Beginning With Baby

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

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

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

“I should be going,” she’d said.

And he’d replied, “Yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You hear from that stepbrother of yours again?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, goodness.

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

He was staring directly at her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Still, just looking at him made her cheeks heat.

His eyes narrowed. “You okay?”

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

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

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

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

“Say again?” she said.

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

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

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

“Let me.” Jackson reached for the baby.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The little blonde blinked.

The little blonde’s mother stumbled.

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

“Yes?” he prompted again.

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

The toddler stared up at Jackson.

The toddler’s mother emitted a little squeak.

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter Three

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

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

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

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

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

Jackson restlessly shuffled his feet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Jackson?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He hesitated, trying to decide how much to say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

To halt once more at the sight of Phoebe.

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

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

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

He still couldn’t move.

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

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

A shriek jerked Phoebe from sleep.

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

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

Phoebe blinked again. “Never what?”

A man cleared his throat.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Entertain!”

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

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

“Rough night!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Humph.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He picked up the baby. “Bottle time?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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