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The Baby Bequest
“Okay,” Grant said, rising from his seat. “I’ll take charge of that.”
“Splitting up everything is a good idea,” Claire said, while Grant rummaged for a pencil and paper. “I meant what I said upstairs about each of you taking a child. More than anything else, a baby needs a sense of security. If each of you more or less adopts one child as his own, each baby will get that sense of security.”
Or things could actually fall apart, Evan thought, studying her carefully. He knew he didn’t trust her because he suspected she was involved in Arnie’s scheme to take the kids. He also believed that by bringing her into their home, he and his brothers had opened the door for her to continue aiding Arnie.
He knew his brothers didn’t agree with him and thought he was being paranoid. But he also realized that he had more to lose than his brothers did. They might love these children in a generic way that mixed responsibility and a sense of family, but if something happened and they lost custody, Grant and Chas would get on with the rest of their lives. For Evan much, much more was at stake, because raising these children was his only chance at being a father.
“How did it go after I left last night?”
Though the question was perfectly innocent, Evan turned and glared at Claire. The insides of his eyelids felt like sandpaper, he was so tired he could have dropped where he stood, and his head hurt.
Between the cuddling and crooning, feeding and changing, Evan figured he’d gotten about two and a half hours’ sleep. And since all three brothers awakened for every baby incident, he knew Chas and Grant hadn’t fared any better than he had. But because the triplets couldn’t be left alone, Chas and Grant got to stay home while Evan set off to handle the second half of their responsibility, running the local lumber mill.
“Kids wake up much?”
Another innocent question. Another narrowing of Evan’s eyes.
“My head hurts. I desperately need sleep. I never realized how difficult it is to care for babies.”
“Oh, come on,” Claire said, following Evan into his father’s old office. “Babies are great. And believe it or not, this is a wonderful stage in their lives…except for the teething, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Evan fell into his father’s chair. “Teething. How delightful.”
“Trust me,” Claire insisted, sitting on the corner of the desk as if it was an old habit. “You’re going to love this.”
Evan’s gaze trailed from the curve of her buttocks on the corner of the mahogany desk, down the line of her thighs to the length of leg that currently dangled over the side of his father’s desk. She wore a chaste navy-blue suit, the skirt loose and sufficiently long, the blazer buttoned. She obviously wasn’t trying to draw attention to herself, but because he wasn’t at his professional best from lack of sleep, Evan found himself staring. Claire was a stunning woman, a naturally beautiful woman with glossy black hair, eyes as wide and as blue as the summer sky, and absolutely perfect legs.
When she saw him looking at her legs, she quickly jumped down and maneuvered herself into the chair across from the desk. As if her movements finally brought him completely awake, he realized he wanted the truth about her and he wanted it now. He refused to work with someone he couldn’t or didn’t trust.
“I think you and I need to have a little talk.”
In an unpretentious way she smiled at him, and Evan got a jolt of something that felt very much like attraction again, only this time laced with rightness. He wasn’t merely attracted to this woman. He felt drawn to her. He sensed a sudden, overwhelming appropriateness about her being in his life, and he knew damned well that was foolish. Even if she wasn’t a part of the Arnie Garrett scheme, he couldn’t be involved with her. He couldn’t be involved with anyone. He wouldn’t tie a woman to a life without her own children, so there was no “right” woman for him.
“Three things happened yesterday,” he said, steepling his fingers at his chin. “We buried my father and stepmother, my siblings and I inherited almost half of everything in this county, and I became a parent.”
This time Claire raised her eyebrows. Without as much as a word from her, he knew she wanted to contradict him about “who” had become parents. He also knew that when the time was right, she wouldn’t hesitate to correct him.
Evan swallowed—and not because she’d caught that inadvertent slip. The very fact that she had caught him, and wouldn’t be afraid to tell him so, and the way she was absolutely comfortable in the chair across from him once again made it seem more than fitting that she was not only here in this office, but here in his life. And that bothered him. He could understand being attracted to her—any man over the age of twelve would be attracted to her—but the little jolts of rightness had to be a mistake of some sort.
