Suddenly a Bride / A Bride After All: Suddenly a Bride. Кейси Майклс

been both mother and father to the twins since they were three. She was used to handling the boys on her own. She was independent. She was capable. She was being an idiot ….

      She reached into her purse for her keys. “I can manage Mikey,” she said, already pulling the boy’s pliable form toward her. “Fireman’s lift. It works.” She took Mikey’s new hat from him, stuck it on her own head—what else was there to do with it?—hefted her son over her shoulder and then retrieved the autograph hound, tucking it under her other arm. Her knees wanted to buckle slightly, but she ignored their protest. “Ready?”

      “As I’ll ever be,” Will told her, putting Danny’s new IronPigs hat on his own head before grabbing up Danny and his autograph hound. He then kicked his side door shut, so that Elizabeth did the same thing, and, together, they made their way up the flight of wooden stairs to the landing.

      Fitting the key in the lock wasn’t easy, but she managed, even while mentally trying to remember if she’d moved the laundry basket from the kitchen table, where she’d earlier sat sorting socks and little boy underwear. One look inside the kitchen told her that she hadn’t. Some people use fresh flowers as a centerpiece, she told herself as she led the way through the apartment, flipping on lights as she went.

      “Right through here,” she said as they passed by her bedroom and she turned into the larger of the two bedrooms, the one shared by the twins. Bending her knees, she managed to pull back the covers and then gratefully lowered Mikey onto the mattress. “If he’d had one more hot dog tonight, I wouldn’t have been able to manage this,” she said, watching as Will untied Danny’s sneakers and pulled them off.

      Did Will know he was still wearing Danny’s hat? The hat didn’t quite fit, and he had it on sideways. Did he know how adorable he looked?

      “Sorry, I think the left lace is still knotted,” he said, now tackling Danny’s socks. “Nothing seems to be waking them, does it? I don’t remember the last time I slept this well—or this deeply.”

      “The sleep of the innocent,” Elizabeth told him, pulling the covers up over Mikey’s chest. They could take baths in the morning. A little dirt wouldn’t kill them, nor would having them sleep in their clothes.

      “The innocent, huh?” Will said, smiling at her as they walked out of the darkened room. “That explains it. I haven’t been innocent in a long time.”

      She shot him a weak smile as she leaned past him to close the bedroom door. “You’ve still got Danny’s hat on, you know.”

      He reached up and took it off, handing it to her before reaching for Mikey’s hat, which was still on her head. “Long live the Pigs.”

      “Oink, oink,” Elizabeth said, putting the hats down on the hall table. “This way they’ll be able to find them first thing in the morning. I have a feeling I’ll be seeing a lot of that pink pig.”

      “I’m trying to figure out how you manage two kids at one time. I mean, I can see how you do it now—and you do it very well. But what about when they were younger? One is a handful. Two is twice that.”

      “I had my ways,” Elizabeth told him as they passed back down the hall, her bedroom to their left, a combined living and dining area to their right. “When I needed to carry both of them, I’d pick up Danny first and then let Mikey climb me.”

      They entered the brightly lit kitchen, and Elizabeth headed for the automatic coffeemaker she’d already prepared for the morning and switched it on.

      “Excuse me?”

      She turned to rest her hip against the counter. “I’d hold Danny, and then Mikey would grab on to my hand with both of his and put his feet against my leg. I’d pull, and he’d climb. Once he was high enough, he’d sort of snuggle against me and I could hold him.” Elizabeth felt her cheeks growing hot. “Sort of like King Kong climbing the Empire State Building.”

      “Except that you’re a lot more soft and snuggly than good old Bethlehem steel,” Will said, looking at her in a way that made Elizabeth think perhaps what little makeup she wore had smudged beneath her eyes or something.

      “I … I have some cookies in that jar on the table. Peanut butter. The boys made them today with Elsie, Richard’s housekeeper. They’re very good.”

      “That sounds nice, yes,” Will said, stepping closer to her, which wasn’t a huge feat, as the kitchen wasn’t all that large. “Here,” he said, reaching toward her, “let me fix this. Your button must have come open when you were carrying Mikey.”

      Elizabeth looked down in shock to see Will’s tanned hands, his long fingers, working with the material of her blouse that had, indeed, come open, revealing the line of her fairly utilitarian bra. He didn’t linger, didn’t do anything more than slip the button back into its buttonhole, but Elizabeth had to fight a shiver at the unexpected intimacy.

      He looked into her eyes. He smiled. His eyes smiled. Teased. Then he backed off.

      “Coffee’s ready,” she said, turning to grab two mugs from the cabinet, congratulating herself for not having fainted dead away or begun drooling or some such idiocy. “What would you like with it? Sugar? Cream?” Me?

      “I’m fine with it black,” Will told her. “Where should I put this?”

      She looked over her shoulder to see he was now holding the laundry basket. Was any of her underwear in it, or just all those little pairs of briefs with cartoon animals or superheroes or race cars all over them? “Oh, anywhere,” she said lamely. “That shouldn’t have been there. I’m sorry. I don’t have guests very often.”

      Will pulled the cookie jar to the center of the table and removed the lid, reaching inside to grab one of the cookies. “Don’t worry about it. You have two kids, and you have a full-time job. I may have a full-time job, but the rest of my life is my own. Do you have your own life, Elizabeth?”

      The suddenness, the seriousness of the question, startled Elizabeth. “I’m very happy,” she answered, wondering if she sounded as defensive as she felt. She also realized that she hadn’t answered Will’s question.

      So, obviously, did he. His eyes, his slight smile, both hinted to her that he did. But his next question really proved it.

      “When was the last time you went out for dinner, Elizabeth? Not counting taking the boys someplace where you order by talking into a clown’s mouth or a dinner that could be served on a napkin at a ballpark?”

      She couldn’t remember. Dear God, she couldn’t remember! “I don’t know. A while?”

      “Okay. How about this one. Name the last movie you saw in a theater.”

      Elizabeth wanted to get up, leave the room. Will was a lawyer, and he was interrogating her. But why? “It was … something the boys wanted to see. There was this prehistoric cartoon squirrel, and he was always chasing a—I don’t know. What difference does it make?”

      “None, probably,” Will said, sitting back in his chair, the coffee mug—the one with a superhero dog stamped on the sides—clasped in both of his hands. “You’d never been to a baseball game until tonight. That was setting the bar pretty high. I didn’t want our next date to be a letdown. So dinner and a movie?”

      She carefully set down her coffee mug, which was better than having the hot liquid splash all over her fingers because her hand was shaking. “Tonight was a date?”

      “Technically, probably not. I thought we could try again, this time without the kids. Not that I don’t like them,” he added quickly. Too quickly?

      “No, of course not. You were very good with them. Very … understanding. But I—I don’t date. I mean, I haven’t been on a date since before I was married, and I really don’t know how to—” She looked at him in appeal. “Could you help me out here? I’m being an idiot.”

      “Happy to be of service.