Книга - Beginning With Baby

Beginning With Baby
Christie Ridgway


STRONG, SILENT DADDYWith one touch of his strong hands, he could soothe her sweet babe to sleep. And with one glance from his dark, sexy eyes, Phoebe Finley found herself falling–hard. So when this single mom needed a "husband" to keep custody of her adorable infant nephew, natural-born daddy Jackson Abbott came to her rescue….Jackson's own shattered family ties made him long to shelter Phoebe from the very things that had once broken his own heart. But now that mother and child were safe in his protective embrace, the brooding loner found himself longing for all that he had once lost. All that he never hoped to have again…Until now.THAT'S MY BABY! Sometimes bringing up baby can bring surprises…and showers of love!












Jackson closed his eyes for an instant, trying to shut out the sensation of the baby in his arms, as well as the bittersweet memories the feeling evoked.

“You did it. You got him to sleep again.” Phoebe smiled as she bent over to retrieve the baby, the rounded neckline of her dress falling forward to give Jackson an innocent peek at two perfectly fine breasts in a white lacy bra.

He bit back a groan, and looked away as she scooped the baby out of his arms.

At last. It was over. Phoebe was finally leaving, and there’d be no more contact between them, he promised.

At the door, though, she spun around, the beginnings of a smile brightening her face. He wanted to shut his eyes again.

“Gee,” she said. “I just gotta ask. What are you doing at 6:30 a.m. for the rest of your life?”


Dear Reader,

With spring in the air, there’s no better way to herald the season and continue to celebrate Silhouette’s 20th Anniversary year than with an exhilarating month of romance from Special Edition!

Kicking off a great lineup is Beginning with Baby, a heartwarming THAT’S MY BABY! story by rising star Christie Ridgway. Longtime Special Edition favorite Susan Mallery turns up the heat in The Sheik’s Kidnapped Bride, the first book in her new DESERT ROGUES series. And popular author Laurie Paige wraps up the SO MANY BABIES miniseries with Make Way for Babies!, a poignant reunion romance in which a set of newborn twins unwittingly plays Cupid!

Beloved author Gina Wilkins weaves a sensuous modern love story about two career-minded people who are unexpectedly swept away by desire in Surprise Partners. In Her Wildest Wedding Dreams from veteran author Celeste Hamilton, a sheltered woman finds the passion of a lifetime in a rugged rancher’s arms. And finally, Carol Finch brings every woman’s fantasy to life with an irresistible millionaire hero in her compelling novel Soul Mates.

It’s a gripping month of reading in Special Edition. Enjoy!

All the best,

Karen Taylor Richman

Senior Editor




Beginning with Baby

Christie Ridgway





www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


With love for my friend Maureen Caudill, who so generously shares her expertise and so unfailingly offers her support.




Books by Christie Ridgway


Silhouette Special Edition

Beginning with Baby #1315

Yours Truly

The Wedding Date

Follow That Groom!

Have Baby, Will Marry

Ready, Set…Baby!

Big Bad Dad

The Millionaire and the Pregnant Pauper




CHRISTIE RIDGWAY


considered herself a writer from that first haiku (about the sound of footsteps in the rain) she wrote in second grade. She became a romance writer in the sixth grade, when she penned a series of love stories starring herself and the teen idol of the time. She turned published author after marrying the love of her life and having two sons.

Now she lives in Southern California, where she writes, wifes and mothers. She prefers not to say which one comes first, but they are all vitally important to her. When she isn’t concocting a new story or concocting some way to sneak vegetables into fish sticks and applesauce, she makes time to volunteer in her boys’ school. Finally, for her sanity, she always finds a way to curl up with a good book.

You may contact her at P.O. Box 3803, La Mesa, CA 91944.


Dear Reader,

Last night I held a friend’s baby daughter. I snuggled her warmth and sniffed her baby-shampooed hair and pressed kisses against her cheeks. When she fussed—the buzz of a gnat compared to the elephant-trumpet hollering of my seven-year-old son—I automatically shifted into a rocking motion as natural as breathing.

She’s a preemie—a miracle on top of a miracle—and each time I look at her it’s like Christmas and rainbows and cotton candy all rolled into one. Call it maternal instinct, call me a sucker for the scent of baby powder, but babies have a way of taking my heart hostage.

In Beginning with Baby, babies appeal to heroine Phoebe Finley as much as they do to me. So when one who needs her love enters her life, Phoebe doesn’t hesitate to do what’s necessary—including accepting help from sexy Jackson Abbott. He’s a hard man with a daddy’s touch, and the closer she gets to him, the more Phoebe realizes how easy it would be to love Jackson, too.

Enjoy Beginning with Baby! May it capture for you a little of the unique magic that only babies bring into the world.

Happy reading!









Contents


Chapter One (#u9a44f421-df21-5f25-9f56-7a96cf1102a6)

Chapter Two (#u08787310-cf8d-5a3a-bfd8-b21729ea9487)

Chapter Three (#u78d347d8-3bfd-57a5-ac72-9cd850d7a036)

Chapter Four (#ucde46ad3-8a3a-5a31-8e9e-24177b188fd2)

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 Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)




Chapter One


When Phoebe Finley felt compelled to say those all-important words for the first time in her twenty-four years of life, the setting was near perfect.

It was past midnight on the first of August, and the moon hung in the sky, as fat and ripe as summer fruit. Ready for wishing, the stars glistened as if newly washed. A breeze, warm and scented with night-blooming jasmine, meandered through the open window of her third-story apartment, the air teasing the white lace of her sleeveless, sheer batiste nightgown.

Crickets provided the musical score, but it was just a rhythm really, the pulse beat of this once-in-a-lifetime moment.

Phoebe held Rex close in her arms, he was awake, too, and the emotion just came out of nowhere to overwhelm her—kidnapping her, so to speak—filling her heart until she just had to say the words or she might pop.

“I think I’m in lo—”

No! Her mouth shut on the dangerous phrase with an audible snap. She had no business even thinking such a thing, let alone saying it.

Rex looked at her quizzically, then yawned, and she found the gesture so adorable and so fascinating she knew she was one toenail away from deep, dark, trouble.

“I gotta find your daddy, Rex,” she said aloud to the two-month-old in her arms, her two-month-old baby nephew, her stepbrother’s son. “I gotta find your daddy before I make a big mistake.”

Keeping the infant against her, she clambered out of bed and crossed the bedroom floor to the living room of the divided-up Victorian house she called home. Phoebe didn’t even bother glancing toward the crib set up in the corner. Like his father before him, Rex was a night owl.

On the small dining room table was the computer she used in her medical transcribing business, her printer and a telephone. The baby tucked firmly in the curve of one arm, she picked up the receiver and used her thumb to dial her younger stepbrother’s number. “Please, please, please answer,” she whispered, as she listened to the ring. Of course Rex’s daddy hadn’t picked up any of the times she’d called in the last fourteen days, but Phoebe was an optimist by nature, and this was an emergency of the first order.

Her very heart was at stake.

It nearly stopped when she heard the telltale click of an answer. “Teddy—”

A robotic voice broke in. “I’m sorry. You’ve reached a number that is out of service or has been disconnected.”

“What?” Phoebe squeaked.

“Please check your number and dial again.”

“Okay, okay.” Phoebe inhaled a calming breath, pressed the disconnect button and tried once more.

The second time, the tinny voice hadn’t lost one iota of its patience. “Please check your number and dial again.”

Phoebe bit off a moan. “Don’t worry, don’t worry, Rex,” she said to her nephew, hanging up the phone.

But Rex didn’t appear worried in the slightest. As a matter of fact, if anything, a new wrinkle on his forehead said he might even be a little miffed at her.

“It’s not that I want to get rid of you, sweetheart,” she assured him. “It’s just that…”

I never want to let you go.

Phoebe moaned a second time, the unspoken thought spurring her once more to locate Rex’s father. After Teddy had dropped off the baby two weeks ago “Just for the afternoon. A little time to get my head together,” she hadn’t been surprised when dinner came and went and Teddy didn’t show. Teddy’s girlfriend, Rex’s mother, had died of an aneurysm just hours after the baby’s birth. Teddy had been as unprepared for grief as he’d been for single fatherhood.

But then three days went by, three days during which she’d contacted any friend or acquaintance of Teddy’s she could bring to mind. Nobody had a clue where he might be. Talk about panic…. But then, on one of her rare trips out of the house, Teddy had called and left a message on her answering machine. He was fine, and he was certain Rex was, too. “Just a little more time,” he wanted. “Maybe a month.” And then, then, they’d “figure out what to do with the baby.”

Phoebe squeezed shut her eyes and drew Rex closer to her heart. Figure out what to do! That had to happen now.

