by Tina Leonard
“No. They were both orphans. She was living with a grandmotherly type named Mrs. Fox whom she mentioned from time to time. But the police have already checked with her, and Mrs. Fox had no more information than I do.”
“There’s got to be a school she attended.”
“She’d dropped out,” April said sadly. “Her husband as well, since he had to work to support them both. Jenny couldn’t work because of the difficulty of a multiple-birth pregnancy.”
“Okay. I’ll check the buses and the airlines, though I don’t guess she would have had money to get anywhere. And I’ll check the teenage hot spots, in case anyone has seen her.”
“You don’t think she might have left town, do you?” April was horrified by the thought.
“Anything’s possible.”
Upset, April turned to go, then slowly returned her gaze to his. “I was in foster care,” she said softly.
“Tell me something I couldn’t figure out on my own,” he replied gently. “Can you give me a description of Jenny which includes weight and height?”
She blinked back sudden tears. Jenny, come back! she thought. These little lives need their mother. They need more than being broken up and shuttled through the cracks in the system. “I’ll have that description waiting at the nurses’ desk when you’re through eating,” she said, hurrying away from the cafeteria.
It would be so unfair, so cruel if that’s what happened. April just had to put her faith in the police force.
And if not them, then Caleb McCallum, trouble shooter and ex-cop, would have to be her knight in shining armor. He was a bit scarred. He didn’t hang out with his family much—until Briana’s surprise pregnancy, his sister didn’t hear all that often from him. She knew that from her close relationship with Bri; she was aware of the family tree.
She also knew that since Briana’s babies had arrived, Caleb had thought up one excuse or another to visit her house.
Now that April had finally met the big bad ex-cop, she decided he was a man who didn’t want his bluff called. He wanted to act as if he didn’t care about these quadruplets—but he did.
She wouldn’t call his bluff on that matter. But she wouldn’t allow him to underestimate her, either.
IT WASN’T THAT he minded his job as a security consultant, Caleb thought as he waited at the nurse’s desk for April to give him the weight/height description of Jenny. What bugged him was being called in on family matters, with his dad’s constant reminders of his past. Maybe his dad wanted to live in his grief by building a monument to it—the birth wing—but Caleb preferred to let time heal his wounds. If time, in fact, could do that.
Since the death of his close friend and cop partner a few years ago, Caleb was pretty certain time had slowed to a crawl.
It was either his dad’s disbelief that his son would never return to the force, or perhaps Jackson’s desire to remind Caleb that time was passing him that made him keep asking him to “use his contacts” about matters that concerned babies.
Okay, when his unmarried sister, Bri, had become pregnant with triplets, Caleb hadn’t needed too damn much convincing to want to find the father. He’d very much felt that he would use all his contacts, and every bit of cop determination he’d ever possessed to find the guy and explain to him how much he really wanted to be married to his sister.
Bri, ever independent, had stayed his search. That situation had resolved itself fine.
Maybe this one would, too. On the other hand, he had to admit a strong desire to see the case closed with a happy ending. It sure would upset April Sullivan if those babies were taken by the state. Goose pimples ran over his hands at the thought. What a feminine little woman! When his father had asked him to look in on this case, he could have had no idea about the compact bundle of steely determination he would meet up with.
Caleb frowned. And then again, Jackson had been dropping hints for some time about Caleb needing a woman to help him through the rough time in his life. Romance. A wife.
That was the last thing he wanted. A wife should be a partner, and he didn’t want any more partners. He didn’t want to get close to anyone; he didn’t want to feel responsibility for a single soul. Take April, for example. Now, she’d suck up a lot of attention. For one thing, he’d sensed she had emotional baggage a lot like his. Clearly, she was a woman with a lot of weather, and while he liked a storm or two, he also wanted calm more than anything these days. And she was so fragile. Those tiny bones in her hand had instantly made him relax his handshake to the point that he’d almost been holding her hand rather than sharing a greeting. It had been like palming warm satin.
He bet those hands felt good to those tiny infants. From pictures, he’d seen that his mother was a fragile flower compared to his father’s hearty stature and—
Oh, no. No, no, no. He was the youngest triplet, the one his mother had brought last into the world. The scrawny one. Yet, might she have lived had there been one less child? What made one woman bear four infants and be strong enough to run away, and another woman unable to withstand the arduous process of birthing three? He wasn’t certain, but it might have something to do with constitution and frame, and April, while she had tugged on his male instincts, was a big red stop sign. Well, a petite red stop sign, but a woman he wasn’t going to allow to get under his skin. He definitely didn’t need a dainty flower that couldn’t withstand the rigors of his roughhouse cop personality.
“Here’s a description of Jenny,” April said, handing him a slip of paper. “All the pertinent details.”
Starting, he found himself looking into her deep green eyes. Eyes that looked at him no-nonsense, as if she fully expected him to walk out into the street and come back inside the hospital, producing Jenny Barrows in all of ten minutes.
“Social Services called a moment ago,” she told him. “They plan to come by today to begin overseeing their role with the children. For now, these babies are too frail to leave the hospital, but in a month, maybe sooner, that won’t be the situation. If Jenny isn’t found, I fully intend to do everything I can to make certain I comply with her wish that I raise the babies.”
