His Brother's Baby
Laurie Campbell
HER BABYBeing jilted at the altar by playboy Kenny Tarkington made Lucy Velardi vow to raise her daughter, Emma, on her own. She didn't need the help of any Tarkington, even her ex's handsome brother, Connor. The undeniable attraction between them wasn't enough, because what Lucy wanted from Connor was the one thing he couldn't give–his heart.HIS RESPONSIBILITYWorkaholic Connor Tarkington was used to taking care of things, and that included Lucy and Emma, no matter how the sight of mother and child sparked painful memories and strong emotions inside him. Though Connor had sealed his wounded heart away, would he risk a second chance at happily ever after with Lucy?
His Brother’s Baby
Laurie Campbell
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Dear Reader,
Step into warm and wonderful July with six emotional stories from Silhouette Special Edition. This month is full of heart-thumping drama, healing love and plenty of babies!
I’m thrilled to feature our READERS’ RING selection, Balancing Act (SE#1552), by veteran Mills & Boon and Silhouette Romance author Lilian Darcy. This talented Australian writer delights us with a complex tale of a couple marrying for the sake of their twin daughters, who were separated at birth. The twins and parents are newly reunited in this tender and thought-provoking read. Don’t miss it!
Sherryl Woods hooks readers with this next romance from her miniseries, THE DEVANEYS. In Patrick’s Destiny (SE#1549), an embittered hero falls in love with a gentle woman who helps him heal a rift with his family. Return to the latest branch of popular miniseries, MONTANA MAVERICKS: THE KINGSLEYS, with Moon Over Montana (SE#1550) by Jackie Merritt. Here, an art teacher can’t help but moon over a rugged carpenter who renovates her apartment—and happens to be good with his hands!
We are happy to introduce a multiple-baby-focused series, MANHATTAN MULTIPLES, launched by Marie Ferrarella with And Babies Make Four (SE#1551), which relates how a hardheaded businessman and a sweet-natured assistant, who loved each other in high school, reunite many years later and dive into parenthood. His Brother’s Baby (SE#1553) by Laurie Campbell is the dramatic tale of a woman determined to take care of herself and her baby girl, but what happens when her baby’s handsome uncle falls onto her path? In She’s Expecting (SE#1554) by Barbara McMahon, an ambitious hero is wildly attracted to his new secretary—his new pregnant secretary—but steels himself from mixing business with pleasure.
As you can see, we have a lively batch of stories, delivering the very best in page-turning romance. Happy reading!
Sincerely,
Karen Taylor Richman
Senior Editor
About the Author
Laurie Campbell grew up playing paper dolls with her sister, but spent far less time selecting their clothes than creating situations for the characters to act out. By the time they outgrew paper dolls, the characters were so real that Laurie started writing a book about six beautiful sisters who lived next door to six dashing brothers.
She swears she’ll finish that novel someday. But meanwhile, she enjoys writing about ordinary people in extraordinary situations that could happen to anyone who want the best for those they love.
Laurie spends her weekends writing romance, and her weekdays producing TV commercials for a Phoenix advertising agency.
She also works as a marriage counselor, teaches a catechism class, speaks to writing groups on psychology for creating characters, coaches newly diagnosed diabetics, and spends any free time playing with her husband and teenage son (who helps her solve plot problems).
For getaway weekends, they travel to Arizona’s red-rock country of Sedona…which was named for Laurie’s great-grandmother, Sedona Schnebly.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Prologue
March 12
Not even Kenny could be late to his own wedding.
Could he?
Lucy Velardi dropped her last two quarters into the courthouse pay phone and punched in the number they’d shared for the past five weeks. It was silly to be nervous when he’d probably just missed his flight back to Scottsdale. If she hadn’t left the house early to pick up her dress—a dress that revealed no sign of the reason for this marriage—he would have called to let her know.
Wouldn’t he?
Sure enough, the answering machine held a message in his familiar, lazy voice. “Hey, babe, it’s me. Look, I’m really sorry, but I, uh, I won’t be coming back. I got this chance to play on the Asian tour, and…well, I just don’t think us getting married would be such a good idea after all.”
What?! Lucy almost cried out before realizing the message wasn’t finished yet.
“I mean, I’m really not ready for a baby, you know?” he explained. As if she was ready—but they had until October to prepare. “And once you think it over, I bet you’ll feel the same way…because a baby just wouldn’t work out right now.”
She would never feel that way, no matter how badly this unexpected pregnancy had complicated her life. How could anyone dismiss a baby so casually, so—
“But don’t worry,” Kenny continued, “I’m putting a check in the mail you can use for, uh, taking care of things. Call it a house-sitting payment, okay? Because, listen, you’re welcome to stay in the house until next January.”
He sounded relieved, she realized numbly, as if that offer made everything right. As if all she cared about was his money and his house.
“Nobody ever uses it except for a few weeks after New Year’s,” came his blithe assurance, “so it’s all yours until then. I know you gave up your apartment, but the family really needs a house-sitter, and I bet you’ll do a great job.”
At least she’d have a place to stay until after the baby was born, but what she’d wanted was a family for her baby. For little Matthew, or little Emma—names she’d already begun using in her imagination, because they sounded so good with Tarkington. But now neither she, nor the baby, would share Kenny’s name.
“Anyway,” he concluded, sounding as cheerful as if he’d suddenly finished a difficult task, “I’m really glad I got to know you—we had some great times, huh? Well, take care of yourself…. Bye.”
And that was that.
Lucy held on to the phone receiver, staring blindly at the lobby beyond her. At the flat white wall, the fluorescent light, the cluster of people in line near the door…until a shrill beep in her ear made her realize the message had ended long ago, and her fingers were starting to cramp.
She couldn’t quite draw a full breath, she discovered while hanging up the phone. Couldn’t quite shake the chill from her hands, her lips, her face. Couldn’t quite make herself think, or cry, or even move—although she would have to move, because she couldn’t spend the rest of her life standing here in the courthouse lobby.
But she couldn’t do anything right now except breathe. In short, unsteady gasps. She felt as if she might burst into tears at any moment—which would be a good thing, because tears could be spilled and then forgotten—but right now she was too stunned even to cry. She had never experienced anything too intense for tears before, Lucy realized, anything like this mixture of disbelief and anguish and desperation and—
And, in a way, relief.
Which didn’t make sense, but she needed to hang on to any comfort she could get. Any comfort that would give her the strength to head back to the bus stop for the dismal trip home.
Alone.
No, not alone, she reminded herself as she made her way outside into what felt like blinding sunlight. She still had the baby inside her…a baby who would never hear a word about this day. Who would never know that its father hadn’t wanted a child.
But his belief that she could even consider terminating her pregnancy proved she’d been right in thinking last week, the day before noticing her period was late, that she and Kenny didn’t really belong together after all. Their first three or four weeks had been dizzying; a frenzy of love-at-first-sight exhilaration and passion and fun. But lately, she had begun suspecting that the relationship wouldn’t last.
And that, no matter how much she might have enjoyed the giddy whirlwind of life with a high-flying golfer, because she didn’t really want it to last.
But the baby would never know that, Lucy resolved on a shaky breath as she made her way back to the bus stop bench. Emma or Matthew would hear only the good things about their father, would hear only about the first month when she had loved Kenny.
Because all she could give her child was the comfort of feeling wanted and loved. And no matter what happened, she was going to love this baby.
Her baby.
Hers alone.
Chapter One
November 28
There was a woman in his living room.
And she was tickling a baby.
Before Conner Tarkington could ask how she’d gotten in here and what she was doing on his sofa, the woman shot one startled glance in his direction, grabbed the baby and immediately angled her body to shield the pink-blanketed bundle from view.
“Who are you?” she demanded, rising from the sofa with the baby almost hidden behind her, as if she were facing down an intruder. “How did you get in here?”
Great defense, he had to give her that, Con thought with a mixture of admiration and annoyance. Put the blame on him, act like he was some kind of burglar or something, rather than a bone-weary attorney who’d just flown from Philadelphia to Scottsdale and found a stranger in his family’s house.
“I used my key,” he told her, holding up the platinum key fob his mother had given him last night, after a farewell dinner during which no one even attempted a toast. “Who are you?”
“The house-sitter,” she answered defiantly, although her guarded stance softened a bit at the sight of his carry-on bag. As if she might be willing to consider the possibility that he wasn’t some random invader. “And the Tarkingtons aren’t coming until January. So if you were planning to visit them—”
“I was planning,” Con interrupted, “to bring in my stuff, dump it on the floor and get some sleep.” Nine hours of flying, counting the layover in Chicago, was a small price to pay for escaping the holiday season at home, but it was still nine hours of teeth-gritting torture. He would never admit it to anyone, but flying scared the life out of him, and while the past few weeks of twenty-hour workdays was his own choice, all he’d wanted for the last hour was to collapse into bed.
Alone.
Although, if he were in a mood for company, he couldn’t ask for better than this woman. In spite of her ragged jeans and disheveled tumble of dark curls, she seemed to radiate more sensuality than any woman he’d noticed in a while. But considering the wary suspicion in her eyes, it seemed pretty certain this house-sitter wasn’t a “welcome to Scottsdale” gift.
Not that his law partners would set up that kind of gift, anyway. Not that anyone he knew would—except maybe his brother, and he hadn’t talked to Kenny in months.
“Nobody said the Tarkingtons were expecting a guest,” the woman protested, drawing his attention back to the problem at hand. His family had believed the house was vacant, but she’d obviously appointed herself as some kind of gate-keeper. And when he glanced beyond her to the dining room, where a baby swing rested against the doorway, he realized why.
“Oh, hell,” Con muttered. “You’re living here.”
She didn’t even attempt to deny it, probably because the evidence of a baby in the house was impossible to hide. “Until January,” she confirmed, moving the gurgling baby to her shoulder before repeating her original question. “Who are you?”
He extracted the driver’s license from his calfskin wallet and flashed it at her. If all she wanted was a show of identification, rather than the self-analysis he’d endured when his partners insisted on a shrink, he could answer with no problem. “Conner Tarkington. And you—”
“Conner…” she repeated, and then her face went white. “Tarkington? You’re Kenny’s brother?”
If she knew Kenny, that might explain how she’d gotten in here. Kenny had always attracted the kind of gorgeous women who appreciated fast living and fun times, and this one was beyond gorgeous, with her vivid coloring and soft, full lips. But she wasn’t dressed like the “show ponies” who used to follow Kenny home from golf tournaments. And it was hard to imagine his brother choosing a woman with a baby.
