His Motherless Little Twins

Eric didn’t move either. And his face, even in the dim lights, was painted with sheer panic and perplexity. A sure sign of what he was thinking, which embarrassed her even more. It wasn’t like she’d kissed every doctor with whom she’d shared a victory, because she hadn’t. Yet one minute she was telling him to keep his boundaries, and the next minute those boundaries had tumbled down—that emotional overreaction Charles had berated her for. Maybe Charles had been right when he’d told her she was more suited, emotionally, to the kitchen. “Look, Eric, I shouldn’t have—”

He thrust out his hand to stop her. Still scowling. Still perplexed. “What you did today with Bryce was nothing short of amazing, Dinah. I don’t want to take anything away from that.”

In the uncomfortable moment between them, she shrugged for the lack of a better response.

“And for the record, I’m sorry about the way I behaved after we had that little collision on the road.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she managed, barely sounding any more steady than she felt.

“But it does. I’d had one hell of a morning, between the floods and the hospital. My twin girls have been sick, and I had to leave to make sure they were safe, then I had to get back to the hospital right away. But they were frightened. Wanted me to stay home with them. Cried, begged. And nothing pulls at your heart harder than two little girls begging for you to stay. So I stayed longer than I should have, was distracted when I finally did leave, and you…” He chuckled nervously, “Well, you know the rest of the story.”

The rest of the story? Did he mean the part where she’d just kissed a married man? Somehow, with the casual way he acted around her, she wouldn’t have guessed that about him. Who was she kidding, though? Her life was a testament to not guessing the right thing. And the right thing with Eric was that he wasn’t only married, but married with children. A man with huge entanglements.

Well, something in her life was finally simple. One kiss, and he’d been a willing part of it, was where it ended. Actually, she was glad about that because her judgment wasn’t going to be tested on this. They’d met their final boundary. Nothing came after it. Period. No doubts, no questions, nothing to wonder about. “How old are they?” she asked, at last finding enough strength to push her toward the door. “Your twins? How old are they?”

“Five, going on twenty-one. Spoiled rotten, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.”

“Their names?” she asked, backing her way around Eric, keeping herself well clear of him as he stood at the end of the crib.

“Pippa. She’s older by nine minutes, and she’s the outgoing one. My little extrovert who can’t stay out of trouble. And Paige, my very serious introvert who tends to be more clingy than anything.”

By the time she got to the door leading to the hall, she half expected Eric to flip a photo wallet out of his pocket, like a kiss followed by a trip through the family archives was all in a day’s work for him. But he didn’t. Rather, he turned around, popped his stethoscope into his ears and had a good look at Bryce. Checked his breath sounds, his heart, his reflexes, probably glad for that whole awkward episode to be over with.

That’s when Dinah escaped.

“Don’t let me keep you from your wife any longer,” she bit out as she fled the ICU. She made it to the hall, got halfway down it and sagged against the wall. What was she doing? How could she have failed to notice the ring on his finger? And how, even now, knowing what she did about Eric Ramsey, was his kiss was still lingering on her lips? It burned all the way through her, and as she raised her fingers to her lips, she knew it would linger a while longer. Against her will. Or maybe because of her will.

For a moment, she’d thought Eric was different. But he was like the rest of them, wasn’t he? Her father who’d walked out on this family, her husband who’d cheated on her, her fiancé who’d seen a weakness in her and exploited it. Well, she’d been gullible again. It was her history. Her habit. They spoke, she believed, she got hurt.

The masses of humanity in the hall were cloying, as she regained enough strength to fight her way through them to get to her sister. So many people with no place to go, people reaching out, people in pain. But Dinah was in her own unbelievable pain, and she didn’t see them all through the tears stinging her eyes. She was hurt, angry, but mostly humiliated. Her fault entirely. She had to get away. Had to find Angela and get out of there. But she was almost half the way to the waiting area when Eric caught up to her.

“Dinah!” he yelled over the crowd.

She heard him, but didn’t stop.

“Dinah!” he yelled again, catching up to her and falling into step. “Did you think I’d leave my wife at home with the girls while I was out hitting on you? Is that why you ran out? Because you thought I was…” He glanced down at the ring on his finger. “That I’d kiss you the way I did if I was…”

She tried to twist away from him and go the other direction, but Eric stepped in front of her then stepped in front of her again when she turned yet another way. “Look, Eric. I’ll give you credit where it’s due. You’re a good doctor. But other than that, you do what you have to do, as long as it doesn’t involve me. OK? I don’t like men like you. No, let me restate that. I hate men like you, and I pity the women who keep falling for them because the result is always the same no matter how much they believe they’re the one who will finally change him, finally tame the beast in him. Men like you don’t tame. Once you’ve had a taste of what it’s like to step outside the bounds of normal decency, you don’t step back in. So, leave me alone. We’ve done what we had to do, and there’s no reason to continue…anything.”

