The Texas Valentine Twins

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  He ignored her helpful gesture. “I’ll just type it in.” He pulled out his smartphone, gaze trained on the oversize screen, paused again, then brought up the appropriate menu.

  Just scribbling the info on paper would have been faster. Then again... “It’s probably best,” Adelaide quipped, in an effort to lighten the mounting exasperation. “No one can read his chicken scratches anyway.”

  Wyatt squinted at her, his expression partly annoyed and the rest inscrutable.

  “Unless something’s changed?” she continued, determined to be just as provoking and ornery as he was being.

  It hadn’t just been the love notes he’d passed to her in class she hadn’t been able to decipher. It had been anything and everything he wrote. Worse, he had seemed to take perverse delight in everyone else’s frustration. Just as he was enjoying her impatience now. She didn’t know why he had to be such a pain sometimes.

  “You’ve taken a class in penmanship...?” she taunted lightly, aware they had temporarily reverted to their worst selves from their teenage years.

  “You wish.” Smugly, Wyatt looked at Claire, his fingers poised over the keyboard on his man-size smartphone. “Ready when you are.”

  Barely suppressing her own exasperation, Claire returned to her own handwritten notes. “The tech who’s going to be doing the test is Martie Bowman. The outpatient lab is on the first floor of the main building of the hospital, in the east wing. Suite 111.”

  Wyatt quickly typed in the information. “Do you want to email that to me, too?” Adelaide asked.

  “Not necessary,” Wyatt said. “I’ve got it.”

  He was also as impossibly chauvinistic as ever. Adelaide sighed. “How long until we have the results?”

  “They’re going to put a rush on it. So three or four days at most.”

  “What about the rest of it?” Adelaide asked.

  “It would be advisable to proceed with the divorce only when the DNA results are back,” Gannon said.

  Adelaide decided to give it one last try. “Are you sure it has to be divorce? Can’t we remedy this mistake—” and it had been a big one, the biggest of her life “—some other way? Maybe just invalidate the marriage on some technicality, or...I don’t know...” She was grasping at straws, and she knew it.

  Wyatt grimaced. “I agree. I’d prefer to find another way to end this, too.”

  “There isn’t one,” Gannon decreed.

  “You’ve not only consummated the marriage, but had children during the term of the union, which has lasted nearly ten years,” Claire reminded sagely.

  Gannon agreed. “Like it or not, divorce is the only way to dissolve your marriage.”

  * * *

  NO SOONER HAD Claire and Gannon left them to discuss their pending trip to the hospital lab than a wail sounded on the baby monitor. A second swiftly followed.

  Adelaide looked at the alarmed expression on Wyatt’s face. Suddenly, she was in no hurry to have cheeks swabbed or blood drawn. At least with him standing right next to her. “I’ve got to feed the twins, so...” She waved him off. “If you want, you can go ahead to the hospital without us.”

  He stood firm. “I prefer we all go together. Just get it done.”

  It wasn’t as if they didn’t already know the results.

  Irritated, she took the stairs quickly, as the cries quickly escalated to a fever pitch. “Well, some things won’t wait.”

  He lagged behind at the foot of the stairs. “How long...?”

  Adelaide threw the words over her shoulder. “If you want to make it fast, then give me a hand, cowboy.”

  Never in a million years did she think he would take her up on the suggestion. By the time she bypassed the tiny master and reached the even tinier room with the twin cribs, the volume had been turned up nearly as loud as their little lungs could go.

  Unable to bear to hear her children sobbing, Adelaide quickly picked up little Jake and snuggled him in one arm. His sobs subsiding, she walked over to Jenny’s crib and scooped her up, too. Hence, it was suddenly blissfully quiet, as she carried both to the changing stations set up side by side.

  “You’re going to change both their diapers simultaneously?” Wyatt lingered in the doorway, the same cautious, awestruck expression he had on his face whenever he saw a new foal.

  Except this wasn’t one of the cutting horses he bred on his ranch.