He cocked an eyebrow at the determined diminutive redhead. “How are you going to do that? Raise four babies by yourself? You’ll have to quit your job.”
“I am prepared to do whatever it takes, Mr. McCallum.”
Waving a hand in surrender, he said, “Caleb. Don’t go all formal on me again. I’m on your side, all right? I’m just asking you how you’re going to do it.”
“How could I not do it?”
“Okay, okay. Do you have a boyfriend, or some one who can help you?”
She put a hand on her hip. “If you want to know my status, why don’t you just ask me rather than phony-baloneying about it?”
Whoa, she was a Tartar. What she lacked in size, she definitely had in spirit. He tucked the information she’d given him into his pocket. “I’m just try ing to determine if you have any resources that might make Social Services look favorably upon you as a temporary mother.”
“I’m a nurse trained in neonatal intensive care. I was the one Jenny Barrows turned to. And I want to do it. I’m not afraid of a challenge. Other temporary-care situations will split the babies up.”
“All right, April. You let me know if you hear anything. This is my cell number,” he said, scribbling on a piece of paper and handing it to her. “It’s always on. I’ll let you know if I find out anything the police haven’t been able to turn up themselves.”
“I hope you’re better at asking questions with other people than you’ve shown yourself to be with me.” She raised an eyebrow at him.
Oh, brother. She just wasn’t going to leave it alone, because she’d squarely caught him trying to figure out if she was unattached, and she knew it. Denial wasn’t going to work here; she was too smart for that. But a man had his pride. He frowned at her and said, “You’re entitled to your opinion, Miss Sullivan.”
She laughed at him, not fo
oled for a second, then turned around and walked to the other side of the nurse’s desk, giving him a view of that sweetheart-shaped tush in action.
And then she glanced over her shoulder, dead-on catching him staring at her fanny.
Oh, brother.
Chapter Two
“You didn’t answer my question,” he said.
“It didn’t merit an answer. Social Services will consider my skills and other matters as a single mother, I hope, if it comes to that. You find Jenny, and I’ll focus on spiffing up my foster parent qualifications in case you don’t locate her in time. But I fully intend to do what I can for the children,” she replied, disappearing into a hospital room.
It was an empty room, which was good, because she needed to collect her thoughts. Her words were almost all bravado. Even she knew that she might be an unlikely candidate because of her marital status. Possibly even a married couple might not be allowed to take in all four children.
The best thing for these children would be for Jenny to come back today. But if Jenny didn’t return, and Social Services didn’t look favorably upon her request to take them, they would be split up and put into varying foster care situations.
The thought was enough to tear April’s heart in two. It wasn’t that her adoptive family hadn’t loved her—they had. Yet all the years of being moved from one home to another had taken its toll. Friends, schools, addresses—nothing ever stayed the same. No relationship ever cemented for her, and she’d grown wary of trying to build any relationship in her life.
In fact, she’d learned to simply rely upon herself. By the time she was adopted, she was a teenager. While appreciative of her new mother and father, she’d almost felt as if she were adopted to take care of them. That wasn’t fair, because they loved her to this day. They’d seen she was put through college and then nursing school, and that she had everything she needed.
But the foundation of love she’d lacked all her childhood couldn’t be filled in. Independence be came her sole weapon against pain; any friends she maintained knew that although she was kind and loving, she could be bullheaded about staying what ever course she chose without allowing anyone to help her. That’s why Caleb McCallum sent prickles of panic running all through her. While she’d recognized that this unexpected source of assistance might be beneficial if Jenny could be located for her children, she’d also perceived a strength and determi nation in Caleb congruent to her own.
Strong men always seemed to want to take care of her—and then they were disappointed when she wouldn’t allow that to happen.
While knowing that Caleb’s personality was equal to hers, she also had to admit to feeling a thrill that he found her attractive. Sometimes, she spent so much time in a nurse’s uniform that she forgot that she was a woman with a feminine wish to be attractive.
Caleb’s gaze had told her she was—and so, for the moment, she could almost forgive him for trying to figure out her relationship status, a point she didn’t want to dwell on because he’d been right about Social Services favoring married couples. She smiled to herself. He’d fished so badly that she almost found it cute—almost.
Poking her head into the hallway, she saw that it was devoid of the big, strong ex-officer and hospital personnel, so she slipped into the nursery for a last stroke for the babies before she went home. Each lay sleeping, with either a fist or a finger in their mouths. “I’ll be so glad when these tubes come off,” she told them softly. “And I’ll be even happier when you have healthy birth weights.”
They’d been alive so short a time. Four flannel wrapped responsibilities in cocoons of warm softness, blissfully unaware of the turmoil their mother’s disappearance was causing. Caleb hadn’t wanted to see them as anything more than an impersonal case his father had tossed at him. “It’s going to be okay,” she murmured, reaching in through the rubber-glove opening to touch the smallest baby’s foot. “What you children need, I think, is to be called something other than babies one, two, three and four. Since you’re supposed to be mine, why don’t we think up some names, temporarily at least? Then maybe everyone will see that you’re real little people, not numbers.”
