by Lexy Timms
“You’ve got to keep her away from Christine, Dad,” Jamie said.
“She and Christine always got along well,” her dad pointed out. “If Christine wants to see her, I can’t stop that.”
“You could,” Jamie said. “She’s too fragile to deal with Mom right now. She’s just starting to recover. And just because Mom pretended to be nice to her in the past doesn’t mean she will now. Just promise me that you’ll keep an eye on her.”
“I will,” her father promised. “And Jamie, you be careful, too. I don’t want you getting hurt either.”
“I will be, Dad. I’m sure that she won’t want to see me anyway. It’ll be fine.” She sighed, and closed the email she had been working on; she wasn’t going to be able to concentrate on it now. “I love you.”
“Love you, too, Peanut. I don’t want you to worry, just be aware.”
“And sleep with one eye open,” she joked. “Thanks, Dad.” The phone call ended, and Jamie sat staring at the phone in her hand for a long moment. It didn’t matter that her mom was back in town, she told herself. She would get her stuff and go, and that would be the end of it. Everything was going to be fine.
Over the baby monitor, she heard the sounds of one of the twins starting to wake, and she got up and went to the nursery, leaving all worries about her mother behind.
Alex, when she told him that night as they got ready for bed, wasn’t quite as sure as she had been that her mother wasn’t going to try to bother them.
“She likes making other people miserable, Jamie,” he said, sliding under the blankets. “That’s what she does. How do you know that she won’t decide this is prime time to try to get at you?”
“She’s just here for her stuff,” Jamie said as she hit the light and crossed the room to crawl into bed with him. “I’m sure that she’ll just get it and go. She might like making me miserable, but not at the expense of making herself miserable by having to be in my unworthy presence.”
In the dark, Alex’s arm curled around her, drawing her close against the heat of his body. “You’re not unworthy,” he said, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “You’re everything that’s good about this world.”
“I think that might be taking it a little bit far,” Jamie laughed, but the words curled up warm behind her ribs all the same.
“I’ll stand by it either way,” Alex said, and this time his fingers under her chin tipped it up for a kiss.
Jamie felt heat rush through her. It had already been days since dinner and sex in the car, and she was ready for more. More than ready. She glanced over at the unblinking green light of the baby monitor. There was no sound. “What do you say,” she breathed, wrapping one of her legs over Alex’s and rocking her hips against his thigh, “we see how much trouble we can get up to in the next fifteen minutes before someone inevitably demands our attention?”
“Is that a challenge?” Alex demanded.
“You know it,” Jamie shot back.
“Oh,” Alex growled, “you’re on.”
There was no more talking after that.
***
“You know,” Jamie said the next morning, dipping a spoon into the jar of mashed banana and holding it out to Benton, “there’s this thing you’re supposed to do with food which is called eating it.”
Benton giggled, and made no move to eat the food. Jamie sighed, but she couldn’t quite help the smile his laughter brought to her face.
“Oh, you think that’s funny, do you?” She offered the spoon to Lillianna, who eagerly leaned forward to take a bite, and made a happy little ‘mmm’ sound as she tasted the banana. “See? Your sister’s got the hang of it. Now your turn.” She offered another bite.
Benton smacked his chubby little hand against the tray of his highchair and laughed at the sound it made. There was a knock on the door, heralded by the sound of Jake barking.
Who could that be, Jamie wondered as she stuck the spoon back into the jar and stood, leaving the twins to their own devices for a moment while she went to answer it. Mark would already be at work with Alex, or out at the club. And if it was him, he’d probably figure that she was busy with the twins and let himself in anyway. Maybe it was FedEx; she did have a package on the way. Jake danced around her feet as she headed for the door, and she caught him by the collar to hold him back as she opened it.
Her mother was standing on the threshold.
“What are you doing here?” Jamie asked before the words had even finished running through her thoughts.
