Balancing Act (Silhouette Special Edition)

by Darcy, Lilian

  She tipped back too far on the way down, bumped hard onto her bottom and scrambled to her feet, taking the rough landing in stride just as Scarlett always did. Next time Colleen came down, Scarlett was right behind her, and both of them were laughing. They were active, vital little girls.

  “The only thing I know for sure, right now, is that it would be wrong for them to grow up not knowing each other, not having the chance to be sisters,” Brady said, his voice suddenly husky. “And for me, too. How could I love one little girl and not the other? It would just be wrong.”

  Shoot!

  He hadn’t planned to say it. The words had just happened, falling out of his mouth, blunt as always, as soon as they crystallized in his thoughts. He looked across to where Libby McGraw sat, in a cedarwood outdoor chair just like the one he was sitting in.

  Her legs were crossed at her ankles and her hands were clasped around her knees, neat and pretty and careful. Hell, and his heart was beating so much harder and faster as he waited for her reply that he could actually feel it thumping inside his chest.

  Why was he so scared about what he’d given away? Why was he instantly sorry he’d laid his beliefs on the table like that?

  Because he’d intended to find out what she thought and felt first.

  With unsteady hands, he took two of the cookies at once and ate them in a single bite. They tasted like Christmas morning when he was eight years old.

  “Why would it be wrong, Brady?” she asked carefully, after a long pause.

  It wasn’t the tack he had expected her to take. He was relieved about that, but still very suspicious, on shifting ground. Something didn’t ring true in what she’d just said. “Don’t you agree?” he asked her.

  “There are plenty of kids that grow up as only children, these days,” she answered. Her chin was raised and her eyes were too bright.

  “True, but—”

  “I wouldn’t have adopted Colleen in the first place if I’d thought I couldn’t meet all of her needs,” she went on, gathering speed. “I refinanced my home and took a pay cut so I could work at a high-quality day-care center and have her there with me.”

  “I’m not saying—”

  “I used to teach kindergarten, but that wouldn’t have given us the time with each other that I wanted. She gets plenty of social interaction at day care with kids her own age. If I hadn’t entered her in that contest, she and Scarlett could have gone their whole lives not knowing about each other, and they’d still have been loved and nourished and happy. They’d have missed nothing.”

  Her voice was high and sweet and very firm.

  Too firm.

  Her eyes, in contrast, were frightened and defiant.

  Okay, he understood, now.

  “You don’t believe a single word of what you’re saying,” Brady growled at her, and sure enough, she flashed him a startled look and her cheeks went bright pink. “You don’t,” he repeated.

  There was a silence.

  “Yeah, okay, you’re right,” she agreed quietly at last. Her clasped hands had tightened around her knees, and her shoulders were rounded, vulnerable looking. There was anguish in her face now. “You’re right. I don’t.”

  She shook her head, and the tiny silver earrings that were nestled against her pink lobes flashed.

  “You know,” she went on, “I’ve been saying it to myself every minute since your call on Monday. I’ve tried to make myself believe it doesn’t make a difference, but I can’t.” Brady could see how hard she found it to put her emotions into words. “We have to give them the chance to be sisters, don’t we? And we have to give ourselves the chance to love both of them. But you’re in Ohio and I’m in Minnesota, and I can’t begin to think about how we’re going to do it. It—it might have been easier if we’d never known.”

  “I know,” he answered, then confessed abruptly, “All the way here on the airplane, I was wishing my mom had never seen that magazine.”

  Chapter Two

  “I can stay until Sunday,” Brady said. “We can think about it. There are options. You know, a lot of people manage shared custody of their kids after a divorce, even when they’re living in different states. People manage to have their kids visit far-away grandparents. It’s not insurmountable.”

  “No, I guess it isn’t,” Libby answered obediently. She popped a little smile onto her face, then added, “More coffee?” and when he nodded and said, “Please!” it gave her an excuse to go into the house, where she could rebel in private.

  She didn’t want Brady to see how much his words about managing “shared custody” had terrified her. One look at that little girl in his arms, identical to her own Colleen, had told her how easily she could come to love two daughters, but how could she share two daughters with a stranger?

  Did he expect her just to hand Colleen over for weekends and vacation visits? Put her on a plane and send her seven hundred miles? Dear Lord, no!

  Her own parents had divorced when she was eight, and she’d had to do that. Just step on a plane every few months. The memories weren’t good, and she didn’t revisit them very often. Mom had never really adjusted to the divorce and to being a single parent. She hadn’t been prepared for managing on her own, so they’d moved from Kansas City to Chicago to be closer to Libby’s grandparents, and it had taken Mom a long time to find her feet.

  She’d been horrified when Libby had taken on the role of single mother voluntarily. “If Glenn was still alive of course I’d have loved a grandchild, but not like this, Libby. You don’t know how hard it’s going to be.”

  But Libby had cherished her independence and her freedom to run her life the way she chose. She hadn’t had that same freedom in her marriage. And now Brady was talking about “shared custody” as if it was easy and safe, as if it was something they could both just slot into their lives. He had no idea!