Much less inviting them to stay.
“Yeah,” Con answered, dropping his coat on the chair by the door and watching the color return to her heart-shaped face. “He moved you in here, huh? Told you to make yourself at home?”
She straightened her posture and gave him a cold look. “He told me,” she said, “that his family needed a house-sitter. I’m supposed to leave them the key in January, but…” He saw the moment his look of disbelief must have reached her, because she suddenly faltered and drew a shaky breath. Clutching the baby tighter against her, she whispered, “Oh, no. He was making that up?”
Oh, yeah. Kenny had outdone himself with this one. Instead of sending her off with a charming thanks-for-the-good-time gift, he’d installed her in the Tarkingtons’ vacation home with an imaginary job.
“Look,” Con began, before realizing he didn’t even know this woman’s name, “I’m sorry, uh…”
“Lucy. Lucy Velardi.” Her voice was still very small, but when she shifted the blanket to present the baby—a baby he really didn’t want to look at right now—there was an unmistakable pride in her bearing. “And this is Emma. My daughter.”
Great, so now he had to play bad guy to a woman and a child. It had been almost a year since Kenny’s last discarded girlfriend showed up at Con’s office, but just because he’d been out of touch for a while didn’t mean his brother had suddenly decided to take responsibility for his own messes. No, that was still—as always—Conner’s job.
All right, then. Time to see if he’d retained his skill at smoothing things over during the past six months of rebuilding his life from the bottom up. Time to start the job, get it done…because he already knew there was no sense in delaying a blow.
“Lucy,” he said swiftly, “I’m sorry for whatever my brother told you, but if my family wanted a house-sitter they’d call an agency.” The stricken look in her eyes was all too familiar, but he’d delivered this kind of speech so many times that by now he knew better than to watch the woman receiving it. “I appreciate your looking after the place, but—”
“But it wasn’t a real job,” Lucy interrupted, “was it?”
That was different, Con realized with a flicker of surprise. One more intriguing contrast from the usual show ponies. Normally they protested that Kenny had to be telling the truth when he’d promised them a Porsche or invited them to Hawaii or talked about five-carat engagement rings, because no one had ever shared a love like theirs.
But this woman wasn’t asking for money….
“Well,” he answered, wondering what his brother had promised her, “it’s a real job, in a way.” After all, she had obviously kept the place clean, watered the plants, taken care of whatever the housekeeping service normally handled the day before anyone arrived. “But it’s my job now.” At least until his mother and Warren arrived in January. “So you and Emma can get back to—”
“Right,” she interrupted again, standing up and adjusting the baby’s blanket with a quick, decisive gesture. “Absolutely. We’ll be out of here in no time.”
“You’ve got somewhere else to go, right?” Of course she did, he realized as soon as he’d asked the question, because otherwise she wouldn’t be so ready to leave. Still, any house-sitter deserved more notice than she’d gotten…no matter what she’d already collected from Kenny. “You need any money? I mean, if you’ve been doing this for a while, I owe you—”
“No, you don’t,” Lucy said fiercely, heading for the dining room where a tall stack of envelopes rested against a printer’s box. “Kenny already paid me back in March, and I’ve been addressing envelopes for a temp service, besides. And last week I started the early shift at a diner downtown. They got a Code of Variance, so I can bring Emma. We just—”
“Lucy. Wait a minute.” She was speaking too swiftly, moving too rapidly, and he had the feeling she was balanced on a very thin edge of panic. But when she turned to meet his gaze, he saw nothing but determination in her coffee-brown eyes. “You sure you’re okay? If you need to make some calls, if you need any help—”
“I don’t need any help!” she snapped, shifting the baby from her right arm to her left with a touch as gentle as her posture was rigid. “I take care of myself. And Emma.”
And Emma, right. The baby he still wasn’t letting himself contemplate looked surprisingly small against Lucy’s trim yellow T-shirt, although he couldn’t remember exactly how big a baby was supposed to be. Had Bryan ever been so—
Don’t go there.
“All right, then,” Con answered her as well as himself. He had to stay focused on action, not on his son. “I’ve got some stuff to bring in, but let me know if you need any help, uh, lifting a suitcase or anything,” he concluded. “All right?”
Lucy fixed him with a steely glare. “Look, I don’t know how much clearer I can make this,” she said evenly, “but I am not taking anything, any help, from any Tarkingtons.”
From the fury with which she practically spit his name, Kenny must have really done a number on her. Which meant that, unlike the women who hinted about Porsches, she must have given her heart completely….
God, she must’ve loved him.
His brother had spent the past four years breaking hearts all over the PGA tour, but never the heart of a woman like this one. A woman who obviously wasn’t in it for the money, who wasn’t clamoring for some kind of reward. No, this naturally sensuous, vibrantly fascinating woman had loved Kenny Tarkington.
A fact which left Conner feeling curiously regretful.
“‘Feelings are our friends,’ remember?”
“I hear you,” he acknowledged, mentally shoving his therapist’s reminder aside. He didn’t need—or want—any feelings right now, not while dealing with yet another woman his brother had abandoned. A woman who, unlike the usual two-month girlfriends, must have believed Kenny’s glib promises of love…and who needed to know there was little chance of him returning anytime soon. “Last I heard, Kenny was playing the Asian tour.”
“Well, he can stay in Asia,” Lucy retorted, with a flush of color that seemed to light her entire body. “And you can stay, uh, here. In your house. Emma and I will be out in no time.” She whirled toward the table, picked up a stack of envelopes and shoved it into the box, then turned back to him with a final plea. “Just do like you said. Get your stuff, dump it on the floor, and…and go to bed. Okay?”
She wasn’t going to watch Conner Tarkington bring in whatever luggage he’d left in his million-dollar car. Or watch him unpack in the luxurious master bedroom she’d kept scrupulously untouched. No, Lucy vowed as she headed for the guest room, she was going to grab a change of clothes, Emma’s freshly washed diapers and her milk from the kitchen, then get out of here before the last fragile shreds of her pride collapsed.
Her friend Shawna had offered to make room on the couch for overnight guests, and Shawna’s husband Jeff could pick them up when he got off work at midnight. So all Lucy needed to do was pack whatever she could carry to the nearest all-night donut shop, and wrap the baby in enough sweaters to keep her warm during the walk…because she sure wasn’t going to wait around here.
Not after vowing to raise her daughter with the hard-won knowledge that accepting men’s favors was stupid.
But Conner Tarkington wasn’t making it easy to concentrate on packing. Maybe he wasn’t deliberately trying to distract her—he seemed intent on nothing but the trek indoors and out and back again, with a laptop computer and a series of airline-labeled file boxes—but in spite of his haggard face and crumpled executive shirt, the man looked incredibly good.
And she had no business thinking that way.
So the sooner she got out of here, the better. “We’re going to be fine,” Lucy told Emma, folding a dozen cloth diapers into her pink-plaid bag. She still hadn’t saved enough for a move-in deposit, and asking for help from Kenny’s brother was out of the question, but there was no sense in worrying her daughter. “Because Shawna—you remember her, she’s got those blond corn-row braids—will let us spend the night at her place, and tomorrow Mommy’s going to find another job.”
The diner had been perfect, because she could keep an eye on Emma while fixing sandwiches for businesspeople, but it didn’t pay as well as the upscale restaurant she’d worked at until February. She had quit waitressing when Kenny wanted to spend more time together, although she’d returned to work the day after his farewell message. But by then it was already too late to qualify for health insurance, which made it all the more frightening when she was ordered to stay in bed or lose the baby.
Still, with the rent taken care of, she’d been able to devote every envelope-addressing paycheck to the medical, grocery and utility bills—and to start a meager savings account for moving out in January.
Which was still five weeks away.
“We’re just moving a little early,” she assured her daughter, tucking the flap of the bag into place and heading for the kitchen. “Not into the trailer park with the nice trees, because that costs more, but tomorrow we’ll look in the paper and find, uh, somebody who wants a roommate with a seven-week-old baby. A wonderful baby.”
Emma gurgled as Lucy kissed her forehead, and when she closed the refrigerator door she saw Conner depositing another armload of boxes on the dining-room table. “We’re almost out of here,” she called, and he turned around.
It was bizarre, she thought with a guilty flicker of awareness, how much the man looked like Kenny. Dark hair instead of blond, but the essentials were unchanged. The same rugged build, the same cleft in his chin, the same vivid blue eyes…except Conner’s gaze was harder. Darker.
More intriguing.
And it was a little unnerving to realize that some ancient, feminine part of her still found that look of effortless privilege so…so… Well, so attractive.
“Sure you don’t need any help?” Conner asked, and she flinched. On the surface his question was perfectly polite, but she knew what lay beneath it. She had seen the weary resignation on his face when he told her there’d never been a job, and she knew what he must be thinking. Here’s some good-time girl who fell into a gold mine.
Just like her mother…
“No,” Lucy answered abruptly, heading back toward her room for the stack of sweaters. “We’re fine.” She didn’t need to remember her mother right now, not with such a humiliating parallel staring her right in the face. When she’d begun supporting herself halfway through high school, she had vowed that Lucy Velardi would either pay for her own dance lessons or go without. That she would never, ever depend on the generosity of men with expense accounts and wives back home.
Until all of a sudden she’d let herself move in with a celebrity golf pro who spent money like water.
But at least Kenny wasn’t married.
Oh, God, was he?
He could have lied about that, too, Lucy realized with a sickening lurch in her stomach. They hadn’t spent much time discussing family, which at the time had suited her fine, but surely he would have mentioned a wife.
Wouldn’t he?
After all, he had mentioned a “big-time responsible” brother and a mother “who about died when my brother got divorced,” and he was the one who’d blithely suggested a quick wedding at the courthouse when the pregnancy test turned blue.
So she hadn’t fallen in love with a married man, Lucy decided, standing up straight and surveying the room one last time. Just a scumbag…which was Shawna’s description of the man who’d never once called to ask whether Lucy had given birth to a daughter or a son. The man who probably still hoped she’d gotten rid of his baby.
A hope which justified her refusal to ever contact him again. Although if she had, maybe she would’ve been warned about the arrival of his brother…a beautifully mannered attorney who probably suspected her of using Kenny for whatever she could get.
“He’s not thinking that,” she knew Shawna would protest, but Shawna hadn’t seen the grim set of his jaw when she announced that Kenny had already paid her. Maybe she was overly sensitive at times, but there was no mistaking the rueful look on Conner Tarkington’s face.
