Maybe, Baby

“It appears I am.” Burke lifted a hand to settle his glasses over his nose. “God help me.”

CHAPTER TWO

NORA LOWERED her knitting needles to her lap with a mournful sigh. “It’s snowing again.”

Jenna twitched back one of the lace curtain panels draped in the deep, three-windowed bay in the second parlor of the Harrison family home. The beam of a lamp on the tea table at her side captured the silver threaded through her honey-gold hair and highlighted the tiny lines at the corners of her blue eyes as she peered at the view beyond the glass pane. Rolling pastureland, buried beneath several inches of snow, stretched to the timbered foothills of the Tobacco Root Mountains.

“So it is,” she said in her muted Texas twang.

“Burke isn’t used to driving in snow.”

“Doesn’t it snow in England?” Jenna turned her attention back to her own needlework project, a cross-stitch keepsake for one of the babies due in early summer. Her former daughter-in-law, Ellie, was expecting a baby a few weeks before her daughter, Maggie Hammond.

“Burke’s from London,” said Nora, though she didn’t know much more about his past than that. “I’m sure they don’t let the snow pile up in the streets there. And it’s getting late. And colder. And I don’t think he knows how to put on chains.”

Jenna knotted a strand of pink floss and snipped off the end. “You seem mighty anxious about Burke’s arrival.”

“That’s because I have a good idea why he’s coming.” And that idea, with its dark and complicated twists and turns, was enough to make her throat close up and her palms sweat. Facing Burke meant facing her insecurities about her future.

She scrunched the beginnings of a tiny sweater to the end of one needle before stabbing them both into a ball of fuzzy pink yarn. “It’s like he and Fitz are playing the good cop, bad cop routine. And Burke’s the bad cop.”

She knew she was overacting it, wringing the situation for every dramatic drop. And from the look Jenna sent her, it was obvious that Jenna knew it, too. But an actress had to stretch every once in a while to stay in shape. Besides, her friends here at Granite Ridge often seemed amused by her excesses.

“Well, you don’t have anything to worry about.” Jenna tidied her things and set them aside. “You’re not a criminal.”

“No,” said Nora. “Just a fugitive.”

A door slammed on the far side of the rambling, Victorian-era house. “Gran!” called Ellie’s daughter, Jody, a few moments later. “I got an A on my math test.”

“I’d better go catch her,” said Jenna, “before she and her aunt Maggie decide that’s reason enough to celebrate and spoil their dinners. Those two can empty the cookie jar when their after-school snacking gets out of hand.”

Nora glanced out the window again, fretting over the fat white flakes falling from a darkening sky. Burke was supposed to arrive in time for the evening meal, but perhaps the snowfall would delay him. Or maybe he’d lose his way. He hadn’t been here since Fitz and Ellie’s wedding, and things looked different under all that white.

They looked clean. Clean and pure, and lovelier than anything she’d ever seen. Everyone she’d met here—and everyone back in California—had warned her that winter in Montana could be harsh, but Nora loved it. She loved everything about this place and the people who lived in it.

No one here measured her worth by her looks or her talent or her box office draw, no one criticized her choices or questioned her decisions. No one here expected her to be anything but herself—and they’d given her the space and the freedom to begin to rediscover who that person was.

Maybe she’d abused Fitz’s hospitality a bit too long while hiding from Hollywood’s spotlight through the worst days of her divorce. And maybe she’d relied on Jenna a bit too much for help with her baby. But she’d needed that time and that help while she prepared to face the next phase of her life and take the next steps in her career.

She hadn’t figured on having to face Burke.

Fitz’s long-suffering assistant had always been one of her favorite people, a man she could tease with a safe and sisterly affection. A paragon who could patiently smooth every wrinkle and methodically clip every loose thread. The idea that all that patient efficiency would soon be aimed in her direction was a bit unnerving.

“My, don’t you look domestic.” Maggie sauntered into the parlor, an oversized sugar cookie in one hand and a tall glass of milk in the other. “Seeing you like that makes me feel as warm and fuzzy as that yarn.”

Nora smiled as she tucked her knitting into the tapestry satchel Jenna had given her for Christmas. Warm and fuzzy were the last words she’d choose to describe her friend. Maggie might have had her mother’s coloring, but there was nothing soft or countrified about the woman who stood before her in a short-and-sassy layered hairstyle, a silk-and-velvet kimono-style top and pencil-slim designer jeans.

