Ten Acres and Twins (11 page)

“And you have fun on your date with, uh—what was your banker's name?”

Now Abby seemed truly startled. Her face colored prettily and she stammered, “Duke—er, Delbert. Um, Duke Delbertson. Kind of an unusual name—I think he's Swedish.”

Duke Delbertson—that was a weighty name. It conjured up images of some blond John Wayne type. This banker must be a big guy. Maybe Abby was blushing because she had a crush on this lumbering mass of a man.

Jack's eyelid twitched. “Oh,” he said coolly. “I hope you have a good time. We can compare notes when I get back.”

“Wouldn't that be a hoot?” she said, looking completely horrified. Then she swished past him on her way out of the greenhouse, leaving him standing alone among her plants.

He strode out in turn and went straight to his brand-new car, which was packed and waiting in the garage. After all, he was a busy man with a full weekend planned; he might as well get under way.

He began the hour-long drive to Kansas City, intending to check into his hotel room first, then spend the remainder of the day tutoring his clients on the use of a new business package.

After hours, however, his options were wide open, and he had the weekend all mapped out. He intended to return to the craziest days of his bachelorhood, partying to an extreme he hadn't indulged in in several years.

He'd call every woman in his book, and the first one who said yes would be wined and dined by a crazed man. Maybe he could play a freckle-faced vixen right out of his mind.

 

A
BBY FIDDLED WITH
her bowl of cold blueberry buckle, wondering idly if the twins were asleep by now. She had resisted the urge to call home for the entire hour that she'd been gone, but she hadn't been able to keep her mind on her date at all.

In truth, she hadn't spent every minute thinking about the twins, although they were in her thoughts often. She knew they were fine with her mother. More often, Abby was thinking about Jack. Imagining that his weekend of romance was more successful than hers.

Every once in a while she looked across the table at her companion to make a cursory check on the conversation. He'd spent at least five minutes discussing the government's economic shortsightedness, and he didn't seem ready to break off his speech anytime soon.

If she'd known the banker had been regarding her with an interest in business rather than romance, she wouldn't have gone into the bank last Tuesday with the sole intention of scaring up a date. Right now, in fact, her blatant pursuit of this man's attention compared in stupidity only to moving in with Jack last month.

Things weren't going well in either case.

“Abigail, did you hear what I asked?” said her companion, whose name she had forgotten sometime between him asking her out and her agreeing to come.

She just knew it started with
D
. For dull.

She looked up with a start, and recognized that frowning expression, even if she hardly knew the face. He'd asked her something. Finally.

“What was the question?”

His eyes rolled upward, as if he found her to be outrageously slow. “I asked if you've developed a five-year business plan for your farm.”

“Oh, I have goals, but I haven't put a pen to paper yet. It hasn't been all that long.”

“Would you mind sharing your thoughts?” he asked, with curiosity honing his already sharp features.

“Actually, I do mind,” she answered. “I didn't know we were coming out to dinner to talk business. I'd rather not.”

His interest deflated as fast as a balloon in a cactus garden. Sitting back in his chair, he asked, “What do you want to talk about, Abigail?”

Why a rational woman would spend her first date in months thinking about her impossibly off-limits roommate instead of her completely harmless companion.

“Well, what do you do for fun?” she asked.

The banker's eyes seemed to vibrate in their sockets. “Fun?”

She sighed and looked at her watch, trying to decide whether it was too soon to go home. “Do you have a hobby?”

He stared at her, straightening up in his chair after a moment and announcing, “I trade commodities.”

She stared back. “For fun?”

He took a deep breath, seeming ready to launch into another Duke-Delbert-Don-or-Dwayne lecture series. “Yes, and other than a few ups and downs, it's been lucrative.”

“I see,” she said through her teeth.

When he began an exhaustive chronicle of his portfolio, she knew an escape was in order. She didn't waste time trying to figure out a good excuse. She was ready to start digging her way out of this date immediately.

