same way. She had everything she’d ever wanted now—and more.
“CAN YOU HEAR anything?” Sara Winston asked Franny Brady, who had her ear pressed to a glass held firmly against the closed bedroom door.
Tufts of Franny’s iron-gray hair stood up a bit wildly as she leaned close to listen. “It’s pretty quiet.”
“Oh. That doesn’t bode well.” Sara pursed her lips. “Maybe Sam doesn’t like the new decor. It’s possible we went a teensy bit overboard with the Miami look.”
Franny shook her head. “Maddie needed decorating with attitude. It lifted her spirits considerably.”
“Has he gone into the bathroom yet?”
“I haven’t heard any howls. Guaranteed if he didn’t like the bedroom, he’ll resist the oranges-and-bananas tropical wallpaper and—”
“Shh!” Sara didn’t want to think about it. The pretty fountain they’d installed on the bathroom counter might not exactly be a hit. Of course, if they’d gotten the water to flow out of the statue’s bowl instead of shooting from the woman’s mouth, it wouldn’t be so bad. “We may have some tweaking to do here and there. But all in all, I think we did a good job.”
“Sure he’ll be proud of how much we’ve tried to do in his absence.” Franny pulled away from the door, and they went up the staircase to join the rest of the family. “Not that I mean to criticize your son, Sara. My daughter was just as much at fault.”
Grandfathers Virgil Brady and Severn Winston rocked in matching white rockers.
“Where are the babies?” Franny demanded, seeing that the grandfathers weren’t holding babies as they’d been when she’d left.
“Maddie came and got them for a bath,” Virgil answered. “She said they needed a feeding and a nap. A second later, I heard the doorbell ring. Who was it?”
“Sam,” Sara said grimly. “And he barely had a word to say to us! You’d think that boy could hug his mother after being gone so long. Not so much as the courtesy of a phone call to tell us he was coming back! But as soon as Franny told him Maddie was in their, uh, her bedroom, he headed in there so fast you would have thought bees were after him.”
Maddie’s nineteen-year-old college-linebacker brother, Joey, halted in the process of stacking diapers, putting away tiny infant clothes and carefully placing numerous baby gifts, which had been delivered to the hospital, on rectangular window seats around the nursery. “I called him,” Joey confessed. “He knows what Maddie did.”
“You called Sam in France?” Franny asked with a gasp. “When?”
“Yesterday. Someone had to tell him about the babies.” Joey’s face was miserable. “I don’t think Maddie could. I think she had good intentions of telling him what she’d done, but as the months wore on, I think she got too scared.”
“We promised her,” Sara said. “Maddie’s going to be angry. She wanted to tell him herself. She asked us just this once to let her handle her life. Oh, dear,” she moaned. “And yet I do believe you have a point, too, Joey. It did seem as if she never got around to making that call. I do believe in my heart that she was so distressed she simply froze.”
“Never mind that. There’s a saying about playing the cards you’re dealt. And Sam and Maddie have been dealt a pair of sweethearts.” A pleased grin lit Franny’s face. “No wonder he was in such a hurry. I’d say that’s a good sign.”
“Nothing to do but sit and wait for the explosion,” Virgil said. “Come here, woman.” He gestured to his wife, and Franny went to sit on his lap.
Too refined to lap-sit, Sara took the window seat closest to Severn. They sat silently for a long moment, surveying the gentle decor and cheery blue and white train furnishings with pleasure. “Now, this room we did right,” Franny said.
“I agree.” It was the room Sara had enjoyed redecorating the most.
“So, how are Sam and Maddie?” Virgil wanted to know. “Did you get to see them together before the boudoir door slammed shut? Did they rush into each other’s arms?” His sun-furrowed skin creased with hopeful expectation. Like his energetic wife, he wore faded, comfortable clothes much like he’d worn on the cotton farm they’d spent their long marriage working. Just as they’d worked the farm, Virgil and Franny were putting every ounce of their effort into seeing that these grandbabies had parents who lived under the same roof—even if they hadn’t been under the same roof for nine months.
“I don’t think that’s exactly how it went,” Franny said sadly.
“A bit of tweaking is all they need,” Sara said. “I can tell our son still loves your daughter.”
“Tweaking is good. Tweaking is important.” Franny screwed up her face. “Maybe we should vacate to our houses so they can tweak.”
Sara thought about that for a moment before shaking her head. “Let’s just carry on as we planned. Sam left. Sam will have to adjust. If Maddie wants us to leave, that’s different, but she might feel we’ve abandoned her in her hour of need.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way!” Franny was aghast. “My daughter did feel deserted when Sam left the country. Although I’m sure he’d rather have stayed if they could have worked matters out. If he’d felt that she wanted him to stay.”
“For the sake of these precious grandchildren, we must act as if nothing’s changed. Even if everything has changed, from the decor to…well, you know.”
The two women shared a conspiratorial glance. “Everything could change back,” Franny said thoughtfully. “Maybe we haven’t seen the last of the Brady-Winston miracles!”
“You said that right before you turned the fountain on,” Sara reminded her. “We rigged that the wrong way.”
“Well, the second time is supposed to be the charm.” Franny brightened considerably, jade-green eyes identical to her daughter’s glowing with mischievous intent. “This time, the plumbing is sure to work just fine!”
Chapter Two
“I feel like I’ve been hit by a two-by-four,” Sam muttered as he stared at the two babies in matching bassinets in the bedroom he had once shared with his wife. “I’m a father!”
Maddie smiled as she stood beside him. “Aren’t they beautiful?”
His almost-ex wife was beautiful. The tiny, writhing potato sacks with appendages he could only call astonishing. “I don’t understand how you did this. How could you not have told me?”
He turned from the babies to the woman he’d been separated from for nine months. Was there a woman on the planet who could make him feel the emotions Maddie made him feel? Love, anger, desire, admiration—they all mixed together when he thought about her.
Unfortunately, right now anger was high on his emotional thermometer.
“Dr. Mitchell Maitland called one day to discuss a new, experimental procedure he thought might work well considering my age, and our history,” Maddie told him.
Her