“Is that for me?” Nora reached for the snack Maggie offered. “My, aren’t you generous.”

“Only because I helped myself to plenty before I came out here. And I’ve got this.” Maggie pulled another cookie from a deep pocket and sank into the chair Jenna had vacated, crossing her model-length legs. “Mom’s fussing over dinner. When is Burke going to show?”

“Any minute now.” Nora sipped the milk and stared past the curtains. “If nothing happened to him.”

“You mean, like a blizzard or an avalanche or some other natural disaster? That’s about what it would take to stop him.”

“He might get lost.”

“Bet he’s got GPS on that phone of his. He’s got practically everything else, including the private numbers for every Hollywood exec, European fashion model and Fortune 500 zillionaire.” Maggie’s mouth turned up in a crooked grin. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he had a gizmo in some pocket that holds a copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the launch codes for our intercontinental ballistic missiles.”

Nora’s smile stretched around a bite of cookie. “You make him sound like a comic-book character.”

“If the colored tights fit…” Maggie leaned back and stacked her stylish heeled boots on a needlepoint stool. “Actually, I think they’d fit pretty well. And look damn good on him, too.”

“On Burke?”

Maggie wiggled her eyebrows. “I’ve always been a sucker for stud muffins in college prof glasses. And he’s got that whole British Clark Kent thing going for him—capable but clueless. Makes me wonder if he’s Superman in bed.”

“Burke?”

“Yes, Burke.” Maggie smoothed her hands over her barely noticeable pregnancy bump. “Don’t tell me you’ve never noticed.”

“I’ve never looked.” Nora stuffed the rest of the cookie in her mouth and brushed crumbs from her hands. “He’s just a friend.”

“Is that so?”

Maggie gave Nora a sly smile, and Nora remembered that Maggie’s husband, Wayne Hammond, had once been “just a friend” from her school days, before she’d left for Chicago vowing never to return. Maggie had taken a second, longer look at the rancher next door when she’d returned home last summer, newly divorced and needing a fresh start. She’d found it here, teaching at the local high school and living the kind of life she’d thought she’d wanted to escape.

Another fugitive from the big city who’d found a refuge in this small-town world.

“Look who just woke up from her nap.” Jody carried Nora’s three-month-old daughter, Ashley, into the parlor. “I changed her diaper already.”

“Thanks, hon.” Nora set her glass on the dainty mahogany tea table beside her. “I didn’t hear her wake up.”

“That’s ’cause she was sucking her thumb again.” Jody shifted the baby into Nora’s arms and then straightened, shoving reddish bangs out of her dark hazel eyes. “She was just lying there, staring at me and sucking away. Slurp, slurp.”

“Hello, sweetheart,” Nora murmured. “Are you hungry?”

Ashley stared into her face as if the question were the most important thing she’d ever considered, and Nora’s heart swelled against her ribs in an intensely painful and wonderful habit. Her daughter—her gorgeous, brilliant, marvelous daughter. She never tired of gazing at the frilly black ringlets springing out in every direction, at that turned-up button of a nose, at those wide, dark eyes. Her very own miracle.

“Here.” Jody handed her a small quilt and two fresh cloth diapers. “I’ll go get more.”

“I think this will be enough for a while.”

“The way that kid spits up?” Jody wrinkled her freckled nose in disgust. “I’ll just bring in the load from the dryer. Might as well save yourself the trouble of folding them.”

“Auntie Jody thinks you’re an awful lot of trouble,” Nora crooned as she unfastened the buttons of her blouse.

“I’m not the only one,” said Jody. “Fitz calls her Upchuck Charlie.”

“I hadn’t heard that one.” Maggie switched off the nursery monitor perched near Jenna’s things on the tiny lamp table. “The night before he left, he was calling her Suzie Oozie.”

“That’s when her diaper leaked all over his shirt.”

“The only thing I haven’t heard him call her is Ashley,” said Maggie.

Nora settled the baby against her breast and adjusted the quilt across her lap. Behind her, the tall case clock chimed the hour. She glanced toward the window again, searching for a car on the long ranch road.

Jody peered over Nora’s shoulder to watch Ashley nurse. “She sure is a sweetie.”

“Yes, she is.”

“Pretty, too. She looks just like her mama.”

