LITMIR.BIZ

       Six

      Clare woke the next morning to her phone ringing.

      She sat up and looked at her phone. Of course it was Parker. Who else would call her at 7:00 a.m.? On her day off?

      “Hello,” she grumbled.

      “You awake?” he asked.

      Duh. “I am now!”

      “Good. Come down and let me in.”

      “You’re here?”

      “I have some very good news.”

      “Fine,” she grumbled, tossing the covers off and rolling out of bed. She tugged on her beat-up terry-cloth robe, and still half asleep, trudged down the stairs to the front door.

      “Good morning,” he said with a smile when she flung open the door.

      “It’s 7:00 a.m.,” she told him.

      “I know.”

      “On my day off.”

      “I know.” He walked right past her without invitation and took his coat off, dropping it over the back of the sofa on the way to the kitchen, acting as if he owned the place.

      It took a good minute to notice that he was unshaven and his clothes were a wrinkled mess.

      “You look like hell,” she said.

      He took in her messy ponytail, puffy eyes and ragged old robe. “Look who’s talking.”

      At least she had a good reason. What was his excuse? And what man in his right mind would tell the woman he was trying to sleep with that she looked like hell?

      She supposed that was what made him so...Parker. When he poured on the charm he was tough to resist. But didn’t he know that honesty was not always the best policy?

      “Did you not go home last night?” she asked, regretting the words the instant she spoke them. She didn’t want to know where he’d been. Or whom he had been with.

      Grinning from ear to ear he said, “I did not. I spent the night with a beautiful girl.”

      Because you’re not man enough for a real woman? she wanted to say. “And you woke me at 7:00 a.m. on my day off to tell me this? Are you on drugs?”

      He shook his head.

      “Mentally challenged?”

      He just smiled, then he looked toward the coffeepot and sniffed. “What, no coffee?”

      Was he kidding? He really was mentally challenged. “Seven a.m. Day off. Sleeping. Is any of this ringing a bell?”

      “I’ll make a pot,” he said.

      Ooookay. She flopped down on the sofa. “Knock yourself out.”

      This was her own fault. She never should have let him get in her head. Or her house. But it was too late now. Now that he was here there was no getting rid of him. And she hated that somewhere deep down she didn’t want to get rid of him.

      She let her head fall back, closed her tired eyes and pinched back the migraine building at the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. She must have dozed off for a minute or two, or maybe ten, because the next thing she knew Parker was waking her, holding a steaming cup of coffee.

      “Time to get up,” he said, holding it out to her. “Black, one sugar.”

      She took the cup, grumbling under her breath as she did. It irritated her to no end that after just one shared meal at the diner he already knew exactly how she fixed her coffee.

      “Not a morning person?” he asked, sitting down beside her with his own cup.

      “Not on my day off.” Especially when she’d spent the previous night tossing and turning, and all because of the man sitting next to her.

      “So, about that girl...”

      “Ugh! Do I really need to hear this?” she said, resisting the urge to stick her fingers in her ears and sing, Lalalalala.

      “There you go again, thinking the worst of me,” he said.

      She had to. It was the only way to keep him at arm’s length.

      “I spent the night at the hospital,” he said. “With Janey.”

      Clare’s heart dropped so fast and hard that she felt woozy. She set her coffee on the table for fear of dropping it from her shaking hands. And though she needed to know what happened, she was terrified to ask.

      “She’s okay,” he assured her with a smile, laying a hand on her arm. “She’s been improving all night.”

      Oh, thank God.

      The sudden gush of relief had her shaking even harder. “How? What happened?”

      “I finally figured out what’s wrong. From watching the news, no less.”

      “So what is it?”

      “It’s called twin-to-twin transfusion.”

      She blinked. “But...she’s not a twin. And if she is, where is the other baby?”

      “Healthy and happy, and living with her uncle Logan.”

      She gasped. “Baby Maggie? But...”

      “Some truck driver filming his rig got a video of Janey’s mother at the Lucky Seven truck stop. She was identified as Margaret Garner by several people. Which means that Maggie and Janey are twins—we confirmed it with a blood test. Although she isn’t Janey anymore.”

      “They gave her a new name?”

      “Madeline. But they’re calling her Maddie.”

      “Maddie and Maggie. That’s cute. But how did we not make the connection?”

      “I beat myself up over that all night. They were brought in separately, worked on by two different teams. She was healthy. There was really nothing to connect. We’re thinking that Margaret didn’t know she was having twins. I think she had Maddie at the rest stop. She was probably in shock, and losing blood. I’m sure she had no idea she was still in labor when she got back in her car.”

      Meaning she probably got little to no prenatal care. “If she’d seen an OB-GYN she would have known it was twins and they

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