Upper left, lower right, middle, middle, middle. Her thumb continued the pattern she’d come to memorize that would dial the number of Teddy’s closest friend. Busy. Curses!

Think, she told herself, think. Her hand trembling a little, she opened her phone book and flipped through the pages. Was there something she’d missed? Someone who might know where Teddy was, someone she might have forgotten the first time?

And like an omen, there it was, right below Mid-coast College, where she was enrolled to finish her accounting degree come September. Natalie Minton, a friend of Teddy’s since high school. Phoebe remembered she’d been unable to reach the young woman when Teddy went missing two weeks before.

Steeling herself to ignore the late hour, Phoebe dialed the number, simultaneously jiggling Rex, who’d started to whimper ominously. “Shh, shh,” she said. After several rings, someone answered.

“’Lo.”

“Natalie. This is Phoebe Finley. Teddy’s sister.” Though they were technically stepsiblings, Teddy’s father had adopted her after marrying Phoebe’s mother. “I’m sorry to bother you, but have you seen Teddy recently?”

“Huh?”

“Teddy,” Phoebe said again, rocking from foot to foot as the baby whimpered louder. “I’m looking for Teddy.”

“Who’s that crying?”

Phoebe swallowed. “It’s Rex. You know, Teddy’s baby. Have you seen him?”

There was a sleepy pause. “I think I saw the baby at the funeral. Didn’t Teddy bring him to Angela’s funeral?”

Rex cried louder, and Phoebe brought him up against her shoulder. “No, Natalie,” she said patiently. “I’m asking if you’ve seen Teddy.”

The voice became somewhat more alert. “He’s boogied out of town? He really did it and stuck you with the kid?”

Something about Natalie’s near-instant grasp of the situation made Phoebe nervous. “Did he talk to you about this?”

“Uh-huh,” she grunted affirmatively. “Said he could count on you to take the baby in. Even thought about giving you the baby for good.”

As if he could hear the conversation himself, Rex really started to cry in earnest. Phoebe rubbed his back and squeezed shut her eyes again. “Anything else, Natalie? Did Teddy say anything else or do you know where he might be?”

Over Rex’s unhappiness, Phoebe could barely make out Natalie’s sleepy “Uh-uh.”

Knowing the apartment walls were paper-thin, and pretty sure the other woman didn’t have any additional information, Phoebe said a quick goodbye in order to turn all her attention to the baby. She held him against her and started pacing, after two weeks sure that he wouldn’t be comforted until she’d racked up a couple of miles of hardwood floor.

Even thought about giving you the baby for good.

With Rex calming down, Natalie’s words finally had a chance to sink in.

Did Teddy really mean it?

And what would Phoebe do if it were so?

Taking a breath, she reined in her galloping pulse. “We need to discuss this rationally,” she told Rex, who blinked at her owlishly as she rounded the corner of the living room for another lap. His mind was easy to read.

“I know, I know. I’ve always been more emotional than rational, it’s true.”

And idealistic and romantic and eager to give her heart.

She licked her dry lips. “But we could do this, Rex, we could make it happen. My work is already flexible, and I could get it done around your schedule.”

There was school, too, of course, but she could postpone completing her degree if she had to, or look into day care on campus. She only had classes scheduled two days a week anyhow. And with her landlady and some of her fellow tenants less than enthusiastic about how easily the sounds of a baby carried through their thin walls day and night, it might be prudent to leave her apartment a couple of times a week.

“See, Rex? School and work taken care of.”

He didn’t appear totally convinced, instead he narrowed his eyes speculatively, as if he still had one important question to pose.

“Well, there is that.” Really and truly bringing a child into her life probably meant—at the very least—postponing romance. And she harbored some very old-fashioned, and very specific dreams on that subject.

She’d been waiting all her life for the man who “clicked”—her code for the man she believed would come along and be recognized by her heart and soul. No doubt having Rex permanently with her would affect that plan.

“But I’m twenty-four and I’ve not caught a glimpse of him yet, Rex.” Oh, there’d been dates and all, but she was determined to find the kind of love her mother had found with her stepfather. So far that had remained elusive. And Rex was right here, right now, needing her.

As if the baby was satisfied with her answer, his eyes finally drifted shut, his incredibly miraculous lashes resting against his soft, plump cheeks.

Unwilling to let go of him just yet, Phoebe sat carefully on the flowered love seat. Despite her tiredness, she just looked at him, marveling at every tiny perfection, and that oh-so-dangerous emotion she’d felt before flooded back into her heart and expanded it with equal parts pain and pleasure.

The click. She would be saying goodbye to that notion if she committed herself to Rex. But she had just as many strong and good reasons—reasons also rooted in her past—to want to provide the baby with a loving home.

It was Rex who was clicking now.

He whimpered a little in his sleep, and she snuggled him closer. “I love you,” she said, letting the words out freely this time. “I’m here.”

Then she allowed herself to say something else, something big and something important, though between the sentiment and the reality stood a whole laundry list of problems: absent fathers, acute-eared neighbors, landladies with a thing about single mothers. She said it, anyway, because it just seemed right. “Mommy’s here.”

Next door that baby was crying again. Jackson Abbott tried to ignore the plaintive sound and fall back asleep.

It wasn’t working.

Nearly every noise penetrated the thin wall between his apartment and the one next door. Either it was the baby crying or the disturbingly soft voice of his neighbor patiently placating it.

A warm, afternoon breeze filled the coarse muslin curtains in his bedroom and then disappeared, snapping the thick material against the sill. It wasn’t soothing, either.

Another infant cry drilled through the drywall. Whoever had divided the old three-story Victorian house into separate apartments had spared the expenses wherever possible. Though the month-to-month agreement he had with the landlady-owner suited his purposes for the moment, this place wasn’t constructed for the long-term comfort of a man whose work required him to sleep while the rest of the world went about their business.

The baby cried again, and Jackson sighed. The thing was, that baby was hard to ignore. Not only its often-dissatisfied wailing and the murmur of his neighbor’s patient and sweet voice trying to calm it, but the existence of the child itself.

Babies had a way of getting to him.

This one unwillingly piqued his curiosity, too. He’d been here in Strawberry Bay a month, and was due to stay five weeks more. The first part of his stay, his neighbor had been blissfully quiet. She did something on a computer most of the day—the clickety-clack of keys was a dead giveaway—with only a phone call or two as punctuation.

Then, something like fourteen days ago, the baby had entered her life.

Their lives.

He punched his pillow, trying to soften the damn thing as he listened to the baby cry some more. Where had it come from? He’d caught a glimpse or two of the woman next door, and she hadn’t looked pregnant. Furthermore, unless the HMOs had that drive-through baby delivery thing really in place, the woman hadn’t been away from her apartment long enough to produce an infant in the usual way.

Jackson groaned through his teeth. What did it matter? He shouldn’t be caring about neighbors or their babies. For years he’d made it his practice to avoid such entanglements. What he cared about was sleep. God knew he’d need it on the job tonight.

The night shift was hell, but he’d been at it for more than two years and would be at it for an indefinite number more. Between 9:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. was the only possible time to shut down even the least-crowded of California’s highways. Then he and his crew could go about the work of retrofitting the overpasses to better withstand the earthquakes that were a certain part of California’s future.

The baby wailed again and his neighbor’s voice counterpointed the sound, her tone soothing and soft. Jackson’s eyelids popped open, and he stared up at the ceiling.

Damn! He never had trouble sleeping during the day, just like he never had trouble moving on to the next assignment, working there for a few months and then moving on again.

He was suited to the night just as he was suited to the wandering life.

The curtains flapped once more. The baby cried. The woman’s soft voice spoke. There were seven hairline cracks in the ceiling’s plaster. The baby cried again.

Jackson gritted his teeth. Sure, he could go next door and complain, but he preferred keeping to himself—avoiding confrontation as well as ties. Life worked better for him that way.

He worked better that way.

The night suited him, the wandering life did, too.

Another infant sound forced him to flop onto his stomach and pull the pillow over his head. Sleep. Now. He’d be damned if anything—either the plaintive noise of a child or the soft voice of a woman—was going to change him.

He would not get involved.

But at 7:30 the next morning, Jackson unlaced the heavy construction boot on his left foot to the unhappy and unsurprising accompaniment of a baby crying. The sound echoed inside the empty place in his chest, unignorable and disturbing. He didn’t need this, not after working all night and then holing up for an extra hour in the hot tin can of an office trailer to write and then fax a report to the company headquarters in Los Angeles.

Closing his eyes, he dropped his boot to the floor and flopped back against the bed’s mattress. He hadn’t slept much yesterday, and with the baby’s cries now ratcheting several notches louder, he doubted he’d enter dreamland anytime soon. The woman’s voice next door started murmuring again, but the baby didn’t respond to her soft hum.

