Raising Baby Jane
Raising Baby Jane
Lilian Darcy
THE BABY'S SECRET…Connor Callahan had just met Allie Todd, but he immediately felt an overwhelming need to protect her. And to understand why she turned to ice whenever she held her baby niece. He sensed that beautiful Allie was weathering her own storm–one even fiercer than the snowstorm that had stranded them in a remote cabin. Her combination of strength and vulnerability tore at his once-restless heart. But it was only after he saved Allie from a near tragic accident that he suspected her innermost secret. What if baby Jane wasn't Allie's niece, but her daughter…?
“What the heck, Allie, let’s get it over with,” Connor growled.
And his mouth came down on hers before she could say another word.
Allie closed her eyes so that all she could feel were Connor’s fingers closed warm and firm over her knuckles, and his mouth softly tasting her. His mouth was firm, warm, smooth. His long lashes tickled her cheeks as he broke contact for just an instant and moved his head to the side. Allie’s bottom lip trembled and dropped open as she let out a slow gasp.
Allie was overwhelmed by the power of Connor’s kiss. Because the kiss had taken control of both of them, had acquired a life of its own. The kiss mattered. It was the crystallization of everything she had begun to feel about him. A trust and a connection deeper than she’d have thought possible in so short a time. A sense of promise, as if the kiss was only the beginning….
Dear Reader,
As Silhouette’s yearlong anniversary celebration continues, Romance again delivers six unique stories about the poignant journey from courtship to commitment.
Teresa Southwick invites you back to STORKVILLE, USA, where a wealthy playboy has the gossips stumped with his latest transaction: The Acquired Bride…and her triplet kids! New York Times bestselling author Kasey Michaels contributes the second title in THE CHANDLERS REQUEST…miniseries, Jessie’s Expecting. Judy Christenberry spins off her popular THE CIRCLE K SISTERS with a story involving a blizzard, a roadside motel with one bed left, a gorgeous, honor-bound rancher…and his Snowbound Sweetheart.
New from Donna Clayton is SINGLE DOCTOR DADS! In the premiere story of this wonderful series, a first-time father strikes The Nanny Proposal with a woman whose timely hiring quickly proves less serendipitous and more carefully, lovingly, staged….Lilian Darcy pens yet another edgy, uplifting story with Raising Baby Jane. And debut author Jackie Braun delivers pure romantic fantasy as a down-on-her-luck waitress receives an intriguing order from the man of her dreams: One Fiancée To Go, Please.
Happy Reading!
Mary-Theresa Hussey
Senior Editor
Raising Baby Jane
Lilian Darcy
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Books by Lilian Darcy
Silhouette Romance
The Baby Bond #1390
Her Sister’s Child #1449
Raising Baby Jane #1478
LILIAN DARCY
Since her marriage to an irresistible New Yorker over ten years ago, Lilian Darcy has divided her time between various parts of the United States and her native Australia. Her children hold dual citizenship, and in her writing she tries to embody the shared strength of the two cultures—heroism, warmth and down-to-earth values. Although new to Silhouette, she has written over thirty books for the Harlequin Mills & Boon Medical Romance line and is now looking forward to creating strong, passionate stories for a whole new set of readers.
Contents
Chapter One (#u4bfff500-bebc-5536-baa8-7d94db3e0b83)
Chapter Two (#ub3ed9db2-5106-56b9-877b-c3a03b7940ba)
Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
“Just remind me one more time why I agreed to do this!” Allie Todd growled at her sister Karen Pirelli.
Karen didn’t answer. She was gripping the steering wheel of the minivan so hard that her knuckles were white. Her shoulders were hunched, her forehead was pleated and those little sounds coming from her mouth were probably prayers.
The road—track—they were driving on probably wouldn’t have been in great shape even on a dry summer’s day. At the end of a brief January thaw, after several big snowstorms already this winter, it was slushy and slippery and positively frightening.
“Can’t be much farther,” Karen muttered, peering ahead. “Connor said—”
She broke off. They’d come out of the dark pine woods into a cleared space that in summer would have had room for several cars. It must have been plowed a couple of times this winter. There was dirty snow heaped up in lumpy, untidy banks on two sides. But it hadn’t been plowed recently.
On the third side, there was the track that Karen had just negotiated, and on the fourth—
Karen slammed on the brakes. Worst thing you could do on a snow-slippery road. Allie could have told her that, though if she’d been driving herself, she would probably have panicked, as Karen had, and made the same mistake.
The minivan suddenly embarked on a skating career. It swirled elegantly in one direction then the other, before it came finally to a stop about two inches from the sharp, four-foot drop down to the sheet of lake ice.
Karen told Allie shakily, “I owe you one, okay?”
But Allie shook her head. “No. That’s one thing you’ll never have to say to me, Karen. You know that.” She cleared her throat to get rid of the sudden huskiness in her voice, then added, “I shouldn’t have complained about coming up here.”
“No,” Karen argued, “ I shouldn’t have asked you to do this, when I know it’s so hard for you to—” She changed tack quickly. “And anyway, I know you’re not much of a cabin gal.”
“Just how primitive is it going to be, did he happen to say?”
“No, he didn’t.”
They both sat in the front of the minivan, peering out across the white lake to the snow-covered island in the distance.
Karen slumped her arms onto the steering wheel and groaned, still looking sick.
“Are you okay?” Allie demanded uselessly.
“I’m fine.” She took a shaky breath. Then she took another one. “I meant to tell you on the way up, but you were sleeping. I’ve got some news. I—I’m pregnant, Allie.”
“Oh, Karen, that’s wonderful! That’s just so great!” Allie said, her voice fogging again.
“I know.” Karen smiled, relief evident in her face. Allie understood at once that her sister hadn’t been confident about how she’d receive the news. “John and I are just so thrilled,” she went on. “Although I feel pretty disgusting a lot of the time, and—”
She stopped, and they both turned instinctively to look at the six-month-old baby asleep in the backseat. She was a beautiful girl. Just beautiful. On her head there was a fine growth of silky, dark-gold hair. On her plump rosy cheeks, there were two fans of extraordinarily long, satiny black lashes. Her skin was so peachy and translucent that a blue vein across her nose showed quite clearly. It was the prettiest, purest color.
There was a short silence, then Allie carefully voiced a small part of what they were both thinking. “They’ll be very close in age.”
“I know. Thirteen months apart.”
“Jane won’t remember…” Allie began.
“…what it was like before she had a baby brother or sister,” Karen finished. “Don’t worry about it, Allie, it’s not a problem. Really! John and I have been wanting a big family for so long. There were so many times we despaired that it would ever happen. And you know that nothing about what we’re doing with this is a problem for me. Whatever you decide about anything in the future, if you want—”
“It’s okay, Karen,” Allie answered with difficulty. “I know. You’ve promised me that from the beginning. I guess I’m still working things out.”
“It’s only that my energy levels are down at the moment. John’s away on business till Wednesday. I should have gone with him, taken a break, but the chance to do this book cover was too good to turn down. The movie rights for it have already been sold. Nancy Sherlock is huge these days.”
“And with a temperament to match, evidently.”
“With a temperament to ma—” Karen began to agree. Then she stopped abruptly and put her hand over her mouth, gripped by nausea.
“Let’s get you out of this car, so you can walk around and get some air.”
“I can’t open the door.”
“I know. And I’m not letting you climb across to my side in your condition. Not with that big old gearshift in the way.”
Allie quickly jammed on her dark blue velour hat and wriggled her fingers into warm woolly gloves, then jumped out of the car and went round to the driver’s side. “Hang in there,” she ordered her sister, both protective and stern. “I’m going to shovel back the snow as quick as I can. You still look like you’re about to throw up.”
“Might,” Karen agreed through clenched teeth. She folded her arms across the steering wheel and buried her face in them, breathing carefully.
Not caring that her gloves were immediately soaked through, Allie began to drag armfuls of snow out of the way of the door. It was slower work than she’d anticipated. The snow bank was like a big, puffy quilt, and the van looked as if it had decided to snuggle in for the night.
“Would a shovel help?” said a male voice.
Allie looked up, startled, and found the orange scoop of a snow shovel staring her in the face. She sat back on her haunches, a little breathless and hot, and looked up higher. A handle. A leather-gloved hand. A big, thick, black coat sleeve ending in an impressive shoulder. Finally, a man’s face beneath a black, stretchy wool hat. He had the bluest eyes she’d ever seen.
There was something about him that immediately had Allie off balance. Literally. She stumbled and wasn’t steady as she straightened. It didn’t help that she hadn’t heard his approach across the slightly softened ice, above the effortful pant of her breathing and the sound of scraping snow.
Karen still had her head hidden in her arms, but she had heard his voice.
“Connor?” came her muffled query.
“Yeah, hi.” He leaned an arm on the minivan’s door frame and examined Karen through the half-open window. “I guess you didn’t intend on parking quite so close to the lake, right?”
“Right.”
“Feeling sick?”
“Right again.”
“Yeah, it can shake you up, a near miss like that. That drop’s pretty sharp.”
“Connor, this is Allie. Allie, meet Connor Callahan. Sorry…about the…informality.” She lapsed into silence once more and went on taking those deep, careful breaths.
“Nice to meet you, Allie.”
Connor stuck out his glove and she shook it, then saw his face as the action squeezed a trickle of icy water from the sodden wool. His grimace was designed to get a reaction from her, and it worked.
She laughed. “Not exactly waterproof, I’m afraid.”
Without another word, only a speaking glance, he began to shovel back the snow from the door. He moved with an efficiency that looked effortless, and he was singing what seemed to be a sea shanty under his breath. It was a very appealing sound and Allie almost felt like joining in.
“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” she suggested after a moment.
“Yeah, and I’m sorry I didn’t get to do it before you got here,” he said. “Some stuff came up at work that I had to deal with before I could take off. I’d hoped to get here a couple of hours earlier, and I should have told Karen to pack some snow chains.”
“Nice idea,” Allie agreed easily, “assuming either of us knew how to put them on.”
She peeled off the sopping gloves, dropped them onto the roof of the minivan with a gesture of distaste and tucked her hands beneath her upper arms to warm them.
Connor straightened from his work for a moment and studied her thoughtfully.
She was petite, a compact bundle of dark blue with her arms folded like that. She was smaller than her sister, and darker, too. Hair of a glossy black-brown escaped from beneath her hat and reached her shoulders.
He couldn’t see much of her face. She had that velour hat jammed down so low, it shaded her eyes completely. All he could see was a soft mouth, not wide but gorgeously shaped, and high, well-defined cheeks that were pink from the cold. She would have looked about sixteen if there hadn’t been such a determined, contained aura to her pose and her expression.
He’d never been slow to form first impressions about a woman. With this one, those impressions were good. He had a feeling that the favor his pretty neighbor had pressed on him might turn out to be interesting.
Allie was hopping up and down now, trying to keep her feet warm. He hoped they weren’t as wet as her gloves in those leather boots, meant for city streets.
“Your sister hasn’t told me much about you,” he said to her with a slow grin, “but I’m getting the impression you’re not the wilderness type.”
“Not since I quit Girl Scouts at age twelve,” she agreed. “I’m a lot more the curling-up-in-front-of-a-blazing-fire-with-some-good-music-and-a-book-and-a-mug-of-hot-chocolate type. Is…uh…that going to be a problem this weekend?”
Allie asked the question a little nervously. Her boots were leaking and her hands were throbbing. She really didn’t want to hear that this cabin they were headed for had no electricity and one smoky woodstove in a ramshackle kitchen.
“You mean does my brother’s place have a blazing fire?” Connor asked.
“For starters, yes.”
“I can arrange it,” he drawled.
He had a jaw as square and strong as his snow shovel, a body like a professional sportsman and a voice like gravel dripping with melted fudge. Allie resisted the impulse to conclude that the man could probably “arrange” just about anything he wanted. In the nicest possible way.
As he returned to work, she had to fight the urge to say to him, “Sing that sea shanty again,” because the rhythm of it had meshed so well with the rhythm of his body, and he had the growling, rollicking singing voice of a pirate.
“Okay, Karen, that’s freed it now,” he said, after a couple more minutes. “Why don’t you get out and I’ll move the car to a safer spot?”
“Thanks,” Karen answered, straightening at last from the steering wheel where she’d been resting her head on her arms.