“Is that any way to treat your mother?” Her mother demanded, pushing past her and Jake and into the house while Jamie stared. She was followed by a guy who looked… to be about Jamie’s age. If not younger.
He gave her a once-over as he passed, and Jamie’s jaw tightened. “It is when she shows up at your house after being totally out of touch for months,” Jamie said. Jake strained at her hand on his collar. “With some stranger in tow.”
“Oh,” her mother said, waving a negligent hand. “This is Nate. He’s my boyfriend.”
Only sheer force of will kept Jamie’s jaw from dropping. Her boyfriend? Was her mother kidding? Was she insane? “Mom, he’s younger than I am.”
“And?” her mother shot back, already heading for the kitchen.
Jamie let go of Jake’s collar, and hurried to get in front of her mother. No way was she letting her anywhere near the twins without close supervision. The dog rushed up to Nate, sniffing at his ankles. “Mom,” Jamie tried again, “what are you doing here?”
“I want to see my grandkids. Is that too much to ask? I know that you’re selfish, Jamie, but you should at least have enough empathy to let a woman meet her grandchildren.”
Jamie pursed her lips, and stepped between her mother and the highchairs that were her obvious goal. “Alex wouldn’t want you to be here without his permission.”
“Oh, so now you’re letting your husband make decisions for you?” Her mother laughed. “I should’ve known. You never could do anything by yourself. And I see that you regained that weight you lost. Pregnancy is no excuse. It’s been three—almost four—months. You should have done something about it by now.”
Jamie bit back the retort on the tip of her tongue, and looked at Nate, who was edging carefully away from Jake and toward her mother. He looked up at her through a fringe of brown hair, and his expression was apologetic.
“Yeah, thanks, Mom. I’ll be sure to keep that in mind.”
“At least the babies are good-looking,” her mother said, moving around her toward the highchairs. Jamie couldn’t block her without actively standing in her way, and she wasn’t quite ready to do that. “But then again, Alex Reid is a very good-looking man.”
Her mother bent down over the highchairs and wiggled her fingers at the babies in a wave. Both of them looked at her with wide blue eyes and didn’t respond, obviously unsure what to do about the stranger in their midst.
Jamie reached for her phone while her mother was distracted, and shot Alex a text.
“So,” her mother said, straightening up and giving the jar of mashed banana on the table a look. “I hope that you’re feeding them well.”
Jamie wanted to ask if she wasn’t worried about them getting fat, but she didn’t really feel like dealing with the fallout of that question. “I know what to feed my babies, Mom, but thanks.”
“I’m just asking,” her mother said. “I’m their grandma. I’m supposed to care about them.”
And you were supposed to care about your daughters, too, but that didn’t seem to be so important to you, Jamie thought. “Sure,” she said, jaw clenched tight.
“Where’s your bathroom?” her mother asked, like she had no idea that Jamie was upset with her.
“Just down the hall that way,” Jamie said, pointing. “It’s the open door.”
“I’ll be right back,” her mother said and headed down the hall, disappearing through the bathroom door.
Jamie sagged against the table and look
ed up at Nate, who still hadn’t said a word. “Are you sure you made a good decision with her?” Jamie asked, unable to stop herself.
He looked at her, not batting an eye. “I’m happy with my decision, thanks.”
“Well, good for you.”
She glanced down at her phone again, and found an answering text from Alex. On my way.
Thank freakin’ goodness. At least she wouldn’t have to deal with her mother alone for the rest of the afternoon. She had no doubt that Alex was pushing the speed limit to make it back as fast as possible.
“Look,” she said, turning to Nate again. “I don’t really know why the two of you are here, but if you could persuade her to turn around and go back to wherever you came from, that would be great. I’ve got stuff to get done today.”
He didn’t protest that she was Jamie’s mother. Jamie hadn’t really expected him to. Any guy in his twenties who was dating a woman as old as her mother probably had his own interesting background. Not to mention the way her mother had talked to her since walking in the door. Jamie wondered if she talked to him like that. Probably. She’d never shied away from talking to Jamie’s father that way, after all.
