Balancing Act

He needed to move farther away from the memories of his marriage first.

His heart sank as he considered the possibility of emotional scenes, energy-sapping manipulation, hidden motives and downright dishonesty. In a situation like this, those things might easily happen if he didn’t play everything right. He’d had more than enough of all that with Stacey, and though he’d grieved for her in a complicated, upside-down kind of way, he couldn’t help doubting that they would have stayed the distance, had she lived. By the end, she’d lied to him a few times too often.

“Do you want to come out back, where they can play?”

Ms. McGraw’s question dragged his focus back to where it ought to have been all along. Scarlett was toddling around the living room, eager to explore. Colleen watched her from the safety of her mother’s arms.

“I expect Scarlett would like that,” he said.

“We can sit on the deck and have some coffee while we watch them.” She clasped her hands briefly, then brushed a stray silk ribbon of hair away from her face. “I—this is such a weird situation. I’m sorry, I don’t know where to begin or what to suggest.”

“Coffee sounds good,” he answered gruffly.

Coffee was the tip of the iceberg. It was the next twenty years that occupied both their minds.

“If you want to wash up first…?” she offered, her politeness apparently ingrained and automatic. Once again, her voice was sweet and clear.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

She indicated a little powder room tucked away beneath the stairs, and he barged into it, needing a few moments alone, and hoping that cool water streaming over his hands would cool his whole body down.

The exercise wasn’t a success. For a start, Scarlett got clingy and stood outside the door, crying persistently. He heard that sweet female voice again, inviting her to go out back and try the slide, but Scarlett wasn’t having any of that. No instant, instinctive bonding for her, thank you very much. She was too young to recognize the mirrorlike familiarity of that other little girl, and eighteen months was a clingy age. Brady wanted to hurry back out to her, which made him even clumsier than he’d already felt.

Ms. McGraw had maddening soaps—tiny pastel-toned seashell shapes, nestling in a glass dish. His big hands knocked several of them out onto the pristine vanity unit, and when he’d finally grabbed one, his wet palms sent it spurting out of his fingers. It ricocheted off the door, hit the bud vase on the windowsill and knocked it over. An apricot-hued rose fell to the floor.

Brady had never liked fussy decor, and now he knew why. If Ms. McGraw had heard the soap hitting the door and the vase hitting the sill, she probably wondered what on earth he was doing in here.

And Scarlett was still crying. Louder than ever. He could hear her little hands, batting at the door.

At least nothing was broken. He pressed his hands together, across his nose and mouth, and blew a long breath through his fingers, then studied his image in the mirror. He wasn’t happy about what he saw.

For a start, he should have shaved again at the motel. He looked like a thug. His jaw had felt as rough as a metal rasp just now beneath his tension-knotted hands.

And he was too casually dressed. He should have worn a buttoned-down shirt and a jacket. Like this, with his gut still churning, he felt that he didn’t project enough authority or enough intellect. He might need both those qualities, if he and this woman disagreed, at a fundamental level, about what they needed to do.

In the brains department, he wasn’t a pushover. He had a college degree, and the construction company he owned was tendering for bigger and more important jobs every year and getting them. He’d never doubted himself in that area. But he wasn’t great with words, and emotional scenes tied his tongue in knots.

There were some emotional scenes coming up. There had to be! They had the futures of two little girls weighing in the balance, and they lived in cities that were more than seven hundred miles apart.

What if Lisa-Belle McGraw expected him to make all the sacrifices? What if she had a plan for getting what she wanted, and he didn’t see it coming until it was too late?

Scarlett wailed louder, and he told her, “I’m still here, baby. I’ll be out in two seconds.”

He bent to pick up the fallen rose, stuck it roughly back in the vase and filled the little glass tube with fresh water. It overflowed and saturated his hands, as well as an inch of one sleeve. With Scarlett still crying outside, he left without taking time to use the towel, and had to dry his hands on the back of his pants before scooping his little girl into his arms once more.

Passing through the spotless kitchen and onto the wooden rear deck, he found his daughter’s twin sister’s mother already there with two porcelain mugs of coffee on a tray, some milk in sippy cups for the girls, and a plate of dainty cookies arranged on a paper lace doily.

