Leigh Michaels - Assignment - Twins

Seth caught himself checking his watch again. If Nikki was going to make it downtown on time, she’d better get her cute little tush—and his SUV—into gear. What was holding her up, anyway? Heavy traffic, perhaps. The Monday morning rush hour had been worse than usual. He just hoped she hadn’t stalled out on the freeway, or gotten into a fender-bender. Maybe he should have turned himself into a contortionist to get those seats into the back of her car after all, instead of expecting her to drive his. She wasn’t used to a big vehicle—he knew that for a fact, because he’d had to fold himself up to fit behind the wheel of her little car.

He heard wood slam against concrete and wheeled around to see one of the workers looking sheepishly down at a scattered pile of lumber lying on the driveway. The delivery crew foreman came around the back corner of the truck and started to yell. “That’s high-grade oak, you idiot! Take it a few pieces at a time so you don’t bang it up.” He called to Seth, “We’ll get it all around back and then we can inspect for damages, sir.”

Seth nodded. He looked down the driveway again and saw his SUV pulling cautiously off the street. About time she showed up. Relieved, he walked down to meet her.

Nikki rolled the window down and leaned out. She was already wearing her standard-issue dark-blue jacket, with her engraved name badge clipped to the lapel. Her hair was caught up at the back of her head in a knot that was held together with what looked to Seth like chopsticks. The sunlight made it look more red than its usual medium brown, and the breeze caught a strand and whipped it around her face. She tucked it impatiently behind her ear.

“You’re running late,” Seth said. “I thought you might have had trouble finding the place.”

She looked indignant. “Not likely. For your information, I know every address in Rockhurst. I’ve sold a good number of these houses. In fact, see the one across the street? I’ve sold that one twice.”

Seth couldn’t resist. “Why? Weren’t the first buyers happy with it after all?” He enjoyed watching her sputter for a few moments. “You can park over there, out of the way of the delivery truck.” He pointed at a narrow strip of concrete between the garage and a row of ornamental evergreens.

She didn’t put the SUV into gear. Instead, she opened the door and slid out. “If you want it out of the way, you park it. It was all I could do to drive this bulldozer. Putting it into a confined space is something I don’t even want to think about. Where’s my car?”

“On the street, just around the corner and out of the path of the truck.”

One of the babies wailed, and Nikki looked over her shoulder, biting her lip.

“The other one will start up pretty quick,” Seth said. “They probably think since they can’t see you at the moment that you’ve disappeared forever. I’ll get them out in a minute and they’ll be fine.”

“They’re a little cranky.” She sounded a bit crochety herself, he thought, but the expression in her big hazel eyes was almost pleading. “I finally had to wake them up or I’d never have made it. But there wasn’t time to give them a bath, and they didn’t want breakfast, so they’ll no doubt be hungry in an hour or two.”

“Oh, that’s just great.”

“Hey, I’m not the one who kept them up late last night,” Nikki pointed out. “But I’ve already had to face the music. It’s your turn.” She leaned into the SUV.

The tailored khaki trousers she was wearing molded themselves to a trim but nicely rounded bottom. Seth watched with appreciation until she turned around again.

She was holding not a baby, as he’d expected, but only her briefcase. “See you in a couple of hours,” she said. “Have a good time.”

Both babies had started to cry in earnest. Seth smothered a sigh and opened the back door of the SUV. “Don’t worry,” he called after Nikki. “I’ll make sure they have a nap so when you get back they’ll be wide-awake and ready to entertain you!”

Nikki made a rude gesture over her shoulder and kept walking.

He grinned and unlatched Zack’s safety harness.

“Sir.” The foreman was standing right behind him, clipboard in hand. “If you can come around to the site now, we’re ready for you to inspect the materials and sign the invoice.”

Seth sighed and reached across Zack to lift Anna out. With a tearstained baby in each arm he followed the foreman around the corner of the house and past a trailer full of tools to the construction site.

At the back of the Mediterranean-style house a new wing, half as big as the original main floor, was taking shape. The poured concrete walls were ready for an eventual coat of stucco to match the rest of the house, half of the windows were in place, and the crates full of red tiles which had been part of this morning’s load of supplies were now stacked neatly nearby, ready to go up on the roof.

Half a dozen men were already at work, but the instant Seth came around the corner of the house with a baby in each arm, everything stopped while the men gawked at him.

His crew chief grinned. “What’s that, boss, a couple of new trainees? Couldn’t get any with experience?”

Seth ignored him and made the rounds of the site, checking the counts and looking over the oak which the delivery men had piled inside the new rooms, safely away from rain. A couple of boards had splintered when they’d hit the driveway, and the foreman noted the damage. “Do you need the replacements right away, or can we just put them on next week’s load?” he asked.

“Next week will be fine.”

“I’ll make sure they get on the truck then. All right, if you’ll sign here….” The foreman looked uncertainly at him and the babies. “I mean…”

The twins probably didn’t top twenty pounds each, but their combined weight, plus the fact that with both arms full he couldn’t shift the burden to let one arm take a break, had left Seth’s muscles aching. Moving stacks of two by fours—even tossing concrete blocks—was dead easy compared to walking around with a twenty-pound weight attached to each arm.

He thought about handing one of them to the foreman, but as if she’d read his mind, Anna grumbled and nestled closer. Well, the babies would just have to lump it for a minute, Seth decided. As long as he kept a close eye on them, they’d be as safe on the ground as anywhere.

He squatted down and set them on the lawn. Zack instantly grabbed a handful of the trampled grass and put it in his mouth. Anna yelped, clutched at Seth’s jeans, and tried to pull herself to a standing position. He hoped his belt buckle wouldn’t suddenly give way.

Seth signed the ticket, folded his copy, and stuck it in his shirt pocket, then bent to pick up Zack, who had green saliva trickling down his chin. “Come on, champ, spit it out,” he ordered.

“And then we need you to move the SUV out of the driveway so we can get the truck out,” the foreman added.

You can park over there, out of the way of the delivery truck, he’d told Nikki. But she had refused to move the SUV, and he’d forgotten to. He smothered a groan, picked up the babies, and hauled them back around to the front of the house.

The hell with it, he thought. It was only ten in the morning, but he might as well call it a day. He wasn’t going to accomplish anything with a twin grafted to each arm, anyway. And since he’d have to buckle them back in again so he could move the SUV fifty feet, he might as well take them home where they could play in the grass without risking splinters and stray roofing nails.

Only after he got them both settled in the back seat and slid behind the wheel did he realize that his key wasn’t in the ignition switch. In fact, it wasn’t anywhere to be found.