moment. Picking up the invitation, she pulled it out of the envelope and looked at it, feeling a bittersweet smile coming on. Sara’s baby shower. All her old roommates from college would be there and they were all doing so well. Cami was publishing a scientific journal of some sort. Hailey was a buyer for a major department store and selling a few paintings on the side. Sara was married to the perfect man and no doubt having the perfect baby.
And here was J.J., still searching for success. How was she going to keep a smile on her face and pretend she was just as happy as the others? She wanted to see her friends again, but something deep inside resisted. If only she could go without feeling like a failure. If only.
Still, she would go if she could get the time off. She had to.
A sound from next door swung her head around. A baby was crying, then a voice, then a child’s laugh. Jack Remington, playboy and man-about-town with babies? And what sort of wife, she wondered? It was going to be interesting finding out.
Jack Remington was floating just on the edge of sleep. Light was coming in through the slats in the blinds. Morning. Time for the madness to begin again. He listened, but the only sound came from the black cat curled at the foot of his bed, purring like a small and very loud generator.
Slowly he forced his eyes to open and listened a little harder. Nope, no sign of the babies. They were either still asleep, which was highly unusual, or they’d knotted together sheets and escaped out their window in the dead of night. Since they were only eleven months old, it seemed a long shot.
“And yet, one can always hope,” he muttered to himself groggily, but he grimaced as he said the words, knowing he didn’t mean them.
His dark gaze traveled around the room and lingered for a reluctant moment on the picture sitting atop the chest of drawers across the room and he frowned, repressing the twinge of pain that always cut deep when he remembered his wife. Every time it happened, he vowed to put that picture away in a drawer somewhere. But somehow he couldn’t do it. Not yet.
For some reason that made him think of his new neighbor. Quite a contrast to his elegant Phoebe was Miss J. J. Jensen, with her neon string bikini and her hair plastered over her face. He grinned, thinking of the way she’d splashed about in the hot tub the day before. He had to admit she’d been a fetching sight. Nice breasts, from what he could see amid all that splashing—the sort of body that made a man think twice about this celibacy kick he’d been on for so long.
“Daddy?”
Annie was in the bedroom doorway that he always left open so as to hear every sound from the babies’ room. She peered at her father around two small fists that were rubbing the sand from her eyes.
“Daddy, the babies are still sleeping,” she whispered in a tone that could have jerked Rip van Winkle out of a sound sleep.
Propping up on one elbow, he put a finger to his lips to quiet her and then gave her a daddy-sized grin. She was the best antidote he knew of for stray thoughts about attractive women. When in doubt, he could always count on his little Annie to bring him back down to earth and remind him of what was important in his life.
“What do we always say, Annie-kins?” he asked.
She furled her young brow and thought hard. “Let sleeping babies lie?” she guessed correctly, her brown eyes huge.
He nodded, pleased with her, as always. Five years old and going on middle age, she had a natural wisdom that often stunned him.
“Come here and give me my morning bear hug, you little rascal,” he demanded tenderly, and she flew across the hardwood floor, her white nightgown billowing around her, her blond curls bouncing, and threw her arms around his neck, squeezing hard and giving him a pretend growl.
He laughed as she let go, giggling. “Best bear hug yet, Annie,” he told her. “You nearly took my head off.”
She smiled happily and turned to dash off again, but not before stopping to shake her finger at the dozing cat.
“Gregor, you are making a very big noise,” she whispered loudly to the startled animal. “Shh, you’ll wake up the babies.”
Gregor stretched out his front legs and yawned, and Annie went on her way. Jack chuckled, enjoying the sunny domestic scene, but his smile faded as his thoughts grew darker. This situation wasn’t really fair to Annie, and he was going to have to think about ways to remedy it. They were an odd little family, he and the triplets and five-year-old Annie. And then there was Marguerite.
Annie’s little feet made a pattern on the hallway floor as she returned, her eyes wider than ever. “Daddy, Marguerite is already up,” she announced breathlessly. “She’s cooking something.”
“Uh-oh.” Jack groaned. “What is it? Could you tell?”
Annie made a face. “I think it’s pancakes.”
“Oh.” He brightened. “Great. Her pancakes aren’t halfbad.”
Annie frowned, looking worried. “But Daddy…what if she puts those little blue balls in?”
He blinked at her. “Blueberries? They’re great.”
Her lip curled dramatically. “They’re yucky.”
He laughed shortly. “Don’t you tell her that. Remember, we love Marguerite’s cooking, no matter what. You got it?”
She nodded reluctantly. “I got it,” she echoed, her voice as sad as her eyes.
He sighed and lay back against the pillow for one last moment, his arms behind his head. Marguerite was in the kitchen. Now he was going to have to get up. What did you call it when the hired help made almost as many problems as she solved? A dilemma, at the very least.
He glanced down at his daughter. “Okay, I’m getting up. You go get dressed and we’ll meet in the kitchen, okay? And whatever it is that Marguerite’s cooking, we’re going to love it. Right?”
Annie made a face, her teeth on edge, and dashed off toward her own room to change. Jack willed his body to rise, and surprisingly, it did as he asked, but it creaked along the way.
“Getting to be an old man at thirty-five,” be muttered as he made his way to the shower. “Raising babies saps the strength right out of you.”
As if on cue, the first sounds from the babies’ room came wafting in through the doorway, and he hesitated, then opted for a quick shower before going to them. And quick it was. He barely lasted long enough for the drops to hit his skin before he was back out, toweling down and hurrying to reach the babies. For just a moment he had fleeting thoughts of the old days when he’d luxuriated in a warm shower, letting the stinging drops hit him for minutes at a time. Those days were gone. Now it was slapdash and make it faster. The babies called.
For just a moment, the image of his new neighbor spun into view again. She’d seemed to have plenty of time to wallow in her hot tub. He remembered when he’d been young like that, with every possible path still in front of him, and for a brief moment, he envied her.
But he quickly shoved the thought away. He couldn’t let stray impulses cloud his horizon. He’d made a commitment to these kids and he was going to keep it, even if everyone on earth seemed to think he was nuts.
“Give a couple of them up for adoption,” someone had actually suggested. “You can’t possibly take care of all four at once by yourself.”
“Send them home to your mother” was another refrain he often heard.
“Don’t they have child-care professionals who can come in and take over running the house and raising the kids so you won’t have to?” said another helpful soul.
He’d reacted to every such comment with good-natured humor on the outside, and