Maybe, Baby

“Not in so many words.”

“Jenna.” Will stood and reached for her hand. “She can’t stay here forever.”

He waited patiently, and after a few seconds she surrendered to his silent request and turned to enclose her slim, pale fingers in his big, rough hand.

“She likes it here.” Jenna’s voice grew soft and wavery. “And she’s been happy here.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Means she’ll come back for visits now and again.”

Jenna stroked her thumb over a scar on his knuckle. “I don’t want her to go, Will.”

“I know you don’t, darlin’.”

“She’ll take that sweet baby girl with her, and I won’t get to see her grow up.”

“You’ll have a couple more babies to love in a few months.”

“They won’t be Ashley.”

“No, they won’t.” He pulled her from her chair to wrap his arms around her waist and hug her close, and her gown quivered and shimmered and hinted at the womanly curves beneath the silk. “They’ll probably sleep for more than an hour at a time and keep the milk they drink in their bellies, where it belongs. No fun at all.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder, and he breathed in the scents of her shampoo and soap and creams. They brought to mind a meadow lush with wildflowers, a woman warmed in the summer sun.

“It won’t be the same around here without her.”

“No, I don’t suppose it will,” he said. “It’ll be a whole lot quieter and cleaner, that’s for sure.”

He guided her down, down to their soft bed, and he shifted over her to press a gentle kiss to the spot behind one ear, right where he’d watched her dab on some of that perfume he’d told her he liked so well.

Her pulse stuttered beneath his lips. “You’ll miss her, too.”

“I s’pose I will.”

He skimmed his fingers across her shoulder, pushing the silk aside. “I have an idea or two about how we can keep those worries of ours off our minds for a while.”

She lifted her arms to circle his neck. “You do, do you?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m surprised you can’t tell just by looking at me how friendly I’m feeling right now.”

“Are you flirting with me, Will Winterhawk?”

He took one of her hands and pressed it to his bare chest. “I’m fluttering for you, Jenna. Just for you. Seems I always am.”

BURKE OPENED HIS EYES to a tomblike blackness so oppressive it threatened to suffocate him. Somewhere beyond the boundaries of the dark a siren wailed its dirge. Suffering. Disaster. Death.

No. Something much, much worse.

The baby.

He groaned and curled into the stiff, creaky mattress and pulled a pillow over his head, tempted for a moment to press it against his nose and mouth until he slipped into oblivion.

Waaa-uh-uh-waaa.

Damn Greenberg for throwing the tantrums and pitching the ultimatums that had set him on the road to this frozen wasteland. Damn Fitz for handing him a map and waving goodbye. Damn Nora for being here in the first place.

And damn his sorry, aching, icicled self for letting them all maneuver him into a mess like this. Again.

He was a perfectly good associate pro—No, he was a bloody terrific associate producer. So terrific he’d already turned down a few offers to trade up. Greenberg’s little empire would go down in flames without Burke there to douse the stray sparks, and Fitz would be quite put out.

Yes, quite. The actor was far more capable than he let on, but he’d invested years in cultivating his image of carefree, casual success. He wouldn’t appreciate being caught out doing something as prosaic as paperwork.

Burke Elliot, enabler. Even the amateurs had roles to play in Hollywood, and he played his as well as any actor in the city. But he preferred to play it at his desk, in his tidy bungalow, with outlets for his office equipment and a phone with more than one line.

With a functional thermostat and a private bath.

He shoved a foot against the iron rail at the end of the too-short mattress and realized he couldn’t feel his toes.

Frostbite, most likely. How tidy of nature to provide a natural anesthetic in case some backwoods carnivore decided to nibble on one’s extremities.

Waaa. Waaa-uh-waaa.

“God.” He rolled to his back and tugged a sloppy tangle of quilts around his chin, staring blindly at a wood plank ceiling he knew was festooned with solidified drips of resinous matter and ghostly tatters of cobwebs. The country style had so much natural charm to offer, if one knew where to look.

The baby wailed again, from the direction of the open room that served as entry, parlor, dining area and kitchen. One more minute, and he’d go out there, to see if Nora needed any help.

And what kind of assistance would he offer her? Feed the baby? Change its nappy? Ship it to a boarding school?

He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face, grimacing at the freeze-dried nubbin that was his nose. Ashley. The baby’s name was Ashley. He didn’t wish to be on more familiar terms with the child than necessary, but Nora seemed to require his active admiration and involvement.

