Adding Up to Marriage (2 page)

Jewel gasped. “I'm not—”

“Oh, for heaven's sake,” Donna said as Oliver dumped the well-worn, Peruvian-patterned poncho on the couch beside her, “Jewel helps deliver babies! She obviously
loves
children! Don't you, honey?”

“You bet! And really, Silas, it's no problem. I don't have any appointments today or anything.” Although despite the generous amount of cheer she'd injected into the words—what with her lack of pressing obligation being momentarily convenient—overall this was not a good thing. As
in, she had far too much free time on her hands and not nearly enough cash in them—

“So it's settled,” Donna said. “You all can stay right here. Si, give me a hand—”

“But we can't stay here!” Oliver put in, his dark brown eyes all watery. “It's almost time to feed Doughboy!”

Oh, for pity's sake…

Crouching in front of the child, Jewel smiled. “Tell you what—if it's okay with your daddy, we can go to your house, and you can feed Doughboy—” who or whatever that was “—and if it gets late you can go right to sleep in your own beds. But before that,” she then said to Tad, tapping him on his nose, “we're gonna have so much fun your daddy's gonna be sorry he wasn't with us!”

The boys shared a glance…then a shrug. Jewel couldn't decide if that was good or not. Then her mouth fell open as Silas scooped his mother—who was by no means a frail little thing—into his arms, before, with no outward evidence of strain, carting her across the room and out the still open front door.

“My daddy's strong, huh?” little curly-head said, grinning at Jewel with one of those sweet, baby-toothed grins designed to make a woman want to rush right out and fill her womb.

Especially when said womb had just been nicely primed by the sight of a good-looking man acting all manly and such. Silently cursing biological imperatives and what-not, Jewel took her little charges by the hand, deciding it was best all around if she not answer that question.

 

“You know,” Silas said to his mother many hours later on their way home from the hospital, “you seem awfully mellow for somebody with a broken ankle.”

Beside him, Donna released a half laugh. “That's the
pain meds.” She looked down at her foot, splinted to within an inch of its life. “Might be tricky to cook with this thing on. Your father will be beside himself.”

“I imagine he'll live. Besides, that's what the church ladies are for. After the thousands of casseroles you've made for everybody else over the years, they owe you.”

She laughed again, then sighed. “Shame I won't be able to take care of the boys, though—”

“And don't even think about that. Hey, if I have to, I'll keep 'em with me. It could work,” he said to his mother's hoot of laughter.

“These are Ollie and Tad we're talking about. Otherwise known as Thing One and Thing Two?”

“Thought you said they'd calmed down.”

“I lied.”

He glanced at his mother. “And you didn't think to warn Jewel?”

“Gal has youth on her side. And resilience. She'll be fine. But wasn't it providential, how she was available to babysit? She's a real sweetheart, that one. A
real
sweetheart.”

Oh, hell. “You know, you could at least
try
to be subtle. Next I'm gonna find out you deliberately broke your ankle just to further your matchmaking mission—hey. Everything okay?”

Donna nodded tightly. “Joy juice is wearing off, I suspect.”

“So take more.”

“Forget it. A flower child I may have been, but a druggie? Never. Damned if I'm about to start now. I'll be fine,” she said, her chin lifting. “At least until we get home.”

Silas's eyes again slid to his mother, the stress lines bracketing her mouth attesting to her no longer being the bottomless well of energy she'd once been. “Why didn't you say something before? About the kids, I mean.”

A moment ticked by before she quietly said, “Because after what happened…those babies needed mothering. And since I was the only candidate… Oh, don't get that look on your face, I'm only stating the facts. At least I was there to fill the gap.”

“Since I haven't done anything to fill it myself.”

She shrugged. Woman could say more with a shrug than most women say in a thirty-minute conversation. Then she blew out a long breath.

“I adore those little monkeys, you know that. But even before this happened, I'd begun to realize I'm not as up to chasing them as I'd thought. As I want to be. Occasionally is fine—well, once this blasted ankle is better—but full time?” She shook her head. “I'm so tired by the time evening rolls around I can barely have a conversation with your father.” That was followed by a weary chuckle. “Let alone anything else.”

