Teardrop Lane (23 page)

Having four kids around was going to play hell with his sex life.

As he pulled Rose into the hallway for some privacy to kiss her good night, he observed, “I have one question. How did Jayne manage to get pregnant so many times?”

He entered his room with Rose’s laughter ringing in his ears.

For the first time in more than two weeks, he slept alone. He didn’t like it. He tossed and turned and learned that Galen talked in his sleep. A lot. And Keenan? Well, from this moment on the kid wasn’t allowed to eat grilled onions if the two of them were sleeping in the same room.

Cicero awoke the next morning tired and cranky and facing another extraordinarily long day behind the wheel. The guttersnipes were perky and rambunctious and loud. Cicero’s head pounded before they reached the city limits of the north central Texas town. In self-defense, he made two stops, the first at a branch of his bank, and the second at a dollar store. At the bank, he changed two twenties for ones. At the store, he refused to let the children go inside, but he effectively stopped the whining when he asked, “If you had to pick one favorite candy what would it be?”

Five minutes later, he returned to the car with pads of drawing paper, four packs of crayons, and the biggest bag of Hershey’s KISSES the store sold. He got into the
car, passed out the drawing supplies, then lowered his sunglasses, and threatened. “You can draw, you can watch a movie, you can sleep. No whining about him being on your side. No asking if we’re there yet. For one solid, blessed hour, I want quiet. For every fifteen minutes of peace and quiet I get, you get a piece of candy and a dollar,
if
there are any left.”

“Are you going to eat them all, Uncle Skunk?” Keenan asked.

“I’m not going to eat any of them. I’m a 3 MUSKETEERS–man. But every time one of you makes so much as a peep, I’m throwing a KISS and a buck out the window. When the bag is empty, it’s empty. When the money’s gone, it’s gone.”

“Really?” Galen asked.

“Really.”

“You won’t throw money out the window,” Keenan accused.

“Just watch me.”

He started the SUV, rolled down the window, tore open the plastic candy bag, and tossed four foil-wrapped KISSES onto the asphalt parking lot.

Misty gasped. “Uncle Hunter!”

“You littered!” Keenan accused.

“Don’t make me do it again.”

In the passenger seat, Rose snorted. Then she reached into the bag and swiped a handful of KISSES and murmured, “My emergency stash.”

Cicero nodded to her, shifted the car into gear, and headed out of town. The scamps didn’t learn real fast. In the first ten miles, he threw fifteen pieces of candy and seven dollars out of the window. Finally, though, they seemed to catch on and for a gloriously quiet half an hour, he heard only whispered comments. The hoodlums really did like their sugar fix.

They drew for a while, and watched another Disney
DVD. For this first leg of the trip, the boys had the backseat and the girls the middle one. He pretended he didn’t hear Daisy sing along to
The Lion King
directly behind him. You couldn’t hold a two-year-old to the same candy standards as you did the older kids. All in all, he considered the idea a success because it bought him peace and quiet for a hundred miles.

He was feeling pretty good about things as they rolled through the Panhandle of Texas. Cotton fields lined either side of the road. He had the cruise control set, the Stones playing on the stereo loud enough to drown out the sound of the movie
Frozen
coming—yet again—from the DVD player. Beside him, Rose read the romance novel that she’d purchased at the last gas station. He remembered a study he’d read in a magazine a while back that said how women who read romance novels had more and better sex than other women.

Works for me
.

The flashing red lights came up behind him fast. Frowning, he glanced down at his speedometer. He was legal. Maybe they’d go around.

He tapped his brakes and pulled over toward the shoulder. The cop car kept coming, falling in behind him. He muttered a curse, and applied the brakes as Rose said, “There’s a roadblock ahead.”

“Wonderful,” he replied. “Must be some sort of checkpoint. I wasn’t speeding.”

“What’s going on, Uncle Hunk?” Misty asked.

“It looks like Dudley Do-Right is about to tell us.”

