Chapter 21
Twenty-One
Andi made good use of her two weeks off to unpack and get settled. She was careful to make changes only to the room she shared with Jack and left everything else in the house just the way it was, which she felt would be important to the girls.
She made them a fancy, candlelight dinner for Valentine’s Day.
The kids enjoyed the dinner and the silly gifts she got each of them.
Jack surprised her with a pair of enormous diamond earrings that sat in a box on her pillow at bedtime.
She gave him a new watch to replace the one he’d broken the week before.
The next weekend, he took her to shop for a car and talked her into a midnight blue convertible BMW, the four-door version of his.
When he tried to buy it for her, she protested and let him know she was capable of buying her own car.
He put up an argument—and even created a bit of a scene in the dealership—until he finally got that he couldn’t win this one.
“Andi…” He reached for her hand as they drove home in his car. Hers would be delivered the next day.
She tugged her hand away and looked out the passenger window.
“What did I do?”
“You know what you did.”
He pulled the car off the road. “Look at me.” Using his finger to turn her chin, he seemed shocked to find tears in her eyes. “Talk to me. What’s wrong?”
She looked down to study her hands. “I totally overreacted. You were just being generous, like you always are. I’m not used to that. No one has ever wanted to take care of me the way you do.”
“I do want to take care of you—and Eric.”
“Since Alec left us—and even before then—it’s been up to me to take care of us. I can’t stop that now. I make plenty of money, and I want us to have an equal partnership.”
“I make plenty of money, too,” he said with a pained expression.
“In fact, I have plenty of money. Well, tons of it actually, and that doesn’t even include the money from my father, which I’ve never touched.
It’s been years since I’ve worked because I had to.
I want be able to do things for you and Eric without upsetting you. ”
She knew he was successful, but to hear him use the words “tons of money” made her laugh. “Tons, huh?”
He winced. “You don’t even want to know. What can I say? The business does well. Really well.”
He was so embarrassed that she loved him all the more for his humility.
“Can we compromise?” he asked.
She thought about it for a moment. “I’ll allow the occasional indulgence, but I pay for the big things—my car, Eric’s school, anything he needs. I don’t want to spoil him. And my salary goes into the household pot. Fair?”
“We’ll go to the bank tomorrow and open a joint account. We’ll pay for everything out of that, okay?”
She nodded. “Will you do something else for me?”
He kissed her hand. “There’s absolutely nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”
“Don’t get mad when I won’t let you pay for something.”
“I’ll try.”
She raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“What? I will try.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Grinning, he leaned over to kiss her. “Did we just have our first fight?”
Laughing, she said, “When we fight, buddy, you won’t have to ask.”
On her first day back to work in early March, she drove Eric’s carpool and stopped for coffee on her way home to her new office in Jack’s study. He’d made room for her to work from home during the final months of construction when she would oversee hiring, publicity, and the opening gala.
Frannie worked every day in her studio while she waited for construction to be completed on their new home.
Andi looked forward to their daily chats and often walked with her to pick up Maggie at school.
They’d begun to notice crocuses nudging their way through the still-frozen ground, a sure sign that spring was on its way.
One afternoon, Frannie came in from the studio looking frazzled.
“What’s wrong?” Andi asked.
“My stomach has been a mess all day.”
Andi took a closer look. “You’re kind of green.”
“Ugh! I can’t afford to be sick right now with so much left to do on your commission.”
“Are you sure it’s a bug and not something else?”
“Like what?”
Andi made a pregnant-belly gesture.
“No way. That ship has sailed for me. I’m sure of it.”
“How sure?”
“Sure enough that I haven’t been doing anything to stop it.” Frannie’s face went slack with shock. “You don’t think… I mean really…”
Andi roared with laughter. “You are so pregnant. I hope it’s not triplets.”
“That’s not even funny! I’ve got to go get a test. Do you mind going for Maggie?”
“Not at all. Are you coming back here?”
“I guess so. I’ll need reinforcements if it’s positive.”
“I’ll be here,” Andi said, laughing again at the shell-shocked look on Frannie’s face.
Andi walked to Maggie’s school and arrived just as the students poured out the front door of the elementary wing. She waved to Maggie when she saw her come running out.
“Hi, Andi. Where’s Frannie?”
“She had something she had to do, so you’re stuck with me.”
“That’s okay.”
Andi smiled at her. She still sometimes felt that Maggie put up with her because she was part of the package that came with Eric. But Andi was making a concerted effort not to push herself on the girls, hoping a relationship would develop over time.
“Did you have a good day?” she asked Maggie.
“It was okay. Bobby Denton puked at lunch. It was so gross.” Maggie shuddered with fifth-grade revulsion.
“That poor kid, I’m sure it was embarrassing for him.”
“It probably was. I hadn’t thought about it that way. There’s Hailey Harper.” She nodded at a girl across the street. “I don’t like her.”
“Why not?”
“She thinks she’s so fancy with her funky French braids.”
“Guess who knows how to braid like that?”
“You do?” Maggie’s eyes lit up. “Could you do it for me?”
“Sure, we’ll do it tomorrow.”
They chatted all the way home, and Andi celebrated her first breakthrough.
One down, two to go.
Andi stifled a laugh at the loud moan from the master bathroom.
