Chapter 9

It seemed like mere moments, but it was actually several hours later when the future Mrs. Adrianna Jarecki awoke to something she never seen before; sunlight streaming through the windows of Paul’s cabin. She then felt a warm touch moving up her leg so soft and so gentle, she snuggled closer and purred in joy at the touch. Andi held his hand and smiled ... but then she realized she was laying her head on his right shoulder. His right arm was wrapped around her, and she was holding his left hand. She reached down and found that the gentle touch was coming from a tiny, warm foot.

She rose up a little bit and realized that the twins had joined them again. Their little heads were at the far end. They brought their pillows down with them. Madeline had even brought her favorite stuffy with her, baby Kermit. Andi got up and filled a teakettle with water and put it on the wood stove to warm up. Then she sat down and fired up her laptop. She opened up messaging and saw that her best friend on earth was on-line, Dr. Evangeline L. Kocsis. Do not call her Evangeline, Eva, Eve, or Evie. To everyone she was Lucy, from her middle name Lucile. Lucy is a true Olympic caliber athlete, a cross country bicyclist and runner. She was in her glory in Colorado, training to go to the Olympics. On a bicycle tour called the Triple By-Pass Mini, she was coming down Loveland Pass, eagerly looking forward to seeing Andi, who was waiting for her with drinking water in Georgetown.

Many career ending injuries are memorable, but nowhere near as spectacular as the one that ended Lucy’s Olympic dreams that year. Well placed in the field of 200, Lucy came down the east side of Loveland pass on US 6 and was gaining on the leaders when the chain on the bicycle ahead of her broke. It flew off of the derailleurs of the bicycle and shot straight for her front wheel, where it tangled in her spokes, then wrapped around her front fork. Every single one of her spokes snapped like matchsticks. Her forks dug down into the road and flipped her through the air. She sailed over the guardrail and down the rocky slope, hitting rocks and trees, and she finally came to a stop on US 6 that had looped back around 500 feet below the scene of her accident. Fortunately, she was unconscious when she hit the road, unfortunately she landed in a pack of riders causing 10 of her fellow competitors to collide. All of this was caught live on ESPN. She looked like a rag doll fired from a cannon as she bounced down the cliff.

She spent 6 weeks in the hospital and the next 11 months living with Andi and her 7-month-old babies. Two broken arms, a fractured hip, 3 broken fingers, two dislocated shoulders and a cracked skull (bicycle helmets are not all that effective) not to mention cuts, bruises, scrapes, and a black eye. Together they were known as Raggedy Lucy and Raggedy Andi, and they kept each other alive and sane for the next 3 years.

AndiGrls: Hi babe, how are you?

LucyK: Andi? OMG! Where r u? How r u? How r my babies? What happened?

AndiGrls: We’r OK, went off the road in a storm. We got rescued by a doctor who lives nearby. See attach

LucyK: Awwww, cute! Whos the dude?

AndiGrls: Dr. Paul Jarecki, LTC USAF RET

LucyK: You don’t do anything halfway, do you?

AndiGrls: Not if I can avoid it

LucyK: Well...?

AndiGrls: No. I set down the rules, and he’s obeyed them ... damnit

LucyK: <3?

AndiGrls: <3 <3 <3 :-)

LucyK: I want to meet him

AndiGrls: be nice! He saved our lives and promised not to KMU.

LucyK: OK, gotta scrub in. The ECMC knife and gun club is open for business. Luv U

AndiGrls: Luv U

As she closed out of the messaging program, Andi felt Paul’s large hands encircle her full, round breasts. He began to gently squeeze and heft her large boobs, and her breath caught from the sudden sensation. She almost cried out, but she didn’t dare for fear of waking the girls. She felt her nipples harden, and he noticed it too, and his thumbs and forefingers soon began pinching and twisting her nipples. “Oh God, didn’t you get enough last night?”

“Oh hell no, especially where you’re concerned.”