Their cue for some polite, meaningless conversation?

Not on Ms. McGraw’s agenda, apparently. He was surprised at the determined look which had appeared on her pretty face, but it gave him a brief warning of her intentions and left him a little better prepared. Almost relieved, too. Whatever she wanted, he would much prefer it if she went after it openly and honestly, if she said what was on her mind so that they both knew where they stood.

“I don’t want to pursue this through official channels,” she said. Her voice started out wobbly and ended up firm.

“Pursue what?” he asked, betraying his impatience, and his ill ease. “The question of whether the girls are twins? Isn’t it obvious, after one glance, that they are? The blood tests are only going to confirm it.”

“Yes, it’s—” she took a deep breath, and tried to smile “—uncannily obvious.” The smile wobbled and fell off her face, like a loose wheel falling off a toy cart. “I never imagined that they could look so much alike, even when I considered that you might be right. When I first saw your daughter, I wanted to snatch her right out of your arms.” Her voice dropped to a husky whisper.

“I know the feeling,” he drawled.

She pulled herself together, and her voice firmed. “No, I just meant that I don’t want to tell anyone about it. Not Immigration or the adoption people.”

“I don’t think it would invalidate the adoptions, Ms. McGraw. I can’t see how it could.”

“Please, call me Libby.”

“Okay. Libby.” He tried it out on his tongue, but couldn’t decide if he liked it. On the one hand, it was a snappy little nickname, and an inventive way to contract the more formal Lisa-Belle. On the other, it was a little too cute. He wasn’t big on cute.

“I guess I’m just not prepared to take any kind of a chance on the adoptions,” she said. The fall air was crisp and cool, and she shivered a little as she spoke. On the grass in her yard, there was already a carpet of fallen yellow leaves. “If there was ever any risk that I might lose Colleen…”

“No one’s talking about either of us losing our daughters.” The very thought opened a pit of fear in his gut. “The adoptions were both done in full accordance with the…you know, you must have read the information about it…the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption,” he reminded her. “You know how strict Vietnam is on that issue, and the United States, too. Stacey and I wouldn’t have gotten involved with the idea if there’d been anything dodgy about it.”

“Me, neither.” She paused, then added gently, “I’m sorry, it must have been hard for you to lose your wife so soon after you’d both become parents at last.”

He nodded, and muttered something. He’d told her over the phone that he was widowed, that his wife’s death had been sudden and unexpected, the result of an accident. What he hadn’t told her was that the blood alcohol level of the man Stacey had been driving with—her lover—had been well over the legal limit at the time.

It wasn’t a piece of information he enjoyed sharing with strangers, and he definitely didn’t want this woman asking questions about the state of his marriage. If that led to any kind of doubt over his capability as a father…

Would he and Libby be able to remain strangers, though?

Looking covertly at her, he wondered about how she was situated. She’d lost her husband more than four years ago. Enough time to grieve, and for the memories to soften. In the dating department, she couldn’t be short of offers if she wanted them. Not a pretty woman like her, a woman who smelled like flowers and rain and springtime. Was there anyone else in her life whom he needed to consider?

And in Scarlett’s? What kind of a connection were they making this weekend? How should he respond to that immediate impulse to take Scarlett’s twin into his heart?

Shift over, Scarlett.

He knew he could love two daughters without being unfair to either of them. The girls could build a precious bond with each other, and his mom would adore another grandchild. But where did Lisa-Belle McGraw fit in?

“So what do you want to do?” he asked her. Despite the colorless phrasing, they both understood what an enormous question it was.

“Talk a little more, first, about what might have happened,” she answered, her voice still firm. “I need to get the dates straight. I just need to understand the history.” She pressed her fingertips to her temples. “You and your wife took Scarlett from the orphanage, when, exactly?”

“June twelfth.” He had the date down pat, like a birthday or an anniversary. Scarlett’s exact birth date wasn’t known. “Fifteen months ago.”

