Daring to Trust the Boss (Harlequin Romance)
Page 19
Daniel could only hope one of the neighbors had heard the ruckus and would have the good sense to call for help.
“Patricia?” he called. “Patricia Marsh? It’s Daniel Riverton, your neighbor from downstairs.”
He heard that little whimper again. The layout of the apartment was identical to Kevin’s, so he got his bearings, moved swiftly past the kitchen and down the short hallway. He burst into the living room. His every step seemed to stir clouds of something off the floor.
The children, obviously identical twins, sat in complete darkness on a brightly patterned sofa by the window, peering at something they held between them.
“Don’t be frightened,” he said. One of them glanced up at him with a look that appeared defiant, not the least frightened.
He wasn’t sure about kids’ ages, since children were the segment of the population that, thankfully, he had the least to do with. He thought maybe these little girls were four or five.
They were dressed in identical white nighties, but that was where any perception of innocence ended. Their hair was black, wildly curly, long and tangled. They looked like children who had been raised by wolves.
As if to underscore that perception, one lifted up her bright red hand, berry-stained like her face, and licked it.
“Where’s your aunt?”
Despite the fact the layout of the apartment was identical to Kevin’s, Daniel found himself feeling disoriented by the mess. It seemed as if it had snowed inside. That white fluff was everywhere. It covered the floor, and floated in little clumps. A closer glance showed him dozens of envelopes were scattered, like so much debris, among the disarray.
Just off the living room, in the dining room alcove, in the middle of that sea of mail and white fluff, was an overturned dining chair.
With a mummy attached to it. Again, the scene was so surreal, he felt disoriented, his mind grappling with what was going on.
Then mummy whimpered.
Daniel raced over and dropped to his knees. All that was visible through one tiny slat in layers and layers of white—toilet tissue?—were the most incredible eyes he had ever seen, as midnight blue as the heart of a pansy, fringed with dark lashes that had teardrops that sparkled like diamonds clinging to them.
He said a word out loud that he was pretty sure you weren’t supposed to say in front of children.
Even ones who looked like little ruffians straight off the set of Oliver Twist.
Copyright © 2014 by Cara Colter
ISBN-13: 9781460325711
DARING TO TRUST THE BOSS
Copyright © 2014 by Linda Susan Meier
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