A Man 0f His Word (Round-The-Clock Brides Book 4)

by Sandra Steffen

  “We have to take them back to their nest now so their mother can feed them,” Cole stated.

  The twins communicated silently with each other with a look. Violet nodded first. With a sigh bigger than she was, Gracie surrendered, too. Utterly forlorn, they fell into step between April and Cole.

  The four of them made their way slowly across the backyard, stopping before the Daddy Tree, which was taller than the twins now. Lowering to his knees, Cole held the branches back where Gracie pointed, and April gently placed first Gracie’s and then Violet’s little charge into the nest the mother rabbit had lined with her own soft fur.

  Tears ran unchecked down both girls’ faces. April would give anything to be able to protect them from life’s sadness and disappointments.

  “I’ll bet their mother won’t mind if we look in on them every morning,” Cole told the girls.

  “Every morning?” Violet asked on a sniffle.

  “I think the bunnies would like that,” April whispered. “Let’s tell them goodbye for now so their mama can come out of her hiding place and feed her hungry children. We’ll come back to see them tomorrow.”

  “Bye, Fluffy.”

  “Bye, Bitsy. See you in the morning.”

  Cole lowered the spruce bow back into place and rose stiffly to his feet. Holding hands, the girls followed the adults slowly, and April mouthed a thank-you to Cole.

  “Catastrophe avoided,” he said, surprising her when he reached out and brushed the tear from her face. Without another word, he returned to his stack of lumber and power tools as if everything was back to normal.

  All around April, everything truly did appear to be normal. A robin splashed in the birdbath and her nephews screeched from their wading pool. A ray of sunshine poked through a cloud overhead, and Gracie and Violet swooped down to pick dandelions.

  Cole had touched her, one finger brushing gently, innocently across her cheek. He’d touched her, and it wasn’t like the other night when they’d kissed. His brief touch today was different. And it had changed something deep inside her.

  Following her daughters back inside, April put each facet of this interlude to memory. She would take it out later and examine every layer. And she would recall the moment she’d fallen the rest of the way in love.

  She hadn’t wanted to fall in love again. She certainly hadn’t intended to fall in love with a man with deep emotional scars of his own.

  But it was done. She loved Cole.

  Please, God, she thought. Let him love me back.

  * * *

  It takes a village to raise a child.

  Looking around her patio table where she and her closest friends had gathered on this sunny Saturday afternoon, April thought there should be an equally profound statement for girlfriends, for she didn’t know how she would have survived this past year without the three women sitting with her today.

  “Do you know what Noah did last night?” Lacey Sullivan asked.

  “Do I need to cover Joey’s ears?” Julia Sullivan asked quietly so as not to wake her toddler son who was napping in her arms.

  Chelsea Reynolds shuddered. “I’m not sure I want to know what he did. Men can be such jerks.”

  “He painted my toenails,” Lacey said, smiling dreamily. “I can’t see my toes anymore, which was what I was telling him after my shower. And what did he do? He helped me into one of the new rocking chairs we bought for the nursery, and then he painted all ten of my toenails pink, for our baby girls, he said.”

  Everyone peered under the table at her pretty pink toes. “Would you stop?” Chelsea grumbled. With her fork poised over her slice of peach pie, she said, “I’m trying to hate all men over here and you’re not making it easy.”

  Of the three women sitting with her today, April had known Lacey the longest. Raised in the small apartment over the town’s seediest bar, Lacey had grown up with a chip on her shoulder and an ability to take care of herself. April secretly considered the sassy, smart expectant mother her best friend.

  She thought the world of Chelsea, too. Dark-haired and gorgeous, she was an extremely popular wedding planner. Having just come from being propositioned by the groom himself following the ceremony of an opulent wedding she’d meticulously planned, Chelsea had good reason to distrust the opposite sex. Only her closest friends knew she secretly longed to find an honorable man.