Setting his back teeth, Jackson tried to force the sounds from his head. But the baby’s noise continued and he curled his fingers into the worn bedspread to keep himself still.

What did he think he could do, anyway? Go next door and make it right, make it better? He knew, only too well, what a failure he’d be at that.

Enough. Jackson sat up and impatiently pulled at the laces on his right boot. It was time to get some sleep. Lack of the stuff was making him vulnerable to thoughts he’d buried long ago. The boot dropped to the floor, its thud nearly drowned by the noise from next door.

Cranky baby. Sweet woman voice.

Damn! And it was hot in here, too. He pulled the tails of his work shirt from the waistband of his ancient jeans and quickly unbuttoned it.

Then the baby cried louder, the woman’s voice hit a concerned note and Jackson finally lost it.

He had to get some quiet!

His feet slid back into his boots, and with determined, swift strides he crossed through the bedroom and living room. Pulling open his front door, he took a breath and glared at the one next to his. In the minuscule hallway the sounds from the neighboring apartment were just as loud.

Another hot spurt of irritation ran through him. He disliked being forced into making the contact almost as much as the noise itself.

But he steeled himself—he deserved some sleep!—and knocked. He would just tell the woman to keep it down and then turn around and go back to his own place and hit the sack.

It didn’t take long for the door to swing open.

Jackson blinked.

This couldn’t be right.

The right apartment, maybe.

The right woman—definitely not.

But there was an infant against her shoulder, and as he stared she tried soothing its fussiness with that familiar, sweet voice. She flicked a glance his way from eyes the clear bluish-gray of a dawn sky, fringed by lashes as dark as the night in which he felt so at home.

Hell. He shifted on his feet, a dull, embarrassed burn heating his neck. Poetry. She had him thinking poetry! He was embarrassed, too, that he was half-dressed, bear-grouchy and completely flummoxed at the sight of her.

“Yes?” that melodious voice asked warily.

He still stared, his mouth unable to move. Her eyes were beautiful, sure. Her voice no surprise. But what had Jackson’s jaw scraping his knees was the rest of the package.

Flowery dress, its hem brushing neat anklet socks folded tidily above pristine Keds. Long, dark hair that waved past her shoulders. Round cheeks, smooth skin, a mouth that looked kiss swollen but that he would wager had never been touched.

He’d never seen a woman who looked so…so…innocent.

Hell. So innocent, that he’d really blush if he had to tell her how that fretful baby she held against her fine body was made.

She threw him another nervous glance and started gently jiggling the baby as it cried harder. “Yes?” she asked again.

He couldn’t think. Beyond her he could see half her living area—a laptop computer was set up on the small dining table—and half her kitchen, where a bottle was warming in a pan on the stove.

Unlike the utilitarian white-on-white of his own apartment, hers was painted a soft-peach and cream. Five or six framed family photos took up one wall.

But none of this observation was getting the job done. Gritting his back teeth, he lowered his brow and put on his best thunderous expression—with his dark hair and eyes, he hoped he looked as dangerously annoyed as he felt.

“Excuse me,” he started, his voice a rumble.

She gulped.

He gestured toward his half-open door. “I…”

Her nervousness suddenly disappeared. “You’re my neighbor!” she exclaimed in friendly relief, obviously just realizing that fact. A smile broke over her face.

For some stupid reason he thought about the dawn again, and he could only watch as she reached her hand toward him. Her smile widened and that hand waved him forward. “Come in, come in.” She stepped back in welcome, all the while patting the noisy and unhappy baby.

In the face of all that friendliness, what could a man do? He let himself walk out of the dim hallway into the light of her apartment.

Just inside, he hesitated. Damn. It would have been better to voice his complaint in the neutral territory outside her door. But another loud squall from the baby had him squaring his shoulders. “I’m Jackson Abbott. I came over because—”

“I’m so glad you did!” She fished in her pocket for a pacifier, which the baby quickly tongued away. “I’ve been meaning to introduce myself and welcome you.” Another smile dug a dimple into one of her smooth cheeks. “I’m Phoebe Finley.”

Then, still trying to calm the baby, Phoebe Finley started rocking from foot to foot, and, following her with his gaze, Jackson went a little seasick. Fighting the queasiness kept him quiet for another crucial moment.

Crucial, because it gave her a chance to talk again first.

“I’ve been meaning to thank you, too,” she said.

His stomach dropped. Thank me?

Her body stopped moving, and she scooped the baby higher in her arms. “But as you can see I’ve been busy.”

Okay, the perfect opening, Jackson thought, preparing again to voice the complaint on his tongue. But the way she held the infant gave him his first full shot of the source of his sleeplessness. Instead of getting to the point right away, he stared at the baby and the baby stared back.

When Jackson’s mouth did finally open, he found himself talking to the infant. “Hey, little—” he narrowed his gaze and tried to make sense of the genderless shape she held, dressed in yellow terry cloth “—it.” A thick diaper covered the obvious parts. Its head was hairless, but Jackson remembered that both girl and boy babies were bald.

That happy dimple dug into Phoebe’s cheek again, as if she approved of men who greeted infants. “This is Rex. My brother’s baby boy.” She took a step toward Jackson, her tone confiding. “And the reason why I need to thank you.”

“Thank me for what?” Jackson asked gruffly, focusing on the dark sweep of Phoebe’s left eyebrow to keep his eyes off the baby and all of Phoebe’s smooth skin.

“For not complaining about the noise, of course!”

His gut dropped again, and his throat closed over a loud groan. “The noise?” he choked out.

The baby started crying once more, and she laid him against her shoulder and started bouncing on her heels. “You must have heard it,” she said.

“Oh, yeah,” he said faintly.

“Well, every tenant and his houseplant is complaining. Thanks to you, I’ve been able to point out to our landlady, several times, that if you aren’t bothered, then why should anyone else be?”

Jackson swallowed. “Yes. Why.” Why was he such an idiot? Why hadn’t he come over and ranted and raved on day one? “Is your…is your brother visiting you…for a short while?” he asked hopefully.

A funny expression crossed her face. “Well, uh, no. Just Rex. For the next month, at least. Maybe longer.”

Another month? Nearly his whole time left in Strawberry Bay! Great. If the baby fussed for the next few weeks the way he had for the last two, Jackson didn’t have a bunny’s chance in the fast lane of getting any sleep.

But then his eyebrows snapped together. Another month? This didn’t make sense.

She seemed to read the puzzlement on his face. “It’s a trifle, um, complicated. Rex’s mother died right after he was born, and my brother needed a little time away. I’m…filling in.” Looking down at the baby, she brushed a soft kiss over his head.

It wasn’t a “filling in” kind of kiss. It wasn’t a “filling in” kind of look in her eyes, either.

But he wasn’t there to assess, judge or, dammit, appreciate, even though he found himself fascinated by her lush and innocent mouth again.

Her tone turned confiding once more, and she smiled, obviously happy. “You’ve been so kind and tolerant, I don’t mind letting you be the first to know I hope to keep Rex with me forever.”

Jackson’s brain came to a screeching halt. “What?”

She cleared her throat. “Well, right now my brother is kind of, um, missing, but he’s going to come back, and then we’ll settle the custody of the baby.”

Still reeling, Jackson opened his mouth to set her straight. Someone needed to tell Pollyanna here that happy endings like the one she wanted were only in fairy tales. People had a way of going out of one’s life—under their own steam or because they were torn from you. In his thirty years he’d experienced both.

But then his mouth snapped closed. None of this was his business or the reason he’d knocked on her door. “Listen,” he started. Hell, what was he going to say now? Could he really burst even the smallest of her fantasy bubbles by griping about the kid? “I came over because—”

At the sound of Jackson’s voice, the baby started squalling again. Phoebe patted, shushed, rocked, but nothing worked.

Accepting defeat, actually a little glad about it, Jackson shuffled backward. Much easier to hit the nearest discount store for earplugs and a white-noise machine.

But Phoebe wasn’t having it. She reached out and caught his sleeve, obviously determined to be the good neighbor, at least in this. “Did you come to borrow something?” she asked, pitching her voice over the baby’s crying.

“Some sleep,” Jackson muttered.

“Something sweet?”

He threw up his hands. With the baby crying and her morning eyes on him, he couldn’t put more trouble on her plate. “Yeah,” he conceded. “I came over to borrow some sugar.”

“Oh, certainly,” Phoebe said, with another one of those sunny smiles.

And that’s when it happened.

She cast a look toward her kitchen.

Cast another at the crying child.

He read the difficulty on her face. How to get that sugar and soothe baby Rex, too? Ironic, when Jackson didn’t even want the stuff.

