Single With Twins

Heather sighed. “Listen to me. Do you hear what I’m doing? I’m scared, Susie, that my daughters will look at me and want to know why we live like we do, when their uncle Mack, who is part of our family now, has so much more than we do. The problem isn’t with Mack Marshall, it’s with me.”

Susie put one arm around Heather’s shoulders. “I think you’re hitting the nail on the head, sweetie. As the teenagers say, ‘Get over it.’ You’re doing a wonderful job raising the girls and you should be very proud of what you’ve accomplished. Don’t be so sensitive about what Mack has and you don’t. Just enjoy his company when you’re together and before you know it, he’ll be gone. When are you supposed to see him again?”

“He’s taking us out for pizza tonight.”

“Oh, wow,” Susie said, “the guy is really throwing his bucks around, the rotten bum. Give Mack Marshall a little credit here, why don’t you? He’s not going to attempt to change your lifestyle, or stand in judgment of it, he just wants to be a part of it for a little while. Hey, send him over to my house. That hunk of stuff can eat crackers in my bed any night of the week.”

“Susie!” Heather said with a burst of laughter.

“Yeah, well, unlike you, my dear, I am not averse to marrying again. This single mother jazz is the pits. Buzzy needs a father and I need a lover. So there. I wish Mack Marshall was a long-lost relative of mine, let me tell you. You’re not biologically related, you know, so you two could—”

“Don’t even think about it,” Heather said, frowning. “I’m not interested in Mack as a man. He’s uncle to my girls and I’m not even comfortable with that for the reasons I’ve stated.

“Yes, yes, I know, I’m the one with the problem about the differences in our tax brackets. But my girls consider the people on our little block their family, and we’re all in the same financial leaky boat. I’ll be glad when Mack leaves town and the girls and I can get back to living our nice, normal lives as we were, putting pennies in our dream piggy.”

“Unfortunately, that will happen all too soon, I’d guess,” Susie said. “Once Mack’s shoulder heals he’ll be long gone.”

“Amen to that.” Heather rolled her eyes heavenward. “I put the flowers he gave me in a pickle jar that still had the label on it, for crying out loud. Nothing like advertising to the oh-so-rich uncle of my daughters that I don’t even own a vase.”

“Forget it,” Susie said, wrinkling her nose. “Men don’t notice things like that. No way. Forget about the pickle jar. Mack never saw it.”

A pickle jar, Mack thought as he wandered through the large, enclosed shopping mall. Heather had put the flowers he’d brought her in a crummy pickle jar, for heaven’s sake. If she’d had a pretty vase, she would have used it. How was it she didn’t even own a vase for flowers?

Mack frowned and shook his head as he continued his trek through the mall. He stopped in front of a toy store and swept his gaze over the display in the window.

He was taking Heather and the twins out for pizza tonight, he mused. Heather had hesitated when he asked if they’d like to go to dinner so he’d quickly tacked on the idea of a casual pizza parlor, which she’d agreed to.

That meant, he was guessing, that Heather felt she and her daughters didn’t own fancy enough clothes to dine at a high-class restaurant.

And there he sat in Heather’s shabby little living room wearing slacks, shoes and a shirt that probably cost more than the sofa he’d been sitting on.

This whole scenario was wrong, very wrong. He was no expert on the dynamics of family, that was for damn sure, but the Heather branch of the Marshall clan had relatively nothing, while the Mack branch had more money than he could spend in a lifetime. He made big bucks and had invested well, could retire today if he wanted to…which he didn’t…but…

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, was it? A family didn’t consist of those who had and those who didn’t. Did it? Cripe, he didn’t know. He hadn’t paid the least bit of attention to the family structures of the people he knew. Not that he knew a lot of people who had families.

Oh, man, he was confusing himself to the point that he was tensing up and his shoulder was killing him. He needed a crash course on how to be part of a family, how to behave, what his role was, the whole bit.

Well, forget it, because that kind of information wasn’t readily available. He’d have to wing it. Yep, that was all he could do. He’d pay attention, try to figure out how to be a good uncle to the girls and a…a what to Heather? A brother?

The sudden vision of Heather’s lovely, smiling face caused a flash of heat to rocket through his body.

Nope. Brother wasn’t going to cut it, not even close. Granted, he’d already realized that hustling Heather into bed was not on the agenda. No way. But act like her brother? That was too far out in left field. Besides, he didn’t have any experience in being anyone’s brother, either.

