by Nora Roberts
It was pretty scary stuff for Zack, the champion worrier.
Their father would help them, of course. This was something Zeke, the eternal optimist, had pointed out. Didn’t they both know how to read stuff like Green Eggs and Ham and The Cat in the Hat because their dad helped them sound out the words? And they both knew how to write the whole alphabet, and their names and short things, because he had shown them.
The trouble was, he had to work and take care of the house and them, as well as Commander Zark, the big yellow dog they’d saved from the animal shelter two years before. Their dad had, as Zack pointed out, an awful lot to do. And now that they were going to go to school, and have assignments and projects and real report cards, he was going to need help.
“He’s got Mrs. Hollis to come in once a week and do stuff.” Zeke ran his miniature Corvette around the imaginary racetrack on the tree-house floor.
“It’s not enough.” A frown puckered Zack’s forehead and clouded his lake blue eyes. He exhaled with a long-suffering sigh, ruffling the dark hair that fell over his forehead. “He needs the companionship of a good woman, and we need a mother’s love. I heard Mrs. Hollis say so to Mr. Perkins at the post office.”
“He hangs around with Aunt Mira sometimes. She’s a good woman.”
“But she doesn’t live with us. And she doesn’t have time to help us with science projects.” Science projects were a particular terror for Zack. “We need to find a mom.” When Zeke only snorted, Zack narrowed his eyes. “We’re going to have to spell in first grade.”
Zeke caught his lower lip between his teeth. Spelling was his personal nightmare. “How’re we going to find one?”
Now Zack smiled. He had, in his slow, careful way, figured it all out. “We’re going to ask Santa Claus.”
“He doesn’t bring moms,” Zeke said with the deep disdain that can only be felt by one sibling for another. “He brings toys and stuff. And it’s forever until Christmas, anyway.”
“No, it’s not. Mrs. Hollis was bragging to Mr. Perkins how she already had half her Christmas shopping done. She said how looking ahead meant you could enjoy the holiday.”
“Everybody enjoys Christmas. It’s the best.”
“Uh-uh. Lots of people get mad. Remember how we went to the mall last year with Aunt Mira and she complained and complained about the crowds and the prices and how there weren’t any parking spaces?”
Zeke merely shrugged. He didn’t look back as often, or as clearly, as his twin, but he took Zack at his word. “I guess.”
“So, if we ask now, Santa’ll have plenty of time to find the right mom.”
“I still say he doesn’t bring moms.”
“Why not? If we really need one, and we don’t ask for too much else?”
“We were going to ask for two-wheelers,” Zeke reminded him.
“We could still ask for them,” Zack decided. “But not a bunch of other things. Just a mom and the bikes.”
It was Zeke’s turn to sigh. He didn’t care for the idea of giving up his big, long list. But the idea of a mother was beginning to appeal. They’d never had one, and the mystery of it attracted. “So what kind do we ask for?”
“We got to write it down.”
Zack took a notebook and a stubby pencil from the table pushed against the wall. They sat on the floor and, with much argument and discussion, composed.
Dear Santa,
We have been good.
Zeke wanted to put in very good, but Zack, the conscience, rejected the idea.
We feed Zark and help Dad. We want a mom for Crissmas. A nice one who smells good and is not meen. She can smile a lot and have yello hair. She has to like little boys and big dogs. She wont mind dirt and bakes cookys. We want a pretty one who is smart and helps us with homework. We will take good care of her. We want biks a red one and a bloo one. You have lots of time to find the mom and make the biks so you can enjoi the hollidays. Thank you. Love, Zeke and Zack.
Chapter 1
Taylor’s Grove, population two thousand three hundred and forty. No, forty-one, Nell thought smugly, as she strolled into the high school auditorium. She’d only been in town for two months, but already she was feeling territorial. She loved the slow pace, the tidy yards and little shops. She loved the easy gossip of neighbors, the front-porch swings, the frost-heaved sidewalks.
