The Brands Who Came For Christmas Read online

  Chapter 9

  Caleb caught himself sliding into a mire of sentimentality more than once on that drive to the small redbrick prenatal clinic in Tucker Lake, fifteen miles the other side of Big Falls. It was a dangerous game he was playing out here. Getting emotionally involved with the babies…insinuating himself into the family and into Maya’s life before even knew for sure that he was the father, but hell, they were twins. He was a twin. His own father had been a twin, too. But, like Caleb’s own twin, his uncle had been stillborn. It terrified him to think of that. It also verified that these children were his. Maybe not totally, and not legally, but it was all the proof he needed. He couldn’t leave. That was obvious. He didn’t want to. Exactly what he did want was as elusive as the meaning of life on Earth. What to do next was a question he couldn’t begin to figure out. It seemed all he could do was stumble through, one step at a time. If it turned out that Maya was lying to him, then he was setting himself up for a big fall. The problem was, she wasn’t lying to him. He might be a gullible idiot, but he just…believed her. Maybe because he wanted to believe her, an even scarier thought.

  That worried him.

  They didn’t have to wait long. He was glad, because being in the waiting room surrounded by swollen-bellied women and nervous-looking men made him feel like a fraud. As if he didn’t belong. As if they could take one look at him and tell he was an outsider, not a real partner to the mother of his kid. Kids.

  “Come on in, Maya,” a nurse said, only moments after they had taken seats in the waiting room.

  Caleb helped Maya to her feet and held her arm as they were led to a small exam room.

  Maya seemed to know the drill by heart. She walked in, stepped on the scale, then used a small stepping stool to get up onto the exam table. She lay back, and the nurse whipped out a tape measure and peeled Maya’s blouse back and leggings downward to measure her belly. “Any problems?” the nurse asked cheerfully.

  Caleb stared at the swollen mound of pink flesh underneath Maya’s blouse. Her belly button was turned inside out.

  “None,” Maya said. “Stop staring, Caleb.”

  Grinning, the nurse jotted a note and proceeded to take Maya’s blood pressure, then her pulse, simultaneously shooting glances at Caleb every once in a while. Curious, pointed glances, but she didn’t ask.

  He didn’t know how much to say, so he said nothing at all.

  When she finished, she said, “The doctor will be in soon,” and headed out the door.

  Maya remained lying down on the exam table, although she did rearrange her blouse. He assumed it was probably too much effort to get up. Caleb paced and looked around the room. Baby scales, baby pictures on the wall. A chart denoting the phases of labor, which he found himself studying intently.

  “Sit down,” Maya said. “You’re making me nervous.”

  He sent her a sheepish grin and sat down, but the moment his buttocks touched the chair, the door opened, so he shot back up again. The doctor came in. Fortyish, red-headed and female. There were silver frames on her oval glasses and a ready smile on her lips.

  “Maya! How are those babies doing this week, hmm?”

  “Kicking up a storm, Dr. Sheila,” Maya said.

  “That’s the way we like ‘em.” She turned to Caleb, offered a hand. “I’m Sheila Stone, Maya’s ob-gyn,” she said.

  “Good to meet you, Doctor. I’m Caleb…er….Cain.” Maya shot him a look he couldn’t read. “I’m…uh…I’m the…”

  “Father?” she asked.

  He nodded, not waiting for Maya’s permission.

  “Well, congratulations. I’m glad to see you’re here for the blessed event.” She pulled her stethoscope to her ears, leaned over and moved it around until she found the spots she wanted.

  “Doctor, is it normal for the babies to kick so much? I mean, they’re really…active in there.” He saw Maya’s curious gaze on his when he asked the question. She had eyes that could hold a thousand emotions, he thought, and he wished he could read every one of them. But they tended to bubble up and swirl and sink again in such rapid succession and unlikely combinations that he thought he never would. He would glimpse something, some glimmer, but it would be replaced by another before he could get a handle on it

  “It’s perfectly normal, Caleb,” the doctor was saying as he plumbed the depths of Maya Brand’s eyes. “It means they’re strong and healthy.”

  Again she leaned over, listening to Maya’s belly, and he dragged his eyes away from the depths of the mother to observe the doctor for signs of dishonesty or worry or anything telling at all.

  “But…is it safe for them to be so active? I mean…with two babies…it is possible they could…you know, hurt each other?”

  “Oh…they may poke each other a bit now and then,” Dr. Stone said. “But they’re very well protected, Caleb. Completely surrounded and cushioned by amniotic fluid. And while those kicks may seem pretty solid to us out here, the babies aren’t strong enough to seriously harm each other. Really, with the quality of prenatal care we have today, twins are barely any more concern to us than single birth babies.”