“Good Answer!” she leaned her head back and their lips met, and as soon as they did, her tongue slithered into his mouth. She drove her tongue in and out, surprising and delighting him. He began sucking on her tongue, teasing it with his tongue as if it were a cock, all the while pinching and twisting her nipples through her flannel nightgown. When their kiss finally broke, she curled her arm around his neck and beckoned him close. He bent lower, and she whispered into his ear the delights of kinky foreplay she has planned for tonight, punctuated with a gentle probing of his ear with her tongue.

“Maybe we should head upstairs,” he said softly.

“No, look at them, they’re watching us.”

Sure enough, Paul could see the twinkle of their dark brown eyes as they tried to hide under blankets and behind pillows. “Yeah, they’re homing in on every word we say.” He noticed that they now tried to make themselves more invisible, pulling the blankets over their faces and scrunching down into the couch cushions. “Here, stand up a second,” he said.

Andi stood and Paul sat in the office chair, then tugged Andi into his lap. “There, now...” he turned the chair so the twins could see their faces perfectly. “ ... I love you,” he said and gave Andi a little kiss on the lips.

Andi smiled and said, “I love you...” then gave Paul a kiss on his lips. At that moment, the twins sprang out from under their blankets and ran to their mommy, yelling “Yaaaaaa!” as they ran. They crashed into Paul’s hip, laughing and giggling as they came behind his desk.

“You’re being kissy with my mom!” accused Sandy

“Yeah, kissy!” Madeline was there for backup.

“Well yeah, because my favorite lovebugs were asleep.”

“Bug bug!”

“Bug bug!”

Paul bent over and said, “I love you, and I love you.” With each I love you, he gave each girl a kiss on the cheek, and both responses were as different as night and day. Madeline’s face broke into a blissful smile as if she were just handed a sleeping puppy and she hugged Paul’s leg. Sandy, on the other hand, ran in circles, rubbing her cheek, shouting, “Boy germs! Poison Boy germs!”

Paul was almost in shock at the difference in their reactions to Paul’s kiss, but Andi expected it. In reality, their feelings were probably the same, it was the way they expressed their feelings that showed the difference between the two. As Madeline looked up at Paul with adoring eyes, Paul said, “Well, at least one of you likes me.”

Madeline’s little hand shot up like she was answering a question in school. “Me!”

Sandy sat on a chair at the table with her arms crossed and her brow furrowed. “Boys are yucky.”

Andi got up from Paul’s lap and Madeline immediately climbed up to take her place. “Believe it or not, they probably feel the same way, they just show it differently,” said Andi.

“You can’t get much different,” agreed Paul.

“Sandy doesn’t hold back, but the girls in daycare have decided that boys are yucky...”

“Dixie’s brother Melvin!” shouted Sandy.

“ ... like Dixie’s brother Melvin, and use your indoor voice little one,” Andi finished sternly.

“Sorry.”

“So, Sandy will act out the way that her peers will act out. If she really didn’t like you, you’d know. It takes some practice but really, it’s not hard to figure out what is Sandy being silly and Sandy being Sandy. Madeline, on the other hand, is my little scientist,” Andi walked over to the couch and began to fold the blankets. “She’s quite skeptical and normally doesn’t take anything at face value, however when she shows her emotions it’s the real deal.”

Paul stood and came out from behind the desk with Madeline cradled by his right arm, her arms around his neck. “I love you Doctor Paul,” she whispered and kissed his cheek. Suddenly Sandy was standing in front of him, her arms stretched upwards, her little hands opening and closing, her face a mask of sorrowful longing. He crouched down and scooped her up, and she wrapped herself tightly around him and kissed his other cheek.

Paul hugged them close and kissed each one again on the cheek. Andi stood smiling and the look on her face should have warned Paul that she was expecting something. And it started with another kiss from Madeline. A moment later, Sandy kissed Paul’s cheek, then Madeline responded with another kiss, then Sandy, then Madeline, back and forth, faster and faster. Before he knew it, his face was drenched with child slobber and the twins were laughing uproariously and Andi was video recording the entire episode with her phone.

As quickly as it started, it was over. The twins pushed outward, and Sandy simply said, “Down.”

“What, you’re leaving me?” asked Paul.

