An Unexpected Addition

by Terese Ramin

  She’d also said that what with him and Kate dating—the very word was twisted with a wealth of emotion and confusion—and all, him sleeping in the house hardly seemed appropriate.

  Kate warmed a little with the thought. Megan might have a point there. It was awfully difficult to simply say good-night and watch Hank go off to bed by himself. The fact that Kate and Hank had both done some careful after-hours sneaking around and had gotten very little sleep—whether together or apart—in the weeks since Hank had moved into the house seemed only to confirm his daughter’s concerns. No matter what she told herself, Kate couldn’t seem to stay put where Hank was concerned. He was equally bad when it came to her.

  And it wasn’t just the physical stuff—although that was pretty Wow! to say the least. It was being together rather than separate. It was having a best friend for the first time in heaven knew when, learning that sharing anything with Hank was infinitely more intoxicating than keeping it to herself. It was having him there, close enough to reach for, to laugh with.

  It was also watching him with the boys, watching them blossom because of him—even Tai, grown, graduated and his own man though he was—and seeing Li turn to him as she’d never had a chance to turn to a father for seemingly inconsequential things that Kate hadn’t realized Li cared about. Like how her daughter looked before she went out on a date. When Hank told her she was beautiful, Li glowed. When Kate said the same thing, Li accepted the compliment, but it was a compliment that carried less weight for being expected.

  As for Megan...

  Certainly there was jealousy on Megan’s part when Hank paid compliments to Li, or gave his attention to the boys, but there was more to Hank’s daughter’s moodiness than the green-eyed monster accounted for. Kate could feel it. Megan wanted Kate to be there for her, the same as always, but she didn’t seem to want Kate near her father. Or her father near Kate. But whether that was a divide-and-conquer sort of tactic or more jealousy, it was impossible to know.

  The girl also seemed to have developed a rather... eclectic...sense of reality.

  To say the least.

  Megan’s perceptions of what was going on around her were skewed—often in the extreme—frequently paranoid and more than a little unpredictable, even where Bele was concerned. Where seven other people—Anden kids, in this instance—saw a thing happen one way, Megan was certain to interpret it another, and most often in terms of how it affected her personally. Kate didn’t even want to think about what might have gone on in Megan’s mind the one time Megan had caught Hank kissing Kate. His daughter’s verbal reaction had been quite astonishingly loud—and incoherent. And the kiss hadn’t even been one of the mind-numbing kind Hank excelled at, but a gentle buss of the kind Kate found melted her heart and soul into a quivery puddle at his feet.

  It was that almost chaste intimacy between Kate and her father that seemed to incense Megan most.

  She’d also begun to disappear at odd hours, pretty much stopped working with Harvey and dumped what she referred to as her “goody-two-shoes clothes” into the trash. She still spoke to Bele, appeared to want to do things with him, but even where he was concerned she was reserved and...not exactly tense, but something close to it. She was frequently up, then very down, sometimes almost giddy, sometimes afraid. She was also disruptive and all too often angry enough that even the boys—besides Ilya and Jamal—who were usually oblivious to the moods of the people around them, walked carefully;

  In short, living with Megan was a stunning illustration of how easily one person could affect both the tone and quality of the lives of those around her.

  Drugs were, of course, the first thing they considered, but neither snooping nor a watchful eye nor a—on the face of it—routine, back-to-school physical complete with urinalysis and bloodwork turned up anything untoward. She refused, even at Kate’s, then Li’s request, to participate in a psychiatric evaluation, making that course impossible to pursue.

  Li’s response, when asked about her friend, had been a firm albeit unhappy and guilty apology and an anxious, “I couldn’t say.”

  Wouldn’t say was more like it, Kate guessed, but since she’d never had reason to distrust her daughter before, she wasn’t entirely certain how to go about doing so now.

  That Kate wanted to trust Li no doubt played a big part in it, too.

