His Twin Baby Surprise

by Patricia Forsythe

  When Lisa opened her eyes, Gemma had seated herself beside her once again. She and Carly were looking at her curiously.

  “What?” she asked.

  “We’re wondering...” Gemma said. “When you’re going to tell us...”

  “Who the father is,” Carly concluded.

  Lisa pressed her lips together.

  “Oh, come on, Lisa, we’re your best friends. We’re not going to judge you.” Gemma gave her a fond smile.

  Lisa looked from one to the other—Gemma, with her practical, no-nonsense approach to life, and Carly, who was strong and businesslike, but who could see a broken-down wooden chair in a junk heap and imagine it as a fun and useful porch swing.

  Taking a deep breath, she released it slowly and said, “It’s Ben McAdams.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding!” Carly yelped. “The Reston Rascal? Oklahoma’s answer to Casanova?”

  “I thought you weren’t going to judge,” Lisa said drily.

  “Um, sorry.”

  Astounded, Gemma said, “I didn’t even know that he was back in town, or that you two were dating, or even liked each other.”

  “We aren’t and we don’t.” Lisa gazed at them miserably. “We haven’t been friends since we were twelve and his parents banned me from seeing him after I—”

  “Masterminded the jailbreak,” Carly interrupted with a grin.

  “Yeah. And that hasn’t changed.”

  “Lisa, obviously something changed.” Gemma smiled in sympathy. “However you don’t have to tell us and—”

  “I want to know what happened,” Carly objected.

  “You don’t have to talk about it until you’re ready,” Gemma went on as if Carly hadn’t spoken. She stood and began gathering the test kits for disposal.

  Carly settled down and gave an encouraging nod, but Lisa, her eyes full of tears, dropped her face into her hands for a few seconds before she, too, sat back and stared at her friends.

  “I feel like my head is floating somewhere off in space.”

  “And that will continue for a while,” Gemma said. “But things will settle down. You’ll get used to the idea, and soon you’ll be excited about being a mother.”

  “I can’t be a mother,” Lisa said desperately. “I had a terrible mother. I’ve still got a terrible mother. And my grandmother tried, at least when I was little, but she wasn’t much of a model mother, either.”

  “You’ll figure it out, Lisa. You’re the smartest and most driven person I know.” Carly gave her a hug.

  The warmth of her friend’s arms couldn’t stop the shaking that had suddenly begun.

  “I swore I’d never do this,” she said fiercely. “I swore I’d never be careless and get pregnant, and leave my baby—”

  “You would never leave your baby,” Gemma objected.

  “Lisa, you’re twice as old as Maureen was when she had you and left you with her mom and dad. You’ve got a successful career, a home of your own, a support system. Friends,” Carly said, emphasizing the last word as she gave her another squeeze and stepped back to look at her with an anxious expression.

  Lisa took deep breaths and tried to still the quaking that came in waves from her core and moved outward. After a few moments she looked up and tried for a wan smile.

  “Right now the question is how are you going to tell Ben?” Carly asked.

  “I don’t know, but I’d better do it soon,” Lisa said. “I don’t like putting off unpleasant tasks and this isn’t something that can be hidden indefinitely.”

  “No,” Gemma agreed. “And if I know you, you’ll want to have every detail planned well ahead of time.”

  Lisa nodded even as she gave her friends a pitiful look. “I can barely form a sentence right now, much less a plan.”

  Gemma gripped her hand in sympathy, but Carly looked at her considerately.

  “And I had plans,” she went on. She knew she was rambling, but couldn’t seem to stop. “The group of investors from Oklahoma City who are interested in developing a resort on Reston Lake are really making progress on the plans. Can you imagine how many jobs that would bring to this area?”

  “So you keep saying.”

  “It will be a boost to your business, too, Carly. The resort will need fresh vegetables for their restaurants. If you get the contract, you’ll have to expand your gardens, which means you and Luke will have to hire more employees. As for the rest of the county—between the construction and the running of the resort, it could bring in so much prosperity. I was going to broker the deal if I could convince the current owners to at least consider it.”

  Carly frowned. “You can still do all that. You’re having a baby, not giving up your career.”

  Lisa barely heard her. “And I didn’t tell you two this, but I’m thinking about running for mayor this year.”

  Her friends stared at her. “You’re kidding,” they said in unison.

  “It’s true. I would never try to push Harley Morton out of office, but—” she lowered her voice and nodded toward the reception area where Harley’s wife worked “—Brenda wants him to retire and...well, I know I could do the job.”

  “Wow,” Gemma said. “Just wow. I had no idea that was even on your mind. Brenda never said a thing to me.”

  “We were keeping it quiet.” Lisa put her hands over her belly. “But now...”

  “Everything’s changed,” Carly finished for her.

  The three of them fell silent for several seconds until Carly cleared her throat. “So you got pregnant two months ago,” she said slowly.

  Lisa could see that her friend wasn’t ready to let this go. “Obviously.”

  “Ben’s been out of town for months. So how and where? If it was two months ago, it must have been—”

  “When I was in Chicago.” Lisa sighed. “At Christmastime. Right after my great-aunt Violet’s funeral.”

