Sweet Liar (36 page)

Watching, Mike saw that, for a moment, Samantha seemed to have no idea what to do, but then his nephew gave it all away by laughing, letting Samantha know that he saw her dilemma and was enjoying being the cause of it.

“You little scamp,” she said, narrowing her eyes at him as the boy kept working his way up the rose trellis on the wall. In the next minute, Samantha was after him, and the child, still laughing while his brother shrieked encouragement from the ground, led Samantha on a chase across the side of the wall, like two crabs moving on a perpendicular surface.

Stepping into the yard, Mike was ready to catch one or the other of them should they start to fall, but Samantha caught the child by the seat of his pants and the imp turned to look at her as if to say, Now what are you going to do? Mike could see that Sam had no idea how to get the big kid down, but she was trying not to let the boy see that. He saw, and he delighted in her consternation.

“Are you going to let a four-year-old defeat you?” Mike asked from the ground.

Without looking down at Mike, Samantha gave the child an I'm-bigger-than-you-and-I'm-going-to-win grin and the next minute she had him in her arms—all of what had to be a hundred pounds of him. Somehow, she got him to the ground. Of course Mike was there for those last few feet, catching them both in his strong arms when a rose branch broke and setting them upright on the lawn.

The minute the child's feet touched earth, he scampered off with his brother while Samantha rubbed her arms. They were aching from the exertion and from hundreds of rose thorn scratches. “Now I understand why you lift weights. It's to prepare you for dealing with children. Do you think I should give them a bath?”

Smiling, Mike gave her a soft kiss and pulled her into his arms. “Mike, where are the boys?”

“Mmmm,” he said, caressing her back. “You said the bad word.”

“ ‘Boys?' How is that a bad word?”

“No, you said,
bath.
They've disappeared, and you'll have to find them if you mean to clean those two up. Half the time Kane admits defeat and throws them into a horse trough. His theory is that they'll take a bath when they discover girls, so why bother until then?”

She pushed away from him and when she looked at him, her mouth was set. “My grandmother dealt with gangsters, so I think I am capable of dealing with two little boys. What we need here is a cunning mind and the strength of Hercules. Stand over there,” she ordered and when he was at one side of the garden, she said, “My goodness, it's Donatello and Michelangelo and Raphael and Leonardo right here in our garden!” When two dirty little boys appeared from nowhere, Samantha grabbed one about the waist then the other. Bowing under the weight like an Olympic bar across a squatter's shoulders, she held on through ferocious wiggles.

“You fibbed!” one child yelled, startling Samantha for she didn't know the boys could talk.

“Yes I did,” she answered calmly. “I learned how from your uncle Mike. He's the best fibber in the world.”

For a moment both boys stopped struggling to look at their uncle Mike with new respect, but he looked just the same, just like their dad, so he wasn't of much interest. They resumed their attempts to get away from Samantha. She wasn't very big, but she seemed extraordinarily strong.

“You two are going to have a bath, then I'm going to read you a story and you're going to bed.” When the boys kept struggling, nearly tearing Samantha's arms out of their sockets, she said, “It's the goriest story you've ever heard. Lots of blood and people being chopped in half and—”

The boys stopped wiggling as they listened to Sam tell them about what she was going to tell them all the way up the stairs.

It was as she was bathing the twins, trying to get what looked like years of dirt off of them while they bashed each other with soap and washclothes and drenched Samantha, that Mike stood in the doorway and watched her. The boys were so much alike, as Mike said, down to moles and birthmarks.

“How are Kane and I different?”

“Michael Taggert, if you're fishing for compliments—” She broke off as she dodged a bar of soap flying through the air.

“Maybe I am, but wouldn't you be curious if all your life people had told you that you were identical to another person, then someone told you that you weren't even similar? How are we different?”

“He's smaller than you for one thing. And the expression in his eyes is different. You're…you're a nicer person than he is. Softer.”

“Maybe when I look at you my eyes are different.”

“Maybe.” She turned toward him. “But your eyelashes are definitely longer. And curlier.”

At that Mike laughed. “Curlier?”

Embarrassed, she turned away. “I knew I shouldn't have said anything. You are not like your brother. Not like him at all.” Mike seemed to be satisfied with that as he left the bathroom, which was rapidly resembling a place that should apply for national relief.