“Oh my God!” Frannie flung open the door and held up the stick with the large pink cross. “I’m almost forty-four. I can’t be pregnant!”
Andi hugged her. “You can, and you are.”
Tears spilled from Frannie’s eyes. “Jamie will freak,” she moaned. “We’re both too old!”
“He’ll be thrilled,” Andi assured her.
Frannie sat on the sofa and dropped her head into her hands.
Andi did and said everything she could think of to comfort Frannie, but nothing seemed to work. “I’ll be right back.” She went downstairs to use the phone in Kate’s room, so Frannie wouldn’t hear her. “Hi, Jamie, it’s Andi.”
“Hey, Andi, what’s up?”
“Everything’s fine, so don’t worry, but can you come over to the house…um…now?”
“Is something wrong?”
“No, it’s Frannie, she’s—”
“I’ll be right there.”
Jamie bounded up the stairs fifteen minutes later and stopped short at the doorway when he saw Frannie crying.
“Frannie, honey, what’s wrong?”
“I’ll leave you two alone.” Andi closed the door and went downstairs. A few minutes later, she smiled at the loud whoop that came from upstairs.
Jack came in a few minutes later looking worried. “What’s wrong, Andi? Quinn told me you called and Jamie went running out of the office.”
Andi kissed him. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“Then why did Jamie come over here like that? It scared the hell out of me.”
“I’m sorry it scared you, but you’ll have to let them tell you,” she said with a mysterious smile.
He seemed to get that whatever was going on wasn’t bad news, so he picked her up. “Tell me what you know, woman!”
“Put me down!”
But instead he flung her over his shoulder and pretended he’d drop her if she didn’t tell him.
“What’ll we do if our kid turns out like him rather than me?” Jamie asked as he and Frannie came into the kitchen.
Jack gasped as he set Andi down. “Your kid?”
The others nodded.
Jack let out a whoop of his own and hugged them both. “Congratulations! What a surprise!”
“No kidding,” Frannie muttered.
Glowing with delight, Jamie put an arm around his wife.
Jill came into the kitchen. “What’s all the yelling about?”
“Your aunt and uncle have some wonderful news,” Jack said.
“We’re having a baby!” Jamie said.
Jill squealed and called her sisters downstairs.
Eric trailed along with Maggie, and Andi signed the news to him.
Everyone was talking at once when Frannie turned green again and ran for the bathroom.
Frannie was sick for weeks, until Jamie couldn’t take it anymore and called her doctor. She was admitted to the hospital and put on intravenous fluids. An ultrasound done the first day she was in the hospital confirmed what the doctor thought she’d heard on the fetal heart monitor—two heartbeats.
Frannie was asleep when Andi stopped to visit later that day after Jamie called to tell them about the twins.
She woke up when Andi sat down next to her bed. “I blame you, you know.”
“Oh, really? I can’t wait to hear this.”
“Everyone you buy paintings from ends up with all these kids—first triplets and now twins. You’re some sort of fertility witch.”
Andi snorted with laughter. “You keep thinking that, but I’ll tell you exactly what got you in this boat—two weeks in a hut in Fiji.”
“It was a very nice bungalow, and we saw no reason to leave it,” Frannie said with a spark of life back in her eyes. “I’m thinking now that maybe we should’ve done some sightseeing.”
“I’ll bet you are,” Andi said with a chuckle.
“My mother was here earlier, telling me how twins run in her family. Mine will be the fifth set she knows of. Her great-grandmother was a twin. I never knew that. I was like, thanks a lot, Mother, but it’s a little late now to tell me I was playing with fire.”
“No kidding! Are you feeling any better?”
“Yeah. At least I’m not puking constantly anymore.”
Andi winced. She could think of nothing worse.
After an easy pregnancy with Eric, the delivery had been chaotic and ended in an emergency cesarean.
She often wondered if the problems during delivery had somehow caused his deafness, but she would never know for certain.
“Well, I’ll let you get some rest. I’m sure the girls will be by, and Jack will want to come in later, so I’ll see you then, okay? ”
“I still blame you.”
After a spell of rainy days that Andi thought would never end, May dawned warm and sunny.
The tulips were in bloom, and a few days were nice enough for her to finally try out her new convertible.
She picked Jack up at his office one day and took him for a ride on Ocean Drive.
They stopped to inspect the hotel, which was now framed and crawling with construction workers.
Jack had been there earlier in the day and said he was pleased with the progress.
A week later, he and the girls noted the second anniversary of Clare’s accident by visiting her and having dinner out. They asked Andi and Eric to join them for dinner, but Andi thought they needed to be alone together and took the opportunity to spend some time with Eric.
She was in bed reading when Jack came home looking exhausted. “How is everyone?”
He unbuttoned his shirt and sat next to her on the bed. “They did very well. They handle seeing her much better than they used to.”
Andi reached out to him. “How about you?”
He laced his fingers through hers. “It never gets any easier to see her like that. I can’t believe it’s already been two years.”
“Can I do anything for you?”
“You already have. I was anxious to get home to you.”
She gave their joined hands a tug to bring him close enough to kiss. What she intended to be a quick kiss turned into a lingering embrace, and before long, her hands were under his shirt, caressing his back.
He shivered from her touch and kissed his way up her neck. “You make me crazy with wanting you, Andrea.”
“You have me, love. I’m right here.”