Determined to ignore them, he cleared his throat. “Do you realize you were there for all three things?”
“Yes. I worked very closely with your father.”
“Very closely,” he agreed with a nod, glad she’d given him an opening to get to the topic that kept getting blotted out by chemistry or sexual awareness or some other damned male-female thing Evan didn’t have time to deal with. “So close that I’d wager you know this business inside and out. And you know how to care for kids. Logically, Ms. Wilson, my brothers and I can’t survive without you.”
“Sure you could,” Claire protested casually. “You could hire a nanny or something.”
“Really? Overnight? On this tiny, sparsely populated piece of the mountain? I don’t think so, and neither do you.”
At the abrupt hardening of the expression in his eyes, Claire shifted uneasily on her seat. She didn’t know what the heck he was driving at, but she had more than a sneaking suspicion she wasn’t going to like it.
“If I were Arnie Garrett and I were trying to coerce custody of the triplets, there is only one person in this world who could help me.”
Claire felt her mouth fall open in surprise. “What?” she said before she could stop herself. “I hope you don’t think that I had something to do with Arnie Garrett trying to get you to sign over custody of the triplets!”
“That’s exactly what I think,” Evan said coolly.
“How dare you!” she gasped, angry in a way she didn’t believe she’d ever been angry before. Most of that outrage came from her loyalty to this man’s father and what she knew Norm would want for his children. “Those babies need to be raised by family. I’d never condone them being raised by anyone but you and your brothers. I’d have gone in search of you and insisted you take them before I’d let Arnie Garrett or anybody else have them, if only because I know that’s what your father wanted.”
“That is what my father wanted,” Evan agreed, waving her back down when Claire sprang from her chair as if to storm out of the room. “I apologize for questioning you, but I had to know whose side you were on.”
“Who says there are sides?” she demanded, furious. “You’re the only person I see making trouble. Everybody else seems perfectly happy with this situation.”
“I don’t agree with you. I don’t think Arnie Garrett is happy with this situation. I don’t think he’s done trying for the kids. And I want the kids. If there’s a war, Ms. Wilson, let me assure you I plan to win it.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Claire agreed quietly. “But you keep talking about those kids as if they are exclusively yours and they’re not. You have two brothers and the triplets need to be raised by all three of you, not just one of you.”
“Grant owns a construction company in Savannah. Chas has an interview with a law firm in Philadelphia in a few weeks. But I could and did leave my job, and my life. Just like that,” he said, snapping his fingers. “I’m here to stay. In the end, those kids will be raised by me. Probably exclusively. And nobody’s going to keep me from doing that.”
“You saw me as that much of a threat?” she asked.
Cool, dignified, he caught her gaze. “I didn’t know what to think about you. That’s why I decided to confront you. Now that I see how loyal to my father you are, I sincerely doubt you could help Arnie do something my father wouldn’t have wanted.”
Stupefied, Claire stared at him. He wore a gray suit, a white shirt and a moss-green tie that brought out the verdant color of his eyes. Those eyes held a determined spark, but his perfect mouth tipped upward, just a fraction, as if he was relieved and couldn’t quite hide it. He looked innocent and sweet, and positively gorgeous. Not nervous. Not confused. Absolutely normal.
In a wave of understanding, she realized this conversation answered the question about why he behaved so oddly around her. He thought she was in cahoots with Arnie Garrett. He hadn’t been getting the same peculiar sensations she’d been getting for the past two days.
Not only was her body constantly on red alert, but she continually experienced a strange intuition that they were made for each other. That wasn’t just preposterous, it was premature. She didn’t even know the man, for pete’s sake. True, he was gorgeous, beautifully built and had a smile that could charm the angels, but it took much, much more than that to be “made for each other.”
And now she knew he wasn’t attracted to her. But, in fairness, she didn’t want to be attracted to him either. She couldn’t afford to be attracted to him. He was older. He was her boss. And he was way, way out of her social circle.
