Babies in the Bargain

by Victoria Pade

  Marla’s sister.

  But as he lumbered up the steps to the porch he caught sight of Kira through the picture window. She was in the living room, dumping an armload of toys into the toy box in the corner and then straightening the knickknacks on the table nearby and bending to snatch up a T-shirt Mandy had spilled juice on earlier—all at a double-time pace.

  Cutty sighed and shook his head, stopping to watch her without her realizing she had an audience, wondering if she had any idea that she was going overboard.

  But as he looked on Kira hesitated suddenly. She glanced from the shirt to the entryway and back again.

  Then she checked the time on the mantel clock.

  Suddenly she crossed to the couch in a hurry, lifted one of the cushions and hid the shirt there, completely surprising him.

  Cutty had to fight to keep from bursting out laughing.

  And just that quick his blind spot was back in place, and he had to wonder if he wasn’t already in trouble with Kira Wentworth, regardless of whose sister she was.

  The awards ceremony honoring Cutty and Ad that evening was held in the school auditorium. It was packed with a standing-room-only crowd as Cutty, Ad, Northbridge’s mayor and the entire city council lined the stage behind a podium where a number of people spoke in praise of the two men and thanked them for the bravery that had saved an entire family. Even the dog Cutty and Ad had managed to free just before the beam had fallen and injured them both was in attendance.

  The ceremony had a casual, friendly feel to it, and as Kira sat in the first row witnessing it all she was glad for Cutty. It pleased her that what he’d done with Ad—as well as everything else he did for the town—was recognized and appreciated. He really had found a home here and an extended family for himself.

  At the end of the ceremony Ad was given his plaque first. His acceptance speech was brief and humorous but then turned more serious and heartfelt as he added his gratitude to Cutty for saving his life.

  Kira didn’t think there was a dry eye in the place as he openly voiced his affection and friendship and presented Cutty’s plaque.

  Cutty was obviously moved himself as he limped to the podium on his cane. The two men embraced roughly—the way men do—and then Cutty took over the microphone.

  He stared down at the plaque for a long moment as if he was reading it, but Kira thought it was more likely he was getting his emotions under control. That opinion was supported when he had to clear his throat before he could speak.

  “This is really nice,” he began, unprepared but without any evidence of stage fright. He went on to give his own thanks for all that so many people in Northbridge had done for him over the years, for how much the small town and its citizens meant to him.

  Kira listened intently, enjoying the chance to so freely study the impressive sight of the tall man with the broad, broad shoulders encased in a pale green shirt. He wore a tie tonight, a hunter-green tie that set off the color of his amazing eyes. He also had on dark slacks tailored to fall perfectly from his narrow hips, and even though he’d complimented Kira on her champagne-colored V-necked silk blouse and matching slacks, and how nice her hair looked falling free to her shoulders, she thought he was definitely nothing to be overlooked himself.

  He didn’t talk for long but he did surprise Kira by aiming the last of what he had to say at her.

  He sought her out in the crowd with those striking eyes and said, “I also want to thank Kira Wentworth who showed up on my doorstep out of the blue last week and volunteered to use her vacation to chase the twins and wait on me. She’s kind of a ray of sunshine in our house and I want her to know how much I appreciate all she’s doing for us.”

  There was nothing inappropriate in his words but there was a hint of intimacy in the smile he shot her way, making her blush with more than embarrassment at being brought to everyone’s attention.

  Luckily, though, Cutty ended his speech then and in the applause and cheers and standing ovation that followed, she hoped no one noticed the pink hue of her cheeks.

  There was a dinner in the gymnasium afterward, and while a number of people made a point of talking to her and showing an interest in her, Cutty and Ad were the men of the hour and barely managed to eat in the midst of the many well-wishers who wanted to shake their hands.

  It was nearly ten o’clock when the evening finally ended. Ad walked with Cutty and Kira out to the parking lot and as he did he said, “Tomorrow night’s all set. My sister can’t wait to get her hands on the twins.”

  Cutty made a face. “I was waiting to spring the party on Kira on the way home,” he said pointedly to his friend.

  “Tomorrow is our boy’s birthday,” Ad explained to Kira, ignoring Cutty’s obvious reluctance to talk about this. “I’m closing down the restaurant for the night. My sister is keeping the twins at her place until the next morning, and I’m throwing him the biggest birthday bash he’s ever seen.”

  “Tomorrow’s your birthday?” Kira repeated, aiming the question at Cutty.

  He made another face. “It’s unavoidable.”

  “Yes, it is. Birthdays are a big deal and we’re celebrating it. Kira included, right?” Ad said, looking for confirmation from her.

  Before she could answer Cutty said, “I was hoping she would come with me but I wanted to ask her in private.”

  “Oops,” Ad said with an ornery grin.

  They’d reached Cutty’s car by then and Ad went on to his own where it was parked one spot over, saying as he did, “Tomorrow night. Eight o’clock. No excuses. Kira, you can bring your dancing shoes even if Cutty can’t dance—there’ll be music and food and plenty to drink.”

  They all said good-night then and Kira and Cutty got into Cutty’s car.

  “I’m sorry about that,” he said before he’d even put the key in the ignition.