Shouldering the diaper bag and wrapping her baby in the pile of sweaters on top, Lucy headed for the front door and found Conner just coming inside with his keys in hand. “That’s the last of it,” he told her, holding the door for them with the kind of reflexive grace she supposed Cinderella’s prince might have shown. Then he stopped, as if only now realizing she was on her way out. “Lucy, where’s your car?”
That was a question she hadn’t expected. She’d been more prepared for a request to examine her bag for stolen silver, although that might be a little crude for someone as well-bred as this man. But instead, he was looking at her with startled concern, as if he couldn’t imagine leaving the house without a car waiting in the driveway.
“I don’t need one,” she said, balancing Emma against her shoulder with one hand while extracting the house key from her purse and holding it out to him. If she could just maintain this confident tone of voice, just let him report to his brother that Lucy Velardi was doing fine… “Tomorrow I’ll come get the rest of our stuff.”
“You—” He glanced from the key to her, then at the sleeping baby, and the frown in his dark blue eyes deepened. “Is somebody picking you up?”
What, all of a sudden he was worried about them walking in a neighborhood like this one? She’d never lived anywhere as luxurious as this secluded enclave of golf villas, not since leaving her mother and Mr. “I’m In Charge Here” the year she’d turned sixteen. “No, we’re going right down the street,” Lucy said, nodding toward the distant lights of Hayden Road, where the donut shop stayed open around the clock.
“At this time of night?” Conner sounded horrified, and he still wasn’t taking the key she held out. “I’m not throwing you and a baby out in the street!”
Maybe not technically, but from the moment he’d broken the news that the Tarkingtons had never requested a house-sitter, there was no other choice. Still, he looked troubled by the realization that she and Emma were actually planning to walk away. “You’re not throwing us out,” she told him, setting the key on the stucco wall that bordered the porch. “We’re leaving.”
“Lucy, wait a minute. I didn’t mean for—” With a swift gesture into the house, he pushed the front door open wider. “Look, there’s plenty of room. Why don’t you stay the night, and in the morning I’ll take you wherever you want.”
That was an unexpectedly generous offer, and it was silly to argue with him when the two-mile walk seemed longer and heavier every minute. Still, her pride wouldn’t allow a complete surrender. “In the morning, I can get the bus.”
He gave her a slight smile, as if conceding that she could take care of herself just fine. “All right. But I’ll tell you the truth,” Conner said, reaching to pick up her discarded key and dropping it on the table just inside the door. “I really don’t want to stay up all night worrying about you. And Emma.”
Oh.
Well…
When he put it that way, Lucy decided, staying one more night in the Tarkingtons’ home seemed like a pretty reasonable choice. And it would certainly make things easier than waiting with Emma at the donut shop. All she needed to do was return to the guest room where she’d spent the past eight months, and remember that nobody could lose their independence by accepting only one night of hospitality.
“All right,” she said, stepping back inside as Conner turned off the porch light and checked the front door deadbolt…the same rituals she’d performed every night since returning here alone in March. “Thank you.”
“No problem.” He started down the hall toward the master bedroom, then turned back. “You can lock your door if you want,” he suggested, and as his dark gaze met hers she realized with a sudden, startling flicker of warmth that they both knew how very little space lay between their bedrooms. “But just so you know, I’m going right to sleep.”
“Good night,” was the only response she could think of, and as soon as she delivered it Lucy ducked into her own room to catch her breath. Lock her door? As if she hadn’t learned a long time ago to protect herself from whatever she had to? It was sweet of him, in a way, to act like she needed such a promise—like she was some blushing virgin who’d never dream of spending the night in a stranger’s house—but she knew perfectly well that a stranger as respectable as Conner Tarkington would never approach her door.
Still, his attempt at reassurance was endearing. And somehow, oddly satisfying. Because it showed that, at least on some inner level, he was as aware of her as she was of him.
Not that anything would come of such awareness, she reminded herself after phoning Shawna and canceling the request for a place to stay. A blue-blood lawyer would probably never look beyond the surface of a woman he viewed as a gold digger…and it wasn’t like she wanted him to! No matter how ruggedly attractive Conner Tarkington might be, no matter how unexpectedly nice he might be, she wasn’t letting herself wonder about him.
But as she put Emma to sleep in the blanket-padded bureau drawer on the floor beside her twin bed, she had to remind herself with increasing severity that she was not going to think about this man. About his intriguing combination of challenge and compassion. About the same compelling gaze and instinctive self-assurance that had drawn her to Kenny in the first place.
No, she wasn’t letting herself make such a mistake again. Ever. Because she now understood the danger in noticing the raw, elemental appeal of a man like that.
It had been far too easy to fall in love with a Tarkington.
And it had cost far too much.
Coffee.
He needed coffee.
Conner opened his eyes and felt a moment’s disorientation at the sight of the white stucco ceiling before remembering where he was. The Scottsdale vacation villa, right…which would explain why this room seemed so much lighter than the oak-paneled office where he’d woken up too often lately, before vowing to limit his workdays to twelve hours or less.
Still, there was always coffee in the kitchen at Weller-Tarkington-Craig, where the more ambitious junior partners arrived by dawn. And judging from the light on the ceiling, it had to be past dawn. More like—he blinked at the watch on his bedside table—seven-thirty in the morning?
God, had he really slept that late? There was no excuse for it, not on his first day of setting up The Bryan Foundation. Even though he’d pushed himself harder than usual these past few weeks, completing and reassigning cases to cover his leave until January fifteenth, sleeping until seven-thirty in the morning was unforgivable.
He’d better get that coffee fast.
It didn’t take long to shower, shave and dress for a day with no appointments, and by seven-forty Conner was heading for the kitchen—when the lusty squeal of a baby woke him more effectively than a jolt of caffeine.
A baby…?
Emma, he remembered.
And Lucy.
He found them in the living room, where Lucy was just bundling her daughter into a quilted carrier. “You must’ve been wiped out, to sleep through all the noise this morning,” she observed, picking up her own denim jacket with the same easy grace he remembered from last night. “Emma’s been up since five.”
Con vaguely remembered hearing an infant’s shrill cry sometime during the night, but the sound must have been absorbed into some dream. Still, it had made him wonder again why Kenny had chosen someone with a baby to keep him company during the Phoenix Open.
Although the baby couldn’t be more than a few weeks old, so she wouldn’t have been around at the time.
And Kenny had probably been dazzled by Lucy’s sparkling energy, which Conner had to admit was even more enticing after a full night’s sleep. This morning she wore her wild curls pulled severely off her face and a conservative white shirt tucked into khaki slacks, as if dressed for a job interview, but there was still no hiding her vibrant, vivid beauty.
“No kidding,” he muttered, wondering if she was seriously planning a job interview at this hour of the morning. “I guess you didn’t need coffee to wake up, huh?”
Lucy grinned apologetically as she shouldered the pink diaper bag resting on the table beside the front door. “There isn’t any coffee,” she told him. “I quit drinking it while I was pregnant, and the past week I’ve been getting it at the diner.”
Oh, hell. “Where’s the diner?”
“Emma and I were just on the way there,” she answered, which made him remember that she’d mentioned a weekday shift someplace. “The bus comes at eight, so—”
“I’ll take you,” Con offered, bracing himself for more time with the baby. “As long as I can get a cup of coffee there.”
Starting coffee was her first task of the day, Lucy assured him, because she had the place to herself for lunch setup until the owner arrived at nine. So within a remarkably short time he found himself at the polished plastic counter of an old-fashioned diner, taking his first, sustaining gulp from the thick white mug she handed him.
“You’re a lifesaver,” he told her as she poured another mug for herself and pulled a handful of flimsy paper placemats from under the counter. “I have to remember to pick up some coffee on the way home.”
“Next best thing to a baby when you need to wake up,” she agreed, deftly spreading placemats from the far end of the eight-seat counter to his side, where the baby carrier rested. “Isn’t it, Emmie?”
The baby responded with a perfectly timed coo, jubilantly waving her fists from the depths of her carrier. It was easier than he’d expected, Conner realized, watching Emma’s look of rapt attention—a wide-eyed fascination he hadn’t remembered from last night. “She’s a morning person, huh?”
“Yeah,” Lucy agreed, tweaking her daughter’s fist with a smile of pure enjoyment, “and I don’t know where she gets that.” She picked up her coffee, then rested the mug on the counter so she could look at both the baby and him as she took her first sip. “I’ve always been a night person, and her dad…” She shrugged, as if Emma’s dad was the type who had never watched a sunrise. “Well, you know Kenny.”
Kenny?
Conner almost choked on a mouthful of coffee. That piece of news, delivered so offhandedly that Lucy evidently viewed it as common knowledge, explained a lot. His brother’s abrupt departure for Asia, Lucy’s haunted look when she mentioned that Kenny had already paid her, and most of all the reason she’d been offered this house-sitting job in the first place. But for Kenny to install her in the family home and then just walk out…
“Does he know about Emma?” Con demanded.
Lucy’s eyes darkened with what looked like a flash of hurt. “I haven’t talked to him since March,” she answered flatly. She picked up the baby, who was still waving both fists, and cradled her gently against her shoulder without meeting Con’s gaze. “He didn’t want her, and I don’t want him involved.”
But if Kenny had said he didn’t want Emma, which wasn’t hard to believe, then he’d obviously known about the baby. And while it was bad enough to walk out on a woman, it was something else altogether to ignore a child.
You did the same thing, remember?
“Well, even so,” Con observed, moving from the shaky ground of threatening emotion to the reliable bedrock of fact, “he’s got some responsibility, here.”
It wasn’t until Lucy’s posture stiffened that he realized he’d struck another sore spot…either that, or a source of fear. Not that Kenny would ever demand visitation rights, but maybe Lucy didn’t realize that.
“Not actually raising Emma,” he hurried to explain, “but at least paying his share.”
The explanation didn’t seem to make much difference in the rigid set of her shoulders. “I don’t want that, either. Just leave it alone, all right?”
“But…”
She turned the baby even closer to her, so that Conner could see nothing of his niece but a soft pink blanket, and glared at him. “Emma is mine, and I don’t need anyone else getting involved!”
Making things better would be a serious challenge, he realized, considering that no one except himself was unhappy with the status quo. Kenny obviously hadn’t cared to follow up on his child, and Lucy just as obviously didn’t want any assistance.
In fact, she seemed almost panicked at the very idea.
