Montana Twins

He woke to the wailing sound of the smoke alarm.

He was on his feet, pulling on his pants, before he realized it was the twins crying. How could two tiny sets of lungs make that much noise?

Shaking the fuzziness from his head, he stumbled out of the bedroom into the hallway. He met Laura at the door to the nursery.

“I’ve got ’em,” he mumbled, his voice thick with sleep.

“Becky’s been crying for five minutes. She woke up Mandy.”

“Sorry. I didn’t hear ’em.” How could Laura tell which one was crying, for Pete’s sake? It just sounded like a racket to him.

They both bent over the crib, each one picking up a baby, which quieted the infants only briefly. Eric followed Laura downstairs, where she retrieved two bottles from the refrigerator, where she’d had him place them earlier, and popped them into the microwave. Jiggling the baby in his arms, he stared stupidly at the glow of the oven until it buzzed.

They each took a bottle and sat down next to each other on the bench at the kitchen table. A moment later the screams were replaced by the sound of eager little sucking noises, not unlike a newborn calf discovering his source of sustenance for the first time.

Eric sighed in relief.

“After a while you get tuned in to their cries and wake up at the first peep. It’s better not to let them get too upset.”

He grunted noncommittally. That kind of adjustment might take more than a day or two.

Gazing at nothing in particular, his eyes finally focused on Laura’s feet. Her bare feet. Long, slender toes tipped by polish in a rainbow of bright colors, each toenail a different hue.

He grinned, awake now. “Nice toenail polish.”

“Huh? Oh.” She folded one foot over the other like a shy little girl. “My neighbors have a nine-year-old daughter who wanted to try out her new fingernail polishing kit.”

“And you volunteered?”

“Something like that.”

He let his gaze wander higher, surveying the modest nightgown she wore buttoned securely at her throat. He had the oddest urge to slowly undo the gown one button at a time to discover what other surprises were hidden behind her prim exterior.

He’d never had a woman stay overnight in his house. It had never seemed to be the right time. The right woman.

Having Laura here was definitely going to challenge his view of what was “right”…and what was wrong for both him and her.

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