“She went to see—” the one on the right started.
“—Aunt Becky in Denver,” the one on the left finished.
Light-headed with relief, Cheryl leaned back on her elbows. Her luck had held. The Queen of Hearts wasn’t going to come running in and demand her head.
Cheryl eyed the bulky white cast on her leg. Her foot was broken, she was out of a job and she had no place to live. Some luck.
“Did Bonkers—” began the one on the right.
“—wake you up?” finished the one on the left.
Cheryl smiled to reassure them. “He did, but that’s okay.”
The twins looked at each other silently for a long moment. Cheryl detected a twinkle, very much like their father’s, sparkling in the depths of their brown eyes. Bonkers lifted a paw and gave it a lick.
“Daddy said—”
“—we can’t wake you up, but—”
“—he didn’t say, Bonkers—”
“—couldn’t wake you up.”
Cheryl followed the twisted logic, but she was having trouble following the single conversation coming from the two children. She scooted up in bed and leaned against the headboard, gritting her teeth as a stab of pain shot up her leg. “Do you always do that?”
“Do what?” they asked together.
“Finish each other’s sentences.”
Again, that look flashed between them. “Not always,” they replied together again.
“I know your names are Lindy and Kayla, but which one is which?”
“You have to guess.”
“How’d you hurt your foot?”
“How’d the doctor get that cast on?”
“Can you still—”
“—wiggle your toes?”
Cheryl smiled. “I think your father tried to warn me about you and your questions.”
“Daddy likes you,” remarked the child on the right.
“Yes, he does,” the girl on the left added. She picked up the cat, draped him over her shoulder, and they all trooped out of the room. Cheryl eyed the bedroom door for a while, but the Mad Hatter and the White Rabbit didn’t show.
She left the bed an hour later still feeling unsteady, but she managed the crutches well enough. The pain in her foot was bearable if she didn’t move too fast or bump it. There was no one in the kitchen or the living room, and Cheryl toyed with the idea of going back to bed until she heard the sound of shouting outside.
She crossed to the sliding glass door that led to the balcony and eased it open. A crisp, cold breeze blew in, lifting the ends of her hair and chasing the last of the cobwebs from her mind as it carried the sound of children’s laughter to her.
Leaning a shoulder against the door frame, Cheryl watched the sledding party in progress on the slope of the opposite hillside. Sam stood behind the twins as they piled on a red sled. He steadied it, then gave a shove that sent them squealing and shrieking to the bottom of the hill. They tumbled out of the sled, trudged back to the top and started all over again.
Cheryl smiled with amusement as Bonkers crept up to investigate the sled. The twins picked him up and settled him in between them. Sam gave them a push, and they flew down the hill again. Halfway down, Bonkers apparently decided he didn’t care for the ride. He jumped out but went rolling and sliding down the snowy slope. The twins shrieked in alarm as they hurried toward the snow-covered cat.
Bonkers didn’t wait for help. He picked himself up with wounded dignity and stalked off, shaking his paws with every other step. Cheryl laughed aloud at the cat’s antics. She saw Sam laughing, too.
He must have heard her because he looked up and gave her a brief wave. She waved back. A warm glow settled in the center of her chest as she watched him playing with his children. This was a new side of him. It couldn’t be easy raising two small daughters, but he seemed up to the job. He was certainly enjoying himself now. He even took a turn on the sled as the girls shouted encouragement.
Cheryl covered her smile with one hand. What a comical figure he made when he sat on the small sled. His long legs were bent with his knees drawn up almost to his ears. With one hand, he kept his hat jammed on his head. The other hand he held high in the air like a bronc rider as the twins pushed him off the hilltop. His grin was as big as all outdoors, and Cheryl had no trouble imagining the boy he’d once been as he flew down the hill and tipped over at the bottom.
An unexpected stab of jealousy pierced her as she watched Sam and his girls. Her father had never played with her and her sister; he had never smiled and laughed with them. A sudden, fierce longing to go out and join the fun came over her. Instead, she gave a rueful glance at the cast on her foot. With her luck, she’d end up breaking another bone, more than likely in her neck this time.