Part of any producer’s job, after all: making nice with the talent. And he valued his friendship with the actress enough to make more of an effort.

There. Silence.

Perhaps they’d both frozen to death.

He borrowed a few of Greenberg’s nastiest swearwords as he tossed off the covers and reached for his glasses, and then swung his bare feet to the scratchy wool rug covering a portion of the wood floor. Tugging a sweater over his head, he made his way down the short hall to the front room, where a tropical wave of stove-heated air washed away his goose bumps.

Nora, swathed in her high-necked gown and a shawl-like wrap, rocked in the tall chair beside the stove and crooned an off-key tune in a slightly hoarse voice. She made a gorgeous Madonna, a Renaissance vision of ripe curves beneath the flowing folds of the soft fabric, of perfect features against pale skin. Her dreamy, ethereal expression as she stared at the child in her arms was as peaceful, as compelling as a timeless work of art. Her black hair tumbled and waved about her shoulders, thick and lustrous and practically begging a man to bury his fingers in its silky strands.

He scrubbed a hand over his face. Where had that last terrifying thought come from? He knew he wasn’t sleepwalking through a nightmare—he was all too aware of the needlelike tingling in his toes as the blood began to circulate through them.

“Burke.” She whispered his name with a finger against her lips. “I just got her to sleep.”

“Congratulations.”

He stood in the center of the room, uncertain of his next move. She sighed and leaned her head against the chair, and he noticed the dark smudges beneath her eyes.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked.

She smiled and shook her head. “No, thank you. I’m just going to sit here a while longer and enjoy the quiet.” She shifted the baby slightly. “I’m sorry we woke you.”

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“I don’t?” One of her feathery brows arched up in amusement. “Don’t you start getting sarcastic with me, buster. I’m the mom here. I’ll send you to your room.”

“You’re not my mother.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“You’re a good one. A good mother.”

The rocker stilled. “Do you really think so?”

Yes, he did, but why had he blurted it out like that? Another renegade thought coming at him from an unknown source. He obviously wasn’t himself tonight, speaking without thinking things through. “You’re much more patient than I thought you’d be.”

“Patient?”

“With the—” he waved his hand in a circle “—with the spitting up. And the crying. And—and everything.”

“Oh.” She frowned. “Thank you.”

“I meant it as a compliment.”

“I’m sure you did,” she said, although she didn’t seem all that convinced of the fact.

“Is it normal for a baby to be…to be so—”

“Annoying?”

“I’m sure she’s not doing it on purpose.”

Nora stared at him for a long moment. “Come here,” she said at last. “You haven’t had a chance to get a good look at her.”

He was tempted to disagree, but he tiptoed across the room and moved to Nora’s side to peer at the infant in her arms.

Asleep, Ashley was a different baby entirely. Pink and delicate, and…amazing, now that he had this chance to study her without any anxiety about holding her correctly or bracing for something unpleasant. Every feature that should be present was correctly in place—and each of them was an incredible, perfect miniature. He had never seen human hair so fine, curving in such interesting waves, or such a little nose turning up in such a wonderfully sculpted shape. The tiny spikes of her eyelashes spread in a soft crescent along cheeks that already showed the promise of her mother’s lush curves, and her pink lips bowed with the hint of a killer pout. As he watched, her mouth moved in a silent rhythm.

“What is she doing?” he whispered. “Is she dreaming?”

“Maybe.” Nora wrapped a fuzzy yellow blanket more securely over the baby’s shoulder. “I wonder what she dreams about. What she thinks.”

“Why does she cry so much?” He shifted from behind Nora’s chair so he could stare from a different angle. “Is she in pain?”

“A lot of the time, poor thing. She’s colicky, always has been. She’ll grow out of it eventually.”

“Poor Ashley.”

Nora looked up with a smile and reached for his hand, and he took hers and gave it a gentle squeeze.

Neither of them let go for a moment, and in the next moment it was too late—he was too aware of the feel of her hand in his to release it and return to the old ease between them. Her awkward tug as she pulled away told him she’d felt the same.

He rubbed one foot over the other, wondering how to make her smile again, how to undo this puzzling tension between them. He told himself they’d get things sorted out in the morning, when they’d both had a bit more sleep, but he couldn’t think of an appropriate exit line.

“You can go back to bed now,” she said. “We won’t be making any more noise for a while, and you should grab some sleep while you have the chance.”