Nora reached back and squeezed Jody’s fingers where they rested on her shoulder. “Thanks for checking on her.”

“No biggie. She snores, though.”

“She does not.”

“Yes, she does.” Jody demonstrated with some snuffles and snorts. “And she grunts like a pig when she starts to wake up. I could hardly concentrate on my homework.”

The electronic tune of a cell phone—a more likely source for Jody’s difficulty finishing her assignments—jangled in her pocket, and she checked the screen as she exited the room.

Nora tipped her head against the deeply tufted chair, her thoughts drifting with the snowflakes tumbling through the streaks of lantern light beyond the porch roof eaves. Outside, the ranch dogs barked and scrambled across the wraparound porch and bounded down to the wide gravel drive. A few moments later, pale headlights swept across the turn at the bottom of the knoll.

“Looks like he made it.” Maggie stood and leaned a shoulder against the thick window trim. “Wonder how long he’ll tough it out.”

Jenna rushed into the parlor, wiping her hands on her apron. “That must be Burke. And Will just called with bad news about the water heater.”

“What about it?” asked Maggie.

“Fitz asked me to open Will’s old place for Burke,” said Jenna. Will Winterhawk had married her last fall and moved from the foreman’s cabin into the family home. “But Will says the water heater needs to be replaced. Pete’s Hardware doesn’t have the right model in stock, and now it’s too late to drive to Sheridan to get one.” She smoothed her apron. “I hope Burke doesn’t mind staying in the guest room tonight.”

“As long as he doesn’t mind sharing a bathroom down the hall with four other people,” said Maggie.

Nora shifted Ashley and lifted the quilt over her shoulder to loosely cover her. “If he doesn’t like that idea, he can always drive back to town and find a place there.”

She wasn’t sure she liked the idea of Burke camped out at the house. Or on the ranch. Or in the state, for that matter.

But in the next moment, she felt guilty about the fact that most of the extended Harrison clan was crowded into this one house, while she and her baby shared one of the three rooms in Ellie’s former home, the guest cabin a mile down the ranch road. There was plenty of space there for Burke, if he wanted it. She could keep an eye on him if she kept him close, and he could see for himself how happy she was here in Montana.

Ashley gurgled and whooped, and Nora eased her embrace and ordered herself to relax.

“He’s got a place right here,” said Jenna. “It shouldn’t be a problem. He’s practically family.”

“Hard to tell where he’s going to want to stay,” said Maggie, “except for somewhere else.”

“He doesn’t like it here, does he?” Jenna shook her head. “The poor man.” She continued into the front parlor, heading toward the entry.

A dark gray SUV pulled into view, and the dogs danced around to the driver’s-side door.

“Uh-oh, here comes Rowdy,” said Maggie with a grin. “This is going to be interesting.”

Nora tipped forward as far as she could and watched the driver’s-side door of the rental car swing open. One long leg stretched toward the ground, and in the next moment Rowdy, the newest ranch mongrel adopted by one of the hands, rushed forward and sank his puppy teeth into the fabric of thin dress slacks. Burke tried shaking him off, but that made the game more fun.

Jenna stepped off the porch and made her way to the car. Nora couldn’t hear what she was saying, but she guessed Jenna was trying to strike a ladylike balance between welcoming her guest and cussing at the dogs. Burke emerged from the car and stood, stiff and stoic, above the maelstrom of tails and paws and flying snow at his feet. He said something to Jenna with a formal nod and then stared at Rowdy, who’d released his toothy grip on Burke’s pants only to replace it with a more intimate embrace of his leg.

“What a welcome,” said Maggie with a laugh. “Poor Burke.”

Nora dropped the quilt to switch Ashley to her other side, and then carefully covered them both again. She glanced up in time to see Burke stalk to the car’s rear, yank open the hatchback and reach inside to collect a briefcase. Rowdy jumped up for one last nip at butt level, and Burke lost traction on the slick white snow coating the gravel and rammed his shin against the back fender.

She winced and shook her head. And then she remembered why he’d come, and she narrowed her eyes. Poor, poor Burke wasn’t going to enjoy this visit at all.

A FEW MINUTES LATER, after Maggie had followed Jenna into the kitchen to help with the last of the dinner preparations, Nora heard the massive front door of the ranch house close with a whump, and then Burke appeared in the high, arched parlor doorway. Melting flakes dotted the creases of a blue parka he must have pulled from the rack in Butte. The white shirt collar poking through the neck opening was tugged awkwardly to one side, and one Rowdy-mangled pant leg was wet and twisted, riding crookedly up a dark gray sock. Caked with patches of white, his black dress shoes looked soaked through.