But letting her get something for him seemed the fastest way out of there, so, for the first time in what seemed like forever, he volunteered for child duty. “Give him to me,” he said.

She hesitated, but probably figured Rex couldn’t be any less content. With careful movements, she transferred the baby to him. At the sensation of the warm, vulnerable weight in his arms, Jackson sucked in a sharp breath.

Rex’s crying immediately stopped.

Darkish eyes stared up at Jackson. A tiny fist waved about as if controlled by a mad puppeteer.

Jackson concluded the kid was stunned by its first closeup of an overworked male in serious need of eight hours of hibernation. But even after a few moments, the crying didn’t restart. The baby’s movements actually calmed, and as Jackson hitched him closer to his chest, Rex appeared to fall asleep.

More irony. Of the two of them, the wailer was the one getting the rest.

He looked across at Phoebe. She was staring at them, apparently stunned.

Jackson lifted his shoulders in a small shrug, more than a little surprised himself. Yeah, in the past he’d had a way with kids. But who could have guessed that after fourteen years without use, it was the one thing he hadn’t left behind.




Chapter Two


Jackson was out of his boots and into his breakfast the next morning when he heard a knock at his door.

He knew who it was, which was why he took another swig of cola instead of going to answer it. Through the walls Rex cried again—the baby had sounded unhappy ever since Jackson had returned from work. And even though it was just after six, he suspected the baby had been awake for some time. The knock came again, percussion to Rex’s noisy discontent.

It was Phoebe Finley and the baby at his door, of course, and he planned on ignoring them until they went away. He didn’t want to encourage any neighborly tête-à-têtes, any more than he wanted to find himself close to that baby again.

Once was enough.

Becoming acquainted with Phoebe and the child who wasn’t hers—but that she obviously cared so much for—was a scenario much too close for comfort. He’d been in her size sixes before, desperately wanting to hold on to someone—in his case, someones—who could be wrenched away.

Jackson wasn’t stupid enough to get entangled, even peripherally, in that kind of setup again.

The baby must have paused to take in a breath, because in the momentary quiet, Phoebe’s voice sounded through his hollow-core front door.

“Jackson! Jackson! Please answer. I’m in dire need of a good neighbor.”

That left him out, Jackson thought smugly, but then her voice pleaded again. “Help,” she said.

God, even if his brain wasn’t stupid, his feet sure were. The two of them pushed against the floor to get him standing and even walked him to the door. His hand didn’t hesitate to open it, though his good sense limited it to only a couple of inches.

Dark hair tumbling, blue-gray eyes pleading, two even, white teeth doing a number on her full lower lip. “My hero,” Phoebe said.

“I’m not.” He glanced at Rex, whose head had jerked toward Jackson at the sound of his voice. “What’s the problem?”

She bit her lip again. “Our landlady, Mrs. Bee, and about two-thirds of our fellow tenants. Rex has been awake and unhappy since 4:00 a.m., and I’ve received complaints. Mrs. Bee is starting to make odd threats.”

Jackson grimaced. While their elderly landlady looked like something off a bakery box, he knew she was better suited to selling nails, as in “tough as.” But he turned his grimace into a forbidding frown. “So?”

She swallowed. “So I thought maybe you could do your magic on Rex and get him to sleep again. He must be exhausted, and it didn’t take you but a couple of minutes yesterday.”

It was Phoebe who looked exhausted. Shadows circled her eyes, making them that much bluer, and her appearance that much more fragile. But Jackson ignored the observation. “No,” he said, swinging the door closed. “I’m in the middle of breakfast.”

The wooden door bounced off a small white sneaker. “Please. Couldn’t you eat and hold him at the same time?”

Years ago he’d been able to do that with both arms full of babies.

“Please,” she said again. “I wouldn’t ask, but I think I really need to appease Mrs. Bee right now.”

Telling himself he was making up some badly needed points in Heaven, Jackson reluctantly opened the door. She came right inside, smiling over her shoulder at him. “Once you sit down I’ll hand him to you.”

The smile died as she took in the Spartan bareness of his apartment—a threadbare couch, a couple of orange crates, a folding table and chairs that served as his dining room.

He found himself excusing his surroundings. “I’m only here temporarily,” he said, gesturing at the naked walls. “My job requires that I move from place to place.”

She didn’t say anything, but her eyes widened again as she looked at what was lying on his table. “That’s your ‘breakfast’? Beef jerky and a cola?”

“It’s turkey jerky,” he defended.

“Still.” She made a face.

As if he was tired of being ignored, Rex started fussing again. Jackson sighed. “Hand him over,” he said.

“Not until you’re seated in front of your…meal.”

He shot her a disgruntled look as he sat down. “Listen, I work nights and my stomach’s on a different time clock than yours, okay?”

“It’s on a different planet than mine,” she said mildly, but then walked toward him and handed over the still-mildly fussing Rex.

The baby immediately quieted, and Jackson shut his eyes for an instant, trying to shut out the sensation of baby again as well as the bittersweet memories the feeling evoked.

“What’s this about working nights?” Phoebe asked suddenly.

He started, and then took a sip of soda before answering. “I begin the job at 9:00 p.m.,” he said. “And I get off at five in the morning.”

She nodded. “So that’s where you go. When I noticed you keeping those kind of hours I just assumed you had something serious going on with someone.”

He laughed shortly. “Not my style. I spend my nights working.”

She came a little closer, the skirt of her flowery dress swishing around the smooth skin of her calves. A fragrance, feminine and creamy sweet, drifted over him.

Blood rushed to Jackson’s groin, and he stifled a groan.

She said something to him, but he didn’t absorb it, not with his eyes focused on her skin and his head dizzy with her scent. It looked as if it was time he did a little something more with his time off. Fostering relationships, even the casual kind that would ease a man who moved on regularly, required more effort than he’d been willing to make lately. But if the scent of a woman—a woman with a baby—and the sight of six inches of her legs could make him poker hard, then sex had made itself a priority.

He heard her voice again, and he forced his gaze away from her and to his soda can. “What?”

“I asked what kind of work you do.”

He didn’t dare look at her again. “I’m an engineer for a company that’s retrofitting overpasses—do you know what that is?”

“Making the overpasses earthquakeproof?”

He shook his head. “Not quite. But better able to handle the stress.” He told her a bit about his work and how he moved from one location to another.

She came closer, looking over his shoulder to check on the stubbornly alert Rex. “Well, California has oodles of overpasses,” she said.

Her female-scent was that much closer, too. “That’s why I’m oodling all over the state,” he answered, keeping himself sternly focused on the conversation. “I’m only here for another month or so.”

She’d started to laugh at the “oodling” but quickly turned serious. “You like it, then? Working at night? Moving around?”

“I’m suited to it.”

She pulled out the only other chair he had, the one beside him, and sat down, the soft fabric of her dress drifting over her legs.

“What about you?” he found himself asking.

Her eyebrows came together. “What about me what?”

Jackson cursed himself silently. What the hell was he interrogating her for? He didn’t want her to get the idea he was interested. But she was looking at him expectantly. He shrugged. “Does your life suit you?”

“I suppose. I’ve been slowly working my way through college, and my business keeps me hopping.” She shifted in her seat, crossing her legs so that more of the smooth skin of one calf was exposed. “Now that I have the baby—”

“What’s your boyfriend think of that, by the way?” Damn. Stupid question number two.

Her eyebrows rose. “I don’t have a boyfriend,” she said. “And I don’t expect to snag one anytime soon.”

Her answer provided an odd spurt of relief that Jackson wasn’t sure was bad or good.

She cast another glance at the baby, then suddenly popped up from her chair. “You did it. You got him to sleep again.”

He looked down. Sure enough, Rex was sleeping away, his mouth falling open and a drop of drool running out and toward Jackson’s forearm.

Phoebe smiled as she tenderly touched the sleeping baby’s cheek. “I thank you. Rex thanks you. Though they don’t know it, the tenants of 1006 Bartlett Street thank you.” She bent over to retrieve the baby, the rounded neckline of her dress falling forward to give Jackson an innocent peek at two perfectly fine breasts in a white lacy bra.

He bit back a second groan and looked away as she scooped the baby out of his arms. He breathed out, too, to keep her dangerous scent from reaching his lungs.

Then she turned away. At last. It was over. She was finally leaving, and there’d be no more contact between them, he promised.

At the door, though, she spun around, her dress floating out around her legs, the beginnings of a smile brightening her face and crinkling the corners of her morning eyes. He wanted to look away.

“Gee,” she said, her lush mouth curling up. “I just gotta ask. What are you doing at 6:30 a.m. for the rest of your life?”

