Babies in the Bargain. Victoria Pade

what she’d told herself the night before when she’d had so much trouble getting to sleep because every time she’d closed her eyes he was there, in her thoughts? There was one reason and only one reason she’d come to Montana and that was to try to have what remained of her family in her life again. And what remained of her family were the twins. Cutty was merely incidental. To her at least. He was just the person she had to go through to get to her nieces.

      So what was she going to wear? she asked herself.

      She forced herself to focus on the clothes in the armoire. To concentrate.

      What about the linen slacks and the short-sleeved yellow silk blouse with the banded collar?

      Comfortable but not sloppy. A little color but not too much. Sort of casual—because Cutty had made that odd comment about how he liked things casual—whatever that meant. So, okay, the linen slacks and the yellow blouse it was, she decided.

      The slacks that made her rear end look good.

      Not that that was a factor in her choosing them, she swore to herself. It was just a coincidence.

      She took the pants and the shirt to the bed and laid them out before she turned to the small dressing table to do her hair and makeup.

      Although she would ordinarily have worn her hair loose on the first day of a new job, for this particular job she thought it should probably be kept under control. That meant pulling it away from her face. A French knot seemed too stiff and formal, but she thought that a ponytail might be just the ticket. So she brushed her hair, pulling it tightly back and tying a pale yellow scarf around it to keep it there.

      Once she was finished with her hair she applied a little blush, mascara and lipstick. Then she returned to the bed to put on the clothes she’d chosen before pulling on trouser socks and loafers, and concluding that she was ready to face the day and this new undertaking.

      Ready and eager.

      “To meet the twins,” she said out loud, as if someone had accused her of being eager for more than meeting her nieces.

      And that wasn’t the case. She wasn’t eager to see Cutty again, she tried to convince herself. How could she be eager to see the person who would no doubt be watching her every move, judging her, comparing her to Marla?

      Of course she wasn’t looking forward to that. Even if the person doing the judging had turned into a staggeringly handsome man.

      Aunt Kira, I’m just here to be Aunt Kira.

      Aunt Kira.

      And Marla had been Mom…

      That seemed so strange.

      Whenever Kira thought of her sister she thought of the age Marla had been the last time Kira had seen her—seventeen. Just a teenager.

      But Marla had grown up. She’d been a wife. A mother.

      And now she wasn’t just out in the world somewhere where Kira had hope of finding her again. Now she was lost to Kira forever. Tears flooded her eyes. Tears for her lost sister, for her lost nephew.

      Kira knew there was nothing she could do to bring back either of them and reminded herself that there were still the twins. Marla’s twins. And if she couldn’t have Marla, if she couldn’t ever know Anthony, at least she could maintain her connection with her sister through those babies.

      Which was exactly what she intended to do, she vowed as she left the dressing table to make the bed, fighting the longing that things had been different. That her family hadn’t ended up the way it had.

      And not just because it would have been nice to have had Marla and Anthony in her life. If things had been different and Marla hadn’t been estranged from them all it might have also been easier for Kira to think of Cutty Grant as her sister’s husband, as someone who was off-limits.

      As it was, she didn’t have any sense of him as family. Maybe that was part of why it was so difficult to get past how attractive he was. So difficult not to notice it. Not to be affected by it the way any woman would be affected by it.

      She was determined not to be, though, Kira told herself forcefully. She was going to have with the twins what she’d missed with Anthony. To be Aunt Kira now, even if she hadn’t been before.

      Aunt Kira, she thought, moving into the tiny bathroom to straighten it. Nothing but Aunt Kira.

      And she meant it, too.

      It was just that it would have been so much easier just to be Aunt Kira if Cutty wasn’t going to be right there with her every minute. Right there where all she would have to do was look up to see his face. Those eyes. That big, hard body…

      But she wasn’t going to let herself be affected by it. She wasn’t. She really wasn’t.

      She was going to do the best she could to take care of the twins, to get to know them, to earn their love, and in the process she was also going to keep their father nothing more than a sidebar to her relationship with them.

      She was going to make sure of that if it was the last thing she ever did.

      It was just that it might not only be the last thing she ever did.

      It also might be the hardest…

      Kira left the apartment at 6:45.

      As she crossed the yard she wondered if Cutty would be awake yet or if he stayed in bed until the twins woke him. If that was the case and she couldn’t get into the house, she had every intention of waiting outside the back door on one of the patio chairs just to make sure that she was there the minute she was needed.

      But when she got to the house the back door was open and through the screen she could smell bacon frying and see Cutty sitting at the kitchen table—his foot propped on a second kitchen chair. There were also two babies in matching high chairs on the other side of the table, and a short, plump, older woman who was setting bowls on the high chairs’ trays.

      Kira felt a sinking feeling at the thought that she was already late. That someone else had had to come in to do the job she’d volunteered for.

      But she didn’t want to make it any worse by wasting time standing there looking in from outside, so she knocked on the screen door’s frame.

      Cutty looked away from the twins and that first glance of those evergreen eyes sent the oddest sensation through Kira. It was like a tiny jolt that skittered across the surface of her skin.

      “Come on in,” Cutty encouraged.

      Kira opened the screen and went in, apologizing as she did. “I’m sorry if I’m late. I thought you said seven was early enough to get here and it’s not even that yet.”

      “I did say seven was early enough,” Cutty responded. “But Betty—this is Betty Cunningham,” he interrupted himself to do the introductions. “Betty, this is Kira, Marla’s sister. Anyway, Betty came over early on her way to the hospital to get her mother, and I dropped the cane coming down the stairs and woke the girls, so here we are.”

      Betty had waited for him to finish, but just barely before she came to stand directly in front of Kira to wrap her arms around her and give her an unexpected hug. “It’s so nice to meet our Marla’s sister.”

      Kira tried not to stiffen up at the physical contact from the stranger. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you, too.”

      Betty released her and turned toward the table, extending one hand in the direction of the twins as if they were the prize on a game show. “And these are our darlings. Cutty said you didn’t get to see them last night.”

      And that was when Kira got her first real look at her nieces.

      She’d never been an easy crier before, and she didn’t know what was wrong with her now, but yet again quick tears filled her eyes at that initial glimpse of the two babies, who were paying no attention to her whatsoever.

      There wasn’t any question