Exhaustion, pure and complete, seeped through Reid Foster’s body. He leaned against the wall in the Lennoxes’ upstairs hallway, let out a bone-weary sigh and hoped the girls were as sound asleep as they’d appeared. The prior week and a half had taught him that one or the other—sometimes both—would fall victim to unquenchable thirst within minutes of their bedroom light going out. Sometimes, they just wanted another hug.

      Either way, he figured he’d wait right here for a bit. Just in case.

      Erin and Megan were scared, and rightly so. They’d already lost their mother, had already learned that even parents can get hurt, or sick, and go away forever. His heart wouldn’t allow him to do anything other than care for them the best he could. Most days, that meant rushing from work to pick them up and bring them home, so they could exist in familiar surroundings, with their toys and their own beds to sleep in.

      But Lord, he was tired.

      During the winter months, his job as a ski patroller often demanded extended hours filled with physically draining, challenging work. Toss in the care and well-being of two frightened children, along with visiting Parker whenever he could, and Reid was running fairly scarce on energy. Especially tonight.

      With forewarning of the storm, which was now raging outside, and completing the necessary preparations, work had started early and ended late. When he’d arrived at the next-door neighbor’s house to collect the girls, he noticed they were more high-strung than normal. Soon enough, Reid discovered that they’d watched some tearjerker of a family movie about several children who were unexpectedly orphaned.

      The neighbor had clued in to Reid’s disapproval and had apologized, stating she hadn’t realized the plot of the movie until the girls were engrossed. At that point, she felt she would’ve done more damage by not allowing them to finish watching it. Reid didn’t know about that, but the next hour of the evening had then been filled with one question after another.

      Seven-year-old Erin, the elder of the two, who looked to be growing into a near replica of her aunt Daisy—both in personality and, other than the color of her eyes, appearance—had asked who would take care of her and Megan if their daddy died like their mommy had?

      Initially, Reid was at a loss. Honesty, he decided, was the best route, so he’d—once again—explained that all indications stated that Parker was out of danger and on the road to a full recovery. And he was, though from what Reid understood, Parker had another surgery facing him, followed by months of physical therapy.

      Five-year-old Megan hadn’t said a word, just sat there and watched Reid with her sad, fearful brown eyes. She’d looked so lonely that he’d picked her up and put her on his lap, where she snuggled against his chest and gripped his shirtsleeve as if it were a life preserver.

      Refusing to let the rest of her question go, Erin had jutted out her chin—a mannerism that, again, had Daisy written all over it—and asked, “But if something happened to Daddy, who would take care of us? I don’t want to be in a f-foster home.”

      Damn that movie. “Sweet pea, that would never happen,” Reid had said, and he’d meant it, but the truth was that he had no idea what Parker’s plans were if such a crisis ever occurred. He could, however, guess at the likeliest candidates.

      He started with Parker’s parents, Charles and Clara Lennox, who had retired to Florida several years earlier, and then moved on to the girls’ maternal grandparents, who lived in Boston. While he knew Erin and Megan had a good relationship with both sets of their grandparents, neither answer fully satisfied the elder Lennox daughter.

      With a quietly contemplative expression, she’d asked, “What if they can’t? Who then?”

      Reid had fumbled for a second before naming their aunt Daisy, not fully believing that Parker would trust the care of his daughters to someone who was a virtual stranger, but unable to latch on to another person that would make sense.

      Saying Daisy’s name aloud—something he rarely did—caused him a fleeting spasm of pain, of loss…a little bewilderment, along with a good, solid dose of anger.

      At Daisy, for not giving them a chance before taking off. At himself, too, for keeping silent on the very same news that had sent her running. He should’ve told her the truth about her paternity when he learned of it, and not decided to wait until after they were married.

      Perhaps if he had, she would’ve leaned on him, trusted in him and their relationship, instead of bolting and never looking back. To this day, she had no idea that he could have saved her from her mother’s ill-timed confession. No one, not even Parker, knew about the argument he’d overheard between Clara and Charles Lennox the week before the wedding.

      That was a secret he still kept.

      So, yeah, he’d kicked himself over his misguided actions. But he couldn’t undo them. And Daisy had made the decision to leave him and their future without so much as a conversation. In his estimation, that made both of them wrong and neither of them blameless.

      But Reid was a practical man, and as the years had piled up on one another, he’d learned to keep the past where it belonged. Mostly, this mindset had proven successful.

      Mostly wasn’t always, though, so mentioning Daisy as a possible guardian for the girls evoked the same mixed bag of reactions he’d become resigned to dealing with. As usual—at least for the last long while—those feelings dissipated as abruptly as they’d appeared, and Reid had returned his focus to the little girl on his lap and the one standing directly in front of him.

      “Listen to me, angel,” he’d said, purposely speaking in a slow and authoritative voice. “I will never let you live in a foster home.