Nothing but Trouble Read online

  As the mercifully short ceremony came to an end, the chimps finally met for a long awaited smooch. Robert took a deep breath. “Okay. We’re almost home free.”

  “And no wedding cake for the poor creatures?”

  “That’s where I draw the line. Their table manners leave a lot to be desired. It’s bad enough that Ellen insisted they be in the receiving line.” Robert held out his hand, first to Aphelion and then to Perihelion. Both chimps shook hands gravely.

  “They seem to remember,” Linda muttered. She was apprehensive. Scratch that, she was terrified. Yesterday they had spent an hour working with the chimps, enlisting a whole class of undergraduates to form a line and shake their hand. Things had gone more or less smoothly. Minor incidents like peeking under the women’s skirts, pinching noses, pulling on hair and slipping off rings had been laughed off at the lab.

  Here, however, they were in big trouble if the chimps didn’t remember their manners. Linda frowned and tightened her hold on Aphelion’s hand. They couldn’t be allowed to ruin the wedding.

  Robert’s thumb grazed her lower lip, causing her breath to whoosh out in an unexpected explosion of awareness. Startled, she looked up at him.

  “If you’re going to ruin that lipstick, there are better ways than biting your lip,” he said with a grin. “Don’t look so worried. After all, what’s the worst thing that can happen?”

  Linda took a fortifying breath and commanded her insides to get their act together and her lips to stop thinking about alternative ways to get rid of that lipstick. “Worst thing? Are you absolutely sure you want to know about some of the worst case scenarios I’ve been picturing?”

  Robert hesitated. “Maybe not.”

  Linda nodded towards an Ellen’s grandmother, heading towards them, leaning on her cane. “See Nora’s ring? Imagine Aphelion yanking it off her finger, like she did with that student yesterday. Imagine Perihelion deciding he wants it, like he did yesterday. Imagine Perihelion chasing after Aphelion, knocking over the furniture, the guests, ripping a few dresses while he’s at it, like he did yesterday. Imagine Perihelion catching Aphelion, getting that ring, eating that ring, like he almost did yesterday. Picture us at the emergency vet, paying big bucks for him to tell us to let it come the natural way. Picture us sifting through Perihelion’s byproducts for a week, searching for that ring. Imagine the look on Nora’s face when we present her with the ring, knowing where it’s been. Imag—“

  His hand clamped over her mouth and she noted with satisfaction that he was looking a bit pale. “You’re got one hell of an imagination.”

  She grabbed his wrist and pushed his hand away. “Not really. Almost all of it really happened yesterday, remember?”

  “You’re overreacting. So Aphelion wanted to look at the ring. And Perihelion was envious. And he didn’t rip that dress, it just got caught on the ring when he was—“

  “Hiding behind that girl, putting that ring in his mouth, where you had to reach inside and fetch it from behind his molars. I have total recall of yesterday’s dress rehearsal, thank you very much.”

  Robert grabbed Perihelion’s hand firmly. “We don’t have a choice. Let’s do it.”

  They took their places, Perihelion between them, Aphelion on the other side of Linda, and they had asked Nora to help out, and stand on the other side of Aphelion. Of all the people there, Chris had suggested that the old lady was the one most likely to keep Aphelion in line, just by a look. Nora might look like a respectable and frail great-grandmother, but there was a no-nonsense quality about her that probably worked well on children, animals and small planets.

  Half an hour later, Linda allowed herself to breathe again.

  Robert grinned, looking just as relieved as she felt. “I can’t believe it. Not a single incident. You won’t even have to make good on that nice offer to help me sift through the byproducts.” He gave both chimps a hug. “You were brilliant, guys! Let’s go home now. I’ve got a treat for you back there that’s a lot better than wedding cake.”

  Aphelion turned her back to Robert, pulled on Linda’s dress to get her attention and signed rapidly.

  “What did she say?” he asked.

