The Baby Twins (Babies & Bachelors USA)
Page 18
“Don’t you think I’m scared? What if, like Clarissa, you leave me, taking the twins with you? Life doesn’t come with guarantees.”
Laughing and crying at the same time, she said, “My therapist tells me that.”
“She—or he—is right.”
“She.”
“Whatever.” Kissing her full on her beautiful mouth, he said, “You have to realize that all we can do is surround ourselves with people we love and hope for the best. And, Stephanie, if you’d just open your heart, you’d see that’s what we were—could be—together. The best.”
Holding on to him for dear life, Stephanie couldn’t have agreed more.
Epilogue
“Steph!” Brady shouted in front of the hall closet. It was their six-month wedding anniversary and movers would be there any minute.
Toddlers, Michaela and Melanie, had hold of his legs and they were covered in something sticky and red.
“Ladies…” he said with a groan “…did your sister leave the strawberry jam out again?”
“Uh-huh,” they said in unison with identical mischievous grins. “Lola in twouble.” The phrase was their favorite.
As for their older sister, she didn’t much like it.
“Steph!” he repeated. “Nobody packed the hall closet!”
“Go for it,” she said, leaving their bedroom with a box in her arms only to enter the nursery.
“What have you been doing?” he asked, trailing after her with the twins attached to his legs like cherubic leeches.
“What’s it look like?” She flashed him the contents of her box. Shoes. He should’ve known. When they’d first met, she couldn’t have cared less about fashion, but since Lola’s first summer with them, she’d turned into a mall rat just like his daughter.
“Eeeuw,” she said, looking at the girls. “Did Lola by chance leave out the jam?”
“Lola in twouble,” the twins said again.
Shaking his head, Brady asked, “Think they were more fun before learning to talk?”
Steph kissed him before tackling the girls’ dresser. Their new house was in Seattle. Only a mile from Clarissa and Vince’s. Brady and Steph both wanted to spend as much time as possible with Lola. With the twins not anywhere near starting school, this was the logical time for the move. Helen bought the pastry shop and when the girls did enter kindergarten, Steph planned on starting a new store that also featured homemade candy. In the meantime, she seemed excited about spending loads of time with all of their girls and working on their modern monstrosity of a fixer-upper.
“Sweetie,” Steph said once she’d finished, giving him the smile he was never strong enough to resist. “Would you please pack the closet? You don’t even have to be neat. Just throw it all in a box.”
With a good-natured groan, he molded his fingers to twin blond heads. “Come on, kiddos. Looks like Mom’s putting us to work.”
“Thank you!” Stephanie hollered from the nursery.
“What’s this?” Lola asked, making more of a mess in the closet than there had already been.
“What’s what?” he asked.
She’d found a blue gift box and removed the lid. After peeking at the contents, she said, “Oops. Think I might’ve found your Christmas and birthday gift.”
“Let me see.” He easily took the box.
“Momma Steph’s gonna be mad at you,” she said.
“I’ll just take a quick look. Don’t tell.”
“Don’t tell what?” Steph asked, emerging from the nursery.
“Nothing.” Brady hid the box behind his back.
“Let me see.”
Wrestling for it, he finally resorted to holding it over his wife’s head. “You’re awful!”
Laughing, he said, “I’d rather be awful than stubby.”
“Now, you’re gonna get it.” She gave his chest a playful pummel.
“Lola in twouble!” The laughing twins jumped up and down. “Lola in twouble!”
“What’d I do?” the preteen complained. To the twins, she said, “You two need psychiatric help.” Rolling her eyes at her dad and stepmother’s antics, she put her iPod’s earbuds back in and headed for the kitchen.
When Brady finally lowered the box, Stephanie gasped. “Where did you find that?”
He shrugged. “Lola fished it out of the closet.”
“I looked everywhere…”
“Since I found it, can I keep it?” he asked, hoping she’d agree.
“At least sit down,” she urged, leading him to the sofa. “It’s a pretty big deal.”
“Now I’m really excited.” To the twins, he said, “How about letting Daddy go? Then you can find Lola and see if she’s getting in trouble.”
“I heard that!” Lola shouted from the kitchen.
The twins took off in that direction.
Seated beside Steph, Brady finally removed the box’s lid, and got his first look inside. After reading the inscription, “Love is the Greatest Adventure,” he looked to Stephanie. “Is this for real?”
Tears shining in her eyes, she nodded. “Like it?”
He clutched the autographed, leather-bound book to his heart. “Like doesn’t come close to describing how amazing this is. Where did you get it?”
“Remember our first Christmas? When I dragged you back to my room to give you a present I’d bought at auction?”
“This was it?”
She nodded. “After the wedding, I found it, but then it somehow got misplaced again.”
“Sweetheart,” he said, still clutching the gift, “I can’t begin to tell you what this means. That all the way back then, you loved me enough to remember something so insignificant as my idolizing Amelia Earhart.”
“Don’t you get it?” she asked, kissing him square on his lips. “When it comes to you, Mr. McGuire, there’s nothing insignificant. You’re my world. And I love you.”
Though he may have had his doubts in the beginning, the more he was with Stephanie, the more crazy in love he fell. Only in their house, with goldfish and at least part of the year, three kids, and an always hiding kitten, heavy emphasis needed to be placed on crazy!
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5553-5
THE BABY TWINS
Copyright © 2010 by Laura Marie Altom.
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