Once in her SUV again, she twisted on the key and the engine refused to fire. “Come on, come on,” she muttered. She tried again, pumping the gas frantically and mentally chiding herself for not taking the rig into the shop for its regular maintenance. “You can do it,” she encouraged and finally, on the fourth attempt, the engine caught. “Tomorrow,” she promised, patting the dash as if comforting the vehicle, as if that would help. “I’ll take you in. Promise.”
On the road again, Nicole drove through the side streets to her little cottage on the outskirts of town. Her stomach rumbled as the tangy scents of melting cheese and spicy sauce filled the rig’s interior and her mind, damn it, ran back to Thorne and the feel of his lips on hers. He was everything she despised in a man: arrogant, competitive, in control and determined—a real corporate Type A and the kind of man she had learned to avoid like the plague. But beneath his layer of pride and his take-charge mentality, she’d caught glimpses of a more complex man, a gentler soul who stumbled through the awkwardness of talking to his comatose sister. He’d tried to communicate with Randi, the back of his neck flushing in embarrassment, his steely gray eyes conveying a sense of raw pain at his sister’s condition—as if he somehow blamed himself for her accident.
“Don’t read more into it than there is,” she warned herself as she cranked the wheel and braked in her driveway. She pulled to a stop in front of her garage and made a mental note that between helping at preschool, the twins’ dance lessons, the housework and the grocery shopping, she should call a roofer for a bid on the sagging roof.
Juggling her briefcase and boxed pizza, she made a mad dash to the back porch and was able to unlock the door, then shove it open with her hip.
Patches, her black-and-white cat, streaked through the opening and Nicole nearly tripped on the speeding feline. Tiny footsteps thundered through the house. “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!” the twins cried, flying pell-mell into the kitchen and sliding on the yellowed linoleum as Patches slunk down the bedroom hallway. Molly and Mindy were dressed in identical pink-and-white-checked sleepers that zipped up the front and covered their feet in attached slippers. Their hair was wet and curled in dark-brown ringlets around cherubic faces and bright brown eyes.
Nicole slid the pizza onto a counter, knelt and opened her arms wide. The four-year-old imps nearly bowled her over. “Miss me?” she asked.
“Yeth,” Mindy said shyly, nodding her head and smiling.
“You got pizza?” Molly demanded. “I’m hungry.”
“I sure do. Lots of it.” She dropped kisses on each wet head, then standing once again, she stripped out of her coat and hung it in a tiny closet near the eating alcove.
Jenny Riley appeared in the archway separating the kitchen from the dining room. Tall and willowy, with long straight black hair and a nose ring, the twenty-year-old had been the twins’ nanny since Nicole had moved to Grand Hope.
“How were they today?” Nicole asked.
“Miserable as usual,” Jenny said, her green eyes twinkling, sarcasm lacing her words.
“Were not!” Molly said, planting her little fists on her hips. “We was good.”
“Were,” Nicole corrected. “You were good.”
“Yeth,” Mindy said, nodding agreement with her precocious sister. “Real good.”
Jenny laughed and bent down to retie the laces of her elevated tennis shoes, “Oh, okay, I lied,” she admitted. “You were good. Both of you. Very good.”
“It’s not nice to lie!” Molly said with a toss of her wet curls.
“I know, I know, it won’t happen again,” Jenny promised, straightening and slinging the strap of her fringed leather purse over her shoulder.
“Want a piece of pizza?” Nicole offered. Using her fingers and a spatula she’d grabbed from a hook over the stove, she slid piping hot slices onto paper plates. The girls scrambled onto the booster seats. Nicole licked a piece of melted cheese from her fingers and looked questioningly at Jenny.
“No thanks, Mom’s got dinner waiting and—” Jenny winked broadly “—I’ve got a hot date after.”
“Oooh,” Nicole said, licking gooey cheese from her fingers. “Anyone I know?”
“Nope. Not unless you’re into twenty-two-year-old cowboys.”
“Only in the ER. I have been known to treat them upon occasion.”
“Not this one,” Jenny said with a wide grin and slight blush.
“Tell me more.”
“His name is Adam. He’s a hired hand at the McCafferty spread. And…I’ll fill you in more later.”
Nicole’s good mood vanished at the mention of the McCaffertys. Today, it seemed, she couldn’t avoid them for a minute.
“Gotta run,” Jenny said as Molly reached across the table to peel off pieces of pepperoni from her sister’s slice of pizza.
Mindy sent up a wail guaranteed to wake the dead in every cemetery in the county. “No!” she cried. “Mommeee!”
Grinning, Molly dangled all the pilfered slices of pepperoni over her open mouth before dropping them onto her tongue. Gleefully she chewed them in front of her sister.
“I’m outta here,” Jenny said and slipped through the door as Nicole tried to right the wrong and Patches, appearing from the hallway, had the nerve to hop onto the counter near the microwave.
“You, down!” Nicole said, clapping her hands loudly. The cat leaped to the floor and darted in a black-and-white streak into the living room. “Everyone seems to have an attitude today.” She turned her attention back to the twins and pointed at Molly. “Don’t touch your sister’s food.”
“She’s not eating it,” Molly argued while chewing.
“Am, too!” Big tears rolled down Mindy’s face.
“But it’s hers and—”
“And we’re s’posed to share. You said so.”
“Not your food…well, not now. You know better. Now, come on, there’s no real harm done here.” Nicole picked off pepperoni slices from another piece of pizza and placed them on the half-eaten wedge that sat on Mindy’s plate. “Good as new.”
But the damage was done. Mindy wouldn’t stop sobbing and pointing a condemning finger at her twin. “You, bad!”
Molly shook her head. “Am not.”
Nicole shot her outspoken daughter a look meant to silence her, then picked Mindy up and, consoling her while walking toward the hallway, whispered into her ear, “Come on, big girl, let’s brush your teeth and get you into bed.”
“Don’t wanna—” Mindy complained and Molly cackled loudly before realizing she was alone. Quickly she slid out of her chair and little feet pounding, ran after Nicole and Mindy. In the bathroom, the dispute was forgotten, tears were wiped away and two sets of teeth were brushed. As the pizza cooled, mozzarella cheese congealing, Nicole and the girls spent the next twenty minutes cuddled beneath a quilt in her grandmother’s old rocker. She read them two stories they’d heard a dozen times before. Mindy’s eyes immediately shut while Molly, ever the fighter, struggled to stay awake only to drop off a few minutes later.
For the first time that day, Nicole felt at peace. She eyed the fire that Jenny had built earlier. Dying embers and glowing coals in deep ashes were all that remained to light the little living room in shades of gold and red. Humming, she rocked until she, too, nearly dozed off.
Struggling