Early the next morning Phoebe typed quietly at her computer. Rex was asleep—for what seemed like the first time in days—and she didn’t want to disturb the baby or her neighbor.

It was the least she could do, now that she knew Jackson Abbott worked nights. Before meeting him, she’d always assumed the hours her mystery neighbor kept were due to some hot-and-heavy romance he had going. And after meeting him…

Well, if he hadn’t denied it himself, she would still think he had some hot-and-heavy romance going. He was the type of man who found women easily. He was big, solidly big, with wide shoulders, narrow hips and strong, thick thighs. Like a pirate, she’d thought nervously, the first time she’d seen him. There was even a small gold earring that winked at her from the rumpled tangle of his coffee-dark hair.

His eyes were dark, too, and heavily lashed, and the first time they’d looked at her they’d seemed to swallow her up.

She shivered now, remembering it.

To top it off, inside that dark and dangerous exterior was an awesome daddy technique that was downright magic. At first, Phoebe figured Rex responded to him because the baby was used to her stepbrother, but nothing about Jackson’s deep voice or muscled chest was anything like Teddy.

It was a puzzle. Jackson was a puzzle.

She tried to put it from her mind, but as her fingers flew over the keys, she kept coming back to him. To the familiar way he held the baby and the undefinable expression that entered his eyes when he did.

To his denial of a woman in his life and the frisson of feminine response she’d felt when sitting across from him in his apartment yesterday.

To the bleakness on his face when she’d joked about what he was doing the rest of the mornings of his life.

Another delicious shiver rolled down Phoebe’s spine. Dark and mysterious men were lethal. But a dark and mysterious man who held a baby as tenderly as he might hold a woman’s heart…

She pulled herself short of going down that path. Her focus was on being Rex’s mommy. He was the only man in her life that mattered, and it didn’t take a genius to realize that Jackson wasn’t exactly welcoming a relationship with Rex and her, anyway.

Jackson was merely her neighbor.

Just then she heard the sound of booted footsteps in the hall and the telltale jingle and click of keys in the lock next door. Her mere neighbor was home.

Phoebe was glad Rex was quiet because Jackson was probably tired and hungry and ready to settle in for sleep right after another epicurean’s delight of dried meat and sugary soda.

Ick.

It was a short leap to the thought of the zucchini nut muffins she’d made the night before. Big fat ones, bursting with raisins, walnuts and cinnamon. Much better than beef jerky. Excuse me, turkey jerky.

Couldn’t she just pop over with two or three? A kind gesture, wasn’t it, that would keep her focus on him as her neighbor rather than anything more dangerous.

Because anything more was impossible.

She was a woman with a new baby. He was a man moving on, in a very short while.

So bringing over a little thank-you gift of home cooking would put her in the right frame of mind to put him out of her mind.

There. That made sense.

With Rex still snoozing away, she carefully locked her door, secure in the knowledge that the slightest peep from her baby would carry right through the wall between her place and Jackson’s.

Still, outside his front door, with a plate of her famous muffins in hand, she hesitated. If she returned to her apartment—

Today would be a rerun of the day before. She’d be squirming on her seat, thinking of him sleeping just a wall way. Oh, yes. Definitely best to force the focus onto that neighbor idea.

Unlike yesterday morning he answered her knock right away. Wearing heavy construction boots, jeans and an unbuttoned shirt, he looked both weary and wary. He blinked at her slowly, for a moment hiding the bittersweet chocolate color of his eyes. “Another problem?” he asked gruffly.

Only if you didn’t like looking at swoonworthy inches of hard, golden chest. Phoebe swallowed. “N-no. I…” Why had she come?

His gaze flicked down toward her hands and she followed it.

The muffins. Right. She’d brought muffins. “Here,” she said, holding out the plate.

He didn’t take it immediately, instead eyeing the gift as if it might be poison. “What’s this?”

A lock of dark hair fell over his forehead. It brought his unapproachability down a notch, which for some weird reason made her babble. “A thank-you. A neighbor—no, zucchini nut—” She broke off, perplexed by her tongue, which kept getting tangled.

His lips twitched. “A nutty neighbor?” he asked innocently.

She laughed for him, and her tongue unknotted. “Zucchini nut muffins.”

He still didn’t take them. “What for?”

“For you. For helping me out. In appreciation.”

Rising up on his toes, he peered over her shoulder as if she might be hiding something behind her. “Where is your midget sidekick, anyway? Signed up for Little League already?”

She shook her head in amusement. “You’ve been hiding your funny side, haven’t you? He’s asleep, believe it or not.” She nudged Jackson’s midsection teasingly with the plate, her gaze suddenly coming to rest on his very male, very naked and very rippling ab muscles.

God. A strange flush of heat washed over her cheeks.

His long fingers grabbed the edge of the plate. “Hey,” he said. “I could be ticklish.”

Phoebe didn’t let go, and sizzling bursts of feminine reaction pinged from place to place in her belly. “Well,” she said, her mouth going dry around the near-flirtatious sound of her voice. “Are you?”

When he didn’t answer, her gaze slowly crawled up his bare, heavily muscled chest, over his throat and the five-o’clock shadow on his chin. Past his chiseled mouth, his strong nose, to meet his dark, dark eyes.

She had no idea what was lurking in their depths.

Her hand loosened from her side of the plate, one finger at a time: thumb, forefinger, middle finger, ring finger, pinkie. In all the long moments that it took, neither one of them blinked.

Phoebe swallowed and finally let her hand fall. “I should be going.”

“Yes.”

Neither one of them moved.

“I have a baby…” she said lamely.

“Yes,” he agreed, seeming to understand what she meant.

“So…” Her feet didn’t obey.

“Give the little guy my best.”

“I will.” The little guy. He was her concern now. But she was going to have to initiate a serious discussion with him. And soon. When it was Rex and Phoebe against the world, Rex was going to have to come through for her sometimes. If he insisted on waking up at 2:00 a.m., a few tears to save her at a crucial moment like this would be a nice payback.

“His father phoned last night,” Phoebe suddenly heard herself saying. She didn’t know why she was telling Jackson. Maybe because there was nobody else to tell.

His expression went even more unreadable. “Rex’s father?”

She nodded. “We talked about the baby. I told him how I felt about Rex. That from the first moment I saw him, it was, well…I can’t explain it.”

He shrugged. “Nature made babies to appeal to us.”

“It was more than that.” It had just felt right, from the very beginning. “He still wants some time he said, but I’m not going to worry.” She brightened now, just thinking about the possibilities. “Things have a way of working out, don’t you think?”

“You are young,” he murmured under his breath.

“I’m hopeful.” She smiled at him. “And a good cook. Enjoy.” With a nod at the muffins, she made herself turn back toward home.

Hopeful, good cook and hopeless romantic, she thought, as she heard his door click firmly and without hesitation behind her. But that last minor problem was solved. In the course of a few pulse beats, her silly little heart had thrown out a few questions that had been quite simply—and sensibly—answered by the hard man with the daddy’s touch.

“I should be going,” she’d said.

And he’d replied, “Yes.”

After returning to her apartment, Phoebe went through the motions of her normal day. Midmornings she had started taking Rex out for a bit of fresh air. After Teddy’s first phone call, she’d realized that if Rex was going to be around for a while, she’d have to come up with some sort of routine for herself and the baby. So at about ten each day, she put him in the stroller she’d bought and rolled the baby down the block to the small and shady city park.

Serendipitously, that first morning, she’d run into an acquaintance from one of her college classes, Lisa. The other woman had a baby a few months older than Rex, and she’d organized a neighborhood play group that had a daily meeting time of ten, and a designated meeting location of the sandbox to the left of the swings. Mothers and their children made it to the play group the days they could, and all had immediately welcomed Phoebe and Rex.

One of the last to arrive today, Phoebe found an open spot among the mothers and children, then spread out the little quilt she’d carried under her arm. Next she set down Rex and his diaper bag. His eyes wide, he stared at her, seemingly mesmerized by her hair stirring in the breeze.

After an initial greeting, the conversations resumed around her. Older children rushed by with sand toys in their hands, and crawling babies explored the connected and multicolored worlds of the various quilts.

Lisa, baby Andrea on her hip, plunked herself down beside Phoebe. “How’s it going today?”

Phoebe smiled at her new friend. It still amazed her how even pseudo motherhood created such instant bonds. “So much better. I’m starting to get the hang of keeping him happy.”

Lisa nodded. “It takes a while.” She chucked the serious Rex under the chin, and the baby’s lips quirked in an automatic smile. “He looks great.”

Phoebe studied her little charge. Downy dark hair, silky eyebrows, eyes turning browner by the day.

“You know, I think he’s starting to look like you,” Lisa said.

“Worse.” Phoebe smiled, her heart aching a little. “He’s starting to feel like mine.”

