Heather nodded and got to her feet. She’d become used to sleeping when she could and waking instantly in the weeks since the babies were born.
When they were all in the dining room, Michael remembered his promise. “Marti, this is my brother Joshua and my other brother Amos. Guys, this is Heather’s youngest sister, Marti.”
Amos nodded to Marti, but Joshua hurried around the table to take her hand. “It’s so nice to meet you.”
“That’s not what you said when I told you to hush earlier.” Marti grinned up at him, realizing then he was even more handsome than his brother.
Josh grinned. “Well, I’m not used to meeting a beautiful woman and being told to be quiet all in one breath.”
Amos looked back and forth between Marti and Josh, and mischief filled his eyes. He hurried around the table and took Marti’s other hand. “I’m so pleased to finally meet you. I’ve seen pictures of all of Heather’s sisters, and I always thought you were the prettiest.”
Michael bit his lip against the laughter that threatened to spill out. Only Amos would flirt with a girl just to annoy Josh. The two of them had fought over many girls in school.
Josh glared at Amos. “Go away, big brother.”
“Not on your life.”
Marti felt a bit bemused standing between the two brothers. “I’m here to help with the babies, not to find endless love with one of you two.” She sat down at the table, not at all shocked when the two brothers sat on either side of her. “Are they always like this?” she asked Heather.
Heather shrugged. “I’ve never seen them around an unattached woman, so I couldn’t answer that, but it seems like they might always be this way.”
Michael shrugged. “What one wants, the other needs.” He ignored them and turned to his wife, seeing by the look on her face that something was up with her powers. She had the ability to tell when two people were meant to be together, and he had a feeling her kid sister was going to marry one of his brothers. Which one was the question.
Throughout the meal, they all talked and laughed, and Marti lamented about how difficult it was to find a job. “I graduated at the top of my class. Dean’s list every single semester, and I get out of school, expecting all of the companies in Austin would roll out the red carpet for me. Nobody wants me! It’s crazy!”
“You should move up here,” Joshua suggested. “I think you could find a job easily.”
Heather raised an eyebrow at that. “No one is going to find a job easily in this one-horse town.”
“She could be the business manager for my ranch,” Josh said quickly.
“Or mine,” Amos said with a grin.
Michael shook his head. “She could manage all of our ranches and Heather’s dance studio. Problem solved. I guess you’re staying here, Marti.”
Marti shook her head. “Mom said she’d give me a thousand dollars if I promised not to move out of Texas.”
Everyone at the table laughed at that. “I’m not sure that’s going to keep you out of Idaho,” Heather said, a grin on her face that belied her exhaustion.
Marti looked at her big sister. “There’s something you’re not telling me, but we’re going to be alone with all four babies in the middle of the night, and you’re going to have no one to talk to but me. I’ll pry it out of you.”
Heather just laughed. “You will, huh?”
It was at that moment that Marti realized how she knew Josh. He’d been at Heather’s wedding, but she’d also had visions about him just that afternoon. She had no idea if the visions meant something or if he was just showing up in them for some crazy reason. Sometimes she felt the need to act on her visions, and sometimes, she felt like they were just for her amusement. It was hard to tell. “You were both at Heather’s wedding in Texas, right?” she asked the brothers.
Josh nodded. “We were. I don’t know how you avoided being introduced to me there, but you can’t avoid me now.”
Amos exchanged a look with Michael. “But even though she met you, I’m all she can think about. Right?”
Marti blushed and looked down at her plate. At first the attention of both men had been a little flattering, but now it was downright embarrassing. “Just don’t duel at dawn, all right?”
Heather laughed. “Been reading Regency romances again, little sis? No one really does that kind of thing anymore.”
“Are you sure? Because it sounds like something a couple of blockheaded men would do for a woman.”
Josh stared at her with shock for a moment, while Amos laughed hysterically. “Are you calling me a blockhead?” Josh asked.
