‘‘Licked my face.’’ Her eyes laughing, she took both hands and ran them up over her cheeks. ‘‘All over.’’ Grinning, she cupped her hands on Ethan’s face and fell into a game she liked to play with him. ‘‘Ouch!’’ She giggled, rubbed his face again. ‘‘Beard.’’

Obliging, he skimmed his knuckles over her smooth cheek, then jerked his hand back. ‘‘Ouch. You’ve got one, too.’’

‘‘No! You.’’

‘‘No.’’ He pulled her close and planted noisy kisses on her cheeks while she wriggled in delight. ‘‘You.’’

Screaming with laughter now, she wiggled away and dived for the boy sprawled on the floor. ‘‘Seth beard.’’ She covered his cheek with sloppy kisses. Manhood demanded that he wince.

‘‘Jeez, Aub, give me a break.’’ To distract her, he picked up one of her toy cars and ran it lightly down her arm. ‘‘You’re a racetrack.’’

Her eyes beamed with the thrill of a new game. Snatching the car, she ran it, not quite so gently, over any part of Seth she could reach.

Ethan only grinned. ‘‘You started it, pal,’’ he told Seth when Aubrey walked over Seth’s thigh to reach his other shoulder.

‘‘It’s better than getting slobbered on,’’ Seth claimed, but his arm came up to keep Aubrey from tumbling to the floor.

For a few moments, Grace simply stood and watched. The man, relaxed in the big wing chair and grinning down at the children. The children themselves, their heads close—one delicate and covered with gold curls, the other with a shaggy mop shades and shades deeper.

The little lost boy, she thought, and her heart went out to him as it had from the first day she’d seen him. He’d found his way home.

Her precious girl. When Aubrey had been only a fluttering in her womb, Grace had promised to cherish, to protect, and to enjoy her. She would always have a home.

And the man who had once been a lost boy, who had slipped into her girlish dreams years before and had never really slipped out again. He had made a home.

The rain drummed on the roof, the television was a low, unimportant murmur. Dogs slept on the front porch, and the moist wind blew through the screen door.

And she yearned where she knew she had no business yearning—to set down the basket of laundry, to go over and climb into Ethan’s lap. To be welcomed there, even expected there. To close her eyes, for just a little while, and be part of it all.

Instead she retreated, finding herself unable to step into that quiet, lazy ease. She went back to the kitchen, where the overhead lights were bright and just a little hard. There, she set the basket on the table and began to gather what she needed to make dinner.