Righteous Lies (Book 1: Dancing Moon Ranch Series) (25 page)

And Grace felt
like her heart had just split in two.

Grace was so
busy getting both babies ready for take-off, she barely had time to worry about
the flight ahead. They were in first class this time, so there was more room,
and Jack was just across the aisle. As terrified as she was on the flight to
New York, she was thankful to be on the plane again, but this time heading back
home.

"You
okay?" Jack asked, reaching across the aisle to take her hand as the big
jet whined before making its run for the sky.

Grace glanced
at Adam in the window seat beside her, strapped into his backwards-facing
infant carrier, then at Marc, on the other side of Jack, and said, "I'll
be fine when we're home and have our boys tucked into their cribs in their
room, where they belong."

Jack looked
askance at her, and said, "Susan gave no indication she plans to give Marc
up. It was just the opposite."

Grace said
nothing. She refused to believe Susan would take Marc back, though seeing her
with him the night before was troubling. Susan held him for the longest time,
just looking at him, that Grace had to resist the urge to take him from her,
claiming she was exhausted, and leave the hospital so Marc would be out of
sight, out of mind. Thankfully, Ricky had been out of the room for tests and
never saw his little half-brother. But in the hallway, as they were leaving,
Sam came out of the room and told them he'd suggested to Susan earlier that they
not say anything to Ricky about having a little brother for the moment, and
Susan agreed. So Grace knew Sam was considering the possibility that Ricky
might not be raised with a sibling.

"Honey,
you can't keep avoiding the issue," Jack said, refusing to let Grace stay
in her dream world. "For the next six weeks we're taking care of our
nephew, not our son."

"I refuse
to take your negative position," Grace said. "Susan
will
give us Marc, and he'll be raised
with Adam. Call it mother's intuition or whatever you want, but that's the way
it will be."

 
Jack folded his arms, seeming to have dropped
the issue, though his face was rigid. Grace tried to set it all aside by
concentrating on how it would be with two babies crawling around the floor. And
two kittens running around the house. And later, they'd get each boy his own pony.

"Jack,"
she said across the aisle, where he was sitting with his arms still folded, and
his mouth in a disgruntled slash. "Please let me dream a little while.
Don't spoil it for me."

Jack heaved a
very long sign, and said, "As long as you don't lose touch with
reality." The dark look of worry on his face said it all. As did Lauren's
own words...

...a hormonal imbalance that messes with the
brain and makes women hallucinate...

"I am not
Lauren," Grace reminded him again. "And just because I want to hope
doesn't mean I'm losing touch with reality. I do know the difference." She
could feel the tension growing between them again. After returning from the
hospital they'd had one night together as husband and wife, mostly her becoming
more intimately acquainted with Jack's body, while Jack confined his caresses
to her overlarge, milk-filled breasts, relieving her of an ounce or two in a
very stimulating way, making her eager to consummate the marriage before long. But
that was last night. Things were different in the morning.

Jack got out of
bed when the babies started fussing and brought them to her for nursing, even
helped bathe and diaper them afterwards. But he'd made no reference to the
intimacies they'd shared, and she knew he too had been restless during the
night, mulling over Susan's reaction to the baby, just as she had, but in a
different way. Jack still viewed Marc as a nephew he could grow to love as a
son if it came to that. She viewed Marc as a son she was in danger of losing.
And until she knew what Susan would do, that's the way it would be.

***

Maureen met
them at the airport, and when they arrived at the house, Grace was surprised to
find that Maureen and Flo had moved the nursery furniture from Sam and Susan's
house and set it up, along with Adam's furniture, so the nursery contained two
dressers, two changing tables, and two cribs, each prepared with new crib-sized
sheets and large wetting pads. Maureen already knew what Grace had only just
learned. Boys piddled all the time. Especially boys who managed to empty two
large breasts several times a day.