  Linda snickered. “She said Robert food bad, Linda food good. Aphelion stay Linda, Robert go away.”

  “Little traitor. Now she thinks chocolate is food. Is this how you’re going to raise your children?”

  Ah. Touchy subject. One that she was going to have to bring up soon, if she was reading everything correctly. She ignored the question. “I’ll just go tell Chris or Ellen that we’re dropping the animals off.”

  “You don’t have to come with me.”

  “I’m coming with you. Non-negotiable. You’d crash the car if Perihelion decided he wanted to try his hand at the wheel.”

  Besides, the three of them had a trick to show him. There hadn’t been time on the way over here, but now Aphelion and Perihelion could demonstrate their newly acquired skill.

  She hurried to tell Chris they were leaving for a minute and then got back to the animals and the four of them lumbered off to the car. She opened the door and shooed the animals in. “Get ready,” she told them, then shut the door and sat down in the front seat.

  “I’ll just strap them in.” Robert leaned in and then stared at the pair, both busy putting on their seatbelts. “When did you...?” He glanced at Linda. “Did you teach them that?”

  Linda grinned, a bit embarrassed at how proud she felt at that achievement. “Yep. Yesterday when we went for that drive. Well, I taught Aphelion, and she taught Perihelion. Perihelion isn’t really agreeable to me telling him what to do yet.”

  Robert grinned and patted both animals. “He’s jealous of your relationship with Aphelion, and I don’t blame him. Good work, gang.”

  He shut the door and got in the driver’s seat. “You know,” he said as he pulled into the street. “They’re going to miss you.”

  “I’m going to miss them,” she said. “Would you mind if I came to visit them once in a while?”

  “Of course not.”

  Then there was silence. Linda frowned as she wondered how to bring up the next subject – that she might come to visit him, as well as the chimps.

  Men, she fumed. She couldn’t figure them out. This one was turning out to be even more confusing than the rest of them. He was supposed to have made a move by now. Flirting was all good and well, but their two weeks together were up. Was he a liberated male or something? Waiting for her to make the first move?

  Back at the lab, Linda visited George and the rest of the mice while Robert helped the chimps out of their finery. She reached into George’s cage and let him nuzzle her palm, and frowned as she pondered over Robert. Although she'd slowly turned up the flirt-factor again, and their time was sometimes like some elaborate dance, there hadn't been another emergence of the macho side of him, the side that had cornered her off and dared her to kiss him.

  Too bad. She was dying to meet him again. This time she knew just what to do with that dare and it wouldn't involve a frantic sprint out the door.

  But first she would to have to put her recent plan into action: tell him that she would never want any children. It wasn’t an easy thing to do, but it was the only way to make sure there wouldn’t be trouble later on.

  “George behaving?” Robert asked, startling her out of her thoughts. She looked up to find him filling out the small doorway quite nicely in his tux.

  “Sure,” she said. “I hope he understands that I can’t take him out to play in these clothes.”

  Robert chuckled. “Speaking of that, I was wondering if I could take you out to play?”

  “Excuse me?”

  He entered the small room, which meant he was less than three feet away from her. “I wanted to wait with this until after that wedding. Now it’s over. Do you think we could get together somewhere away from animals and test tubes?”

  How articulate. And how very sweet. “Are you asking me out, Bob?”

>   “Robert.” He smiled. “Yes, I am.” Lord. His smiles were lethal enough at any time, but that slight edge of vulnerability got to her. He wasn’t sure quite sure of her response.

  That indicated he had somehow failed to notice how she’d been drooling over him for the past two weeks. Hmm. Maybe that meant he had been suffering a similar preoccupation himself. How nice would that be?

  She’d have to bring up The Issue now. “I would love to. But there’s something you really need to know first.” She took a deep breath and blurted it out before she had the chance to think more about it and change her mind. “I don’t want to have any children.”

  Silence for a while. He was giving her that look again. The one that made her feel like he’d just picked her up and tossed her under his microscope.

