Baby Bonanza

Nine

Nick couldn’t blame her for the outrage.

She jumped in front of the babies and held her arms up and extended as if to fight him off should he try to grab the twins and run. “Are you insane? You can’t split them up,” she said, keeping her voice low and hard. “They aren’t puppies. You don’t get the pick of the litter. They’re little boys, Nick. Twins. They need each other. They need me. And you can’t take either of them away from me.”

He’d already come to the same conclusion. All it had taken was one look at the boys, sitting in their little seats, so close that they could reach out and touch each other. But he hadn’t known until he’d seen them.

“Relax,” he said, lifting one hand to try to stop her from taking off on another rant. “I said that’s the plan I did have. Things have changed.”

“You’ve been here ten seconds. What could have changed?” She was still defensive, standing in front of her sons like a knight of old. All she really needed was a battle-ax in her hands to complete the picture.

“I saw them,” he said, and something in his voice must have reached her because her shoulders eased down from their rigid stance. “They’re a unit. We can’t split them up. I get that.”

“Good.” She blew out a breath. “That’s good.”

“I’m not finished,” he told her, and watched as her back snapped straight as a board again. “I came here to see my sons, and now that I have, I’m not going anywhere.”

She looked stunned, her mouth dropping open, her big, blue eyes going even wider than usual. “What do you mean?” Then, as she began to understand exactly what he meant, she shook her head fiercely. “You can’t possibly think you’re going to stay here.”

This was turning out to be more fun than he’d thought it would be.

“Yeah, I am.” Nick glanced around the small living room. You could have dropped two entire houses the size of hers into his suite on the ship, and yet there was something here that was lacking in his place, despite the luxury. Here, he told himself, she’d made a home. For her and their sons. A home he had no intention of leaving. At least not for a while. Not until he’d gotten to know his sons. Not until he’d come up with a way that he could be a part of their lives.

“That’s crazy.”

“Not at all,” he said tightly, his gaze boring into hers. “They’re my sons. I’ve already lost four months of their lives and I’m not going to lose any more.”

“But Nick-”

He interrupted her quickly. “I won’t be just a check to them, Jenna. And if that’s what you were hoping for, sorry to disappoint.”

She chewed at her bottom lip, folded her arms over her chest as if she were trying to hold herself together and finally said, “You can’t stay here. There’s no room. It’s a two-bedroom cottage, Nick. One for the boys, one for me and you’re not staying in my room, I guarantee that.”

His body tightened and he thought he just might be able to change her mind on that front, eventually. But for now, “I’ll bunk on the couch.”

“But-”

“Look,” Nick said. “It’s simple. I stay here, get to know my kids. Or,” he added, pulling out the big guns, “I sue you for sole custody. And which one of us do you think would win that battle? Your choice, Jenna. Which will it be?”

Her face paled, and just for a second Nick felt like a complete bastard. Then he remembered that he was fighting for the only family he had. His sons. And damned if he’d lose. Damned if he’d feel guilty for wanting to be a part of their lives however he had to manage it.

“You would do that?”

“In a heartbeat.”

“You really are a callous jerk, aren’t you?”

“I am whatever I have to be to get the job done,” Nick told her.

“Congratulations, then. You win this round.”

One of the babies began to cry, as if sensing the sudden tension in the room. Nick glanced down to see that it was Jacob, his tiny face scrunched up as fat tears ran down his little cheeks. An instant later, taking his cue from his brother, Cooper, too, let out a wail that was both heart wrenching and terrifying to Nick.

He threw a panicked look at Jenna, who only shook her head.

“You want a crash course in fatherhood, Nick?” She waved a hand at the boys, whose cries had now reached an ear-splitting range as they thrashed and kicked and waved their little arms furiously. “Here’s lesson one. You made them cry. Now you make them stop.”

“Jenna-”

Then, while he watched her dumbfounded, she scooped up the stack of freshly folded baby clothes and walked off down a short hallway to disappear into what he guessed was the boys’ bedroom, leaving him alone with his frantic sons.

“Great,” Nick muttered as he dropped to his knees in front of the twins. “This is just going great. Good job, Nick. Way to go.”

As he dropped to his knees, jiggled the bouncy seats and pleaded with the boys to be quiet, he had the distinct feeling he was being watched. But if Jenna was standing in the shadows observing his performance, he didn’t really want to know. So he concentrated on his sons and told himself that a man who could build a cruise ship line out of nothing should be able to soothe a couple of crying babies.

After all, how hard could it be?

By the end of the afternoon, Nick was on the ragged edge and Jenna was enjoying the show. He’d fed the boys, bathed them-which was entertainment enough that she wished she’d videotaped the whole thing-and now as he was trying to get them dressed. Jenna stood in the doorway to the nursery, silently watching with a delighted smile on her face.