As she’d tried to explain to both Teddy and Jackson, that had happened nearly instantly, too. She hadn’t anticipated it and couldn’t explain it, but something strange had occurred the moment she’d held him. Her heart had bloomed, and this tender, almost painful love had poured out. For a woman who had always wanted a family desperately and who had been lonely for too long, it was a feeling both unignorable and potentially dangerous.

“You hear from that stepbrother of yours again?”

Phoebe nodded. “Last night. But he’s still hard to pin down.” That was the danger. If Teddy did nothing about the situation, she might lose the baby. She took a calming breath. “And I’m hearing plenty from that landlady of mine. She’s making all sorts of unpleasant noises about a single woman raising a baby alone. She’s even talked about contacting Social Services.”

Lisa frowned. “Don’t let her do that! At the very worst, they could take Rex away from you. At the least, if you’re going for custody of Rex you don’t want even a hint of a problem.”

“I know you’re right, but…” She shrugged, tracing the tiny curve of Rex’s ear. “Though I think she’s self-righteous and interfering, at heart I’m sure she’s well meaning. I just don’t know what to say to satisfy her.”

“Tell her you’re not going to be single forever. Tell her…”

Another one of the nearby moms had been listening in. They had all been so supportive and friendly that Phoebe had shared her predicament with many of them. “Yeah, tell her you’re going to marry someone—” she broke off, her eyes widening and a mischievous grin appearing as she peered over Phoebe’s shoulder “—someone like that!”

Laughing, Phoebe threw a casual glance behind her. Then the laughter died. Jackson, looking rumpled and dangerous in jeans and another of his work shirts—half-unbuttoned—was stalking her way.

Oh, goodness.

A breathless panic made her look frantically around her for an instant, trying to figure out why an unattached man like Jackson Abbott would be striding across the grass in the direction of playground swings and shrieking children.

He was staring directly at her.

Something brought her to her feet. It was the width of his shoulders, maybe, or that glimpse of tanned skin in the vee of his shirt. Possibly the hard, chiseled planes of his face.

Earlier this morning his looks and manner had unleashed pinballs of reaction in her belly. Now his sensuality acted on her like a fishing line. One look and he reeled her right in.

He halted a couple steps from her. “Phoebe.”

She gulped for air like a landed sturgeon. Just her name on his lips gave her a rousing wave of shivers.

The other women around her had fallen silent. Out of the corner of her eye, Phoebe saw another female, this one a golden-haired mop top of a toddler with a lollipop in one hand, stop in her tracks to gape at him.

She swallowed. “You were looking for me, Jackson?” After their unstated conversation this morning, she’d doubted she would ever see him again. And she’d been glad of it.

Daddy’s touch or not, she’d been right about the hardness of the man. An attraction to one such as him was something she couldn’t afford right now. With Rex—and Teddy for that matter—occupying her life, she was exactly right in thinking the last thing she needed was another troublesome male.

Still, just looking at him made her cheeks heat.

His eyes narrowed. “You okay?”

She swallowed again. “Sure. Fine.” Stop babbling, Phoebe. “Okeydokey.” Curses. The thing was, all the cautions and unstated rebuffs in the world didn’t make that deep aloneness she sensed in him any less compelling.

Her hand fluffed her bangs self-consciously. “Why, um, why are you here?” she asked, staring at his hair and the way the smooth and shiny stuff curved against his strong neck.

“A couriered package was left for you. They knocked on my door first, by mistake, and I signed for you, but then I got to worrying that it might be something…important.” He frowned darkly, as if worrying about her annoyed him. “Maybe it’s from Rex’s—from your brother. Mrs. Bee told me where I could find you.” He paused. “Phoebe?”

She started. Darn! She was as easily mesmerized as Rex. From Jackson’s hair her gaze had wandered to the dark stubble of beard along his jaw, and she’d heard, but not quite absorbed, his explanation.

“Say again?” she said.

Crossing his arms over his chest, he once more narrowed his gaze. “Package. For you. Might be important.”

She blinked, appreciating his succinctness. “Oh. Okay. Thank you.” Though she doubted Teddy would have made a decision so quickly—he wasn’t one to promptly respond to anything even slightly unpleasant—she’d better check it out.

Whirling around, she bent for the diaper bag, Rex, the quilt and the stroller.

“Let me.” Jackson reached for the baby.

Phoebe dumped the diaper bag in the seat of the stroller and folded the quilt then placed it atop the bag. Squashing a traitorous sense of feminine smugness over the man she was walking away with, Phoebe waved her fingers in a brief goodbye to the still-stunned play group.

The stroller wheels crunched over the dusting of sand on the park’s cement path. With Jackson leading and Phoebe slightly behind, they headed toward home. She gazed on the broad expanse of his back and tried not to be fascinated by the powerful muscles she saw playing beneath the worn fabric of his shirt.

Suddenly little footsteps pounded against the cement behind them. The three-year-old mop top caught up with them, her fat cheeks pink with exertion. Her mother was trailing behind her, a puzzled look on her pleasant face.

“Mister!” The toddler looked up at Jackson with the same kind of awe that Phoebe barely hid better.

Frowning, he looked down. A pained expression crossed swiftly over his face, but then was gone. “What?” he said harshly. Then he took a breath and seemed to deliberately soften his voice. “What is it?”

“You that baby’s daddy?” She pointed her sticky lollipop at Rex’s puffy, diapered bottom.

He shook his head, turning as if to move on.

The tot wasn’t going to let him go that easily. “Mister!”

Jackson froze, then shifted back. “Yes?” He raised an eyebrow and his lips tilted upward, his expression now half-amused and all masculine.

A totally foreign zing of heat sizzled through Phoebe’s bloodstream. She blinked.

The little blonde blinked.

The little blonde’s mother stumbled.

They all stared at Jackson, his face hard, but patient, and the picture he made in rough boots, soft jeans and chest-baring shirt, cuddling the tiny infant. Goose bumps prickled Phoebe’s scalp.

“Yes?” he prompted again.

“Well…” The little girl seemed to screw up all her courage. “If you’re not his, will you be my daddy?”

The toddler stared up at Jackson.

The toddler’s mother emitted a little squeak.

Phoebe briefly closed her eyes, without a clue as to how Jackson might react.

He shocked her. Hunkering down, Rex still cupped against his chest, he looked at the little girl eye-to-eye and smiled.

It was the first time Phoebe had seen him give one, and she almost keeled over in the sand. It softened the stark handsomeness of his face, changing it to something altogether devastating. White, warm, Jackson’s smile gave Phoebe another secret zing where a woman who’d made her kind of promise to herself had no business zinging.

The smile must have given the little girl confidence. “Well?” she demanded. “Will you be my daddy?”

He smiled once more, then tapped the little blonde on the nose with one long finger. “Thanks for the invite, pumpkin,” he said gently. “But I’m not cut out to be anybody’s anything.”




Chapter Three


Jackson stood outside Phoebe’s door, a tall takeout cup of coffee heating each palm, and creamers, sugar packets and red stirrers balanced on each plastic top. He didn’t know why he was here. Well, yeah, he did. On his way into the Victorian after work this morning, he’d run into Melinda Richie, the nurse who lived on the first floor. She’d just happened to mention that Phoebe and Rex had a rough night.

He’d suddenly remembered dark hours from a thousand years ago. Crying babies that were only soothed by walking the floors in someone’s arms. Being so tired he hadn’t made it to school the next day, even though he’d already missed way too many of his classes.

Listening to Nurse Richie describe Phoebe’s disturbed night, an unexpected, but by now not unfamiliar, Samaritan impulse had overcome him. The day before, the impulse had sent him to find Phoebe in the park—a bust of an idea, since the package was something not urgent and pertaining to her business. This morning the impulse had taken control once again and sent him back out of the Victorian and to the local Speedy-Mart for the coffees and bagels he now held.

No sense letting them go to waste. Hands occupied, he lightly tapped on Phoebe’s door with the toe of his boot.

When she opened it, Jackson nearly dropped the cups. Long brown hair tumbled and tangled, eyes at half-mast with weariness, and wearing a simple sleeveless, white nightgown, she looked like a woman who’d just risen from bed.

Jackson restlessly shuffled his feet.

She shifted baby Rex against her body and then her eyes opened wider, her whole face brightening at the sight of what he held in his hands.

She sniffed delicately. “Coffee? Is that coffee?” Her eyes blinked once slowly, as if she was coming awake. She lifted her gaze to him. “I’ll pay you whatever you ask for one of those cups.”

What if he asked for a taste of her mouth? It sat there on her face, right below those morning-sky eyes and that perfect nose, bare and ripe for kissing. Tempting him. He shuffled his feet again.