She climbed awkwardly out onto the snow, and the fresh, cold air brought some healthy color back into her cheeks.
Connor slid into the driver’s seat, turned the ignition and maneuvered the minivan so that it sat neatly beside his own Range Rover. While he was doing so, Allie said quietly to her sister, “Going to be okay?”
“Fine now,” Karen nodded.
“Does he know about the baby?”
“Not yet. We’ve only just started telling family. You’re the first apart from Mom and Dad and John’s parents.”
“I won’t say anything this weekend, then.”
“I may have to tell him, if I keep getting sick like this. I guess I’m nervous about that book cover, which isn’t helping. Nancy Sherlock has already rejected two previous versions done by other artists, and they must have roped me in as a desperation measure. I’ve never done cover art for an author this big before. Apparently, she wants a ‘natural feel.’ She thought the backdrop and the models they used before were ‘too fake.’ And she saw the covers I did for Gloria Blackmore’s ‘Harvest’ trilogy and loved them.”
“So there you are,” Allie soothed. “She loves your stuff.”
Karen made a face. “She has a reputation for changing her mind without warning. I mean, was she serious about those models? I decided to try it with you guys because you’re both photogenic, but you’re not professionals. Only maybe that was crazy?”
“Trust your intuition, Karen,” Allie soothed again. “You’ll calm down once you get behind your camera.”
“Which reminds me, I’d like to get some photos of the lake right now before the light changes. There’s a great feel and quality to it at the moment, so crisp and clean. And before Janey wakes up.”
Allie nodded, ignoring the slight tightening of her throat that happened every time her sister mentioned baby Jane, especially in that tender yet casual way.
Connor was with them again, and had heard Karen’s words. “Having an attack of inspiration?”
“If that suits you,” Karen nodded. She was already on her way to the rear door of the van to get out her camera equipment.
“It’s fine,” he agreed. “I’ll bring the snowmobile across for our gear. I checked the ice, and it’s rock-solid out there. The softening from the thaw is only in the top half inch. Meanwhile, my fellow ‘model’ here, can look after her little niece if she wakes up.”
He tossed a casual grin across to Allie, then his face darkened and fell, and she knew she hadn’t managed to hide her stricken expression. Suddenly, she realized how vulnerable she was going to be this weekend, having to spend it so close to Karen and Jane with a stranger looking on.
“Hey,” Connor came in quickly, “Did I scare you? I didn’t mean to. You’re not nervous about this gig, surely? Treat it as a joke. I am! I’ve never modeled for anything before.”
“Neither have I,” she managed.
“And the idea of having your sister do one of those vibrant, romantic book-cover paintings of hers based on photos of us tickles me to death. I leaped at the chance to goof off for a three-day weekend.”
“I guess I should look at it that way, too,” Allie replied, thankful that he’d unknowingly given her an easy way out of admitting what was really eating away at her heart.
“Or is it the thought of changing a diaper that’s so frightening?” he teased.
Could he read her mind?
“Yes, it’s terrifying,” she answered, trying to make it sound like a joke. “I’ve never changed a diaper in my life.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
He raised one eyebrow and tucked in the corner of his mouth, and she could tell he wasn’t impressed. Damn it, damn it, it was none of his business! Thrust deep in the pockets of her coat, her thawing hands were shaking.
“I’ll be back in about five minutes,” he said, then paused for a second. “No, make that ten. I have a couple of things to do inside the house.”
“Ten minutes. Okay,” she nodded.
Karen had her camera lens attached and her tripod positioned out on the wooden boat dock that thrust out into the lake from the far end of the parking lot. Jane was still fast asleep in her car seat. The engine was switched off now, so the car’s heating wasn’t on anymore. She’d get cold, soon.
Opening the door of the minivan as soundlessly as she could, Allie reached in and unfolded the baby quilt that was sitting on top of the diaper bag. She tucked it in around Jane as well as she could with the restraining bar of the baby seat in the way, hardening herself against any ambush of tenderness. Had Karen’s news about her pregnancy changed anything? The possibility overwhelmed her.
Then she closed up the car again, leaving one window open just a crack to let in some air, and went over to her sister.
“Have you known him long?” It was almost an accusation.
Karen looked up from her viewfinder. “Nearly five months,” she said, betraying no surprise at the question. “Maybe you don’t remember. His place used to be rented out, then it came up for sale and was empty for about three months until he bought it. He moved in early September, and that was when we first met him.”
Allie nodded. The explanation told her everything she wanted to know. But Karen had more to say.
“He’s a great guy, Allie. The kind you could trust with your life. John and I have met his parents and two of his brothers, and they’re a close, wonderful family.”
“That’s good to know,” Allie answered. She trusted her sister’s judgment in a way that she trusted few other things in life these days. Then, changing the subject deliberately, she added, “Getting some good stuff?”
“Don’t know yet,” Karen answered. Her eye was already back peering through the viewfinder. “But I’m not taking any chances on this. I’m going to shoot as much film as I can so that there’s no way Nancy can come up with a suggestion for a scene that I can’t cover. I love those clouds just feathering above the mountains.” She waved a hand. “I want to take a whole lot of winter-landscape shots as well, for this photographic kids’ book I’m planning on the four seasons.”
Allie laughed. This was typical of Karen. She had energy to burn, and usually more irons in the fire, professionally and personally, than she could count. Allie repeated this gentle accusation out loud.
“Irons in the fire?” Karen looked up, with a self-conscious expression. “What do you mean?”
“Well, despite your being so nervous about the Nancy Sherlock cover, you still have time to think about a kids’ book.”
Karen’s expression cleared. “Oh. Right. That.”
“Why, what did you think I meant?”
“Nothing.” Very offhand. Not looking at Allie. Very seriously taking pictures and talking about the book cover again.
Allie felt a tiny tickle of suspicion and alarm, but she let it slide.
“I’m going to do night shots, interiors,” Karen was saying. “And I want to get out the clothing this afternoon, if we can, so I can get some shots of you wearing—”
She stopped abruptly and gave a hiss of dismay. She’d been taking pictures as she talked, changing lenses, moving the tripod, and the camera had just made a strangled, clicking sound that even Allie recognized wasn’t right.
“Hang on,” Karen said carefully, “Let’s try again.” She pressed the camera’s small silver button but nothing happened. “I’m not going to panic,” she informed Allie in a panicky voice.
“Okay, good,” Allie agreed.
“I’m just going to check out each possibility very carefully and slowly,” she continued, madly rattling, clicking, shaking and winding every bit of delicate camera apparatus that she could lay her hands on.
“Sounds sensible.”
“And if there is something wrong with it that I can’t fix,” she announced, ripping the entire roll of film out of the camera in several torn sections and dropping them onto the ice-encrusted dock, “I’m not going to overreact.”
All of which didn’t fully explain why Connor was greeted, on his return with the snowmobile several minutes later, with the news that as soon as baby Jane and all the bags were unloaded, he had to drive the minivan up to the main road. Karen needed to make an emergency dash into Albany to get her very expensive, state-of-the-art, obscure brand of camera repaired immediately.
“I’ll be gone three hours max,” she finished.
“Karen, it’s over an hour’s drive each way,” Connor pointed out patiently. “And then you have to get the—”
“Okay, three and a half. But I’ll be back before dark.”
“It’s already nearly four o’clock.”
“Before dinner.” She paused at last, and listened. “That’s Jane waking up, Allie.”
“Yes, I can hear her.”
Jane was waking up happy. There were some singing and cooing and gurgling sounds coming from the backseat of the van.
“If you can get her and put on her snowsuit, Allie, then Connor can take you and her and the diaper bag over to the cabin now, while I unload the rest of our gear. Then he can come straight back and drive me up to the main road. I can be on my way in five minutes.”
This time, Connor didn’t even bother to offer a more realistic time-frame, and Allie was too busy thinking, Jane. I’m going to have to look after Jane. All by myself. No one else around at all. For at least half an hour while Connor drives up and walks back down and loads our gear onto the snowmobile. And then when he gets back, it’ll be just him and me and Jane. For hours. I don’t want to do it. I’m scared. I’m not ready. I don’t know yet if I’ll ever be ready. Why can’t Karen see that? Why isn’t she helping me with this?
Because Karen was scared, too.
Allie could see it and hear it in the panicky plans and the jittery movements. First and foremost, Karen was a mother and a wife. She wanted a big, loving, untidy family in her big Victorian house next to Connor’s. But she had a strong creative drive as well.
Her career as a commercial artist and photographer was important to her, this cover for a guaranteed bestseller was her biggest break so far. She needed to continue this success if she and John were to afford that parcel of kids they dreamed of. She didn’t want to blow it, and her camera had jammed, and of course she was scared.
“Sounds do-able,” Connor said. He gave an apparently casual glance at the horizon over the snow-covered mountains that ringed Diamond Lake and added, half under his breath, “More or less. If we’re lucky.” Then aloud he said, “Let’s go, Allie.”
“Don’t hold dinner for me,” Karen told Connor. “Although I’ll definitely be back.”
“Of course you will,” Connor soothed her, as if he hadn’t just spent five minutes trying to convince her she shouldn’t go in the first place. He hunched his shoulders against the growing chill. It was only just past four o’clock, but the day was darkening by the minute. There was bad weather in the forecast, although it hadn’t made its appearance yet.
“And for Jane you’ll need to—” She tucked a strand of light brown hair behind her ear and it stuck out messily, adding to her aura of nervous distraction.
“I know a fair bit about babies,” Connor soothed her again.
“Allie…doesn’t.”
“I gathered that,” he nodded.
He was actually a little put off by how cold Allie seemed toward her cute little niece. Maybe his positive first impressions were going to need some revision. She had neatly ducked the task of getting Jane into her snowsuit and Karen had done it instead, with a tight face. Was she angry at her sister’s lack of interest?
I would be, Connor decided inwardly. It doesn’t take much to show a little warmth toward a baby.
“Look after her—and Allie,” Karen said now.
“Oh. Sure. Of course.” Did Allie need looking after?
“Seriously, Connor.” For a moment, Karen actually held still long enough to look him in the eye. “She’s been through a really rough time, and she’s such a great person. Warm, funny, sincere.” She stopped suddenly, as if rethinking the wisdom of what she’d just said. “Anyway, I’ll be back pretty soon. I know what you said about the forecast, but look at that sky.” She waved in the direction where it was still blue. “Does that look like a storm to you?”
It didn’t, and Connor didn’t waste his breath pointing to the clouds that had begun to build behind them. She could well be right. The storm would pass to the west, or hold off altogether.
“And I have my cell phone,” Karen was saying. “Oh, this is such a nightmare!”
“No, it isn’t. Really, it isn’t.”
She hadn’t heard. “See you later.”
She was gone in a flurry of dirty roadside snow seconds later, and so he turned with a fatalistic shrug and began to walk back down the winding quarter mile of track to Diamond Lake.
Allie stood outside to greet him after he’d brought the snowmobile across the lake and wheeled it around to park it by the front door.
“You said this place was a cabin,” she said accusingly.
“Never did,” he returned lightly, following her inside. She peeled off her coat to reveal black pants tucked into damp leather boots, and a pale blue angora sweater that hugged her small frame.
He decided Allie was an assertive woman, despite her size! If he hadn’t heard it in her voice, he’d have seen it in the lift of her strong, but graceful jaw and in the electric flash of her dark eyes. Eyes like hot chocolate syrup, he could see, now that she’d unjammed that hat from her head.
“Karen said—”
“Karen might have said it was a cabin,” he pointed out, enjoying their trivial conflict. “But I didn’t. I probably used the word ‘place,’ as in, ‘my brother Tom’s place in the Adirondack Mountains.’ She must have assumed it was a cabin, as people tend to, when you mention mountains. I’m sorry if you’re disappointed.”
“Disappointed?” She shivered and stepped toward the warmth of the open fire, a sudden grin lighting up her face and draining away the tension in her that he still didn’t understand. “Are you kidding? It’s fabulous! And you even lit this fire! I’ve been toasting myself.”
“After what you said about blazing fires and good music and hot chocolate, how could I not?”
Knowing what a panic Karen was in, he hadn’t wasted time on coming into the house with Allie after he’d brought her here with baby Jane. And he’d deliberately left the fire he’d lit for her earlier to be a surprise. He didn’t know, at the time, what had prompted the impulse to light it in the first place. The central heating was very efficient.