“All right,” Con said. A courteous withdrawal was always a safe delaying tactic, and it might take a while to locate Kenny on the Asian tour. Meanwhile, he would have to arrange for child-support payments until his brother showed up. But before he could find an acceptable way of phrasing such an offer, Lucy surprised him once again.
“I mean it,” she insisted, facing him across the counter with such intensity in her gaze that he wondered for a moment whether she had guessed his plan. “As far as Kenny’s concerned, I could’ve gotten rid of her and he’d be fine with that. So he’s got no business in Emma’s life—and neither do you.”
“All right,” Conner repeated, more loudly this time. “Lucy, I hear you. I won’t fight you for the right to change her diaper.”
For once, he saw, he’d hit exactly the right note, and he was rewarded with her sudden, sheepish smile. “Okay, then,” she said, giving Emma another gentle squeeze before returning her to the baby carrier, taking another gulp of coffee and picking up a handful of flatware. “I didn’t mean to jump on you like that. I just…”
“You’ve just got this thing,” Con finished for her, “about taking care of yourself.”
She regarded him thoughtfully for a moment, as if searching for some trick in his statement. But she evidently didn’t find anything to disagree with, because she gave him another smile…the kind, he imagined, that would make anyone within view feel suddenly lighter. More energized. “Exactly,” she said, laying a white-handled spoon, fork and knife on the first placemat to his left. “So, what are you doing today, anyway? Playing golf?”
It was a reasonable question, Conner acknowledged, gulping the last of his coffee a little faster than he’d meant to and forcing himself to concentrate on business instead of her smile. Why else would a Philadelphia lawyer spend the holiday season alone in Scottsdale, if not to soak up the sunshine on a resort course?
“No,” he answered, moving to the coffee machine to refill his mug and gesturing a warm-up offer at her. “I came here to get some work done.” Not to mention a fierce desire to escape the memories of Christmas at home. “I figured I’ll turn the dining room into an office for the next six weeks. What about you?”
She looked surprised at the question, which reminded him that she was already planning today’s move—a move she’d better forget, Conner realized, because he couldn’t very well throw his brother’s baby out of the family home. No, Lucy and Emma were entitled to stay there, assuming she wouldn’t mind sharing a roof with Kenny’s brother.
“I’m going to find an extra job,” Lucy answered, sliding her mug down the counter for him to refill without letting their fingers touch. Just as well. You’re not going there. “This time of year, everybody’s hiring.”
She sounded remarkably confident, which made him guess she was no stranger to the process of job-hunting. And of course that made sense. A dedicated career woman wouldn’t have time to follow a pro golfer—even one as entertaining as Kenny—from party to party. No matter how earnestly he might have promised to love her forever.
Damn, Lucy deserved better than that….
“So as soon as we find a place,” she continued, accepting the freshened coffee he slid back to her with a nod of thanks and gathering another set of flatware, “I’ll come get the rest of my stuff out of your way. I’ll call first and see if you’re home, or out on… What kind of work are you here for?”
“A foundation,” Conner said, forcing his attention toward business as he returned to his seat. She obviously didn’t think Kenny’s family owed her a place to stay, but he couldn’t turn his back on a baby. “My partners talked me into taking some leave from the law firm, so I can get it done before I go back in January.”
“A foundation?” she repeated, looking so bewildered that he wondered whether Kenny had mentioned anything about the past two years. “Like for charity?”
“It’s a memorial.” The words came harder than he expected, but he knew better than to let the guilt over Bryan linger. No, he had to focus on what he could do right now. “There’s a lot of work involved up front, and that’s what I’m starting today.”
Or at least, that was what he’d planned to start today. But first, Con knew, he needed to figure out some way of making things right for his brother’s child.
Which, given Lucy’s determination not to accept anything from the Tarkingtons, might present a problem.
“Foundations give money to people, right?” Lucy asked, returning to the flatware bin at his end of the counter and setting down her coffee a safe distance from Emma’s carrier. “How much work does it take for you to write checks?”
Not nearly enough, which was why he’d set himself the task of creating The Bryan Foundation in the first place. Only by using every skill he possessed, not just every dollar, could he say that he had come to terms with his son’s death. That he was ready to move on with his life.
A life with no more false promises. To himself, or to anyone else.
“First,” Conner explained, “I have to organize the groundwork. Today I’m calling a temp agency…” And then, with a sudden jolt of triumph, he flashed on a solution to the problem of Lucy’s pride. “I’ve got to find someone who can help with the clerical stuff,” he told her in the same cordial tone he’d use with any potential employee. Thinking of her as an employee should make it considerably easier to keep his mind on business…and that was the only responsible choice he could make. “Typing envelopes, copying proposals, that kind of thing.”
Lucy was watching him warily, but there was no mistaking the interest on her face—so he might as well finish the offer.
“Is that,” Con asked her, “something you could do? Whenever you finish here?”
She hesitated. “I’ve done office work, sure. But I already know about the Tarkingtons and phony job offers.”
“This one’s real,” Conner retorted, trying not to show any annoyance. Such caution was understandable, considering what Kenny had pulled. “If you don’t want the job, that’s fine, but I’ve got to hire somebody. And I’d rather it was someone I know.”
He’d intended all along to hire someone for a few weeks of office work, and maybe she saw the truth of that in his eyes, because she frowned in concentration. “How much would it pay?”
“Not that much,” he answered slowly. If he tried to offer her something too generous, she’d go back to insisting she didn’t need any help and probably wind up in some fleabag apartment. “Minimum wage. But I’d like to get someone who can be on call if the job runs late, or stay as long as it takes….” Then another brainstorm struck. “So of course I’d throw in the guest room.”
Lucy stared at him in disbelief. “You’re making this up.”
“I’m not my brother!” Which was a stupid reaction, Conner knew. It was pointless to feel any flicker of hurt, because he shouldn’t care what this woman thought of him. “I’m offering you a straight, up-front deal,” he concluded. “You take care of the office work, and you and Emma can stay at the house until January fifteenth.”
It wasn’t going to be an easy sell, he knew as soon as Lucy folded her arms across her chest. “Why?” she demanded, glancing from him to Emma. “Just because she’s your niece?”
Because taking care of family was the kind of habit no one ever outgrew.
Because, like it or not, he’d spent a lifetime cleaning up after his brother.
Because if he turned his back on yet another responsibility, Conner Tarkington might as well check out.
“That’s partly it,” he told Lucy. After all, his responsibilities now included his brother’s baby. And as long as he didn’t allow himself any distractions from Bryan’s memorial, he could handle six weeks with a woman who made him feel more alive, more aware than he’d felt in a long time. “But I also want to get this foundation up and running, and I’ll need some help to get it done by January. So do we have a deal?”
She met his eyes, and the gaze lingered for a long moment before she drew a deep breath and reached forward to offer a handshake he wouldn’t have dared to suggest himself.
“All right,” she said as Con accepted her small, strong hand and felt the warmth of her skin radiate through every cell of his body. “Yes. We have a deal.”
Chapter Two
They had a deal, Lucy reminded herself two days later as she inserted another sheet of letterhead into the printer and watched The Bryan Foundation logo slide toward the tray. She gave Conner neatly typed letters, he gave her a paycheck and a place to stay. That was all.
Their deal didn’t require him to act like family, to enjoy playing with Emma instead of keeping a careful distance whenever the baby was awake. It didn’t require him to act like anything more than a housemate who traded cooking and grocery-shopping duties with her, and who didn’t go beyond the light conversation they shared during breakfasts and dinners at the kitchen counter. It didn’t even require him to answer a simple question like, “Why do you call this The Bryan Foundation?”
But every time she remembered his response to that question—“It’s a long story. Do you have the investor list?”—she found herself gritting her teeth. If he didn’t even want to tell her how he’d named a foundation which provided after-school care for children, there was obviously never going to be much of a friendship, here.
Not that she cared, Lucy reminded herself as she glanced at the baby carrier, where Emma seemed enchanted with the pulsing concerto she’d put on the CD player. Not that she even wanted to be friends with Conner Tarkington. It was just hard to share a house and a dining-room office with someone who stayed so remote all the time…except for that one, never-mentioned flash of awareness between them, the night he’d mentioned locking her door.
Then she heard the front door slam, which meant he was back already. “Lucy, can I Fed-Ex that proposal tonight?” Conner called, and she hastily turned her attention to the page emerging from the computer printer.
“They close at five-thirty,” she told him, and as Con came into the office he glanced at his Rolex watch.
“Damn, I guess not.”
But he said it calmly, the way he said everything else. Wednesday evening, when she had whooped with exhilaration over finally getting the new fax machine to send pages, he had barely nodded. And yesterday afternoon, when the computer swallowed the addresses she wanted and Lucy had burst into tears, his only response had been a quiet suggestion that she call someone to recover the data.
It was probably that very lack of emotion which made the man so incredibly good at business, Lucy suspected. And while she couldn’t help wishing he’d let himself relax once in a while, she had to admit there was something impressive about his detached professionalism, his innate confidence that things would go exactly the way he wanted. No one who dealt with Conner Tarkington would ever have to worry about him changing his mind or backing out of a promise.
She could handle her end of their deal just as professionally, she knew, the same as anyone he might have hired from the temp service. Although, Lucy admitted, as the CD player in the living room began a lush violin solo, maybe a temp wouldn’t answer phone calls while dancing to the Tarkingtons’ music collection….
Conner reached for the message slips she handed him, then halted momentarily as the violin’s melody soared. “Thanks,” he said, but in his voice she could hear a thread of tension. “What’s that?”
“I can turn it down,” she offered. Maybe Con was one of those people who couldn’t think with noise in the background, but the sound wasn’t loud enough to disturb Emma. “Or do you just not like music?”
He hesitated, and she saw his knuckles whiten as he tightened his grip on the messages. “It doesn’t bother me,” he muttered. “It’s just… Do you have anything else?”
“Practically everything,” she told him. “You should know, it’s your family’s collection.” But now that she thought of it, Lucy realized, over the past few days she hadn’t noticed him anywhere near the cabinet of jazz, big band, classical and contemporary CDs in the living room. “Are you sure you don’t mind music?”
Conner squared his shoulders, picked up the portable phone from the dining room table and then met her gaze straight on. “I’ve been on the board of the Philadelphia Orchestra First-Nighters,” he answered gruffly, “for the past six years.”
That didn’t really answer her question, but she sensed there was no point in asking anything more. Whatever bothered Conner Tarkington about music, it wasn’t something he intended to share with her.
