Jacqueline Diamond - Paris or Bust!

She couldn’t do it. Fibbing to nosy townspeople was one thing. Lying to the man she loved would be intolerable.

“Mine?” He mouthed the word as if unable to speak aloud.

Jody nodded. “Callum, meet Benjamin and Jeremy.” She pointed to each in turn. Since Ben preferred red shirts and Jerry’s favorite color was blue, he should have no trouble keeping them straight.

Callum stood there staring at them. For once, he’d lost his aplomb.

“Who’s he?” Jerry demanded. “Why is he wearing our hair?”

Approaching the newcomer, Ben reached up boldly. With a bemused smile, Callum bent so the boy could finger his stylish cut. “It feels soft,” the boy said.

Tentatively, Callum rested one palm atop the boy’s head. “So is yours.” He turned to Jody, his expression that of a man lost in a wilderness. A bright and shining wilderness, perhaps, but one with no known pathways. “What do we do now?” he asked.

“I’d suggest we eat dinner.” She waited tensely. Callum wasn’t the sort of man to explode at her in front of the boys. In fact, she couldn’t recall him ever losing his temper, although he did get a bit edgy sometimes. But he had every right to be angry.

Although four years ago she’d believed she was doing the right thing, she could see now that she’d been protecting herself as much as him. And it hadn’t been fair to the boys. The older they grew, the plainer that had become.

Callum pulled himself together. “I hope you guys like spaghetti,” he said.

“It’s my favorite!” When Ben grinned, he looked like an exact miniature of his father. His father. A lump formed in Jody’s throat.

“I like mine plain.” Jerry planted himself firmly next to Jody.

“How plain?”

“No sauce,” the boy said. “Just cheese.”

Galvanized into action, Callum transferred the pasta to a glazed bowl and poured the tomato sauce into a separate container. “I’ll tell you what. We’ll serve the sauce on the side and you can suit yourselves. Do they eat salad?”

“Surprisingly, yes.” Jody wasn’t sure how she’d been lucky enough to get children who liked vegetables. “As long as it has ranch dressing.”

They gathered around the table. Callum and the boys bowed their heads while Jody said a prayer, and she was pleased to see her sons minding their manners as they ate. That didn’t prevent a fair amount of tomato sauce from spattering across Ben’s shirt, but since it was already bound for the laundry, she didn’t care.

As the twins chattered about the new puppy, Callum stared from one boy to the other, wearing a puzzled half smile. Jody admired the way he’d kept his poise after being hit with a revelation that would have sent many men into either a towering rage or a mad scramble for the exit.

“Freddy asked Gladys whose car was in front of the house,” Ben said between mouthfuls of salad. “She told him Mommy had a handsome visitor.”

“Who’s Freddy?” Callum had mastered the art of twirling his pasta smoothly around his fork, while Jody’s spaghetti kept slipping off her utensils. Finally she gave up and chopped it into pieces.

“Freddy Fallon is our full-time assistant,” she answered. “He lives in the bunkhouse next to Gladys’s place, past the machine shop.” Because of the unpredictable hours and the distance from town, it was customary for full-time employees to live on the property. “He’s one of those fellows I mentioned in my essay.”

“One of your admirers?” Callum’s jaw jutted forward.

“You could call him that. We went square dancing once.” Jody had agreed in hopes of pacifying the man, who’d been tagging after her like a lovesick hound. It hadn’t worked.

“He’s got a brother,” Jerry said. “Frank works on Mr. Widcomb’s ranch.”

“Frank likes Mommy, too.” Ben helped himself to more spaghetti from the bowl, trailing a few strands across the table. When he reached for the sauce, Jody grabbed it first and ladled it onto his plate.

“Who else likes your mommy?” Callum asked.

“Everybody likes Mommy,” Jeremy said.

“Mr. Landers from the newspaper brings her flowers,” Ben said.

Callum’s eyebrows shot up. “Old Mr. Landers? He must be nearly seventy.”

“No, his son, Bo,” Jody said. “Don’t you remember him? He was a year behind us in high school.”

“That’s right, he worked on the school paper.” Callum drummed his fingers on the table. “Skinny kid with braces, wasn’t he?”

Bo had improved with age, Jody reflected. Although his gangly lope and gee-whiz style of talking were no match for Callum’s smoothness, he was the most interesting single man in Everett Landing, and he clearly cared about her. Sometimes she’d wondered if that might be enough.

“He took over the newspaper after his dad retired,” she said. “He’s a good friend.”

“Who else?” Callum asked.

“Who else what?”

“Who else is after you?” He’d stopped making any effort to eat.

“Mr. Lamont invited Mommy to one of his parties,” Ben piped up.

Jody felt her cheeks grow hot. Andy Lamont, a pretentious newcomer from the East Coast who’d sold his high-tech stocks at the right moment, was known for strutting around his ranch in glitzy cowboy gear and throwing wild parties for out-of-town friends. “I didn’t go.”

“Gladys said it was going to be an or-gee,” Jerry added. “What’s an or-gee? She wouldn’t tell us.”

“Who is this guy?” Callum’s tone took on a harder edge.

“He’s nobody,” Jody said. “Believe me.”

“An or-gee is a party with lots of food,” Jerry said.

“How do you figure that?” she asked, grateful for the distraction.

“People offer you two pies. You go, ‘Oh, gee, I can’t pick,”’ her son explained.

Ben wrinkled his nose. “I’d say, ‘Or, gee, I’ll have both.”’

Callum’s expression mellowed. “I like their style! Speaking of pie, what’s for dessert?”

Jody was tempted to deny having any, just to tease, but she couldn’t bear to crush the three hopeful looks beaming her way from around the table. “Cookies.”

“What kind?” Callum asked.

