Baby Bonanza (10 page)

The doorbell had her looking up, frowning. Then she glanced at the twins. “You weren’t expecting anyone, were you?”

Naturally, she didn’t get an answer, so she grinned, pushed herself to her feet and stepped around them as she walked the short distance to her front door. Glancing over her shoulder, she gave the living room a quick look to make sure everything was in order.

The couch was old but comfortable, the two arm chairs were flowered, with bright throw pillows tucked into their corners. The tables were small, and the rag rug on the scarred but polished wooden floors were handmade by her grandmother. Her home was just as she liked it. Cozy. Welcoming.

She was still smiling when she opened the front door to find Nick standing there. His dark hair was ruffled by the wind, his jeans were worn and faded, and the long-sleeved white shirt he wore tucked into those jeans was open at the throat. He looked way too good for her self-control. So she shifted her gaze briefly to the black SUV parked at the curb in front of her house. That explained
how
he’d gotten there. Now the only thing to figure out was
why
he was there.

Looking back up into his face, she watched as he pulled off his dark glasses, tucked an arm into the vee of his shirt and looked into her eyes. “Morning, Jenna.”

Morning?
“What?”

“Good to see you, too,” he said, giving her a nod as he stepped past her into the house.

“Hey! You can’t just—” Her gaze swept over him and landed on the black duffle bag he was carrying. “What are you doing here? Why’re you here? How did you find me?”

He stopped just inside the living room, dropped his duffel bag to the floor and shoved both hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “I came to see my sons,” he said tightly. “And trust me when I say it wasn’t hard to find you.”

“Nick…”

“And I brought you this.” He pulled a small, sealed envelope out of his back pocket and handed it over. “It’s from your friend Mary Curran. She was upset when she found out that you’d left the ship.”

Jenna winced. She hadn’t even thought of saying goodbye to the friend she’d made, and a twinge of guilt tugged at her.

“She said this is her telephone number and her e-mail address.” He stared at her. “She wants you to keep in touch.”

“I, uh, thanks.” She took the envelope.

He looked at her, hard and cold. His pale eyes were icy and his jaw was clenched so tightly it was a wonder his teeth weren’t powder. “Where are they?” he demanded.

Her mouth snapped closed, but she shot a look at the boys, jiggling in their bouncy seats. Nick followed her gaze and slowly turned. She watched as the expression on his face shifted, going from cool disinterest to uncertainty. Jenna couldn’t remember ever seeing Nick Falco anything less than supremely confident.

Yet it appeared that meeting his children for the first time was enough to shake even his equilibrium.

Walking toward them slowly, he approached the twins as he would have a live grenade. Jenna held her breath as she watched him gingerly drop to his knees in front of the bouncy seats and let his gaze move from one baby boy to the other. His eyes held a world of emotions that she’d never thought to see. Usually he guarded what he was thinking as diligently as a pit bull on a short chain. But now…Jenna’s heart ached a little in reaction to Nick’s response to the babies.

“Which one is which?” he whispered, as if he didn’t completely trust his voice.

“Um—” She walked a little closer, her sneakers squeaking a bit as she stepped off the rug onto the floor.

“No, wait,” he said, never looking at her, never taking his gaze off the twins, “let me.” Tentatively, Nick reached out one hand and gently cupped Jacob’s face in his big palm. “This one’s Jake, right?”

“Yes,” she said, coming up beside him, looking down at the faces of her sons who were both looking at Nick in fascination. As usual, though, Jacob’s mouth was open in a grin and Cooper had tipped his little head to one side as if he really needed to study the situation a bit longer before deciding how he felt about it.

“So then, you’re Cooper,” Nick said and with his free hand, stroked that baby’s rounded cheek.

Jenna’s breath hitched in her chest and tears gathered in her eyes. God, over the past several months, she’d imagined telling Nick about the boys, but she’d never allowed herself to think about him actually meeting them.

She’d never for a moment thought that he would be interested in seeing them. And now, watching his gentle care with her boys made her heart weep and every gentle emotion inside her come rushing to the surface. There was just something so tender, so poignant about this moment, that Jenna’s throat felt too tight to let air pass. When she thought she could speak again without hearing her voice break, she said, “You really were listening when I told you about them.”

“Of course,” he acknowledged, still not looking at her, still not tearing his gaze from the two tiny boys who had him so enthralled. “They’re just as you described them. They look so much alike, and yet, their personalities are so obvious when you’re looking for the differences. And you were right about something else, too. They’re beautiful.”

