Five Kids, One Christmas (The Brannigan Sisters) Read online

  Children made such a wonderful excuse for grown–ups to take pleasure in—and relive—the memories and exploits of their youth.

  He opened the watch on his wrist, touched the hands. Hell and damnation, ten–thirty in the morning! Hours later than he’d thought. He had to get dressed, had to get ready, had to go! Just half an hour until the best treats he’d ever gotten in his life could come home with him again.

  His fingers convulsed, kneading his knees. His kids were coming home.

  He could hardly wait.

  In darkness, Nathaniel Hawthorne Crockett sat on the edge of the bed, grabbed for his socks and got ready for his life to begin.

  ~ZACH, CARA, LIBBY, MAX AND JANE~

  "I don’t care who they are or what the papers say." Zachary Allan Crockett, age eleven, stomped around the playroom, passionate, angry and rebellious. "He didn’t even take us home with him after the funeral—"

  "He wanted to," his sister, Cara Lauren Crockett, age nine, assured him fiercely. "You saw, he tried. Grandma and Grandpa Sanders wouldn’t let him. They made the lawyers tell him he couldn’t—"

  "If he’d really wanted us, he’d have taken us," Zach retorted. "He wouldn’t have let anything stop him."

  Elizabeth Jane Maximovich, taller and older than her seven years, put a hand on her stepbrother’s shoulder. "Maybe he thought—"

  Zach pitched her hand aside. "He didn’t think anything, he didn’t do anything, and anyway, what would you know about it? Your mother didn’t even come to the funeral."

  "She was in Japan," Libby returned evenly. For pete’s sake, they’d covered this territory several times already this morning. She was at the point where she was either going to stamp her foot and act seven, or use the martial arts training Helen had given her for her last birthday and smack Zach good, then get him in trouble for fighting with somebody younger, smaller and more feminine when he hit her back. "It took her three days to get here and then the funeral was over and your stupid old grandma and grandpa said she had to wait for the lawyers to talk to her before she could see me because she didn’t have legal custody yet."

  "They’re not stupid," Zach snapped. "They were here when Mom and Dad were killed, they were here all the time, not my father, not your mother, just Grandma and Grandpa, so you—"

  "Zach," Cara pleaded, eyes tearing with all the sensitivity of her nine years. "Don’t fight, please don’t fight, there’s been enough fighting. That’s what we have to stop." She grabbed his arm and hung on when he tried to push her away as he’d done Libby. "You and Libby and I each have a parent still alive, but what about Max and Jane? All they have is us. We can’t let them split us up—we won’t let them split us up, but they will if we fight, they will. We’ve lost everything else, but not each other, please. Maybe we did start out from separate families, but we’re not separate families now—"

  "Family now!" Jane Wallis Crockett–Maximovich agreed firmly. The three–year–old had been named for Amanda’s and John’s grandmothers when, after much finagling, she’d finally been adopted and brought stateside from Romania as an infant. Nodding vigorously, pleased with both her vocabulary and her ability to participate in the conversation of her elders, she shook a finger and yelled, "No fighting!" She pirouetted in the center of the huddle formed by her siblings, watching the poodle skirt—part of her Halloween costume, which Amanda had finished making the morning before the devastating accident—twirl wide. "Spin!" she shouted, delighted.

  "Not now, Jane," Cara said gently, catching her. "Have to talk. Have to decide what to do."

  "Do," Jane agreed importantly, though she was somewhat puzzled by Cara’s seriousness. "Decide what?"

  "Decide what?" John Maximilian Crockett–Maximovich, age five, echoed, his Serbian features screwed tight with anxiety. Max was the most–recent addition to the Crockett–Maximovich tribe—his adoption had been finalized only six months previously—and his English, although progressing at breakneck speed, suffered from a few holes. In his turbulent lifetime, he’d survived civil war, the loss of one set of parents and the conditions of an overcrowded orphanage, only to be found by then lose, a second set of parents. He clung tightly to Cara’s hand, a thin, brown–haired little boy in serious need of reassurance. "Please, don’t wanna leave."

