"You mean that?"
She nodded. "With all my heart." Don't go. I'll feed you potato salad and leftover fried chicken and all the cheesecake you can eat. Please stay...
"Well, if you're sure -- " He handed the twins to her and before she could say another word he left.
"Bye-bye!" Jenny and Kath waved at the closed front door while Diana stood in the center of the foyer, shell-shocked.
"You stinker," she said, as the girls looked up at her. "You absolute stinker."
"Man bad?" asked Jenny, eyes wide.
Before Diana had a chance to answer the doorbell chimed.
It couldn't be.
She swung the door open again.
It was.
Gregory Stewart stood there on the step, arms laden with fragrant parcels. "Szechuan Palace, at your service."
"You had it in your car all the time?"
He nodded. "I knew you couldn't leave the kids."
"And you were baiting me?"
"Not baiting you; I was heightening the suspense."
"I'll give you suspense!" She slammed the door in his face. "Man bad," said Kath to her sister.
"That's right," said Diana. "Man very bad. Man rotten. Man terrible."
The doorbell rang for the third time.
Man persistent.
"Go away," she called out. "We don't want any."
He opened the door himself. "Where should I put it?"
"You don't really want me to answer that, do you?"
"We're going to have to work on your sense of humor, Diana."
"My sense of humor doesn't need any work."
"You need to loosen up."
"I don't want to loosen up," she said through clenched teeth.
He followed her into the kitchen and deposited his packages on the counter top. "If you want me to leave, just say the word and I'm out of here."
Last chance, Travis. Send him away now or you're a goner.
"Diana?" The sparkle was gone from his eyes and, in its place, was something deeper, something stronger, something infinitely more tempting than simple desire.
"Stay," she said at last, giving herself up to the inevitable. "I want you to stay."
Chapter Twelve
Gregory helped her with the girls, bathing and changing and tucking them in with the ease of a man comfortable with the tender side of his nature. Diana found herself casting quick glances at him as he crouched down between the girls' beds and told them a rollicking story about Daisy the cocker spaniel and Ignatius the cat and their adventures on the high seas.
She was behind schedule on meeting her book deadline for Mother's column, but was it possible -- was there any chance at all that she was ahead of schedule on finding the man of her dreams?
Dangerous thoughts, those, and she pushed them from her mind as they carried their Chinese feast out to the deck.
"I don't think I've ever had a Szechuan picnic before," she said as they set up the paper carton on the twins' plastic table. "Is this an old East Hampton tradition?"
"If it isn't, it should be." He opened the lid on the container of hot and sour soup and handed her a plastic spoon. "Dive in."
They ate dinner in a companionable silence, watching as darkness spread over the Atlantic. Now and again a rocket, left-over from the Fourth, exploded over the beach, casting gold and silver glitter across the night sky, battling the stars above for dominance. "I could get used to this," Diana said as a cool breeze blew in off the ocean. "I never knew I could be so downright lazy."
"This is your vacation, isn't it?"
She drained her bottle of beer and leaned against Gregory's shoulder. "Working vacation," she amended. "Or at least that's what I told my agent and editor."
"I thought you were starting work today."
"I was. You interrupted."
His laugh rumbled pleasantly against her ear. "I interrupted The Mary Tyler Moore Show."
"I was going to start work right after it."
"A likely story. I saw the TV Guide next to your chair. You had four more shows circled in red pencil."
"Handy household hint #376: plan your children's TV time carefully."
"Those weren't kid shows you had circled."
"Okay, so that's handy household hint #377."
He ruffled her curls, those long fingers of his cupping her head. "So you really are the organized type."
"Long ago and far away -- I wish you'd known the old me. I used to be efficient and capable and disciplined down to the last micro-second." She sighed and gestured toward her shorts-clad body. "Look at me now: indolent, lazy, and sloppy. If I weren't so comfortable, I'd be ashamed of myself."
"I like you this way."
