The Bonus Mum

He’d lowered his voice so the girls wouldn’t hear. His whisper was just as evocative as his normal tenor.

“Well, if you think up something evil I could do, give a shout, would you?”

He chuckled. They shared a smile that made her feel like a lit sparkler in a dark room. But then he motioned toward her corkboard.

“The girls said you were doing a project with orchids.”

She nodded. “The wild orchids in South Carolina—especially rare and endangered ones. Duke gave me a two-year grant, but I think I can finish the project sooner than that. When I came up here in June, that’s all I did, traipse around the mountains, taking photographs and collecting specimens. So most of the gut research is done. I just have to put it all together, which is going to take a serious block of time.” She knew she was babbling, but he honestly looked interested.

“Landscaping’s my work.”

“The twins said you owned a business.”

He nodded. “I’m the family disgrace. I have three siblings, two lawyers and my sister is a CPA. I’m the only dirt bum. Love working with my hands. Love taking a piece of land—don’t care whether it’s small or big—and analyzing the soil, the shapes and contours, figuring out which plants and trees will thrive there, what will show it off. I have no idea where I picked up the addiction, but I sure have it hard-core.”

“My parents are both surgeons, and they expected the three of us kids to follow in their footsteps...but at least I could share disgrace with one of my brothers. I went for botany, and Tucker has a retreat camp on Whisper Mountain here. Ike was the only brother who turned into a doctor, like we were all supposed to.”

“Being a disgrace is tough.”

“Well, I was a disgrace for more than one reason,” she admitted, and then wanted to shoot herself. That wasn’t information she meant to share with Whit—or anyone else, for that matter.

He didn’t ask. He looked at her, as if waiting to hear the “other reason” she was a disgrace. But when she didn’t say anything more, he turned his attention back to the corkboard of photographs.

“Are you only photographing them when they’re in flower?” he asked.

“Good question. No. I marked the spot where I found each orchid—the location, the environment, the plants growing near them, tested the soil for acidity and all that. Then I went back every month to record that information all over again. Different predators showed up in different months. Different plants became dormant in different months. There were different insects, different temperatures, different rainfall.”

“Man. I’d love to have done this kind of study. I don’t know anything about orchids. But the how, why, when and where certain plants or grasses grow is of enormous interest to me.”

“You didn’t go for a botany degree...?”

“No, I went after a landscape architecture degree from Michigan State. It was a long way from home to go to college, but they had a great program for what I wanted. Never regretted it. But the study you’re doing crosses paths with so much I’m interested in.”

But he looked at her as if he were far more fascinated in her than her study. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone wanted to hear what she thought, what she felt.

“Hey, Dad!” Pepper leaped up from the tablet and hurtled toward them at her usual speed—a full gallop. “Can we all stay and watch a movie if Rosemary says yes? There’s one that starts in just a few minutes. We’ll miss the beginning if we have to go home.”

“I think our family’s imposed on Rosemary enough for today.”

“But Dad. It’s Princess Bride! And it’s on right now.”

“You never have to see that one again. You know all the words. Hell. I know all the words. Please. Anything but that. Anything. We can even go home and talk about...clothes.”

He herded them out, over a new round of protests and pleas and outright begging. Grabbed jackets. Found shoes. Listened to chatter.

Over their heads, before he whooshed them out the door, he looked at her. Really looked at her. As if they’d been connecting in a private way since the moment they met...the moment he walked in. Every moment they found themselves together.

She thought: he wanted to kiss her.

It was there. In his gaze. In how privately he looked at her, how silently he looked...worried. Worried but determined.

When she finally closed the door, the sudden silence in the cabin struck her again as unexpectedly lonely—when she’d been content living alone. Or she thought she’d been content.

She ambled through the living room, picking up mugs and glasses, doing little cleanups—and lecturing herself at the same time. She was imagining those “looks” from Whit. The guy was still in love with his wife, from everything the girls had said. He was still loving her, still mourning her, still grieving.