  “You said you were stuck at the airport during a blizzard,” Gemma added.

  “I was, along with a million other people who were trying to get home. By the wildest chance, I ran into Ben. I’d last seen him in September, when he bought Riverbend Ranch and I brokered the deal. He was in Chicago for a Christmas charity event that a bunch of big-name sports figures support. It benefits cancer research. Anyway, he had a room, one of the last ones at a hotel near the airport. He invited me to share the room, and we ended up sharing one of the beds.”

  “Oh, honey,” Carly said.

  “I never do things like that.” Lisa could feel the tears sliding down her face. “I always think about consequences, about how my actions will affect my future.”

  “Whereas Ben McAdams has never needed to. He’s always just taken chances on everything, followed the most fun path to whatever he wanted next,” Gemma said.

  “And that night, you were what he wanted,” Carly added.

  “It wasn’t really like that,” Lisa told them, resting her head in her palm as exhaustion swamped her. She should have known something was wrong. Besides working too much, she’d thought maybe she’d had a low-grade virus. But it wasn’t. It was a baby. A baby!

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw her two best friends exchange a look.

  “We wondered why you were so...unlike yourself when you got back from Chicago,” Carly said.

  “It seemed to be more than simply your great-aunt’s death,” Gemma added, her face full of compassion. “You didn’t say much about it, but your mother was there, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes.” Lisa looked down at her hands, which were now clasping the water bottle. “I tried to talk to her, but she—Maureen—turned away. She seemed very shaken up over Aunt Violet, but I don’t really know how she was feeling. I’ve only seen her half a dozen times in my life, so I don’t know how she would react to anything.
She barely talked to me at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s funerals, so—” Her voice choked off and her head dropped forward.

  “Oh, that’s rough,” Carly said.

  “Maureen didn’t talk much to anyone, except the minister, and then she practically ran from the funeral home. I don’t know where she went. I don’t even know where she lives. What kind of family is this?” she asked fiercely. “I see my own mother only half a dozen times in my life and we don’t have anything to say to each other? How is that even possible?”

  “Oh, honey,” Gemma said. “That’s something that started before you were even born and you can’t fix it with one conversation.”

  Lisa took another deep breath. Somehow she couldn’t seem to get enough air to blow away the storm of emotions. “You’re right.” She paused, then said, “A little while later, I saw that the weather was closing in, so even though my flight wasn’t until late that night, I said goodbye to my cousins and headed for the airport and got stuck there...or, actually, nearby.”

  “With Ben.” Gemma reached for her hand again as Carly gathered her into another hug.

  Lisa rested her head on her friend’s arm and glanced up with a rueful look. “You know how he is.”

  “Yeah,” Carly said. She and Gemma both sighed wistfully. “Charm in size twelve cowboy boots.”

  Lisa nodded miserably. “He was warm, sympathetic and understanding. I was happy to see someone from home, you know? I was so distraught I hardly knew which way to turn, and the thought of spending the night at the airport was more than I could handle. I know I could have called my cousins for help, but the roads were already closed and they had enough to deal with. Then I saw Ben. He took care of everything.”

  “Short-term responsibility has always been his strong point.”

  “I...I know. I needed someone to lean on right then, but it got way out of hand. I never meant for this to happen,” she said yet again. “And now I’m going to have a baby.”

  “Which I’ll be happy to deliver when the time comes, if you want me to,” Gemma assured her. “The good news is that you’re healthy, things look fine, and you’ve got some time to come to terms with this.”

  Lisa nodded and leaned into the hug. She had time, but not much.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MAUREEN THOMAS SAT in her car across the street from Reston Realty and watched the front door, trying to build up the courage to go in and talk to Lisa, the daughter she had no right to call her own.

  She had returned to Reston because she’d had no choice. She’d promised her aunt Violet that she would try to make amends with her daughter. It was far too late to patch things up with her parents, or to even get answers to the questions she’d carried with her from the time she’d been old enough to wonder why her mom and dad were so different than everyone else’s parents. Why their house and farm were overrun with things no one used, discards from other people that were left to rot or rust.

  Before she could go back into the rabbit hole of endless questions, she pulled her mind to the present.

  To anchor herself, she stared at her hands, which were scarred and callused from every minimum-wage job she’d had since she was sixteen. They were a reminder of how hard she’d fought to stay alive after she’d bound her breasts to stop the flow of milk and left her infant daughter in her parents’ care. She’d sneaked away in the night, dodging the twisted metal hazards in the front yard and running down the lane, hitchhiking to Aunt Violet in Chicago.

  The terror and despair she’d felt then paled in comparison to the abject fear she was experiencing now at the thought of facing Lisa.

  Maureen’s plan had been to stay at a motel for a couple of days, get a sense of how Lisa was, then see if they could talk. That plan had been destroyed in Wichita, Kansas, when the transmission dropped out of her car and she’d had to make a roaring, rattling entrance into a nearby garage.

  The repairs had taken almost all of her spare cash, so now her plans had changed. She couldn’t stay at a motel, couldn’t eat at Margie’s Kitchen. There was no money.