“Good for you,” she told him instead, and noticed the slight relaxation of his neck muscles…as if he hadn’t expected such matter-of-fact acceptance of that curious tension. “That’s one more nice thing,” she offered, “I can tell Emma about her family.”
If he appreciated how easily she’d switched the conversation to neutral ground, he didn’t show any sign of it. “What, the Tarkingtons?”
“Well, you know, kids need to hear good things about where they came from.” Which meant never saying their father had been a scumbag…not that she could say such a thing to Conner, in any case. He seemed like the kind of person who believed in family loyalty, and that was all the more reason to remember her vow of speaking well about Emma’s dad. “I already saved the articles that talked about Kenny in the Phoenix Open.”
Crumpling the message slips onto his side of the desk, he set the phone down harder than necessary. “No kidding.”
“For when she’s older, I mean.” Emma would grow up hearing only the best about a talented golf pro who needed to travel the world…the same reassuring generalities Lucy’d heard about a guitarist who had played twenty-six years ago at some festival in Santa Fe. “She needs to know I—” Lucy swallowed, wishing the statement didn’t take so much effort. “I fell in love with him the first time we met.”
Conner stayed very still for a moment, then flexed his shoulders under the white broadcloth shirt that made him look like an ad for some old-money tailor. “Right,” he said abruptly. “I figured that.” With a quick gesture, he grabbed his stack of letters from the printer and sat down across from her at the dining room table. “So how come you won’t take any help from him?”
She’d been prepared for doubt, but not for such a challenge. “We had this conversation already,” Lucy protested, trying not to notice the hard muscles of his shoulders as he reached across the table for his pen. She didn’t want any more Tarkingtons in her life, but sometimes watching Kenny’s brother made it difficult to remember that.
“You want Emma to have the best of everything, right?” he persisted, picking up his monogrammed silver pen as if it were an ordinary felt-tip. “You want her to hear good stories about her father….”
“She will!”
Con drew the first letter into position and fixed her with a challenging gaze. “So why do you want your daughter to have stories, but not child support?”
He made it hard to argue with him, Lucy realized, hard to think why he might be wrong. But he was wrong about Emma needing anything from Kenny’s family. “Because,” she answered, “I can support her myself.”
Conner signed the letter with his usual swift, almost illegible scrawl, and folded it into the envelope she’d left beside him. Only then did he offer a flat objection. “Not like the Tarkingtons can.”
Maybe not in terms of money, but… “It’s not about money, all right?” she protested. It was about love, about family, about building a home where children were cherished. “If Kenny doesn’t care about her, then why would your family? I mean, from what he said, it doesn’t sound like you’re all that close.”
Con closed his eyes for a moment, as if weighing a series of potential arguments and rejecting each one. “We aren’t,” he admitted finally. “But it’s not like we fight or anything. I mean, we get along whenever we see each other.”
“When was the last time your whole family saw each other?”
His expression didn’t change in the slightest, but she saw his shoulder muscles tighten as he signed the next letter. “My mom’s wedding, I guess,” he answered while folding the pages. “She remarried a few years ago.”
Kenny hadn’t mentioned that, although if he’d tried to share life stories about their mothers she would have quickly changed the subject. “Is your dad…” she began, and Con answered before she could finish the question.
“He died when I was twelve.”
She had learned firsthand how amazingly hard it was to lose a parent, but there was a world of difference between such a loss at twelve and at twenty-three. “Oh, Conner, I’m sorry.” Lack of family was even worse at this time of year, as the calendar moved from November to December. “So on holidays, you… What are you doing for Christmas?”
“Nothing.” He must have heard how stark that answer sounded, because he offered a quick amendment. “Working. But you don’t need to stick around.”
Darn right she wasn’t going to stick around—she’d already made her plans for the holiday. But nobody should be alone at Christmas! “Emma and I are spending the day with Shawna and Jeff,” she offered. “You’re welcome to come, if you’d like.”
Although he smiled in response, she suspected Conner had no intention of accepting such an invitation. “Well, thanks,” he said noncommittally, handing her the stack of envelopes. “Anyway, these need to get out.”
Okay, fine. Maybe he really didn’t want anyone in his life, even during the holidays. After all, not everybody enjoyed the kind of close relationship that Lucy wanted for herself and Emma. Yet still, it troubled her that Conner seemed so detached from not only his family, but from the rest of the world as well. Because, although she’d taken calls from acquaintances suggesting a round of golf, a lunch or dinner when he had the time, even a Riverdance performance that Lucy would have shrieked to accept, he declined them all with impersonal courtesy and concentrated on his work.
Even on Saturday, which appalled her. “It’s the weekend!” she protested when she found him at the computer shortly after sunrise the next morning. “Don’t tell me you work Saturdays, too.”
He gave her an unapologetic glance. “Yeah, pretty much. But if you need the weekend off, take it. I just need to finish some planning while there’s nobody calling in.”
Her own plan was to take Emma shopping—well, window-shopping, because she couldn’t justify buying any gifts—but even so, they spent a pleasant few hours strolling the shops at Scottsdale Fashion Square. When they came home and found Conner still in the office, Lucy gazed in disbelief at the untouched stack of folders beside him. This was getting way out of hand.
“Conner,” she announced, tweaking the lid of his laptop computer, “it’s time to take a break. I mean it. Come to the park with Emma and me.”
He looked at her strangely for a moment, as if returning from an impenetrable gulf of time or space. “Uh…” he mumbled, glancing at his watch. She saw the look of surprise dart across his face, then felt a rush of triumph when Con slowly rose to his feet. “Yeah, okay,” he answered. “Thanks.”
Conner knew she was right. He needed a break. He’d spent the past three hours engulfed in memories, engulfed in guilt, and that was a dangerous habit even without any scotch in the house.
But even so, it took him a moment to save the document on his computer screen, to flex the stiffness from his shoulders and to return his full attention to the present. Saturday afternoon. Scottsdale. A trip to the park.
With Lucy…
“We can walk there,” she told him. “It’s right up the street, and it’s really nice out.”
She must have been out walking already, he noticed, because her cheeks were flushed with color. But the weather was evidently warm enough that she hadn’t taken a coat, so he followed her and Emma outside in his long-sleeved rugby shirt and inhaled the fresh December air.
“Thanks,” he told Lucy again, stretching his arms behind his back and feeling the muscles shift into place. Her invitation was all the more welcome because he’d spent the past week maintaining a formal distance between them, and yet here she’d taken it on herself to offer a gesture of friendship. “I needed to get out for a while.”
“Darn right,” she agreed, tucking a baby blanket between Emma and her loose green sweater, then flashed him a challenging glance. “Don’t you ever do anything besides work?”
“Not lately,” Con said, wishing he could set aside his sense of responsibility for the next hour or two. But that wouldn’t be fair to a woman who’d already been abandoned by his brother, and Lucy didn’t seem inclined to pursue the question. Instead she transferred Emma to her shoulder and pointed toward the west.
“The park’s right across the street, practically. They have a lake, and a soccer field…Emma’s never been, but I think she’ll get a kick out of it. Last week I saw a bunch of kids playing there.”
It seemed wildly optimistic to believe that Emma would enjoy playing with other kids—she couldn’t be more than six weeks old—but he wasn’t going to mention that. Instead he observed, “She might need a few more years before you give her a soccer ball.”
Lucy grinned at him. “Did you ever play soccer, growing up? Or was your whole family into golf?”
Her quick pace was a pleasure to match, and already her sparkling energy seemed to have jump-started his own, which was happening far too often lately. “Kenny was the golfer,” he answered, hoping the conversation would stay on sports rather than on the Tarkingtons. “I mostly ran track.”
“What did your mom do?”
It took him a moment to remember. “She played tennis.”
“How about your dad?”
He drank.
“Golf,” Conner said, choosing the simplest answer. After all, his dad had still been a member of the Philadelphia Cricket Club when he wrapped his car around a Schuylkill River boathouse at ninety miles an hour. “He would’ve been proud seeing Kenny make the tour.”
“I bet he would’ve been proud of you, too,” Lucy observed, pushing a stray cluster of dark curls behind her shoulder. “I mean, you’re a lawyer and everything.”
“Well, everybody in the family’s a lawyer.” This was a safer line of conversation, one he’d used with dozens of women over the years. He had discovered during his first semester at Cornell that there was something appealing in the notion of eldest sons carrying on the family tradition, which made it useful for impressing women without moving beyond the surface.
Not that he cared about impressing Lucy….
The hell he didn’t.
“Do you miss it?” Lucy asked, and it took him a startled moment to realize she must be asking about his practice.
“Yeah, it’ll be good to get back.” His partners had already covered for him longer than he had any right to expect, but they’d agreed to another six weeks of leave. And by the time he returned with The Bryan Foundation up and running, Conner knew, he’d be able to live with himself again. Next year, he could face the holiday season with his soul intact. “But I have to get the foundation started.”
She wrinkled her forehead, as if calculating feasible workloads, which reminded him once again that this vividly emotional woman was a lot smarter than he’d expected. “Couldn’t you start your foundation and do your lawyer stuff at the same time?”
Even if he’d been willing to face another Christmas in Philadelphia, that would have required more time than he possessed. At least he’d learned that much from the therapist his partners had insisted on, after discovering he’d spent eighty-two consecutive hours at his desk.
“No,” Con answered, letting her precede him out the community gate and trying not to let his eyes linger on the naturally sensual way she walked. “Only so many hours in a day.”
“And some of them,” Lucy announced with a nod at the grassy park across the street, where clusters of people were enjoying the afternoon sunshine, “you have to spend enjoying.”
He knew that, Conner reminded himself, with a twinge of envy at how easily she moved from business to pleasure and back again. He tended to forget the importance of taking time to play catch, feed the ducks, all those things the people across the street were doing. All the things he could do once the foundation was complete. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“I don’t want to sound like I’m bossing you around,” she said as they waited for a break in traffic. “But working as much as you do…I don’t think it’s very good for you. I think you need to take more breaks.”
When was the last time, Con wondered, anyone outside the firm had worried about him like that? All this time he’d been keeping his distance from Lucy, she must have been noticing far more of his habits than he realized. And it was endearing that she cared enough to try and straighten him out.
That she saw him as…well, as a friend.
“You’re right,” he said again, letting his mind explore the concept of friendship and realizing that it could work out fine. Just because she loved his brother was no reason they couldn’t be friends. “Once the foundation’s up and running, I’ll make more time for fun.”