“Yeah, they are,” she said, her heart warming as it always did when someone complimented her children. “Nick,” she asked a moment later, because this was definitely something she needed to know, “why have you come here?”

He stood up, faced her, then glanced again at his sons, a bemused expression on his face. “To see them. To talk to you. After you left, I did a lot of thinking. I was angry at you for leaving.”

“I know. But I had to go.”

He didn’t address that. Instead he said, “I came here to tell you I’d come up with a plan for dealing with this situation. A way for each of us to win.”

“Win?” she repeated. “What do you mean ‘win’?”

Shifting his pale blue gaze back to hers, his features tightened, his mouth firming into a straight, grim line. A small thread of worry began to unspool inside of her, and Jenna had to fight to keep from grabbing up her kids and clutching them to her chest.

Only a moment ago she’d been touched by Nick’s first sight of his sons. Now the look on his face told her she wasn’t going to be happy with his “plan.”

“Look,” he said, shaking his head, sparing another quick glance for the babies watching them through wide, interested eyes, “it came to me last night that there was an easy solution to all of this.”

“I didn’t come to you needing a solution. All I wanted from you is child support.”

“Yeah, well, you’ll get that.” He waved one hand as if brushing aside something that didn’t really matter. “But I want more.”

That thread of worry thickened and became a ribbon that kept unwinding, spreading a dark chill through her bloodstream that nearly had her shivering as she asked, “How much more?”

“I’m getting to that,” he said. “Like I said, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since you left the ship. And finally, last night on the flight up here, it occurred to me that twins are a lot of work for any one parent.”

What was he getting at? Why was he suddenly shifting his gaze from hers, avoiding looking at her directly? And why had she ever gone to him? “Yes, it is, but—”

“So my plan was simple,” he said, interrupting her before she could really get going. “We split them up, each of us taking one of the twins.”

“What?”

N
ick couldn’t blame her for the outrage.

She jumped in front of the babies and held her arms up and extended as if to fight him off should he try to grab the twins and run. “Are you insane? You can’t split them up,” she said, keeping her voice low and hard. “They aren’t
puppies.
You don’t get the pick of the litter. They’re little boys, Nick. Twins. They need each other. They need
me.
And you can’t take either of them away from me.”

He’d already come to the same conclusion. All it had taken was one look at the boys, sitting in their little seats, so close that they could reach out and touch each other. But he hadn’t known until he’d seen them.

“Relax,” he said, lifting one hand to try to stop her from taking off on another rant. “I said that’s the plan I
did
have. Things have changed.”

“You’ve been here ten seconds. What could have changed?” She was still defensive, standing in front of her sons like a knight of old. All she really needed was a battle-ax in her hands to complete the picture.

“I saw them,” he said, and something in his voice must have reached her because her shoulders eased down from their rigid stance. “They’re a unit. We can’t split them up. I get that.”

“Good.” She blew out a breath. “That’s good.”

“I’m not finished,” he told her, and watched as her back snapped straight as a board again. “I came here to see my sons, and now that I have, I’m not going anywhere.”

She looked stunned, her mouth dropping open, her big, blue eyes going even wider than usual. “What do you mean?” Then, as she began to understand exactly what he meant, she shook her head fiercely. “You can’t possibly think you’re going to stay here.”

This was turning out to be more fun than he’d thought it would be.

“Yeah, I am.” Nick glanced around the small living room. You could have dropped two entire houses the size of hers into his suite on the ship, and yet there was something here that was lacking in his place, despite the luxury. Here, he told himself, she’d made a home. For her and their sons. A home he had no intention of leaving. At least not for a while. Not until he’d gotten to know his sons. Not until he’d come up with a way that he could be a part of their lives.

“That’s crazy.”

“Not at all,” he said tightly, his gaze boring into hers. “They’re my sons. I’ve already lost four months of their lives and I’m not going to lose any more.”

“But Nick—”

He interrupted her quickly. “I won’t be just a check to them, Jenna. And if that’s what you were hoping for, sorry to disappoint.”

She chewed at her bottom lip, folded her arms over her chest as if she were trying to hold herself together and finally said, “You can’t stay here. There’s no room. It’s a two-bedroom cottage, Nick. One for the boys, one for me and you’re
not
staying in my room, I guarantee that.”