“Chocolate chip with pecans.”

“I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

“This isn’t heaven,” Jerry said solemnly. “Heaven’s where Grandma and Grandpa went.” He pointed toward the ceiling.

“You’re right.” Callum didn’t say much after that, letting the boys’ chatter eddy around him as they finished dessert. He kept watching them, as if fascinated. Or shell-shocked, perhaps.

Once the pair began yawning, Jody excused herself to bathe them and put them to bed. “Mommy?” Jeremy asked sleepily as she tucked him into the lower bunk. “Who’s Callum?”

She stroked his hair and slipped her free arm around Ben, who nestled beside her. “Remember when you asked me if you had a father, and I said you did but he was far away?” Two tousled heads bobbed in accord. “You asked when he was coming home and I said some daddies don’t ever come home.”

“Like Joey’s,” Ben said. A Sunday school friend, Joey lived with his divorced mother and never saw his father.

“Kind of,” she agreed. “Well, Callum’s your father.”

“Really?” Ben said. “That’s why he looks like us?”

“That’s why,” she confirmed.

Both boys started shifting around, as if they couldn’t find the words to express themselves and needed to move. Then they pelted her with questions. Why had their daddy been gone so long? Was he going to live here now?

She answered as best she could. “He’s here for a visit. Then he’s going back to Los Angeles. That’s where he works and he has to live there. He’s been really, really busy until now. I hope we’ll see him more often now, but he can’t move to the ranch.”

Surely they’d stay in touch, now that Callum knew the truth. At least, she hoped so.

“I like him,” Ben told her. “I always wanted a daddy.”

“He’s okay, I guess,” Jerry said. “But we’re your little men, aren’t we, Mommy?”

“You sure are.” She hugged them both. “Forever and ever.”

When they were both under the covers, Jody turned out the lights and paced toward the living room. She wasn’t looking forward to facing Callum’s questions, not one little bit.

HE WAS A FATHER. It was amazing. Wonderful. Scary.

Alone on the couch, Callum tried to sort out how he felt. His first reaction had been an indescribable thrill as he gazed down at those two little fellows who could have posed for his own childhood photos.

Over the years, Callum had considered it irritating when a friend brought a child to dinner because he spent the meal getting interrupted, peppered with nonsensical questions and kicked in the shins. Yet tonight, he’d enjoyed the boys’ liveliness and the twists and turns of their thinking. Was it because they belonged to him? Or were they simply, as he suspected, exceptional human beings?

He wished he’d seen them as babies. Leaning back, he tried in vain to picture the two of them as newborns. His mind just couldn’t shoehorn all that alertness and those full-blown personalities into such tiny packages.

Imagining the future proved easier. He could see the three of them rollerblading at the beach, weaving in and out of pedestrian traffic on the promenade. They’d enjoy Disneyland, and when they were older he could take them to the Page Museum to see the prehistoric beasts from the La Brea Tar Pits.

The details of how he and Jody were going to arrange things remained fuzzy. As a father, he knew he ought to take charge of the situation, but he wasn’t quite clear yet on what the situation was. Callum decided to play this one by ear.

Even with his eyes closed, he felt Jody’s nearness the moment she entered the kitchen from the bedroom wing. When he opened his lids, the air shimmered as she eased into an upholstered chair across from him.

“So how angry are you that I kept them a secret?” she asked. “On a scale from one to ten?”

“I’m not angry.” Callum realized it was true. He supposed he ought to feel cheated because he hadn’t been here for the twins’ infancy. He had no illusions about his own unreadiness for parenthood when he was twenty-four, however. He’d have done his best, but he was honest enough to acknowledge that he might not have been able to provide as much stability as the elder Reillys. “You’ve done a great job under difficult circumstances.”

“Would you have preferred it if I’d gone on keeping them a secret?” She twisted her hands together.

“No, of course not.” He wished she were sitting closer so he could take her hands to reassure her. They were cute hands, with plump fingers and short, clear nails.

She crossed her denim-clad legs. “They asked about you just now. I explained that not all daddies live with their children and that we might see you occasionally. Was that all right?”

“Of course you’ll see me.” He had no hesitation on that point. “I’ll be paying my share of their expenses, too.”

“We don’t need your money!” She squared her shoulders.

Callum understood about pride. He’d grown up on a tight budget, helping out at his parents’ store and earning extra money with odd jobs. “Maybe not, but I’d like to provide them with extras. Kids grow fast, or so I hear, and there must be a lot they’ll need once they start school. Don’t forget about college, either.”

“I haven’t given it any thought,” Jody admitted. “I’ve been taking life one day at a time since they were born.” She waved one hand. “That isn’t a criticism.”

“You mean you’re not complaining about the fact that I got you pregnant and hijacked the course of your life?”

“You didn’t do it on purpose,” Jody said. “Besides, I could have told you.”

That brought them to the sticking point. “Why didn’t you?” Callum asked.

“It would have killed you to come back here and give up your dreams.”

He supposed she was right. It wouldn’t have had to happen that way, though. “I invited you to California.”

“We’d have ended up hating each other,” Jody said. “Besides, I don’t belong in California.”

She belonged there as much as anyone he’d ever met! “Do you think there’s a panel of judges that rates people who want to move to the Golden State?” Callum asked in amusement.

“Don’t make fun of me!”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.” The hurt in her eyes filled him with remorse. “Please tell me why you don’t think you’d fit in L.A.”

“I’m not glamorous.” A narrowing of her eyes warned him not to interrupt. “I neither know nor care what the latest styles are, and neither do my kids. They’ve got lots of learning opportunities here, and a lot of emotional ties. Besides, I have a responsibility to the ranch.”

“Surely your parents never meant to chain you to it,” Callum said. “If you want to come with me, you should.”