Triple treat (9 page)

Moving once again in tandem, their movements unspoken but perfectly attuned, she turned in his arms as he turned her toward him. She went on tiptoe, her arms clasped around his neck as he held her tightly pressed against him, his big hands smoothing over the supple curves of her back and buttocks, caressing, squeezing, stroking.

Their mouths impacted for a long, deep, drugging kiss that seemed to go on forever, growing hotter and wilder as they clung together in a private passionate whirlwind of intimacy and desire.

"Mama, mama!" Franklin launched himself against Carrie, fastening his small arms around her legs. "Go, go,

go."

At the same time, Emily squatted down beside Tyler and, fascinated, began to pull at the wiry dark hairs on his legs. "Yikes!" he yelped painfully.

Tyler and Carrie jumped apart so swiftly that they swayed and teetered and almost fell before shakily gaining their balances.

"Yikes!" shrieked Dylan in delight. "Yikes, yikes, yikes!" He clearly loved the sound of the new word.

Tyler ran his hand through his hair. He felt dazed, unreal. Franklin's shouts of "Go" and Dylan's "Yikes" kept echoing in his head.

"Why say something once when you can say it fifty times?" he mumbled grimly. That seemed to be the triplets' motto. Automatically, he stooped to pick up Emily. "Hey, Emily, are you trying out for a position as a torturer's apprentice? That hurt!"

"Yikes," Emily said happily.

Carrie picked up Dylan and Franklin. "Time to eat," she sang out, but her voice was thick and shaky. She caught Tyler's eye and quickly looked away.

Without a word to each other, Carrie and Tyler carried the three children back to the kitchen where she tied full-size

bibs around each small neck before placing each baby in a high chair.

Tyler sank onto a chair at the kitchen table and watched Carrie tear ham and cheese into bite-size pieces and place it on the three high-chair trays.

"Can I have mine in a sandwich?" he asked dryly.

Carrie tossed the packets of ham and cheese at him. "Here's the bread, lettuce and tomatoes, too. You can make the sandwiches while I get out the carrots and grapes." She gave each child a few thin slices of raw carrots and some seedless green grapes.

The triplets attacked their lunch with enthusiasm. Tyler and Carrie watched them silently, he sitting at the table, she standing across from it. Carrie's gaze slid covertly from the babies to Tyler. Inadvertently, she caught him staring at her.

She quickly looked away. "You haven't even started making our sandwiches yet," she said. Her voice was still not as steady as she would've wished.

"I hate to cook." Tyler shoved the food away from him.

"Making two sandwiches hardly falls into the realm of cooking." Carrie began to make the sandwiches herself, spreading mayonnaise, then mustard, on the bread with methodical precision.

"What's the matter?" Tyler watched her, his green eyes intent.

"Nothing," she said quickly—too quickly, she realized. She caught her lower lip between her teeth in a gesture of dismay. "Why?"

"You seem—" he paused and shrugged "—different. Edgy." He leaned forward in his chair. "Yes, very much on edge. A bit high-strung." His eyes blazed with intensity. "Are you thinking about—what happened upstairs?"

Five

"No, of course not!" Carrie insisted.

Tyler's eyes narrowed. "You weren't?"

She shook her head. "It was just a kiss and it—it just sort of happened." Her pulses were jumping, her heart pounding. She felt edgy and high-strung, just as Tyler had observed, but she was determined to project otherwise. "Chalk it up to basic biology. We're both adults. We can deal with it."

"That's true. It was simply chemistry. Proximity." Tyler shrugged. "It didn't mean anything. I'm glad you understand." He sounded nonchalant, even amused.

"I'm glad you understand," Carrie said quickly. "Because I love Ian and I'm never going to love anyone else."

Tyler nodded his understanding. "I'm glad we can be honest with each other, Carrie. I like you, and your kids are very cute, but I'll never, ever get involved with you. It's out of the question. I don't want an instant family. I've deliberately never even dated a woman with children before be-

cause I'm not interested in the surrogate daddy role, even temporarily."

"Well, I certainly don't want to date you!" Carrie was aghast. "I don't want to date anyone, ever again!"

"Not anyone? Not ever?" he asked, distracted by her vehemence. "Why not?"

"Why would I? People date when they're looking for someone to become involved with, and I'm not looking. That part of my life is over."

