Wood Worked

“Just regular. And thank you so much for doing this.”

Nana beamed. “Taking care of people in this house is what I do.”

A few minutes later, the little wooden table was loaded with tea, toast, and a huge bowl that contained eggs, sausage, potatoes, onion, pepper, salsa, and cheese. I picked up my fork and sampled the food.

Every bite was an explosion of flavor. An explosion of heat, too, but after the bland hospital food, it was nice to taste strong flavors. “This is delicious.”

“Raphael made the sausages last night.” Nana was sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed. She’d said it would give us a chance to get to know each other and make me feel less like I was still in the hospital.

I didn’t have the heart to tell her that me eating in bed with someone sitting there watching me made it feel exactly how I had in the hospital. But the food sure was better.

“Eat up,” Nana chided whenever my fork stilled

“It’s really good, but I think my appetite has shrunk.”

She nodded. “Yes, that can happen after the kind of thing you’ve been through.” She blinked rapidly. The moisture in her eyes warned me what was coming. “We’re all so very, very grateful to you. Lucas is a very special young man.”

“I’m glad I was there,” I said sincerely. “I only saw the twins for a few minutes, but they seem like great kids.”

“They are,” Nana said, the pride in her voice making it clear she felt like the twin’s real grandparent, even if she wasn’t a blood relative. “Some siblings fight. Lord knows that Raphael and Corinne did when they were kids. But Lucas is fiercely protective of Charlotte.”

She paused, thinking it over. “And vice versa. They’re two peas in a pod.”

I wanted to hear more about the twins—but I was also curious about what

Nana had said about Raphael. “Raphael doesn’t seem like the fighting type.”

“He’s not,” Nana confirmed. “Not anymore. But he was pretty wild as a teen. He and my granddaughter would stay out until the wee hours of the morning, come home with smiles on their faces, and never feel an ounce of shame.”

“Really? He doesn’t seem like the type.”

A shadow passed over Nana’s face. “Once his sister got sick, it was like night and day. He dove into research, trying to find out anything he could about her condition. And after she passed, he became a super uncle. I did what I could, but he was the one who held things together over here after such a terrible loss.”

Wow. That sounded more like the man I’d met recently, but still, it was truly sad that his change had come about from such a tragic thing. “Was she—Corrine—sick for long?”

Nana nodded unhappily. “She was diagnosed with cancer not long after she and Spencer married. And then when they found out she was pregnant, she refused all treatment. She didn’t want to hurt the babies.” Nana was silent for a long moment. “She died when the twins were just a few months old, but she loved them as much as she could while she was here.”

The sausage scramble felt heavy in my stomach as Nana concluded the devastating story. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to pry.”

Nana’s tone turned brisk. “You didn’t. When a young lady suddenly finds herself in a household with three handsome men, she needs to know the score.”

“Three? Oh, you mean Flynn, too.”

“Haven’t you met him? Usually, he’s over here all the time. He lives right next door.”

“No, I haven’t met him.” I thought about adding that I’d seen him at the park, but that was another upsetting story, and I’d had enough of those for the moment.

“You’ll like him. He’s a real charmer. Well, when he wants to be. He’s a vet, you know. Enjoys working on his own sometimes. But he’s great with those kids. They all are. It’s like Charlotte and Lucas have three dedicated and devoted dads.”

A vet? I wondered what branch of the military he’d been in. It kind of fit with what little I knew of him. At the park, he’d seemed strong and healthy, with a straight posture that in retrospect, seemed like something a former military man might have.

The image of his deep brown eyes as he hovered over me in the street came back to me. I’d seen the same mesmerizing eyes in Spencer’s face, but I hoped I’d see Flynn’s again soon.

I also thought about the twins. They were very lucky to have three men who loved and cared for them, but I wondered how often they thought about their mom. Was it something that weighed on them, or was it more like something they’d never known and therefore couldn’t miss?

That made me think of Charlotte. She’d seemed so competent and at ease signing with her family yesterday. Was her hearing loss like the loss of her mother? Something she knew she was without, but had never experienced? It made me want to find the girl and give her a big hug, the way she’d given me one yesterday.