Married...With Twins!

by Jennifer Mikels

  Upstairs, he opened the bathroom door and stumbled. Cursing, he hit the light switch and stared down at potty chairs. Not a minute passed when he wasn’t aware of how much Val’s and his life had changed almost overnight.

  When he’d contemplated being a father, he’d imagined a gradual change in his life-style. He’d expected midnight feedings and constant diaper changes, not chattering toddlers.

  With nothing else to do at five-thirty in the morning, he climbed into the shower and let steaming water run over his skin. Muscles aching from his night on the short sofa welcomed the warmth.

  Physically, he felt better when he opened the shower door, stepped out and snatched a towel from the rack. But he stared in the mirror at a man he sometimes didn’t recognize. Though he’d worked hard most of his life, he’d never felt defeated by anything. The guy staring back at him looked like a quitter. He’d given up something that Luke had thought would never slip from his grasp, the woman he loved.

  It had come as a surprise to realize that love sometimes wasn’t enough. “Love conquers all” equated to a lot of mumbo jumbo. Who knew better than he that two people could love and still lose?

  He yanked on the clean briefs and jeans that he’d left in the bathroom last night, then lathered shaving cream onto his face. Every day, he shaved. For Val, even when they’d gone camping, he’d performed the task daily because during a nuzzle or a kiss, the short stubble of his beard reddened her face. He paused in spreading the cream on his jaw. He hadn’t been that close to her in months. So why was he doing this?

  Turning on the water, he held his razor under the spigot for a second. As the water flowed into the sink, the door flung open.

  “Whatcha doin’?” In a yellow robe and puppyfaced slippers, Brooke tipped her head, following his movement with the razor.

  “Morning, kiddo.”

  “Lu-cas up.”

  Another adjustment. No privacy, he realized. Tomorrow he’d remember to lock the bathroom door. He swiped the razor down his cheek, then complied to her request.

  As she stood on the closed toilet seat, she viewed herself in the mirror. Thoughtfully she studied his movement while he dragged the razor down his jaw. “Me can do,” she said, and imitated the motion with her toothbrush.

  Luke played along and dabbed shaving cream on her chin and on each pudgy cheek. “Where’s Traci?”

  “Dressin’.” Her lips spread into a grin, her eyes twinkling above the smudge of shaving cream he’d also put on the tip of her nose. “Look, Vali.” Delight danced in her voice. “Me shabin’.”

  In the doorway, Val smiled back at her, but her attention strayed to a rivulet at the base of Luke’s throat. It streamed down the smooth, flowing muscular flesh. Crystal droplets beaded the dark hair on his head. She smelled the soap on him, the cleanness. Amazingly she somehow managed not to take a more leisurely look.

  Luke knew if he’d taken another downstroke with the razor, he’d have cut himself for sure.

  Finally listening to a command from her brain to move, Val backed into the hallway and held out a hand to Brooke. “You need to get dressed.”

  Before Brooke tumbled off the toilet lid, Luke lowered her to the floor.

  “Me go find Traci?”

  “Yes,” Val urged. And I need to get out of here.

  Alone again, Luke waited a long moment to steady himself before he resumed shaving. Things weren’t much clearer between them except-except last night he’d felt the pulse at her throat thudding when he’d touched her. And seconds ago he’d have sworn he’d seen that look in Val’s eyes, a warm softness that had always preceded a caress, a kiss, a subtle brushing of her body against his.

  Standing at the stove, Val dropped pancake batter on a sizzling skillet. Being honest with herself and her own feelings had always come easily to her. Pleasure. Pure pleasure had rippled through her minutes ago. But so what? she countered. All that meant was hormones were still on track. With the ring of the phone, she lowered the heat on the burner, then offered a greeting.

  In her usual bubbly manner, Jenny filled her in on what the swooning gossip triplets, good friends and town busybodies, Agnes, Minny and Ethel, were aghast about now.

  “It doesn’t take much to shock them,” Val said lightly over the loud giggling of the twins as they made up words to the delight of each other.

  “How are your first days of motherhood going?”