“Um…D-Drake?” she interrupted. “I must have forgotten to tell you, but I need to get home to feed the babies.”

“Feed the babies? Can't your mother do that?”

“Well, not the way I feed them,” she said, tugging at the lapel of her jacket.

His brows formed a perfect V over his eyes, and he shook his head.

She bit her lip at the lie she was about to tell. Then she said in a hushed tone, “You know…the natural way.”

The banker jumped halfway out of his chair and then plopped back down. Cupping a hand beside his mustache, he stared at her chest and whispered, “You're breast feeding? But the babies aren't yours.”

She shrugged, and offered a tiny wink. “Anything's possible if you want it bad enough.”

“Amazing,” he said, already retreating from the lady who'd brazenly flirted with him in the lobby of the biggest commercial lending bank in Topeka.

He picked up the bill, pulling a calculator out of his jacket pocket to double-check the amounts. Then he called the waitress over, suddenly quite receptive to the idea of taking his wacky date home.

Abby didn't bother trying to make conversation as he drove her back out to the farm, and she was fairly certain he'd never ask her out again.

Her fib had ensured that fact. She considered that a good thing, since she had no intention of ever going out with him again. Even if she never had another date, she wouldn't suffer through the D-man's speeches.

She'd known for a long time that she wasn't cut out for romance, and at least in the case of her date tonight, she wouldn't notice the loss. It had been silly to try again.

As she hopped out of the car in front of the farmhouse, she said, “Thanks, Doug. See you around.”

He sped off before she'd taken a single step toward the door. She had to dodge the sand that came flying out from under his tires, but she chuckled anyway. Either he was in a big hurry to leave or the staid banker was a stunt driver in his spare time.

She went to the door, eager to get inside and see what the twins were up to. “Mom, I'm back,” she hollered as she walked through the living room.

Her mother appeared at the top of the stairs wearing a cow puppet on her hand. “We're up here—and you're early! Did you bring Dwight with you?”

“Oh!
Dwight!
” Abby said as she started up the stairs. “I kept thinking his name was Duke. Or Don. Or Duffy.”

Her mother waited for Abby to reach the landing, then patted her arm with the puppet. “You must not have had too good a time if you didn't even catch his name,” she said.

Abby snorted, but not from amusement. Her few experiences with men seemed doomed to failure. She simply wasn't good at man-woman stuff. “A girl could learn a lot from Dreary Dwight, the banker. I can say that much.”

“You always did prefer smart boys.”

Stepping over the baby gate to see the twins, Abby said, “This guy's brains only worked with numbers. Maybe I was just interested in listening to a speech on another topic.”

Her mother followed and sat cross-legged on the nursery floor in front of the babies. Bobbing the puppet around in front of her, she imitated the slow lowing of a cow as she said, “Oh, dear, I was hoping Abby's date would take her to the harvest party next month.”

Still in her new suit, Abby sat beside her mother and grabbed a lamb puppet from a pile of toys on the floor. To the delight of the twins, she held the lamb up and bleated, “The harvest par-r-r-ty, is it time for that aga-a-ain?”

The cow turned toward the lamb. “Absolutely, it's the same time every year.”

“And I won't go, the same as every year,” Abby said, forgetting the voice and the hand movements.

Her mother removed the cow puppet and pushed Abby's bangs away from her eyes. “You should go,” she said. “Even if you're not concerned with the social aspect, you're an owner now. The party's a great place to make business contacts.”

Abby held up her puppet again and moved the lamb's mouth in time to her voice. “But Abby doesn't wa-a-ant to go alone.”

Her mother didn't join the act. “Your dad and I will be there, dear,” she said. “And you need to get out.”

Again Abby used the puppet to say words that were too painful to say in a normal voice. “And here's a news flash— Abigail Briggs, twenty-six-year-old divorcée slash guardian to adorable twins, attends big community bash with parents. Will she ever get a li-i-ife?”

