A Game Of Chance

“They’re almost as big as Nick. She still outweighs them, but I swear they feel heavier.” The twins were sturdy and strongly built, the little boys already showing the size of the Mackenzie males, while Nick was as dainty as her grandmother Mary.

“Where are Barrie and Nick?” Chance asked, missing his pretty sister-in-law and exuberant, cheerfully diabolic niece.

“We had a shoe crisis. Don’t ask.”

“How do you have a shoe crisis?” Chance asked, unable to resist. He sat down in a big, comfortable chair across from Zane’s desk, setting the babies more comfortably in his lap. They lost interest in pulling his ears and began babbling to each other, reaching out, entwining their arms and legs as if they sought the closeness they had known while forming in the womb. Chance unconsciously stroked them, enjoying the softness of their skin, the feel of squirming babies in his arms. All the Mackenzie babies grew up accustomed to being constantly, lovingly touched by the entire extended family.

Zane laced his hands behind his head, his big, powerful body relaxed. “First you have a three-year-old who loves her shiny, black, patent leather Sunday shoes. Then you make the severe tactical error of letting her watch The Wizard of Oz.” His stern mouth twitched, and his pale eyes glittered with amusement.

Chance’s agile mind immediately made the connection, and his acquaintance with the three-year-old in question allowed him to make a logical assumption: Nick had decided she had to have a pair of red shoes. “What did she use to try to dye them?”

Zane sighed. “Lipstick, what else?” Each and every young Mackenzie had had an incident with lipstick. It was a family tradition, one John had started when, at the age of two, he had used his mother’s favorite lipstick to recolor the impressive rows of fruit salad on Joe’s dress uniform. Caroline had been impressively outraged, because the shade had been discontinued and finding a new tube had been much more difficult than replacing the small colored bars that represented medals Joe had earned and services he had performed.

“You couldn’t just wipe it off?” The twins had discovered his belt buckle and zipper, and Chance moved the busy little hands that were trying to undress him. They began squirming to get down, and he leaned over to set them on the floor.

“Close the door,” Zane instructed, “or they’ll escape.”

Leaning back, Chance stretched out a long arm and closed the door, just in time. The two diaper-clad escape artists had almost reached it. Deprived of freedom, they plopped down on their padded bottoms and considered the situation, then launched themselves in crawling patrol of the perimeters of the room.

“I could have wiped it off,” Zane continued, his tone bland, “if I had known about it. Unfortunately, Nick cleaned the shoes herself. She put them in the dishwasher.”

Chance threw back his head with a shout of laughter.

“Barrie bought her a new pair of shoes yesterday. Well, you know how Nick’s always been so definite about what she wants to wear. She took one look at the shoes, said they were ugly, even though they were just like the ones she ruined, and refused to even try them on.”

“To be accurate,” Chance corrected, “what she said was that they were ‘ugwy.”’

Zane conceded the point. “She’s getting better with her Ls, though. She practices, saying the really important words, like lollipop, over and over to herself.”

“Can she say ‘Chance’ yet, instead of ‘Dance’?” Chance asked, because Nick stubbornly refused to even acknowledge she couldn’t say his name. She insisted everyone else was saying it wrong.

Zane’s expression was totally deadpan. “Not a chance.”

Chance groaned at the pun, wishing he hadn’t asked. “I gather Barrie has taken my little darling shopping, so she can pick out her own shoes.”

“Exactly.” Zane glanced over to check on his roaming offspring. As if they had been waiting for his parental notice, first Cam and then Zack plopped down on their butts and gave brief warning cries, all the while watching their father expectantly.

“Feeding time,” Zane said, swiveling his chair around so he could fetch two bottles from a small cooler behind the desk. He handed one to Chance. “Grab a kid.”

“You’re prepared, as always,” Chance commented as he went over to the twins and leaned down to lift one in his arms. Holding the baby up, he peered briefly at the scowling little face to make sure he had the one he thought he had. It was Zack, all right. Chance couldn’t say exactly how he knew which twin was which, how anyone in the family knew, because the babies were so identical their pediatrician had suggested putting ID anklets on them. But they each had such definite personalities, which were reflected in their expressions, that no one in the family ever confused one twin for the other.

