and there stood Chris in the doorway, almost as if she’d dreamed him into existence. Holly quickly hid her face with her hands and rubbed at her eyes, pretending she needed to wake up that way. She didn’t—she just didn’t want Chris to see her flaming cheeks.
“Dinner’s ready” was all Chris said, and as he walked farther into the room, Holly scrambled off the bed. “I’ll take Ian for you,” he said, lifting the older of the twins—older by three minutes—out of his crib.
“How do you know that’s Ian?” she asked, moving to grab Jamie. “They’re identical. Most people can’t tell the difference. Peg can, but it took her a week.”
The intimate smile Chris gave her curled her toes. “Ian looks up when he sees me. Jamie looks away.”
“That’s it? That’s how you can tell them apart?”
“Well...that and the fact that Ian’s ears stick out just a little more than Jamie’s, and Jamie’s hair is just a shade lighter than Ian’s.”
Holly stopped short, glancing from the toddler in Chris’s arms to the one in her own arms. “You’re right,” she said after a minute. “I never realized about the ears...but you’re right.”
“So how do you tell them apart? Motherly instinct?”
She adjusted Jamie to balance him against her hip and popped a kiss on his rosebud mouth. “I can’t really tell you,” she confessed. “I just know.”
Chris nodded as if she’d given him the answer he expected. “Motherly instinct,” he repeated, but this time it wasn’t a question. He turned toward the doorway. “Come on, dinner will be getting cold.”
“I was going to make dinner,” she protested as she followed Chris into the kitchen, feeling guilty.
“You were fast asleep every time I came to check on you, and I didn’t have the heart to wake you.” Chris settled Ian in one of the two high chairs he’d pulled up beside the kitchen table and strapped him in. “Hang tight, buddy,” he told the boy as Ian began banging on the tray and shouting, “Din-din-din-din-din!”
Jamie took up the chant as Holly got him settled. “Sorry,” she told Chris over the boys’ urgent demands. “I usually feed them a little earlier. I must have been more exhausted than I thought.”
“Adrenaline will do that to you,” Chris said as he grabbed two child-sized plates that were sitting in the microwave, added the baby cutlery she’d used at lunch from the rack on the drain board—he must have washed the lunch dishes, Holly realized with another little dart of guilt—and whisked the plates in front of Ian and Jamie. Baked chicken, cut into baby-sized bites, sat next to miniature mounds of mashed potatoes. Peas with a tiny dollop of melted butter rounded out the servings.
“Are you sure you’re not a nanny in disguise?” Holly joked as the twins’ eyes lit up and they dug in, soon making a mess out of feeding themselves. “How do you know—”
“Don’t even think about finishing that sentence,” Chris told her in a stern voice, but the twinkle in his eyes gave the lie to his tone. “I’m the second oldest of seven. That many kids in a family—you need a lot of hands to get all the work done. My twin sister, Annabel, and I used to help Mama with the younger kids, especially my baby sister, Josie.”
He turned away to take the rest of the chicken out of the oven, but not before Holly saw a troubled expression slide over his face. More land mines, she warned herself. He doesn’t want to talk about his childhood. That made sense given what he’d told her this morning—that his father was a notorious serial killer who’d killed Chris’s mother, too.
She cast about in her mind for a safe topic of conversation as she filled a plate for herself from the chicken pan and the pots on the stove, and Chris filled Wally’s bowl with fresh water. “I didn’t realize you’re a twin,” she said as she seated herself at the table.
Chris started to respond, but Holly leaned over to Jamie, who was rolling his peas across his high-chair tray and then smashing them flat with the tip of one chubby pointer finger. “You’re going to eat those, mister,” she told him in a no-nonsense voice. “So you just peel them up and pop them into your mouth.” She waited until Jamie obediently scooped up two peas and ate them before she glanced up at Chris. “Sorry. It’s a constant battle with boys this young. They want to feed themselves, but... What were you going to say?”
“I was just about to say that yeah, I’m a twin myself. Not identical, of course, but there is an unbreakable bond.”
“I’ve seen that with Ian and Jamie already.”
“Not surprised. It starts early.”
“What does your sister do? Is she a PI like you?”
Chris shook his head. “She’s a cop.” He hesitated. “My brothers and I—we didn’t want that for her. I know it’s chauvinistic in this day and age, but this is Texas. We wanted her to be safe, you know? I had a big argument about it with her. And—” he had the grace to look ashamed “—none of us except Sam attended her graduation from the police academy. She graduated top of her class, too.” He took his plate and settled in a chair at the other end of the table.
They ate in silence for a minute, then Chris said roughly, “I know how it sounds, but we’ve already lost one sister. Josie. We don’t want to lose the only one we have left.”
Treading cautiously, Holly asked, “What happened to Josie?”
“No one knows. We haven’t heard from her in six years.” His brows drew together in a troubled frown. “And even before that she practically refused to have anything to do with us for years.” He thought for a moment. “I guess she was about twelve when she told the social worker she didn’t want us visiting her anymore.”
“How old were you?”
“Twenty. The summer before my junior year in college.” He sighed. “But even before that she... When Trevor turned eighteen—Trevor’s the oldest, three years older than me—when he turned eighteen, he tried to get custody of Josie, take her out of foster care. But she refused. We figured it had something to do with her foster sister, Lizzie. They were particularly close. And Lizzie says they were both attached to their foster parents.”
He sighed again. “I also tried to get custody when I turned eighteen and graduated from high school. I’d have passed on college if that’s what it took—scholarship be damned. But I didn’t have any more luck than Trevor.” He looked down at his plate, forked a bite of chicken and swirled it in the mashed potatoes, then ate it.
Holly pried peas off Jamie’s tray, piled them on his plate and tapped an imperious finger. “Eat those, mister.” She glanced over at Ian to make sure he was eating what was set before him without difficulty, then looked up at Chris. “What happened then?”
“Even with the scholarship it wasn’t easy, but I managed. I worked to put myself through school, and when I graduated, I came back here to Granite Gulch. Laura was waiting for me—we’d been engaged since my junior year in college—but I told her I needed to try one more time with Josie...who turned me down flat.”
That hurt him. Chris didn’t have to say it; Holly just knew. “Josie didn’t say why?”
“Nope. Basically
