Mommy Tracked by Whitney Gaskell Page B

me,” Patrick said, stretching his arms up over his head as he yawned again. He was a tall man, nearly six foot five, and broadly built. It was another trait that had attracted Juliet to him when they’d first met at a dinner party thrown by mutual friends. She’d been tired of always wearing flats for her date’s benefit and loved being with a man who was taller than she, even when she wore her highest heels. Standing next to Patrick had made her feel petite and dainty for the first time in her life. She’d also loved that he was a firefighter. It had seemed like such a manly-man sort of job, so much sexier than the lawyers and tech executives she was used to dating.
    Still, when she’d gotten pregnant a few months after they married—a surprise souvenir from their weekend scuba-diving jaunt down to the Keys—it had only made sense for Patrick to be the one to stay at home with the girls. Juliet earned nearly three times what he made, and they would never have been able to pay their mortgage on his salary alone.
    Juliet had to talk Patrick into leaving his job. He hadn’t wanted to at first.
    “I don’t want to be a kept man,” he’d said every time she brought up the subject.
    “Is that what you think of stay-at-home moms? That they’re ‘kept women’?” Juliet would counter.
    “No, of course not. It’s just…different,” Patrick had said.
    And Juliet, ever the litigator, would pounce. “It’s only different if you’re approaching it with a dated, misogynistic point of view,” she argued.
    “It just doesn’t feel right having you bear all of the financial responsibility,” Patrick would respond somewhat feebly.
    Juliet knew it was only a matter of time before she’d wear him down. There were so many reasons it made sense for him to stay home with the twins. Day care was expensive for one child; for twins it would end up being nearly two grand a month. A nanny would cost even more. Patrick would have to pick up extra shifts at work to cover the additional costs, and then he’d hardly ever see the girls. And Juliet was already stuck working long hours until she made partner at her law firm.
    Finally Patrick had agreed. Reluctantly. At first Juliet was thrilled with the arrangement, happy that she could leave the twins every day knowing they were being cared for by the one person in the world who loved them as much as she did. If that meant she’d miss out on all of the firsts—first smiles, first words, first steps—well, that couldn’t be helped. And if one of the twins woke in the middle of the night, shaken to tears by the aftereffects of a nightmare, and called for Daddy, not her, Juliet tried not to take it too personally. The same applied when she got home in time to supervise the bath-and-bedtime routine, only to have one of the twins bossily inform her that Daddy poured lots more bubble bath into the tub and that the pajama tops covered with little red hearts could not, under pain of torture, be worn with the purple striped bottoms.
    It’s a small price to pay, knowing that the twins are safe and happy , Juliet had thought.
    As Patrick took the crumpled suit from her and laid it back out on the bed, she hesitated for a minute, wanting to apologize for her irritable outburst, to explain that the stress of the dead-baby case had been getting to her, to fold her arms around Patrick and rest her head against the flat plane of his chest, absorbing his calmness.
    But Patrick was in the closet for a long time, noisily trying to extract the ironing board from where it was stored behind the luggage, for some inexplicable reason. Juliet noticed the clock. Shit . Now she was really, really late. She hurried back to the bathroom to finish getting ready, instantly forgetting her intentions to apologize.

    “I have to cancel our lunch,” Alex Frost announced.
    Juliet looked up from the deposition she was reading, startled at the interruption. She hadn’t heard Alex approach, hadn’t realized