“I have to be prepared. Barrie weaned them last month, and they don’t take kindly to having to wait for dinner.”

Zack’s round blue eyes were fiercely focused on the bottle in Chance’s hand. “Why did she wean them so early?” Chance asked as he resumed his seat and settled the baby in the crook of his left arm. “She nursed Nick until she was a year old.”

“You’ll see,” Zane said dryly, settling Cam on his lap.

As soon as Chance brought the bottle within reach of Zack’s fat little hands the baby made a grab for it, guiding it to his rapacious, open mouth. He clamped down ferociously on the nipple. Evidently deciding to let his uncle hold the bottle, he nevertheless made certain the situation was stabilized by clutching Chance’s wrist with both hands, and wrapping both chubby legs around Chance’s forearm. Then he began to growl as he sucked, pausing only to swallow.

An identical growling noise came from Zane’s lap. Chance looked over to see his brother’s arm captured in the same manner as the two little savages held on to their meals.

Milk bubbled around Zack’s rosebud mouth, and Chance blinked as six tiny white teeth gnawed on the plastic nipple.

“Hell, no wonder she weaned you!”

Zack didn’t pause in his gnawing, sucking and growling, but he did flick an absurdly arrogant glance at his uncle before returning his full attention to filling his little belly.

Zane was laughing softly, and he lifted Cam enough that he could nuzzle one of the chubby legs so determinedly wrapped around his arm. Cam paused to scowl at the interruption, then changed his mind and instead favored his father with a dimpled, milky smile. The next second the smile was gone and he attacked the bottle again.

Zack’s fuzzy black hair was as soft as silk against Chance’s arm. Babies were a pure tactile pleasure, he thought, though he hadn’t been of that opinion the first time he’d held one. The baby in question had been John, screaming his head off from the misery of teething.

Chance hadn’t been with the Mackenzies long, only a few months, and he had still been extremely wary of all these people. He had managed—barely—to control his instinct to attack whenever someone touched him, but he still jumped like a startled wild animal. Joe and Caroline came to visit, and from the expressions on their faces when they entered the house, it had been a very long trip. Even Joe, normally so controlled and unflappable, was frustrated by his futile efforts to calm his son, and Caroline had been completely frazzled by a situation she couldn’t handle with her usual impeccable logic. Her blond hair had been mussed, and her green eyes expressed an amazing mixture of concern and outrage.

As she had walked by Chance, she suddenly wheeled and deposited the screaming baby in his arms. Startled, alarmed, he tried to jerk back, but before he knew it he was in sole possession of the wiggling, howling little human. “Here,” she said with relief and utmost confidence. “You get him calmed down.”

Chance had panicked. It was a wonder he hadn’t dropped the baby. He’d never held one before, and he didn’t know what to do with it. Another part of him was astounded that Caroline would entrust her adored child to him, the mongrel stray Mary—Mom—had brought home with her. Why couldn’t these people see what he was? Why couldn’t they figure out he had lived wild in a kill-or-be-killed world, and that they would be safer if they kept their distance from him?

Instead, no one seemed to think it unusual or alarming that he was holding the baby, even though in his panic he held John almost at arm’s length, clutched between his two strong young hands.

But blessed quiet fell in the house. John was startled out of his screaming. He stared interestedly at this new person and kicked his legs. Automatically Chance changed his grip on the baby, settling him in the cradle of one arm as he had seen the others do. The kid was drooling. A tiny bib was fastened around his neck, and Chance used it to wipe away most of the slobber. John saw this opportunity and grabbed Chance by the thumb, immediately carrying the digit to his mouth and chomping down. Chance had jumped at the force of the hard little gums, with two tiny, sharp teeth already breaking the surface. He grimaced at the pain, but hung in there, letting John use his thumb as a teething ring until Mom rescued him by bringing a cold wet washcloth for the baby to chew.

Chance had expected then to be relieved of baby duty, because Mom usually couldn’t wait to get her hands on her grandson. But that day everyone had seemed content to leave John in his hands, even the kid himself, and after a while Chance calmed down enough to start walking around and pointing out things of interest to his little pal, all of which John obediently studied while gnawing on the relief-giving washcloth.

