Christmas Surprises (6 page)

"He might," Maddie said, thinking that he'd probably prefer sitting in a quiet corner, buried in a book if he was like his mother.  Or in a kitchen somewhere, banging pots and pans if he was like his father. 

A frightening image of the baby crawling around the restaurant kitchen, darting in and out of the legs of all the workers, barking orders like Grant always did, ran through her mind.  Grant would probably put him to work, would tell him to comp his salary for the restaurant, to put his earnings towards the mortgage --

"Daddy calls the baby Huck," Mia said.

"And Mommy laughs about it," Zoe added.

"But we don't get the joke," they said together.

They were creepy like that sometimes.  Identical copies of one another, as good looking as their parents but... creepy, with their twin talk and little looks and tiny hands...

Maddie was worried about being a mother, obviously.  She wasn't good with kids.  She would likely be as bad at this mothering thing as her own mother had been.

She was feeling insecure about almost everything these days, actually.

"Huck Finn," she said, relieved to settle on a topic she did know.  Books.  "He's a character in a book."

"Is the book about Huck Finn as good as all of your books?," Zoe asked.

Ahh, innocence.  Assuming that Aunt Maddie, who wrote books in a sub genre so tiny that no one had ever even heard of her, was on par with an American classic.

"Even better," Maddie said.

Yeah, her old books had sold better than Mark Twain's had in his lifetime, but she'd been done with that for quite a while now.  She'd wondered at the wisdom of signing away all future royalty rights since then, but Grant had been supportive about it, telling her like he told her so often back then, with stars in his eyes and true love in his voice, "You're being just who Christ intends for you to be, Maddie."

Christ intended for them to be poor, apparently.  Which was fine.  If they could only be poor and happy. 

They were excelling at the first.  But the second was elusive.

"It's your turn," Mia prompted, just as the doorbell rang.

"Hold up," Maddie said, noting that Rachel, Micah, Joy, and Taylor were all still wherever they'd run off to in the east wing, while Grant continued on in the kitchen.  "I've gotta get the door."

But first, she had to get up, which was a real struggle.  Not even into the third trimester yet and already gigantic.  Well, as gigantic as a woman who was naturally as small as she was could get.  Grant had been feeding her around the clock.

"Hey."

Speaking of, there he was, looking down at her with concern as she continued to try and get to her feet.

"Are you going to get the door?," he asked, wiping his brow with his forearm, his hands covered in flour.

"Yes," she said.  "If I can get up."

"Here," he said, putting his arm out.  "Let me help."

So, she put her hands to his arm, the same arm that even now, even all these years after they'd first fallen in love, he put her hand on as they walked together, almost always leaning down to kiss her with the contact, even if his attention was divided at times and his tone was critical.

Or at least she heard it that way.

With her on her feet now, he leaned in and kissed her on the cheek.  "I made you a snack," he said softly.  "You need to eat."

There it was again.

"I already ate," she said.  "You made a huge breakfast for me."

"But you need to snack, too."

"What's the snack?," she asked, imagining any number of healthy, organic things he was constantly whipping up these days in between rushes at the restaurant, setting them aside for her because
it's good for the baby.

What vile, disgusting thing had he created for her now that she'd have to pretend to like? 
Oh, I see what you did there with the kale and quinoa, Grant.  Mmmm.  Delicious.

But that wasn't it.

"I made you tiramisu," he said softly.

She looked at him with surprise.  He'd made that for her every day back when they'd been falling in love...

"A whole pan of tiramisu?," Mia squealed, even as they all began making their way to the front door.

"I want some!," Zoe trilled.

"You two are just like your mother," Grant muttered, his arm around Maddie, his flour covered fingers swiping war paint onto his nieces' faces.  "And where is your mother?"

"Who knows," the two girls sighed together.

Grant raised his eyebrows at Maddie. 
Freaky.
  She could hear him say it.  Because he usually said it at least once every time they were around the girls.

They understood each other on some things, at least.  Maybe that was enough.

Maybe.  She managed a soft laugh as he continued to shake his head at his nieces, and he looked over at her, a smile on his lips.

You have the greatest laugh.

He'd said that more than once, but her mind went back to the last time she could remember him saying it, a few years ago when the debt was nowhere near being paid off, she was still hopeful that her writing career in her new genre would take off, and they'd been newlyweds.

She'd helped him in the restaurant until closing, like she'd done until the pregnancy and the morning sickness, afternoon sickness, evening sickness, all the time sickness started in, and like he had been helping her with her writing, like he always had, much later on back in their room.

"Okay, read that new part to me," she'd said, her hands in his hair, his head in her lap, both of their eyes on her laptop and the story she'd been working on.

"You love my voice that much?," he'd asked, kissing her knee even as his hand trailed up her thigh.