  Adelaide shrugged. “Neither one of them is all that keen on going second.”

  “Then how do you...?”

  “When I was nursing, I put one on each breast.”

  She knew it was too much information. She also figured too much information might incent him to leave.

  He seemed to know that was what she wanted, so, as ornery as ever, he strolled languidly into the room.

  Jenny and Jake lay on their backs while she worked at unsnapping their onesies, letting their legs go free. Fortunately, both diapers were just wet.

  “They look like you,” Wyatt said softly.

  No surprise there. She had picked a donor with the same shaped facial features, dark wavy hair and bittersweet chocolate eyes as her own.

  The tender regard in his expression made him all the more handsome. “Their eyes are blue, though.”

  Pure blue.

  His were blue-gray.

  The wistfulness he was suddenly evidencing forced her to recall he had always wanted kids, too. “Most fair-skinned babies are born with dark blue or dark gray eyes that can change color several times before their first birthday.”

  He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Did not know that.”

  Did not know a lot of things. Finding it a relief to be able to distract themselves with information, she explained, “An infant’s eye color changes as he or she gets older and melanin levels increase.”

  He watched as Adelaide eased away the wet diapers, quickly wiped down their diaper area and slid on the new.

  Wyatt turned to her, his broad shoulder nudging hers in the process. “When will you find out?”

  Ignoring the electricity of the brief contact, she fastened one, then the other. “By their first birthday, I’ll know if their eyes are going to be blue or brown or green or gray.”

  Not that it mattered.

  They would be adorable regardless.

  She turned back to the man she had once loved. Suddenly, he wasn’t the only one feeling wistful. Had their elopement worked out, the way they both had hoped, these children could have been theirs. But they weren’t. So...

  She sighed, aware Wyatt had gone back to observing her children. He leaned closer, regarding them contentedly. For a person who’d had zero interest in ever laying eyes on the two babies she’d had on her own, he was certainly fascinated.

  “I think they have your nose, too. See the way it turns up slightly at the end?”

  She certainly recalled Wyatt kissing her nose. And her cheek, and her temple, and...

  Best she not go there.

  She really should not go there.

  “Your eyelashes, too,” he mused.

  Aware this situation was getting far too intimate too fast, she challenged him with a droll look. “Is that a good thing or bad?”

  He straightened. As their gazes collided, it was hard to tell what he was feeling.

  “Fact.”

  “Whew!” She pretended to wipe perspiration from her forehead. “For a moment, I thought you were paying me compliments.”

  His low laugh filled the room, bringing back a slew of unwanted memories.

  Simmering with emotion, Adelaide scooped up Jenny in one arm, Jake in her other. She headed down the hall. He followed, close enough she could feel his steady male presence. “You’re really going to go down the stairs like that?”

  He
was a man. Of course he wanted to take charge. “Very carefully. And yes, I am.”

  He still looked skeptical.

  With good reason, had she not already done this dozens of times.

  Figuring as long as she had a pair of helping hands nearby she might as well use them, Adelaide turned and handed off little Jake. For a moment, Jake gazed up at Wyatt mutely, studying the handsome rancher’s unfamiliar face.

  Blinking in confusion, Jake let out a howl loud enough to wake the entire neighborhood.

  “Now what?” Wyatt mouthed, looking every bit as panicked as Adelaide had felt the first moment she was confronted with two in the hospital. When all she had ever signed up for was one baby. Until Mother Nature had intervened. Adelaide held out her free arm.

  Wyatt slid Jake back into her hold.

  To everyone’s relief, the crying ceased.

  Adelaide continued on downstairs, as originally planned. Once in the kitchen, she had no choice but to put both babies down in their infant seats, as she prepared their bottles. Luckily, they were so focused on watching her, each other and their visitor, both forgot to voice their immense impatience, as per usual.

  Wyatt stood next to her, his arms braced on the counter on either side of him. Was it her imagination, or did he look completely besotted by her precious offspring?

  “When did you stop nursing?”

