Babies in the Bargain

by Victoria Pade

  His dark green eyes searched hers, probing them, holding them, and even though Kira knew she should pull away, even though she reminded herself of her vow that if he ever tried to kiss her again she would put a stop to it before it happened, she didn’t pull away. And she didn’t do anything to stop him from kissing her again.

  In fact, somehow her palms were pressed to the hard wall of his chest and when he leaned forward, toward her, she did the same until their lips met.

  And lingered this time.

  Long enough for Kira to savor the heat of his mouth over hers. Long enough for her to kiss him back the way she’d been wishing she had the night before.

  It was still only a soft kiss. A starter kiss. With lips just slightly parted. With eyes drifting closed. With the gentle brush of his breath against her cheek and the scent of his aftershave tantalizing her.

  But it was kiss enough to make Kira’s knees go weak. To wipe away every thought about why they shouldn’t be doing it and wonder where it was going to go from there.

  That thought gave her a jolt. Where was it going to go from there?

  It couldn’t go anywhere from there. It shouldn’t even be there.

  It was just that it was so nice…

  Then it was over, and she wasn’t sure whether she’d ended it or he had. She only knew that, in spite of everything, she wished it hadn’t ended.

  Still, on the chance that she’d been the one to initiate the break, she tried to make light of it by saying, “Maybe you’re just in too much pain to think straight.”

  Once more he smiled a leisurely, devilish smile. “Actually, I feel pretty good.”

  But he didn’t try to kiss her again, and when she eased out of his grip he let her go.

  “You’re not supposed to be on that ankle,” she reminded.

  “I’ll survive,” he said, staying where he was, watching her.

  “It must be getting late,” she said then, afraid of what she might do if she didn’t retreat. “And I don’t suppose the girls sleep in even on Sunday.”

  “No, they don’t.”

  “So we better rest up for the next onslaught.”

  Cutty just nodded his handsome head, his eyes never leaving her.

  “Is there anything special going on tomorrow? Do you go to church?”

  “The girls in church? That’s just asking for disaster. I do usually barbecue on Sunday, though. It might take a joint effort, but I think I can stand long enough for that—if you’re game.”

  It was a nice thought—a Sunday at home with a family, Cutty barbecuing, maybe eating outside. So much better than the Sundays Kira frequently spent—long, boring days that ended with solitary TV dinners.

  “Barbecuing sounds good,” she said. Then, before the urge to kiss him again became any stronger and caused her to actually act on it, she said, “I’ll see you in the morning then.”

  Another nod. “’Night,” he said in a husky whisper that only made her want to stay all the more.

  And the fact that she did want to stay was her cue to go…while she still could.

  “Good night,” she responded, wasting not even another moment before she forced herself to go out the back door.

  But all she really wanted to do was to stay right there in that kitchen with him. With his arms wrapped around her waist the way they’d been. With his mouth against hers and hers against his.

  Exploring every possibility of where they might go from there after all!

  Chapter Five

  “Hi, Kit, it’s me,” Kira said into her cell phone at 6:45 the next morning when her best friend answered her call.

  “I know it’s you, your number showed on my caller ID, or I wouldn’t have answered,” Kit Mac-Intyre said.

  “Because you’re up to your elbows in frosting for the cake for the Blumberg wedding. I knew you had to start working on it at dawn this morning so I was safe calling you this early.”

  “You’re almost right. I’m up to my elbows in ganache,” Kit corrected. “But I should have the cake finished in time to deliver it by three and still be able to pick you up at the airport at four.”

  “There’s been a change of plans,” Kira informed her. But before she got into that she said, “How was your trip?”

  Kit had left Denver the same day Kira had to go to her great-great-aunt’s funeral in Iowa.

  “It wasn’t too bad. As far as that kind of thing goes. My aunt was ninety-six and she outlived so many people that it was a small, quiet send-off. Mostly I’m just kind of bleary-eyed. I didn’t get in until one this morning, and I had to be up at five to work on this cake. How about your trip? Why the change of plans?” Kit asked.

  Kira had met Kit two years ago when Kira had moved into the apartment across the hall from her. For the first three months that they’d been neighbors they’d only exchanged enough information for Kit to know that Kira was working on her doctorate degree in microbiology, and for Kira to learn that Kit was the Kit of Kit’s Cakes—a well-known Denver shop that specialized in special-occasion cakes—primarily for weddings.

  But during a snowstorm that had stranded them without electricity for a full weekend they’d shared blankets, candles, food and the stories of their lives, and come out of the experience friends. Kit was the only close friend Kira had had since Marla had left home.

  By now Kit knew everything there was to know about Kira, including what had taken her to Montana. What Kit didn’t know—since they’d gone in opposite directions on Wednesday and hadn’t been able to talk—was what Kira had discovered in Montana.

  So Kira told her friend that her worst fears had proven true, that, yes, the Cutler Grant in the article was the Cutler Grant who had eloped with her sister, but that Marla and Anthony had been killed.

  “I’m so sorry,” Kit said. “I know you were hoping you would find Marla and your nephew, and have a family again. Are you okay?”

