McCallum Quintuplets (18 page)

Grace looked at Maggie. “Be patient,” she said.

Before Maggie could demand an explanation, Adam was back, but he didn't sit down with the women. He stood by Maggie's chair, sipping his coffee while he
squinted out the window. “Looks like rain's coming,” he said, echoing Grace's words.

Maggie didn't look out the window. She looked at her husband. She felt bombarded by him, by the clean freshness of soap and denim mingling with the richness of the coffee. He rocked her world when they first met, and he still could. He did. And now, whatever he was up to was adding to that sensation. She felt definitely uneasy. “Adam, I don't care about the weather. Just tell me what's going on. Grace won't, but you'd better. And if it's something to do with the babies, if one of them…” She swallowed hard. “Tell me.”

He cast her a narrowed glance that made her heart catch slightly. “Okay, I'll tell you.”

Grace stood, taking her coffee. “My cue to go and see if Louise needs help.”

“Don't leave,” Adam said without looking at her. “You know about this anyway.”

“About what?” Maggie asked, looking from Grace to her husband, a degree of panic setting in. “Is it the babies?”

“No, love,” Adam said. “No, it's not about them. It's about us.”

“Us? What?”

He hesitated, something Adam seldom did, and finally said, “We're making our escape.”

“Escape?” Maggie shook her head, her coffee forgotten. “What are you talking about?”

“You and me.” He smiled, a slightly unsteady expression that crinkled his eyes and curved his lips. “Three days. Alone. Just the two of us. Grace and Louise will stay with the babies, and—”

She felt relief at the same time she felt shocked at what
he was saying. “Adam, stop. We can't just run away from home. I mean, that's craziness.”

His smile faltered, but he came closer and put his coffee on the table next to hers. Dropping to his haunches, he framed her face with his hands. “It's not craziness. It's called survival, and we can. We need to.”

“Sure.” She exhaled, her insides twisting with nerves. “Of course, I just meant, not now. When we can manage it. It sounds wonderful, just the two of us. But when the babies are older, when they aren't so tiny.”

“No, we need to do it now. Grace and Louise will do fine with the babies, and Douglas will be here to help, too. We can go up to the family cabin by the lake. It's open and aired out, just waiting for us to get there.”

Maggie covered his hands with hers. “Adam, please, be reasonable. I can't go. I can't just leave.”

“Yes, you can,” he said in a low voice, no smile on his face now. “You're not irreplaceable, and it's not desertion to leave them for a few days.” He drew in a sharp breath. “Maggie, you're not your mother.”

She drew back sharply, breaking the contact with him as an ache in her middle almost took her breath away. “That's not fair,” she muttered.

“Isn't that what you think? If you leave them at all, you've failed? You've run out on them? You've deserted them? You can't love them and leave them even for a day or two?” He raked his fingers through his hair. “Maggie, listen to me, your mother walked out. She was there one minute, then gone the next. She didn't care and she left. How she could do that to you is unbelievable, but that was her and that isn't you. She left a year-old child without looking back. And she was gone. Do you really think that you're anything like that?”

His words tore at her, bringing back feelings she never
wanted to feel again. “No, of course not.” She bit her lip hard, and she closed her eyes tightly to block out his determined expression. “This isn't about my mother. It's about me and my babies. I love them. They're mine.”

“I love you, and they're ours.”

She sensed him moving. She opened her eyes to find him standing over her, his hands jammed in the pockets of his jeans. “You of all people know what it took to get them here with us. I can't just walk away like that.”

“Sweetheart, you can. You can walk out the door with me, know that they're in great hands.” His expression narrowed even more. “You couldn't be your mother even if you tried to be.”

“I don't want to talk about her.” She stood, put some distance between them, then turned and went to the windows to stare at the beginning rain. “She's got nothing to do with this irrational idea of yours.”

“Irrational?” he asked from right behind her. “It's irrational that I want to be with you?”

That ache grew, and she hugged her arms around her so tightly that she began to tremble. “That's emotional blackmail,” she muttered.

“What?”

“I want to be with you, too, and we'll have time, but right now, it's…it's too soon. Don't force it like this.”

“Oh, baby, I'm not doing that. I don't want to do that. That isn't what's going on. I just want you to remember you and me. The two of us.”

Her eyes burned and smarted but were painfully dry. “Of course I remember.”

“Then what happened to us?”

“It's…we're still here.”

“We are…for now,” he muttered. “But for how long?”