"There is a huge difference between dating and involvement," Tyler explained patiently. "I enjoy women's company but I don't want to get seriously involved with anyone, not at this particular point in time. Probably not for years. I told both my father and my brother so, just the other day. For what seemed like the millionth time," he added, sighing.

Carrie pushed a plate with a tall sandwich on it across the table to him. "Are they nagging you to settle down?"

"Lately it seems to be their sole topic of conversation." Tyler frowned. "I'm sick of it."

"Tell them that you don't want to get married—and be firm about it," Carrie advised. "When my family tries to gently hint that I ought to think about looking for a father to help me raise my children, I tell them in no uncertain terms that I have no intention of ever marrying again."

"Why don't you?" Tyler asked curiously. "Practically speaking, marriage could benefit you and the children, certainly in a financial sense."

"You sound like my parents." Carrie grimaced. "But realistically, what man would want to support three children who aren't his? And, anyway, you know what they say about people who marry solely for money."

"Oh, yeah, I'm real familiar with that one. Those who marry for money—"

"—earn it the hard way," Carrie chimed in.

* 'But finances aside, wouldn't it be easier for you if there were another adult around here?" Tyler pressed. "You're very attractive and you're very young, Carrie, There must be some guy out there who wouldn't mind marrying you, kids and all."

"But I don't want my children to be viewed as an obligatory part of a package that comes with me," Carrie said earnestly. "I want them to be valued and wanted for themselves. And what are the chances of that? I mean, you summed it up accurately and honestly when you said that you didn't want an instant family. I'm sure most men feel that way. They wouldn't mind having their own kids, but they don't want someone else's."

Tyler looked at the triplets, who were babbling to one another and grinning happily as they stuffed their lunch into their mouths with their little fingers. They were bright and cute and lovable. Even though he'd never had much interest in children, he could easily see the Wilcox triplets' appeal. It seemed sad to think that no man could want them; in fact, it was downright depressing. So typically, pragmatically, he decided to think something else.

"You know, I believe that there is some great guy out there who would be delighted to raise your kids as his own. In fact, I'm sure there is," Tyler insisted fervently.

"There already was a great guy," Carrie corrected. "His name was Ian Wilcox and he was killed two years ago when a teenage drunk in a pickup truck ran a red light and hit his car head-on."

"Ian was killed in a car accident?" Tyler was taken aback. He stood up and began to restlessly pace the floor. "That's how my mother died. Her car was hit from behind while she was stopped to make a left turn, and the car was thrown into the path of a sixteen-wheeler. She was pronounced dead at the scene. She was only twenty-nine years old," he added flatly.

"That's terrible," Carrie said softly. "You must have been very young at the time."

"Five. Well, almost. My fifth birthday was three weeks after her funeral. I still remember blowing out the candles on my birthday cake while everyone told me to make a wish." He shrugged. "Helluva thing to say to a little kid whose mother just died. Of course, I wished that she would come back. And, of course, she didn't."

"Do you have any memories of her?"

"A few. They're mostly fleeting images rather than actual memories. I've looked at her pictures and tried to remember more." He looked at the triplets, then back at Carrie. "Maybe they're luckier not to have known their father at all. At least they didn't have to cope with losing him. Those were bad times for my brothers and me. Really bad times."

"It would be devastating for a child to lose his mother," Carrie said quietly. She thought of the mournful spiritual about the motherless child and the sense of abandonment and despair it evoked. And then she thought of five-year-old Tyler celebrating the first birthday of his life without his mother in it, of his innocent attempt to wish her back.

"Oh, Tyler, I'm so sorry." Impulsively, she put her arms around him and hugged him. It seemed the natural way to offer comfort to the lost, lonely child he had been.

Tyler hesitated for a moment, then wrapped his arms around her. "It's all right," he said quietly. "It happened a long, long time ago and there is no more grief. All I feel now is a vague sense of curiosity about what might have been had the accident not occurred."

"That's probably the way the triplets will feel about Ian," Carrie said sadly. "How could it be otherwise? Poor Ian. He deserved to be known and loved by his children."

"I'm sorry that they'll never know their father," murmured Tyler. His lips brushed the top of her silky blond hair. Once again, his senses began to spin.

