Four Times the Trouble (6 page)

“You’re one lucky dude,” he muttered as Jacob waited for Michelle to slide into the booth. Jacob didn’t bother correcting him.

“You feeling better?” Michelle asked half an hour later as they finished their breakfast.

Jacob nodded. The food had definitely helped improve his mood.

“You probably just needed something to eat,” she said, smiling at him.

“Probably.”

“So what’d you think of the show tonight?”

Jacob grinned at her. “Are you fishing for a chance to say, ‘I told you so’?”

“Well, I did tell you it was worth our time, and I was right, wasn’t I?”

“I’m not sorry we went,” he said.

“After all the doughnuts I had to buy to get you to come tonight, I think I at least deserve the chance for an ‘I told you so,’ Ryan.”

“You were absolutely correct, Ms. Colby. Our time was well spent and I’m glad you talked me into going. I had no idea how much one evening could accomplish.”

“Those kids were really something, weren’t they?” she asked, getting serious on him all of a sudden.

Jacob agreed that the kids had been remarkable. Remembering the yearning he’d seen on her face when she’d watched the talent show that evening, he was once again struck with how much she was cheating herself out of as the years rolled by without her.

“Did you and Brian plan to raise a family?” he asked before he could stop himself. What he needed right then was more distance, not more familiarity.

“I was six weeks pregnant when he left to go overseas.”

“You were? But…” She’d said the words so softly Jacob wondered if maybe he’d misunderstood. But as he looked across the table into her pain-filled eyes, he knew he hadn’t. “Oh, Michelle. I’m sorry.”

She shrugged, looking down at her empty plate.

Jacob cradled his coffee cup in his palms. “What happened?” he asked.

“I lost the baby the day after they told me Brian was missing. It was a boy.”

He could tell she was trying hard not to cry again. She looked up finally, a sad tremulous smile on her lips, and Jacob felt a rush of admiration for her. He was amazed how she could come to work every day, be cheerful and optimistic, when her life had held so much tragedy. Until tonight, he’d had no idea how much.

“Did Brian know? About the baby, I mean?” he asked.

She looked down at her diet soda, stirring the near-empty glass with her straw, and shook her head.

“I wanted to wait until I was completely sure. It was going to be a homecoming surprise.” Her words were little more than a whisper.

Silence stretched between them as her words hung in the air.

“How do you do it?” he finally asked. “How do you find so much good in this world when it treats you like it does?”

She shrugged and looked up at him. “I don’t always find good. But I know it doesn’t help any to focus on the bad. When I lost the baby I almost lost myself, as well. It hurt so badly I didn’t have the strength to get up in the morning. I kept thinking I’d be okay when Brian came home. The loss was as much his as it was mine. He’d be as devastated by it as I was, and together, sharing that, we’d get through it. I didn’t think things could get any worse. But they did.”

Jacob wished he were someplace he could take her into his arms. “You mean not finding Brian?”

She shook her head. “No. I was staying with my mom and dad after the miscarriage, and one morning a couple of weeks later, the first time I’d been alone since leaving the hospital, I got a phone call. It was a government official wanting me to identify a corpse that had washed up on the shore of the Gulf of Suez near Cairo. Brian had been staying in Cairo. The body was still intact and they were certain it was Brian. When I hung up the phone I promised myself that if I was spared that—if it wasn’t Brian, if only I could still hope he was alive—I would handle anything else. They brought the body back here, my dad drove me to the airport to meet the plane, I looked into the body bag, and it wasn’t Brian. I’d never been so thankful in my life. I knew then that I had to get a grip on my grieving or it was going to kill me before Brian made it home. Ever since then, I just do what I have to do to get through and look for whatever good I can find to make the waiting easier.”

“I think you’re a remarkable, woman, Michelle Colby,” Jacob said softly, holding her gaze with his own.

She looked down. “I’m not really. Sometimes I think maybe I’m just taking the easy way out, doing nothing but waiting. But I just don’t know any other way. So I wait.” She shook her head. “Anyway, I don’t even know why I’m telling you all this, except that tonight I needed a friend and you seemed different somehow, more human.”

Jacob frowned. “More human? What have I been up to now? An alien?”

“You always seem so invincible. In all the years I’ve known you I’ve never heard you ask anyone for anything.”

“Maybe you weren’t listening,” he said lightly, reaching for his wallet as he picked up their bill.

