Joan Pickart – Single With Twins (страница 5)

He’d driven through some very rundown areas to get here, had seen teenagers hanging out on the corners, many wearing what he had a feeling were gang colors. This entire section of Tucson was crime waiting to happen.

How could Heather sleep at night, knowing she was raising her daughters in such a dangerous location? What kind of a mother would—

Hold it, Marshall. That had been a lousy thing to mentally insinuate about Heather. He was positive that Heather lived here with her girls because this was the best she could afford.

That made sense. The records he’d uncovered about Frank listed his half brother’s occupation as a gas station attendant. Not a certified mechanic, just a guy who pumped gas, he guessed. That wouldn’t have left any kind of estate to his pregnant widow.

He also knew from his hours on the Internet that Frank Marshall had been killed in an automobile accident driving while drunk. His investigative skills had turned up a copy of the police report. Some more delving had provided the information that the twins had been born about six months later.

Heather Marshall deserved a lot of credit for what she’d done on her own. She’d been young, pregnant, and faced with raising two babies alone. He’d found records of the classes she’d taken for many years, finally obtaining her license as a certified public accountant.

She worked at home, apparently, to be there for her daughters. That meant she had no group medical insurance, no retirement plan, no benefits at all that came from being employed by a large firm.

Hand to mouth, Mack thought, parking in front of Heather’s house. That was how this little family was living. He didn’t like that. He sure as hell didn’t.

Mack retrieved his parcels from the passenger seat, locked the Blazer he’d rented, then started slowly up the front walk leading to the house. The walkway was cracked in places and several chunks of cement were totally missing.

The minuscule yard was free of weeds, but was more dirt than grass, and a bald tire hung by a rope from a limb on the mulberry tree. The house itself was a rather strange shade of color…not white, not yellow, just dingy gray with no contrasting color on the trim. The roof was a multitude of shades, obviously patched many times over the years with whatever was available.

On the porch, Mack noted the empty hole in the plastic faceplate where the doorbell should have been, and rapped on the door.

He squared his shoulders, took a deep breath and realized to his self-disgust that he was nervous. He, Mack Marshall, who had braved a multitude of dangerous war zones around the globe, was actually shaking in his shorts about the prospect of attempting to carry on a conversation with a mother and her two young daughters. Ridiculous, but annoyingly true.

“Get a grip,” he muttered, then waited for the door to open.

“He’s here,” Melissa said, jumping off her chair. “I’ll answer the door.”

“No, I want to,” Emma said, leaving the table and running after her sister.

“Wait,” Heather said, getting to her feet. “Oh, never mind.”

She was nervous, she thought, as she trailed after the girls. She’d had a difficult time concentrating on her work while the twins were in school, had glanced at the clock so often she’d felt like one of those bobbing toys that people put on the dashboards of their cars. Ridiculous.

As Heather heard a chorus of, “Hi. Come in,” she smoothed the waistband of her bright red string sweater over her jeans-clad hips and produced what she hoped was a believable smile.

“Hello, Mack,” she said as he stepped into the living room.

Oh, gracious, she thought, Mack was even better looking today than he had been last night. How was that possible? But Mack Marshall in black slacks and a navy-blue knit shirt was a sight to behold.

Her heart was beating too fast. What was wrong with her heart? Why was it doing that? Forget it. Just forget it. She had to act like a mature adult, a mother, for heaven’s sake.

“I’d like you to meet my daughters.” She placed one hand on Emma’s shoulder. “This is Emma.” The other hand plopped onto Melissa’s head. “And this is Melissa. Girls, this is Mack Marshall. Your…your uncle. Yes, that’s what you can call him…Uncle Mack.”

“Hi,” the pair said in unison.

“Hi,” Mack said, staring at them.

They were identical twins, he thought incredulously. They both had short, curly black hair, big dark eyes, the very same features and—he’d never been face-to-face with identical twins before.

They were wearing different clothes, thank goodness, which would help him to keep them straight. Emma was wearing a flowered dress and Melissa was decked out in jeans and a baseball jersey that was a bit too big for her.

