Читать книгу Raising Baby Jane - Lilian Darcy, Lilian Darcy - Страница 9

“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.