Baby Bonanza

basket began to take shape, and she smiled to herself despite the frantic racing in her mind.

When she was finished, she left the basket on her worktable where, in the morning, she’d affix a huge red bow to the top before packing it up to be delivered. For now, though, she was tired, hungry and very curious to see how Nick was doing with the boys.

She slipped into the kitchen through the connecting door and stopped for an appalled moment as she let her gaze sweep the small and usually tidy room. The red walls and white cabinets were pretty much all she recognized. There was spilled powdered formula strewn across the round tabletop, discarded bottles that hadn’t been rinsed and a tower of dirty receiving blankets that Nick had apparently used to wipe up messes.

Shaking her head, she quietly walked into the living room, half-afraid of what she would find. There wasn’t a sound in the house. No TV. No crying babies. Nothing.

Frowning, she moved farther into the room, noticing more empty baby bottles, and a torn bag of diapers spilled across a tabletop next to an open and drying-out box of baby wipes. Then she rounded the sofa and stopped dead. Nick was stretched out, fast asleep on her grandmother’s rag rug and on either side of him lay a sleeping baby.

“Oh, my.” Jenna simply stood there, transfixed by the sight of Nick and their sons taking a nap together. A single lamp threw a puddle of golden light across the three of them even as the last of the sunlight came through the front window. Nick’s even breathing and the soft sighs and coos issuing from the twins were the only sounds in the room and Jenna etched this image into her mind so that years from now she could call up this mental picture and relive the moment.

There was just something so sweet, so right about the little scene. Nick and his sons. Together at last.

Her heart twisted painfully in her chest as love for all three of them swamped her. Oh, she was in so much trouble. Loving Nick was not a smart thing to do. She knew there was no future there for them. All he wanted was to be a part of her sons’ lives-that didn’t include getting close with their mother. So, what was she supposed to do? How could she love Nick when she knew that nothing good could come of it? And how could she keep her sons from him when she knew, deep down, that they would need a father as much as Nick would need them?

“Why does it have to be you who touches my heart?” she whispered, looking down at the man who’d invaded her life and changed her world.

And as she watched him, Nick’s eyes slowly opened and his steady stare locked on her. “Do I?” he asked quietly.

Caught, there was no point in trying to deny what she’d already admitted aloud. She dropped to her knees. “You know you do.”

Carefully, so as not to disturb the twins, Nick sat up, wincing a little at the stiffness in his back. But his gaze didn’t waver. He continued to meet her eyes, and Jenna wished she could read what he was thinking. What he was feeling.

But as always, Nick’s thoughts were his own, his emotions so completely controlled she didn’t have a clue what was going on behind those pale blue eyes.

“Then why’d you leave the ship so fast?” Nick asked quietly.

“You know why.” Just the memory of the naked redhead was enough to put a little steel back into her spine.

“I didn’t even know her,” he reminded her with just a touch of defensiveness in his voice.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, lowering her voice quickly when Jacob began to stir. She hadn’t meant to wake him up. Hadn’t wanted to get into any of this right now. But since it had happened anyway, there was no point in trying to avoid it. “Nick, don’t you see? The redhead was just a shining example of how different we are. She brought home to me how much out of my element I was on that ship. With you.”

He reached out, skimmed his fingertips along her cheek and pushed her hair back behind her right ear. Jenna shivered at the contact, but took a breath and steadied herself. Want wasn’t enough. A one-sided love wasn’t enough. She needed more. Deserved more.

“I don’t belong in the kind of life you lead, Nick. And neither do the boys.”

“You could, though,” he told her, his voice a hush of sound that seemed intimate, cajoling. “All three of you could. We could all live on the ship. You know there’s plenty of room. The boys would have space to play. They’d see the world. Learn about different cultures, different languages.”

Tempting, so tempting, just as he’d meant it to be. A reluctant smile curved her mouth, but she shook her head as she looked from him to the twins and back again. “They can’t have a real life living on board a ship, Nick. They need a backyard. Parks. School. Friends-” She stopped, waved both hands and added, “A dog.”

He tore his gaze from hers and looked at first one sleeping baby to the other before shifting his gaze back to hers. “We’ll hire tutors. They can play with the passengers’ kids. We could even have a dog if they want one. It could work, Jenna. We could make it work.”

Though a part of her longed to believe him, she knew, deep down, that this wasn’t about him wanting to be with her-finding a way to integrate her into his life-this was about him discovering his sons and wanting them with him.

“No, Nick,” she whispered, shaking her head sadly. “It wouldn’t be fair to them. Or us. You don’t want me, you want your sons. And I understand that. Believe me I do.”

He grabbed for her hand and smoothed the pad of his thumb across her knuckles. “It’s not just the boys, Jenna. You and I…”

“Would never work out,” she finished for him, despite the flash of heat sweeping from her hand, up her arm, to rocket around her chest like a pinball slapping against the tilt bar.

She wished it were different. Wished it were possible that he could love her as she did him. But Nick Falco simply wasn’t the kind of man to commit to any one woman. Best that she remember that and keep her heart as safe as she could.

“You don’t know that. We could try.” His eyes were so filled with light, with hunger and the promise of something delicious that made Jenna wish with everything in her that she could take the risk.

But it wasn’t only herself she had to worry about now. There were two other little hearts it was her job to protect. And she couldn’t bring herself to take a chance that might bring her sons pain a few years down the road.

But instead of saying any of that, instead of arguing the point with him, she pulled her hand free of Nick’s grasp and said softly, “Help me get the boys up to bed, okay?”

He drew up one leg and braced one arm across his knee. His gaze was locked on her, his features half in shadow, half in light. “This isn’t over, Jenna.”

As she bent over to scoop up Jacob, Jenna paused, looked into those pale blue eyes and said, “It has to be, Nick.”

Ten

“Here?” Maxie repeated. “What do you mean he’s here? Here in Seal Beach here?”

Jenna glanced back over her shoulder at her closed front door. She’d spotted Maxie pulling up out front and had made a beeline for the door to head her off at the pass, so to speak. “I mean he’s here here. In the house here. With the boys here.”

For three days now. She’d been able to avoid Maxie by putting her off with phone calls, claiming to be busy. But Jenna had known that sooner or later, her older sister would just drop by.

“Are you nuts?” Maxie asked. Her big, blue eyes went wide as saucers and her short, spiky, dark blond hair actually looked spikier somehow, as if it were actually standing on end more than usual. “What are you thinking, Jenna? Why would you invite him here?”

“I didn’t invite him,” Jenna argued, then shrugged. “He…came.”

Maxie stopped, narrowed her eyes on Jenna and asked, “Are you sleeping with him?”