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“Did I?” Taylor said shakily. She looked from Ally to Spence to Rose. “Thanks for being here. It was just like having a real family—” She stopped as her lips trembled.
Rose patted her arm. “We are a real family, and you’re a special part of it. Thank you for this wonderful gift.”
“You’ll want pictures before I take them to the warmers,” the baby nurse said. She handed one infant to Ally. The other she plopped in Spence’s arms. “Here, Daddy.”
Ally couldn’t help but laugh as Spence reacted in typical surprised-bachelor horror. The child could have been a bomb ready to detonate instead of his nephew.
“I’m not the father,” he hastily corrected. He carefully held the baby out in both hands. The nurse ignored his desperate expression.
“He’s the uncle,” Ally explained.
Rose grabbed a camera from her purse. “Hold Nicholas in the crook of your arm, Spence, the way Ally has Hannah.”
Ally grinned when he looked worried and gingerly held the baby as directed. Rose snapped pictures like mad.
“Now Taylor with the babies,” Ally requested. “Spence, put your hand over Taylor’s on that side.” She did the same and leaned close. “Lean down, Spence. And smile. This is a happy event.”
After they had taken every possible combination of photo for the babies’ album, the kind nurse whisked the little ones off to the warmer. Taylor yawned.
Ally was aware that Spence had played his part gallantly…after he got over the shock of being in on the birthing. She felt an enormous sense of pride about the whole event and everyone’s part in it.
However, she was a tad embarrassed about the emotional kiss she’d plastered on him when he had caressed her in that gentle way. Poor bachelor uncle. This would be a day he wouldn’t soon forget. Rose had some explaining to do to her handsome, and single, son.
Spence remained in the waiting room while the babies were bathed and put in a warmer—he imagined something like a chicken incubator with dozens of babies tucked into their little individual pockets. Ally had gone with the baby nurse to help with the twins while his mom stayed with Taylor.
In the nearby nurses’ station, he heard two student nurses discussing someone. Rachel—another nurse, he surmised—was pregnant and due to deliver soon. They speculated on possible candidates for the father and mentioned Dr. Reid.
Spence was surprised. Dennis Reid was chief of staff at the clinic and sometimes a pain in the neck for Rose in her role as administrator. The man was nearly fifty, a tad old to be getting a woman pregnant out of wedlock.
He wondered if there was a paternity case in the offing, and knew he wasn’t going to handle it if there was. His specialty was ranching cases, not personal problems. He and Johnny were contract attorneys.
He sipped the bitter coffee from the machine. Ugh. It was hard to take on an empty stomach. As if by way of a gentle reminder, his stomach growled.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said.
Ally bustled into the room. “Hi. Talking to yourself? Better watch it. That’s the second sign of senility.”
“What’s the first?” he asked, falling into her teasing mood, even as it made him remember days gone by.
“I forget,” she said, then burst into laughter.
Listening to her husky voice with its intriguing little breaks, he laughed, too. She had always had the ability to make him feel better. When she was in an exuberant mood, as she was now, she was prone to laugh and tease unmercifully.
But she had also listened to his problems and shared her feelings with him…in those long ago days when they were friends.
“Coffee?” he asked, tearing himself away from the memories with an effort.
“Not on an empty stomach. Rose and I did a study, and that stuff can eat through stainless steel in three days, gospel truth.” She held up a hand in a pledge of honor.
He tossed the cup into the trash bin. “How about dinner? I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
“That would be great. Taylor and the babies are all asleep, so it would be a good time to go. I’ll get Rose.”
He nodded, but she was already gone, a whirlwind of energy, shedding radiance on all who came into her orbit.
His heart pounded suddenly. The birthing had caused some strange twists in him that afternoon. He hadn’t realized it would be so emotional and affecting.
Right now, after the excitement of all that…okay, after the kiss that had seared him right down to the soles of his feet…well, he kept thinking of other things, things he hadn’t let himself think of in years.
