Finn's brows drew down. "You're weren't?"
"I simply wanted to be sure all was well."
"It's fine." If you didn't count the crying before bedtime over missing Izzy even yet. If you didn't count the nightmares and sad faces around the breakfast table, the We Want Izzy poster campaign that Pansy had launched, and the "You can make her come back, Uncle Finn," insistence that Tansy wouldn't give up on.
"Good." Meg gave a satisfied sigh. "Maybe Roger and I will fly out and see you in the next month or so."
"You'll be disrupting things if you come that early. Give us some time."
"You're probably right," his sister said. "You do need to bond." She giggled. "I bet it's a kick, watching you and Izzy and those girls."
It was a kick, all right. A kick in the gut.
"Izzy's gone," Finn said flatly.
"What?"
"She's gone. What'd you think?" he demanded. "That she'd throw over Sam Fletcher to stay with me and a couple of kids? Don't be an idiot."
"She didn't?" Meg said in a small, bewildered voice.
Finn said a very rude word. Strong's eyes widened; she pursed her lips.
"But I thought she would," Meg continued in that same small voice. "I don't understand why she didn't. You're perfect for each other. Any idiot can see that. Even you," she added almost as an afterthought.
"I did see it, damn it!" Finn came close to yelling at her. "She didn't."
"I don't believe that," Meg said bluntly. "She's miles more perceptive than you are." Her voice took on a suspicious tone. "Did you drive her away, Finn MacCauley?"
He didn't answer her.
"I swear, Finn, sometimes I despair of you. You didn't think I'd leave the girls just to you, did you?"
Finn bristled. "What's wrong with me?"
"You're short-tempered, irascible and stubborn, for starters," Meg said frankly. "But—" she cut him off when he started to speak "—you're also loving and caring and you'd do anything for the people who matter to you."
"Thanks," he said grimly. "I think."
"You would. And I'd do anything for you. That's why I sent you Izzy—so you'd have someone to love like I have Roger. Someone who'd love you, too."
He couldn't believe she was so naive. On second thought, maybe he could. "Izzy doesn't love me. She loves Sam Fletcher, damn it."
There was a long silence. Then, "Does she?" Meg said quietly. "Are you sure?"
Lots of people left their hearts in San Francisco. Not Izzy. All the rest of Izzy's body had been back in San Francisco for a week. She'd left her heart in New York City.
But she was trying to make the best of it, trading jokes with Digger, framing pictures with Hewey's help, watching soaps with Pops, trying to smile and pretend that, even without her heart, she was going to be fine.
"That damn Sam Fletcher," Hewey muttered, running a mat knife down the edge of a swirling black mat. He and Izzy sat in her basement shop, working side by side.
Or rather Hewey worked. Izzy couldn't seem to keep two thoughts together, except when they had to do with Finn.
"Gordon must be spinnin' in his grave. Thought we could trust 'im, your Sam. I'd like to run 'im through." The knife flashed wickedly in his hand.
"It wasn't Sam's fault," Izzy said quickly. She hadn't explained when she got back. She'd just come, smiling wanly, letting them think what they wanted. But she knew she couldn't let them continue to blame Sam. "It was mine, Hewey. I was the one who broke the engagement."
"I thought you loved him."
"I thought so, too," Izzy murmured, bending her head over the picture she was backing.
"Then…how come you reckoned you didn't?" Hewey had apparently decided he'd been circumspect long enough. Now he was getting to the bottom of Izzy's reddened eyes and blotchy face even if it meant asking her point-blank what had happened. Maybe that was just as well. Maybe she needed to face it point-blank—and then move on.
Izzy nibbled on her lower lip, trying to decide how to explain. "Were you ever in love, Hewey?"
"Scads o' times." He gave her his best sailor's leer.
She smiled. "No, I mean really in love."
"Heart-stoppin' like?" He regarded her through rheumy blue eyes.
Izzy nodded and watched as a sort of faraway smile lit his face for a moment, making her wonder what—or who—he was seeing. But then his smile faded and he seemed to come back to earth with a thud.
"Just once," Hewey said. "But she was engaged to someone else so I had to let her go." He sighed and ran a hand through his thinning white hair. "Hell of a thing. I shoulda fought for her, but I was too damn noble."
"I'm not." This voice was harsh and so entirely unexpected that Izzy was glad she wasn't holding the mat knife; she'd have cut her hand off.
She jerked her gaze up to see Finn standing at the foot of the stairs. He looked exhausted, worn to the bone, as if he hadn't had a good night's sleep in a week. Exactly the way she felt. She stared at him, poleaxed. Hewey looked from one to the other of them, his curiosity obvious.
"Not what?" Izzy said faintly when she at last could speak.
"Noble. Apparently." Finn's mouth twisted. "I tried. Didn't work. So then I went around to knock Sam's block off."
Hewey's jaw dropped.
Izzy swallowed carefully, wanting to blink, but not daring to, even for an instant. She was that afraid he might disappear. She ran her tongue over her lips, then made herself concentrate on breathing. It was more difficult than she might have thought.
"Why would you want to…knock Sam's block off?" Was that her voice, that tiny, pathetic sound?
"For having you." Finn said it flatly, but she saw the way his fists clenched at his sides and his knuckles turned white.
"He doesn't."
"I know that. Now." His voice was harsh. "He told me you'd broken off your damned engagement a week ago. A week!" He glared at her.
She nodded. She didn't know what else to do. She wished Hewey would close his mouth. She wished he'd put down that mat knife. She wished he'd go upstairs!
"You the reason she's been mopin' around like a brig-bound sailor?" Hewey asked, fixing Finn with a hard stare.