“You’re welcome to come in,” she said. “As long as you bring that coffee with you.”

He followed her inside, kicking closed the front door with his foot. Then, as if she’d just expended her final energy reserves, Phoebe slipped bonelessly to the love seat in her living area. She flung out one arm, exposing the blue veins at the crook of her elbow. “I’m way too tired to drink it. Intravenously, please.”

He half smiled at her little joke, thinking he’d much rather put his mouth on that translucent, innocent skin. She would taste like she smelled, flowery and soft.

“Jackson?”

He approached her slowly, then sat beside her to set the cups on the small table in front of her. “Sugar? Cream? How do you take it?”

Her head moved from side to side against the cushions, spreading her hair against them. “I can’t remember. Black will be fine.”

He busied himself making an opening in the plastic top. “The night was that bad?”

Her eyes were closed. “Rex wasn’t happy unless I was jiggling him and walking. At one point I tried sitting on the couch and moving my feet, but he’s way too smart for that, my little guy is.”

My little guy, she’d said. Didn’t she know how dangerous it was to think that way? “Here.” Jackson nudged her free hand with the coffee cup. “Is Rex sick or something?”

She sat up a bit to take a sip of the coffee, carefully keeping the hot brew away from the baby. Her happy sigh at the first taste made the whole damn trip worthwhile. She took another sip, then looked over at him.

“Not sick, according to Melinda. Do you know that she’s a n—” At his quick nod, she continued. “I called and asked her to check on him, and he didn’t show signs of anything but indigestion. She suggested a change in his formula. We think he might be a lot happier from now on.”

He nodded. “Makes sense.” He reached over and ran a finger down the sleeping baby’s back.

Phoebe shivered, and he saw goose bumps rise on the bare skin of the arm that clasped the baby.

He frowned. “You’re cold? Do you want a robe?”

There was a little flush on her cheeks, from the coffee maybe. She shook her head. “I’m fine.”

“You’re sure?” Sleepy and pink-cheeked, she looked vulnerable. Tempting.

Her gaze flicked toward him, flicked away. “Fine as I can be under the circumstances.” Then her body curved awkwardly as she went for another sip of the coffee without disturbing Rex.

Jackson frowned again. “Do you want me to put him down? He’s asleep.”

The decision looked like it was too much for her. He took the cup out of her hand and then slipped the baby from her. His knuckles brushed against the warmth of her nightgown-covered skin, but he gritted his teeth and ignored the sensation as he walked the baby to the small crib set in the corner of the room.

Rex settled down without a whimper, which was instead the noise Jackson wanted to make when he turned around and looked at Phoebe again. Still flopped on the couch, with Rex gone from her chest, Phoebe exposed to him more than she could possibly realize.

Her short gown came to just above her knees, revealing both bare feet, curving calves, the beginnings of her thighs. The nightgown was thin white cotton, and he could see just the hint of panties beneath it. He quickly jerked his gaze upward—then wished he hadn’t.

Where Rex had been snoozing, the gown was plastered to her skin. And with Rex gone, Jackson could clearly see the outline of her lush breasts and the dark pink of her nipples. He swallowed.

Thankfully, Phoebe’s eyes were closed and as he watched, she blindly felt around in front of her, muttering something about coffee. He sprang forward to place her cup in her hand.

Her eyes slitted open. “My hero,” she said.

She’d called him that before, he remembered, gritting his teeth. “Is going to his own apartment right this minute.”

Two little lines appeared between her arching brown brows. “Why?”

He hesitated, trying to decide how much to say.

Her eyes opened and her unguarded gaze ran over him, slowly and sleepily. He let himself look her over, too. All those slender limbs and smooth, smooth skin. He groaned.

“What?” she said, obviously too sleepy to be aware of what she wasn’t hiding.

He shook his head. “I need to get you a robe.” He strode toward her bedroom door without even waiting for her acquiescence or direction.

And groaned again. Her scent permeated her bedroom, too, that flowery, creamy smell that sent signals to his body he had no right listening to. Her bed was just steps away, a big brass one with rumpled white linens and five—five!—overstuffed pillows.

Without even closing his eyes he could imagine her hands gripping the brass rails, imagine himself shoving one of those fat pillows beneath her hips….

“Damn!” he muttered, whirling around, whirling away from the scene in his own imagination. There. On a hook behind the door he saw a silky, flowered kimono. Grabbing it, he took a step toward her living room.

To halt once more at the sight of Phoebe.

She’d abandoned the coffee and stretched out as best she could on the small love seat. Her hair was spread wantonly against the cushions and one foot had slipped completely off, spreading her legs. The nightgown’s round neckline had slipped too, revealing the pale rise of one breast.

She was fast asleep, with each breath the gown slipping more and threatening to completely expose her.

Jackson couldn’t breathe. He quickly choked in a breath, but air didn’t help.

He still couldn’t move.

And that was how their nosy and moralistic landlady found them as she pushed through the front door that Jackson apparently hadn’t completely shut on his way in.

Phoebe in what appeared to be sensual abandon. Jackson coming out of her bedroom, Phoebe’s lingerie in his hands.

A shriek jerked Phoebe from sleep.

She struggled to sit up, blinking quickly, her heart pounding. “Wha—”

“I never!” said Mrs. Bee, her tiny nose quivering in what was obviously outrage.

Phoebe blinked again. “Never what?”

A man cleared his throat.

Phoebe’s head whipped around. Jackson. That’s right, he’d brought coffee.

She appreciated the sight of him all over again—delicious and lord-of-the-manor handsome, his shirt partway undone. Heat kindled, melting her insides.

He closed his eyes. “Phoebe, that’s not helping.”

Right. Right. But not helping how? She looked back at Mrs. Bee. “Did you need something?”

The white bun atop the little lady’s head stabbed the air as she drew her spine poker straight. “It seems to me it’s you that needs something.”

Uh-oh. Phoebe sat straighter on the couch and drew the folds of her nightgown closer. Her thin, white nightgown. She bit her lip.

Mrs. Bee didn’t require any prompting to continue, though. “Good morals and good sense is what you need, young lady! What is this man doing in your apartment?”

“Uh, uh…” Phoebe tried gathering up her thoughts.

Jackson stepped into the room and strode to the couch. He released something he’d been holding, and Phoebe’s robe floated to her lap. “Mrs. Bee, I’m sure I don’t have to remind you Phoebe has a right to entertain whomever she likes.”

“Entertain!”

Phoebe didn’t need to tell Jackson it was a poor choice of words. As she quickly slipped her arms through the sleeves of her robe, she could read the knowledge on his face.

She touched his arm, smiled to reassure him. “Maybe later we can talk, Mrs. Bee, I’ve had a rough night and—”

“Rough night!”

Jackson shot her a sympathetic look. Apparently foot-in-mouth disease was rampant.

He stepped closer to the old lady. “Come on, Mrs. Bee. You know I’ve been hard at work—”

“Hard at work! That may be what your generation calls it, young man, but…”

This had gone far enough. Phoebe rose to her feet. “Don’t be silly,” she said firmly. “Jackson has been on the job all night. I’ve been up with Rex.” She stood on tiptoe to verify the baby was still comfortably sleeping, even through the ruckus.

Mrs. Bee crossed her matchstick arms over her narrow chest. “Then why is this man here at such an early hour?”

Phoebe sighed. The woman had no right. “He brought me coffee, okay?”

“Humph.”

Phoebe struggled to keep a pleasant expression on her face. “Now, was there something I can do for you?”

“You know I’m worried about the child.”

Phoebe sighed. “And bless your heart for it, Mrs. Bee. Rex and I appreciate your concern.”

“I can’t sleep nights thinking of the situation.”

She couldn’t sleep nights! Phoebe thought longingly of her bed.

“A young woman shouldn’t be raising a baby alone,” Mrs. Bee proclaimed.

The older lady’s strident tone was apparently too much for Rex. Without even a snuffle of warning, a full-out wail burst from his baby lungs. Phoebe rushed toward the crib, only to collide with Jackson, who’d gotten there quicker.

He picked up the baby. “Bottle time?”

She nodded, then led the way. “But I need to make one up with the new formula.”

Completely ignoring Mrs. Bee, they both went into the small kitchen, bumping elbows and hips in order to put together the bottle as quickly as possible. Rex signaled his hunger by intermittent and plaintive wails that insisted the adults in his life needed to get a move on.

Finally she had Rex in the crook of her arm and the bottle poised above him.

Silently, surprisingly, a stone-faced Jackson adjusted her hold on the baby, bringing Rex’s chest a little higher and tilting the bottle a little more. “Less air in his belly,” he said softly, looking at the baby instead of her, “Might also help that indigestion.”

