Surprise! Surprise!

by Tina Leonard

  She knit her lips together. “I’m sorry.”

  He sighed. “I’m not upset about you selling the rings. I can replace them in a heartbeat. But Maddie, it tears me up to think that you might have needed things and wouldn’t tell me. I can’t stand the thought of it.”

  “You’d been very generous financially, Sam. You couldn’t possibly have known that I wanted expensive medical procedures. Not covered by insurance, I might add. I didn’t quite mortgage the house to get those babies, but—”

  He swept her into his lap. They slid to the carpet from the tub, and he held her, rocking her in his arms. He kissed her forehead tenderly, telling her with his actions that he didn’t care about money as much as he cared about her.

  And then, for some reason he couldn’t explain, he cried. Silently, she wiped his tears with her fingers, until his cheeks were dry.

  “YOU KNOW, I wonder if it’s unhealthy for the babies to sleep in bed with us,” Maddie remarked as the four of them stayed up for late-night TV.

  Sam admired Maddie’s long, bare legs, exposed by the thigh-length T-shirt she wore. Damn it, a T-shirt shouldn’t be sexy, but his woman’s legs were so fine it was all he could do not to grab her by the ankles and feast his way up. He reached for the popcorn in the bowl between them, situated where the babies couldn’t reach in accidentally.

  “The family that watches reruns of Dick van Dyke and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, as well as a healthy dose of British comedies, stays together,” he said, still thinking about her as he ate the popcorn. Idly, he wondered if she wore any panties under the T-shirt. Probably, but that was a problem he could quickly fix. Much easier than the other issues they were tackling.

  “No, it’s the family that ends up with the same taste in TV programming,” Maddie said sensibly.

  “I’m sure there’s a psychologist out there who would tell you that the boys shouldn’t be in bed with us, and your mother probably told you a hundred times not to eat in bed. It’s so much more fun to just relax, though, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” She smiled at him. “Why do I feel like we’re on our own little vacation?”

  “You gave up breast-feeding, which took you off the soft-serve, short-order schedule.”

  She nodded. “I feel a little guilty—”

  “Don’t. I was a bottle baby, and I turned out to be a great, strapping hunk. Or close enough.” He tossed some popcorn into his mouth and reached for the glass of soda on the nightstand. “There must be ninety-five percent guilt in parenting and five percent heck-yeah-I’m-right-on. I think we should resolve that, no matter what, we build each other up. There’s an awful lot of negativity out there you women have to deal with. I was watching one of those talk shows today while you were in the shower—”

  “You were not!”

  “I was. The boys were hungry, so I flipped on the TV as I gave them their bottles. Children need this, children need that…hey, nobody knows what children need. I say parents need to be with their children, and that’s the end of what needs to be heard from the wisenheimers. A close family is like a strong backbone—it holds everything together.”

  “Sam Winston,” Maddie declared, “you sound like my mother.”

  “Well, maybe just once she was right.” He rolled his head on the pillow to look at her. “I always knew you’d be a good mother. Even if you do get popcorn salt in the sheets.”

  She threw an unpopped kernel at him. “You get laundry duty tomorrow.”

  “I don’t mind laundry duty. I do mind you not having a wedding band.”

  He stared at her purposefully. His heart beat harder as he waited for her reply to that.

  She said nothing.

  They both went back to pretending they were watching TV.

  “Tell me what I’m not doing right,” Sam said after a moment. “I’ll fix it.”

  “It’s not you,” she said. “It’s me. And you can’t fix me. I can’t even fix me.”

  “I like you just the way you are.”

  “I have a lot to think about,” she said softly. “And I don’t want to rush it.”

  “I do understand, Maddie.” He winced. “It’s just so hard feeling left out. I don’t know if you want romance, or a new wedding ring, or—”

  “I want time, Sam. Time to figure out what I’m doing. And to think about how I fit with you.”

  “Last I noticed, we fit together just fine,” he grumbled.

