Baby Be Mine

“It’s all set. Rennie’s glad to have the company.”

“Just like that? Without knowing me from Adam? What if I’m a crazed serial killer or something?”

That made him smile, and if she’d thought he was good-looking before, it was nothing compared with how he looked when that sculpted face was lit with amusement.

“Are you a serial killer?” he asked with a laugh that creased the corners of his eyes and drew very sexy lines down the center of each cheek.

“Not on my good days. But still…”

“I don’t think she’s worried. She said for you to go on over and she’d get you settled in. Then tomorrow—if you’re interested—you can come out to the ranch with Willy and me. Start gettin’ to know him. Lettin’ him get to know you.”

“I’d like that.”

Since there didn’t seem to be any more to say, Clair stood and headed for the door.

Her host reached it before she did and opened it for her. “Rennie’s place is just to the right. Rennie Jennings. You’ll like her. She’s great.”

For no reason Clair understood, she suddenly searched his expression and analyzed his tone, wondering much more than she should have if there was affection for the other woman in either.

But she couldn’t tell if there was more between Jace Brimley and Rennie Jennings than neighborliness, and she was just left wondering and feeling something oddly—and inappropriately—like jealousy.

She tamped it down and pushed aside the very notion that she might care whether Jace Brimley was involved with his neighbor, and said, “Thanks for not slamming the door in my face.”

His square brow wrinkled in a confused frown. “Why would I have done that?”

Clair shrugged. “Someone else might have. They might not have welcomed my showing up out of the blue. Horning in.”

“Lives have room for a lot of people in them. I don’t see any harm in Willy knowin’ he has an aunt who cares enough to come all the way from Chicago to see him.”

It was a nice way to look at things, and Clair was grateful for it. She also felt a little guilty for having ulterior motives.

But she only smiled and kept the truth to herself.

“We usually get out of here pretty early, but seein’ as how we’ll have company, why don’t you come back at nine?” he suggested.

“Nine it is,” Clair agreed as she stepped back out onto the porch.

“I’d walk you over to Rennie’s, but if I drag this boy away from Barney we’ll have a half hour fit on our hands.”

“It’s all right. It’s enough that you arranged for a place for me to stay. I can introduce myself.”

“Tomorrow at nine, then. Come comfortable.”

“Tomorrow at nine,” she repeated.

And with that she said good-night and went back to her car to get her suitcase.

Jace Brimley didn’t go into the house then, though. He stayed on the porch, watching her until she’d rung the bell on the house next door.

As Clair waited for the bell to be answered she marveled at what she’d found in this particular small town. A shopkeeper friendly enough to introduce herself, a man who hadn’t balked at all at her sudden appearance in his life and instead had found her a place to stay so she could be near her nephew, and a woman willing to open her home to a total stranger.

In comparison to what she was used to, Clair felt as though she’d just landed on another planet.

And in comparison to other men she knew—less polite, less considerate, more threatened, and much, much less gorgeous—Jace Brimley seemed like something from another world, too.

But she wasn’t there to be impressed by Jace Brimley, she reminded herself as she heard Rennie Jennings coming to the door.

She was there to connect with her nephew. To convince Jace Brimley that she should be the person to raise William.

And that was exactly what she intended to do.

Chapter Two

Willy didn’t do it every morning, but he did it often enough that Jace didn’t even open his eyes when he felt the little boy get into bed with him. He didn’t have to look at the clock to know it was about 4:00 a.m., either. When Willy got into bed with him it was always about 4:00 a.m.

Jace didn’t mind.

He was lying on his back, his hands on his chest, and he just stretched one arm up and out along the second pillow so that the toddler could burrow into his side like a pup looking for warmth.

It made him smile, and once Willy was situated and settled, Jace gazed down at him.

Yep, there he was, curled up to him as close as he could get, sound asleep again, one index finger poked through his security washcloth to rub it methodically against his chubby cheek.

