to how much he wanted to hold her lithe, warm body in his arms and make sweet love to her all over again, Poppy persisted on her verbal trip down memory lane. “When we went to the Stork Agency and met Anne Marie?”
That had been the only serious part of the entire rendezvous, but important nonetheless. “Sure, I remember,” Trace said, pausing to take in the sexy fall of her thick, silky mahogany hair. A sweep of bang framed her oval face; the rest tumbled over her slender shoulders. Lower still, the five-foot-seven interior decorator had shapely calves, delicate feet, a taut tummy and trim waist, and full, luscious breasts that were meant to be worshipped. Very little of which he could actually see, given that the image on the screen only showed her from the ribs up...
But then, given how much time he’d spent paying homage to her lovely form, and vice versa, he didn’t really need to see her body to remember it. Fondly. He could tell by the way she often gazed at him that Poppy felt the same.
“Anne Marie was a nice kid.” And at seventeen years old, Trace recollected, way too young to be pregnant. That was why she was giving up her children for adoption.
“Well, she’s picked us to raise her twins!” Poppy exclaimed with a joyous twist of her velvety-soft lips.
“Seriously?”
“Yes! Can you believe it?” She paused to catch her breath. “There’s only one itty-bitty problem...”
Trace saw the hesitation in Poppy’s dark brown eyes. Waited for her to continue.
She inhaled sharply. “She wants us to be married.”
Whoa now. That had never been on the table.
Trace swung his feet off the desk and sat forward in his chair. “But she knows we’re just friends—” and occasional lovers and constant confidantes “—who happen to want to be parents together.” He thought the two of them had made that abundantly clear.
Poppy folded her arms in front of her, the action plumping up the delectable curve of her breasts beneath her ivory turtleneck. Soberly she nodded, adding, “She still gets that neither of us want to get hitched.”
No woman prized her independence more than the outspoken Poppy. For a lot of very different reasons, he felt the same. “But?” he prodded.
Wrinkling her nose, she reluctantly explained. “Anne Marie’s decided she would feel better if we were actually married at the time of the adoption. And, as it happens, the Stork Agency apparently has a requirement of their own—that any time more than two children are adopted simultaneously, there be two married adults with a longstanding relationship doing the adopting.”
“The agency officials didn’t say anything about this when we were there, meeting Anne Marie and the other girls.”
“Apparently they didn’t expect Anne Marie to choose us...but they wanted to give her a basis for comparison. As it turns out there was another couple that was also in the running, which Anne Marie’s mother met and prefers, and they are married. But in the end, Anne Marie decided she wants us. On the condition,” Poppy reiterated with a beleaguered sigh, “that we get hitched and the kids have the same last name.”
“I have no problem with you becoming a Caulder,” Trace said. “In a nontraditional sense, of course.”
“Or you could become a McCabe.” Removing a coated elastic band from her wrist, she swept her hair up into a messy ponytail on the back of her head and secured it there.
Aware when she wore her hair that way it reminded him of her college cheerleading days, he volleyed back. “Or, better yet, you could just drop the Elizabeth—” her middle name “—and change yours to Poppy McCabe Caulder. Like a lot of married women do, for practical reasons, to cut down on the confusion.”
Silence fell.
Finally, realizing this was one battle she wouldn’t win with him, Poppy conceded, “Fine. If you insist.”
“I would.” Thanks to two parents who couldn’t stop marrying—and then divorcing—he’d been saddled with a lot of different “family names.” He had no intention of ever inflicting the same on any offspring. Whatever it started out with was what it would stay.
He studied the ambivalence in her dark brown eyes. “You’re sure you want to get married, though?”
Trying not to think that if things had gone the other way, he and the woman opposite him might very well be married now, Trace watched her rise to pace around the room, then return, her taut-fitting jeans doing very nice things for her waist and hips.
A river of desire swept through him.
He wished they were close enough to touch.
Kiss.
He wished he could inhale the tantalizing apple blossom fragrance of her soap and shampoo.
Meanwhile she looked perfectly content with the way things were; the two of them thousands of miles apart.
“It’s a big step,” he cautioned her. “Even if it is only on paper.”
She twisted off the top of a water bottle. “I’m sure I want to adopt those twins with you.” She paused to take a long, thirsty drink then shrugged. “And since this is the only way...”
Travis knew how frustrated and upset she was, deep down. And with good reason. He and Poppy had abandoned contraception ten years ago, when she’d told him she wanted to start a family, on her own. As her best friend, because he still felt responsible for a very sad time in her life, he had readily agreed to help her achieve her goal of having a child on her own.
After six years, and many a passionate rendezvous, she still hadn’t been able to conceive. She hadn’t wanted to see a fertility doctor, because she didn’t want to risk having multiples. So she had signed up to adopt. Again with his full emotional support. For the first two years, strictly on her own, as a single woman. When that hadn’t panned out, he had signed on to be the dad in the proposed arrangement. Except that they hadn’t been selected by any of the mothers wanting the type of open arrangement they did.
Hadn’t even come close. Until now.
But there was a catch.
The babies were twins.
And, of course, when he’d agreed to all this a couple of years ago, he had never considered the fact that he and Poppy would have to get married.
That, for a lot of reasons, neither of them wanted.
Yet with both of them thirty-five and her biological clock ticking, passing on the marriage requirement and waiting for another baby to come along—a single-birthed child this time—did not seem wise.
It would be foolish to not do whatever was deemed necessary to make this happen. Even if getting hitched wasn’t something they would choose under any other circumstance. “What’s the timetable?” Trace asked finally, aware that nothing about their long-standing relationship was exactly conventional.
“According to the agency, we’ll need at least three weeks to get all the legalities in order, after we’re married. That is, if we want the babies