“Come on, Cooper,” Nick pleaded. “Just let me get this shirt on and then we’ll-” He stopped, sniffed the air, then turned a horrified look on Jacob. “Did you?” He sniffed again. “You did, didn’t you? And I just put that diaper on you.”

Jenna slapped one hand over her mouth and watched Nick in a splash of sunlight slanting through the opened louvred blinds. The walls were a pale green and boasted a mural she’d painted herself while pregnant. There were trees and flowers and bunnies and puppies, painted in bright, primary colors, racing through the garden. A white dresser stood at one end of the room and an overstuffed rocking chair was tucked into a corner.

And now there was Nick.

Staring down into the crib where he’d laid both boys for convenience sake, Nick shoved both hands through his hair-something he’d been doing a lot-and muttered something she didn’t quite catch.

Still, she didn’t offer to help.

He hadn’t asked for any, and Jenna thought it was only fair that he get a real idea of what her days were like. If nothing else, it should convince him that he was so not ready to be a single parent to twin boys.

“Okay, Coop,” he said with a tired sigh, “I’ll get your shirt on in a minute. First, though, I’ve got to do something about your brother before we all asphyxiate.”

Jenna chuckled, and Nick gave her a quick look. “Enjoying this, are you?”

“Is that wrong?” she asked, still grinning.

He scowled at her, then shook his head and wrinkled his nose. “Fine, fine. Big joke. But you have to admit, I’m not doing badly.”

“I suppose,” she conceded with a nod. “But smells to me as if you’ve got a little problem facing you at the moment.”

“And I’ll handle it,” he said firmly, as though he was trying to convince himself, as well as her.

“Okay then, get to it.”

He scrubbed one hand across his face, looked down into the crib and murmured, “How can someone so cute smell so bad?”

“Yet another universal mystery,” she told him.

“Another?”

“Never mind,” Jenna said, thinking back to her conversation with Maxie when Jenna was still on the ship. Before the redhead. Before she’d left in such a hurry. Oh God. Jenna straightened up and closed her eyes. Maxie. Wait until she found out that Nick was here.

“You okay?” he asked.

Opening her eyes again, she looked at him, so out of place there in her sons’ nursery, and told herself that this was just what he’d said their night together was. Nothing more than a blip on the radar. One small step outside the ordinary world. Once he’d made his point, got to know his sons a little, he’d be gone again and everything would go back to the way it was supposed to be.

Which was good, right?

“Jenna?”

“Huh? Oh. Yeah. I’m fine. Just…thinking.”

He looked at her for a long second or two as if trying to figure out just what she’d been thinking. Thankfully, mind reading was not one of his skills.

“Right.”

“So,” Jenna said softly, “are you going to take care of Jake’s little problem or do you need a rescue?”

He didn’t look happy, but he also didn’t look like he was going to beg off.

“No, I don’t need a rescue. I said I could take care of them and I can.” He took a breath, frowned again and reached into the crib.

Jenna heard the tear of the Velcro straps on the disposable diaper, then heard Nick groan out, “Oh my God.”

Laughing, she turned around and left him to his sons.

Though it made her crazy, Jenna spent the rest of the day in her small garage, working on a gift basket that was to be delivered in two days. If Nick wanted to play at being a father, then she’d just let him see what it was like dealing with twin boys.

It felt strange to be right there at the house and still be so separate from the boys, but she had to make Nick see that he was in no way prepared to be a father. Had to make him see that taking her sons away from her would be a bad idea all the way around.

Just thinking about his threat sent cold chills up and down her spine, though. He was rich. He could afford the best lawyers in the country. He could hire nannies and bodyguards and buy whatever the court might think the boys would need.

“And where does that leave me?”

A single mom with a pitifully small bank account and an office in her garage. She’d have no chance at all if Nick really decided to fight her for their sons.

But why would he? That thought kept circling in her mind and she couldn’t shake it. Was this all to punish her? Was it nothing more than a show of force? But why would he go to such lengths?

Shaking her head, she wrapped the completed basket with shrink-wrap cellophane, plugged in her travel-size hair dryer and focused the hot air on the clear plastic wrap. As she tucked and straightened and pulled, the gift basket began to take shape, and she smiled to herself despite the frantic racing in her mind.

When she was finished, she left the basket on her worktable where, in the morning, she’d affix a huge red bow to the top before packing it up to be delivered. For now, though, she was tired, hungry and very curious to see how Nick was doing with the boys.

She slipped into the kitchen through the connecting door and stopped for an appalled moment as she let her gaze sweep the small and usually tidy room. The red walls and white cabinets were pretty much all she recognized. There was spilled powdered formula strewn across the round tabletop, discarded bottles that hadn’t been rinsed and a tower of dirty receiving blankets that Nick had apparently used to wipe up messes.

Shaking her head, she quietly walked into the living room, half-afraid of what she would find. There wasn’t a sound in the house. No TV. No crying babies. Nothing.