  Of the three friends gathered with her today, April had known Julia Sullivan the least amount of time, for she’d only been in Orchard Hill for a year. Her latest round of chemo had made her hair fall out. Again. Today she wore a blue scarf that matched her eyes, but on the day she’d returned to Orchard Hill last summer, she’d worn a floppy hat to hide her baldness.

  Before they met her, a lot of people in Orchard Hill had judged her harshly for leaving her newborn son on his father’s doorstep shortly after his birth. But they hadn’t known that the delicate watercolor artist with the lilting Southern accent had been fighting for her life back in North Carolina while also raising her teenage half sister, Annalise.

  Julia had been beyond shocked when she’d discovered she was pregnant following an idyllic vacation romance the summer before last. From the beginning, the pregnancy had been plagued with complications, and then, when she was nearly four months along she’d learned she had breast cancer. Her chance for survival lessened with every month she failed to seek treatment, treatment that meant she had to choose between her chances and her child’s.

  Her love for her baby had been instant and fierce. Somehow, she knew her son would be a fighter like her. She underwent surgery to remove the tumor from her breast, but would wait until after her baby was born to begin chemotherapy and radiation treatment.

  Like her pregnancy, her labor and delivery had been fraught with complications. Her baby was born a month prematurely. As soon as she and the baby were strong enough, she’d secretly brought Joey to his father’s doorstep then waited at the edge of the orchard until she was certain he’d taken their son inside. With tears streaming down her face, she returned to North Carolina to begin the rigorous treatment, hoping and praying she might live long enough to raise her child.

  The minute she was able, she came back for baby Joseph, arriving shortly after Jay had died. Julia had been going through her own hell on earth, and yet she’d reached out to April in her darkest hour. Each had found a kindred spirit in the other.

  Marsh had convinced Julia to marry him, and for a time it had seemed as though they might live happily ever after. But three months ago her cancer reared again, this time in her other breast. She’d had more surgery, more radiation and even more grueling chemotherapy treatment.

  Sitting across from April today, Julia kept a protective hand on Joey’s back. Her skin looked ghostly pale against Joey’s rosy complexion. April reminded herself that Julia was in remission. Her lymph nodes hadn’t been affected and her prognosis was good, and yet sometimes she saw something in those wizened blue eyes that sent worry to the pit of her stomach. Not today, though. Today, the four of them were enjoying peach pie, iced tea and one another.

  In a series of small, ungainly motions, Lacey rose to her feet. “Another trip to the bathroom?” Chelsea exclaimed.

  “It’s crowded in here,” Lacey said, her hand resting protectively on her bulging belly. “This has been going on day and night. There are a hundred reasons I cannot wait to have these babies. I want to hold them, kiss them, nurse them, care for them, marvel at them. Right now all I can think about is having them so I can sleep.”

  Julia caught April’s eye and winked. Even Chelsea, who was single and had limited experience with children, knew that having twins wasn’t exactly a relaxing experience.

  It was a warm, sunny Saturday afternoon. Other than the occasional humming noise eighteen-month-old Joey made in his sleep, the only sounds April had heard for the past half hour were Gracie, Violet and the
neighborhood children playing in the wading pool in their cousin’s backyard, her friends’ laughter and the pounding of Cole’s hammer carrying through the window upstairs.

  Moving slowly these days, Lacey finally reached the door. “Chelsea insists chivalry is dead,” April heard her say. “Do you want to tell her she’s wrong or shall I?”

  April wasn’t surprised to see Cole holding the door for Lacey, but she doubted anybody was more shocked than him when she planted a kiss on his cheek on her way by. “That,” Lacey said, “is for seeing me as a peacock and not a beached whale.”

  April’s gaze flew to his. Watching him walk toward her, she said, “I hope you don’t mind that I told her. She feels bigger than a barn and I was trying to cheer her up.”

  “Did it help?” he asked.

  “You’re the one she kissed. You tell me.”

  April smiled.

  And he almost did.

  “Have you told all your friends?” he asked.

  “Only Lacey.”

