She had her puffy, pale gray coat hanging over her arm and Colleen’s much smaller pink-and-purple one dangling in one hand. As long as Libby put her coat on soon—
What? He might survive until she took it off again?
He had to do a heck of a lot better than that! For the next…what, week? month?…they would be living together.
His cell phone rang, pealing out some candy-flavored tune which his office manager, Gretchen Taylor, had programmed in for him and which he couldn’t be bothered to change. He saw the way Libby schooled her face into a neat picture of patience and sat down on the stairs beside Colleen, and then he heard Gretchen’s voice at the other end of the line.
She sounded stressed. “Nate hasn’t shown up yet.”
“No? He should get there any minute, from what he said earlier.”
“It’s after five. I wanted to get home. I hate leaving Alison on her own.”
“I know, Gretchen.”
In the background, Scarlett drummed her heels exuberantly on the floor.
“…So what do you want me to do?”
He tried not to sigh audibly into the phone. Nate Simmons had dated Gretchen for a while. She was a few years older than Nate was, with a twelve-year-old daughter. They’d broken up after a couple of months. Brady didn’t know why, and he wasn’t going to ask.
Now Gretchen had this aggrieved sub-text going on every time she spoke to him about Nate, as if she expected Brady himself to do something about it. He gave her what she wanted, at least on a micro-management level.
“Go home,” he told her. “The rest can wait until Monday.”
Messy office romances killed him, but how could you prevent that stuff? He didn’t believe you could forbid it, the way some corporations tried to do. It’d be worse if people started sneaking around. He just wished they would look a little harder before they leapt in.
Remember that, Brady. Keep your own rule, and stop looking so hard at the wrong parts of Libby McGraw.
“Okay, Brady.” Gretchen wasn’t as diplomatic as he’d tried to be in controlling her sigh. It practically whooshed out of the earpiece of his phone and whistled right through his head. “I’ll see you Monday,” she said. “Have a good weekend.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
Yeah. Yeah. He’d try. He might burst into flames first.
He hadn’t told anyone at the office or anyone on his sites about Scarlett’s twin. Not yet. He planned to wait a couple of weeks, see how the chips fell. And it would probably be best if he waited until Libby and Colleen were out of his house, too. Then he’d gather his senior people together and make an announcement, as low-key as possible, then leave them to spread the news however they wanted. He hoped this was the best way to handle it. There were no precedents to fall back on.
As soon as he’d gotten back from Minnesota, he’d told a couple of college friends, Matt and Russ—the ones he watched football with—and they had initially come out with a less-than-helpful repertoire of stunned expletives. In the weeks since, however, they’d done some more of the nice male friendship stuff they’d been doing since Stacey’s accident, like coming round in the evenings with pizzas, videos and beer, and helping him lop some big branches off an unsafe tree in the yard on a weekend. That was great, but it didn’t provide him with any answers.
He’d asked them to stay away for the next couple of weeks until “things got settled.” Now he wondered if a continuation of the pizzas and videos and beer might have diluted the intensity of the air between himself and Libby a little.
“Sorry,” he told her, after he’d ended the phone call. She was still sitting on the stairs, hugging Colleen.
“I guess it’s what happens when you run your own business,” she said. “Thanks for taking today off. I appreciate it.”
“Watch me, I’m switching off the cell phone. Let’s go before Nate tries to get me on the land line.”
They got the girls strapped in their seats and drove the short distance down to the North Campus area. Brady found parking without too much trouble. On football Saturdays, it would have been a different story.
The floats had already started coming past when they reached a vantage point on the corner of Lane and Neil avenues. It was still light, with the sun coloring up the west, painting this year’s top interior design shades onto the wall of breaking clouds.
Brady hadn’t managed to get to this event for the past few years, but the parade was pretty much the same as it had always been. Homecoming king and queen and courtiers in vintage cars, kids still in their teens tossing handfuls of candy from antique fire trucks and amateur floats. The marching band was the highlight and the reason Brady came when he could.
Libby apparently heard the drums in the distance and pricked up her ears. She had the collar of her coat turned up and a soft pink-and-gray hat, shaped like a bell, jammed down on her head. Her cheeks were pink from the cold and her eyes were bright and interested.
The girls both loved the candy. Colleen hardly seemed to know what it was—Libby was obviously careful about nutrition—but she wanted it anyway, every time it flew in her direction. In contrast, with a grandmother who regarded spoiling as a God-given right, Scarlett probably knew far too much about the stuff.
Released from their strollers, the two of them rushed around squealing and picking up Tootsie Rolls and lollipops, their arms a little stiff, one in a pink-and-purple coat and one in a fleece-lined denim jacket. Their hands were soon crammed and spilling over.
Libby took off her hat, making golden strands of hair fluff up in a halo around her head. “Put it in here, guys,” she told them, and they ran back and forth, cadging the stuff from adult candy collectors. They were just too cute to resist, and they didn’t even know it.
Libby’s hat was full in minutes. She held it out to Brady, laughing. “What do I do now?”
Brady was bare-headed, but he had pockets—slanty jacket pockets which turned out to be almost impossible to fill. They tried anyway, spilling it from the hat crown as they tipped it in.
