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Driving through town, she’d noted Grass Valley didn’t offer a whole lot of options for temporary housing. She hadn’t considered that problem before she left home, and now she had nowhere else to stay except with him and the twins, because she sure as hell wasn’t going to leave them.
“I think staying here is a fine idea,” she announced.
They all turned toward her. Eric shook his head. Lizzie said, “I think it’s perfect, too. Would you like us to help bring in your luggage?”
“No, I’m sure Eric will be more than happy to do that for me.” She gave him her stern schoolmarm look that had been known to wither a whole gang of adolescent boys. Managing one man shouldn’t be all that difficult.
Lizzie and Kristi appeared pleased they’d accomplished whatever it was they’d set out to do.
“We’ve got to be running along,” Kristi said.
“Just wanted to welcome you to Grass Valley,” Lizzie added. “Eric’s a great guy, by the way.”
Laura smiled weakly. The man had certainly developed a fan club among his sisters-in-law. She wondered what their spouses thought of that. And knew their views wouldn’t sway her about leaving the twins with Eric if she wasn’t one hundred percent convinced it was the right thing to do.
Given how much she loved the babies, it was hard to imagine she’d ever be willing to do that, despite Amy’s wishes.
She swallowed hard, telling herself she didn’t know enough yet about Eric to seriously consider handing over the twins’ custody. His worthiness to be their father could take days to determine. Maybe even weeks.
She nearly groaned aloud. Surely it wouldn’t take that long to discover some fatal crack in his paragon-of-virtue image.
He managed to escort his sisters-in-law out the door, then returned to the living room.
“I’m sorry about the misunderstanding. Those two are really great people but they do sometimes jump to conclusions.”
“It’s all right.” She knelt and draped a light blanket over the two sleeping babies. “The fact is, you’ve jumped to a conclusion, too.”
“What’s that?”
Pulling some papers from her briefcase, she handed a copy of Amy’s notarized instructions to Eric.
“Amy was abused most of her life, not just by the man who fathered the twins. The one thing she asked me to do before I relinquished the babies to you is to make sure you had a wife who could love them like a mother should.”
He stared at her in disbelief, then quickly read through the papers.
“This makes you the final arbiter of whether or not I get custody.”
“That’s true.” The attorney she and Amy had hired had carefully crafted Amy’s last wishes so that the custody decision about the twins would be Laura’s and hers alone.
“And she wanted me to have a wife.”
“It was her very strong preference. She had good reasons to—”
“That’s crazy!”
“Those were her wishes.” She gestured toward the legal papers in his hand. “This is what she wanted. I intend to fulfill her request as best I can.”
“Then I guess that makes it you and me against each other.”
“If that’s how you see it. I see it as doing what’s best for the twins.”
Chapter Three
“I’m going to need some sort of a changing table.”
Sunshine streamed through the window of the designated nursery, but the room itself looked bare, the only furniture the crib Eric had hauled upstairs. There ought to be a border of teddy bear ballerinas dancing along the top of the walls to match the bumper pads and crib sheets Laura had chosen for the twins. An overflowing toy box would fit under the window, a pair of desks in the corner for when they got older, a two-sided easel for painting.
“Seems to me we’re short one crib, too,” Eric commented, checking that the crib was solidly held together. “They should each have their own.”
“For now, they’re all right in one. In fact, I think they like it better that way. They seem to want to cuddle as if they were in the womb. When I take them back home—”
“The way I see it, they are home. Right here.”
“Yes, well…” For a man who’d only lately learned about the twins, he had certainly developed a possessive streak. Or maybe he was challenging her because he was innately competitive. Given the number of rodeo trophies on the mantel downstairs, he wasn’t one to give up easily. “That’s yet to be determined, isn’t it?”
“A court might decide my claim has more merit than yours, given my relationship with the twins.”
“You’re welcome to consult with an attorney.” She and Amy had already done that. In general, the mother’s wishes would prevail.
“I think I’ll do that tomorrow. Assuming you don’t mind staying with the babies while I drive into Great Falls and back.”
“If you’re planning to raise the twins, you’d better get used to having to take them with you wherever you go.”
His brows slammed down into a straight line, narrowing his eyes. “Now you’re telling me I’ll be disqualified as a father if I use a baby-sitter?”
