Epilogue
Chapter One
There’s a look that narrows the eyes of a nearly teen adolescent—a look reflecting stubbornness-bordering-on-rebellion—that strikes terror in the heart of any normal parent. And Sloan Radcliff was receiving that very look from not one, but three pairs of eyes. The defiant expressions he confronted belonged to his daughters, his twelve-year-old triplet terrors.
Sloan tamped down the myriad of emotions creating chaos in his head and focused on keeping his voice calm, his nerves steely.
“Girls,” he quietly began. The experience of being a single parent for the last two years had taught him that, when dealing with his children’s obstinacy, a tranquil tone never really helped very much. However, he was the mature, sane adult here and he did want to act in a manner befitting that fact. For as long as he could possibly hold out, anyway.
“You know the rules,” he continued. “Nine o’clock. That’s curfew. You’re twelve years old. It’s not an unreasonable request.”
“Sez who?”
Oh, Lord. Sydney, the most quick-tempered of his three daughters, was already becoming bluntly out-spoken. He chose to ignore the fact that her short question was laced around the edges with insolence.
“Daddy,” Sasha whined pitifully, “this is going to be the party of the year. All the coolest kids will be there. We have to go. We just have to. If we don’t, we’ll be labeled as geek.” Her eyes were wide, her forehead furrowed, her arms gesturing wildly. All indications that if this classification were to take place, her entire existence would be ruined for all eternity.
Sloan’s brows rose a fraction. Not because Sasha was being overly dramatic—that was her trademark—but it was awfully early in the dispute for her to start displaying her well-oiled thespian skills. This New Year’s Eve get-together must be more important to his daughters than he’d first realized.
Glancing over at Sophie, the third of his lovely, lively daughters, he wasn’t surprised to see her arms crossed tightly over her rib cage, her mouth pressed together in a firm line.
With their long, straight brown hair and their nut-brown eyes, his girls might look like peas in a pod, but their characters—the methods they used to cope with everything from joy and success to anger, disappointment and stress—were as different as the snowflakes that now fell from the wintry, late December sky.
“Look, Dad,” Sydney piped up, “we’ve been asking you about this party for a month. Now it’s time to go shopping for dresses and shoes and stuff. We’re down to the wire. We need an answer. Now.”
“Shopping?” he asked. “But all three of you just received new clothes for Christmas—”
Sasha’s wide-eyed look of horror cut his protest off in midstream.
“You can’t expect us to wear those things,” Sasha said. “We got jeans and sweaters. Knock-around clothes. We need gowns.”
“Yes,” Sydney agreed with her sister. “We need long, elegant dresses. Everyone there will be wearing them.”
Seeing a means of lightening the mood, Sloan allowed exaggerated skepticism to tug at one corner of his mouth as he teased, “The boys are going to look pretty silly in—”
“Dad,” both Sydney and Sasha chimed. They shook their head in disgust.
“Our girl friends,” Sydney supplied. “You knew what we meant.”
“We need an answer,” Sasha pressed him. “The party is just four days away. Are you gonna let us go?”
He’d put off his girls as long as he could. He needed to make a decision. Let them go to the party? Or protect them, and at the same time, disappoint them terribly?
During times like this, he really hated being a single dad. With both sets of his daughters’ grandparents deceased, and him with no siblings, Sloan had no one to talk these things over with. He felt…lonely. Lost. And terribly unsure. He never knew for certain whether or not he was making the right choice. He needed more time.
“Girls, you can’t just come traipsing into my office, demanding—”
“All your patients are gone, Dad,” Sydney said. “The waiting room is empty.”
“It’s time for you to go home.” Sasha plunked her hand on her hip. “Besides, you were expecting us. Remember? You asked Annie’s mom to drop us off here.”
Of course Sloan remembered the girls had spent the day with a friend. He’d just been hedging for time.
“Sure, I remember,” he said jovially. He stood and pulled off his white lab coat. “How about if we stop off on the way home and pick up some burgers and fries for dinner? We’ll go to your favorite place.”
Three pairs of eyes glowered at him.
“We won’t let you change the subject, Dad.” Now Sydney, too, had her hands on her hips, her elbows cocked at wide angles.
“We want to go to the party!” Sasha said.
Sophie only nodded tightly, her gaze silently reflecting all the anxiety she was feeling.
Sloan sighed. He felt damned tired. He sat down, rubbed his palms up and down his thighs.
“Okay,” he said, “you can go to the party—”
“Whooo-hoo,” Sydney shouted.
“Yes!” Sasha threw her hands into the air and performed a joyful little jig.
Even Sophie smiled, the tension in her shoulders visibly melting away.
The girls began chattering to one another all at once.
“I’m going to get that black strapless dress I saw in the mall—”
“I’m wearing that electric-blue one with the slits up both sides—”
“I need panty hose and I want those strappy platform sandals—”
“And let’s not forget to go to the drugstore for makeup. I saw a tube of red lipstick I’ve just gotta have—”
Strapless dress? Electric-blue slits? Panty hose? Platform sandals? Red lipstick?
Sloan didn’t think so. Not while he still had breath in his body.
“Hold it!”
His daughters turned to face him, their excitement suddenly dimmed by his rare show of anger.
“I wasn’t finished,” he continued, not bothering to remove the edginess from his tone. “You can go to the party. But you can’t stay out until two o’clock in the morning.”
“But, Dad—” Sasha lamented.
“Oh, no—” the two little words