“This isn’t working,” Libby said.
She took a handful instead, held the pocket open and thrust her cache inside. The jacket tugged and tightened at his shoulder with the push of her hand, and Brady realized that their heads were almost touching.
The corner of her coat collar brushed across his cheek, and when she rummaged in the hat for another handful of candy, he felt her shoulder nudge his arm and her hip bump his thigh. He was badly tempted to get even closer, to find out how soft that hair felt against the brush of his mouth. Just a little moment like this, and his whole body was throbbing.
Stop this!
“Okay, now I have room for some more,” she said, and stepped away.
The band got nearer and louder, and there were some sporadic cheers and calls from farther along. Brady could hear the classic, familiar drum riff like a call to arms, making Buckeye blood beat faster in Buckeye veins across the whole state. What were the team’s chances of making it to the Rose Bowl championship this year?
“They’re adorable,” an older woman said beside him, her voice gushy and high. She wasn’t talking about the football team, or even the band. “And they’re identical! How come you dress ’em so different?”
“Uh, so we can tell them apart.” He was improvising, and it showed. His and Libby’s diametrically opposing views on how to dress their girls was an issue they hadn’t begun to tackle. Would they eventually have to? Or could they agree to differ?
As for the woman’s clear assumption that they were married…
“Really?” she said. “And you’re their parents! My Lord!” She took another look at the girls, but seemed to accept his statement. “They really are identical,” she repeated. “What a cute, cute family.”
“Thanks,” he muttered.
“Adopted, of course.” She was looking at Lisa-Belle, now, taking in her Scandinavian fairness.
“Yes.” He felt uncomfortable, and was glad when the wom
an turned away.
Libby was trying to corral both girls and keep them within reach. Hampered by a hat once more brimming to overflow point with candy, she was having a hard time.
“Colleen, honey, stay with Mommy. Scarlett, stay with—” she took a jerky breath “—with me.”
To Scarlett, she wasn’t Mommy. Not yet. Brady didn’t blame her for that. But it was another future hurdle to get across.
The band had almost reached them, pushing a wave of energy ahead of the long column of black-and-red-uniformed marchers and musicians. The girls were getting wild.
“Do we follow along?” Libby yelled.
“If you’d like to.”
“Oh, I would! And the girls sure are raring to go.”
Scarlett didn’t want to go in the stroller, a sentiment which made perfect sense to Brady. She wanted to see. He folded the stroller quickly and swung her up to sit on his shoulders, with her arms wrapping around his forehead. Libby dumped the candy-filled hat in the seat of the other stroller, lifted Colleen onto her hip and managed to push the stroller ahead of her, one-handed.
The band broke into a double-time strut and they raced along beside it, slowing when it slowed, walking in time to its beat, surfing the excitement. Only when the column turned south into High Street did Libby stop and look at him, with a question in her eyes. She was a little breathless, and her arm had to be aching from carrying Colleen that way for so long.
“Do we keep on?” she asked.
“Let’s leave it to the undergrads, now.”
The girls still had energy to burn. Scarlett recognized the opportunity for one of her favorite activities when they came past a low brick wall. “Ba’ance! Ba’ance!” she said.
He put her down and held her hand and she balanced all the way along. As soon as Colleen saw, she wanted to do the same. Libby had trouble managing her and the stroller, so Brady folded it up, hat and candy still wedged and bulging, packaged by the canvas seat. He carried both folded strollers under his arm, and the girls “balanced” for a good five minutes.
“The parade was great!” Libby said.
“It’s the right speed for them, isn’t it?”
“For me, too.”
“Yes, it’s not a big enough event to draw a huge crowd, so you don’t have to stand around and wait, or try to maneuver for a line of sight when the sidewalks are ten people deep, like most parades.”
“It’s given me an appetite.”
“Someone mentioned a beef casserole, earlier.”
“Someone else has to get us home, and then I think there’s plenty. It shouldn’t take too long to heat in the microwave. Thanks, Brady. This helped, didn’t it? It was—it was awkward when I first arrived.”
Yeah, awkward. That was one word for it.
He could think of a few others that fitted better.
Her blue eyes were serious, fixed on his face, asking for something from him that he didn’t quite understand. Her cheeks were pink and satin-smooth from the evening cold. Her lips were full, and her mouth closed and straightened as soon as she finished speaking.
“It, uh, yeah…” he said. Didn’t know quite how to answer her. “Don’t know if you saw, but I left the real estate listings on the table. I circled a few things, but of course you’ll want to look through them yourself. If you want to look at some places on the weekend, I can watch Colleen.”
The suggestion seemed logical, to give the girls some time together, get this sister thing going. But Libby shook her head.
“No, I’ll take her with me,” she answered quickly. “It’s fine. It’ll slow me down a little, I guess, but I’d like to see how she reacts to the places, anyhow.”
She didn’t quite trust him, Brady realized, and she was making excuses.
The fact was pretty apparent—due to her own self-conscious awareness that she was making excuses, mainly. Maybe she thought he wouldn’t be vigilant enough about falls and sharp objects, or that he’d give Colleen too much junk to eat. He decided to let it go for the moment. After all, how would he have felt about leaving Scarlett with Libby?