Laura was sure Eric knew how to smile, but she had yet to see him accomplish the maneuver. But then, her comment had been unreasonable. “Point taken. I’ll stay with the twins while you check with your attorney.”
Before her accident, Laura had had adolescent dreams of someday finding a man as protective of her as Eric appeared to be of the twins. But as she’d grown older and finally fallen in love, she’d learned the truth. She was damaged goods, a woman no man would want to marry. She couldn’t bear his children.
She swallowed back the bitter memory. A man as macho as Sheriff Oakes would demand nothing less than perfection.
“Come to think of it,” Eric said, “who watches the twins when you’re at work?”
She cut him a sharp look. Fair was fair, she supposed, and he had a right to know what arrangements she’d made for the twins. “My mother will baby-sit the twins during the school year. She lives only a mile from me and adores Mandy and Becky. She loved Amy like her own, and she’s always wanted grandchildren but knew, since my accident—”
“Does that mean in order to get custody I have to come up with a loving grandmother, too, as well as a wife?”
“Well, no, I’d never require that of you.” Although Laura’s mother would be heartbroken to lose the only grandchildren she was likely to have.
He nodded, but his expression didn’t soften much. “Now, you were saying you needed something?”
She forced her thoughts back to practicalities. “A changing table. If you’ve got a card table or something like that I can use, it will do temporarily.”
“I haven’t done much decorating of the place, it didn’t seem important.” Until now, he realized. What did a bachelor need with eight rooms filled with furniture? He only used three or four of the rooms himself. But if this was going to be the twins’ home, they needed the right equipment. “Come on, we’re going shopping.”
“For what?”
“I saw some oak chests of drawers at the general store. Handmade by an old guy east of town. There ought to be one that’s the right size. You can help me pick it out. We can put their clothes and stuff inside.” He headed for the hallway. He could get another crib, too. At least order one from the catalogs Hetty Moore kept around. And he remembered Susie-Q, Lizzie’s little girl, had a jumping swing thing. He’d need two of—
“Eric, the babies are about to wake up. They’ll be hungry and need their bottles.”
“Oh. Well, okay.” So he needed to learn their schedules. No big deal. “We’ll feed them and then we’ll go.”
“What time does the store close?”
He checked his watch. “Six o’clock. It’s four now.”
“That should give us barely enough time—if the store doesn’t have a big selection and you don’t linger over your decision.”
His jaw went slack. It took that long to get the twins ready to roll? Lord, when he got up in the morning, he shaved, showered, ate breakfast and was on the road in under thirty minutes. How much longer could it take to get two itty-bitty babies organized for a trip of less than a half mile?
IT WAS LIKE PREPARING for an African safari.
There was a diaper bag, extra bottles, a plastic baggie of pacifiers in case the twins began to fuss. Then Laura had insisted that the infant car seats, which only an hour ago he’d taken into the house, had to be transferred to his vehicle. She was right, of course, that the babies’ safety was all-important but the seat belts had tangled. Sorting out the mess had taken Eric a full twenty minutes. She’d suggested, with mock sweetness, that they could take her SUV, which had the seat belts already adjusted to the proper length.
Not a chance! They were his kids now.
Still, he had to give her credit. While he had battled frustration, she had remained calm. Cuddling the twins and cooing at them. Checking on his workmanship to be sure the babies would be as safe as possible.
A child could do worse than have her as a mother.
Which didn’t mean Eric was going to concede the twins’ custody to her, not by a long shot. Blood counted.
By the time they all piled into the police cruiser, a black-and-white SUV with a light bar on top—which he’d been forced to drive because his personal vehicle was a pickup truck that didn’t have a place for the twins—Eric was exhausted. He suspected Laura was, too. But she was so tight-lipped, he was afraid to comment.
Hell, they would have been better off to carry the babies down the street to the general store. But then, how would they have gotten a chest of drawers back home if he hadn’t driven the SUV?
Not that there was much time left before the store closed to do their shopping by the time they got there.
LAURA ADJUSTED AMANDA in a cuddly sling across her chest. She had yet to find a sling to handle both babies at once, so Eric carried Rebecca into the general store.
A cheery chime greeted their arrival as he pushed open the door and held it for Laura.
An amazing array of products, from wilted produce to bathroom faucets, cluttered the narrow aisles. Aging Christmas items were still on display on the higher shelves, two-foot-tall aluminum trees, dusty Styrofoam snowmen in jaunty hats and a plastic crèche missing its wise men.
