He was in faded denim with an even more faded Orioles T-shirt stretched across his broad chest. Definitely a man’s man, she decided, and felt a flutter of something low in her belly. He lifted an arm in casual greeting and flashed a quick smile that actually made Georgia’s heart skip a beat before it began hammering against her ribs.
She raised her hand in response, waving her mail at him, then felt the flood of heat in her cheeks as she realized what she’d done. She wasn’t sure if it was sexual deprivation or sleep deprivation that was responsible for her distraction, but thankfully, he was too far away to note either her instinctive physical response or her embarrassment. But wow—the man obviously had some potent sex appeal if he could affect her from such a distance.
An appeal that, she knew now, was further magnified up close.
“This is Luke—and Jack,” Matt told her, gesturing to the two other men on his porch in turn. “My brothers.”
The former was even taller than her six-foot-tall neighbor, with the same brown hair but blue-green eyes; the latter was of similar height but with broader shoulders and slightly darker hair. All three were sinfully handsome.
“I’m Georgia,” she finally said, her heart rate mostly back to normal now that the twins were in her line of sight again. “And these pint-sized Houdinis are Quinn and Shane.”
“What’s a Houdini?” Quinn tore his attention away from the blanket-lined laundry basket for the first time since she’d stepped onto her neighbor’s porch.
“A little boy who is in very serious trouble for leaving the house without his mommy,” she admonished.
Her son’s gaze dropped to his feet, a telltale sign of guilt. “We just wanted to see the puppies.”
“Puppies,” Shane echoed, and looked up at her with the heartbreakingly sweet smile that never failed to remind her of his father.
She took a few steps closer, as inexorably drawn to the basket as her children had been. But still, she had to make sure they understood that leaving the house for any reason wasn’t acceptable.
“If you wanted to see the puppies, you should have told Mommy that you wanted to see the puppies,” she said.
“But you told us not to bug you ‘cuz you had work to do,” Quinn reminded her.
And it was exactly what she’d said when she set them up with their blocks.
“I also told you to never go anywhere—even outside into the backyard—without telling me first.”
But how could she blame them for being drawn away when even her heart had sighed at the first glimpse of those white, brown and black bodies wriggling around in the basket?
She looked at her neighbor again. “You have four puppies?”
“No.” Matt shook his head emphatically. “I don’t have any puppies—they’re all Luke’s.”
“Only until I can find good homes for them,” his brother said.
“How did you end up with them?” she wondered.
“I’m a vet,” he told her. “And when someone finds an abandoned animal on the side of the road, it usually ends up at my clinic. In this case, the abandoned animal was a very pregnant beagle that, two days later, gave birth to eight puppies.”
“Eight?” She cringed at the thought. As if carrying and birthing twins hadn’t been difficult enough.
“My receptionist is taking care of the other four.”
“They look kind of young to be away from their mother,” she noted.
“They are,” he agreed.
It was all he said, but it was enough for her to understand that the mother hadn’t survived the delivery—and to be grateful that his response in front of the twins wasn’t any more explicit than that.
“Nice puppy,” Shane said, gently patting the top of a tiny head.
“Can we keep one?” Quinn, always the more talkative and articulate twin, asked her.
She shook her head. As much as she hated to refuse her kids anything, she’d learned that there were times she had to say no. This was definitely one of those times. “I’m sorry, boys. A puppy is too much responsibility for us to take on right now.”
But she didn’t object when Matt lifted one of them out of the box and handed it to her. And she couldn’t resist bringing it closer to nuzzle the soft, warm body. And when the little pink tongue swiped her chin, her heart absolutely melted.
“He likes you, Mom,” Quinn told her.
“She,” Matt corrected. “That one’s a girl.”
Her son wrinkled his nose. “We don’t want a girl puppy.”
“We don’t want any puppy,” Georgia said again, trying to sound firm.
“We do want a puppy,” Shane insisted.
“‘Cept Dr. Luke says they can’t go anywhere for two more weeks,” Quinn informed her. “‘Cuz they’re too little to eat and hafta be fed by a bottle.”
Shane pouted for another minute, but the mention of eating prompted him to announce, “I’m hungry.”
“So why don’t we go home and I’ll make some little pizzas for lunch?” she suggested.
“With pepperonis?”
“With lots of pepperoni,” she promised.
But Quinn shook his head. “We don’t wanna go home. We wanna stay with the daddies.”
Georgia felt her cheeks burning as her gaze shifted from one man to the next.
Matt’s smile slipped, just a little; Luke kept his attention firmly focused on the animals; and Jack actually took a step backward.
“They’re at that age,” she felt compelled to explain, “where they think every adult male is a daddy. Especially since they lost their own father.”
“He’s not lost, he’s dead,” Quinn said matter-of-factly.
The announcement made Shane’s eyes fill with tears and his lower lip quiver. “I miss Daddy.”
Georgia slipped her arm around his shoulders.
Matt’s brows lifted. “You’re a widow?”
She nodded, because her throat had tightened and she wanted to ensure she was in control of her emotions before she spoke. “My husband passed away eleven months ago.” And although she’d accepted that Phillip was gone, she still missed him, and there were times—too many times—when she felt completely overwhelmed by the responsibilities of being a single parent. “That’s one of the reasons I moved in here with my mom.”
“Charlotte’s your mother?”
“You know her?”
“I met her the first time I came to look at the house,” he said. “But I haven’t seen her since I moved in.”
“She’s on her annual trip to Vegas with some friends,” Georgia told him.
“Leaving you on your own with two young boys,” he remarked sympathetically.
“And a baby,” she said, just as a soft coo sounded through the baby monitor she’d clipped on her belt.
“Pippa’s waking up.” Quinn jumped up, his desire to stay with the “daddies” not nearly as strong as his affection for his baby sister.
“Pippa,” Shane echoed.
Matt looked at Georgia, seeking clarification. “You have three kids?”
She