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The next time I get the chance, I’m going to ask him, Holly promised herself.
The North Shore Businesswomen Club had booked a banquet room at a local hotel for tonight’s party and raffle. A station for the drawing had been set up in advance on a dais at one end of the room. On a draped table sat an elegant flower arrangement, compliments of a florist member, but the focal point of attention as the guests gathered around the dais were two crystal bowls flanking the centerpiece, one containing five small envelopes and the other containing two hundred envelopes of a comparable size.
After a speech, Ann proceeded with the raffle by first introducing the five club members who were either donating their services or that of an employee as prizes. Holly was among them. She would be donating her own skills for the Decorating Consultant for a Week prize.
Next, Ann called for a volunteer to step up and draw two envelopes, one from either bowl. A jovial bald-headed man responded. He first read out the name of the winner, a woman who was present. After the excitement had died down, he revealed her prize in his booming voice, “Nanny for a Week!”
The raffle proceeded with three more volunteers assisting. In order, lucky ticket buyers won Fashion Consultant for a Week, Personal Fitness Trainer for a Week and Girl Friday for a Week. Finally, only one prize envelope remained to be awarded to the winner of Decorating Consultant for a Week.
Holly smiled at her own reaction. Her nerves had tightened with the suspense. Who would win her?
The last volunteer, a matron in pearls who happened to be one of Holly’s wealthier clients, stepped up beside Ann. Holly had sold Gwendolyn Myers her fund-raiser ticket. Gwendolyn dipped a manicured hand into the bowl still filled with envelopes, fished around at length to prolong the drama and eventually plucked out one. Careful of her nails, she opened the envelope and showed the card inside it to Ann, who blinked and cast Holly a surprised look that said, You won’t believe this.
“Shall I read the name?” asked Gwendolyn, getting into her role as though she were an emcee on an awards program.
“Please do,” said Ann, whose expression was amused.
Somebody, read the blasted name, thought Holly, her curiosity thoroughly aroused.
Gwendolyn cleared her throat and intoned, “The final lucky winner of the evening is…Graham Knight.”
Holly’s mouth fell open.
“Is he present tonight?” Gwendolyn was inquiring.
“No, I don’t believe Graham was able to come,” Ann spoke up smoothly. She moved things along and concluded the raffle with another speech while Holly was adjusting to this unexpected development.
“Holly, will you notify Graham Knight? Or would you like for me to?”
“I’ll do it,” Holly replied without hesitation. She and Ann were on their way to their cars and had paused in the parking lot. “I won’t mind having a legitimate excuse to pay him a visit at his office. You probably guessed that from our earlier conversation when his name came up.”
“True,” Ann admitted laughingly. “What a coincidence for him to win you!”
“How well do you know Graham, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Fairly well. Our connection, of course, is Bob.” Bob was Ann’s husband, a prominent builder on the North Shore. “We’ve had Graham over to dinner at our house quite a few times over the past five years. Bob considers him an excellent architect and is always glad to land a project designed by Graham.”
“When he came to dinner, did he bring a date?” Holly was blatantly fishing for information.
“On a couple of occasions he brought a very striking woman he was obviously quite infatuated with. As a matter of fact, she had coloring very similar to yours. Golden-blond hair and blue eyes. And I believe she was an interior decorator, too. Her name has slipped my mind. We’re talking at least four years ago.”
“Hmm, I wonder if she’s still around. I haven’t run into any other decorators who look like me.”
“The relationship apparently didn’t last. Maybe she moved away. It’s my impression that Graham hasn’t been that involved with anyone since. When I quiz him, he always denies having a special woman in his life. He’s such a nice solid guy. I’ve no doubt he’s good husband material.”
“I’m not looking for a husband,” Holly volunteered frankly. “But I enjoy male company, and he’s awfully likable and cute.”
Ann lightly slapped her forehead. “A brain cell just kicked in! Heather. That was Graham’s woman friend’s name. Heather. Holly. Same first initial,” she remarked.
Holly wasn’t acquainted with anyone named Heather.
The two women bade one another good-night. On the way home Holly mulled over the background on Graham’s past love life that Ann had divulged. Maybe he was still carrying a torch for this old girlfriend Heather who bore some outward resemblance to Holly. Maybe he was reminded of Heather everytime he ran into Holly and experienced nostalgia or pain.
