“I HATE SOUP.”
“You haven’t even tried it yet,” Melissa reminded the girl scowling at her. The four of them were sitting at her kitchen table for lunch, though it felt more like they were two battalions preparing for war.
“I hate all soup.”
“Can I have milk instead of juice?” the other twin asked.
Spoiled brats. Melissa’s fists clenched, and she counted silently to ten. “The soup and crackers—and the juice—are easy on your stomach.”
“Dad never makes us eat stuff we hate.”
“He doesn’t let our babysitters make us, either.”
Deciding nonconfrontation was her best course of action, Melissa put her spoon into her soup and started eating.
She refused to react when the twins walked away from the table, leaving their lunches barely touched. She needed to talk to their father about how she planned to handle the girls, and for this first day, she was curious to see how they behaved. Although curious was quickly turning to appalled.
After lunch, Alice went down reluctantly for her nap. “I want to play with the two twins,” she argued.
“They’ll still be here when you wake up. Besides, they’ll be resting, too,” Melissa promised her.
And rest and quiet was exactly what the twins needed. Knowing they would want to watch more TV, Melissa was determined, so long as they were under her care, they wouldn’t spend all their time drooling over the Bravo Boys.
It was time she took charge. She went to her room and dug out Anne of Green Gables and Little House on the Prairie from among her favorite books from childhood.
As she returned downstairs she heard the hum of the TV, as she’d expected. Marching into the room she stopped dead. She’d anticipated the music videos. But she certainly hadn’t expected to find the twins curled on the couch surrounded by potato chips and candy bars.
“What on earth?” she cried angrily.
“Dad said we could bring some snacks,” replied the one she’d come to see as the bolder of the two, her chin jutting forward. The smell of grease and chocolate hung in the air, and Melissa stared at the bold twin—Laura, she thought—until the girl’s defiant gaze faltered. She was beginning to see subtle differences between the twins, but it would be a while before she’s be able to distinguish them unerringly.
Cellophane crackled beneath her fingers as she scooped up the load of junk food from the couch and ordered the girls to wash their hands once more.
“But I didn’t finish my Doritos.”
“In my house, you follow my rules. No snacks between meals if you don’t eat your lunch.”
They glared at her as if she were an ogre before stomping off, muttering to each other.
If they thought she was evil to take away their junk food, she must have dropped even lower in their estimation when she produced the books.
“We don’t have to do homework, we’re sick.”
“This isn’t homework. It’s called reading for pleasure.”
Glumly, Laura took the proffered book and then balked again when she read the cover. “Don’t you have A Series of Unfortunate Events?”
She shook her head.
“American Girls?” Jessie cried, glancing at the cover of Little House on the Prairie. “Redwall? Saddle Club?”
“Sorry, I only have the books I used to read when I was a little girl.”
The two identical looks of horror caused her lips to tremble with barely suppressed amusement. “That was just after the printing press was invented.”
“You read this stuff?”
“Well, only because the Bravo Boys weren’t born yet.”
“My Dad—”
“Would you like to phone your Dad and check if it’s okay to read a book at my house?”
The panicked glance the twins shared confirmed what Melissa had begun to suspect: they were on their worst behavior for her benefit. Without another word, they opened their books and at least made a pretense of reading.
“I’m going to start dinner now. If you have trouble understanding any words, you can bring the book into the kitchen.”
“But we’re too sick to read,” Jessie whined.
“Then you can nap in Matthew’s bed.”
They had their heads down, eyes to the page in seconds.
Challenge is good. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. She continued her silent pep talk as she started preparing dinner. While she was peeling onions the phone rang.
“Hello?” she answered, sniffing.
“Melissa?”
She sniffed again, and wiped her streaming eyes with her sleeve. Oh, for a tissue. “Hello, Seth.”
“What is it? Have the twins made you cry?” Seth’s voice sounded full of dread.
She chuckled. “I’m peeling onions. The twins are fine.”
She heard scuffling noises in the hall and suddenly the bold twin bounded in the room gesturing frantically. It took Melissa a minute to figure out that the flapping, pointing and silent begging were a plea for her not to tell Seth about the junk food stash in the backpacks. Interesting. Maybe he wasn’t a complete pushover after all.
The sigh that rumbled out of the receiver said more than any words could. “Tough day?” she asked.