If anyone had told her, even a year before, that she would be trading in Manhattan for a dot on the map in western Maryland, she would have thought them mad. But here she was, Taylor’s Grove High’s new music teacher, as snug and settled in as an old hound in front of a fire.
She’d needed the change, that was certain. In the past year she’d lost her roommate to marriage and inherited a staggering rent she simply wasn’t able to manage on her own. The replacement roommate, whom Nell had carefully interviewed, had moved out, as well. Taking everything of value out of the apartment. That nasty little adventure had led to the final, even nastier showdown with her almost-fiancé. When Bob berated her, called her stupid, naive and careless, Nell had decided it was time to cut her losses.
She’d hardly given Bob his walking papers when she received her own. The school where she had taught for three years was downsizing, as they had euphemistically put it. The position of music teacher had been eliminated, and so had Nell.
An apartment she could no longer afford, all but empty, a fiancé who had considered her optimistic nature a liability and the prospect of the unemployment line had taken the sheen off New York.
Once Nell decided to move, she’d decided to move big. The idea of teaching in a small town had sprung up fully rooted. An inspiration, she thought now, for she already felt as if she’d lived here for years.
Her rent was low enough that she could live alone and like it. Her apartment, the entire top floor of a remodeled old house, was a short, enjoyable walk from a campus that included elementary, middle and high schools.
Only two weeks after that first nervous day of school, she was feeling proprietary about her students and was looking forward to her first after-school session with her chorus.
She was determined to create a holiday program that would knock the town’s socks off.
The battered piano was center stage. She walked to it and sat. Her students would be filing in shortly, but she had a moment.
She limbered up her mind and her fingers with the blues, an old Muddy Waters tune. Old, scarred pianos were meant to play the blues, she thought, and enjoyed herself.
“Man, she’s so cool,” Holly Linstrom murmured to Kim as they slipped into the rear of the auditorium.
“Yeah.” Kim had a hand on the shoulder of each of her twin cousins, a firm grip that ordered quiet and promised reprisals. “Old Mr. Striker never played anything like that.”
“And her clothes are so, like, now.” Admiration and envy mixed as Holly scanned the pipe-stem pants, long overshirt and short striped vest Nell wore. “I don’t know why anybody from New York would come here. Did you see her earrings today? I bet she got them at some hot place on Fifth Avenue.”
Nell’s jewelry had already become legendary among the female students. She wore the unique and the unusual. Her taste in clothes; her dark gold hair, which fell just short of her shoulders and always seemed miraculously and expertly tousled; her quick, throaty laugh and her lack of formality had already gone a long way toward endearing her to her students.
“She’s got style, all right.” But, just then, Kim was more intrigued by the music than by the musician’s wardrobe. “Man, I wish I could play like that.”
“Man, I wish I could look like that,” Holly returned, and giggled.
Sensing an audience, Nell glanced back and grinned. “Come on in, girls. Free concert.”
“It sounds great, Miss Davis.” With her grip firm on her two charges, Kim s
tarted down the sloping aisle toward the stage. “What is it?”
“Muddy Waters. We’ll have to shoehorn a little blues education into the curriculum.” Sitting back, she studied the two sweet-faced boys on either side of Kim. There was a quick, odd surge of recognition that she didn’t understand. “Well, hi, guys.”
When they smiled back, identical dimples popped out on the left side of their mouths. “Can you play ‘Chopsticks’?” Zeke wanted to know.
Before Kim could express her humiliation at the question, Nell spun into a rousing rendition.
“How’s that?” she asked when she’d finished.
“That’s neat.”
“I’m sorry, Miss Davis. I’m kind of stuck with them for an hour. They’re my cousins. Zeke and Zack Taylor.”
“The Taylors of Taylor’s Grove.” Nell swiveled away from the piano. “I bet you’re brothers. I see a slight family resemblance.”
Both boys grinned and giggled. “We’re twins,” Zack informed her.