So, okay, he’d be her… What? Her friend? Her buddy? Her pal? That wasn’t it. No. Heather was family. That still didn’t give him a clue as to how he should act around her.

He was just going to have to get very basic here. He was a man. Heather was a woman. He’d treat her with the respect she deserved and let the chips fall where they may. He’d keep his hands to himself and watch for any signals from Heather that she might be interested in him not just as a long-lost relative who had suddenly appeared in her life.

Yes, that was the ticket. Let Heather call the shots. If he ended up acting like her big brother—as nauseating as that thought was—so be it. He would do nothing to jeopardize his place in that little family. Nothing.

In the meantime, he thought, pulling open the door to the toy shop, Uncle Mack was going to get a surprise for those cute-as-a-button little girls. He had a handle on their personalities now, could do a lot better than showing up with candy suckers.

And, by damn, he was going to see to it that Heather Marshall never again had to put pretty flowers in a pickle jar.

Just before six o’clock that night Heather stood in front of the full-length mirror mounted on the back of her bedroom door.

She looked, she decided, presentable for going out for pizza. She’d French-braided her hair, which gave it a bit more style than just her usual plait. Her navy-blue slacks were fine, the place where she mended them covered by the blue-flowered overblouse. She’d even polished her loafers until they shone.

Heather sighed and sank onto the edge of the bed.

She wanted this evening to be over before it had even begun. She was nervous, unsettled, did not want to spend the following hours in the company of Mack Marshall.

Talking to Susie had helped her to sort through some of her jumbled thoughts. It had been months, even years, since she’d scrutinized how well she was providing for the girls. Melissa and Emma were happy, well-adjusted children, who never questioned their lifestyle, who believed in hopes and wishes, who put pennies in a piggy toward their ultimate dream of living in their very own house.

Her daughters had an extended family made up of the kind and loving people on this block. Melissa and Emma knew they were welcome in those homes, cared about, could go to any neighbor and get a hug, a Band-Aid or a drink of water if they needed it.

And now? In waltzes a real family member. The famous, rich-beyond-measure Mack Marshall, and his emergence into their lives was terrifying. Mack didn’t wear used clothing, nor live in a tiny little house. Mack didn’t have to pinch pennies, nor save them in a piggy. Mack could have anything he wanted just by writing a check or pulling out his wallet or producing a credit card.

If we’re all part of the same family, Mommy, why does Uncle Mack have so much and we have nothing? That’s not fair, Mommy, it’s not. How come we don’t have a bunch of stuff, Mommy—

“Stop,” Heather whispered to the voices in her head, pressing her fingertips to her now-throbbing temples.

Susie was right. Mack was on their turf, would sit in the living room of their home. Her twins, who couldn’t help but make comparisons, wouldn’t see what Mack had to be able to question what they didn’t possess.

Right?

Oh, dear heaven, she hoped so. It would break her heart if her children became unhappy, began to yearn for what never could be, saw their life and, thus, themselves, as being less than what they should be.

“Mack Marshall, go home,” Heather said out loud, getting to her feet. “Just go home and leave us alone.”

Oh, that was awful. Mack wanted, needed, to be part of a family, even for a short while as he recuperated from being shot. Shot, for mercy’s sake. What kind of a human being was she to be wishing he’d never shown up to stake a claim on his rightful place in their family unit? Tacky. Very tacky.

So, okay, she’d get through this. Mack didn’t intend to stay in Tucson very long, only a couple of weeks. She’d just treat him like a…a…what? Brother?

Heather looked at her right hand and remembered the incredible heat that had traveled up her arm and across her breasts when Mack held that hand in his strong but gentle one.

Brother was not going to work.

So, okay, they were…simply members of the same family…sort of. They were half ex-whatever-they-were people who…

Oh, who was she kidding? Mack was the most blatantly sensuous man she had ever met in her entire life. And she was a woman, a fact she’d rather forgotten, or taken for granted, until Mack Marshall had made her so acutely aware of her own femininity.

This, Heather thought, pointing one finger in the air, was not good. The mere thought of Mack caused her heart to do a funny little two-step and that disturbing heat to travel throughout her entire body.

Mack Marshall was…was—oh, hey, she had it now—he was Melissa’s and Emma’s uncle. There. That title was perfect. It meant thinking of him in terms of the girls rather than thinking about the disconcerting effect he had on her as a man.

“Uncle Mack is here,” Melissa yelled from the front door.

And so are the butterflies, Heather thought in self-disgust as she placed one hand on her stomach and made her way to the living room.