was going to call his mother. There’d be no turning back after that. What were they thinking? What was she thinking? Her mother and Aunt Wanda would be happy, but how was she going to explain this to Jenna? Only time would tell if this fake-date idea was brilliant or ill-conceived.
The giggling emanating from Molly and Martha’s room was like music to Kristi’s ears. Such sweet kids. Each girl was wearing dress-up clothes over their pajamas. Molly’s black spaghetti-strap cocktail dress bunched on the floor around her. Martha had a messenger bag slung crosswise over her shoulder and a floppy-brimmed hat all but covered her eyes. Scattered around them were toys and clothes and the largest collection of stuffed animals Kristi had ever seen.
After agreeing to the fake dates, she had completely forgotten that she’d gone into the kitchen to ask Nate about the toys. For now she and the girls would sort them and make decisions later. She looked around for a place to set up the bins and ended up having to clear a space near the door.
“How would you girls like to play a little game?”
“I’m going to a party,” Molly said. She twirled, got one foot tangled in the hem of the black dress and collapsed onto a pile of what appeared to be even more dress-up clothes.
Martha giggled. “I’m going on a safari to look for dinosaurs.”
“You both look very cute,” Kristi said. “Do you like playing dress-up?”
“Yup!” Molly straightened out her dress and bounced to her feet.
“Aunt Britt gived us these clothes,” Martha said.
Kristi separated the three bins, set them side by side and took another look around the room. “I need helpers who are good at sorting things.”
Martha took off the hat and tossed it in the air. “I can do that. Daddy got us a card game that’s all about sorting.” The hat landed on one of the beds.
“That sounds like fun.” An image of Nate and his daughters playing a card game had Kristi thinking how the world could use more dads like him.
“What are we going to sort?” Molly asked, attempting another twirl, this time successful.
“Let’s start with all the clothes on the floor. Do you think you can put your everyday clothes into a red bin and dress-up clothes into the blue one?”
“Yup.” Martha pulled the messenger bag over her head and tossed it in the blue bin. “See?”
“Good job.”
“I can sort, too.” Molly slithered out of the black dress and added it to the blue bin.
“What’s going in the yellow bin?” Martha asked.
“Well, let’s see…” Kristi pretended to give the question some thought. “I guess some of the stuffed animals could go in there for now. What do you think?”
Molly scooped two teddy bears and a toy killer whale off her bed and dumped them into the yellow bin. Martha followed with a frog, a rabbit and another teddy bear.
“Our grandmas gave us these,” Molly said.
“Except for Winnie the Pooh and Curious George. Aunt Britt gived them to us on our birthday.”
Kristi recalled the party streamers that Nate must’ve taken down last night. “Did you have a cake with candles to blow out?”
Both girls shook their heads.
“We had cupcakes!” Martha said.
“Daddy bought them at the store.”
“I yike cupcakes better than cake.”
Their excitement made Kristi smile. “Me, too.”
“Is that why you have them on your purse?”
“It is.” She liked that they had noticed her bag. She had found the fabric on sale and had sewn the bag herself. As for birthdays, she made a mental note to suggest to Nate that he ask his family to consider clutter-free gifts, like admission to the Seattle Aquarium or the Children’s Museum. It hadn’t been easy, but even Kristi’s mom had gradually been retrained to give movie passes and iTunes gift cards instead of items Jenna didn’t need.
Kristi picked up a purple T-shirt and a pair of jeans. “Who do these belong to?” she asked.
“Me!” Martha reached for them.
“Why are they on the floor?” Kristi asked.
The child shrugged. “There’s no room in my dresser.”
“Are you sure?” Kristi opened a drawer in one of the matching dressers. Sure enough, it was crammed full.
“Those clothes don’t fit us,” Molly said.
It took Kristi three tries to get the drawer closed again. No wonder the kids didn’t use it. “All right, then. You can put your clothes in the bins for now.” Later she would talk to Nate and figure out what to do with the things the girls had outgrown.
Would Nate be open to getting rid of the dressers and building some cubbies for storing the girls’ clothes? A couple of months ago Sam had built a modular system for clients who had then taken them to their new home.
“Can you girls keep sorting while I take a look at your dad’s office across the hall?”
“Yup.”
“We can.”
“Good. Maybe there’ll even be a prize for the winner.” She’d learned long ago that bribery was never a parent’s best tactic, but in this case she wasn’t the mom. She was just a desperate decorator who wanted all this stuff picked up in the least amount of time.
“What do we win?”
“Well…it just so happens that I brought cupcakes with me. You can each have one at lunchtime, as long as it’s okay with your dad.”
“Goodie!”
“We yike cupcakes!”
Kristi laughed. “It’s a deal, then. I’ll come back in a while and see how you’re doing.”
With the twins engaged in a sorting game, she moved across the hall to the bedroom Nate used as an office. She paused in the doorway, thought of him working here, grading his students’ papers, researching the projects she’d read about last night while letting herself indulge in a little daydream about what it would be like to be with a guy like him. Smart, hot, sexy. And now she was about to find out. Not with him with him, but spending time with him. A flash of panic caused a flutter in her chest. Fake dating a man she was already attracted to could get complicated.
“Only if you let it.” Which she wouldn’t. She didn’t dare. Besides, she could always change her mind, back out. She knew what that would mean, though. Her high school memory of fending off Bernie Halverson’s unwelcome advances flickered through her mind. She wasn’t risking a repeat of that. And Nate didn’t want a relationship any more than she did,