“Are you acting like one?” Marti returned.
“I thought I was acting all suave and debonair.”
Marti wrinkled her brow. “Maybe you should look those words up in a dictionary and get back to me.”
Amos choked on his laughter. “Would you care to go for a walk with me after supper, Marti?” he asked.
“You want me to walk with you in the wilds of Idaho late at night in the middle of winter?”
“Winter? It’s still early fall!” Amos returned.
“I refuse to get eaten by a bear,” Marti said, pushing her hair back from her face. “Think of something indoors to do, and I might consider it.”
“Would you go see a movie with me on Saturday afternoon, Marti?” Josh asked, beating his brother to the punch. Deep inside, he knew that Amos was only flirting with Marti because he wanted to get his goat, but truthfully, his goat was gotten. He wanted his brother out of the picture immediately.
“I’m not sure. Heather might need my help with the babies.”
Heather shook her head, her lips twitching with uncontrolled laughter. “Nope. You go ahead to the movies. You’re on night shift, remember?”
“I figured I’d be on day and night shift like you are.”
“I can’t ask that of you. No, you go have fun at the movie.”
Amos frowned. “Would you care to go out to dinner with me on Saturday night?”
“She’s got a date with me on Saturday,” Josh said, a grin on his face as he put his arm around the back of Marti’s chair.
Marti turned to Amy Muir and frowned at her. “Did you raise them to have the manners of pigs, or did they come by it naturally?”
“Oh, it was all natural. You’ll see what I mean if you ever have sons. They are beasts through and through.” Amy continued eating as if she didn’t notice what her sons were doing, and she obviously cared even less.
Barbara grinned at her youngest daughter. “So it looks like you have four jobs lined up and two gentlemen callers. Sounds like you’ve had a good first few hours in Idaho.”
“I feel like I’ve entered the Twilight Zone.”
“Do do do do,” Josh said, mostly under his breath. He’d never been able to hear anyone mention the Twilight Zone without making the sound effects.
Marti looked at Josh and burst into laughter. “I think I like you.”
“Good, because you’re spending the entire day with me on Saturday. You hear me? All day!”
“Then I get Sunday,” Amos said, calmly taking a drink of his water. “We have to take turns after all. My mama taught me to share.”
“I didn’t teach you to share young women, so you can stop with that line of reasoning,” Amy said, glaring at her sons.
“I’ll take you snowmobiling,” Amos said.
“Again with the outdoor stuff. I’m a Texas girl. I don’t even own a winter coat.”
“Then I’ll spend Sunday watching movies with you. At my place,” Josh said softly.
“That’s not very turn takery,” Marti said.
“Turn takery?” Barbara asked, an eyebrow raised. “And this is the education I paid for?”
“Oh, please, Mother. Even Shakespeare made up words when he couldn’t think of a good one to suit his purposes.”
Heather shook her head. “I’m clearing the table, so I can escape from this ridiculous conversation.”
Barb
ara and Amy jumped to their feet to help, but when Marti tried to get to her feet, Josh caught her hand. “Stay and talk to us.”
“But you’re scary! I feel like I’m in the middle of a stalker movie, and there’s a stalker on each side of me!” Marti looked over at Michael. “Can you vouch for these two . . . unusual human beings?”
Michael grinned at her. “I can vouch for them a little. I’m going to go get the Trivial Pursuit game and get it set up. It’s game night.”
“Marti’s on my team!” Josh called out quickly. “You can have Mom.”
“If you’re taking Marti out both Saturday and Sunday, don’t you think it would be kind of you to let me have her for a partner on game night? I’ve never known you to be quite this selfish, Josh.”
“I saw her first!”
Marti shook her head. “I think you two are getting younger by the minute. Of course, I have six sisters, so I totally understand why. How can you be around a sibling and not revert to childhood immediately?” She took another sip of her water and smiled when Michael came back. “Please tell me you’re here to rescue me!”
