of months.”
“Christmas is next month,” the little girl holding tightly to the woman’s hand told him matter-of-factly.
He nodded. “Yes. It is.”
She was a cute little girl, with an intense stare that shouldn’t have unnerved him, but just like touching the woman had, it did.
“Even though the sales probably won’t be official until after the first of the year, I need to do a walk-through before then. I’ll send my lawyers a report and they’ll get started with the listing. If you don’t mind, could you show me around?” he asked, returning his gaze to the woman.
His question was met with immediate silence and after a few seconds she shook her head. “I’m rehearsing with the children. We’re just getting started with regularly scheduled rehearsals and the play is in four weeks. They have school during the day. We only have the weekends and an hour and a half in the evenings to rehearse.”
Gray presumed she was telling him “no.” That wasn’t a word women usually used with him, but his ego wasn’t bruised. This was business after all.
“Fine. I’ll wait until the rehearsal is finished,” he said. “Can I sit over here?”
There were chairs scattered about the spacious room, some lined directly in front of the small stage, where he suspected they were rehearsing their little play.
“You can watch me be Scrooge,” a boy wearing a frizzy white wig and an oversize black tuxedo jacket with tails told him.
He’d stepped away from the woman and her entourage and motioned for Gray to follow him. Admiring the child’s initiative, Gray walked behind him, leaving the still-leery gaze of the woman behind.
She didn’t say another word, but moved across the room and gave instructions for the children to resume their places and continue. The little girl who had been holding her hand still stood right beside her, but the child peeked back at Gray more than once. She had questions, he thought. Who was he? Why was he here and what did that possibly mean for them? He’d stared into her pensive eyes and felt the urge to answer all her questions in a way that would make her stop looking at him with such sincere inquisitiveness. It was the strangest thought he’d ever had, especially since Gray wasn’t known to get caught up in anyone’s emotions about anything.
He was the strongest of the Taylor sextuplets, the first one to be born on that humid July evening thirty years ago. His brothers and sisters all shared his birthday, but none of them had ever shared the weight of being the first baby born of the first set of multiples in the town of Temptation. That had been his title for the first seven years of his life—“the first born of the first Temptation sextuplets.” The Taylors of Temptation was what they’d named the reality show that featured his parents as they brought home their six bundles of joy and lived in the huge blue-and-white Victorian with the river at its back. As Gray recalled, the show would have been more aptly named if it had been called Terror of the Taylors instead.
“Do you like Christmas?”
He was yanked from his thoughts by the soft voice of the little girl who had been sneaking glances at him. Her hair was dark and long, brushing past her shoulders with red bows at the end of each ponytail. She wore jeans and a red-and-white striped sweater. Her boots had black-and-white polka dots.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “Do you like Christmas?”
She nodded and said, “Yes. I do. So does my mother.”
As she said those words Gray nodded. “Is your mother up there directing the play?”
“Yes. Her name is Morgan Hill. She’s a teacher, too.”
“You’re not supposed to talk to strangers,” a little boy said as he came up beside the girl and pulled on her arm.
She jerked away. “He’s not a stranger. His name is Grayson Taylor and he owns this building.”
Gray didn’t like the stoic way in which she’d mimicked his previous words.
“We don’t know him, so he’s a stranger,” the boy, who looked a little like the girl, said. “I’m gonna tell Mama.”
Gray almost smiled, but he felt his forehead drawing into a frown instead. Twins?
“No need to tell,” he declared. “How about we all go up front and sit with your mother? That way she’ll know where you both are.”
It would also give Gray a chance to ask a few questions about the building. From the looks of the outside, he didn’t think he’d get much for the building itself, but the land might be worth something. Between the sale of this building, the hospital and the house, the total should be a good chunk to split between the six of them. Not that Gray needed the money. His vision and the talented people he’d hired to work at Gray Technologies had made him a rich man years ago. No, any money that came from the properties would be what the Taylor sextuplets thought of as their father’s payment for destroying their lives all those years ago.
“Mama, he wants to sit with you,” the little girl said when they’d come to a stop next to the chair where her mother sat.
Morgan looked up from her clipboard and then hastily stood. “Oh, I apologize,” she said. “I hope they weren’t bothering you.”
Now it was Gray’s turn to simply stare. She was very pretty, he thought, as if he hadn’t noticed that before. Her skin was smooth and unmarred by any cosmetics. Gray was used to seeing more glamorous women, from the ones he worked with to the ones trying to get into his bed. High heels, tight dresses, heavily made-up faces and beaming smiles—that’s what he was used to.
Morgan was looking at him like she couldn’t decide whether to curse him out or be cordial to him. The look, coupled with the stubborn lift of her chin and the set of her shoulders, tugged at something deep inside him. Glancing away was not an option.
“He doesn’t know if he likes Christmas, Mama,” the little girl said.
“She’s always telling,” the boy added with a shake of his head.
“Hush,” Morgan told them.
“Ms. Hill! Ms. Hill! Ethan forgot what to say,” another child’s voice exclaimed.
“I did not! I’m imposizing. That’s what actors do,” the boy in the white wig—who Gray now knew was named Ethan—argued.
“The word is improvising, Ethan, and I’d prefer if you just repeated what’s written in the script,” Morgan replied.
She’d moved quickly, heading to the stage where the two arguing children stood. She spoke in a voice that was much calmer than he suspected she was feeling. She guided the children to where she wanted them to stand on the stage and spoke the lines she wanted them to repeat, all while Ethan looked as if he had other, more exciting things to do.
“He thinks he knows everything,” the little girl told Gray.
She’d scooted onto one of the chairs by then.
“Be quiet, Lily. Mama’s gonna show Ethan who’s the boss,” the boy told her.
“I