“And maybe you weren’t asking.” She snatched the bill from his fingers. “I said I’d pay. See if you can handle having someone do that much for you.” Her tone was teasing, but her eyes told a different story.

Jacob drove her home, waiting until she’d waved at him from her living room window before he pulled away. Michelle might think he needed to reach out to people more. But she was wrong.

* * *

H
E
WALKED
his babysitter to the end of his driveway, watched while she ran across the street to her mother’s bungalow and went slowly back inside, locking up for the night. Looking in on the girls on the way to his bedroom, he tucked in a stray limb here and there. As he bent to put Jessie’s teddy bear back into bed with her, he was surprised to see his daughter’s big brown eyes gazing up at him. Her brow was puckered, her lower lip quivering.

Jacob sat down on her bed and lifted her onto his lap. “What is it, precious? Did you have a bad dream?”

She sniffled and shook her head. “Tomorrow’s Valentine Day,” she said softly. Her little voice was so forlorn Jacob had to struggle not to smile.

“Is that a problem?” he whispered back.

Her head moved against his chest as she nodded. Jacob loved the feel of her slight weight leaning on him, trusting him. Needing him.

“I forgot to tell you that me and Meggie are s’posed to bring cookies to the party.”

“That’s easy enough, punkin. We’ll stop at the store on our way to school in the morning. Okay?”

“’Kay.” She didn’t sound any happier.

“Jess? Is there something else wrong?”

She sat up and studied him for a moment, then settled back against him. “Meggie says not to say,” she said barely above a whisper.

While Jacob was concerned to hear that his daughters were deliberately keeping things from him, he was even more concerned about the reason for their silence. Picking Jessie up, he carried her out to the living room, reaching to flip on the light by the couch as he sat down with her on his lap.

“Okay, sport. Get this once and for all. There is never,
ever,
anything you can’t tell me and there never will be—got that?” He took hold of her shoulders, turning her so that she was looking at him.

Wide-eyed, she nodded.

“I can’t keep you and your sisters safe unless I know what’s happening, Jess. So it’s important that you guys don’t keep secrets from me.”

She fiddled with one of his shirt studs. “It’s just that when I said me and Meggie’d bring cookies to the party, some of the kids said we always bring yucky store kinds, so I said uh-uh and they said uh-huh, ’cause we didn’t have a mommy to make cookies for us to bring and I said we had you and they said daddies couldn’t make cookies, so I said you could and now we’re going to be bringing yucky store ones anyway ’cause I forgot to tell you about making them,” she finished in a rush.

Jacob would have loved to have a talk with each and every kid in Jessie’s class. “I’m not glad you forgot to tell me about the cookies, Jess, but I think we can solve this pretty easily. Lucky for you I don’t have to work in the morning because of tonight’s benefit show. So I’ll make a deal with you. You put your pretty little self right back to bed, go to sleep, and I’ll see about getting those cookies made. Deal?”

Jessie flung her arms around his neck and squeezed him so tightly it hurt. “Thank you, Daddy.”

* * *

M
ICHELLE
FLUFFED
the pillow on the end of her couch and settled down against it—again. She couldn’t sleep. Usually, when her demons drove her from her bed, she’d be out as soon as she lay down on the sofa. There was something soothing about being in the living room. There were no expectations there. But it wasn’t working this time.

She turned over, closed her eyes and tried to will herself to sleep, but a restless energy hummed through her. Her traitorous mind replayed the scene that had taken place hours earlier in this very room. She could still feel Jacob’s arms around her, pulling her against him.

She reached for the picture on the end table, gazing at Brian’s likeness in the moonlight. Not that she needed the picture to remember every line of his face, every expression, every smile. She didn’t need to see his laughing green eyes to imagine them gazing at her lovingly.

But how could she continue just existing like this? Brian had been gone for so long…

Rolling over, she hugged Brian’s picture to her chest. Tonight Jacob had been warm and solid—real. He was more than just a memory. She remembered the compassion she’d seen in his eyes when she told him about the baby she’d lost. She had a feeling that underneath his irreverent facade was a deeply caring man.

But none of that gave her the right to be unfaithful to her husband. She’d rather die than take the chance that Brian might come home to find that she’d given her heart to another man.

* * *

J
ACOB
COULD
THINK
of a lot of things he’d rather be doing at one in the morning than looking through cookbooks. Like going to bed, for instance.

