McCallum Quintuplets (16 page)

Mary Anne Wilson

The first cry came at midnight, and before Maggie McCallum could open her eyes, another cry joined in with the first one.

“I'm coming,” she muttered as sleep totally dissolved for her and she got out of bed in the master suite. She barely noticed that Adam wasn't in bed and didn't bother with her robe, heading through the shadows of the house in an oversize T-shirt Adam had worn in college.

“I'm coming,” she whispered again as the cries grew in volume when she stepped into the hallway. There was little light, but she knew the way by heart to the renovated game room that had become the nursery for five babies. Her babies. And they were crying.

Those cries were echoing behind her from the monitor and in front of her, loud even through the closed doors at the end of the corridor. The nursery had been a vast game room in the single-story ranch-style house they'd moved into just before the quints came home from the hospital. But now it was a fully equipped nursery with everything the five tiny lives needed. Including a monitoring system wired directly to the master bedroom so Maggie could hear everything that went on in the room.

She pushed back the doors she'd painted with rainbows,
a symbol of the hope that the babies had brought with them, and went into the thirty-by-twenty-foot room. The idea had been to make the space peaceful, from the pale blue walls to the off-white ceiling and the deeper blue carpeting on the hardwood floors. But there was little peace with five six-month-old babies living in the space.

Grace Weston, the nearest thing Adam had had to a mother, was with the babies. She stayed overnight several times a week to spell the live-in help Maggie had, and she was wonderful, everything Maggie could want, but that didn't stop Maggie from going into the room and heading for the cribs that formed a circle in the center of the room. Five white cribs, all of them near the others and easy to get to, with five changing tables at their feet. The setup had taken on the look of a wheel, with the cribs the spokes and the three rocking chairs the hubs, while the changing tables made the outer rim. It worked, at least for now.

Grace was leaning over the nearest crib, talking softly, her voice almost drowned out by the crying. Maggie went to her, touched her on her back and said, “What's wrong?”

The tiny, gray-haired woman didn't look up from the crying baby, but motioned over her shoulder to the next crib. “I told you to turn off the monitor.”

“And I told you I wasn't going to.” She went closer and looked at baby Douglas lying on his back, the covers long ago kicked off and his tiny face scrunched up tightly as he let out another scream. “Is he hungry?”

“He's always hungry,” Grace said, scooping up the tiny boy and cradling him against her shoulder. “He's a bit colicky, that's all. A bit of a bubble in his tummy.” As she started jiggling him while she softly patted him on his back, the crying faltered a bit and became soft
gulps. “Now I've got Master Douglas under control, and since you're here, my namesake seems to need to be changed.” She nodded to the crib directly opposite them. “Why don't you do that?”

Maggie crossed to Gracie. As she reached for the little girl, she felt that familiar leap of her heart when she saw any of her children. Five of them. Tiny lives. Hers and Adam's. Five at the same time. She lifted Gracie, a decidedly damp baby at the moment, and thought about how much it had taken to get them all here safe and sound. So much worry and fear, and Adam having the added worry of knowing his mother hadn't survived the birth of himself, his sister, Briana, and his brother, Caleb. That was three babies, and they'd had five.

After three months in the hospital, they were all home and doing well. The last thing she could do when they started to cry was sleep. She cuddled a damp Gracie to her breast and whispered, “Gracie, girl, you are definitely wet.” Remarkably, the baby quieted immediately. “Good girl,” she said, putting the baby on the changing table and stripping off the damp diaper.

When the baby was changed, she picked her up and cuddled her. She turned to find Douglas in his crib, settling with a sigh while Grace stroked his almost bald head. Maggie glanced at the other babies, Jackson, Daniel and Julia, relieved that they had apparently slept right through their brother's and sister's uproar.

Grace came toward Maggie and slipped Gracie out of her arms. “Let me take the little one,” she murmured, and the baby went to her without a murmur. Grace had raised Adam, loved him, and she loved the new babies. She helped all the time with the quints, but Maggie never quite relaxed, never quite had the ability to turn her back and let someone else do for her children.