It would explain why he kept his distance from Holly when he plainly was drawn to her.
One way or another, Holly intended to solve the mystery. Darn, she wished tomorrow were a weekday instead of Saturday. She guessed she would have to wait until Monday to drop in on Graham at his office and make her announcement. “You lucky man, you won me!”
By then he might have heard through the grapevine. Holly liked the idea of breaking the news personally. It was rather late in the evening for someone—including her—to phone him tonight. She was probably safe. What the heck, Holly thought, I’ll call him tomorrow morning at home and ask him to meet me for coffee.
Graham’s home number was conveniently listed in the phone directory.
Holly waited until nine-thirty to call, figuring that was a decent time to bother him on a Saturday. If she waited too late, she increased her chances of not catching him at home before he went out to run errands or whatever.
He picked up on the second ring and said hello in a tone that was almost a shout. Holly could hear some kind of loud background noise. A TV playing?
“Hi, Graham. This is Holly Beaumont. I have some news I’d like to tell you in person. How about meeting me for coffee at the Breakfast Joint?”
“I wish,” he said with an emotion that seemed to be bitterness.
Were those the voices of children shrieking and wailing?
“Graham, what’s all that racket?”
“What? I can’t hear you, Holly.”
“I said what’s all that racket?” she shouted. “Can’t you turn the TV lower?”
“Hold on. I’ll have to do it manually.”
“Don’t you have a remote?”
“God knows where it is, or whether it’s still functioning. Hold on,” he said again.
About ten seconds later some of the noise subsided, but not the shrieking and wailing. That noise obviously wasn’t coming from the TV.
“Okay. That’s a little better,” he said. “Look, Holly, I’m sorry, but I’m tied up here. Justin, don’t hit your sister. Jennifer, stop kicking Justin.” His pleas, obviously not intended for her ears, held desperation.
“Whose children are those?” Holly asked, having deduced that he was addressing a couple of kids.
“Mine.” The bitterness again.
“Yours? I didn’t know you were a father.”
“Neither did I until yesterday.”
“How old are they?” Holly was as fascinated as she was astonished.
“Three and a half. They’re twins—a girl and a boy.”
“Is their mother there, too?” She hadn’t heard a woman speaking.
“No, she’s deceased. I learned that yesterday, too, from the great-aunt who delivered the children.”
“‘Delivered’ them? You mean she just brought them and left them?”
“You got it.”
“Graham, this is the most bizarre story I’ve ever heard!” Holly exclaimed.
“Tell me about it. Sorry to be abrupt, but I’d better hang up before these two hurt each other.” He said a terse goodbye and cut the connection.
“Poor guy!” she sympathized out loud. “What a predicament!” Holly sat there a few moments, flooded with sympathy and trying to imagine what it would feel like to be in his shoes. One minute a single man with only himself to worry about and the next minute a daddy with twins.
Graham had come across as desperate and downright depressed, understandably. His life had been thrown into a turmoil and he didn’t seem to be coping very well. It would be criminal of Holly to go about her business today and not play Good Samaritan, especially since she’d had quite a bit of experience dealing with children during her teenage years. Baby-sitting had been her main source of extra spending money.
I’ll go over to Graham’s place and help him out for a few hours, Holly decided.
Generosity was her main motivation, but she was also dying of curiosity to meet his offspring!
The decision made, Holly briefly considered calling Graham back and alerting him that he should expect her. Then she scratched that plan and decided simply to appear at his door. Fortunately, she’d been inquisitive enough to note his address when she was stuffing raffle ticket stubs into envelopes for the drawing.
The drive from her house in the village of Madisonville to Graham’s condo near the lake in Mandeville took Holly between fifteen and twenty minutes. At ten o’clock she was ringing his doorbell.
Graham jerked the door open in midact of shoving his free hand through dark brown hair that already was rumpled. He wore a T-shirt tucked into his unbelted jeans, and athletic shoes. Despite the dark circles under his eyes that suggested he hadn’t slept well, despite his harried expression, Holly found him as ruggedly good-looking as ever.
