After a beat, Sheila reissued the command. “All right. Push.”
Dennis lifted Nicole up again. He could feel the tension running along her spine, her shoulders. Nicole was absolutely rigid as she worked to bring her babies into the world. He held his breath along with Nicole as she bore down and pushed.
“All right, stop,” Sheila ordered.
Nicole could have cried if she had the energy. She fell back against Dennis’s hands, exhausted. They cradled her. Distantly, she was aware that she was a mass of perspiration. A nurse mopped her forehead. Or was that Dennis? She tried to focus. Everything was swimming and she felt so light-headed.
“Once more,” Sheila told her. She smiled in response to the moan. “We’re almost there, Nicole. I see the head.”
Nicole had no idea where the strength came from. She could have sworn that there was none left. With Dennis’s help, she raised herself up again and bore down with every shred of her being. Her hands were clenched so hard, her nails bit through the skin on her palms.
“And behind door number one we have—a baby!” Sheila cried out with unmistakable pleasure. Quickly, she handed the infant to a waiting nurse. “You have a daughter, Nicole. A beautiful baby girl.”
“A girl. I have a girl,” Nicole panted. Joy mingled with exhaustion. Her eyes felt as if they were rimmed with sweat as she looked up at Dennis. “A girl.”
He wiped the perspiration from her brow as he smiled. “I heard.”
It wasn’t over yet. Sheila prepared to catch the second one. “You also have another occupant to evict, Nicole. You’ve done this before. This one’ll be a piece of cake,” Sheila coaxed. “All right, push.”
Nicole didn’t think she could anymore. “Can’t you just pull this one out?” she pleaded.
Sheila laughed as she shook her head. “Afraid not. Push, Nicole. Now!”
Nicole thought she was going to pass out as she did as she was told. It took her two tries instead of three, but the second twin, almost a carbon copy of its sibling, came out with a lusty wail of protest.
I don’t blame you, Tiger. You’re going to have to do things on your own from now on, Dennis thought. He leaned forward to see what sex the infant was.
The doctor announced it for him. “It’s a boy.” Sheila looked up at the clock overhead. Nine minutes past twelve. She’d missed New Year’s. Sheila looked down at the infant in her hands. Well, maybe not.
Another nurse took the second infant. Sheila rose from the stool and came forward.
“Happy New Year, Nicole. You have two fine, healthy babies.” She looked at Dennis. “You did very well.”
He had done nothing except be there. “All I did was hold her up.”
Sheila knew what it was like, facing a pregnancy alone. “Yes,” she said significantly. “You did.”
“Can I hold them?” Nicole asked. Now that it was over, she wanted nothing more than to touch her children, to see for herself that they were all right.
Sheila beckoned to the nurses. “Just for a minute. We have to see about getting all three of you cleaned up.”
Nicole hardly heard her. Nurses on either side of the bed were carefully tucking her children into her arms. Nicole let out a deep, heartfelt sigh.
It had been worth it.
Dennis was positive that he would remember the way she looked at that moment until his dying day.
Chapter 11
One hand on the dead bolt, Nicole raised herself on her toes to look through the peephole. She already knew that it was Dennis who was knocking. But she did it anyway because he would lecture her if she didn’t. He’d left for the grocery store an hour and ten minutes ago and she could set her watch by his return. In the last week and a half since she’d been home from the hospital, Dennis had insisted on pitching in and helping her with her newly acquired handful. Or handfuls. Erika and Ethan demanded lots of attention.
He was a hell of a lot more helpful than Craig would have ever been, Nicole thought. She couldn’t help wondering if, after all these years, she’d finally gotten lucky. It certainly looked that way from where she was standing.
She stepped back, opening the door wide. Dennis walked in, the handles of four plastic bags slung over each wrist. There were two more bags in his hands.
“Sure you’re carrying enough?” she asked, grinning as she closed the door behind him.
“I hate making multiple trips.” Dennis maneuvered the bags onto the kitchen table.
He’d managed to get all the groceries into the house in one trip without dropping anything, he thought with satisfaction. Funny how that pleased him. He’d gotten so involved with his work, he’d forgotten what it felt like to lead a normal, day-to-day life.
Like the one he was leading with Nicole.
Pretending to lead, he corrected himself. Only pretending.
“I got everything on your list,” he said as he began to unpack one of the bags.
She didn’t have to check to know he had. Craig hadn’t even known what the inside of a grocery store looked like. In all the years they were married, he’d never offered to help her with the shopping even once, much less do it himself. Dennis didn’t wait to be asked; he volunteered.
The twins were both asleep, providing her with what was becoming a rare moment without one or two babies in her arms. She took advantage of the luxury and began putting away the groceries he unpacked.
He looked so at home here, she thought. And she was getting very used to having Dennis around.
“Now, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way,” Nicole began slowly.
He noticed she was chewing on her lip, a habit she had whenever there was something on her mind. Because there was so much he had to hide, Dennis immediately felt uneasy.
He managed to sound casual as he asked. “But?”
By her count, he’d been away from his job as long as she had from hers. Over two and a half weeks. She was on maternity leave. What was he on? She knew he’d said that he was taking vacation time for the week between Christmas and New Year’s, but this was already nearly two weeks into the new year.
