I said I didn’t think it mattered if you knew.” His jaw hardened and a small muscle popped in his square jaw, near his ear. “And don’t do that again. Put words in my mouth. I may not be president of the PTA, but I love my kids.”

“Then why don’t you have any pictures of them? Why don’t you have any of their artwork framed? Where are their books and toys—”

“I don’t like clutter.”

“What about them? What about what they like?”

“Pardon me?” He was on his feet, towering over her.

Her heart raced, blood roaring in her ears. He didn’t just look like a savage with the fire’s flickering flames casting a glow over his hard features, he sounded like a savage, too. But she wasn’t intimidated. She’d been through far too much in life to be intimidated by an eccentric mountain man. “You never once mentioned them to me in a week of working here. I had no idea that those two bedrooms I was dusting every day were your children’s rooms. I had no idea that two eleven-year-olds would be showing up here on the nineteenth for their Christmas holidays.”

“Clearly their arrival has upset you.”

Harley’s lips tightened. Her heart thudded uncomfortably hard. “No. They haven’t upset me. You have upset me.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you. You are painfully out of touch as a father, more worried about a young cow than your eleven-year-olds, who arrived in Marietta after an all-night Greyhound bus ride after a train ride, as well a lift from a local sheriff who found them at the bus station in downtown Marietta. He thought they were runaways, and then they told him they were yours.”

“Your point?”

“You should have known they’d left the school. You should have known they were missing and you should have been out there looking for them the way you were searching for that damn cow.” Her chin jerked up, her eyes stinging as she fought emotion she didn’t want to feel. “I don’t know why they came home early, only that they did, and they were desperate and determined to come home.” She blinked hard, trying to clear her eyes before tears welled. “And you should have been here, to greet them. You should have been the one at the door. Not another housekeeper.”

His gaze narrowed. He studied her for a long moment, dark lashes lowered over penetrating eyes. “Quite the expert, aren’t you?”

His scathing tone wounded. She winced, but wasn’t surprised he was angry. He was a man, a thirty-nine year old man, and of course he wouldn’t like being criticized.

“I don’t belong here,” she said, by way of an answer. It wouldn’t serve to get into an argument. She’d leave, find another position. It was the only way. She couldn’t be here, with the kids, not like this. It’d tear her apart. Break her heart which was only starting to heal. “I’ll call the agency in the morning—”

“You dislike kids that much?” he interrupted harshly.

She flinched. “I don’t dislike kids.”

“Then why leave? You told me just this afternoon you liked it here, you were happy here.”

“That was before.”

“Before what?”

“Before I knew about...” Her voice faded, she swallowed hard. “The twins.”

“If you’d known about them... what? You wouldn’t have taken the job here?”

She hesitated, knowing that the truth would damn her.

But the job was no longer the same position she’d accepted.