She turned to Adam and a very silent Grace. “You…you need to give me time. I thought it would be so easy, just fall in love, get married and have a baby, then it all fell apart.” She closed her eyes tightly, the images of months of trying, of treatments and tests, of calling Adam to come home because “my temperature is just right,” making love frantically because it had to be then. “But it worked out, it really did,” she said in a shaky voice. “Five babies. Five lives. And they're so tiny, so fragile. I thought you wanted them…and loved them as much as I do, that you'd understand that things could never be the same again.”

He came to her, reaching toward her, and she braced herself when his hands touched her shoulders. “Good God, you know I want them and I love them, and I understand how scary this all is. I'm scared, too, and I know where you're coming from about having to be here all the time. Your mother walked out on you, just left.” She flinched at his words, but he didn't let go. “And I'm going to say this one last time. You are not your mother. You're a loving, caring mother. You almost gave your life for them.” His hands tightened in a spasm, then eased. “I'm losing you, Maggie, and I can't live if that happens.”

Tears were there, hot tears that slipped out of her eyes, and she began to shake. The next thing she knew, she was cuddled to Adam's chest, surrounded by the man she loved, and for an instant, she felt so safe and so complete. She grabbed at that feeling, but then he spoke again, his voice a deep rumble against her face pressed to his chest. “Do you love me?”

“Oh, God, yes,” she groaned.

“Then trust me?” He was easing her back but never letting her go. He studied her with an intensity that made
her world stop. “Let me do this. Let me call the shots. Just three days. You and me?”

She felt as if she were being torn in two. She couldn't let go of Adam or the babies, or those two halves of her life would be permanently separated.

She closed her eyes, barely able to get air in her lungs. There had to be some way to make this right without losing either half of her soul.

Maggie tried to think of something, anything to make this all better. “What…what if… Maybe we could go away for a day, just the two of us?” she asked.

Adam was silent for what seemed an eternity, never blinking, barely breathing. “A day?” he finally said. “Twenty-four whole hours?”

“Yes, absolutely.” Maybe this would work. “We could go next week, when I have everything ready and planned. We could get Grace to come here, and we could maybe go to dinner and a movie, and—”

“No.”

The single word stopped her dead. “But why not, Adam?”

“We go now. We have twenty-four hours from now, just you and me. No dinner, no movie, no monitors, no nothing. Just us at the cabin. Right now,” he finished in a hoarse voice.

“I…I…don't know if I can,” she stammered, wondering how her heart could be so divided between the great loves of her life. It wasn't fair. “I don't know.”

“Well, if you don't know, I guess that's it,” he said, a flatness touching his voice.

She glanced at Grace, the woman who had been silent through all this, never moving. “Grace?”

“It's your choice,” she said evenly.

“But I can't—”

“Oh, you can, you can do it,” Grace said.

“But what if something happens? Daniel's been so fussy and Gracie…?”

“I'll be here, sweetheart. I'll be here.”

“But I need to be here.”

Grace nodded. “Of course you do, and you will be. I can call if there's a problem, and Adam will bring you right back.” She came closer to the two of them, her voice growing softer as she spoke. “You need to go, sweetie, you really need to go.” The woman looked at Adam, who Maggie knew was as close to a son as Grace had in this world. “And he needs you to go, too.”

Maggie looked at Adam. She didn't know if she could do this, but she'd try. She'd really try. She kissed him quickly, needing that grounding, then met his gaze again. “Okay, we'll go. I'll pack and—”

Grace moved closer to the two of them. “You're all packed. Just go up and say goodbye to the little ones, then go and be with your husband.”

It felt to Maggie as if she was taking a huge leap off a towering cliff…with no lifeline. Then she felt Adam draw her closer and knew that was wrong. He was her lifeline. She nodded, slipped out of his reach and started across the room. “I'll get dressed,” she murmured.

“Casual, nothing fancy,” Adam called after her.

She kept going out of the kitchen area and stopped when she was out of sight of her husband and Grace. She hugged her arms tightly around herself to stop a trembling that seemed to be coming from the inside out as Adam's words echoed in her. “You're not your mother.”

“I'm not my mother,” she muttered to herself as she headed in the direction of the bedrooms. But that didn't stop the horrible feeling that she was abandoning her children. She neared the nursery doors, hesitated and had to force herself not to go inside yet, but to go and get dressed first. Then she'd say goodbye. She'd promise each of them she'd be back in twenty-four hours. She'd keep her promise. She'd be right here in twenty-four hours.

