“Boys?” His voice had gone an octave higher. He had to concentrate to keep the shock from showing all over his face. So, Leigh had achieved motherhood. That had been one of her chief desires, children. At the time he had been with her, having children had been low on his list of wants, but hearing she had sons caused a pang of envy. Was Jess going to insist she’d been talking about “the boys” all these years, too?

“Mitch and Ty, my grandsons,” she replied, digging into her purse for her checkbook. “You’d hit it off, I think. They’re absolute hellions. Unlike their mother, they’re quite athletic.” She wrote his name on the line. “I wouldn’t say Leigh is a bad mother. She adores them. But her mind wanders, and she’s frequently off in la-la land. She’s really no fun for little boys to play with. She’s too prissy. She’s the kind of woman who’s…brilliant, but without a lick of sense, you know?”

He knew.

“I think she has burnout,” Jess was saying as she wrote the check. “Pressures, deadlines, complications, work work work. Her housekeeper quit, leaving Leigh in charge, and Leigh’s a slob. My fault. With all she learned, she was too busy to straighten up. Gad. Leigh never takes time off unless she’s completely frazzled.”

Like last time, he thought. “How old are your grandsons?” he asked.

“Four,” she supplied, fishing her wallet out of her purse. “Twin boys.” She flipped open the picture section of her wallet. John didn’t audibly gasp, but his heart did flip around in panic. “I can’t believe I haven’t bragged about them, but maybe I just bore other people.”

“She is an awful show-off about those boys,” Kate said.

“We don’t exactly get sick of hearing about them,” Peg said, “but a change of subject once in a while wouldn’t hurt.”

John looked at the pictures. One was blond and blue eyed, one dark. Interesting. Leigh was blond and blue eyed. He himself, it so happened, had very dark brown hair and brown eyes. He gulped. “They look older than four,” he tried a bit breathlessly, baiting her, his heart not only hammering, but racing. He hoped his voice didn’t sound terribly unnatural.

“Oh, no, they just turned four.” He almost fainted. His eyes did a long blink. “End of January, I think… Yes, the twenty-eighth.”

His eyes actually closed while he calculated, but he didn’t drum his fingers one at a time; he wasn’t the snap at math that Leigh was. At anything, for that matter. Seven months from the time he met her. An old pain shot through him and hurt slightly more. Oh, no. Oh, no. She had already achieved motherhood. And hadn’t known? She couldn’t have. She wouldn’t have gotten involved with him if she…