Was she being unreasonable? Was she trying to be too strong? Why was that? Because she didn’t want anyone helping her…or she suddenly didn’t want Mitch helping her? The thought of him sleeping on her couch tonight made her stomach do something more than flutter. She felt as if she’d gone over the top of a Ferris wheel.
But she certainly wasn’t going to Mitch’s place. The gossips in Sagebrush would have a field day.
“Let’s go inside and you can curl up on the sofa,” he suggested. “I’ll get you something to drink and we’ll go from there.”
“Don’t you have other things to do today?”
“Repairing winter’s damage to the patio? Sweeping out my garage?” He gave her one of his rare smiles.
Ever since Mitch had started with the practice, she’d noticed the long hours he worked, longer than any of the other physicians. He even scheduled consultations on Saturdays. He had rarely taken off work in the time she’d known him. Didn’t he have a life outside of the fertility lab? Did he have friends other than the service buddies Troy had once mentioned? Mitch was an enigma, a puzzle she couldn’t solve—one she shouldn’t be interested in at all.
She nibbled on her lower lip for a couple of seconds and then asked, “Do you know how to cook?”
When he chuckled, she liked the sound of it. “I do. My mother taught me the basics,” he said with fond remembrance. “I do all right.”
The air in his SUV seemed stifling. She was relieved they were separated in the bucket seats because being physically close to Mitch now seemed…dangerous.
She asked in a low voice, “Why are you doing this, Mitch?”
“I made a promise to Troy. I keep my promises.”
That’s what she thought. This was duty for Mitch. He was a man who knew duty and honor well.
She let out a long breath. “All right, you can sleep on my couch. But just tonight. That’s it. Tomorrow I’m on my own again.”
“Deal,” he agreed.
Even though he said it, she saw a considering flicker in his eyes. How long would his promise to Troy hold?
Minutes later they were escaping the blustery weather outside and walking into the old house that Lily now thought of as home. Last September she’d moved out of the apartment she’d shared with Troy because the memories there had been too painful.
She breathed in the scent of cinnamon emanating from the potpourri dish beside the Tiffany lamp in the foyer. Angie had filled it before Christmas. Her housemate had understood how difficult the holidays would be for Lily and had included her in her family’s celebrations. So had Gina and, of course, Raina. They’d kept Lily too busy to think if not feel. At night, alone in her room, she’d faced her loss and spoken to her unborn babies about their dad and about what their first Christmas the following year might bring. She had to look toward the future.
“Where would you like your overnight case?” Mitch asked, stepping in behind her.
“Upstairs on my bed would be great.”
“The steps won’t be a problem?”
“Not at all. But I’ll only do them once today.”
“Which room is yours?”
A jolt of reality hit when she realized Mitch would be standing in her bedroom in a few minutes. He’d see the baby catalogs and magazines splayed across the chest at the foot of the bed, as well as the photo of Troy on her dresser. What else would he notice?
And why was the idea of Mitch standing in her bedroom so unnerving?
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing. My bedroom’s the second one on the right. It’s the one with the yellow rose wallpaper.”
“Got it,” he said with the flash of a smile that made her breath hitch a little.
Confused, she decided she was just tired from the trip home and worried about her babies. She wasn’t reacting to Mitch as a man. She absolutely wasn’t.
When Mitch returned downstairs, she was pulling greens and carrots from the refrigerator.
He came up beside her and took them out of her hands. “Stop. Today you’re not doing a thing. Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in the living room in an easy chair?”
He was a doctor, too. He knew what her body had been through, though she was trying to deny it.
“Don’t you have a good book you want to read?” he teased.
She supposed humor was better than anything else. Maybe it would make this jumpy feeling she had when she was around him go away. “I’m sure I can find something to read.”
When she took a last glance around, he said, “Relax and trust me.”
Trust him. That was the tall and short of it. She did. And trusting him formed a bond that she just didn’t want right now. She’d trusted Troy because he was her husband. But now he was gone, and she shouldn’t be able to simply turn around and trust another man so easily.
Should she?
“What’s going on in your head?” Mitch asked with gentle persuasion.
Nothing he’d want to know about. Her doubts and questions and issues were all hers. None of it had anything to do with him. “I’m just…wired and tired at the same time.”
He set the greens and carrots on the counter. Then he nudged her around and walked her toward the living room. He was a good six inches taller than she was and she felt petite beside him.
The heat of his palm on her shoulder seeped through her knit top. She should have worn a sweater. This old house could be drafty. If she’d worn a sweater, she wouldn’t feel the warmth of his hand at all…or remember him holding hers as Sophie was born.
He released her as they reached the sofa. Then he stood there and waited and she realized he wanted her to sit. He definitely was a commanding male. Why would that change simply because he was trying to be her friend? Men in the military had a particular bearing, a straightness of their backs, a tautness of their shoulders, that made them seem more than ordinary men. Not that anything about Mitch today seemed military. His jeans, sweater and even his leather boots looked comfortable. She couldn’t remember ever seeing him dressed so casually before.
