Mother Load (13 page)

Anna looked at her curiously. “What’s this? We always do our gifts at home.”

“Just a little something extra.”

“Little?” The box was half again as large as the box that had held the car seat, and wrapped identically in gold foil with a velvet ribbon. Anna tore the paper tentatively and finally opened the top to peek inside. “There’s another box inside this box.”

By this time the boys were curious too, and they helped separate the two boxes. “Open it,” Andy said, pulling the ribbon on the smaller package.

Inside, Anna found a second car seat. “I feel like I’m having a déjà vu. Is this supposed to be one for your car and one for my office?”

Lily shook her head. “Nope, for your car.”

Anna sighed and looked at the others plaintively. “She’s trying to talk me into selling the Z8 and getting a minivan. I told her no way, that if I needed to pick up Andy and the baby I’d just grab something off the lot. Seriously, can you guys picture me in a minivan?”

“I think it’s a marvelous idea,” Kim said. “You can swing by and pick up Jonah too…and eight of his closest friends.”

“Don’t you need a bus driver’s license for that?” Hal teased. “And I think they have a union.”

Even Martine got into the game. “You can wear a uniform! Dark slacks and a short-sleeved shirt with a necktie.”

“You guys are hilarious. I’m not getting a minivan.” Anna folded her arms and stubbornly jutted out her lower lip.

“Maybe I’ll get a minivan,” Lily said.

“I don’t see why you’d need one. This baby seat will fit just fine in the X3.”

“That one’s yours.”

“Then the other one, the one you gave me this morning.”

“That one’s yours too.”

Anna’s face contorted and she locked eyes with Lily, who was fighting a losing battle not to smile.

“Holy—” Kim slapped her hand over her mouth.

“Holy what? Why would I—” Her jaw dropped and her eyes went wide. “Oh, my God.”

Lily nodded. “You’ll need both of them. And two cribs…two high chairs…and a double stroller.”

The next few moments were a blur as the room filled with shrieks and everyone reached out to claim a hug. When the chaos cleared, Anna was holding her in front of the tree grinning wildly. “Twins.”

“Two of them.”

“And you’ve known this how long?”

“Since the second sonogram. That’s why Beth had me come back. She saw a shadow and it turned out one of our babies was hiding behind the other one.” The last two weeks had been sheer torture as she planned her surprise. The idea had come to her as she wrapped the first car seat, which she had bought with every intention of letting Anna keep it in her office for emergencies. Now with two children on the way, the sports car was toast. “And there’s more.”

“Not more children.”

“More news, smart aleck. Beth’s pretty sure from the way they’re situated that they aren’t identical, which means…” She waited a few beats for realization to dawn. “One of them is mine and the other is yours.”

Another round of cheers erupted and Andy wrapped his arms around their legs. “Why is everybody so happy?”

Lily knelt and put her arms on his shoulders. “Because we aren’t just having one baby. We’re having two. You might get two little brothers or two little sisters, or maybe even one of each.”

There was a flicker of concern but it lasted only a second. Then he turned to Jonah and announced proudly, “I’ll be a bigger brother than you.”

“Are you doing that on purpose?” Hal asked, leaning away to cast a look of annoyance.

Anna was momentarily perplexed, until realizing she had been crunching potato chips in his ear as she peered over his shoulder at the figures on his computer screen. That passed for lunch these days, as she never seemed to have time to get out of the office. Everyone was pulling a heavier load now that their staff was leaner, and she was back to handling all the advertising for the BMW lot.

“Sorry…type faster and I’ll get out of your hair.” She was anxiously awaiting his December report, their first full month since the downsizing. If they couldn’t turn a profit with a skeleton crew and year-end sales that slashed prices to just over invoice, Premier Motors was going to hell in a handbasket.

“I think you’re going to be happy with the numbers.”

“Happiness is too much to hope for. I just want to exhale for a change.”

He made some final adjustments to his spreadsheet and zeroed in on the profit/loss column. As he predicted, they finished in the black for the first time in eight months. “What’d I tell you?”

There it was, the first sign they were bouncing back. “It’s not as much as I’d hoped.”

