Totlandia: The Onesies, Book 1 (Fall) (7 page)

Her slap left him reeling. It echoed off the two-story-high ceiling, waking both the babies.

Scott hesitated just a moment, as if fighting the instinct to reach in and pick up his daughters. Because they happened so rarely, the memories Jillian treasured most were those of him holding both of them in his arms, cooing down at them, his head rocking back and forth as he peered into each of their little faces.

You can’t stop caring for them, she pleaded silently. Even if you don’t love me anymore, you can’t stop loving them, too.

When he didn’t pick them up, she took them instead: one on each hip, rocking them to keep them from reaching out to him.

Their happy squeals for their Dada were hard enough to take.

Obviously, he couldn’t take it either, because he headed for the door. “The mail is on the table. I took mine. I’ll have the rest forwarded to the office.”

He nodded toward the tortoiseshell bombe beneath the large ornate mirror that graced the foyer wall below the winding staircase. She’d found both pieces at an estate sale for a pittance and refinished them herself.

Maybe I should have been working on my marriage instead, she thought.

The door creaked when he closed it. Jillian stood there staring at it for at least five minutes. All that time she fought back the tsunami of tears that made her head want to burst. The girls’ responses to her silence were to babble back at her. To yank her ponytail. To hug her around the neck.

To giggle and reach down, toward the floor.

They’re right, she thought. We have to keeping moving forward, with or without Scott.

She forced herself to do something normal. What were Scott’s last words? Oh yes, something about mail…

That’s when she saw it, right on top of the sales flyers and the Restoration Hardware catalog and the latest issue of
 
Elle
 
Décor
:

The invitation for the Pacific Heights Moms & Tots Club.

She and the girls had been accepted into the club.

They’d be able to meet new people, make friends, network, get on with their lives—

As long as the club didn’t find out about her pending divorce.

If and when that happened, they’d be considered an inconvenience.

“They won’t find out,” she said out loud. “We deserve to belong. I’ve worked too hard for it.”

No matter what, the club would be her daughters’ entrée to everything she’d hoped for.

She wanted to believe that so, so badly.

8:36 a.m.

“You’re not seriously taking Dante to Bettina’s shindig dressed in that tuxedo, are you?” The shocked look on Matthews’s face said it all: overkill.

Since receiving the Pacific Heights Moms & Tots Club invitation, Lorna had been floating on a cloud. For three days she had scoured the town’s baby boutiques for the perfect outfit in which he’d make his club debut. When she came across the tiny tuxedo, she had actually squealed out loud, scaring the poor shop girl out of her skin.

Stunned by Matt’s remark, she shook her head. “But…he looks so adorable in it, and it’s Armani—”

He was laughing so hard he choked on his coffee. “Hon, he’s not meeting the Pope! It’s just a bunch of babies drooling all over each other.”

Matt’s belly laugh normally made Lorna feel as if everything was right with the world. Today, though, all it did was reinforce the fact that nothing was as it should be.

But Matt’s reaction had her wondering if Bettina’s would be the same. She could just imagine her sister-in-law’s tight lips curling into a smirk.

Yep, nix the baby tuxedo.

She sighed. It had taken her almost fifteen minutes to knot Dante’s tiny bowtie, what with him squirming the whole time. She had learned fast that he didn’t like her touching him around his neck. With his long dark tendrils and those big blue eyes, he’d be the handsomest child there. But in life, looks only took you so far. The other mothers would be comparing him to their children, scrutinizing everything about him. His height and weight. His agility. His laugh, and the other noises he made. It was hard to admit that anything about Dante seemed out of place, but yes, his disinterest in walking and talking—his naturally quiet demeanor—did concern her.

He’s got plenty of time to catch up, she reasoned. No one is perfect, but he comes darn close.

As for today, his appearance would be his calling card. All they had to do was get through the morning, and they wouldn’t have to worry about fitting in for the next four years of his life. Longer even, considering the friendships they’d be making.

She nodded grudgingly at Matt. “Okay, maybe a tux is a bit overboard. Since you want to play Tim Gunn on
 
Project Runway,
 
make yourself useful, and help me decide what he should wear. We’ve got to be fast, though. Dante and I have to be at the inaugural meet-up in less than an hour.”

She picked up Dante, then grabbed Matt’s hand and led him into the nursery. Everything that had been hanging in Dante’s closet lay on the toddler bed beside his crib.

“My second choice is this.” She held up a navy long-sleeved cowl sweater with miniature chino pants. “It’s Ralph Lauren. Understated, wouldn’t you say?”

“Nah. He’ll look like he just came back from the country club in that get-up.”

Lorna’s eyes widened. She wanted the other moms and tots to envy them, not despise them. “Good point.” She reached for her Plan C: a monogrammed sweater vest over a pale blue Oxford shirt with khaki shorts.

“Do you have anything without a polo player or monogram?” Matt asked as he pulled open one of Dante’s bureau drawers. “Jeez, Lorna! Even his T-shirts are designer. What did you do, buy out the store?”

Lorna crossed her arms over her chest. “Our son deserves the very best.”

“He’s not in prep school. Hell, he’s not even near
 
pre-school
. Shouldn’t he dress like a toddler?” He shut the drawer, opened another and rummaged around. “This is more like it.” He pulled out a miniature red, white, and blue tracksuit adorned with the London Olympics logo. “This has ‘stud’ written all over it, don’t you think?”

“And why, pray tell, would I want the others to think of him as ‘a stud’?”

Matt grabbed hold of her arm and pulled her down onto the bed with him. “Girls like studs. You wouldn’t want them to think he’s a mama’s boy, would you?”

