Getting Hotter
Page 9

“Jase!” she called. “Breakfast!”
When her son didn’t come skidding through the doorway, Miranda frowned. “What’s he up to?” she asked her daughter.
Sophie’s expression was too angelic to be trusted. “I dunno.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Spill, missy. You know I don’t like it when you two keep secrets.”
“But, Mommy, I really don’t know.” Sophie had the nerve to bat her eyelashes, all liquid brown eyes and innocence.
Miranda was used to it. Her twins only loved one other person more than they loved their mom: each other. Whatever bond they’d formed in utero had followed them right out of the womb—they always had each other’s backs, no matter what, and Miranda could swear they possessed the ability to read each other’s minds. Maybe even communicate telepathically. As toddlers, they could be in the same room for hours without saying a single word. They conducted entire conversations with their eyes, and if anyone tried to hurt one of them? The other came running to the rescue.
Normally, she loved the idea that her kids were so intrinsically connected, but at times like these, when one of them was up to no good, it was impossible to get them to turn on each other.
“Soph, if you don’t tell me what Jason is doing, I might have to reconsider giving you a solo in the summer recital…”
Sophie tilted her head pensively, looking far too mature for her six years. “You wouldn’t.” Her voice was matter-of-fact. “Everyone gets a solo in the summer recital and I know you wanna see me do the solo ’cause I heard you tell Ginny that.” She beamed. “And you told Ginny you loved my enfoozeeazim.”
“Enthusiasm,” Miranda corrected, choking down laughter. It figured that Sophie would see through the empty threat. The girl was way too smart for her own good.
“Here I am! Sorry! I was doin’ stuff!”
Jason flew into the room with the same level of intense enfoozeeazim he threw into everything he did. The kid was a bundle of energy and always had been, unlike Sophie, who was more laid-back. Sophie was also capable of extreme focus, which she displayed during ballet class, while Jason’s head was all over the place, bouncing from subject to subject in a whirlwind pace that made Miranda dizzy. Fortunately, his short attention span wasn’t hurting him in school; the twins’ kindergarten teacher assured her both kids were doing well. In fact, their reading and writing levels could even be considered advanced for their age.
“And what kind of stuff were you doing?” Miranda asked as she popped open the cap of the maple syrup bottle. She drew her trademark syrup happy face on Sophie’s pancakes, which made her daughter grin, then did the same for her son, who seemed to be doing his damndest to avoid her gaze.
“Kid stuff, Mom. You wouldn’t understand.”
She bit back another laugh. “Okay, let’s go through the list. Will this stuff make me mad?”
“No,” both twins said immediately.
“Is it dangerous?”
“No.”
“Illegal?”
“No.”
“Will it require me to clean up a huge mess?”
Hesitation.
Miranda sighed. “Come on, guys, you know how much I hate cleaning.”
Sophie giggled. “Cleaning sucks.”
“Sucks,” Jason agreed, reaching for the glass of orange juice by his plate. He chugged the entire thing, then said, “Juice me.”
A laugh flew out of her mouth. “Yes, sir.”
As she poured him another cup of juice, she watched her daughter from the corner of her eye, making sure Sophie was actually eating her food instead of pushing it around on her plate the way she was sometimes prone to do.
“So this mysterious project of yours will only cost me a couple hours of cleaning?”
“We can try ’n clean first,” Sophie offered, oh so gracious. “But if we do a pooey job, you can help.”
“Sounds fair.” She gave her son a pointed look. “If you pour any more syrup on that, you’ll be eating pancake soup. Not to mention guaranteeing a visit to the dentist.”
He hastily put down the syrup bottle. It was the D-word. Worked every time.
“…making its way northward. Hurricane Nora is not expected to hit the West Coast, but there is a chance it will reach California in the form of a tropical storm.”
Miranda turned her attention to the small TV on the far end of the kitchen counter. The screen revealed a complicated-looking weather map with a bunch of squiggly lines that made no sense to her. But the weatherman standing to the side of the map seemed pretty damn excited, animatedly pointing to it as he continued to dole out information.
“Now, most Eastern Pacific hurricanes lose steam as they travel north and their winds are weakened, but this one is expected to have a larger impact than we’re used to, folks. Starting tomorrow afternoon, we can expect powerful winds, torrential rain and extensive coastal, as well as inland, flooding…”
Sophie’s head swiveled to the screen, her fork poised halfway to her mouth. “Oh no! What if we get washed away?”
“We won’t get washed away,” she assured her daughter.
Jason gasped. “What if there’s a big tide wave—”
“Tidal wave,” she corrected.
“—tidal wave, and it whooshes over here and then everything is underwater? How cool would that be?”
“That would not be cool at all,” Miranda replied.