Now he understood. He’d wanted to imagine her face lighting up like that when she first saw it, and he’d gotten his reward as it lit up again now. It changed her whole personality, hinted at a warmth and softness and sense of fun that he hadn’t seen much of yet in that small package of womanhood. Karen had mentioned those qualities, but he wasn’t going to take them on trust. He liked to make his own decisions.
“Well, it was wonderful,” she answered him. “Thank you. I haven’t even tried to look around or unpack.”
“You haven’t made yourself that hot chocolate yet?”
“No, as I said, I’ve just been toasting myself. And—and Jane.” She frowned.
Remembering what Karen had said about looking after her, and the rough time she’d been through—had she been ill, maybe?—he offered, “I’ll make one for you, after I’ve taken your stuff up to your room.”
“I can do that. I can make the hot chocolate, too, if you’ll show me the kitchen. And I can cook dinner. Karen brought up a frozen casserole and some other stuff. While you look after Jane.”
“Whatever.” He shrugged.
Back to that again. She really didn’t want to be with Jane, he could tell. He was aware of a disappointment nagging at his guts like stomach acid, and he took a few moments to analyze it.
Until recently he hadn’t been in one place long enough to get serious about marriage to any woman, and he wasn’t sure, at the moment, if he was going to be in one place for much longer. He’d been feeling a little restless lately, not totally sure that he’d made the right decision to hook up with his two brothers in their software company. There was still something missing. Something important. Maybe an intuitive voice inside him was telling him, once more, to move on.
Yet he was a family man, at heart. He had loving parents. He had seven brothers he was close to, two of whom had made happy marriages over the past couple of years. He had three little nieces of his own now. He liked extended families, loved his nieces. Deep down, he knew that his sense of family was the best medicine for the times when he had questions about himself and his life that he couldn’t answer, and he didn’t have any qualms about prescribing that same medicine for others.
An outwardly healthy, capable, in-control woman like this should at least like her own sister’s child, he considered. No one was asking her to adopt the kid! What was her problem?
Fortunately, Allie hadn’t noticed his look of disapproval. She was over at the window, staring out at the gathering darkness, and she didn’t seem to notice his curiosity, either. How long was she going to stand there like that?
Minutes, apparently.
Jane was on her tummy on a receiving blanket spread out on the floor at a safe distance from the fire. The central heating had warmed the place up fast, as had the roaring fire in the fireplace. Jane was cooing at the leaping brightness and banging a toy. Needs fully taken care of, but utterly ignored. Allie just kept staring out the window. For some reason it seemed incredibly sad.
Instinctively, he went up to her, needing to understand her. He liked Karen a lot. She was warm, enthusiastic, full of energy and optimism…except when panicking about a jammed camera. Why was her sister so different and difficult?
He’d almost reached Allie when she turned from the window at last. “Those clouds are coming over pretty fast. Is it going to snow?”
“It’s starting to look like it,” he agreed. “I warned Karen about the forecast, but even half an hour ago it looked like it’d probably hold off, and she was desperate about that camera.”
“She’ll make it back, though, won’t she? They won’t close the roads. She guaranteed me she’d make it back tonight!”
The appeal and fear in her face hit him like an electric shock. “Then she’ll do her best, I guess,” was all he could say. It sounded lame in the face of her need.
Something about this situation had her completely terrified. Was it him? He didn’t think so, but there was something. Karen’s appeal to him to “look after” her suddenly made a whole lot more sense. Karen had known Allie would feel this way. How? Why?
And why did he have such a clear, powerful intuition that the answers were going to matter to him?
Chapter Two
“Right.” Allie pulled her mouth into a bright smile. “I guess you should show me my bedroom, then. It looks like there are plenty of them.”
“Five,” Connor said. “Six at a pinch.”
“Upstairs?”
“Upstairs. You can unpack while Jane’s still happy on the floor. Karen’ll want the Portacrib in her room, I assume.”
“I expect so.”
“I’ll put you in the adjoining room. Then if the storm does hit and stops Karen from getting back, you can keep the connecting door open so you’ll hear Jane if she wakes in the night.”
“Yes, that’s the most sensible idea, isn’t it?” Allie agreed, outwardly calm.
“Let’s go, then.”
He placed some cushions around Jane’s receiving blanket, casually betraying his experience with babies. Jane wasn’t officially mobile yet, according to Karen, but she could shuffle herself backward along the floor on her tummy for quite a distance if she kept at it long enough.
“These’ll keep her safely corralled while we’re upstairs,” Connor said.
Allie ached with envying him. Just the way he moved around the baby. Just the way he could reach down to ruffle the fuzzy, dark-gold hair on her little head without even thinking about it. Some day, with the right woman, he’d make a great dad. But for Allie, the idea of herself as a mom had become so complicated—
She snapped that compartment of her mind shut like a jailhouse gate.
Now he’d picked up the crib, the diaper bag and the soft suitcase that contained Karen’s and Jane’s things. Allie grabbed her overnight bag and followed him up the wide stone staircase. This was a great house, only a few years old and full of gorgeous hardwood and stone. In any other situation, she’d feel like she was on vacation here and would look forward to exploring. The house, the island, the surrounding mountains, the nearby towns.
But with Karen temporarily gone and herself and Connor and Jane trapped here by the gathering night and the prospect of a snowstorm, it felt…Well, exactly like that, as if the house were a prison, an emotional hell that wasn’t her fault.
Trapped for how long? she wondered miserably. Would anything ever be truly right in her life again?
“Here you go,” Connor said, opening the door of a pretty little room high in one corner of the house. It had its own bathroom and an antique Amish quilt on the bed, a connecting door to a similar room where Allie would sleep, and a little window peeping out to a white view of flat ice and snow-covered pines…and freshly falling flakes, Allie saw, already coming down thickly. Karen would be over halfway to Albany by now. Had the storm hit down that way yet?
“Any idea how to set this thing up?” Connor indicated the Portacrib in its blue nylon cover.
“No. Sorry.”
She took her bag through to the connecting room, then came back and watched him helplessly as he unzipped the cover and rattled around with the legs and sides of the crib. He discovered some instructions printed on it and started muttering to himself.
Since she didn’t want to think too hard about having Jane so close to her during the night and what that would mean, she watched his body instead. It wasn’t a punishing activity. Even without the bulk of the coat he’d been wearing outside, he looked incredibly solid and strong in his dark sweater and pants, yet he moved very easily.
Or most of him did. For the first time, she noticed that he had a slight limp and it drew her attention to the lines of his thighs and hips, defined by the dark clothing he wore. Had he hurt himself recently? Or was it something permanent, dating from long ago?
And how come it didn’t detract from his masculine grace but only added to it? The limp hinted at a whole, complex range of possibilities about his past, suggesting there was a lot more to Connor Callahan than met the eye. And what met the eye was impressive enough to begin with. It was a long time since she’d met a man who wore his strength and good looks so casually, and with so little arrogance.
“Karen says you’re in the computer-software business,” she said, needing to know more about him. Karen had said she could trust him. That didn’t mean she felt comfortable with their situation.
“Yeah.” He nodded as he pushed the base of the crib into place. He had his sleeves pushed up to the elbows, and she noticed how strong his forearms were. “A couple of years ago I joined the company two of my brothers started. I head up their games division now. Tom has a pretty impressive computer up here, but I won’t be powering it up this weekend.”
“Karen will keep us busy as soon as she gets back.” I wish she hadn’t left. That darned camera!
“I offered her my disposable camera to take some shots with, but she wasn’t impressed,” Connor said. Once again, their thoughts had travelled along the same track.
“I should think not!” Allie exclaimed. “Have you any idea how she feels about that camera of hers?”
“I do now,” Connor admitted humbly. “It has features I didn’t know existed.”
“Yes, it’s some German or Swiss thing that cost her half a gazillion dollars.”
“Insured, I hope.”
“Definitely insured. I know she was acting a little crazy this afternoon, but my sister is actually very—”
“I know what your sister’s like,” he soothed, jerking the side rails of the crib upward with knotted hands to lock them straight. “A whirlwind of energy, with a heart of gold. She makes a great neighbor and a terrific mom.”
“Yes, she does, doesn’t she? An incredible mom.” Her throat was tight again.
“She and John have become good friends since I moved in next door,” Connor went on. If he’d noticed her sudden emotion, he didn’t let on. “That’s why I was happy to bail her out with this book-cover deal. Contrary to what my brother accused me of when I went to pick up the keys to this place, it’s not ‘cause I have a wild urge to be immortalized as Nancy Sherlock’s answer to Rhett Butler on the front of three million copies of Days of Grace and Danger.”
“Three million?”
“That’s not unrealistic, apparently, if they go ahead with the movie,” he pointed out. “Although Karen says that they might reprint the paperback using movie stills for the cover.”
“Gee, you know all about it!”
“Don’t you, too? She’s been reading the manuscript of the book all week and giving me updates on the plot, as well as a play-by-play account of the problems with the cover design. I assumed she’d been doing the same with you.”
“Karen and I…Well, we haven’t spent a lot of time together lately,” Allie said uncomfortably.
“Haven’t you?”
He looked up. He had the crib all set up now, and had found the crib-size quilts folded in the top of Karen’s suitcase. Their eyes met as he shook one out, revealing a fluffy pink-and-white-striped flannel fabric. Allie flushed, then chilled, in the space of a few seconds. She could tell quite clearly what he was thinking.
He knows it’s because of Jane.
But he couldn’t know why. Was he going to let it go?
No.
“And yet you seem close, like you really care about each other and like each other’s company.”
The tone was mild, but he was deliberately pushing. She could tell. And she felt angry. How dare he? What gave him the right to probe like that, with all the hostility and disapproval such probing implied?
She glared at him, and then—wham! It hit her like needles of hot water under a welcome shower. Like the taste of chocolate after strong, sugarless coffee. Like the rush of a summer wave on a Carolina beach. There was chemistry between them, insistent and physical, full of promise and delight. Chemistry that shattered her control, even while it made her heart dance. Chemistry that frightened her, even while it sang to her soul.
Underneath, she’d known it all along, right from the first moment she’d heard that gravelly, cream-filled and not entirely safe voice of his. Right from the moment she’d seen the startling blue eyes beneath the intimidating black hat.
And her sudden understanding of this chemistry answered the indignant question she’d just silently posed. That was what gave him the right to probe for answers from her as he was doing. Because he felt the chemistry, too.
Her breathing was shallow now, and she wanted to run a mile. She couldn’t possibly dare to open up to this. She had to freeze him off. Freeze herself off, too, because there was no way she was ready to let a man into her life at this point—any man—when she had so much else to struggle with.
“We are close,” she answered him frostily at last. “Which is exactly why we can take some time out from our relationship when we need to.”
“And you’ve needed to just lately?”
“Yes.” She wasn’t going to explain any further. Let him think what he liked!
“Okay.” He shrugged and bent to spread a second quilt on top of the first. “Cute,” he commented, studying the lush, hand-quilted and machine-appliqued design of sea creatures illustrating the numbers from one to nine. He bent lower, and touched the bright beading that picked out a sea urchin’s shell. “Karen made this?”
“I did.” She turned deliberately away so she wouldn’t see the surprise on his face as he straightened, but he didn’t let it go, despite her crystal-clear signal.
“You quilt?” he sounded astonished.
The man was relentless!
“Yes,” she retorted. “And I have three heads and the body of a leopard.”
“Hey. Hey…” His voice had softened so that it sent hot prickles of need charging up and down her spine. “Is it a crime on my part to suggest that you seem more like a career gal?”
“Must people be purely one or the other?”
“No, of course not. But—”
“Jane’s fussing,” she announced abruptly, and fled from the room and down the stairs.
She only realized when she reached the bottom that it was the first time in Jane’s life that she’d gone to her willingly and without an agony of turmoil, in the handful of times they’d been under the same roof. And what a tribute to Connor Callahan’s effect on her equilibrium that was!
“Hi, little girl,” she said softly as she entered the big, open living area and approached the glorious warmth of the fire. Janey was whimpering and fretting as if to say, “Okay, I’m done looking at the fire. Isn’t somebody going to come smile at me soon, and show me something interesting? I’m bored!”
“I know,” Allie answered her, as if Jane had spoken her complaint in clear English. Then, with her heart beginning to pound, she bent down and picked the baby up.