Dudley and his partner, he corrected, seeing two highway patrolmen approach either side of the car. In front of them, another patrol car eased toward them. A flutter of unease rolled through Cicero. They were in the middle of nowhere, Texas. Something about this didn’t feel one bit right. He rolled down his window.

The officer placed his hand on the grip of his sidearm.
“I need your hands up where I can see them. Right now.”

“Officer, what’s this—”

“Now. Hands up!”

Cicero’s chin dropped open in shock but he raised his hands, as the other officer said to Rose. “You, too, lady. Hands up.”

“I want you out of the car,” said the first officer. “You, too, ma’am.”

In the backseats, children began to wail.

“Don’t shoot Uncle Hunk,” Misty cried.

“He didn’t mean to litter!” Keenan added.

A brush or two with the law during his wild twenties had taught Cicero that the best way to handle a situation like this was to follow directions and keep his mouth shut. So when the trooper told him to place his hands flat against the car and spread his legs, he did it without protest.

As the officer frisked him, Cicero spied the piece of drawing paper propped in the window beside Keenan. In red crayon, it read:

Cicero banged his forehead against the mom-mobile. Hard.

“He did
what
?” Shannon O’Toole asked with a gasp in her voice as she handed Daisy a doll to hold. At Celeste’s request, a large group of friends were gathering at the community center building three days after Rose’s return to Eternity Springs, which had been a day later than planned, due to the events in the Texas Panhandle.

“Keenan put a sign in the car window saying he’d been kidnapped,” Rose replied. “He’d seen it on TV and thought it would be a good idea to do it, too.”

“Oh, my gosh. I’m torn between horror and laughter. What did Cicero do?”

“Before or after the trooper pulled his stun gun?” Rose dryly asked.

Shannon’s chin dropped, but then she couldn’t hold back the laughter as Rose gave her a blow-by-blow report of the event. “You can’t blame the troopers. They were doing their job. But our circumstances were unusual to say the least, and it took some time to get everyone on the same page. The fact that Cicero had already contacted Mac Timberlake and gotten the ball rolling on a formal custody arrangement made everything so much simpler.”

“Is that going to be involved?”

“Not really. The Parnells have provided the documentation
he needs in order to enroll the kids in school or approve any medical treatment they need, but Child Protective Services in Texas will need to work with CPS in Colorado to get the details ironed out. He’ll have a court appearance. It’ll take a while.”

The arrival of more of their friends interrupted any further conversation between Shannon and Rose. Everyone exchanged greetings, then Celeste stepped onto the dais at the front of the room.

“Good afternoon, my dears. Thank you all for coming. As you most likely have heard, we have four new pint-sized citizens to welcome to town. It’s the Eternity Springs way for us to help, and after speaking with Cicero and Rose, I thought a bit of formal organization was in order. To recap the situation, these poor dears lost their mother in January and now our own Cicero has stepped up and brought them to live with him. I know we all want to help welcome these children to town. Cicero will be moving into the Garfields’ house once school is out in June, and Brandy and the children are able to join Greg who is loving his new job in Connecticut, by the way. In the meantime, they’re living in one of my cottages, and he has the basic necessities that he needs to provide their care. Of course, being a bachelor, he has little beyond those necessities. I thought it would be fun to throw a welcome party in June and shower these little ones and our friend Hunter with things they’re going to need.”

“That’ll be fun,” Sarah Murphy said, pulling up the calendar app on her phone. “Do you have a date picked out?”

“I have three. Let’s see what works best for everyone, shall we?”

Once the date was agreed upon, Celeste brought up the next item on the agenda. “Hunter will enroll the oldest two of the group in school tomorrow, but Little
Angels Day Care won’t have room until mid-June, I’m afraid. He’s going to need help with babysitting, especially for the younger two. I want to give him a list of people to call. If you’re willing to volunteer, please add your name and number to the signup sheet I’m sending around. Include your usual availability.”