  Not that she could blame him, of course. Telling a man you didn’t want children was not your run-of-the-mill pick-up line. In fact, she was feeling a bit like something that belonged under that microscope.

  “I know,” she hurried to say, “I know it’s weird to tell you this, since we aren't in a relationship or anything. But if we’re going on a date and if we did hit it off and I didn’t tell you...” she shrugged and refused to contemplate the idiocy of this conversation. It was necessary, darn it. She’d learned that much by now.

  “There never is the right time to tell men this. They are likely to freak out at all times for about million different reasons.” He opened his mouth and she raised a hand to stop him. “It’s not that I don’t like babies. They’re terribly cute and all that, and I get a fuzzy feeling inside holding them and all that. I just don’t want any of my own. I’m not a mothering type. The Baby species is much better off without me butting in their lives. And no, telling you this does not mean I want to marry you. I’ve just decided to be up-front about this.”

  Robert leaned against the counter and stared at her with an unreadable expression. “How far have you taken this idea? Did you have an operation or something?”

  “No. Not yet. I have this strange aversion to being cut open and having my insides messed with.” She fidgeted. “I’ll probably get around to it soon, though. I’m very serious about this. That’s why I’m telling you even though it makes me look weird. No children. Ever.”

  “I see,” Robert murmured. He was smiling in a rather wicked and mischievous way, and Linda looked at him suspiciously. He was not freaking out, but what was he smiling about?

  “How would you feel about mothering children that are not your own?”

  “Huh?”

  “You see, any woman I go out with has to be sized up as a potential stepmother, as well as a potential lover.”

  The way the word lover rolled off his tongue like a caress almost wiped out the rest of the sentence, including that most horrid word of all, stepmother, but her survival instincts kicked in at last.

  “You’ve got a kid?” she repeated with a sinking heart. Why hadn’t Ellen mentioned that tiny detail? Ellen knew Linda had sworn never to attempt the role of stepmother or mother again. It had been a fiasco the first time around. “You are single, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. That’s why my kids need a mother more than I need a wife. Their needs have to come first.”

  Whoa. Wife? Mother?

  Linda took a step back and raised her hands in defense. All she’d wanted was a date. Okay, not precisely the date as such, she’d wanted some fun. And some kissing. She had a quite obsessive need to know what color his eyes were in candlelight after she’d kissed all that polite restraint out of him.

  Wife and mother hadn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t, enter into it.

  Wait a minute. Had he said kids? Plural?

  “Kids?” she said, emphasizing the S sound. “You have more than one?”

  “Yep.”

  Worse and worse. “I see. Boys or girls?”

  “Two of each.”

  “Two of each?” Linda squeaked. “You’re kidding, right? You can’t possibly have four kids! How could you have time to get a Ph.D. and have four kids?”

  “Easy. I had them all at once. Plus, I had someone else do the actual pregnancy and delivery. That saved me some time and energy. And I have excellent daycare. It all works out.”

  “Are you telling me you have qua...quadri...” she waved a hand irritably. “You know. Twins times two?”

  He smiled. “Yes. Four adorable children who just happen to be going through the terrible twos prematurely. They’ll be two years old in December.

  Okay. That was it. Jelly knees or no jelly knees, rule out Bob.

  She had sworn off all men with children, but she might actually have given in to one child for that dark scowl that turned into a dangerously wicked smile. She might even have taken on a second one since he looked drop dead gorgeous in jeans and T-shirt, an outfit that did more to her than all the uniforms in the world put together.

  But four kids.... no way. Never. Not in a million lifetimes all across the galaxy. It was time to grab her little crush and run in the opposite direction.

  Two minutes later she was annoyed to realize that she was still standing there, staring at the proud father of four, and trying to find a reason to give in to child number three.