  And now Kate was pregnant. Not doctor-officially yet, but as officially as a missed period, three positive home pregnancy tests and the absolute knowledge of a woman who knew her own body extremely well could make it.

  She tapped a fingernail against her front teeth, considering. How was she going to, break this to the kids? Especially after all the lectures she’d given them on the dangers of unsafe sex and the value of abstinence until marriage. And now here she was, twenty-some-odd years older than any of them, and she’d managed to, well, bluntly put, screw up once and get caught. Some example she set, huh?

  For almost thirty seconds she considered attempting to sell them on the idea of another immaculate conception. Unfortunately, llama breeders that they were, they were far too well versed in the how’s, where’s and why’s of procreation to believe even briefly. Even Bele and Mike had seen Mike’s maternal aunt’s birthing-room video and could quote chapters from The First Nine Months of Life at her, so...

  She wasn’t terribly concerned about her own kids—oh. they’d have questions and certainly comments, but in the end a good time would be had by all—in particular the doted-on-by-itssiblings and soon-to-be-spoiled-rotten baby. Especially given that it was Mom who’d messed up, not one of them. But there was no telling how Megan would handle this news. She seemed to be having a difficult enough time being Hank’s only child, and now that he and Kate had managed to complicate the situation with a very unplanned number two...

  Kate grimaced. Maybe she should make a doctor’s appointment, confirm her condition and get a prescription for prenatal vitamins, but then wait until Hank and Megan moved back to their own house to make the announcement. Why that would necessarily make a difference Kate didn’t know, but it was an option. Still, they’d be here only another ten days or so, and what was another week and a half out of nine months?

  Better than one third of her first trimester, that was what.

  On the other hand, it didn’t seem particularly fair to keep Hank hanging for even another day, let alone another week. It might be her body, but he’d made it perfectly clear her body could contain his child and that meant he had as many decisions and choices to make, as many parental rights, privileges and responsibilities, as Kate did.

  Which might, now that she thought of it, actually be a good reason to keep the news from him a while longer. He was already plenty darned arrogant as it was. Add a baby on top of it and...

  She sighed. And nothing. And he was also restless.

  He didn’t talk about it, but she’d felt his mood more and more clearly since the night of the raid. It affected everything he did. He missed the action of undercover, she was certain, craved the kick, was balking at the mere thought of returning to his desk in less than three weeks. She didn’t want to be one more chain binding him to a life he didn’t want but couldn’t, out of his own sense of duty, commitment and obligation leave.

  Not that she wasn’t considering this a little late in the game. If she didn’t want to...tie Hank down, what had possessed her to make love with him in the first place?

  Thoughtlessness, that was what. And greed. And lust. And need and desire and liking him and....

  And a sense of caring that easily translated to love.

  In short, although it was certainly no excuse, he was the right man—even if it was the wrong time—and she couldn’t help herself.

  She didn’t want to.

  So, where did that leave her? Tell him now or tell him later, she was still going to tell him.

  Sighing, she drummed her fingers on her neck. Decisions, decisions...

  He couldn’t sleep.

  Restless, Hank prow
led the house, checking doors and windows, peeking into rooms, looking at the kids. It was easy to move silently. After only five weeks, he knew every squeaky board in every floor, had done what he could to shim or lubricate or reattach most of them. The simple labor, the ability to seek out the problem, give it some thought and fiddle with it until he’d corrected—or at least improved—it was probably one of the most satisfying things he’d ever done. Brains and brawn working in cooperation at his command, not someone else’s.

  He liked that, enjoyed being his own man for the first time in who knew how long, owning his principles instead of having to...manipulate and rationalize them to accommodate someone else’s bidding. Here at Stone House no one was second-guessing him, changing the rules, rewriting the script, straining his resolve. Or at least, when they did, there were reasons for the second-guessing, changing, rewriting that he not only understood but could applaud—life reasons, not political nuances.