Celeste passed around a clipboard, then turned to Rose.

“Did you have something you wanted to say to the group?”

“I do. Thank you, Celeste.” Rose stood up and hugged the older woman. “I don’t believe it takes a village to raise a child. It takes an angel. Thank God we have you.”

Turning to face her friends, she added, “Thank God we have all of you.”

She surveyed the room. Nic Callahan was signing her name to the babysitting roll. Hope Romano rocked her fussy eleven-month-old in her arms. Savannah Turner was hurrying to corral her newly crawling eight-month-old and Gabi Romano and her mother Maggie played a silent game of peek-a-boo with Sarah Murphy’s Michael whose second birthday was coming up. Ali Timberlake held Sage’s three-year-old, Racer, as Cat Davenport pulled a plastic cup full of dry Cheerios from her diaper bag to offer to her two-year-old Johnny.

A sudden lump formed in Rose’s throat and she fought back tears. She shifted Daisy from one hip to the other. For the first time since she moved to Eternity Springs and these women began marrying and reproducing like rabbits, she felt like she belonged.

She continued. “Since none of you have asked me about my vacation with Hunt, I figure you must have made a collective agreement to respect my privacy.”

“No, that’s not it at all,” Gabi said. “I’ve been keeping
them up-to-date on developments. Mitch kept me apprised.”

Rose laughed. “Why am I not surprised?”

Nic said, “We’re your friends and we’re happy to see you happy, Rose. Anything we can do to help you stay that way, we’re glad to do.”

“Absolutely,” Sarah added. “If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, I figure an hour of babysitting now and again surely helps her to stay.”

“Well, on Hunt’s behalf, I can’t thank you enough. The man is pitifully overwhelmed, what with his regular work schedule and Whimsies opening later this week and now all that needs doing where the children are concerned. I’m doing what I can to help, but after being gone for more than two weeks, my clinic schedule is packed.”

For the next half hour, the women talked and discussed and scheduled. Gabi quizzed Rose about her impressions of Bella Vita. In full mother-of-the-bride mode, Maggie not so subtly inquired about the status of Rose’s love life by asking if Rose wanted her to save all of her notes on wedding vendors.

“You’re getting way ahead of us there, Maggie.”

“Nevertheless, I’ll copy my file for you. I do have a soft spot in my heart for Cicero. I want him to be happy.”

Rose considered the harried man who’d handed over Daisy along with a diaper bag empty of diapers—but filled with Keenan’s baseball glove and cleats—this morning. “Once he learns of all this help you all are offering, he’ll be ecstatic, I’m sure.”

“While you’re copying wedding vendor lists, would you mind making one for me?” Ali asked. “Just in case.”

“Just in case?” Sarah repeated. “Are wedding bells gonna chime for the Timberlakes?”

“Maybe.” Ali gave Sarah a crooked smile. “Chase is coming home over Memorial Day and bringing his girlfriend
to meet us. A note in his voice gave me a heads-up. I won’t be at all surprised if they’re engaged.”

“That’s nice,” Rose said. Then, seeing the wistful smile that Sarah and Ali shared, she added, “Isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” Sarah replied, giving a firm nod. “You want him to be happy, Ali.”

“I do. I really do. It’s just that Mac and I had hoped he’d satisfy his wanderlust and come home and settle down. With a local girl.”

With Lori Murphy, Rose thought, recalling that Sarah’s daughter and Ali’s son had been sweethearts for a while. Their life paths had taken them in different directions, and they’d parted friends. Now Chase Timberlake made his living doing sports adventure photography all over the world. Lori Murphy was in vet school at Colorado State.

“How long has he been dating this girl?”

“Around eight months, I believe,” Ali responded. “Maybe a little longer. He talked about bringing her home at Thanksgiving, but they got a last minute assignment. They work together. They’ve both been in Chile for the past month.”

“I’ll bet you’re looking forward to seeing him,” Rose said.