  “Our doctors made me stop when they reached four and a half weeks. I wasn’t able to provide enough milk for both and trying to do so was having an adverse effect on my health.” She sighed her regret. “Since I’m all they’ve got, I had to do what was best for all of us. Even if that meant making concessions I would really have rather not.” She paused to give her babies adoring looks. “I thought it might be hard for them, moving from breast to bottle, but they adjusted really easily. Maybe because they were already getting supplemental formula feedings.”

  He nodded. Understanding in a way she didn’t expect.

  Telling herself this was no time to start feeling kindly toward him, Adelaide put one bottle in the warmer, waited for it to ding, then added the other. Finished, she tested the liquid of both on the inside of her wrists. Scooping up both babies, she inclined her head at the bottles. “Mind bringing those in for me? You’ll save me a trip.”

  “Sure.”

  Adelaide walked over to the sofa and settled both infants into the supportive indentions on the extra-large twin nursing pillow already there, then she sat and carefully moved it onto her lap. Wyatt handed over the bottles one at a time, and she tipped the nipples into Jake and Jenny’s mouths. Then all was silent as they drank. For the first time in a while, Adelaide felt herself begin to relax and really breathe. Until she looked up again and saw Wyatt watching her with the kind of respect she had always yearned to see.

  Telling herself that his newfound admiration didn’t matter, that this situation would be over as quickly as their one-night stand had been, Adelaide bent her head and did not look up at him again.

  * * *

  AN HOUR LATER, they were on their way. Thankfully in separate vehicles. Four cheek-swab DNA tests later, they again split up. Wyatt returned to his horses and his ranch. Adelaide took the twins home and thus began the wait for results.

  They came in late on the third day.

  On the morning of the fourth, she found herself back at the hospital. This time in Dr. Jackson McCabe’s office. To her surprise, Wyatt was there, too.

  Jackson indicated they should sit, even as Adelaide’s palms began to sweat. “I understand you requested this test to disprove Wyatt’s paternity of the twins.”

  Wyatt and Adelaide nodded.

  “It proved the opposite. Adelaide Smythe is their biological mother, Wyatt Lockhart their biological father.”

  “But that’s...” Adelaide sputtered. She thought this was just a formality! “I was artificially inseminated before Wyatt and I ever hooked up. So it can’t be! He can’t be!”

  * * *

  SHE SLANTED A look at Wyatt, who was not moving or reacting in any way.

  “Apparently the AI did not take,” Jackson explained.

  That was impossible. “We used protection when we were together!”

  Not because she had felt she needed it, since she had been convinced she was already pregnant by then, but because she hadn’t wanted to stop and explain her circumstances, a move that surely would have spoiled the romantic aura of the evening, as surely as it had the morning after. And she had wanted that one night with Wyatt so very badly. To make up for everything heartbreaking and awful that had come before.

  “No birth control method is one hundred percent effective.” Jackson handed over two sets of lab results. “The tests were conclusive. Both children are Wyatt’s. So—” he rose, reaching across the desk and shaking their hands “—congratulations to both of you.”

  Chapter Three

  Wyatt was still reeling from the news that he was a dad, when his younger sister met them at the door of Adelaide’s home, where she had been babysitting the twins. Sage caught the equally shell-shocked look on Adelaide’s face. “What happened to you?” Immediately incensed, his sister swung back to him and demanded, “Are you responsible?”

  If Sage only knew, Wyatt thought ironically. Feeling joy—that he finally had the kids he had secretly wanted for a long time. And shock—that the woman he’d once thought—erroneously—was the love of his life, was the mother who had provided them.

  He had no idea why fate kept propelling them together this way. When it was abundantly clear he and Adelaide could not be more wrong for each other.

  Yet there was nothing of the cruel joke of nature when it came to the sweetly slumbering children, he thought, gazing down at Jenny and Jake in reverence and awe.

  They were perfect.

  And they were his.

  As well as Adelaide’s...