“Where are you from, anyway?”
“Pittsburgh,” Nate said.
Jamie’s mother emerged from the bathroom and walked over to stand beside Nate. If he’d had anything else to say, Jamie thought, he wasn’t going to say it now. “So,” she said, keeping her body between her babies and her mother. “You’ve seen them. Anything else you need before you go? A glass of water, maybe?”
Help out the door?
“Go?” Her mother laughed. “We’ve planned the whole day around this visit. I’m not going to say hi to them once and then walk out.”
“Alex is going to be home for lunch in about fifteen minutes.” Jamie crossed her arms over her chest. “So you might want to clear out before then.”
Her mother’s eyes narrowed. “Is that a threat?”
“Just a head’s up.” Jamie met her mother’s eyes and refused to be the first to drop her gaze. These were her children. Nothing was going to stop her from protecting them… Even if it was from her own mother. “Whether you choose to stay or not is up to you, but I don’t think Alex will be happy to see you.” She turned back to the twins, lifting a spoonful of mashed banana from the jar and offering it to Lillianna. She ran her mother’s comments through her head. She wasn’t the insecure child who was scared of disappointing her mother anymore. “And for the record? If you’d planned the whole day around a visit, you should have called first. Not just showed up at my house with no warning and an expectation that we’d wait on your pleasure for the afternoon. We have plans already.”
“I cannot believe,” her mother said, frowning as Lillianna took the bite of banana, “that you would treat your own mother this way.” She shook her head and rolled her eyes at Nate. “Although of course I can, since you’ve always been like this. Putting yourself before other people. Honestly, it’s going to be a wonder if those children of yours grow up with any kind of manners. You had better watch that the little girl doesn’t end up as fat as you are.”
Jamie dropped the spoon she was holding, standing so quickly that her chair scraped back against the floor and nearly fell. She slammed a hand down on the back of it to hold it in place, then crossed the kitchen toward her mother, feeling anger rise in her like a flame. “You will not talk about my children that way,” she growled. “And you will certainly not talk about my daughter being fat.”
Her mother took a step back as she approached, and Nate looked vaguely alarmed.
“Don’t you think what you did to Christine and me was bad enough?” Jamie took another step forward. “I’m not letting you ruin another little girl’s childhood. You were a monster to us, to your husband. You think you can disappear, without so much as a good-bye or a head’s up of where you are, for months, and then waltz back in and we have to drop everything for you?” Her voice rose and the twins stopped eating to watch their mother with wide eyes. “You are never going to talk to my little girl with degrading words. Never! Now. Get. Out. Of my house.”
For a moment, there was just shock on her mother’s face. Then she drew herself up, glaring. “If you think that—”
“Mothers,” Jamie hissed, “are supposed to protect their children. Unlike you, that is what I’m doing. So don’t think for a minute that I won’t physically throw you out the door if my children’s safety depends on it. Go! Get the hell out!”
“I believe you heard her.” Alex’s voice carried in from the living room, and then he was standing in the doorway with his arms crossed over his chest, the expression on his handsome face cold.
Jamie’s mother opened her mouth and sucked in a sharp breath. She looked ready to blast the two of them but then, without another word, she spun on her heel and left the room, Nate trailing after. Jamie heard the door slam shut, and took two steps forward and all but fell into Alex’s arms. They wrapped around her, strong and secure, and she took a moment to hide her face against the safety of his shoulder and remember how to breathe. She was shaking, but not with fear.
“I’m so proud of you,” Alex said over her head.
Jamie laughed, and thought the sound might be just a little hysterical. “I can’t believe that worked, honestly.” She lifted her head to look up at her husband, and found him looking down at her with hunger in his eyes.
“I can,” he said. “The way you looked crossing the kitchen like that. I honestly thought you were going to smite her with lightning.” He grinned. “Honestly, it was hot as hell.”