Sugar cookies. That sounded doable. He had sugar. He looked at the picture in the book and figured he could cut out a pretty mean heart with a paring knife. Then scanned the list of ingredients, hoping he wasn’t going to find something like chocolate squares or coconut. He didn’t stock many baking supplies. Flour, salt, butter. Check. Biscuit and pancake material. Vanilla he had for when he and the girls, mostly he, cranked out homemade ice cream. And baking soda. Jacob opened his refrigerator—yes, he still had that open box of baking soda Nonnie had told him to put there when he’d forgotten to throw away the bologna before leaving on vacation last summer. He was set.

He dumped the ingredients into his biggest bowl, determined to make the best cookies Lomen Elementary had ever had. Maybe then his little girls could just go about living their lives like the happy kids they should be. He’d bet there weren’t too many mothers who’d stay up half the night baking cookies simply because their daughters had forgotten to say they needed them. Unless of course that mother were Michelle. He had a feeling she’d stay up
all
night to bake cookies if she had to.

Not that he had any business thinking about Michelle. Nope. He was going to make life easier on himself and keep thoughts of Michelle strictly off-limits. There would be no more spurts of jealousy, no more hormonal reactions. She wasn’t the type of woman a guy had a casual relationship with. And casual relationships were all Jacob had.

Besides, he didn’t have a chance with Michelle, casual or otherwise, even if he chose to, which he wouldn’t. Brian’s hold on Michelle went much deeper than the loyalty of young love Jacob had originally thought it was. She’d made a pact with fate to hold on until Brian returned. Just hold on. She wasn’t really living at all, just existing. It sounded as if she hadn’t even yet begun to grieve for the baby she’d lost. She was waiting for that, too.

Jacob cracked an egg on the side of the bowl. After what he’d witnessed and heard that evening, he didn’t think Michelle was ever going to get on with life until she had her answers—one way or another. And by the sounds of things, those answers might never be found.

He spent the next few minutes picking eggshell out of his cookie dough.

CHAPTER FIVE

“J
ACOB
,
CALL
FOR
YOU
on line six.” Bob Chaney, their producer, poked his head into the sound room during a commercial break Friday morning.

Michelle pushed a button on the telephone and handed Jacob the receiver. He looked so different this morning than he had on Wednesday night, and she’d hoped the return to his usual uniform of sweats and T-shirt would have a grounding effect on her growing interest in him. It hadn’t.

“Of course I remember. I never forget a beautiful woman,” she heard him say into the receiver.

Michelle studied the program sheet in front of her. They had three promos coming up, a telephone interview, a weather spot, sport scores to announce again and six songs to play. What did she care if Jacob was talking to a beautiful woman? It certainly wasn’t anything new.

“Tonight?”

Please say no.

“How late?”

You have children to watch.

“I only stay up past my bedtime on special occasions.”

He was grinning. She had to look away.

“You’re on. I’ll pick you up at eight.”

Michelle had never felt lonelier in her life.

* * *

J
ESSIE
, A
LLIE
AND
M
EGGIE
dragged in from school Friday afternoon, the oversize 49ers T-shirts they were wearing seeming to weigh them down. They walked through the kitchen, their multicolored backpacks still across their shoulders, not even stopping to take a sip from the three glasses of milk he’d set out on the table.

“Hi,” Jacob said, smiling at them.

“Hi,” they answered in identically unhappy voices as they continued on out of the kitchen, traipsing down the hall to their room.

Jacob looked at the untouched peanut-butter sandwiches still sitting on the table while a knot formed in his stomach. The only time Allie had ever passed up food was that time she’d reacted to her diphtheria inoculation and run a fever of 103. Enough of this mind-reading routine—he was going to trust his own judgment. Leaving the sandwiches on the table, Jacob turned and strode down the hall.

The girls were sitting on Meggie’s bed, their backpacks dropped haphazardly in the middle of the floor. Jacob stood in the doorway, wishing he was a lot more sure of himself. He could hardly believe he was intimidated by three pint-size seven-year-olds.

“Who’s going to tell me what’s going on?” he asked glancing from one to another. They looked so small and vulnerable as they sat there huddled together. But he managed a relentless stare, anyway.

“We promised Ms. Wilson we’d do our best on everything from now on,” Allie finally said solemnly.

“That doesn’t sound so bad.” He didn’t see the problem yet.