Lucy shifted Emma to her other shoulder as a distant group of golfers strolled toward the adjacent course. “I bet you’d enjoy playing golf if you ever got back into it,” she offered, evidently guessing how quickly he’d always neglected his periodic vows to relax more often. “Kenny said you guys used to play together.”
Back in college, yeah, when he was still trying to get his brother through high school. “Well, it was a way to keep an eye on him.”
“Really?” She slowed her steps, regarding him with what looked like fascination. “Did you kind of take over, after your dad died?”
He’d taken over even before that, in a way, but it wasn’t until the death of his father that his mom had completed her escape into the haze of prescription drugs. “Yeah, pretty much,” Conner replied. He had learned early on that the agency who replaced the Tarkingtons’ constantly quitting housekeepers never challenged a new request, and that no one ever questioned his scribbled initials on whatever papers his mother let pile up on the desk.
But that wasn’t a story which needed sharing, and Lucy seemed more concerned with crossing the street than his response. Until they reached the opposite sidewalk and she glanced at him with open curiosity. “I’ll bet having you around made things easier on Kenny, didn’t it?”
Things had always been easier on Kenny, though. Con had recognized even as a child that everyone—including himself—enjoyed his brother’s carefree attitude, the happy-go-lucky charm which proved their family was as normal as anyone else. While Conner had been silently acknowledged as the one who kept things running, Kenny seemed to have a gift for attracting fun and friendship and love.
He was just that kind of person.
And you’re not.
“I don’t know,” Conner muttered, “I probably wasn’t anyone’s dream of an older brother. I was always throwing my weight around—do your homework, don’t stay out too late—that kind of thing.”
“That sounds more like a dad or a mom,” Lucy observed, surprising him with the accuracy of her perception. It wasn’t like any big secret, of course—there was no reason not to explain the Tarkingtons’ sordid family dynamics—but the habit of making his life sound normal must be more deeply ingrained than he’d realized, because he automatically chose an evasive response.
“My mom was pretty easy on us,” he said lightly, and Lucy gave him a teasing smile. As if she sensed the growing companionship between them.
“So she didn’t mind if you spent all day playing golf, huh?”
“No, not really.” When she’d completed her recovery a few years ago, Grace Conner Tarkington had apologized for being so uninvolved with her sons, as if their inability to love might somehow be her fault. But he couldn’t remember whether she’d mentioned their frequent escapes to the golf course. “Anyway, that was only on weekends.”
Lucy glanced around the park, evidently seeking a spot near children whose voices might attract a baby’s interest, then started toward a group playing Frisbee in a nearby clearing. “So what kind of things did you do during the week?”
Good, they were finished with the family history. And she still sounded genuinely interested, Conner realized. Not in whatever trauma he might have suffered, the way the shrinks had been, but simply in his everyday life. “You mean, besides school?”
She spread her baby blanket on the grass and set Emma down on it, then brushed her hands against her jean-clad hips and cocked her head at him. “School, or whatever. I’m just trying to picture you, when you were little.”
It was a little unnerving how flattered he felt by her forthright interest. By the way she kept her eyes focused on his, waiting for an answer he didn’t even know how to give. “Well…”
“You know,” Lucy explained, “what you did for fun.” As if spotting an example, she gestured at the teenager attempting to throw a bright orange Frisbee with an elaborate, under-the-knee move. “Did you go around collecting golf balls?”
Golf— She was asking about Kenny, he realized with a sudden jolt of embarrassment. Of course she wanted to know about the childhood he’d shared with his brother.
Because Lucy loved his brother.
Before he could stammer a response, the orange Frisbee came sailing right toward them, and he instinctively grabbed for it. Caught it on the downward arc, then steadied his balance. Glanced around for the kid who’d thrown it, took aim and flung it back.
“Good one!” the teenager’s buddy called, and sent another shot his way.
He could deal with a Frisbee a lot easier than anything else, Conner thought, and already Lucy was moving Emma toward a nearby olive tree as if acknowledging the newly expanded playing area. So he caught the second throw as well, returned it with the same lofty spin as the first, and in no time was part of a three-way circle that soon expanded by a couple more teenagers and a dad with some kids.
This was mindless activity, nothing but working his body, watching the angles, running and catching and throwing whatever came his way, but it offered the same distraction as his computer. A refuge from thinking, a refuge from feeling, and that was all he could ask for right now.
“Feelings are our—”
No, forget it.
The game began moving faster, tighter, and he found himself making higher catches, more demanding throws than he would have attempted at the start. But by now he was in the rhythm of motion, the simple exhilaration of calling on his muscles and feeling them respond. And when the kid beside him missed a Frisbee that skittered to the ground near Lucy, his first reaction to seeing her fling it back was an instinctive admiration—damn, she was good! Even as he watched, one of the teenage girls moved over to where she sat with Emma and gestured an invitation to switch places, and in another minute Lucy was part of the circle as well.
She was good, Conner realized, sending her a tougher throw than he’d aimed at the previous girl, and feeling a surge of pleasure as she caught it deftly and, without ever moving too far from Emma, sent it skimming across the circle. The way she moved, the way she threw herself into the game, laughing, so alive, so…
God, I want her.
The raw heat of recognition startled him, even as he realized that it was nothing new. He’d been wanting her for days, but had never let himself feel it so intensely, so acutely—until now, with the vigor of the game pulsing through his veins, with the pleasure of her company still heightening his senses, with her sparkling energy almost radiating across the circle to him.
Lucy had a gift for enjoying the moment, he realized, watching as she applauded a successful catch by the kid beside her and beamed at Emma’s sitter, who was entertaining the baby with a bright red balloon. A gift for reaching out to friends, as well, but right now she was so happy, so vibrant, so gut-wrenchingly beautiful that he found himself staring at her without a single conscious thought in his head. With nothing but the raw, pulsing desire for—
Don’t go there.
But he’d already shot way past friendship, Con knew as the orange Frisbee came his way again—there, up, another step, grab it—and he almost missed the catch before flinging himself sideways for a perfect, last-minute save. Lucy grinned at him, a smile that might have been simple congratulations but which he suddenly suspected, with a flash of heat that left him reeling, meant that they’d shared the same primal awareness.
The same ache of need.
Now wasn’t the time for reasoning, not when the other Frisbee was coming right toward him—easy, up a little, there, coming, got it, go! But when he fired it back across the circle and saw Lucy still smiling at him, still watching him with that curious new light in her eyes, he knew that reason didn’t matter. Nothing mattered right now except moving, straight toward her, forget the game, forget the park.
And to his exultation, she seemed to feel exactly the same way. As soon as he approached her she backed out of the circle…then welcomed him with a hug that could have been sporting, could have been the same congratulations she’d offer any teammate, but…
But there was more than congratulations going on, more than celebration. More than sharing the fun of a game, more than simple enjoyment.
Because when he kissed her, she kissed him back.
As eagerly, as joyously as if she’d been waiting all day, all her life for this fierce embrace. He had never imagined such a flash of heat could rise so intensely, sweep in so fast, but it was happening now with staggering power, with astonishing force. He ran his fingers down her spine and heard her gasp, drew her hips closer and felt himself shudder as she deepened the kiss, buried his hands in her hair and abandoned all thought, all reason, knowing they were soaring together into something that could sear their very souls—and just as the thought took shape in his mind, Lucy pulled away.
“Conner,” she gasped, “we have to stop.”
They had to stop, Lucy reminded herself as she struggled against the wave of dizziness that had all too swiftly replaced the pressure of his body against hers. She couldn’t let this happen, no matter how much she might have wondered what Conner would feel like, whether his body was as hard as his gaze, how his lips might taste if she—
She couldn’t do this.
But when she heard the growl of “Why?” it took her a moment to realize that the question hadn’t come from her.
“Why?” Conner repeated, gazing down at her with such unabashed desire that she felt herself starting to sway toward him again. Even though she couldn’t. Hugging a teammate was one thing, but this… She couldn’t.
“You’re my boss,” Lucy whispered, although that was the least important reason. But she couldn’t think well enough right now to explain why falling for another Tarkington would mean the end of her battered self-respect, why she couldn’t let herself lose control again.
“Lucy,” he began, and then suddenly the pleading in his eyes gave way to a harder, darker expression. “I know,” he said abruptly, squaring his shoulders and taking a step back from her. “We can’t do this.”
The swiftness of his acknowledgment hurt, even though it was what she’d wanted, and she found herself staring at him with the hope she might witness another, equally sudden change of heart.
But that wasn’t happening, she realized. Instead, she saw on his face the same uneasiness she’d seen the first night they met. When he’d found her in his family’s home and made it clear—without so much as a word of discourtesy—that he knew Lucy Velardi was a gold digger.
“Because of what happened with Kenny,” she guessed with a sinking sensation in her heart, and his gaze turned even darker.
“Right.”
“But I—” Lucy faltered, then forced herself to remember what mattered most. Emma deserved to know there had been something between her parents, regardless of how quickly it had faded. And that meant she could never deny that, for a few giddy weeks, she had loved her child’s father. “I’d never loved anyone,” she pleaded, “the way I—”
“I know. You said that.” Conner shoved his hands in his pockets, casting a quick glance behind him as one of the Frisbee players shouted in exultation, and then seemed to recognize a source of inspiration. “This was just,” he said slowly, as if seeking some reason for an otherwise inexplicable kiss, “just…the game, that’s all. People get carried away when they’re winning.”
It wasn’t like anyone could win a game of Frisbee, but Lucy seized the flimsy explanation with relief. “That’s it, exactly,” she agreed, noticing that her daughter was still engrossed in the teenage sitter’s balloon. At least, during that passionate lapse of responsibility, she hadn’t fallen down as a mother. She had remembered that Emma mattered most. “That’s all it was.”
“Right.” Conner sounded equally relieved, which bothered her. But after all, she reminded herself, it wasn’t like she wanted him to blame anything beyond the excitement of the game. It wasn’t like she wanted to throw away her carefully salvaged independence. “So we ought to head back to work.”
Work. Right.
“Sure,” Lucy agreed, although she hadn’t planned on working today. “I mean, if you need me for any—” Anything wasn’t the right word, she realized, because that could imply more than office duties. “I mean, do you—” Then she broke off, recognizing how difficult it would be to phrase the question correctly. And for the first time since he’d let her go, she felt a tremor of dread.
That kiss was going to be hard to forget.
