by Caro Carson
India’s heart squeezed. His gesture sparked some emotion—yes, he’d done that to her, too, that brush of his hand over her hair, so many times. She looked at him as he looked at the little girl. He looked so, so sweet with a child. He was big and broad, filling up the door frame, masculine—a man in a dark knit shirt that clung to muscled shoulders and biceps—and still so, so sweet to these girls.
Fabio joined the party, nosing his way in between the girls, who barely noticed him as they continued to unabashedly stare at her.
“Hi, Fabio,” she said. In the house, she could hear more voices. A family gathering was happening, after all—but Aiden clearly wasn’t going to let her in. She remained standing on the porch, facing the three of them, wondering how she’d misjudged Aiden’s invitation so badly.
“Are you here for Christmas, too?” the dark-haired girl asked.
Too? What other woman had already arrived? A new possibility hit India so hard, it hurt: she hadn’t accepted Aiden’s invitation, so he’d invited someone else. Some other woman, someone less family-phobic than India. Are you here, too?
“I’m not sure.” She met Aiden’s impassive gaze. “Am I?”
“Sure. Come on in.” His words were polite. His expression was resigned as he stepped back and opened the door wider.
She had to step across the threshold to be close enough to speak to him under her breath. “I can go. I should have called.” I thought you’d be happy.
“No, it’s better this way.”
What is better? But the dog was turning circles, and the little girls were still right in the mix. The voices India had heard were coming from a television in the next room, not from a big family, although she could see the back of a man’s head, someone sitting on the couch. He could be the father of at least one of the girls. There were probably more family members in the kitchen.
“Daddy, tell her my name.”
So gosh darned cute, the way the cherub said Daddy—
India froze. The child wasn’t talking to the man on the sofa. She was looking up at Aiden.
“Tell her it. Tell her my name is Poppy.”
“Okay, I will.” Aiden put his hand on the child’s head as she continued to squeeze herself against his leg. “This is Poppy.”
“Poppy,” India repeated, staring at the little girl, looking for any resemblance. Fair skin, red hair, green eyes. She must have heard wrong.
“Dad-deee,” pleaded the other girl, “tell her my name.”
Daddy, again. India looked up at Aiden.
He returned her look with much less shock than she felt. “And this is Olympia. Poppy and Olympia. My daughters.”
“We’re twins.”
“Fraternal,” Aiden said, as if he knew that was going to be the next question.
“How...?”
How could she not have known this? How could she possibly not have known this?
A car door slammed in the driveway. Fabio went bounding out the door, and India turned around to prepare herself for whatever was going to hit her next. Fabio was jumping around a woman as she walked toward them. A woman who was probably her age. She was telling the dog to shoo and holding a child’s suitcase and a gallon of milk out of his reach. She was...
Oh, my God.
She whirled back to Aiden and spoke under her breath again, through fiercely gritted teeth. “Is that your wife?”
“That is my sister.”
Her relief was short-lived. “But are you married?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Hey, you, did you bring us a present?” the dark-haired one—Olympia—asked.
“Olympia,” Aiden said sharply. “That’s not polite.”
Aiden sounded like a father. Aiden was a father. His sister was coming up the walk, his daughters were staring at her and India’s heart was pounding out of her chest.
“I brought cookies.” She sounded desperate, but after she set the bag on the floor, she backed away in a controlled and careful manner, like she’d just plunked down a raw chicken in front of a couple of lion cubs. Cute lion cubs.
When the cubs pulled out the blue tin, the flowers came out, too, and hit the floor with a splatter of petals. Little Olympia picked up the bouquet and put it back in the bag, blooms down. Aiden reached down and snagged the wine bottle before it could suffer a similar fate. He stood there so casually, bottle dangling from his fingers, as if nothing here was a big deal at all.
India could handle this. She had five seconds to handle this while the girls were chatting with each other, five seconds before his sister walked in the door. “Okay, let me get this straight. You’re divorced. Sharing custody. This is your weekend with your children.”
His children. That was going to take her a while to get used to, but thank God he wasn’t married. She couldn’t live with herself if she’d slept with a married man, even if she’d been duped into sleeping with a married man. She didn’t think Aiden was the kind of man to dupe a woman—but he had duped her, hadn’t he? Just not about a wife. Thank God.
Aiden let the bottle swing from his fingers, back and forth, back and forth, hypnotic—easier to focus on than all of these people with all of the emotions they churned up. India had to force herself to look away from it, back to Aiden’s eyes. He’d been waiting for her to look at him, she realized, before he spoke.
“I am widowed, and I have full custody, and they’re all mine, every day.”
She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t look away.
Fabio came bounding in, the woman from the car—Aiden’s sister—following behind.
“This is the last one.” She set down the child’s suitcase. “Got the milk before the store closed.”
Aiden finally looked away from India to glance at the suitcase, then his sister.
His sister looked between the two of them. “Aren’t you going to introduce me?”
Aiden gestured toward the woman who shared his coloring. “This is my sister, Debra.”