And she had no business volunteering for trouble, besides. She was still in deep emotional shock over George—the man everyone assumed she’d be thrilled to marry, thrilled to spend her life with. She hadn’t discovered his turnip side until it was almost too late...which unfortunately said a whole lot about her lack of judgment in men.

She was afraid to trust her judgment again. Not because she was a sissy. Because she was smart.

She had to be smart. Her confidence had been crippled, not by George, but by misjudging a man she thought she loved. It was a mistake she couldn’t risk making again.

Chapter Three

They’d been home a half hour. The girls were parked in front of The Princess Bride, mesmerized, as if they’d never seen the movie fifty times before. But Whit couldn’t settle, couldn’t shake an odd case of restlessness.

He prowled the rented house from room to room. The mountain cabin suited him far better than their home in Charleston—but Zoe loved the city side of life, so a city house was what she’d wanted.

He liked it here. The quiet. The clean air. The mists in the morning, the smell of pine, and the house itself had a dream of a layout. The great room had a massive corner fireplace, and the kitchen/dining area was all open. You could feed two or twenty in the same space. Glass doors everywhere led to a wraparound porch. The back door opened onto a practical mudroom and downstairs bath, and beyond that was a good size master bedroom.

The upstairs was a simple open loft—a bedroom and den type of area—the girls had squealed nonstop when they first saw it, thought it was “beyond awesome” to have a whole floor to themselves. He thought it was equally “awesome” that they were always safely within his sight.

When he’d prowled the house enough, he settled with a mug of cider in the great room—as far away from The Princess Bride movie as he could get—and accidently found himself staring out the glass doors to the west. More precisely, he wasn’t staring out, but staring up.

He couldn’t see the MacKinnon lodge through the thick forest, but without those trees, he suspected he’d easily be able to locate Rosemary’s place, maybe even see her, if she were outside on her front deck.

Mentally he could still picture her long legs, the careless, easy way she wore clothes. Her hair was short, blond as sunshine, always looking finger-brushed, framing her delicate face so naturally. The way her sun-blushed skin set off added to her looks being striking, interesting.

More than interesting. He hadn’t felt his hormones kick like this in a long, long time.

There was a reason—there had to be a reason—why a smart, delectably attractive and downright interesting woman was living alone. It gnawed at him to think of her being alone, especially during the holidays. It wasn’t as if there were close neighbors or friends who could easily stop over for a visit. Whit understood that she’d won that academic grant, that she loved the study, that whole business.

But that still didn’t explain her holing up alone for the holidays.

And it didn’t begin to explain the sadness in her blue blue eyes.

Abruptly he heard the tune on his cell phone, flipped it open and heard the country drawl of Samson, one of his truck drivers. No emergency, Sam just wanted to relay that he was headed to Savannah for his Christmas family gathering, and he hoped Whit and the girls would have a good holiday.

The conversation lifted his spirits. His employees had been together for years now, except for a few extra college kids he’d hired over the summer. They’d turned into a team, the kind who shared good times and bad, who attended each other’s christenings and graduations.

Whit didn’t know what that really meant until Zoe died, and the crew hung closer to him than sticky glue. Someone called every day; someone else brought food; and all of them offered help with whatever needed doing—either for Whit or for the girls. It taught him forever that “family” could mean a lot of things, and wasn’t always defined by blood kin.

When he finished the call, he almost put down the phone...but instead flipped it open again. Rosemary’s number was already in his phone’s memory, from their first call. It only took one impulsive, brainless moment to dial it.

Her line was busy.

So, he thought, she did have someone to talk to.

He couldn’t call again for a couple hours, because the movie ended and the girls immediately claimed starvation. The vote for dinner was a made-from-scratch pizza—one of the few things he could do well in the kitchen. It just always seemed to require every dish and every counter to put it together.

The girls helped clean up. Some. Predictably, though, they scattered faster than dust in the wind when he turned on the news.

Once they ran upstairs, he tried calling Rosemary again.

For the second time, her line was busy. So she either had another person to talk with, or she’d talked for three solid hours to her first caller. The former seemed more likely, but as the girls came back down to con Whit into an old fashioned game of Clue, he got the niggling idea that possibly she was in trouble. Maybe she hadn’t been talking. Maybe her phone wasn’t working, because for a hermit to be occupied with two calls seemed odd. A puzzle piece that didn’t fit.