As soon as
Grace finished nursing both babies at the same time, Maureen helped bathe and
diaper them, and they put them in their cribs. Afterwards, while Grace and Maureen
sat in the chairs facing the fire while waiting for Jack to return from
checking on the horses, Maureen said, "Jack's happier than I've seen him
in years. He's pleased you're breastfeeding. Lauren refused to, and it wasn't
because she didn't have milk. When the nurse brought the baby to her she said
she wanted the baby on formula and for the doctor to give her something to dry
her up. Jack was furious, walked out of the room. I was there, and knowing how
obsessive Lauren was over Jack I thought she'd change her mind, but she didn't.
After that, Jack gave Jackie his bottle most of the time. There was no question
which parent bonded with the baby."

"I love
nursing the boys," Grace said. "And I love having Jack with me when I
do because he looks so pleased. It makes me feel like at least I can do that
for him... be the best mother I can be for his son. I know it means a lot to
him."

Maureen patted
her hand. "Honey, you have no idea how much it means to him. Jack's a born
father, and husband. He's been my nester since he was a little boy. I think all
he ever wanted was to run this ranch and have a home and a wife and a bunch of
kids. Sam, on the other hand, was okay going along with Susan and not having
kids. Then everything changed. Ricky's their focus now."

"But not Marc,"
Grace reminded Maureen. "At least not until last night."

"Jack told
me. He's pretty troubled," Maureen said. "He knows you're attached to
the baby, and he's worried about what might happen if Susan takes him
back."

"I'm
having trouble dealing with Jack's paranoia," Grace said. "I'm not
Lauren and I'm not Susan and I will never harm my babies. Jack and my boys are
the focus of my life. I can't imagine not having any of them now. But if Susan
took Marc back it wouldn't send me over the edge. I'd have this hollowness
inside for the rest of my life, but I'd cope and go on because I'd still have
Jack and Adam. "

"I
know," Maureen said. "Jack will eventually come around because he
loves you."

Grace said
nothing because she knew Jack didn't love her, at least not the way she wanted
him to. But she was working on that. Jack was a nester, as Maureen said, and
she intended to feather his nest and make it so soft he'd want to return to it
every night of his life, and stay every morning so she could prove to him, over
and over, for years to come, that there was no place like home in their
feathery nest bed...

The front door
swept open and Jack came in, hair mussed, face flushed, fleece-lined parka open
to reveal a worn shirt, faded jeans, chaps, boots and spurs. Her man. A real
man. The kind that kept her heart fluttering. She couldn't imagine a day would
come when she wouldn't feel that way. His presence seemed to fill the room. It
certainly filled her heart. Oddly, her breasts begin to tingle, like they did
when the boys cried. And all she was doing was looking at her husband.

He smiled.
"Are the boys asleep?"

She nodded.
"Out like lights."

"They ate
well?"

"Like a
couple of calves."

"Good."
He looked at his mother. "We're fine here now, Mom. Grace seems to have
everything under control," he said, and Grace got the impression he wanted
to be alone with her. It would be their first night together in their home as a
real family.

"I'll be
at the lodge if you need me then," Maureen said. "You'll be okay for
the middle-of-the-night feeding, Grace? I can stay if you want."

"I can
handle things, Mom," Jack said, winking at Grace, who blushed.

"Yes, son,
I believe you can," Maureen said, then hugged Grace and Jack, and left.

While Jack was
in the shower, and Grace was in her bedroom changing into her nightgown, the phone
rang, and she was surprised to find Justine on the other end, and even more
surprised when Justine announced she'd be driving down from Seattle the
following week to see the baby. Grace didn't fool herself into thinking Justine
was interested in seeing her new nephew. She wanted to check out her
brother-in-law. Part of Grace was excited about seeing the expression on
Justine's face when she saw Jack for the first time. Another part was
apprehensive. She always felt plain in Justine's presence, and Jack couldn't
help but notice the contrast between the sisters. Grace grew up watching the
stares of friends and relatives, and even strangers, and hearing their
comments...

...the little one's cute, but that older
one's absolutely gorgeous...