That brought real laugher, and Jamie leaned into Alex’s arms, letting it roll through her. “Was it really?” she asked when she’d caught her breath again.
“Absolutely,” Alex answered. “Watching you go all mother bear on her. Protecting our kids. I’d show you how hot, but…”
He looked over her shoulder, and Jamie turned to find two pairs of curious blue eyes fixed on them.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “That might be a little scarring for the children.” She untangled herself from Alex’s arms, and moved back toward them to finish giving them their snack. He followed, seemingly unable to resist the lure of tickling each of the twins a little, making them giggle.
“I’m not going to be able to feed them if they’re too busy getting tickled,” Jamie said after a minute, and Alex relented, moving behind her chair instead to work his big hands over her shoulders, forcing knots of tension to slide loose. Jamie sighed appreciatively and offered Benton a bite of banana, which he finally ate. “Can you stay?” she asked.
“Stay here?”
“Just for the afternoon?” She turned enough in her chair to look at him. “It’s a nice day. We could take the twins to the park together.”
Alex looked at her, his expression saying he wanted to take her up on her offer, and he pulled his phone out of his pocket, thumbs moving rapidly over the keyboard. A moment later it dinged to signify a return message, and he tucked it back in his pocket, leaning down with a smile to kiss her.
“Yuppers,” he said when he pulled back. “Zander has it. I can stay.”
Jamie smiled, and pulled out a chair for him next to her own. The kitchen was bright, sunlight streaming in through the windows, and the room was warm and full of her family. For today, she and the twins had taken precedence over work. Jamie leaned against Alex’s side, and watched as he took the mashed banana, holding out the spoon.
Someone else might have called her mother’s visit a blessing in disguise. Jamie didn’t think of it that way, but at least one good thing had come out of it, and that was enough for her. Getting Alex to herself on a weekday afternoon was worth enduring twenty minutes of her mother’s insanity.
Alex had the double stroller and the four of them packed in his car fifteen minutes later.
“We are we going?” Jamie asked, not really caring, just happy to chat with her husband about anything that didn’t have to do w
ith work for a few minutes.
“I figured we could drive out to Mark’s club. Do you want to walk the grounds and see the course?”
Jamie smiled. “That’s a great idea.” She’d seen the blueprint but hadn’t been to the club yet. “Will Mark be there?”
“Probably.”
They drove in comfortable silence, the kids happily babbling and gurgling in the backseat. Jamie loved watching Alex check the rearview mirror every few minutes and smiling at their kids. He wore suit pants and a button-down, but had dropped the tie and suit jacket. Still hot as hell. Jamie leaned against window and enjoyed the heat of the sun on her face. Thank goodness her kids had their father’s looks.
Alex pulled into a fancy iron-gated road that led up to the golf course parking area. “I’d suggest taking a golf cart,” he glanced behind him for a second before winking at Jamie, “but I think Benton’s a little too young to drive.”
Jamie leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. He’d grown a slight shadow of a scruff and the roughness tickled her lips; she wished she could taste more of him. “You just want to sit in the back of the cart and make out.”
A single eyebrow rose as Alex shot Benton a glance. “Hey B… think you could watch your sis for a bit while I French kiss your mom and whisper dirty things in her ear?”
Jamie laughed and swatted playfully at him. “Watch it, Daddy. Pretty soon these kids are going to be repeating everything we say.”
They got out of the car together and set the stroller up, clicking the kids in and heading to the clubhouse. Mark came out to greet them.
“I thought I saw you guys pulling in. Everything okay?”
Alex clapped his brother on the shoulder. “It’s good. We just decided to take an afternoon off and let Jamie see the course. I was thinking of trying to talk her into golfing with me, but I’m afraid after a week she’ll start kicking my butt at it.”
Mark laughed and bent down to kiss his nephew and niece. “She probably will.”
“I’m not golfing, guys. Sorry.” Jamie watched a pretty girl come out of the club house with a few construction workers.