“It’s been a really difficult two days for all of us,” she said, though she wouldn’t meet his eyes. She couldn’t. Something completely wrong was happening to her, and unless or until she was sure she could manage it, she wasn’t going to take any chances. “I have some things I need to do this morning. If you’re going to pick up where your father left off, those contracts—” she pointed at the corner of his father’s desk “—need to be renegotiated. I’d start there, if I were you.”
Evan nodded. Claire let herself out of his office and closed the door, since her desk was right outside and she didn’t want him watching her every move any more than she wanted to be reminded of him.
She didn’t need privacy or time to think about this. Her mother’s involvement with an older, more sophisticated…richer man had cost Claire her father.
Staying away from Evan Brewster should be a nobrainer.
Chapter Three
After work, Claire followed Evan to the Brewster mansion. Because she had been quiet all afternoon, Evan suspected she was probably still annoyed with him for suggesting she might have been in league with Arnie Garrett. For Evan that was good news and bad news. On the one hand, her irritation was a sort of proof that she hadn’t thrown in her lot with Arnie and Evan could trust her. On the other, being able to trust her nullified the argument he continually used to pull himself away from noticing she was a woman. If she wasn’t in partnership with Arnie to take the triplets, then there was no reason not to find her attractive. None, except that he had nothing to offer a wife, so he wasn’t in the market.
And he wasn’t. He had even begun to seriously doubt his attraction to her, in spite of the way it seemed to get worse as the day went on. Huddled together in two rooms, cocooned from the rest of the lumber mill, they were in their own private world. He was sure most of what he was feeling was nothing more than a response to being so close all the time.
As he pulled into the driveway, Evan wasn’t concerned about having to spend extra hours with Claire, since nobody would have time to be attracted to anyone while trying to feed, bathe and put to bed three children. If anything, these next few hours would probably nip the attraction in the bud.
He waited for her by the front door while she parked her car. When she met him at the entryway, he smiled. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
She laughed. It was the first time she’d laughed all day, and though Evan wished the sound hadn’t pleased him so much, he took it as a sign that she’d forgiven him for mistrusting her.
“I said I didn’t mind helping you guys get adjusted to parenting, and I don’t,” she said cheerily.
“You’re sure?”
“Are you trying to get rid of me?”
Wondering if that wasn’t exactly what he was trying to do, Evan opened the door. “Welcome to paradise.”
Crying was the music that greeted them. Evan could see Grant running back and forth in the kitchen. A glance to the right showed Chas had all three sobbing kids corralled in the living room…on the white rug, white sofa and white wing chair.
“What are you doing?” he asked with a gasp, then strode in and scooped Cody off the rug. “Are you blind? Everything in here is white.”
“The kids are clean,” Chas argued in exasperation.
“Maybe now, but…”
Evan stopped when Claire tapped him on the shoulder. “I think I should go in the kitchen and help.”
“Good thinking.”
The minute Claire left the room, some of Evan’s tension eased. He lowered himself to the sofa and settled Cody on his lap. “Sorry,” he said to Chas. “I know you guys probably had a hell of a day.”
“That’s okay,” Chas said, easily accepting his apology. “I imagine your day couldn’t have been any easier than ours.”
“Actually, my day wasn’t too bad,” Evan admitted, pressing his cheek against the top of Cody’s head, not just because it was one of the little gestures of affection Claire had taught them the night before but because it felt right, good. Holding the baby was like getting grounded. Even amid the noise and confusion, everything they were going through made sense when Evan held one of the babies.
“Claire is very much on top of things,” he continued. “She seems to have the entire sequence of events down. When a contract comes in, she knows how to schedule inventory, labor and delivery, and then how to put each contract into the accounting system so it gets billed.”
“That’s a relief,” Chas said as he successfully caught Taylor, who was crawling away as if drag racing with Annie. Unfortunately, he just missed Annie, who eluded him by scrambling around the leg of the coffee table.
Today the girls wore ruffly yellow dresses with a row of very happy daisies across the front hem. Annie, who was now playing peekaboo with Chas around the leg of the table, was so cute Evan was momentarily taken aback. Sometimes when he looked at the kids and realized they were his to raise, he felt the overwhelming sensation that he was in the middle of a miracle.
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