And Babies Make Four

There it was, Manhattan Multiples, smack in the middle. The mayor might as well have placed a gun to her head. Or her heart.

“How could he?” she demanded out loud of the cool pastel-blue walls that surrounded her Madison Avenue office.

Her office was the very hub that was Manhattan Multiples, an organization that had begun as a support group championed by one lone woman. Manhattan Multiples had grown like the proverbial weed until it had mushroomed into a foundation occupying three floors of the ten-story building. Rather than just a single small group of people, it now encompassed services that ranged from support groups—including career counseling, Lamaze, yoga and meditation classes—not to mention a thriving day-care center, all for women faced with the frightening and overwhelming reality of giving birth to not just one life-changing child, but two or more.

Eloise knew what that was all about. She’d had to face up to it herself when she’d given birth to her three boys, now all entering their adolescence together, a state guaranteed to turn her ash-blond hair as gray as her eyes. She hadn’t had a clue how to handle the situation, not then. And she wouldn’t have had much more than a hint now if it wasn’t for the organization she’d started and now oversaw, an organization blessed with knowledgeable people who came to share their experiences, their advice and their acquired wisdom with women who were scared out of their minds.

“And he wants to pull the plug on us?” Eloise drew the newspaper closer as she looked at the face of the man she had almost married instead of Walter. “Think again, Billy-boy. If you think I’m capitulating without one hell of a fight, boy have you got the wrong woman.”

With a pronounced sigh, Eloise threw the paper aside and picked up her coffee.

Chapter One

That Monday morning Jason Mallory had a great many things on his mind as he hurried into the spacious suite that comprised the securities investment offices of Mallory and Dixon. From the ridiculous—as in where he’d stashed his dry cleaning ticket for a jacket he needed—to the sublime, which meant going over the net-quarterly returns of a very successful firm season.

Being instantly and unceremoniously catapulted into the past, however, was not one of them.

But, scheduled or not, that was exactly where he found himself. In the past. More than eleven years in the past to be exact, at a time when he had been the loner in a local high school where everyone else seemed to know one another.

At that time, all he’d had were his thoughts, his books and an overwhelming ambition to become someone. A powerful “someone.” Someone a person like Mindy Conway would notice. She’d been, as much as anything, the reason why he’d been so driven, so compelled to scale those corporate mountains, so dedicated to accumulating not only money but respect for who and what he was.

She had been his catalyst, his focus. His impossible dream, even after she’d left town. Because loners like him didn’t stand a chance with popular girls like Mindy Conway.

So, after high school, after she’d gone away to Northwestern, he’d stayed in New York and attended first NYU, then Columbia University. And diligently worked toward his goal even though he would never see Mindy again.

After a while, of course, there had been Debra. Debra, with her extensive family connections that she’d tried to dangle before him like some kind of enticement. Debra with her sexy smile and her own agenda. Why she’d chosen to single him out as the man she wanted to be with was still a mystery to him. A flattering mystery.

At least, it was flattering at first.

But that all changed once vows had been exchanged and for the first time in his life, he’d surrendered himself completely to a woman, breaking down his own walls of reserve to be the man he thought she wanted him to be. He’d thought wrong. And just as suddenly as she’d burst onto his horizon, she’d withdrawn from it. From him. Physically, emotionally. He had no clue as to why. Another mystery, one he chose not to explore. The pain there was still too great. And very possibly always would be, he judged.

But now, for some strange, whimsical reason known only to the gods who helmed the universe strictly for their own amusement, the girl from his long-lost past was here. In his office.

Sitting at a desk.

Mindy.

Bigger than life and twice as beautiful as he remembered.

But Mindy wasn’t a girl anymore, she was a woman. A gorgeous woman with longish, straight black hair and the most beautiful sky-blue eyes he’d ever seen.

And he wasn’t that quiet, introverted loner no one noticed. He was Jason Mallory, whose business acumen people listened to with rapt attention because in this strange, topsy-turvy world of upending finances, he somehow, through instinct and a great deal of careful observation and painstaking, ongoing evaluation, knew how to negotiate through the often turbulent and troubled waters of the stock market.

Right now he would rather have been traveling down the Colorado white rapids in a canoe made out of paper cups than standing here, staring at a woman who could have so easily had his heart—if she had only known that he was alive.

For a frozen second in time, Jason’s mouth felt too dry to form any words.