  She might be lying to him, he thought. Perhaps because Maya was in the room. Oh, he wanted to believe her. But he knew better, didn’t he? He’d been told all his life how the stronger twins in his bloodline managed to survive at the expense of their weaker siblings.

  “You look worried, Dad,” Dr. Stone said. “Come here, let me reassure you.” She motioned at Caleb to come closer. When he did, she snagged a second stethoscope from her pocket and handed it to him.

  He took it, his hand shaking, and put it on. Then the doctor guided the other end to the right spot. And he heard it. Rapid as the beat of a hummingbird’s wings—a tiny, powerful patter.

  “Holy…my God, is that the baby’s heart?”

  “It sure is. Here, here’s the other one,” she said, moving the business end of the thing yet again.

  Caleb closed his eyes as he heard the second beat, every bit as strong and steady as the first. “Are they supposed to be that fast?” he asked, eyes closed as he listened.

  “They’re just right,” Dr. Stone assured him.

  When he opened his eyes again, they were slightly blurry, and Maya’s were staring right into them. Probing and seeking and surprised and a dozen other things. “It’s amazing,” he said. “I…I don’t even know what to say.”

  “So are you planning to be in the delivery room, Caleb?”

  He blinked and felt his eyes widen as they shot to the doctor’s.

  Maya smiled. “Don’t panic, Caleb. No one expects you to do that.”

  “But…but….”

  “Well, you’ve got time to think about that. But for now, it’s time for the internal, and you need to wait outside.”

  “Okay. Okay, sure.” He reached up and gave Maya’s hand a squeeze before he left. Then he met her eyes, held them for a long moment, and without even knowing he was going to, he leaned down and kissed her very softly. Then he straightened, realized what he’d done and wondered why. It had just seemed…like the thing to do. “I’ll…be right out there…if you need me.”

  She stared at him as if too stunned to speak, and he turned and fled.

  In the waiting room, he paced. Hell, he didn’t like this. He didn’t like believing her without question, and he liked even less that he knew right to his toes that he was right to believe her. She wouldn’t lie to him. She wasn’t up to anything. She didn’t even want him around, much less want his money, and even if she did, she wouldn’t have to resort to scamming to get her hands on it. She could just ask. He would give it to her. All of it. He would give her everything he had, if she wanted it.

  She was carrying two babies, and they were both his. His children. His babies. He wanted to be there when they were born. In the delivery room, right there. She was incredible…that she could do this thing, perform this miracle, give life to his offspring. It was mind-boggling to him.

  Minutes ticke
d by. He spent the time pawing through the pamphlets, of which there seemed to be hundreds. He flipped through all of them, took several. Then added a couple of parenting and natural childbirth magazines to his collection. Finally the door opened, and the doctor called him back in. “It’s not going to be long,” she said. “I don’t think you’ll go another week, Maya.”

  “Thank God. I don’t think I can take another week.” Maya grimaced at the doctor as she got herself up into a sitting position on the table. “We’re going to want a paternity test done as soon as they’re born. Dr. Sheila,” Maya said.

  The doctor lifted her brows. “Sure. But I can already tell you their blood types. Not that it would prove you are the father, Caleb, but it could eliminate you.”

  Caleb shook his head. “I don’t need that. I don’t need—”

  “I want it settled,” Maya told him.

  “I believe you, Maya. You don’t have to prove anything to me.”

  She lowered her head, keeping her gaze from his. He couldn’t even try to read her eyes. She said, “That…means a lot to me, that you’d say that, Caleb. Thank you.”

  “No. Thank you.”

  Lifting her head, meeting his eyes, she drew a breath. “Caleb, you’re…who you are. The question of paternity is going to come up, sooner or later—someone’s going to want proof. Maybe it won’t be you. But it’s going to happen. So I’d just as soon we get this done right away.”

  He thought about what she’d said, realized she was right. It would come up eventually. “All right. Okay, you’re probably right.”

  The doctor flipped open the charts without so much as shooting Caleb a curious glance. He liked her. She was a pro. “Well, according to the amnio, the babies are both type O-negative. That doesn’t match Maya, so it has to match the father. Do you know your blood type, Caleb?’’

  He lifted his head slowly. “Yeah. It’s O-negative. And it’s not a common blood type.” He turned to face Maya. “I’d like…very much…to be in that delivery room with you, Maya. If you think you wouldn’t mind too much.”

  Frowning until her brows touched, she sighed. “I…don’t know.”

  Dr. Stone eyed them both. “When you make a decision, let us know, okay? The hospital needs to be forewarned.”