  Val flipped pancakes onto plates. “Mind-boggling.”

  “If you need help, I could come over,” Jenny offered.

  Wedging the receiver between her jaw and shoulder, Val cut the pancakes, then set them in front of the twins. “Thanks, but I’m sure Gramps and Irene will both do their share of doting over them.”

  “And Luke?”

  It was hard for her to keep anything from Jenny. “He’s acting funny.”

  “Funny ha-ha? or funny strange?”

  Val ran fingers sticky with maple syrup under the water. “Funny unpredictable.”

  “The stable, reliable Dr. Kincaid is acting unpredictable?”

  Val took Jenny’s words as what they were, a tease. “He’s being attentive, cooperative.”

  “Is that so bad?”

  Val wondered how to explain. Years of memories, of nights filled with his soft caresses, his seductive whispers, were spinning back at her every time she was alone with him. “He’s making me nervous.”

  Jenny snickered. “This sounds interesting. Will you keep me informed?”

  “Daily,” Val promised, hanging up a second before the back door flung open.

  “Well, I’m here,” her grandfather gruffly announced.

  “Hi, Gramps.” Val twisted away from the stove for a hug. “I’ll make some decaf and-”

  “I don’t want the unleaded stuff.” He smacked a kiss on each twin’s cheek, then dropped to a chair.

  “Didn’t your doctor tell you not to drink caffeine?”

  “He told me. When you get old, doctors torture you to death with their Don’t lists.”

  Concern and affection mingled. Gently Val nagged, “Gramps, you eat the wrong food. A man who’s had a heart bypass has to watch his diet.”

  “Don’t like them phony eggs.”

  As he sent her a scowl, Val wondered if she was wasting her breath. Her endearingly crotchety grandfather usually did as he pleased. Unfortunately he had a propensity for high fat and high cholesterol foods.

  “Reached seventy-one doing whatever I damn well please. Don’t need any female nagging me about what I should and shouldn’t do.” His gaze shifted to a favorite wall plaque of his late wife’s. “Your grandmother always liked that, too.”

  Val remembered. As a young girl visiting her grandparents, she’d been fascinated by the bright yellow plaque shaped like a teakettle that hung on a wall in their kitchen. When her grandmother had died, she’d wanted nothing of hers except that plaque.

  Tenderness seeped into her grandfather’s voice. “Glad you took it.”

  Val returned his smile, aware he’d gotten rid of almost none of her grandmother’s possessions.

  “Only one I’ll ever love,” he mumbled. “About time all the dang females in this town wake up to that.”

  That he was grumbling with his usual complaint about being pursued by too many women didn’t surprise Val. “That’s what you get for being the biggest catch in town,” she teased.

  “Don’t know why they’re after an old goat like me. Goes to show you, they lose all good sense after turning seventy.”

  “Who’s after you now?” Val asked while wiping the twins’ sticky fingers.

  “Beatrice Elwood. Been dodging her for days. The last time she trapped me to have lunch with her, she made me a fruit salad. That’s no lunch for a man. This town needs-more eligible bachelors. Old geezers like me.”

  Val rolled her eyes then lowered the twins from their highchairs. “You try to make sense with him,” she said to Luke as he came into the kitchen carrying the morning newspaper
. “I have to get the twins’ shoes.”

  His head swiveling around to follow her movement from the room, Edwin barely waited until she’d disappeared with the girls. “Have you thought over what we talked about, Luke?”

  Luke needed no further explanation. Romance was on the old man’s mind. “She wants the divorce, Edwin.”

  “Has she seen Harry yet?” he asked, referring to their lawyer.

  Luke didn’t try to explain. Before either of them had made that appointment, the girls had entered their lives. But there was nothing he could say that would be any different now than it had been when Edwin had first guessed that they’d discreetly separated.

  “Luke, you know what family means to her. Her mother taught her well. Valerie watched her flit from one man to the next. Divorced three times,” he said, shaking his head as if that had happened yesterday instead of decades ago. Luke knew the story, but the old man seemed compelled to remind him. “Valerie never knew any real home life, never could depend on having any father for very long. Only the brief summers he spent with her grandmother and me ever gave her a sense of home and family. She always said she’d marry only once. That isn’t a woman who believes in divorce.”