She sank down onto the sofa.
“Put your legs up,” he ordered.
She didn’t usually take orders well. “I’ll be bored,” she muttered.
While he pulled the afghan from the back of the sofa and spread it over her, he asked, “Don’t you knit or something?”
“Crochet,” she corrected automatically, then pointed to the tapestry bag beside the easy chair. She knew if she made a move to get it, he wouldn’t let her.
When he stooped to pick up the bag, she noticed the play of his shoulder muscles, the length of his upper torso, his slim hips. A tingle that she relegated to post-birth pangs rippled through her belly. Looking away, she pulled the afghan up higher.
He brought the bag to her and settled it in her lap. “What are you making?”
After opening the Velcro closure, she extracted a pink sweater that sported one sleeve. “I didn’t know whether to make these both pink or not. You know, stereotypes and all. But then I thought, two baby girls. What could be cuter than matching pink sweaters?”
He laughed. “I’m sure Sophie and Grace will agree.”
She turned the sweater over in her hands and then admitted, “I was an only child. I wanted a sister desperately. Sophie and Grace will always have each other.” She looked up at him again. “Do you have brothers or sisters?” She really didn’t know anything about Mitch’s background or his childhood.
“Nope. No brothers or sisters.”
“Troy and his sister Ellie were close,” Lily said in a low voice.
“He talked about her often,” Mitch responded, in the way he had ever since Troy had been killed. She was grateful he made it all right for her to speak about her husband and anything connected to him.
“She’s in a tough situation right now,” Lily said to Mitch. “She had a small store where she sold her own line of baby clothes. But her area of Oklahoma was hard hit by the economic downturn and
she had to close the store.”
“What’s she doing now?”
“She’s trying to take her business to the internet.”
“Is she coming for a visit?”
“Ellie and Troy’s mom, Darlene, both want to visit after the babies come home.” She’d always gotten along well with Ellie and Darlene…with all of Troy’s family. She knew he’d moved to Texas because the construction market had been thriving around Lubbock, unlike Oklahoma. She’d often wished his family wasn’t so far away.
An odd expression crossed Mitch’s face, one she couldn’t decipher. He said, “You’ll have a lot of people to help with the babies. That’s just what you need.”
“Is that what I need, Mitch? I’m their mom. I want to take care of them myself.”
“Sure you do. But twins are a lot of work. There was a kid in my neighborhood when I was growing up. His mother had twins. She was always run ragged. And when you go back to work, you’re definitely going to need child care.”
“I have to go back,” she said. “Insurance money and savings will only go so far.”
“You’ll have Troy’s benefits,” Mitch reminded her.
“That money is going into a trust fund for the twins.”
He didn’t contradict her, or try to convince her otherwise. She wanted to give her girls the advantages she’d had growing up. Yet, most of all, she wanted them to appreciate the people around them who loved them. When she’d lost her parents, she’d realized how little material possessions actually meant, and she’d grown up quickly.
“Did you grow up here in Sagebrush?” she asked Mitch, curious about his childhood.
“Yes, I did.”
Frustrated he wasn’t more expansive, she prompted, “But you don’t have family here.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Mitch,” she said, letting her frustration show.
“What do you want to know, Lily? Just ask.”
Studying his collar-length black hair, his chiseled features, she let the question pop into her head. Are you just here out of duty or do you care? Instead she replied, “I am asking. But you’re not telling me much.”
“And why is this suddenly important?”
That was a good question. “I’m not sure. I guess talking about Ellie, thinking about how I’m going to raise the twins— It just made me wonder, that’s all. At least give me something to think about while I rest and twiddle my thumbs.”
“Crochet,” he pointed out.
“Same difference.”
The silence in the living room enveloped them for a few moments until Mitch said, “Your background and mine are very different.”
“How do you know about mine?”
“Troy shared some of it when we played pool.”
Lily’s husband and Mitch had gone out and shared an evening of guy stuff now and then, the same way she shared time with her friends.
“Just what did he tell you?”
Mitch’s shrug told her he was attempting to make the conversation casual. “That your father was a respected scientist and professor at Stanford. That your mother was a pharmacist who developed her own line of cosmetics and did quite well with them. Something about after your father died, she sold the formula to provide you with a college education.”
“Yes, she did,” Lily murmured, mind-traveling back to a time that was filled with bittersweet memories. “Daddy died of a massive coronary when I was in high school. My mom died of breast cancer when I was in college. Losing them both made me want to find a profession that gave life.”
“If your father taught at Stanford, how did you end up here?”
“My mom had a friend who lived in Lubbock, so we moved here. But she and my dad had always planned I’d go to their alma mater. I was at Stanford when she got sick. I flew home as often as I could, but then took off a semester when we called in hospice.”
“You’ve had a lot of loss.”
“The people I love leave me.” She stared at her hands when she said it, but then she raised her gaze to his. “I know. I know. I shouldn’t believe that. If nothing else, I should think positive to change the pattern. But this negative pattern is awfully fresh again and it’s hard not to wonder.”