He’d obviously plowed a hand through his thick black hair more than once, making it stand out in uneven layers. One loose strand drooped over an eyebrow to brush against the edge of his glasses, and his nose was red from the cold. That amazingly perfect British complexion of his looked paler than usual, making the spots of color edging his angular cheekbones a vivid contrast. When he reached up to straighten his glasses over dark, deep-set eyes, he seemed very tired, and very disgruntled and, oh, so very dear.

He was a dear. He’d always been her friend and, until this moment, her protector. She wondered how he’d manage the shift in their relationship, how she’d deal with the same thing, and she shivered. He’d be a focused and tenacious adversary. She hoped their friendship would survive the coming days.

“Hello, Nora,” he said in his low, slightly gruff voice.

“Hello, Burke.” She lifted the quilt higher over her shoulder. “I hope your trip wasn’t too bad.”

“No. Not at all.” His lips thinned with the hint of a grimace, and she remembered how much he hated to travel. “Everything went according to schedule,” he said.

Ashley kicked at the quilt, and Burke stared for a moment at the tented spot before meeting Nora’s gaze again. He cleared his throat.

“I hope you’re hungry,” she said. “Jenna’s been cooking all afternoon.”

“Whatever it is, it smells delicious.”

“That’s pecan pie, I think.”

Ashley whooped and tugged at the cover.

He flicked another glance at the quilt. “Is that your baby under there?”

“Yes.” Nora smiled. “I’ll show her to you in a few minutes.”

“Is there something—” Burke frowned and straightened. “Is she ill?”

“She’s fine.” Nora’s smile widened. “She’s nursing.”

“Nursing?”

Nora could see the moment Burke understood what nursing meant. The red spots on his cheeks deepened and spread.

“I see,” he said. “I mean, I don’t. That is, I don’t want to see, if that’s all right. Not that I don’t want to see the baby—I just don’t want to see you. No—I mean, I do want to see you. Just not you and the baby. Together. Right now, that is.”

“I know what you mean.” Nora bit hard on her lip to kill a smile. “Don’t worry. I don’t want you to see right now, either.”

“Well, then,” he said with a stiff nod. “That’s settled.”

This was so strange, watching him deal with her in such a formal manner. And what was even stranger was the fact that the more ill at ease he appeared, the more relaxed she felt.

Things between them seemed reversed, somehow. Usually she was the one asking the questions, needing his help. Usually he was the one with the answers, the one in control.

“Why don’t you take off that jacket and sit down?” She gestured at the empty chair across from her. “Dinner will be ready soon.”

“While you—no, thank you.”

Jody skidded into the room behind him. “Hey, Burke.”

“Hello, Jody.” His face eased into the first smile Nora had seen, deepening the grooves on either side of his mouth. “I’ve got a delivery for you. From Fitz.”

“Shh.” She glanced behind her, toward the entry. “You don’t want Mom to find out. She’ll skin us both.”

Burke froze. “She will?”

Ellie had decided months ago that Fitz’s habit of bringing presents back from his business trips to California needed to be broken. So far he’d been able to find a few ways to smuggle goods past her embargo, but it was always a dicey proposition.

“Is it in here?” Jody lifted his briefcase. “You can slip it to me while I help you carry your things to your room.”

“My room?” He pushed his glasses up his nose. “I wasn’t told I’d be staying here.”

“Well, you are,” said Jody as she headed toward the entry.

Burked turned to face Nora. “Fitz mentioned a small cabin.”

“Will’s old place. The water heater’s broken.”

“I’ve no hot water?”

“That’s what Jenna said.”

Ashley squawked and kicked at the quilt, and Nora struggled to button her blouse beneath the cover. “Will went into town today to get a replacement, but they didn’t have what he needed. It won’t be fixed until tomorrow.”

“Then I’m to stay here, in this house?”

“You could go back to town, but the snow is coming down pretty fast now.” She gave up on the buttons and lifted Ashley against her shoulder, still beneath the quilt, rubbing her back and hoping for a quick, neat burp. “Do you have chains?”

“For the tires, you mean?” He frowned. “There’s a box in the back of the car.”

