He nodded. “Looks like our thief is a little boy in second grade.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “Are you sure?”
“Not a hundred percent, but it sure looks that way. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow once it’s a sure thing.” He sniffed the air again. “Sure I can’t steal some of that?”
“I did make extra,” she said, “for not only seconds but thirds. I could give you a tiny bit.”
He smiled. “I don’t want to get you in trouble with Virginia Gelman. That woman is fierce.”
She added the mushrooms to the skillet of onions. “How about if I make it for us tomorrow?”
“Deal. What can I do for you?”
She thought about that. You could give me last night, take two, but with a different ending.
What came out of her mouth was “You can stay home with the quads while I deliver this to Virginia.”
“Win-win. I miss the Starklets,” he said. “Are they napping?”
“They should be up any minute. You came home just at the right time.”
The ding of the oven timer took her attention. Finally, the beef bourguignon was ready to come out of the oven. She drained the stew into a colander and then added it to the pot, stirring the onions and mushrooms in along with the sauce. It looked heavenly.
The first waah came a minute later.
She watched Theo head up the stairs and heard him making monster noises and blowing raspberries and then lots of baby laughter.
She smiled as she transferred the beef bourguignon and the garlic mashed potatoes into warming dishes, packed up the French bread, the green salad—Virginia was particular about dressing and liked to make her own, which she was known for—and dessert, a berry tart.
Theo came down with Ethan and Olivia in each arm, and she gave each tot a kiss on the head. “I’ll go plop these guys in the playpen in the family room and then go get the others. Back in a flash.” Two minutes later, he was back with Tyler and Henry, who also got a kiss each from her, then he disappeared into the family room.
She could hear them all playing and squealing. She’d join them for a minute, but between being exhausted from working on this masterpiece of a stew for the past five hours and now having to deliver it and deal with Virginia, who could be...strident, Allie let Theo know she’d be back in twenty minutes and headed out.
As she drove to Virginia’s Colonial, she realized she’d be passing right by the new house. She pulled up in front and stared at it, and once again, just the sight of it, its specialness, its magical rightness, the pretty Christmas lights, filled her with hope. In less than two weeks, she would be moving here. With her husband and children, starting a new life.
But as she realized she’d better get a move on it and pulled away from the curb, she had a terrible, horrible, awful thought.
That Theo might have bought the house for them because it was so big and roomy and he could keep himself at a distance there the way he couldn’t in their tiny Victorian. Maybe he figured that if she was going to marry Elliot Talley to give her children a father and security, then she’d be happy having their actual father doing the same, that it didn’t matter if their relationship worked or not. They could lead separate lives—together.
She shook her head. No. That wasn’t why he’d bought the house. He was just getting used to his new life, being a family man.
As her sister had said, everything would be okay.
It was all she wanted for Christmas, so it had better be okay.
As Allie pulled into Virginia’s driveway at precisely the time she was told to arrive, a good half hour before her sister-in-law was due, she told herself to stop thinking about Theo and start thinking about getting everything set up in Virginia’s kitchen to look as though her client had made everything herself. She’d offered to cook right in Virginia’s kitchen, but Virginia was in a mood and just wanted Allie to make it look that way when she arrived.
Allie grabbed her heavy bags and brought them inside, then spent ten minutes making a faux scene of a woman who’d been cooking for hours but was Virginia Gelman, so still had a practically spotless kitchen. The warming stew would fill the kitchen with its breathtaking aroma and no one would be the wiser.
Allie Stark, ghostcook. Allie Stark, ghostwife.
She shivered, not liking either.
As she was leaving, out the back door, of course, Virginia asked how things were going with “that handsome husband,” and Allie said pretty well, they were getting used to each other again. Talking too much, as usual, Allie. A “How are you?” was usually a throwaway comment that no one wanted a real answer to. Particularly Virginia Gelman.
“Want to know a secret?” Virginia asked, her expression quite serious all of a sudden.
Allie tilted her head. Did she?
“Tell no one. Do I have your word? Only two people know about this and they’re both long gone, but every time I see you, Allie, I want to tell you. I’m not sure why, but I do.”
Yeesh, what was this about? “You have my word, Virginia.”
“I know I’m lauded at having been married for almost fifty-five years. But I was engaged once before to a real daredevil type. My parents hated him!”
Huh. “Is that why you didn’t marry him?” she asked.
“Are you kidding? I would have run off with him and sat on the back of his motorcycle.”
Allie smiled. She tried to imagine Virginia on the back of a motorcycle, her hair whipping in the wind, her arms wrapped around a daredevil in a leather jacket.
“He left me,” she said, her expression so wistful that Allie stayed quiet to give her some privacy with her thoughts. “He wrote me a letter that said he knew I was a good girl and could never defy my parents and I’d be miserable with him and he loved me too much to make me miserable. So he left. I never saw him again.”
Allie sucked in a breath. “Do you still think about him?”
“Of course. I always wonder what if. I love Edward and we’ve had a great marriage and I hope we will have many more years together. But my beau was who he was and I guess it’s true I wouldn’t have been able to accept it past a certain point. I’d want Sunday dinners with my parents. Children.”