  Besides, she didn’t want to be seen around town, at least not until she had talked to Lisa. She would stay out of sight and sleep in her car again if necessary. She’d done it last night, driving to an old barn off the highway that she’d remembered as abandoned. But, of course, things had changed in the thirty-three years since she’d been back. The place was now a prosperous-looking organic gardening operation.

  She had driven on, searching for someplace to park for the night, and had ended up at Reston Lake. Posted signs said the park was closed, but she’d driven around them and parked behind a stand of trees, leaving before dawn to avoid detection.

  Maureen hated that she was sneaking into her own hometown, skulking around to see her daughter, but she simply wasn’t ready to face anyone else from her past. It would take all of her courage to talk to Lisa.

  The uncomfortable truth was, if she wanted to follow Aunt Violet’s last wish, she would have to ask Lisa if she could stay with her. Lisa had once had an apartment in town—she’d proudly sent pictures of her place to Aunt Violet years ago when she’d gone into real estate. Heaven knew the girl had never sent pictures of the old Thomas place. Who would want their relatives to look at photos of a landfill?

  “Now she owns the office. She’s an agent and a broker,” Maureen said aloud, gazing out her car window as she experienced a flurry of pride in what her daughter had accomplished in spite of the lousy circumstances she’d been handed.

  Maureen reached for the door handle, hesitating to see Lisa at work, fearing a humiliating rejection. Still, she’d been humiliated before and she’d survived. She was terrified that’s all she would ever do—simply survive.

  Jerking up on the door’s stiff handle, she stepped out of her old sedan. As the door clicked shut behind her, she smoothed the front of the coat that had fit her so well a few months ago but flapped around her figure now. At least it was good quality. Nothing to be ashamed of there.

  As she walked up to the glass-fronted doors, she reached for the handle just as a man’s hand grasped it.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said in the local drawl she’d longed to hear again. “Let me get that for you.”

  Flustered, she looked up at the handsome dark-haired man. He looked familiar, but she couldn’t recall where she’d seen him. She stepped inside and he followed.

  The moment passed as the secretary looked up and broke into a wide smile. “Why, Ben McAdams, as I live and breathe. I didn’t know you were back in town.”

  “I am for now, Sandy.”

  Maureen recognized the secretary, too. Her name had been Sandy Westlyn, but the nameplate on her desk said Sandy Borden. Maureen used to babysit for her and her two little brothers. She’d known the Borden family, too, but it had been so long, she couldn’t think of which one of the sons Sandy might have married.

  Sandy managed to move her dazzled smile to take in Maureen’s somewhat subdued appearance and switch to being professional. “I’ll be right with you, Ben. How can I help you, ma’am?”

  Maureen clenched her hands inside her coat pockets, grateful that Sandy didn’t seem to recognize her. “I’d like to see Lisa Thomas, please.”

  “What a coincidence,” Ben said affably. “That’s just what I want, too.”

  Maureen answered with a shaky smile, then went to a chair so she could stop the trembling in her legs. And get her bearings.

  * * *

  “LISA, YOU’VE GOT VISITORS.”

  Sandy Borden’s voice pulled her away from the paperwork she was compiling for a new listing. She had spent an hour rereading the resort proposal, checking facts and figures. The more she read, the more excited she became at the prosperity the resort would bring to the county. She’d finally put the report away, knowing there was much work to be done before a
ny ground-breaking could take place.

  The faraway tone of her receptionist’s voice caught Lisa’s attention.

  Intrigued, she closed her laptop, stood and walked to her office door. “Yes? Oh.” Her attention darted from her receptionist to the man at the front of the office.

  Ben McAdams stood by the glass front door of Reston Realty. He tipped his hat and winked at Sandy. “So, how are you, beautiful? Haven’t seen you since little Derek won the roping competition at the county fair. How is he? How’s the family?”

  Delighted color washed up Sandy’s face. As if she couldn’t help herself, she fluffed her hair and moistened her lips. “Oh, Ben. It’s great to see you. Everyone is fine. Little Derek is taller than you are now and he’s going to Oklahoma University in the fall.”

  “Go, Sooners,” Ben said, making a fist and pumping the air. “That’s great. You must be proud of him.”

  “Cliff and I both are.”

  Ben tilted his head as he gave her a teasing grin. “I’m wondering, though, how he’s going to get out of the house with you two hanging on to his leg crying, ‘No, no, please don’t go.’”

  Sandy laughed. “I don’t know. You’re supposed to raise kids to let them be independent, but I’m sure we’re not ready for that.”

  “I’m sure you and Cliff have raised a good man. He’ll be okay.”

  Lisa was so shocked to see Ben in her outer office, she could barely form words. She’d been thinking about him constantly for days, but she hadn’t contacted him about the baby because she couldn’t decide what to say—a rarity for her since she usually met problems head-on. Was it possible that her imagination had conjured him up?

  Distracted, she looked around to see that someone else had come in, as well, and had taken a seat against the wall.

  She glanced at the woman, then away, but her attention shot back to her, astounded.

  “Huh... H-hello,” Lisa stammered.

  “Hello, Lisa,” Maureen said. “Can I talk to you?”