“Holly,” he said blankly. His gaze took in her jeans and T-shirt and athletic shoes. Holly’s body hummed pleasurably in response to his inspection, the way it always did when she was around him.
“Hi. I came to give you some moral support,” she announced cheerfully. “On the phone you sounded pretty rattled.”
“This is hell.” He rubbed his forehead roughly with his palm. “Sheer hell.”
“The TV’s been turned up loud again,” Holly observed. She could hear the soundtrack of a cartoon show blaring inside the condo.
“They insist on playing it loud enough to burst their eardrums. When I turn it down, they turn it back up again.”
“Did you try taking away the remote?”
“Yes. I tried that,” he confirmed wearily. “But they scream and yell like a couple of banshees when they don’t get their way. I’m afraid the neighbors will call the police. So I gave the remote back to them to shut them up.
“God, you should see the inside of my condo. It looks like vandals have struck. I was cleaning up the kitchen when you rang the doorbell. Cereal and milk all over the place. Broken dishes. These two kids are monsters disguised as children, Holly. Monsters.”
“Can I come in? I’ll give you a hand with the kitchen.”
He hesitated before saying, “Sure. But enter at your own risk.”
Even in a state of emergency he had his qualms about admitting her into his condo. Holly ignored her little stab of hurt for the time being. She smiled and stepped inside the foyer, commenting, “Three-and-a-half-year-olds can’t be that dangerous.”
The trained decorator in her automatically noticed and approved the décor of his condo. Mexican tile floor in the foyer gave way to oatmeal-colored carpet in the living area. Soft white walls, striking artwork, glove-soft brown leather upholstery, natural finishes on wooden furniture. Tasteful, comfortable, and masculine.
It was an adult environment. The toys strewn about the living room looked totally out of place as did the two children lying on their stomachs in front of a thirty-six-inch TV housed in a handsome built-in entertainment center. Doors in the entertainment center stood open, drawers were pulled out, videotapes and CDs had been tossed about helter-skelter.
“See what I mean about vandals?” Graham gestured helplessly. “I tried to tell them that I didn’t own any videos or CDs for kids, but they refused to listen.”
“You mind if I ask them to turn the TV down?” she asked.
“You’re wasting your breath. But go ahead.”
Holly walked over to the twins and clapped her hands together smartly to attract their attention. “Justin. Jennifer. The TV’s too loud,” she said. The children looked up at her, taking her measure. It was difficult for Holly to maintain her brisk manner as she gazed into their faces. They were both adorable, the blue-eyed, fair-haired little girl and the brown-haired, brown-eyed little Graham look-alike. “I said, ‘The TV’s too loud.’ It hurts our ears. Turn the volume down.” She mimicked using an imaginary remote control.
Justin held the real remote clutched in both hands. After long seconds of deliberation, he pressed a small finger on the appropriate button.
“Well, I’ll be d—” Graham muttered. He’d followed behind her but stopped a few yards away.
“Lower than that, please,” Holly directed Justin. She smiled at the little boy when he’d reluctantly obeyed. “Thank you. That’s much better. And much safer. Loud noise can damage our eardrums and eventually make us deaf. That’s why workmen running noisy machines wear ear protection.”
“Who are you?” demanded Jennifer, sitting up.
“I’m Holly Beaumont, a friend of your daddy’s.”
The little girl’s face clouded up and her bottom lip trembled. “He’s not our daddy. Our mommy told us we didn’t have a daddy, and I don’t like him.” Tears suddenly welled up, and Jennifer began to cry brokenheartedly. “I w-want my m-mommy to come b-back from heaven. I want to go to my h-house and stay with Mary.”
“Don’t cry, sweetie,” Holly crooned. Her own eyes wet, she sank down beside the distraught child and hugged her.
“I want Mommy to come back. And I want to go to my house,” Justin said, breaking down and sobbing just as pitifully.
Holly gathered him close, too, and murmured reassurances that seemed woefully inadequate in light of the children’s great loss. “Mommy wouldn’t want you to cry like this. She would want you to be happy children. Tell you what. Let’s dry those tears and do something really fun. Okay? How would you like for your daddy and me to take you to a playground?”
Graham had come closer. At his muffled sound of protest, Holly glanced up at him and read panic on his face. He shook his head hard and mouthed, “No way.”
