His Motherless Little Twins (7 page)

Someday, when the girls were a little older, he would have both rings melted down and made into heart pendants for them. That's why he'd kept Patricia's ring. He'd wanted Pippa and Paige to have it, to have something that had been so loved by her. Now it only seemed right that they would have both rings…rings that belonged together, for ever.

Yes, that was a good idea. And it did give him some comfort as he stared at the empty, stark white band of skin on his finger. Then, for the next few minutes, he leaned against the bedroom door and listened to the laughter coming from the kitchen. It was good, he thought. Bad in so many ways, painful beyond anything he could have expected, but good, too. But, damn, it hurt.

Good, bad, or otherwise, first thing tomorrow he was going to start looking for a house for one dad and two daughters. Yes, it was time for that, too.

Funny, though, how he'd only now come to terms with that after he'd met Dinah. It had nothing to do with her, of course, but the timing was…odd. Unexpected. “One thing at a time,” he whispered, plodding into the bathroom to splash cold water on his face. Taking off a wedding ring didn't mean he was going to go out and get involved right away. It was only a first step. Truth was, the second step scared him to death. Especially if it was in the direction of someone who came
with so much baggage. And Dinah did have her fair share of it. Yes, one thing at a time, and that didn't include the beautiful nurse-chef-amazing woman who was in the kitchen, teaching his girls how to bake chocolate-chip cookies.

Or did it?

“N
O
,
THE
chocolate chips go in after the flour.” Pippa had chocolate smeared all over her face. Paige, on the other hand, had wiped it on her apron. And Dinah was loving every minute of this. In fact, she couldn't remember when she'd had so much fun. It was like everything was right in their world, and their world was all there was. She was drawn into it, and happy to be there.

“But won't the flour turn them all white?” Pippa asked. “Maybe if we put them in first, then cover them up…”

“With more chocolate chips,” Paige chimed in. “If we put more chocolate chips on top of the first ones, then the first ones won't get all white from the flour.”

“Then how do you keep the ones on top from getting white?” Pippa asked, somewhat miffed.

“It comes off,” Dinah said, trying to hold back her laugh. These little girls were deadly serious about this. They wanted to make perfect cookies, and she wondered if they strove for such perfection in everything they did. It was so cute, and she owed Eric a great big thank-you for letting her do this. “Once we get everything all mixed together, and get the cookies in the oven, everything will come right off the chocolate chips.”

Both girls frowned at her, like they didn't believe her. “But
Aunt Janice makes us go to another room so she can have room to wipe the chocolate chips clean,” Paige said in all earnestness.

Probably because by this time in the process Janice was tired of answering all the questions and wanted to get on with it. By last count, each girl had asked Dinah about a hundred, only she'd thought it was fun trying to find answers for questions she would have never, in her life, anticipated.
Where does salt come from? Who was the first person to ever cook food and how did they know they were cooking if cooking hadn't been invented yet? Wouldn't it be better to have a whole bunch of aprons in different colors to match all the foods so they wouldn't look dirty when food gets spilled on them?

Maybe for Janice the questions got tiring, but for Dinah they were amazing. She liked the challenge. Liked the way the girls thought. But she was concerned that they were trying to be much older than they were and, in effect, losing a little of their childhood. Maybe because their care was, by necessity, left up to so many people? Or maybe because their father wasn't at a place in his life where he knew how to have fun anymore, and the girls mimicked what they saw. “Well, I'm sure Aunt Janice is used to doing it her way, but this way has always worked for me.”

The girls looked at each other, considering something unspoken between them—that twin connection—then both came up smiling. “Can I mix?” Pippa asked.

“Me, too?” Page also asked.

“I have two bowls, so I'd say I'm going to need two good mixers.” Ten minutes later, with all the ingredients split evenly between the bowls, and mixed as well as any cookie dough had ever been mixed, it was time to get the dough to the cookie pan.

“Let me warn you that this is where they eat more than they bake.”

Dinah spun around, almost knocking into Eric, who had crept back to the kitchen and was leaning against the fridge, watching. Barefoot, hair mussed, shirt untucked…wickedly sexy. “Do you always sneak up on people that way?” Her voice was amazingly calm considering how nothing else about her was.

“Only people worth sneaking up on,” he said, stepping aside as Dinah brushed herself against him, trying to wedge herself between the fridge and the utility drawer.