Jace didn’t really understand the appeal of the washcloth. He knew some kids got attached to blankets and stuffed toys, but a washcloth? He couldn’t figure that one out. It had been a stocking-stuffer the year before last—a washcloth with a big, goofy-looking Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer on it. Kim had said that Willy wouldn’t go down for a nap or a night’s sleep without it, and for a while after the accident he hadn’t let go of it for a single minute.

But now he was back to just wanting it to sleep with, and that felt like an accomplishment to Jace, as if he’d been able to return Willy to the same sense of love and safety the little boy had felt with his mom and dad.

Jace pulled the covers up over the child, rubbed his head as if he really were a puppy snuggled up to him and waited to fall back to sleep himself.

But that didn’t happen as easily as it usually did. Just the way it hadn’t happened earlier in the night. And for the same reason.

Clair Fletcher.

Jace just wasn’t too sure what to make of her and her sudden appearance in Elk Creek.

She’d said she wanted to be a part of Willy’s life and she wanted Willy to be a part of hers. A simple enough statement. But what exactly did it mean? Did it mean she wanted to be someone who visited him now and then, who maybe had him visit her occasionally? Someone who talked to him on the phone to keep up with him, and sent him gifts for birthdays and holidays?

Or did it mean something more than that?

That’s the part that had Jace on the alert. Because the truth was, his gut instinct told him that she’d meant more than that.

He didn’t have anything tangible on which to base his doubts. But he’d seen her eyes well up with tears when she’d taken her first real look at the boy, and for a minute Jace had thought she might actually reach out, snatch Willy and run with him. From that moment on Jace had had a strong sense that she’d come to claim Willy for herself.

But if that was true, she was in for a rude awakening. Because Jace wasn’t going to let that happen. No matter what she might think, he wasn’t giving Willy up. Not only had he been granted legal guardianship through his best friend’s will, but he’d made a pact with Billy Miller the day Billy’s adoption of Willy had become final. A pact that if anything ever happened to Billy, Jace would take over for him and raise the boy. And Jace didn’t take that lightly.

Besides, he had been more than happy to step up to the plate. He’d been so closely involved with Willy, even before Billy’s and Kim’s deaths, that Willy had seemed like his own son. He’d been Uncle Jace, who baby-sat and brought gifts, who played with Willy and took him on outings to the ranch. Uncle Jace who’d discovered through those tiny tastes of parenthood that he had a pretty strong urge to become a father himself.

Unfortunately, the desire to become a parent was not shared by the woman who had been his wife at the time, so instead of looking forward to having a child of his own when Billy and Kim had died, he’d been trying to put a divorce behind him.

But that was all over now. And he might not have a child of his own making, but he had Willy and he intended to concentrate on being the best dad he could be to the boy.

Sure, he supposed Clair Fletcher could complicate that, if she had a mind to, but she wasn’t going to change it. He’d do whatever he had to do to go on raising the boy, even if it meant war.

It would be too bad if it came to that, though, he thought. Not only didn’t he want a custody battle with her, but there were a whole lot more pleasurable things he could think of to do with her….

An image of her drifted into his mind’s eye, that first image of her when he’d opened the door to find her standing on the porch. No, thoughts of custody battles had definitely not been what she’d initially inspired in him.

She was damn beautiful. A knock-out—that had been what he was thinking when she’d said her name and he’d suddenly recognized the resemblance to Kristin and Willy.

Her hair was darker than theirs. Richer. It didn’t have the pumpkin shades of her sister’s hair or her nephew’s, it was the red of cherry wood. And it was a stark frame to the color of her skin. Flawless, porcelain skin so luminous it almost hadn’t looked real in the porch light.

Her eyes were something, too. Big, wide, green eyes, so light they were like looking at meadow grass through spring frost.

And there was sure nothing wrong with the rest of her. Delicate features—a thin nose, high cheekbones, lips so soft looking and so sweetly curved, the only thing they could be called was kissable.

Plus, her body—what he’d been able to see of it through the opening in the coat she’d never taken off—was great. She had long legs for a relatively short person—he guessed her to be not more than five foot three or four. Small hips and waist. Just the right size breasts…

Oh, yeah, she was not at all hard on the eyes.

