Читать книгу The Mummy Miracle - Lilian Darcy, Lilian Darcy - Страница 9

Jodie woke to the smell of something delicious coming from Dev’s kitchen. The daylight had begun to fade, which meant she must have slept a good three hours this time. She felt disoriented and not in full possession of either her body or her brain. It was just the way she’d felt coming out of the coma. It was like being in the eye of a hurricane—eerily quiet, with a sense of danger all around.

She gave herself a couple of minutes to regroup, then sat up and eventually stood, steadier on her feet than she would have expected. As before, Dev had left her walking frame within reach, and the quiet, considerate nature of this small gesture almost brought her to tears.

She could hear him in the kitchen, chopping something on a wooden board. The delicious aroma announced itself as beef sizzled in a pan. She’d had a crush on him thirteen years ago, she’d slept with him three times, and she’d had no idea until now that he could cook. It didn’t surprise her, though. When Devlin Browne put his mind to something …

He heard her—the rubbery tap of the frame on the floor—as she reached the kitchen doorway, and he turned. “Hi. Better?”

“Think so. It’s crazy. To need all that sleep.”

“Your brain is still healing.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“I’m making brain food. A beef-and-vegetable stir-fry, full of iron and vitamins.”

“It smells great.”

“Ready in a couple of minutes. Sit down.” He nodded at the wooden kitchen table, then moved to pull out a chair for her.

“No, don’t,” she said quickly, taking one hand off the frame to reach for the chair herself. “I’m fine. I hate—” my family hovering over me “—too much help.”

“Duly noted.” He turned back to the stove, tossed in slivers of onion and red bell pepper, sticks of carrot and celery, lengths of green bean. The pan hissed and made a cloud of aromatic steam, filling the silence made by their lack of conversation.

He seemed to understand instinctively that she didn’t want to talk yet—or not about anything important, anyway—and to her surprise the interlude of silence between them felt easy and right. She didn’t have that uncomfortable itch to break the quiet with a rush of words that people often experience in the company of someone new.

Not that Dev was new.

But this felt new.

Untested.

Three of us. We’re a family, he’d said.

Anything but the usual kind.

She watched him. Just couldn’t help it. The way his neat, jeans-clad butt moved as he tossed the contents of the pan. The way his elbow stuck out and his shoulder lifted. He added the cooked meat and leaned back a little as another cloud of hissing steam came up. There was rice in a steamer on the countertop, and a jug of orange juice clinking with a thick layer of cubed ice.

Nine months ago, he hadn’t wanted a serious relationship, but now it was as if she’d simply blinked and woken up to find herself here, in his kitchen, and the mother of his child.

Connected.

Yet not.

Are we dating?

She felt they needed to talk about it—for hours surely—but had no idea what to say, what to suggest. He was the one who’d had time to think. The surge of chemistry she’d felt earlier at the family barbecue couldn’t compete with her shock and disorientation. It hummed in the background of her awareness, but she didn’t know what to do with it, just wished it would go away.

“Is there a schedule?” she blurted out.

“A schedule?”

“Of who takes care of—of DJ.”

DJ. That’s my baby’s name. Well, it’s not her name. It’s what we’re calling her in the interim.

A crazy litany of baby names began to scroll in her head, the ones she’d vaguely thought, over the years, that she liked. Caroline, Amanda, Genevieve, Laura, Jessica, Megan, Anna … The idea that it might be up to her to make a decision, replace temporary DJ with something different and permanent that would belong to the baby her whole life, was daunting. A huge, confusing responsibility that she didn’t feel equipped to handle.

“Your family has her when I’m at work,” Devlin answered. “Mainly your mom. She’s set up Elin’s room for a nursery.”

“That’s why Lucy had to sleep in my room today.” An image flashed in her head of her sister’s old room with the door firmly closed. Even if she had seen inside, she would have assumed it had been set up for Maddy’s baby girl.

“But Elin and Lisa have her sometimes, too. And then I pick her up on my way home.”

“The night shift.”

“That’s right. I expect she’ll spend more nights at your parents’ place now.” Now that you’re home, he meant.

“That’s why you look tired.” A rush of tenderness and guilt ran through her. Those creases around his eyes, and she hadn’t been here to help. Crazy to feel that it was her fault, and yet at some level she did. What kind of a mother slept through her whole pregnancy and didn’t even waken to give birth? What kind of a mother had an eleven-week-old baby that she’d never touched and held?