“Why aren't you sleeping, Daddy?” Paige asked.

“I discovered I wasn't sleepy. And I thought I would come out here and wait for my cookies.”

“Then wait in the dining room,” Dinah said, brushing up against him one more time on her way back from the utility drawer. It caused a chill to shoot up her spine, first time, this time. A chill she was fighting to ignore. Why was it that whatever governed one person's attraction to another was working overtime with her right now? She'd never been this wildly attracted to Charles. Hadn't gotten chills
ever
during her brief marriage to Damien. But Eric… It's because she couldn't, that's why! Couldn't have him, couldn't get involved. Couldn't even think about it. Couldn't! And that little streak of opposition in her that knew she
couldn't
was rebelling. Hence the attraction, and the shivers. It was simply a personal little insurrection.

Good explanation, she decided as she handed large spoons to each of the girls. She turned back to insist that Eric step away, but surprisingly he already had. He hadn't gone all the way to the dining room, but he was in the doorway, and the look on his face… It was distant. He was staring out the back window, but if she'd had a paycheck coming in, she'd bet every penny of it he wasn't seeing anything outside.

“How much?” one of the girls said insistently.

“What?” she asked.

“How much cookie dough?”

Pippa had a chunk on her spoon that approximated the amount for six cookies, which snapped Dinah back into the baking lesson. “Not quite that much,” she instructed, showing the girls the proper amount. Then she showed them the appropriate spacing of the dough on the pan, and stepped away while they worked to get the unbaked cookies lined up in perfect little rows. Once, when they were halfway through, she looked back at Eric, who was still there. Physically. But his eyes were still so distant.

Propped there against the doorframe, he looked…sad. She studied him for a moment, trying not to be obvious. But something caught her eye. Something missing. So, when had he removed his wedding ring? “No, Paige. You can't squeeze them that close together. They have to have room to expand, so spread them out a little more. Just look at the first row I did, and copy that.”

The girls chattered away as they finished putting the dough on the pan, while Dinah supervised. Then, as Dinah, not the girls, placed the cookies in the oven, Eric withdrew from the kitchen altogether. She thought about going after him, asking him if there was anything she could do to help, but her two little assistant cooks weren't about to budge from the kitchen while the timer was counting down the minutes, and she wasn't going to leave them alone in there. So she sat down at the kitchen table and fielded another battery of questions from the girls.

“Who was the one who decided how long a minute was?” Pippa asked.

“And how did he know it was a minute and not an hour, if no one had ever had a minute before?” Paige chimed in.

 

“The girls are great,” Dinah said. She sat a plate of warm cookies on the table on the patio outside. Eric was leaning
against the deck rail outside in the backyard, this time looking into the kitchen through the window. “You've done an amazing job with them. And if you don't mind, they want me to take them shopping for…well, let's just say, five-year-old unmentionables.”

“Unmentionables?” He arched his eyebrows, even though the eyes underneath them were still distracted.

“Well, panties. Apparently Aunt Janice buys boring panties and your daughters want…”

Eric blinked himself back into the conversation. “They want new panties? You don't have to,” he said.

“But I don't mind. And I sort of promised them manicures and hair appointments.”

“Manicures? They're five!”

Dinah laughed. “But a girl is never too young to have her hair and fingernails done.” Her eyes wanted to trail down to his ring finger, but she resisted. “And Pippa and Paige informed me they've never had a manicure. So…”

“They're growing up.” He sighed heavily.

“A little bit.”

“And I don't have a clue.”

“Well, that's probably true. But it's curable, because I have an idea your daughters will always let you know exactly what they need, and when. Like I said, they're amazing little girls. Full of life.”

“Like their mother.” He cleared his throat and continued. “The girls and I…we're going to move,” he said, out of the blue. “I love my sister, but she's put up with us for too long, without ever complaining. She disrupted her life back in California and moved here with us because she didn't want us coming here alone. But she's the one who got her life together, not me. And I think it's time the girls and I had a place of our own so she can live more of that life.”

He was moving out? Did that mean he was starting to move on? Eventually, it always happened. Her mother had, after a while. She herself had, after her divorce from Damien, and in a sense this was part of her moving on from Charles. But Eric's situation was something she couldn't even begin to understand. “You're sure you're ready for this?” she asked, for a lack of something better to say. “I mean, I know that you have to get to a certain point where it feels right, feels like it's time. When Damien and I were married—”

“You were married?” he interrupted.