But that didn’t make any difference, he reminded himself. Willy was his priority. Raising Willy. And regardless of what Clair Fletcher had on her mind, raising Willy was exactly what he was going to do.

Cherry-wood-colored hair and stunning green eyes or no, Jace swore to himself that he would keep the lovely Miss Fletcher at arm’s length—at arm’s length and in his sights so there wouldn’t be any surprises from her.

And that was all there was to it.

Except that even with his determination in place, it was still hard to get her out of his head….

As Clair stared into her open suitcase trying to decide what to wear to the ranch, she realized that her options were limited.

She’d only packed one pair of blue jeans, so that narrowed that choice. But what to wear with them was more difficult since she wasn’t sure how dirty she might get.

She opted for the oldest sweater she’d brought with her—a hunter-green V-neck that she wore with a white T-shirt underneath—in case it was ruined.

Once that decision was made and the clothes were laid out on the bed, she took a shower and shampooed her hair, all the while trying once again to calm those familiar jitters in her stomach.

The cause was two-fold today—thoughts of Jace Brimley and thoughts of Willy—as her nephew was apparently called.

Although it wasn’t something Clair would ever admit to Jace, she’d never been much of a kid person. Not that she didn’t like kids. She did. She just hadn’t had very much experience with them.

She’d baby-sat for Kristin. Their ten-year age difference had made her perfect for that. But her younger sister had been the only child with whom Clair had had contact. And that had been a long time ago. So she wasn’t altogether sure how to relate to Willy. How to make friends with him. How to get him to warm up to her. Especially when he seemed to have been totally oblivious to her the previous evening, during the brief time before he’d been dispatched to watch his Barney tape.

Would he even notice she was there today? And if he didn’t, how would she draw his attention? Because she needed to have his attention. She needed him to like her. She needed to win him over. If she could accomplish that, she’d have a firmer footing to stand on when she put in her bid to take custody of him from Jace Brimley.

Jace Brimley. Another cause of her jitters.

Clair didn’t like not being perfectly honest and up-front with him. She wasn’t a deceptive person, and practicing even a small deceit made her uncomfortable. But even if she hadn’t been sure before, she knew that after seeing Jace with Willy last night, he wouldn’t just give her the little boy for the asking.

In fact, she was convinced that if she’d been open and aboveboard about why she was really in Elk Creek, Jace wouldn’t have welcomed her the way he had or allowed her free access to Willy. That would have kept her from bonding with her nephew the way she hoped to and would have left her on shakier ground both in getting Jace to agree amicably to give the boy over to her and in winning any court battle, if it came to that.

She definitely hoped it didn’t come to that, though. She hoped that she and Willy would hit it off and that she could develop the kind of relationship with him that Jace seemed to have. She hoped that, when Jace saw it, he would concede that a blood relative should have precedence over someone who was merely a designated guardian.

Clair towel-dried her hair, then fluffed and scrunched it with her fingers, thinking that gentle persuasion, finesse, tact, and diplomacy were most certainly the routes she wanted to take with Jace Brimley.

After meeting him, after seeing him, she knew that he would not be an easy person to do battle with. Not with those big, bulging biceps and those broad, broad shoulders and those penetrating, blue eyes…

Clair paused in the middle of brushing a light dusting of blush on her cheeks and shook her head disgustedly at her own reflection. What was she thinking? That Jace Brimley would pummel her with those massive muscles or that lasers would shoot from his eyes to burn her alive?

Of course there was no physical danger from Jace Brimley. Any man who could so tenderly handle a toddler a fraction of his size was hardly likely to react with some kind of he-man, World Wrestling Federation antics when she finally admitted openly that she wanted to raise her nephew.

If he decided to fight her over Willy he would likely be a force to be reckoned with. But he wouldn’t present any danger to her.

No, if she were honest with herself, she had to admit that what was really dangerous about Jace Brimley was the fact that her own thoughts kept wandering to things like his bulging biceps and broad shoulders and penetrating blue eyes. Not to mention the rest of his incredibly handsome face and well-built body and even the deep baritone of his voice…

Clair paused again, this time with her mascara wand halfway to her eye. She’d been so lost in thoughts of Jace Brimley that she hadn’t even realized she’d moved on to eyeliner and mascara.

