Finn's Twins!

by Anne McAllister

  Tansy watched him go. "Mommy never said he was a grouch."

  "He's adjusting," Izzy said. "I'm sure he'll be fine when he comes to terms with your being here."

  "Doubt it," Tansy said frankly. She dug into the plate of pancakes Izzy put in front of her.

  "You've got to try to get along, dear," she told the little girl.

  Tansy looked at her with wide green eyes. "Why?"

  "Because your mother would want you to."

  "Why?"

  "Because she knows you'll be happier if you do."

  "Doubt that, too," Tansy said.

  Another argument she wasn't going to win. Izzy sighed. Finn MacCauley was going to have his work cut out for him.

  Now she heard a thump, a sudden harsh exclamation from Finn, a wail from the missing Pansy, a few of what sounded like placating words from Finn again, then further wailing and the slam of a door.

  "Oh, dear," Izzy said as he came pounding down the stairs. He had on freshly laundered jeans and a pale blue shirt, which hung open, the shirt tails flapping. "What happened?" she asked.

  He shoved a hand through still uncombed hair. "Damned if I know. I had to get some clothes out of my closet and I was trying to be quiet because it was dark in there and I thought she was still asleep. But she was coming back from the bathroom and I tripped over her. Didn't hurt her I don't think, but she howled and took off like a scared rabbit. Slammed the door on me. Damn near broke my foot." He grimaced as he wiggled his bare toes, then sat down to pull on a pair of socks. "She always like that?"

  "No, of course not. Well," Izzy amended, "sometimes."

  "Swell." Finn took the plate of freshly cooked pan­cakes out of her hand and poured syrup on them. Then he kicked out a chair, straddled it and dug in, eating wordlessly until the pile of pancakes was all gone. "Good," he said, wiping his mouth on a napkin. He looked at his niece. "Don't chew with your mouth open."

  Tansy shut her mouth.

  Finn gave her a curt nod of approval, then stood up and headed for the door, running a comb through his hair as he went. "Call you later."

  "But—"

  "Don't worry," he said over his shoulder. "I haven't forgotten. I'll have Sierra give you a call this afternoon."

  The only Sierras Izzy knew were mountains.

  "To set up a time to cut your hair."

  "But—" Izzy clutched her tousled curls.

  Finn flashed her a grin. "Have to start somewhere."

  * * *

  Cut her hair?

  Izzy ran her fingers through her tangled brown hair, then crushed a handful of it against her scalp, savoring the weight of it, the thick luxuriant feel of it. She couldn't remember anyone besides her grandfather cutting her hair. Every first Saturday of the month he'd given everyone in the house a haircut whether they needed it or not. His clippers buzzed Pops and Digger and Hewey and whichever other old sailors were currently in resi­dence. His scissors snipped off the ends of Izzy's in­creasingly lengthy mop.

  "Shame to cut such a treasure," he'd always said, barely removing a fraction of an inch. So he never had. And now, with a blithe, "I'll have Sierra call you," Finn MacCauley was going to have Izzy sheared like a sheep.

  To say she was having second thoughts was putting it mildly. To say she was having an anxiety attack was perhaps overstating things a bit. But not by much.

  If she wasn't good enough for Sam the way she was, did she want him? she asked herself.

  Was she overreacting, perhaps? Maybe his home would be far less intimidating in the daylight.

  It was more. After breakfast she and the girls went to the park. "To explore," she explained to them. But somehow they ended up on the other side across the avenue from Sam's building. Its pale gray marble facade looked even more imposing in the clear light of day. It looked more solid, more substantial, more demanding even than it had the night before.

  She knew she couldn't show up there unannounced with her unpainted toenails peeking out of her sandals and her windblown hair tangling down her back. Sam might be willing to take her the way she was, but didn't she want to be her best for him?

  He was a wonderful man. She owed him that.

  So, shortly after lunchtime when the phone rang and a cheery female voice said, "Hi, this is Sierra. Finn said to call," Izzy agreed to meet her at Finn's studio for a haircut.