“Do you know how to put them on?”

“I’m sure I can follow the directions.” He closed his eyes, and his glasses slipped crookedly as he pinched at his nose. “Isn’t there a snowplow service of some sort?”

“For the main roads. But it doesn’t come out to Granite Ridge. And you might still need the chains.”

Ashley burped. A loud, liquidy burp. The kind that meant lots of slightly curdled milk coming back up. A familiar warm, wet sensation slid over the edge of the cloth diaper and down the front of Nora’s blouse.

“Isn’t there another alternative?” asked Burke.

“Yes, there is.” Nora folded the quilt down to reveal Ashley, her curly baby hair sticking up in places, her cheeks bright pink from the warmth beneath the cover. One side of her face was smeared with spit-up, as was the front of her yellow print sleeper. Her head wobbled a bit as she craned her neck to get a better look at Burke, and then she burped again—another long, wet, gurgly sound effect to accompany the stuff that spattered over Nora’s lap and dripped to the floor.

“You could stay with the baby and me,” said Nora.

CHAPTER THREE

BURKE TOOK HIS SEAT in the Harrison family’s spacious dining room later that evening and surveyed the crowd gathered around the lake-sized table. Ellie and Will formed a cozy corner to his left, their voices low as they discussed scheduling changes involving an injured member of the ranch crew and the season’s calving chores. Jody and Jenna sat to his right, negotiating the details of Jody’s plans for a sleepover party. Across the table, Nora laughed at Maggie’s description of a classroom incident while Wayne, Maggie’s husband, paced behind them with Nora’s squalling baby in his arms.

The table was set with thick, homey china and daffodils crowded in a fat pitcher, and the serving platters were heaped with delicious-looking food. The wine in Burke’s goblet, which Wayne had contributed from his cellar, was a surprisingly good cabernet. At least Burke could be assured of one thing: he wouldn’t go hungry during his stay.

If only the din weren’t enough to obliterate his appetite.

The baby ceased its howling for a moment, and a wide smile creased Wayne’s rugged features as he lifted its face close to his and nuzzled its nose. “That’s my girl,” he said in his soft voice as he carried the kicking, writhing bundle toward the dimly lit parlor adjoining the dining room. “You were just waiting for your uncle Wayne to figure things out.”

“Here, Burke,” said Jody as she handed him a platter piled with thick slices of glazed ham. “And please pass the sweet potatoes down to Will when you get a chance.”

He noticed the others were helping themselves to servings of beet salad, home-preserved peaches, dilled carrots, baked-bean casserole and corn bread. “Aren’t we going to wait for Wayne to join us?”

“He’s got Ashley.”

“Yes, but—”

“He’ll give someone else a turn in a minute,” she said, handing him a pottery jar filled with some kind of aromatic relish. “He likes her. Besides, he says he needs the practice.”

Burke didn’t understand why anyone would want to spend one minute more than necessary practicing to have his eardrums damaged.

“You’ll get a turn, too,” Jody said.

“Thank you, but that’s not—”

“Excuse me, Burke.” Nora fluttered impossibly thick lashes at him from across the table. “Could you please pass the butter?”

She looked lovely tonight, he thought, dazzled by her presence. He knew she was doing the dazzling bit on purpose, and he supposed he should be immune to it by now. But she was so bloody good at it.

She’d changed her top and pinned up her hair. A few wavy black tendrils wisped about her face and tumbled to drape along her long, shapely neck. Those impossibly dark almond-shaped eyes were somehow more exotic than ever without layers of makeup, and her famously pouty lips shimmered a clean, glossy pink. Motherhood had accentuated her mouthwatering curves, enough to send any man to his knees. She was a fresh-scrubbed Gypsy temptress, a siren in a white T-shirt and jeans, radiating so much charisma across the table he was afraid he’d burn to cinders in the heat.

“Burke?”

“Yes. Sorry.” He snatched up the butter and handed it to Ellie to pass along.

Wayne lowered the baby into Maggie’s arms and took his seat at the table.

“Have you heard from Fitz today?” Burke asked Ellie.

“Nope.”

“He hasn’t called you?”

“He knows better than to call me while I’m working.” Ellie shrugged. “Just like I know better than to call him when he’s on the set.”

Burke was no stranger to Fitz’s odd aversion to the phone—serving as a human message machine had been one of Burke’s most important duties during his years as an assistant.