But it was too hard. “Are you looking for your…your Mommy?” she asked, her voice coming out with an unnatural intonation.
What would happen if I kissed her, just smothered her with kisses, and smelled her little head and let her little hands grab at my clothing? Allie wondered. What would happen?
Unconsciously, she held Jane farther away from her and her arms were stiff and awkward. No wonder the baby writhed, arching her back and screwing up her face. She wasn’t happy with such blatant ineptitude. She wanted to be held against a warm body. Who could blame her?
Allie heard Connor’s footsteps behind her.
“Want me to take her?” There was a surprising amount of understanding in his voice.
“Uh, sure. I was going to get that hot chocolate, wasn’t I?”
“Yup. I’ll take a mug, too, while you’re at it. Kitchen’s back through that door.”
“Two hot chocolates, coming right up. And I’ll put the casserole in a low oven to start heating up while I’m at it,” she planned aloud. “It must be still half-frozen, and it’s already after five o’clock.”
“I guess Janey, here, will want to eat early,” he agreed.
He was holding her with casual, practised ease, bouncing her on his hip and earning radiant, open-mouthed smiles, entirely uncomplicated by the presence of teeth. Allie’s envy and torment was like a straitjacket.
“The jars of baby food are in her diaper bag, I think,” Allie said. “Is there a microwave? Because I think she likes them warmed up.”
“There’s a microwave. Any idea what time she eats and goes down for the night?”
“I think she’s usually down by seven, but she has a bath before that, so I guess she eats at about six.”
“See, kiddo,” Connor crooned, “we’re cookin’, here. We’ve got your routine worked out—we know what you eat. You’re not gonna miss your mommy at all, are you?”
If the gurgle was an answer, it sounded like Jane agreed.
Allie hid in the kitchen for the next half hour, apart from ten minutes spent sipping her hot drink by the fire while Connor changed a messy diaper. He made so little fuss about the task that she didn’t even realize he’d done it until he dumped the diaper bag back on the end table next to the squashy cream sofa and announced, “Fresh as a daisy again.”
Back in the kitchen, as she turned the oven up higher and found salad and garlic bread amongst the provisions her sister had brought, Allie wondered about Connor’s new attitude. He didn’t seem so hostile anymore, and there was a peacefulness in the atmosphere now. Against the night-dark sky, the snow still whirled, thick and silent, promising changed plans, but in here it was seductively cozy.
The savory aroma of the beef casserole began to snake through the house, mingling with the faint tang of wood smoke. Connor had put on some soft music, and maybe it was that or maybe it was the warmth of the fire, or just the long, travel-filled day, but Jane was getting tired.
At six, Connor came into the kitchen with the baby and announced, “No way is this little princess going to make it until seven o’clock, and I think we’d better skip any thought of a bath.”
Allie just nodded, pushing back a dangerous rush of tenderness at the sight of those rosy little cheeks and heavy lids.
“She’s finished her bottle,” Connor said. “I’ll feed her her fruit in here, and she might be asleep before she’s even done. Now, let’s think. Where’s the high chair?”
“There’s a high chair here?”
“Believe me,” he drawled, “in the Callahan family, there’s always a high chair.”
She laughed in sudden delight. “That’s nice!”
“Is it?” He flashed her a look that was curious and ready to be convinced.
“It says something about a family, when there’s always a high chair.” Her face had softened with her smile.
“Yeah, I think so,” he agreed, then added, “Actually, here there’s probably two high chairs. Tom and Julie have twins, just one year old. Adorable little monsters, they are. I’ve been doing a fair bit of hands-on uncle-ing over the past six months or so, and I’m speaking from experience!”
“Boys?”
“Girls. My mom had eight boys. This generation, so far, is specializing in the other kind.”
“Your mom must be thrilled.”
“She is. And as for Dad…”
He didn’t say anything further for a while, just found one of the high chairs folded away in a storage closet and brought it out. Then he sat Jane in it, put her in a bib, heated a jar of pureed apricots in the microwave, stirred and tested it carefully and began to feed her with a rubber-tipped spoon. As he’d predicted, her little head was nodding by the time he got to the bottom of the jar.
Watching him ease her gently out of the high chair, Allie asked in a distracted tone, “Shall I set the table in here, or…?”
“Nicer to eat by the fire, don’t you think?”
“Uh…yes, it would be.”
“Want me to take her up to bed while you start setting everything up on the hearth?”
“Thanks. Yes.”
There was a tiny pause.
“Want to give her a good-night kiss?”
Another pause.
“Okay.”
He brought the baby over and held her out for her kiss, his blue eyes fixed steadily and thoughtfully on Allie’s face.
I’ve never done this before. I’ve never kissed her, she thought.
But she managed it, and it didn’t last long, just one little press of lips—dry lips—on a soft, velvety cheek. Somehow she kept those flooding feelings dammed back.
When he’d gone, though, tiptoeing from the kitchen with Jane’s head resting heavily on his shoulder and her breathing slow and even, Allie had to lean against the granite counter to keep from buckling at the knees.
Karen called while Connor was still upstairs. She sounded tired but resigned at the far end of the phone. And Allie was resigned to what she knew the news would be.
“Where are you?” Allie demanded.
“Albany. I’ve just checked into a motel. Sorry I didn’t call earlier, but the trip down was a nightmare. The snow started just after the Saratoga exits and, boy, did it hit thick and fast! When I got here, the camera store was about to close. I had to sweet-talk the guy into staying open and taking a look at the thing.”
“How is it?”
“Fixed. He had the part. Took him half an hour. Then I started out on the Interstate to get back up to you.”
“That was crazy, Karen!”
“I know. But I kept hoping maybe it hadn’t gotten so heavy up there. I mean, the sky was still blue…well, half-blue…when I left! And they turned me back. They’ve closed the road. If the snow eases off by morning, which it’s supposed to do, if I can believe the Weather Channel, they’ll have plowed and I can get back.”
“Plowed all the way up to—” Allie began, but Karen didn’t let her finish.
“How’s Jane?” she demanded.
“Asleep. Connor took her up, oh, about twenty minutes ago.”
“Okay, then.” Karen took a deep breath. Clearly, she wanted to ask more about the baby. Did she play? Did she take a bath? Did she seem upset? But Karen apparently decided to hold the questions back.
She didn’t say, “Kiss her for me,” either, and Allie didn’t tell her sister that she already had.
“I’m going to call you again first thing tomorrow,” Karen promised. “And I’ll give you the number here if you need to call me.”
Connor came back downstairs just as Allie was winding up her conversation. He paused halfway down and for a few moments listened quite shamelessly—she’d turned and seen him, so it didn’t feel like eavesdropping—intrigued by the mystery and complexity of the woman he was just beginning to get to know.
He listened to the way she handled her sister, soothing her anxieties, teasing her a little. She was clearly comfortable with their loving and supportive relationship. And yet they “hadn’t spent a lot of time together lately.”
He thought about the quilt she’d made for Jane, and what that said about her creativity and her care for beautiful things. I really must find out about her career, he decided. He’d been assuming it was something high-powered but rather cold. The sort of job where she’d wear a power suit, size eight, and deal with money or property or corporate clients. Accountancy or law or international banking.
But how many international bankers took the time to create a beautiful handmade quilt for their niece? And how many people, no matter what their profession, would make a quilt for a baby they couldn’t even hold or touch without stiffening as if they’d been turned to ice?
He felt this overwhelming need to take her by those fine-boned shoulders and demand, “What happened to you? What damaged you? And how can I help you to heal?”
And that last question was completely insane, because he’d only known her for three hours. It didn’t make any sense at all.
Abandoning the unanswerable issue, he reached the bottom of the stairs as Allie put down the phone. “Everything okay?”
“She’s in Albany, at a motel. The camera’s fixed,” she summarized, and added a couple more details.
“Are we ready to eat? It smells great!”
“Karen’s a fabulous cook.”
“I know. I’ve tasted her chicken potpie and her lasagna.”
“Her beef casserole is even better.”
“Do you cook?” he couldn’t help asking as they brought the food through to the hearth together. He was quite prepared to be unsurprised if she did, thinking again of the quilt, but she made a face.
“I scramble. As in eggs. I toss. As in salad. And I reheat. As in leftovers, takeout or TV dinners. That’s about it.”
“You live alone?”
“I have an apartment,” she confirmed.
“Not the best incentive, is it, living alone?”
“Incentive?”
“For becoming a great cook.”
“No,” she agreed. “You need people to cook for, don’t you?”
“People you care about,” he said, pinpointing her meaning more exactly.
For a brief moment, their eyes met, then she looked quickly away. But not before they’d each read far too much in the other’s face, by the light of soft table lamps and a glowing fire. Things you couldn’t even put into words.
Then they both came to their senses and got busy dishing the gravy-rich casserole into bowls, unwrapping the garlic bread from its foil wrapping, breaking it into steaming pieces, tossing dressing onto salad, pouring a little red wine.
“Your sister hasn’t mentioned what you do for a living,” Connor said as they began to eat, each hunkered down on one of the squishy two-seater sofas pulled close to the hearth.
He tried to make it sound like a casual question, but for some reason he really wanted to know. He had the instinctive sense that whatever it was, he was going to be surprised.
He wasn’t wrong, and when she told him, he had the answer to at least one of his many questions about this woman. He knew why, whenever he heard her voice, he felt as if they’d met before, despite the fact that he could never have forgotten meeting a woman like Allie.
“Actually, I’m a radio announcer,” she said, with a grin that was almost apologetic, as if she’d already understood that he was expecting something from left field. “I do the morning drive-time program on Philadelphia’s Country Classic Radio WPYR. We Play Your Requests. We’re Not the Biggest, but We’re the Best.” She’d dropped into her on-air voice half way through, rich and melodic and upbeat.
“Oh—my—lord!” he got out, stunned, then had to check to make sure he’d really gotten it right. “You mean you’re A. J. Todd? The A. J. Todd?”
“Stands for Alison Jane.”
“I listen to you all the time, on my way in to work. Karen never said.”
“Why should she? It’s a minor station, and our broadcasting range is pretty small. I’m not exactly a nationally syndicated shock jock.”
No, but as far as I’m concerned, you do have the sexiest voice on American radio, bar none.
Fortunately, he hadn’t said it aloud. Alone here, with the night ahead and only a six-month-old baby girl for chaperone, he didn’t need to have her thinking he was coming on to her. Somehow he suspected that she could do a pretty good job of freezing a man into solid ice if she had a mind to, and though he hadn’t made up his own mind what he wanted from her yet, he definitely knew it wasn’t that.
He groped for something safer. “Are you ambitious, career-wise, A.J. Todd? Would you like to be a big name in radio?”
“Of course!” she answered, then paused, narrowed her eyes a little and repeated, “Of course I would,” in a much less definite tone.
He sensed a little chink he could use to enter her world, the way a spelunker might slide through a crevice to find a huge, unexplored cavern system. “It’s not obligatory to be ambitious, is it?” he asked.
“Well, no, but I guess I’ve always been the career woman in the family. Karen’s doing great with her art, but family comes first for her, and always has. Clare, our younger sister, has a religious vocation and has known it since age ten.”
“So you’ve positioned yourself as the ambitious one?”
“Positioned myself?”
“You’re a middle child, right? So am I. I know the drill.”
“As I understand it, there are six middle children in your family,” she pointed out, a little cool.
So she didn’t like this kind of analysis? Tough! Connor decided. For some reason, he really wanted her to know that she could trust him, open up to him. To the point where he was prepared to force it a little.
“Makes no difference,” he answered her. “There’s still the same need to fight for a unique place. In one way, that’s good. In others…Well, I spent a good few years working at stuff I didn’t really enjoy, just to prove a point.”
“Like what?”
“You mean what point? That I was my own person, I guess.”
“No, what did you work at?”
“Oh, drilling for oil in Alaska, roadying for a country-music band, doing stunt work in films. That’s how I banged up this leg, don’t know if you’ve noticed.”
“I noticed,” Allie admitted. She didn’t admit that to any healthy, red-blooded female, the slight imperfection could only make him seem sexier.
