Words From The Heart (Spring-Summer Romance Book 2) (4 page)

“With a little work, he’ll get the hang of it,” Bennett said. His gaze lifted to hers. “Boys I understand. Girls I may have to have some help with.”

Releasing a long breath, she calmed herself and ran her damp palm down her pants leg. “You have no idea how happy this makes me.”

Bennett stood, still holding onto August’s hands. “I think I do,” he replied, his eyes still on her face. “The same way I feel seeing June peaceful.”

Audrey offered him a smile. “You teach him to be mobile too fast, and I’ll need a leash to keep up with these three.”

To her surprise, he laughed. The sound whisked, pleasant, in her ears and stretched down to her soul. A hint, like bread baking or popcorn popping where your mouth watered way in advance, she tasted the flavor on her tongue. Joy and tranquility for the children, the security of growing up, safe, protected. But stronger in the mix was a taste she’d forgotten, the salty savor of a healthy, attractive man.

It curled in her gut, on the edge of hunger, and suddenly, she was twenty-six and newly wed, gazing into her husband’s adoring eyes. He’d made her a woman on their wedding night. But she’d set that behind the day he’d left and had no right to long for it now, especially not with a man who had so much else on his mind.

Desperation shot through her to escape.

“I should …” Stepping forward, she grasped August and pressed him to her chest. “He still … nurses sometimes. Why don’t you and Jeff go downstairs?” Not waiting for his response, she spun on her heel and dashed to her room. After a quick walk through the Jack and Jill bath to check on June, she retreated to her bed.

August wasn’t particularly hungry, but she forced him anyway, wincing at the nip of his teeth, and conscious she was clinging onto memories as much as Bennett was. Yet, she longed to go back there, experience those emotions again, the lack of them becoming that much sharper.

If Bennett had questions about her behavior, he never said so, and Audrey wasn’t about to bring it up. Instead, over the next few days, she fell into a routine in an effort to forget the incident entirely. Her days were made up of simple household tasks, her mind entirely on the children, and any contact she and Bennett had was fleeting.

At the end of her first week there, however, he approached her as she folded the children’s clothes. He’d dressed up more than usual, black slacks, a white button up, the sleeves rolled to the elbow. He also had on expensive shoes. But it was the dash of cologne that caused her to stop mid-motion.

“You smell good,” she said, unthinking. There was, perhaps, no harm in complimenting him, except for where it took her thoughts. Meeting his intense gaze took them further away from her task, to the strength of his arms, the broad span of his chest, the day’s growth of beard he seemed to wear a lot. “What’s the occasion?” she asked, awakening herself.

Her gaze immediately rested on August and June. The baby gnawed on one curled first. August, as usual, gripped his bare feet.

“I have a business meeting.”

She furrowed her brow. It was good if he was willing to work, but his doing so this suddenly surprised her.

“Just a meeting. I’ll be gone a couple hours. They have questions about a client I was directly involved in and need my input. I was thinking …” He paused. “Why don’t you take the children somewhere, get out for a while? You’re always so busy here.”

Take them somewhere? She could, but she realized, sitting there, she hadn’t taken them anywhere alone yet. Always, they’d split them up, Jeff, still preferring to tag after Bennett. “I need to visit my mother.” And father, who remained curiously silent. She’d called numerous times, but only ever spoken with her mom.

Worry rose in Bennett’s eyes.

Seeing it, Audrey released the garment in her hand, and setting it beside her on the couch, she stood to her feet. “Dad may have problems with you, but he’s incredibly soft with children. I know he misses August and bet he won’t say one word about Jeff or June. In fact, I guarantee it. This may be the perfect way to bridge the gap.”

“If you’re sure,” he replied.

“I’m sure. More than sure. You go to your meeting, and I’ll take the children to see my parents. We’llbe back after lunch. Mom will insist on feeding us. Why don’t you pick up something while you’re out? Better yet, visit with some of your old office friends.”

He hesitated.

