Triple Trouble

by Lois Faye Dyer

  “Since college.” Nick’s expression shuttered.

  Charlene sensed his withdrawal. His expression didn’t invite further questions. Without further comment, she logged off her computer and closed it before picking up her mug and walking to the sink.

  “It’s late. I think I’ll try to get some rest while the triplets are all asleep.”

  “Not a bad idea.” Nick yawned. “I need to let Rufus outside before I come up.”

  “Good night.”

  He murmured a response and Charlene left the room. She heard the click of a latch behind her and paused, glancing back. Nick was turned away from her as he held the door open for Rufus. The big dog trotted through and Nick followed, his tall frame silhouetted against the darkness by the kitchen light spilling through the open door.

  She was struck by how very alone he looked, standing in the shaft of golden light, facing the black night, before she turned away and climbed the stairs.

  He’s your boss, she reminded herself firmly. He’s also older, more experienced. There is absolutely no reason for you to assume he’s lonely. He’s charming and probably wealthy, given his family ties, and no doubt has a little black book filled with the phone numbers of numerous women who’d be happy to keep him company.

  Fortunately, she didn’t lie awake thinking about Nick. Being wakened by the triplets several times the night before, combined with her long day, made her tired enough to fall asleep almost the moment her head hit the pillow.

  Unfortunately, Charlene wasn’t allowed to remain asleep for long.

  The first cry woke her just after 1:00 a.m. She tossed back the covers and fumbled for her slippers with her bare toes but couldn’t find them. Giving up the search, she hurried across the hall to the triplets’ room.

  Jessie was standing up in her crib, holding on to the railing with one hand, the other clasping her beloved blanket. Although the room was lit by only the dim glow from the plug-in Winnie The Pooh night-light, Charlene could see the tears overflow and trickle down Jessie’s flushed cheeks.

  “Sh, sweetie,” Charlene murmured, crossing the room and lifting the little girl into her arms. “What’s wrong?”

  Jessie burrowed her face against Charlene’s neck. The heat coming from the little body was palpable.

  “You’re running a temperature,” Charlene murmured, realizing the ear infection was no doubt responsible for the rise in body heat. Jackie and Jenny appeared to be sound asleep. Charlene sent up a quick prayer that they would remain so as she quickly carried Jessie out of the bedroom and into the room next door. Her sobs were quieter now, muffled as her damp face pressed Charlene’s bare throat. Charlene rubbed her hand soothingly over the small back.

  Earlier that day, Melissa had helped Charlene move a changing table and rocking chair into the empty bedroom next to the triplets’ room. The babies still refused to fall asleep unless they were all in the same room—they fretted and worked themselves into a state if the adults tried to separate them. Nevertheless, Charlene was determined to find a solution to their waking each other in the night. If one of them cried, the other two inevitably woke, and the loss of sleep for everyone was a problem that desperately needed solving.

  Charlene managed to ease Jessie back, putting an inch or so between them, just enough to unzip her footed pajamas. The pink cotton was damp, as was the diaper beneath.

  “Let’s change your clothes before we get your medicine,” she said, lowering Jessie to the changing table.

  The little girl whimpered in complaint and when Charlene stripped off the damp pajamas, Jessie’s little mouth opened and she wailed.

  In the bedroom next door, one of the other triplets protested and then began to sob. Charlene groaned aloud. The sound was bound to wake Nick.

  She took Jessie’s temperature with a digital ear thermometer, relieved when it registered only a degree above normal. As she quickly replaced Jessie’s wet diaper with a dry one and tucked her into clean pajamas, Charlene fervently wished the employment agency would find a suitable nanny applicant soon. If the triplets had two nannies—herself and another—then maybe Nick wouldn’t feel required to get up at night when the babies woke.

  And she wouldn’t be confronted with seeing him in the pajama bottoms he’d started sleeping in after that first night when he’d staggered into the triplets’ bedroom in navy boxers. He might believe he’d found a modest alternative to underwear, but as far as she was concerned, the low-slung flannel pants only made him look sexier.