“Potty,” said Madeline as Paul set them down, and that was it. They strode off purposefully toward the bathroom.

“You knew that was going to happen,” said Paul with a grin as he advanced on Andi.

“No!” said Andi, laughing and holding up a folded blanket as a shield. “I didn’t know!” The blanket didn’t deter Paul. He held Andi close and rubbed his child saliva covered cheeks against hers as she squawked in protest. She finally stopped him by holding his head still and placing her lips on his. They were still kissing when the twins finished their trip to the potty and headed up the stairs, stamping their bare little feet all the way up.

“I think they want breakfast,” said Paul as their lips parted.

“I want something to put in my mouth too,” said Andi with a wink and a grin.

“I can whip something up for you,” he responded with an equally lecherous grin, “but for the girls ... all I have for them to drink is some dried milk. It’s not much for drinking but it’s good for cooking ... no wait - I have dutch process powdered chocolate for baking, I can make some instant hot chocolate.”

Twenty minutes later the girls were seated at the table, each child had a huge slab of French toast crowned with a pool of melted locally made butter and maple syrup that came from a sugar shack just a few yards away and a steaming mug of hot cocoa. Both Andi and Paul had poached eggs perched atop a thick slice of toast from the same homemade loaf Paul used to make the twins’ French toast.

“Is this the bread the girls made?” asked Andi as she buttered a slice of toast.

“It sure is,” answered Paul.

“So good,” muttered Madeline around a mouth packed full of French toast.

Sandy licked syrup off of her fingers. “Makes the syrup taste better!”

“These eggs are addictive!” exclaimed Andi as she sopped up the creamy dark orange yolk with a bit of toast. “Where did they come from?”

“Not far,” said Paul, gesturing toward the large barn. They had agreed not to mention Paul’s chickens until the weather improved enough to allow the twins to walk over to the barn. “Their feed resembles what they would eat if they were uncaged in the wild.” That meant that there were many and varied grains, seeds, and meat in their feed. To the twins he said, “What do we have to do today?”

“I don’t know,” answered Sandy, then her face brightened. “Cartoons?”

“Lessons,” said Andi.

“YouTube?” chirped Madeline brightly.

“Lessons,” said Andi, her eyebrows lowered.

Sandy and Madeline started tapping their forks on their plate. “Les-sons! Les-sons! Les-sons!”

Paul started collecting plates and silverware. “While you study physics, I’ll be in the barn sharpening my hammer.”

“Can we do physics?” asked Sandy, “Alphabets are so boring. Zee, why, ex, double you, vee, tea, ess, are, que, pea, oh, en, em, el, kay, jay, eye, aich, gee, eff, eee, dee, sea, bee, aye.”

“I wanna do physics too,” added Madeline, “we already read all the Doctor Seuss books,” then she and Sandy started chanting “Not in a box. Not with a fox. Not in a house. Not with a mouse. I would not eat them here or there. I would not eat them anywhere. I would not eat green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.”

They finished the final “Sam-I-Am” looking straight at each other, their noses barely an inch apart. Paul was in complete shock. He had just heard a five-year-old recite the entire alphabet backwards, and then she and her sister just recited a good portion of Green Eggs And Ham from memory.

“Is physics numbers? I like numbers,” said Madeline.

“Oh yeah? What’s eleventy four plus seven?” said Paul, trying to bait the twins. Both toddlers just glared at him from behind lowered eyebrows. “Ok then,” he continued, “what is twenty-five times sixteen?”

“Four hundred” the girls called out before he could complete saying ‘sixteen.’

Paul’s eyes practically bugged out of his head and he finally said, “I think I need to go sharpen that hammer,” and he took the dishes he had collected and turned toward the kitchen. Andi reached up and handed him a slip of paper. “Here’s a few things we’re going to need when we can get out of here.”

As Paul tucked the note in his shirt pocket, the girls started chanting, “Phys-ics! Phys-ics! Phys-ics!”

“Thank you dear,” said Andi glaring at Paul who blew her a kiss and went to wash the dishes and left Andi to explain to the girls that physics aren’t really a pre-school subject and are best left for kindergarten or maybe even first grade.