 

A
DAM FELT
the tension in Maggie as they drove through the steady rain into the hills. He didn't know if it was wishful thinking on his part or not, but by the time they neared the dirt road that led to the family cabin near the lake, she seemed a bit less anxious.

He believed that until she spoke for the first time in the past hour. “I'm sorry I took so long getting ready, but it seems just too much for Grace to be able to handle all of the babies for a whole day.”

“She's up to it. And she's got Louise with her. No problem. But there is a change in plans.”

He sensed her dart him a quick look. “What?” she asked, sitting straighter in the seat, turning to him. “What change?”

“Since we didn't get away until later, the twenty-four hours started when we left the house.”

“That's it?”

“That's it.”

“Okay, twenty-four hours from the time we left the house. It's a deal, as long as you're sure Grace will be okay with them.”

“Love, I'd trust her with my life. My dad did, and I trust her with our family.”

“And she'll know if the babies need anything, won't she?”

He reached for her hand clenched on her thigh and closed his hand around her fist. “Next to you, she knows those babies better than anyone, even me. And she loves them.” He squeezed her hand slightly. “She can tell them apart without looking at the bracelets they wear. She's brilliant.”

Thankfully Maggie laughed at that, a weak chuckle, but it was something he relished. “Yes, she is. You still get Julia and Daniel mixed up, and I can't see how you can do that. He's such a boy, and she's so feminine.”

Adam chuckled. “Dead right. She looks just like you. Absolutely beautiful.”

“And he looks like you, like a real McCallum.”

“I don't know if that's good or bad.”

“Good, very good,” she said, twisting her hand in his until their fingers were laced together.

He pulled her hand to him, kissed it, then drew it down with his to his thigh. “Yes, very good.”

He heard her sigh softly in the confines of the black Jeep. “Adam, who would have thought our lives would have gone like this. All that worry and trouble…” She sighed again. “Five babies. What a miracle.”

He glanced at her, the love he felt for her beyond words. And his fear when he thought he would lose her as she was having the babies still lingered in the back of his soul. Losing her was beyond anything he could think about. They needed this time alone desperately. “Thanks for coming,” he murmured as he turned onto the gravel drive that led up the hill to the cabin and the lake.

She didn't respond, and he darted her a quick look. He was a bit taken aback to see her eyes closed tightly. Then they crested the hill in the road, which ended in the driveway to the sprawling cabin. The log and shingle structure his father had helped build the year before he was born
was ahead of them, the steady rain robbing the afternoon of light and making the building look a bit foreboding.

He drove under the protection of a jutting portico that shadowed the stairs that led to a wraparound porch and massive carved doors. He stopped the car and turned to Maggie, letting his gaze skim over her. She was achingly lovely even in an oversize gray sweatshirt, slender jeans and chunky boots.

She'd taken him at his word. Nothing fancy. Not even any makeup. Her short, feathery cap of hair framed her delicately boned face, a thinner face since the babies had come. And those eyes that had shadows they shouldn't have and looked tired too much lately. She wouldn't take the offer of more help, almost frantic to be with each baby as much as she could be.

She looked at him, a fleeting glance from under lashes that needed no mascara to enhance them. “I almost forgot about this place. It's been so long.”

This was the place they had first made love, and the place, he was certain now, the babies had been conceived. Their place. No one else in the family came out here anymore. Not even his father. It had become theirs until the babies were on the way. Then it had been shuffled to one side, the way so many things had been in the past months. But now they were here, together, and the magic was still here for him.

He let go of her hand to lightly brush her cheek with the back of his fingers, deep shadows cast there by the soft green of the dash lights. Her body heat radiated into him. “Damn straight it's been too long,” he murmured roughly, and leaned toward her, tasting her soft lips before pulling back. If he could have smiled then, he would have, but he felt unsteady, and his need for her was unbearable. “Do you remember the first time we came here?”

He felt her tremble slightly, and she said, “How could I forget? I hadn't ever been out of the city, and here I was in the middle of the wilderness.”

“The wilderness? It's a lake and some trees, not the end of civilization.” He smiled, an easy expression to muster as he remembered her thinking she could hike in suede boots or that he could be here alone with her and not want to make love to her. “Although I seem to remember that you thought it was when we couldn't get pizza delivered and you were shocked that we used real wood in the fireplace and didn't have gas logs.”

Her soft chuckle sounded delicious to him. “The roles were changed, weren't they? Me, the teacher, and you were teaching me about roughing it.”

