Because of the Baby...

As soon as Lark finished speaking, Grace punched outward with both fists and opened her eyes. Lark half expected her face to screw up in distress, but the baby blinked and relaxed in a way that Lark had never seen before. Was it being snuggled against her mother for the first time in three months?

Keaton leaned forward to peer at Grace. His shoulder pressed against Lark’s back. “She looks happy.”

“The mother-daughter bond is alive and well.”

How comfortable it would be to rest her head against his broad chest and pull his muscular arms around her body. The longing for his touch was so compelling, Lark had to dig her fingernails into her palms to keep from acting on the impulse. What was happening to her? She’d never been so physically drawn to a man before. Usually the men she dated were intellectually stimulating, but not exactly fantasy material. Not that they were unattractive, but their allure had been mostly cerebral.

Grace yawned and her eyes drifted shut. She knuckled one cheek. Her other hand rested on her mother’s arm.

The anxious knot in Lark’s chest tightened. “What if Skye never wakes up?” It was the first time she’d spoken the fear out loud.

“She will.” Keaton’s big hands settled on her shoulders. “As Grace gets stronger, so will her mother.”

Keaton’s words couldn’t have been any more perfect. Lark’s optimism surged.

“You’re right.” As much as she was loathed to disrupt the rapport that had bloomed between her and Keaton, she needed to get Grace home and settled. “Say goodbye to your mommy,” she said to the baby, lifting her away from Skye. It hurt Lark’s heart to separate mother and daughter, but she told herself it was only temporary. Before she left Skye’s bedside, Lark turned to Keaton. “I want you to know how much I appreciate everything you’ve done. I realized this morning that I’d underestimated how much I needed to get ready for Grace’s homecoming. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

Her father would be furious to hear her say those words. But if he and her mother refused to step up and be grandparents to Grace, they had no right to criticize Lark for accepting Keaton’s assistance. Unfortunately that wouldn’t stop them from bombarding her with their opinions. Lark cringed away from thinking about her father’s ire. Always volatile where the Holts were concerned, he’d become a powder keg since the tornado leveled his tree farm.

“You don’t need to thank me,” Keaton said. “We’re doing this for Grace, remember?”

“For Grace,” she agreed.

With Keaton a step behind her, Lark headed out of the ICU. As she neared the door to the hall, two people came into view. Her parents. They stood at the nurses’ station, speaking with Lark’s coworker Jessa and hadn’t spotted Lark or Keaton yet.

She slowed her pace, all too aware of Keaton’s towering presence behind her. In the rush of getting prepared for Grace’s homecoming, Lark had neglected to mention to her parents that Keaton would be helping her with Grace. Or maybe she’d dodged the issue to put off dealing with her father’s ire as long as possible. Lark gathered a breath to bolster her courage. This encounter promised to get ugly.

Her mother spotted her first. “Lark?” Her gaze bounced from her daughter to the man shadowing her. “What’s going on?”

At Vera’s sharp tone, Tyrone Taylor glanced around. His expression twisted with disgust when he saw Keaton.

“Grace is coming home with me today,” Lark explained, stopping a good fifteen feet away from her parents, hoping distance and a soothing tone would keep her father’s temper from flaring. “I brought her to see Skye before we left.”

“And him?” Lark’s father demanded. “What’s he doing here?”

“I’m driving Lark and Grace home.” Keaton’s level reply was neither defensive nor aggressive. His body radiated calm confidence at Lark’s side, but her tension didn’t ease.

Lark had let Keaton take on the role of Grace’s caretaker because her parents hadn’t stepped up. Was that dawning on Tyrone and Vera or were they too consumed by their needs and desires to realize they would never be nominated for grandparents of the year?

“Since when are you two so chummy?” Tyrone demanded, his attention fixed on his daughter.

Lark felt her chin lift to a defiant angle in response to her father’s hostility. “Keaton is Grace’s uncle. We are both concerned about her welfare.” She glanced down at the tiny bundle of pink sweetness they all should be concerned about, but failed to refocus her father’s attention.

“I don’t know why you’ve accepted Jake as Grace’s father. He sure as hell isn’t acting like it. What sort of man abandons his baby and the woman he claims to love?” Tyrone shot Keaton a hard look. “What does your brother have to say for himself?”

“I haven’t spoken with Jake.”

Lark’s father made a dismissive noise, but his next words were for Lark. “I told your sister four years ago that Jake was going to ruin her life.”

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