A Forever Kind of Family

Unfortunately, the memories of that long-ago experience churned up by his casual touch had kept her awake into the early hours of morning. And wasn’t it a sad reflection on her love life that, four years later, she could still recall every detail of that night?

She shook her head, as if to banish the unwelcome memories, and realized that while she’d been gathering her scattered thoughts, her assistant had taken her cold coffee cup away and returned now with a fresh, steaming cup.

“Thanks,” Harper said gratefully.

“You have—” Diya gestured to her own cheek “—paper creases on your face.”

So much for maintaining the illusion that she had been hard at work rather than sleeping at her desk. “I guess I dozed off for a minute,” she acknowledged.

“Why don’t you go home and get some proper sleep?” her assistant suggested gently.

“Because when I get home, I’m on baby duty,” she admitted.

“Babies nap—you have to learn to sleep when they do.”

It was the same advice she’d read in countless books, but it seemed to Harper that whenever Oliver was napping, there were a million other things to do before she could even consider sleep.

“That sounds simple enough,” she agreed. “But when I put my head down on a pillow, my mind refuses to shut off.”

“But when you put your head down on a desk, sleep comes?”

Her smile was wry. “Apparently.”

Diya shook her head. “What are you working on there?”

She had to look at the computer screen to remember. “Finalizing the shopping list for our cooking segment tomorrow morning.”

“‘In the Kitchen with Kane.’” Her assistant sighed dreamily. “That man is as yummy as everything he cooks.”

“And an absolute tyrant when it comes to his supplies and ingredients. Three of the items he wants for tomorrow— banana blossom, rau ram and Thai basil—are only available from that specialty cooking shop in Raleigh.”

“What’s rau ram?”

“Vietnamese coriander—which is apparently similar to cilantro, but Kane can’t use cilantro. He has to have rau ram.”

“Send the list to my phone—I’ll go.”

“Really?”

“Sure. My sister, Esha, lives in Raleigh and I was planning to stop by to see her this week anyway.”

“That would be a huge help,” Harper told her.

“I’m the assistant producer’s assistant—it’s my job to help,” Diya reminded her.

“Well, thank you for saving me a detour to the grocery store on my way home.”

“Anytime.”

But as Harper was making her way to her car, her phone chimed with a text message.

can u pick up milk for Oliver?

And she realized she was going to have to make that detour anyway.

* * *

Only a few weeks earlier, Ryan had texted his brother to tell Justin that he would pick up the beer on his way over to watch the game. Today he’d texted the woman he was living with to ask her to pick up milk for the baby.

Obviously his life had undergone some major changes, not the least of which was that he was now playing house with Harper Ross. Beautiful, smart, sexy and infinitely challenging Harper Ross.

He used to think he was smart, too, but his unrelenting attraction to his co-guardian suggested otherwise. He’d been attracted to other women—a lot of other women, and he’d taken a fair number of those other women to his bed. Whether a relationship lasted a few nights or several months, it would inevitably run its course. And when it did, he and the woman in question would part ways, usually amicably.

The problem, from his perspective, was that his relationship with Harper had never run its course. One night with her hadn’t been enough. Not even close. But after that first night, she’d made it clear there wouldn’t be a second.

And he’d accepted her decision. He hadn’t tried to change her mind. If she didn’t want him, there were plenty of other women who did. Unfortunately, countless nights with other women hadn’t helped him purge his desire for her. It was still Harper he wanted, her taste that he craved, her passion that he coveted. He’d hoped the yearning would fade with time and distance. Of course, their current circumstances ensured that he would have the benefit of neither of those to help assuage the ache inside him.

He heard a thump through the monitor on the counter and, glancing at the screen, saw that Oliver had kicked the headboard of his crib. The kid was a restless sleeper. He always started in the middle of the mattress, but he never finished there. He sometimes woke up on his belly, sometimes on his back, but never in the same position he’d started from. Ryan figured it was a good thing Oliver’s bed had four sides—otherwise the little guy might wake up in the hall.

As he dumped some pasta into a pot, he kept an ear tuned to the monitor, listening for any other indications that Oliver was waking up from his nap. For now, he was sleeping peacefully, blissfully unaware that the “mama” and “dada” he still called out for weren’t ever coming home again. Ryan tried not to dwell on that fact too much himself, but it was an unassailable truth that squeezed like a fist around his heart.

He missed his friend. He hated that Darren’s life had ended so tragically and prematurely only weeks after his thirtieth birthday. And there were moments, though he would never acknowledge them aloud, when he resented having his own life derailed by the responsibility of helping to raise Darren and Melissa’s child.

Those moments never lasted long—probably not more than a few seconds. Just long enough for the thought to form and guilt to slice him in half. Because how could he be mad at his friend for anything when Darren had lost everything? How could he begrudge caring for his best friend’s son when the little boy already owned his heart?

