Babies in the Bargain. Victoria Pade

up empty.” As empty as she’d felt so much of the time after Marla had left. “I know we weren’t related by blood, but she was still my sister. We shared a room from the time I was three years old. And, I don’t know, I guess rather than being rivals or fighting with each other, we sort of banded together…” Kira’s voice trailed off before she said too much.

      But Cutty picked up the ball where she’d dropped it and said, “Does your father know you’re here now?”

      Kira finally managed to stop the flow of tears and dabbed at her face with the tissue. “He and my mom were killed a year ago in a freak accident. They were coming home from a day in the mountains when there was a rock slide onto the road. They were hit by a boulder that came right down on the car. They both died instantly.”

      “I’m sorry,” he said once more. “Your mother was a nice enough woman.”

      That was true. It was just that nice hadn’t had any potency against the strong will of the man she’d married. The man who had adopted her three-year-old daughter.

      But that seemed beside the point now. Kira had come here hoping to find the sister she’d so desperately wanted to reconnect with. Hoping to find family. And it suddenly struck her that the only chance of that might be in Cutty Grant’s twins.

      “The article said you have eighteen-month-old daughters,” she said then.

      “Upstairs asleep as we speak,” he confirmed, a brighter note edging his voice at the mere mention of them.

      “Marla’s babies?”

      “Yes. They were barely three weeks old when the accident happened.”

      “My nieces,” Kira said, trying it on for size because blood or no blood, if they were Marla’s babies, Kira felt a connection to them.

      “I guess so,” Cutty conceded.

      “I’d like to meet them. Get to know them. Would you let me?” she said impulsively and without any idea how she might go about that.

      Cutty’s frown from earlier reappeared and he didn’t jump at the idea. Instead he said, “Like I said, they’re asleep.”

      “I know. But…”

      And that was when, completely out of the blue, the mess in the room caught her attention again and an idea popped into her head.

      “What if I took the place of that woman you were talking to on the phone a few minutes ago?” she said before the notion had even had a chance to ferment.

      “Betty? What if you took Betty’s place?” He sounded confused and leery at the same time.

      “You said she took care of the twins and helped around the house, and without her—and with you needing to stay off your ankle—you’re obviously in a bind. So what if I did it? I’d like to help and that way I could get to know the babies. Bond with them.”

      The more Kira considered this, the better it sounded to her.

      But from the look on Cutty’s face it wasn’t having the same effect on him.

      “Don’t you have a job or a husband or a boyfriend or something you need to get back to?”

      “No, I don’t. In May I finished my Ph.D. in microbiology. I’m going to start teaching at the University of Colorado for the fall semester, but that doesn’t begin until the last week in August. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do with myself until then but that means I’m free.”

      “No husband or boyfriend, either?” he asked, and Kira couldn’t tell if he was looking for an out for himself or satisfying his own curiosity.

      “No, no husband or boyfriend. I have one really close friend—Kit—but she can get along without me. Plus she’ll bring in my mail and water my plants for me, so it won’t be any problem for me to stay.”

      “You really want to spend your summer vacation picking up after us? Changing diapers?” Cutty asked skeptically.

      “I really do,” she said, hating that she sounded as desperate as she felt. “I admit that I don’t have any experience with kids,” she confessed because it seemed only fair to let him know what he was getting into. “But when it comes to cleaning—”

      “You’re Tom Wentworth’s daughter,” Cutty supplied. “I don’t know, I like things casual.”

      “Casual is good. I can be casual.” Although she wasn’t quite sure what casual housekeeping and child care meant.

      But still he didn’t look convinced. In fact, he looked downright dubious and as if he was on the verge of saying thanks, but no thanks.

      Why would he, though? It was clear he needed help and she was offering it.

      Unless maybe he still harbored resentment toward her family for the way things had played out that night thirteen years ago when he’d come with Marla to tell their parents that he’d gotten their seventeen-year-old daughter pregnant.

      “You know,” Kira ventured, “I didn’t have anything to do with what went on between you and my father. I know how ugly it got. He sent me to my room but I was hiding on the stairs, listening to what went on. He was a difficult man—”

      “That’s an understatement. He was a tyrant.”

      Kira didn’t dispute that. “But nobody can change the past and now he’s gone and so is Marla. But there are your twins. And me. I lost all these years that I could have had with Marla, with Anthony, and I can’t get them back. But I could have a future with the twins. If you’ll just let me.”

      She hated the note of pleading that had somehow slipped into her tone.

      And Cutty Grant must not have liked it much, either, because she saw his jaw clench suddenly and his voice turned tight. “I’m really not the bastard your father thought I was. The kind of bastard who would keep you from knowing your nieces.”

      “I didn’t—I don’t—think you’re that. I just know there have to be hard feelings—”

      “Harder than you’ll ever know. But I’m well aware of the fact that you were only a kid, that you didn’t have anything to do with it.”

      “Then will you let me stay?”

      Again he didn’t answer readily, and she knew he wasn’t eager to agree even if he did need the help.

      But in the end she thought that he might have wanted to prove he wasn’t a bad guy, that he wasn’t punishing her for something she’d had nothing to do with, because he said, “I suppose we can give it a try.”

      Kira was so happy to hear his decision that she couldn’t help grinning. “Shall I start right now?” she asked with a glance at the clutter all around them.

      “It’ll all wait for tomorrow.”

      In that case Kira thought it was probably better to get out of there before he changed his mind.

      “Then if you’ll tell me where I can find a hotel or a motel I’ll get a room and be back first thing in the morning.”

      Again he let silence reign as he seemed to consider something before he answered.

      “If you aren’t particular about the ambience you can stay out back. Where Marla and I lived when we first got here.”

      “No, I don’t care about the ambience. And it’s probably better if I’m close by.”

      He didn’t look convinced of that but he didn’t rescind the offer.

      “Do you have a suitcase somewhere?” he asked instead.

      “Out in the rental car.”

      “Why don’t you go get it and I’ll show you the accommodations?”

      Kira didn’t waste any time complying. She hurried