  “Did she tell us what?” Chelsea asked.

  Cole finally acknowledged the other two women at the table. “April discovered a peculiarity I have for seeing animal traits in people.”

  “Has April mentioned that she perceives Lacey as spiced apple cider on a crisp autumn night?”

  He shook his head, and April pulled a face at Chelsea. “Thanks a lot.”

  “I didn’t know it was a secret,” Chelsea replied.

  “Is it a secret?” Cole asked April.

  She shook her head. And he asked, “What are your friends?”

  “Chelsea is a field of lavender in May and Julia is an ocean breeze at dawn’s early light.”

  “What am I?” he asked.

  “Nice try,” she said. “Tell me which animal I remind you of and we’ll talk.” She laughed, and there was such joy in it that even Lacey, who was gingerly making her way back to the table, looked at April peculiarly.

  “What’s going on?” she asked, lowering carefully into her empty chair.

  But April didn’t hear.

  “Did Gracie and Violet visit the rabbits this morning?” he asked April.

  “They were up very early to do just that, but I made them wait until it was light outside,” she said.

  He smiled, and it did something to her heartbeat.

  “Maybe we should have told them they could look in on the rabbits before bedtime instead of in the morning,” he said.

  “Hindsight.”

  This time they both smiled.

  On the other side of the table, Chelsea held her hand in front of Lacey’s face. “Can you see my fingers?” she asked.

  “Uh, Chelsea? I’m pregnant not blind.”

  “Then we’re not invisible,” Chelsea said, tipping her head toward April and Cole.

  “Ahh,” Lacey said as understanding dawned.

  Temporarily oblivious to the others at the table, April watched Cole stride to his truck parked in the driveway. She was convinced his gait was getting smoother. He wore jeans and a black T-shirt, his tool belt riding low on his hips. He rummaged through a large stainless steel tool chest, the action drawing attention to the corded muscles in his back, shoulders and arms.

  Watching, too, Chelsea toyed with her bracelets; Julia softly patted Joey’s little back and Lacey gently massaged her taut belly. Only April’s hand came to rest over her fluttering heart.

  Glancing at the time on her phone, Chelsea rose to her feet, and with a sigh, quietly said, “I’d love to stay and watch the show, but I have a six-course wedding dinner and an elegant reception to attend to, even if the groom is a sack of dog poop.”

  “Will you tell the bride?” Julia asked.

  “If he’d propositioned me before the ceremony I might have tried to broach the subject with the bride. What good would it do now? The music and the flowers and the dresses and the vows and a hundred other details turned out perfectly. It took us a year and a half to plan this wedding. I give the marriage six months at the most.”

  She pointed a purple-tipped fingernail at Lacey and said, “Do not go into labor.” To Julia, “Do not go out of remission.” And to April, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  With that, Chelsea sashayed to her car. April saw her say something to Cole as she passed him. After she was out of his sight, she turned and looked back at the three women sitting at the table. With a wink, she held both hands out, palm-side up, and mouthed, “Nothin’.” She wasn’t accustomed to being ignored by the opposite sex.

  Lacey and Julia looked at one another the way Violet and Gracie often did, communicating silently. “What is it?” April asked.

  With a loud clank, Cole closed the lid of the tool chest. Lacey waited until he’d ambled into the house before she turned to her best friend and smirked the way she had when she’d been a cocky teenager growing up over the town’s seediest bar.

  “What is it?” April prodded again.

  “It’s nothing,” Lacey said.

  “I know you,” April said quietly. “When you have that look in your eye and that knowing grin on your face it’s never nothing.”

  “Okay, you asked for it. What’s going on between you and the sexy war hero with the haunted look in his eyes and to-die-for physique?”

  “Nothing’s going on,” April whispered.

  “Oh, sugar, something’s going on. You two couldn’t take your eyes off one another just now. If I wasn’t madly in love with Noah, I’d have a serious crush on Cole, too.”

  “If only it were just a crush,” April said.

