Finn's Twins!

Finn slit the envelope and began to read. He said a rude word. A very rude word. And then another.

Izzy’s head snapped around. He was staring at the letter in his hand, then he crushed it in his fist. “She can’t do this! Damn it! She can’t! I won’t let her!”

Izzy blinked, then realized that Meg must have used the letter to inform him that she was planning to marry Roger. “Maybe it won’t be so bad. Marriage might be the making of them.”

“Marriage?” He stared at her. “They’re only six.”

“I meant Meg. Isn’t that—Didn’t Meg tell you she was marrying Roger?”

“I wanted her to marry Roger!”

“You did? I can’t imagine why,” Izzy said with perhaps more bluntness than absolutely necessary.

“Neither can I now.”

“Then what are you fussing about?”

“Because she’s marrying Roger, all right, but she’s decided she was wrong about him. He isn’t stable enough or responsible enough for fatherhood.” Once more his blue eyes bored into Izzy’s and he waved the letter in her face. “She’s given me permanent custody of the girls!”

It wasn’t her fault.

Nor was it her responsibility. They weren’t her responsibility. None of them. Not Tansy. Not Pansy. Not the black-haired pirate.

Going to Sam’s was her responsibility. Seeing Sam. Being with her fiancé, beginning a real engagement together at last.

But she couldn’t get Finn MacCauley and his nieces out of her mind. What would happen when the girls woke up? Would they have nightmares? Would Finn know how to deal with them if they did?

As the taxi whizzed through Central Park toward Sam’s Upper East Side apartment, Izzy found herself worrying more and more.

It wasn’t until the cab pulled up outside an elegant Fifth Avenue apartment building that Izzy let another worry enter her head.

Should she have told Sam she was coming?

Should she have called him? Should she have at least written?

But then, Sam appeared out of the blue on her doorstep often enough. He had never warned her. In fact every time he’d appeared in her life, he’d come unannounced, appeared on the doorstep, daisies in hand, a beguiling smile on his face, determined to whisk her away on some crazy, romantic outing. That was one of the things she loved about him.

Well, now it was her turn.

But as she peered out the window at the marble facade of the building, she began to have second thoughts. She’d never quite thought about where Sam lived until this moment. When Finn had led her into his brownstone, she’d thought it was the sort of place Sam might call home and she was pleased.

This building wasn’t a brownstone. There didn’t seem to be a multitude of brownstones on Fifth Avenue. Actually there didn’t seem to be any. All the buildings seemed to be bigger and fancier, with exquisite wrought-iron gratings over tall windows, and heavy double doors set back beneath awnings. And they all seemed to have doormen.

Surely Sam didn’t have a doorman!

But the driver said, “This is it, lady,” and she knew, just as surely, that Sam did.

She fumbled in her purse for cab fare. Then, clutching her duffel bag against her chest, she climbed out. The cab sped away, leaving her standing on the curb, staring at the heavy oak and glass doors above which in gold numerals—maybe even gold leaf, Izzy thought with dismay—was the address to which she had sent all her letters to Sam.

Izzy ran her tongue over her lips. In all the time she’d envisioned Sam as her Prince Charming, she’d never ever thought he lived in anything remotely like a castle. Why hadn’t he told her?

Because it hadn’t mattered to him. She was what mattered to him—not the fact that he lived in splendor and she lived in a slightly seedy-looking old Victorian monstrosity that had far in the past seen more paint and better days.

She approached the doors hesitantly, two steps, then three, then stopped. She reached up and tried to judge just how messed up her hair was. Why hadn’t she thought to comb it before she left Finn MacCauley’s? She started to fish around in her bag for a comb when she was suddenly jostled aside as two very elegant young women swept past her, heading for the door.

Their hair was combed. In fact, not a single strand was out of place. Probably never had been. Izzy touched her own again, feeling the tangles and frizz. She bit down on her lip. They were wearing lipstick, too. She could see it as they turned to each other and smiled.

“It was gold. Sam saw it at Tiffany’s. He told me so,” she heard one of them say.

“No! Not really!” the other replied and gave a musical laugh. There was no other word for it—it was musical . And Tiffany’s? Sam went to Tiffany’s?

Then the door opened—not because they had deigned to lift a hand to do it but because the doorman—just as she’d feared—pushed it and held it open so they could enter. “Good evening, Miss Talbot, Miss Sutcliffe.” He very nearly bowed.