That had been his indoctrination to the ways of babies, and from that day on he had been a sucker for the parade of nephews his virile brothers and fertile sisters-in-law had produced on a regular basis. He seemed to be getting even worse, because with Zane’s three he was total mush.

“By the way, Maris is pregnant.”

Chance’s head jerked up, and a wide grin lit his tanned face. His baby sister had been married nine whole months and had been fretting because she hadn’t immediately gotten pregnant.

“When is it due?” He always ruthlessly arranged things so he could be home when a new Mackenzie arrived. Technically, this one would be a MacNeil, but that was a minor point.

“March. She says she’ll be crazy before then, because Mac won’t let her out of his sight.”

Chance chuckled. Other than her father and brothers, Mac was the only man Maris had ever met whom she couldn’t intimidate, which was one of the reasons she loved him so much. If Mac had decided he was going to ride herd on Maris during her pregnancy, she had little hope of escaping on one of those long, hard rides she so loved.

Zane nodded toward the file on his desk. “You going to tell me about it?”

Chance knew Zane was asking about more than the contents of the file. He was asking why it hadn’t been transmitted by computer, instead of Chance personally bringing a hard copy. Zane knew his brother’s schedule; he was the only person, other than Chance himself, who did, so he knew Chance was currently supposed to be in France. He was also asking why he hadn’t been notified of Chance’s change in itinerary, why his brother hadn’t made a simple phone call to let him know he was coming.

“I didn’t want to risk even a hint of this leaking out.”

Zane’s eyebrows rose. “We have security problems?”

“Nothing that I know of,” Chance said. “It’s what I don’t know about that worries me. But, like I said, no one else can hear even a whisper of this. It’s between us.”

“Now you’ve made me curious.” Zane’s cool blue eyes gleamed with interest.

“Crispin Hauer has a daughter.”

Zane didn’t straighten from his relaxed position, but his expression hardened. Crispin Hauer had been number one on their target list for years, but the terrorist was as elusive as he was vicious. They had yet to find any way to get close to him, any vulnerability they could exploit or bait they could use to lure him into a trap. There was a record of a marriage in London some thirty-five years ago, but Hauer’s wife, formerly Pamela Vickery, had disappeared, and no trace of her had ever been found. Chance, along with everyone else, had assumed the woman died soon after the marriage, either by Hauer’s hand or by his enemies’.

“Who is she?” Zane asked. “Where is she?”

“Her name is Sonia Miller, and she’s here, in America.”

“I know that name,” Zane said, his gaze sharpening.

Chance nodded. “Specifically, she’s the courier who was supposedly robbed of her package last week in Chicago.”

Zane didn’t miss the “supposedly,” but then, he never missed anything. “You think it was a setup?”

“I think it’s a damn good possibility. I found the link when I checked into her background.”

“Hauer would have known she’d be investigated after losing a package, especially one containing aerospace documents. Why take the risk?”

“He might not have thought we would find anything. She was adopted. Hal and Eleanor Miller are listed as her parents, and they’re clean as a whistle. I wouldn’t have known she was adopted if I hadn’t tried to pull up her birth certificate on the computer. Guess what—Hal and Eleanor never had any children. Little Sonia Miller didn’t have a birth certificate. So I did some digging and found the adoption file—”

Zane’s eyebrows rose. Open adoptions had caused so many problems that the trend had veered sharply back to closed files, which, coupled with electronic privacy laws and safeguards, had made it damn difficult to even locate those closed files, much less get into them. “Did you leave any fingerprints?”

“Nothing that will lead back to us. I went through a couple of relays, then hacked into the Internal Revenue and accessed the file from their system.”

Zane grinned. If anyone did notice the electronic snooping, it likely wouldn’t even be mentioned; no one messed with the tax people.

Zack had finished his bottle; his ferocious grip on it slackened, and his head lolled against Chance’s arm as he briefly struggled against sleep. Automatically Chance lifted the baby to his shoulder and began patting his back. “Ms. Miller has been employed as a courier for a little over five years. She has an apartment in Chicago, but her neighbors say she’s seldom there. I have to think this is a long-term setup, that she’s been working with her father from the beginning.”

Zane nodded. They had to assume the worst, because it was their job to do so. Only by anticipating the worst could they be prepared to handle it.