“We’ll order pizza for supper, eat on the patio if you like.”

He seemed to take that remark as she’d intended it, as a reminder they’d still be here. He gave a nod and checked his cell for the time. “I should say goodbye to Jeff.” He made a few steps toward the stairs.

“Bennett,” she called.

He paused and glanced her way.

“This is good for Jeff, too. I know you two are close, but he’s hanging onto you so much because of missing his mom.”

Nothing he didn’t already know. But hearing her say it brought on a nod. In the next breath, he was gone, sprinting up the stairs.

She returned to folding, and at the sound of the front door opening and closing, called for the little boy. His small face, so much like Bennett’s, appeared at the top of the stairs. She held out one hand and wiggled her fingers. “Come here. I want to talk to you.”

Reluctant, he descended. She took his hand in hers at the bottom. “I need your help today. You think you can be a big boy and keep up with August?”

Jeff looked past her toward where her son lay on the blanket in the floor. “He doesn’t move,” he said.

She smiled. “Not much, but it’s a lot to keep an eye on him and June together. Don’t you think?”

He nodded.

“Good. Now, here’s your first big task.” She tugged him further into the living room. “You keep an eye on both of them while I put up these clothes, then you can help me buckle them in the car.”

Another thought stuck in her head. “Jeff?”

He looked up at her.

“Do you ever talk to your grandparents?”

Bennett had said little to nothing about either his parents or Beth’s.

“Daddy says they’re in heaven,” the little boy said.

All of them? That was intensely sad. Children needed grandparents. Audrey brightened her voice. “Then, you’ll enjoy where we’re going today. I’ll bet my mom has cookies hidden somewhere. Would you like that?”

He nodded, and Audrey smiled. Her mom would be easy to convince. Her dad would take a certain amount of tact. And a phone call. It’d be best to warn them they were coming.

CHAPTER 4

Being alone in the car felt extremely odd, and the thought he was headed to the office, out-of-place. He’d used accumulated sick time before Beth’s passing and taken a leave of absence afterward. As a result, any knowledge of accounting practices had dimmed. He wasn’t even sure how much help he’d be today, but been unable to find a way out of, at least, showing up.

He had Audrey to watch over the kids. They’d reached a financial agreement over how and what to pay her. He’d taken the time to draw up a contract, all of that, to make things legal and above board. In his mind though, she’d shown him how much she was worth, and in little ways that didn’t strictly involve Jeff and June.

She gave him space to think again and provided an orderly way of doing things that made his life much more palatable. They’d had only one mishap, left unexplained, where she’d run off with August as if the little boy would dissolve. In thinking on it later, he’d decided that sight of her son standing, eager to use his pudgy legs, had made her fear the future. The fact she hadn’t encouraged him to crawl, much less walk, also pointed that way. Clearly, Audrey wasn’t as over her husband’s betrayal as she’d thought.

He hadn’t brought the subject up again. There was no point. But he worried, watching her bury herself in motherly tasks, that she’d taken on too much. There was a big difference between feeding one child and feeding three. Add in the cleaning and care of the household, and she never had one moment alone.

That was, again, her refusing to think about her ex-husband, though he suspected she did anyway in the glances she gave him sometimes … the same manner he often looked at her. It was as if they were each on the other side of a glass wall, their individual visions clouded by the partition.

Strangely, that feeling, reminded him of Beth. They’d had a mutual attraction from the start, but for the longest time, denied it in favor of political correctness. Late one night, buried beneath a pile of tax season accounting, they’d found themselves sharing a meal, a laugh, and at one point, a kiss. He’d lost his position at the firm after things went public, but he’d gained Beth, and that had been worth it.

Audrey wasn’t Beth, and he wasn’t an eager single male wooing the pretty girl who flirted with him across the desk. He was a widower, still in love with his wife, and confused about how to go forward. He sought the normalcy that Audrey provided. She fit their lives, her steady, gentle manner what he needed to survive day-to-day.