  At the office, even as assistant director, he had his higher-ups to answer to; they wanted results from him now as badly as they had when he’d been merely an agent, but they also expected him to get results from his agents and underlings without telling them everything they might need to know to resolve their cases, let alone what they sometimes needed to know to stay alive. He hated it, but it was a job he knew and could do while he tried to let Megan grow up. And like it or not, that was bureaucracy; everything was “need to know.” He was told no more than someone in the upper echelons deemed needful, was allowed to pass on even less.

  Until this summer he hadn’t fully realized how poorly he’d slept since becoming AD, but Megan had always been his bottom line, his reason enough. Now he knew that sleep either hadn’t come out of constant fear for someone else, or when it had it was like the restless sleep of the haunted dead, without repose. He wouldn’t trade Megan for the world, but he half thought he’d sell his soul not to have to go back to office politics and the uncertainties of life in a suit. He didn’t want to go back to deep cover or anything close to it, either.

  The truth was he finally accepted what he’d been seeking for the past five years—and maybe longer. Life with Kate and the kids and the farm was plenty complicated, but it was also simple, basic. He worked hard not simply to make a buck, to feed some nebulous adrenaline addiction, but because he wanted to, because here he was part of a whole, something infinitely larger than himself and Megan. Here, he made a difference.

  Here also made a difference in him. And for the first time in more years than he wanted to remember, it was a difference he could like.

  If only he could somehow make it permanent.

  He cat footed across the open second-floor landing to an open doorway. There were the boys, Bele and Mike, asleep in their bunks on the north side of the upstairs. Their floor was coated with debris: fallen Lego pirates and knights, a stormed castle to be repaired before the next invasion, Bele’s prosthesis—still wearing its shoe—the peg leg Hank had made for Mike and a tumble of shared clothing both clean and dirty. They were a constant ad for the concept of “what’s his is ours,” no matter which his was whose at the time. And that included Bele’s leg. Occasionally pirate kings needed a peg leg, so why not use the readymade one?

  No amount of pleading, commanding or reasoning on Kate’s part could convince them that Mike shoving his folded knee into the socket of Bele’s prosthesis was hard on both it and him. It was a problem easily solved in the woodshop, though. Kate had called him a show-off for thinking of making Mike a peg leg, but Hank had been plenty pleased with himself for doing so.

  Grinning at the memory, he left Bele and Mike’s room and poked his head into the one next door. In variously contorted stages of deep slumber, Grisha, Ilya and Jamal snored, their personalities evident even in their sleep. At the foot of Ilya’s bunk, clothes lay where and how they’d fallen; at the head of Jamal’s, everything was neat and precise, draped or folded right side out. On the other side of the room, Grisha’s makeshift desk—two sawhorses with a solid-core security door stretched across them—was cluttered with his microscope and slides, notebooks and specimens. The star theater Kate’s mother had given him for his birthday stood beside his bed, turned on and forgotten, casting the print of constellations over walls and ceilings. Smiling, Hank stepped carefully over and pulled the plug to turn it off, then paused with his hand on the foot rail of the lower bunk. Something like regret slid against his conscience when he looked at the bed Risto used to occupy.

  Though she’d dealt with it openly, Kate had been devastated by the questioning the youth had undergone, the spate of scrutiny and questioning she’d been forced to undergo because of Risto’s activities, and his eventual removal from Stone House. And during it all, there had been the other kids to deal with, their questions, their hurt and the youngest boys’ inability to understand why one of their favorite people had to be summarily withdrawn from their lives before he was supposed to be. Then they’d recovered relatively quickly and left Kate with her own demons to deal with, the sense of failure that she hadn’t prevented what she knew she really couldn’t have prevented.

  The feeling that she should have known, should have seen what was happening. He could hold her, make love to her, try to tell her passionately that there was nothing she could have done because that was what he believed, but he couldn’t make what she felt change overnight. And he couldn’t change his part in the revelations.

  He moved on to Li’s room.

