Page 26 of Courting Catherine
“An eye on them?”
“Oh, they’re no trouble at all.” She beamed at him, then down at her grandniece and grandnephew. “Jenny, don’t bite your brother. Calhouns fight fair.” Unless they fight dirty, she thought. “I’ll be back before you know I’m gone,” she promised, easing past him.
“Coco, I’m not sure that I—”
“Oh, and don’t forget about the séance tonight.” She hurried down the steps and left him to fend for himself.
Jenny and Alex stopped wrestling to stare owlishly at him. They would fight tooth and nail but would unite without hesitation against an outside force.
“We don’t like babysitters,” Alex told him dangerously.
Trent rocked back on his heels. “I’m already sure I don’t like being one.”
Alex’s arm was around his sister’s shoulders now, rather than her neck. Hers slipped round his waist. “We don’t like it more.”
Trent nodded. If he could handle a staff of fifty, he could certainly handle two sulky children. “Okay.”
“When we went back to Boston last summer for a visit, we had a sitter.” Jenny eyed him with suspicion. “We made everybody’s life a living hell.”
Trent turned the chuckle into a cough. “Is that so?”
“Our father said we did,” Alex corroborated. “And he was glad to see the back of us.”
The infant profanity was no longer amusing. Trent struggled to keep the burn of anger out of his eyes and merely nodded. Baxter Dumont was obviously a prince among men. “I once locked my nanny in the closet and climbed out the window.”
Alex and Jenny exchanged interested glances. “That’s pretty good,” Alex decided.
“She screamed for two hours,” Trent improvised.
“We put a snake in our babysitter’s bed and she ran out of the house in her nightgown.” Jenny smiled smugly and waited to see if he could top it.
“Nicely done.” What now? he wondered. “Have you any dolls?”
“Dolls are gross,” Jenny said, loyal to her brother.
“Off with their heads!” Alex shouted, sending her into giggles. He sprang up, flourishing his imaginary sword. “I’m the evil pirate, and you’re my prisoners.”
“Uh-uh, I had to be prisoner last time.” Jenny scrambled to her feet. “It’s my turn to be the evil pirate.”
“I said it first.”
She gave him a hefty shove. “Cheater, cheater, cheater.”
“Baby, baby, baby,” he jeered, and pushed her back.
“Hold it!” Trent shouted before they could dive for each other. The unfamiliar masculine tone had them stopping in their tracks. “I’mthe evil pirate,” he told them, “and you’re both about to walk the plank.”
He enjoyed it. Their children’s imagination might have been a bit bloody-minded, but they played fair when the rules were set. There would have been any number of people he knew socially who would have been stunned to see Trenton St. James III crawling around on the floor or firing a water pistol, but he could remember being closed in on rainy days himself.
The play went from pirates to space marauders to Indian rampage. At the end of a particularly gruesome battle, the three of them were sprawled on the floor. Alex, rubber tomahawk in hand, played dead so long he fell asleep.
“I won,” Jenny said, then with her feather headdress falling over her eyes, cuddled against Trent’s side. She, too, in the enviable way of children, was asleep in moments.
C.C. found them like that. The rain was patting gently at the windows. In the bath down the hall, a drip fell musically into a bucket. Otherwise there was only the sound of gentle, even breathing.
Alex was sprawled on his face, his fingers still clutched over his weapon. In addition to bodies, the floor was scattered with miniature cars, defeated action figures and a few plastic dinosaurs. Avoiding the casualties, she stepped inside.
She wasn’t exactly sure what her feelings were at finding Trent sleeping on the floor with her niece and nephew. What she was certain of was that if she hadn’t seen it for herself, she wouldn’t have believed it.