...the older one should be a model or go
into acting...

...she just has that natural beauty...

But Justine
didn't have big boobs! And Jack liked big boobs.

Grace also gave
birth to Jack's son. Justine could never top that.

Still, Grace
wished she were prettier, if only for Jack. Her nose was straight, and her eyes
nicely spaced, and her mouth of a regular size, and her chin pointed, but not
too pointed. But put together, her face was the kind of face no one could
describe. Women like Lauren and Justine were described by some as exotic,
others as stunning, or striking. But there was no way anyone could look at
either of those two and see ordinary.

Grace also
wished Jack loved her more, the kind of love men lay down their lives for. In
spite of what Maureen said about how angry Jack was when Lauren refused to
nurse their son, Grace couldn't set aside the look on Jack's face when he saw
Lauren for the first time in three years. Even after she'd killed their son,
Jack had been stunned by the sight of her...

"You'd
better get some sleep so you'll be ready for the boys when they want to be fed
in the middle of the night," Jack said, emerging from the bathroom wearing
nothing but a towel around his hips. She thought he might take her in his arms
then, while she stood in the doorway to her bedroom, but he walked past her and
headed down the hallway toward the living room.

"Where?"
Grace called after him, not exactly sure what she was asking. Well, sure, but
the question came out wrong.

Jack stopped at
the end of the hallway and glanced back at her. "Where what?"

"Where am
I supposed to sleep?" she asked, feeling odd to be asking that after what
happened at the hotel the night before, but uncertain. Jack had never said
anything about her sleeping with him once they were home, and all of her things
were in her bedroom.

"Okay,
honey," Jack said, walking up to her. "What's this all about?"
He reached down and took her hands and put them around his neck and kissed her
lightly and waited for her to say what she had to say.

"It's just
that... I know you
kind
of love
me—"

"What do
you mean
I kind of love you
?"

"We both
know why we got married," Grace said, "but I know it will take time
for fondness to grow into something more."

"Is that
all you feel for me, Grace? Fondness?"

"No, of
course not," Grace said, "but we're not talking about me. We're
talking about you."

"Honey,
you're the mother of my son. You've made this house into a home. You make me
happy. And I want to take care of you and Adam, and Marc if he becomes
ours."

"I know
all that," Grace said. "But that's part of the problem. You love me
the way a man loves a woman who's good to his child. But I want you to love me
the way a man loves a wife. The way I love you. For three years after Marc
died, I thought about nothing but him. Every moment of every day he was on my
mind. Almost as if his presence was around me. But when I met you things
started to change. A day would go by when I didn't think about Marc at all.
Then a couple more days. And then one day I realized I hadn't thought about him
for a week. And now my thoughts of you are constant... things you say, the way
you look, how you sometimes make me mad, but mostly how you make me happy. I
loved Marc, but he's in my past and I just want you."

"Can we
get in bed and talk about this?" Jack asked.

"Your
bed?"

"No,"
Jack said. "Our bed. Where we'll be making all those babies you
want."

"That's
another thing. Do you really want that many?" Grace asked. "Six
children are a lot of kids to raise."

"Honey, if
you want six I can handle six. I could use some help around this place." Jack
took her by the hand and led her into their bedroom, then slipped off the towel
and tossed it aside.
"And this has
to go," he said to Grace, reaching for her gown.

"No! Not
yet," Grace said. "I'm still wearing a pad and my stomach's
stretched, and I don't want you to see me. In a few months I'll have my figure
back and it'll be different."

"Honey,
you just had my son. Of course your stomach's stretched. And I don't care about
the pad. I want us to be flesh-to-flesh when we talk about whatever's bothering
you. Now raise your arms and let's get this thing off."

After they were
nestled in bed, Jack on his back with his arm around Grace, she snuggled up
against his side with her hand on his belly, and after they'd talked about the
boys, and even broached the subject of Susan with Marc the previous night,
Grace became quiet, not knowing how to tell Jack what was really bothering her.