"I do, but any voice will do.  Besides my own, that is.  I've got to hear this little section of dialogue outside of my own head."

"Where do I need to start?," he'd asked.

"Right here," she'd pointed.

He'd taken a breath and begun.  "
He put his hand to her face, looking down at her.  'I was intending forever.'  Oh, the very thought.  Amazing.  He was just as eager as she was.  And just as certain
."  Then, in a different voice, a higher falsetto, "
'I'm going to be happy with you,' she said softly, rising up on her toes to kiss him again.  'Happier than I thought I could be
.'"

And her heroine, sounding like a screechy Grant while delivering (she could admit it) cheesy lines had been enough to make her begin to giggle.

"
'Mmm,' he murmured, bringing her even closer, kissing her --
"  Grant had stopped reading and looked up at her.  "Will you stop laughing?  Good grief, Maddie, you keep jostling my head around with your giggling --"

This had made her laugh outright, loud and clear, a sound that even then was so strange to her, given how little she'd had to laugh about and love before Grant had come into her life.

He'd just smiled at her, turning over onto his back so that he could look up at her, even as she'd held his face in her hands and leaned forward to kiss his lips.

"You make a great hero, Grant," she'd said.  "Even the cheesy lines sound good coming from you.  But the heroine's voice?"

"I don't sound pretty enough, do I?," he'd asked. 

"No," she'd laughed again.

"You have the greatest laugh," he'd murmured.  "It's my favorite sound."

"More than the credit card machine downstairs?," she'd asked, joking with him.  "Or the sound of the door from the kitchen to the dining room opening up again and again?  More even than the sound of the plates being put onto tables?"

He'd loved those sounds, too.  She could tell when he was at work, when he'd smile at his success.

"Oh, easily," he'd said, sitting up and pulling her into his arms.  "But maybe I mis-spoke before.  Maybe your laugh isn't my favorite sound."

"Then what is?," she'd asked, wondering what he was getting at.

"Can't really describe it," he'd whispered, grinning, his lips already at her neck.  "But I'll bet I can get you to make it."

"Aunt Maddie, why is the doorbell making that sound?," Mia asked, jolting Maddie back to the decidedly less exciting present. 

Sure enough, the doorbell was making a horrible, dying sound.

"Sounds like someone's leaning on it," Grant said.

He let her go when they got to the door and nodded at the handle, unable to use his own what with all the flour.  So, she opened it up... and smiled almost instantly.

"Gracie..."

For as huge as Maddie herself was, she was nothing in comparison to Gracie, who was, from the looks of things, just a few days away from giving birth to her fourth child.  Her husband, Jacob, was looking a little round himself.

And happy.  They looked so happy, even as Gracie beamed at Maddie.

"Look at you!," she exclaimed, rushing right in and embracing her childhood friend.

Yes, they'd grown up together, going to the same church as little girls.  While Maddie had been friends with Gracie's sister, Faith, first, she's spent plenty of time around Gracie over the years as well.  Now, they were married into the same family... in a distant, twice (or more?) removed way.

"You, too," Maddie said, whispering it into her hair, feeling a little closer to home with her old friend here.

"I read your last book," Gracie said, corralling her two older children into the house, even as one of them -- the boy -- was standing at the doorbell with his forehead pressed against it.

Well, the horrible, dying sound was easily explained, then.

"Andrew, stop that," Gracie said.  "You're going to wake up half the neighborhood, which is saying a lot since Micah and Rachel are, like, ten miles from the rest of civilization on this huge compound they've got."  She took a breath.  "Anyway, Maddie, the book!  I've read it!  And that's a big compliment, that I even read it, because you know how I am with reading, and I've had no time anyway, trying to pack up all of our stuff and ship it all from Argentina --"  She finally saw Grant standing there.  "Well, hello, handsome.  Don't you look cute with flour on your forehead?"

Grant frowned at this, lifting up his arm to his forehead.  "Do I have --"

Maddie reached out and wiped it away before he could make it worse.  He opened up his mouth to thank her (or criticize her for getting her own hands dirty and potentially harming the baby, his main concern these days), but Jacob cut him off.

"Handsome?," he said, shifting the toddler he held in his arms.  "Only if he's got a plate full of samples for me to eat in there."

"I do actually," Grant said, taking the slap to the shoulder from Jacob with a smile.  "Heard you were coming and made sure there were some snacks ready.  Better snacks than those premade cookies Rachel always tries to feed her guests."

"Awesome," Jacob said, handing off his youngest to Maddie, who was surprised by the bulk of the small child as he stared at her, his eyes just exactly like her nieces’ eyes.  Jacob and Micah were cousins who strongly resembled one another, which might have explained why their kids looked like they were all siblings.