Finn's jaw tightened. He looked as if he might tell Hewey exactly where to get off with his interference, but apparently a second's reflection made him think better of it. "Was she?" His voice held a hopeful note.
"Damned right," Hewey said. "Poutin' around here like somebody shot her fav'rite dog."
Finn didn't look certain whether he ought to be pleased by that comparison or not, and Izzy didn't know, either. She wanted to know what he was doing here! Why, against all odds, he'd come! A thousand half-born hopes rose in her heart, but she needed it spelled out.
"Hewey," she said, "I wonder if you'd mind going upstairs."
"What for?"
She raised her eyebrows at him, then looked at Finn.
"Oh," Hewey said, comprehending. He shoved himself up off his stool, then hesitated and looked back at her. "You reckon that's what Gordon would do?" Obviously he saw himself as in loco Gordonis since her grandfather's death.
"Yes." No. Her grandfather would have asked a lot more interfering personal questions than Hewey, but at the moment she had enough of her own.
Hewey looked Finn up and down, then apparently decided to reserve judgment. He headed for the door. "Reckon I'll just take this here mat knife with me." He flashed it—and a deadly smile—at Finn as he passed.
Neither of them moved until Hewey's footsteps sounded in the hall upstairs. "I found out Izzy's problem," Izzy heard him shout to Digger.
"I know. I let him in," Digger replied.
"Don't mind them," Izzy said, forcing herself to look back at Finn.
"They're the least of my problems." He shoved a hand through his hair, took a step toward her, then stopped. His blue eyes bored into hers. "I didn't even try to be noble," he said in a low voice, "until it was too late."
Izzy looked at him, perplexed. "What d
o you mean?"
"If I'd been noble I wouldn't have made love with you in the first place. I wouldn't have taken you up to George's and seduced you. I'd have been like your friend there—" he glanced up the steps.
"Hewey," Izzy supplied.
"Yeah. Noble to the core. And lonely as hell. I didn't want that. So I played dirty. I wanted you to want me, not Sam." His voice dropped. "But you didn't."
Izzy waited a heartbeat. "I didn't?"
"You started crying, for God's sake! We made love and you burst into tears!"
"Because I thought it was only sex to you, that love had nothing to do with it," Izzy told him.
"What?" He stared at her. "That's why you were crying? Not because I'd ruined you for Sam?"
"You'd already done that."
He scowled. "What do you mean?"
She drew a deep breath and met his blue gaze head-on. "I thought I loved him… until I met you." She had nothing to lose.
He looked stunned. "You…love…me?" He sounded as if he was speaking a foreign language. Maybe, Izzy decided, given his past, he was. Maybe that night had been as hard for him as it had for her.
She found courage in that idea and moved toward him, stopping just inches away. "I wanted the memory," she confessed. "I thought it was all I'd ever have."
"Oh, God." The words seemed to strangle him. He loosed his fists and took her hands in his. She could feel the tremor in them as they gripped hers. "Oh, God, Izzy. I do love you!"
He kissed her then, long and hard and with all the need he'd been storing up for Izzy couldn't even guess how many years. Finn might have given other women his body, but she knew without a doubt that she was the first to ever get his heart.
The tears started again. She thought they were hers, but when he wiped his eyes, too, she wasn't sure. She laughed shakily and so did he.
"How did you know I was here?" she asked him.
"Sam told me."
"Sam?" Had he done that for her, too?
"He wasn't exactly surprised to see me," Finn said wryly, "when I finally lost the rest of my nobility and found enough of my courage to beat his door down last night. In fact he said it was about time."
Izzy smiled. "Dear Sam."
"I wouldn't go quite that far," Finn said darkly. "If it weren't for Sam I'd have had you a lot sooner."
"If it weren't for Sam, you wouldn't have me at all. I was coming back to New York for him."
"Maybe," Finn allowed. "And then there was Meg. She set us up."
"What?" Izzy stared at him, astonished.
The skin across his cheekbones reddened slightly. "She reckoned we were perfect for each other. That's why she sent the girls with you."
"She knew I was engaged to Sam!"
"Yes, well, you know Meg and scruples. She doesn't have many." He grinned.
Izzy made a harrumphing sound, but she couldn't really get angry at Finn's sister. Not when for once Meg had actually been right. "She's wicked," she muttered.
"Thank God," Finn said, clasping his hands behind her back and bringing their bodies together. "Otherwise I wouldn't have you—or the twins." He shot a fleeting glance up the steps again where Izzy could now hear, along with Pops and Digger and Hewey, the sound of Tansy and Pansy giggling.
"It nearly killed them when you left," Finn said quietly.
"It nearly killed me to leave. But I couldn't stay, not when I thought—"
"I know." Finn's lips touched hers. "But now you're staying. Forever." He hesitated, a worried flicker in his eyes. "Aren't you?"
"If you want me," Izzy said.
"Yes," Finn said. "Oh, yes, I want you. I want to marry you. I want to have children with you."
"More children?"
"If you don't mind," Finn said quickly. "But we are keeping Tansy and Pansy. I told Meg that." He grinned. "We can go on a honeymoon to Bora Bora. All four of us."
All four of them. Izzy laughed and put her arms around him. "Sounds wonderful. Shall we go upstairs and give them the news?"
"You think they'll like it? All of them? Even the old man with the knife?" He sounded just a little apprehensive.
Izzy hugged him. "Don't worry. I'll save you."
He kissed her once more, a promise of loving yet to come. "You already have, Izzy my love. You already have."
Finn's Twins! Page 16