Maybe Ryan had never given much thought to being a father, but he knew that Darren had been as excited as Melissa when they’d learned she was expecting their first child. And even when Ryan had teased his friend about trading in his Audi for a minivan, Darren hadn’t minded. He’d been sincerely looking forward to Cub Scouts and soccer games and all the things that most dads did with their sons.

But he hadn’t had a chance to do any of them, so Ryan would. He’d even buy that minivan if he had to—but he really hoped he wouldn’t have to. A Jeep, maybe. Yeah, a Jeep had enough seats for carpooling and plenty of cargo space for all of the kids’ gear.

The timer on the oven buzzed. He lifted the pot off the stove and dumped the macaroni into a colander just as Harper came through the back door with the jug of milk he needed to make the cheese sauce.

Her heels clicked on the ceramic tile, drawing his attention to the sexy sling-back shoes on her feet. His gaze skimmed upward, following the curve of her calves to the flirty hem of her skirt, which twirled around her knees—

“Is Oliver still sleeping?”

He dragged his attention away from her legs. “Yeah, but he’s moving around in his crib, so probably not for long.” He dumped the pasta back into the pot and reached for the milk, frowned at the label. “This is nonfat milk.”

“So?” She kicked off her shoes and dropped her purse on the counter.

“So Oliver can’t drink that.”

“Why not?”

“Because babies need whole milk until the age of two, to aid in brain development.”

She huffed out an impatient breath. “Your message didn’t say to pick up whole milk—it just said milk.”

“I figured you knew.”

“Well, obviously you figured wrong,” she snapped at him, as she slipped her feet back into her shoes and grabbed her purse again.

“Where are you going?”

“To get whole milk.”

Clearly, he’d screwed up. Again. Eager to smooth things over, he told her, “Don’t worry. This’ll be fine for his pasta. I’ll go out later and—”

“You asked me to get it,” she reminded him, reaching for the handle of the door.

He slapped his hand on the frame so that she couldn’t open it. “Forget it. It’s not that big of a deal.”

But he could tell by the moisture shimmering in her eyes that it was—at least to her.

He wondered how it was that, only ten minutes earlier, he’d been thinking that they were managing okay and now Harper was on the verge of a meltdown—for reasons he couldn’t even begin to fathom.

“Haven’t you ever heard the saying ‘no use crying over spilled milk’?” he asked, striving for lightness in a desperate attempt to ward off her tears. “Well, I think the same could be said about nonfat milk.”

“I’m not crying,” she denied.

And maybe she wasn’t, but she definitely sniffled.

“Do you want to tell me what this is really about?” he asked gently.

She shook her head. “I’m just tired.”

Which was hardly surprising in light of the hours that she worked—not just at the studio but after Oliver was settled into bed at night. “It’s almost the weekend—you can sleep all day Saturday if you want.”

“I don’t mean physically tired, although I am that, too,” she admitted. “I mean tired of faking it.”

His brows lifted. “What exactly have you been faking?”

She drew in a deep breath and looked up at him. “That I know what I’m doing here, playing house, playing mommy, when the truth is, I don’t have a clue.”

He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, then cupped the back of her head and gently drew her closer, until her forehead was against his shoulder. “You’re doing just fine. We’re doing just fine.”

She didn’t pull back, but she shook her head again. “You already do so much more than I do, and when you ask me to do one little thing, I screw it up.”

“No one’s keeping score, Harper.”

“If they were, you’d get all the points,” she said.

“That’s not true,” he denied. “You’d get points for having breasts.”

That, finally, earned him a watery smile.

“Now, why don’t you go get Oliver while I finish making the mac and cheese?” he suggested. “There’s enough for you, too, if you’re hungry.”

“Maybe.” And then, proving she hadn’t lost her sense of humor, she added, “But only if you’re making it with nonfat milk.”

* * *

She didn’t have any of the pasta.

Instead Harper made herself a salad and munched on lettuce and chopped veggies while Oliver shoved handfuls of macaroni in his mouth and smeared cheese sauce all over his face and the tray of his high chair.

Ryan had taken his bowl of pasta into the main-floor den to do some work while awaiting the start of a conference call. In the past, Harper might have resented the inherent flexibility afforded to him because his family owned the business he worked for. Now she was grateful.

Not just because it allowed them to share childcare responsibilities but because their offsetting schedules meant that they didn’t have to spend a lot of time together. Because their late-night encounter the night before had reminded her all too clearly how dangerous it was to be in close proximity to Ryan Garrett.

“Mo!” Oliver demanded, banging his now-empty bowl on his tray.

“Please,” Harper admonished.

“Mo!” he said again.

She got up to put some more macaroni in his bowl, shook her head when she placed it in front of him. “You are a mess.”

“Mess,” he echoed, and grinned to show off his eight tiny pearly-white teeth in a mouth stuffed full of macaroni.

Smiling, she ruffled the soft, wispy curls that fell over his forehead.

He needed a haircut—his first haircut. A few months earlier, Melissa had told her that Darren was pushing her to take Oliver to the barbershop because he was tired of strangers mistakenly assuming their son was a daughter, even when he was dressed all in blue. Melissa had resisted, because she was afraid that if they cut off Oliver’s curls, they might be gone forever. And just in case, she’d already snipped one of them and tucked it into a clear plastic folder in his baby book.

