“You sit,” she ordered. Turning to Cole, she instructed, “You, come with me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied with a grin.
Watching Cole get up and follow Rita, Stacy felt her heart being tugged. His grin had the same effect on her now that it always used to have—before things went so wrong.
If she wasn’t careful, Stacy silently warned herself, she was going to fall into the same trap she had all those months ago. She was supposed to learn from her mistakes, not make them all over again.
Coming back into the dining room, Cole placed the large bowl of warm mashed potatoes right next to her.
“I remember you were partial to mashed potatoes,” he told her.
Stacy had no idea why that should have touched her. But it did. He had remembered a small, inconsequential detail about her that made no difference in the grand scheme of things—but it did to her. And he had remembered.
“There is gravy,” Rita said, putting the gravy bowl right next to the potatoes. Retreating, she went to bring in the green beans. When she returned, the housekeeper placed the vegetables beside the fried chicken. “Now eat,” she dictated, declaring, “Everything is already getting cold.”
A small wail was heard from the living room. Reacting in unison, Connor and Cole both began to rise.
“I said eat,” Rita reminded them in a firmer voice. “I will take care of the babies.” Her eyes swept over the threesome seated at the table. “I expect to see clean plates when I come back.”
Stacy smiled to herself. “Definitely a benevolent dictator,” she said after the woman had left the dining room.
“I’m beginning to think that she’s actually Miss Joan, wearing a wig,” Cole said.
“No, she’s too short,” Connor pointed out. “But somewhere, way back a couple of generations ago, those two had to have shared the same forebearers.”
No sooner had they finished discussing the similarities of the two women’s approaches to the people around them than Rita walked back into the room with one twin in her arms.
“I need to get a bottle,” she told them matter-of-factly. On her way to the kitchen, the housekeeper still paused to see if the people she technically worked for were eating as she had told them to. “How is everything?” she asked.
From her tone it was clear that she expected only to hear good things.
Stacy spoke up first. There was no hesitation in her voice when she said, “Perfect.”
“You’ve outdone yourself, Rita,” Connor said, adding his voice to Stacy’s.
“Fried chicken’s a little dry,” Cole deadpanned. And then he couldn’t keep it back any longer and laughed. “Just kidding.”
Rita’s dark eyes narrowed as she gave Cole a piercing stare.
“You are lucky that my hands are busy with this baby right now, or you would learn that there is nothing funny about saying something insulting about my cooking that is not true.”
Cole backed off immediately. “Everyone knows you couldn’t ruin anything you made if you tried, Rita,” Cole told her, turning his charm up full volume. He gave her a soulful look. “Am I forgiven?”
Stacy fully expected the woman to relent, succumb to Cole’s charm and say yes.
Instead, she heard Rita tell him, “I do not forgive so easily. I will be keeping my eye on you, Mr. Cole,” she warned.
“Then I’ll just have to do something special,” Cole teased.
In response, Rita’s expression only grew darker. Stacy couldn’t tell if the woman was only pretending to be annoyed, or if her humor was on a completely different wavelength than Cole’s.
Cole appealed to his older brother. “You’re her favorite. Tell her I was only kidding.”
“Don’t look at me,” Connor said, pretending to want nothing to do with the joke that had fallen so completely flat on its face. “I was busy eating and enjoying this wonderful meal that Rita made for us. And by the way, the chicken, Rita,” he said, looking at the housekeeper, “is fantastic.”
“Fantastic,” Cole echoed with enthusiasm.
“You had your chance,” was all Rita said to Cole as she walked into the kitchen with the baby.
“Maybe you shouldn’t tease her like that,” Stacy told Cole.
Now that the housekeeper was in the other room, Cole appeared totally unfazed. “Rita knows that I don’t mean anything by it. It’s a way for everybody to blow off some steam. We’d all go through fire for that lady and she would readily do the same for all of us. It’s a given,” he told Stacy.
Stacy wasn’t a hundred percent convinced. “I don’t know. Rita looked pretty annoyed to me just now.”
Stacy fell silent as Rita returned to the dining room. Mike was tucked into the crook of her arm and she fed him with the warmed bottle. She tossed an icy glance in Cole’s direction.
“Only one piece of pie for you tonight,” she decreed as she continued walking to the living room.
Rita was kidding, Stacy thought. The slight smile at the corners of the woman’s thin mouth right before she walked out gave her away.
“I guess she does realize that you’re kidding,” Stacy said. “This is going to take some getting used to.”
It was only after she’d said it that she understood what that sounded like—like she intended to stay longer than just a few days or, at most, another week looking after the babies until their mother could be tracked down or came forward on her own.
From the smile she saw on Connor’s lips, that was exactly what he was thinking. If she said anything in protest, that would only make things worse, so she decided to let the whole thing go.
Instead, she asked, “Anyone hear anything from the sheriff about the babies’ mother? Has he got any leads yet?”
Cole laughed at the way she’d worded her question. “This isn’t exactly a detective novel, Stacy. And I think if the sheriff had any leads, he would have either sent Cody to the ranch to tell us or come himself. Looks like the kids’ mother is going to remain a mystery for at least a while longer.”
