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eyes again, but opened them quickly when he saw the face. A boy no more than ten years old looking up at the birds. Or at something else overhead, Sam still wondered. The boy’s eyes flashed with fear or determination—which had it been?
    Just a boy—
    “Enough,” he said out loud, and sat up in bed. He smoothed his hands through his hair, then lay back down, flipping over to his other side and searching for a cool spot on the sheets.
    He punched his pillow and didn’t sleep.
    …
    The next morning, Sam got up early. It was an old habit from years of early drills in the Marines. He hopped out of bed, eager to get started on the day. Breakfast he could handle. He might not be the best cook in the world, but he knew how to make bacon and eggs without burning down a house.
    He made his bed with perfect hospital corners, remembering the sergeant who insisted on bouncing a quarter off the recruits’ tightly tucked sheets. He frowned at his handiwork, recalling what Mac said about masking his rigid inner Marine. Sam bent down and untucked one of the corners, pausing to rumple the quilt before doing the same to his own hair. He thought about shaving, but decided to skip it. The rumpled look was part of his disguise.
    Within twenty minutes, he had bacon sizzling on the stove. The babies were awake when he checked, so he changed them both and set them in their little bouncy chairs to watch him work. Instead of sitting quiet and smiley like babies in a diaper commercial, they took turns shrieking and banging their little plastic stacking cups against each other.
    “Shhh, keep it down,” he murmured. “You don’t want to wake up your mom.”
    The babies looked at him and shrieked louder, one of them blowing a big snot bubble his brother tried to grab. Sam turned around to focus on mixing a pitcher of orange juice from a can, wondering if he could convince Sheri it was freshly squeezed.
    No. Keep the lies minimal. Keep things simple.
    “Morning,” Sheri said, and Sam spun around.
    Her hair was in loose ringlets around her shoulders and she definitely wasn’t wearing a bra under her thin cami top. She looked sleepy and disheveled and so deliciously fuckable, Sam dropped his spatula.
    “M-morning,” he stammered back, stooping to pick up the spatula and tossing it in the sink. He grabbed a clean one from the holder beside the stove, and used it to flip the bacon.
    She slid her fingers through her curls, and he ached to know what it felt like to have all those ringlets twisting around his hand.
    “You don’t have to do that,” she said, yawning a little as she shifted from one bare foot to the other. “On days I’m not working, you aren’t obligated to—”
    “You want one egg or two?”
    She blinked, then nodded. “Two, please.”
    “Mac said you like ’em over easy. That still the case?”
    “Yes, thank you. That would be wonderful. Can I at least make you some coffee?”
    “I don’t drink coffee, but there’s a pot brewing right now.”
    “Christ, did you paint my house, too?”
    He grinned. “That’s next week.”
    He set the plate down in front of her, then strode to the fridge to pull out a pair of gummy teething rings.
    “Here you go, guys,” he said, handing each twin a chilled ring. Blessedly, they stopped shrieking, and Sam felt a surge of pride at his own dumb luck. He smiled at her. “My sisters’ kids loved these things.”
    Jeffrey and Jackson stuffed the goo-filled rings in their mouths, drool running onto their bibs. Sam watched with relief as they gummed the toys with enthusiastic glee.
    He grabbed his own plate and sat down beside Sheri. “I hope it’s okay that I already fed them. They were up early, and I didn’t want to wake you. The guidelines you wrote up were really helpful.”
    “Good,” she said, picking up her toast and taking a bite. “I didn’t want to flood you with information, but I tried to be thorough. Sorry, I guess some of it doesn’t apply to you. I wrote that