“Southern California isn’t out of the slide yet, Anna. As people get back to work, that number will grow. But for now you’ve stopped the bleeding, which is what the reduction in force was supposed to do. That’s quite a feat in this economy.” He continued with his calculations. “Whatever you do, don’t look at the fourth quarter by itself. You’ll have a heart attack.”

The severance payouts had cost them almost two million dollars, but she had braced for the drop. Without them she would have leaked the money gradually through payroll and been forced into layoffs. “What’s that number going to look like for January without the Christmas sales?”

“It’ll probably be flat for a while, but we should be sailing again by the time your little ones get here in June.”

Twins. She had been smiling nonstop for the last three weeks. They had known going in that twins were a strong possibility since they were implanting two eggs, but after their first two attempts had failed it seemed unlikely.

“How’s Lily?”

“That depends on which minute you’re talking about. She’s got some energy back but she’s still having her mood swings—except I’m not supposed to call them that because it’s patronizing.”

“Ah, yes. I remember it well.” He swiveled in his chair as she perched on the edge of his desk. “You can’t even head it off because sometimes it’s just flat-out contrariness. Kim finally admitted to me that what she wanted was just to bitch. If I tried to make things better I was an insufferable pest, and if I left her alone I was a heartless bastard.”

“Was there anything you could do that actually helped?”

“Keeping Jonah occupied seemed to help the most. It was good for him too.”

Anna recalled several times she had dropped in to find her sister relaxing on her own. “I think Andy would like that. By the way, we want to get an early start down to Palm Springs on Saturday. Can we drop Andy off around eight o’clock?”

Hal snorted. “Jonah will have been up two hours by then.”

“Knowing Andy, he’ll fall asleep in the car on the way over.”

“It isn’t fair.”

“I know, but we’re rolling the dice with these two on the way. With our luck, they’ll sleep at opposite times and wake each other up.” She slumped into the chair across from his desk. “Anything besides keeping Andy occupied?”

“I did a lot of little stuff that seemed to help, like bringing flowers or rubbing her feet while we watched TV. That was kind of a crapshoot though because sometimes she got sentimental and it made her cry.”

“I don’t know how you stood it.”

He smiled. “The first time you hold your babies you’ll forget all about the bumps in the road. And here’s the kicker—no matter how much you do for Lily while she’s pregnant, you won’t ever feel like it’s enough. I watched Kim suffer through all those fertility treatments and two miscarriages. Then she had all those aches and pains. It made me love her like crazy.”

“I already feel like that and we’re not even that far along.” She felt pleased with herself for how she had stepped up to take over many of the things Lily used to do, like laundry and grocery shopping. Their only real sticking point had been the issue of a new car, which had turned from teasing banter to a sharp-tongued battle of wills. She could understand why Lily would find a minivan more appealing for carrying three children, but her continued insistence that Anna get rid of the Z8 was beyond reason. “Did you ever…never mind.” After all the things Hal had just said, it was ridiculous to think he would understand where she was coming from over something as silly as a car.

“What?”

“I was just wondering…how did you feel about giving up your boat after Jonah was born?”

“It broke my heart, if you want to know the truth. But after Jonah came there was no way we were going to get out more than a couple of times a year. It didn’t make sense to pay all those docking fees for something I couldn’t even enjoy.”

“But you loved it.”

“I did, but I loved being a dad more. It was one of those bargains I made with myself, to trade one for the other.”

That wasn’t exactly the answer she was looking for. “But who said you had to trade? You could have had both.”

“Come on, Anna. You know how it was when Andy came along. No more sleeping in on Sunday. No more making out on the couch. It’s part of the decision to have kids.”

Yes, their routines had changed, but their sex life hadn’t suffered that much.

“But you know what I realized? I can get another boat someday. I can’t get this time back with Jonah and Alice.”

She should have known better than to look for support from her family when she and Lily disagreed because it seemed nearly everyone took Lily’s side without even realizing there were sides to take. That meant she was being unreasonable. “Looks like I’ll have to get rid of my Z8.”

“No, you won’t. Rent a garage and put it away for special days.”