Maybe Con knew that, too, because he was already shaking his head at the idea of spending time in the office together. “It can wait until Monday,” he said gruffly. “Nothing urgent.”
“Okay, then.” She had faced other awkward situations before, but never had she come up against one like this. How on earth could she survive five more weeks in the same office, the same house with this man? “Let me just get Emma.”
Emma’s sitter offered to let them keep the balloon, which Conner tied onto her ankle, and the baby’s rapturous interest in her new treasure provided sufficient material for conversation on the way home. But by the time they arrived at the front door, Lucy could tell they were both feeling the strain of keeping up a casual dialogue. Conner immediately headed for his computer, then hesitated a moment, and she saw his shoulder muscles tighten before he turned to face her with a troubled expression.
“Lucy,” he said, “I just want to make sure you know…I mean, back at the park…” He looked more uneasy than she’d ever seen him before, but drew a deep breath and finished in a rush. “I was out of line. That’s not going to happen again.”
She already knew that, had known it ever since he backed away from her with such disconcerting swiftness. But she had to give him credit for such flawless courtesy, pretending that a blue-blood lawyer would even consider repeating such a mistake.
“Right,” she murmured. Normally they might shake hands to seal the agreement, but touching Conner now was out of the question. “It was just the game.”
“Yeah, that’s it.” He looked over his shoulder at the computer still waiting on his desk, then gave her what was probably supposed to be a comforting smile. “So, everything’s all right.”
But it wasn’t all right, Lucy knew. She spent the rest of the day avoiding any glance at the office, and took a sandwich to her room before their usual dinnertime, but she knew this self-imposed distance wasn’t working. She was getting too close to Conner Tarkington. She was remembering too often how the crackling barrier had shattered for that dazzling moment in the park. And if she couldn’t control herself any better than she had at the instant when he’d kissed her, well, she needed to get out of here.
Plain and simple. She had to get out.
Getting out the next morning was easy, because Shawna had invited her to string popcorn for the community Christmas tree at her grandmother’s senior center. It was a tradition Lucy appreciated all the more this year, since she desperately needed a few hours away from Con’s resolutely impersonal gaze.
She arrived early, relieved that the church shuttle driver hadn’t minded picking up passengers for the trip back to Mesa, and grateful that she and Emma had made it through breakfast with Conner while maintaining a conversation that would have sounded normal to anyone else. She could get through five more weeks under his roof if she had to, Lucy told herself, and she would have to unless Shawna could come up with an idea.
“I guess you could move out,” her friend suggested when Lucy finished the story, then wrinkled her forehead as she dropped another popcorn chain into the collection bag. “But I can’t really see why you want to. Couldn’t you just…enjoy him?”
“Oh, right, go from one brother to the next,” Lucy protested, relieved that Shawna’s grandmother had taken the baby for a walk outside. Emma didn’t need to hear any of this. “Shawna, what kind of person would that make me?!”
“Not your mother,” came the swift reassurance. “Because you loved Kenny—at the beginning, anyway. I was there when you met him, remember? It was instant, for both of you.”
That was true. They’d met in one of the Phoenix Open party tents, where she’d been working the afternoon-drinks shift, and had hit it off within the first thirty seconds of laying eyes on one another. “He was…” Lucy let the memory resonate, wishing it would rouse more than a faint sense of nostalgia. “Well, he was fun.”
Shawna twisted her thread into a knot and bit the end off, shaking her red-beaded braids back behind her shoulder. “So you loved Kenny, and you like this guy. Why can’t you just enjoy each other while he’s here?”
Because she knew better than to make the same mistake twice. “I like him too much,” Lucy explained, remembering how carefully they’d maneuvered around the coffeemaker this morning and how quickly he’d cut off her attempt to explain about Kenny. “Anyway, he already said it was a mistake. He doesn’t want to get involved with a gold digger.”
“He couldn’t call you that!” Shawna sounded fiercely certain. “Lucy, you’re not asking him for anything.”
No, of course not. But that hadn’t stopped him from offering to make her life easier. “He already wants to take care of me,” she muttered, remembering his repeated mentions of child support. “I mean, like a family honor thing. But I don’t need any help…especially from someone like him.”
Her friend glanced up from knotting the thread with a small frown. “He’s paying you, isn’t he?”
“Well, minimum wage.” Which she could justify accepting, because he’d have to pay anyone else the same amount. “And free rent.” Which was harder to justify, except… “I could make more money somewhere else, because weekday-lunch people don’t tip much. But I’d still have to find a sitter for Emma.”
“You know Gram would love to take care of her,” Shawna offered, nodding at the patio where her grandmother was showing the baby a bright ribboned wreath. “She’s said that all along.”
That was true, and it was a relief to know Emma would be in good hands once she started waitressing full-time again. “I know,” Lucy agreed, glancing out the window at her daughter and Gram, “and I’ll plan on that in five more weeks.”
Five weeks is too long!
The thought startled her with its desperate intensity, but she recognized the raw truth of it. She couldn’t spend another five weeks working in the same house, living in the same house, with Conner Tarkington.
Who had delighted her yesterday with that first glimmer of an easy camaraderie between them. Whose powerful hands and searing mouth had invaded her dreams last night. Who had promised she’d never need to worry about him touching her again.
“I have to get out of there,” she blurted, and saw from Shawna’s startled glance that there must have been a note of panic in her voice.
“Well, then,” her friend advised, reaching for the bowl of popcorn, “just tell him you’re moving out. You’ve almost got enough saved up, right?”
Not enough for the trailer park where she could feel safe letting Emma play outside. Even with what Conner was paying her, the electricity and security deposits there would take another month. But the sooner she moved out, Lucy knew, the sooner she could put the memory of that kiss behind her.
And while it would be wretchedly irresponsible to abandon free rent until she had at least another three hundred dollars saved, she needed to earn the money fast.
“I need an extra job,” she announced, feeling a rush of relief at hearing the words aloud. Even making such a declaration was already a step toward independence, toward regaining control of her life. “Maybe something on weekends.”
“I know we’re looking for more catering people at Joseph’s,” Shawna offered, sliding a piece of popcorn onto her chain. “All those holiday parties up in Carefree and Paradise Valley, and you don’t have to drive there yourself. You just get to Joseph’s, and the van takes everybody.”
She could manage that easily enough, and she still had the traditional white shirt and black slacks she’d worn for catering jobs in the past. “But Emma—”
“Gram would be happy to baby-sit, remember? You know you can call her anytime.”
“All right, then,” Lucy decided, closing her eyes for a moment against the memory of Conner’s promise never to touch her again. “Because I can’t keep wanting him like this. I’ve got to get out of there—fast.”
Chapter Three
He had to get over this fast, Conner warned himself as he rounded a curve on the Scottsdale Greenbelt running trail. He had no business coveting Lucy. After all, he couldn’t keep a promise of love any better than Kenny could. But it was taking far too long for him to get this craving out of his system.
She kissed you back, remember?
Which made things worse. If she’d flinched or slapped his face, it would be a lot easier to put the whole afternoon out of his mind. But Lucy had responded with the same genuine passion she showed for everything else in life…with the dazzling enthusiasm that had intrigued him from the first night they met…with the same unabashed honesty that enabled her to explain a moment later that Kenny was the man she loved.
She hadn’t lingered over the vast differences between a man who offered nonstop excitement and a man who offered stolid responsibility. She hadn’t needed to. Because she’d made it clear that wanting Con was a mistake—
So forget it.
Running should help, Conner knew. This was the fourth day he’d taken off at lunchtime to run the nearby greenbelt. At least that afternoon of Frisbee had shown him how badly he needed the distraction of movement, but it was ludicrous that in four days of carefully cheerful companionship, he hadn’t quite been able to get Lucy Velardi out of his mind.
The way she’d closed the lid of his computer and insisted he come to the park.
The way her entire body had stilled as she whispered, “I loved him.”
The way she’d smiled when he helped Emma with that balloon—a balloon the baby had enjoyed so much that Con intended to replace it the next chance he got. Emma was a cute kid, he’d noticed over the past few days, always fun to watch while he waited for his pages from the printer. And watching her was a lot safer than watching her mom. This morning he’d enjoyed letting the baby grip his finger until Lucy whisked her off for a feeding.
And damn it, he was thinking about Lucy again!
Hell, anybody would think he loved her. But he knew better than to believe that, Con acknowledged as he caught sight of the splashing fountain ahead. Conner Tarkington might be capable of any number of things, but wholehearted love wasn’t one of them.
He’d learned that two years ago, when Bryan…
No, he wasn’t thinking about Bryan now. It was pointless. He was already atoning as best he could, and he didn’t need those agonizing memories of the holiday season two years ago to know he was incapable of loving anyone the way they deserved.
Which meant he needed to get this longing for Lucy out of his system before he forgot what the mother of Kenny’s child meant to him—a family responsibility, nothing more.
Con splashed a handful of water across his face and picked up his pace, vowing to keep his mind on the well-worn track of caring for Tarkingtons. As long as he stayed focused on the foundation, he could make it through the next five weeks. Bryan’s memorial was what mattered, his responsibility was what mattered, and he was never going to neglect a responsibility again.
Especially to a child.
Which was why he’d tracked Kenny down in Hong Kong a few days ago. His brother would check in on Thursday, the hotel had announced, so Con was planning to call him tonight while Lucy put Emma to bed. There was no sense confronting her with the possibility that Kenny could have forgotten her name.
“Lucy Velardi?” his brother repeated blankly when Conner reached him that evening. “Who—oh, yeah. You’re in Scottsdale now, right? Did she, uh…”
“She had your baby,” Con told him. “A girl, named Emma.” Lucy was bathing her in the kitchen sink right now, while he used the phone in the hall to keep his conversation private. “So it’s time to start taking some responsibility.”
“Yeah, well, last spring I sent her a check,” Kenny offered. “I know I said I’d marry her, but—”
But instead he’d walked out? Con felt his entire body tighten with fury. “You what?”
“It wouldn’t have worked! She was okay with that,” his brother added defensively. “I just didn’t think she’d keep the baby…. Look, I’ll pay a settlement or something, but it’s not like I really wanted a kid in the first place. And things are kind of tight right now, so… How much does she want?”
Right to the bottom line, Conner observed. For all his freewheeling charm, Kenny was still a Tarkington at heart. “She doesn’t know I’m calling.”
“What?” His brother sounded incredulous. “You just decided to… Whose side are you on?”