“Why not?” she mouthed back.
“You haven’t ridden with them in a car,” he said in an urgent undertone. “They won’t keep their seat belts fastened. And if you let go of their hands when you’re out in public, they can be gone in a flash. In different directions.”
He obviously spoke from terrifying experience.
“There’re two of us. We can manage,” Holly said confidently.
Meanwhile the children’s sobs had quieted.
“A playground?” questioned Justin with interest, sniffling.
“With seesaws and swings?” Jennifer asked, wiping her wet little cheeks with her palms.
Holly looked pleadingly at Graham, who sighed in capitulation.
“Against all my better judgment,” he said.
Chapter Three
“We can take my minivan,” Holly offered, and Graham readily agreed once he’d determined she had child-safety locks on the back doors.
The two vehicles parked in his garage were a small extended-cab pickup and a sporty two-door car. Presumably he used the truck to drive to construction sites and the car for personal use. Holly tactfully didn’t point out that neither qualified as a family automobile.
“This is like my mommy’s minivan,” Jennifer said as she scrambled up onto the middle bench seat after Holly had cleared it of decorating paraphernalia.
Justin climbed up beside his sister, elaborating on her statement. “Mommy’s is green, too. And has wallpaper books and stuff in the back, like yours does.”
“We ride in it to Grandma’s house.”
Their use of present tense brought on another wave of sadness that they’d been visited by tragedy at such a young age, but Holly shoved the emotion aside in the interest of being upbeat for their benefit. Justin’s reference to wallpaper books in his mommy’s minivan fed her curiosity. Was their mother the interior decorator named Heather whom Ann had described last night?
The picture of cooperative children, the twins assisted Holly as she buckled their seat belts for them. Graham stood back and watched, tense and seemingly prepared for them to bolt.
“You made that look easy,” he said when she’d stepped out of the van and slid the door closed. “Yesterday it was a fifteen-minute battle getting them buckled in. And all for naught. They’d unbuckled themselves by the time I’d started the car. It took an hour to get home from my office by the time I pulled over four or five times. Finally I just gave up and drove as slowly and carefully as possible and prayed I wouldn’t meet a policeman.”
“No wonder you didn’t want to take them to the park after an ordeal like that.” Holly touched his arm in sympathy. He jerked away as though her hand had burned him.
“What is your problem with me?” she asked in exasperation.
“When are we going to the playground?” Justin called out, and Jennifer repeated his query with childish impatience.
“Right now,” Holly replied, but she didn’t budge. She was waiting for Graham to answer her.
“Sorry, I guess I’m a little on edge,” he said, not quite meeting her eyes. “We’d better go before they get restless.”
“Eventually I’d like an honest explanation,” she informed him. “Because you’ve been ‘on edge’ around me long before the twins showed up.”
He nodded soberly, not pretending to be mystified by her words. “Fair enough.”
On the ride to a park near the Mandeville city hall, the children chattered about trips to a playground in Jackson with their nanny, Mary. There was no mention of any such outings with their mother, Holly noted.
“I’ll hold Holly’s hand,” Jennifer announced, unsnapping her seat belt on arrival. She’d made a point earlier of refusing to take Graham’s hand when they were exiting his condo.
“I’ll hold my daddy’s hand,” Justin offered, as he had also done earlier.
“He’s not our daddy. And I don’t want to live at his house.”
Graham said nothing, leaving it up to Holly to assume the role of adult in charge.
“Since you both were so well behaved on the drive here, I think you can be trusted to walk on your own,” she said.
Her words gained her a horrified look from Graham. Relax. It’ll be okay, she soothed him silently, not daring to reach out and give him a reassuring pat.
He did relax his vigilance ever so slightly as they trooped toward the playground equipment, Jennifer and Justin talking excitedly and hopping and skipping along like normal preschool children.
“Will you swing me, Holly?” Jennifer asked.
“Sure.”
“My daddy can swing me,” Justin said, going along with the adult assignments.
Holly found the little boy’s readiness to accept a newfound daddy very sweet and endearing. So far he hadn’t addressed Graham as Daddy in her hearing, but she suspected it wouldn’t require much coaching for him to do so.