  The low rumble of Nick’s voice as he talked to the babies carried through the wall separating the rooms and Charlene was certain both Jackie and Jenny were awake.

  “Come on, sweetie,” she murmured to Jessie, lifting her.

  She left the room and paused in the doorway of the triplets’ bedroom. Nick had Jackie in one arm and Jenny in the other. Both babies were sobbing, blankets clutched in tiny fists.

  “Jessie’s temperature is up again. I’m taking her downstairs to get her medicine out of the fridge.” Charlene had to raise her voice to make sure Nick could hear her over the crying babies. His brief nod told her he’d understood, and she headed downstairs, leaving him to cope with the two fractious little girls.

  As she pulled open the refrigerator door and took out the prescription bottle, she heard Nick come down the stairs and go into the living room. Jackie and Jenny were still crying, although the volume wasn’t quite as loud as before.

  Jessie’s sobbing had slowed to hiccups and intermittent outbursts. Charlene managed to unscrew the lid from the bottle and fill the eyedropper with the proper dose of pink medicine while balancing the little girl on her hip.

  “Open up, sweetie.” Fortunately, the medication was strawberry flavored and Jessie’s mouth immediately formed an O. Just like a little bird, Charlene thought. Jessie’s lips closed around the dispenser and Charlene emptied the pink liquid into her mouth. “Good girl, you like that don’t…”

  A sudden blast of music from the living room startled Charlene and she jumped, nearly dropping the bottle. Jessie’s eyes grew round, her little body stiffening in Charlene’s grasp.

  “What in the world?”

  The volume lowered as quickly as it had blared. The music didn’t cease, though, and Charlene wondered why Nick felt a concert by Bob Seger was a good 1:00 a.m. choice for year-old babies.

  Jessie, however, seemed to wholly approve of Nick’s selection. She kicked her feet and gave Charlene a toothless grin.

  “You like that?” Charlene replaced the lid on the bottle and returned it to the refrigerator. Then she took a baby wipe from the container next to the sink and smoothed the cool, damp towelette over tearstained downy cheeks, closed eyes and brow. When she wiped Jessie’s mouth and chin, the little girl stuck out her tongue and left a faint pink streak across the baby wipe.

  “Feel better?”

  Jessie babbled a reply and Charlene nodded gravely. “Excellent. Let’s go see how Uncle Nick is doing with your sisters. And let’s ask him why he decided to have you all listen to rock ’n’ roll before dawn.”

  She and Jessie reached the archway to the living room. Nick sat on the sofa, Jackie lying across his chest and Jenny sprawled on the soft leather cushion with her head on his thigh. Neither little girl was asleep but they’d stopped crying and appeared to be content. Rufus lay on the floor at Nick’s feet, his head on his outstretched paws. He looked up at Charlene and wagged his tail, but didn’t get up.

  Charlene crossed the room and dropped into the big armchair. Jessie laid her head on Charlene’s shoulder, popped her thumb in her mouth, and was blissfully quiet.

  “What did you do to them?” Charlene said, just loud enough to be heard over the music. Bob Seger had finished and she was fairly certain the current song was Tom Cochrane’s “Life Is a Highway.”

  “They love music,” Nick said simply. “I should have thought of this earlier.”

  “But this isn’t exactly a lullaby,” she said. “Great song, I love
it. But not what a year-old baby usually likes.”

  “Not normal babies, maybe. But Stan and Amy loved music—all kinds of music. We never discussed it, but I’d be willing to bet the triplets have been listening to everything from Seger and Cochrane to Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald since the day they were born. Probably before they were born,” he added with a tired grin. Gently, he lifted Jenny and laid her facedown on her tummy on the sofa cushion beside him. She murmured, stirred, then went still.

  “How did you figure it out?” Charlene lowered her voice to a whisper as the state-of-the-art sound system randomly selected tracks from CDs and segued smoothly from Cochrane to Ella Fitzgerald. The chanteuse’s mellow tones, smooth as butter, alternately crooned and belted out the lyrics of “A Tisket, A Tasket.”