“I can’t rescue you. They’re my brothers!”
“And I’m your new favorite sister!”
“You are?” Michael asked, a frown on his face.
“No one else drove twelve hundred miles to help you with the quadruplets. Three days on the road. I’m here for you!”
“You’re here for Heather. Fine, you can be my favorite for today. Boys, leave her alone. You’re smothering her and scaring her.” He smiled sweetly at Marti. “How was that?”
“Perfect!”
As the night progressed, Marti realized the brothers were truly in some sort of competition over her, but she didn’t quite understand it. Amos hadn’t seemed interested at all, and then suddenly he was all over her.
At the end of the evening—and she’d partnered with each of Michael’s brothers for one game—she was ready for them both to leave. They were making her head spin, and she had the whole night shift with the babies ahead of her. She would need to take the kind of nap that Heather had taken all day.
As he was getting up to leave, Josh caught her hand. “Walk with me to the door.”
Marti looked at her mother with a beseeching look on her face. She was not impressed with her mother’s shrug. “You’re an adult. Walk him to the door if you want to.”
Marti sighed. “I’d be happy to.”
Josh kept her hand in his as he tugged her through the kitchen and to the door where they’d all entered. “I’m glad I got a chance to get to know you a little better,” he said softly.
“You and your brother are creeping me out.”
He laughed. “Well, Amos has this thing where if I’m interested in something, he has to compete with me for it. It’s a sibling rivalry kind of thing. But he’s not really interested in you. I am.”
“Really?” Marti had gotten that impression throughout the evening, but she wasn’t completely sure it was true.
“Really. He backed off pretty quick on the dates both times.” Josh pulled her closer to him. “May I kiss you goodnight?”
Marti swallowed hard. Josh was moving awfully fast for her. “I . . .”
“You’re trying to take unfair advantage!” Amos called from across the kitchen. “You don’t get to kiss her goodnight unless I do, too.”
Josh wanted to kick his brother, but there was no way he was going to let him kiss her goodnight. “I don’t think so.”
“Then we both walk out of here together, neither of us getting that kiss. That’s fair, isn’t it, Marti?”
Marti shrugged, still unsure of both of them and the entire situation. “Yeah, I think it’s fair. Probably.”
Amos laughed, and Josh groaned. “Fine, we’ll leave together, but the next time you need help mending fences, you can ask Karen.”
Amos rolled his eyes. “You’ll help me, and you know it. G’night, Marti.”
“Good night.” Marti watched them both leave, wondering what she’d just gotten herself into.
Chapter Three
By Friday evening, Marti had a new respect for mothers. Any mother, and not just a mother of quadruplets.
She sank onto the couch and stared blankly ahead after the babies were back to sleep. “How would we do this if they were on different schedules?” she asked no one in particular.
Heather was already asleep, so she didn’t respond. Barbara sighed. “I have no idea. I don’t know how mothers of twins do it either. You girls were hard enough.”
Amy rubbed the back of her neck. “Being a mother is hard. Period. It doesn’t matter if you have one or two or seven. Multiples puts a whole new dimension on things, though.” She looked as if she had nothing left inside her. “I’m going to sit here for five minutes, and then I’m going to go see to supper. It’s mostly done. I put it in the Crock-Pot hours ago.”
“Thank heavens for Crock-Pots,” Barbara said. “I’ll help with supper. It’s not fair that you get stuck cooking every night.”
“You’re up with the babies before I get here in the mornings. No, it’s fine if I cook.”
Marti wasn’t even sure what to say to any of it. She had taken to sleeping from five in the morning ’til about noon. The babies were usually asleep by five. She knew her mom and Heather took the next shift of babies alone, and Amy got there around eleven. Marti was even doing the laundry for the entire household.
She’d not really been outside since her arrival in Idaho, but she knew Amy lived in a house behind the main house, where Heather, Michael, and all forty-thousand babies lived. There had to be that many!