Ally stuck her head in the door. The hall light turned her blond hair into a golden halo around her slender, oval face. She had “big” hair. Shoulder-length, it always looked tousled. Her cheeks were always pink. As if she’d just come in from some fun exercise in the outdoors. Or climbed out of bed. His body stirred hungrily.
For a second, he considered what it would be like to share the excitement of bringing a new life into the world with a beloved mate. And the excitement of creating that new life. Heat pounded through him. There in the birthing room, as he held the two babies, an image had flashed through his mind—of him and a woman and their children….
“Ready?” she asked.
“Yes.” His voice was husky, sexy. He cleared his throat. “Yes,” he said again, more firmly this time.
Yeah, it was good that his mom would be with them.
He followed Ally along the corridor. He heard groans and pants emanating from a couple of rooms as they passed. The sounds took on a whole new meaning for him now that he knew exactly what they were. He still couldn’t believe his mother had deliberately set him up for the birthing scene. He intended to ask her about that.
“Rose? We’re ready,” Ally called softly to his mom, who was still in the room with Taylor. When Rose joined them, Ally whispered, “Let’s go by the nursery.”
Spence patiently accepted the women’s eagerness to peek at the twins once more before they left. At the nursery window, he saw the babies tucked into little plastic buckets on wheels, a bright light shining down on each one. Both kids wore a tiny stocking cap on their heads and slept peacefully in spite of the lamp.
“Ohhh,” Ally croaked, her voice breaking. “They are so beautiful.”
A hand closed around his arm. Ally leaned against him and looked up, her eyes glowing like a laser beamed through sapphires.
“Aren’t they just darling?” she crooned.
Spence squinted and tried to see what made them more beautiful than the other two babies, also under lights, in the nursery. “Well, uh, they are pretty cute.”
“Hannah looks like Taylor, I think,” she continued, pressing her nose to the glass. “Nicholas probably takes more after his father. What do you think?”
Spence thought women could see a lot more than men could when it came to these things. To him, they looked like…well…they looked like babies.
His mother gave a soft, feminine snort of laughter. “Don’t make him perjure himself, Ally.” She patted her son’s other arm. “Don’t worry. They’ll grow on you. Let’s go eat. I’m starved. How about the diner?”
They went across the street to Mom and Pop’s diner. He’d grown used to seeing medical staff, still wearing their white jackets, in there, or men in suits and women in fancy dresses with stethoscopes around their necks. The diner was a hangout for all the workers from the baby clinic, hospital and professional office building across the street. The food was about ten times better than anything they could get in the medical complex.
Ally sighed as she slid into a booth. Rose sat opposite her, taking up the middle of the banquette. After a second’s hesitation, Spence took the place beside his sister-in-law.
His warmth slid up her arm and down into her belly. She licked her lips. They tingled as if electricity was running lightly over them. The way it had during that impulsive kiss. She wished she hadn’t done that.
She noticed Spence carefully avoided touching her. A pang of irritation shot through her as the euphoria of the births gave way to weariness. They ordered and were silent until tall frosty glasses of raspberry tea were served.
“I’m dog-tired,” she stated.
“You’ve been working too hard,” Rose admonished. “You need to watch it now that you have two babies to care for. You’ll have to learn to pace yourself. Start with a good night’s sleep. It will probably be your last for the next few weeks. Or years.”
Ally laughed with her mom-in-law. “I’ve caught up on all my casework, including all the reports required by the city, county, state and federal agencies. Sometimes it seems I hardly have time for patients because of the forms I have to fill out.”
As a child psychologist who scheduled in as much pro bono work as she could, Ally had to admit she had a tendency to overextend herself at times.
“But now I have a whole two weeks off,” she continued. “After that, I’ll be working half-time until the twins are three months old and can go to the Family Care Center.”
She was aware that Spence had turned partially in the seat so that he could watch her as she talked. She suddenly felt self-conscious at his perusal. It was so odd to be…oh, nervous or something, around him, when they had once been best friends. She turned back to Rose.