India smiled politely and nodded, totally on autopilot while her inner self ran around screaming and pulling her hair out. “Nice to meet you.”
Debra looked at her brother. “And...?”
Aiden set down the wine bottle on a little hall table with a decisive thunk. “And this is India Woods. She’s...the girl next door.”
* * *
“Are you dating that woman? You are, aren’t you?”
His sister was whispering to him in the kitchen. Terrific. Neither of the women in his house could speak to him in a normal tone of voice.
“You’re the one who told me to enjoy being a bachelor.” He dried the spatula Debra handed him and stuck it into the crock he kept by the stove because Melissa had kept it by the stove.
“Did you two get busy this week? You did. I can see it on your face.”
He didn’t want to discuss his sex life with his sister. “Get busy? Is that what the kids are calling it these days? Or is that what the grandmas are saying?”
“You did. You got jiggy with it. You did the wild thing. You—”
“What decade are you in?” He shoved the cutting board in its drawer and slammed it shut.
That killed the conversation for an eternal second.
“You like her, don’t you?” Debra’s tone of voice had changed in that second, which only annoyed Aiden more.
“Of course I like her. I wouldn’t sleep with a woman I didn’t like.” He dried the glass measuring cup and placed it carefully on the shelf, bracing himself for Debra’s crow of victory, because he’d just inadvertently confirmed that he’d slept with India.
“No, I mean you like her like her, don’t you?”
He stared out the window over the sink, seeing nothing. He liked her, yes, and she liked him. They’d broken up and parted ways, and there’d been no reason to tell her anything more b
ecause he hadn’t expected anything more. Now she was back, telling him she loved him as she wore a purple dress, a knockout, a single woman who intended to stay that way, a single career officer—currently sitting shell-shocked on the sofa in the family room. He exhaled, dully aware that meant he had been holding his breath.
Debra kept her voice quiet. “She doesn’t look anything like Melissa, does she?”
Aiden frowned at his sister. “Is she supposed to? Since I loved Melissa, the next one should look like Melissa? Is that how it works?”
“No, I—Oh, Aiden. The next one? You’re thinking of her on the same level as Melissa? She’s not just the hot chick next door, is she?”
“Hot chick? Come into this decade, Deb.” He threw the dish towel on the countertop. The macaroni and cheese was in the oven, the pots and pans were washed and put away. There was no reason to stay in the kitchen and play Twenty Questions about something that hurt his soul.
He turned to go, but he couldn’t just walk out on his sister with no explanation. She’d been with him through the worst times of his life. He hoped he wasn’t heading for more darkness now.
He spoke over his shoulder. “She didn’t know I had kids. She didn’t know any of it, nothing about the whole sorry situation. She just liked...me.”
Deb was silent.
“So much for that, right?” Aiden asked, suddenly wanting to know what his sister thought.
“Well, she hasn’t turned tail and run out the door screaming yet. That’s something.”
“I suppose it is.”
“It is. Good luck. You’re going to need it.” Debra was the one who turned to walk out this time, but after she passed him, she stopped to toss one more comment over her shoulder. “Next time, don’t be such a blockhead with a woman you might really like.”
“Next time?” It made him angry, her casual assumption that if India didn’t work out, he’d just move on to someone else. “There’s no next time.”
“Then you better not blow this one.”
Chapter Thirteen
“India, you really blew it this time.”
She whispered the words to her reflection in the bathroom mirror.
She could hardly freshen up her makeup, she was scowling at herself so hard. This was an epic screwup.
Remember that time you thought this guy was in love with you, and you chased him down at Christmas in his own house, and his whole family didn’t know who you were, and you found out he had kids and he’d been married and he hadn’t told you anything about it? Remember that one? Epic.
And yet...
She was still here.
Aiden had looked at her. For one second their eyes had met, and she was still here, because she was a lovesick idiot.
It had happened in the kitchen. She’d met Debra’s husband, who seemed more than ready to give Aiden his children back. She’d made some vague attempt to help Debra salvage the flowers, but she hadn’t known where the scissors or the vases were kept, so she’d just kind of stood by and watched an efficient woman do everything efficiently. It had all been a farce; India wasn’t part of the scene. She was entirely superfluous, unexpected and unwanted. She’d shown up at Aiden’s house without knowing the most basic facts about him: I am widowed. These are my daughters.
He hadn’t told her anything. He’d kept her in the dark.
She should have left.
Instead, she’d been invited to stay for Christmas Eve dinner, or rather, it had been assumed she was staying. Debra had told her the plans as she’d set the flowers on the kitchen table that India noticed had been set for five; they’d added a sixth place setting for her. We’ll be leaving after dinner, but then you and Aiden and the girls can get the tree decorated before Santa Claus comes.
India should have bowed out gracefully. She could have said that she couldn’t stay for dinner. She’d only come by to wish Aiden a merry Christmas and give him the wine and flowers for helping her with the dog and the shower installers this week—a very reasonable lie—and then she should have bolted. Aiden had not planned on her staying for supper and being part of his Christmas with his children, because he hadn’t even hinted that he had children. He hadn’t wanted her to know.