If that thinking was flimsy, he figured out the obvious. He wanted to talk with her. Any excuse he could conjure up was good enough.

He checked on the girls, found them in their Christmas pj’s, lying on their tummies reading. He stole a good-night kiss from each, then took his cell phone into his room downstairs.

He kicked off his shoes, flipped off the light and sank into the recliner facing the west glass doors. The master bedroom suited him like a good pair of gloves. Nothing fancy, just a giant bed with a serious mattress and a warm, dark pine comforter. The best part was the view. The glass doors looked straight up the mountainside. A few nights before there’d been a full moon. He’d been close enough to touch it.

Okay, so maybe not that close. But he’d moved the recliner to the window that night, and that’s where he’d spent the past few evenings since, a short brandy in his hand, the lights off, to just inhale the mountain, the air, the peace.

When he dialed Rosemary’s number this time, she answered. “Whit? Trouble at your house?”

She sounded breathless, animated. “No trouble. Did I catch you in the middle of something?”

“Yeah. Stargazing.”

She didn’t chuckle but he could hear the smile in her voice.

“I was doing that here, too. I just shut off the lights. I can’t get over how many stars I can see from this altitude.”

“It’s the mountain. You know the mountain’s full of magic, don’t you?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m a real believer in magic,” he said drily.

Again, he could hear the smile in her voice. “Whisper Mountain has a legend. The ‘whisper’ business is supposed to be real. Except that only true lovers can hear the mountain whisper. It’s a sign.”

“You mean like a stop sign or a construction warning sign?”

“No, you lunkhead. It’s a magic sign.”

“Did you just call me a lunkhead?”

“No, of course not. That was the other woman on the phone. Not me. I don’t even know what a lunkhead is. I never heard the word before.”

“Well, would you put Rosemary back on the line?”

“Can’t. She’s in the bathtub shaving her legs. Took a glass of wine and a candle with her, so I doubt she’s coming out soon.”

“Is it me, or is this conversation coming out of never-never land?”

“What do you expect? You’re living with two preteen girls and I live alone. After nine o’clock, I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect rational conversation.”

“Well, I swear, there was a rational reason why I called you. But now—”

“You can’t remember it? You’re feeling a little discombobulated?”

“That wasn’t the first word that came to mind. But once you said it, yes.”

“Well, I can pretty well guess why you called. I thought a little estrogen-spiced conversation might scare you off, but so far it doesn’t seem to be working.... So yeah, I’ll go Christmas tree hunting with you three tomorrow.”

For a moment he was speechless. “How did you know I was calling for that?”

“Because your girls brought it up about fifty times—that you were going to find your own tree, bring it home, do the really traditional holiday things. And after spending a couple hours with the twins, I figured you’d started to realize that an entire week alone with two girls that age could strain your sanity—no matter how much you love your daughters. And they’re adorable. Anyway...”

Sitting on a chair, Whit couldn’t figure out why he felt so dizzy. “Anyway?”

“Anyway, the last thing I want to do is intrude on your family time. I’m not an Aunt Matilda, who you have to invite for holiday stuff because she’s alone. I’m fine here. One hundred percent fine. Two hundred percent fine even. Just because the girls were bubbling with invitations, you’re talking to me now, and I promise, I didn’t take them seriously.”

“I’m going to have to hang up pretty soon, because you’re starting to make sense and that’s scaring me.” Then he added quickly, “But tomorrow, we figured on taking the Gator, doing a search-and-cut for Christmas trees. I figure around ten in the morning, if it’s not raining? And that’s a ‘please come’ from all three of us, not just Pepper and Lilly.”

“All right, all right! I’ll come. I can’t resist the three of you! But...I’m going back to my stargazing now. If I quit doing this, I’ll have run out of excuses for not working. I’ve got hours of soil samples I have to analyze, so you can’t imagine how happy I am that you called. I got to postpone work even longer.”