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Lilian Darcy
THE BABY'S SECRET…Connor Callahan had just met Allie Todd, but he immediately felt an overwhelming need to protect her. And to understand why she turned to ice whenever she held her baby niece. He sensed that beautiful Allie was weathering her own storm–one even fiercer than the snowstorm that had stranded them in a remote cabin. Her combination of strength and vulnerability tore at his once-restless heart. But it was only after he saved Allie from a near tragic accident that he suspected her innermost secret. What if baby Jane wasn't Allie's niece, but her daughter…?
“What the heck, Allie, let’s get it over with,” Connor growled.
And his mouth came down on hers before she could say another word.
Allie closed her eyes so that all she could feel were Connor’s fingers closed warm and firm over her knuckles, and his mouth softly tasting her. His mouth was firm, warm, smooth. His long lashes tickled her cheeks as he broke contact for just an instant and moved his head to the side. Allie’s bottom lip trembled and dropped open as she let out a slow gasp.
Allie was overwhelmed by the power of Connor’s kiss. Because the kiss had taken control of both of them, had acquired a life of its own. The kiss mattered. It was the crystallization of everything she had begun to feel about him. A trust and a connection deeper than she’d have thought possible in so short a time. A sense of promise, as if the kiss was only the beginning….
Dear Reader,
As Silhouette’s yearlong anniversary celebration continues, Romance again delivers six unique stories about the poignant journey from courtship to commitment.
Teresa Southwick invites you back to STORKVILLE, USA, where a wealthy playboy has the gossips stumped with his latest transaction: The Acquired Bride…and her triplet kids! New York Times bestselling author Kasey Michaels contributes the second title in THE CHANDLERS REQUEST…miniseries, Jessie’s Expecting. Judy Christenberry spins off her popular THE CIRCLE K SISTERS with a story involving a blizzard, a roadside motel with one bed left, a gorgeous, honor-bound rancher…and his Snowbound Sweetheart.
New from Donna Clayton is SINGLE DOCTOR DADS! In the premiere story of this wonderful series, a first-time father strikes The Nanny Proposal with a woman whose timely hiring quickly proves less serendipitous and more carefully, lovingly, staged….Lilian Darcy pens yet another edgy, uplifting story with Raising Baby Jane. And debut author Jackie Braun delivers pure romantic fantasy as a down-on-her-luck waitress receives an intriguing order from the man of her dreams: One Fiancée To Go, Please.
Happy Reading!
Mary-Theresa Hussey
Senior Editor
Raising Baby Jane
Lilian Darcy
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Books by Lilian Darcy
Silhouette Romance
The Baby Bond #1390
Her Sister’s Child #1449
Raising Baby Jane #1478
LILIAN DARCY
Since her marriage to an irresistible New Yorker over ten years ago, Lilian Darcy has divided her time between various parts of the United States and her native Australia. Her children hold dual citizenship, and in her writing she tries to embody the shared strength of the two cultures—heroism, warmth and down-to-earth values. Although new to Silhouette, she has written over thirty books for the Harlequin Mills & Boon Medical Romance line and is now looking forward to creating strong, passionate stories for a whole new set of readers.
Contents
Chapter One (#u4bfff500-bebc-5536-baa8-7d94db3e0b83)
Chapter Two (#ub3ed9db2-5106-56b9-877b-c3a03b7940ba)
Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
“Just remind me one more time why I agreed to do this!” Allie Todd growled at her sister Karen Pirelli.
Karen didn’t answer. She was gripping the steering wheel of the minivan so hard that her knuckles were white. Her shoulders were hunched, her forehead was pleated and those little sounds coming from her mouth were probably prayers.
The road—track—they were driving on probably wouldn’t have been in great shape even on a dry summer’s day. At the end of a brief January thaw, after several big snowstorms already this winter, it was slushy and slippery and positively frightening.
“Can’t be much farther,” Karen muttered, peering ahead. “Connor said—”
She broke off. They’d come out of the dark pine woods into a cleared space that in summer would have had room for several cars. It must have been plowed a couple of times this winter. There was dirty snow heaped up in lumpy, untidy banks on two sides. But it hadn’t been plowed recently.
On the third side, there was the track that Karen had just negotiated, and on the fourth—
Karen slammed on the brakes. Worst thing you could do on a snow-slippery road. Allie could have told her that, though if she’d been driving herself, she would probably have panicked, as Karen had, and made the same mistake.
The minivan suddenly embarked on a skating career. It swirled elegantly in one direction then the other, before it came finally to a stop about two inches from the sharp, four-foot drop down to the sheet of lake ice.
Karen told Allie shakily, “I owe you one, okay?”
But Allie shook her head. “No. That’s one thing you’ll never have to say to me, Karen. You know that.” She cleared her throat to get rid of the sudden huskiness in her voice, then added, “I shouldn’t have complained about coming up here.”
“No,” Karen argued, “ I shouldn’t have asked you to do this, when I know it’s so hard for you to—” She changed tack quickly. “And anyway, I know you’re not much of a cabin gal.”
“Just how primitive is it going to be, did he happen to say?”
“No, he didn’t.”
They both sat in the front of the minivan, peering out across the white lake to the snow-covered island in the distance.
Karen slumped her arms onto the steering wheel and groaned, still looking sick.
“Are you okay?” Allie demanded uselessly.
“I’m fine.” She took a shaky breath. Then she took another one. “I meant to tell you on the way up, but you were sleeping. I’ve got some news. I—I’m pregnant, Allie.”
“Oh, Karen, that’s wonderful! That’s just so great!” Allie said, her voice fogging again.
“I know.” Karen smiled, relief evident in her face. Allie understood at once that her sister hadn’t been confident about how she’d receive the news. “John and I are just so thrilled,” she went on. “Although I feel pretty disgusting a lot of the time, and—”
She stopped, and they both turned instinctively to look at the six-month-old baby asleep in the backseat. She was a beautiful girl. Just beautiful. On her head there was a fine growth of silky, dark-gold hair. On her plump rosy cheeks, there were two fans of extraordinarily long, satiny black lashes. Her skin was so peachy and translucent that a blue vein across her nose showed quite clearly. It was the prettiest, purest color.
There was a short silence, then Allie carefully voiced a small part of what they were both thinking. “They’ll be very close in age.”
“I know. Thirteen months apart.”
“Jane won’t remember…” Allie began.
“…what it was like before she had a baby brother or sister,” Karen finished. “Don’t worry about it, Allie, it’s not a problem. Really! John and I have been wanting a big family for so long. There were so many times we despaired that it would ever happen. And you know that nothing about what we’re doing with this is a problem for me. Whatever you decide about anything in the future, if you want—”
“It’s okay, Karen,” Allie answered with difficulty. “I know. You’ve promised me that from the beginning. I guess I’m still working things out.”
“It’s only that my energy levels are down at the moment. John’s away on business till Wednesday. I should have gone with him, taken a break, but the chance to do this book cover was too good to turn down. The movie rights for it have already been sold. Nancy Sherlock is huge these days.”
“And with a temperament to match, evidently.”
“With a temperament to ma—” Karen began to agree. Then she stopped abruptly and put her hand over her mouth, gripped by nausea.
“Let’s get you out of this car, so you can walk around and get some air.”
“I can’t open the door.”
“I know. And I’m not letting you climb across to my side in your condition. Not with that big old gearshift in the way.”
Allie quickly jammed on her dark blue velour hat and wriggled her fingers into warm woolly gloves, then jumped out of the car and went round to the driver’s side. “Hang in there,” she ordered her sister, both protective and stern. “I’m going to shovel back the snow as quick as I can. You still look like you’re about to throw up.”
“Might,” Karen agreed through clenched teeth. She folded her arms across the steering wheel and buried her face in them, breathing carefully.
Not caring that her gloves were immediately soaked through, Allie began to drag armfuls of snow out of the way of the door. It was slower work than she’d anticipated. The snow bank was like a big, puffy quilt, and the van looked as if it had decided to snuggle in for the night.
“Would a shovel help?” said a male voice.
Allie looked up, startled, and found the orange scoop of a snow shovel staring her in the face. She sat back on her haunches, a little breathless and hot, and looked up higher. A handle. A leather-gloved hand. A big, thick, black coat sleeve ending in an impressive shoulder. Finally, a man’s face beneath a black, stretchy wool hat. He had the bluest eyes she’d ever seen.
There was something about him that immediately had Allie off balance. Literally. She stumbled and wasn’t steady as she straightened. It didn’t help that she hadn’t heard his approach across the slightly softened ice, above the effortful pant of her breathing and the sound of scraping snow.
Karen still had her head hidden in her arms, but she had heard his voice.
“Connor?” came her muffled query.
“Yeah, hi.” He leaned an arm on the minivan’s door frame and examined Karen through the half-open window. “I guess you didn’t intend on parking quite so close to the lake, right?”
“Right.”
“Feeling sick?”
“Right again.”
“Yeah, it can shake you up, a near miss like that. That drop’s pretty sharp.”
“Connor, this is Allie. Allie, meet Connor Callahan. Sorry…about the…informality.” She lapsed into silence once more and went on taking those deep, careful breaths.
“Nice to meet you, Allie.”
Connor stuck out his glove and she shook it, then saw his face as the action squeezed a trickle of icy water from the sodden wool. His grimace was designed to get a reaction from her, and it worked.
She laughed. “Not exactly waterproof, I’m afraid.”
Without another word, only a speaking glance, he began to shovel back the snow from the door. He moved with an efficiency that looked effortless, and he was singing what seemed to be a sea shanty under his breath. It was a very appealing sound and Allie almost felt like joining in.
“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” she suggested after a moment.
“Yeah, and I’m sorry I didn’t get to do it before you got here,” he said. “Some stuff came up at work that I had to deal with before I could take off. I’d hoped to get here a couple of hours earlier, and I should have told Karen to pack some snow chains.”
“Nice idea,” Allie agreed easily, “assuming either of us knew how to put them on.”
She peeled off the sopping gloves, dropped them onto the roof of the minivan with a gesture of distaste and tucked her hands beneath her upper arms to warm them.
Connor straightened from his work for a moment and studied her thoughtfully.
She was petite, a compact bundle of dark blue with her arms folded like that. She was smaller than her sister, and darker, too. Hair of a glossy black-brown escaped from beneath her hat and reached her shoulders.
He couldn’t see much of her face. She had that velour hat jammed down so low, it shaded her eyes completely. All he could see was a soft mouth, not wide but gorgeously shaped, and high, well-defined cheeks that were pink from the cold. She would have looked about sixteen if there hadn’t been such a determined, contained aura to her pose and her expression.
He’d never been slow to form first impressions about a woman. With this one, those impressions were good. He had a feeling that the favor his pretty neighbor had pressed on him might turn out to be interesting.
Allie was hopping up and down now, trying to keep her feet warm. He hoped they weren’t as wet as her gloves in those leather boots, meant for city streets.
“Your sister hasn’t told me much about you,” he said to her with a slow grin, “but I’m getting the impression you’re not the wilderness type.”
“Not since I quit Girl Scouts at age twelve,” she agreed. “I’m a lot more the curling-up-in-front-of-a-blazing-fire-with-some-good-music-and-a-book-and-a-mug-of-hot-chocolate type. Is…uh…that going to be a problem this weekend?”
Allie asked the question a little nervously. Her boots were leaking and her hands were throbbing. She really didn’t want to hear that this cabin they were headed for had no electricity and one smoky woodstove in a ramshackle kitchen.
“You mean does my brother’s place have a blazing fire?” Connor asked.
“For starters, yes.”
“I can arrange it,” he drawled.
He had a jaw as square and strong as his snow shovel, a body like a professional sportsman and a voice like gravel dripping with melted fudge. Allie resisted the impulse to conclude that the man could probably “arrange” just about anything he wanted. In the nicest possible way.
As he returned to work, she had to fight the urge to say to him, “Sing that sea shanty again,” because the rhythm of it had meshed so well with the rhythm of his body, and he had the growling, rollicking singing voice of a pirate.
“Okay, Karen, that’s freed it now,” he said, after a couple more minutes. “Why don’t you get out and I’ll move the car to a safer spot?”
“Thanks,” Karen answered, straightening at last from the steering wheel where she’d been resting her head on her arms.
She climbed awkwardly out onto the snow, and the fresh, cold air brought some healthy color back into her cheeks.
Connor slid into the driver’s seat, turned the ignition and maneuvered the minivan so that it sat neatly beside his own Range Rover. While he was doing so, Allie said quietly to her sister, “Going to be okay?”