“Is that what you do now? Grab sleep in snatches?”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

She stared at her sleeping child with an achingly tender smile and set the chair in motion again. “For as long as it takes.”

He’d seen the smile he’d waited for, and now he was strangely sorry it was time to go. The expression on her face seemed to pierce right through him, reaching deep into a spot he hadn’t known existed until it twinged with a bittersweet pain.

“Good night, then,” he said.

“Good night, Burke.”

Her low, throaty tune followed him down the cold, dim hallway.

CHAPTER FIVE

NORA SHOVED a hunk of hair behind one ear and frowned at the jumble of dishes in the sink and the meager pile of breakfast ingredients on the kitchen counter. She hadn’t kept up with the housework, she’d forgotten she was running low on her emergency supply of breakfast basics, and now she had to share all her shortcomings with an unexpected guest.

A guest who wandered through her house in the middle of the night, intruding on her private time, the dark and quiet hours when she was most lonely, most vulnerable. She didn’t want anyone to see her like that, with her pillow-mussed hair and her fatigue-tinged eyes, with her spit-up-stained nightgown and her ratty robe. And yet it had been good to know there was someone else there, someone who cared about her enough to come looking for her, to offer her assistance and reassurance.

She’d forgotten how supportive Burke could be. Had always been.

But before last night, they’d always spent their time together in small doses, in afternoons at Fitz’s house or quick conversations at parties, in snatches of between-scene activity on the set or in a shared meal. In passing, really.

It wasn’t until she’d been confronted by his things in her bathroom this morning—neatly arranged and organized—that she’d begun to consider the consequences of her impulsive invitation, to worry over the damage sharing such close quarters might do to their friendship. They were already dealing with a difficult situation. Why had she added another layer of stress to it?

And why had he agreed to the arrangement?

“Good morning.”

She turned to see him standing in the hall doorway, looking adorably tense, his shower-damp hair slicked back and his briefcase dangling from one hand. The boots on his feet looked new enough to give him blisters, and his crisp white shirt was neatly tucked into jeans that looked so stiff they could probably stand on their own creased legs.

“Good morning,” she said. “I hope you’re not too hungry.”

He frowned and pushed his glasses up his nose. “Why?”

“Because the snow might be too deep to get to the ranch house, and I don’t have much to eat here.”

He strode to the window above the table and stared at the white-coated scene outside. “It doesn’t look too deep to me. Besides, I rented an SUV.”

“I know.” She picked up a carving knife and hacked at the slightly stale bagel she’d found in the bread bin. “It was a good idea, too.”

“It’s for driving in the snow.”

“It’s for driving without chains on snowy pavement that’s been plowed.” She glanced over her shoulder at him. “I’m not sure a city slicker like you could handle an off-road, cross-country trek.”

“Are you saying we might be stuck here?” He cleared his throat, neatly covering the note of panic she’d heard in his voice. “Isn’t there someone we can call?”

“About what?”

“About getting us out of here.”

“You just got here.” She turned with a smile and offered half the bagel, slathered with cream cheese. “Relax. It’s Saturday. Put your feet up. Have a bagel.”

“I don’t want a bagel. Thank you,” he added politely. “I’d like to see about arranging for an Internet connection.”

“Ah, yes. The Internet. First things first.”

“I do have work to do.”

Somewhere in that briefcase was a job offer she wasn’t ready to consider and paperwork she dreaded reading. She pasted on a brilliant smile and cocked her head to one side, prepared to deal with things as best she could. “What kind of work, exactly?”

“My job.”

She lifted an eyebrow and bit into the bagel. “Excuse me for prying.”

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “And excuse me for snapping at you. I guess I need some coffee.”

“Me, too.” She shrugged. “I didn’t remember that I’m out, or I’d have borrowed some from Jenna last night.”

“You don’t have any coffee?”

“Nope.”

“Tea?”

“Sorry. Finished that off last night.”

“Juice?”

“Apple.”

“I’ll take it,” he said. “Unless you need it. For the baby.”

“Ashley doesn’t drink apple juice.”

“I meant…” A charming blush stained his cheeks. “Where is she, by the way?”

“Napping.”

“In the morning?”

“She naps through the day, off and on.” Nora opened the refrigerator door and pulled a bottle of juice from one of the shelves. “You learn to cram all the nonbaby activities into the quiet times.”

She took a glass from one of the honey-toned oak cupboards and filled it with juice. “We’re not really trapped here, you know.”

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