Ten Acres And Twins

“Are you planning to leave Wyatt here?” she asked.

Perhaps her hopes were coming true. If he would sell her the land, too, her dreams would be tied up with a tidy bow.

“No,” he said, dashing her hopes abruptly. “I’ll stay a year as Brian requested. If you run the orchard, the proceeds can go back into the farm. Next fall, we can talk about a fair price for the land, and a way to keep Wyatt and Rosie in contact. Things might be easier by then.”

“Maybe.”

Jack ran a hand along his whiskery jaw, staring out at the greenhouse. “I could sublet the town home….”

Abby listened as he thought out loud. Since he was moving things in her direction on his own, she decided to let him ramble on before she butted in. Maybe he’d realize he should just leave Wyatt here with her. Forever.

“…and find a place around here. You know of anyplace?”

She thought of the land surrounding the farm. There was a cattle ranch on one side and a wheat farm on the other. She shook her head. “There’s nothing to rent out here.”

Wyatt’s howl exploded into the room, causing Jack to jump out of his seat. “Hot damn—” he began, then glanced at Rosie. “Hot dang, what is that racket?”

Abby clicked off the receiver. “Just the baby monitor.”

He stared at the device. “Why is it so loud?”

Abby was already headed for the stairs. “A bad habit,” she hollered back. “This house is so big I’m afraid I won’t hear them, so I turn it up full blast.”

Wyatt quieted almost immediately when Abby picked him up.

She used one of Rosie’s diapers to change him, and then carried him back downstairs, thinking all the way.

She loved this baby. She wanted to be near him every single day and night. She’d do anything to achieve that goal.

Anything.

When she got back to the kitchen, she handed Wyatt to Jack, then lifted Rosie out of the bouncer and laid her belly-down on the floor. “This is when a high chair would come in handy,” she said. “Paige was thinking about getting one, but the babies only started eating solid food a few weeks ago.”

A frown creased Jack’s forehead. “Is Wyatt hungry?”

“No, but one baby could sit in a high chair with a couple of toys while the other took a turn in the activity center.” Abby took Wyatt and deposited him in the toy’s seat. “It’s just another source of amusement for the twins.”

Wyatt immediately started bouncing and batting at colorful knobs. “You were just ready to play, weren’t you?” she crooned.

Opening a cabinet drawer, she pulled out a couple of toys and tossed them in front of Rosie, who propped herself up on sturdy arms to grab a set of plastic keys.

When she dropped them, they produced a clacking sound that must have pleased her, because she snagged them right back up and began hitting them repeatedly against the terracotta tiles.

“If I can find a big enough apartment, I could run my business from there,” Jack said as Abby returned to the table. “There’s bound to be something suitable in town.”

“Or we could both move in here,” Abby suggested, wondering even as she said it if she was completely insane. “This house has plenty of room for an office, and we could switch off duties so we’d both have time to work.”

“You mean we’d live together as roommates?” Jack asked.

“Of course,” she said, trying with all her might to make the suggestion seem like no big deal. Even though it was. A big deal.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” he murmured, staring at her with a bemused expression. “I could set up my office here easily enough, but don’t you work at a flower shop?”

“My parents own a flower shop in town,” she corrected. “I work at a garden supply warehouse, but I was thinking of quitting, anyway. I could pay my share of the bills with the profits from the cut-flower business.”

“Hmm,” he said, pushing out his bottom lip and toying with the whiskers underneath. “I like this idea more and more. The babies would have both of us around for a year and by the end of that time they’d be easier to manage.”

“Um-hmm,” Abby said, worrying about the idea more and more. Could she and Jack actually live here, together?

He might not know her from a garden of weeds, but she was painfully aware of his vitality. Always.

She also knew he led a pretty active social life. Would he want to bring his women here? She began to imagine a revolving door of various women, coming in and out of the farmhouse and cooing at the babies before they vanished into Jack’s room to coo some more.

“Sounds cozy,” he said, breaking into her angst.

“Doesn’t it, though?” She feigned composure, but her alarm grew exponentially as her idea hurtled from impetuous to barely conceivable to likely. And remained, all the while, quite impossible.

CHAPTER THREE

ABBY HAD HAULED seven loads of her belongings past the burned-out front porch light before she finally decided to change it. She had just dragged a kitchen chair outside and perched on top to make the adjustment when her new neighbor, Sharon Hauser, hollered from inside. “Donation box, or new location?”

Sharon’s matronly figure filled the doorway. She held a bean-pot lamp on one hip, and Wyatt on the other. Her usual smile was missing as she stared at Abby’s precarious pose.

Abby held up the bulb and light cover, and chuckled when her friend’s big, gummy smile returned. Though Sharon had at least fifteen years on Abby, she was on the same wavelength. Sometimes words weren’t necessary.

Abby finished the job and hopped down. As she carried the chair back in, she said, “I asked you here to help with Rosie and Wyatt. I can finish unpacking.”

Sharon jiggled both baby and lamp, prompting a happy squeal from Wyatt. “Shush,” she told Abby. “Scrap or keep—that’s all I need to know.”

Abby knew not to argue. She squinted at the lamp. “Keep,” she answered. “Put it on the table beside the sofa.”

Sharon swept the lamp and the giggling Wyatt off toward the living room, and Abby headed off in the other direction to cart the chair back to the kitchen.

Her helpful new friend was well on her way to becoming a cherished old friend. She had appeared on that very same porch the morning after the accident, and she’d been just as obstinate then about lending a hand. She’d pushed her way in behind a pierogi casserole, explained that she was the wife of the farmer down the road, and had commandeered the babies and the kitchen duties so Abby could deal with the tragic news.

That morning, Abby had been too stunned to argue. She’d been baby-sitting the twins the night before, and had waited up all night for Paige and Brian’s return. She’d thought they must have decided to stay out overnight, and reasoned that they’d been having too much fun to let her know.

She had only learned the grisly truth at dawn, after their overturned car was discovered near a dirt road just two miles from the farmhouse. The white-tailed deer Brian had swerved to avoid was found dead a few yards away, and the furrowed path in the steep embankment told the rest of the story. At first, Abby blamed herself. If only she’d thought to call someone, perhaps they could have been saved. But the coroner had said their death was immediate. He’d called it merciful.

Abby didn’t know if a healthy young couple could die a merciful death. She only knew they were gone forever, leaving her behind with a couple of babies who would never be orphans as long as she was around.

That night had created a deep and unhealing chasm in her memory. Everything before had become part of a past that was already lost. Everything since was the future.

Uncertain. Frightening. As important as air.

The delicious sound of baby cackles broke into her thoughts and led her down the hall. She discovered her neighbor and the twins—vital components of her new life—cavorting in one of the rooms she had emptied for Jack.

Sharon now held a baby in each arm, and she was spinning lazy circles in the middle of the room. “Looks funny without Brian’s exercise equipment,” she said. “You sure about this living arrangement?”