My Husband My Babies Read online

  His ranch and his brother had been the most important things in Sam’s life

  Now he had only the ranch.

  “Everyone says we need time. That eventually life will get back to normal,” he said, parroting the words he’d heard all day.

  “I seriously doubt that,” his sister-in-law, Jenny, replied. Her voice was bleak. “You’re forgetting one thing. Two, actually. The babies. Lara and Tucker.”

  Sam swallowed. He wasn’t a coward. He simply wasn’t up to talking about the twins tonight. “Can we hold off on that for a while, Jen? We just have to trust each other to do the right thing.”

  “Do you have any idea what that is?”

  He stretched the aching muscles in his shoulders and back. “Nope. But we’ll figure it out.” He rose and put out his hand to help her stand. “You should get to bed.”

  She stood for a moment, then crossed her arms. “I wonder if my milk is coming in. Do you know where Andi put that box of nursing pads?”

  He didn’t have a clue, but he jogged to the bathroom. He needed to get away. Such frank talk struck him as too intimate for what they were to each other.

  Sam stared at his reflection in the mirror.

  He might be a father, but he wasn’t a husband!

  Dear Reader,

  You’re about to enter the world of Gold Creek, California. An imaginary town a bit like the gold-rush-era community up the road from me. In the twelve years that I’ve lived in this section of the Sierras, I’ve come to love the beauty of the landscape—lush green winters and burnt-gold summers. I’ve also come to respect and admire the unique individuals—true mountain characters—who populate these hills. A perfect setting for a book about three independent and strong-willed women—the Sullivan triplets—trying to find their place in the world.

  This first book in the trilogy is Jenny’s story. She married her high-school sweetheart, then after college returned to her hometown to teach school. Perfect. Until Josh’s cancer returned. And she found herself giving birth as her husband lay dying. Jenny’s story is about reaching deep inside for strength you didn’t know you possessed.

  I’ve witnessed this amazing courage firsthand. My niece, Amy, is the true inspiration behind this story. She faced a devastating crisis—the loss of a child—at a time when most of us rejoice: the birth of a new baby. The tragedy was inconceivable, the agony almost overwhelming, but Amy went forward with true grace and remarkable fortitude.

  Life does go on. I have two beautiful grandnieces, Laura and Rachel, to prove it. And I hope you’ll enjoy Jenny’s sweet triumphs, as well. Her sisters—Andi and Kristin—will tell their stories in January and February in their books, Without a Past and The Comeback Girl. I hope you’ll come to love all three of them as much as I do.

  Debra

  P.S. Please keep in touch. You can reach me at P.O. Box 322, Catheys Valley, CA 95306 or via the Internet at my Web site, www.debrasalonen.com, or at eHarlequin.com, where you can access the Let’s Talk Superromance thread at the Authors’ Corner Bulletin Board.

  My Husband, My Babies

  Debra Salonen

  In memory of Kyle Woodrow Gray.

  We miss you, sweet boy.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  November 23, 2000

  Thanksgiving

  SAM O’NEAL GRABBED his younger brother by the collar of his sage-green brushed-cotton shirt and pressed him up against the weathered siding of the Old Bordello Antique Shop. “Jenny won’t look me in the eye,” he growled, after making sure no one was near. “Why does your wife run out of the room every time I walk in?”

  Josh tried to shrug but was handicapped by the two foil-covered plates of turkey and trimmings that he carried like a circus juggler. Sam had one, too, in his left hand. In his right—the one at his brother’s throat—was a grapefruit-size pink ball labeled Rosemarie. Ida Jane Montgomery—Josh’s wife’s eighty-something great-aunt who had raised Jenny and her two sisters—had insisted Sam and Josh use her so-named 1972 pink Cadillac to make their deliveries and pick up the other guests who were joining the family for Thanksgiving dinner.

  “The old coots deserve some dignity,” she’d told Sam as she pressed the hideous key bob into his hand. “Can you see those ladies trying to climb into your big fancy pickup?”