“Did I tell you Taylor is going to come over to my office and help with the twins as much as she can? I’m going to insist that she let me pay her.”
“I’m not sure you should encourage that,” Spence spoke up, his brow furrowed into a thoughtful frown. “The courts have been very protective about returning adopted children to their birth parents the past few years.”
“Taylor and I have talked about it. I want her to have a place in the children’s lives. I think it’s important. The situations that work best result in the birth parent becoming a big sister to the kids and the adoptive parent being the mother.”
“If things work out according to plan,” Spence added with a cynical inflection. “What about the father?”
She glanced at Spence. His dark brown eyes with their tiny golden flecks delved into hers. “The father…the sperm donor,” she corrected, “has no place in this. He opted out when he listened to his folks and abandoned Taylor. They said she was a gold digger and had gotten pregnant to trap him into marriage. They tried to buy her off.”
“Did they succeed?”
“No, she refused their money. She was working here in the diner and overheard Rose and me talking about adoption. When I came in alone, she approached me about taking her baby. It was hard for her.”
Ally and Taylor had both shed tears when the nineteen-year-old had explained her plight. A lot of young women in her situation would have taken the money, had an abortion and gotten on with their lives. Ally could understand the stubborn pride that had caused Taylor to refuse the money.
Ally’s folks had been middle class, but they had died when she was eleven. She had gone from being a cherished only child to an undesired duty in her aunt’s life. The woman hadn’t wanted to deal with the needs of a youngster or spend any money on her, either. Ally had delivered papers and worked odd jobs to earn her own spending money. Oh, yes, she understood pride very well.
Like Taylor, she had also worked her way through school, taking the courses that led to an R.N. and college degree and finishing in three years. After that, she had gone to night school while working full-time as a nurse at the hospital. With her Ph.D. in psychology, she had opened her own practice.
And she had married Jack McBride, Rose’s oldest son, brother to Spence, who had been her best friend during the lonely years of living with her aunt down the road from the friendly McBride family. Sometimes she wondered if she had married Jack because she had wanted Rose for a mother.
Or maybe because of the loneliness.
Spence had made it clear they could never be anything but friends. Her college years had been divided between work and study. Lonely years. Until Jack had started to show interest in her.
Actually, he’d swept her off her feet, an action that was totally out of character for him, as she had learned during their years of marriage.
She sighed, thinking of that young girl who had wanted…had truly expected…the moon and stars and all the magic life had to offer. She wondered what had happened to that girl, then realized she knew the answer.
She’d had to grow up.
For the rest of the evening nostalgia gripped her in a vague cloud of yearning and regret. After saying goodnight to Rose and Spence, she returned to the hospital for one more peek at the twins and to chat with Taylor before visiting hours ended. Driving home, she tried to throw off the haunting emotion, but it was no use. As she turned out the light and settled into the queen-size bed, she realized she felt sorry for the girl she had once been—the one who had dared to dream.
And the birth of the twins had stirred those dreams once again.
Chapter Two
Ally threw the sheet off and sprang up as if someone had dumped a load of hot coals on the bed. She had so much to do! If everything had gone well during the night, she could bring the twins home this afternoon. She would have them to herself at last.
The qualms that coursed through her were natural. All new moms felt unsure and apprehensive about the responsibility of caring for babies. Rose would help if she needed her. She only had to call.
The sadness descended unexpectedly. In her heart, she realized, she still wanted all the things she’d once dreamed of—a husband who would share life with her, who would be there for her as she would be there for him, who would be a loving father to their children. That dream wasn’t to be.
But the one about having her own family was about to come true in a big way. Twins were double trouble! Laughing, she jumped out of bed.
She dashed through her morning chores, then, taking her coffee with her, strolled through the house. She and Jack had bought the two-bedroom cottage from her aunt for the acreage that went with it.
They had planned to remodel the house before having kids. They’d wanted to put in a garden and fence off a section for a pony. Somehow the years had slipped by without their doing any of it. As Spence had mentioned, plans didn’t always work out.