  “If you don’t stop gnashing your teeth, you’re going to start up your chest pain again.”

  “Maddie!” Sam roared. “Don’t baby me!”

  Startled, the babies began to cry.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Sam.” Maddie got up from the bed, hurrying to wash her hands so that she could pick up Hayden. Sam bundled Henry to his chest. After a few moments, they were able to calm the infants.

  Maddie eyed him then, highly disgruntled. “Sam. I have some things on my mind I told you I wanted to deal with for a while. I don’t think I’m asking for a whole lot. If you don’t bug me about…you know, exerting total control over this relationship, I promise not to badger you about your heart. Okay?”

  He frowned. “Is that what you think? That I’m trying to exert control over you?”

  “I think you’re being a bit heavy-handed. We’re sleeping together. We’re under the same roof. We’re parenting our children together. Do we have to be locked at the neck for you to feel satisfied?”

  His brows raised. “Would you care to tell me exactly what’s bothering you, sweetheart?”

  Her shoulders sagged instantly. “Abby told me today that Mitchell Maitland can’t do another procedure for me. Actually that Maitland wouldn’t advise doing the same procedure twice.”

  She held her baby, staring at Sam with dismay. Sam could feel his heart bleeding for his wife as surely as if someone had opened his chest and taken a knife to it. “I’m sorry, Maddie.”

  “I don’t want to be at the end of my childbearing, Sam. I’m not trying to be selfish or ungrateful. It’s just that—” she glanced down at Henry for a moment before catching her breath again “—it’s just that I loved feeling…whole. I loved being pregnant. I felt like Mother Earth in full spring bloom.” She sank to the edge of the bed, laying her quieted baby back on the blanket. “I thought this time you and I could go through a pregnancy together. But I was wrong. And I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want to burden you with my problems, but…”

  He wanted to cry again when he heard her voice breaking. He understood now why she’d asked for time. It really wasn’t him. He’d prefer it if she wasn’t pushing him away, but he understood that, too. He had done the same thing when he’d suffered his angina attack. “Maddie, I have to be honest about something.”

  She turned to face him. “What?”

  “I’m not proud of this, but I already knew. I couldn’t tell you. I’m sorry. It was a lousy, chicken-hearted thing to do, because I could have comforted you. You could have come to me instead of suffering by yourself. And I hope you can forgive me.”

  He got up from the bed and walked to her side, hunkering between her knees. “I knew you’d be crushed. And I guess I wanted to spare both of us as long as possible. Never did I dream Dr. Abby would tell you. I thought you’d mention making an appointment at Maitland one day, and then I’d…” He shook his head. “I don’t know. Somehow find the words to tell you.”

  She took a gasp of air. “I found out in a doctor’s office, Sam. You could have saved me that.”

  “I’m so sorry. It was lame. I have no excuse except that I didn’t think it would come up today. And even so, I thought I’d take you to your checkup, as I did last time.”

  “Yes, you did.” Maddie pushed her soft brown hair behind her ear and looked at him. “Sam, I need time. Everything inside me is jumbled up and turned inside out. I don’t know that I have one thought that stays on track before it hits another thought and gets turned around. I’m not suffering from postpartum, and I
’m not losing my mind, but…I need some space to myself.”

  He swallowed painfully. “Do you want me to move back next door?”

  She hesitated so long he thought he could hear minutes ticking by in his head.

  “I don’t think so,” she whispered. “Just don’t keep mentioning wedding rings and marriage to me. Let me get my soul reconnected to my spirit.”

  It was so hard to say yes, to give her that time, when all he wanted to do was crush her to him and tell her that he would protect her, would keep her safe. If he had to, he would pick up the minute fragments of her broken heart and piece them all back together, sliver by sliver, if it took him a lifetime to do it.

  But that wasn’t what she wanted right now.

  “Do you want me to sleep on the sofa? I’ll do it. We can go back to swapping duties like we were.”

  She looked away from him, her gaze focusing on the darkness outside the sliding glass doors. “Stay,” she said. “We’re a family. And maybe I’ll find my backbone eventually.”