The sledding halted when a snowball fight broke out. It quickly became father against daughters, and it was a pretty even fight as the snowballs flew fast and furious between them. Suddenly, a cry of pain brought the game to a halt. Sam quickly crossed to where one of the girls sat in the snow with her sister bending over her.
Sam pulled off his gloves and knelt in front of her. He pushed the brim of his hat back with one finger. “What’s wrong, Lindy?”
“I hurt my eye,” Lindy answered with a pout on her lips and one fist balled up against her face.
“Let me look.” He tilted her face up and carefully brushed the snow from her cheek. “I see it. There’s an ouch-maker right here.” He touched his lips in a gentle kiss to her eyelid. “Is that better?”
“No.”
“It’s not?” he asked in surprise. “I must be out of practice. My ouch-remover always works. Let me try again.” He planted a second kiss on her cheek. “How’s that?”
“That got it.” She rubbed her eye and smiled at him.
“I think my eye hurts, too,” Kayla said in a wistful voice.
“It does? Well, come here and let me see.” Sam examined Kayla’s eye critically and planted a kiss on her cheek, as well. “Better now?” he asked, and she nodded. “Good! Ready to fight some more?”
“No, we want to make snow angels.”
“Grandma showed us how.”
“Did she? You know what? She showed me how when I was about your age, too. Let me see if I remember.” He flopped backward into the snow and began to swing his arms and legs and the twins quickly joined him.
Cheryl watched the scene from the balcony door, and her heart warmed at the sight of Sam’s tenderness. She remembered her own mother kissing her cheek to make the tears go away. It was a startling, clear and treasured memory of her mother, and Cheryl couldn’t believe she’d forgotten it until now.
She stepped back and closed the door. Just for a moment, as she watched Sam and his children on the hillside, Cheryl wondered what her life would have been like if her father had been more like Sam. His children were very lucky, indeed.
Back in the bedroom, she sat down on the edge of the bed and picked up the phone. After dialing Damon’s cell phone, she braced herself to give him the bad news.
He answered on the second ring. “Sands here.”
“Damon, this is Cheryl.”
“It’s about time. Where are you?”
“Still stranded.”
“What? Are you kidding?”
“No, and it only gets worse. I’m afraid my foot is broken. I’m not going to be able to rejoin you for a few weeks.”
“Don’t tell me that! Geoffrey is already complaining because Miranda is taking your place in rehearsals. He says she outweighs you by ten pounds and his back is killing him from trying to lift her.”
“He complains about my weight, too.”
“I know, but you don’t miss your jumps.”
Cheryl cringed. “Did she?”
“The jeté entrelacé, twice! Fortunately, she recovered well. You understand I have to terminate your contract.”
“Damon, please. I’ll be back in a few weeks at most.”
“Maybe! I can’t hold your place. I�
�m sorry, Cheryl.”
“But I need this job.”
“It’s too bad. You had potential.”
It was the highest praise Damon had ever given her. She knew she wouldn’t get anywhere by arguing with him. She was fired. The least she could do was take it with dignity. “I hope I have the honor of working with you again someday.”
“We’ll see. I’ve got to go. Give me your address so I can have your last check forwarded to you.”
She gave him Sam’s address then hung up the phone and stared at it for a long time. The best role of her career had just gone down the drain. She knew there would be other roles, other chances to shine, but they seemed very far away at the moment. Now, what was she going to do in the meantime?
Several hours later, the tantalizing smell of roast beef drew her out of the book she’d been trying to read and out of the bedroom into the kitchen.
The twins were setting the table. One laid down the dishes, and the other followed arranging the flatware carefully beside each plate. Sam, wearing oversize orange oven mitts, removed a cookie sheet of golden-brown biscuits from the oven.