  It was, thank heaven, a day like any other—hectic, busy, by most people's account insane. To Finn it was the stuff of which his life was made: frantic stylists, demanding ad execs, fidgety models, temperamental makeup art­ists, slow-moving Gareth who helped set the lights and move the baffles. Other than calling in a favor from Sierra Jacobs and telling Strong to get him a list of nanny agencies when he got to the studio in the morning, he was able to put the Tansy and Pansy problem right out of his mind.

  He worked flat out all day long—urging, soothing, cajoling, placating and incidentally shooting pictures. Getting eventually the look he wanted. And after he got it, he went on to the next project. And the next.

  It was late afternoon by the time he got rid of the agency people, the stylists, the models, everyone—even Gareth. Then he disappeared into the darkroom and processed the film himself.

  He didn't need to. He could have left it for Tabby and Alex to do in the morning. There was no rush, no need. Except for his own.

  In the darkroom he could think about the film, about the negatives, about things he could control. Unlike his life. And the nieces he would be facing when he finally got brave enough to go home. And Isobel Rule. This was his kingdom. Here he was safe.

  There was a sudden crash from the reception area, then a childish wail.

  Finn groaned. His kingdom had been invaded.

  Sure enough, when he stalked out, his prints barely finished a few minutes later, he saw one twin holding a dustpan while Strong wielded a broom. The other urchin was huddled in one of the chairs at the far end of the room. At the sight of him, she glanced around as if looking for somewhere to hide.

  "Small accident," Strong said briskly, barely sparing him a look. "Here now, Tansy. Dump that in the trash can over there."

  Tansy carried the dustpan over and dutifully dumped it. Then she looked at her uncle and lifted her chin. "It was an ugly ol' vase anyway."

  Finn gaped at her, realizing what the crash had been. "You broke my Baccarat—"

  "It was an accident," Strong said firmly. "She was showing me how to do the butterfly."

  "Butterfly?"

  "A swimming stroke," Strong enlightened him.

  "There's no bloody water in here!"

  "That was part of the problem."

  Finn muttered under his breath, then fixed the girls with a hard stare. "What are you doing here? Where's Isobel?"

  "In there," said the one called Tansy. She nodded her head toward the dressing room.

  Pansy nodded, apparently unable to say a word.

  "Somebody with purple fingers is cutting her hair," Tansy added solemnly.

  Purple fingers? He knew that sometimes Sierra was given to flights of fancy when it came to makeup, but purple fingers? He looked at Strong for confirmation.

  She nodded, then handed him a sheet of paper. "Here's the list of agencies with possible nannies."

  "Nannies?" Tansy latched onto the word at once. She looked at him worriedly. "Like Mary Poppins?"

  "Maybe that dog in Peter Pan," her twin suggested in a voice barely loud enough for Finn to hear. "Nana."

  Tansy's eyes widened. "Oooh, yes." Her eyes shone and she looked at Finn. "Are we gonna get a dog?"

  "No, we're not going to get a dog!"

  Both girls' faces fell. They looked at him pitifully.

  Finn raked his fingers through his hair in desperation. "You can't have a dog in the city. It's not fair to the dog."

  Neither girl said a word. They just continued to look. He glanced at Strong, hoping for support. "You don't have a dog, do you?"

  She gave Finn an apologetic smile. "Two of them.
Golden retrievers."

  "Do they got puppies?" Tansy asked eagerly.

  "No," she said.

  Thank God, Finn thought. "Forget dogs," he said firmly just as the door to the dressing room opened and Isobel came in.

  He stared at her, stunned. Where once all he had seen was a mop of unruly brown hair, now he saw a face—an astonishingly pretty face, with high cheekbones, a small straight nose and a pair of lips that would defi­nitely give Angelina Fiorelli a run for her money. And the face was framed, accentuated, by a swingy layered cut that lay easily against her head. It moved as she did, lightly, effortlessly.

  "Not bad, huh?" Sierra said, waggling purple fingers at him. Her own spiky short hair was purple, too, which probably accounted for the fingers, but no one seemed to consider that worthy of mention.

  Izzy gave him a tentative, somewhat nervous smile.

  Finn ran his tongue over dry lips. "Not bad," he agreed finally. Not bad at all. Who the hell would have thought it? He shook his head.

  That apparently made Izzy even more nervous. "Really?"

