by Joan Kilby
Ouch, she winced, angry on his behalf. She’d have thought her in-laws would overlook the circumstances of Randall’s birth, especially since he was their only grandson.
Arms crossed over his dark blue shirt, Max leaned against the counter, his pensive gaze fixed on the playing children.
“I know you missed not having brothers and sisters, but you can’t live through Randall, Max,” she said gently. “Nor can you change the course of his life.”
He turned his head to look at her. “I already have.”
Kelly felt a chill down her spine. She faced the sink and began running water over the dishes used in food preparation. It was true. The girls, Max, even their family and friends…all their lives had been changed forever by Randall’s coming here. She herself had been jolted out of her comfort zone and the change wasn’t for the better.
But she’d decided this morning she wouldn’t spoil today by arguing, even if she had to pretend nothing was wrong.
“I need to apologize to you,” she said over the clatter of dishes and running water.
“Pardon?” Max leaned toward her, an amused smile playing over his face. “Did you say ‘apologize’?”
Kelly rolled her eyes at the obvious relish in his voice. “You’ll never believe who I saw this morning with their heads together. Robyn and Randall. I could have sworn she hated him—sorry, disliked him intensely—but they’ve been spending a lot of time together lately.”
“I know,” Max said, frowning a little. “I’m pleased, but it is odd. What happened, do you think?”
“Perhaps it was their little plot. Remember how I got mad at you for buying so many flowers for me?”
His features hardened slightly. “Yes—”
“I received two huge bouquets that morning,” she went on hurriedly before he could add something she wouldn’t be able to overlook.
“Two? But I only bought one. Who—? You mean Robyn and Randall?” She nodded. His eyebrows rose as he whistled through his teeth. “No wonder you said I was too extravagant.”
“They signed theirs from ‘A Not-So-Secret Admirer.’ I looked at the card and believed it was your handwriting, clumsily disguised. Randall’s is remarkably similar.”
“Is that right? I hadn’t noticed.” Max seemed ridiculously pleased. “I always thought handwriting was one of those completely individual things.”
“There appear to be family traits. Look at Erin, Geena and me—each of us has distinctive writing, yet we all make similar loops on our gs and ys.”
“Just as I always suspected—you’re a set of evil triplets.”
Kelly gave him a you’re-so-funny smirk and nudged him aside so she could stack a clean pot in the draining tray. She slipped him a sideways smile. “I’m sorry I was so ungracious at the time. I’m not sure I even thanked you properly for the flowers.”
His gaze met hers, tender and humorous. “Just tell me mine were the nicest.” She nodded, and he seemed satisfied, then a second later he shook his head with a puzzled frown. “Why would Robyn and Randall do that?”
“Isn’t it obvious? They wanted me to think the flowers were from you, little knowing you’d already sent me some.”
“They shouldn’t have been so sneaky, but you’ve got to admit, their hearts were in the right place.”
“Yeah, I guess. Though I don’t see what they thought they were going to achieve.”
She waited for Max to say, “You coming home,” but he didn’t. The silence extended. Max glanced away. Kelly reached for the chef’s knife and plunged it into the dishwater.
“Why are you washing dishes now?” he asked. “Surely that can wait. Later, I’ll help. The kids will help.”
“I just want to get some of the mess out of the way. You can start barbecuing anytime. I won’t be long.”
“In a minute.” Max moved closer. “I want to thank you, Kel, for going along with this.” He swept an arm wide, indicating the food, the family get-together, the whole day.
She shrugged, her arms in soapy water, her hair fallen forward, shielding her face. Pretending nothing was wrong wasn’t so bad. It made things feel almost normal.
Except that she and Max hadn’t touched each other in weeks. There was nothing normal about that.
“And I want to tell you my good news,” he continued. Her eyebrows rose and he broke into a broad smile. “The preliminary round of judging is over. I’ve been nominated for the Stonington.”
“Oh, Max!” Disregarding her soapy, wet hands she threw them around his neck and kissed him. “Congratulations. I knew you could do it.”
“The awards dinner is coming up in two weeks.” Max slid his arms around her waist. “I’d really like you to be with me on the night.”