“Fine now,” Karen nodded.
“Does he know about the baby?”
“Not yet. We’ve only just started telling family. You’re the first apart from Mom and Dad and John’s parents.”
“I won’t say anything this weekend, then.”
“I may have to tell him, if I keep getting sick like this. I guess I’m nervous about that book cover, which isn’t helping. Nancy Sherlock has already rejected two previous versions done by other artists, and they must have roped me in as a desperation measure. I’ve never done cover art for an author this big before. Apparently, she wants a ‘natural feel.’ She thought the backdrop and the models they used before were ‘too fake.’ And she saw the covers I did for Gloria Blackmore’s ‘Harvest’ trilogy and loved them.”
“So there you are,” Allie soothed. “She loves your stuff.”
Karen made a face. “She has a reputation for changing her mind without warning. I mean, was she serious about those models? I decided to try it with you guys because you’re both photogenic, but you’re not professionals. Only maybe that was crazy?”
“Trust your intuition, Karen,” Allie soothed again. “You’ll calm down once you get behind your camera.”
“Which reminds me, I’d like to get some photos of the lake right now before the light changes. There’s a great feel and quality to it at the moment, so crisp and clean. And before Janey wakes up.”
Allie nodded, ignoring the slight tightening of her throat that happened every time her sister mentioned baby Jane, especially in that tender yet casual way.
Connor was with them again, and had heard Karen’s words. “Having an attack of inspiration?”
“If that suits you,” Karen nodded. She was already on her way to the rear door of the van to get out her camera equipment.
“It’s fine,” he agreed. “I’ll bring the snowmobile across for our gear. I checked the ice, and it’s rock-solid out there. The softening from the thaw is only in the top half inch. Meanwhile, my fellow ‘model’ here, can look after her little niece if she wakes up.”
He tossed a casual grin across to Allie, then his face darkened and fell, and she knew she hadn’t managed to hide her stricken expression. Suddenly, she realized how vulnerable she was going to be this weekend, having to spend it so close to Karen and Jane with a stranger looking on.
“Hey,” Connor came in quickly, “Did I scare you? I didn’t mean to. You’re not nervous about this gig, surely? Treat it as a joke. I am! I’ve never modeled for anything before.”
“Neither have I,” she managed.
“And the idea of having your sister do one of those vibrant, romantic book-cover paintings of hers based on photos of us tickles me to death. I leaped at the chance to goof off for a three-day weekend.”
“I guess I should look at it that way, too,” Allie replied, thankful that he’d unknowingly given her an easy way out of admitting what was really eating away at her heart.
“Or is it the thought of changing a diaper that’s so frightening?” he teased.
Could he read her mind?
“Yes, it’s terrifying,” she answered, trying to make it sound like a joke. “I’ve never changed a diaper in my life.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
He raised one eyebrow and tucked in the corner of his mouth, and she could tell he wasn’t impressed. Damn it, damn it, it was none of his business! Thrust deep in the pockets of her coat, her thawing hands were shaking.
“I’ll be back in about five minutes,” he said, then paused for a second. “No, make that ten. I have a couple of things to do inside the house.”
“Ten minutes. Okay,” she nodded.
Karen had her camera lens attached and her tripod positioned out on the wooden boat dock that thrust out into the lake from the far end of the parking lot. Jane was still fast asleep in her car seat. The engine was switched off now, so the car’s heating wasn’t on anymore. She’d get cold, soon.
Opening the door of the minivan as soundlessly as she could, Allie reached in and unfolded the baby quilt that was sitting on top of the diaper bag. She tucked it in around Jane as well as she could with the restraining bar of the baby seat in the way, hardening herself against any ambush of tenderness. Had Karen’s news about her pregnancy changed anything? The possibility overwhelmed her.
Then she closed up the car again, leaving one window open just a crack to let in some air, and went over to her sister.
“Have you known him long?” It was almost an accusation.
Karen looked up from her viewfinder. “Nearly five months,” she said, betraying no surprise at the question. “Maybe you don’t remember. His place used to be rented out, then it came up for sale and was empty for about three months until he bought it. He moved in early September, and that was when we first met him.”
Allie nodded. The explanation told her everything she wanted to know. But Karen had more to say.
“He’s a great guy, Allie. The kind you could trust with your life. John and I have met his parents and two of his brothers, and they’re a close, wonderful family.”
“That’s good to know,” Allie answered. She trusted her sister’s judgment in a way that she trusted few other things in life these days. Then, changing the subject deliberately, she added, “Getting some good stuff?”
“Don’t know yet,” Karen answered. Her eye was already back peering through the viewfinder. “But I’m not taking any chances on this. I’m going to shoot as much film as I can so that there’s no way Nancy can come up with a suggestion for a scene that I can’t cover. I love those clouds just feathering above the mountains.” She waved a hand. “I want to take a whole lot of winter-landscape shots as well, for this photographic kids’ book I’m planning on the four seasons.”
Allie laughed. This was typical of Karen. She had energy to burn, and usually more irons in the fire, professionally and personally, than she could count. Allie repeated this gentle accusation out loud.
“Irons in the fire?” Karen looked up, with a self-conscious expression. “What do you mean?”
“Well, despite your being so nervous about the Nancy Sherlock cover, you still have time to think about a kids’ book.”
Karen’s expression cleared. “Oh. Right. That.”
“Why, what did you think I meant?”
“Nothing.” Very offhand. Not looking at Allie. Very seriously taking pictures and talking about the book cover again.
Allie felt a tiny tickle of suspicion and alarm, but she let it slide.
“I’m going to do night shots, interiors,” Karen was saying. “And I want to get out the clothing this afternoon, if we can, so I can get some shots of you wearing—”
She stopped abruptly and gave a hiss of dismay. She’d been taking pictures as she talked, changing lenses, moving the tripod, and the camera had just made a strangled, clicking sound that even Allie recognized wasn’t right.
“Hang on,” Karen said carefully, “Let’s try again.” She pressed the camera’s small silver button but nothing happened. “I’m not going to panic,” she informed Allie in a panicky voice.
“Okay, good,” Allie agreed.
“I’m just going to check out each possibility very carefully and slowly,” she continued, madly rattling, clicking, shaking and winding every bit of delicate camera apparatus that she could lay her hands on.
“Sounds sensible.”
“And if there is something wrong with it that I can’t fix,” she announced, ripping the entire roll of film out of the camera in several torn sections and dropping them onto the ice-encrusted dock, “I’m not going to overreact.”
All of which didn’t fully explain why Connor was greeted, on his return with the snowmobile several minutes later, with the news that as soon as baby Jane and all the bags were unloaded, he had to drive the minivan up to the main road. Karen needed to make an emergency dash into Albany to get her very expensive, state-of-the-art, obscure brand of camera repaired immediately.
“I’ll be gone three hours max,” she finished.
“Karen, it’s over an hour’s drive each way,” Connor pointed out patiently. “And then you have to get the—”
“Okay, three and a half. But I’ll be back before dark.”
“It’s already nearly four o’clock.”
“Before dinner.” She paused at last, and listened. “That’s Jane waking up, Allie.”
“Yes, I can hear her.”
Jane was waking up happy. There were some singing and cooing and gurgling sounds coming from the backseat of the van.
“If you can get her and put on her snowsuit, Allie, then Connor can take you and her and the diaper bag over to the cabin now, while I unload the rest of our gear. Then he can come straight back and drive me up to the main road. I can be on my way in five minutes.”
This time, Connor didn’t even bother to offer a more realistic time-frame, and Allie was too busy thinking, Jane. I’m going to have to look after Jane. All by myself. No one else around at all. For at least half an hour while Connor drives up and walks back down and loads our gear onto the snowmobile. And then when he gets back, it’ll be just him and me and Jane. For hours. I don’t want to do it. I’m scared. I’m not ready. I don’t know yet if I’ll ever be ready. Why can’t Karen see that? Why isn’t she helping me with this?
Because Karen was scared, too.
Allie could see it and hear it in the panicky plans and the jittery movements. First and foremost, Karen was a mother and a wife. She wanted a big, loving, untidy family in her big Victorian house next to Connor’s. But she had a strong creative drive as well.
Her career as a commercial artist and photographer was important to her, this cover for a guaranteed bestseller was her biggest break so far. She needed to continue this success if she and John were to afford that parcel of kids they dreamed of. She didn’t want to blow it, and her camera had jammed, and of course she was scared.
“Sounds do-able,” Connor said. He gave an apparently casual glance at the horizon over the snow-covered mountains that ringed Diamond Lake and added, half under his breath, “More or less. If we’re lucky.” Then aloud he said, “Let’s go, Allie.”
“Don’t hold dinner for me,” Karen told Connor. “Although I’ll definitely be back.”
“Of course you will,” Connor soothed her, as if he hadn’t just spent five minutes trying to convince her she shouldn’t go in the first place. He hunched his shoulders against the growing chill. It was only just past four o’clock, but the day was darkening by the minute. There was bad weather in the forecast, although it hadn’t made its appearance yet.
“And for Jane you’ll need to—” She tucked a strand of light brown hair behind her ear and it stuck out messily, adding to her aura of nervous distraction.
“I know a fair bit about babies,” Connor soothed her again.
“Allie…doesn’t.”
“I gathered that,” he nodded.
He was actually a little put off by how cold Allie seemed toward her cute little niece. Maybe his positive first impressions were going to need some revision. She had neatly ducked the task of getting Jane into her snowsuit and Karen had done it instead, with a tight face. Was she angry at her sister’s lack of interest?
I would be, Connor decided inwardly. It doesn’t take much to show a little warmth toward a baby.
“Look after her—and Allie,” Karen said now.
“Oh. Sure. Of course.” Did Allie need looking after?
“Seriously, Connor.” For a moment, Karen actually held still long enough to look him in the eye. “She’s been through a really rough time, and she’s such a great person. Warm, funny, sincere.” She stopped suddenly, as if rethinking the wisdom of what she’d just said. “Anyway, I’ll be back pretty soon. I know what you said about the forecast, but look at that sky.” She waved in the direction where it was still blue. “Does that look like a storm to you?”
It didn’t, and Connor didn’t waste his breath pointing to the clouds that had begun to build behind them. She could well be right. The storm would pass to the west, or hold off altogether.
“And I have my cell phone,” Karen was saying. “Oh, this is such a nightmare!”
“No, it isn’t. Really, it isn’t.”
She hadn’t heard. “See you later.”
She was gone in a flurry of dirty roadside snow seconds later, and so he turned with a fatalistic shrug and began to walk back down the winding quarter mile of track to Diamond Lake.
Allie stood outside to greet him after he’d brought the snowmobile across the lake and wheeled it around to park it by the front door.
“You said this place was a cabin,” she said accusingly.
“Never did,” he returned lightly, following her inside. She peeled off her coat to reveal black pants tucked into damp leather boots, and a pale blue angora sweater that hugged her small frame.
He decided Allie was an assertive woman, despite her size! If he hadn’t heard it in her voice, he’d have seen it in the lift of her strong, but graceful jaw and in the electric flash of her dark eyes. Eyes like hot chocolate syrup, he could see, now that she’d unjammed that hat from her head.
“Karen said—”
“Karen might have said it was a cabin,” he pointed out, enjoying their trivial conflict. “But I didn’t. I probably used the word ‘place,’ as in, ‘my brother Tom’s place in the Adirondack Mountains.’ She must have assumed it was a cabin, as people tend to, when you mention mountains. I’m sorry if you’re disappointed.”
“Disappointed?” She shivered and stepped toward the warmth of the open fire, a sudden grin lighting up her face and draining away the tension in her that he still didn’t understand. “Are you kidding? It’s fabulous! And you even lit this fire! I’ve been toasting myself.”
“After what you said about blazing fires and good music and hot chocolate, how could I not?”
Knowing what a panic Karen was in, he hadn’t wasted time on coming into the house with Allie after he’d brought her here with baby Jane. And he’d deliberately left the fire he’d lit for her earlier to be a surprise. He didn’t know, at the time, what had prompted the impulse to light it in the first place. The central heating was very efficient.
Now he understood. He’d wanted to imagine her face lighting up like that when she first saw it, and he’d gotten his reward as it lit up again now. It changed her whole personality, hinted at a warmth and softness and sense of fun that he hadn’t seen much of yet in that small package of womanhood. Karen had mentioned those qualities, but he wasn’t going to take them on trust. He liked to make his own decisions.