He had always sided with Kenny, even while dealing with half a dozen disappointed women whose dreams of marrying money had never materialized. But none of them had ever borne Kenny’s child, and Lucy wasn’t even looking for money. “I’m thinking,” he told his brother flatly, “about the kid.”
“The— Aw, hell.” During the pause, he could almost hear Kenny realizing what time of year this was. “Look, I’m sorry about— Are you doing okay?”
The sympathetic question caught him off guard, but Con managed to swallow the unexpected rush of feeling in his throat. He didn’t need feelings. He didn’t have feelings, no matter what the therapists said. “I’m fine,” he answered hoarsely. “Just taking some time to set up the foundation.” And even though it was frustrating to quit after twelve hours of work each day, so far he’d stuck to his self-imposed limit.
Which was a lot tougher than he’d expected.
“Oh, yeah, Mom mentioned the foundation thing.” Their mother was the clearinghouse for family messages, although Conner suspected she talked to Kenny in Asia far more often than himself in Philadelphia. “Anyway, about Lucy’s kid…I’ll come up with something. Just buy me some time, okay?”
Lucy had called this one correctly from the start, Con reflected, remembering how much easier it was to breathe when he kept his focus strictly on facts instead of feelings. She’d insisted all along that Kenny had no interest in fatherhood, but that was still no reason to ignore his own responsibility. While he wouldn’t mention this conversation to her, he wasn’t about to forget another child.
“All right,” he told his brother, “but just so you know, I’m not letting this go.”
“You haven’t changed, have you?” Kenny muttered. “Still trying to make sure everything’s fair and square.”
“Somebody has to, dammit!” Conner snapped, just as Lucy emerged from the kitchen with Emma wrapped in a fluffy towel. “Look, I’ll talk to you later.”
She made no pretense of having missed his outburst, but at least she didn’t ask who he’d been talking to before slamming down the phone. Instead she gave him a look of frank curiosity and asked, “Somebody has to what?”
Minimizing bad news had always been part of his responsibility, both while growing up and while married to Margie. “Take care of the finances,” he replied, hoping he sounded indifferent enough that she would drop the subject altogether.
Apparently the strategy worked, because Lucy rested Emma on the sofa and rubbed the baby’s damp hair with the top of her towel before turning to another topic. “I meant to tell you, Shawna called a little while ago. She said they— You still don’t need me to work weekends, right?”
The last thing he needed was more time with Lucy. “No.”
“Okay, good,” she said, rewrapping the towel around the wriggling baby. “So I’ll get Shawna’s grandmother for Saturday—her name’s Lorraine, she’s really sweet. But I’ll tell her you’re working, so she won’t distract you or anything.”
A whole platoon of sweet grandmothers would be far less distracting than a woman he couldn’t let himself want. “No problem,” Conner answered, wondering why she felt obligated to notify him of a visitor. “You don’t need to clear it with me if you want to have someone over.”
“Well, she’ll be spending the day here,” Lucy explained, picking up Emma and starting toward her bedroom, “because they won’t let her baby-sit at the senior center.”
Wait a minute, this grandmother was a baby-sitter? “How come you need a sitter?” Con asked, following her as far as the door.
She didn’t seem to notice that he’d never come this close to her vanilla-scented room before. Instead she addressed him over her shoulder as she transferred the cooing baby from her fluffy towel into some fuzzy, footed sleepers. “That’s what Shawna called about. I got a job at the same place she—”
“Lucy, you’ve got a job!”
“Not on weekends,” she said simply, fastening the sleepers over Emma’s diaper. “And I need the money.”
Oh, hell, he’d messed up. He should have called Kenny sooner, arranged for some kind of child support before she had to take a second job. “Look, if you need—” he began, and she interrupted him in a rush.
“I don’t need anything from you! I take care of myself, remember?”
From the steel in her voice, he knew this was an argument he couldn’t win. At least not yet. “So…”
“So, Lorraine will be here Saturday,” Lucy concluded, nestling Emma in what looked like a bureau drawer lined with blankets. My God, his niece was sleeping in a drawer? “But I’ll tell her you’re working, so she won’t get in your way.”
And she didn’t, Conner acknowledged on Saturday after four hours of listening for any fussing from Emma and hearing nothing at all. This pudgy, white-haired grandmother seemed like a nice lady, although he wished she had come bearing gifts…like a crib, or a car seat, or any of the other things Lucy would never accept from a Tarkington.
But the sitter did such a great job of keeping Emma out of his way that by midafternoon—with only four hours left on his workday limit—he found himself almost missing the baby. And when he moved into the kitchen for coffee and insisted that she and Emma weren’t in the way, he was pleased that Lorraine took him at his word.
She didn’t seem to realize that he had very little experience with babies, because when she shifted Emma for a better grip on Conner’s finger, she smiled at the baby’s rapt expression.
“Looks like she wants you to hold her,” Lorraine said, moving his coffee out of the way and handing him the baby as easily as if she were handing him a dinner plate. “There you go. Isn’t she just the cutest thing?”
Emma felt so incredibly fragile that he was uneasy about breathing, but she didn’t seem to mind his lack of skill at holding a baby. In fact, she nestled into his embrace so warmly that for a moment Conner let himself imagine that she felt safe, comfortable, cared for….
That Emma felt loved.
“I’m going to run to the rest room,” Lorraine told him, and he nodded without taking his eyes off the child in his arms.
He had to give her back, of course. He wasn’t capable of caring for a baby for more than two or three minutes, but it was surprisingly sweet to pretend that he knew what he was doing, and that this little bundle of life welcomed the assurance of his heartbeat against her own.
Still, he handed her back to the sitter without trying to prolong the moment, and hastily retreated to his work. It had been a fluke, that’s all, enjoying that sense of protecting a baby. But two hours later, when he heard Emma wake up from her nap with a hearty cry, he closed the lid of his computer and followed the sound.
“Somebody needs a clean diaper,” Lorraine observed, lifting the baby onto the dresser Lucy kept covered in blankets. Then, apparently taking it for granted that Conner had arrived with assistance in mind, she nodded at him. “Want to hand me the pins? We’ve got the old-fashioned kind, here.”
He could do that, Con decided. There was a pile of diaper pins right there on the dresser, and it couldn’t be that hard to offer one whenever the expert held out an expectant hand. Still, he was amazed at how deftly Lorraine folded the cloth under Emma’s squirming body and tucked it into a neat triangle shape. “You’re good at that.”
“Years of practice,” she told him, then set the baby down again and whisked off the just-applied diaper. “But anybody can do it. I’ll show you.”
Conner gulped. There was no way to refuse that offer, even though he hadn’t quite planned on learning such a skill. But within a few minutes he realized that the baby-sitter was right.
“I can do this,” he acknowledged, lifting the freshly diapered baby into his arms and marveling at the knowledge that he, Conner Tarkington, had completed the entire task himself.
Maybe he couldn’t love a child, but he could sure take care of her.
“Of course you can.” Lorraine gave him a cheerful smile as he nestled Emma into the crook of his arm. “Babies are easy as pie.”
“It’s easy,” Lucy muttered to the low-hanging desert moon as she skirted an ocotillo cactus behind the festively lighted hacienda, circulating yet another tray of chorizo-stuffed tarts. “I used to do this all the time.” For the past week she’d kept telling herself how easy it was, how she used to sail through the workday after dancing all night, but the pep talks were starting to wear thin. Still, it shouldn’t take too much longer to get back into the swing of things.
At least she hoped not.
“Oh, the chorizo!” a woman exclaimed, and Lucy turned with a practiced smile to offer the tray. Tonight’s guests were a cordial group, celebrating somebody’s fortieth anniversary, and it was encouraging that most of them looked old enough to go home early. With any luck she’d be finished by ten, the Joseph’s van would already be waiting to shuttle everyone back to the restaurant, and she could get enough sleep that Emma wouldn’t need to wait more than thirty seconds while she dragged herself awake for the two o’clock feeding.
But first she had to circulate these tarts. Then the jalapeño crackers, the miniature tacos and another round with the chorizo.
Working inside would be more fun, she knew, because the hosts had set up a dance floor in the great room, and she’d enjoyed the music whenever she returned to the mansion-size kitchen to refill her tray. On her last trip they’d been playing a song she loved, a song she’d danced to a hundred times on the radio, and she had entertained herself by peeking at the couples out there. Some of them were good; some of the younger men were the kind she’d have chosen for herself if she had her pick of partners.
I’d rather have Conner.
The thought startled her—what was she doing, envisioning him as any kind of a partner? Lucy hastily returned her attention to the hors d’oeuvre tray. She wasn’t going to think that way, she told herself as she offered tarts to a cluster of people by the pool. Not when she’d finally made it through almost an entire day without remembering their kiss in the park.
Not now that she was finally regaining her independence.
She’d held the thought of independence like a talisman, every time she handed Emma over to Lorraine and changed from her diner clothes to her catering uniform. With every hour of evening and weekend work, she was closer to acquiring the money she’d need to move out before Christmas. And with every hour of circulating trays, directing guests to the bar and collecting crumpled napkins from the patio planters, she was proving that Lucy Velardi could pay her own way in life.
That she didn’t depend on anybody’s goodwill. Especially not a “gentleman’s.”
It had surprised her, Lucy remembered as she returned to the kitchen, the first time her third-grade teacher addressed the girls and boys as “ladies and gentlemen.” She had always thought the term applied solely to those friends of her mom who visited at random hours and occasionally presented her with a pack of gum or a comic book.
Those gentlemen who had made it clear, through years of gifts and favors granted or withheld, that nobody mattered more than the man providing the money.
But by now she had moved beyond the humiliation of depending on any gentlemen. Which was why, Lucy reminded herself as the party wound down and the crew supervisor directed her to collect all the glassware left outside, she needed to pay Lorraine as soon as she got home. Before Conner could offer his help and whip out a checkbook, the way he’d done a few nights ago when he dismissed the sitter twenty minutes early.
Lorraine wouldn’t have left, of course, if she hadn’t trusted him with the baby, so Lucy had decided she wasn’t going to fuss about Con sending the sitter home. But she drew the line at letting him pay someone she’d hired herself. As long as she and Emma were living under his roof, she needed to guard her pride.
Still, she admitted while she finished her share of the cleanup, pride was costly. It was costing her tonight, in aching muscles and growing fatigue, but the power of independence was worth it. And when she finally made her way to the desert-landscaped front yard to wait for the shuttle, with her first week’s pay voucher safe in the pocket of her black slacks, Lucy felt taller than she’d felt in a long time.
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