  Val hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but a step from the kitchen doorway, she heard her grandfather’s rambling. “Gramps, stop. Right now,” Val insisted.

  “From everything I’m hearing, this is nothing more than a bogus marriage. For how long?” he challenged.

  That question couldn’t be answered. Ignoring it, Val cleared dishes off the twins’ highchairs. “Luke and I made an agreement,” she said, moving to the doorway and checking on the girls playing with blocks in the living room.

  Her grandfather’s dark eyes darted from her to Luke and zeroed in on her again. “A friendly one?”

  His stern stare had always made her fidget. She fought the urge to do so now. She was thirty-two, not twelve. Grabbing a dishtowel, she began drying a glass that had been draining in the sink rack.

  “Well, is it?” he insisted.

  Val faced him squarely. “Of course.”

  In what could only be interpreted as disgust, he snorted and started for the back door. “Married people can’t be only friends. It isn’t natural.”

  Val looked to Luke for reinforcement. He merely shrugged. “Gramps, we have to convince the court. We have to give the impression of having a solid marriage.”

  “What you both need is a good swift kick in the backside,” he muttered.

  At a loss for words, Val laughed as he shut the door behind him. “He does like to have his say.” She grabbed a sponge and wiped off the highchair trays. “What are you going to move out of the den?”

  “Everything but the desk.” Luke ran a hand over

  the back of his neck. “I’ll have to do it later. Fred left

  a message for me. He had an emergency, so I have to go in to the office.” After saying he’d be there to help, that he was leaving her to deal with things didn’t sit well with him. He disappeared into the living room to kiss the girls goodbye. Stepping back into the kitchen he started for the door but stopped. He couldn’t go yet. One question had gnawed at him through every quiet moment he’d had last night. “Val, this isn’t too hard on you, is it?”

  All women knew motherhood wasn’t a cinch. “Well, they are exhausting, but adorable.”

  Luke considered letting her answer satisfy him, but he couldn’t take the easy way out. “That’s not what I meant.”

  All she had to do was look at him. A remoteness had swept into his eyes. He was thinking about their daughter. It seemed odd to her that they’d mentioned Kelly more in the past twenty-four hours than they had in seven months. “I want the twins. My feelings for them have nothing to do with Kelly,” she said, sensing what he wasn’t saying.

  Luke couldn’t back off. “You said no more children.”

  How could she explain? What hadn’t made sense to her before suddenly did. Why? she wondered. Because she was finally healing? “When you suggested having another child, I wasn’t ready.” Did he understand? How would she know? Whatever his feelings were, he’d keep them to himself. The connection so vivid and so natural between them had disappeared. With his silence, a new worry sprang up within her. “You don’t want them?”

  “Did I say that?”

  No, you tell me nothing, she wanted to say.

  “I made a promise, too. Do you think so little of me that you don’t think I’d keep it?” He didn’t wait for an answer but walked out the door. It was clear how little faith she had in him. But could he blame her? She’d been alone in the delivery, alone when she’d been told how ill their newborn daughter was. If he’d been with her then, everything might have been different. No, that wasn’t true.

  On that February night, he’d stepped out of surgery and learned he’d become a father, but his daughter was dying. He’d rushed to Val’s room but by then she’d been so distraught she’d barely looked at him as they’d waited. Their baby had died, and there’d been nothing Luke could have done. He couldn’t have changed the final outcome, but that knowledge didn’t ease the burden he carried with him since that night.

  Val stood at the kitchen door for only a second, then rushed outside. His back to her, he was slipping the key in the car door. She couldn’t let him leave this way. Deeply she breathed and braced herself, not for more anger but for what hurt the most-no reaction. “Luke, I’m sorry.”

  God, don’t say that. Those were his words, the ones he’d never been able to say.

  “I really want them,” Val went on. “And-I’m afraid.”

  The ache, identifiable now, rose up within him.