“I was there around ten weeks later. August twentieth. I was told Colleen had just been left on the veranda at night. Someone heard her cry at around midnight and went out and found her. No idea about either of her parents, except that her father, most likely, was white and her mother was probably mixed race. I’m thinking the mom would have been conceived back during the war…”

“Yes, in the sixties or early seventies.”

“…with an American GI father. But all of that’s just conjecture, based on the way she looks. The way they look,” she corrected herself quickly.

“We were told pretty much the same story,” Brady answered. “Whether the orphanage workers had any inkling the girls were sisters… Probably not, since they passed through the place at different times. I got the impression the orphanage gets its share of mixed-race babies.”

“Yes, so did I.”

“I’m guessing the mother kept one baby in the hope she could manage to raise it, then found after a couple of months that she couldn’t.”

“I can’t imagine what that must have been like for her. I try not to think about it. Maybe she felt better knowing that her baby would be going to a better life.”

“That’s what we told ourselves, also.”

“It was for the best, I’m sure of it.”

“And of course,” he went on, “by the time she brought Colleen in, the orphanage would have had other kids passing through, and staff coming and going, possibly. And anyhow, a baby changes so much in those first few months.”

“I guess that’s how it happened,” she agreed. “And that’s where I’m happy to leave it. Whatever the exact story is, it doesn’t change what we’re facing now.”

“No, I guess it doesn’t.”

Brady took a sip of his coffee, debating on whether to reach for a cookie as well. They looked melt-in-the-mouth good, but the way they were arranged on that doily made them seem as if they were only for show. He’d already ruined Lisa-Belle’s little soap arrangement in the powder room. Didn’t want to do the same with the cookies.

Instead of taking one, he dampened down his hunger and watched the girls. Scarlett had discovered the sturdy plastic slide and playhouse set, and was exploring its ins and outs. Colleen came down the little slide. Showing off, maybe, or staking out her territory? More likely, at eighteen months, she was just having fun.

She tipped back too far on the way down, bumped hard onto her bottom and scrambled to her feet, taking the rough landing in stride just as Scarlett always did. Next time Colleen came down, Scarlett was right behind her, and both of them were laughing. They were active, vital little girls.

“The only thing I know for sure, right now, is that it would be wrong for them to grow up not knowing each other, not having the chance to be sisters,” Brady said, his voice suddenly husky. “And for me, too. How could I love one little girl and not the other? It would just be wrong.”

Shoot!

He hadn’t planned to say it. The words had just happened, falling out of his mouth, blunt as always, as soon as they crystallized in his thoughts. He looked across to where Libby McGraw sat, in a cedarwood outdoor chair just like the one he was sitting in.

Her legs were crossed at her ankles and her hands were clasped around her knees, neat and pretty and careful. Hell, and his heart was beating so much harder and faster as he waited for her reply that he could actually feel it thumping inside his chest.

Why was he so scared about what he’d given away? Why was he instantly sorry he’d laid his beliefs on the table like that?

Because he’d intended to find out what she thought and felt first.

With unsteady hands, he took two of the cookies at once and ate them in a single bite. They tasted like Christmas morning when he was eight years old.

“Why would it be wrong, Brady?” she asked carefully, after a long pause.

It wasn’t the tack he had expected her to take. He was relieved about that, but still very suspicious, on shifting ground. Something didn’t ring true in what she’d just said. “Don’t you agree?” he asked her.

“There are plenty of kids that grow up as only children, these days,” she answered. Her chin was raised and her eyes were too bright.

“True, but—”

“I wouldn’t have adopted Colleen in the first place if I’d thought I couldn’t meet all of her needs,” she went on, gathering speed. “I refinanced my home and took a pay cut so I could work at a high-quality day-care center and have her there with me.”

“I’m not saying—”

“I used to teach kindergarten, but that wouldn’t have given us the time with each other that I wanted. She gets plenty of social interaction at day care with kids her own age. If I hadn’t entered her in that contest, she and Scarlett could have gone their whole lives not knowing about each other, and they’d still have been loved and nourished and happy. They’d have missed nothing.”

Her voice was high and sweet and very firm.