“I have to be Cinderella, Daddy,” Jessie said, looking wistfully excited and ready to cry all at once.

“You got the part?” he asked. He’d thought the triplets had either skipped the auditions or blown them.

“And we’re her evil stepsisters,” Allie said, pointing to herself and Meghan. Meggie’s hair was loose, hiding her face. Jacob hoped she wasn’t crying.

He went in and sat down on Allie’s bed. “I don’t get it. You guys loved acting in the Christmas play. It’s all you talked about for months. And now you’re upset because you got picked for the starring roles of a story you all three know by heart?” He tried not to panic as it occurred to him that his daughters weren’t just his children—they were females. This was what Eleanor Wilson and, later on, Michelle had been trying tactfully to point out. That just by the nature of the beast—male versus female—there were going to be times when he missed the boat.

Allie’s little chin trembled. “If I gotta tell you something, you promise you won’t get mad enough to go away like Mommy did?”

“Go away?” Jacob was completely unprepared for that. He joined the girls on Meggie’s bed, pulling them all into the circle of his arms. “I’m not going anywhere, ever—at least not without you three. You could lie and cheat and steal, and I’d punish you for sure, but I’d never leave you. Never.
I love you.
”

Three little pairs of arms wrapped themselves around Jacob, and his words of love echoed back to him in triplicate. Jacob sought the gaze of his eldest daughter by nine minutes. “We’re a family, Allie, you and Meggie and Jessie and me, and nothing’s going to change that. You guys are stuck with me until you’re all grown-up and so sick of me you’ll be begging for your own apartments.”

Jacob felt an extrahard squeeze around his middle. “I’m going to live with you forever, Daddy,” Jessie said.

“You can’t, Jessie,” Meggie said. “Not when you get married and have babies.”

“Then I won’t get married.”

“Don’t you ever want to be a mommy, Jess?” Allie asked.

“Not if I have to leave Daddy.”

“That’s dumb.” Meggie scooted off the bed and sat on the floor by the bookcase.

“It’s not dumb, is it, Daddy?” Jessie asked, climbing onto his lap.

“It is kinda dumb, Jess,” Allie answered for him, playing with the fringe of his cutoff denim shorts.

“Is not,” Jessie said, burrowing her head into his chest.

“Is too,” Meggie said. She was leafing through
Green Eggs and Ham.

“Is n—”

“Okay, girls. We’re kind of getting off the subject here. But for the record, whether Jessie’s feelings withstand the test of time or not, they aren’t dumb—not if Jessie’s feeling them. Now, back to
Cinderella.
What’s the problem? You don’t like acting anymore?”

“I do,” Jessie said.

“Me, too,” Meggie agreed, still thumbing through the book.

“It’s the costumes, Daddy. Ms. Thomas—she’s the boss of the play—says they all have to be homemade and we don’t even have a sewing machine,” Allie said, frowning up at him.

“And Cinderella has to have
two
costumes because of being a maid
and
going to the ball,” Jessie added.

Jacob’s mind was spinning as he tried to find a way to reassure his daughters and find a solution to their problem at the same time. “So we’ll learn how to sew,” he said, knowing that was going to be a near impossibility. A sure impossibility considering the time he had to work with.

“Even we know you can’t sew, Daddy,” Meghan informed him. She was no longer turning the pages of her book. Glancing down he read silently,
Would you could you?
He had a feeling Meggie hadn’t stopped there by coincidence.

“So we’ll find someone who can,” he said, realizing he knew someone who both could and probably would. He remembered the homemade curtains at her windows, the throw pillows on her couch.

“But we can’t just go take them to somebody, Daddy, ’cause we have to help,” Allie said.

Jacob shifted Jessie more firmly onto his lap. “Then we’ll have to find someone to come here just like Nonnie does.”

“We could ask Nonnie,” Jessie suggested.

“Nonnie can’t
sew,
Jess,” Meggie said, clearly irritated with her sister’s naiveté. “Her fingers hurt her all the time and she has to look through those funny glasses just to read our papers.”

“I’ll find someone, girls, I promise,” Jacob said before another argument flared up.

“There’s more, Daddy,” Jessie said timidly.

More?
“Well, now’s the time to lay it on me.” Jacob injected an extra note of cheer into his voice. He wanted them to trust him with their troubles, which meant that one way or another he was going to have come through for them when they did.

“Ms. Thomas said to tell you we need someone to help us change during the show,” Meggie said, closing her book with a snap.