He found her attractive as a man. That, in itself, wasn’t wrong. He saw attractive women all the time and acknowledged it. But his vision of her nursing that first night continually returned in his head giving it strength.

How much of it, though, was his longing for Beth? It was too soon for him to feel anything. He should mourn his wife and think only of his children, not of satiating the ache in his heart in the arms of another woman. Yet, his mind sought numbness that his body didn’t accept, and the vision in front of him grew blurrier by the day.

“Bennett, it’s so
good
to see you, and thanks for coming in on such short notice.”

Bennett smiled at the woman speaking.

He and Julia hadn’t been particularly close in the past, so he saw her words for what they were … yet another preplanned offer of condolence. Not that she didn’t mean them, but the sentiment was more for propriety’s sake. She wasn’t alone either. No one else had directly said those words, yet all of them had worn them in their expression. He was now “poor Bennett.”

He hadn’t realized until facing it over and over again this morning how much he loathed it. Sitting home with his children, it’d been easy to want pity. Thinking on that though, what he’d really wanted was guidance, someone like Audrey to come in and take control. Because the pity of his work colleagues used to be respect, and he’d rather have that than all the cheap “nice words” they could come up with.

“How are the children?” Julia purred across the conference table.

Five of them had assembled in the room.

He tried to smile. “They’re fine … now. I had to hire someone.”

The other suits in the room perked up at that news, ears turned sharply in his direction.

“June cried all the time, couldn’t adjust to formula,” he rushed to explain. “The doctor suggested I bring someone in …” He halted mid-sentence. He’d spoken too much.

“A nanny?” Julia asked. “That’s a good idea, but how does …” She pulled in a breath. “Oh.”

His face flamed, and he imagined he’d turned ten shades of red. Despite that, he tried to act calm. “You didn’t hear her, day in and day out, every breath. Audrey …”

“Audrey?” One of the others repeated her name.

Bennett swallowed. “We really should get to work. Don’t you think?”

He was grateful to have the subject dropped and relaxed enough, a couple hours later, to accept the offer of lunch. They’d be on a schedule. What would one more hour hurt? Besides, Audrey had suggested it, and she was right. He needed to do regular things.

Seated in the restaurant, a chicken sandwich in his grip, he was almost human and this day like how it used to be. Until his work colleague, Rick, leaned into his ear.

“So … this ‘Audrey’, she’s living with you?”

Bennett delayed a response. He and Rick had only had marginal contact with each other, yet what he knew of him was all positive. “She has to in order to care for the children. That’s why I hired her, to do what I’m incapable of.”

Rick lowered his voice. “She’s … nursing the baby?”

Again, Bennett didn’t immediately speak. “That’s what I’m incapable of,” he finally replied.

“That doesn’t feel odd?” Rick waved one hand outward. “Never mind. I’m being insensitive. We all just want you to get better.”

Get better? Like he’d been ill. Bennett took a bite of his sandwich, the flavor not as tasty as it once was. No offense to Rick, but any comments they’d made, good and bad, were extremely suspect, their condolences, merely gratitude he wasn’t there. Because what he’d done to her dad, he’d done to others … and often worse.

Audrey had said he wasn’t the same man anymore, and after today, he knew how true that statement was. At this point, he wasn’t even sure he could ever go back to nine-to-five within those building walls.

Audrey balanced August on one arm, while toting June’s car seat with the other. She set it down outside the door and raised her fist to knock. Jeff half-dragged the diaper bag down the walk, the weight of it almost as much as him. “You’re such a big help,” she said, making room for him to join her on the stoop.

Her first knock went unanswered, so she tried again. This time, the lock clicked and the painted surface gave a groan as the door swung inward. Her mom, dressed in khaki slacks and a floral print blouse, gazed out.

“Let me help you,” she said. She reached for August, then spotted Jeff and paused. “Well, what a big man you are to carry all that. Here, why don’t I take it, and you can come in out of this heat?”