“Annual directors’ meeting. It went all right, but I had trouble concentrating.” He paused. “I was worried about the twins.”
Was he worried she was being mean to his sweet darlings? His sympathy would have been better placed with their caregiver. She kept these feelings to herself, however, and asked what time he’d be picking them up.
A groan of frustration was her answer. “There are a couple of urgent items I’ve got to clean up. I was hoping you could keep them till seven tonight…at your overtime rate, of course.”
She hesitated. Frankly, she had been counting the minutes till she could get rid of the twins, but she heard real anxiety in Seth’s voice. And he was paying her overtime. “All right,” she finally agreed.
“I’ll tell you what.” She heard the relief in his tone and was glad she was able to help. “Put the onions away, I’ll have pizza delivered to your place for dinner.”
“We’ll take a rain check on pizza. The last thing those girls need is more junk in their stomachs. I’ll make them something wholesome.”
He chuckled, and the sound did something to her stomach that she didn’t even want to consider. “If it’s wholesome, they probably won’t eat it, but you’re the boss.”
She was thinking that if he used that laughing, sexy voice all the time, the bank would be swamped with female customers. And even though he and his daughters seemed to have taken over her life in a matter of twenty-four hours, she felt her lips turning up in response. “See you later.”
Surprisingly, he turned out to be wrong. Maybe it was because they hadn’t eaten anything but a few filched potato chips and a lunch they’d only picked at, but the twins wolfed down the chicken and vegetable stew she’d made and got through most of a loaf of whole wheat bread. They looked suspiciously at the rice pudding, but once they’d tasted it, they made short work of that, too.
And they surprised Melissa by displaying excellent table manners.
Matthew was so much in awe of them that he spent the entire mealtime staring at first one, then the other twin. Maybe they were used to that kind of attention; they didn’t even seem to notice. Alice didn’t stare. She merely copied everything they did.
“How did you get on with Anne of Green Gables, Laura?” Melissa asked. They hadn’t come to her all afternoon for help, so she was suspicious about how much reading they’d done. She’d peeked in on them once and found Laura reading and Jessie sound asleep on the couch.
“It was okay.” The girl shrugged and fell silent.
“Did you have any trouble with big words?” Melissa persisted.
“Not really.”
Had the girl read any of it? Or had she heard Melissa’s approach and stuck the book in front of her face before she got caught doing something else? “What did you like about the book?”
Laura stared hard into her rice pudding. Beneath the rioting auburn curls, Melissa made out a different shade of red staining her cheeks.
Nobody said anything for several seconds.
Just as Melissa was about to ask her what she’d really been doing all afternoon she burst out with, “That Anne was an orphan. If our dad dies we’ll be orphans, too, and nobody will want us.” She raised a face wet with tears, her eyes huge.
“Laura, that’s not true.” Melissa’s heart turned over at the real fear she saw in those big, wet eyes before the child turned and dashed out of the room. “Laura, come back,” but the running footsteps kept pounding down the hall and up the stairs.
Before Melissa could stand, Jessie let out a sob, and knocking her chair over in her haste, jogged after her sister, beginning her own noisy brand of wailing.
Melissa stood up. “Excuse me, children,” she mumbled. What had she done?
She started to follow the twins, but, glancing at Alice, saw her daughter’s face start to pucker. She wouldn’t understand what the crying was about, but she’d responded to the emotion she’d witnessed.
Matthew looked anxious. He was pulling on the cowlick in the centre of his hairline, a habit he had when he was upset. “We don’t have a dad. Are we orphans?”
Sudden tears pricked Melissa’s own eyes. “Of course you have a dad. And he loves you. And you have me.” She felt as though a vise was squeezing her ribs. “I won’t let anything happen to you…I promise.” By this time, tears were streaming helplessly down her own cheeks and Matthew’s eyes had flooded.
Alice howled, “I want my daddeee!”
At that moment Seth O’Reilly walked into the kitchen. “Nobody answered the door. I…what the—?”
SETH BLINKED HIS EYES AS though he could reopen them and find the world was back to the familiar place he knew.
It wasn’t.
Melissa was melting into a puddle right in front of him, and strangely, he felt a strong urge to take her in his arms and comfort her. Except that she was already moving to offer comfort to her sobbing children.
He glanced around for his own children. What had they done now? Fear clenched his gut. “The twins?”
