The Baby Invasion (Destiny Bay-Baby Dreams) (2 page)

But no one paid any attention.
 

His mother merely shifted him a bit on her hip and went on talking up into the tree to her other children.
 

“I don’t know, honey. April didn’t tell me. On trips, I guess.”
 

She reached her free arm up to help the little boy down.
 

“Come on, Beth. You’ve got so many apricots in that nightgown, you won’t be able to walk.”
 

“I hope he doesn’t come back while we’re staying in April’s house. I hope he never comes back. I hope-“
 

Scott had taken just about all the verbal abuse he was ready to take. He wasn’t used to being called mean and being shunned.
 

“Guess what,” he said in a deep, loud voice, surging up out of the water and reaching for the oversize towel at the same time. “It’s too late for hoping. He’s already back.”
 

He whipped the towel around his dark, naked body and pulled it tightly around his hips. “Now would you like to explain just exactly what all you people are doing in my yard?”
 

That was as far as he got. For mere fractions of a second the four intruders stood transfixed, shocked by his presence. Then they swung into action.
 

The woman screamed. The little girl screamed. The little boy screamed, and so did the baby.
 

Caught up in the moment, Scott almost screamed himself.
 

Still shrieking, the neighbors ran for the fence. The woman shoved the baby through, then the other two children, before slipping through herself, screaming all the while.
 

“Hey,” he yelled, going after them, frowning in annoyance at all the noise they were making. Half the town must have heard them by now. “You could at least apologize.”
 

He reached the fence and leaned over it, watching them run for the house next door, the woman carrying the baby and stopping to help the little boy. The little girl was the straggler, looking back and calling to her mother in a broken voice, “Mommy, I dropped all my apricots!”
 

Pangs of guilt shot through him. After all, what had they been doing that was all that bad? Just eating fruit he didn’t bother with himself. Was that so terrible?
 

He looked down. Apricots covered the ground at his feet. He reached down and picked a couple of them up.
 

“Hey, kid,” he called over the fence. “Here. Catch.”
 

He tossed two nice big apricots to the girl.
 

Instead of reaching out to capture them, she screamed again. “Mommy! He’s throwing things!”
 

Scott shook his head, aghast. “No, I was just--“
 

Too late. The woman had whirled and was bearing down on him.
 

“Listen, mister,” she stormed as she neared where he stood. “I know we were trespassing. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. But it was a harmless thing we did. And for a grown man to stand there and throw things at a child!”
 

“No, really,” Scott said, trying to smile.
 

She was close now, and even in the moonlight, he could see that she was a very pretty young woman. Pretty women usually liked him. Women in general, in fact, usually fell all over him. Surely once he’d explained....
 

“I wasn’t throwing them
at
her. I was throwing them
to
her. You do see the difference, don’t you?” He gave her the “we adults understand these things” look and shrugged charmingly, expecting to see that familiar little glint appear in her gaze, to see the line around the mouth soften, the lips begin to turn up at the corners.
 

Unfortunately, those things didn’t happen.
 

Instead, she put her hands on her hips, facing him as though he were a barking dog and she a mama cat protecting a basketful of kittens. The hard line around her mouth tightened. Her blue eyes flashed unfriendly fire.
 

“I’ve heard about you, mister,” she told him evenly. “You lay a finger on anyone of my children and I’ll make sure you’re sorry for it.”
 

Scott would have liked a pause in which to pursue the topic. He’d never made any bones about the fact that he liked his privacy, that he would prefer to live among adults in a place where the patter of little feet was not often heard.
 

But he wasn’t the boogie man. This reputation for hating kids seemed to be getting out of hand.
 

Before he could begin his own defense, a sound came from the house. Everyone turned toward it. Easy enough to identify, it seemed to strike each one of them with the same sense of horror.
 

“Babies,” Scott said, staring at the pretty woman. “More babies.”

He quickly counted the three still outside. The sound coming from the house indicated at least two more.
 

“How many kids do you have, lady?” he asked incredulously.
 

Her eyes shone with defiance. “As many as I want, mister,” she replied. But she began to back away toward the house.
 

“Wait.”
 

As horrifying as the prospect of even more children was he found he didn’t want to lose her so quickly.
 

She hesitated. “What is it?”
 

For a long moment all he could do was look at her. The backlight from the house was illuminating her, showing off her trim waist, rounded hips, and the full, dark-tipped breasts.
 

The baby doll pajamas were practically transparent. Her wild silver hair flew about her face like an enchanted mist, and her long, slender legs ended in fluffy, white bedroom slippers, completing a picture that was sending his senses into a tailspin.
 

Common sense was tugging on his consciousness, trying to remind him that with all these children, there must be a father around somewhere.
 

“I ... listen, couldn’t we start over here? I didn’t mean to scare you and the kids.”
 

Her blue eyes were wary, cynical.
 

“No? Then what exactly did you mean to do?”
 

He shrugged disarmingly, but ignored the question. “I’d like to get to know you better,” he said with the smooth tone of a practiced charmer. “After you get those little ... those kids to bed, why don’t you come on over for a nightcap?”
 

The husband problem nagged at him. After all, babies didn’t usually appear on doorsteps these days. There was always a father involved, at least at the onset.
 

“You and your husband,” he added hastily. “After all, we’re neighbors. We should talk.”
 

He smiled.
 

She didn’t.
 

“Sorry mister,” she replied evenly. “I teach my children, not to talk to strangers. They learn best by example.”
 