“Did he want children?” Allie asked.
“Motorcycle buckets full of them.” She smiled and shook her head. “He wanted to name our firstborn Spike.”
Allie laughed. “Spike. I love it.”
“My list was a bit more classic,” she said. “But hey, Spike could work as a nickname. My parents would have fainted, of course. If I could go back in time—” She stopped and shook her head. “Well, that’s silly because I can’t.”
“But I want to know,” Allie said. “If you could go back in time...”
“I would have stopped him from leaving. I would have said, let’s try. Let’s find middle ground. If you love me, you’ll compromise. If I love you, I’ll compromise. All marriage is about compromise. Even between the very compatible like me and Edward.”
“And daredevils and good girls,” Allie said.
“And moms of quadruplets and cops who take the most dangerous assignments,” Virginia added.
“What if the middle ground is that both of us compromise to the point that we’re making ourselves miserable?”
“If you want your marriage to Theo to work, just ask yourself—do we want to split up or do we want to do everything we can to save this marriage? I wish TJ had had more faith in me. Turns out I had it in myself.”
Virginia lifted her chin as if trying to get control of her emotions, which probably wanted to tumble out of her. Allie wished she had more time before her sister-in-law got here. She wished she could be the one having dinner with Virginia and listen to her talk for hours.
“Do you think wanting to save the marriage is enough?” Allie asked. “If Theo distances himself e
motionally to protect us both, what can I do?”
“You’ll figure that out as you go along, Allie, as I’m sure you’re doing. When to back off, when to steamroll. If you know your husband, you’ll know when to do which.”
“I’ll do what I have to for you and me,” Allie said with a smile, tears misting her eyes.
Virginia wrapped her in a hug. Just then the doorbell rang.
“Oh, no! We’ve been talking so long your guests are here! I’ll leave my stuff, since it’ll help look like you made everything, and come pick it up later.” She hurried toward the sliding glass doors at the back of the house.
But Virginia caught her by the hand and frowned, then led her to the front door. She opened the door and there was a woman and man about Virginia’s age, very well dressed.
“Joanne and Steven, so nice to see you. And you’re so lucky that you get to meet chef Allie Stark. She cooked dinner tonight, soup to nuts.”
“I thought I was having your fabulous beef bourguignon,” Joanne said, lifting her nose in the air. “We were so looking forward.”
“Joanne, I haven’t made beef bourguignon once in my life. Allie has been cooking for me for years.”
The woman’s mouth dropped open. “Really? My God, all this time I thought I had to compete against Mrs. Perfection. I wish you’d told me years ago. What a relief that would have been.”
The surprise in Virginia’s eyes lit up her entire face. “Well, to new beginnings.”
The previously snooty sister-in-law threw her arms around Virginia for a hug. “To new beginnings.”
Huh. Honesty had won the day.
“Well, this is a nice development,” the husband said, giving his brother, Virginia’s husband, a hug.
Allie smiled. “Enjoy dinner,” she said.
“Maybe we could have lunch, just us two,” Virginia said.
“I’d like that,” she said, giving Virginia’s hand a squeeze.
She left, barely able to feel her feet. If Virginia Gelman could surprise her, anything was possible.
Good news when it came to Allie’s life.
Back at home, Allie spent the evening coming up with new recipes for her gluten-free clients and thinking about Virginia’s secret. It was crazy how you never knew what was going on with other people. All this time she thought Virginia Gelman was a snoot who cut corners and who’d never experienced real emotion. What the hell did Allie know about Virginia or her life? Judge not, as her mother used to say with a wag of her finger.
For the first time since Theo had returned to her life, she found herself thinking more of what he’d gone through than what she had. Yes, she’d been told her husband was dead—and when she was just seven weeks pregnant. She’d gone to his funeral. She’d sobbed in her bedroom for hours at a time at night. She’d given birth with her sisters by her side, thank God, wishing her late husband could see these four beautiful little beings they’d created and brought in the world. She’d had months to mourn Theo before they’d been born, but when she’d brought the quads home to this house, knowing they’d never know their father, she’d fallen into despair all over again. Luckily, four infants had a way of keeping a new mother very busy on all levels, and she’d focused on them.
But she’d never really stopped to think about Theo the night of the explosion. The panic at hearing that monster rattle off her name, her sisters’ names, his father’s room number at the nursing home. He’d given up so much—his loss made only slightly bearable, perhaps, because he thought disappearing from her life, forever, was the right thing for her, for her happiness. And for almost two years, he’d been living like a ghost on a remote cattle ranch in southern Wyoming, completely cut off from anything he’d known and been. He’d done that for her, for her family, for his father.
He hadn’t been relieved to walk away. She knew that now. It had broken his heart that he thought he should in the first place. That she’d be better off.
Oh, Theo. She could hear him in the nursery, making up words to Brahms’s Lullaby, using all their names and places in Wedlock Creek. She smiled and then almost cried.
I love you so much, Theo.