Too firm.

Her eyes, in contrast, were frightened and defiant.

Okay, he understood, now.

“You don’t believe a single word of what you’re saying,” Brady growled at her, and sure enough, she flashed him a startled look and her cheeks went bright pink. “You don’t,” he repeated.

There was a silence.

“Yeah, okay, you’re right,” she agreed quietly at last. Her clasped hands had tightened around her knees, and her shoulders were rounded, vulnerable looking. There was anguish in her face now. “You’re right. I don’t.”

She shook her head, and the tiny silver earrings that were nestled against her pink lobes flashed.

“You know,” she went on, “I’ve been saying it to myself every minute since your call on Monday. I’ve tried to make myself believe it doesn’t make a difference, but I can’t.” Brady could see how hard she found it to put her emotions into words. “We have to give them the chance to be sisters, don’t we? And we have to give ourselves the chance to love both of them. But you’re in Ohio and I’m in Minnesota, and I can’t begin to think about how we’re going to do it. It—it might have been easier if we’d never known.”

“I know,” he answered, then confessed abruptly, “All the way here on the airplane, I was wishing my mom had never seen that magazine.”

Chapter Two

“I can stay until Sunday,” Brady said. “We can think about it. There are options. You know, a lot of people manage shared custody of their kids after a divorce, even when they’re living in different states. People manage to have their kids visit far-away grandparents. It’s not insurmountable.”

“No, I guess it isn’t,” Libby answered obediently. She popped a little smile onto her face, then added, “More coffee?” and when he nodded and said, “Please!” it gave her an excuse to go into the house, where she could rebel in private.

She didn’t want Brady to see how much his words about managing “shared custody” had terrified her. One look at that little girl in his arms, identical to her own Colleen, had told her how easily she could come to love two daughters, but how could she share two daughters with a stranger?

Did he expect her just to hand Colleen over for weekends and vacation visits? Put her on a plane and send her seven hundred miles? Dear Lord, no!

Her own parents had divorced when she was eight, and she’d had to do that. Just step on a plane every few months. The memories weren’t good, and she didn’t revisit them very often. Mom had never really adjusted to the divorce and to being a single parent. She hadn’t been prepared for managing on her own, so they’d moved from Kansas City to Chicago to be closer to Libby’s grandparents, and it had taken Mom a long time to find her feet.

She’d been horrified when Libby had taken on the role of single mother voluntarily. “If Glenn was still alive of course I’d have loved a grandchild, but not like this, Libby. You don’t know how hard it’s going to be.”

But Libby had cherished her independence and her freedom to run her life the way she chose. She hadn’t had that same freedom in her marriage. And now Brady was talking about “shared custody” as if it was easy and safe, as if it was something they could both just slot into their lives. He had no idea!

I should have challenged him on it. But maybe if I work as hard as I can to make this weekend nice and fun and harmonious, we can talk on Sunday and we’ll find there is another answer.

Even as she thought this, she knew it was a cop-out on her part. The kind of cop-out she’d made before, and didn’t want to make again. But wanting something and achieving it were two very different things, she’d found, especially when life came at you sideways like a runaway train.

Still unsure of how she would handle the situation, she poured two fresh mugs of coffee and went back out to the rear deck. Brady had vanished from the deck chair, and a few seconds of panicky searching—he was a stranger, she knew almost nothing about him, and she’d left him with her precious daughter, was she crazy?—revealed him safely down in the yard with the girls.

Oh, mercy, what a sight it was!

Silently, she put the coffee mugs down on the barbecue table and watched. Somehow, he’d gotten himself horizontal on the damp grass, solid as a fallen log, and both girls were running to and fro, covering him deeply with leaves.

They were shrieking with laughter—identical laughter—tossing wild handfuls of color every which way and earning exaggerated protests from Brady which they clearly found hilarious.

“More leaves? We’re having more leaves?” he was saying in that gravelly voice she was starting to know. “What? I’m not buried deep enough for you, yet, guys? I swear—”

Then he caught sight of Libby and stopped abruptly, and she had to hide a laugh of her own at the sight of his face.