"The old me was so much better, Gregory. Now I have no will power whatsoever." She cast a baleful look at the remnants of their Chinese dinner. "And I'm supposed to be on a diet...."
He kissed her temple. "Go back to the part about no will power."
"Don't rush things, Gregory. "His lips against her skin were soft as the summer air. "Let's take it slow."
"You'll be gone in twenty-six days, Diana. I don't -- "
She pressed the tip of her index finger to his mouth. "I leave Gull Cottage the end of the month but I'm not leaving the country." She was free and unfettered and able to hang her hat anywhere she chose.
"I am."
She started in surprise. "I'd forgotten."
Her lighthearted mood took a sudden shift toward melancholy. There really was no point to all this, was there? She angled her head to look at him. "Tahiti complex?"
"Not really. It's been in the works for a long time." She listened as he told her about the work he intended to do, monitoring the progress of humpback whales for Greenpeace but she had the distinct feeling there was more to the story than he chose to tell.
"What about the hospital?"
"Dave can handle it. Things ease off after Labor Day and he has Charlie to help out."
"And that volunteer work you do in Southold?"
"They'll survive. They're closed from Labor Day until the first day of spring."
She hesitated a moment. "And Joey?"
He grasped her shoulders and pulled her into his embrace. "Can we stop talking now?"
She looked at his mouth, the dimple in his chin, the sparkle that was back in his blue eyes. "You won't hear another word from me."
But even as she surrendered herself to his kiss, a small part of her remained separate, wondering what it was Gregory Stewart was running from -- and why it made her feel so uneasy.
#
Thomas Edward Reilly was plump and rosy and impossibly adorable. In fact, all of the babies in the hospital nursery were impossibly adorable -- a fact that was causing Diana no small amount of trouble.
"I'd love to scoop them up and take them all home with me," she said to Mary Ann the next afternoon as the two women peered through the heavy glass window separating adults from infants. "They're precious."
"Look at that one," said Mary Ann, pointing toward a blue-blanketed bundle in the far corner. "He looks like a Cabbage Patch doll."
Up front Thomas Reilly screwed up his tiny red face and squalled lustily. "Peggy's going to have her hands full with that little guy. He has incredible lung power." "I told her to catch up on her sleeping in the hospital because it will be eighteen years before she has an unbroken night's rest from this point on."
"Come on, Mary Ann," Diana objected. "The twins sleep through the night and they're not even two-and-a-half yet."
"Company manners," said Mary Ann. "Wait until the monsters in the closet arrive and the tooth fairy and the fourteen glasses of water and the fourteen trips to the bathroom and that's only for starters."
"You must tremble at the thought of Joey's first date." The expression on Mary Ann's face changed and Diana wished she could call back her words. "Maybe we should be heading down to the lobby. Gregory and Joey have probably had enough of baby-sitting duty. I'm sure they want to see Dave and Peg
gy once more before we leave."
Mary Ann said nothing. Her head was bent forward, until her curly red bangs brushed the glass window.
"Newborns do it to me, too," Diana said as a knot of fear, ugly and dark, settled in her belly. "I disgraced myself the day the twins were born, blubbering all over my brother-in-law. You would have thought I'd given birth to them, the way I carried on."
Gregory had been so optimistic when they'd talked about Joey's condition, so positive the boy was on the road to recovery that Diana had pushed the other possibility from her mind. And because Diana didn't have anything miraculous in her bag of tricks -- no potions or powders or incantations to ward away evil -- she put her arms around the red-haired woman and wished she could transfer some of her optimism to Mary Ann.
#
The group of them stopped at a Burger King in Riverhead for dinner and the twins were enchanted by the cardboard crowns the counter clerk presented to them. They insisted upon wearing them throughout dinner, even though the crowns kept slipping off and falling to the floor, and Joey took it upon himself to retrieve the paper tiaras and place them back on the girls' heads each time it happened.