  After a moment of staring at her pale, porcelain face, he rose to his feet. He dropped a light kiss on her forehead, just at her hairline.

  Then he got back on his side of the king-size bed.

  This time, it wasn’t his chest that suffered unendurable pain. It was his bones, flesh, heart, mind—his very spirit.

  His soul.

  She was his soul. Without her, he was only existing.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The following afternoon, loving disaster struck.

  “We’re back!” Franny called up the stairs. “Anybody home?”

  Maddie glanced at Sam, surprised and a trifle alarmed. “Did you know they were returning today?”

  He shook his head. “Nope.”

  “Up here,” Maddie called. She swooped up Henry and went to greet the travelers.

  The grandparents hurried upstairs, and Maddie met them at the top of the staircase. Everyone hugged, and the babies were immediately admired by the newly returned family members.

  “My, they’ve grown!” Franny said, taking Henry from Maddie. “You’re quite the little gentleman now!”

  Maddie smiled proudly as Sam relinquished Hayden to Severn.

  “A pair of princes,” Sara said. “My goodness, I feel like we’ve been gone for ages! We didn’t miss out on anything, did we? Did anything…exciting happen while we were away?”

  Sam and Maddie shared a glance at his mother’s hopeful tone.

  “Not too much,” she said, not wanting to talk about what she suspected they wanted to know about most—how she and Sam were getting along. “We mostly worked on settling into a routine.”

  It was a hedge, but it was all she had at the moment. “Did you decide not to buy a château in France?” she asked.

  Everyone found something to sit on, preferably close to a baby. “We had so much fun traveling that we decided we don’t want to stay in one place. We want to keep going!” Franny said, her eyes fairly twinkling with delight. “Next up is Singapore!”

  “Singapore?” Sam and Maddie repeated.

  “What your mother is trying to say,” Virgil interjected, “is that we may be more the hobo sort. We like traveling with Sara and Severn, and we all agree there’s a hundred different places we’ve never seen and want to. But we had to come back and see our little grandchildren before we journey to the next port.”

  “I’m glad that you enjoyed France,” Sam said.

  “We were hoping you might, too,” Franny stated, adjusting the baby in her arms. “While we’re recharging our batteries and making our reservations, why don’t you let us keep the babies and you two go to France?”

  “It seems a shame that Maddie hasn’t seen Jardin,” Sara agreed. “It’s something else, Sam. We’re very proud of you.”

  Cahoots. Clearly, this was a preplanned agenda to get them alone together in a setting known for romance. Maddie didn’t dare look at Sam. Their parents were always trying to be so helpful—they couldn’t possibly know that the last thing she and Sam would do right now was take a trip. There was absolutely no point in it.

  “What about it, Maddie?” Sam asked. “Since you’ve quit breast-feeding, we wouldn’t be upsetting the babies’ routine. I’d be happy to take you to see your new wine company.”

  She stared at him, dismayed. How could he twist her arm in front of their parents? Once she turned him down, and the folks realized she was the sticking point, they would do everything within their power to unstick her. All in her best interests, of course.

  As soon as she said no, regardless of how nicely she refused the offer, they were going to gang up on her.

  “We’ll talk about it another time,” she said smoothly, getting to her feet to kiss each of the grandparents. “Now that Sam has some reinforcements, I think I’ll take a nap.”

  Everyone agreed that was an excellent idea. Without meeting Sam’s eyes, Maddie made her escape, hurrying to her bedroom to lock the door behind her. Taking a deep breath, she let it out heavily.

  If she was going to elude their machinations until she could see them off to another continent, she was going to have to be extra vigilant. Clearly they’d come back to America with some new thoughts on “helping” her.

  ALL FOUR GRANDPARENTS stared at Sam after Maddie exited the room. Their gazes could only be described as hopeful. Eager. He gave a vague smile and cleared his throat. “Nice try, all of you.”

