by Peggy Jaeger
While Sarah and I decided on the best food to serve, I rolled out pastry dough and started a batch of scones, muffins, and cinnamon rolls.
No rest for the wicked. Or New England bed and breakfast owners.
Chapter 11
By eleven, long after Sarah had left for the day and my cleaning and serving staff had all gone home, I sat down in my private kitchen and glanced at the text Cathy had just sent.
—I don’t have the words to tell you how much what you did for me today means— she wrote. —I’m blessed with sisters I love beyond all else. You and Colleen made this the best day of my life, and that’s the plain truth. I don’t know what I did in a former life to deserve the two of you but whatever it was, I’m thankful and I love you.—
I swiped a tear from the corner of my eye and typed back —I love you, too, and I adore your husband. Now, stop texting and go kiss the man. See you when you get back from Hawaii.—
A string of kissing-face emojis blew up the screen.
After making sure everything was locked up for the night, I started up the stairs to my private quarters, tired, but smiling, when my phone pinged.
—Are you still up?— Lucas asked.
—Yeah, why?—
—I’m outside. Can I come in?—
Lucas? Here, at this time of night?
Worried, I typed —Use my private entrance.—
I hit send, then went where I directed him to meet me. I rarely used the private entrance located in the back of the inn and just down the staircase from my apartment. It was easier to come through the main part of the house. I opened the back door as Lucas pulled out of his vehicle and came toward me.
He’d changed from his tuxedo into a button-down shirt and jeans. He’d been magnificent in his formal wear, but I much preferred this casually dressed Lucas Alexander. He wore jeans as if they’d been hand tailored for him, the faded denim hugging him in all the right places. I knew if I touched the material it would be as soft as a sigh covering all that hard, toned muscle beneath.
“Is everything okay?” I asked as those long legs pounded up my porch steps.
“Fine, why?”
“I thought you were bringing me bad news or something.”
He stopped in front of me, angled his head, and peered down at me, his brows pulled in. “I told you I was gonna call before I left with Fiona, remember?”
“Call, yes, not show up out of the blue.”
“I show up out of the blue all the time, Maureen.”
“Not when it’s almost midnight.”
A tiny grin tugged at one corner of his lips. “Well, that’s true. You gonna let me in, or are we gonna stand out here all night?”
I stepped back so he could enter. Once he was in the little entryway leading up to my apartment, I shut the door behind me and asked, “Are you hungry?”
He nodded.
I started to walk back toward the kitchen when he grabbed my hand and spun me around. One look at his eyes and I knew his hunger wasn’t for a few insomnia cookies. He stretched one arm around my waist and tugged me flat up against the hard length of him. I arched back so I could see his face, and when I did, I knew without a doubt those cookies were staying in their tin tonight.
“I thought you were hungry?”
That tiny grin twitched as he lowered his head to mine. With a gentle caress that sent every nerve fiber in my soul firing, he trailed a finger down and across my cheek, stopping at the corner of my lips. “I am.” His low, deep voice melted my insides. “Ravenous, in fact. I may fall over in a faint if I don’t get something to satisfy me. And soon.”
When I grinned up at him, he traced the outline of my lips with the tip of his finger. Forget firing. My nerve endings were exploding like a raging, spewing volcano.
“You’d better not,” I told him as I stretched up on my toes. “You’re too big for me to catch. I’m strong, but I’m not hulk-catching strong.”
His forehead creased as he cocked his head. “Hulk-catching?”
I nuzzled his chin, then kissed the hard edge of his jaw. “You know what I mean.” I slid my arms up and around his neck and stretched up even further. “Now, let’s get you something…nourishing.”
Right before I touched my lips to his, he grinned.
I’d had fantasies for almost twenty years about this man’s kiss. As a tween, when I hadn’t known the mechanics of kissing, Eileen and I had pretend-kissed our pillows, trying to figure out where our heads should be, our hands, etc. We never did discover how to do it properly. I mean, who could? It was a pillow, for goodness’ sake. I’d been given a firsthand—and nose—education about the aroma of my mother’s fabric softener, but not much else in the way of useful knowledge.