When she and Jack had married, she’d thought she would never be lonely again. At first, she hadn’t, but somehow things had changed. Jack had become increasingly jealous of her work and her involvement with her patients after she finished her studies and set up the office.
And of his younger brother whenever Spence joined the family for holiday meals and such.
She’d had to be very careful not to mention the past adventures she and Spence had shared. She had made sure she was never alone with Spence at the family gatherings and had been careful not to tease or even talk to him very much.
Later, when she didn’t conceive, Jack had become angry, as if she’d withheld a child on purpose. Their marriage had fallen upon rocky times. He had started working later and later. Last year, she’d even wondered if there was another woman. Then he had died, working alone one night, trying to finish a job by moving lumber with an old forklift.
Something had gone wrong and the stack of lumber had cascaded down on him. The doctor said he hadn’t suffered. A blow to the head had killed him at once.
Small comfort in that.
She had thought, with the coming of the babies, they would have a focus in their marriage. As a psychologist, she knew how foolish it was to hope children would solve a troubled marriage, but they’d had no real problems, no crises of faith or broken vows.
Just a slow drifting apart…
Sadness trailed after her as she went into the guest bedroom. She had used it as a home office, but it would have to be the nursery until the addition on the house was completed.
Twin bassinets stood next to the wall. One was trimmed in blue, the other in yellow. They had known one baby was a boy, but hadn’t been able to tell for sure about Hannah from the sonograms.
After checking the supplies of diapers, nightshirts, day outfits and bottles, which she’d done a hundred times already, she went to the door at the end of the hallway.
Two bedrooms and a bath were being added for the twins so each could have a room. The carpenter hadn’t proceeded as quickly as she would have liked. The inside work remained to be done, although the outside was finished.
Baseboards were stacked in one room, paint cans in the other. She and Rose had made curtains, which still needed to be hemmed after the rods were put up. None of that could be done until the walls and trim were finished.
She returned to the kitchen. Where was the carpenter she had hired? He was supposed to be there at seven. He liked to start early, what with the heat of summer and all, he’d told her. So where was he?
She sat at the table and debated calling his home. He got peeved if she pestered him or asked too many questions.
Men and their fragile egos.
She called the hospital and found out Taylor and the twins were doing fine. Taylor reported she was leaving the hospital with a friend soon and thanked Ally again for being with her.
After hanging up, Ally sat and stared out the window at the orchard that separated the cottage from the McBride house where Rose lived.
Spence had a neat apartment in a new building about a mile from them. She’d been there once when Rose had thrown a welcome-back dinner for him at the place.
A sigh worked its way out of her. She felt melancholy today for some reason. As if she was suffering from the postpartum depression new mothers often got.
Her thoughts drifted. She mused on her nine years of marriage and on being a widow for almost eight months. At thirty-two, she felt no wiser than she had at twenty-two, when she’d married Jack.
Or at eighteen when she’d thought friendship would grow into love. She smiled and felt her lips tremble.
Memories. Sometimes they could weave a cloud around the heart and make a person ache for what might have been. How young she’d been at eighteen on the night of their high-school graduation….
Spence, the most popular guy in class, had broken up with a cheerleader, who was the most popular girl. The cheerleader had gone to the graduation dance with the star quarterback to get back at him. He’d dropped by Ally’s house, knowing she hadn’t planned on going to the dance.
She’d had few dates in high school. With delivering newspapers and baby-sitting jobs, plus working toward a nursing scholarship, she’d had very little time for extracurricular activities, and no money to buy a fancy dress.
Spence had asked her to go for a drive. She’d gone willingly. They had always been there for each other from the moment she’d come to live with her aunt. The day she arrived, he’d stopped by to see what was happening, and he’d immediately pitched in and helped carry her things inside and store them in the little sewing room that would become her bedroom for the next seven years. He’d even let her ride his new bike. They had become fast friends.
Sometimes that seemed strange to her, as if they’d been kindred souls, even as children. She’d never been as close to another person, before or since.
