What hadn’t happened was another kiss. Though they’d slept in the same bed, and more than once she’d awakened curled against his back or with her head resting on his chest, she reminded herself that passion alone wouldn’t heal the wounds.
With a late September heat wave adding to Val’s discomfort, she took the twins to the community pool. Under her watchful eye, they splashed around in the kiddie pool until nearly two-thirty. Their pale blond hair shining bright beneath the sunshine, they dragged towels and meandered from the car toward the house. As Val looked up from fishing the keys from her shoulder bag, she noticed not only Luke’s-car in the driveway but also a white van.
Dressed in white overalls, a tall, thin man strolled from the house. “Afternoon, Mrs. Kincaid. Window seat is gone, and the dry wall is up.” Val smiled instinctively at Pete Armstrong. “I didn’t know you were coming today.” She looked past him to see the girls squatting and following a bug’s progress across the walkway to the grass.
“I called Doc Kincaid. He said he’d meet me here.” He gave her a crooked grin and gestured with his thumb behind him. “He sure plays a mean piano, doesn’t he?”
Val heard a bluesy version of “Heart and Soul.” “Yes. Mean,” she repeated, assuming that meant good. As he climbed into his truck, Val scooted the girls to the door. The bug had eluded their inquisitive hands.
When they entered the house, Luke’s fingers danced down the keyboard to end the song.
“Went swimmin’,” Brooke announced, dashing to him. One little finger flattened on a piano key.
Val hoped Luke would sit with the child at the piano some time to see if her interest was childish curiosity or a desire to play. “The room is done?” she asked, dropping her tote bag onto the closest chair.
“Still needs painting.” Over Brooke’s head, he swept a lengthy look up his wife’s long tanned legs. “I have to go back to the office. Before I came home, I got some good news.” He strained to think. What he wanted to do was slip his hands beneath the oversize shirt that skimmed her thighs and covered her bathing suit.
“What good news?”
Luke nearly grinned at her telltale nervous gesture as she suddenly tugged at the bottom of the shirt. “Harry called me.”
Val gave him her full attention.
“The court hearing is scheduled for next week.”
She’d expected the finalizing of their guardianship to take months, not a week. And since they hadn’t heard from Charlene again, she’d almost convinced herself that Charlene’s challenge had been a passing idle one. “That’s wonderful.” With a laugh, she snatched up the towels dropped by the twins.
Luke stared after her for a long moment. No reluctant smile. She’d flashed a dazzling one at him. “Are you going to the office to pick up work?”
She’d mentioned doing that, Val recalled. Before she got too far behind in her work, she did need to pick up receipts and ledger books to take home so she could play catch-up. “Yes.” With the towels dangling from her fingers, she lifted her head. His warm gaze remained on her. Sensation skittered up her spine like a warning. Suddenly tense, she wanted to get away and escape what only he had ever made her feel. “Come on,” she urged the girls, steering them back toward the door.
“Val?” His eyes narrowed, an unexpected gleam of amusement visible in them.
Val geared up for more reaction. “What?”
“You might want to change your clothes.”
Okay, so he made her nervous. After several quick errands, within the hour Val pulled into the parking lot next to Luke’s office. While unfastening the girls from their car seats, she was still making excuses for her reaction to him at the house. She hadn’t expected to see him home. She’d forgotten about her promise to the doctors Luke shared offices with. She was muddled with so much to think about.
That all sounded extremely logical. So why were nerves present? And why had she been so damn flustered earlier with him staring at her? Because he hadn’t acted indifferent to her, she realized. For that matter, for the past few days he hadn’t been acting distant or uninterested. Not really.
Holding each twin by a hand, Val slowed her stride at the double-glass door entrance. Still feeling the need to draw a few long, deep breaths just in case she saw Luke inside, she stalled and noticed town busybodies Agnes, Minny and Ethel with their heads bent together, whispering. Val spotted the object of their attention. Her grandfather.