  “Thanks, we will.” Caleb watched the doctor go and turned back to Maya. “I didn’t mean to put any pressure on you. I mean…if it would make you uncomfortable, then—”

  “We have a tree to cut down,” Maya said. She started to slide off the table.

  Caleb reached for her, picked her up and gently lowered her to the floor. Their eyes locked as he did, and Maya’s cheeks went pink. Then he grabbed her coat and held it for her. But she shook her head slowly and glanced down.

  He looked, too, and saw that she was standing there in her socks. Her warm suede shoes stood nearby. She, too, looked at the shoes. Then at him. Then at the shoes again. She kicked them closer to the chair where he’d been sitting earlier, then sat down and, biting her lip as if preparing to face some great challenge, bent to reach for the shoes.

  Caleb got there first. “Let me do that.”

  “I can put on my own shoes.”

  “Lean back in the chair, Maya. You bend over any further and my kids are going to be born with no necks. You’re squishing them.”

  “I am not.” But she did lean back.

  Caleb knelt down. He grabbed a shoe, then slid it gently onto a socked foot. He pulled the laces snugly and tied them up. “Just like Cinderella,” he quipped, picking up the other shoe.

  “Yeah, but those aren’t exactly delicate glass slippers.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, well, Cindy didn’t have to carry her coach-sized pumpkin around with her. It carried her, as I recall.” He slid the other shoe on, tied it and got to his feet.

  “Last week I could reach,” she said.

  “Maybe next week you’ll be able to reach again.”

  She closed her eyes fast, turning her head slightly. But not before he saw what flashed through her expression. “Hey,” he said. “It’s okay to be nervous about this. Hell, I’m nervous and I don’t have to do anything.” She didn’t say anything. He caught her chin, tipped it up. “Are you? Nervous?”

  For a long moment she stared into his eyes, and then she said, “I’m scared to death, Caleb.” Her hands went to her belly. “I mean, what if I can’t do it? One baby is hard enough. I went to the hospital one day just to check out the maternity ward. And I heard some woman screaming in the delivery room. It sounded like a Halloween horror movie on high volume. I thought she was being murdered in there.”

  He swallowed hard. “Did you talk to your mother about it? I mean, she’s been through it so many times.”

  Maya lowered her head. “I don’t want her to know how scared I am. Mom’s…she’s the strongest woman I’ve ever met. She thinks I’m like her.”

  “I think you are, too.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t tell her I’m terrified of something as natural as giving birth. She’d be….”

  “Disappointed?”

  Maya nodded.

  “Don’t you think she was afraid the first time? Hell, I’ll bet she was afraid every time, Maya. But your dad was there with her, right? And maybe that made it easier.”

  Maya sighed. “No. Dad wasn’t there for her at all. Not for any of us. Mom…she gave birth five times, all by herself. Daddy…well, his job kept him traveling a lot. Or…that’s what we all thought at the time.”

  Frowning as he helped her to her feet, Caleb asked, “But…it wasn’t really his job that kept him away, was it, Maya? It was…his other family.”

  “Yeah,” she said, smoothing her blouse, turning her back to him and shrugging into her coat with his help.

  He waited, but she said no more.

  “Will you tell me about it sometime?” he finally asked.

  She shrugged. “I already told you about it, that night at the bar.”

  “You told me the facts. Not how it affected you or your mother or your sisters. I’d like to hear how you felt about it, when it all came out. How you feel about it now.”

  She shook her head. “It’s irrelevant. It’s in the past.”

  “Then will you tell me?”

  She gave a shrug. “Maybe.”

  He nodded slowly, taking her elbow, steering her out the door, through the waiting room and into the parking lot where her van waited. He opened her door for her, helped her get in, then went to the driver’s side.

  After he started the engine he sat there for a minute. Then he said, “Tell me this much. What happened between your dad and your mom—is that why you don’t trust men very much?”

  “Who said I didn’t trust men?”

  He shrugged. “No one. No one had to, Maya. You’ve been suspicious of my every move, word and deed since I showed up here.”

  “Well, who wouldn’t be?” She shook her head. “But for the record, it’s not that I don’t trust men. It’s that I don’t want to get hurt like my mother did—but, uh, by the looks of things, I didn’t miss it by much. I mean, you didn’t break my heart, but I sure as hell did end up with a pair of babies and no husband around.”

  He licked his lips and told himself not to blurt the words he blurted next. “That could be remedied, Maya.”

  Her eyes got wider than the rings around Saturn, and she stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “No. No, I wasn’t, as a matter of fact.” Starting the van, he drove it into the road, and carefully back toward Big Falls.