She rang off before he could reply. His first impulse was to shake his head, hard, see if he could get some airflow back to his brain.

But his second impulse was to just laugh. Hell. He could feel a wreath of a smile on his face. The call had been completely off the wall and nonsensical...but he couldn’t remember laughing in a long time. Even smiling some days was a job.

Since Zoe died, he’d almost forgotten that he used to be a happy-go-lucky kind of guy. Laughter used to come to him easy as sunshine. As a kid, he’d been prone to a little trouble, couldn’t shake the mischief gene, but marriage had shaped him up. The twins came six months after the wedding. Neither he nor Zoe was ready for marriage, but she’d had an early ultrasound, so they knew about the twins.

There was no way they could give up two. Or raise two without each other. He was a little mad at first. So was she. Before the babies, they’d both realized that their love affair was more of a lust affair, and the marriage was on precarious ground. But then the girls came. Whit still remembered the first time he’d held his newborn daughters.

He’d been a goner. That fast. That completely. He never knew he had a daddy streak, much less that he would go head over heels hopeless for the squirts. Neither slept at night. They cried in unison, never a little whine, always screams loud enough to wake the dead. If one didn’t have a messy diaper, the other did.

The babies had not only terrorized him; they’d terrified him. In spite of that—in spite of everything—the bond kept growing. He’d have given his life for them. Without a qualm.

Abruptly he heard a noisy attack of giggles coming from the loft. Since they were obviously still awake, he ambled toward the stairs. They were going to love the news that Rosemary was joining them tomorrow.

Still, just from talking on the phone with her, he felt a goofball smile glued on his face. She had that kind of dry humor, the way she talked total nonsense in such a serious tone.

Whit might have killed for his daughters...but it had been a long time since he’d felt anything to live for, beyond the girls. He couldn’t remember smiling...just for himself. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt lighthearted—and he had no idea why or how Rosemary had evoked those forgotten emotions in him.

But he was glad he was seeing her tomorrow.

After that...well, he’d just have to see.

* * *

Rosemary was trying to pull on thick wool socks and hold the cell phone at the same time. It was not an easy balance act.

“I swear, Tucker, no one could be more of a pain than a brother—unless both you and Ike were calling me at the same time. Just tell me how the new wife is. And how her pregnancy is going. And how the boys are—”

“Everybody’s fine.” Tucker would do anything for her and she knew it, but her oldest brother was more stubborn than a mule. “But I still want you to agree to have Christmas with us. You don’t have to see Mom and Dad. You could just—”

“Tucker! I told you and Ike both that I can’t do that. I don’t want to hurt the parents. I just can’t handle one more conversation about why I canceled the wedding, what George must have done, what I must have done, how I could fix it all if I just called him, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I’ve heard it too many times. I don’t want to miss any of you at Christmas. Even though you’re both total pains, I love you. And your families. I even love Pansy, that damned bloodhound Ike made me babysit for.”

“But—”

She wasn’t about to hear him repeat his argument. “But nothing. I told Mom and Dad that I had to work. If anyone in the universe could understand that, it’s them. And it’s not like I won’t catch up with all of you. I already sent heaps of presents to the kids—”

Tucker, of course, interrupted with different persuasive arguments. Being relentless wasn’t totally his fault. Growing up with absentee parents—and their parents were such terrific surgeons that they were always on call—Tucker had taken on the role of Dad. Being the only girl, Rosemary had tried to play the role of Mom, but since she was the youngest, all she could really do was hand out suckers when the boys were sick. The point, though, was that Tucker thought she needed a caretaker.

Which she did. But not a brother or a dad or a lover. Not a man at all.

She needed to be her own caretaker.

Still, she listened to her older brother’s rant—or mostly listened—as she walked to the closet to retrieve her serious jacket, then ambled over to the front window. Whit and the girls would be here any moment. It was after ten now.

Outside, there was brilliant—but misleading—sunshine. She’d hiked before dawn, almost froze to death. The sleet had started in the middle of the night and stopped before daybreak. But there were still tears dripping from every pine branch, crystal ice on every puddle. She needed wool mittens, and wasn’t sure where she’d seen them last.