Izzy goggled.

The door shut once more. But not before the doorman gave her a very hard stare. It was almost as if he’d looked at her and said, “Move along. Move along now. No riffraff here.”

Izzy bristled. Doorman or no doorman, she wasn’t turning tail and running now. Just because it wasn’t exactly what she had expected, still it was where Sam lived. All she had to do was ask for Sam.

She marched up to the door.

It didn’t open. The doorman just looked at her. She opened it herself. Halfway. And then the doorman grabbed the handle on the other side and held it there. “Yes?”

“I’ve come to see Sam Fletcher, please.”

He looked down his nose at her, but he was too well bred to sniff. “Mr. Fletcher is away.”

“Away? Where away?” God, why hadn’t she called?

The doorman didn’t reply. Discretion was probably his first name. And last and middle.

“For how long?” she asked.

Another dead end.

“Look,” she said desperately, “I know he travels. I just didn’t realize he’d be traveling now. We’re...old friends.” She didn’t think for a minute Mr. Starched Shirt would believe she and Sam were engaged. “I’m from San Francisco. He stops by unannounced to see me when he comes through the city and—” She stopped abruptly, realizing what he might think about that!

Before he could remark a well-dressed—weren’t they all? Izzy thought desperately—older woman came out of the elevator. She gave Izzy an inquisitive glance, then apparently decided that curiosity was rude and her gaze fixed on the doorman.

“Could you get me a taxi, Travers?”

“Yes, ma’am.” He held the door for her, then kept holding it, obviously waiting for Izzy.

Reluctantly she followed. The doorman flagged a cab and held the door while his tenant got in. “Good evening, Mrs Fletcher,” he said as the taxi pulled away. Then he turned and looked at Izzy.

“Mrs. Fletcher?”

He dipped his head. There was the barest hint of a supercilious smile on his face.

“A relative of Sam’s?” Thank God she hadn’t said they were engaged—even if it was true.

“His mother. May I get you a taxi?”

Izzy felt as if she had swallowed her duffel bag. She stared at her toes peeking out the ends of her sandals.

They suddenly seemed very bare. Very out of place in this world that was Sam’s.

It occurred to her how little she knew about Sam. He was the grandson of her grandfather’s beloved friend, the man whose life he had saved during World War II. They had corresponded for years. That was why Sam had looked Gordon Rule up on his way through San Francisco five years ago. He’d wanted to meet the man who’d saved his grandfather’s life. “I owe him mine, in a manner of speaking,” he’d said to Izzy.

It was the first of a dozen meetings—all at the end of business trips to the Far East—during which they’d fallen in love. So Izzy didn’t know much about Sam’s life in New York. She’d simply expected he lived much the same way she did.

It didn’t take a genius to see how wrong she’d been.

Maybe it was just as well she hadn’t found him at home, she thought now. She could imagine him being embarrassed if she showed up on his doorstep—no, in his marble foyer—unannounced. She didn’t want to embarrass him. She was suddenly very worried.

“Miss?”

She glanced up to realize the doorman was still waiting for her answer. “No, um, thank you,” she said faintly. “I’ll walk.”

Finn contemplated his liquor cabinet for a long time before he decided that booze wasn’t going to solve his problem.

Only a fairy godmother who would wave her magic wand and turn his nieces into mice would solve his problem. Or one who would whisk them back to San Francisco and provide them with a stable, devoted mother who loved them.

He rubbed his hands down his face and slumped on the sofa. No, their mother loved them. He didn’t doubt that. She had just finally come to terms with her limitations and, because she loved them, gave them to him.

He supposed there was a skewed sort of logic to her behavior.

I know you think they need stability, she had written in her letter to him. I agree. And you must see that I’m not the one to give it to them. I’ve tried, God knows. But so far I don’t even seem to have managed it for myself. I think I might be able to do it with Roger, but I don’t want to give the girls hopes that I might destroy again. That’s why I’m giving them to you. I know how you feel about being responsible. You never let me down. I know you won’t let them down either. Thanks, big brother. I love you all. Meg.

Quite a testimony.

How the hell was he ever going to live up to it?

He’d been too afraid of their unstable background to ever consider marriage himself. He hadn’t wanted kids for precisely the same reason. And now Meg had dumped into his lap responsibilities he never would have chosen in a million years.

But she was right about one thing—she knew him—and she knew he’d bust himself trying to take care of them. If only he knew where to start.