  “That’s okay. I wish I had known earlier that tomorrow is your birthday, though.”

  “I really don’t like a fuss to be made about it. But now that Ad has blown my plan to ease you into the idea, would you like to go with me to a party tomorrow night?”

  “What was your plan to ease me into the idea?” Kira asked rather than answering his question.

  “I was going to see if you might like to take a drive tonight, show you the north bridge that inspired the town’s name, and then spring it on you.”

  Kira laughed, thrilled more than he would ever know by the fact that he’d had a plan at all for prolonging this evening.

  “I’d like to see the bridge,” she said then.

  “And the party tomorrow night?”

  “I’ll think about it until after I see the bridge,” she said, as if there was any doubt she would accept an invitation to go with him to his own birthday party.

  “Fair enough,” he said, starting the engine and pulling out of the school parking lot.

  “So there really is a north bridge?” Kira asked along the way.

  “An old oak one. Built across the river north of town. Actually, the bridge is more impressive than the river—which isn’t much more than a creek anymore.”

  They were outside the city limits within a few minutes but Cutty kept on driving along a dark country road.

  They went about seven miles before he turned onto another road—this one more narrow and less developed than the other, following it through an area that grew more and more densely wooded until they finally came to a clearing.

  The bridge was a short distance ahead when Cutty pulled to a stop. He turned off the engine and the car lights so they could see it in the moonlight.

  It was indeed a wooden bridge with crosshatch bars running the length of both sides and a railing bracing posts that held a shingled roof over it.

  “The only thing it’s missing is a horse-drawn wagon clomping across it,” Kira observed of the bridge that seemed right out of the pages of a history book.

  “That was just what it was built for ninety-nine years ago. It gets its hundredth birthday next year.
”

  “I saw a covered bridge similar to that on a trip to Vermont. Once upon a time,” Kira said then.

  Cutty angled her way and stretched an arm along the seat back, transferring his focus from the bridge to her. “What were you doing in Vermont?”

  “Meeting the parents of a guy I was dating.”

  Despite the view of the old bridge, Kira went from looking at it to looking at Cutty because he was still a sight she preferred. And when she did she got to see his eyebrows arch.

  “You dated a guy seriously enough to go across the country to meet his parents?”

  “Why do you sound so surprised?”

  Cutty shrugged. “I guess after hearing about how things were for you in the Wentworth household I just didn’t imagine you involved with anyone.”

  “I did eventually move out of the Wentworth household, you know.”

  “When?”

  “About two years ago. I stayed at home while I got my undergraduate and master’s degrees, and you’re right—I still couldn’t really date as long as I was living under my father’s roof. Although I did have a little more contact with the opposite sex because of the freedom and flexibility college offered. But beyond having coffee with a guy or lunch or dinner between classes, I couldn’t have a relationship that involved much else.”

  “Even when you hit your twenties? Your father still wouldn’t stand for you dating?”

  “It wasn’t as if there was a magic age at which he started to see me as a flesh-and-blood human being who was entitled to a life. That never happened. I had to excel so he looked good. That was all he thought about regardless of how old I was.”

  “But after you got your master’s degree you moved out on your own?”

  “I did.”

  “And your father was okay with that then?”

  “He didn’t speak to me for six months. I wasn’t allowed to go to Christmas dinner that year.”

  “That sounds like the man I hardly knew and didn’t love,” Cutty said wryly.

  “It wasn’t as if he ever willingly relinquished control of anything or anyone, so my moving out wasn’t something he could just roll with. But when the silent treatment didn’t make me move back in, he eventually had to accept that I’d left and wasn’t coming back. Plus it helped that he saw that even though I wasn’t living with him, I was still working hard as a research assistant and getting my Ph.D.—which meant I was staying the course the way I was supposed to.”

  “So even though you were finally out from under his thumb you stayed regimented—you still didn’t cut loose?”

  Kira laughed. “I definitely didn’t cut loose. I moved into the studio apartment I live in now, worked days at the lab and nights and weekends on my doctorate dissertation.”

  “Then when did Mr. Vermont come into the picture?” Cutty asked.

  Did he sound a shade jealous?

  Kira smiled at that possibility. “Mr. Vermont was my advisor for my master’s thesis. As long as I was working on it we kept things impersonal, but when I finished it and we wouldn’t be seeing each other again on a professional basis, he asked me out. Although I didn’t call him Mr. Vermont. I called him Mark.”

  “Mark,” Cutty echoed only with a more distasteful inflection in his voice.

  “Mark Myers,” Kira elaborated, thinking Cutty really might be jealous. And loving it.

  “And he was your first…boyfriend?”

  “He wasn’t the first guy who ever kissed me. There were a couple of stolen kisses that went with those secret lunches and dinners through undergrad and my master’s program. But Mark was the first everything else.”

  And the last. But Kira didn’t add that.

  “So if you went to Vermont to meet parents, does that mean you were really serious about him?”

  “We were talking marriage,” Kira confirmed. “Although I still hadn’t been brave enough to tell my parents about him because I knew my father would hit the ceiling. He would have said I was letting someone interfere with my education, that I was going to end up throwing away my life—” Kira cut herself short. “Well, you can probably guess what he would have said. But I was serious enough about Mark that I was on the verge of going through all that to have a future with him.”