  “I am. I have some sad times every now and then, but I guess in a lot of ways I mourned the loss of Marla when she left thirteen years ago. And as for having a family again—there are still the twins.”

  “So they are your nieces?”

  “They are.”

  “Tell me about them,” Kit urged in a lighter tone. “Are they cute?”

  “They’re so cute you just wouldn’t believe it. But they’re so busy you wouldn’t believe that, either. They’re into everything. They climb like monkeys—if I so much as leave a kitchen chair a few inches from being pushed in they’ll be dancing on the table or dumping breakfast cereal all over it and spilling milk and juice into the mix.”

  Kit laughed. “Are they identical, or can you tell them apart?”

  “They look just alike—they both have curly brown hair and big green eyes and cheeks so chubby you just want to kiss them. But one of them has a tiny mole the other one doesn’t and I can usually tell them apart by the differences in their personalities. Mel—that’s short for Melanie—is all girl, while Mandy seems to have a touch of tomboy in her. She’s more adventurous, braver. Mel can be on the timid side, but she loves looking at herself in the mirror. She makes faces and preens—it’s hilarious.”

  “Do they walk? Talk?”

  “They say a few words. No is their favorite—it’s the first thing they say to everything. They do walk and would rather do that than be carried and—believe me—they get around. It’s a full-time job just chasing them. They would also rather feed themselves than be fed, but they don’t get much into their mouths so someone has to help. And whatever one of them does, the other one imitates.”

  “They sound like so much fun,” Kit said. “Make sure you bring home pictures.”

  Kira was surprised by the twinge that came out of nowhere at the thought of going home and leaving the twins behind. And Cutty.

  But that was the last thing she wanted to think about now and she was glad when Kit provided a distraction by saying, “So, let me guess—you’re having such a good time with your nieces that you decided to sp
end a few more days with them?”

  “Actually, when I got here the woman who usually works as the nanny and housekeeper needed some time off to care for her mother. So I talked Cutty into letting me stay to help him and get to know the girls in the process.”

  “Does that mean you’re the nanny and housekeeper?”

  “That’s what it means,” Kira confirmed. “Informally, anyway. I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself until classes start and I just thought why not help out here?”

  “I’ll bet you’ve already taken a toothbrush to the bathroom tile, haven’t you?”

  “As a matter of fact I haven’t cleaned the bathrooms hardly at all. You wouldn’t believe how bad I am at juggling a house and kids, Kit.”

  “You’re not bad at anything. And you’re especially not bad at cleaning—your apartment is nearly sterile.”

  “No, honestly, I’m bad at this. I just can’t get on top of things. I mean, I start every day with good intentions, but that’s as far as it goes. I get the girls up in the morning and feed them breakfast. Then I pile the dirty dishes in the sink so I can take them upstairs to get them dressed and before I know it the day is over and all I’ve accomplished is chasing babies from one place—or from one catastrophe—to another, and I’ve left a trail of more dirty dishes and laundry and diapers and mess and chaos behind me.”

  Kit laughed again. “I get the idea.”

  “At first I thought it was because the twins didn’t like me and it took so much to get them to cooperate. But now, even though I’m still not who they run to if they want comforting or something, they’ll let me take care of them without a fight, and it still doesn’t make any difference. Looking after babies ends up the only thing I really get done every single day.”

  “That’s something,” her friend pointed out.

  “But it’s not enough.”

  “Says who? The twins’ dad?”

  “Cutty? Oh, no, it isn’t as if Cutty complains. He’s great. Which is a problem in itself. Like last night, he talked me into going with him and the girls to a softball game when I should have stayed home and cleaned.”

  “Cutty is great?” Kit repeated, sounding intrigued by only that portion of Kira’s statement.

  “He’s very nice,” Kira amended.

  “Is he very nice looking?” Kit fished.

  “Yes, he’s very nice looking.”

  “And you went to a baseball game with him last night?”

  “Softball. It’s this sort of informal league a bunch of the men around here belong to,” Kira said, purposely expounding on the subject to get her friend off the track she’d been on. “You should have seen these guys, Kit. A few of them were average, but more of them were pretty amazing. It was like a whole bunch of calendar hunks all together at once. I kept getting introduced to one after another of them who were so gorgeous they nearly made my eyes pop out of their sockets. If you were in the market for a man I’d tell you to drop everything and come up here. It must be something in the Montana water.”

  “What about you? You could be in the market for a man.”

  Except that, as attractive as so many of the men she’d met the night before were, none of them had appealed to her as much as Cutty had.

  But she didn’t say that. She said, “Only I’m not in the market for a man.”

  Still, her friend saw through her. “Or maybe you’ve just already found one. In Cutty—whose name, by the way, you say reverently.”

  “Reverently?” Kira repeated. “You really do need sleep. You’re hearing things. What I’ve found here is a ton of frustration and a challenge I can’t measure up to.” And she wasn’t only talking about the kids and the housework.

  “But you’re determined to stay until you do—is that why there’s been a change of plans?”