“You have two little girls now to love.”
“I do. And you can bet, I will be an overprotective mom.”
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.”
Somehow the conversation had rolled back to Lily again. Mitch was so good at deflecting. Why had she never realized that? But she was also determined to delve below the surface.
Hiking herself up higher against the sofa arm, she nodded toward the space at the end of the couch where her feet had been. “Tell me how you grew up.”
He looked as reluctant to sit on her couch as she was to have him sleep there tonight. But in the end, he decided she wouldn’t rest until he gave her something. So he sat on the sofa, his thigh brushing one of her stockinged feet. He looked terrifically uncomfortable. “There’s not much to it.”
She waited, her gaze on his rugged profile.
With a grimace, he finally said, “My father married my mother because she was pregnant when they were both eighteen.”
She knew Mitch was probably going to need some prompting, so she asked, “Did it last?”
Mitch’s brows drew together as he, obviously reluctant, answered, “He stuck around for a year, then took off on his motorcycle and bailed. She went to business school and became a medical transcriber, but she couldn’t always find work. Other times she held two jobs, cleaned offices at night and saved for when times were thin again. I was determined to make life better for both of us.”
“Did you always want to be a doctor?”
“Do you mean was it a lifelong wish from childhood? No. Actually, at first I thought I might become a stockbroker or an investment banker.”
Lily couldn’t help but smile. She couldn’t imagine Mitch as either of those. She didn’t know why. She just couldn’t. “So why aren’t you working on Wall Street?”
“I was good at sports…basketball. I won a scholarship to college. But during my sophomore year my mother got sick and didn’t tell me. She didn’t have insurance so she didn’t go to the doctor. She developed pneumonia and died.”
“Oh, Mitch. I’m sorry. That had to be awful for you.”
Again he looked uncomfortable revealing this part of his past. “She’d been my motivator. After she died, I took a nosedive. I’d been a good student, but my grades tanked. Then one day, after a few months of drinking into the night and sleeping too late to get up for class, I looked out the dorm window and knew that campus wasn’t real life. Guys hooking up with girls, frat parties, learning to play teachers for better grades. I thought about my mom’s life, how hard it had been and how it ended, and I decided to make a difference. I wanted to help patients who didn’t have much of a chance. I wanted to give life when it was hardly there any longer. So I juggled two jobs, got my B.S., and went on to med school. I decided on trauma surgery. In my last year of residency, September 11th happened.”
Lily thought of Raina and her first husband, a fire-fighter, who had lost his life that day. Her knowledge of Mitch’s character and her intuition where he was concerned urged her to ask, “And that’s when you signed up for the Army National Guard?”
“Yes.”
“When did you go to Iraq?”
“Two years later.”
They were both quiet for a few moments.
Mitch flexed his hand and moved his fingers as she often saw him do, and she knew he was remembering something he never talked about…something that caused those deep fatigue lines around his eyes some mornings.
To break the heavy silence, she asked, “Are you happy being part of our fertility practice?” She and two other doctors had been in unanimous agreement, voting him into their partnership.
“You mean would I rather be performing surgery? Sure. But I like what I do. You and me, Jon and Hil
lary…we give the seeds of life a chance, as well as at-risk pregnancies. That’s rewarding. What I miss is not being part of the Guard, no longer having that unique camaraderie and sense of spirit. Before deployment, it was tough trying to be a doctor as well as a guardsman. But it was what I wanted to be doing.”
Abruptly he stood, his body language telling her that this conversation was over. He already knew Lily was the type who wanted to know more, who would ask questions until she got her answers. He was cutting that off before it could go any further. To her surprise, she already missed his presence at the end of the sofa.
“I checked your refrigerator and you have a couple of choices,” he said with a forced smile. “Scrambled eggs, scrambled eggs with asparagus and bacon on the side, or… I think I saw sausage in there that I could turn into sausage and pasta of some kind, maybe with canned tomatoes.”
“Are you kidding me?” Her eyes were open wide and she was staring at him as if she really didn’t know him.
“I told you my mom taught me the basics. But in college I had an apartment with two other guys. I couldn’t stomach pizza every night, so I cooked. I borrowed a cookbook or two from the library and they kept me going for the year.”
“You’re just full of surprises,” Lily said, laying her head back against the arm of the sofa, suddenly tired and feeling weak.
“Is the adrenaline finally giving out?” he asked her.
“If you mean do I feel like a wet noodle, yes. Are you happy now?”
The corner of his mouth turned down. “Seeing you tired doesn’t make me happy. But knowing that because of it you’ll get some rest does.” He took hold of the afghan and pulled it above her breasts. He made sure she was covered from there to her toes. Then he gave it a little tuck under her hip so it wouldn’t fall away.
Mitch’s fingers were strong and long. She felt heat from them with just that quick touch. He’d used his left hand. From what she’d heard, he didn’t have much feeling in the fingers of his right hand.
Twins Under His Tree Page 3