  “What happened?”

  “I guess I met his parents,” she said, trying to make a joke of something that hadn’t held any humor for her.

  “Was there something wrong with them?” Cutty asked quietly, apparently sensing the more somber aspects that had returned to stab her even now.

  “No, Mark’s parents were great. It was just that once I met them things with Mark became a little too clear.”

  “What kind of things?”

  “Well, I’d always known that Mark thought highly of his mom and dad—his mother in particular. I thought it was nice and I was looking forward to being a part of a family that had good relationships with each other.”

  “But the truth was they were as dysfunctional as the rest of us?” Cutty said, making his own attempt to lighten the tone.

  “No, they really were a picture-perfect family. It was just that I didn’t know until that trip that Mark considered his mother the epitome of what any wife of his would have to be.”

  “Mark Myers was a mama’s boy,” Cutty concluded.

  “There was more to it than that. For me, at least. I spent my whole life watching my mother trying to live up to my father’s first wife. And never making it. I hated that so much.”

  Kira had to swallow back the anger that the mere memory could still rouse in her.

  When she had she continued. “Even though Mark wasn’t as controlling as my father, there was still an image of someone else that he expected me to emulate. That he was demanding that I fashion myself and my whole life after. I had this vision of making pot roast after pot roast that wasn’t as good as the pot roast his mother made, and I knew there was no way I was going to put myself in that position. Almost the same position my mother had been in.”

  “So you broke it off with Mr. Vermont.”

  “I just had to,” Kira said, suddenly thinking of too many similarities between the situation with Mark and the situation she was in now.

  “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m glad you did,” Cutty said then with a devilish smile that succeeded where his joke had failed to break some of the tension this conversation had caused.

  “Why are you glad I broke up with him?” Kira asked a bit coyly.

  “Because if you hadn’t you’d probably be so busy making pot roasts that you never would have come to Northbridge, and I’d have to go to my birthday party tomorrow night by myself.”

  There was such a glint of mischief in his eyes that Kira could see it even in only moon glow and it made her smile. “I haven’t said that I will go to your birthday party tomorrow night.”

  “You would turn down a man on his birthday?” Cutty said as if the very idea was unfathomable.

  “Maybe I have a mean streak you haven’t seen yet.”

  That just made him grin. “Let’s see it then,” he said as if he were asking to see something a whole lot more enticing.

  He suddenly let his seat slide back as far as it would go and, as if she weighed nothing at all, he half lifted, half pulled her toward him so she found herself facing him and sitting partially on his lap.

  Even after the fact Kira wasn’t too sure how she’d gotten there but she didn’t protest. Instead she played along and said, “I don’t show it to just anyone on demand.”

  “Maybe I can coax it out of you,” he suggested, running the tip of his nose along her cheek like the stroke of a sable paintbrush.

  “I’m uncoaxable,” Kira said in a breathy voice that made a liar out of her.

  Not that she cared. She was too lost in thoughts of how much she liked being there with his arms draped around her and his nose tantalizing her.

  She closed her eyes and reveled in the tingling, teasing sensation that traveled to the edge of he
r jawbone, to her earlobe, to the side of her neck where he replaced the whispery strokes of his nose with a kiss. A brief, delicate kiss heated by his breath, warming her from the inside out.

  He kissed her chin then. And her bottom lip alone before he finally took her mouth with his. But only playfully. Lips met and separated. Met again. And again, staying only after that third kiss to make it a real one.

  Cutty brought a hand to her face, cupping her cheek as he parted his lips and urged hers to follow, allowing tongues to come out and toy with each other.

  Kira let her hand rise to the strong cord of his neck, to his hair where it bristled at his nape. In the slightly odd position she was in, her breasts were against the inside of his arm and she felt her nipples tighten there, greeting him all on their own.

  For a moment she wondered if he could feel it, too. But her curiosity was short-lived because just then he flexed back at them in answer.

  It was a small thing and yet it was enough to make her breasts come to life with a yearning for more than the feel of his muscled arm.

  Cutty didn’t hesitate to trail his hand from her face even as he went on kissing her, their mouths open wide by then. Firm fingers traced a path to her shoulder and downward until he cupped one breast.

  The pleasure was instant and caught Kira’s breath, expanding her lungs suddenly and pushing that nipple more deeply into his palm.

  His hand closed around her engorged flesh and Kira was torn between how wonderful it felt and desperately wanting the feel of it without the filter of clothes.

  Longing for any touch of skin, she untied his tie and pulled it free, then she went to work on the buttons of his shirt until she had them all unfastened so she could plunge her hands inside.

  He was hot and smooth and hard muscled, and she suddenly became aware of the fact that there was an insistent ridge letting its presence be known at her hip.

  A quiet moan rolled from Cutty’s throat as his mouth deserted hers to kiss her neck again, to nibble her earlobe.

  Kira let her head fall back to free the way to the hollow of her throat as his hand slipped beneath her silk blouse and coursed up under her lacy bra to envelop that breast that was straining for him.