“Not for long. I was barely in my twenties. Not so smart about relationships. He was…not who I thought he was. The marriage lasted for less than a year, but I stayed near him for a year longer than that because I couldn't force myself to make the move. You know, move on. I suppose I always hoped something would change, that the situation wasn't really what it was. So I left him, reconciled, left, reconciled…”

“And?”

“I wised up when I finally realized that you don't change a cheating husband, no matter what he promises you. No matter how much you want things to be different, some things will never change.”

“I'm sorry,” he said, rubbing the empty spot on his ring finger. “That had to be rough.”

“It was.” Because she'd grown up picturing herself living happily-ever-after. Because she'd grown up wanting it. Sadly, she didn't believe in that anymore. “Moving on wasn't easy.”

“I know,” he said. “Not easy, but necessary. But I've put it off too long, so now…”

“Can we bake some more?” Paige called from the door. “We got them ready on the pan.”

“Duty calls,” Dinah said, backing away from Eric. “And it's pretty demanding.”

“I appreciate this, Dinah. I know we've got a little friction going between us, and I'm sorry about that.” He chuckled. “Seems like I'm always apologizing for something, doesn't it? But I do appreciate what you're doing for my girls. And if they need some new
unmentionables
and a manicure, and you don't mind…”

“I don't mind, Eric. In fact, I'm looking forward to it.” She glanced down at his empty finger this time, and this time he saw her do it. But he didn't say anything.

“Eric, I'm so sorry,” she whispered, laying her hand on his as Pippa ran up, grabbed her by the other hand and started tugging.

“So am I. But it was time.”

The broken whisper of his voice broke her heart as her hand slid away from his.

 

“Pedicures, too?” Eric said, smiling.

“A girl can't really have the full manicure experience without having the pedicure, too.” It had been a wonderful morning, and she almost hated turning the girls over to their cousin, Debbi. But the arrangement had been made, and now she had the rest of the day ahead of her with nothing to do as it was her day off. Angela was simply too pregnant to do anything but sit with her feet up and manage the kitchen from that position, so Dinah had a lot of empty hours ahead of her. “I promised them we'd do it again some time. And have high tea in the lodge conservatory. Father permitting, of course.”

“You're kidding, aren't you?”

Smile bright, eyes wide, she shrugged. “Actually, no. We all thought it was a brilliant idea.”

Eric laughed out loud. “You know they're taking advantage of you, don't you? They're very good at it. Better than I thought, apparently.”

“You're probably right. But I'm a willing participant.” Besides, she truly enjoyed their company, probably more than she'd thought she would. It was nice, being in the company of children who weren't sick. Although the more she was with the girls, the more she ached to get back to nursing. “I was wondering…would you need someone part-time in the hospital? Maybe the emergency department? I know you mentioned something the other day about nursing, but I thought maybe I could do something as a volunteer.” Perhaps being back in a non-medical capacity would help ease the ache. “I could be a clerk, maybe check supplies…”

“Or be a nurse, like I suggested.”

She shook her head adamantly. “I told you…”

“No, you didn't. But I agreed not to ask, so I won't. However, I still need a part-time
nurse
, and it's a serious offer.”

Nursing scared her, though. In little bits and pieces she was OK. But how could she tell him that she no longer trusted herself for anything more than the bits and pieces? That all those words about being a good nurse were only words? That when she'd most needed to be professional in her duty, she'd let herself down? “Just forget it, OK? It was stupid of me to ask. I don't need to be back in a hospital. In fact, I don't want to be back in a hospital.”

“Yes, you do. Or you wouldn't have asked. Wouldn't have come here to the hospital, to my emergency room, to tell me that you'd left the girls with my niece when that was the plan all along, and I knew you'd do that. Or you could have called and told me. But you didn't. Instead, you came here, which makes me think you want to come back. And don't tell me that we can't always have what we want, because I'm offering you the opportunity to have exactly what you want…a few hours a week in the emergency department. As a nurse, not as a clerk or someone who stocks the shelves.” He stepped
closer, leaned in to her. “I trust you here. I think you've lost your confidence for some reason I don't understand, and I'm not going to ask why, but I do trust you, Dinah.”