  Josh rolled his chin away from Sam’s fingers. “Jen’s just getting used to the idea of being pregnant. It wasn’t easy talking her into it, you know,” he said, his voice slightly strangled.

  Sam released his grip but didn’t move away. He kept his voice low. “What do you mean talk her into it? I thought it was her idea.”

  Josh’s color rose to clash with the key bob. “The in vitro was her idea. I’m the one who pushed to use your sperm.” He winked in a manner so typically Josh that Sam backed off. His brother knew all too well how to get around Sam’s common sense.

  When Josh had first broached the idea of Sam’s donating sperm so Josh and Jenny could conceive, Sam had flat out refused, but Josh was…well, Josh. And when the three of them met in the office of the fertility counselor three weeks ago, Jenny, Josh’s wife of ten years, had seemed guardedly enthusiastic. “If Sam’s okay with this, then I am, too,” she’d said.

  Sam had returned home to think about the idea. He couldn’t come up with any real objection. The recurrent phrase in his mind was “Why not?” After all, the chance of his getting married and having kids of his own seemed remote.

  “So why is she avoiding me?” Sam asked again.

  Josh eased sideways to put some distance between them. “You’re imagining things. She’s just busy with all these preparations. You know how organized she is.

  “And if you and I don’t get these plates delivered and pick up the old girls—excuse me, the town matrons—we’ll be dining on hot tongue and cold shoulder instead of turkey.” He shuffled toward the wide steps leading to the parking lot.

  Sam followed, mindlessly squeezing the pink ball to ease his trepidation. Something was wrong. He felt it. But Josh was right. This was Jenny’s big day. The first Thanksgiving in ten years that the Sullivan sisters were celebrating together. And at some point in the festivities, Josh would make the big announcement that Jenny was pregnant.

  However, they’d unanimously decided that the role of Sam’s sperm in the Petri dish would remain a secret. He’d made the commitment and signed the necessary papers. He was going to be an uncle not a father. And if that felt a little weird, he’d learn to live with it because—bottom line—he’d do anything for Josh. Always had. Always would.

  THE ARTIST IN HER made Jenny Sullivan O’Neal yearn to capture every single nuance of the moment. The Sullivan Sisters’ Thanksgiving, she named the imaginary piece.

  She took a second to memorize the way Kristin’s strawberry-blond hair glistened in the light, and the odd combination of Andi’s Marine Corps camouflage pants and pumpkin-orange sweater that somehow worked.

  Their first reunion in ten years.

  Kristin—the youngest of the Sullivan triplets—stirred the gravy with one hand then dashed to the corner of the oak buffet where she was assembling a salad. A “willo’-the-wisp,” Ida Jane used to call her. Kristin had left home right after high school to stay with family in Ireland where she’d worked as a companion to their unc
le’s aged grandmother. Later, Kris and two of their Irish cousins, Moira and Kathleen, moved to Wisconsin where she became certified in massage therapy. Although she’d migrated back to the West Coast, she seldom made the seven-hour drive from southern Oregon to Gold Creek, their hometown in the historic gold rush corridor of the Central Sierras in California.

  “Ida Jane is getting older,” Kris was saying, shaking her head. “So she’s a little forgetful and makes a few mistakes. Are you suggesting it’s something more serious? Like Alzheimer’s?” she added, lowering her voice.

  “No. Not exactly. I don’t know. But I think her business is in trouble,” Jenny said, moving with care around the clutter of her great-aunt’s kitchen. Ida Jane’s idea of decorating was to fill every available nook and cranny with hodgepodge, from cobweb-laced pinecones in a battered copper urn to chipped vases stuffed with dusty peacock feathers and dried weeds. Jenny worried that the jumble might trip the eighty-one-year-old woman, but Ida loved her “junque,” as she called it. Thankfully, so had the collectors who’d visited her antique shop, the Old Bordello, over the years.

