Free Four Times the Trouble by Tara Taylor Quinn Page A

telephone and handed Jacob the receiver. He looked so different this morning than he had on Wednesday night, and she’d hoped the return to his usual uniform of sweats and T-shirt would have a grounding effect on her growing interest in him. It hadn’t.
    “Of course I remember. I never forget a beautiful woman,” she heard him say into the receiver.
    Michelle studied the program sheet in front of her. They had three promos coming up, a telephone interview, a weather spot, sport scores to announce again and six songs to play. What did she care if Jacob was talking to a beautiful woman? It certainly wasn’t anything new.
    “Tonight?”
    Please say no.
    “How late?”
    You have children to watch.
    “I only stay up past my bedtime on special occasions.”
    He was grinning. She had to look away.
    “You’re on. I’ll pick you up at eight.”
    Michelle had never felt lonelier in her life.
    * * *
    J ESSIE , A LLIE AND M EGGIE dragged in from school Friday afternoon, the oversize 49ers T-shirts they were wearing seeming to weigh them down. They walked through the kitchen, their multicolored backpacks still across their shoulders, not even stopping to take a sip from the three glasses of milk he’d set out on the table.
    “Hi,” Jacob said, smiling at them.
    “Hi,” they answered in identically unhappy voices as they continued on out of the kitchen, traipsing down the hall to their room.
    Jacob looked at the untouched peanut-butter sandwiches still sitting on the table while a knot formed in his stomach. The only time Allie had ever passed up food was that time she’d reacted to her diphtheria inoculation and run a fever of 103. Enough of this mind-reading routine—he was going to trust his own judgment. Leaving the sandwiches on the table, Jacob turned and strode down the hall.
    The girls were sitting on Meggie’s bed, their backpacks dropped haphazardly in the middle of the floor. Jacob stood in the doorway, wishing he was a lot more sure of himself. He could hardly believe he was intimidated by three pint-size seven-year-olds.
    “Who’s going to tell me what’s going on?” he asked glancing from one to another. They looked so small and vulnerable as they sat there huddled together. But he managed a relentless stare, anyway.
    “We promised Ms. Wilson we’d do our best on everything from now on,” Allie finally said solemnly.
    “That doesn’t sound so bad.” He didn’t see the problem yet.
    “I have to be Cinderella, Daddy,” Jessie said, looking wistfully excited and ready to cry all at once.
    “You got the part?” he asked. He’d thought the triplets had either skipped the auditions or blown them.
    “And we’re her evil stepsisters,” Allie said, pointing to herself and Meghan. Meggie’s hair was loose, hiding her face. Jacob hoped she wasn’t crying.
    He went in and sat down on Allie’s bed. “I don’t get it. You guys loved acting in the Christmas play. It’s all you talked about for months. And now you’re upset because you got picked for the starring roles of a story you all three know by heart?” He tried not to panic as it occurred to him that his daughters weren’t just his children—they were females. This was what Eleanor Wilson and, later on, Michelle had been trying tactfully to point out. That just by the nature of the beast—male versus female—there were going to be times when he missed the boat.
    Allie’s little chin trembled. “If I gotta tell you something, you promise you won’t get mad enough to go away like Mommy did?”
    “Go away?” Jacob was completely unprepared for that. He joined the girls on Meggie’s bed, pulling them all into the circle of his arms. “I’m not going anywhere, ever—at least not without you three. You could lie and cheat and steal, and I’d punish you for sure, but I’d never leave you. Never. I love you. ”
    Three little pairs of arms wrapped themselves around Jacob, and his words of love echoed back to him in triplicate. Jacob