Mary Ann smoked a lot and ate very little; her dark-shadowed blue eyes rarely left her son's face. Joey ate half a Whopper and an order of fries and was dawdling over a chocolate shake while he urged the twins to stop wearing their food and start eating it.
Gregory seemed oblivious to the undercurrent of tension at the table. He ate with gusto, laughing and talking as if everything were normal. Men so often seemed unaware of the fluctuations in the emotional barometer and the heretofore perfect Dr. Stewart was apparently no exception. In a way Diana was glad to find his Achilles heel.
Finally the meal was over and they stood out in the parking lot as traffic whizzed by on Route 25A.
"You don't have to work tomorrow," Diana said to Joey as Gregory and Mary Ann fastened the twins into their car seats. "If you want to start the beginning of next week, that's okay with me."
"I'm saving for a catcher's mitt," Joey said, straightening the bill of his Yankees baseball cap. "I want to work as many days as I can. It's not easy to find a job around here."
"No," said Diana, grinning at the boy's enthusiasm, "I guess it's not." Twelve year olds weren't in great demand in the job market. "How does around nine o'clock sound?"
"How about 8:30?" Mary Ann chimed in. "Then I can still get to work on time myself."
"I'm all in favor of that," said Gregory with a laugh. "We have a lot to get straightened out before I take off for the Caribbean."
"I'm out-numbered," Diana said with a good-natured shrug. "8:30, it is." She waggled a finger in Joey's direction. "Just don't expect me to be an intelligent boss until I've had my second cup of coffee."
"Can I clean Boris's cage?"
"Good grief!" Diana turned to Mary Ann. "Is this boy for real?"
"Afraid so. He loves animals almost as much as he loves the Yankees."
"Cleaning Boris's cage isn't part of the job description, Joey, but you're welcome to it." She named a dollar figure that was twenty-five cents higher than the original hourly wage. "Okay?"
"Aww-right!" Joey's narrow face was lit from within by excitement. "I bet I'll have enough for the catcher's mitt before the summer's over."
"Yeah," said Gregory, his voice huskier than usual, "I'll bet you will at that."
#
The test results were bad, Gregory...test results were bad...bad...bad....
Mary Ann's words haunted him as he drove Diana and the girls back to Gull Cottage in her rented station wagon. He thought he'd done a fair job keeping his emotions under control, but back at Burger King he'd come close to losing it. He was glad Diana and the twins were dozing because it gave him a chance to untangle the knot his gut was in.
A mistake. It had to be a mistake. The kid was doing better every day. He could see it -- would Joey actually be asking to clean Boris's cage if he was feeling as lousy as those doctors apparently wanted him to believe? The kid had fire and energy and too much spirit to give in to a couple of misread blood tests.
What the hell was the matter with everyone anyway -- jumping to conclusions like that? Best thing for Joey was to go on doing what he wanted to do: working for Diana; saving for his catcher's mitt; taking each day as it came.
Last thing the kid needed was a bunch of doomsaying crepehangers.
Jackasses, he thought, slowing down to avoid a cat scampering across the dark road. The kid was fine, just fine. Joey would breeze through his treatments this summer and come September he'd be back in school where he should be while Gregory would be heading out into the open seas according to plan.
Dave would be back at work in two weeks -- maybe he could even aim toward the end of July. The season had been slow, so far, and with Charlie on staff now the workload was easier to handle. A vision of Joey's sad eyes flashed before him and he forced the image away.
You've earned the right, he told himself. Finally he had the time and the money to take off, to push aside all of his responsibilities and run the way he'd wanted to run from the first day he'd been told he had cancer. And he wasn't running away from anything -- Joey and Mary Ann weren't his family. Joey had a mother and a father and a slew of relatives willing to hold his hand when he needed it.
Nobody had been there to hold Gregory's hand and he'd survived it. Besides, the kid would be fine. One day Joey Marino would be coming up fast on the official "all-clear" same as Gregory and he'd understand.