“I wouldn’t miss it.” Noticing damp patches on his shirt, she laughed and started to pull away. “I’m getting you all wet.”
Instead of letting her go, he tightened his arms around her waist. His intense blue gaze filled her vision and she couldn’t look away, even though she knew he could see the naked longing in her eyes. Then he dropped his head and a sigh quivered through her as his mouth met hers in a kiss so sweet and tender and full of love she could have cried.
When at last she dragged herself back, a shaky smile tugged at her mouth. “I didn’t see that one coming.”
His fingertips lightly touched the dimple in her right cheek. “We’re good together, Kel.”
Once more she waited for him to ask her to return home. And maybe this time she would have said yes. Instead, he kissed her again, long and deep, until her knees started to soften and she melted against him. His hand cupped her breast and her body came alive with his touch—
“Excuse me,” someone said.
CHAPTER TEN
RANDALL’S VOICE YANKED Kelly back to dirty dishwater and granite benchtops.
“Tina and Tammy want me to take them out in the boat—” he continued, then broke off as he suddenly realized what they’d been doing. “Oh! Sorry.” His face brick red, he stumbled backward onto the patio.
Unperturbed, Max said, “Sure, Randall. The life jackets are in the garage. Make sure the girls wear them.” Randall ran off and Max turned back to Kelly. “Where were we?”
Kelly damped down the pulsing of blood in her veins. All her alarm bells were ringing. “Are you sure it’s a good idea for him to take out the little ones? Does he even know how to drive a boat?”
“I’ve been teaching him,” Max said. “Don’t worry so much. Puttering around in a sixteen-foot aluminum boat with a fifty-horsepower motor is not exactly the stuff of Evel Knievel.” He slid one hand around to grasp hers and attempted to dance her out of the kitchen. “Come and join the party.”
“Pretty smooth moves, mister,” she purred, adapting her steps to his. “Have you been taking lessons?”
He chuckled. “I’ve got moves you’ve never imagined.”
At the table, Kelly slipped out of his arms. “You take the platter of chicken and hamburgers and I’ll bring the salads.” Kelly removed her apron, loaded herself up with bowls and followed Max outside.
She was a quarter of the way across the lawn when she saw Tina and Tammy scamper down the short dock and into the boat. They were not wearing life jackets. The tiny craft bobbed wildly, sending wave-lets lapping at the pilings.
“I’ll be a pirate princess, Tammy, and you can be a mermaid,” Tina said, her excited voice carrying easily.
“Ooh, goody. I’m Ariel,” Tammy crowed. Then she planted her little fists firmly on her hips. “Only, I’m not going on land ’cuz then I can’t talk.”
“Okay,” Tina said. “Oh, I know. You’ll take me to your underwater kingdom and show me your treasure.”
Tammy scrambled to the side of the boat and hung over the edge, her small bottom waggling in the air. “I can see the castle. Tina, look!”
Dear God, Kelly thought, they hadn’t even left the dock and they were already in danger.
“Tina! Tammy!” she yelled. “G
et all the way inside the boat and sit properly!”
Nick and Ben, alerted by her voice, looked up. They took a few steps toward the dock. Max, jaw set, strode across the lawn, his gaze on the twins. He didn’t notice a chicken shish kebab fall off the platter, to be quickly gobbled up by Billy.
Randall hurried past Kelly on his way down to the water, fluorescent orange life jackets dangling from his arm. “Hey, kids. You were supposed to put these on before you got in the boat.”
Either they didn’t hear him or they didn’t want to obey. Tina moved to Tammy’s side and leaned over the low gunwale. The boat, which was attached by a painter to a ring on the dock, swung away from its mooring into midstream.
“Where’s the castle?” Tina demanded of her sister.
“There,” Tammy said, pointing into the murky water. “Can’t you see it?”
Tina leaned farther over. The boat tilted dangerously.
“Tina!” Kelly shrieked.
Randall dropped the life jackets and ran the last few steps to the boat. He lunged for the painter, but his sharp jerk on the rope tipped Tina off balance. With a yelp of surprise, she somersaulted into the water. And sank out of sight.