  “I remembered my mother telling me she used to sing us to sleep. When the girls woke up at the motel the other night, I sang to them—would have tried a lullaby but I didn’t know one, and the only song that came to mind was a Bob Seger favorite.” He shrugged and glanced down at Jackie, whose eyes were closed. One tiny fist clutched her blanket while the other held fast to a handful of the cotton pajamas covering his thigh. “I don’t have the greatest voice, but it worked—so I thought I’d try the real thing.”

  “I think you’ve discovered the magic bullet,” Charlene said, smiling at him. “They’re sound asleep.”

  He smiled back, laugh lines crinkling at the corners of his eyes. His hair was rumpled from sleep, his jaw shadowed with beard stubble and his big body sprawled on the sofa with a baby asleep on each side of him. The warm light from the lamp on the end table illuminated half of his face, brushing the arch of his cheekbones and the line of nose and jaw with gold, and threw shadows across the other.

  “Sugar,” he drawled, his eyes twinkling, “it’s a good thing something finally worked. Because after days of little to no sleep, if we were married and these were our kids, I’d seriously consider divorcing you and giving you custody—just so I could have eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.”

  Charlene burst out laughing.

  Jessie stirred, her eyelids lifting. Charlene immediately muffled her laughter, smoothing her palm in circles over the baby’s back, and she drifted asleep once more.

  When Charlene looked up at Nick, he was watching her through half-closed eyes. Her heartbeat accelerated, her lungs seized as she stared at him. Then his features shifted, erasing whatever she thought she’d glimpsed on his face, and his big body shifted restlessly against the cushions. She could no longer read his expression—was no longer sure the moment had even happened, or if she’d imagined the sudden blaze of sexual awareness she’d felt between them.

  “I think it’s safe to take them back to their cribs,” he said, stroking one big palm over Jackie’s back. The little girl didn’t stir.

  “At least Jackie,” Charlene agreed. She glanced down at Jessie, who seemed as deeply asleep as her sister. “And Jessie. What about Jenny?”

  “She’s out like a light.” Nick gently picked up Jackie and stood. “If you’ll keep an eye on Jenny, I’ll take Jackie up and come back.”

  Charlene nodded and he headed for the stairs, Jackie cradled in his arms. She turned to watch him go just as Ella reached the end of her song. A heartbeat later, the opening lyrics of Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” thumped from the speakers and filled the room.

  “I’ve got to stop watching Nick walk away from me,” she muttered to herself. We have a professional relationship, employer-employee, and ogling the boss’s very fine backside is probably taboo. Not to mention embarrassing should he turn around and catch me staring.

  Rufus’s tail thumped against the wood floor. Charlene looked down at him and found him eyeing her, pink tongue lolling, ears alert.

  She could swear he was laughing.

  The following morning, Charlene wanted nothing more than to hit her alarm clock’s Snooze button and roll over for another hour of sleep. But she knew if she didn’t shower and have her coffee before the triplets awoke, she wasn’t likely to do so until their afternoon nap.

  She barely had time to pour a cup of coffee and say good-morning to Nick when he entered the kitchen to fill his travel mug before Melissa arrived. Nick left for the office moments later and the purr of the Porsche’s engine had barely trailed away to silence outside when LouAnn knocked on the back door. The triplets awakened soon after, and the day’s chaos began. When the babies napped after lunch, Charlene fell into bed and slept dreamlessly.

  Just about the time that Charlene was catching her much-needed nap, Ross Fortune arrived in Nick’s office for their meeting.

  “Ross. Good to see you.” Nick shoved his chair back and stood, leaning across the desk to shake his cousin’s hand. He hadn’t seen Ross since the New Year’s Eve party at Red Restaurant. His brown hair was longer, brushing his shoulders. On a less rugged man it might have looked effeminate. On Ross, the long hair had the opposite effect. “Have a seat.”

  Ross sat in one of the two chrome-and-leather chairs facing Nick’s desk and took a small notebook and pen from the inner pocket of his jacket. “I appreciate your cooperation in agreeing to see me today. I know it was short notice.”

  “No problem.” Nick dropped back into his chair, leaning back and linking his fingers across his midriff. “I’m happy to do anything that might help you find out what’s going on with the family.”