The doorbell sounded, startling him. He glanced at his watch. It was after eleven. He frowned and hauled himself to his feet, then turned on the intercom.

“Who is it?”

“Izzy,” the voice said. It was faint and slightly tremulous, and for a moment the name didn’t register.

Then it did, and he pushed the button to unlock the door downstairs and jerked open his own door at the same time. Then he went out into the hallway to peer down as Isobel Rule made her way slowly up the stairs.

“What happened?” he demanded, looking her over, half certain she’d been mugged.

Then sanity reasserted itself. No one would mug someone who dressed like a thrift-shop reject.

She gave him a faint smile. “He wasn’t home.”

He dumped you? That and several equally uncomplimentary questions leapt into his head. He suppressed them, stepping back to usher her into the apartment. She stopped just inside the door and stood, still holding her duffel bag. He took it out of her hand. Earlier she probably would have fought him for possession of it. Now she let him take it. She looked as if she was about to cry.

Finn, used to the vicissitudes of emotions in the models he photographed daily, was no stranger to tears, although he was more than a little surprised to see the previously unflappable Isobel Rule coming close to them. “Tell me what happened,” he said gruffly. He steered her into the kitchen and put the kettle on.

She sniffled and perched herself on one of the kitchen chairs, propping her elbows on the table. “He’s gone—and I don’t even know for how long. I should have let him know I was coming.”

“You didn’t?” He’d been reaching into the cupboard for mugs. Now he simply stared at her.

“He never told me!” Isobel protested. She sighed and ran her hands through her hair distractedly. “It’s hard to explain,” she mumbled.

“Try me.” He was intrigued. Besides, it took his mind off his own problem.

“Sam Fletcher is the grandson of my grandfather’s best friend. They fought together in the Second World War and my grandfather saved his grandfather’s life. I used to hear stories about it when I was growing up. My grandfather raised me,” she explained. “My parents died when I was seven and I went to live with him.”

Finn set out the mugs and leaned against the counter, watching her, waiting for the water to boil.

“I met Sam when I was nineteen. He was twenty-four. His grandfather had just died and Sam was taking over a lot of the nitty-gritty work in their family import-export business.”

“They own Fletchers’?” Finn’s eyes widened. Fletchers’ was one of the best-known import-export businesses in the country. While it might not have the household name recognition of a Tiffany’s or Neiman-Marcus, in its own sphere it was legendary. People with incomes like Tawnee Davis bought their household furnishings and knickknacks from Fletchers’.

“You’ve heard of it?”

“I’ve heard of it.”

“They must make a lot of money,” Izzy said glumly.

“You could say that.”

“I didn’t know it,” she said in a small voice. “I thought Sam wasn’t any different than me.”

“And he is,” Finn guessed, beginning to get an inkling of what she must have unexpectedly walked into.

She looked morose. “He has a doorman. And a crystal chandelier. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Waterford.”

“It is,” Finn said.

Izzy looked at him, eyes wide. “How do you know?”

The kettle whistled and he poured water into the mugs for tea. “Because I shot a layout in his apartment building last year.”

“You know where he lives?” Izzy considered that. “It’s pretty fancy. It’s very fancy,” she corrected herself. “Sam never seemed fancy.”

“Maybe he’s not.”

“You don’t know him?”

“No.” Finn hobnobbed with the recently rich and famous. The Fletchers had had money since they’d got off the Mayflower.

“I think I’m out of my league,” Izzy said after a moment.

“But if he intends to marry you—”

“That’s what he said. He gave me a ring.” She flashed it briefly. It was a rock almost the size of a pea. “I thought it was a zircon,” she said. “It must not be.” She sounded even more miserable at that.

“Probably not.” Finn thought she was the strangest girl he’d met in his life. Most of the women he knew would have killed for a diamond of that size. He shoved a cup of tea in front of her, hoping to forestall the tears he saw threatening.

Izzy wrapped her hands around the mug and stared into the steaming tea. “Thank you.” She sipped it. “His mother looked at me like I had a social disease.”

“What?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t even know it was his mother at first. This lady came out while the doorman was rejecting me, and she gave me this look...it wasn’t really snotty exactly, just aware, you know, like she was registering that I didn’t belong.”

“Maybe you’re imagining things.”

Izzy shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She sighed. “I don’t think she has the faintest idea Sam and I are engaged.”

“Not every guy tells his mother about the woman he’s going to marry. Anyway,” he said briskly, “he’s a grown man. He doesn’t need her permission.”