Idly Laura wondered how many years the decorations had been waiting for a frantic last-minute shopper to succumb to desperation.
From the back of the store, a woman appeared. She wore a blue butcher’s apron over a print dress and had one of those faces that was best described as having character. Laura guessed a line had been etched for each of the seventy-something years she had lived in Montana.
“Afternoon, Eric. Bet you’ve run out of frozen dinners again and don’t want to eat at—” Her eye caught the baby in his arms, and she halted abruptly. “My sakes, look at what you’ve got. Isn’t she the cutest little thing.”
Laura winced as the woman chucked Rebecca under the chin. She’d been told by the doctor that the twins’ immune system might not be as strong as those of a higher birth-weight baby, and she hated to take the twins around strangers.
“Excuse me,” Laura said. “The babies are—”
“Hetty, I’d like you to meet Laura Cavendish. Hetty Moore and her husband, Joe, own the store.”
Laura smiled politely, but before she could prevent it, Hetty had zeroed in on Mandy’s rosy cheek, giving the baby a grandmotherly pinch.
“Twins…” she crooned. “You’ve been keeping secrets from us, Eric. Shame on you. These little bundles are too precious to hide. And their mamma, too. Such a pretty girl.”
“I didn’t know about them till yesterday, Hetty.”
“He’s their uncle,” Laura tried to explain.
Hetty’s eyes widened and she gasped. “You mean Walker has been—surely not Rory. Why, they’re only just married, the both of them. I can’t think what gets into a man’s head these days. My Joe and me—”
“Hetty! It’s not what you think. This has nothing to do with my brothers.”
She huffed. “I should hope not.”
Eric rolled his eyes, and Laura stifled a smile. The good folks of Grass Valley had a tendency to jump to conclusions. Explaining the situation would likely take hours, and there wasn’t that much time before the store closed.
“Eric was hoping to buy a small chest of drawers to put the twins’ things in,” Laura said.
“With two new babies to manage, you’ll be needing a lot more than one chest of drawers.” On a mission now, Hetty bustled down the aisle toward the back of the store.
“They may not be staying that long,” Laura called, hurrying after her.
“Now, honey, you don’t have to play coy with me, giving me some wild story about young Eric being the twins’ uncle. If he’s their daddy, you have to give him a chance to make up for whatever he did that upset you. I’m sure you two can work out your differences.”
“We might as well give it up for now,” Eric muttered only loud enough for Laura to hear. “Once Hetty gets something in her head, it sticks there like Super Glue, even if it’s wrong.”
“I don’t want people to think you and I—”
“They won’t. Not for long.”
Just what did that mean? Was he going to take out an ad in the local paper, assuming there was one, to explain the situation? Or was it simply too obvious the handsome town sheriff wouldn’t be caught dead with someone like her? Not that she was a dog. But she certainly wasn’t model thin. Nor had she ever been considered sexy. Men had never fallen all over themselves to ask her out. And the few who had soon lost interest, either because she knew more about history and government than they did, or because she couldn’t give birth to the offspring their egos demanded a woman produce.
“Now here’s a nice one.” Hetty scooped a display of American flags and red, white and blue bunting off the top of a five-foot high honey-oak chest of drawers. “Conrad Gelb’s a true craftsman. I’m sure he’d make up another one just like this if—”
“It’s too tall,” Laura said. “I’m going to use it for a changing table while I’m here.”
“He could make you one of those, too, if you want.”
“We aren’t a hundred percent sure the babies will be staying—”
“I’m sure.” Juggling Rebecca in one arm, Eric lifted the edge of a dust cover from a similar oak piece that was about waist high and had three drawers. “How about this one?”
Laura nodded. “That would work fine.”
“Won’t hold but a teaspoon’s worth of baby clothes,” Hetty warned.
“We’ll take it.” Eric glanced around the store. “How ’bout those swing things babies like?”
To Laura’s dismay, and frequently over her objections, Eric went on a shopping spree that would have made most women envious. It made Laura uneasy. She didn’t like the thought of anyone wasting money. And she didn’t like the idea that Eric was so determined to provide everything possible the twins could want or need. In the long run, that attitude wouldn’t be healthy for the twins.
Short term, it would make it all the harder to put the babies back in her car and take them away from Eric.