“Well, it was wonderful,” she answered him. “Thank you. I haven’t even tried to look around or unpack.”
“You haven’t made yourself that hot chocolate yet?”
“No, as I said, I’ve just been toasting myself. And—and Jane.” She frowned.
Remembering what Karen had said about looking after her, and the rough time she’d been through—had she been ill, maybe?—he offered, “I’ll make one for you, after I’ve taken your stuff up to your room.”
“I can do that. I can make the hot chocolate, too, if you’ll show me the kitchen. And I can cook dinner. Karen brought up a frozen casserole and some other stuff. While you look after Jane.”
“Whatever.” He shrugged.
Back to that again. She really didn’t want to be with Jane, he could tell. He was aware of a disappointment nagging at his guts like stomach acid, and he took a few moments to analyze it.
Until recently he hadn’t been in one place long enough to get serious about marriage to any woman, and he wasn’t sure, at the moment, if he was going to be in one place for much longer. He’d been feeling a little restless lately, not totally sure that he’d made the right decision to hook up with his two brothers in their software company. There was still something missing. Something important. Maybe an intuitive voice inside him was telling him, once more, to move on.
Yet he was a family man, at heart. He had loving parents. He had seven brothers he was close to, two of whom had made happy marriages over the past couple of years. He had three little nieces of his own now. He liked extended families, loved his nieces. Deep down, he knew that his sense of family was the best medicine for the times when he had questions about himself and his life that he couldn’t answer, and he didn’t have any qualms about prescribing that same medicine for others.
An outwardly healthy, capable, in-control woman like this should at least like her own sister’s child, he considered. No one was asking her to adopt the kid! What was her problem?
Fortunately, Allie hadn’t noticed his look of disapproval. She was over at the window, staring out at the gathering darkness, and she didn’t seem to notice his curiosity, either. How long was she going to stand there like that?
Minutes, apparently.
Jane was on her tummy on a receiving blanket spread out on the floor at a safe distance from the fire. The central heating had warmed the place up fast, as had the roaring fire in the fireplace. Jane was cooing at the leaping brightness and banging a toy. Needs fully taken care of, but utterly ignored. Allie just kept staring out the window. For some reason it seemed incredibly sad.
Instinctively, he went up to her, needing to understand her. He liked Karen a lot. She was warm, enthusiastic, full of energy and optimism…except when panicking about a jammed camera. Why was her sister so different and difficult?
He’d almost reached Allie when she turned from the window at last. “Those clouds are coming over pretty fast. Is it going to snow?”
“It’s starting to look like it,” he agreed. “I warned Karen about the forecast, but even half an hour ago it looked like it’d probably hold off, and she was desperate about that camera.”
“She’ll make it back, though, won’t she? They won’t close the roads. She guaranteed me she’d make it back tonight!”
The appeal and fear in her face hit him like an electric shock. “Then she’ll do her best, I guess,” was all he could say. It sounded lame in the face of her need.
Something about this situation had her completely terrified. Was it him? He didn’t think so, but there was something. Karen’s appeal to him to “look after” her suddenly made a whole lot more sense. Karen had known Allie would feel this way. How? Why?
And why did he have such a clear, powerful intuition that the answers were going to matter to him?
Chapter Two
“Right.” Allie pulled her mouth into a bright smile. “I guess you should show me my bedroom, then. It looks like there are plenty of them.”
“Five,” Connor said. “Six at a pinch.”
“Upstairs?”
“Upstairs. You can unpack while Jane’s still happy on the floor. Karen’ll want the Portacrib in her room, I assume.”
“I expect so.”
“I’ll put you in the adjoining room. Then if the storm does hit and stops Karen from getting back, you can keep the connecting door open so you’ll hear Jane if she wakes in the night.”
“Yes, that’s the most sensible idea, isn’t it?” Allie agreed, outwardly calm.
“Let’s go, then.”
He placed some cushions around Jane’s receiving blanket, casually betraying his experience with babies. Jane wasn’t officially mobile yet, according to Karen, but she could shuffle herself backward along the floor on her tummy for quite a distance if she kept at it long enough.
“These’ll keep her safely corralled while we’re upstairs,” Connor said.
Allie ached with envying him. Just the way he moved around the baby. Just the way he could reach down to ruffle the fuzzy, dark-gold hair on her little head without even thinking about it. Some day, with the right woman, he’d make a great dad. But for Allie, the idea of herself as a mom had become so complicated—
She snapped that compartment of her mind shut like a jailhouse gate.
Now he’d picked up the crib, the diaper bag and the soft suitcase that contained Karen’s and Jane’s things. Allie grabbed her overnight bag and followed him up the wide stone staircase. This was a great house, only a few years old and full of gorgeous hardwood and stone. In any other situation, she’d feel like she was on vacation here and would look forward to exploring. The house, the island, the surrounding mountains, the nearby towns.
But with Karen temporarily gone and herself and Connor and Jane trapped here by the gathering night and the prospect of a snowstorm, it felt…Well, exactly like that, as if the house were a prison, an emotional hell that wasn’t her fault.
Trapped for how long? she wondered miserably. Would anything ever be truly right in her life again?
“Here you go,” Connor said, opening the door of a pretty little room high in one corner of the house. It had its own bathroom and an antique Amish quilt on the bed, a connecting door to a similar room where Allie would sleep, and a little window peeping out to a white view of flat ice and snow-covered pines…and freshly falling flakes, Allie saw, already coming down thickly. Karen would be over halfway to Albany by now. Had the storm hit down that way yet?
“Any idea how to set this thing up?” Connor indicated the Portacrib in its blue nylon cover.
“No. Sorry.”
She took her bag through to the connecting room, then came back and watched him helplessly as he unzipped the cover and rattled around with the legs and sides of the crib. He discovered some instructions printed on it and started muttering to himself.
Since she didn’t want to think too hard about having Jane so close to her during the night and what that would mean, she watched his body instead. It wasn’t a punishing activity. Even without the bulk of the coat he’d been wearing outside, he looked incredibly solid and strong in his dark sweater and pants, yet he moved very easily.
Or most of him did. For the first time, she noticed that he had a slight limp and it drew her attention to the lines of his thighs and hips, defined by the dark clothing he wore. Had he hurt himself recently? Or was it something permanent, dating from long ago?
And how come it didn’t detract from his masculine grace but only added to it? The limp hinted at a whole, complex range of possibilities about his past, suggesting there was a lot more to Connor Callahan than met the eye. And what met the eye was impressive enough to begin with. It was a long time since she’d met a man who wore his strength and good looks so casually, and with so little arrogance.
“Karen says you’re in the computer-software business,” she said, needing to know more about him. Karen had said she could trust him. That didn’t mean she felt comfortable with their situation.
“Yeah.” He nodded as he pushed the base of the crib into place. He had his sleeves pushed up to the elbows, and she noticed how strong his forearms were. “A couple of years ago I joined the company two of my brothers started. I head up their games division now. Tom has a pretty impressive computer up here, but I won’t be powering it up this weekend.”
“Karen will keep us busy as soon as she gets back.” I wish she hadn’t left. That darned camera!
“I offered her my disposable camera to take some shots with, but she wasn’t impressed,” Connor said. Once again, their thoughts had travelled along the same track.
“I should think not!” Allie exclaimed. “Have you any idea how she feels about that camera of hers?”
“I do now,” Connor admitted humbly. “It has features I didn’t know existed.”
“Yes, it’s some German or Swiss thing that cost her half a gazillion dollars.”
“Insured, I hope.”
“Definitely insured. I know she was acting a little crazy this afternoon, but my sister is actually very—”
“I know what your sister’s like,” he soothed, jerking the side rails of the crib upward with knotted hands to lock them straight. “A whirlwind of energy, with a heart of gold. She makes a great neighbor and a terrific mom.”
“Yes, she does, doesn’t she? An incredible mom.” Her throat was tight again.
“She and John have become good friends since I moved in next door,” Connor went on. If he’d noticed her sudden emotion, he didn’t let on. “That’s why I was happy to bail her out with this book-cover deal. Contrary to what my brother accused me of when I went to pick up the keys to this place, it’s not ‘cause I have a wild urge to be immortalized as Nancy Sherlock’s answer to Rhett Butler on the front of three million copies of Days of Grace and Danger.”
“Three million?”
“That’s not unrealistic, apparently, if they go ahead with the movie,” he pointed out. “Although Karen says that they might reprint the paperback using movie stills for the cover.”
“Gee, you know all about it!”
“Don’t you, too? She’s been reading the manuscript of the book all week and giving me updates on the plot, as well as a play-by-play account of the problems with the cover design. I assumed she’d been doing the same with you.”
“Karen and I…Well, we haven’t spent a lot of time together lately,” Allie said uncomfortably.
“Haven’t you?”
He looked up. He had the crib all set up now, and had found the crib-size quilts folded in the top of Karen’s suitcase. Their eyes met as he shook one out, revealing a fluffy pink-and-white-striped flannel fabric. Allie flushed, then chilled, in the space of a few seconds. She could tell quite clearly what he was thinking.
He knows it’s because of Jane.
But he couldn’t know why. Was he going to let it go?
No.
“And yet you seem close, like you really care about each other and like each other’s company.”
The tone was mild, but he was deliberately pushing. She could tell. And she felt angry. How dare he? What gave him the right to probe like that, with all the hostility and disapproval such probing implied?
She glared at him, and then—wham! It hit her like needles of hot water under a welcome shower. Like the taste of chocolate after strong, sugarless coffee. Like the rush of a summer wave on a Carolina beach. There was chemistry between them, insistent and physical, full of promise and delight. Chemistry that shattered her control, even while it made her heart dance. Chemistry that frightened her, even while it sang to her soul.
Underneath, she’d known it all along, right from the first moment she’d heard that gravelly, cream-filled and not entirely safe voice of his. Right from the moment she’d seen the startling blue eyes beneath the intimidating black hat.
And her sudden understanding of this chemistry answered the indignant question she’d just silently posed. That was what gave him the right to probe for answers from her as he was doing. Because he felt the chemistry, too.
Her breathing was shallow now, and she wanted to run a mile. She couldn’t possibly dare to open up to this. She had to freeze him off. Freeze herself off, too, because there was no way she was ready to let a man into her life at this point—any man—when she had so much else to struggle with.
“We are close,” she answered him frostily at last. “Which is exactly why we can take some time out from our relationship when we need to.”
“And you’ve needed to just lately?”
“Yes.” She wasn’t going to explain any further. Let him think what he liked!
“Okay.” He shrugged and bent to spread a second quilt on top of the first. “Cute,” he commented, studying the lush, hand-quilted and machine-appliqued design of sea creatures illustrating the numbers from one to nine. He bent lower, and touched the bright beading that picked out a sea urchin’s shell. “Karen made this?”
“I did.” She turned deliberately away so she wouldn’t see the surprise on his face as he straightened, but he didn’t let it go, despite her crystal-clear signal.
“You quilt?” he sounded astonished.
The man was relentless!
“Yes,” she retorted. “And I have three heads and the body of a leopard.”
“Hey. Hey…” His voice had softened so that it sent hot prickles of need charging up and down her spine. “Is it a crime on my part to suggest that you seem more like a career gal?”
“Must people be purely one or the other?”
“No, of course not. But—”
“Jane’s fussing,” she announced abruptly, and fled from the room and down the stairs.
She only realized when she reached the bottom that it was the first time in Jane’s life that she’d gone to her willingly and without an agony of turmoil, in the handful of times they’d been under the same roof. And what a tribute to Connor Callahan’s effect on her equilibrium that was!
“Hi, little girl,” she said softly as she entered the big, open living area and approached the glorious warmth of the fire. Janey was whimpering and fretting as if to say, “Okay, I’m done looking at the fire. Isn’t somebody going to come smile at me soon, and show me something interesting? I’m bored!”
“I know,” Allie answered her, as if Jane had spoken her complaint in clear English. Then, with her heart beginning to pound, she bent down and picked the baby up.
But it was too hard. “Are you looking for your…your Mommy?” she asked, her voice coming out with an unnatural intonation.
What would happen if I kissed her, just smothered her with kisses, and smelled her little head and let her little hands grab at my clothing? Allie wondered. What would happen?