On that long-ago graduation night, he’d driven out to a hiking trail that started next to the river and wound up into the mountains. To her surprise he’d had one bottle of champagne in a cooler in the back of his car. She’d laughed when she realized she was sharing a treat he’d planned for the homecoming queen, and had teased him about it.
They had talked seriously then, about the college he would attend and law school, both back east, then about her scholarship, which had come through. She’d admitted she would be glad to leave her aunt’s home.
“I’m going to have my own place someday,” she’d bragged.
And here she was, back in her aunt’s old house. But now it was hers…hers and the twins. For the split second between one heartbeat and another, she wondered what life would have been like if Spence had been her husband, if the twins had been their babies….
When Spence had opened the bottle of champagne, he’d proposed a toast.
“To friendship. To the future. To us.” She had echoed his words and raised the glass to her lips.
“Wait,” he’d said. He had hooked his arm through hers. Arms linked, they had sipped the magic elixir.
It had been sweet and romantic. When the moon rose over the mountain peak and laid a sparkling trail on the swift flowing river, he had leaned over and kissed her. Full on the lips. Mouth open. Tongue gently asking for entry between her surprised lips.
Then came the rush. A wild, swift, painful release of pleasure that had made her gasp.
He had deepened the kiss at that moment, taking advantage of her momentary start to delve inside and claim her mouth for his own in a way no boy had ever done. And in that instant, she had known this was a man’s kiss, given to a woman. She had responded in kind.
When they had pulled apart, both had been breathing in deep, harsh drafts. They had taken another sip of champagne from the plastic stemmed flutes, their eyes never leaving each other as they drank a wordless toast.
When the flutes were empty, he had tossed them into the back and slid across the space between the bucket seats. Then he’d lifted her into his arms and settled her across his lap. They’d kissed again.
For her, it was as if the heavens had opened and poured all its blessings on them. Happiness, like golden raindrops, splashed through her spirit, and rainbows formed, faded and reformed behind her closed eyelids.
She’d been to parties. She’d been kissed. But not like this. Nothing would ever be like this total bliss, this blending of hearts and minds and spirits. She sensed they had changed. They had gone from best friends to lovers in a single melding of the lips and their spirits.
“You taste like honey,” he murmured, leaving her mouth and tracing a path to her ear. “Like hot honey.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “I am hot…achy hot…”
His body pressed urgently against hers. She felt the rigid length of him against her thigh and wasn’t shocked at the blatant evidence of his desire. Then she was a little shocked…at herself. She’d never been this close to a male, had never felt an erection, but the knowledge only excited her more.
Because it was Spence. And because she trusted him—her best friend, her lover. She shivered in anticipation.
“Spence,” she whispered as a thread of desperation unwound inside her. “The yearning…make it go away.”
“I will,” he said just as fervently. “We will. Together.” He caressed her back, then slipped one hand under her hair to nestle against her scalp.
This time the kiss was explosive, filled with needs they had never dared confess, much less share. She whimpered and moaned. Sometimes she sighed. The kiss went on.
Driven to boldness, she pushed her hands under his T-shirt and found the heated expanse of smooth skin laced with hard muscle. There was hair on his chest. Not a lot, but enough to fascinate while she ran her fingers through it.
He groaned and pressed her hands flat against him. “Yes, Ally, touch me. In any way you want. For as long as you want. It feels…too good,” he muttered.
She thrilled at the shudder that passed through his lean, muscular body. When his hands began a gentle exploration along her waist, she held her breath, wanting…needing…
“Yes,” she said on a sigh when his hand slid over her hot, hot flesh, along her back, down her sides and up her middle. He hesitated then he cupped her breast, taking its weight into his hand.
His heart pounded in unison with hers as the tension escalated to dizzy heights. Her nipple drew into a tight bud against his palm. He rubbed in circles until spirals of sensation echoed down into her core. Breaking the kiss, she pressed her face into his shoulder and bit, very gently, into the strong cords of his neck.