  She was headed for dangerous waters. There was no way, no way, she’d get involved with someone with four children. She’d rather emigrate to Antarctica. The penguins would make fine companions. Always immaculately dressed, which was more than she could say for most humans.

  “They’re getting very independent now,” Robert was saying, and with her mind filled with penguins it took her a moment to realize he was talking about his children. “Mealtimes are especially interesting. I think I will wait until they stop treating food as projectile weapons and then I’ll just move to a new place. My apartment will be ready for demolition by then.” He cocked his head. “Why don’t you join us for dinner on Monday? You can meet the gang and we can see how the six of us get along. We can plan our date then.”

  “No! I mean, no thank you. I’m afraid it’s not... it won’t work. No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Linda’s suspicions resurfaced. His voice was filled with regret, while those startling blue-green eyes were aglow with amusement behind his glasses. Was he finding this funny?

  Could he really be telling the truth? No. He couldn’t be. They’d been working together for two weeks now, surely he would have mentioned his children.

  Of course he was kidding. “You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you? You don’t have four children. If they really exist, why didn’t you tell me about them sooner?”

  He shrugged, looking deceptively innocent. “It didn’t come up.”

  Linda laughed, amazed that she’d even believed him for a second. “You’re lying. I don’t believe a word of it.

  “You think I would lie about my own flesh and blood?” He put his hand on his heart. “Here is the proof!” He pulled out his wallet and removed a picture. Linda gingerly accepted the snapshot. There were indeed four children. One was smiling, one crying, one yawning and the fourth one was pointing at something with an astonished look on his or her face. They all looked the same, small, blonde and chubby, wearing an assortment of the most colorful baby clothes she had ever seen. But then, babies did tend to look all the same to her.

  That settled it. He did have four children.

  “Are they identical?” As soon as the question was out of her mouth, she realized that two boys and two girls couldn’t possibly be identical. Great going, Linda, she castigated herself. The guy’s got a Ph.D. in biology and you’re flunking 7th grade in front of him.

  “No, they’re not. And they don’t really look alike once you get to know them.”

  Linda waited. “What? No comment about my blaring ignorance about the biology of multiples?”

  Robert shrugged. “It’s an easy mistake to make.”

  Linda rubbed her arms as her thoughts turned to her test run as Stepmom. Although her natural buoyancy had for a long time
made up for it, Elliot had constantly made her feel inferior, stupid and ignorant, especially when it came to anything concerning little Barry. Obviously, there were still some scars although she’d been telling herself all that was ancient history that no longer had the power to affect her.

  “If you change your mind about Monday, we’ll save a seat for you.” Robert said. “Around eight? We’d love to see you. If not, I’ll call you that evening to make plans for our date.”

  Linda nodded, not quite finding her voice. The ride back to the reception was a blur, and her head was still spinning in confusion when she climbed out of the car.

  Robert, a father? Of four children?

  Her plan had been twofold: she would tell any man she dated, as soon as possible, that she was not planning on ever having children; and she was never going to date a man with children, since it could just get her in more trouble than she could handle.

  Four children? She couldn’t live with that.

  She looked sideways at him as they walked inside. Could she?

  At the reception, her next task was to convince Ellen, again, that she didn’t need to take the cat with her on the honeymoon. Linda felt a headache coming on as she repeated for the fifth time: “The cat will be fine. Don’t worry.” She counted her tasks on her fingers. “I’ll take care of the cat, I’ll water the plants, I’ll visit your grandmother, I’ll do girly stuff with Aphelion -- it’s all under control. Stop worrying. You’re going to have a wonderful honeymoon.”

  Ellen was still agonizing like a mother about to leave her baby for the first time, convinced the cats would pine away without them. “I don’t know. Copernicus is very attached to me...”

  Chris kissed his new wife and grinned as he whispered something in her ear that made her blush and giggle. Linda rolled her eyes, but couldn’t help smiling. “It’s settled, Ellen.You two would just forget the cats in your honeymoon bliss.”