  The name of the shop reflected the original use of the turn-of-the-century Victorian building. The front half housed Ida’s antiques; the second floor and rear section provided the home where Ida had raised Jenny and her sisters. Until recently, the store had been fairly successful. But something had changed. That was one reason Jenny had pushed for this reunion. There was a second reason, too.

  Andrea, who’d shortened her name to Andi when she was seven, repeatedly plunged a potato masher into the crockery bowl resting in her lap. “Ida Jane Montgomery is the most astute businesswoman I’ve ever known. If her profits are down, then it has to be due to something else. Maybe she needs a new marketing angle.”

  On leave from the marines, Andi was seated cross-legged on the butcher-block countertop between the old-fashioned stove and the even more old-fashioned refrigerator.

  “I was thinking about it on the plane,” Andi continued. “You said foot traffic is sluggish and Ida refuses to have anything to do with the Internet.” She took a breath. “What if we went with some kind of advertising ploy—like a ghost?”

  “What ghost?” Kristin asked. “This place isn’t haunted.”

  Andi shrugged. “Maybe not, but it’s got history. It used to be a bordello. And I swear I remember Ida telling us a story about a young prostitute who was murdered in one of the upstairs bedrooms. That sounds spooky enough.”

  Jenny shook her head. “She just said that to keep us out of Grandma Suzy’s stuff.” The triplets’ grandmother, Suzanne Montgomery Scott, a tragic soul who’d been in and out of mental institutions, had passed away decades earlier, leaving behind a daughter, Lorena. Lori and her Irish-born husband had returned to Gold Creek to give birth, when tragedy struck. A car accident claimed Mick Sullivan’s life first, then—after an emergency cesarean section to deliver the triplets—took his wife’s, as well.

  Andi put a finger into the bowl and popped some potato into her mouth. Chewing, she said, “Doesn’t matter. I think the story has just the right combination of tragedy and mystery to attract antique hunters and curious skeptics.”

  Jen agreed. “I like the idea, Andi. When can you come back to implement it?”

  Her sister stiffened. “Move back here?”

  The inflection she gave the last word left no doubt in Jenny’s mind that Andi wanted nothing to do with Gold Creek. She thought she understood Kristin’s antipathy toward the town—people had unfairly labeled her a screwup—but Andi had always kept her reasons for leaving home to herself.

  “Yes,” Jenny said bluntly, giving both her sisters a look they’d understand. “Ida Jane isn’t getting any younger. She needs our help.”

  As she pried the cornmeal muffins from the speckled enamel tin, she told them, “Warren Jones stopped me on the street a couple of weeks ago and told me we’d better do something before our aunt loses the bordello. But when I asked to see her books, Ida told me to mind my own business.”

  Andi made a grumbling sound. “Warren Jones has always been a worrywart.”

  Jenny agreed, but if Warren, who’d filed Ida Jane’s income tax returns ever since his father, Walter, retired three years earlier, was worried, then they owed it to their aunt to find out what was going on.

  After Jenny transferred the muffins to the warming basket, she brushed back several strands of deep-auburn hair that had escaped from the lapis clip at the nape of her neck. “All I’m saying is that we need to stay on top of the situation. Remember Sandy Grossman…Grimaldo?”

  Jenny noticed the way Kristin threw herself into opening a can of ripe olives. Her exaggerated disinterest in the conversation made Jenny wonder if her sister might still harbor feelings for her old boyfriend, Donnie Grimaldo. “Sandy’s mother got hooked on bingo and lost everything. Sandy didn’t discover how bad it was until Poopsie was facing eviction.”

  Andi pitched the potato masher into the sink then hopped down from the countertop. She scraped the fluffy white potato into a serving bowl, added a dollop of butter and covered the dish with a plate. “Ida Jane’s no gambler. How many times has she repeated the cautionary tale of her father losing the Rocking M in a poker game?”

  Kristin, who’d driven down from her home in Ashland that morning, nodded. “For years I was afraid to buy a lottery ticket for fear I might turn into a gambleholic.”