“I brought you a little something.” Mack handed Heather a bouquet of spring flowers, then gave each of the girls an enormous cellophane-wrapped, rainbow-colored sucker.

“Wow,” Melissa said. “I’ve never seen a sucker this big. This is so cool. Can I eat it now, Mom?”

“I’m going to save mine forever,” Emma said. “It’s so pretty. I’ve never had such a big, beautiful sucker.”

“What do you say?” Heather said.

“Thank you,” the twins chorused.

“And I thank you for the lovely flowers, Mack,” Heather said, not looking directly at him. “Please, have a seat while I put these in water. And, Melissa, no, you can’t have any candy now. We’ll decide after dinner how much of it you can eat at one time. I’ll be right back.”

Heather hurried from the room. Once safely in the kitchen and out of view, she buried her face in the lovely flowers and inhaled their sweet aroma.

Oh, darn, she thought frantically, she could feel the sting of tears. She had to get a grip, regain control of her emotions now. Right now. It was just that she had never, not once in her entire life, been given flowers by a man. She felt like Emma…she wanted to keep them forever.

Heather opened a cupboard, remembered that she didn’t own a vase, then proceeded to half fill an empty pickle jar with water and arrange the flowers. She returned to the living room and placed the makeshift vase on the coffee table.

Mack was sitting on the sofa with a twin on each side of him, each holding their sucker and staring up at him.

He looked about as comfortable as a man waiting to have a root canal, Heather thought, curbing a smile as she seated herself in the rocker. She had the distinct impression that Mack’s experience with children was zip.

“So,” Heather said, “are you enjoying our weather, Mack? March is a lovely month here, and April will be even nicer.” Good grief, was this the best she could do? Talk about the weather? But her experience in-conversing with a worldly man such as Mack was most definitely zip. “I’ve told the girls that you’re a famous photographer.”

“Well, yes, I do take pictures of…of things,” he said, glancing at Melissa, then Emma. “Lots and lots of photographs.”

“Where’s your camera?” Melissa said.

“It’s locked in my vehicle out front,” Mack said. “I never go anywhere without it, it seems. Would you like me to take your picture?”

“No,” Melissa said.

“Oh,” he said, then cleared his throat.

“Do you have a house?” Emma said.

“A house? No, I have an apartment that I rent in New York City. I’m not there too much of the time, though, because I travel a great deal taking photographs.”

“Oh-h-h,” Emma said, nodding. “We rent our house, too, but we have a dream piggy. Maybe if you got a real job, instead of just playing with a camera and stuff, you could get a dream piggy, too, and get a house.”

“Emma,” Heather said quickly, “being a photojournalist is a real job, a very difficult one, in fact. Mack has won a great many awards with his photographs.”

“But Uncle Mack doesn’t have enough money to buy a house, Mommy,” Emma said. “He needs a dream piggy.”

“What’s a dream piggy, Emma?” Mack asked.

“Well.” Emma set the sucker very carefully next to her on the sofa, then folded her hands in her lap. “You see, when you want something more than anything else in the whole wide world…that’s your dream. Me and Melissa and my mommy want to have our very own house, buy it, not rent it and everything, and fix it up real nice, and have enough bedrooms for everyone to have their very own, and we save all our pennies and stuff in our dream piggy, ’cause someday we’re going to have our dream. Our house. Get it?”

Mack nodded slowly. “Got it.”

“So!” Emma continued. “You could get a house, too, but you gotta have a dream piggy first so you have a place to put your pennies.”

“I’ll certainly give that some serious thought,” Mack said. “I appreciate your telling me about a dream piggy, Emma. I didn’t know such a thing existed.”

Emma’s eyes widened. “You didn’t? Wow. Well, now you know, so that’s okay.”

“Not everyone has the same dream, Emma,” Heather said. “Maybe Mack doesn’t want to own a house.”

“Buzzy doesn’t care if he has a house,” Melissa said. “His dream is to be the bestest baseball player in the whole wide world.”

“What’s your dream, Uncle Mack?” Emma said, gazing up at him.

“I, um, well, Emma, I…” Mack stopped speaking and sent a pleading look at Heather, who just smiled at him pleasantly. “I guess I don’t have a dream.”