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to manage.”
    Lord, the little princess was strong. He would never have believed she could lift more than a cucumber sandwich.
    “Kit was hungry so we dug around in the cupboards. Hope you don’t mind.”
    She looked anxious, and he cursed inwardly that she’d overheard his comment to Hargreaves. How ungrateful could he be? “Thank you, Ingrid. I’m not very hungry at the moment, but it looks good.” Must be. Kit was tucking into his food as if he hadn’t eaten for a week. Breck knew his cooking left much to be desired, but hell, it wasn’t that bad. “He did get breakfast and lunch, you know,” Breck muttered.
    Ingrid smiled. She dug her fork into her food. “It’s good. Try some.”
    He frowned. She was talking to him as if he were one of her four-year olds.
    Then she saw the expression on his face and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry. Force of habit.” She removed the plate from his lap and plunked it down on the table next to him.
    Perversely, he now wanted to sample the casserole. Damn it. The woman must have done a course in psychology. Child psychology.
    He shuffled along the sofa and retrieved the plate, his head swimming with the effort. As soon as he swallowed the first mouthful, he realized she was right. It was good. It wasn’t like any canned casserole he’d ever had before. “What did you add to it to make it taste like this?” he asked.
    “Just a bit of this and that. You know, the usual stuff.”
    Well, that cleared things up. What the hell was she talking about?
    “She put in some spices and stuff, Dad,” Kit explained. His plate was clean. Breck suspected that if Ingrid wasn’t there, Kit would have licked the plate. As a matter of fact, if Ingrid wasn’t there, he would lick the plate. “I didn’t know I had any of those things in the cupboard,” he said, feeling like an idiot.
    She eyed him, delicately forking up small mouthfuls. “So who stocked your cupboards?”
    The penny dropped. “That must have been Jace on the day the Unit came here. The day you—” He stopped. He’d been going to say, “The day Kit was kidnapped and you got snotty about our having a party.” Since Kit was listening and since she was doing him a favor, he shut up.
    “Oh. That day,” she said. “It must be great to have friends like Jace. I could do with some.”
    “You don’t have friends—”
    “None who I’d let near my kitchen.” She finished the sentence quickly, with a snap.
    What was she saying? That she didn’t have any trustworthy friends? She was so hard to read. Anyway, why was he wasting his time wondering? She was a kind, helpful, okay…very pretty woman who was also his son’s preschool teacher. That’s all. And he wasn’t in the market for kind, helpful, pretty preschool teachers. He wasn’t in the market for any kind of woman, period.

Chapter Seven
Ingrid collected their empty plates. Her stomach churned with embarrassment. For one God-awful moment she had nearly admitted how lonely she was. Then she’d caught a glimpse of Breck’s face and seen his closed-in expression. He didn’t want to listen to her any more than she wanted to confide in him. But today she’d been able to help him and she’d almost misread the situation. Hell, she’d heard what he said to the doctor about her being Kit’s friend, not his. That should have told her he didn’t want her lingering around, burbling on about her life. She was an idiot.
Head down, she shoved the dishes into the dishwasher, then turned around to grab her bag and escape.
And there he was. Standing right at her elbow.
She jumped back.
“Uh, sorry to startle you. I was wondering—”
“Yes?”
“Well, I was wondering if you had any ideas about where Tania might…” He stopped. He’d probably seen the pissed-off expression on her face. She’d had Tania Kerr right up to the back teeth.
“No. That’s not what I meant to say.” He paused and looked as if the words were being dragged out of him. “I want