He remembered just what they taught each other that first time, and his body began to ache in the most wonderful way. “You taught me a lot, too.” He slipped his hand behind her neck, burying his fingers in the silky fringe of hair. “You taught me that two people can meet, a simple meeting, looking at each other, and that it could change my life. I fell madly in love with you.” He grinned at her. “We taught each other so much, and the second time we came here, we knew exactly what to do, didn't we?”

“Exactly,” she whispered and leaned toward him, her lips a feathery caress on his, then her breath brushing his skin with warmth. “I can't believe that we found each other like that,” she said in a low, unsteady voice. Then he felt her tremble. “Can we go inside?”

She didn't have to ask him more than once. He moved away from her, got out of the Jeep and strode through the cold damp air to go around to her door. She opened it, and before she could get out, he reached for her, taking
her hand again. “Come on,” he said, taking her with him up the two steps that led to the wraparound porch.

She took two steps at once to keep up with him. He let her go long enough to get the key out of his pocket, unlock the door and swing it open. Then he turned to her. The ancient trees that framed the front of the cabin, the way the rain blurred the day around them, were lost on him. All he saw was Maggie. “Twenty-four hours,” he murmured. “I'm not wasting any of it.”

She grinned, a fantastic expression that hit deep in his being, then she was moving past him into the cabin, breathing, “Amen.” He moved with her, thankful Grace had taken care of everything so quickly. The cabin seemed as if it was waiting for them, aired and ready. Maggie flipped on the overhead light and turned to him, inches separating them. “Okay, we're here, and I'm open to anything,” she said, a slight huskiness in her voice. “So, swimming is doable in the rain. Hiking? Nah,” she said with a shake of her head. “Fishing is questionable.”

He swung the door shut before he went closer to her, sensing her heat but not touching her…yet. It was just like old times. The slight smile. The teasing. That connection, and for a moment, he couldn't remember why he'd been afraid for them. “Can I add to your list of possible activities?”

“You can do anything you want.”

He touched her then, lightly cupping her chin with one hand. “Anything? Are you sure?”

She pressed her hands flat against his chest, and he knew that his heart was hammering. “I trust you, and I'm very sure,” she whispered. His breath caught when her hands slowly moved lower and her hand found the fastener at the waist of his jeans. She tugged at it, unsnapping it. “I'm very sure.”

As she said those words, all the things that had made these twenty-four hours happen were more than worth it. Missed business meetings, a deposition that wouldn't happen on time, paying Louise double to stay with Grace and Douglas, getting past the fact that his father had seen what was happening to them so clearly.

“Okay, you've got it. We're going back to the beginning, to when it all started,” he said as he swept her into his arms. He stopped just long enough to kiss her fiercely before carrying her into the bedroom at the back of the cabin, into shadows and the sound of rain beating on the French doors that lined the back of the room.

Maggie had never lived in the past. The present and the future fascinated and intrigued her and were full enough to keep her more than busy. But for that split second, she
was
back at the beginning, to the first time Adam had picked her up like this in the cabin. To that moment when she knew that she would give herself to him because she loved him, and knew that her life was never going to be the same because of him.

She held him, her eyes closed tightly as she tried to absorb the overwhelming feelings that flooded through her. Love and completeness. Everything she'd wanted all her life, everything she'd found in this man from the start, everything she'd forgotten in the middle of the business of their new lives. They moved together, his voice a rumble against her cheek where it rested in the hollow of his shoulder. “I love you,” he said, his voice as unsteady as she felt.

Then he was easing her down into the coolness of the linen, and she opened her eyes to the main bedroom in the cabin, to the vaulted wooden ceilings, whitewashed walls and the sound of rain against the windows that overlooked the view of the water. Adam was with her in the
bed, gathering her to him, and in that moment, nothing else existed.

A crack of thunder made her jump slightly, then a flash of lightning washed the room in brilliance, moving over Adam so close to her. It exposed the lines etched in his face, the plane of his strong jaw, eyes filled with a fire that echoed in her. She reached to touch him, feeling the prickling of a new beard at his chin, then her forefinger touched his lips, so soft, such a contradiction to the hardness of the man.

He took her finger into his mouth, into heat and warmth, and the seductive act made her tremble. Love was such an inadequate word for what she felt for him, and loneliness was such an inadequate word for what she felt when he wasn't there.

He shifted, his hand slipping under her sweatshirt, and his eyes never left hers. A smile came when his hand skimmed on her bare skin, finding no bra, just the weight of her full breasts. His smile was crooked, his chuckle rough. “You really didn't dress up, did you?” he murmured.