“Do you have anything in mind?” he asked, taking the bottle from Cam’s slackened grip and gently lifting the sleeping baby to his own shoulder.

“Getting next to her. Getting her to trust me.”

“She’s not going to be the trusting sort.”

“I have a plan,” Chance said, and grinned, because that was usually Zane’s line.

Zane grinned in return, then paused as a small security console in the wall dinged a soft alarm. He glanced at the security monitor. “Brace yourself,” he advised. “Barrie and Nick are home.”

Seconds later the front door opened and a shriek filled the house. “Unca Dance! UncaDanceUncaDance-UncaDance!” The chant was punctuated by the sound of tiny feet running and jumping down the hall as Nick’s celebration of his visit came closer. Chance leaned back in his chair and opened the office door a bare second before Nick barreled through it, her entire little body quivering with joy and eagerness.

She hurled herself at him, and he managed to catch her with his free arm, dragging her onto his lap. She paused to bestow a big-sisterly kiss and a pat on the back of Zack’s head—never mind that he was almost as big as she was—then turned all her fierce attention to Chance.

“Are you staying dis time?” she demanded, even as she lifted her face for him to kiss. He did, nuzzling her soft cheek and neck and making her giggle, inhaling the faint sweet scent of baby that still clung to her.

“Just for a few days,” he said, to her disappointment. She was old enough now to notice his long and frequent absences, and whenever she saw him she tried to convince him to stay.

She scowled; then, being Nick, she decided to move on to more important matters. Her face brightened. “Den can I wide your moborcycle?”

Alarm flared through him. “No,” he said firmly. “You can’t ride it, sit on it, lean on it, or put any of your toys on it unless I’m with you.” With Nick, it was best to close all the loopholes. She seldom disobeyed a direct order, but she was a genius at finding cracks to slip through. Another possibility occurred to him. “You can’t put Cam or Zack on it, either.” He doubted she could lift either of them, but he wasn’t taking any risks.

“Thank you,” Barrie said dryly, entering the office in time to catch his addendum. She leaned down to kiss him on the cheek, at the same time lifting Zack from his arms so he could protect himself from Nick’s feet. All the Mackenzie males, at one time or another, had fallen victim to a tiny foot in the crotch.

“Mission accomplished?” Zane asked, leaning back in his chair and smiling at his wife with that lazy look in his pale eyes that said he liked what he was seeing.

“Not without some drama and convincing, but, yes, mission accomplished.” She pushed a feather lock of red hair out of her eyes. As always, she looked stylish, though she was wearing nothing dressier than beige slacks and a white sleeveless blouse that set off her slim, lightly tanned arms. You could take the girl out of the finishing school, Chance thought admiringly, but you could never take the finishing school out of the girl, and Barrie had gone to the most exclusive one in the world.

Nick was still focused on negotiating riding rights on the motorcycle. She caught his face between her hands and leaned down so her nose practically touched his, insuring his complete attention. He nearly laughed aloud at the fierce intent in her expression. “I wet you wide my twicycle,” she said, evidently deciding to cajole instead of demand.

“Somehow I missed that,” Zane murmured in amusement, while Barrie laughed softly.

“You offered to let me ride your tricycle,” Chance corrected. “But I’m too big to ride a tricycle, and you’re too little to ride a motorcycle.”

“Den when can I wide it?” She made her blue eyes wide and winsome.

“When you get your driver’s license.”

That stymied her. She had no idea what a driver’s license was, or how to get it. She stuck a finger in her mouth while she pondered this situation, and Chance tried to divert her interest. “Hey! Aren’t those new shoes you’re wearing?”

Like magic, her face brightened again. She wriggled around so he could hold one foot up so close to his face she almost kicked him in the nose. “Dey’re so pwetty,” she crooned in delight.

He caught the little foot in his big hand, admiring the shine of the black patent leather. “Wow, that’s so shiny I can see my face in it.” He pretended to inspect his teeth, which set her to giggling.

Zane rose to his feet. “We’ll put the boys down for their naps while you have her occupied.”

Keeping Nick occupied wasn’t a problem; she was never at a loss for something to say or do. He curled one silky black strand of her hair around his finger while she chattered about her new shoes, Grampa’s new horses, and what Daddy had said when he hit his thumb with a hammer. She cheerfully repeated exactly what Daddy had said, making Chance choke.