  Oblivious to the ambivalent nature of his thoughts, Adelaide turned back to Sage and made a shushing motion with her hand. “It’s complicated,” she told his sister.

  Sage looked them both up and down. Sighed, as a twinkle came into her eyes. “Isn’t it always with the two of you?”

  Reluctantly, Wyatt turned away from the twins, who were still sleeping angelically in their Pack ’N Plays. Eager for some time alone with them, he grabbed his sister’s coat and bag and ushered her toward the door. “Thanks for babysitting.”

  Sage dug in her heels. “I can stay awhile longer if you need me.”

  Adelaide’s expression broadcast the need for privacy. “Wyatt and I have some things we need to discuss.”

  Which probably, Wyatt admitted grudgingly, should be done before the twins woke up.

  “Uh-huh.” Sage shrugged on her coat and patted Wyatt’s arm. “Be good to Adelaide, big brother.”

  As if he had ever wanted to be anything but, Wyatt thought grumpily. Even if things hadn’t worked out.

  Sage shut the door behind her.

  Adelaide’s small house felt even tinier.

  Looking as tense and upset as he felt, she went to the kitchen, stood on tiptoe and pulled out a bottle of Kahlua. Wyatt knew how she felt. He could use a good stiff drink himself. Even if it was barely ten in the morning.

  Hands trembling, she made two drinks. Wordlessly, they each took a stool at her kitchen island. “What are we going to do?” she asked in a low, jittery voice, lifting the glass to her lips.

  He sipped the concoction of milk, ice and coffee-flavored rum. “The only thing we can. Raise them together.”

  She looked down her nose at him. “I’m not staying married for all the wrong reasons.”

  He grimaced as the too-sweet mixed drink stayed on his tongue. “I’m not asking you to stay married,” he retorted in exasperation. “I still think we should get a divorce.”<
br />
  “Good.” Relief softened her slender frame. “I’m glad we agree on that, because the last thing I want Jenny and Jake to suffer through is a marriage like my parents had,” she vowed, her cheeks turning an enticing pink. “With both of them fighting all the time.”

  He gazed into her eyes. “I promise you. For the sake of the kids, we won’t fight.” And especially not the way Paul and Penny Smythe had, before Penny had died in that Jet Ski accident when Adelaide was fourteen. He could still remember how unmaternal Adelaide’s mother had been, her dad only a little more interested in their only child. Had it not been for the teachers, camp counselors and horse-riding instructors who had taken an interest in the shy but eager to please little girl, he wasn’t sure what would have happened to Adelaide.

  Her face grew pinched. “I promise you, too. We’ll keep things civil in the way we haven’t managed to in the past.”

  Regret tightened his gut. It wasn’t the first time he had felt remorse over having given her such a hard time. “Then, we had no reason to buck up,” he admitted shamefully.

  She nodded, accepting her own culpability in the ongoing tension between them. “Now, we certainly do.”

  The unmistakable ache in her tone caught him unawares. He studied her, realizing for the first time she might wish that things had turned out different for them, too, despite her avowals to the contrary.

  Silence. She lifted her eyes to his, then looked at him long and hard. “The question is, how are we going to arrange it?”

  He drained his glass. “I don’t want a judge to tell us how the twins are going to divide their time.”

  She pushed her unfinished drink away. “I don’t want them to divide their time at all,” she said firmly, sending him a probing look that sent heat spiraling through him. “Not when they are this young.”

  It took everything he had not to touch her again. Haul her into his arms. And... “What are you suggesting?” he bit out.

  She angled her chin. “That we work together to get you up to speed on all the daddy stuff and make you and the twins comfortable with each other.”

  That sounded good in terms of the kids, but there were still wrinkles to work out. “I’m not moving into my mother’s bunkhouse, Adelaide.” He anticipated enough family interference as it was. From his mother, who never seemed to trust him to be able to succeed without her help. And his way too idealistic younger sister, Sage, whose own unsatisfying love life prodded her to look outward for her fix of romance.