“You don’t think that anything happened to her, do you?” Stacy asked as she suddenly thought of that possibility.
“Exactly what do you mean by ‘happened’?” Cole asked.
She resisted saying more, but she supposed that there was no getting away from the possibility of that being one of the scenarios.
Even so, the words were hard for her to utter. “You know, like, she died.”
“You mean right after leaving them on my doorstep?” Cole asked.
This was gruesome, but she was the one who had brought it up, so she continued advancing the theory. “I know that sounds like a coincidence, but coincidences do happen sometimes.”
“This is a very small town, Stacy,” Connor gently reminded her. “Unless the twins’ mother was buried in a rock slide without a trace, if someone dies in or near Forever, Rick would know about it.”
“All right, let’s look at this whole thing from a different angle,” Stacy suggested.
“Such as?” Cole asked, unclear as to where she wanted to go with this.
“Such as the twins’ mother deliberately picked you to leave her babies with,” Stacy told him.
He still didn’t understand. “What are you saying?” Cole asked.
“I’m saying that the easiest thing for the twins’ mother to do might have been to leave the babies on the clinic doorstep. Or on Miss Joan’s doorstep, for that matter. But, instead, their mother left them on your doorstep. She picked you, not anyone else,” Stacy stressed.
Cole was definitely not ready to go with that theory. “Maybe she just picked the first doorstep she came to.”
Stacy shook her head. “The Healing Ranch is out of the way. And the bunkhouse is even more out of the way than that. No, I think she picked y
ou on purpose.” The more she considered the matter, the more Stacy was sure that she was on to something. “I’m not saying the twins are yours. I’m just asking if you know anyone who was, well, in the family way recently? Someone you were nice to?”
The look he gave Stacy said she had to be kidding. “I spend most of the week here, working with Connor, and usually a couple of days and nights at the Healing Ranch, which is dedicated to helping troubled boys, so, no, I haven’t noticed anyone in the family way in the last few weeks—or before then, either,” Cole told her.
Stacy sighed. So much for that idea. “So then you haven’t noticed anybody who looked as if they were expecting a baby?”
“No, nobody,” Cole answered, just in case there was any room for doubt.
“Why don’t we just leave this up to the professionals?” Connor suggested, specifying, “Rick, Cody and Joe.”
Stacy sighed. “I guess we don’t have any other choice.”
“Don’t sound so depressed about it, Stacy,” Connor told her. “Forever might be a small town, but Rick’s not a hayseed and he’s been at this for some time now.
“And you’re forgetting about the reservation. If their mother is still out there, they’ll find her. Now let’s do justice to Rita’s dinner or she just might decide not to let any of us have dessert.”
That sounded a little over the top, considering that the woman did work for him. “You’re kidding, right?” Stacy asked.
“When it comes to Rita,” Connor answered, “I’ve learned not to kid.”
Stacy couldn’t tell if he was serious or not. She decided not to question him. They had bigger concerns right now.
“You know,” Cole said, thinking, “what you said isn’t half bad.”
Stacy looked at him a little uncertainly. “You mean about someone deliberately leaving the babies so that you’d be the one to find them?”
“Yeah. It doesn’t have to be someone I know, just someone who knows me.”
“Because you’re so wonderful?” Had he gotten a swelled head after all? It occurred to her that he might have changed a lot in the last eight months.
“No, because whoever their mother is, she knows I wouldn’t let anything happen to those babies and I’d make sure they were safe.”
Much as she hated to admit it, Stacy knew he had hit the nail on the head. And, if she was being honest, she was rather relieved that the babies weren’t Cole’s—even though she told herself that wasn’t supposed to matter to her.
But it did.
Chapter Eleven
Stacy frowned slightly to herself as she was feeding Mikey. Mikey was more restless than his twin, but that wasn’t why she was frowning.
Almost two weeks had gone by and there was still no sign of the twins’ mother. Stacy found that rather disturbing and upsetting. Primarily for the twins, because abandonment like that brought issues with it down the line.
However, on a personal level, she found herself hoping that their mother would take a little longer coming forward. She was really beginning to enjoy taking care of the infants, who seemed to be growing daily right in front of her eyes.
Maybe she felt this way because she told herself that this was just temporary, that she’d have to give them up to their mother soon. Not only was she enjoying every minute she was spending with Kate and Mike, but she kept finding new things to enjoy about them.
Like bath time.
Initially, Stacy had been afraid to attempt to bathe either twin and had just used a washcloth to clean them. It was Cole, not Connor or Rita, who showed her how to properly bathe the twins. He’d helped her get over her fear of somehow inadvertently allowing one of the twins to slip beneath the water and drown.
“There’s really nothing to it,” Cole told her. “You just make sure you support the baby’s head by resting it in the crook of your arm and you use your other hand to wash the baby. You take a washcloth that you’ve soaped up, rub it along that little body and then you rinse the baby off with the water in the little tub.”
“Little tub?” Stacy repeated.
“Yes. I brought it down from the attic last night,” Cole told her, then added, “Cassidy left it behind when she married Will and moved to his ranch.”