She hoped she didn’t offend him by inquiring. “Don’t you have a life to get back to, people to defend?”
He was wondering when she’d get around to asking him about that. “I told the head of the firm I had a personal emergency situation arise. I gave my caseload to one of the junior partners at the firm, Winston. He’s taking over things for me until I get back.”
He wondered how Winston would feel being used as part of an alibi. Everything that was said in the kitchen, the living room and the nursery reached Winston’s ears as it went on tape to be cataloged and later debriefed as the situation called for.
Nicole stacked the large cans of formula on the bottom shelf in her pantry. Like Marlene, she’d discovered that she was unable to nurse. Though she missed the idea of bonding on that level, she had to admit that, in a way, it was a relief. She’d envisioned herself permanently attached to one hungry baby or the other for the next six months.
She looked at Dennis over her shoulder, surprised by his explanation. Did he consider her a personal emergency? That meant she was important to him. She rather liked the sound of that. “You can do that?”
“Sure.” He emptied out the last bag onto the table. “I’ve covered for him plenty of times. Besides, I do still have vacation time to take if I want to.” He looked at her as he gathered the empty bags together, depositing them into one main one. “And I want to.”
When he looked into her eyes like that, she felt giddy, like a young girl. Like the young girl she had once been.
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate your being here, I do,” Nicole paused. Maybe she was going a little too fast for him. But then, he’d been the one who pushed his way into her life in the first place. She grinned at him as she made space for a bag of chocolate chip cookies. “It’s like having my own built-in nanny.” He’d remained with her last night and not for the first time. It was all
purely altruistic. He’d stayed so that she could get some sleep. He’d gotten up for the feedings. She doubted if there was another man like him in the world. “You don’t sleep much, do you?”
He shrugged. “I’ve learned to make do on very little.”
When there wasn’t a party to attend or a race to prepare for, Craig could sleep until noon. Every way she measured him, Dennis was so different from Craig. So incredibly, wonderfully different. The only similarity was the attraction she felt, and even that was different if she examined it. She didn’t think she’d ever felt this rush when Craig just touched her hand. She did with Dennis.
“Why?”
He put the bags away where she kept them, in the drawer next to the sink. “So I could pull all-nighters and still be fresh enough to take the exam in the morning.”
That sounded like him. She tucked away two dry cereal boxes, angling for space in an already crowded pantry. Nicole closed the doors behind her and turned to face him.
“Well, I don’t know why you want to put yourself out and pull all-nighters for me, but you’ve certainly turned into my guardian angel.”
He placed two containers of milk into the refrigerator. “There’s that word again.”
“What word?”
“Angel.” Dennis had felt uncomfortable when she’d referred to him as one in the ambulance, but she had been barely conscious then. He felt twice as bad now because she knew what she was saying. Or thought she did.
Add modest to the growing list of attributes. Something else Craig hadn’t been. Nicole smiled at him. “Well, you are.”
The refrigerator door handle slid from his fingers. Dennis turned to look at her. He couldn’t let this go on this way. She’d hate him even more once she knew. “Nicole, I’m no angel.”
He looked so serious that for a moment, she was afraid that he was going to tell her something terrible about himself. But she sincerely doubted that there was anything terrible enough to negate the good he’d done for her.
She moved closer, her hands lightly resting on his arms. “I’m not exactly proud about some of the things in my past, either. Whatever you’ve done, Dennis, it doesn’t matter.”
He knew all about her past. And she knew nothing of his. Dennis shook his head as he took her hands in his. “You don’t know anything about me.”
He was wrong there. Dead wrong. “I know all I need to know. I know that you’re good, and kind.” The smile on her lips was mirrored in her eyes. Eyes, he noted, that were no longer wary. “And neighborly.” She slipped her hands from his and continued putting things away. “I wish I could have met your mother.”
The remark, coming out of the blue, took him by surprise. Winston was still trying to track down Laura Bailey’s whereabouts. What did his mother have to do with anything?
“Why?”
“Because she must have been a very special lady.” Nicole leaned into the refrigerator, pushing aside an army of small baby bottles on the top shelf to make room for a couple of loaves of bread. “She had to have been, to have turned out someone like you,”
“Yeah.” It made him restless to talk about himself. He was beginning to worry that his conscience was going to get the better of him.
A tiny wail wafted through the air out of the nursery. Saved by the baby. Dennis began to back out of the kitchen. “I think one of the twins needs attention.”
She put the last item away and hurried to join him in the nursery.
Four tiny legs were kicking the air. Both twins were fussing now. Dennis looked in her direction.
“I think they need changing,” he guessed. He was starting to distinguish between the different kinds of cries. He had no idea that he’d become so good at it this quickly. But then he’d always liked children.
Nicole felt the perimeter of Erika’s diaper. “Give the man a cigar,” she murmured.
They each changed one baby. By then, it was time to feed them again. It seemed like an endless merry-go-round to Nicole. She knew she would have gotten dizzy on it, no matter how much she loved them, if it hadn’t been for Dennis. The extra two hands were a godsend.