He was blushing?

No, it had to be the effort and exertion of all that protesting, followed by the sudden scramble to his feet.

“I…uh…” he said, and brushed himself down, strong shoulders moving beneath the gray fabric of his sweatshirt. “That was…you know…”

“I know,” she answered, still laughing. “They loved it.”

She wanted him to laugh with her, but he’d closed off, retreated somehow. Coming up the steps and reaching for the coffee mug she still held in her hand, he looked intimidating and serious, a construction company boss through and through, not the kind of man you’d ever catch horsing around with two little girls.

Libby was sorry, now, that she’d caught him out. She didn’t want to create more distance than necessary.

Their fingers touched briefly as he took the mug. As a piece of body contact, it was nothing. Quicker and lighter than the touch of a makeup brush on her cheek, or the flick of her hand when she shooed a mosquito from Colleen’s face. All the same, it was warm and physical and potent, and she wished it hadn’t happened.

Possibly he did, too.

If he’d even noticed it, Libby revised. She doubted that the imprint of it had lingered on his skin the way it was still lingering on hers. And she doubted that her scent was still wrapping around him, the way his had wrapped around her. It was clean and male, reminding her of freshly shaven wood, and it was mixed with the earthy scent of the leaves.

He could have had half a dozen better reasons for moving away from her so quickly, with that distant frown still on his face.

Brady knew he was frowning too much, knew it made him look distant—intimidating, even—and he didn’t care. Deliberately, he turned his back on Libby, took a big mouthful of coffee and stared down at the fall color carpeting the yard.

He shouldn’t have fooled around with the leaves like that. He couldn’t afford to have this woman think he was soft, lacking intelligence, easy to manipulate, easy to distract from his goals with a bit of pretty color, and ready to take care of everything as needed.

Even though he was soft. He knew that. When it came to Scarlett’s well-being, he was a pussycat. He turned to liquid inside, like a soft-centered chocolate candy, every time he felt her little arms around his neck, or saw her smile, or had to kiss a bump.

And when it came to Scarlett, he would take care of everything as needed. He would walk over hot coals to give her the things she should have. A play in the leaves. Pretty toys at Christmas. A college education. Her very own twin sister.

What kind of sacrifices was Libby McGraw prepared to make? he wondered.

They drank their coffee mostly in silence, just watching the girls and commenting occasionally on their play. Inwardly, Libby was working on her courage, putting it in place piece by piece, like building a solid brick wall.

She waited until Brady had drained his mug, then cleared her throat—it shouldn’t have been so tight, but it was—and said, “How about we go out for pizza? There’s a place just a few blocks from here that’s kid-friendly, and the girls should stay the distance, don’t you think, after their naps? It’s not even six, yet. Seven, Ohio time.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” he agreed.

She took a deep breath and forced herself to speak. “Because I don’t want to leave it until the end of the weekend before we talk about this, Brady. I want to get it on the table tonight, so that we both know where we stand.”

He looked at her, and she could see the speculation and assessment in his face. He didn’t fully trust her. It was written in the jut of his jaw and the narrowing of his eyes. It was shouted by the frequent glances he gave toward both the girls. Definitely, he didn’t trust her.

The feeling was mutual, and maybe that was good. Staying on her guard was a lot better than the alternatives.

Since it was still pretty early, they had their pick of several tables at the pizza restaurant, and chose one in a quiet corner in back, near the open kitchen. The girls were happy to squiggle with crayons on sheets of paper, watch the pizzas sliding in and out of the big, wood-fired oven and slurp their juice.

“Have you always lived in St. Paul?” Brady asked Libby as they waited for their order, and she couldn’t help her suspicion that it was more than just a casual question. Had she once again lost the initiative she was seeking?

“No, I was born in Kansas City,” she answered him, too accustomed to behaving as good manners dictated. She wasn’t prepared to avoid his question, or to challenge it, no matter how suspicious of it she was. “But I grew up in Chicago after my parents got divorced. I met my husband at Northwestern—he was doing his master’s—and we moved here when his company transferred him, around ten years ago, right after I finished college.”