Kelly screamed.
Randall dove in after Tina.
Kelly dropped the bowls of salad on the lawn and ran toward the water. She heard Max swear, saw him shove the meat platter into Ben’s hands and race for the dock. Tammy shrank back into the bottom of the boat, her little face white and terrified.
Kelly tore after Max. Please, God, please. Don’t let her drown. The river was murky, the bottom current swift, and Tina could barely dog-paddle in the shallows. God, please don’t let her drown.
Randall surfaced ten yards downstream, gasping for breath, blood pouring from his forehead. Flicking wet hair from his eyes, he glanced wildly around, then dove again.
By this time, Max had reached the end of the dock. He kicked off his shoes and was about to dive in, when Randall surfaced, a limp and dripping little girl in his arms. He swam back to the dock, keeping Tina’s head above water.
“I don’t think she’s breathing,” Randall gasped.
“Give her to me, son.” Max reached down and Randall handed Tina up.
Anger surged through Kelly, replacing the intense fear of moments ago. Anger so fierce and overwhelming she nearly lost control. How could Max call him ‘son’ when he’d almost drowned their daughter?
Then the sight of Tina lying inert on the dock displaced those feelings and brought Kelly to her knees. “Oh, Max! Our baby.”
Ben ran forward and Max moved aside to let him take over. Ben checked for a pulse, rolled Tina on her side to clear her airway and began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Max crouched on Tina’s other side, ready to assist if necessary.
Nick pulled the boat to the dock and scooped Tammy out. “Take her up to the house,” he ordered Miranda. “Beth and Robyn go, too. Call 911.”
“I wanna stay with Tina,” Tammy wailed, but Miranda picked her up and carried her away.
Kelly stuffed her hand in her mouth to quell her wrenching sobs. Her sisters wove their arms around her on either side and held her tightly, uttering soothing words of hope and support.
Maybe only thirty seconds had passed since Ben had begun resuscitation, but to Kelly it seemed an eternity. Then she heard Tina cough and splutter back to life. Kelly sobbed with relief and ran to her daughter. Tina curled up in her mother’s arms and immediately began to cry. A protective arm around Kelly, Max touched Tina’s hair, her arm, her foot, as if convincing himself she was alive.
Randall hauled himself from the water, dripping wet. His head throbbed and his lungs ached, but those pains were minor compared with the hurt in his heart from the accusing glare Kelly had flung at him. She probably didn’t even realize she’d done it, but he knew she blamed him for Tina’s accident.
Tina was safe. That was all that mattered, he told himself, trying to shake off a debilitating sense of rejection. He wasn’t looking for a mother. He had a mother. A mother who loved him just as much as Kelly loved her daughters. He had a father, too, although Max was something special.
Kelly started back to the house with Tina. Max came up to Randall and put his arm around him, heedless of Randall’s soaking clothes. “That was a brave thing you did, jumping into the river after Tina,” he said. “She’s going to be fine thanks to you.”
Randall began to feel a little better. “I didn’t think about it. I just did it.”
Max pushed aside lank, wet hair to examine his forehead. “The cut has nearly stopped bleeding.”
Ben came over and had a look. “Just a bad graze. You won’t need stitches.” He paused at the sound of a siren.
“I’ll take care of that,” Nick said, and headed off.
“Get out of those wet clothes, Randall, and I’ll find something in my bag of tricks to patch you up,” Ben added, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “First I want to have another look at Tina.”
Randall trudged up the slope to the house and went in through the laundry room door so he wouldn’t drip on the carpet. He stripped off his wet clothes and pulled a towel from the linen closet to wrap around his waist. Holding a clean rag to his forehead to stanch the blood, he peered down the hall. No one in sight.
From the bathroom came voices and the splash of bathwater. Kelly and Tina; one gently scolding, one explaining in earnest tones why the unexpected dip in the river wasn’t her fault.
“Tammy said there was a castle down there. Ariel’s castle.”
“She probably saw some old pilings,” Kelly told Tina. “Don’t you ever do that again.”