  “None of this is easy.” Val stared at his broad back. There was a time when she’d wanted to see his eyes so she’d know his mood. Now it didn’t matter. Even when she stared into them, he was a mystery to her. “Couldn’t we have a truce?” As he turned around, she held his gaze despite a cowardly shiver that urged her to retreat. “Couldn’t we?”

  Luke wasn’t sure how to handle the moment. He wanted to pull her into his arms. He wanted to give her assurances. The slip of a smile she delivered made him feel like hell. With his nod, she turned away. I’ll do right by you this time. He kept the words to himself, but it was a promise he planned to keep.

  Val had nudged herself to move. No matter what she did or how hard she tried, he still slammed a door in her face, and she didn’t know why.

  With a frustrated sigh, she entered the house to giggles and the theme song for “Sesame Street.” She set a cup of milk for each twin on the coffee table. With them content and glued to the antics of Big Bird and Cookie Monster, she returned to the kitchen.

  Leaving the back door open allowed a breeze to cool the kitchen. She flicked on the radio, turned the volume low and began wiping smudges from little fingers off the refrigerator,

  “Valerie?” a feminine voice called.

  Val spun around. She peered at the face obscured by the screen door for only a second before she identified the visitor. It took another second, a long one, for her to find the politeness she’d been raised to extend to company. It didn’t really matter.

  The woman didn’t wait for an invitation. She opened the screen door and stepped into the kitchen. “I’m sure you know who I am.”

  She did and was suddenly uneasy. A tingling slithered over the back of Val’s neck. The kind of tingle she got when watching a horror movie where, as the dumb heroine inched down the stairs to the dark basement, Val just knew that the psycho killer was waiting for her.

  Tall, shapely and blond, with heavily shadowed eyes, this woman hardly fit that description. Her major offense centered on her bad taste in clothes. In her forties, she wore a thigh-length leather skirt and a hot pink, knit top that was one size too small. Since Val had arrived in New Hope, she’d spoken to Charlene Dawson Evans no more than half a dozen times. Joe Dawson’s cousin socialized in a different circle of friends, so they’d had nothing in common-until
now.

  “The twins are here, aren’t they?”

  The screen door closed behind Charlene. “Yes, your cousins are.”

  “Actually I think of them as my nieces.” She slid the strap of her beaded purse off her shoulder and stepped further into the kitchen, looking around it like a prospective buyer inspecting a house for defects.

  “Who’s she?” Wide-eyed, Traci came into the kitchen, cradling her cup in her hands.

  A protective instinct rose within Val to block Charlene’s path as she sauntered toward Traci.

  Charlene’s voice sang with sweetness. “I’m your cousin, Charlene. Are you Traci or Brooke?”

  Funny, Val thought, but she’d never had trouble identifying them.

  “Traci.” She leaned close to Brooke, now standing beside her.

  Charlene patted her head. “Oh, aren’t you both cute. You can call me Auntie Charlene.”

  The girls weren’t receptive to a stranger. And that’s what Charlene was to them. They’d never met her. She hadn’t been at the hospital when Carrie had the girls. She hadn’t gone to the church for their baptism. She’d never sent a birthday present or a Christmas gift. She didn’t know anything about them except their names.

  Brooke reacted predictably, pulling back and scurrying to Val to hide behind her leg.

  Charlene excused her reluctance with what she wanted to see. “Shy little thing, isn’t she?”

  Traci gazed up at Val for some kind of confirmation about the woman reaching out to touch her, then suddenly lunged for Val’s other leg.

  Val said the obvious. “They don’t know you, Charlene.”

  She spared Val a glance. “Well, we’ll soon change all that.”

  Val recognized the worst of her fears since Charlene had arrived becoming a possibility. “What do you mean?”

  “They’re my cousin’s children. Who do you think they should be with? A stranger or a blood relative?”

  Protectively, Val draped a hand over each girl’s shoulder, pulling them tighter to her. If she believed Charlene really wanted them, she’d be more understanding. But Charlene hadn’t even been at Joe and Carrie’s funeral. “You’re the stranger.”