Silence finally ruled in the nursery, and Grace eased the baby into her crib. Satisfied that Gracie was settled, she turned to Maggie and pointed to the door. Maggie took a quick look at all the babies, then followed Grace out of the room into the hallway. Grace closed the door behind them, then faced Maggie in the softly lit hallway. “I told you to turn off the monitor, that I was staying tonight to help Louise so you could get some rest, and so could Adam.” She glanced down the hallway and lowered her voice even more as she smiled slightly. “That man could always sleep through anything.”

Maggie realized then that Adam hadn't been in bed with her. His side hadn't been slept in at all. “He's not here,” she said.

Grace frowned. “It has to be midnight. Where is he?”

She hugged her arms around her. “I don't know. Work, I guess. He…” She bit her lip. She couldn't remember what he'd said when he'd called earlier, because Julia had been crying. She'd only half listened, but remembered something about an affidavit that had been wrong. “You know how it is. He's snowed under at work. The McCallum men don't seem to know when to stop.”

Grace didn't say anything to that, but the slight shake of her head spoke volumes. Then she said, “You get back to bed. I'll stay in here for a while and read to make sure they're settled for now.” She urged Maggie toward the master bedroom. “Turn off the monitor and call Adam at work and tell him to get on home.”

“Thanks,” Maggie whispered and headed for the bedroom.

She stepped into the shadowed room, glanced at the empty bed and wondered how she couldn't have noticed Adam hadn't come home. There had been a time when she couldn't sleep unless he was with her, even when
they'd been under pressure to conceive. Even then, he was part of her, part of her soul. She slipped into the bed, far too big a bed for one person, and was about to reach for the phone on the night table when the door opened.

Adam. He strode into the room, and there was an instant connection that wasn't there unless he was close by. The jacket of his dark suit was gone, and his tie hung undone from the collar of a pearl gray shirt. Shadows touched the man, blurring his features, but she knew them by heart. The hazel eyes, sandy brown hair that was always a touch too long, spiked a bit from his habit of running his fingers through it when he was deep in thought. A faint dimple played at the left side of his full mouth. It seemed forever since she'd touched that dimple. “Hello and welcome home,” she breathed, sitting back against the coolness of the headboard.

He hesitated in midstride, but kept going as he muttered, “Thanks.” There was an edge to his voice that made her tense. He walked quietly past the bed to the huge walk-in closet. A flash of light came, then he was out of sight in the closet, which was the size of a small bedroom.

“Adam?” she called. “Why were you working so late?”

“I told you on the phone, the Rhyder deposition,” he said, his voice vaguely muffled in the distance. “It won't die.”

She wrapped her arms around her bare legs, resting her chin on her knees as she stared hard at the open doors of the closet. “Can't someone else take care of it for you?”

There was no response for a moment, then Adam was back, all his clothes but his jockey shorts gone. They were vividly white against his tanned skin, and she swallowed hard. Dark hair formed a faint V on his chest, disappear
ing into the waistband of the shorts. “Probably, but I'm doing it.”

She jerked her eyes up, startled that at the moment she was feeling decidedly like a hormone-driven teenager. For months, it seemed, the pregnancy and babies had overridden everything, but, at that moment, she wanted her husband with a hunger that was startling to her. “It's so late,” she said, her mouth slightly dry. “I was worried.”

He was by the side of the bed, his side, and too far away from her. “Did you need something?”

For some reason, she couldn't just say, “I want you.” It would have been so simple before the pregnancy problem got in their way. “I just…I was thinking…” She bit her lip hard.

He made no move to get into bed. “What were you thinking?” he asked in a low voice, and she cursed the shadows, wishing she could see his eyes, see what he was thinking.

She shrugged. “About…things,” she stammered, feeling more than a bit foolish. She was suddenly very embarrassed to be looking at her husband with such lust, at his lean and tanned body that belied his hours behind a desk.

And he was near naked. “Things?”

“Important things,” she blurted, wishing she'd had time to put on some makeup and wasn't wearing an old T-shirt instead of a sexy nightgown.

