She was as pretty as he’d seen in her photo in Parenting Now. Actually, she was more than pretty. Definitely not something he wanted to be so aware of, he reminded himself. He wasn’t in the market for a new relationship any time soon, and certainly not with this woman. Even if he liked the way she smelled.
He needed to move farther away from the memories of his marriage first.
His heart sank as he considered the possibility of emotional scenes, energy-sapping manipulation, hidden motives and downright dishonesty. In a situation like this, those things might easily happen if he didn’t play everything right. He’d had more than enough of all that with Stacey, and though he’d grieved for her in a complicated, upside-down kind of way, he couldn’t help doubting that they would have stayed the distance, had she lived. By the end, she’d lied to him a few times too often.
“Do you want to come out back, where they can play?”
Ms. McGraw’s question dragged his focus back to where it ought to have been all along. Scarlett was toddling around the living room, eager to explore. Colleen watched her from the safety of her mother’s arms.
“I expect Scarlett would like that,” he said.
“We can sit on the deck and have some coffee while we watch them.” She clasped her hands briefly, then brushed a stray silk ribbon of hair away from her face. “I—this is such a weird situation. I’m sorry, I don’t know where to begin or what to suggest.”
“Coffee sounds good,” he answered gruffly.
Coffee was the tip of the iceberg. It was the next twenty years that occupied both their minds.
“If you want to wash up first…?” she offered, her politeness apparently ingrained and automatic. Once again, her voice was sweet and clear.
“Yeah. Thanks.”
She indicated a little powder room tucked away beneath the stairs, and he barged into it, needing a few moments alone, and hoping that cool water streaming over his hands would cool his whole body down.
The exercise wasn’t a success. For a start, Scarlett got clingy and stood outside the door, crying persistently. He heard that sweet female voice again, inviting her to go out back and try the slide, but Scarlett wasn’t having any of that. No instant, instinctive bonding for her, thank you very much. She was too young to recognize the mirrorlike familiarity of that other little girl, and eighteen months was a clingy age. Brady wanted to hurry back out to her, which made him even clumsier than he’d already felt.
Ms. McGraw had maddening soaps—tiny pastel-toned seashell shapes, nestling in a glass dish. His big hands knocked several of them out onto the pristine vanity unit, and when he’d finally grabbed one, his wet palms sent it spurting out of his fingers. It ricocheted off the door, hit the bud vase on the windowsill and knocked it over. An apricot-hued rose fell to the floor.
Brady had never liked fussy decor, and now he knew why. If Ms. McGraw had heard the soap hitting the door and the vase hitting the sill, she probably wondered what on earth he was doing in here.
And Scarlett was still crying. Louder than ever. He could hear her little hands, batting at the door.
At least nothing was broken. He pressed his hands together, across his nose and mouth, and blew a long breath through his fingers, then studied his image in the mirror. He wasn’t happy about what he saw.
For a start, he should have shaved again at the motel. He looked like a thug. His jaw had felt as rough as a metal rasp just now beneath his tension-knotted hands.
And he was too casually dressed. He should have worn a buttoned-down shirt and a jacket. Like this, with his gut still churning, he felt that he didn’t project enough authority or enough intellect. He might need both those qualities, if he and this woman disagreed, at a fundamental level, about what they needed to do.
In the brains department, he wasn’t a pushover. He had a college degree, and the construction company he owned was tendering for bigger and more important jobs every year and getting them. He’d never doubted himself in that area. But he wasn’t great with words, and emotional scenes tied his tongue in knots.
There were some emotional scenes coming up. There had to be! They had the futures of two little girls weighing in the balance, and they lived in cities that were more than seven hundred miles apart.
What if Lisa-Belle McGraw expected him to make all the sacrifices? What if she had a plan for getting what she wanted, and he didn’t see it coming until it was too late?
Scarlett wailed louder, and he told her, “I’m still here, baby. I’ll be out in two seconds.”
He bent to pick up the fallen rose, stuck it roughly back in the vase and filled the little glass tube with fresh water. It overflowed and saturated his hands, as well as an inch of one sleeve. With Scarlett still crying outside, he left without taking time to use the towel, and had to dry his hands on the back of his pants before scooping his little girl into his arms once more.
Passing through the spotless kitchen and onto the wooden rear deck, he found his daughter’s twin sister’s mother already there with two porcelain mugs of coffee on a tray, some milk in sippy cups for the girls, and a plate of dainty cookies arranged on a paper lace doily.
Their cue for some polite, meaningless conversation?
Not on Ms. McGraw’s agenda, apparently. He was surprised at the determined look which had appeared on her pretty face, but it gave him a brief warning of her intentions and left him a little better prepared. Almost relieved, too. Whatever she wanted, he would much prefer it if she went after it openly and honestly, if she said what was on her mind so that they both knew where they stood.
“I don’t want to pursue this through official channels,” she said. Her voice started out wobbly and ended up firm.
“Pursue what?” he asked, betraying his impatience, and his ill ease. “The question of whether the girls are twins? Isn’t it obvious, after one glance, that they are? The blood tests are only going to confirm it.”
“Yes, it’s—” she took a deep breath, and tried to smile “—uncannily obvious.” The smile wobbled and fell off her face, like a loose wheel falling off a toy cart. “I never imagined that they could look so much alike, even when I considered that you might be right. When I first saw your daughter, I wanted to snatch her right out of your arms.” Her voice dropped to a husky whisper.
“I know the feeling,” he drawled.
She pulled herself together, and her voice firmed. “No, I just meant that I don’t want to tell anyone about it. Not Immigration or the adoption people.”
“I don’t think it would invalidate the adoptions, Ms. McGraw. I can’t see how it could.”
“Please, call me Libby.”
“Okay. Libby.” He tried it out on his tongue, but couldn’t decide if he liked it. On the one hand, it was a snappy little nickname, and an inventive way to contract the more formal Lisa-Belle. On the other, it was a little too cute. He wasn’t big on cute.
“I guess I’m just not prepared to take any kind of a chance on the adoptions,” she said. The fall air was crisp and cool, and she shivered a little as she spoke. On the grass in her yard, there was already a carpet of fallen yellow leaves. “If there was ever any risk that I might lose Colleen…”
“No one’s talking about either of us losing our daughters.” The very thought opened a pit of fear in his gut. “The adoptions were both done in full accordance with the…you know, you must have read the information about it…the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption,” he reminded her. “You know how strict Vietnam is on that issue, and the United States, too. Stacey and I wouldn’t have gotten involved with the idea if there’d been anything dodgy about it.”
“Me, neither.” She paused, then added gently, “I’m sorry,