Melissa pointed upward, her body shaking badly. “I’m so s-sorry.” She could barely speak. “The b-book. It’s all my fault.”
He bounded out of the kitchen and up the stairs without bothering to ask permission. “Girls?” he shouted as he ran, terrified of what he might find. He’d never thought of a book as being a deadly weapon, but with the twins you never knew. His terror eased a little when he heard distinct, noisy sobs coming from down the hall.
They were lying curled up together on a single bed in a room so dominated by pink and purple it must have been Alice’s. A quick survey showed him they weren’t obviously hurt. There was no visible bleeding or broken body parts. Some of his panic dissipated and he crossed quietly to perch on the bed beside them.
“Hey Red, what’s up?” he said softly, using the nickname he’d had for them since they were toddlers.
“Dad-ee!” they cried in unison and somehow both ended up on his lap, clutching at him. “Don’t d-die,” Laura begged him, turning a tear-swollen face up to him.
Even as he opened his mouth to utter an automatic soothing promise, a pain sharp and cruel pierced his chest. How could he promise something he had no control over? Who’d have thought Claire would die? Claire, who’d embraced life and who would have done anything to spare her children pain. “I’m right here,” he said with a catch in his own voice. It was the best he could offer.
“I don’t want to be an orphan,” Laura sobbed. “They make you work like a c-cleaning lady and send you on trains to people who don’t even w-want you.”
“Who does?” Seth was floundering way out of his depth. Cleaning ladies? Trains? Death? What kind of a babysitter was Melissa Theisen? “Nobody’s going to make you a cleaning lady,” he soothed.
“That’s what happened to Anne. And she finally finds a place she likes but they d-didn’t like her because she was a girl. Why couldn’t we be b-boys?”
“Well, I’m glad you’re girls.” Seth latched on to the one part of her complaint he understood. “Your mom and I always wanted a girl, and we were so lucky when we got two of you.” He squeezed their slim shoulders to him in a hug.
Jessie’s body shuddered on a hiccup.
“Who’s Anne?” He never remembered hearing about anyone at school called Anne. He thought he knew most of their friends outside of school. No Annes there, either.
“Anne Shirley.”
“Anne Shirley?” Now where had he heard that name before? Then he remembered, Melissa had mentioned a book. “Anne of Green Gables? That Anne Shirley?”
Laura nodded and sniffed.
“Anne Shirley is a fictional character. And that book was written a long time ago. That’s never going to happen to you.”
“Then who’s going to look after us when you die?” Laura demanded.
“First of all, I’m not planning to die for a long time. And if something did happen, your Auntie Janice would look after you. You know that.”
“But she has her own kids,” Jessie objected.
“She’d let us live with her to be cleaning ladies and do all the cooking and the wash,” Laura warned.
“Well, she wouldn’t be getting much of a bargain,” Seth said drily. “You two would soon have her whole house looking like your bedroom.” He squeezed his arms around them in another big hug. “And after yesterday, I don’t think she’ll be asking you to do any cooking.”
A reluctant chuckle answered him.
“How was the rest of your day?”
He caught the guilty glance they exchanged. “Fine.”
Dropping kisses on their fiery curls, he said, “Wash your faces and come back downstairs.”
Considerably calmer now, he made the return journey to the kitchen. Melissa had settled her kids as well as dried her own tears. She glanced up guiltily when he entered. “How are they?”
“Drying off.”
“Matthew, take your sister into the den for a few minutes while I talk to Mr. O’Reilly. You can watch TV.” She gave them each a loving pat as they trotted out of the kitchen. The Theisen tear storm had apparently passed.
She waited until they were out of the room before speaking again, her face creased with worry. “I’m so sorry, Seth. I—”
“Anne of Green Gables. I heard.”
“I loved that book so much as a child. And since it’s about a spirited girl with red hair, I thought Laura might enjoy it. I didn’t think about how it begins, with Anne as a rejected orphan. I’ll put it away and find Laura something else to read.”
“No, wait. I know I read the book in school, but I’m a little fuzzy. Doesn’t she run around after some boy named Gilbert?”
Melissa said, “No. She doesn’t. Gilbert runs around after her, and she won’t have anything to do with him. He has to win her slowly, with a lot of hard work.” She sighed blissfully. “I loved that book.”
Sounded like a bunch of BS to him. “Why do you women always love to make men suffer?”
