The Bachelor, the Baby and the Beauty

She’d successfully jumped that hurdle.

And she breathed a sigh of relief.

Granted, their reunion had taken a backseat to Neily’s news, but still, Hadley thought she’d done okay before that. No, she hadn’t been smooth or glib or clever—the way she’d imagined herself in one of the many scenarios she’d played out in anticipation of this—but she hadn’t embarrassed herself, either. She was relatively sure she’d hidden her tension, that she’d appeared reasonably normal.

And the first hurdle was the highest, she told herself. From here on every time she saw Chase it would get easier. She would feel less awkward, she would be able to relax more. Eventually she would forget all about that crush she’d had on him so many years ago and forge a plain and simple working relationship with him.

And that was all she was looking forward to, she told herself.

Even if the image of those blue eyes of his was mysteriously lingering in her mind and making it seem as if she might be looking forward to something more than that …

Chapter Two

“You want me to stick around?”

Chase couldn’t help smiling at his friend’s offer. He knew Logan was swamped with last-minute wedding details.

“Do you think I need a babysitter?”

“That is one of the things you’ll need after Monday,” Logan goaded wryly.

“Or maybe a pretty little nanny …” Chase volleyed good-naturedly, referring to the fact that Logan was about to marry his daughter’s caregiver.

“Knowing you, I’m sure you’ll run through plenty of those,” Logan countered with a laugh.

All kidding aside, Chase let his friend off the hook. “It’s weird to find out I might have brothers and a sister, and that in a day and a half I’ll be taking on a kid who’s supposed to be my nephew. But the earth hasn’t stopped turning because of any of it. Get going on that honey-do list you told me you have in your pocket. I’m fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah, go on.”

It didn’t take more than that for Logan to head for the door. “Meg stocked a few groceries in your fridge, but for anything other than snacking you can hit ours. Come over whenever you’re ready,”

“Thanks,” Chase said to his partner’s back as Logan left him alone in the loft Chase had designed and Logan had built.

With all Chase had had to do back in New York, he hadn’t made it to Northbridge since late May. At that point the space he’d taken for himself in the top half of what had formerly been a barn had been in the final stages of construction.

A quick glance around at the large, open area and Chase knew that Logan had made sure the contractor met his specifications.

His furniture had been sent ahead last week. He’d trusted his own belongings to professional movers while he’d manned the truck—that was now stalled just outside of town—filled with the Mackey and McKendrick Designs pieces that were slated for the Northbridge showroom. The movers had set his things around the place haphazardly—the furniture was usable but still needed to be arranged the way he wanted it.

But Chase had more important things on his mind. Despite what he’d led his friend to think, he was a little shaken to suddenly find out he hadn’t been an only child.

How the hell could he have blanked on something like brothers and sisters? he asked himself as he went to the chrome-and-glass kitchen table and tossed the social worker’s file folder onto it.

Okay, yes, he had been barely more than a baby when his parents were killed—six months younger than Tia was now, and she was just a tiny, tiny kid.

And yes, there had been dreams. Disjointed dreams that had never seemed like anything but dreams—that he had a family, that his parents were alive. But he’d always figured it was just wishful thinking. It had never felt real enough to be anything else, or been clear enough to make him believe there had ever actually been other kids, especially when he honestly had no waking memory of them.

But apparently there had been. Older and younger kids …

Trying now to think back as far as he could, Chase still couldn’t recall anything that led up to his going to the boys’ home where his first memories began—and even those were vague. He just remembered being at the boys’ home, being scared and lonely most of the time there.

Nowhere in that could he remember the slightest indication that there were siblings he’d been separated from.

Not that he recalled ever asking.

He did remember asking about his parents—though he didn’t remember exactly when. He only knew that the answer to his question had been, “They’re no longer with us …” He’d thought that that meant they’d gone off somewhere and just left him behind for some reason, maybe because he had done something wrong.

The fact that his parents had died hadn’t been openly discussed with him until he’d gone from the boys’ home to his foster home.

He’d been eight then. When Alma Pritick had taken the time to talk to him about his mother and father, about what had happened to them.

Alma Pritick had been one of the few positive aspects of his childhood.

It had been Alma who had located an old newspaper clipping of his parents’ wedding picture for him and framed it. Alma who had finally given him the sense that at one point he had belonged to someone who cared about him.

But nowhere in any of what Alma had said, either, had there been a mention of other kids who had been orphaned alongside him.

He had never had a clue.

But now that he knew it, he had other things to deal with.

Things like an eleven-month-old nephew …

That still didn’t seem real.

But with that baby in mind, he sat on one of the director’s chairs that went with the table and opened the file.

The DVD and some paperwork were inside. Along with the photograph of the baby.

Cute enough, as kids went, he thought as he studied the picture. Big brown eyes. Chunky cheeks. Some feathery, light-colored hair that stood up on the top of the kid’s head like spikes.

“Okay …” he said as if he’d successfully taken the first step on the detour he’d just made into unknown territory.