A single word kept echoing within Mindy Richards’s brain over and over again, each time increasing in volume. Omigod, omigod, OMIGOD!

She was surprised that she’d somehow managed to keep it tucked in the confines of her head and not let it burst out of her all-but-numbed lips.

It was a complete set. Her numbed lips went with her numbed everything else. Because that’s how she felt. Completely numbed. She’d become that way the second she raised her eyes to see who walked in through the door of the office that she had only moments ago walked into herself.

Everything inside of her froze for exactly half a beat, then went into a frenzied dance, the kind that would make a musician’s fingers fall off if he tried to emulate it.

Forget about what her heart was doing.

Jason? Jason Mallory?

It just hadn’t occurred to her that the Mallory attached to the logo on the door belonged to Jason, to the hunk she’d spent all four of her high school years daydreaming about. How many hours had she wasted wishing, praying, that he would part the sea of people in the high school hallway and just walk up to her? She couldn’t begin to remember.

All she remembered was that he hadn’t made that short trip. And she hadn’t had the nerve to approach him. Except on the very last day of high school, when, clutching her senior yearbook to her young chest, she’d walked up to Jason and asked him to sign it for her. The words had tasted like cotton in her mouth, but she’d gotten them out somehow. And belatedly remembered to smile.

Have A Nice Life—Jason. That was all he’d written. It was enough. She’d slept with the open page beside her on her pillow for weeks.

Right now, remembering how she’d felt approaching him that one time infused a ray of heat through her that melted away the iciness of her fingertips. She had to remember to make herself breathe.

Eventually, after she’d gone to Northwestern in pursuit of a degree in journalism, Jason had become that unattainable star for her, like some celebrity you fall in love with on the screen. With effort, she’d filed him away in her mind. To take out and sneak a peek at every so often when her spirits were low and she needed to think, “What if—?”

But that was before Brad had entered her life. “What if—” became a thing of the past. Until just recently. She had no idea why, but as she’d spent her first night in her new, minuscule apartment, she’d found herself thinking what if Jason had taken that single opportunity to talk to her? What if they’d gone out, become romantically involved and gotten married? What if they’d begun their married life in an apartment just like this little bit of plaster, floorboard and paint?

God, but life was funny. She’d never dreamed that she’d run into him again. Yet, here he was, looking twice as gorgeous as he ever had.

Jason thought he was hallucinating. Maybe the pressure he’d been putting on himself had finally gotten to him. Like a man not entirely sure of what his eyes were seeing, he said her name. Part of him expected her to either vanish or transform into someone else, into the real woman sitting there.

“Mindy?”

She couldn’t think, couldn’t even answer in the affirmative. All she could do was say his name. And hope that she didn’t sound like some addle-brained idiot. “Jason?”

Somehow he found enough moisture in his mouth to ask, “What are you doing here?”

Even as Jason asked the question, he upbraided himself. Damn it, he sounded just as tongue-tied as he was certain he would have if he’d ever tried to talk to her in high school. What the hell was wrong with him? He gave seminars for high-ranking financiers from all over the country without so much as a second’s hesitation. Met with important CEOs of major companies on a regular basis. Even if this was Mindy, there was no reason to feel as if the very foundation of his life had suddenly transformed into delicately arranged playing cards.

He followed up his own question with the only thing he could think of. “Are you here for some financial advice?”

But if that were the case, what was she doing, sitting at the desk normally occupied by the battalion of temporary administrative assistants his partner, Nathalie Dixon, kept insisting on hiring?

Her eyes never left his face. My God but he’d gotten even sexier looking than I remembered. Stop it, you can’t think like that anymore.

“No,” Mindy heard herself saying, “I work here.”

Jason frowned. He’d only been away on business for four days. “Since when?”

“Since now.” That sounded almost confrontational, she thought as a sudden zip of panic came out of nowhere. “Um—” she looked at her wristwatch, wanting to be more accurate “—since ten minutes ago.”

His dark-brown eyes narrowed beneath what Mindy had always considered to be perfectly shaped eyebrows. She couldn’t help wondering if her heightened hormonal state was responsible for her very physical, very intense reaction to Jason.

“I don’t understand.” When he’d left Wednesday evening, the young, rather vapid temp who’d been sitting at this desk was gathering her things together to leave. Permanently. He’d just assumed that Nathalie would find someone else from that bottomless well of temps. How did Mindy Conway even remotely qualify?