His body tightened and he thought he just might be able to change her mind on that front, eventually. But for now, “I’ll bunk on the couch.”

“But—”

“Look,” Nick said. “It’s simple. I stay here, get to know my kids. Or,” he added, pulling out the big guns, “I sue you for sole custody. And which one of us do you think would win that battle? Your choice, Jenna. Which will it be?”

Her face paled, and just for a second Nick felt like a complete bastard. Then he remembered that he was fighting for the only family he had. His sons. And damned if he’d lose. Damned if he’d feel guilty for wanting to be a part of their lives however he had to manage it.

“You would do that?”

“In a heartbeat.”

“You really are a callous jerk, aren’t you?”

“I am whatever I have to be to get the job done,” Nick told her.

“Congratulations, then. You win this round.”

One of the babies began to cry, as if sensing the sudden tension in the room. Nick glanced down to see that it was Jacob, his tiny face scrunched up as fat tears ran down his little cheeks. An instant later, taking his cue from his brother, Cooper, too, let out a wail that was both heart wrenching and terrifying to Nick.

He threw a panicked look at Jenna, who only shook her head.

“You want a crash course in fatherhood, Nick?” She waved a hand at the boys, whose cries had now reached an ear-splitting range as they thrashed and kicked and waved their little arms furiously. “Here’s lesson one. You made them cry. Now you make them stop.”

“Jenna—”

Then, while he watched her dumbfounded, she scooped up the stack of freshly folded baby clothes and walked off down a short hallway to disappear into what he guessed was the boys’ bedroom, leaving him alone with his frantic sons.

“Great,” Nick muttered as he dropped to his knees in front of the twins. “This is just going great. Good job, Nick. Way to go.”

As he dropped to his knees, jiggled the bouncy seats and pleaded with the boys to be quiet, he had the distinct feeling he was being watched. But if Jenna was standing in the shadows observing his performance, he didn’t really want to know. So he concentrated on his sons and told himself that a man who could build a cruise ship line out of nothing should be able to soothe a couple of crying babies.

After all, how hard could it be?

By the end of the afternoon, Nick was on the ragged edge and Jenna was enjoying the show. He’d fed the boys, bathed them—which was entertainment enough that she wished she’d videotaped the whole thing—and now as he was trying to get them dressed. Jenna stood in the doorway to the nursery, silently watching with a delighted smile on her face.

“Come on, Cooper,” Nick pleaded. “Just let me get this shirt on and then we’ll—” He stopped, sniffed the air, then turned a horrified look on Jacob. “Did you?” He sniffed again. “You did, didn’t you? And I just put that diaper on you.”

Jenna slapped one hand over her mouth and watched Nick in a splash of sunlight slanting through the opened louvred blinds. The walls were a pale green and boasted a mural she’d painted herself while pregnant. There were trees and flowers and bunnies and puppies, painted in bright, primary colors, racing through the garden. A white dresser stood at one end of the room and an overstuffed rocking chair was tucked into a corner.

And now there was Nick.

Staring down into the crib where he’d laid both boys for convenience sake, Nick shoved both hands through his hair—something he’d been doing a lot—and muttered something she didn’t quite catch.

Still, she didn’t offer to help.

He hadn’t asked for any, and Jenna thought it was only fair that he get a real idea of what her days were like. If nothing else, it should convince him that he was
so
not ready to be a single parent to twin boys.

“Okay, Coop,” he said with a tired sigh, “I’ll get your shirt on in a minute. First, though, I’ve got to do something about your brother before we all asphyxiate.”

Jenna chuckled, and Nick gave her a quick look. “Enjoying this, are you?”

“Is that wrong?” she asked, still grinning.

He scowled at her, then shook his head and wrinkled his nose. “Fine, fine. Big joke. But you have to admit, I’m not doing badly.”

“I suppose,” she conceded with a nod. “But smells to me as if you’ve got a little problem facing you at the moment.”

“And I’ll handle it,” he said firmly, as though he was trying to convince himself, as well as her.

“Okay then, get to it.”

He scrubbed one hand across his face, looked down into the crib and murmured, “How can someone so cute smell so bad?”

“Yet another universal mystery,” she told him.

“Another?”

“Never mind,” Jenna said, thinking back to her conversation with Maxie when Jenna was still on the ship. Before the redhead. Before she’d left in such a hurry. Oh God. Jenna straightened up and closed her eyes. Maxie. Wait until
she
found out that Nick was here.