And a kid was pretty unknown territory for him. The only one he’d ever had contact with was Tia, and that had been more in the role of sort-of uncle. Initially, when Logan’s wife had left Logan with their two-month-old daughter, Chase had gone to Connecticut to help out. But his help had actually just been moral support for Logan—it wasn’t as if he’d done much hands-on with Tia.

Diaper changes, feedings, baths—those things had been his friend’s purview. He’d held Tia a few times, but that was about it. And in the three years since then? A sort-of uncle—that was what Chase’s relationship with Tia had consisted of. There definitely hadn’t been anything that would have prepared him for taking care of a kid himself, that was for sure.

But when Neily Pratt had said this new kid was in foster care? That had struck a nerve.

No, his experience in foster care hadn’t been a horror story. But he did know the good and the not-so-good sides of it.

Alma Pritick had been the good side.

But there had also been Alma’s husband, Homer. And while Homer might not have been abusive, he had definitely been on the not-so-good side of foster care. Homer Pritick and the boys’ home before him—those were the memories that had spurred Chase to take the kid. Because the bottom line was that if the child was related to him in any way, he didn’t want him in that same system.

“So you’re gonna be mine,” he said as if he were talking to the baby rather than the baby’s picture. “At least for a while …”

Then he set down the photograph and picked up the DVD.

The DVD his older sister had made.

Sisters and brothers …

It just didn’t seem possible.

It was Logan who had sisters and brothers, not him.

Sisters like Hadley.

Hadley …

“I couldn’t believe my eyes, Had-Had-Hadley,” he said to himself as set down the DVD, got up and went to unpack his laptop computer so he could play it.

Sure, over the years Logan had told him that Hadley had slimmed down, but he hadn’t given it much thought. Hadley was just Hadley: Logan’s sister. Logan had told him things about Tessa and Issa and Zeli—Logan’s half sisters—and about his half brothers, too. None of it had meant anything to Chase beyond being Logan’s news from home.

But wow, seeing Hadley for himself? She hadn’t just lost weight, she’d grown up into a knockout.

Her previously bad skin was porcelain-perfect now. He’d never known she had high cheekbones or that what had just looked like dents in bread dough were actually damn adorable dimples in her cheeks. Her hair wasn’t stringy anymore; it was bouncy and smooth and silky and begged to be touched. The rest of her face had been so plump that until today, he’d never known what full, sweet lips she had. And even her eyes somehow seemed more remarkable—green but with a sort of topaz glimmer to them.

And the body! No one would ever guess that that firm, curvy little figure could have been whittled out of what she’d been as a girl.

Man, she was a beauty! A country-girl kind of beauty that made him think of Northbridge and clean air and fresh fields of hay, clear blue skies and snowcapped mountains.

A country-girl kind of beauty that—if things were different—he would have gone after with full force.

But even the new Hadley was still the little sister of his best friend and business partner, he reminded himself as he took the laptop back to the table. That alone was reason enough to keep his hands off of her, but add to it the fact that Hadley had also come back to Northbridge to be their upholsterer, the fact that they’d be working together, too, and there was no clear sailing for him on waters like that.

At least not with his philosophy on relationships. He never mixed the long-term with the short-term. His friendship and partnership with Logan were definitely long-term. Potentially, Hadley working with them could also be long-term. But a personal relationship with Hadley? A personal relationship with any woman was always short-term for him.

Besides, after the fiasco of his last relationship, he needed a breather from the opposite sex.

And topped off with this family and nephew thing, there was no room for romance even if being with Hadley wasn’t outside of his own self-set limits.

But damn if Hadley McKendrick hadn’t turned herself into someone who was going to make it tough on him to stick to his limits, he thought as he turned on the computer and waited for it to boot up.

He was going to stick to them, though.

When it came to Hadley, he knew without a doubt that he had to adopt a strict look-but-don’t-touch policy.

No matter how good she looked.

And damn, did she look good …

“It’s a lot to ask and I wouldn’t, except that this is our honeymoon and you know how excited Tia is to go to Disneyland—I just can’t cancel.”

“I wouldn’t want you to,” Hadley assured her brother. “And you’re right, Chase is going to need help with that baby—”

“Not just help. He’s going to need his hand held from beginning to end—babies aren’t his thing. He doesn’t know the first thing about them.”

Hadley certainly didn’t want to think about holding Chase Mackey’s hand.

“I’m sure he’ll be a fast learner,” she said, putting her own hope into words.

Logan had come back from Chase’s loft and immediately sought out Hadley in the living room of the main house, where she was hemming Tia’s flower-girl dress.

She’d been so lost in thinking about Chase and their first meeting that she hadn’t given a second thought to what her brother had said about needing her help—big-time. But now that Logan had asked her to stand in for him, to teach his friend how to care for the nephew Chase had agreed to take on, she was playing it cool. She was acting as if Logan’s request hadn’t surprised her, as if she wasn’t thrown by the idea of being Chase Mackey’s companion-in-childcare. But she was hardly as unruffled by the idea as she was pretending to be.

Working with Chase, living near him, seeing a lot of him—those were things she’d known were coming. Things she’d planned for. Things she’d decided she could handle in a purely friendly acquaintance sort of way that would ease them into this new phase in their lives.

