Kaitlyn Rice - Ten Acres And Twins

Paula didn’t take the glass, and she didn’t look amused. “And you’re actually going to help take care of two brats?”

Jack frowned as he sat the glass back down. That had sounded ugly. He knew she wasn’t the nurturing type, but now she was slandering his own flesh and blood. “They’re only five months old,” he said. “Infants can’t be classified as brats.”

“Future brats, then,” she sniffed, standing up to leave before they’d even ordered dinner.

“Paula, you surprise me,” he said, as he stood up, too.

“Darling, I’m afraid it’s you who has surprised me,” she said over her shoulder.

Jack threw a couple of bills on the table and followed her out, wondering why two out of three of the women who were supposedly crazy about him were giving up so easily.

He wasn’t doing anything shady. This was all just geographical. He was moving from a condo in the city to a house in the country, and it was an easy forty-five minute drive between the two. What was the problem?

As they stood near the front of the restaurant, he held out her jacket so she could slip it on. In a desperate attempt to bring their conversation back to its usual witty banter, he said, “If I can ditch the rugrats one weekend and get to the city, may I give you a call?”

“You can try,” she said. “I do have a life, you know. I’ll tell you what you can do—you can call me when you’re finished playing family man. Perhaps then we can move in together.” She gave him a peck on the cheek before she slid into her car, which the valet had just parked in front. And then she drove away without a single backward glance.

As Jack watched her go, he didn’t wonder at his lack of disappointment. He knew his weekend’s diversion wasn’t lost just yet. He’d simply call in his third option tonight, instead of waiting for morning.

Zuzu was slightly offbeat, but her unpredictable way of looking at things was amusing. And he’d never once seen her mad. Despite a colorful head of hair whose base tone, he suspected, was red, she was peaceable, often prophetic. He called to invite her out for coffee. Luckily, she was free.

An hour later, he sat in a trendy diner handing Zuzu fresh napkins. “I knew you were going to run off to the country and fall in love,” she sobbed.

The sequins on her pink-and-orange blouse glimmered with each shuddering breath, making it hard for Jack to take her seriously.

“Zuzu, I’m not in love,” he said. “Abby and I are just moving in together for convenience. We have never even kissed—”

He clamped his jaw shut when he remembered how much he’d wanted to do just that in the farm kitchen a few days ago, and he tried not to let the thought echo in his brain.

There was no need to bring something like that up now.

“W-well, if you haven’t yet, you w-will. I just know it.”

“I doubt that,” he soothed, moving his chair closer to hers so he could rub her back. Maybe there was still hope for snatching a little romance out of an otherwise wasted evening.

In a singsong voice, Zuzu asked, “Is she pretty?”

He removed his hand. She’d sounded far too childlike to be touching her seductively right now. Sighing deeply, he said, “In a way, I suppose. She seems to have the basic material, but she doesn’t try very hard to enhance it.”

“But that’s worse!”

“Why?”

“Because that means she’s a natural beauty.”

“I suppose you’d say she’s all right in the looks department,” Jack said, wondering if Abby would be considered attractive by another woman.

Her eyes were gorgeous—no one else had eyes that bright and clear. But her hair was usually just parted in the middle and tied back. Even at Paige and Brian’s wedding, she’d simply wound a braid around each side of her head. He’d never seen her hair loose around her shoulders, and her clothes were usually unassuming.

A woman would think she was plain, he supposed. Only a male would home in on that sexy little body.

“Is she sexy?” Zuzu asked.

He shrugged. He prided himself on being truthful with his dates, but with Zuzu he tried to be extra careful.

In case she knew.

Sounding confident now, she said, “See what I mean? You’ll be married in less than a year.”

“Zuzu, we’ve talked about this before. I’m never going to get married. There are too many women out there.”

“Every man says that,” she said. “Every woman knows it only takes the right one.”

Jack frowned. He always spent time at the beginning of each relationship establishing a single rule: he’d date whom he wanted, when he wanted.

No commitments, and no cat fights.

“And what makes you think Abby’s my Miss Right?”

“Intuition,” Zuzu said with a knowing smile.

“Baloney,” he responded, with a confidence of his own.

And with that, the otherworldly Zuzu drifted out of the diner, and the astounded Jack returned to his town home alone for the first time in a number of weekends.

Always before, a barren weekend had been his choice—not theirs. He’d had no idea how spoiled he’d been. He walked around among his boxed possessions, wishing he hadn’t packed. Wishing the movers would come so he could get to the farmhouse and begin to put the next year behind him.

At least there the baby-care duties should keep him from being bored. It had been nice of Abby to offer to take care of the twins all weekend. He wondered if Wyatt had gone to sleep without a struggle tonight, and if Rosie had babbled nonstop all day.

After an hour of quiet, he called Abby to find out.

“Hullo?”

Her voice was low and throaty. She sounded tired. He checked the time and realized it was eleven o’clock. She’d probably been asleep. He could picture her lounging in bed with a pristine white sheet slipping down the front of her— Whoa!

An evening’s assorted discussions about the caliber of her assets must have gotten to him.

“Hullo? Is anyone there?”

“Abby, it’s Jack. How’s it going?”

“Fine. The babies have been asleep for two hours,” she said. “They wake up early, so I came on up to bed.”

Bed. There it was again.

No matter how hard he fought it, that image of her naked body kept popping into his brain. The only explanation he could think of was that his woman-filled weekend had been a complete washout.

“I’m sorry if I woke you. I just wanted to check on things there,” he said with his eyes closed, as if he could block the unwanted mental pictures.

“You mean you’re alone? Jack, are you slowing down at the ripe old age of…what, thirty-one?” As she grew more alert, she seemed to extend her talons again.

“There’s no need to start a fight now,” he said, opening his eyes again.

He should thank her, really. As soon as her tone changed from soft to sarcastic, her image transformed, and he saw her standing with her hands on her hips and her lips pinched together. Wearing plenty of clothes.

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