For the first half hour, the twins demanded close attention and constant supervising. Then half a dozen more children appeared, accompanied by parents. Jennifer and Justin began to interact with their potential playmates, Justin more so than Jennifer. Holly seized her opportunity to carry on private conversation with Graham, who continued to watch his children with hawklike intensity.
“Who is their mother?” she asked.
“A woman I dated named Heather Booth.”
“Heather Booth?” Not only did Heather and Holly share the same first initial, but the same last initial, too, since Holly’s surname was Beaumont!
Graham eyed her questioningly. “You knew her?”
“No. Ann Johnson mentioned her last night. At the fund-raiser party you didn’t attend.”
“I couldn’t get a sitter on such short notice. Plus I was too shell-shocked to go out among people and be sociable.”
“That’s understandable.” Once again Holly suppressed the urge to comfort him physically with a squeeze or a pat. It came naturally to her to be a demonstrative type of person. “You said on the phone that you didn’t know you were a father until yesterday,” she prompted.
“No, I didn’t have the first suspicion that Heather had used me for a sperm donor.” His tone was bitter. “Looking back, all the pieces fit. Now it makes sense that she broke off with me so suddenly. She’d accomplished her goal and gotten pregnant.”
“Did she move away from the North Shore?” Otherwise he might have kept tabs on her and known she’d become a mother.
He nodded. “She moved back to Jackson, Mississippi, where she was from. According to her aunt, Heather had given herself a six-month leave from her highly successful interior decorating business. Heather had lied and told me she was from north Louisiana.”
“She didn’t want you to be able to look her up.”
“You got it,” he said flatly.
“I wonder how she happened to pick the North Shore as the place to…” Holly’s voice drifted off.
“The place to find just the right dumb male? I asked Lena Booth about that. She said Heather made trips to New Orleans for business and pleasure and was familiar with the population makeup of the North Shore.”
Holly elaborated for herself, “Lots of well-educated young professionals, making up a good gene pool. Upscale, friendly environment. Where did you meet her?”
“At my health club. She introduced herself to me.”
“Perfect.” It was easy to understand how a woman would notice him working out in gym shorts and a T-shirt.
“Yeah, perfect.”
“Don’t misunderstand me,” Holly hastened to say. “I don’t at all approve of what Heather did. I think it was horribly immoral.” She remembered Ann’s words. On a couple of occasions he brought a very striking woman he was obviously quite infatuated with. “You must have liked her a lot if the two of you became that intimate.”
“I more than ‘liked’ her. I asked her to marry me.”
“Oh, no. You poor guy.” They were standing side by side. Before she could stop herself, Holly impulsively slipped her arm around his waist to give him a consoling hug. He stiffened. “There you go again!” she exclaimed, stung by his reaction. “For heaven’s sake, I was just showing sympathy, not trying to come on to you!”
“I don’t deserve sympathy for being stupid. If I’d had any sense, I’d have taken precautions instead of trusting Heather when she pretended to be on birth-control pills.”
Holly wasn’t about to be sidetracked. She was ready for an explanation of his behavior toward her. “Do I remind you of Heather? Has that been the problem all along?” She ticked off points on her fingers. “Same initials. Both of us interior decorators. Maybe some similarity in looks, too?”
Graham sighed, running his right palm roughly down the back of his neck. “I did a double take the first time I saw you from a distance. For one crazy second I thought you were Heather.” His gaze took in her hair and face and wandered lower, arousing the pleasurable tingles of awareness. “But it’s not just the hair color and eyes and…figure. You’re so much like her in other ways.”
“Could you be more specific?” Holly wasn’t flattered, not after the insight into Heather’s character she’d just gotten.
“No offense, but you’re not exactly shy, and neither was she. The day we met, you asked me out on a date.”
“I liked you. I sensed that the attraction was mutual. You didn’t make the first move.” Holly shrugged. Intuition suddenly struck her. “Heather asked you out on a date when you met her, I’ll bet. And you accepted.”
“Fool that I was, I found her boldness a refreshing change.” His bitterness had resurfaced with recollection.
“Take my word for it. I would never sleep with a guy to get pregnant, and keep him ignorant of the fact. If I ever decide to be a single mother, I’ll go the sperm bank route.”