“I’m not exactly in line for a potential parent of the year award. But I’ll be damned if I could live with myself if I turned them over to someone they didn’t know.”

“I know,” she agreed unhappily. “Especially now, Rafe. I don’t think either child understands what’s happened yet. Aaron seems particularly confused. They need someone familiar in their lives, someone they already care about and trust, someone who had first-hand knowledge of their lives with Janet and Jonathan.”

“So they go with one of us,” Rafe murmured, and turned to face her. His eyes glinted with a speculative light, and his tone was thoughtful. “Or both of us.”

“Pardon?”

“We don’t have to come up with a permanent solution this instant, just a temporary one. You feel you can’t handle the kids, and so do I, but we agree we’re not about to leave them with strangers.”

“Yes…”

“They’ve just had their world rocked to hell. They need two parents.”

“Yes…” Why did she have the feeling that a slow-rolling rock was picking up momentum on its course down a darned long hill?

“I don’t know how I can manage to get time off, but I will. If we took them to your place in Washington, you could keep your job, and I could watch over the boys. For a short time only, of course. But they’d have both of us there, and we’d have the chance to live with them, know them, get them through these rough first weeks without Janet and Jonathan. And in the meantime, we’d both be in a better position to make long-term decisions about what’s best for them.”

“Wait a minute,” Zoe said desperately. And Rafe obligingly waited while she struggled for something to say. “I don’t see…I mean, obviously we can’t…” She took a breath. “There’s no way that arrangement would work, and anyway, wherever you live has to be better for kids than where I live.”