“Rosemary...Ike said something about a guy there.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. You two are like mother hens, I swear.”

“Well, you’re all alone up there. And if it were me all alone, you’d be checking out how I was doing. No difference.”

“Of course it’s different. You think because I’m a girl, I’m less capable. Who whipped you at poker last time, huh? Who beat you in the kayak race last fall? Who—?”

“Those were technicalities. I’m the big brother, so I had to let you win.”

She made a rude sound into the phone, making him sputter with laughter. Her eyes were still peeled on the gravel road, though. It didn’t matter if Whit was late or early. They were on vacation during the holiday week, so it’s not as if they were compelled to stick to a schedule.

Tucker eventually circled back to his nosy grilling. “About this guy.”

“I only mentioned my temporary neighbor to Ike because he was bugging me about being alone—he wasn’t as awful as you, but close. Anyway, that’s why I mentioned that a very, very nice guy rented a house for the holidays. He has twin daughters, around eleven—”

“Very nice, huh?”

“If you won’t interrupt, I’ll fill in the blanks. He’s a widower. Major car accident a year ago, and his wife was killed. So he came up here with his girls to have a private Christmas away from the memories.”

“Okay.”

“Get that tone out of your voice, Tucker, or I swear, I’ll sock you when I see you next, in front of the boys.”

“I was just asking....” Tucker had that innocent tone down by rote.

“He’s grieving. Hard. For his wife. It’s pretty obvious he’s still in love with her and can’t get over the loss. The girls accidently came across to the lodge. That’s the only reason we met.”

“Okay, that sounds...” Her brother searched for a word. “Nice.”

“It is nice. He’s nice. The girls are nice. But the only thing on their minds is the loss they suffered last year. It’s a sad time of year for them. That’s all.”

“Okay, okay, I got it. Sheesh.” Tucker hesitated. “All the same, if you wanted, I could run a background check on him—”

She hung up. Sometimes that’s all you could do with brothers. It was something in the male sibling gene. When they got a bone between their teeth, they all turned into Neanderthals.

And just then, she saw a sturdy SUV winding up the driveway. The girls were here.

And so was their dad.

* * *

Whit couldn’t take his eyes off her. She bounced out of the house like a kid, a stocking hat yanked over her head, wearing old hiking boots and skinny jeans and a Christmas red parka.

“Hey, Rosemary!” the girls called out.

“Hey right back! Does everybody have mittens?” She opened the passenger door, but didn’t climb in yet. The girls had automatically taken the backseat, assuming anyone of adult age would want to sit up front. Which pretty much meant they intended to lean over Rosemary’s seat the whole time.

“Who’d have guessed it would be this cold?” Rosemary said, and kept talking. “I figured you’d change your mind about the Gator and bring a bigger car. Don’t know how we’d carry trees and the four of us together, otherwise. Anyway, I have spare mittens and hats and gloves in the lodge, if anyone needs stuff like that. Nothing pretty. Just warm.”

Lilly said, “I brought gloves, but Pepper didn’t. She always says she doesn’t need them, but two seconds later, she’s freezing to death.”

“You lie,” Pepper shot back.

“I’m not lying, I’m—”

Rosemary shot Whit a wink, then just hustled back in the house and came out moments later with a bag full of cold-weather gear. She jumped back in, belted up, handed the bag to the girls and that was it. The girls pulled out gloves and mufflers and leg warmers and hats. Just like that, the three females all started talking at the same time, nonstop. Rosemary carried on two if not three conversations simultaneously...as if she’d always been with them, always been part of the family.

Part of his life.

Maybe she was primarily talking to the girls about mittens versus gloves, who knitted what, what colors looked good with their hair, how both of them desperately needed new jeans, and a bunch about movies he’d never heard of—except, of course The Princess Bride.

Somehow, though, she managed to answer a question from him about the lodge in the middle of all that.

“I’m not sure how big the lodge is—I think three thousand square feet or so? My great grandparents built it originally...when families tended to be bigger, and cousins and uncles and spare relatives all wanted a place to get together, so they needed a monster-size place like that...”