He stood nearly nose-to-nose with New Hope’s newest librarian.
A sixtish widow with salt-and-pepper hair, she had a dimpled smile, a peaches-and-cream complexion and smiling blue eyes. No friendliness was in them at the moment. “Mr. Reardon, I realize the town council has a budget to meet. However, the library requires-”
“Impossible,” he cut in. “’Who goeth a-borrowing, goeth a-sorrowing.’“
Her chin raised several inches. “Please refrain from quoting Thomas Tusser to me.”
Val shifted her stance and patiently waited.
Myrna Traynor proved as feisty as he was. “We need funds for more books. That is what a library is, a place to find books.”
Inching a few steps closer, Val saw her grandfather’s face better. Despite the annoyance edging his voice, his eyes twinkled.
“Vali.” Traci tugged on her hand.
Val decided this was not the time to say hello to Grandpa, and steered the girls toward the outside door of the doctors’ offices.
Inside the waiting room with the twins, she understood why Carrie always laughingly commented that since the twins’ birth she’d gone nowhere without gathering attention. A couple in the waiting room gushed at the twins, an elderly man wiggled his fingers to entertain them, and even the postal carrier delivering mail lingered to watch their play.
Standing at the counter, Val waited for Jolene to finish her phone call. The door of Neil Venmon’s office opened, and Val prepared for a lengthy lecture about flossing.
Instead of the balding dentist, Neil’s wife Cindy strolled out. A thirty-something plump blond, she bubbled, touching Traci’s blond head. “Oh, they are so adorable.”
Angelically, Traci grinned up at Cindy.
“I noticed that you don’t dress them alike,” Cindy said about the obvious.
Val hesitated until Traci wandered over to the toy box in a corner. “Carrie never did. She wanted them to be their own person.”
“Carrie couldn’t have chosen anyone better than you and Lucas.” To emphasize her approval, Cindy squeezed her arm.
“I second that,” a familiar voice said from behind them. Beaming since Mitch McCord had entered her life, Jenny offered a smile that punctuated her happiness.
“What are you doing here?” Val asked lightly, certain if Jenny had had an appointment with Luke she’d have mentioned a medical problem during their recent phone conversation.
Jenny bared her teeth in a semblance of a smile. “Had my teeth cleaned. Are they white?”
“Blinding,” Val teased.
Cindy laughed along with them. “I already talked to Jenny about her and Mitch coming to our annual October party on Saturday night. You received your invitation, didn’t you?”
A month ago. Val had wondered then how to refuse. They couldn’t go. It was one thing to give the impression of happily married from afar, but to be so near friends for hours might require more of an acting job than she and Luke were prepared for. “I meant to call you-”
“Oh, if your problem is a baby-sitter, I wouldn’t worry,” Cindy cut in. “Irene is raving about the twins to everyone she sees. I’m sure she’ll be delighted to sit with them for a few hours.”
The sound of another door opening gave Val a moment’s reprieve. Feeling as if the walls were closing in on her, she saw Luke and blessed his timing. He’d help her dodge this.
“Lucas, tell Valerie that you two will come to our party on Saturday night,” Cindy persisted in one breath.
Val shifted her stance to catch his attention.
“My usual October party. The kids are back in school.” Cindy laughed with the private amusement of a mother of four. “So, will you come?”
Val’s silent plea to say no went unnoticed. Or ignored? she wondered, narrowing her eyes at Luke.
“I don’t see why not. I’m sure my mother will baby-sit,” he said helpfully. Too helpfully.
“That’s exactly what I told Valerie.” Pleased, Cindy turned away. “So we’ll expect you two,” Cindy practically chirped with a wave back at them. “See you Saturday.”
“Wait for me. I have to go, too,” Jenny piped in, seeming awfully eager to leave.
Coward, Val mouthed when Jenny cast a look back at her. Val didn’t miss her friend’s grin. Plastering a sweet smile of her own on her face, she directed it to Jolene. “Does my husband have a moment or two between appointments?”