After the boys were bathed and at long last in bed, she and Mike went to bed—together, in his bed. Samantha was very tired and would have thought she could expend no more energy during the day, but she walked out of the bathroom wearing her white nightgown and took one look at Mike's eyes, and they were on each other ravenously, tearing at clothes and skin, mouths and hands everywhere.

It was an hour later that they lay side by side, sated, Sam's head on Mike's shoulder, his arms around her.

“This is all so new to me,” Samantha said. “I mean, I've done this…Sort of.” She laughed. “Mike, the difference between sex with you and sex with my ex-husband is, as Mark Twain says, the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. I had no idea sex could be enjoyable, fun, and so very…fulfilling.”

Mike said nothing.

Idly, she ran her fingers over the hair on his chest. “I guess you've done this a thousand times with a thousand different women. I guess this is nothing…unusual for you.”

“Sam, when I was fourteen my father gave me the first of many talks about using protection during sex. He talked to me about sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. Since then, every time I've gone to bed with a woman I've used protection, a thin little membrane that separated me from her. I've used it even if she
said
she was on the Pill or whatever. I'd rather be safe than sorry. Until last night I'd never been, I guess you could say, skin to skin with a woman before. Maybe you could even go so far as to say that I was a virgin until last night.”

She was hesitant. “Was it better? Without, I mean?”

“Much
better. Much, much, much better. Never experienced anything like it. Had no idea sex could be so good.”

Holding up his hand, she looked at it, comparing it in size to her own, caressing his fingertips with hers. “So now I guess, well, later, with other women you won't use any protection. You'll always want to be…skin to skin.”

“That's true.”

Her fingers laced with his and tightened. She could not let herself think of life without Mike, of Mike being with another woman.

“But then, Sam,” he said very softly, “I think the buck stops here.”

She was afraid to ask what he meant, but his words made her heart beat faster. Then, abruptly, she turned toward him. “Michael! If you're not using any birth control, I could get pregnant!”

“Really?” He sounded as though he were unconcerned about the possibility of pregnancy, then just slightly, his hand tightened on hers. “Would you mind?”

She ignored his second question. “I think this is extremely irresponsible of you. You should have used something.”

“Me? Why not you?”

“I would have, but that first time you didn't exactly give me time to think, and besides, I was a little too tipsy to think clearly.”

He grinned down at her. “Know what the mating call of the southern belle is? Ooooh, I'm soooo drunk.”

“I'll get you for that,” she said as she jumped on him, trying to tickle him, her nightgown wrapping around both of them.

But they were interrupted by two very clean little boys standing by the bed and staring at them. There was no need for the children to say anything because what they were feeling was in their eyes: They were away from home and their dad and they wanted reassurance. Neither Sam or Mike hesitated as they pulled the boys into bed with them. The children snuggled together like the two halves of an egg that they were between Mike and Sam and went to sleep instantly.

Samantha had an idea that sleeping with children cuddled close was nothing new to Mike, but it was to her, and the feeling called to something deep within her.

“Mike,” she whispered, “do you make twins?” She tried to make the question sound light, but she couldn't. She wanted Mike, and she wanted the children he could possibly give her.

Mike knew what she was asking: She wanted to know if the two of them could have kids together, and Mike knew that an affirmative answer from him was a lifetime commitment. But then he'd made a commitment the first night they'd made love and he'd used no birth control, which had been a very conscious decision on his part. “Probably,” he said at last. “Want a couple?”

“I rather would, yes,” she answered as though it were not the most important answer she'd ever given in her life.

Above the heads of the sleeping children, their fingers entwined, holding to each other tightly.

M
ike woke when he heard the soft sound of a key turning in the front door lock. Since the attempt on Sam's life, he never seemed to sleep soundly; he always had one ear alert and listening. Now he knew that the person coming in the front door had to be his brother Kane because, for all his brother's act of nonchalance, the truth was, Kane was mad about his two boys and could hardly bear them to be out of his sight.

Easing out of bed and tiptoeing from the room, Mike was still pulling on his trousers when Kane entered the town house. “I see the place is still intact,” he said. “Did my brats give your lady nightmares or did she do the sensible thing and leave you?”

