One
There were things that Rose Sewell wanted about marriage. There were a lot of them. She’d never made a formal list, but she was pretty sure that once she got started making one, it would fill most of a page.
She wanted the attention, as embarrassing as it was to admit it. She wanted the rice and the ceremony and she wanted it in a church. She wanted the tax benefits, too. Wanted the stability it would give her and her little twins. That was, perhaps, the most important part of all. She wanted someone who could make sure that she was provided for.
Of course, that wasn’t all she wanted. Most of a page, remember. She wanted the loving relationship, too. She wanted the government permission to have sex all the time. She wanted to find herself a man and have a hundred of his babies and be a homemaker.
Well, there were things that she didn’t want, too. Like, for example, to have to decide whether they went with a blue-silver theme, or a purple-gold theme, or… there were, as she was finding out, about ten thousand decisions like that to be made.
Maybe, in an alternate universe, her mother would have helped with this. She’d have picked colors when Rose stood up in a huff and walked off without picking. But her mother wasn’t around any more. Maybe her father would have stepped in. But he wasn’t around, either. Which was the source of most of her problems.
And she wasn’t going to get the sex, or the babies, or the love, either.
Rose was a sensible person. Love and sex were an important part of marriage, but they weren’t the only thing in marriage. They were something that she could get in a perfect situation. She wasn’t in a perfect situation. She needed money, and she needed the tax break, and that meant getting married. It was that simple.
Duncan’s lips pressed tight together and he looked at her. Rose was vaguely aware of him at the edge of her consciousness. The fact that he was watching her registered and she ignored it. This needed to get done.
“Rosie, if you don’t want to do this…”
“It needs to get done,” she said sharply. “And I hate it when you call me that.”
“Oh, come on. Don’t take that from me.”
“I took it from you ten years ago, and you ignored that completely. Why would you suddenly start listening now?”
“Ouch. That’s harsh.”
“Well? Am I wrong?”
She studied the colors in front of her as movement flicked at the edge of her vision. His frown twisted into a wide grin. “No.”
“Now come on. Teal or Navy?”
“You don’t think Navy is a little dark?”
“It’s an accent color. Of course it’s dark.”
“You know who you’re talking to, right? I know about accent colors.”
“Oh, right. I forgot that you are what you eat. You’ve fucked enough of those skinny artist boys that you’ve absorbed it by osmosis.”
“That’s not fair. I went to art school.”
“For a semester, Duncan. It was never for you.”
He shrugged and leaned forward. “I don’t recall you ever having a different man every night.”
“I don’t want a different man every night.”
Duncan picked up one of the cards. “Right. Your mystery baby-daddy, right?”
“Isn’t this supposed to be talking for the wedding? Are we supposed to be getting married?”
Duncan dropped the card back on the table and picked up the other one, sat back in his chair, and studied it. When he spoke, she could hear the distraction thick in his voice.
“Oh, come on. It’s the twenty-first century. What’s a little marriage going to get in the way of sex?”
She let out a breath and snatched the card out of his hand. “Alright, this one it is.”
“Come on. I was looking at that.”
“You got that look on your face like your brain was melting, Duncan. Let’s just get a cup of coffee or something.”
“I guess.”
“I’ve got an appointment next week to meet with the dress people. They’ll love this whole thing, I tell you.”
“Yeah?”
“Well. I wasn’t going to tell them the whole thing. Just the deadline. They’re going to love that.”
“I’m not sure that you and I have the same ideas of love.”
“Just like how I love you, Duncan. Love like a punch in the nose.”
“I aim to please,” he said. He was practically preening, as if she’d given him the best compliment that he’d ever received.
She set the color combination card off to the side, picked up the rest, and shuffled them into a pile. On the way out the door, she dropped them into the trash.
The girls didn’t want to be woken up. But then again, neither did Rose, ten times a night, and that was going to happen regardless. So they were going to wake up to get carried to the car. It was dinner time for grown-up people, and that meant that it was car-ride time for baby girls.
She hooked her hands together to help carry the weight in each elbow until Duncan offered to take one. She gave Sarah over and kept Violet for herself. That would show him not to just reach for the little sweetie. Then again, maybe he preferred the spitfires. He seemed to like her well enough, after all.
They were just about buckled into the car-seats when her phone buzzed in her pocket. She kept working and half-felt for more buzzing. Buzzing that didn’t come. A text, then. No problem.
Which was a mistake to think, she realized later. Because she’d just received a company-wide text from her new boss, and he wanted everyone to come in. Not coming to the first meeting under a new administration was going to form an excellent first impression.