  “But not quite successful.” Franny eyed him. “Perhaps we didn’t stay gone long enough?”

  He gave up the smile and the cheery persona. “I think it’s too much to expect that two weeks would solve everything that happened over the last couple of years.”

  Virgil nodded. “Best to have the hang-tough attitude.”

  “Oh, what would you know?” Franny said crossly. “Sam’s been hanging tough. We’ve got us a stubborn daughter.”

  “Where’s Joey?” Sam suddenly realized one in-law was missing.

  “Our stubborn son is still in France enjoying himself,” Franny said, even more crossly. “He’s talking crazy!”

  “Crazy?” Sam raised an eyebrow and glanced at his folks.

  Sara sighed and filled in the details, since the Bradys seemed unable to speak of it. “He doesn’t seem to have your reservations for falling head over heels and following his heart, no matter where that leads him. He’s talking about settling in France for good.”

  “Isn’t he due to report to football training camp soon? College should be starting—”

  “Seems he’d rather get a degree in love,” Severn interrupted. “Needless to say, Franny and Virgil are taking their son’s decision with great distress.”

  Indeed, Franny held on to her husband with both hands as he patted her comfortingly. Sam’s lips flattened. He didn’t know what to say. Actually, it was none of his business—except that he sensed some pithy, appropriate comment would be well received.

  He was fresh out of appropriate comfort. Maddie would know what to say. She and her brother were exceptionally close. “Maybe you should talk to Maddie,” he said.

  “Maddie?” Franny’s voice rose. “What can she do? Joey’s well and truly hooked.”

  “No, I mean that Maddie is probably the best person to talk to,” he said helplessly. “I don’t know if the situation calls for congratulations or commiserations.”

  “How could it call for congratulations?” Franny asked sternly.

  He was stepping into a position that would likely earn him no points with his in-laws. Sam didn’t want to, but there was an obvious point he couldn’t ignore. “Seems to me love only comes once in some folks’ lives. Maybe this is Joey’s true love. And that would call for congratulations.”

  Franny and Virgil were outraged. “That would be fine if it was love instead of a summer romance—not worth throwing away one’s whole life over,” Virgil commented.

  Maddie slipped into the room, putting her hand on Sam’s arm. “I can hear you all bickering fr
om my room. If you want to continue your conversation, go to a more comfortable location. I want to put the babies down for a nap.”

  “Your brother has fallen in love,” Sam told her.

  “I know. I heard the whole thing.” She smiled up at him wryly. “I can tell you this debate won’t be decided for several hours. Head to the kitchen and get yourselves some refreshments. I’ll be right down.”

  Sam hung back to help her. “Think I’ll let them settle themselves for a minute.”

  “That would probably be best.”

  Together, they changed the babies’ diapers and put their sons into their cribs, after holding them quietly for a few moments.

  “They’re overexcited,” Maddie said.

  “I think our parents always are.”

  “I meant the babies. More stimulation than they’ve been used to.”

  “Oh.” Sam snorted. “Well, me, too.”

  “I think I see the outline of their plan,” Maddie told him. “The reason they want me to go rushing over to France is not so much to see the company as it is to talk sense into Joey.”

  “Ahh. I didn’t think of that angle.”

  “I didn’t either until you startled them by saying that true love may only come once, and this woman might be Joey’s. They didn’t like your answer, and yet they’ve always been huge proponents of match-making, fixing up relationships, and true love. Strange that they’re not shaking the love beads this time.” She frowned. “I can’t think it’s the football they’re holding out for, although they’re very proud of him, and his grades.”

  “Maybe they think he’s too young.”

  “Maybe. But Mom and Dad married young.”

  “And they’ve always been happy.”

  “Well…” Maddie looked hesitant as she went back to sit in a rocker. She rocked back and forth a moment, remembering. “The unexposed branch in our very shady family tree is that Mom and Dad actually…”

  “Actually?” Sam couldn’t wait to hear whatever it was Maddie didn’t want to reveal.