Unconsciously, she held Jane farther away from her and her arms were stiff and awkward. No wonder the baby writhed, arching her back and screwing up her face. She wasn’t happy with such blatant ineptitude. She wanted to be held against a warm body. Who could blame her?
Allie heard Connor’s footsteps behind her.
“Want me to take her?” There was a surprising amount of understanding in his voice.
“Uh, sure. I was going to get that hot chocolate, wasn’t I?”
“Yup. I’ll take a mug, too, while you’re at it. Kitchen’s back through that door.”
“Two hot chocolates, coming right up. And I’ll put the casserole in a low oven to start heating up while I’m at it,” she planned aloud. “It must be still half-frozen, and it’s already after five o’clock.”
“I guess Janey, here, will want to eat early,” he agreed.
He was holding her with casual, practised ease, bouncing her on his hip and earning radiant, open-mouthed smiles, entirely uncomplicated by the presence of teeth. Allie’s envy and torment was like a straitjacket.
“The jars of baby food are in her diaper bag, I think,” Allie said. “Is there a microwave? Because I think she likes them warmed up.”
“There’s a microwave. Any idea what time she eats and goes down for the night?”
“I think she’s usually down by seven, but she has a bath before that, so I guess she eats at about six.”
“See, kiddo,” Connor crooned, “we’re cookin’, here. We’ve got your routine worked out—we know what you eat. You’re not gonna miss your mommy at all, are you?”
If the gurgle was an answer, it sounded like Jane agreed.
Allie hid in the kitchen for the next half hour, apart from ten minutes spent sipping her hot drink by the fire while Connor changed a messy diaper. He made so little fuss about the task that she didn’t even realize he’d done it until he dumped the diaper bag back on the end table next to the squashy cream sofa and announced, “Fresh as a daisy again.”
Back in the kitchen, as she turned the oven up higher and found salad and garlic bread amongst the provisions her sister had brought, Allie wondered about Connor’s new attitude. He didn’t seem so hostile anymore, and there was a peacefulness in the atmosphere now. Against the night-dark sky, the snow still whirled, thick and silent, promising changed plans, but in here it was seductively cozy.
The savory aroma of the beef casserole began to snake through the house, mingling with the faint tang of wood smoke. Connor had put on some soft music, and maybe it was that or maybe it was the warmth of the fire, or just the long, travel-filled day, but Jane was getting tired.
At six, Connor came into the kitchen with the baby and announced, “No way is this little princess going to make it until seven o’clock, and I think we’d better skip any thought of a bath.”
Allie just nodded, pushing back a dangerous rush of tenderness at the sight of those rosy little cheeks and heavy lids.
“She’s finished her bottle,” Connor said. “I’ll feed her her fruit in here, and she might be asleep before she’s even done. Now, let’s think. Where’s the high chair?”
“There’s a high chair here?”
“Believe me,” he drawled, “in the Callahan family, there’s always a high chair.”
She laughed in sudden delight. “That’s nice!”
“Is it?” He flashed her a look that was curious and ready to be convinced.
“It says something about a family, when there’s always a high chair.” Her face had softened with her smile.
“Yeah, I think so,” he agreed, then added, “Actually, here there’s probably two high chairs. Tom and Julie have twins, just one year old. Adorable little monsters, they are. I’ve been doing a fair bit of hands-on uncle-ing over the past six months or so, and I’m speaking from experience!”
“Boys?”
“Girls. My mom had eight boys. This generation, so far, is specializing in the other kind.”
“Your mom must be thrilled.”
“She is. And as for Dad…”
He didn’t say anything further for a while, just found one of the high chairs folded away in a storage closet and brought it out. Then he sat Jane in it, put her in a bib, heated a jar of pureed apricots in the microwave, stirred and tested it carefully and began to feed her with a rubber-tipped spoon. As he’d predicted, her little head was nodding by the time he got to the bottom of the jar.
Watching him ease her gently out of the high chair, Allie asked in a distracted tone, “Shall I set the table in here, or…?”
“Nicer to eat by the fire, don’t you think?”
“Uh…yes, it would be.”
“Want me to take her up to bed while you start setting everything up on the hearth?”
“Thanks. Yes.”
There was a tiny pause.
“Want to give her a good-night kiss?”
Another pause.
“Okay.”
He brought the baby over and held her out for her kiss, his blue eyes fixed steadily and thoughtfully on Allie’s face.
I’ve never done this before. I’ve never kissed her, she thought.
But she managed it, and it didn’t last long, just one little press of lips—dry lips—on a soft, velvety cheek. Somehow she kept those flooding feelings dammed back.
When he’d gone, though, tiptoeing from the kitchen with Jane’s head resting heavily on his shoulder and her breathing slow and even, Allie had to lean against the granite counter to keep from buckling at the knees.
Karen called while Connor was still upstairs. She sounded tired but resigned at the far end of the phone. And Allie was resigned to what she knew the news would be.
“Where are you?” Allie demanded.
“Albany. I’ve just checked into a motel. Sorry I didn’t call earlier, but the trip down was a nightmare. The snow started just after the Saratoga exits and, boy, did it hit thick and fast! When I got here, the camera store was about to close. I had to sweet-talk the guy into staying open and taking a look at the thing.”
“How is it?”
“Fixed. He had the part. Took him half an hour. Then I started out on the Interstate to get back up to you.”
“That was crazy, Karen!”
“I know. But I kept hoping maybe it hadn’t gotten so heavy up there. I mean, the sky was still blue…well, half-blue…when I left! And they turned me back. They’ve closed the road. If the snow eases off by morning, which it’s supposed to do, if I can believe the Weather Channel, they’ll have plowed and I can get back.”
“Plowed all the way up to—” Allie began, but Karen didn’t let her finish.
“How’s Jane?” she demanded.
“Asleep. Connor took her up, oh, about twenty minutes ago.”
“Okay, then.” Karen took a deep breath. Clearly, she wanted to ask more about the baby. Did she play? Did she take a bath? Did she seem upset? But Karen apparently decided to hold the questions back.
She didn’t say, “Kiss her for me,” either, and Allie didn’t tell her sister that she already had.
“I’m going to call you again first thing tomorrow,” Karen promised. “And I’ll give you the number here if you need to call me.”
Connor came back downstairs just as Allie was winding up her conversation. He paused halfway down and for a few moments listened quite shamelessly—she’d turned and seen him, so it didn’t feel like eavesdropping—intrigued by the mystery and complexity of the woman he was just beginning to get to know.
He listened to the way she handled her sister, soothing her anxieties, teasing her a little. She was clearly comfortable with their loving and supportive relationship. And yet they “hadn’t spent a lot of time together lately.”
He thought about the quilt she’d made for Jane, and what that said about her creativity and her care for beautiful things. I really must find out about her career, he decided. He’d been assuming it was something high-powered but rather cold. The sort of job where she’d wear a power suit, size eight, and deal with money or property or corporate clients. Accountancy or law or international banking.
But how many international bankers took the time to create a beautiful handmade quilt for their niece? And how many people, no matter what their profession, would make a quilt for a baby they couldn’t even hold or touch without stiffening as if they’d been turned to ice?
He felt this overwhelming need to take her by those fine-boned shoulders and demand, “What happened to you? What damaged you? And how can I help you to heal?”
And that last question was completely insane, because he’d only known her for three hours. It didn’t make any sense at all.
Abandoning the unanswerable issue, he reached the bottom of the stairs as Allie put down the phone. “Everything okay?”
“She’s in Albany, at a motel. The camera’s fixed,” she summarized, and added a couple more details.
“Are we ready to eat? It smells great!”
“Karen’s a fabulous cook.”
“I know. I’ve tasted her chicken potpie and her lasagna.”
“Her beef casserole is even better.”
“Do you cook?” he couldn’t help asking as they brought the food through to the hearth together. He was quite prepared to be unsurprised if she did, thinking again of the quilt, but she made a face.
“I scramble. As in eggs. I toss. As in salad. And I reheat. As in leftovers, takeout or TV dinners. That’s about it.”
“You live alone?”
“I have an apartment,” she confirmed.
“Not the best incentive, is it, living alone?”
“Incentive?”
“For becoming a great cook.”
“No,” she agreed. “You need people to cook for, don’t you?”
“People you care about,” he said, pinpointing her meaning more exactly.
For a brief moment, their eyes met, then she looked quickly away. But not before they’d each read far too much in the other’s face, by the light of soft table lamps and a glowing fire. Things you couldn’t even put into words.
Then they both came to their senses and got busy dishing the gravy-rich casserole into bowls, unwrapping the garlic bread from its foil wrapping, breaking it into steaming pieces, tossing dressing onto salad, pouring a little red wine.
“Your sister hasn’t mentioned what you do for a living,” Connor said as they began to eat, each hunkered down on one of the squishy two-seater sofas pulled close to the hearth.
He tried to make it sound like a casual question, but for some reason he really wanted to know. He had the instinctive sense that whatever it was, he was going to be surprised.
He wasn’t wrong, and when she told him, he had the answer to at least one of his many questions about this woman. He knew why, whenever he heard her voice, he felt as if they’d met before, despite the fact that he could never have forgotten meeting a woman like Allie.
“Actually, I’m a radio announcer,” she said, with a grin that was almost apologetic, as if she’d already understood that he was expecting something from left field. “I do the morning drive-time program on Philadelphia’s Country Classic Radio WPYR. We Play Your Requests. We’re Not the Biggest, but We’re the Best.” She’d dropped into her on-air voice half way through, rich and melodic and upbeat.
“Oh—my—lord!” he got out, stunned, then had to check to make sure he’d really gotten it right. “You mean you’re A. J. Todd? The A. J. Todd?”
“Stands for Alison Jane.”
“I listen to you all the time, on my way in to work. Karen never said.”
“Why should she? It’s a minor station, and our broadcasting range is pretty small. I’m not exactly a nationally syndicated shock jock.”
No, but as far as I’m concerned, you do have the sexiest voice on American radio, bar none.
Fortunately, he hadn’t said it aloud. Alone here, with the night ahead and only a six-month-old baby girl for chaperone, he didn’t need to have her thinking he was coming on to her. Somehow he suspected that she could do a pretty good job of freezing a man into solid ice if she had a mind to, and though he hadn’t made up his own mind what he wanted from her yet, he definitely knew it wasn’t that.
He groped for something safer. “Are you ambitious, career-wise, A.J. Todd? Would you like to be a big name in radio?”
“Of course!” she answered, then paused, narrowed her eyes a little and repeated, “Of course I would,” in a much less definite tone.
He sensed a little chink he could use to enter her world, the way a spelunker might slide through a crevice to find a huge, unexplored cavern system. “It’s not obligatory to be ambitious, is it?” he asked.
“Well, no, but I guess I’ve always been the career woman in the family. Karen’s doing great with her art, but family comes first for her, and always has. Clare, our younger sister, has a religious vocation and has known it since age ten.”
“So you’ve positioned yourself as the ambitious one?”
“Positioned myself?”
“You’re a middle child, right? So am I. I know the drill.”
“As I understand it, there are six middle children in your family,” she pointed out, a little cool.
So she didn’t like this kind of analysis? Tough! Connor decided. For some reason, he really wanted her to know that she could trust him, open up to him. To the point where he was prepared to force it a little.
“Makes no difference,” he answered her. “There’s still the same need to fight for a unique place. In one way, that’s good. In others…Well, I spent a good few years working at stuff I didn’t really enjoy, just to prove a point.”
“Like what?”
“You mean what point? That I was my own person, I guess.”
“No, what did you work at?”
“Oh, drilling for oil in Alaska, roadying for a country-music band, doing stunt work in films. That’s how I banged up this leg, don’t know if you’ve noticed.”
“I noticed,” Allie admitted. She didn’t admit that to any healthy, red-blooded female, the slight imperfection could only make him seem sexier.
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Lilian Darcy
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: THE BABY′S SECRET…Connor Callahan had just met Allie Todd, but he immediately felt an overwhelming need to protect her. And to understand why she turned to ice whenever she held her baby niece. He sensed that beautiful Allie was weathering her own storm–one even fiercer than the snowstorm that had stranded them in a remote cabin. Her combination of strength and vulnerability tore at his once-restless heart. But it was only after he saved Allie from a near tragic accident that he suspected her innermost secret. What if baby Jane wasn′t Allie′s niece, but her daughter…?