The prickly little hairs from Matt’s perennial five o’clock shadow never failed to arouse her. Lorna didn’t mind at all—except this morning. This morning was devoted to Dante’s launch into polite society.

Reluctantly, she pushed him off and stood up. “What’s wrong with that? I married a mama’s boy, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Matt’s smile disappeared. “Thanks, Lorn. Just what I need to hear.”

“What? You know I didn’t mean it like
 
that.
 
All I was trying to say is—”

He rolled off the bed and walked out the door, slamming it behind him.

Damn me, why did I say that?

Matt’s sensitivity to Eleanor’s role in his life as his chief form of income—at least until one of his hair-brained online schemes hit it big—had always been a sore spot. Okay, yeah, it irritated her that he was able to slide through life on his family name—not to mention their largesse—unlike Lorna, who had come from nothing and had worked hard to make good enough grades to get accepted to U.C. Berkeley on scholarship...a scholarship that bore the Connaught name.

Matt had been the one who awarded it to her. Then he asked her out.

Of course she turned him down.

She held strong through three months of insistent phone calls, but the six straight days of two-dozen yellow roses sent to her room at Berkeley’s Cloyne Co-op finally convinced her to give in. She got tired of her roommates teasing her that her dorm smelled like a flower shop.

“What do you care? The rest of this place smells like a men’s locker room,” was always her reply.

Still, she couldn’t help but be flattered by his attentions.

It wasn’t until a year later, when he’d asked her to marry him, that he confessed it was love at first sight.

“Why is that?” she had asked. This was, after all, Matthew Harrison Connaught.

“Because I knew you’d love me despite my name. Why else would you have played so hard to get? I haven’t worked this hard for anything in my whole life.”

His answer had been such a surprise that she laughed out loud. To cover up her embarrassment, she retorted, “I think you work harder at your fantasy basketball picks. Still, I’m flattered, and I’ll try my best to have made it worth your while.”

“No need. Now that you’re mine, my life is complete. We can both relax.” His declaration came with a kiss.

He’d been wrong about her motives. Of course she loved him. But if she was honest with herself, his name had been the prime attraction. It inspired awe in others, like from those in the university’s fawning fundraising staff. It also elicited the envy of her friends. Most importantly, being seen on Matthew Connaught’s arm opened many doors she’d always longed to enter, but had only been allowed to peek through.

Before him, she was nobody. Now, she belonged.

Granted, without his name he would have been just another good-looking San Francisco slacker. Cute, yes. Fun to flirt with, hang out with, and to ruminate about world hunger and politics, without a doubt…

But would she have married him?

Lorna didn’t know. But she did know she longed to run after him now; to beg his forgiveness, even though they both knew she hadn’t said it to hurt him.

Watching from the window as her husband stalked out of the house and down the street, it struck her once again how truly different they were. Unlike him, she could never sit back and let the Connaught name carry her. She had too much pride.

She was grateful that as a Connaught, Dante would always enjoy financial security. But she was determined for him to make his own way in the real world. Dante’s successes would have to come from him and him alone.

With her help, of course.

In fact, if she’d had her way, Dante would have used her surname as opposed to Matt’s. That way, unlike his father, he’d never allow himself to be burdened by it, or use it as a crutch. Best yet, no one would presume his many future accomplishments came from his family name and connections. He would take pride in being a self-made man.

But she knew better than to suggest this drastic move to Matt. It would crush him, and she loved him too much to hurt him that way.

Instead, she would work that much harder to make Dante just one of the guys.

For starters, that meant looking like one. The cute little tracksuit would do just fine.

9:44 a.m.

“A divorce is never easy, Mrs. Frederick. But you do have a lot working in your favor. Especially the fact that he’s left you for another woman only a year after you gave birth to two infants, and you’ve been a stay-at-home mother because of that.” Tom Lutz, Jillian’s divorce lawyer, nodded toward Addison and Amelia, who were half-toddling, half-crawling on the very expensive Persian rug that graced his hardwood floors.

This initial meeting with Lutz had already run a full twenty minutes over the allotted hour, and the girls were getting antsy. Jillian could have kicked herself for not expressing her breast milk the night before so she could have brought it with her, but she hadn’t counted on being here this long. The girls’ first Pacific Heights Moms & Tots Club was starting in less than ten minutes. Considering Lutz’s office was all the way downtown, even if she hustled the girls out in the next ten minutes or so, by the time she got their stroller to the car and drove to the meeting, they’d still be twenty minutes late.

So much for a good first impression.

She scooped up Amelia, buckling her into the stroller’s back seat. By the time she’d turned around, Addison had crawled under Lutz’s desk. Instead of picking her up, though, he scooted his wheeled chair away, as if she were carrying the plague or something equally undesirable. Addison giggled, crawling even faster to catch up with him.

Realizing he was cornered, he had no choice except to grab her.

Addison promptly spit up on him.

What didn’t end up on the lapel of his $3,000 wool-and-silk Brioni suit landed on the rug.

The terror in Lutz’s eyes was not lost on Jillian. She had no doubt he’d be adding the dry-cleaning charges to her bill.

She swapped him a dry cloth diaper for her daughter. “Mr. Lutz, thanks for all you’re doing on our behalf. As for our home, it’s only fair that I hold on to it, isn’t it? I may not work out of the house now, but I was our sole source of income while Scott was in school. And I found the house and renovated it. He—he couldn’t care less about it.”

Lutz’s lids closed as he considered her question. Or maybe he was reconsidering her as a client. She still remembered his pained grimace when she bumped the girls’ stroller against his antique side table.