“Mom, geez.”

His mother laughed again, then briefly squeezed his arm. “I'm sorry, Silas. The spirit's willing, but—”

“And there's nothing to be sorry for.” He flashed a smile at her, even as panic began to simmer in his gut. Nobody knew better than he that both his sons had gotten double doses of snips and snails and puppy dog tails. Not to mention enough energy to fuel a hydrogen bomb. Finding another day-care option for them wasn't going to be easy. But taking out his mother—who'd already earned her medal for surviving her own four boys—hadn't been part of the game plan. “You could've backed out anytime, you know.”

In the dim light from the dash, he saw tears glisten in his mother's warm brown eyes. “Couldn't. Would've meant giving them up.”

“It's okay, we'll figure something out,” he said softly as they pulled into his parents' driveway, his father
shooting through the front door before Silas switched off the engine.

Nearly thirty-four years his parents had been married, and yet Gene Garrett's solicitous concern for his wife when he jerked open her door was every bit as tender as Silas remembered from his childhood. Oh, they fussed at each other as much as the next couple, but what they had—it was magic and rare and defied explanation. Or definition.

And there were times when Silas envied them so much it hurt.

“For heaven's sake, Gene,” Donna said after Silas's dad gingerly maneuvered her out of the truck. No mean feat. “I'm completely capable of managing on my own. Thank you, honey,” she said to Silas after he handed her the crutches. She squinted at the things for a moment, shaking her head, then fitted them under her arms, her grip firm on the braces. “But you better go on—I imagine Jewel's more than ready to be rescued by now.”

“It's nearly ten—the boys are bound to be asleep.” His mother rolled her eyes, and he smiled. “You sure you don't need me?”

“Honestly, between you and Gene… It's a broken ankle, for goodness' sake, not bubonic plague! Here, hold this,” she said to Gene, shoving a crutch at him, then reached up to give Silas a strong, one-armed hug around his neck. “Thanks for everything, honey. And we'll talk tomorrow.”

Still, after Silas climbed back into the truck to watch his father hover over his mother as she unsteadily navigated the short sidewalk between the driveway and house, envy pinched again. And regret, that his own marriage had been a dismal failure.

But at twenty-four, even with his parents' example, he hadn't been nearly as ready for it as he'd thought. Especially
to a gal who'd apparently tuned out when the minister, during their prenuptial classes, had done his best to drive home that married life wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, that it took more than love—and sex—to get through the rough patches. That without determination to
make
it work, a willingness to put each other's feelings and needs ahead of your own from time to time, you didn't have a chance in hell.

Not that he had used those exact words, but close enough.

And God knew Silas had tried his best. He'd hated seeing Amy so miserable, especially after Bundle of Joy Two arrived. But as her demands became increasingly impossible to meet—she constantly complained about not having enough money, yet pitched a fit if he worked late because he wasn't around to help her with the babies—Silas began to see the writing on the wall.

Oh, he'd dug in his heels the first time she'd said she wanted out, not about to give up that easily on something he still believed in. But eventually Silas had had to admit he couldn't prop up the marriage on his own. Or raise his wife as well as his sons.

His folks inside, Silas backed out of the drive, thinking that at least the resulting implosion, as horrendous as it had been, hadn't left him where it had found him. In fact, his shrugging off his mother's relentless matchmaking attempts notwithstanding, he was beginning to heal, even if only in terms of…
maybe. If
the right woman—not girl,
woman
—crossed his path, he might,
might,
consider trying again.

But this time, he had a checklist as long as his arm, with
Putting the boys first
at the top. Followed closely by maturity. Serenity. Stability.

Sanity.

In other words, not someone who made him feel like the ground was constantly shifting under his feet.

Moments later he pulled up into his driveway and cut the engine, his forehead crunched. Why were the lights still on?

The cottonwood's first crackly, fallen leaves scampered across his feet as he walked to the door, the rustle barely audible over the raucous goings-on inside. The instant he opened the heavy carved door to the hundred-year-old adobe, Doughboy speed-waddled over and plastered himself against Silas's calf, the English bulldog's underbite trembling underneath bulging, terror-stricken eyes.