Next to him Diana stirred and for a moment he wondered what he would do if she asked him to stay.
"Ridiculous," he mumbled as they entered the village of East Hampton. After August 1st, she'd be gone and he would be only a memory.
Why then did she make him think of things he hadn't thought about in years? About family and permanence and putting down the kind of roots he'd believed existed only in Frank Capra movies and 1950's television.
She was a dazzling mass of contradictions: uncertain about her appeal, charming, so insanely positive the world was a happy place that she drew people toward her as if she were a magnet. She was also arrogant and stubbornly certain some crazy fairy godmother was ready to grant all her wishes.
She radiated womanly warmth with her nieces; she was patient and loving with Joey; she offered Mary Ann friendship even when Mary Ann was being caustic and downright rude. In his arms, she was pure female heat. Even Ignatius and Boris were treated to a degree of loving care that Gregory as a boy would have gotten down on his knees and thanked God for.
She expected the best from herself and those around her and damned if she didn't seem to get it. Her gentle, innately feminine nature was bolstered by a spine of pure steel and Gregory found himself wondering how it would feel to be loved by a woman like that.
He wanted to hear her voice, see the sunlight dance in her hair, hold her close for as long as he could. He wanted --
He glanced in the rearview mirror and laughed out loud. "What a fool," he mumbled in the silent car.
He wanted August to hurry up and yet he wished July would never end.
Lots of luck, Stewart. He might as well try to stop time completely because, like it or not, the end was definitely in sight.
Chapter Thirteen
Joey Marino turned out to be a godsend. He cleaned Boris's cage until it sparkled. He fed and combed Ignatius until the Abyssinian's coat gleamed. He watched Sesame Street with Kath and Jenny, then took them down to the beach at low tide to search for sand crabs while Diana sat at the foot of the dunes with her laptop computer and notebook.
With Joey around to play with the girls and answer some of their endless questions, Diana was able to watch over all three of them and still get down to work. It felt good to be back on familiar territory, dealing with broken dishes and broken hearts. She dispatched advice on everything from the perfect wedding cake to the perfect man with renewed enthusiasm, pulling favorite bits from past columns, quoting suggesti
ons from loyal readers, and surprising herself with inspired bits of philosophy and down-home common sense.
The work went so well that within three days she was back on schedule and then some. Watching the girls, listening to Joey as he patiently answered their questions, Diana found herself caught up in a new rhythm of life that had eluded her before. She must have been mad to think she could carry off a column like Mother Knows Best without firsthand experience; this time spent caring for her nieces had opened her eyes to the awesome responsibilities involved in raising a family. It didn't dampen her enthusiasm at the prospect of raising a family of her own, but it did cause her respect for women like Mary Ann Marino to soar.
How did Mary Ann do it? Each morning she dropped Joey off at Gull Cottage then, after a quick cup of coffee, headed over to the animal hospital to spend eight hours keeping the chaos under control. She picked Joey up at 5:30, went to the supermarket and the dry cleaners and the bank, and did whatever other errands had to be tended to before she drove back home to cook, clean and collapse.
Mary Ann had no time to herself, certainly no time or privacy to even consider dating seriously and Diana could only wonder how other women coped with the realities of single parenthood. It was a much tougher world than she'd first imagined; she could see that just in these past days with the twins. Children required as much time as you could possibly give them; they were the sun around which a parent revolved.
Diana couldn't make a move without considering the twins. Even a trip to the bathroom became an event when there were two active, mischievous toddlers in the house. Tragedy could strike in the blink of an eye and Diana found herself exhausted each night as she climbed up the ladder to Cleopatra's barge-bed in the master bedroom, but not too tired to fantasize about Gregory and how wonderful it would be if he were climbing up the ladder to join her.
It certainly made her sister's dithering seem comical.
"I don't want to hear it," she said one morning near the end of her second week at Gull Cottage. "If you ever complain about caring for the girls again, I'll hit you over the head with a loaf of French bread."
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