Patricia Forsythe - His Twin Baby Surprise

Jim would have that if Ben didn’t end up in juvenile detention first. The family didn’t realize it, but Fred was doing them a favor by scaring some sense into their boy right now.

He was still considering that when the door to the outer office was thrown open, reverberating against the wall. Startled, Fred jerked upright. No one came in, but he craned his neck to see five kids scuffling in the dirt, fighting, clawing and kicking. Their howls echoed into the jail as they shrieked and tumbled.

Fred pushed his chair back and lumbered to his feet, forgetting about his pants as the weight of his utility belt dragged them down and they started to slip.

His horrified attention was on the kids. There was something wrong with their faces. Their features seemed to be smashed in. It was several seconds before he realized they were all wearing stockings over their heads. One kid had a pair of pantyhose over his, the legs tied up in a kind of crazy ponytail that bobbed on top of his head. Or her head. Fred couldn’t tell.

“Hey, what’s going on here? Stop that right now. You can’t be fighting like that.”

They ignored him, continuing to punch and kick as they howled and screamed, kicking up dust and knocking over a trash can. They banged up against the side of the building as they called each other names, the yelling so loud and crazy he couldn’t make sense of what they were saying.

“Stop! Stop!” Fred bellowed. He started around the side of the desk, forgetting about his pants, which immediately fell to his knees, hobbling him. He tripped and went down like two hundred and fifty pounds of wet cement, face-first. Instantly the fighting outside paused and he heard footsteps running toward him.

“Sorry, Sheriff Jepson,” one of them growled in an obvious effort to disguise his voice. “Just...just stay down, okay?”

“What? Stop. What are you doing?” Fred couldn’t get up and he couldn’t turn over because of the way his pants had twisted around his knees.

“Get the key! Get the key!” the kids were shouting in unison from where they crowded around the door.

He could hear one of them scrambling through the items on his desk, opening drawers and riffling through.

“I got it!” the kid shrieked.

Fred couldn’t tell who it was—who any of them were. He groaned when one of them crouched on his back to keep him down. Blackness was closing in on him. Mary Alice’s meat pie threatened to make a second appearance.

He managed to turn his head to the side enough to see one of the kids run toward the other room. He heard the rattle of the key in the lock of the holding cell. A moment later that same kid ran past with Ben in tow.

The boy was yelling, “Are you crazy? My dad woulda got me out.”

The kid who was pulling him responded, “Shut up and come on. We’re heading for the border. My uncle Lester’s been in jail for years and Grandpa says he’ll never get out.”

“I’m not your uncle Lester. How come you think you’re the boss of everybody?”

“I’m standing up for my friend,” the kid insisted. “You gotta think about your future. You don’t want to be a criminal.”

“I ain’t a criminal, and you didn’t let me finish my sandwich.”

“Oh, quit thinking about your stomach.”

“I don’t need you to—” Ben started to say but the other kid jerked him out the door.

Fred heard feet running away, and the one sitting on his back jumped up, freeing him. Pushing himself up onto his elbows, he cursed.

His prisoner was in the wind.

CHAPTER ONE

Twenty years later

LISA THOMAS STARED at the row of pregnancy tests—six of them—lined up on the table in front of her like crestfallen soldiers who had let their leader go down in defeat.

“They’re all positive.” Gemma Whitmire, one of her best friends since childhood, sat beside her. Carly Joslin, her other best friend, sat, too, and scooted her chair in closer.

They were in one of the examination rooms of the Sunshine Birthing Center, which Gemma had founded for the benefit of the women of Reston County. The walls were painted a soothing pale green, but the color did nothing to calm Lisa’s distress.

Her eyes full of tears, and her lips trembling, she asked, “You don’t think they could be lying?”

Gemma gave her a gentle smile, her eyes sympathetic. “What would be their motive? They’re inanimate objects. They would have no reason to lie. I’ve been a midwife for a long time, Lisa, so I can tell you that pregnancy tests, especially six of them done at the same time, are going to be truthful.”

Panic fluttered in Lisa’s throat as she looked around. “But we’re in your birthing center. Don’t you have a...another test I can take?”

“The ones here at the Sunshine Birthing Center aren’t any different than those you bought at the pharmacy.”

In desperation Lisa turned to clutch at Gemma’s hands, holding them with her shaking fingers. She knew her hair was frazzled and messy because she’d been sitting and holding her head in her hands while she’d waited for the test results—which she now had. “But what if I did another—”

“Doing another test won’t change the results,” added Carly.

White-faced, Lisa looked at them. “Pregnant. How? How could this have happened?”

Carly raised a dark eyebrow. “Oh, I think it happened in the usual way.”

“I can give you a clinical description,” Gemma added, “but I think you know how it happened.”

“I...I do know. But I’m thirty-three years old. It’s not like I’m a silly teenager with her first boyfriend...and we...we used protection.”

“No protection is one hundred percent reliable.”

“I know that—however, I didn’t think—”

“Did you suspect you were pregnant? Has anything been different?”

“I’ve been a little light-headed, though not really faint, for a couple of months. I thought I was just working too hard, what with the plans coming together for the resort out on the lake—”

“You always work too hard,” Gemma pointed out. “And I’m not quite sure you have to be the point person on the resort project.”

“Are you kidding? Do you have any idea how many jobs this will bring to Reston County? And besides, I’m not really heading it up. Mayor Morton is.”

Gemma held up her hand. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have become sidetracked. What other symptoms have you had?”

Lisa wrinkled her nose. “Things smell odd. Stronger. I had to take all the scented candles out of my home and office because they were overwhelming, and they’ve never bothered me before.”

“Those are all symptoms of hormonal changes.”

“I’ve felt sick every day for two weeks and I’ve thrown up every day, too. I thought it was some kind of flu bug or—something I ate.”

“Every day for two weeks?” Carly asked. “Denial much?”

“You didn’t say anything about feeling sick,” Gemma put in, sending Carly a quelling look.

“My period’s been off for months, but I thought maybe things change when you’re in your thirties, you know?” She groaned and continued, “And they should. A person is supposed to have sense enough to not get unexpectedly pregnant at the age of thirty-three.”

Gemma said, “Some hormonal changes are normal—”

“But a complete abandonment of common sense?” Lisa asked desperately. “I don’t think so.”

They all fell silent. Lisa knew they were waiting for her to deal with this the way she did most things—head down, moving forward, plans set.

She couldn’t do that, though, because she’d been distracted and daydreamy for the past month. She had difficulty concentrating, and odd, random thoughts and memories had popped up like jack-in-the-boxes when she tried to focus on work. She was sure Gemma was right—it was probably hormonal.