Deep breath, Dinah, she kept telling herself. Calm down. This wasn’t Damien Corday, her husband, who’d had the decency to wait six months into their marriage before cheating on her. It wasn’t her father, a man who’d left his family because it hadn’t been the family he’d wanted. Wasn’t even Charles Lansing who’d turned on her in such a profound, hurtful way. This was Eric Ramsey, who was trying to cheat on Mrs. Eric Ramsey. Yes, pity the poor wife. But this time it was truly none of her business.

“Do I get to defend myself?”

“Against what?” Dinah snapped. She wouldn’t look up at him, wouldn’t take a long, slow journey into those gorgeous brown eyes because if she did she might do something stupid, like believe him. And the last thing she ever intended to do again was believe anything any man had to say. Sure, it was reactionary, but she had good cause to react the way she did.

“Against your accusations. You get to fling them at me, so I should have the opportunity to deflect them. To defend myself.”

“I don’t care what you have to say, Eric, because I’ve heard…everything. All the excuses, all the explanations. All the lies. There’s nothing new under the sun, you know.”

He opened his mouth to speak, to compound his lie, to make an even bigger fool of her, but at that very same moment a tiny figure in a pink rain slicker came running through the hall, directly to Eric, followed by an identical little figure in another pink rain slicker.

“Daddy!” Eric spun to see them, then braced himself against the inevitable as both little girls launched themselves into his arms at the very same time.

Galoshes halfway to their knees, rain slickers all the way down to the galoshes, rain hats covering up most of their faces, it was hard to see the little girls, but Dinah’s heart did pound a little harder as Eric went down on one knee and scooped them both up into his embrace. They were giggling and laughing and splashing him with water dripping from their slickers, almost knocking him flat on his back in their exuberance.

“OK, girls,” their mother said, coming up from behind. “I told you not to overwhelm your father. Remember he’s been doing a very difficult surgery, and he’s tired.”

“But we brought him cookies,” one of the girls cried.

“We’ve been baking,” the woman Dinah took to be Eric’s wife said. “And baking, and baking. They were bored, and they missed you.”

“Well, you know how I love your cookies!” Eric exclaimed, extricating himself from the girls and standing up. Once he was fully upright, both girls immediately latched on to him again, one girl holding on to each of his legs.

“Are you coming home now, Daddy?” one of the girls asked.

“Sorry, but I can’t leave here yet. We’re too busy. Too many people still coming in and you know Daddy has to stay here and take care of them.”

“Then can we stay here and help?” the girls cried in unison. “Please, Daddy, can we stay?”

He looked at the woman, who shrugged. “I’m going to sit with Gabby, and Debbie’s coming in shortly to look after the girls. So it’s fine with me if they stay for a while,” she said. “Maybe you can take a break with them later on?”

“How can I say no to taking a break with my two best girls?” Eric said. He took hold of the brims of both their rain hats and shoved them up. “But first I want you to say hello to Dinah Corday. She’s the nurse who helped me in surgery today. The surgery I did on Dr. Evans’s baby.”

Totally unaware of her presence there, in this cozy family scene, until they spun to face her, they both ran immediately to Dinah and grabbed her like she was their long-lost friend. “Hello,” she said tentatively.

“Hello,” they said in unison. “Do you want to eat some of Daddy’s cookies?” one of the girls continued.

“That’s Pippa,” Eric said. “Without the rain gear, you’ll be able to tell her from Paige because Pippa has brown eyes like me, and Paige has hazel eyes like her mother. Other than that, they’re identical.”

“And I’m taller,” the one Dinah believed was Paige said. “By half an inch.”

“Only when you’re standing on your tiptoes,” Pippa argued.

“Do not,” Paige protested.

“Do, too,” Pippa countered.

“And so goes the Ramsey family,” Eric said, laughing. “Oh, and, Dinah. I’d like you to meet my sister, Janice Laughlin. The girls and I live with her, and she watches them when I’m working.”

Eric lived with his sister? Suddenly the heat of embarrassment began its creep from her neck, up her throat, to her cheeks. “Hello,” she said, almost choking over the single word.

“But Daddy’s going to get us a great big house of our own soon, where we can have a dog and…” Paige started.

“A cat,” Pippa finished.

Dinah chanced a glance at Eric, whose expression was an odd one, caught between pain and amusement. He wanted to laugh, or cry. She couldn’t tell which. And she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. “Look, it’s nice to meet all of you…Janice, Paige, Pippa. But I’ve really got to go and find my sister.”

“Can we go see the baby?” Pippa cried. “Please?”

“Pretty please?” Paige joined in.

“Not right now,” Eric said, trying to take a firm hand. “He’s not feeling very well. But maybe in a few days.”

But Eric wasn’t very good at that firm hand, and it showed. Even to a casual observer such as herself, Dinah saw that he was just plain gooey when it came to his little girls. They had him wrapped around their little fingers, and he enjoyed every bit of it. He would be a very indulgent father, Dinah decided. And a very good one. Something also told her that Eric wasn’t a man cheating on his wife. He was a man getting over something painful, for which she felt very bad. So bad, in fact, that she turned away without saying another word, and practically ran into the room where Angela was sitting, waiting for Gabby to return from seeing her baby. “Tell me about Eric,” she whispered to Angela.

“What do you want to know?”

“Is he married?”

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