LITMIR.BIZ

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talking about something else. “Two days I’ve been gone, and I just can’t believe what a shambles this place is in. You came at the right time, that’s for sure. Now I can take care of my mother and know everything here will be all right. If poor Marla saw a mess like this she’d have had a fit. Never a thing out of order—that was Marla.”

      Betty went on to point out the box in the corner of the room where the downstairs toys could be put away, as well as outlining how often Marla had washed windows. And turned mattresses. And scrubbed walls. And wiped down baseboards. And polished furniture and silver. And made hot meals and home-baked cakes and cookies and her own bread.

      The list seemed to go on and on until Kira began to think she might have a panic attack if she heard one more word.

      Maybe Betty saw it on her face because she stopped suddenly and said, “Oh, not that you have to do all Marla did. I don’t know if anyone could do all Marla did. I’ll just be happy if you can keep everybody clean and fed and the house picked up until I can get back here.”

      “I’ll do my best,” Kira said, realizing that Marla had left her a very high standard to live up to.

      “I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Betty said. “Now let me give you a quick tour of the kitchen and tell you about the babies’ schedule before I let you get to work.”

      Kira followed the plump woman back to the kitchen where Cutty was trying to coax his daughters to eat.

      The reappearance of Kira didn’t aid that cause because this time when she walked into the room they watched her warily and paid no attention to what their father wanted of them.

      “After breakfast I get the darlings cleaned up and dressed for the day,” Betty was saying, oblivious to the twins’ continuing disenchantment with Kira. “Some mornings they’ll watch Sesame Street while I get to work on the house, or they’ll play—”

      “Those are the good mornings,” Cutty contributed wryly, leaving Kira to guess what happened on the bad mornings.

      Betty didn’t address it, though, she just went on. “They’re ready for lunch around noon and then I let them digest their food for about half an hour before I put them down for their naps. That’s the best time to catch up. They’ll be awake again about three or so. We try to have dinner around six. Then there are baths and hair washing. They like to look at books before bedtime—they won’t sit still if you try to read to them but if you point to the pictures and tell them what they are, they like that. I put them to bed for the night about eight or eight-thirty, and that’s the day.”

      Kira felt winded just listening to it.

      But she wasn’t going to let either Betty or Cutty know that and decided she would look at it all as a challenge. A challenge she was confident she could meet just the way she’d always met every other challenge in her life. After all, she’d been well-trained in meeting standards set by someone else. Plus she kept her own apartment pristinely clean. How much more difficult could it be to take care of two little girls on top of doing the housework around here?

      “Okay,” she said simply enough.

      “You’ll do fine,” Betty insisted, looking at her watch. “I’d better leave you to it so I can get Mom out of that hospital before she tries hitchhiking home. She warned me to be there first thing this morning or else. But if you all need me—”

      “Don’t worry about us. We’ll manage,” Cutty said.

      “What’s this we business?” Betty countered. “Remember, you’re supposed to stay off that ankle. You just let Kira do everything. After all, she’s Marla’s sister. She’ll be able to handle anything.”

      Kira didn’t refute that because she knew she would bend over backward to do every bit as well as Marla had. As always.

      “Okay, I’m off,” Betty announced.

      She kissed the babies on the top of their curly heads as Cutty said, “Tell your Mom hi and that we hope she feels better.”

      “I will,” Betty answered before bustling out amidst her goodbyes.

      And then there Kira was, alone with Cutty and that incredible face that looked amused at something, and two babies who both eyed her warily.

      “Are you sure you’re up for this?” Cutty asked then.

      “Absolutely,” she said.

      And she honestly thought she was.

      Even as she glanced around at the stacks of dirty dishes, at the babies who seemed to hate her, and thought about all she suddenly found herself in charge of.

      Marla had done it. And done it well.

      She would, too.

      “You were on your ankle too much, weren’t you?”

      It was nine o’clock that night before Cutty got the twins to bed and, coming down the stairs after putting laundry in the dryer, Kira saw him flinch as he sat on the couch and raised his foot onto the throw pillow on the coffee table.

      “It’s okay,” he said, looking embarrassed to have been caught showing pain.

      But it was Kira who was really embarrassed. She’d been much more hindrance than help today and she knew it. She had only to look around at the chaos that had grown rather than diminished to realize just what a detriment she’d been.

      “Why don’t you sit down so we can talk?” Cutty said then.

      “That sounds bad. You’re going to fire me, aren’t you?”

      He laughed. A deep rumble of a laugh that sounded better than it should have to Kira. “You just look like you need to sit down,” he said.

      She caught sight of her reflection in the living room’s picture window and was nearly startled by what she saw. Her blouse was partially hanging out of the waistband of slacks stained with Mandy’s chicken-noodle soup from lunch, half of her hair had slipped from the scarf-tied ponytail and the other half was bulging out of it more on one side of her head than the other, and all in all she looked as if she’d just been through the wringer. In fact, she was more of a wreck than the house was.

      “Oh,” she said, reaching up to snatch the yellow scarf so her hair could fall free. She stuffed the scarf into her pocket and then finger-combed her hair into some sort of order.

      “Come on. Sit a minute,” Cutty urged.

      She did, perching like a schoolgirl on the edge of the easy chair to his left.

      Cutty’s dark green eyes studied her, and it occurred to Kira that even though they’d basically been together all day and evening she’d been so enmeshed in one thing after another that she’d hardly glanced at him.

      He didn’t look any the worse for wear, though. The gray workout pants that stretched across his massive thighs and the muscle-hugging white T-shirt he wore were still clean. Even the five o’clock shadow that darkened the lower half of his striking face only gave him a scruffiness that was very sexy.

      But the last thing Kira needed was to notice that now.

      To avoid it she forced herself to stare at the apple-sauce caked on her shoe. “I’m so sorry about…” She shrugged helplessly. “Everything today. Really, I swear I’m usually the most organized, efficient person anyone knows. And believe it or not, my apartment is always spotless.”

      “I don’t doubt it,” he said. “But add a couple of busy, mischievous eighteen-month-olds to the equation and it tends to throw everything off.”

      Why did he seem to think her failure today was funny?

      “Even when my focus was on school and I was under a lot of pressure to get grades as high as Marla always had, I could still juggle all my work at home with all my classwork and even my research. My room at home and my apartment after I left home never looked like this…” Kira motioned to the even bigger mess all

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