Trouble With Harry by Katie MacAlister Page B

along that task.”
    Juan snorted something that Harry interpreted as disagreement. He pushed his spectacles up and tried to look like a supportive, confident husband. “We just have to trust that she knows best about these things. Where is she, do you know?”
    Juan shrugged. “That is what I do not know. She was here an hour ago, telling us that we must set places for the diablitos , and then she left.”
    Harry tugged at his lower lip as he thought, then left the dining room. Perhaps Plum was having a rest before dinner. Perhaps she was spending a quiet hour in the room he had given over as her sitting room. Perhaps she was with Thom or India and Anne. Perhaps she was lying naked in his bed, waves of ebony hair surrounding her, waiting to entrap him in their silken strands… He shook that last image out of his head and went to search for his wife.
    ***
    He found her locked in one of the gardening sheds, filthy, hungry, and absolutely furious.
    â€œHarry!” she shrieked when he opened the door to the shed, and fell into his arms in a most gratifying manner, trembling and shaking with what he assumed was horror and shock.
    Once again his wife showed her unexpected depths.
    â€œWhere are they?” she growled, pushing himself back from his chest. “Where are those little…little…”
    â€œDevils?”
    â€œYes! Exactly! Devils! What a very good word that is. Apt, too. Very apt.”
    She was magnificent in her fury, inky hair tumbling down from its once tidy braid, her eyes flashing with promised retribution, her cheeks pink with emotion. And she was all his, every last delectable morsel of her.
    Morsels he was perilously close to losing unless he calmed her down and made her believe the children did not routinely lock people into garden sheds as pranks.
    â€œThey have been sent to the nursery without their suppers.”
    â€œGood,” Plum snarled and pushed past him to freedom, trying to tidy herself as they walked through the overgrown garden back to the house. “They don’t deserve the nice dinner I planned. They locked me in there, Harry, trapped me with all the spiders and beetles and slithery things.”
    Harry tutted and murmured sympathetic noises as he slid his hand around her waist, ostensibly to help her walk, but really because he just liked touching her.
    â€œMcTavish, the very same McTavish that I had just given a kitten to, lured me into the shed, then escaped out through the narrow space in the corner as the others locked me in.”
    â€œUngrateful little monster.”
    â€œThey’re all ungrateful. They spurned my overtures of friendship, positively spurned them!”
    â€œThey don’t deserve you, they really don’t,” Harry said soothingly, then could have bitten his tongue. The last thought he wanted to put in her mind was leaving him.
    Plum froze for a moment at his words, then resumed her way to the house at a slower pace, one more given to deep thought. “Perhaps I was overhasty in my judgment. They’re not bad children, not really.”
    Harry thought it best not to comment on that since he was a fairly honest man.
    â€œTruly, I believe they are more spirited than anything else,” Plum said thoughtfully, the fire in her lovely dark eyes dying down to a mere smolder. “Spirit in children is something to be hoped for.”
    â€œAs it is in a wife.”
    Plum turned her big velvety eyes upon him. “Yeeees,” she said slowly, a faint frown between those glorious straight brows. She bit her lower lip, sending a flash of heat to Harry’s groin as her small white teeth toyed with that delightful little pink lip. “I wouldn’t want you to think I wasn’t up to the task of mothering such high-spirited children. I am, I was just taken by surprise by their—”
    â€œNefarious plot to frighten you?” he suggested, having no false impression of just what were the