  Andi opened the oven door and leaned down to pull out the golden–breasted turkey. “So we’ll talk before Kris leaves. No problem. Is that the only reason you pushed for this reunion, Jen?” She heaved the enamel roasting pan to the counter then whipped about to face her sisters.

  A tremor fluttered in Jenny’s belly. She knew it wasn’t the baby. They’d only received confirmation of the success of the procedure on Tuesday. “Well, there is one other thing, but I thought I’d wait to make the announcement at dinner.”

  Andi and Kristin glanced at each other. The two hadn’t been on good terms since high school, but they still seemed to be able to communicate without words. “Tell us,” Andi ordered.

  “Josh and I are pregnant.”

  “Told you so,” Kristin said smugly.

  “You knew?” Jenny sputtered. “How?”

  “Lucky guess,” Andi said sourly. “It’s not like you haven’t wanted to be a mother forever. What I can’t figure out is why you’re not shouting out the news from the upstairs porch.”

  Because we cheated.

  “We’ve been seeing a fertility specialist,” she admitted, her words tumbling over each other. “We used in vitro. There was a chance it wouldn’t take.” But it did take. I’m going to be a mother. Of my brother-in-law’s child.

  Andi left the turkey to rest and walked to Jenny’s side. She looped a slim, muscular arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “I understand. You’re Jenny Perfect. You shouldn’t need technology and Petri dishes to make offspring. But, hey, sometimes even the best of us need help.”

  The teasing might have stung if Jenny hadn’t heard it a million times. Her sisters had nicknamed her in kindergarten when she’d brought home her first report card: all S’s and O’s—Satisfactory and Outstanding. No N’s— Needs Improvement. Unfortunately, the name had stuck.

  Just last week, Gloria Harrison Hughes, author of “Glory’s World,” a local “news” column in the weekly Gold Creek Ledger, had reported:

  Jenny O’Neal, the Sullivan triplet better known as Jenny Perfect, will host her sisters and select friends at a Thanksgiving dinner at her great-aunt Ida Jane Montgomery’s home. This reporter can’t help but wonder how long it’s been since the Sullivan triplets have been together. Isn’t it a shame when family is torn apart by poor judgment?

  The dig had infuriated Jenny, but Josh had cajoled her into laughing at the vindictive woman who held Kristin responsible for her son’s premature departure from high school. “Gloria Hughes is a small-town, small-minded harpy,” he’d stated. “Everyone knows she got the job b
ecause her brother owns the paper. Nobody pays any attention to her column.”

  Jenny knew that wasn’t true, but there wasn’t anything she could do to change Gloria’s mind. She’d tried.

  She stuck out her tongue at her sisters, knowing it was the expected response, then walked to the pantry to retrieve the folding stool. Kristin and Andi laughed, and peripherally Jenny saw them exchange a look that she remembered well from their teen years.

  Triplets shared a dynamic wholly different from twins. Much of the time they were a threesome—“Our Sullivan Girls,” the people of Gold Creek called them, partly because many of the townsfolk felt they’d lent a hand in raising the orphaned triplets. But factions arose, too. Sometimes one combination, sometimes another.

  Kristin finished preparing the garnishes then slithered a second can of jellied cranberries onto a ruffled crystal dish that had belonged to their mother. Earlier they’d culled some turkey and fixings for Ida’s housebound friends. Josh and Sam were due back any minute from their taxi duties.

  Chewing on a stalk of celery, Kris tilted her head and asked, “Why in vitro? You’re young, healthy. Why didn’t you and Josh just try harder? Isn’t that half the fun?”

  “We’ve been trying to get pregnant ever since we got married, Kris. The fertility clinic finally determined that Josh has some problems left over from his bout of testicular cancer when he was twelve.”

  Kristin’s expressive face showed concern. “I’d forgotten about that. Is there a problem?”

  Jenny shook her head. “No. He’s fine. He’s been cancer free for nearly fifteen years. But unfortunately, the treatment affected his ability to make viable sperm.” Like he doesn’t. Period. “So, it came down to in vitro or adoption.”