She rolled her eyes. “We’re entering dangerous territory. The point is, Anne overcomes all the obstacles in her life and finds love and happiness.”
Seth was nodding his head as though she’d helped him win an argument. “Then let’s let her finish reading the book. Life is tough. Laura’s already learned that.” He sighed and shifted his hips back against the kitchen counter. “She’s the older twin, you know, definitely the dominant personality.”
Melissa nodded vigorously, and he smiled a little. She’d figured them out pretty fast.
“She’s having more trouble than Jessie getting over her mother’s death. I’ve been trying to smooth her path, prevent her from being upset. And she pulls pranks like the brownie disaster.” He shrugged. “Maybe reading a book about somebody else who gets over a similar situation will help her.”
His stomach churned, recalling her plea to him not to die. “At least it brought out a fear she hasn’t talked about before.”
“That she’ll be orphaned?”
“Yeah.” He swallowed a sudden lump in his throat. “I told them my sister Janice would look after them.” He shrugged his helplessness. “It’s the best I can promise.”
She nodded, a crease between her eyebrows. “She made me suddenly realize that if anything happens to me, my children will have nobody.” Her voice trailed away, and she turned quickly, moving with jerky steps toward the kitchen sink.
She paused there, leaning against the edge of the countertop. She appeared to be staring out the window, but Seth didn’t think she saw anything. Even though her shoulders didn’t move, he knew she was crying.
Before he knew what he was doing, he was gripping her shoulders and turning her to face him. He wanted to offer comfort, but what could he say? She was right. He’d seen this situation before. Unless she was very lucky, or her ex suffered a sudden attack of conscience, Stephen Theisen was as good as dead to Melissa and the children.
“Don’t you have any family?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I’m an only child. My mother’s dead and my father…” She gulped. “No. There’s no one.”
The raw pain and fear he saw connected with his own pain and fear. He couldn’t offer her any real consolation, but he could hold her while she cried, give her the temporary comfort of a shoulder to cry on. Gently but firmly he pulled her into the circle of his arms.
She tried to pull away, making little sounds of distress, but suddenly she gave in and clung to him.
Melissa fit into his arms perfectly, the top of her head nudging his chin. The bones of her back were slender and prominent beneath his hands. Her frame seemed too delicate for the strength of the sobs that shook her. Her hands gripped his shoulders and her tears soaked through his shirt.
But even through her terrible grief, he was aware of the woman’s body shuddering against him. His response to the feel of her shocked him. He felt every curve of her. Warmth radiated from her body where it pressed against his.
And the way she smelled. He’d forgotten how exciting all those fragrances were. The hair products that were scented like flowers. The powders and lotions so numerous that Claire’s side of the medicine cabinet overflowed into his half. Razor, shaving cream, toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant. That’s all he needed. He used to tease Claire about renting a storage locker to keep all her junk in. Now he had lots of empty shelves. And he missed the little spills of makeup goo on the counter. But most of all, he missed the delicate, flowery scents.
He missed the taste of lipstick during a wet, hungry kiss. He missed the taste and touch and smell of a woman. And not just Claire. He was appalled to discover he was eager to sample the woman in his arms. At least his body was.
He’d meant to offer comfort. It was an effort of will to prevent his body from letting her know in no uncertain terms what her movements were doing to him. Grief was making her body rub against him in a way that was giving him all sorts of ideas he didn’t want to have.
Shifting his hips back slightly didn’t help. She clung closer, so far gone in her indulgence of tears she didn’t know what she was doing.
“Shh. It’s going to be okay,” he murmured over and over, stroking her hair as well as her back. Touching those silken curls was another big mistake.
A mental cold shower was in order. And fast. Down, Boy. Profit and loss figures from the yearly income statements. He tried to recall all the numbers from this morning’s meeting. The bank’s profits were up. The board of directors was pleased. Everyone was pleased.
He wouldn’t have even got to the meeting if it hadn’t been for Melissa.
Not only had she been there all day with the twins and fed them healthy food, but she’d convinced Laura to read a work of literature instead of watching TV. No other babysitter had ever bothered.
A wet sniffle coming from the direction of his right shoulder called his attention back to the matter at hand. The sobs seemed to have ended as quickly as they had begun. She didn’t raise her head, though. Instead, her hand reached out behind her, fingers splayed, bouncing along the countertop, searching.
