His Brother's Baby

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.