“Yeah, she said we couldn’t have another incibent like the one at the Christmas play where you came into the girls’ changing place. The other girls and mothers didn’t like it ’cause you’re a boy,” Jessie said.

Jacob figured he’d been more embarrassed than anyone else present that night. “I’ll tell you what. When I ask someone to help with the costumes I’ll make sure she can be there on play night, too. How’s that sound?”

Meggie’s smile transformed her usually serious face. “That sounds real good, Daddy.”

“Yeah,” Jessie and Allie chorused.

“Laurie’s coming over to babysit later tonight, but how about we play a game of hoops before dinner?” Jacob asked.

“Yeah!” All three girls scrambled up, their worlds all right again.

Jacob shook his head and wondered how much his promise was going to cost him as he followed his daughters out to the small basketball hoop he’d installed beside the garage. He knew who he had to ask to help them—someone who’d already offered her services; someone who’d looked longingly at strangers’ children the other night.

It was the perfect solution. The girls would have some female companionship; they’d get their costumes made and still be safe from emotional disaster. Michelle was already married, committed elsewhere. It would be no reflection on the girls when she moved on. They’d know going in that she’d already promised her life to another family. If only Jacob could trust himself to remember the same thing.

* * *

H
E
WAITED
until Monday to approach Michelle. He could have called her at home over the weekend, but he’d wanted to keep things as impersonal as possible. He chose his moment, the two-minute commercial break in the middle of their show. Short and simple, that was how he planned to keep things.

Leaning forward on his stool, he rested his arms on the counter in front of him. “Remember what you said the other night about me never asking for anything?” he asked, turning his head to glance at her. She looked good. Man, she looked gorgeous.

“Yeah.” The one word brought him back with a snap.

“Well, I’m about to change that.”
Get a grip, Ryan.

“Congratulations.” She slid off her stool and headed for the door.

Jacob sat up and stared at her. “Where’re you going?” The words came out more sharply than he intended.

She turned back with a startled look. “We only have another eighty seconds and my throat’s dry. I need a drink.”

“So that’s your answer, then?”

She walked back to the counter. “My answer to what?” she asked, clearly perplexed.

“I just took you up on your offer to spend some time with the girls.” And it was much harder than even he’d thought it would be. If she said no…

She started to smile. “You did?”

He suddenly felt pounds lighter. “Yeah, I did.” He smiled back at her.

“Five, four, three, two…go!” Bob’s voice piped over the speaker from the control room.

Michelle mouthed yes as Jacob started in with the weather report. It was going to be a bright sunny day in Los Angeles.

* * *

M
ICHELLE
DIDN
’
T
second-guess her decision to take on Jacob’s girls even once, though she thought of little else all morning. Spending time with Jacob’s daughters would certainly entail spending more time with him, and considering the way she’d been feeling about him lately that might have been a problem. Except that she’d just spent the longest weekend of her life picturing Jacob in the arms of some new beauty. When she realized she was actually jealous, she’d been reminded of just why she’d never been tempted by Jacob before. His inability to commit himself to a long-term relationship was a basic flaw that was sure to prevent her from seeing him as anything more than a friend. But mothering his children for a while was another ball game entirely. Michelle knew they were just what she needed—and suspected they might very well need
her
a little bit, too.

“So when do we start?” Michelle asked the minute they were off the air.

Jacob started gathering up the material they’d used for that morning’s show. “Maybe you’d better wait until you find out what you’re getting into before you commit yourself,” he said.

Michelle’s smile faded as she watched him. “You don’t want my help now?” she asked. She should’ve expected he’d change his mind. Jacob never let himself rely on anyone.

“That’s not it,” he said, throwing newspapers in the trash. “But I should explain a few things first. You want to go for coffee or something?”

He wasn’t meeting her eyes, and she had a pretty good idea why. She just wished it wasn’t so hard for him to ask for a little help. “A diet soda would be great,” she said.

They went to the deli next door to the station and ordered bagels to go along with Jacob’s coffee and Michelle’s soda. The girl behind the counter obviously approved of the way Jacob was dressed. Or maybe it was his smile that fascinated her. All Michelle knew was that the girl looked at Jacob more than she did her cash register; she was flirting so obviously it was embarrassing. But though Jacob flirted right back, his response seemed somewhat mechanical. Michelle wondered if that was how he managed to keep women from getting too close.