  Cara put protective arms around him. "Nobody’s going to leave. I’m not sure how, but we’re all staying right here in our house. Nobody can make us leave."

  "Dam right." Libby—very much Helen’s Libby despite the fact that she’d spent her formative years to date primarily influenced by her father—planted her feet, hands on hips, and scowled ferociously.

  From the wildly curly, shoulder–length, black–brown hair to the high, wide, freckle–smattered cheekbones, stubborn chin, determined mouth and brook–no–back–talk green eyes, she was every bit Helen’s childhood duplicate: independent, single–minded, as tough and infuriatingly complex as she was transparent, and hell bent on doing what she was absolutely sure was right regardless of what her elders, with their wider and wiser worldview, might decide. In short, Elizabeth Jane Maximovich was everything her maternal grandmother, Julia Block Brannigan, might ever have wished on Helen to avenge all the transgressions Helen herself had committed under Julia’s parentage and then some.

  "So, what are we going to do?" Zach, the smart, tough enforcer, perfectly suited for sergeant but who would never make a great general, asked. He checked the clock on the playroom wall—a big blue Cookie Monster. It was babyish by his advanced standards, but Max and Jane loved it, and he tolerated it for them. "They’ll be here any minute."

  "Oh, don’t worry," Libby, the general who went to war filled with the knowledge that there would be casualties and who relished the thought of leaving some, said serenely. A serious student of Artemis Fowl, the Wimpy Kid, Harry Potter, and Zombiekins, she pulled up her shirt and extracted the two crumpled sheets of heavy legal paper from their hiding place against her stomach. "I’ll think of something."

  For the first time that Halloween morning, Zach, Cara, Max and Jane smiled.

  ~HELEN AND NAT~

  "Joint custody?" Helen peered blankly at the woman in the conservative designer pinstripe who posed beside the leather wing chair to the left of the fireplace, a sheaf of legalese dripping through her hands. "We’ve never been divorced from, or even married to, each other. How can there be joint custody?"

  She turned to look at the tall, rambling, active–looking man seated in the deep–cushioned leather chair a third of the way around the heavy glass coffee table from her.

  Rough, long–fingered hands contracted on the arms of his chair; opaque blue eyes stared unseeing at the woman holding John and Amanda’s will. The generous mouth tightened. Helen’s pulse accelerated slightly. It had been over five years since she’d caught more than a passing glimpse of him—before his accident, at the joint "shipping out" party Amanda had thrown for them before they left for Iraq. Who’d known then how far they were really being shipped? Out of their country, out of their homes, their marriages, their children’s lives… But never had Helen seen Nathaniel Hawthorne Crockett appear less at ease with any of his limitations—visual, emotional or otherwise—or less hampered by them.

  And sighted or not, there was still no doubt about it: Amanda’s ex was gorgeous and had always been gorgeous, pure and simple. From the top of his shaggy, wheat–colored hair to the tips of his beat–up hiking boots, and all points in between.

  All points.

  Helen fidgeted with the hem of her uniform jacket. Like it or not, there was no harm in feeling that hop, skip and shimmy in her veins. It wasn’t like feeling her pulse puddle laxly around her feet every time she’d seen Nat while she and John were still married. And then it wasn’t like she’d ever done anything about the sensation—or even considered doing anything about the awareness. She wouldn’t have. It wasn’t just part of her ethics, her morality or her upbringing. Brannigan girls did not pursue other women’s men, married or not, in any way
, shape or form. Not by thought, word or deed. Ever.

  Period.

  On the other hand, Brannigan girls didn’t always have complete control over their pulse rates. Some things—a great many things, the unfortunate truth be told—had a tendency to take them by surprise. Consequently they often felt guilty for things they didn’t do. The refrain went something like this: Maybe if I hadn’t felt, then John wouldn’t have done… Instead of the equally valid: Maybe I felt because John was already…

  No accounting for culpability sometimes.

  Especially not when guilt was bred in the bone.