Puzzled, he let his gaze scan the counter, but he didn’t think it was the pot scrubber or the dish detergent she was after.
The hand suddenly clenched and pulled back. “I’m out of tissues,” she mumbled into his chest.
Seth smiled into her hair, dug into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, which he placed into her hand.
With a muffled “thanks” she kept her head lowered while she wiped her eyes and nose. Only then did she raise her head and look at him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that,” she whispered.
“Feel better?”
Her face flushed. “A little. Mostly, I feel stupid.”
Stepping back, he shot her a smile he hoped was brotherly. “Crying is supposed to be therapeutic.”
“I’ve never found it good for much except sore eyes. I try to be a doer, not a crier,” she said on a hiccup.
“And how are you doing?”
A frown appeared. “I found out I’m not the only person whose spouse ever went AWOL. I have an appointment with a legal aid clinic for women. If I could find Stephen…” She glanced up quickly. “I made an evening appointment so I’ll be here for the girls, of course.”
Seth tried to look positive, but it was tough. He’d seen a few of these cases at the bank. Everybody hated them. He didn’t think Stephen Theisen planned to keep paying child support for children he no longer saw and mortgage payments on a home he no longer inhabited.
If Melissa’s hunch was correct and he was in Eastern Europe, things didn’t look good.
The sooner Melissa realized she was on her own, the better. But he was too tired and too smart to tell her that. She’d find out soon enough.
She blew her nose once more, then started to hand the soggy handkerchief back, only to stop with an embarrassed, “Oh! Why don’t I wash this and return it.”
He would have taken it, but he could see she was uncomfortable and with a shrug said, “Sure, thanks. No starch.”
She grinned at his lame humor and tucked the hanky in her own pocket. “Would you like some chicken stew?”
Homemade stew. He’d been smelling it in the air since he walked in. It reminded him of his own mother’s kitchen. Melissa’s food smelled like a warm hug at the end of a tough day. If it was anything like the soup she’d brought over last night… But he paid Melissa to look after his kids, not him. “No thanks, I had a big lunch,” he lied.
“Same time tomorrow?” she asked while they both tried to pretend they hadn’t heard his stomach growl in hunger.
“Yes, I’ll get the girls. Oh, and here.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out the check he’d written. “A week’s pay, plus time and a half for the overtime tonight. I don’t think I’ll be late again this week, but if I am I’ll add that to next week’s check. Is that acceptable?”
She flushed slightly as she took the folded paper in her hand. She didn’t open it but stared at it with her head bowed. “You know, I used to babysit for people all the time. Working moms, neighbors with dentist appointments. I’ve never taken money. If we’d met under different circumstances, I would have been happy to look after your girls. I wouldn’t have charged you.”
That urge to comfort was back again. He smiled down at the top of her blond head. “Working for money is nothing to be ashamed of, Melissa. Welcome back to the real world.”
Her head jerked up. He was surprised it wasn’t anger, but amazement in her face. “You’re right. I’ve been living in a dream world. I was like one of those TV women from the sixties, Mrs. Cleaver, maybe. I just wanted to stay home with my kids, that’s all.”
“Mrs. Cleaver always scared the pants off me when I was a kid. That hair never moved. Did you ever notice that? And she had that smile that looked like it wouldn’t budge even if she was force-feeding you the peas on your plate.” A shudder of memory went through him.
Her expression lightened even more. Now, if he could get a smile on her face before he left.
“But Mrs. Partridge, there was a cool mom. Although I’m not sure I’d have wanted my mom in my rock ’n roll band. Still, she was pretty sexy.”
“She was a single mother, too. And she sure made it look a lot easier than it is.”
“Hah, she wasn’t as bad as Mrs. Brady, tossing two single families together like it was as easy as baking a batch of chocolate chip cookies.”
“No. I imagine that’s a very difficult thing to do.” Melissa was blushing slightly, and then it hit him what she was thinking. Good God, she couldn’t be thinking…
Hard to tell. She’d dropped her head and started fiddling with the check again.
“Hey, Red!” he bellowed up the stairs, “Time to go.”
The bustle of sticking the girls in their coats, collecting their belongings and saying their goodbyes got him out of the door without having any more intimate conversation involving the Brady Bunch. He hoped she didn’t think he’d been hinting. He didn’t want a desperate woman getting any ideas about him.
Any more than he wanted to have any ideas about her.
The Brady Bunch. Get real.