“Really? Now I bet I’m supposed to guess who’s who.” She came to the edge of the stage, sat and eyed the boys narrowly. They grinned back. Each had recently lost a left front tooth. “Zeke,” she said, pointing a finger. “And Zack.”
Pleased and impressed, they nodded. “How’d you know?”
It was pointless, and hardly fun, to mention that she’d had a fifty-fifty shot. “Magic. Do you guys like to sing?”
“Sort of. A little.”
“Well, today you can listen. You can sit right in the front row and be our test audience.”
“Thanks, Miss Davis,” Kim murmured, and gave the boys a friendly shove toward the seats. “They’re pretty good most of the time. Stay,” she ordered, with an older cousin’s absolute authority.
Nell winked at the boys as she stood, then gestured to the other students filing in. “Come on up. Let’s get started.”
A lot of the business onstage seemed boring to the twins. There was just talking at first, and confusion as sheet music was passed out and boys and girls were assigned positions.
But Zack was watching Nell. She had pretty hair and nice big brown eyes. Like Zark’s, he thought with deep affection. Her voice was kind of funny, sort of scratchy and deep, but nice. Now and again she looked back toward him and smiled. When she did, his heart acted strange, kind of beating hard, like he’d been running.
She turned to a group of girls and sang. It was a Christmas song, which made Zack’s eyes widen. He wasn’t sure of the name, something about a midnight clear, but he recognized it from the records his dad played around the holiday.
A Christmas song. A Christmas wish.
“It’s her.” He hissed it to his brother, rapping Zeke hard in the ribs.
“Who?”
“It’s the mom.”
Zeke stopped playing with the action figure he’d had stuck in his pocket and looked up onstage, where Nell was now directing the alto section. “Kim’s teacher is the mom?”
“She has to be.” Deadly excited, Zeke kept his voice in a conspiratorial whisper. “Santa’s had enough time to get the letter. She was singing a Christmas song, and she’s got yellow hair and a nice smile. She likes little boys, too. I can tell.”
“Maybe.” Not quite convinced, Zeke studied Nell. She was pretty, he thought. And she laughed a lot, even when some of the big kids made mistakes. But that didn’t mean she liked dogs or baked cookies. “We can’t know for sure yet.”
Zack huffed out an impatient breath. “She knew us. She knew which was which. Magic.” His eyes were solemn as he looked at his brother. “It’s the mom.”
“Magic,” Zeke repeated, and stared, goggle-eyed, at Nell. “Do we have to wait till Christmas to get her?”
“I guess so. Probably.” That was a puzzle Zack would have to work on.
* * *
When Mac Taylor pulled his pickup truck in front of the high school, his mind was on a dozen varied problems. What to fix the kids for dinner. How to deal with the flooring on his Meadow Street project. When to find a couple of hours to drive to the mall and pick up new underwear for the boys. The last time he folded laundry, he’d noticed that most of what they had was doomed for the rag pile. He had to deal with a lumber delivery first thing in the morning and a pile of paperwork that night.
And Zeke was nervous about his first spelling test, which was coming up in a few days.
Pocketing his keys, Mac rolled his shoulders. He’d been swinging a hammer for the better part of eight hours. He didn’t mind the aches. It was a good kind of fatigue, a kind that meant he’d accomplished something. His renovation of the house on Meadow Street was on schedule and on budget. Once it was done, he would have to decide whether to put it on the market or rent it.
His accountant would try to decide for him, but Mac knew the final choice would remain in his own hands. That was the way he preferred it.
As he strode from the parking lot to the high school, he looked around. His great-great-grandfather had founded the town—hardly more than a village back then, settled along Taylor’s Creek and stretching over the rolling hills to Taylor’s Meadow.
There’d been no lack of ego in old Macauley Taylor.
But Mac had lived in DC for more than twelve years. It had been six years since he’d returned to Taylor’s Grove, but he hadn’t lost his pleasure or his pride in it, the simple appreciation for the hills and the trees and the shadows of mountains in the distance.
He didn’t think he ever would.