  Helen jerked the front of her jacket firmly into place. This was neither the time nor the place. Grown–ups got to choose what they did about attractions and where they suffered them. That was the point of outgrowing adolescence. She looked at John and Amanda’s attorney.

  "I was under the impression arrangements for the children were already sorted out. I just came to pick up my daughter, Libby. Elizabeth. I have to be back in Washington next Monday. I didn’t come to stay, only to take care of her and see to the estate. I assumed…" Helen stopped, squirmed imperceptibly, revised the partially spoken thought. No need to remind herself what assume translated to. Especially when she’d apparently assumed wrong. "I’ve hired a nanny, enrolled her in school…"

  From his vantage point near the front bay window—the faint stirring of cool air on his cheek, the clean scent of live greenery and loam and the fact that Amanda had once described the room to him told him where he was—Nat listened to Helen’s voice, heard beneath the disciplined cadence the nuance of panic she’d almost successfully hidden. Long time since he’d heard that voice, the crisp contralto far better at snapping commands than suggesting music, the hidden undercurrent of wry humor never totally absent.

  Long and bitter time since he’d somehow had the gall to blame her for Amanda’s defection. After all, if Helen hadn’t been so career oriented; if she’d objected to her Middle East posting; if she’d stayed home and kept her husband happier—or at least kept track of him…

  Also if she hadn’t been so damned attractive to Nat himself, and Amanda so acutely all–seeing…

  But what had happened between John and Amanda wasn’t Helen’s fault at all, not Nat’s, not the military’s for requiring their services for so many months so far from home. It was John and Amanda who’d made the choices. John and Amanda who’d comforted and supported each other through their loneliness, who’d together discovered how alike their goals were, their needs, their plans, their ideas of what made up a family….

  Who’d discovered how poorly suited they each were to their own spouses…

  Yeah, well. History. It changed nothing. He still remembered Colonel Helen Brannigan when she’d been merely Major Brannigan in vivid, vibrant detail: tall, imposing, sometimes lost when she wasn’t hiding inside her uniform; a curly–haired, green–eyed brunette with fair, black–Irish skin and high, surprisingly delicate cheekbones connected to one tough–cookie–stubborn jawline—an effect almost immediately ruined by the laugh dimples set to either side of her wide mouth, two on the left, one on the right. She was the only female he’d ever met who’d made him doubt that Amanda was the one–and–only woman in the world for him. Shook him up pretty good when he’d realized it, too.

  Rattled him tenfold more when he’d found himself wishing, even for an instant, that he was the kind of guy whose conscience would allow him to step out on Amanda in order to poach another man’s wife.

  Made him turn around and run when he’d surprised Helen with the same look on her face—quickly masked in horrified shame—when he’d danced with her, at John’s urging, at her and John’s second wedding anniversary party. Nat and Helen had each made sure not to get anywhere near the other since.

  Like it or not, he knew well enough that what took place between a man and a woman often had no basis in logic or persuasion, reality or anything resembling it. He was his own best case in point: while his heart and his eyes had recognized what he wanted in Amanda, it was his soul that knew Helen—still knew her, damn it. It was his body that even now betrayed its affinity with hers when she was in the vicinity, his spirit that hammered at his brain, demanding that he seek her out when this meeting was through.

  The same mind that had once made him run far and fast in the opposite direction, only to wind up here, now, full circle around the table from her, with nothing but children and history remaining between them.

  Nat dropped a hand to where Toby lay quiet and alert beside his chair, absently petting the dog’s furry head. Life was a lot more complicated than the black–and–white rights and wrongs he’d grown up with. And if his reaction to Helen Brannigan simply being in the same room, the lawyer intimating something beyond simple custody and the mutinous tones he could hear of children arguing in whispers somewhere in the wings were indicators, then life in all its glory was about to become far more involved than he chose to imagine.

  And quite possibly a good deal more interesting, too.

  Smothering a grin, Nat sat forward slightly in the leather wing chair and paid attention.

  Across the table from him, paying attention, too, Helen caught Nat’s half grin and winced. Whatever was coming, she’d get no help from that quarter. The dratted man had a true sense of the ridiculous—and got a kick out of it, to boot.