She groaned. “You mean save it for my midlife crisis.”

“Right, swing by someday and pick me up and we’ll go buy another boat.”

Lily steeled herself as the massage therapist’s knuckles bore into the tight knots at the base of her neck. He seemed to have a bead on all the places that held her tension, but there was no denying his precision work was chasing it from her body. When he lowered his hands to the small of her back she tipped her head sideways to look at Anna, who was lying on a table alongside her. Her back was bare also and the woman seemed to be pinching her, at least that’s what Anna’s grunts and whimpers suggested.

Nick and Una, the husband and wife team who specialized in couples massage, set a relaxing scene in their studio. Candles flickered around the room as a new age mixture of rainfall and flutes played softly from hidden speakers behind her.

Anna turned to meet her gaze. “This is heavenly.”

“If heaven is anything like this, I’m going to be very good.”

They had gotten an early start from LA, arriving at the spa at ten a.m. Their day of pampering had begun with manicures and pedicures, followed by facials and bikini waxes. Next was lunch on the veranda, then two hours of massage. The spa day was one of Anna’s Christmas presents to her, and while the indulgent treatments were special, nothing compared to the treat of getting out of town on their own for a couple of days, something they hadn’t done since last summer. With twins on the way, it was hard to imagine when they would get another chance, and Lily had no intention of wasting a second, especially tonight in their hotel room.

“What are you thinking about?”

She was glad for the dim light that hid her blush. “Later.”

Anna rumbled with a knowing laugh. “You’re thinking about later or you’ll tell me later?”

“Both.”

They quieted until Nick and Una left them.

“Are you enjoying your Christmas gift as much as I am?” Anna asked.

“If I enjoyed it any more I’d be unconscious. What’s next?”

“Sauna for twenty minutes, then tepid showers. Last is the salon.”

“And dinner?”

Anna smiled and stretched out her hand until they touched. “Room service.”

They wrapped in robes for the walk across the common area, and exchanged them for bath towels to enter the sauna. A middle-aged woman and a teenage girl were already seated and, from the tension in the air, had just had an argument.

“For three thousand dollars, you’d think I could buy one day of not hearing what a disappointment I’ve been as a mother,” the woman said, walking out the door with obvious disgust. The girl tossed her chin defiantly but the embarrassment of their public argument was plain on her face. Several awkward seconds passed and she gathered herself and followed in her mother’s wake.

“Three thousand dollars?” Lily asked.

“Damn straight, so you’d better not bring up getting rid of my car.”

Lily laughed, started to speak, and laughed again. “Believe it or not, it was the farthest thing from my mind. I’ve decided to let you keep your silly old car, but I still want a minivan and when we all go somewhere together, you have to drive it.”

Anna clutched her chest as though she had been mortally wounded. “I’ll have to keep a mask in the console so people won’t know it’s me. And little masks for all the children.”

“Oh, no. Our children will be proud of the minivan, so proud they will beg to ride in it.” She laughed at the exaggerated anguish on Anna’s face. “We’ll get one of those personalized license tags that says ‘Kaklis 5’ so everyone will know it’s ours. And I’ll decorate it with bumper stickers for our honor students.”

“Kill me now.”

Without opening her eyes, Anna began the morning in her usual way, reaching to her right to find Lily. Their decadent getaway had served its purpose, as they had shed a good bit of the stress that had been building over the past year. The indulgent treatments had worked like a reset button, certain to send them back to their lives refreshed and renewed.

“Please don’t tell me we have to get up,” Lily mumbled from beneath the comforter.

Anna wrapped her in an embrace, relishing the warmth of her smooth skin. “We have the room until one, so that means breakfast in bed.”

“I already have the most delicious taste on my lips this morning.”

“So you’re not interested in French toast with confectioner’s sugar and warm maple syrup?”

Lily made a small squeaking noise at the mention of her favorite breakfast. “With bacon?”

“I’ll order it now.” Lily nuzzled her neck as she placed their order, a move that proved very distracting. “Yes, and one French kiss…I mean toast, with a side order of…bacon. And coffee for two.”