Free Tender Loving Care by Jennifer Greene

silence—a glass-splintering, explosion-type crash. The lights went out.
    She collided with Rafe on the rush for the door.

Chapter Five
    As soon as Zoe reached the living room, she was surrounded by darkness and two frantic boys. An acrid odor of smoke permeated the room. “Good Lord! What were you two doing!”
    She couldn’t tell one voice from another in the pitch-black room, and they were both talking at once. “The lamp just fell all to pieces; I didn’t mean to—”
    “What’d you expect to happen when you threw the book at it, stupid?”
    Rafe clamped a hand on her shoulder from behind. “Keep them away from it, Zoe. I’ll unplug the lamp and change the fuse.”
    Grabbing the little ones, she tried to soothe and calm and at the same time determine just how the disaster had happened. Both boys were safely stashed on the couch next to her when the lights snapped on again, and then her eyes widened in shock at the wreckage. Rafe’s huge porcelain lamp was in shards on the floor, its shade bent grotesquely. A leatherbound textbook lay in the center of the mess.
    “All right. Who threw the book?” Rafe hadn’t taken long to return from the fuse box. Standing in the doorway, he looked like ten feet of cold male fury.
    Total silence, then “Me.” Zoe stood up, but Aaron wrapped his arms around her hips in a viselike grasp.
    “You know what’s going to happen to you, don’t you?” Rafe said sternly.
    “Yup,” Aaron said sadly.
    “And right now.”
    “Yup,” the little boy agreed again.
    “Now, wait a minute,” Zoe said frantically. “Rafe, I’m sure it was an acci—”
    “Aaron, upstairs,” Rafe ordered.
    “Yup.” Aaron quietly pried his fingers away from Zoe’s hip. Her arm tightened protectively around his shoulders.
    “You haven’t even heard what happened!” she yelled at Rafe.
    His voice was as calm and cold as the ocean in November. “I don’t need to hear a darn thing. I can see the book. He admitted he threw it. Upstairs, Aaron.”
    “Yup.” Resigned to his fate, Aaron lowered his head, ducked out from under Zoe’s hold and headed for the stairs. He climbed them as heavily as if he were old and weary.
    Zoe rushed after him, but Rafe reached the landing first.
    “Stay out of it,” he said quietly.
    “I won’t. Darn it, you can’t mean this! You’re angry, Rafe. You can’t deal with him when you’re this mad—”
    “I sure as hell can.”
    “It was an accident! ”
    “It was deliberate. And he knows it.”
    “He’s only four years old!” They were at the door to the twins’ bedroom. Startled, Zoe noted Aaron had already bent over the bed, bottom up. One might almost think he’d been through this before. She flashed a look at the child, and then at Rafe.
    His eyes were blue-black, and his jaw like iron. He was too big a man, too powerful, too strong…and all that patience he’d been famous for was gone. Rafe was flat-out furious.
    With some vague thought of protecting Aaron, she hurled herself over him. Firm hands settled around her waist and lifted her off the small trembling body.
    The trace of humor in Rafe’s voice came from nowhere. “Read that in a book, didn’t you?” he asked amiably.
    “You are not going to spank him!”
    “Seems to me I read that same book in a lit class my junior year in high school,” he continued gently. “The guy was a Canadian Mountie or something? Only these aren’t quite the same circumstances. I’d know that little boy’s fanny anytime over yours, and I’m not about to lay a hand on you. On him—you can bet your sweet petunias.”
    “The heck you are!”
    “Zoe. Try to relax.” He set her gently, firmly in the hall, and then quietly closed the door in her face.
     
    Both boys were in bed by nine. A half hour before they went upstairs, Zoe had watched Aaron climb on Rafe’s lap and regale him with a story about a lost puppy. She’d watched Rafe listen, and she’d watched Aaron laugh. Rafe had toted both