“Why not just use the kitchen sink?” Stacy asked. She knew that Connor and Cole had done some renovations to the house, including replacing the old sink that had been there for decades. “It certainly seems big enough, at least when the twins are this size.”
“The tub’s softer,” Cole told her. “It’s easier on their little bottoms. Miss Joan took up a collection for the baby that Cassidy rescued the same way she did when Devon had hers. Being Miss Joan, she’ll probably do the same for these two if their mother doesn’t show up,” he said, nodding at the twins, who were both in the crib they shared. “The woman’s got a heart of gold even if at times it seems like she has a tongue that can cut a person in half at ten paces.”
Stacy laughed. “That’s a pretty accurate description of Miss Joan. I guess that’s what makes her so interesting.”
“She is that,” he agreed. “No doubt about it.” And then he looked at Stacy. “All right, enough talking. Are you ready to do this?”
“You mean give the twins a bath with you?” She actually felt butterflies fluttering in her stomach, but she did her best to ignore that.
“More like you give the bath and I’ll be there if you need me,” Cole corrected. “Too many arms in the tub might get in the way,” he explained.
She supposed he had a point, although she wished it was his arms in the tub, not hers—at least, this time around.
“Sure, I can do this,” Stacy said, only because saying she couldn’t, or would rather that he do it, made her sound like she was afraid, and she refused to come off that way—even if it was true.
“Yes, you can,” he agreed quietly, his eyes meeting hers.
He was just encouraging her, Cole told himself. It had nothing to do with the growing feelings he was trying to deny.
Cole fetched the tub and placed it on the spacious kitchen counter. “Okay,” he told Stacy, stepping back. “It’s all yours.”
She filled the small rubber tub halfway with lukewarm water, making sure she had soap and washcloths handy. “It’s ready.”
Cole nodded and went to her room, where they’d moved the crib a few days ago. “Looks like you’re up first, Mikey,” he said. He swiftly took off the baby’s shirt and unfastened the diaper’s tabs for easy removal, then holding him, quickly brought the infant into the kitchen. “He’s all yours,” he told Stacy.
Taking Mikey, she positioned him in the crook of her arm, just the way Cole had told her. Then, before immersing Mikey in the tub, she looked at Cole and asked, “You’re not leaving, are you?”
Cole smiled reassuringly at her. “I’m going to be right here. Because bath time’s fun, isn’t it, Mikey?” he asked the baby.
He splashed the little boy ever so lightly, just enough to get a response, but not enough to frighten him or make the woman who was trying to bathe him nervous.
Stacy felt as if time had stood still as she gently lathered the infant’s body then rinsed away the soap film on it.
“I guess I’m finished,” Stacy said several minutes later, glancing at Cole to see if he thought she’d missed anything.
“Let’s see, lather, wash, rinse—yes, you’re done,” he agreed. “Why don’t you take this big boy out of the tub and I’ll wrap a towel around him, and then you can dry him off?”
“Sounds good.”
Within moments, Cole had a large, fluffy towel wrapped loosely around the baby and she was patting him dry.
“We did it,” she declared with a note of triumph a few minutes later. This was just a minor thing, but she still felt really good about the accomplish
ment. “I guess we make a pretty good team,” she told Cole happily.
Their eyes met over the infant’s head and Cole felt an all-too-familiar pull. One he hadn’t felt since Stacy had left his life. He’d almost forgotten the swirling warmth that accompanied that feeling.
“I guess we do,” Cole answered.
For a split second, he struggled with the strong urge to kiss Stacy. Just to kiss her, to reconnect with this woman he had once felt so strongly about.
But just then, Rita walked in, scattering the moment as she surveyed the kitchen.
“Are you going to be finished soon?” she asked, looking from Cole to the woman holding the baby. “I need my kitchen.”
“One twin down,” Cole told her, “one to go.”
“All right,” Rita said. “But don’t take all day.”
“You heard the lady,” Stacy said, handing over Mike to him. “Bring me Katie.”
“I’ll just get him dressed and be right back with twin number two,” Cole told her, hurrying out of the room.
It went faster this time. Stacy didn’t know if it was because she felt a little more confident about what she was doing after having bathed Mikey, or if it was because she knew Rita wanted to take the kitchen over and she didn’t want to keep the housekeeper waiting indefinitely.
“You’re getting really good at this,” Cole told her as he wrapped a dripping Katie up in another soft white towel.
His praise pleased her and Stacy smiled in response. “Piece of cake,” she said, trying to sound blasé. But in her heart, she was really grateful for his kind words.
Careful, Stace, you don’t want to risk going down that path again. He just gave you an offhanded compliment. It wasn’t a declaration of love. Besides, you know where a declaration of love leads you—nowhere.
She had to remember that this was first and foremost a favor to Connor. She was also doing this to make sure that the twins didn’t wind up getting shipped off to social services. There was no other reason for her to be here, Stacy told herself. She had to remember that and focus all her attention on the twins, not on a man who had disappointed her and broken her heart.
Twins on the Doorstep Page 10