  The moonlight revealed both girls asleep, lightly snoring. It pained him to know that if he didn’t actually see Megan’s head, or her arm and one leg trailing outside the sheet, he’d have gone in to make sure she hadn’t stuffed her bed with pillows and snuck out. Being unable to trust his child hurt more than anything he could remember—except Gen’s suicidal betrayal of his trust.

  He moved on, not pausing when he passed the third-floor staircase on his way back downstairs. Tai hadn’t yet returned from Carly’s. With amusement and empathy, Hank wondered how long Tai would be able to live with the nightly trips to and from his lady’s apartment, how soon it would get too difficult to leave Carly before morning—and how Kate would deal with the situation when it arose. It was one show he definitely wanted to be around to see.

  The thought of Kate brought him to her door, his ultimate destination when he’d begun this restive prowl.

  Hank smiled softly to himself. He didn’t think he’d ever seen anyone more beautiful in sleep. Nor more beautiful awake, either, for that matter. It was just harder to enjoy when she was awake. Kate rarely stayed in one place long enough for him to savor simply looking at her.

  He’d made the complaint one evening, wishing she’d be still so he could gaze at her. When he’d called her beautiful, she’d been insulted, reacting as though he’d accused her of something odious. She was, she’d snapped, much too busy to stand still like some mannequin and be beautiful for his benefit. In almost the same breath she’d accused him of being obnoxiously handsome and requested he “do something” about his appearance so she could quit staring at him and get something done. Like what? he’d asked, laughing at her. Like clean up, she’d responded tartly, since it was when he was filthy that she had the hardest time keeping her hands to herself.

  He’d made a quick check for prying eyes at that and hauled her into an empty closet in the woodshop and urged her to demonstrate what she wanted to do with her hands instead. The result had been immensely rewarding for them both.

  The memory of that half hour made him hard and aching. Her willingness to drop everything for a momentary exploration, her ability to pull from him more than he’d ever thought possible in every capacity, the way she could become part of him, share intimacy with a glance no matter who was around, never ceased to amaze him. To sleep without her was to lie awake wanting her, or to fall into the hottest dreams he’d ever had. In either instance, thoroughly dissatisfying. He wouldn’t wake her, but it was better to stand in her doorway and watch her a while, let the
sough of her repose lull him than to fall into a slumber her spirit or his latest falling out with Megan would interrupt.

  When long enough had passed, he turned to go. The light shifting of her mattress stopped him.

  She jacked herself up on an arm. “Hank?” Her voice was soft and drowsy, a sound he didn’t get to hear often.

  “It’s me.” He padded noiselessly to her bedside, touched gentle fingers to her cheek. “I didn’t mean to wake you. Go back to sleep.”

  She drew his hand under her cheek like a pillow and snuggled into it. “I will as soon as you lock the door and come to bed.”

  God, exactly what he wanted, needed. Had for weeks. Exactly what he didn’t dare do. “Tai’s not in yet.”

  “I know. He’s at Carly’s. He’ll be home before the kids get up.” She yawned and shifted, reaching to pull him closer onto the bed. “You can get up then, too.”

  An invitation, a temptation and an insight all in one. Amazing. Even half asleep she could cover the bases without missing a beat.

  “I shouldn’t,” he whispered. “What if Megan...the kids—”

  “Lock the door,” she murmured, a suggestion, a command. “If they knock, you can go out the window and come in through the back.”

  “Sneak around?” he asked, chuckling. “I’m not seventeen anymore.”

  “Neither am I,” she said softly. “I’m an adult and that means I get to choose where I sleep and with whom. If I was seventeen I wouldn’t need the sleep, but I’m not and I do and so do you, so shut up, lock the door and come to sleep before I wake all the way up and keep you awake for the rest of the night, too.”

  It was difficult to argue with illogic when he didn’t want to, so he did as he was told. She butted contentedly up against his erection and went back to sleep while he lay awake in exquisite pain wryly cursing himself.