  I should have challenged him on it. But maybe if I work as hard as I can to make this weekend nice and fun and harmonious, we can talk on Sunday and we’ll find there is another answer.

  Even as she thought this, she knew it was a cop-out on her part. The kind of cop-out she’d made before, and didn’t want to make again. But wanting something and achieving it were two very different things, she’d found, especially when life came at you sideways like a runaway train.

  Still unsure of how she would handle the situation, she poured two fresh mugs of coffee and went back out to the rear deck. Brady had vanished from the deck chair, and a few seconds of panicky searching—he was a stranger, she knew almost nothing about him, and she’d left him with her precious daughter, was she crazy?—revealed him safely down in the yard with the girls.

  Oh, mercy, what a sight it was!

  Silently, she put the coffee mugs down on the barbecue table and watched. Somehow, he’d gotten himself horizontal on the damp grass, solid as a fallen log, and both girls were running to and fro, covering him deeply with leaves.

  They were shrieking with laughter—identical laughter—tossing wild handfuls of color every which way and earning exaggerated protests from Brady which they clearly found hilarious.

  “More leaves? We’re having more leaves?” he was saying in that gravelly voice she was starting to know. “What? I’m not buried deep enough for you, yet, guys? I swear—”

  Then he caught sight of Libby and stopped abruptly, and she had to hide a laugh of her own at the sight of his face.

  He was blushing?

  No, it had to be the effort and exertion of all that protesting, followed by the sudden scramble to his feet.

  “I…uh…” he said, and brushed himself down, strong shoulders moving beneath the gray fabric of his sweatshirt. “That was…you know…”

  “I know,” she answered, still laughing. “They loved it.”

  She wanted him to laugh with her, but he’d closed off, retreated somehow. Coming up the steps and reaching for the coffee mug she still held in her hand, he looked intimidating and serious, a construction company boss
through and through, not the kind of man you’d ever catch horsing around with two little girls.

  Libby was sorry, now, that she’d caught him out. She didn’t want to create more distance than necessary.

  Their fingers touched briefly as he took the mug. As a piece of body contact, it was nothing. Quicker and lighter than the touch of a makeup brush on her cheek, or the flick of her hand when she shooed a mosquito from Colleen’s face. All the same, it was warm and physical and potent, and she wished it hadn’t happened.

  Possibly he did, too.

  If he’d even noticed it, Libby revised. She doubted that the imprint of it had lingered on his skin the way it was still lingering on hers. And she doubted that her scent was still wrapping around him, the way his had wrapped around her. It was clean and male, reminding her of freshly shaven wood, and it was mixed with the earthy scent of the leaves.

  He could have had half a dozen better reasons for moving away from her so quickly, with that distant frown still on his face.

  Brady knew he was frowning too much, knew it made him look distant—intimidating, even—and he didn’t care. Deliberately, he turned his back on Libby, took a big mouthful of coffee and stared down at the fall color carpeting the yard.

  He shouldn’t have fooled around with the leaves like that. He couldn’t afford to have this woman think he was soft, lacking intelligence, easy to manipulate, easy to distract from his goals with a bit of pretty color, and ready to take care of everything as needed.

  Even though he was soft. He knew that. When it came to Scarlett’s well-being, he was a pussycat. He turned to liquid inside, like a soft-centered chocolate candy, every time he felt her little arms around his neck, or saw her smile, or had to kiss a bump.

  And when it came to Scarlett, he would take care of everything as needed. He would walk over hot coals to give her the things she should have. A play in the leaves. Pretty toys at Christmas. A college education. Her very own twin sister.

  What kind of sacrifices was Libby McGraw prepared to make? he wondered.

  They drank their coffee mostly in silence, just watching the girls and commenting occasionally on their play. Inwardly, Libby was working on her courage, putting it in place piece by piece, like building a solid brick wall.

  She waited until Brady had drained his mug, then cleared her throat—it shouldn’t have been so tight, but it was—and said, “How about we go out for pizza? There’s a place just a few blocks from here that’s kid-friendly, and the girls should stay the distance, don’t you think, after their naps? It’s not even six, yet. Seven, Ohio time.”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” he agreed.

  She took a deep breath and forced herself to speak. “Because I don’t want to leave it until the end of the weekend before we talk about this, Brady. I want to get it on the table tonight, so that we both know where we stand.”

  He looked at her, and she could see the speculation and assessment in his face. He didn’t fully trust her. It was written in the jut of his jaw and the narrowing of his eyes. It was shouted by the frequent glances he gave toward both the girls. Definitely, he didn’t trust her.

  The feeling was mutual, and maybe that was good. Staying on her guard was a lot better than the alternatives.

  Since it was still pretty early, they had their pick of several tables at the pizza restaurant, and chose one in a quiet corner in back, near the open kitchen. The girls were happy to squiggle with crayons on sheets of paper, watch the pizzas sliding in and out of the big, wood-fired oven and slurp their juice.

  “Have you always lived in St. Paul?” Brady asked Libby as they waited for their order, and she couldn’t help her suspicion that it was more than just a casual question. Had she once again lost the initiative she was seeking?