Jackson standing behind her, Phoebe settled on the love seat, careful to keep Rex and the bottle in the suggested positions. With a sigh she looked up at Mrs. Bee, who stood where they’d left her, her hands clasped together.

With her gaze focused on the small tableau, Mrs. Bee sighed, too. “There, dear,” she said more kindly. “That’s exactly what I like to see.”

Phoebe had a bad feeling about this. “Well, uh, thank you, Mrs. Bee.”

The other lady sighed again dramatically. “A mother, a father. That’s what a baby needs.”

Phoebe frowned. “Well a baby doesn’t always have the choice.”

Jackson’s fingers touched her shoulder. Just a soft touch with two fingers, but soothing all the same.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Bee. “But a baby can expect more than a young woman who isn’t even related to him. Who doesn’t even know how to feed him properly.”

Bitter waves of panic started roiling around in Phoebe’s stomach. No. She was related to Rex. He was the last of her family. The last of the wonderful, golden family that had been so happy those years before her mother and stepfather died.

John Finley had taken her into his home and his heart, adopted her, cared for her because of the undying and spectacular love he had for her mother.

The kind of love she’d sworn to find for herself.

And since that love had yet to show itself, that click that she was certain she’d feel when the true right man came along, then maybe fate had sent Rex to her instead. Rex, whom she’d taken into her home and her heart and whom she was going to hold on to with all her might.

“I’m still thinking of making that call to Social Services,” Mrs. Bee said.

“What?” As if startled awake, Jackson came to sudden, shimmering life, his voice harsh, his back steel-rod straight. “What?” His fingers tightened painfully on Phoebe’s shoulder. “What are you talking about?”

Phoebe sighed wearily. She had tried to tell herself for days the landlady wasn’t serious, but as the same threat came with increasing frequency, she was finding it tougher and tougher to dismiss.

The little lady tightened her mouth. “Maybe it’s my duty to report the unusualness of these circumstances.”

“These circumstances,” Jackson repeated. He stalked around the love seat as if he needed to move. “Social Services.” He practically spat the words from his mouth.

Phoebe reached out to put her hand on his arm. The skin was hot, and his muscles twitched with tension. “It’s okay, Jackson.”

“It’s not okay,” he said, his voice hoarse, his expression grim. “It’s never okay to take a child away from someone who loves it.”

Mrs. Bee’s expression didn’t soften. “She’s not his mother.”

Jackson’s voice went hoarser still. “This child doesn’t have a mother. He has Phoebe, who’s doing a good job caring for him.”

Though his words warmed her, Phoebe didn’t take her hand from his arm. Some strange and powerful emotion radiated from him, and it worried her. She stared into his face, aware that something was going on behind his eyes, some pain he was reliving…or maybe some pain he was anticipating. “Jackson?” she said softly.

He stood stiffly for another moment, then visibly relaxed, even coming to sit beside Phoebe and slide his arm along the back of the love seat. “Anyway,” he said, his voice now quite deliberate and gentle. “This whole conversation is unnecessary.”

There was something dangerous left in his voice, though, and a glitter in his eyes that seemed to make even Mrs. Bee wary.

“What do you mean?” she said cautiously.

Jackson cupped Phoebe’s shoulder with his palm. The heat of his touch streaked down her arm, and she squeezed her hand into a fist in response. “I mean Rex has the kind of two-parent, stable home life you want so much for him. Or will have, anyway.”

Phoebe’s mouth went dry, and another ripple of heat coursed through her body.

Mrs. Bee’s eyes were wide. “What are you saying?” the older lady asked.

“I’m saying Phoebe and I are getting married.”

“What were you thinking of?” Phoebe asked Jackson, her voice tense.

He rubbed his hand across the back of his neck. “I—” He couldn’t say the past. He couldn’t tell her what had happened in his own life. He never talked about it. Never thought about it, if he could help it. “She left, didn’t she?”

Phoebe stared at him. “Left thinking that we had some sort of secret whirlwind courtship going! Left thinking we were going to the justice of the peace to tie the knot this afternoon!”

Jackson rubbed at his neck again. “When she asked us the wedding date, I thought it best to go for soon.”

“Uh!” She let out a frustrated exclamation, then hurriedly soothed a startled Rex. “I’m sorry, baby,” she whispered to him, rubbing her lips against the baby’s head.

“I did it for him,” Jackson said quietly. And for Phoebe. Because years ago he’d been in a situation eerily similar.

Phoebe’s shoulders slumped, and a defeated sigh escaped her. “But what are we supposed to do?”

Jackson had been thinking about that since the instant he’d made the shocking announcement. Not really so shocking to him, considering how Phoebe and Rex brought out in him this odd rescue impulse. He hadn’t so much thought through the idea as he’d just whipped it out like a sword in defense of the woman and child.

He sat down on the love seat beside Phoebe, watching her hand stroke Rex’s small back. Jackson couldn’t allow her to lose the baby to Social Services. “Look. Let’s talk about Mrs. Bee. Would you say she’s a little—dotty?”

Phoebe rolled her eyes. “As dotty as that itsy-bitsy, teeny-weenie, yellow polka-dot bikini. She latches on to stuff and then won’t let it go. A couple of months ago it was a campaign to license pet reptiles like dogs. I’m not kidding. She circulated petitions and everything.” Inhaling a deep breath, she closed her eyes. “And now she’s moved on to me and Rex.”

Jackson could feel Phoebe’s escalating fear. “Let’s calm down for a minute,” he said, wanting to touch her in reassurance, but denying himself the pleasure. “How much trouble could she make?”

She shrugged. “No telling. But if she contacted someone it would definitely be awkward explaining that I don’t know where Rex’s father is.”

“That’s what I thought.” He rubbed his palms against his bent knees. “And if you’re hoping for custody—”

“I am, if it’s what Teddy wants.”

Jackson nodded. “Then it’s best that there are zero calls on file.”

“Well, then, what do you suggest?” Phoebe closed her eyes, then opened them. “We can’t really be thinking of getting married.” She swallowed. “Can we?”

Jackson smiled grimly. “That’s where Mrs. Bee’s dottiness is going to work for us. She seemed perfectly satisfied when she walked out of here, right? So now we go out this afternoon and come back, grinning like happy newlyweds and say it’s done.”

Phoebe groaned. “You’ve got to be kidding. Say it’s done? We’re done for.”

He shook his head stubbornly. “Dotty is going to work for us, I promise you. Nothing will have to change.”

“But—”

He put his hand over her mouth to halt further protests. “In a month I’m outta here. In a month you and Teddy will settle the situation with Rex. Or a month will give you time to find a new place to live, if that’s still necessary. But I bet Mrs. Bee quickly moves on to some other fixation.”

Suddenly registering the warm, smooth skin of Phoebe’s lips, he snatched his hand away.

“What do we tell other people? How do we act around the other tenants?”

Jackson shrugged. “I leave that up to you. For myself, I’m going to live my life just as I have every day before.”

“Like every day before?” she echoed, raising one skeptical brow.

For some reason his pulse started hammering like a death knell. “Yeah.”

“Like every day before.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Despite the fact that you’re now ‘married’ and the father of one?”




Chapter Four


Regardless of Phoebe’s doubts that they could pull off this “marriage,” Jackson felt satisfied he’d been proven right. Mrs. Bee had gaily waved them off and then been discreetly absent upon their return.

So a few hours after their supposed wedding, a “married” Jackson sat on the sill of his open third-story bedroom window, sipping from a mug of hot coffee and watching the sun go down.

Instead of visiting the justice of the peace, Phoebe, Rex and Jackson had driven to the local open-air mall and gone their separate ways. She and the stroller had disappeared into one of those girlie shops selling bath and shower stuff.

He’d found a bench shaded from the broiling August sun. The coastal town of Strawberry Bay, situated in the central part of California, sweltered this time of year, like most of the rest of the state. Though he’d been dog tired—these were his customary sleeping hours—there’d been a breathlessness to the afternoon that had made him edgy.

With the sun now setting, his foreboding hadn’t completely dissipated. There was an ominous cast to the sky, and Jackson shrugged, trying to dislodge the uneasy feeling. He should be content now. With Phoebe and Rex’s situation taken care of, he could return to his familiar, isolated existence.

His involvement in their lives was no longer required.

And their involvement in his. He needn’t feel anything toward either one of them any longer.

From the corner of his eye, movement caught his attention. He held his breath. Great. Phoebe was at her window. There was more fluttering movement, and he could see one shoulder and an arm. He guessed she’d settled on the sill like he had, with her back against the side of the window opening.

Then, as he watched, a leg emerged from the window, and her small bare foot braced against the gently pitched second-story roof. The hem of a long pink dress fluttered about her calf.





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