  She was still staring at him. He could feel her eyes on him, huge and probing. “You’re out of your mind, Caleb. My God, I wouldn’t even consider marrying you!”

  The barb sank deep. He felt it clear to his bones. “Why not? I mean it’s not like I’m the flat-busted drifter you thought I was before. I could give you anything, Maya. Everything.”

  Not one word came from her lips, and when he turned to ask w
hy, the look in her eyes almost toasted him to a nice golden brown hue.

  “How dare you?” she whispered.

  He shrugged. “How dare I what?”

  “Try to buy me! My God, do you really think I give a damn how much money you have or don’t have? I wouldn’t consider marrying you for one reason, and one reason only, Caleb Montgomery! I don’t love you. I don’t even know you.”

  “And what if you did?”

  Her brows bent low, and her eyes burned him. “What if I did what? Know you? Or love you?”

  “Both. What then?”

  She lowered her head, her cheeks burning red. “This is ridiculous. It’s a ridiculous conversation, Caleb. Because it’s irrelevant. But the fact of the matter is, if I was in love with a man—any man—it wouldn’t matter to me how much money he had, or what kind of truck he drove, or what he did for a living.”

  He searched her face, looking for the lie, but seeing no sign of it.

  “The only thing that would matter,” she went on, so earnestly it was difficult to imagine she might be making it up as she went along, “would be how he treated me and the babies, and whether he…felt the same way. I’ll never be one of those women tied to a man who doesn’t love her. I’ve seen them—the political wives, the trophy wives, the ones who married because they fit the profile their husbands were looking for, and vice-versa.”

  He stared at her for so long he almost veered off the road. Then he looked straight ahead again. Snowflakes, huge and soft as balls of cotton fluff, came floating a few at a time from the sky. Snowflakes, in Oklahoma.

  “You’re right,” he said finally.

  “I know I am.”

  He glanced sideways at her. “I had a profile, you know. Just before I left that night when we first met, my father and his advisers had been filling me in on the woman I was going to have to find and marry. Or should, if I wanted to win the senate race.”

  Blinking slowly, she turned to look back at him. “And I’ll bet I missed on every point,” she said. “Go on, tell me the kind of woman you were looking for. Let’s see, I imagine she should have at least been college educated, which I’m not. Probably her mother should not own a saloon, and I daresay her father being a bigamist wasn’t on the list. I don’t imagine being pregnant and unmarried showed up anywhere, either.”

  He tilted his head to one side. “I left that night because I didn’t want to be tied to the woman who would fit their profile. And you’re right—you would have missed it by a mile on one point in particular.”

  “What’s that? ‘Must have class and breeding’?”

  “No. It was item number seven, if I recall correctly. ‘She must be pretty, but not too pretty.’” He tried a charming smile on her. “You’re way too pretty.”

  She averted her face quickly, stared outside, but her cheeks went pink. “I’d have missed on a dozen points,” Maya said softly, her voice raspy. Then she shrugged. “But you already know I’m not up to your family standards, don’t you? Isn’t that why you lied about your name to Dr. Stone?”

  He stepped on the brake, stopping the van dead center in the middle of the deserted, snowy road. “Is that what you think?”

  She didn’t look at him, so he gripped her shoulders and turned her until she did. “Maya, I lied about my name to protect you and the babies and the rest of your family.”

  This time the message in her eyes was clear. Doubt. Skepticism. She didn’t believe a word he said. “Protect us from what?”

  “From public humiliation. Scandal. The press. A story like this gets out, Maya, and this town will become a circus. You wouldn’t have a moment’s peace, and what’s left of your reputation would be in shambles.”

  She tilted her head to one side. “And so would yours.”

  With a sigh, he nodded. “Yes. So would mine. But that’s not what I was thinking about when I gave the doctor a false name.”

  “And what about the last time—when you lied about your name to me? Was that to protect me, too?”

  He swallowed hard, looking away. “I had reasons. They had nothing to do with you, Maya, I just…I was running away from who I was that night.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  He lowered his chin, shook his head and put the van back into gear again. “I’m telling the truth,” he said as he drove. “You’re the one who’s lying now.”

  “Me?” She shot him a surprised look. “What have I lied about?”

  “When you said you don’t have any problem trusting men.”

  She looked away. She needn’t have bothered. It wasn’t as if he had a snowball’s chance in hell of reading whatever flashed into her eyes.

  An hour later they pulled in at the house, and Maya reached over to blow the horn. Within minutes several bundled-up women came scrambling out the front door. One was carrying a small chainsaw. Mel, of course. She tossed it in the back of Caleb’s pickup, then came to the driver’s door of the van, tapped on the window. Caleb rolled it down.