And a few minutes later, when he came into the bedroom, in his sexy army sweats and a T-shirt that showed off his incredible shoulders and arms, and slipped into bed beside her, she turned to face him.
“Talking is the key,” she said. “No matter what, we have to talk. If something’s bothering us, if something is wrong outside the marriage, in the marriage, we have to talk to each other. Deal?”
He held her gaze for a moment, as if thinking, What brought this on? But then he thought better of it, apparently. “Deal,” he said. “It might take me a day or two, though. I’m used to keeping things bottled up.”
“I know. But just try to tell me sooner than usual. Before it gets clogged in there,” she said, patting his chest. His rock-hard chest.
She couldn’t move her hand. Could not. Would not. Seriously, he’d have to make her.
And suddenly he was kissing her, passionately, his hands in her hair, roaming her back, pulling her closer.
“I’ve been dying to do this since...the last time,” he said. “But...” He held her face between his hands and looked at her, his green eyes so intense on her.
“Forget the buts. We just have to communicate, Theo. So if you feel like running for the hills after, say so. And I’ll go make you a great omelet and one of those berry smoothies you love, and we’ll watch a movie, something funny, and we’ll get through it. We just have to get through it, deal with what comes our way.”
“Same goes for you,” he said. “Say what you need to. I can take it.”
“I know you can. But can you take this,” she said, moving her hand lower under the blanket until he shuddered.
“No,” he moaned. “I can’t.” He smiled and took her hands and held them over her head on the bed as he lay fully on top her, kissing everywhere he could reach.
And then she couldn’t think anymore; she could only feel.
Chapter Twelve
In the morning, when Theo heard a baby cry, he wasn’t imagining it or wishing it as a means to escape the bed and Allie’s arm, which was flung over his shoulder. He really did hear a cry—and because he could differentiate between the quads now, he knew it was Tyler.
Fifteen-second rule, he reminded himself, this time not wanting to get out of this bed, to leave Allie’s warm, sexy body for a minute. They’d made love twice last night. After the first time, they’d gone downstairs and she had made the talked-about Western omelet while he made the smoothies. They’d watched a Marvel movie and he’d had to tell her every superhero’s backstory, but she’d liked the film, and then they’d checked on the babies, hand in hand, crib by crib, and he’d never felt closer to her ever. With the quads fast asleep, he’d picked her up and carried her into their bedroom, Allie kissing him en route, and they’d had amazing sex again.
Now, one ear peeled for another cry from Tyler and his eyes on his beautiful wife, he moved a strand of hair from her cheek and just drank in the sight of her. An award-show montage of moments of their lives popped into his head—seeing her trying to climb that tree to get the I’m-not-coming-down old cat, their first date at Mexicano Mike’s, then her favorite restaurant, standing in the Wedlock Creek Wedding Chapel and watching his bride walk down the aisle toward him in that amazing white gown. A few not-so-happy moments tried to muscle their way into the montage, but Theo pushed them out of his mind. That was then, before. He was a different person now. And together, he and Allie were a new Mr. and Mrs. Stark.
“WAAAH!”
“That boy has some set of lungs,” Allie said, snuggling closer against him and kissing him on the cheek. “I’ll go.”
“No, you sleep, I’ll go. I need to get up and have ten cups of coffee, anyway. Difficult phone call to make this morning.�
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She glanced at him. “About the case?”
He nodded. “I’m hoping to meet with the barely four-foot-tall suspect’s mother this morning.” He gave Allie another kiss and was about to tell her how great last night was, but Tyler screeched again, followed by Olivia. Then all four babies joined in on the concert.
“The neighbors will be thrilled when we move,” Allie said, slipping her feet into the fuzzy dog slippers one of her sisters had given her.
“Hey, you live in Wedlock Creek, land of the multiples, you gotta expect lots of simultaneous crying at all hours.”
She laughed and they headed into the nursery, Allie lifting up the black-out shades, flooding the room with sunshine.
They took care of the babies, got them downstairs and took their turn to shower. All ate breakfast, and then Theo finally excused himself back upstairs to make that call to Hunter Chadwell’s mother. School vacation started today and Christmas was in just five days. He hated adding to Mrs. Chadwell’s grief, particularly at such a difficult time of year to be in mourning. But it was a call he had to make.
He closed the bedroom door and sat at the desk, pressing in the Chadwell number on his cell phone. June Chadwell answered and he introduced himself.
“Is it about the Christmas presents going missing around the neighborhood?” she asked. “We haven’t been targeted, thank heavens. I only have two gifts for my son, and I’d be devastated if one was stolen.”
Theo’s heart squeezed. “Well, it’s about that, but I’ll explain in person.” He set up a meeting for nine, not looking forward to this visit at all, though it always felt good to wrap up a case.
He went back down to the kitchen to find Allie on the phone, and from the sounds of it, she was being hired to cater a party.
“Huh. Virginia Gelman’s sister-in-law not only hired me to cater her New Year’s party, but three calls have come in at her recommendation for standing gigs for meal deliveries.”
“Wow,” he said. “I guess the beef bourguignon was a big hit.”
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