Why? Why you send crazy lady here?

Then, his spawn's shrieks of unbridled glee assaulting his ears, Silas got the first glimpse of what had once been his living room.

Which now looked like Tokyo, post-Godzilla-rampage.

“D
addy!
Daddy!
You're home—!”

“You shoulda been here, we had sooooo much fun!”

“So I see,” Silas said in a low, controlled voice as he swept Tad up onto his hip while leveling a
What the hell?
look past the destruction at the flushed, heavily breathing, messy-haired female responsible for the mayhem.

Who gave him a whatchagonnado? shrug.

Woman destroys his house and she gives him a
shrug?
God help him.

And her.

Sofa and chair cushions teetered in unstable towers all over the room. Sheets, tablecloths, bedspreads—was that his good
comforter?
—shrouded every flat surface. No lamp was where he'd left it that morning, not a single picture on the wall was straight. And so many toys littered the floor—what he could see of it—it looked like Santa's sleigh had upchucked.

Leaning against his ankle, the dog moaned.
See? Told ya.

Jewel giggled. “Guess we kinda got carried away.”

Silas forced himself to breathe. “Ya think?”

Apparently, she got the message. “O-kay, guys, Daddy's home, so off to bed—no, no arguments, we had a deal, remember?”

He could only imagine. “Thought I said bedtime was eight?”

“You did, but—”

“Jewel said if we took our baths and got our jammies on,” Ollie said, “we could stay up for a bit.”

“A bit?” Silas said. Calmly. Over the seething rage. “It's after ten.”

“What? You're kidding!” Shoving loose pieces of hair behind her ears, Jewel picked her way through the wreckage to peer at the cable box clock. “Ohmigosh—I'm so sorry! The clock got covered and we were having so much fun we lost track of time—”

“Yeah,” Tad said, curls bobbing. “We made cookies, an' then Jewel said we could bring our toys out here, an' then we decided to make tunnels an' stuff—”

“Jewel's like the funnest person ever,” Ollie put in. “She's not like a grownup at all!”

There's an understatement,
Silas thought as he lowered the four-year-old to his feet, then lightly swatted both pajama-covered bottoms. “Go get your teeth brushed, I'll be there in a sec—”

“But we already brushed our teeth!” Ollie said, then stretched his lips back to show. “Shee?”

“Fine. Let's go, then. And you,” he said, pointing at Jewel, “stay right where you are.”

She shrugged again, then plucked the boys' quilts off two chairs. “Here! Take these back to your room!” The kids ran over, grabbed the quilts, gave Jewel hugs and kisses,
and took off down the hall. Where, naturally, somebody tripped over his quilt, taking his brother down in the process, resulting in a tangle of Thomas the Tank Engines and hysterically giggling little boys. Silas sighed, sorted out his spawn and steered them to their room as Doughboy trudged dutifully behind, leaving a trail of slobber in his wake.

The boys flew into their beds on opposite sides of the room hard enough to bang both headboards into the walls, while poor Doughboy collapsed on the multicolored carpet in the center of the floor with a noisy, relieved sigh. His little masters, however, were still high as kites from overexertion and God only knew how much sugar. In fact, no sooner had Silas tucked Tad's quilt around him than he yanked back the covers, yelled “Gotta pee!” and flew to the bathroom, leaping over the already snoring dog.

Silas looked at his older son. “What about you?”

“No, I'm good,” Ollie said, pawing through two dozen stuffed animals for his ratty, shredded baby blanket which at this rate would accompany the kid to college. His bankie found, the kid pushed out a satisfied sigh and wriggled into the middle of the critters, giggling when Silas momentarily buried him in the comforter. Then his head popped out, his straight hair all staticky and his expression suddenly serious.

“Is Gramma okay?”

Silas sat on the bed beside him, rearranging the covers. “She'll be fine, but her ankle really is broken. Which means she's not gonna be able to take care of you guys.”

Worry instantly flooded big, brown eyes. “So who's gonna watch us?”

“I have no idea. That's tomorrow's project. In the meantime, you get to hang out with me. Guess I'll have to work from home for a while.”