He made a wry face. “Yeah, she’s not exactly sleeping through. Your sisters have been great with that. They’ve stayed over here three or four times to give me a good night. Your whole family has been—” He stopped, as if the word he’d originally intended to say was wrong. “Amazing. They have. I was a little short with them before, and I shouldn’t have been. The boundaries—the roles—are complicated.”

“It’s okay. I know how you feel. Just be thankful they’re not trying to cut up your food.”

He laughed and she smiled at him and then her breath caught, and the question she’d been asking in her head even before she’d found out about DJ came blurting out, “Are we dating, Dev?”

He went still. She just knew he was going to say no. It was there in his body language so clearly, and she wondered why on earth she’d thought it necessary to ask. Well. She hadn’t thought. Her brain didn’t seem to control either her body or her words anymore.

Eventually answered in a slow, careful way, “That’s a question, isn’t it?”

“I mean, I’m not suggesting you have a thing for unconscious women.” The humor didn’t work. It was too dark for a moment like this. It didn’t evaporate the tension, as intended. She apologized. Seemed as if she might be doing a lot of that. “I’m sorry. I was just—”

“It’s okay. Lightening the mood. You had a right to ask. I talked about making a family, just now.”

“When you came to see me in the hospital, I didn’t know why you were there. Because I didn’t know about DJ. And last fall we …”

“I know.” He was still so uncomfortable. They both were.

“I don’t think we’re dating,” she said, before he could say it. “It would be crazy. It’s not what we need. It would just be a complication. We have enough of those.”

He nodded, and looked relieved. “You’re right. I guess that’s what I’ve felt. First things first. Take care of DJ. Take care of you. Take all of it slow. You’re not strong enough to do much with a baby right now. We want to find a way to share her and love her. There’s no hostility or conflict. I want to keep it that way. We have to keep it that way. I want as much involvement as I can have.”

“But she’ll be with me most of the time.” Was it a question, or a statement? She didn’t even know.

“Once you know her,” he said. “Once you can take care of her. You’re her mother and most of the time the baby stays with the mom. I’m accepting that.”

But am I?

She saw herself stranded with baby DJ in her parents’ house for weeks at a stretch with barely a break. She imagined the winter days closing in, keeping her and the baby inside the house, when normally even in the cold weather she loved to be outdoors.

These weren’t the pictures she wanted to have of herself and her baby, but they were the ones that came. She heard herself wrangling and bickering with Mom about when to introduce solid food and whether to dress her in pink.

Dress her in pink …

She tried to picture it, and couldn’t. At all. With a stab of horror she realized, I don’t remember what she looks like. All she had were two vague images of a little face distorted with crying and then peaceful in sleep. Would she recognize her, beyond the familiarity of Dev’s arms, or Mom’s? Could she pull her own daughter out of a lineup?

Another bizarre image came to her. Police station. One-way glass. “Now, Ms, Palmer, look carefully at the numbered cribs. Do you see your baby here? It’s very important that you make a correct identification.”

But she couldn’t …

“Dinner’s up,” Dev said. “I think we’re—I’m glad we said this.”

She tried to stand, to go over to the bench and help him dish out the food, but her feet caught and she almost fell. He was there just in time.

“He-e-ey. Who-o-oa.” He caught her and folded his arms around her. “You didn’t have to get up. I’m bringing it to you.”

She felt his breath fanning her hair and his chin resting on her shoulder, and could have stayed like this forever. She loved the way they fit together despite their mismatched size. She loved the smell of him, the strength of him, the honor and humor and decisiveness and brains. She loved the fact that he could hug her like this so soon after they’d agreed—the only thing they could agree on, in this situation—that they weren’t dating anymore.

It was just a hug, and yet if she just turned her face up, she was sure he would kiss her. The chemistry was still there, a deep pool of it, secret and still, magical and unspoken.

She wanted him to kiss her.

Desperately.

Just kiss me, Dev, so I don’t have to think. Just kiss me, so I know that part is okay, even if everything else isn’t.

I don’t care what we decided.

I don’t care about sensible.

Kiss me and say, “Let’s get married, and I’ll take care of whatever you need,” so that we can play by the rules and be a normal mommy and daddy and then maybe I’ll feel as if I belong in my own life, instead of being just a visitor.

“This is the most insane situation,” he muttered. “I don’t know what to tell you. Just take your time. That’s all. We all need to give this time.”

Kiss me. Say it.

Shoot!

This neediness, this wasn’t her! Jodie Palmer, don’t you remember who you are? You’ve been fighting your whole life to show how strong you are, and now you’re clinging to Dev as if he has all the answers and so you can just go with the flow?