  " 's beautiful," Tansy told her, and Pansy nodded, eyes wide. Her hand went to her own hair, twisting a lock around her fingers.

  Sierra grinned. "Want me to do them, too?" she asked Finn.

  Before he could open his mouth to get out an answer one way or the other, Tansy beamed. "Yes!" and skipped past them all into the dressing room.

  Finn looked at Izzy for approval. She shrugged.

  "Go for it," he said to Sierra. "Maybe you could give one a haircut and not the other. Then I could tell them apart."

  Izzy frowned. "You need to be able to tell them apart without haircuts to help you."

  "I need time for that," Finn said.

  "You'll have plenty."

  Exactly what he was afraid of. His glower made Pansy edge behind Strong's chair.

  "Izzy," Tansy called from the dressing room. "Come watch!"

  Izzy went and Pansy, crablike, skittered after her.

  Finn stood where he was, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans, and watched them all. Then he slipped back into his studio and picked up his camera and returned, still staying outside the room, shooting picture after picture as Izzy and Sierra, Tansy and even Pansy, oblivious to him, discussed how Tansy's hair should be cut.

  As Sierra snipped, the mass of coppery ringlets gave way to a pixieish halo that framed the little girl's face. And Tansy's expression went from nervousness to amazement to enthusiasm.

  Finn, shooting into the mirror, caught it all—Sierra's intense concentration, Pansy's interest, Izzy's delight. He caught Izzy running her fingers through Tansy's short hair, fluffing it and smiling. He caught Tansy holding a fluffy ball of her own recently shorn hair. He caught Pansy scrambling into the chair as soon as Tansy got out of it. He shot Izzy and Tansy and Pansy, all three of them, beaming at Sierra when she had finished. He shot Sierra giving them a purple-fingered victory sign.

  He didn't have to print the film to know it was good. He had a story, had framed a slice of life. His nieces' life. Once again their kinship was born in on him. They seemed less strangers and more a part of him. He won­dered that their mother had been so ready to give them up. Wasn't sharing these two little girls' lives worth some kind of effort?

  Izzy seemed to think so. At least she was sharing it now.

  Maybe Meg couldn't. Just like their mother and father hadn't. Finn's jaw tightened.

  Just then Izzy looked over at him and smiled. It was a sweet, gentle smile—almost a comforting smile, as if she knew somehow what he was feeling.

  Did she know? How did she know?

  And how could a simple haircut make her so damn beautiful?

  Izzy loved her haircut. All evening and all the next day she kept reaching up to run her fingers through it, ruf­fling it and shaking her head to make it swing, conscious always of how light her head felt—as if someone had removed the anchor weighing her down.

  She whistled a tentative phrase of "Anchors Aweigh" and snickered at her own idiocy. But she couldn't stop touching it—or glancing at it in every mirror or shop window she passed. And whenever she glimpsed her re­flection, she tossed her head to watch her hair swing out and fall back into perfect place.

  "People will think you have a tic," she admonished herself.

  "Who you talkin' to?" Tansy asked her.

  They were walking over to the park late in the afternoon, passing a shop with skulls and bones and brass incense holders in the window, and she was busy fluffing out her hair. She felt her face warm and she gave Tansy a guilty look. "No one."

  "Your hair's pretty," Pansy told her.

  Izzy turned her self-conscious smile on Pansy. "Thanks. So's yours."

  "I like Sierra," Tansy said. "D'you suppose I could have purple hair, Izzy?"

  "No, my dear, you could not," said a voice behind them, and Izzy jerked around to see Finn, camera bag slung over his shoulder, coming up the sidewalk.

  The look he gave Tansy had her stepping backward worriedly. But then his lips quirked and he reached out a hand and ruffled it through her coppery curls. "I like it just the way it is."

  She blinked, then gave him a faint, tentative smile.

  "Where did you come from?" Izzy asked him.

  He wiped a hand through sweat-dampened dark hair and jerked his head. "Up from the subway."

  "You're finished early."

  "Some days I get done earlier than others." He sounded almost defensive. It surprised her.

  "We were going to get an ice cream and then walk by the lake. Want to join us?" Say yes, she implored him silently. Not because she wanted him to, but because he needed to make connections with the girls.