But what her brother was asking of her was something else entirely. She wouldn’t have the benefit of Logan being around, or Meg or even Tia. She and Chase would be on their own together. Alone. In his loft a lot of the time, putting a nursery together, caring for an infant, with her holding his hand through it all.

And that was a little unnerving for her.

Still she said, “Whether he learns fast or not, you can’t miss your honeymoon to do something that I can easily do.”

“Are you sure it’s no problem?” Logan asked. “At least the vet is going to neuter the dogs and keep them until we get back, so you won’t have Max and Harry to take care of, too, but—”

“I’m sure there’s no problem. It’ll be fine,” she assured her brother, hiding her own misgivings.

Maybe not too well, because Logan’s expression was doubtful. “So you didn’t have any pangs of the old crush when you saw Chase again?”

“I told you I wouldn’t and I didn’t,” she said. Which was basically true. But she also hadn’t been able to ignore the fact that time had only improved Chase’s appeal.

She wasn’t going to confess that to her brother, though, so she said, “Since we’ve been back in Northbridge you’ve met up with a few girls you dated in high school without having any effect, right? So when it comes to Chase, it’s no different for me,” she reasoned.

“Okay. I’m not sure why I keep worrying about it.” Maybe because he had some awareness that to the overweight, unattractive young girl she’d been, this crush had been more important in its own way than any of his own casual high-school dating.

Maybe because he had an inkling that her daydreams of Chase had gotten her through some very rough times when teasing at school had been downright mean, and at home when she’d had their malicious stepmother to contend with.

But that was all in the very distant past. She honestly felt sure that she’d left her crush behind with the extra hundred pounds she’d carried around then.

“I guess I just wouldn’t want you to try to live out some fantasy,” Logan said. “You and Chase aren’t on the same wavelength when it comes to—”

“I know—Chase is a so-many-women-so-little-time kind of guy. Don’t worry, I’ve gotten the picture from the things you’ve told me about him over the years. He plays around. He’s like Garth—”

The mention of her ex-husband’s name brought a frown edged with anger to her brother’s face.

“Chase is nothing like Garth,” Logan retorted. “Chase doesn’t break commitments to women because he doesn’t make commitments to women. Because what Chase is committed to is his belief that that’s the best way for him.”

Whatever that meant …

“But ultimately he runs through women like other people run through shoes.”

“I just think that, for you, relationships are different than what they are for Chase,” Logan said. “And I wouldn’t want you to get hurt. But for the record, I’ve never said Chase runs through women.”

“There’s been a different one every time I’ve talked to you over the years. That seems to me like running through women. And after Garth, the last thing I would go anywhere near is a man who’s commitment-impaired. So I’m telling you, I might have had some illusions about Chase being the perfect guy nearly twenty years ago, but I don’t have any now. I guarantee you, I can show him how to change a diaper without fainting from infatuation.”

And she thought that was true. No, she didn’t especially want to spend concentrated time alone with Chase, and it would certainly have helped if he looked more like a warthog than the heartthrob leading man in a Western movie. But after eleven years in the European fashion industry, she’d learned to take good looks with a grain of salt, and that was what she intended to do with Chase.

“No matter what you say, you know I’ve been worried about you being around Chase again and this … well, this really makes me worry,” her brother fretted.

“That’s because you and I haven’t had a lot of time with each other since you left Northbridge. You might have missed it, but I’m not the innocent, naive, dreamy-eyed girl I was before,” Hadley said patiently. “And what I believe is that trying to make a one-woman man out of Chase Mackey—or any other man who doesn’t want to be a one-woman man—is something only a fool would undertake. And I’m nobody’s fool.”

“Got it—you’re all grown up, you’re a woman of the world and you can take care of yourself,” Logan said.

“Yes,” she confirmed. “And it’s really not a big deal for me to help Chase. I’m happy to do it until you get back from your honeymoon.”

Okay, happy was not exactly true. But she’d still do it.

“I appreciate it,” Logan said.

“It’s nothing. Now go do what Meg needed you to do today so you can get to the rehearsal on time tonight.”

“Yeah, I better. And thanks—I owe you for this.”

Hadley waved him away.

All this talk about gratitude suddenly made her realize that to some extent, helping Chase out now would repay the debt she’d had to him since they were kids.

Growing up, Chase had been unfailingly kind to her, and that wasn’t something she could say about everyone, especially not about the boys she’d known back then. In fact, that kindness he’d shown her had probably contributed to why she’d had such a crush on him.

And not only had he been kind to her, but there also had been a time when he’d come to her rescue, when he’d defended her against people who hadn’t been so kind.

For that, she owed him.

Besides, so far she’d managed not to act like a silly schoolgirl with a crush in Chase’s presence. What harm could come in helping him out next week while Logan was gone?

None, she told herself.

And if she wasn’t going to be able to ease into being around Chase again, then maybe taking the plunge—so to speak—was the next best thing. Maybe the more time she spent with him right off the bat, the quicker she’d be able to overlook his attributes, completely conquer feeling awkward around him and just get on with things.

That didn’t seem altogether unfeasible, she decided.

And ultimately, it would all be fine.

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