Without a word, Mike put his finger to his lips and motioned for his brother to follow him. Silently, he opened the door to the bedroom he shared with Sam and allowed him to look inside. Samantha was on her back, and in the crook of each arm was one of Kane's sons, one on his stomach, his face pressed into Sam's arm, while the other boy was on his side, half on her, half off.

“It's been so long since I've seen them clean I'm not sure I would have recognized them.” As Mike started to close the door, Kane looked at his brother and what he felt was in his eyes. “God, how I envy you!”

Mike smiled but with a touch of sadness at the memory of the death of his brother's wife. His sadness was soon erased by the cry of “Daddy!” and the hurtling through the air of one small body then another. Catching one then the other of the heavy, sleep-warmed children, Kane started for the living room.

“Sammy!” one of the boys yelled, putting out his arms for Sam to come with them, but Mike put his hand over the door as a barrier.

“Oh, no, monster, you've had her long enough. She's mine now.” At that he shut the door, locked it, turned to Samantha, who was just waking up, and stroked a pretend mustache. “And now, my beauty…”

“Mike,” Samantha said, sitting up in the bed. “You can't…I mean, there are people out there.”

“A common occurrence in my family,” he said as he made a leap onto the bed and grabbed her about the waist, pulling her to him.

“Mike, really, you can't. Your brother—”

“He knows all about the birds and the bees.” He was fumbling for the edge of her nightgown, but fumbling in an expert way as she made halfhearted attempts to push his hand away. Halfhearted because what if she
won
?

When Samantha finally left the bedroom, she found Kane in the breakfast room buried behind
The Wall Street Journal
and the twins sitting on the floor eating.

“What are they eating?” she asked, although she could very well see what they had been given to eat, but she wanted Kane to admit it. She was having a difficult time liking this man.

When Kane spoke, he didn't seem very concerned, for he didn't even look around his paper. “Cookies. Diet cola.”

Without asking their father's permission, Samantha took the paper towels laden with cookies from in front of the children along with their cans of cola.

Kane looked around his paper at her. It wasn't that what she was doing was so unusual, heaven knew that every female in his family had tried to get his sons to eat properly, all without success. What surprised him was that Samantha had taken away the boys' food and they weren't screaming in protest.

Kane watched as she put pillows on chairs at the table—his boys did
not
eat at tables—towels over the pillows to protect them, then lifted the boys to seat them on the pillows.

Giving up any pretense at pretending to read the paper, Kane saw his rambunctious boys sit quietly while Samantha scrambled two eggs, toasted whole wheat bread, and poured two glasses of milk. Kane was now fascinated because to his knowledge, his sons had not eaten anything except grasshopper legs and rose thorns and sugar for years. Twice he managed to catch the eye of one of his boys, raising an eyebrow in question, but his son merely gave him an angelic smile, as though their eating eggs and toast and sitting at a table without spilling anything was what they did every day.

After the meal Kane watched Samantha wash their hands and faces—another first—then kneel and hold up two cookies.

“What do I get for these?” Samantha asked.

“Kisses,” the boys chorused, sounding like something out of a 1950s model-child training film.

Smiling, the boys each kissed one of Samantha's lovely cheeks, then held theirs up to be kissed by her. When the boys went scampering into the garden, Samantha called after them that if they got dirty she'd have to bathe them again and rewash everything.

“Genitalia, too?” one of the boys asked.

Samantha turned to Kane, her eyes wide in shock.

“He means toes,” Kane said, shrugging. “He heard the word on ‘The Simpsons' and I told him it meant toes.”

“Yes, you darling child,” Samantha said. “I'll wash your toes too and further, if you get dirty, I'll trade all your Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle bandages for boring grown-up ones. How's that for punishment?”

Giggling, the boys ran into the garden.

Kane's mouth was hanging open as he looked at Samantha as she cleaned up the breakfast dishes.

Turning to him, her face stern and judgmental, she said, “You really shouldn't let them eat cookies for breakfast, and diet cola is all chemicals. And their hygiene leaves a great deal to be desired.”

Picking up his paper, Kane put it back in front of his face. “You can't have them, Sam. They're mine. Get Mike to make you some of your own.”

Samantha didn't answer him. When she went to the kitchen, she was blushing, for the thought that Kane, who she knew was a widower, might possibly leave the boys with her until he found a mother for them had indeed been uppermost in her mind.