“Oh, sure, go ahead in, Valerie. I’ll watch the twins,” she volunteered, already skirting her desk to be near them. In a far corner, Brooke was zooming a toy truck up and down a chair leg while Traci was tugging apart toy beads meant for a one-year-old.
“Thank you.” Her smile never wavering, Val stormed past Luke into his office and waited only until he’d closed the door. “We need to talk. What is wrong with you? Do you realize how difficult Saturday night might be?” she said in a hushed voice to keep the conversation private.
He’d forgotten the passion that danced in her eyes when she was riled. “The more people who can testify that we’re a loving couple, the more the court will believe it,” he said easily.
His logic abated her annoyance immediately. He was right, of course. “Luke, it’s not going to be easy,” she reminded him. “These people know us.”
“Then we’ll have to be convincing.” He noted that she looked doubtful.
Outside the window, Val saw her grandfather and Myrna still bickering. “Have you met the new librarian?”
Luke skimmed his appointment book for the next one. He had five minutes before the harried manager of the New Hope Hotel came in about a stomach problem that Luke sensed might be more acid indigestion than an ulcer. “I’ve met her.”
Less tense, Val strolled back to his desk. “By the sparks that are flying between Gramps and her, I think they have more of an attraction than an aversion to each other.”
“That’s hard to believe. How many times has he said that your grandmother was the only woman he’ll ever love?”
“People change their minds.” Val bent over and fingered the candy wrapper in his wastebasket. “Better hide these or your secret as a junk food addict will be out.”
With a grin, he balled a sheet of paper and aimed it to fall strategically on top of the wrappers. “We’re talking about Edwin now,” he said, and perched on the front edge of his desk. “He was the most stubborn patient New Hope General ever had.”
As if it were yesterday instead of five years ago, Val recalled the trouble the hospital staff had with her grandfather. “I was so scared that day.” She’d taken the first flight out of Houston when she received word that her beloved grandfather had chest pains. When she rushed into New Hope General, she’d been met by her grandfather’s doctor, Lucas Kincaid.
“You should have known he’d battle his way back.”
Val sat beside him. What she’d known was that Luke’s compassion and his assurances after her grandfather’s emergency heart bypass had quieted her fear.
“What’s going through your mind?”
Sitting practically shoulder to shoulder with him, she spoke honestly. “I was remembering you.”
“Me?” His gaze drifted to her lips. “What about me?”
She’d been taken with him from the first meeting. It was the blue operating room scrubs, she reflected. They’d made his eyes look bluer. “I think all surgeons wear blue to calm the patient’s relatives.”
“Did it calm you?” he asked, toying with her gold hoop earring.
No, her heart had raced then, too. She’d have preferred to believe that it had been natural anxiety. After all, she’d been worried about her grandfather. But she remembered those moments clearly. Luke had made her heart pound as if it might burst through her chest. “You’d already told me that he’d be all right,” she answered. “I believed you.”
His breath fluttered across her face. “Just like that?”
“Just like that.” She spoke quickly, breathing softly.
Like a butterfly’s caress, he brushed a finger down the side of her neck. “For me, it was love at first sight.”
A nervous wariness slipped over her. Why had she forgotten that he had a knack for surprising her? “You never told me that before.”
“I didn’t want you to be smug.” Her soft laugh rippled over him, its low, husky tone one he’d heard often when they stood in the shower, when her eyes had danced with her playful smile, when the moisture on her skin had beckoned his lips. Edwin had assessed their situation accurately. Two people who’d been intimate couldn’t pretend to be only friends.
“Still, I’m surprised,” Val said, a little unsettled again as he toyed with a strand of hair near her ear.
He breathed in the scent of her, taunting himself. “About what?”
She tried to think. He wasn’t making it easy. With a palm planted on his desk, he leaned closer. “I’ve always been more of a romantic than you,” she blurted.