“I just don’t want to...embarrass him.”

“You won’t embar—” he started to say, then his voice faltered because there was just so far assurances could go, and assuring Isobel Rule that in her present state of slightly hippy shambles she wouldn’t embarrass Sam Fletcher was too far.

Finn’s eyes narrowed and he studied her closely, assessing point by point the woman he saw.

She wasn’t tall and willowy like the models he shot every day. She didn’t know the first thing about how to move with their sinuous grace. But she did have assets. Her shiny brown hair, if someone cut it and styled it and tamed all that riotous curl, might actually be lovely. Her skin was freckled, but not unattractive. In fact it had a sort of peachy-rosy glow that, if she wore the right colors, would be stunning. Slate blue, drab gray and burnt umber were not the right ones. A change of clothes would help, too. Something that didn’t shriek Haight-Ashbury with an underlying hum of thrift-shop grabbag for a start.

Her features were actually quite nice, not that she’d done the slightest thing to enhance them. She had wide brown eyes flecked with green and amber, a nice straight nose. And her mouth... he looked more closely. There was something almost akin to Angelina Fiorelli’s about her mouth.

He could turn Isobel Rule into a woman who would knock all the Fletchers’ socks off.

A slow smile spread across his face. “Izzy,” he said, “have I got a deal for you.”

CHAPTER THREE

“YOU want to make me over?” She echoed Finn MacCauley’s words, trying to sound offended or at least indifferent. She didn’t do a very good job.

He shrugged. “You’re the one who just finished saying you didn’t think you were playing in his league. I only offered to fix that.”

“For a price,” she reminded him.

“You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. Besides, where are you going to go if you don’t stay here?”

She didn’t know. She knew actually that his offer was close to life-saving. At least it was face-saving. She couldn’t imagine going home now and reporting to Pops and Digger and Hewey, the old sailors who shared the house Grandad had left her at his death two months before, that she couldn’t get past Sam Fletcher’s front door. They’d come storming out en masse and throw him overboard. They’d fuss and fume and get all overprotective and cosset and coddle her to within an inch of her life.

It had been all she could do to convince them she was capable of coming clear across the country alone to see him. If they’d known for a minute that she hadn’t told him she was coming, well, it didn’t bear thinking about!

No, she had to dig in and stay in New York. And Finn MacCauley’s offer was clearly the best way to do it. All he wanted in exchange was that she take care of the girls. What sort of hardship was that? She enjoyed the girls.

So what was the problem?

The problem, Izzy finally got around to admitting to herself, was Finn MacCauley himself. She’d never met anyone like him in her life. Sam, who was apparently wealthy beyond all her wildest dreams, seemed somehow more ordinary, more commonplace, than Finn.

Sam was easygoing, casual, lighthearted. There was nothing intense about Sam—unless it was the romantic spark he had fired in Izzy five years before. Finn, on the other hand, positively radiated passionate energy. She’d seen it in him the moment he’d burst out of the door to his studio. She could see it now as he prowled the confines of his kitchen.

It was a sort of intense singularly masculine energy that made her more than a little nervous. She found that surprising when she thought about it, because heaven knew she’d been raised around men. Since the age of seven, she’d been raised by men—Grandad and his sailor pals. But not one of them had she been as aware of as she was Finn MacCauley.

Did she want such a man to, as he put it so very bluntly, “shape her up”?

Did she have a choice?

Well, yes. She could say no thank you to his deal. But then where would she stay? And who would he get to take care of Tansy and Pansy?

“For how long?” she asked warily.

“How long is Fletcher going to be gone?”

“I don’t know.” She didn’t relay any more of the ignominious details of her encounter with the doorman.

“I’ll find out tomorrow,” Finn said.

He acted as if it would be no big deal. Probably for him it wouldn’t be. No doubt she could learn a lot from him.

If she dared.

Visions of Pops and Digger and Hewey looking after her for the rest of her life—or theirs—rose again in her mind. She lifted her gaze and met his piratical one. “All right,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

She was awake at first light, surprised, in fact, that she’d slept at all. But the previous day’s events had been tiring enough so that it wasn’t long after her head hit the pillow that Izzy was out like a light. The sounds of the city woke her again when it was scarcely dawn. She didn’t know why sirens and rattling trash cans should sound different in New York than they did in San Francisco. She only knew that she was awakened very early.

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