“But I’m not ’posed to say dat,” she said, giving him a solemn look. “Dat’s a weally, weally bad word.”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice strained. “It is.”

“I’m not ’posed to say ‘damn,’ or ‘hell,’ or ‘ass,’ or—”

“Then you shouldn’t be saying them now.” He managed to inject a note of firmness in his tone, though it was a struggle to keep from laughing.

She looked perplexed. “Den how can I tell you what dey are?”

“Does Daddy know what the bad words are?”

The little head nodded emphatically. “He knows dem all.”

“I’ll ask him to tell me, so I’ll know which words not to say.”

“Otay.” She sighed. “But don’t hit him too hard.”

“Hit him?”

“Dat’s de only time he says dat word, when he hits his dumb wid de hammer. He said so.”

Chance managed to turn his laugh into a cough. Zane was an ex-SEAL; his language was as salty as the sea he was so at home in, and Chance had heard “dat word,” and worse, many times from his brother. But Mom had also instilled strict courtesy in all her children, so their language was circumspect in front of women and children. Zane must not have known Nick was anywhere near him when he hit his thumb, or no amount of pain could have made him say that in her hearing. Chance only hoped she forgot it before she started kindergarten.

“Aunt Mawis is goin’ to have a baby,” Nick said, scrambling up to stand in his lap, her feet braced on his thighs. Chance put both hands around her to steady her, though his aid probably wasn’t needed; Nick had the balance of an acrobat.

“I know. Your daddy told me.”

Nick scowled at not being the first to impart the news. “She’s goin’ to foal in de spwing,” she announced.

He couldn’t hold back the laughter this time. He gathered the little darling close to him and stood, whirling her around and making her shriek with laughter as she clung to his neck. He laughed until his eyes were wet. God, he loved this child, who in the three short years of her life had taught them all to be on their toes at all times, because there was no telling what she was going to do or say. It took the entire Mackenzie family to ride herd on her.

Suddenly she heaved a sigh. “When’s de spwing? Is it a wong, wong time away?”

“Very long,” he said gravely. Seven months was an eternity to a three-year-old.

“Will I be old?”

He put on a sympathetic face and nodded. “You’ll be four.”

She looked both horrified and resigned. “Four,” she said mournfully. “Whodadunkit?”

When he stopped laughing this time, he wiped his eyes and asked, “Who taught you to say whodathunkit?”

“John,” she said promptly.

“Did he teach you anything else?”

She nodded.

“What? Can you remember it?”

She nodded.

“Will you tell me what they are?”

She rolled her eyes up and studied the ceiling for a moment, then gave him a narrow-eyed look. “Will you wet me wide your moborcycle?”

Damn, she was bargaining! He trembled with fear at the thought of what she would be like when she was sixteen. “No,” he said firmly. “If you got hurt, your mommy and daddy would cry, Grampa and Gamma would cry, I would cry, Aunt Maris would cry, Mac would cry, Unca Mike would cry—”

She looked impressed at this litany of crying and interrupted before he could name everyone in the family. “I can wide a horse, Unca Dance, so why can’t I wide your moborcycle?”

God, she was relentless. Where in the hell were Zane and Barrie? They’d had plenty of time to put the twins down for their naps. If he knew Zane, his brother was taking advantage of having a baby-sitter for Nick to get in some sexy time with his wife; Zane was always prepared to use a fluid situation to his advantage.

It was another ten minutes before Zane strolled back into the office, his eyes slightly heavy-lidded and his hard face subtly relaxed. Chance scowled at his brother. He’d spent the ten minutes trying to talk Nick into telling him what John had taught her, but she wasn’t budging from her initial negotiation. “It’s about time,” he groused.

“Hey, I hurried,” Zane protested mildly.

“Yeah, right.”

“As much as possible,” he added, smiling. He smoothed his big hand over his daughter’s shining black hair. “Have you kept Uncle Chance entertained?”

She nodded. “I told him de weally, weally bad word you said when you hit your dumb.”

Zane looked pained, then stern. “How did you tell him when you aren’t supposed to say the word?”

She stuck her finger in her mouth and began studying the ceiling again.