“We tried that before, remember? You nearly lost it.”

As tired as he was, Silas laughed. “That was a year ago. You're older now. It'll be fine.”

The toilet flushed; Tad zoomed back into the room and flew into his bed again. Unlike his brother, Tad didn't need to sleep with a menagerie. But God help them all if Moothy—a smelly, one-eyed moose with sagging antlers—went AWOL.

“Okay, you two,” Silas said, bending over to kiss Tad. “Lights out—”

“Book?” Tad flopped around to grab a Dr. Seuss from the skyscraper-high pile on the floor beside the bed.

“Not tonight, buddy. I'd pass out if I tried to read right now.”

“Besides, doofus,” Ollie said, “Jewel read like ten books to us already, remember?”

Curling himself around Moothy, Tad sulked. “S'not the same if Daddy doesn't do it.”

Just reach in there and squeeze my heart, why not?
“I'm flattered, squirt, but reading is not happening tonight. So lights out. Now.”

Grumbling, Tad reached over to turn off his light. Much to Silas's relief, the kid nearly passed out before Silas finished with the nightly hugs and kisses routine, but Ollie still had enough oomph to whisper, “You know what?”

“What?”

“I think Jewel should be our babysitter.”

“She's already got a job,” Silas said as he smoothed back his son's soft, straight hair. “She was just filling in because it was an emergency.”
And I would hang myself if she was the only option.
“But…I'm glad you had fun with her.”

“Are you kidding? She's like the coolest girl ever!”

Yeah, let's hear it for the cool girls,
Silas thought, returning to the living room. Like a hummingbird, Jewel madly darted from spot to spot, folding, straightening, picking
up. At Silas's entrance, she glanced over only to disappear behind a tablecloth as she stretched her arms to fold it in half.

“Nothing's broken,” she said from behind the cloth, then reappeared, the cloth neatly folded into eighths in three swift, graceful moves. “In case you were wondering.”

Glued to the spot, Silas watched her zip, zap, zing around the room as he got grumpier by the second. “But where do you get off going into
my
room and getting
my
comforter off of
my
bed?” Silas said. Okay, whined. “I sleep under that! Naked! And now it's dirty!”

In the midst of hauling a cushion larger than she was back onto the sofa, Jewel shot him a look. “Geez, it might be a little dusty in places, but it's not
dirty.
And the boys brought it out, I didn't go into your room and disturb your things. Trust me, I'm not that desperate.”

For what?
floated through Silas's brain, only to get shoved aside by Jewel's “You sleep naked?” as she scooted across the room to smack at several large smudges on the comforter.

It took a second. “I sleep
what?
”

That got another look. A puzzled one, this time. “Naked. You know, without any clothes?”

“I know what it means! But isn't that kind of a personal question?”

She frowned at him. “Um…okay…it wasn't me who introduced the word into the conversation. You did.”

“I did not!”

“Yes, you did,” she said patiently. “Because my imagination's not that vivid. Not that it matters to me one way or the other.” Huffing a little, she dragged the king-size comforter off the dining table, only to have it swallow her whole as she tried to fold it, like she was wrestling a monster marshmallow. Finally she gave up and dumped it on
the sofa. “But you don't strike me as the sleeping-naked type.”

“Could we please move on?”

“You're really cute when you blush. And it's okay, really. Since I do, too.”

“Do what?”

“Sleep naked. You hungry?”

Lord above, being in the same room with her was like riding the Tilt-A-Whirl at the fair. Over the dizziness, Silas watched her zip to the kitchen, ignoring—more or less—the way her butt twitched as she walked. Then he opened his mouth to say “no,” that all he wanted was for this night to be over, but then he realized, one, that his stomach felt like it was going to eat itself and, two, that the house smelled like an Italian restaurant.

Against his better judgment, he let his gaze sweep what he could see of his kitchen from where he stood. As he feared, it made Armageddon look like a minor dustup. The sooner he got this chick out of his house, the better. Except—

“Damn. I should've run you home before I put the boys to bed.”

