Roz Fox - Married in Haste

No wonder Abby looked as if she’d dropped twenty pounds. Ben guessed dashing up and down stairs a hundred times a day would burn a lot of calories.

“There you go, Sam.” Ben straightened after maneuvering them both into the small half bathroom. He glanced up, feeling a drop of water strike his ear. He identified a water stain on the ceiling, which seemed to grow larger as he studied it.

Jeez, Abby probably didn’t know her problems weren’t limited to the upstairs. The flooded commode must be directly above this one. “Hey there, Sam, let’s not dally. I’d just as soon neither of us had to be treated for ceiling plaster falling on our heads.”

The child’s lips quivered. “I wish Daddy was here. Will that phone in your pocket call everywhere?”

“Pretty much,” Ben murmured, still focusing his attention on the damaged ceiling tiles while he helped Sam tie his robe. “Do you have a friend you’d like to call? If you tell me where I can find his number, I’ll dial for you.”

Donning a serious expression, the boy waited patiently while Ben washed and dried his hands. “I don’t got the number for heaven. Maybe it’s in my daddy’s ’puter. Mommy said Daddy put everybody’s number from church on his ’puter. And Daddy said God’s the most important member of his church. So I think God’s number hasta be there.”

“Oh. Oh, Sammy…” Ben patted the sad-eyed child’s back as he carried him to his recliner. “I wish making contact with the Almighty were so simple. But…he’s everywhere, you know, watching over us. Like…maybe the reason I picked today to visit your aunt is that I’m supposed to help her.” Ben gave the four-year-old a coloring book and opened it to a picture of a partially colored ark. “Ah…I believe your aunt was saying you guys might need one of these,” he teased.

He needed to get out of the room before Sam asked more questions. Ben figured he was the last person able to explain why any supreme being let kids lose their moms and dads. He left the room no wiser than before.

Upstairs, he put his foot into two inches of water on the bathroom floor.

Abby was draped over a gurgling commode, mumbling at a pipe wrench that kept slipping off a valve cap. Rolling up his shirtsleeves, Ben relieved Abby of the wrench. He threw his considerable muscle into budging the solidly stuck shut-off cap.

“I think it gave a little,” Abby said. “Ben, I’m sorry you walked into this mess. Oh, there…you got it. Oh, no! The valve twisted off.” A gusher shot everywhere. “Ben, make it stop!”

Leaping aside, he swore roundly.

“Shh.” Abby clapped a hand over his mouth. “We don’t use language like that in this house.”

“Apparently you don’t ask for help in this house, either. Why are you just standing there watching Old Faithful? Get me a damn phone book.”

“What for?”

“Something you should’ve done at first splat. To call a plumber.” So saying, Ben whipped out the phone Sam thought he could use to call heaven. Directory assistance was close enough to heaven’s hotline to suit Ben. As he was connected to a local plumber and gave the man terse directions to the house, Ben wrapped a white towel around the broken pipe to stem the geyser.

“My best Egyptian cotton towel. Ben, what are you thinking?”

“Something else I should’ve done when I first walked in,” he growled, closing off her sputtering tirade with a kiss that drove the air from her lungs.

BEN SET ABBY DOWN, then had to grab her arms to hold her upright.

A bit stunned, she did rally. “Here I thought my day had tanked. If that’s your standard method of dealing with hysterical women, Dr. Galloway, I can see why your practice grows by leaps and bounds.”

Laughing, Ben leaned in for another, slower, more sizzling and satisfying kiss. “This brand of superb bedside manner is reserved for an elite few, Ms. Drummond.”

“You’re full of it, Ben, you know that?” Casting a furtive glance over her shoulder and down the hall, Abby segued to a new subject. “How are the girls? I thought Erin looked…different. But I guess that’s understandable, since everything’s changed because of the quake.” She shrugged. “Which may be all it is with Erin. I shouldn’t forget she’s by nature a serious child.”

“True. But you’re dead on, Abby.” Ben bent again to twist the soaking white towel tighter. “Erin’s not bouncing back. Not like Mollie, anyway. Erin’s whole personality has nose-dived.”

“With time and hugs, maybe she’ll be her old self again. It’s been almost two months. But it feels like forever. I still step into a room and expect to see Elliot and Blair.” Her eyes were glossy, and she turned aside. “Nighttime is the hardest on the boys.”

“For the girls, too.” Ben’s back tensed. He should be the man with answers.

Abby stroked a hand up his side. She thought how good the hard outline of his ribs felt, and wondered if men didn’t need the hugs she’d spoken of.

She missed Ben’s touch. Even if they’d had a casual dating style, they’d been demonstrative with each other. Whenever they saw each other, Ben had doled out a squeeze or two. Vastly different from the brief impersonal brush of their cheeks at their respective family funerals. Different, too, from the almost desperate kiss Ben had just delivered.

Would their lives ever get back to normal? The first few weeks after the quake, Abby thought Ben had disappeared from her life. On those occasions, an ache settled in her chest. And yet she’d accepted that was the way things might have to be.

Abby understood that she and Ben had obligations and responsibilities that came before any personal wants or needs. For perhaps the first time, she realized what it felt like to walk in her brother’s shoes. Elliot, who’d selflessly put his life on hold until she was grown and off to college. Did she owe his children any less?

Straightening away from the valve again, Ben started to take Abby in his arms. A commotion downstairs split them apart. Although Abby had wrenched loose from his touch and taken a step back before the disturbance began. “Sorry, Ben. I’m afraid the timing here is off. Besides which, Ruffian’s going crazy in the laundry room. I think the plumber’s arrived.”

Ben tried to reconnect with Abby’s eyes, to no avail. Giving up, he said magnanimously, “I’ll stay right here, if you’d care to rescue the poor man. Send him on up. Since I made this major mess, I’ll do the explaining. Maybe you could spend a few minutes reassuring Sam. He’s down there coloring an ark like mad. I’m afraid he’s worried his home’s in danger of floating away.”

“Poor Sam. I only just brought him home from the hospital today when all heck broke loose. I’d checked the twins out of school early so they could ride along. We’d barely gotten home when Brad reported that Mike had scooped a dead fish out of one of the tanks. The minute he flushed it, he dropped the strainer.” She rolled her eyes. “I tried the plunger. That did nothing, except maybe compound the problem. You showed up as I decided I’d better shut off the water to the toilet tank.”

They heard one of the boys bellowing for Abby. “Go,” Ben urged. “By the way, you maybe should also check on the status of a gerbil. The older twins had him in a remote-controlled truck. They sent him down from the second landing.”

“Noah and Mike,” she exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “Harry’s their gerbil. Brad and Reed have hamsters. Yesterday I caught them harnessing their pets to G.I. Joe’s parachutes. Luckily I caught them before they dropped them over the bannister. I don’t know why Blair didn’t go completely gray.”