My first real kiss had been behind the Heaven High bleachers after a student rally, and the boy had been even more unschooled than I was. After a gross session of tugging tongues and dripping spit, it would be another four years before I got any further training. My college boyfriend had been older, worldlier, and technically proficient; so much so, after college, we’d moved in together for two years with a thought toward marriage. The nuptials died a horrible death when Eileen asked me to co-partner in purchasing the inn and my not-quite-officially-engaged-yet boyfriend told me to choose my sister or him.
Needless to say, after we broke up I’d been too involved with running the inn, then caring for my sick sister, to worry about kissing a man.
But every time I had, I’d always wondered if Lucas’s kiss would be different.
And now I knew it was.
Now I’d experienced firsthand—or mouth—what it truly meant to be seduced. Lucas kissed with his whole body, his entire being. From torso to touching torso and hipbone to hip, his body enveloped mine. While his lips did wicked and sinful things to my own, his hands caressed, stroked, and glided over me as if memorizing every curve and cranny. He slid his hands along my temples and reached up to the knot on top of my head. With a swift tug of the pencil securing it, my hair fell down over his hands and the pencil dropped to the floor.
“You always wear it up,” he said, nuzzling my cheek.
“To keep it out of the way when I’m cooking and baking.” Good Lord. Was that breathless voice mine? “No one wants to find a long, curly red hair in their soup or scone, you know.”
“I like it better this way.” He kissed my temple, then moved down to my neck. His breath fanned over the column of my throat sending heated flares straight through me. “When I saw you at the church, I lost my breath at how lovely you were. Are.”
I grinned. “You said the same thing to Nanny.”
His shoulders shook under my hands as his lips slid up, then down, my neck. “I had to say something ’cuz it seemed like she knew the effect seeing you all decked out was having on me. Watching Cathy use diversionary tactics on her for so many years helped me quick-think something to say. Your grandmother loves nothing better than a compliment tossed her way.”
“No lie.”
He pulled my earlobe between his lips and gently bit down, while his hands gripped my hips. “But saying it to you is the plain truth.”
He pulled back and kissed the tip of my nose. “You did take my breath away, Maureen. You do every time I see you, whether your hair is tied up on your head and you’re wearing one of your ten million aprons with something quirky written on them”—I smiled—“or you’re dressed for a wedding.” He laid his forehead against mine and sighed. “I could stare at you all day. Every day.”
“I think you’d get bored fairly quick.”
“Never.”
I shook my head and dropped my gaze to his chest.
“Look at me,” he commanded. When I did, he asked, “Why don’t you believe me?”
“I don’t disbelieve you.”
“What, then?”
“It’s just so…I don’t know.” I shook my head, making my hair tumble into my face. Lucas brushed it back and cupped my cheeks. I stared up into those hypnotic, gor
geous, verdant eyes and told him the truth. “I never imagined you considered me anything other than a friend.”
“I’ve been thinking about you and me, like this, Maureen, for a long time. Just like I told you the other night. And we are friends. Good ones. The best relationships start when the two people in them know each other well, like you and I do.”
That one word scared me to my bones.
“Is that what this is? A relationship?”
One of his shoulders hitched. “If you want to give it a label, then sure. I’m not with anyone else and don’t want to be. Just you.” He placed a light kiss on my mouth, then one corner of his mouth kicked up. “I’m pretty sure you’re not dating anyone else, right?”
I nodded.
“And you want to be with me, correct?”
Another head bob.
“So we’re both unattached, attracted to one another, and have been in and out of each other’s lives forever. I’d say it’s about time we got together, don’t you?”
