Free Baby Bonanza by Maureen Child

she were a statue. She tucked her purse under her left arm and turned her face into the breeze sliding down the street from the sea.
    “It’s still several blocks to the ship,” Nick said as he joined her on the sidewalk. “You going to be able to make it in those shoes?”
    Jenna glanced down at the heeled sandals she wore then lifted her gaze back to his. “I’ll make it. I just—needed to get out of that cab and move around a little.”
    “I don’t remember you being so anxious,” he said.
    She laughed a little and sounded nervous even to herself. “Not anxious, really. It’s just that since the boys were born, I’m not used to being still. They keep me running all day long, and sitting in the back of that cab, I felt like I was in a cage or something and it didn’t help that neither one of us was talking and we’d just come from the lab, so my brain was in overdrive and—”
    He interrupted the frantic flow of words by holding up one hand. “I get it. And I could use some air, too. So why don’t we start walking?”
    “Good. That’d be good.” God, she hadn’t meant to go on a stream of consciousness there. If he hadn’t stopped her, heaven only knew what would have come out of her mouth. As it was, he was looking at her like she was a stick of dynamite with a burning fuse.
    He took her arm to turn her around, and the sizzle of heat that sprang up from his touch was enough to boil her blood and make her gasp for air. So not a good sign.
    Music spilled from the open doorway of a cantina and a couple of drunk, college-age tourists stumbled out onto the sidewalk. Nick pulled Jenna tight against him and steered her past them, but when they were in the clear, he didn’t release her. Not that she minded.
    “So what’s a typical day for you now?” he asked as they moved along the sidewalk, a part of, yet separate from, the colorful crowd of locals and tourists.
    “Typical?” Jenna laughed in spite of the fact that every nerve ending was on fire and lit from within due to Nick’s arm wrapped tightly around her waist. “I learned pretty quickly that with babies in the house there’s no such thing as typical.”
    She risked a glance at him, and his blue eyes connected with hers for a heart-stopping second. Then he nodded and said, “Okay, then describe one of your untypical days for me.”
    “Well, for one thing, my days start a lot earlier than they used to,” she said. “The twins sleep through the night now, thank God, but they’re up and raring to go by six every morning.”
    “That can’t be easy.” His arm around her waist loosened a bit, but he didn’t let her go and Jenna felt almost as if they were a real couple. Which was just dangerous thinking.
    “No,” she said quickly, to rein her imagination back in with cold, dry facts. Their lives were so different, he’d never be able to understand what her world was like. He woke up when he felt like it, had breakfast brought to his room and then spent the rest of his day wandering a plush cruise ship, making sure his guests were happy.
    She, on the other hand…
    “There are two diapers that need changing, two little bodies who need dressing and two mouths clamoring for their morning bottle. There are two cribs in the room they share and I go back and forth between them, sort of on autopilot.” She smiled to herself as images of her sons filled her mind. Yes, it was a lot of work. Yes, she was tired a lot of the time. And no, she wouldn’t change any of it.
    “How do you manage taking care of two of them?”
    “You get into a rhythm,” she said with a shrug that belied just how difficult it had been to find that rhythm. “Cooper’s more patient than his brother, but I try not to use that as an excuse to always take care of Jacob first. So, I trade off. One morning I deal with Cooper first thing and the next, it’s Jacob’s turn. I feed one, then the other and then get them into their playpen so I can start the first of the