“Something smells wonderful,” she said, maneuvering into the kitchen. The cast was heavy and her pain medicine left her feeling lightheaded and groggy. She joined Walter at the kitchen table, happy to have made it without falling.
Sam set the biscuits on a plate in the center of the table. “Are you feeling better? I could have brought you something to eat in bed. You didn’t have to get up.”
She smiled wanly. “I’m a little better, thank you. I wanted to get up. I’m not used to lying around.”
“At least let me get that leg elevated. The doctor said you need to keep it up.”
“Did he? I don’t remember much after he set it.”
Sam brought another chair and padded it with pillows, then gently lifted her foot onto it. The twins eyed them intently. He introduced them, and Cheryl had the feeling they hadn’t told their father about meeting her earlier. She decided to keep mum as well and was rewarded with a grin from each of them. They came and sat on either side of her at the table.
Sam introduced the child on her left as Lindy, and the one on her right as Kayla. Cheryl tried to find some way to tell them apart, but she couldn’t. They were dressed identically in blue jeans and green shirts.
The meal started out quietly, but the twins soon opened up and regaled her with stories of their stay at their grandmother’s during the storm and of playing in the snow.
Eating at a tennis match would be easier, Cheryl decided. They continued to start and finish each other’s sentences on some hidden cue. She found she couldn’t turn her head fast enough to keep up with them. Finally, she looked at Walter. “How do they do that?”
He shrugged. “Beats me.”
“What do you do?” Lindy asked Cheryl.
“I’m a classical ballet dancer. A ballerina.”
“Do you dance on your toes?” This time Kayla popped up with a question.
“Sometimes, but only when the steps of the dance call for it. Not all ballet is danced on your toes. There are lots of different steps.”
“Do you wear a tutu?” Sam asked with a smirk.
Lifting her chin, she replied with a haughty air, “I wear many different costumes when I dance. Yes, I wear a tutu, but I have even worn a cowboy hat.”
“Not in a ballet,” Lindy jeered in disbelief.
Cheryl grew serious as she studied the girls’ faces. “You’ve never been to a ballet, have you?”
Of course they hadn’t. Neither had she at their age, and if it hadn’t been for one special woman, Cheryl would have spent her whole life never knowing the beauty or her love of dancing. She glanced at Sam and Walter and wondered what they thought about her career. Did they consider it frivolous? And why should it matter what Sam or anyone else thought? It shouldn’t, but for some reason, it did.
Focusing on the children, she began to explain her art. “Some ballets are written to express the joy of the dancing, and some tell a story, like Cinderella or Peter and the Wolf. In that ballet, I was the duck,” she confided, and the girls giggled.
She stared at their father a long moment. “There is even a ballet about a lonely, clumsy cowgirl who wins the heart of the most handsome cowboy on the ranch. It’s called Rodeo.”
She’d never had the role, but she knew exactly how the character would feel. Lonely and left out, sad and filled with a longing to be loved for who she was inside. Afraid no one could ever love her.
“Can you show us?” asked Kayla.
“What?” Momentarily lost in thought, Cheryl stared at the child.
“How to dance on our toes?” Lindy added.
Shaking her head, Cheryl said, “I’m afraid I can’t. Not with my foot in a cast. Perhaps your father will take you to Kansas City someday and you can see a ballet there. There are several good companies there.”
Kayla leaned forward. “Is that where you dance?”
“Cheryl is from New York, girls. That’s much farther away than Kansas City. No, we can’t go there and don’t ask,” Sam told them. “Enough questions. Eat!”
Cheryl, surprised to find her appetite returning, did justice to Sam’s meal, including his light and fluffy biscuits. She sighed inwardly as she glanced across the table at him. He was a good cook and a devoted father. Neither of those were things she expected to find attractive in a man. Especially not a rancher. Somehow, she’d always thought that men who lived this life were hard and bitter. Like her father.
Instead, she was the one with bitterness in her heart. She didn’t like deceiving Sam. He’d done so much for her already. Would he have been as helpful if he’d known who she really was? Maybe. Still, she should tell him. He deserved to know the truth. He looked up and their eyes met.