  Lacey’s mouth gaped. “It’s more than that?” she asked.

  April couldn’t help noticing that Julia remained silent. “He’s been here less than two weeks and I feel like I’m falling in love. I know it’s only been fourteen months since Jay died. I know I wasn’t ready. But I can’t seem to help myself.”

  Leaning forward as far as the twins she was carrying would allow, Lacey whispered, “How in love?”

  Leave it to Lacey to get right to the heart of the matter. “He makes my heart feel like it’s doing somersaults into the pit of my stomach. Maybe it doesn’t mean I’m in love.”

  “What then, in lust?” Lacey asked.

  April gasped. “No. I mean, kinda, but I’m afraid it’s more than that.”

  Lacey exclaimed, “That’s wonderful. We’re your best friends. Why haven’t you told us?”

  “I haven’t even told him,” April said. “Besides, it’s completely one-sided.”

  “Oh, I think he knows,” Lacey insisted quietly.

  “He couldn’t. We agreed we should be friends. That was after I threw myself into his arms and kissed him.”

  “I’m no expert,” Lacey stated, “but isn’t kissing him first and then deciding to be friends backward?”

  “You think?” April agreed.

  “So how was it? Kissing him, I mean.”

  April’s sigh said it all. “We agreed friendship is better for both of us. No one can have too many friends, right? It’s certainly safer, and feeling safe felt good. But then we helped Gracie and Violet put a pair of tiny baby rabbits back in their nest yesterday and I felt my heart tumble top over bottom into my stomach. It’s okay. I’m not sorry. I never thought I’d feel this way again. With Jay it was mutual, you know? This is different. Cole doesn’t feel the same way about me.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Lacey moved this way and that as she tried to get comfortable in her chair.

  “I’m sure, Lace.”

  “I hate to be the one to tell you you’re wrong, but you’re wrong.”

  April looked at her friend. “Why do you say that?”

  “You saw what happened when Chelsea just left,” Lacey said. “That flawless face and those violet eyes, that gorgeous hair, that luscious body, that dress, those h
eels and the sway of those hips. She’s the mark against which every woman within a hundred-mile radius is measured. The only man who doesn’t fall at her feet is one blinded by his interest in someone else. FYI. Cole didn’t give Chelsea more than a cursory good-bye just now.”

  April looked at Julia. For a moment she was distracted by the sad expression in her friend’s blue eyes. But Lacey continued talking, and April turned her attention back to her.

  “Honey, that man is interested in you.”

  “He’s leaving as soon as he finishes the upstairs,” April said.

  “When will that be?” Lacey asked.

  Again, April wondered why Julia had become so quiet. Joey was asleep on her shoulder, but she’d talked earlier, so she couldn’t be worried that would wake him. Was she feeling all right? Perhaps she was just tired.

  April couldn’t help sighing as she considered Lacey’s question, for Cole was working today, and it was Saturday. He was obviously in a hurry to be done and gone. “He has a life and a thriving business in upstate New York and is leaving in a few weeks.”

  “Then you need to make your move.”

  “What are you suggesting?” she whispered.

  “You’ve already kissed him, right?” Lacey said softly. “What’s your seduction style? Unbuttoning his shirt? Or unbuttoning yours? Whatever you do afterward, kissing him again would be a wonderful place to begin.”

  Leaving April with that bit of sage advice, Lacey lumbered to her feet. April and Julia exchanged a concerned look.

  “I know. Again, right?” Lacey said. And then her eyes grew round. “Oh, no,” she said on a moan.

  “What’s wrong?” Julia finally broke her silence.

  “I think I’m having a contraction.”

  “You think?” Julia asked her sister-in-law.

  “But your C-section is scheduled for ten days from now,” April said, as if Lacey wasn’t aware of that minor detail.

  One hand flattened on the table, the other supporting the small of her back, Lacey said, “Tell that to these two.” Then she grasped her belly with both hands and moaned. “Oh-oh,” she said. “Houston, we have a problem.”