  Kit said that with a note of innuendo in her voice, as if Cutty was the challenge. But Kira chose to take her friend’s words at face value. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do this as well as Marla did—or even come close—but I promised to help out until the regular lady—Betty—came back, so that’s why there’s been a change of plans. I switched my plane ticket to one that’s open-ended, and I’ll just play it by ear.”

  “Oh-oh,” Kit said as if there was a problem with that.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “You don’t know if you’ll ever be able to do as well as Marla did?” Kit said, paraphrasing that portion of Kira’s statement. “Your father isn’t there telling you you have to, is he?”

  Kira laughed. “No. It’s just that you should hear what people around here say about her. Everyone I’ve met goes on and on about how wonderful and amazing she was. The house was always immaculate. She never had a hair out of place. She was a pillar of the community. She was a saint with Anthony. She was devoted to him. She was…well, from all reports, she was—”

  “You’re killing yourself trying to be equally as good as your sister again, aren’t you?” Kit guessed.

  “I wouldn’t say I’m killing myself,” Kira hedged.

  “Oh, Kira,” Kit said, sounding concerned.

  “What?”

  “Don’t do to yourself what your father did to you for all that time.”

  “I’m not.”

  “No? Because it sure sounds like you are. He raised the bar higher than you—or anyone else—could ever reach and used Marla as the example of what you had to compete with to try, and, unless I’m hearing things, now you’re doing the same thing.”

  “I’m not using Marla as the example of the way things should be done, everyone else is.”

  “And you’re still trying to follow that example and feeling like you’re not as good or as smart or as fantastic as you should be. Even though, chances are, Marla’s greatness is being exaggerated all out of proportion.”

  “I don’t know, the Marla I knew was smart and beautiful and talented and great at everything. Do you think that when she got here she swept the dirt under the rugs or hid the unwashed dishes in the pantry and just fooled everybody?”

  “I think,” Kit said patiently, “that Marla was human. I think she was human enough to sneak around to date a boy her father didn’t want her to date and to get pregnant at seventeen. I think that even if her house was clean and she was a good mother, there were probably days when she didn’t wash her hair or when the laundry was stacked somewhere out of sight. I think she wasn’t some kind of wonder-woman and neither are you, and I hate seeing you falling into even more of a pattern of trying to be and finding fault with yourself for not making it.”

  “I don’t have to find fault with myself, all I have to do is take one look at this house to know I’m failing,” Kira said with a humorless laugh.

  “See? Failing. You aren’t failing. You’re using your own vacation time to help out this guy. No matter what doesn’t get done, that’s still a really good, really generous thing to do. The twins are getting taken care of—which is the main thing, the thing that counts. But all you can say is how much you’re not doing. From where I’m sitting, Cutty Grant is lucky to have you and should be grateful as all get-out.”

  “He’s not ungrateful,” Kira said. “He’s the one telling me to leave things until the next day or not to worry about what doesn’t get done.”

  “Then maybe you should take that seriously and forget how stupendous Marla may or may not have been.”

  Easier said than done…

  “Okay, I’ll try,” Kira said anyway, knowing her friend only wanted what was best for her.

  “And in the meantime,” Kit’s tone turned sly, “maybe you can just enjoy your nieces and the very nice-looking Cutty.”

  Kit sounded like a dreamy-eyed teenager when she said Cutty’s name and Kira laughed. “You are bad,” she told her friend.

  “Try it, you might like it,” Kit advised with a lascivious intonation that made Kira laugh again.

  “Bad, bad, bad. But will you use your key to my place to go in and water my
plants until I get home?”

  “You know I will. But only if you swear you’ll let your hair down a little with Mr. Very Nice-Looking Montana Man. You deserve some fun, you know?”

  “I know—all work and no play makes Kira a very dull girl,” Kira repeated what Kit had said to her often since they’d met.

  “Play is good for the metabolism—think of it that way,” her friend added.

  “I’ll try,” Kira said once more. “I’ll also let you get back to your ganache so the Blumbergs can have cake at their reception today.”

  “Okay. Keep me posted,” Kit said before they hung up.

  But even as Kira turned off her phone she knew that, despite what she’d told her friend, she didn’t need to try to have fun with Cutty. That happened all on its own.

  What she did need to work at was trying to improve at everything else.

  Because no matter what Kit thought, Kira knew deep down that she just had to be better at the job she’d taken on than she had been.

  She just had to.

  “Sim?”

  “Sim?” Kira whispered back to Mandy, not understanding the word.

  Kira had just gotten the girls up from their naps that afternoon, and Cutty was on the telephone in the kitchen where Kira had taken the twins and given them graham crackers to keep them occupied while she marinated the chicken Cutty was going to barbecue for dinner. But Mandy wasn’t interested in the cracker. She was demanding whatever sim was.

  And now that Mel had heard it, she obviously understood it and wanted it, too, because she began an excited chant, “Sim! Sim!”

  “Shh!” Kira said in an attempt to keep the noise level down while Cutty was on the phone. Especially since the questions he was asking the caller were clearly police business. “Can you show me what you want?” she asked the girls as she covered the dish with the chicken and marinade in it and put it in the refrigerator.