Carrie closed her eyes and instinctively snuggled closer. Her motives had been to ease the pain of his inner child, but her body was responding to the man he had become. It felt so good to hold him and be held. Her hands smoothed over the broad bareness of his back, and she felt his arms tighten around her.

"Hi, Carrie! I thought I'd come over and—" Alexa gasped and stopped dead at the threshold of the kitchen.

Carrie and Tyler, who had been so absorbed in each other that they hadn't heard Alexa enter the house, selfconsciously broke apart to face her. Alexa's blue eyes were round as saucers, her mouth comically agape as she stared at the pair.

Carrie blushed scarlet. She was suddenly aware of how skimpily she and Tyler were dressed—she in her swimsuit, he in his cutoff jeans. Through her sister's eyes, she saw the picture she and Tyler had presented, and she winced.

"We—I—didn't hear you come in, Lex," Carrie said weakly.

"Well, that's certainly obvious." Alexa sniffed.

"You didn't see what you thought you did," Tyler added quickly. "That is, what you saw isn't what you think."

He grimaced, feeling unjustly tried and accused. His embrace with Carrie had been perfectly innocent, two friends offering each other comfort and sympathy. But the way Alexa was staring at him made him feel as guilty as an adolescent caught necking in the park by a flashlight-toting cop. "Oh, hell," he muttered.

"Oh, hell!" Baby Dylan broke the silence, imitating Tyler perfectly, right down to the inflection.

"Don't react," Carrie cautioned quickly. "He'll forget it if he doesn't get a reaction. But if we laugh or make a big deal out of it—"

"—they'll all pick it up," Tyler concluded. "This trio loves an audience." He walked over to Dylan's high chair

and swiped a grape from the tray. "Yikes, Dylan!" he said jovially.

"Yikes!" Dylan repeated, popping a grape into his own mouth. He grinned happily at Tyler.

Tyler grinned back. "Kids are so easy, once you get the knack," he said smugly. He saw Carrie and Alexa exchange glances. It was obvious that Alexa was dying to get her sister alone so she could grill her—probably lecture her, too—about what she'd seen when she'd barged in on them.

"Carrie, can I talk to you?" Alexa asked, confirming his supposition.

"I assume that's my cue to leave," Tyler said, deciding then and there that he was not going to be run off. Instead, he sat down at the table and resumed eating his sandwich.

"You missed your cue," Carrie pointed out dryly.

"Yeah, I guess I did." Tyler shrugged. "I don't take direction well. Good thing I'm not an actor."

Carrie and Alexa sat down, too. There seemed no point in hovering over the table while Tyler blithely consumed his lunch.

"I figured that you didn't get much sleep last night with that ungodly racket going on next door, Carrie," Alexa said as she fixed herself a sandwich. "I came over to watch the kids so you could he down and get some rest this afternoon." She reached over and tousled Franklin's blond hair. "Besides, I miss the little devils. I'm used to spending almost every Sunday with them."

"Alexa watches the kids on the weekends I work and stays over during the day so I can sleep between shifts," Carrie explained to Tyler.

"Yeah, you told me that last night," he replied.

"Last night?" Alexa echoed suspiciously.

"I was over here last night, helping Carrie dispose of a body," Tyler whispered confidentially.

"Ignore him/' Carrie advised the visibly flummoxed Al-exa. "You can't take him seriously. He's a big teaser, even worse than Ben."

"Speaking of Ben..." Alexa lowered her voice and leaned forward in her chair. "I called him this morning to ask if he wanted to come over here with me, and he was not alone. It seems he met this woman named Rhandee at your neighbor's party last night." She shot Tyler a baleful look. "And the two of them ended up at his place."

"Ben hooked up with Rhandee? No kidding?" Tyler's curiosity was mildly piqued. Not his jealousy, though.

He frowned. Yesterday he had toyed with the idea of spending the night with Rhandee himself. Therefore, wasn't it reasonable to expect that he'd feel at least a twinge of jealousy at the thought of uninhibited, adventurous Rhandee with another man?

But he felt nothing. His eyes connected with Carrie's. Tyler stiffened. Merely gazing into those incomparable blue eyes of hers affected him more than any salacious fantasy of sexy, available Rhandee.

Unnerved, he had to struggle to play it cool. "So how did brother Ben survive his night with Rhandee? Or didn't he have enough energy left to talk about it?" He prided himself on hitting just the right glib note.