He was a godsend.
Changed, fed and burped, the babies began to settle down again. It wasn’t soon enough for Nicole. She leaned against the doorjamb, looking at them. The windup mobiles that Dennis had bought were slowly moving above the two cribs, lulling the babies back to sleep.
She sighed, tired and grateful. “They lied.”
Slowly, Dennis backed out of the room, afraid that any misstep might bring about fresh wails.
“Who did?” he whispered as he turned his face toward her.
She felt his breath along her cheek and struggled not to give in to the shiver that slipped along her spine. “Teachers. They told me that one and one is two. It’s not.” She looked at her babies. “It’s an army.”
Dennis laughed softly as he slipped his arm around her shoulders. “Feeling a little overwhelmed?”
“No, I’m feeling a lot overwhelmed,” she corrected as she closed the door behind them. With any luck, they had bought themselves an hour of peace and quiet. Her hand in his, Nicole followed Dennis to the living room. “I really don’t know what I would have done these last few days without you. These last few weeks without you,” she amended.
Nicole sat down on the sofa. As he sat down beside her, she had a feeling that everything was going to be perfect from here on in.
“Funny how you came into my world just when I’d given up on life in general.” Which made Dennis her own private miracle, she thought.
Oh God, if it weren’t for the fact that Winston was monitoring all this, he would have made a clean breast of it now. There was no way she was involved in her husband’s dealings. Through records and informants, he and Winston had established her innocence. And even if they hadn’t, he would have known she was blameless. Yesterday, he had helped her pack the last of Craig’s clothes to send off to charity. He’d watched her go through all the pockets before folding the garments up. No sign of a disk anywhere.
If it weren’t for the fact that he had a gut feeling Standish would return, Dennis would have left her life as quickly as he had entered it.
The hell he would have, he thought, touching her cheek. Somehow or other, he would have found an excuse to stick around a few more days.
“Never give up, Nicole.” His eyes held hers. How long before she looked at him with loathing? “No matter what happens. Never give up.”
Nicole reached up and stroked the furrow between his brows. “You sound like you’re warning me.”
“Maybe I am,” he said quietly.
She frowned. He was scaring her. “This isn’t like you.”
No, he thought, it wasn’t. He was always the one who could look at things from a distance. Not from close up. “I’m just a little tired.”
That she could readily believe. She rose to her feet, drawing him up with her. “Go home, Dennis. Go back to your apartment and your bed and sleep in until tomorrow. God knows you deserve it.”
He shook off the feeling that was seeping through him, infiltrating his very soul. This was still a job and he still owed her the best protection he could render, even if she wasn’t aware of the reasons behind it. He would just have to make the most of the time he had left.
“What, and give up the glamour of motherhood?” He shook his head. “Not a chance. I’m just getting my second wind. You’re the one who should sleep in.”
Nicole felt relief whispering through her. He had her worried for a moment, but this was more like it. More like him. He was spoiling her, and she had to admit that she liked it.
“If I sleep any more, I’m going to turn into Rip Van Winkle.”
He tugged lightly on her chin. “More like Sleeping Beauty.”
The comparison pleased her. After spending months as a blimp, she was hungry for compliments. “You think I’m pretty?”
“No,” he answered seriously. “I think you’re beautiful.”
Nicole looked down at the cutoffs she was wearing and the kelly green maternity T-shirt which now hung around her body like a vacated tent. Beautiful was really stretching the word.
“Yeah, right.” She laughed. “I’m right up there with Cleopatra and Helen of Troy.”
“No.” Surveillance camera or no surveillance camera, he couldn’t help himself. Very subtly, he turned his body so that it hid her from the camera’s eye. Dennis took her into his arms. “You’re not up there with them. You’re in a class all by yourself.”
God, but he could turn her head and leave her breathless, panting for more. Very slowly, she brought her mouth closer to his.
“It’s lonely being in a class all by myself. Couldn’t I have, say just one more occupant there with me?”
He wasn’t aware of bringing her body closer to his. He just knew that it was. Heat radiated between them, tempting him. His voice was low, seductive. “Who would you want?”
Her eyes grew soft, dreamy, as she wound her arms around his neck. “You, Dennis. Just you.”
Why hadn’t he just bumped into her at the supermarket? Or sat next to her in class, years ago? Why did he have to meet Nicole on a covert operation where security forbade him to tell her who he really was? A man sent to spy on her.
“I’m not beautiful, Nicole.”
Yes, he was. Inside and out, she thought. Inside and out. “That’s your opinion.”
He didn’t want to hold her. He didn’t want to breathe in the fragrance that seemed to be hers alone. It only clouded his mind. Sunshine and sex, that’s what he had thought when he had first looked at her photograph. That’s what he thought now. And the impact was more powerful each time he encountered it.
Her hips fit against his, as if they were both two halves of a puzzle.
But they weren’t. He had to remember that.
“Men aren’t beautiful, Nicole. They’re cute, they’re good-looking, they’re handsome. But they are not beautiful.”
He looked so serious, she almost laughed. But she managed to bite her lip and keep the sound bubbling within her from surfacing.
Happy New Year--Baby! Page 16