Instead, the girls had gotten so excited at the talk of tree decorations and Santa Claus, they’d been jumping around, and the dog had barked, and India had continued to stand silently in the kitchen without agreeing or disagreeing to Debra’s plans, because she hadn’t really been asked if she’d like to stay for dinner.
Christmas Eve dinner was not going to be a turkey or a goose or a ham, but macaroni and cheese. Debra and Aiden had done the work and put the casserole in the oven as the girls got in the way and talked about Santa Claus incessantly. It got loud.
The girls have been fast asleep by nine every night, Debra had told Aiden. Then you’ll have some peace and quiet to...you know...talk. She’d laughed, and her husband had laughed as he looked in the fridge for juice boxes for the children. India had felt overwhelmed and out of place, and she’d just resolved to pretend to notice the time, make her apologies and leave, because she was not part of this family she hadn’t known existed.
One step toward the door, one, and then her eyes had met Aiden’s.
She’d caught him watching her, but he didn’t look away. He wanted her, a raw hunger in his eyes that she recognized, a trace of pain that she didn’t.
He still wants me.
He wanted her the way he’d wanted her since she’d propositioned him over a Bloody Mary, and she wanted him, too, like she wanted to breathe.
So here she was, hiding in the bathroom until the macaroni and cheese could finish baking, because a man who had not shared the most essential part of his life with her still wanted her in his bed. Six nights hadn’t been enough. She was apparently so desperate for one more night, she was willing to disrupt his family tree-trimming tradition.
No, I’m not. I’ll leave after dinner.
There was a knock on the bathroom door. India paused in the middle of unscrewing the cap of her lip gloss. She’d have to stop stalling and let someone else use the bathroom.
“Just a minute,” she said.
More knocking. She could tell it was coming from low on the door, little knocks made by little knuckles. Insistent.
Well, she was done in here. Her clothes were fastened, her hands washed. She couldn’t imagine what the girls wanted, but her instinct was to avoid the children. She’d spent a four-day weekend with Adolphus’s family before his little sister had gotten so attached to India that she’d cried, according to Adolphus’s report, when India had left. India would only be here for a few more hours, at most. How much damage could she really do in just a couple of hours?
Knock, knock, knock.
“Come in?” I guess?
The door opened. A little face appeared at the door, all eyes. The littler one—Poppy.
“What are you doing?” she asked, hanging on the doorknob with two hands.
What did she think a person did in a bathroom?
“Are you putting on lipstick?”
Olympia’s face pushed Poppy’s face out of the way for a second, until the door just swung the rest of the way open and two girls crowded right up to India. Jeez, they were cute. Aiden dressed them so cutely, too, from the little ankle socks and Mary Janes on their feet to the sparkly barrettes in their hair.
“Lipstick,” Poppy said.
India held out the squeeze tube for inspection. “It’s lip gloss, actually.”
“Glossss.” Poppy said the word with such satisfaction.
“What’s it called?” Olympia asked.
“Lip gloss,” India repeated.
“No, what’s it called?”
India had no idea what Olympia was trying to ask.
Poppy came to her rescue. “Aunt Debra’s lips
tick is called ‘mixed berry.’ What’s your’ses name?”
Both girls were just so interested in the plastic squeeze tube of gloss. Their little hands were on the sink counter. Their little faces were reflected in the mirror, and India realized with a jolt that their eyes were focused on her, not the gloss. They were studying her avidly, waiting for her to reveal one of the mysteries of the world.
“Oh. Well, let’s see.” India squinted at the tiny font on the tube. “This is called...fifty-one.”
“Fifty-one?” Their disappointment was palpable.
India felt the need to make things better. “Yes, but do you know what that means? That means there are fifty other colors of lip gloss, too.”
“Whoa...” Poppy was suitably impressed. India felt proud of herself for that spin.
Olympia was not so impressed. Her little nose scrunched up. “But why?”
“Why what?” India asked.
“Why did they make fifty colors?”
“Well...” They were even more inquisitive than they’d been at the front door. India suspected Aiden dealt with this all the time, on every subject. “Well, I suppose because fifty different women won’t all like the same color, so they make a variety to choose from.”
“Why do you like fifty-one?”
Why, why, why. “It makes my lips shiny.”
“The other numbers aren’t shiny?”
This is crazy. “I assume they are. I only use this number. I like the way it looks.”
“I like the way it looks, too,” Poppy said.
“I like it, too,” Olympia said.
They were both on their toes, trying to get closer to the mirror and the reflection of the tube of lip gloss. If they were puppies, they would have run up to the mirror and left little nose prints everywhere.
The thought made India smile. “Would you like to try it?”
They responded like she’d asked if they’d like ice cream and ponies and cotton candy. Their little faces didn’t just light up; their whole bodies did. What a joy, to see so much joy in a person that it couldn’t be physically contained. Poppy bounced on her toes, like the happiness was going to lift her right off the ground.