They didn’t move, too content for the moment, but this would change soon enough. As soon as one awakened, usually all of them would begin flailing tiny fists and feet. “You’re the big sister,” she said to the baby in the first isolette. “You can be Melissa. When I was a little girl, I was in a home with a girl whom I desperately wanted to become my big sister. Her name was Melissa, and I remember her telling me that her name meant bee in Greek.”
Picking up a pen, she wrote Melissa on the card attached to the front of the isolette. Then she reached for a baby names book. “Let’s call you Chloe,” she told the second pink-wrapped girl, “because it’s pretty. And according to this book, it means blooming. I guess every bee needs a bloom, huh?”
She chuckled to herself. “Number three, lucky number three. A man should have a strong name, right?” Caleb was a strong name, as was Jackson. “But I don’t want you to be so strong that you’re tough and unreachable,” she told the tiny boy. “Yet I believe that comes from nurture not nature.” Frowning, she thought about what she knew about Caleb. Bri had said once that Caleb was the sibling who didn’t really fit in somehow. They loved him, but many times he wanted to be alone, choosing a harder path for himself than any his two siblings took. If they went hiking at summer camp, he had to go over the rocks to get where they were going, while they took the marked trails.
“Craig,” she whispered to the baby. “It means crag. And we’ll take care of the nurture thing so that you don’t grow up too tough and unreachable. A little is good, too much is…well, it means a lonely path for you. And now you,” she said to the last, smallest baby. “You need a special name. I’ll call you…Matthew. Did you know that means gift of God? Well, it does, according to this handy-dandy book.”
Closing the names book, she finished writing all the names on the cards. Satisfied for the moment that she’d given the babies a reason to become real people and not just numbers to even the most stalwart of tough hearts, she went to sign off her shift.
Slipping her hand into her pocket, she felt the note that had changed her life. Pulling it out, she read the note for the hundredth time:
Dear April Sullivan,
I know you’ll love my babies and take good care of them, so I want you to have them.
Jenny Barrows
The words, written in immature lettering on a piece of school notebook paper, cried out the young teenager’s despair. She had to have been so desperate to appoint a near stranger as the guardian to her precious babies! April was twenty-seven, and she knew she’d feel overwhelmed by the thought of raising four tiny infants alone, as precious as they might be. But she would do it.
Replacing the note in her pocket, she headed to the nurses’ station. To her dismay, a Social Services worker was at the desk, speaking to the head neo natal nurse, Cherilyn Connors.
“April, this is Mandy Cole from Social Services. April Sullivan is the nurse to whom Jenny left the note concerning her children.”
“How do you do?” Mandy said.
April looked the tall brunette over without trying to seem obvious. “I’m fine, thank you,” she said carefully, wondering if the woman would be sympathetic to her plea for temporary custody.
“I’m going to examine the infants,” Mandy said. “Is there anything you feel I should know about them?”
The question was directed to either Cherilyn or April, she noted. But it was April who wanted answers. “We can go over their files together, if you’d like. What will you do after you examine them?”
“We’ll continue to monitor them. If Ms. Barrows doesn’t return, or if the children become healthy enough to leave, they’ll be placed in temporary care until the situation can be resolved more satisfactorily.”
Misgiving rose inside April. “Jenny’s wish is that I take care of her children. I am willing to do so.”
Mandy looked at her with some surprise. “The paper Ms. Barrows left itself is not a legal document. I’m certain you realize the difference, Ms. Sullivan, between a legal document and an emotionally distraught young girl’s note?”
“I recognize this, Ms. Cole, but I also am willing to take the emotionally distraught young girl’s wishes into consideration.”
“May I ask how old you are?” Mandy asked. “I see that this particular wing is new. How long have you been employed as a nurse, here or anywhere else? And are you married, Ms. Sullivan? This is information germane to any application you might wish to put forward.”
With those words, April realized Caleb had been right. Regardless of what Jenny had wanted, or what she, April, might be willing to do for those sweet babies, she would not be considered as a temporary foster mother.
And that meant the babies would go into the system.
CALEB HAD RETURNED to the hospital, after going down to the nearby Austin police station to talk to some guys he knew who would give up the information on the missing mom, when a small dynamo swept past him, walking fast toward the parking lot. “Hey,” he said, reaching out to grab April’s arm gently. “Going somewhere? Remember me?”
She kept her head down, and he realized she was upset. “Hello, what’s going on?” he asked, encircling her with one arm. “Are you okay, April? Did something happen?”
She shook her head, a sniffle escaping her as she blew her nose into a tissue. Despite the parking-lot lights, it was too dark outside for him to see her face, but clearly, the calm tigress of a lady had some unexpected troubles.
“Ah,” he said soothingly, tugging her up against his chest. “Didn’t you know it’s okay to talk to police officers? Police officers are our friends,” he said in a singsong teacher’s voice.
Though she didn’t laugh at his attempt to cheer her, she didn’t pull away from his chest. He decided to shut up and go with the physical comfort, because one, it was working, and two, she felt good. Underneath the nurse’s smock, delicate shoulder blades quivered. And man alive, was her waist ever tiny.