He thought about it.
No, actually, he’d have been okay with that. He’d have forced himself to be okay with it on principle. Sure, he had fears and suspicious instincts, but they’d made a commitment to bring the girls together, and he was going to act on it. He wasn’t going to play emotional games, because he hated them.
At this stage, it was a little thing, but when he told himself he was letting it go, he knew in his heart that this wasn’t quite true. He was storing it up, ready to be wary or angry if it happened again, ready to feel some mistrust of his own, for his own reasons.
Chapter Five
Both girls were asleep.
Scarlett had napped less and had a busier day than Colleen, so she was ready to go first, while it was after eight by the time Libby came back down the stairs. She and Brady hadn’t eaten, yet. Since it was already late when they’d arrived home, they’d fed the girls first and gone through their separate, different bedtime routines. Scarlett had a bed-time story, while Colleen got a bath and songs. Singing seemed to settle her at night better than words and pictures.
Maybe singing settled Brady, too. He had the radio tuned softly to a country music station in the kitchen, and he was setting the table in the breakfast nook with place mats and cloth napkins, a bowl of bread rolls and a bottle of wine. It was a little more lavish than Libby had expected, and he caught her look of surprise.
“Figured I should do justice to the casserole,” he said. “It’s your first meal here.”
“You haven’t tasted it, yet.”
“Yes, I have. I pinched a mouthful of Scarlett’s. It was good. She wolfed it down. The wine’s an optional extra.”
“It’s a French dish. The French would have it with wine.”
“Gotta do what the French do,” he mocked her lightly.
“You think I’m making excuses? I’ll gladly drink a glass of wine without one!”
“Sometimes excuses are okay.” The words were slow, a little reluctant. “You don’t want to start hearing them too often, or you start to wonder what’s going on…”
Libby pretended absorption in opening the wine, and didn’t answer. If he meant the way she’d turned down his baby-sitting offer, she wasn’t ready to admit to that yet. You couldn’t force trust, and she wasn’t going to apologize for not fully feeling it after so short a time. She was only sorry she hadn’t managed to hide her attitude more successfully.
Let it slide, please, Brady, she begged him silently. Recognize the value of the occasional little white lie, until we know each other better.
He turned off the radio and brought the casserole to the table, steaming in a big dish, and they sat opposite each other. The breakfast nook was small, old-fashioned and pretty, set adjacent to the windows and containing a built-in wooden table and hinged bench seats with storage space underneath.
Brady looked as if another inch or two of teenage growth would have made him unable to fit in it, and Libby had to pivot her knees a little to the side to keep her legs clear of his. She could tell by the twist in his upper body that he was doing the same thing in the opposite direction. They were, each of them, unnaturally careful about it.
He poured wine into the glasses, and pushed the bowl of crusty rolls toward her, then he sat back a little so that she had a clear run at the bread without the risk that they’d accidentally touch. This was already too much like a date—a first date between two teenagers who’d been aware of each other for a while, but didn’t have the slightest clue what to say and how to act, now that they were alone.
When he grabbed his wineglass, his hand looked so tight she almost expected the fragile glass stem to snap.
“So, the weekend,” he said.
“Do you have commitments?”
“I kept it clear. In case you needed help with anything.”
It was the same rough-hewn kind of thoughtfulness he’d shown with th
e flowers in her room. She valued that. And yet she’d already turned down his offer of baby-sitting because she didn’t know whether to trust him with her daughter. She felt bad about that—bad about being so unsubtle, but not bad enough to change her mind.
And is Scarlett my daughter, too? What will happen if I let myself love her as much as I love Colleen, but have no parental rights where she’s concerned? If I lost her…
Too frightening to think about.
“The rest of my furniture and boxes that were shipped—” she started to say.
“In the garage and the tool room.”
“So if I find somewhere to live right away…”
“I can get a van and a couple of my guys, no problem. You know there’s no hurry for you to settle on anything, though.”
“I appreciate that, Brady.”
But…
There was a but, though neither of them mentioned it.
But if things continued to be this awkward…
Why were things this awkward?
Easy.
Because, on top of everything else, they were attracted to each other. It had begun within their first few minutes of meeting, and it hadn’t gone away, it had only gotten stronger. Unlike those imaginary teenage first-daters she’d conjured up, however, they didn’t want it. It added a complication to the question of the relationship between their daughters that would only get in the way. It was dangerous. There were a thousand ways in which it could end badly.
Knowing this gave Libby absolutely no power to do anything about it. She was still almost painfully conscious of the way the light hit Brady’s hair and face, conscious of the contours of his shoulders, and of the movements of his hands, conscious of the way he smelled and the way he smiled.
Her senses seemed heightened in their perceptions. His voice was like rough music to her ears, and the scent of him was like the cedar balls she put in her clothing drawers.
She wanted to reach out and touch him. Just his hands at first. No hurry, no impatience. She wanted to explore the raised shapes of bone and vessel across the backs, and feel the work-hardened roughness of his palm against hers.
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