  That was her one true remaining weakness when it came to men. Because the bottom line was, gorgeous could cut it for only so long if a man had no sense of humor. Too bad she’d realized this weakness in herself too late to avoid the mistake she’d made in getting swept away by John.

  Firmly she yanked her attention away from Nat and past mistakes, back to the discussion.

  "Believe me, Colonel Brannigan." The lawyer held up a soft, manicured hand that somehow made Helen nervous. No good ever came out of a situation where someone had to hold up a hand to her to make a point. "I’m sorry if you misunderstood the nature of my correspondence. I’m truly not here to stonewall either you or Mr. Crockett in taking custody of your separate children and getting on with your lives. I’m here only to discharge my duties to this estate, and see to the welfare of all the children. And Mr. and Mrs. Maximovich were most specific about this last point. I did, however, think they had discussed all the, er, particulars with you first."

  She paused, looking first at Helen, then at the keenly listening Nat. Glanced uncomfortably away when she realized Nat couldn’t acknowledge her pointed look. Colored when his mouth tightened and he raised a mocking brow in recognition of the nature of her pause. The man didn’t even have the grace to wear heavy dark sunglasses to remind people of his… visual limitations.

  "Our children’s welfare is why Colonel Brannigan and I are here, Ms. Frye." Nat crossed his legs and arranged himself comfortably, carelessly, deep in his chair. "Speaking for myself, I hate the circumstances under which I’m getting my children back, but the situation can’t be changed. If we can get on with this? I’d like to be able to…" he searched for the right phrasing "… get things headed toward normal again for Zach and Cara as quickly as possible. I’m sure Colonel Brannigan wants the same for Libby."

  Geneva Frye nodded, colored again when she caught herself, cleared her throat and continued, "I believe you each were granted only visitation in the original custody decrees." She waited for two nods, got none, swallowed. She was out of her depth big–time. "You each fought for more, but neither received it. I’ve been… empowered… to offer you the chance you both wanted five years ago to be with your children full–time."

  "But there are strings," Helen supplied darkly.

  Nat jacked an elbow up on the arm of his chair and covered a grin at the expression in her voice. Before life had changed for them both, John had once told him that what Helen hated most in the world was anything with strings attached—particularly if they were leading strings. A third of the way around the table, she cleared her throat, and Nat heard the glare in the harrumph, as plainly as he
might have once seen it in her eyes.

  Helen didn’t give in to the childish urge to kick the former Captain Crockett in the ankle under the table. What the dickens did her pulse find so fanatically attractive about this man, anyway? Besides his ill–timed sense of humor, his physique and that indefinable something that could turn her heart on its ear in a pulse beat.

  Geneva Frye inclined her head, gathering composure from familiar ground. "As you say, strings." She consulted her notes. "The… dilemma… here is that Mr. and Mrs. Maximovich wanted the children—all five children—"

  "Five?" Helen demanded.

  The lawyer nodded. "As I’m sure you must be aware, they adopted a boy and a girl in the last couple of years—"

  "Yes, but…" Helen began, then subsided. Clearly there were a few things she’d neglected to take into consideration.

  The clipped nod came again. "Five children," Ms. Frye resumed, "and Mr. and Mrs. Maximovich wanted than all to stay together. It was very important to them to maintain this family unit in its entirety—give the children one another to count on even if they had no one else. It’s also what the children want. They asked me this morning to let you know that."

  Ignoring the implications, Nat prompted, "The particulars?"

  "The adopted children—" again she consulted the legal parchment in front of her "Maximilian and Jane, have no living parents. Mr. and Mrs. Sanders—your former in–laws, I believe, Mr. Crockett—have requested that our firm… explore… the possibility of them obtaining full legal guardianship of all five children with intent to adopt. As you know, the Sanderses were first available and became temporary guardians on the deaths of your ex–spouses. From the court’s standpoint they are still relatively young, in excellent health, are well–known to all the children and have a tremendous rapport with them, as well as having maintained regular contact with the family throughout the years—"