On his way past the bathroom Kelly poked her head around the door. “Randall, wait.” She wrapped Tina in a big towel and said, “Go get dressed.” The little girl ran down the hall.
Randall, left facing Kelly, mumbled, “I’m sorry about the accident. Is Tina okay?”
“She’s fine.” Kelly’s gaze went to his bleeding forehead. “Let me see that.”
He lifted the cloth away from his forehead and she stood on tiptoes to peer at the cut. “You must have scraped your head on the submerged pilings. Hang on.”
“Ben’ll look at it…” Randall began, but Kelly had already gone back into the bathroom. She returned with a first-aid kit and led him into the living room. “Sit.”
Randall sat on a stool, feeling horribly self-conscious about being clad only in a towel. Kelly didn’t seem to notice, or even see him.
“A mother knows almost as much about patching up kids as a doctor,” she said, dabbing antiseptic on the wound.
Randall had nothing to say to that. She wasn’t his mother. He didn’t understand why she was doing this. Or why the fingers that applied the bandage to his forehead were gentle and the eyes that met his, as she drew back, kind.
“Thank you for saving my little girl,” she said, her voice husky.
Randall nodded, wanting to believe she meant it. “I shouldn’t have let them go near the dock without their life jackets on. It was my fault—”
“No, it wasn’t. Max has drilled water safety into them since they could understand speech. They knew better.” Her gaze downcast, she crumpled the paper wrapping the bandage had come in. “I reacted badly on the dock. I may have looked at you in a way that was hurtful to you. I’m sorry.”
He nodded again, his heart listening. “It’s okay.”
Kelly gathered up the first-aid kit and rose. Randall got up, too, clutching his towel. At the door, she turned. “By the way, thanks for the flowers you and Robyn sent.”
Frozen in his tracks, he waited for her to tell him off. But she simply gave him a brief ironic smile and walked out, leaving him scratching the unwounded side of his head. “Not-So-Secret” was right. How the heck had she figured it out?
“HI, DR. JOHNSON,” Kelly said to her OB-GYN, hopping onto the examining table. She was here to have another IUD inserted. Max’s awards night was next week and she wanted to be prepared. Just in ca
se.
“Good to see you, Kelly,” Dr. Johnson greeted her warmly. The kindly white-haired doctor had not only delivered Kelly’s four daughters but also Kelly and her sisters. Even though he and his young partner had moved offices from Everett into the new medical center in downtown Seattle, she didn’t mind the longer trip necessary to see him.
After the preliminary courtesies were out of the way, Dr. Johnson donned a pair of latex gloves and asked, “How long since your last period?”
“To tell you the truth, I’m not sure.” As she lay down on the examining table, she frowned, thinking back. Good grief. Unless she counted the spotting in early June, her last real period had occurred before she and Max went to the Salish Lodge. “Um, the beginning of May, I think.” Since it was now the last week in July she couldn’t blame Dr. Johnson’s bushy white eyebrows for rising above his gold-rimmed glasses. Kelly hastened to explain, “I’ve been going through a pretty stressful time this summer and missed a period. Maybe two. Does it matter?”
“I can’t insert an IUD while you’re menstruating. The wall of the uterus is soft and could be damaged. I’ll do an internal examination, and if everything looks okay I’ll go ahead. Just place your feet in the stirrups.”
Kelly turned her gaze to the ceiling and breathed deeply and slowly while Dr. Johnson inserted the speculum and conducted an internal. After only a minute, he pushed his chair away from the end of the table and rose to continue his examination by palpating her abdomen.
“Well, Kelly, it looks as though you won’t be able to have that IUD after all.”
“Why not?” Kelly said, disappointed. “Am I too close to my period?”
“No.” Dr. Johnson’s pale blue eyes regarded her kindly. “But an IUD at this stage would be like shutting the proverbial barn door after the horse has bolted.” He withdrew his hands and smiled genially. “You’re pregnant.”
The air stopped in her lungs. For a moment Kelly thought she was going to black out. Forcing in a deep breath, she propped herself up on her elbow. “My periods have always been irregular, and I’ve missed before due to stress. Could you be mistaken?”