There was the faintest of chills in the air now, and a good strong breeze from the west. But they had yet to have a frost, and the leaves were still a deep summer green. The good weather made his life easier on a couple of levels. As long as it held, he’d be able to finish the outside work on his project in comfort. And the boys could enjoy the afternoons and evenings in the yard.
There was a quick twinge of guilt as he pulled open the heavy doors and stepped into the school. His work had kept them stuck inside this afternoon. The coming of fall meant that his sister was diving headfirst into several of her community projects. He couldn’t impose on her by asking her to watch the twins. Kim’s after-school schedule was filling up, and he simply couldn’t accept the idea of having his children becoming latchkey kids.
Still, the solution had suited everyone. Kim would take the kids to her rehearsals, and he would save his sister a trip to school by picking them all up and driving them home.
Kim would have a driver’s license in a few more months. A fact she was reminding everyone about constantly. But he doubted he’d plunk his boys down in the car with his sixteen-year-old niece at the wheel, no matter how much he loved and trusted her.
You coddle them. Mac rolled his eyes as his sister’s voice played in his head. You can’t always be mother and father to them, Mac. If you’re not interested in finding a wife, then you’ll have to learn to let go a little.
Like hell, he would, Mac thought.
As he neared the auditorium, he heard the sound of young voices raised in song. Subtle harmony. A good, emotional sound that made him smile even before he recognized the tune. A Christmas hymn. It was odd to hear it now, with the sweat from his day just drying on his back.
He pulled open the auditorium doors, and was flooded with it. Charmed, he stood at the back and looked out on the singers. One of the students played the piano. A pretty little thing, Mac mused, who looked up now and then, gesturing, as if to urge her classmates to give more.
He wondered where the music teacher was, then spotted his boys sitting in the front row. He walked quietly down the aisle, raising a hand when he saw Kim’s eyes shift to his. He settled behind the boys and leaned forward.
“Pretty good show, huh?”
“Dad!” Zack nearly squealed, then remembered just in time to speak in a hissing whi
sper. “It’s Christmas.”
“Sure sounds like it. How’s Kim doing?”
“She’s real good.” Zeke now considered himself an expert on choral arrangements. “She’s going to have a solo.”
“No kidding?”
“She got red in the face when Miss Davis asked her to sing by herself, but she did okay.” Zeke was much more interested in Nell right then. “She’s pretty, isn’t she?”
A little amazed at this announcement—the twins were fond of Kim, but rarely complimentary—he nodded. “Yeah. The prettiest girl in school.”
“We could have her over for dinner sometime,” Zack said slyly. “Couldn’t we?”
Baffled now, Mac ruffled his son’s hair. “You know Kim can come over whenever she wants.”
“Not her.” In a gesture that mimicked his father, Zack rolled his eyes. “Jeez, Dad. Miss Davis.”
“Who’s Miss Davis?”
“The m—” Zeke’s announcement was cut off by his twin’s elbow.
“The teacher,” Zack finished with a snarling look at his brother. “The pretty one.” He pointed, and his father followed the direction to the piano.
“She’s the teacher?” Before Mac could reevaluate, the music flowed to a stop and Nell rose.
“That was great, really. A very solid first run-through.” She pushed her tousled hair back. “But we need a lot of work. I’d like to schedule the next rehearsal for Monday after school. Three forty-five.”
There was already a great deal of movement and mumbling, so Nell pitched her voice to carry the rest of her instructions over the noise. Satisfied, she turned to smile at the twins and found herself grinning at an older and much more disturbing version of the Taylor twins.
No doubt he was the father, Nell thought. The same thick dark hair curled down over the collar of a grimy T-shirt. The same lake-water eyes framed in long, dark lashes stared back at her. His face might lack the soft, slightly rounded appeal of his sons’, but the more rugged version was just as attractive. He was long, rangy, with the kind of arms that looked tough without being obviously muscled. He was tanned and more than a little dirty. She wondered if he had a dimple at the left corner of his mouth when he smiled.