  “Good.” Ross’s brown eyes were shrewd, his gaze direct. “Give me the highlights.”

  Nick’s eyes narrowed. “Someone slipped a note into Patrick’s pocket at Red Restaurant during the New Year’s party. He called us all together at the Double Crown last month to tell us about it.”

  “What did the note say?”

  “‘One of the Fortunes is not who you think,’” Nick quoted, shaking his head. “Makes no sense, at least as far as I can tell. We all thought it was the first contact in a blackmail attempt, but everyone at the meeting insisted they had no idea what it could mean, nor who the blackmailer might be.”

  “Hmm.” Ross glanced at his notes, flipped a couple of pages, and looked back at Nick. “And there have been three more notes?”

  Nick nodded. “My dad received one—so did Cindy. That’s when your mom suggested we contact you and begin an official investigation.” Nick saw Ross’s eyes shutter, his face unreadable. He knew Ross and his mother had problems—in fact, as the eldest of Cindy’s four children, Ross had pretty much taken over the role of caretaker for his younger siblings. It looked like there were issues between the two that went deeper than a mother-son disagreement. “All three of the original notes said exactly the same thing,” he continued. He didn’t know Ross well enough to comment or question him about what, if anything, his response to Nick’s naming his mother meant. “But then Aunt Lily received a fourth that was more threatening.”

  “And what did it say?”

  “‘This one wasn’t an accident either,’” Nick quoted, his voice deepening as anger rose. “She got that after the second fire—the one at the Double Crown.”

  “The first was the restaurant that burned down?”

  “Yeah.” Nick said grimly. “Darr’s fiancée, Bethany, could have easily died in the restaurant fire. And Darr could have died when the barn burned at the Double Crown.” He leaned forward, his forearms resting on his desk, and pinned Ross with a level stare. “Whoever the hell is doing this has to be stopped before someone gets hurt.”

  Ross nodded, his keen gaze fixed on Nick. “There haven’t been any other accidents or threats to anyone in the family?”

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Nick confirmed.

  Ross tapped his pen against his notebook, a faint frown veeing his brows downward. “And no one in the family has any idea who might have sent the notes?”

  “None.”

  “Are you aware of any skeletons that might be rattling in someone’s closet? Any gossip about a family member having an affair? Anybody gambling? Anyone with a drug or alcoho
l habit?”

  “No.” Nick shook his head. “But I’ve lived in Red Rock for less than two months. Before that I was in L.A. and off the grid on up-to-date family gossip—you might want to ask Aunt Lily. She seems to have her finger on the pulse of what’s happening with the Fortunes.”

  Ross nodded and jotted a note on his pad. “What about the Foundation?” he asked when he finished and looked up at Nick. “Any controversial deals or activity?”

  “Not that I know of, although I’ve only been working here for about six weeks, give or take.”

  “I understand the Red Restaurant is owned by the Mendozas, and they have a long-standing connection to the Fortunes. Do you have any reason to believe the notes and the fire at the Double Crown might be connected in some way to the Mendozas rather than the Fortunes?”

  Nick shook his head. “I’m the wrong person to ask, I’m afraid. My dad might have better information, or Uncle Patrick, or the Mendozas themselves.”

  Ross nodded and made another note. “I’ll be honest with you,” he said when he looked back at Nick. “It’s time to call in the cops. This has gone beyond possible blackmail. Lives have been endangered and that last note seems to threaten the family with more arson fires.”

  “I agree,” Nick said, nodding abruptly. “But Aunt Lily is dead set against calling in the police. She’s adamant about keeping this inside the family.”

  “The cops can spread a wider net, use forensics on the notes…” Ross stopped, glancing down at his pad before continuing. “If the fire department is investigating the two fires for possible arson, they’ll eventually turn their report over to the police.”

  “I sure as hell hope so,” Nick said with feeling. “Nobody in the family wants to upset Lily. It would be good news if the fire chief suspected arson and the department investigators could tie the two fires together, then refer both cases to the police.”

  “In the meantime, I’ll keep digging.” Ross stood and so did Nick. “Thanks for your cooperation, Nick.”