This time when he kissed me, I could taste the truth on his lips. I did want to be with him—had wanted to forever. I wasn’t going to fool myself, though, into thinking what we’d started would last. We could enjoy one another for now—God knows I’d been dreaming about it for years—but there’d be no happily ever after for us. In my mind, I was still on borrowed time, and I didn’t want Lucas to get hurt. We could enjoy and explore one another, though. There was no harm in that.
“Why are we standing here,” I asked while he skimmed his lips across my jaw, “when we could be upstairs and much more comfortable?” I pulled back and took his hand in mine. “Come on.”
Halfway up the staircase, my phone rang. Even though it was tucked in the back pocket of my jeans, the noise exploded in the quiet.
“Holy Christmas.” We stopped and I pulled the phone out. “It’s Cathy. What the heck are you doing calling me on your wedding night?” I asked when I connected.
“Get to the hospital. Coll’s in labor, and Slade said it’s going fast.”
“Oh, sweet Jesus. Is she okay?”
“Just get there.”
“I’m on my way.”
“I’ll drive,” Lucas said, tugging me back down the stairs.
One of the perks of living in a small town is it’s easy to get anywhere within the city limits fast. The bonus of Lucas flashing his strobe light as we barreled down the roads to the hospital made the trip even quicker.
Holy Mother of God Hospital sat on the south edge of town surrounded by lush woods and quiet farmland. Lucas pulled up to the emergency room entrance and double-parked his car with the hazard lights engaged.
We sprinted up the stairs to the second-story maternity ward where we found a floor-pacing Cathy and a seated Mac.
“How is she?” I hugged Cathy, astounded to feel her shaking. My usually stalwart and calm sister was anything but right now. When she pulled away from me, her hands automatically went to the bulge at her belly.
“The nurse came out a minute ago to give us an update. She said things are going as expected. What the heck does that even mean?”
“Calm down, Counselor.” Lucas pulled her into his arms when I let her go. “It means Coll is doing fine. Relax.”
“You didn’t hear Slade’s voice when he called me, Lucas.” She pulled back and glared up at him. “I’ve never heard a man’s voice shake with such terror before. It scared me to my bones and—wait.” Her eyes went to slits. “How did you even know? I only called…” She turned to me, her eyes now wide and her head tilted to an angle.
It took every ounce of courage I could muster to keep my face calm and expressionless. One single eye twitch or facial flush would signify something had been going on between Lucas and me, and she would have pounced.
“Did you two come together?”
Before either of us could answer, Slade burst through the maternity suite doors.
My brother-in-law, like my elder sister, is routinely a font of calm. Manners, good breeding, and a lifetime of living in the public eye have taught him to always maintain a controlled façade around others. But I guess having a wife in labor wasn’t something the breeding and manners rulebook had a chapter devoted to, because Slade Harrington was a man unraveling.
“Oh, thank God, you’re both here,” he cried. I understood Cathy’s statement about him sounding terrified now. His voice warbled and echoed in the empty hallway, and he must have dragged his hands through his hair a time or two because the ends stood straight up to the sky and not plastered down like they usually were. Faded sweatpants dropped down his long legs and the T-shirt covering him was ancient. He had two different shoes on, and I don’t even think he knew it. His face was devoid of all its usual color and his eyes looked crazed. “She’s screaming for you. Both. Now.” He flew back through the door, stopped, and shouted over his shoulder, “Come on.”
Cathy grabbed my hand, her anticipated interrogation forgotten. Before leaving, she spun around and kissed her now standing husband on the lips. “Don’t leave,” she commanded.
“I hadn’t intended to.” A tiny tug yanked on a corner of his mouth.
I flicked a quick glance at Lucas, who nodded.
The last thing I heard him say before Cathy dragged me into Colleen’s room was, “Don’t worry. She’s gonna be fine.”
****
“You coulda told us you were having twins, lass. ’Twoulda made shoppin’ much easier. At least they’re both girls, so they can share for a bit until I can get out to a store.”
Nanny sat in the only chair in the room, across from a sleepy, weary, and bedridden Colleen, and held her first great-grandchild. She was dressed for bed, her floor-length Irish linen robe covering her tiny body, her long hair braided and tossed over one shoulder.