Gratitude washed over her at her mom’s care. Taking hold of June’s car seat again, Audrey navigated her way indoors, through the foyer in her mom’s wake.

She inhaled deep, a smile on her lips. She’d promised Jeff cookies and could smell them in the air.

“What do you think …?” her mom asked, entering the tiny kitchen, barely twelve feet square. She bent over at the waist, more into Jeff’s view. “You think we’ll spoil our lunch if we eat dessert first?”

He shook his head.

“Me neither.” She patted the stool. “Take a seat, and you can have one. Mr. Ferguson has already had two.”

Her dad’s lumbering gait rustled from the far doorway. “I’m coming for a third,” he called out. “You must be Jeff,” he said. “My name’s Dale, and that’s Everly. Kind of hard to say, I know, so you can call her Eve.”

Jeff stuffed the cookie in his mouth in response.

Her dad’s gaze lifted, meeting hers.

“Daddy …”

He continued forward, giving her a hearty hug. “I’m glad you came,” he mumbled in her ear.

She reversed to an arm’s length. “It was Bennett’s suggestion.”

Hearing Bennett’s name, sparks flared in his eyes briefly, replaced, seconds later, by the interest in both August and June. “There’s my grandson!” he declared. He grasped August’s curled fist in his own, then glanced downward. “And this young lady …”

Releasing August to her father, Audrey removed June from the seat. She faced her forward so her parents could see her tiny face.

“She’s a lovely child,” her mom said. “She seems content.”

Audrey read meaning between the lines and held pride in her mom’s remark. Coming here was a good idea. “She’s doing much better, sleeps more regularly already and doesn’t cry so much. I feel like I’ve gone back in time some, and taking care of August and Jeff make for more work. But it’s very fulfilling.”

Her dad made a garbled cough, his cheeks stained red. “Me and my boy need to have us a talk,” he said. “It’s been a week and feels like a year.”

“Dad …” Audrey ventured.

He glanced up.

“Why don’t you take Jeff and show him the swing?”

Jeff gazed at her wide-eyed, his lips smeared with melted chocolate chips. “Swing?”

Audrey nodded. “It was mine, long ago. You can play on it, but stay where my dad can see you.”

Excitement bursting from him, Jeff slid from the stool and dashed toward the back door. Her dad hesitated a moment, then gave another cough. “That’s right. Built it myself and have always thought it needed grandchildren on it.” Opening the door, he stepped outside in Jeff’s wake, his voice fading.

Audrey waited for the door to close before she spoke. “Thanks,” she said.

Her mom’s smile grew. “You’re welcome. We had a good talk. I reminded him it wasn’t the children’s fault for anything that happened in the past and told him he’d be eating and sleeping alone if he made so much as one negative peep.”

Audrey laughed beneath her breath. She had no doubt her mom would follow through either. “Still, thanks.”

Her mom wiped her hands on a dishtowel and walked closer. “Can I hold her?” she asked.

Audrey nodded and shifted June, gingerly, into her mother’s arms.

Her mother sighed. “It never gets old,” she said. “I held you and was so full of wonder that anything that perfect came from me. I held August and thought the same. What an amazing miracle he is. Now with this one … what lovely features …” Her mom paused. “Tell me. How are things really?”

Between she and Bennett. That’s what her mom wanted to know. But the answer was convoluted, his behavior and her reaction to him not all that clear cut. She became aware she’d hesitated to answer too long when her mom’s forehead wrinkled.

“They’re fine. He’s very nice. Mom, whatever happened between him and Dad, I hope you know he wouldn’t do that again.”

“He told you that?”

“Not in so many words, but …”

Her mom swayed left to right, bouncing, and June’s eyes slid closed. “Sweetheart, you don’t know this man. I can see the children need you, but Bennett Adams is …”

“Hurting,” Audrey supplied. “He’s hurting, and I know how slippery the ground is. You don’t have to tell me.”

Her mom exhaled. “I was going to say a very good-looking man. I met him once at one of those Christmas shindigs … met his wife as well.”