely male hand and smiled down at the little boy, who wore the cautious expression of someone on the lookout for fangs. “How old are you, Seth?”

Long pause. Then: “Eight.”

She squatted in front of him, trying to look as unthreatening as possible. A gust of hot, humid wind yanked a strand of curly hair out of her ponytail, tangling it in her eyelashes. “I know how scary new situations are,” she said gently, “but it sounds to me like your daddy’s got a lot of work to do—”

“Joe’s my brother,” the boy said. “Not my dad.”

Taylor’s eyes shot to Joe’s, only to meet with a guarded expression. Seth’s brother? He looked to be around Taylor’s age—in his early thirties at least—which would make the child more than twenty years younger. However, she could tell from the look on Joe’s face that whatever questions she might have would have to wait. If he would ever be inclined to answer them at all. Not that Taylor was any expert on the male thought process, God knew, but in her experience, men with stony expressions like Joe Salazar’s didn’t tend to be the most forthcoming souls in the world.

Then again, the frustrated-hand-through-the-hair gesture said plenty. “I’m sorry,” he said with what Taylor was going to accept as genuine regret, “but I’ve got a crew waiting for me, I really need—”

“Got it.” She smiled at Seth, steeling herself against the wobbly lower lip. “Okay, sweetie, let’s go inside—”

“No!”

But Joe swung the kid up into his arms and started for the building, his cowboy boots pounding the sun-baked earth. Over the standard “It’s gonna be okay, buddy” noises, a veritable swarm of pheromones drifted back to Taylor on the warm, muggy breeze.

She mentally stood aside and let them play on through, then followed Joe and Seth inside.

The place was crawling with kids.

No, seething, Joe silently amended. Like ants on a melting Popsicle. Sweat trickling down his back, he watched, vaguely horrified, as many, many short people pinballed around the dozen or so tables dotting the large, bright room’s flecked industrial carpeting. They were laughing and shrieking their heads off, acting like normal kids, making him uncomfortably aware of just how unused he was to being around kids anymore.

Just as he was uncomfortably aware of the fresh-faced, soap-scented, round-hipped redhead beside him.

“Is it always like this?” he asked.

“Actually, no,” she said, although she had to raise her voice to be heard. And step closer. Closer was not good. A paper airplane soared over their heads; a half dozen little boys swerved around them to retrieve it. Seth huddled closer to Joe’s hip, vibrating like a plucked guitar string. “Once we officially start at nine,” she said, “things calm down quite a bit.”

Joe could feel a scowl burrow into his forehead. “I don’t see a lot of adults.”

Taylor turned, her entire face lighting up into a smile that easily made it into Joe’s top ten female smiles. Maybe even the top five. “That’s probably because the kids’ve tied them up outside.”

The scowl burrowed deeper. Because it was killing him to leave Seth when he knew the kid wasn’t ready to be left yet, because the trio of lazy overhead fans weren’t doing squat to stir the hot, sullen air, because this woman and her damned top-five smile reminded him how long it had been since there’d been a woman in his life for more than ten minutes and because his body apparently had no qualms about bringing that lamentable fact to his attention.

“Just kidding,” she murmured. Dammit, she wasn’t even all that pretty, really, with her spice-colored hair yanked back into that ponytail and her pointy little nose and wide mouth and not a speck of makeup that Joe could see. But the way she looked at Seth, like it was everything she could do not to wrap her arms around him, was seriously messing with his head. And if all that wasn’t bad enough, then she glanced up at Joe, and he saw something in copper-fringed eyes that couldn’t decide if they were green or gold or gray that made him suspect she might be thinking about wanting to hug him, too. And, well—he looked away—it made him mad. At life in general and his life in particular. But most of all at himself, for half thinking he wouldn’t mind being hugged right now. Especially by a pretty—okay, fine, he’d been kidding himself about that part—lady who looked soft and smelled sweet and whose smile, it pained him to notice, edged damn close to number one every time she looked at his baby brother, as if she could see straight through to his battered soul.

“Didi—that’s the woman you talked to yesterday, the pastor’s wife?—is always here, plus me, plus at least one parent volunteer for every ten kids, and several teenagers as junior counselors. Didi and I are CPR-trained, and three of the teens have their Red Cross lifesaving certificates. For the aboveground pool outside. Building’s up to code, you don’t want to light a match for fear of setting off the sprinklers, and no chips, candy or soda allowed. How’s that?”

An exasperated breath left his lungs. “That’s fine,” he said, because it wasn’t as if he hadn’t given Mrs. Meyerhauser the third degree yesterday when he’d called, for one thing. And for another, it seemed everyone he talked to either had their own kids in the camp or knew somebody who did. Hank Logan’s own daughter was even one of the counselors. So he had no doubt Seth would be safe and well cared for here. It was just—

A whistle blast nearly stopped his heart as every kid in the room froze. “Okay, y’all,” Taylor’s surprisingly strong voice rang out as the whistle bounced back between her breasts. “Seems to me you should’ve burned off most of the excess energy by now. So Blair, Libby, April…why don’t you guys take your groups outside for a bit? And Blair, take mine, too, would you?”

The noise level sank considerably as the kids all scrambled over each other like puppies and out the two open doors at the back of the room.

“Impressive,” Joe said.

“Thanks,” she said, and she turned that smile on him, just for an instant. Just long enough to singe him right down to his…toes.

Seth tugged on his arm. His lashes were all stuck together in little spikes, and he still didn’t exactly look thrilled about being here, but at least there seemed to be a lull in the hysterics, for which Joe was extremely grateful.

“I gotta go.”

This much Joe had learned in the three weeks since Seth had come into his life. He looked over at Taylor. “Rest rooms?”

“Right over there. Follow me.”

After a mild tussle over whether Seth could go in by himself—which Joe won by reassuring the boy he’d never be more than a few feet away—his brother pushed through the door, while Taylor swung around the reception desk to extract a blank file card and fee schedule from a drawer.

“This’ll only take a sec,” she said, rummaging through a second drawer for a pen, which she handed to Joe with the card. “I just need his name and age, your name and where we can contact you while he’s here. Oh, and any allergies you might know about. Day camp hours are nine to three, generally, but we always have a few kids who need to stay until six or so—”

“I’d like to pick him up around four, if that’s okay,” Joe said as he filled out the card, tamping down the spurt of panic that he had no idea what the boy might be allergic to. “I promised Seth I’d be done work by then.”

“Four will be fine.”

Joe frowned at the fee schedule. “‘All fees are suggestions only?’” he read aloud, then lifted his eyes to hers. “What does that mean?”

“It means this is a small town and money is sometimes pretty tight. And Didi swore when she and Chuck came to Haven nearly thirty years ago and started up the camp, that she’d never turn anyone away who couldn’t pay.” She smiled again. Full out. Laugh lines around the eyes and everything. “And before you ask how she manages, let’s just say Didi has, um, connections.”

“One of those ‘the Lord will provide’ types?”

Taylor laughed. “No, one of those ‘the Lord helps those who help themselves’ types. Rummage sales, car washes, carnivals—you name it, Didi does it. And if that doesn’t bring in the funds, she has no qualms about shaming people into coughing up a donation.”

There went that damn smile again, more of a grin this time, actually, partnered by an open, direct gaze as ingenuous as a child’s. Only far more potent. At least, to a man who hadn’t spent a whole lot of time gazing into women’s eyes in the last little while. To his surprise, that grin and those eyes reached way deep inside him, way past the heaviness he’d begun to think would be a constant companion for the rest of his life, and tugged loose a chuckle.