“You okay?” he asked.

Opening her eyes again, she looked at him, so out of place there in her sons’ nursery, and told herself that this was just what he’d said their night together was. Nothing more than a blip on the radar. One small step outside the ordinary world. Once he’d made his point, got to know his sons a little, he’d be gone again and everything would go back to the way it was supposed to be.

Which was good, right?

“Jenna?”

“Huh? Oh. Yeah. I’m fine. Just…thinking.”

He looked at her for a long second or two as if trying to figure out just what she’d been thinking. Thankfully, mind reading was
not
one of his skills.

“Right.”

“So,” Jenna said softly, “are you going to take care of Jake’s little problem or do you need a rescue?”

He didn’t look happy, but he also didn’t look like he was going to beg off.

“No, I don’t need a rescue. I said I could take care of them and I can.” He took a breath, frowned again and reached into the crib.

Jenna heard the tear of the Velcro straps on the disposable diaper, then heard Nick groan out, “Oh my God.”

Laughing, she turned around and left him to his sons.

Though it made her crazy, Jenna spent the rest of the day in her small garage, working on a gift basket that was to be delivered in two days. If Nick wanted to play at being a father, then she’d just let him see what it was like dealing with twin boys.

It felt strange to be right there at the house and still be so separate from the boys, but she had to make Nick see that he was in no way prepared to be a father. Had to make him see that taking her sons away from her would be a bad idea all the way around.

Just thinking about his threat sent cold chills up and down her spine, though. He was rich. He could afford the best lawyers in the country. He could hire nannies and bodyguards and buy whatever the court might think the boys would need.

“And where does that leave me?”

A single mom with a pitifully small bank account and an office in her garage. She’d have no chance at all if Nick really decided to fight her for their sons.

But why would he? That thought kept circling in her mind and she couldn’t shake it. Was this all to punish her? Was it nothing more than a show of force? But why would he go to such lengths?

Shaking her head, she wrapped the completed basket with shrink-wrap cellophane, plugged in her travel-size hair dryer and focused the hot air on the clear plastic wrap. As she tucked and straightened and pulled, the gift basket began to take shape, and she smiled to herself despite the frantic racing in her mind.

When she was finished, she left the basket on her worktable where, in the morning, she’d affix a huge red bow to the top before packing it up to be delivered. For now, though, she was tired, hungry and very curious to see how Nick was doing with the boys.

She slipped into the kitchen through the connecting door and stopped for an appalled moment as she let her gaze sweep the small and usually tidy room. The red walls and white cabinets were pretty much all she recognized. There was spilled powdered formula strewn across the round tabletop, discarded bottles that hadn’t been rinsed and a
tower
of dirty receiving blankets that Nick had apparently used to wipe up messes.

Shaking her head, she quietly walked into the living room, half-afraid of what she would find. There wasn’t a sound in the house. No TV. No crying babies. Nothing.

Frowning, she moved farther into the room, noticing more empty baby bottles, and a torn bag of diapers spilled across a tabletop next to an open and drying-out box of baby wipes. Then she rounded the sofa and stopped dead. Nick was stretched out, fast asleep on her grandmother’s rag rug and on either side of him lay a sleeping baby.

“Oh, my.” Jenna simply stood there, transfixed by the sight of Nick and their sons taking a nap together. A single lamp threw a puddle of golden light across the three of them even as the last of the sunlight came through the front window. Nick’s even breathing and the soft sighs and coos issuing from the twins were the only sounds in the room and Jenna etched this image into her mind so that years from now she could call up this mental picture and relive the moment.

There was just something so sweet, so
right
about the little scene. Nick and his sons. Together at last.

Her heart twisted painfully in her chest as love for all three of them swamped her. Oh, she was in so much trouble. Loving Nick was not a smart thing to do. She knew there was no future there for them. All he wanted was to be a part of her sons’ lives—that didn’t include getting close with their mother. So, what was she supposed to do? How could she love Nick when she knew that nothing good could come of it? And how could she keep her sons from him when she knew, deep down, that they would need a father as much as Nick would need them?

“Why does it have to be you who touches my heart?” she whispered, looking down at the man who’d invaded her life and changed her world.

And as she watched him, Nick’s eyes slowly opened and his steady stare locked on her. “Do I?” he asked quietly.