Oh, yes, there was definitely danger in her own wandering thoughts, she told herself as she finished her makeup and abandoned the small vanity table to go to the bedside to get dressed.

In essence, Jace Brimley was the enemy, and it certainly wasn’t good strategy to think about the enemy in terms of staggering good looks and a spectacular body, she reasoned. Even if staggering good looks and a spectacular body were what the enemy had. It also wasn’t good strategy to be distracted by the thrumming of her own heart every time he so much as flashed through her mind. That was truly where the danger lurked. And she wasn’t going to allow any of it.

Of course, if she had met Jace Brimley at a party one Saturday night in Chicago, the staggering good looks and spectacular body and her own involuntary response to it all might make him someone she would be interested in personally.

But this wasn’t a Saturday-night party in Chicago, and being interested in Jace Brimley personally was not part of the plan. She’d come to Elk Creek for one reason and for only one reason—to get her nephew—and that was all she was going to do here. Period.

But as she pulled on her socks and shoes, gave her hair a last fluff and applied a little lip gloss, she realized that the jitters she was feeling had an added element to them. An element that felt suspiciously like eagerness. And not just eagerness to see Willy again. Eagerness to get next door to see Jace Brimley again, too.

And no amount of willpower or reasoning with herself dispelled it.

Especially not when the image of the gloriously handsome man popped into her head again and her heart did another round of that uncontrollable thrumming in response.

I’m here for Willy. And for Kristin’s sake, she reminded herself firmly. And nothing else.

But still her heart kept thrumming, and a little voice in the back of her mind said, But if this was a Saturday-night party in Chicago things might be a whole lot different….

Willy was on the porch when Clair crossed the two yards at exactly nine o’clock. He was so cute that just one look at him made her smile.

He had on miniature blue jeans with the legs cuffed on the bottoms to expose tiny suede work boots. He also wore the heavy parka Clair had seen on the sofa the night before. It wasn’t zipped in front, so between the open sides she could see a navy-blue T-shirt with a bright picture of a cartoon dog and the words Scooby-Doo arched over the dog’s head.

Clair wasn’t sure what Willy was doing, but he was very busy scanning the perimeters of the porch, looking into the two empty clay flowerpots that sentried the front door and even studying the swing seat.

“Hi, Willy,” she greeted as she reached the porch steps.

The little boy cast her a glance from beneath a suspicious frown but he didn’t answer her. Instead he went on about his business.

Clair climbed the stairs and sat on the porch floor, bracing her back against the railing so she could watch him at his own level.

“What are you doing?” she tried again.

“Nussin’,” he finally responded under his breath, pressing his adorable red head as far as he could between the railing slats to peer into the surrounding bushes that hadn’t yet begun to leaf.

“It doesn’t look like you’re doing nothing,” Clair persisted, hoping she’d translated nussin’ correctly. “Did you lose something?”

“No,” he said forcefully, even though searching for something was what he appeared to be doing.

“Can I help?”

“No,” he said, adding impatience and surliness to the forcefulness.

He must have spotted whatever he was hunting for because suddenly he ran as fast as his little legs would take him, around Clair, down the steps and toward the driveway where he snatched something from the side of the porch.

Then he bounded back the way he’d come and charged into the house as if Clair wasn’t there at all.

“Whoa, boy!”

She heard Jace’s deep voice come from just inside as she stood to follow Willy. By the time she was on her feet again Jace was out the door, one big hand on Willy’s head to urge him in the same direction.

“’Mornin’,” Jace said, ignoring Willy’s obvious lack of desire to rejoin her.

“Good morning.”

Willy tugged on Jace’s pant leg—apparently a signal that he wanted to be picked up, because the tall man bent over and did just that, settling the child on one hip.

When he was situated, Willy whispered something in Jace’s ear and in response to it, Jace said, “Her name is Clair. She’s your aunt—that’s someone like Josh and Beau and Ethan and Scott and Devon. They’re your uncles, and ladies like them are called aunts.”