“Oh! That's okay, I figured you'd get back late. So I called Patrice, asked her to come get me in a little while. We've got a couple clients to see early tomorrow out at Jemez, so I'll probably crash at her house, since it's halfway to the pueblo already.”

The idea of this woman being responsible for bringing someone's baby into the world made him shudder. But then, childbirth was a messy business, too, so he supposed she felt right at home. He looked at his kitchen again.

“There's actual food in there somewhere?”

“Just something I tossed together out of whatever you had on hand,” she said, shoving aside…stuff to plunk a
casserole dish onto the counter. “Go on, you sit—” she pointed at the formal dining table behind him “—I'll warm some of this up and bring it right over. I see you've got beer—you want one?”

He sat, becoming one with the chair. “Please.”

A minute later she set a heaping dish of her concoction in front of him—pasta and tomato sauce and sausage and peppers and cheese and heaven knew what else.
And you'll eat it and love it,
he thought, almost too hungry to care.

“Huh,” he said, taking a second bite over the clatter of pans, water rushing into the sink. “This is really good.”

“Thanks. Tell me if you want more, there's plenty. You eat while I clean.”

But once he'd taken the edge off his hunger, he felt weird sitting here while she was in there cleaning. So he got up and moved his plate and beer to the breakfast bar, climbing up on the stool.

“Aw…didja get lonely?” she said with a little smile as she wiped down the island. A throwaway question, hardly meant to cause the pang it did. When he didn't answer she tossed him another glance, then sashayed to the sink to rinse out the sponge. “So how's your mom?”

“Looks like she'll be out of commission for a while,” Silas said around another mouthful of food. “She's in a splint until the swelling goes down enough to put on a cast. It'll definitely put a cramp in her style, that's for sure. And mine. I'll have to make other day-care arrangements.”

“Well…” Jewel's entire face scrunched in thought. “I've heard lots of good things about the Baptist preschool. And there's that place out on the highway, in the old convenience store Thea Griego used to live in?”

“With the big jungle mural across the front?”

“Yep. I know the gal who runs it, she's the real deal. Although they might be full up at the moment—”

“It's okay,” Silas said, almost irritably. “I'll check around in the morning. So…what all went on in here while I was gone?”

Jewel laughed. “What
didn't
go on, is more like it. And I apologize for keeping them up so late, but they were having so much fun—well, me, too, but that's something else again—I didn't have the heart to play mean old babysitter and make them go to bed. Especially since I doubted they would've gone to sleep on time, anyway. They missed you,” she said with a little smile. “And they were so worried about their grandma. And no way was I gonna let them sit in front of the TV all night, no, sir.”

Dinner dishes scraped and rinsed, she pushed down the dishwasher door and pulled out the bottom rack. “So we made cookies—they're on that dish over there if you want some—” she nodded toward a foil-covered plate at the end of the bar “—and read a bunch of books—I made Ollie read a couple to me, he sounds like he could use the practice—and then we played about a million games of Snakes and Ladders, and then we played Secret City.”

“Which called for wholesale destruction of my living room.”

She straightened, shoving a piece of hair off her forehead with her wrist. Even with her glasses, he could see the knot between her brows. “Kids learn by playing, Silas. By using their imaginations. Okay, so maybe we sorta went overboard—I'm sorry about your living room. But I put it all back together, didn't I? And the boys had
fun.
Isn't that kinda the whole point of being a kid?”

Life's not all about having fun,
he wanted to say, except even he knew how stuffy and ridiculous it would have sounded. And of course he wanted the kids to have fun, but…

But, what? Yeah, that's right—no answer, huh?

His dinner finished, Silas reached for the foil-covered plate. Catching a whiff of the peanut butter cookies lurking underneath, he smiled. Despite himself.

“You might want to put peanut butter on your list,” Jewel said, her back to him as she continued cleaning. “I got carried away with that, too.”

Silas bit into one, sighing at the taste of childhood, of innocence against his tongue, and felt like a heel. “Where'd you get the flour?”

“One of your neighbors. Which reminds me, you owe Mrs. Maple two cups of flour. And an egg.”

Silas hesitated, hoping she'd turn around. She didn't. “These are delicious, too.”