  “Where do you think you are, Caleb? New York City?” she asked him.

  “Huh?”

  “Keys,” Mel told him, holding out a hand, palm up. “You’ve got that thing locked up tighter than Fort Knox.”

  “Oh. Right.” He dug in his pocket, fished out the pickup keys and handed them to her. “It’s not that I think anyone’s going to steal that heap,” he told her. “Just habit.”

  “Oh, yeah? I suppose it would be, for a guy used to tooling around in a Mercedes.” Mel wore a blue knit hat with a fuzzy ball on top over her short dark hair. Her bangs stuck out from under it and a couple of snowflakes had landed in them and clung like glittering ornaments.

  “Lexus coupe,” he told her. “It’s less pretentious.”

  “Oh, yeah, right. That’s downright slumming.” But she said it with a smile. “So you may as well drive the van over. I’ll take Mom with me in your truck; That is, if you trust me with your wheels.”

  Already the side door of the van was sliding open, and Selene and Kara were clambering into their seats, snapping their belts. “Sure I trust you,” he told her.

  “You should,” Mel said. “I figure any collisions I might have can only improve the looks of that thing, anyway.” She sent him a wink and turned away.

  “Hey, I saw yours in the barn, Mel. Makes mine look like a luxury car,” he called.

  Mel stopped, turned and eyed him.

  “And, I might add, mine runs.”

  She grinned and sent him a mock salute, then walked away. As he rolled his window up, he heard Vidalia say, “I told you he’d loosen up once he got to know us.”

  In the back seat, Kara and Selene were still laughing at his exchange with Mel. As he put the van into motion, Kara said, “Can you believe it’s snowing! It’s perfect that it’s snowing on tree day, don’t you think?’’

  “Oh, yes,” Selene said, sobering. “Snow is a great backdrop for murdering a tree.”

  “Oh, gee, here we go….” Maya muttered.

  “Oh, come on, Selene!” Kara cried. “Don’t spoil it for us!”

  “I can’t help the way I feel! I just don’t think it’s nice to chop down millions of living trees every year just for our own selfish pleasure. Hell, we only throw it out a few weeks later!”

  “It’s not like we’re chopping down wild trees, Selene,” Kara argued. “These trees wouldn’t exist without the custom! For Pete’s sake, they are planted and raised just for this purpose! Selling them helps farmers make ends meet. You’re so narrow-minded!”

  “I am not. Life is life. Trees have spirit, and I don’t see the sense in murdering them.”

  “Dammit, you two, enough!” Maya shouted. They went silent as she glared at them over the seat. “We are going to be joyful and filled with Christmas spirit while we choose our tree, do you understand?’’ She practically growled the words through clenched teeth. “Now stop fighting and be joyful, or I’ll come back there and make you sorry!”

  Caleb looked at the two pou
ting faces in the rearview mirror, then at Maya’s angry one beside him. He cleared his throat and very softly said, “Can I…make a suggestion?”

  All three sets of eyes turned on him. He swallowed hard. “The ground’s not frozen yet. It wouldn’t be all that hard to dig the tree up, instead of cutting it down. We could wrap the roots in burlap and soil, put it into a big tub of dirt, feed and water it all winter. Then, come spring, we can take it out and plant it again.”

  Selene’s pout eased into a smile so soft and genuine that Caleb thought she might lean up and kiss him. She looked at Kara, and Kara smiled back and nodded.

  Then he looked at Maya. But she wasn’t reacting at all to his suggestion. Instead she said, “What do you mean ‘we’?”

  “Huh?”

  “You said we could take the tree out and plant it in the spring. I want to know what you meant by that.”

  “I…well, hell, I don’t know.”

  “Do you plan to be here in the spring, Caleb?”

  She said it as if she were issuing a challenge. He decided to rise to it. “Are you and my children going to be here in the spring?” he asked her.

  “Well, of course we are.”

  “Then…then so am I.” He didn’t know what the hell made him blurt those words. Had he lost his freaking mind?

  “Hot damn,” Kara said from the back seat. “You go, Caleb!”

  “Shut up, Kara,” Maya growled. Caleb glanced at Kara in the mirror and sent her a wink. She smiled, and her eyes sparkled. He shifted his gaze to Selene, whose eyes were knowing, wise beyond their years. She gave him a very slight nod of approval, but the look she sent him said she had known it all along.

  Caleb was worried. He’d said something he had no intention of saying. He had no idea if he could be around here in the spring. He would visit, of course, but that wasn’t the way his statement had sounded. And now it was said. It was out there. And he couldn’t take it back.