Amy smiled at Marti. “You look exhausted. I hope you get some good sleep before your date.”
Marti groaned. “I forgot all about that date.” It was true, and that’s what surprised her. She hadn’t realized that she was so tired she could forget about the bizarre evening she’d had with Michael’s brothers. Had that really been days before? She knew she’d gotten there on Monday. At least she thought she had. All the days were running together in her sleep deprivation.
“Well, it’s tomorrow. Josh said he’d pick you up around one.”
Josh. Hearing his name caused a flash of the future to go through Marti’s mind. A flash of him standing in front of a pastor in a powder-blue tuxedo. A flash of him smiling sweetly down at her.
Marti shook her head. “I’ll be ready. I hope he’s fine with jeans for a date, because I don’t have the energy to even think about putting on something nicer.” She glanced at her sister, who was sound asleep. If the babies were sleeping and she wasn’t eating, she was sleeping. She made it into the shower once a day, but other that that, her entire life was feeding babies and herself. It was crazy.
“What would Heather do if she didn’t have people helping her?”
Amy got to her feet. “I’m glad we don’t have to worry about that. She does have people helping her, and she always will. Once the babies are a little older, the help won’t be needed like it is now.”
Barbara and Amy went into the kitchen, and Marti closed her eyes. Sleep was all she needed. If she could just get ten minutes . . .
She woke up to a pair of big brown eyes staring down at her. “Josh?” she asked, surprised to see him.
“Hey. I wanted to tell you that if a later show of the movie is better for you, we can do that. Mom said you’d been exhausted and doing way more than your share.”
Marti hid a yawn behind her hand, suddenly worried about how bad her breath might be. “What are our options?” she asked tiredly. “I have been getting up about noon to help with the babies, but they said I could have all day off tomorrow and Sunday as long as I do the night shift as I have been.”
“I guess it didn’t occur to me that you were working as hard as you are. Mom said you were even doing all the laundry. I kind of thought we had a pact . . .”
Marti grinned. “Well, I do laundry when I need to do laundry.” She sat up straighter. “Maybe
we should put off going out for another week . . .”
“No way. I need every minute of the time available to me to get to know you better.”
She frowned at him. “You know I’m not going to be part of your weird tug-of-war game with your brother. You two are strange.”
He laughed. “It goes back to high school. I had a crush on a girl, and he asked her out. That kind of thing. We’ve always competed for everything. It’s a guy thing.”
“Well, it’s weird, and I don’t like it.” Marti blinked a few times to clear the last of the cobwebs from her brain. “I really don’t have any winter clothes. How cold is it going to be tomorrow?”
“In the twenties. You should borrow Heather’s coat, but you really do need to get a coat of your own.”
“I’m not sure how long I’ll be here . . .” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Marti realized that she did know she’d be there at least through the winter. “You’re right, though. I need to get a coat.” There was no way she was going to abandon her sister in her time of need.
“I would think so!” He grinned at her. “I like the idea of you sticking around for a while.”
“You do?” She still wasn’t sure if he liked her, or if she was just some pawn in the weird game he was playing with his brother.
“Yes, I do. I know the other night was weird with both of us there, but I like you. A lot. I want to get to know you better. I think our relationship could go somewhere.”
“I feel like all my time needs to belong to Heather and the babies right now. For the foreseeable future even. The workload that quadruplets brings is unfathomable until you’re right in the middle of it.” Marti looked over and saw that Heather was awake and Heather’s eyes were on her. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“I talked to Michael last night, and we want to pay you. We want you to be our nanny. Live-in, of course.”
“Really?” Marti asked, surprised. She wanted to do it, more than she could express, but she wasn’t really qualified. “Are you sure you don’t want someone who knows what she’s doing?”
Heather laughed. “You’ve been more help than I imagined a spoiled-rotten sister could be. Yes, I’m sure we want you and not someone more experienced.”
Marti: Seven Sisters Book Page 2