  “No, I was born in Kansas City,” she answered him, too accustomed to behaving as good manners dictated. She wasn’t prepared to avoid his question, or to challenge it, no matter how suspicious of it she was. “But I grew up in Chicago after my parents got divorced. I met my husband at Northwestern—he was doing his master’s—and we moved here when his company transferred him, around ten years ago, right after I finished college.”

  “You’ve moved around some, then. I was born in Columbus, and I’ve stayed there.”

  “So Scarlett is a third-generation Buckeye fan?”

  He laughed. It was the kind of laugh that invited a response, deep and chuckling, like a little stream gurgling way down in a forest’s secret hollows. “Fifth.”

  “Wow!”

  “My grandfather used to take me to games when I was a kid, and his father took him. I’ve been taking Scarlett since she was a baby. Not sure how she’ll go this season, now that she wants to run around.”

  “That’s nice.”

  His eyes were nice, too. Libby didn’t want to notice the fact, but it was a little hard not to, when they were looking at her from just a few feet away, across the table. She was right in what she’d seen earlier. They didn’t always look blue. Now, for instance, you’d have said they were gray—dark and smoky and thoughtful.

  She got the impression he wasn’t an intellectual man—not the kind of person who read serious books and watched documentaries on TV—but he wasn’t stupid, either. He was the kind of person who kept his thought processes to himself, then came out with surprising results in the end. Take his next question, for example.

  “Were you and your husband trying to have a baby for long?” he asked. “Were you on that whole assisted reproduction treadmill, like Stacey and I put ourselves through?”

  “No, we hadn’t been trying long at all,” she answered, startled into honesty. A couple’s fertility wasn’t something most people wanted to ask about at a first meeting. As it happened, she and Glenn hadn’t had time to discover whether they had any problems in that area. “Just three or four months,” she added. “Glenn hadn’t felt ready until he hit thirty-seven.”

  Too late, she realized what she’d unconsciously implied—that she herself had been ready much sooner.

  Well, that was true, wasn’t it? Although ten years younger than he was, she’d been ready for a long time, but Glenn had stood firm, as always. He wasn’t ready to share her with a baby yet. He wanted her all to himself. He still had career goals to accomplish. He didn’t want to be tied down and woken in the night. She had pretended to herself for years that she understood those reasons, and that she didn’t mind.

  She just wished she hadn’t let Brady Buchanan in on the secret. There had been some dissatisfactions in her marriage before Glenn’s illness. For the sake of the deeper connection they’d made with each other during those last months when Glenn had softened so much, however, she kept those to herself.

  It seemed weird to be talking on such a personal level with Brady, a near-stranger, but discovering that you shared twin daughters with a man cut through some of the usual barriers.

  Some of them.

  In other areas, she felt even more wary, and more protective of secrets and doubts and resolutions.

  She went on quickly, “Then his cancer was diagnosed, and that was the end of it. With the type of cancer and treatment he had, there was no possibility of getting another chance to conceive once his treatment was over, even if he had survived.”

  “That must have been tough.”

  “It was. A double loss, in a lot of ways. My husband, and my chance for a child that was his. Even so, it took me a long time to decide on adoption. I knew it would be a major undertaking on my own.”

  “Stacey and I tried to have a baby for eight years,” Brady said. “Deciding to go for an intercountry adoption gave us the best year of our marriage.”

  It didn’t quite make sense. They’d only had Scarlett for two or three months before his wife’s death. He must have been including the months before that.

  Libby couldn’t agree on those months being good ones in her own case. Although she’d appreciated the need for all the bureaucratic red tape in two countries, in
order to ensure that children were willingly given up to responsible adoptive parents, she’d found the actual process of it—the waiting and the uncertainty—quite gruelling.

  She’d had to list every address she’d had in her adult life, every organization she’d ever belonged to, and every job she’d ever had. She’d been allowed to choose the sex and approximate age of the child she hoped for, but that was all. Brady and Stacey must have been through the same thing.

  She’d spent weeks in fear that her application would snag and fail on some small detail, and weeks more, before her flight to Vietnam, panicking that she might not be able to bond with the child who’d been chosen for her.

  She couldn’t imagine how those had been good months in Brady’s life, but maybe it was a very different process if you weren’t going through it alone.

  “So, if you moved because of your husband’s job, that means you don’t have parents or siblings here, right?” he asked, while she was still thinking about his last statement.

  “No, no siblings anywhere,” she told him.

  His gray, thoughtful gaze was still fixed on her, and she found it unsettling. His questions were like an interview, or a test. For the sake of Colleen and Scarlett, she hid her growing anger and discomfort. What was he angling toward?

  “I’m an only child,” she explained.

  “Me, too.”

  “My parents divorced when I was in grade school, as I said. My mother’s still in Chicago, and my Dad died when I was eighteen.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Yes, it was hard,” she answered. It wasn’t something she let herself think about.

  “But at least you have your mother, not so far away.”

  “Far enough!”

  Mom hadn’t visited since Colleen’s adoption. She’d sent gifts, and she talked about coming, but she hadn’t made it yet. Mom was a cautious, conservative person, slow to adjust to new situations. How would she deal with the news of Colleen’s twin?