Frowning, she moved farther into the room, noticing more empty baby bottles, and a torn bag of diapers spilled across a tabletop next to an open and drying-out box of baby wipes. Then she rounded the sofa and stopped dead. Nick was stretched out, fast asleep on her grandmother’s rag rug and on either side of him lay a sleeping baby.

“Oh, my.” Jenna simply stood there, transfixed by the sight of Nick and their sons taking a nap together. A single lamp threw a puddle of golden light across the three of them even as the last of the sunlight came through the front window. Nick’s even breathing and the soft sighs and coos issuing from the twins were the only sounds in the room and Jenna etched this image into her mind so that years from now she could call up this mental picture and relive the moment.

There was just something so sweet, so right about the little scene. Nick and his sons. Together at last.

Her heart twisted painfully in her chest as love for all three of them swamped her. Oh, she was in so much trouble. Loving Nick was not a smart thing to do. She knew there was no future there for them. All he wanted was to be a part of her sons’ lives-that didn’t include getting close with their mother. So, what was she supposed to do? How could she love Nick when she knew that nothing good could come of it? And how could she keep her sons from him when she knew, deep down, that they would need a father as much as Nick would need them?

“Why does it have to be you who touches my heart?” she whispered, looking down at the man who’d invaded her life and changed her world.

And as she watched him, Nick’s eyes slowly opened and his steady stare locked on her. “Do I?” he asked quietly.

Caught, there was no point in trying to deny what she’d already admitted aloud. She dropped to her knees. “You know you do.”

Carefully, so as not to disturb the twins, Nick sat up, wincing a little at the stiffness in his back. But his gaze didn’t waver. He continued to meet her eyes, and Jenna wished she could read what he was thinking. What he was feeling.

But as always, Nick’s thoughts were his own, his emotions so completely controlled she didn’t have a clue what was going on behind those pale blue eyes.

“Then why’d you leave the ship so fast?” Nick asked quietly.

“You know why.” Just the memory of the naked redhead was enough to put a little steel back into her spine.

“I didn’t even know her,” he reminded her with just a touch of defensiveness in his voice.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, lowering her voice quickly when Jacob began to stir. She hadn’t meant to wake him up. Hadn’t wanted to get into any of this right now. But since it had happened anyway, there was no point in trying to avoid it. “Nick, don’t you see? The redhead was just a shining example of how different we are. She brought home to me how much out of my element I was on that ship. With you.”

He reached out, skimmed his fingertips along her cheek and pushed her hair back behind her right ear. Jenna shivered at the contact, but took a breath and steadied herself. Want wasn’t enough. A one-sided love wasn’t enough. She needed more. Deserved more.

“I don’t belong in the kind of life you lead, Nick. And neither do the boys.”

“You could, though,” he told her, his voice a hush of sound that seemed intimate, cajoling. “All three of you could. We could all live on the ship. You know there’s plenty of room. The boys would have space to play. They’d see the world. Learn about different cultures, different languages.”

Tempting, so tempting, just as he’d meant it to be. A reluctant smile curved her mouth, but she shook her head as she looked from him to the twins and back again. “They can’t have a real life living on board a ship, Nick. They need a backyard. Parks. School. Friends-” She stopped, waved both hands and added, “A dog.”

He tore his gaze from hers and looked at first one sleeping baby to the other before shifting his gaze back to hers. “We’ll hire tutors. They can play with the passengers’ kids. We could even have a dog if they want one. It could work, Jenna. We could make it work.”

Though a part of her longed to believe him, she knew, deep down, that this wasn’t about him wanting to be with her-finding a way to integrate her into his life-this was about him discovering his sons and wanting them with him.

“No, Nick,” she whispered, shaking her head sadly. “It wouldn’t be fair to them. Or us. You don’t want me, you want your sons. And I understand that. Believe me I do.”

He grabbed for her hand and smoothed the pad of his thumb across her knuckles. “It’s not just the boys, Jenna. You and I…”

“Would never work out,” she finished for him, despite the flash of heat sweeping from her hand, up her arm, to rocket around her chest like a pinball slapping against the tilt bar.

She wished it were different. Wished it were possible that he could love her as she did him. But Nick Falco simply wasn’t the kind of man to commit to any one woman. Best that she remember that and keep her heart as safe as she could.

“You don’t know that. We could try.” His eyes were so filled with light, with hunger and the promise of something delicious that made Jenna wish with everything in her that she could take the risk.

But it wasn’t only herself she had to worry about now. There were two other little hearts it was her job to protect. And she couldn’t bring herself to take a chance that might bring her sons pain a few years down the road.

But instead of saying any of that, instead of arguing the point with him, she pulled her hand free of Nick’s grasp and said softly, “Help me get the boys up to bed, okay?”

He drew up one leg and braced one arm across his knee. His gaze was locked on her, his features half in shadow, half in light. “This isn’t over, Jenna.”

As she bent over to scoop up Jacob, Jenna paused, looked into those pale blue eyes and said, “It has to be, Nick.”