The air around her seemed to hum with a sudden intimacy.
Tell him who you are. Maybe he won’t care.
As she stared at him, the friendliness of his gaze lightened her heart. Then she remembered the way other people had looked at her once they realized she was a Thatcher. The looks of condemnation—the looks of pity. Years of knowing people laughed at her behind her back, made fun of her, distrusted her, those feelings didn’t go away simply because she wanted them to.
She looked away from Sam’s gaze and struggled to quell the longings he kindled. She couldn’t bear to see any of those emotions in his eyes.
She would be leaving soon. She would take her secrets with her and go back where no one knew anything about her past—a past she desperately wanted to forget.
To avoid Sam’s scrutiny, she focused her attention on his children. As the meal progressed, she started to think she could detect a slight difference in mannerism between Lindy and Kayla. Lindy seemed more outgoing, a little brasher than her sister. Lindy’s face was a little thinner, too. Cheryl directed several comments to the girls, and Lindy usually answered first.
Suddenly, Kayla dropped her spoon, and both girls piped up, “I’ll get it!” They dived under the table together.
She heard giggling, but the children didn’t reappear until Walter spoke. “Enough playing. Get up here and finish your meal.”
They popped up and sat down in their chairs, but they continued to giggle. Sam tried to hide a grin, as well.
“What’s going on here?” Cheryl asked with growing amusement. “If I had two shoes on, I would be looking to see if you’d tied my laces together.”
“Oh, we wouldn’t—” Kayla started.
“—do that,” Lindy finished.
They ate the rest of their meal between giggles and grins, and as Cheryl studied their faces, she decided she had been mistaken. Kayla’s face was slightly thinner.
When the meal was done, Sam stood and consulted a list posted on the refrigerator door. “Lindy, it’s your turn to load the dishwasher tonight.”
With a small groan, the girl on Cheryl’s right got up and began to clear the table. Bewildered, Cheryl said, “I thou
ght you were Kayla?”
That brought a fresh outburst of laughter from the twins, and Cheryl looked at Sam. He couldn’t keep a straight face.
“Oh, I get it, now,” she said. “You two switched places under the table, didn’t you?”
They nodded, and Cheryl shot Sam and Walter a stern look, but she couldn’t maintain her stoic face, either. They all dissolved into laughter.
The rest of the evening she spent answering dozens of questions from the twins—about dancing, about her career and about New York City. Cheryl sat on the sofa with her foot propped up and answered their rapid-fire questions as best she could.
Walter had gone to his room, but Sam remained and looked on with an indulgent smile as they grilled her. He said, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Cheryl didn’t mind. She loved talking about the city and about her work. “These two should work for CNN. How many questions can they ask in an hour?”
“Enough to fill an encyclopedia. By the end of the night, I’ll know everything there is to know about you.”
Cheryl’s grin faded. Not everything, she hoped.
“Do you have kids?” Lindy asked her.
“No, I don’t.”
The twins exchanged a knowing look, and Kayla said, “Are you married?”
“No.”
Kayla glanced at her father and smiled in spite of the stern look he leveled at her. “Our dad’s not married, either.”
Cheryl sensed where they were going. She propped her elbow on the arm of the sofa and settled her chin on her hand. “I heard that.”
Lindy grew serious. “Don’t you think he’s handsome?”
Cheryl tapped her fingers against her cheek and struggled not to laugh as Sam rolled his eyes. “He’s sort of handsome.”
“Would you like to have some kids?” They both looked at her with hopeful faces.
That threw her. The focus of her life had been dancing, to the exclusion of everything else. And yet, when she’d watched these two and Sam playing in the snow, she’d been filled with a longing to join in the fun, to become a part of something she didn’t really understand—part of a family.
“I’m afraid I don’t have time for a husband or for kids,” she said at last. “I’m much too busy with my career.”
Balancing Act Page 7