He came around the bed, standing directly over her, and she jerked her eyes up to meet his gaze. She loved him beyond words. Really loved him. And she almost forgot what it felt like being loved by him. “What's wrong?” he asked. “Sniffles, fever, diaper rash?”

“What?” she asked, disoriented for a moment, then she shook her head. “Oh, no, no. Just fussiness. Grace thinks
that Daniel might be starting to teethe, but I think he's too young, and premature babies sort of lag behind the others.”

He held up one hand. “Enough. If you weren't thinking about the babies, then what? Are you feeling okay?”

She looked at her hands pressed to her bare thighs. “I'm okay.” She bit her lip as she met his gaze again. “Oh, Adam, I was just…just…”

He hunkered down in front of her, not touching her, and she ached to be touched by him. “Oh, baby, what is it?” he asked, his voice low and soft and just for her.

Tears were there, coming from nowhere, stinging her eyes. “I don't know.” She bit her lip hard to keep it steady, then blurted, “I miss you.”

He was still for what seemed forever. His exhale was a rough rush of air around them. “I'm here,” he whispered in a slightly unsteady voice, then touched her. His fingers lightly brushed her cheek, sending a shock of awareness through her, making her take a short gasp. “Right here.”

“We never…hardly…anymore, I mean…”

“I know, love, I know.”

“The babies, I love them so much, and there's so much to do, and you and I…we…”

“You need more help. You need to trust Grace and the others to be there, to care for them, and you need time.” His hand on her trembled. “God, we need time.”

She ached for what had been between them at the first. “We'll have time, when they're older and okay. They're so tiny and so fragile.”

His touch was gone abruptly. But he stayed close. “Maggie, my love, we don't know how much time we have, and if we can't figure out how to have us in the middle of all of the baby stuff, I don't know what to do.”

It had seemed so simple to Maggie. Fall in love, get married, have children, live happily ever after. But it hadn't been that way. The loving had been easy, and the marriage had been wonderfully perfect. The children had been the hard part. She'd never dreamed she wouldn't just get pregnant, that they couldn't just love each other and make a baby. There had been months of testing, treatments and anxious lovemaking—at the right times.

Eventually, they'd had a miracle happen, fivefold. Grace, Douglas, Jackson, Julia and Daniel. And their lives had been changed more than she'd ever dreamed possible. Three months of going to the hospital four times a day, giving breast milk for the babies, holding them when she could or standing by their incubators. And Adam had been there with her all the time. Adam, as solid as a rock. Understanding that she was exhausted, that she was worried, that she had to get to the hospital first thing in the morning and go last thing at night. That she'd had nightmares about something happening to one of the babies.

Then the quints had come home, and the days of the hospital had seemed serene and calm compared to the reality of fitting five little babies into their lives.

“We can do it,” she managed to utter. “We'll figure it out.”

He exhaled. “Get more help and step back a bit. Take time to just be Maggie.”

Maggie. Maggie loved this man. And Maggie was aching for this man. She looked right at him, and this time she touched him, barely cupping his chin with her fingers and feeling the slight bristle of a beard against her skin. “Maggie knows that all five little McCallums are asleep for the moment, and Grace is in the nursery, and…” She trailed her hand down to his bare shoulder, then lower to
press her palm against his chest. She felt his heart beating, felt each breath he took. “You're here, and I'm here.”

“Why, Mrs. McCallum, are you trying to seduce me?” he asked, his voice rumbling against her hand from deep in his chest.

“I think so. I'm a bit out of practice and this old T-shirt isn't black lace…”

“Then we'll take care of that,” he said softly, and in an easy motion tugged at the cotton and slipped it off. “Better than black lace.”

Adam loved Maggie. Simple, very simple. And in that moment, he'd never loved her more. There was no black lace, just a woman who was beautiful beyond words. A woman who had cut the long hair he'd loved so much into a shorter than short feathery cap, and he'd hidden his disappointment when she'd explained how much simpler it was with the babies to have short hair.