Willy shook his head, vigorously, solemnly and muttered, “Ants’re bugs.”

Clair felt her heart clench at the continuing rejection, but she laughed at his reasoning, anyway.

“Some ants are bugs and other kinds of aunts are people. Clair is not a bug,” Jace tutored. Then, in a confidential voice directed into the boy’s ear, he added, “Why don’t you say good morning to her?”

“No,” Willy responded without hesitation and with as much force as his earlier nos to her.

“Come on. She’s a nice lady. Pretty, too. And if I’m rememberin’ right, she’s come a long way to see you.”

Willy shook his head once more, a stern refusal. Then he stuck his index finger in his mouth and glared at Clair.

“Okay,” Jace conceded as if it were Willy’s loss. “But me, I like pretty ladies.”

Willy shook his head again and remained mute.

Jace ignored that, too, and focused his denim-blue eyes entirely on Clair. “He’s had a lot of upheaval in the past few months,” he said. “And he’s two.”

Clair nodded as if she understood, but she couldn’t keep her spirits from deflating slightly at this second, less-than-enthusiastic beginning.

Then, in a cheerier tone, Jace said, “Shall we get goin’?”

“Sure,” Clair agreed, putting some effort into hiding her disappointment that Willy wouldn’t have anything to do with her.

To Willy, Jace said, “I see you found your tool belt. So we should be all set.”

This time the small, bur-cut head bobbed up and down, and Willy held aloft the toy tool belt he’d located a few minutes earlier by the side of the porch.

Jace turned back to the house to close and lock the door. As he did, Clair’s gaze went with a will of its own to the man himself.

He was dressed much like Willy was—cowboy boots instead of work boots, blue jeans, and a jean jacket over a faded red Henley shirt over a white crew-neck T-shirt that showed beneath the Henley’s open placket.

But it wasn’t merely the clothes that Clair took notice of. It was also the way the clothes fit the man.

The T-shirt molded to impressive pectorals. The waist-length jean jacket was stretched to its limits by the breadth of his shoulders and the expanse of his muscular arms. And the jeans…oh, the jeans! They were just snug enough to cup a derriere to die for.

Clair’s mouth went dry, her heart started thrumming all over again, and she felt as if her temperature had gone up.

Maybe she’d caught some kind of country fever, she thought. Some kind of country fever that was making her body react to things she shouldn’t even be aware of.

Or maybe it was cowboy fever, she amended, none too patient with herself.

But country fever or cowboy fever, she forced her eyes off Jace’s rear end in the nick of time as he spun back around on his heels with a sexy bit of grace and agility that made her think he was probably a good dancer.

He pointed his chin toward the black truck in the driveway and said, “Hope you don’t mind sittin’ in the middle. Willy’s car seat has to be on the passenger’s side because of the seat belt.”

It wasn’t sitting in the middle that she minded. The problem was the effect it would have on her to be that close to Jace.

“Maybe I should follow behind in my car,” she suggested when it occurred to her, trying not to think about his behind….

“You can if you want but it seems silly. Unless you aren’t plannin’ to spend the whole day with us.”

“No, it isn’t that,” she answered in a hurry, concerned that he’d gotten the impression she didn’t want to be with Willy that long. “I just thought that if I was crowding you—”

“There’s plenty of room,” he assured her before she could finish her attempt to cover her tracks.

“Okay, then,” she said much too happily, when the truth was that just the thought of being that near to Jace on the truck’s bench seat raised her temperature another notch. Cowboy fever. If there was such a thing, she really thought she had it.

But since there was no rectifying the situation, she went along with Jace and Willy to the truck, arriving on the driver’s side at the same moment Jace did.

He reached in front of her and opened the door for her, then rounded the cab to deposit Willy in the car seat and buckle him in.

That was accomplished by the time Clair slid in next to the child. But her welcome there was cold as Willy frowned at her as if she were intruding, then presented her with the back of his head, looking through the side window in yet another rejection of her.

She really didn’t know what to do about him. But before she could come up with anything, Jace was behind the wheel and she was left torn between the child who didn’t want anything to do with her and the man whose very presence did too much to her.