  Finn hesitated. "Yeah, all right. I guess I could. An ice cream sounds pretty good right now." He shifted his camera bag to his other shoulder and fell into step beside them.

  Behind his back the girls glowered at her. Izzy gave them a bright smile, deliberately ignoring their silent protest. She knew he made them uncomfortable, but nothing was going to change that but getting to know him better. She wondered if he had deliberately quit early today in an effort to spend some time with them. Would he admit it if she asked?

  As they entered the park, Tansy skipped on ahead. Pansy lagged behind, then seemed to notice that doing so allowed Finn to walk almost on her heels. She sped up, catching her sister. Izzy was left to walk with Finn alone. Neither of them spoke.

  Finally Izzy ventured, "It was… nice of you to come home early."

  "I was done."

  "You could have hung around developing film or something."

  "D'you wish I had?" There was a brusque challenge in his voice.

  "No, of course not."

  But he shoved his hands into his pockets and scuffed along and Izzy wondered if she'd offended him. What was underneath the gruff exterior he showed to the world? As she watched him out of the corner of her eye, he kept his eyes on the girls. He was watching them like they were an unknown species. Izzy was beginning to suppose they were.

  "You don't photograph children often, do you?" she asked.

  "Not very."

  "Don't you like to?"

  He shrugged. "Never thought about it. It isn't what they pay me for." He kicked at a fallen branch in what looked to her now like determined disinterest. She liked watching him. Much more used to the elderly men with whom she had lived, she wasn't accustomed to the easy grace of a man in his prime. Of course there was Sam— but she saw Sam so briefly and at such sporadic intervals that she was always busy listening to him, being en­chanted by him. She'd never paid any attention to the way he moved.

  "What're you staring at?" Finn demanded now.

  Izzy jerked her gaze away. "Nothing," she said quickly. "Just…thought I saw a bird over there." She doubted he believed her, but at least he didn't ask her any further questions. And the girls had reached the ice cream vendor now, so she was saved from having to come up with anything else.

  Finn bought t
hem all ice creams. He ate his own quickly, not savoring it—or spilling it—like the girls did. And as soon as he finished, Izzy saw him open his camera bag and take out a small camera. He pointed it at her. She stuck her ice-cream-covered tongue out at him. He shot the picture.

  "Oh, you!"

  He grinned unrepentantly. "Saving your haircut for posterity."

  Izzy's hand immediately flew to her hair to smooth it. It was already smooth.

  "It's fine," Finn told her as he snapped another—and another. Then he turned the camera on the girls. They weren't nearly as self-conscious as Izzy was. They mugged and preened—particularly, of course, Tansy— and dribbled ice cream down their chins with a complete lack of concern. At least they didn't stick their tongues out at him.

  Finally they simply ignored him, grabbing Izzy's hands with sticky ones of their own and dragging her toward the boat house. She noticed that Finn followed, keeping a distance, watching, occasionally shooting another picture or two.

  Izzy rented a boat. She and the girls clambered in. She looked over at Finn and motioned for him to come. "There's plenty of room."

  He shook his head. "Go on. I'm fine."

  Izzy started to protest, but the girls urged, "Come on, Izzy. Let's go!" So finally she shrugged and fitted the oars into the locks and had Tansy shove them away from the dock. She'd learned to row at an early age. Her grandfather had considered it a necessary ac­complishment. Reading, writing, 'rithmetic, riding and rowing were equally important to Gordon Rule. Though they had mostly sailed whenever he had taken her out on the bay, she was glad now to have spent all those hours rowing. At least she didn't feel like an incom­petent while Finn walked around the shore of the lake snapping pictures of them.

  She even gave each of the girls a turn. They were small and the oars were big and hard to maneuver, but she figured they could each get a start. Tansy, in her en­thusiasm, almost knocked Izzy's head off with one, and Pansy nearly lost one in the water. But they tried hard, and they laughed a lot and Izzy laughed, too, and every once in a while she would glance over at Finn on the bank and wish he had come along so he could really get to know these lovely little girls.

  When their time was up, he was waiting on the dock when they climbed out.