Her mother smiled as the twins chuckled in glee at the puppet's antics. “What about taking Jack, just for fun?”

Abby didn't miss a beat. She swept the lamb around immediately, announcing to all in the room. “Abigail Briggs, twenty-six-year-old divorcée slash guardian, is the talk of the
t-o-w-n
as she engages in a loud quarrel with her male roommate at the annual harvest party.”

“That's not going well, either?”

“You could say that.”

“Oh, dear.”

 

F
OR THE PAST HOUR
, Jack had listened as a young couple across the bar exchanged verbal insults. He wondered if the pair of sweethearts knew they had an audience, and why they didn't take their argument to a more secluded place. Even more than that, he wondered why he didn't just get up and leave himself. He'd long since scouted the room for romantic
possibilities, and no one here seemed intriguing enough to make the slightest effort.

“Excuse me, handsome,” said a voice from behind him. A doe-eyed brunette was standing at his shoulder. She slid a slow hand across his back, flexing her fingertips around his biceps. “May I sit here?”

Shrugging, he turned back to his drink while the woman slithered onto the bar stool beside him. After a few moments, a man with spikes in his hair and a hoop through his nose appeared between Jack and the lady. The other man whispered in her ear—which was completely unnecessary, since no one else was interested—and soon Spikey and Bambi floated off into the shadows of the room.

It was the same thing that had happened for two hours now. The women came, they sat, and when Jack didn't devote his entire attention to their loveliness, they found another stool to occupy.

He just couldn't rally the interest. Maybe he was too tired. He'd worked doubly hard to complete the training sessions for his clients so he could be finished by eight o'clock. He'd wanted the rest of his weekend free.

Now he wished he was back in the clients' conference room, standing in front of a circle of executives who were each resentful of the fact that their Saturday was being wasted by a work session. He hadn't been popular there, either, but at least he hadn't been bored.

He must be too old to meet women in bars. After all, he'd given up this sort of thing several years ago, when he realized he needed to get to know a woman to fully enjoy her. That was when he'd made a rule to date no more than three at a time. He knew his limitations.

And his approach had been successful enough before he moved out to the sticks. There had always been an ample supply of women who found it acceptable to share a part-time boyfriend, as long as he kept them feeling encouraged.

But he'd tried calling the remaining two girlfriends from
his hotel room earlier. They hadn't answered their phones. It did nothing for his pride to realize that Diane and Zuzu had replaced his attentions in a month.

He'd left messages on their machines, making sure to keep any hint of desperation out of his voice. Desperation would imply something that simply wasn't true, and in spite of his many failings, he tried to be honest.

He wouldn't want to imply that he missed their company specifically—he didn't. He just wanted a woman's company. He didn't care which one called him back.

After waiting a couple of minutes in case one of them had been out picking up her mail, he'd left for the bar. He'd chosen the one that had been his favorite nighttime roost in his younger years, figuring he could make a connection with someone there.

He knew that with more than fifty women populating the bar this evening, one or two must be attractive and intelligent enough to take his mind off those damn little sand-colored freckles.

These women hadn't taken his mind off the things for a minute. He figured he must have outgrown the desperado lifestyle he used to love, so he gave up and left the bar long before the night's crowd had even begun their uprising.

He returned to his hotel room and paced around the phone.

He wanted to call Abby, but she was out with The Hulk tonight and probably wasn't home yet. If she was, she might have company. Jack should leave her alone.

He stripped bare right there in front of the phone and headed to the shower. And stood under the hot water and imagined some muscle-bound man kissing Abby good-night.

Jack wished it was him kissing her. He wished kissing her was all right. He fought to remember why it wasn't. Complications.

Kissing her would cause complications.

She was too special, and wouldn't be as easy to leave as the others. That was it. Monumental complications.

Still, the thought of kissing Abby, and more, had him turning the nozzle to frigid for a long couple of minutes before he jumped out of the shower.