“I feel insulted.” A smile hovering at the corners of his mouth, he framed her face with his other hand. And he took a chance. Gently he pressed his lips to her eyelid, to her cheek. “Didn’t I carry you over the threshold? Didn’t I throw tulip petals all over the bed?”
Val floated with him, closing her eyes when his mouth roamed to her jaw, then to the sensitive skin below her earlobe.
“You taste wonderful,” he murmured, nipping at the corner of her mouth.
Unhurried, the kiss beckoned with its tenderness. She wrestled with herself to ignore the excitement pounding through her body. How could she, with his palms framing her face, with his mouth on hers? All the denials seemed useless. She was beginning to truly feel again. As he’d done when they first met, he detonated something inside her. She tasted the heat, felt it-yearned for it.
Letting the past and present tumble together, she knew she was treasuring everything far longer than she should have, far longer than was wise.
Seconds passed before a knock on the door penetrated the dreamy cloud she was drifting along on. She opened her eyes and saw his smile-and more. There wasn’t the coolness that had kept her at a distance for months or the warmth that had always reflected easy amusement. In his eyes, she saw longing and determination.
With some reluctance, Luke lifted his hands from her face, but ignored the rap for another moment, absorbing the sweetness of her taste. That she’d trembled pleased him. The sweet womanly taste of her still on his lips, he pulled back. “What is it, Jolene?” he asked in a voice sounding far more in control than he felt.
Opening the door, she smiled at Val first. “I’m sorry, Dr. Kincaid, but the lab is on the phone about Mr. Tentmen’s blood test. And Mr. Tentmen is here.”
“Thank you.” Luke sent Val a thoughtful look. Was she really only with him for the girls’ sake? He couldn’t believe he was misreading her that much.
Nerves scrambling, Val hung on to a smile because of Jolene and slid off the desk. “I have to leave.” What was happening between them? She’d thought that everything was over.
“I have emergency room duty tonight,” he said to her back.
That was just as well. Nodding, she didn’t look at him again-couldn’t, with the warmth of his mouth lingering on hers.
Chapter Six
A clang of metal to metal instead of an alarm clock awakened Luke at six o’clock the next morning. A moment passed before he fought through the fog of sleep, before he remembered he’d slept on the sofa in his office. When his emergency
room shift was ending last night, one of his patients had admitted a granddaughter for an emergency appendectomy. Surgery had ended at three in the morning. Tired, Luke had chosen the closest place to sleep away from the hospital, his office.
Instead of the pleasing sight of Val’s face, he stared now at the unshaven one of the building’s maintenance man.
As if glued to the floor, Arnie slouched beside the desk, holding a wastebasket in his hand. “Sorry, Doc.” He added an apologetic grimace for good measure. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
Groggy, Luke sat and raked a hand through his hair. “It’s all right.”
“Want me to leave?”
Despite the lingering fog of sleep, Luke noticed the curious expression on the man’s face. “No, go ahead and finish.”
Until this morning, he’d avoided running into anyone from the cleaning crew when he slept in his office. By the man’s puzzled frown, he had plenty of questions about why Luke was sleeping at the office instead of at home in bed.
Yawning, Luke shuffled to the bathroom in his back office and scraped fingers across his unshaven jaw. He’d managed three hours of sleep and looked like hell.
He splashed water at his face, then lathered it with shaving cream, and considered the consequences of this morning’s encounter with Arnie. The last thing he and Val needed was gossip about their marriage being shaky. It was ironic that someone had seen him the one time he’d been sleeping in his office out of necessity instead of as an alternative.
He made a last swipe with the razor down his morning beard and dabbed a towel at his face. Since this was his private bathroom, he’d been able to leave a set of clean clothes in it for mornings like this.
Dressed, he left the bathroom to find Arnie gone. In need of coffee, he crossed the street in the direction of Sue Ellen’s Diner before he returned to the hospital. Steps from the door, he made a decision that had him walking past it.
Married...With Twins! Page 8