With a flick of her hair, she turned and strode quickly to the sliding glass door where her children were waiting. Scott watched her disappear, drawing the drapes behind her. He sighed, feeling strangely lonely all of a sudden.
 

Turning back to his own dark house, he started across the lawn, and quickly realized why the woman in the baby doll pajamas had been scathing about his yard. Against his tender bare feet, the grass seemed to have turned into a field of jagged rocks and lethal stickle burrs.
 

“Ow, ow, ow,” he muttered in agony as he made his way gingerly across it.
 

When he reached the patio, he bent down to pull out a few burrs, at the same time grabbing at the towel that kept sliding off his backside and swearing under his breath. Compared to this hostile hellhole he called home, Bombay was beginning to seem downright attractive.
 

Things looked a little different in the morning as Scott sat and drank his orange juice and gazed out at the shiny blue, Destiny Bay sky with not a cloud in sight.
 

The night before had been unusual, but hardly devastating. True, there were a lot of kids around.
 
But it wasn’t the memories of crying children that haunted him. Memories of their mother were much more vivid.
 

He wasn’t sure what it was exactly that had captivated his imagination. She was awfully pretty, with a body that could melt stone, but then, so were a lot of women--women without children attached.
 

He made a face at his cold cereal. Children. There was nothing worse. Sticky fingers. Whiny voices. He’d spent a good part of his life very carefully staying away from the little rug rats.

And now they were invading his territory.
 

He’d never actually made it a rule not to date women with children. It had just sort of turned out that way. In his line of work, most of the women he met were unattached. None of them wanted children any more than he did. At least, he supposed that was true. Come to think of it, the subject had never really come up.
 

Another thing his mother had held against him.
 
“You’re my oldest,” she would say.
 
“My first born.
 
Scotty, you need to find a nice girl and have babies.
 
I am just aching for a grandchild from you.
 
If you wait any longer, I’ll be senile before I get to hold one of your children in my arms.”

He groaned, pushing those memories away, resentment smoking through him as he did.
 
She’d had six other children, a few of them busy having babies as soon as they could manage it.
 
Why had it been so important to her that he have them, too?
 
That was a mystery to him, just part of the past that he couldn’t quite reconcile with reality.
 

He looked out through the window at the red tile roof of the house next door, wondering if his pretty neighbor and her kids were up yet. Funny he’d never noticed her before. She must have moved in while he was flying somewhere in another corner of the world.
 

He had a vivid picture of the woman who had been living there lately. Dark, pretty in an over-obvious way.
 
The sort of woman, who dressed as though she were heading for a cocktail lounge at nine in the morning.
 

Not his type, but attractive enough. He’d said “hello” now and again, but that was about the extent of it. He hadn’t been particularly intrigued.
 

This new one was different. Despite the children, she interested him.
 

Now that he thought of it, he really ought to make amends. After all, he had scared the poor kids half to death when he’d leaped out of the hot tub. He’d made them drop their apricots.
 

His gaze lowered to the heavily laden branches of his apricot tree. That was it. He would take them a bowl of apricots.
 

A few minutes later he was on his way to his neighbor’s front door, a large canister of apricots in hand.
 

Just being neighborly.

CHAPTER TWO:

 
The Mean Man Visits

Cathy Feenstra stared down at the three identical cribs holding three nearly identical six-month-old babies. For once, all three were asleep at the same time. She stood very still. The last thing in the world she wanted to do was wake-them up.
 

She examined them slowly, from the dark wisps of hair on the top of their little round heads to their perfect tiny fingernails. So very much alike. It was amazing.
 

Two of them were girls, and one was a boy. Their names were Michelle, Robert and Kimberly, but Cathy and her crew had taken to calling them Pink, Blue and Daffodil. (Yellow just hadn’t struck quite the same note.)
 

“Poor little babies,” she whispered at last. “I wish I knew where your mama was.”
 

Daffodil sighed in her sleep, as though she were in heartfelt agreement. Cathy smiled.
 

“Don’t worry, little one,” she murmured. “One way or another, we’ll find her. I promise you that.”
 

Things that tore families apart fired up a fierce anger in Cathy—things like mothers disappearing, fathers walking out—all of which were part of her life.

Was it naive to want an intact family unit with all the nurturing love that it could hold for every child? Probably. But she couldn’t help it. She still longed for that in the same way children longed for a white Christmas. It was just the way things should be.
 

Turning away from the three, she backed carefully out of the room.
 
Easing the door closed, she almost tripped over Beanie, her own barely-walking tyke in diapers. She scooped him up with a practiced, hand and started down the stairs.
 

“Mama.” Beth was at the bottom, looking up, her strawberry-blond hair tied back in a crooked braid, her wise six-going-on-thirty face slightly, anxious. “Are the babies asleep?”
 

Cathy nodded wearily. “Finally.”
 

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, she gave Beanie a noisy kiss and set him down.
 

“Now, at last I’ve got some time for my own brood. What do you children want for breakfast?”
 

“Mama.” Beth clasped her hands behind her back and looked self-conscious. “I ... I already fixed something for us.”
 

Cathy turned to stare at her daughter. “Why you little darling! What did you fix?”

Beth’s smile wavered as though she wasn’t sure if she’d done something good or something that only made things worse.
 

“Toast with butter and honey. And milk.”
 

Cathy felt one level of tension flowing out of her, and at the same time, tears welled in her eyes. Ever since Joey had left them, she’d been strung so tightly, trying to hold it all together. There were days when the effort seemed too much to bear.