At four o’clock in the morning, my sister’s hospital room exploded with people.
While Colleen had been pushing her daughters into the world, with Cathy holding one hand, me the other, and Slade at her head, Lucas had driven to the Arms and collected Nanny. He knew she would have been sorely miffed if she’d missed the delivery. Plus, since he was the one to tell her Colleen was in labor and then escort her to the hospital, I knew Nanny would give him brownie points for his consideration, something I don’t think slipped his mind.
Slade’s sister Isabella and her pediatrician husband Jack had been notified by Mac and had arrived just after the first twin came into the world, a mere five minutes after Cathy and I got into the room.
“We wanted to keep one thing about this pregnancy a secret, Fiona,” Slade told her, holding his other daughter. With a hip perched on the bed, he smiled down at his wife. “Plus, we knew you’d all worry more than you already were if we told you she was having two girls instead of one. And it wasn’t a total secret.” He eyed me. “Mo knew.”
“I suspected,” I corrected. “Colleen was too big to be having just one baby, and if she was it was a thirteen-pounder. And besides, you were the one, Coll, who let loose with the bowling ball comment. I knew then my suspicions were true.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Cathy asked. She reached out for the baby, and Slade put her into my sister’s arms.
A quick bark of a laugh had all our attention turning to the window. “Maureen’s like a vault,” Lucas said from his perch there, arms crossed over his chest, a wry smile tugging on his lips. “She never tells a secret. You know that.”
“Unlike Eileen who couldn’t keep one if you paid her,” Colleen said with a tired smile.
For a moment, the room grew silent, as, I imagined, we all thought about the sister who was absent.
“Well, now, I’m assumin’ you’ve known for a bit about the two of ’em,” Nanny said. “What have ya decided to call them, then? And please, don’t be telling me you’re gonna do what your pain-in-the-keister mother did with your names. I don’t take kindly to having to think up nicknames at my age.”
Colleen paled for a second, and I knew she was thinking abo
ut her dreaded Nanny-name of Number Two.
“Since they’re girls,” Slade said, “it was pretty easy to come up with names. You want to tell them?” he asked his wife.
She nodded.
“It’s appropriate you’re holding that little girl, Nanny, because we’re calling her Fiona Mary after you and Slade’s mom.”
Nanny never cries in public. Ever. She always says she reserves her precious tears for sad times when she’s alone. So to see her eyes fill and spill over was a once in a lifetime, if you were lucky enough to see it, occurrence.
“Ah, now, lass. Lad.” She smiled up at Slade. “It’s made this old woman’s heart fill, it has, with the honor of being this little one’s namesake.”
The baby startled and let loose with a yowl loud enough to wake the dead. While she rocked and cooed and calmed her, Nanny grinned and swiped at her tears with one arthritic finger.
“She seems aptly named,” Lucas said, his lip twitching.
The room erupted with laughter while Nanny side-eyed him, her mouth pursed. Lucas merely smiled back at her.
“What are you calling this little lovely?” Cathy asked as she handed the baby to me.
“Eileen Belle,” Slade said. “I know how much you dreaded being called Isabella when you were little,” he told his sister. “Belle seemed like a good alternative.”
Like Nanny, tears had sprung to my eyes at the honor. Isabella darted to her brother and threw her arms around him. The sound of her sniffling told us just how pleased she was.
As I rocked my sister’s namesake, I caught Lucas staring at me from across the room. Heat so scorching it could have melted metal filled his eyes. I can only imagine what was raging through his brain. If we hadn’t gotten the call about Colleen, the two of us would have been in my bed right now, and I’d bet every insomnia cookie in my tin we wouldn’t be sleeping.
A few minutes later, Colleen yawned, and Slade took it as his cue to ask us all to give mom and babies some quiet time. Kisses given, hugs performed, Isabella and Jack left first, followed by Cathy and Mac.