The baby book that Melissa kept in the top drawer of Oliver’s dresser so it was readily accessible to record her son’s every milestone. She’d documented everything from his weight and length at birth and the day he came home from the hospital to his first smile, when he rolled over, sat up, clapped his hands, waved bye-bye, got his first tooth and took his first step.

It was a meticulous record of her love as much as her baby’s growth, and Harper didn’t know if she should continue what Melissa had started or leave the book as she had left it. Either way, she knew she had to talk to Ryan about taking the little boy for a haircut.

Sooner rather than later if he was going to insist on putting things like cheesy macaroni in it.

“I think that’s a sign that you’ve had enough to eat,” she said to him.

“Mo!”

She shook her head. “No more. Not today.”

“Kee.”

She was starting to understand his unique baby language and that word was one of his favorites. “Let’s get you cleaned up first. Then you can have a cookie.”

She wiped his hands and his face—and his hair—with a wet cloth, ensuring that no traces of orange sauce remained. “There’s my handsome boy,” she said.

He grinned at her, melting her heart. “Kee.”

She laughed. “Yes, I’ll get you a cookie.”

While he was munching on his arrowroot biscuit, she tidied up the kitchen. Then she washed Oliver’s hands and face again.

“What are we going to do this afternoon?” she asked the little boy.

He banged his hands on his tray. “Bah-bah-bah.”

“I’m going to need a translation on that,” she said as she unbuckled him from his high chair. “Either you want to play ball or you want to pretend you’re a sheep—which is it?”

“Bah-bah-bah.”

“Blocks,” Ryan said from the doorway.

Harper glanced up as she set the little boy on his feet. He ran straight to Ryan, who swung him up into his arms. “Do you want to play with your blocks?”

“Bah-bah-bah.”

Harper frowned as she moved into the living room. “Do you think his speech is delayed?”

“No, I think he’s a sixteen-month-old with the limited vocabulary of a sixteen-month-old.”

He was probably right but she thought she’d check the vocabulary lists in her books again to be sure. “Your conference call is done already?”

He nodded. “I knew it wouldn’t take too long.”

She put the bucket of blocks on the carpet and sat down to play with Oliver. The little boy immediately upended the container. “Are you going into the office now?”

“Not today.”

She started the base of a tower for Oliver, aligning three square blocks for the bottom, then overlapping a second row to hold the blocks together. “Why not?”

“I thought I’d spend some time hanging out with Oliver this afternoon.”

“Big,” Oliver said again, offering her a blue block.

“He wants you to make the tower bigger,” Ryan told her, squatting down to add more blocks to the base of the structure she’d started to build.

“You just want to play, too,” she remarked.

He didn’t dispute her claim. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“You had Oliver all morning—it’s my shift now,” she reminded him.

“Just like no one’s keeping score, no one’s punching a clock here,” he said gently. “If there’s something else you’d rather be doing, I don’t mind honing my construction skills here.”

She hesitated, torn between the temptation to accept his offer, annoyance that he handled the little boy so effortlessly and guilt that if she let him, she would again be doing less than her share. “I do have some notes to write up for Caroline for next week’s shows.”

He shrugged. “Or you could take a nap so you’re not cranky tomorrow.”

“I’m not cranky now,” she snapped, her tone in contradiction to the words.

He just lifted a brow.

She turned on her heel and walked out.

Chapter Three

Harper hadn’t planned to fall asleep.

She’d decided that her notes for Caroline could wait, and she’d lain down on her bed to read another chapter in What to Expect the Toddler Years. She managed to keep her eyes open for four pages.

When she woke up, it was almost five o’clock and her grumbling stomach chastised her for not thinking about dinner before she’d put her head on her pillow. After a quick detour to the bathroom, she headed down to the kitchen to see what she could scrounge up for the evening meal.

But Ryan had apparently beat her to that, too, as he was peeling potatoes at the sink. Oliver was on the floor nearby, playing with some plastic lids. They both glanced over when she stepped through the doorway.

“I guess I should say ‘sorry’ and ‘thank you.’”

“Why?”

“The ‘sorry’ because I was tired and cranky. The ‘thank you’ for letting me sleep and getting dinner started.”

“No worries,” he said easily.

“What’s for supper?”

“Steak pie, mashed potatoes and corn.”

“Do you want me to finish the potatoes?”

“Are you going to eat any potatoes?”

“Probably not,” she admitted.

“Then you can make your salad.”

She got the ingredients out of the fridge and set to work.

* * *

Half an hour later, they were sitting down to dinner, just like a regular family.

Except that she had almost no experience being a regular family. She’d grown up in New York City, where her father was an actor and her mother was a talent agent. And for as long as Harper could remember, her parents had been going in opposite directions—to auditions and meetings and events. Occasionally one or the other would take her and her brother, Spencer, along for the ride, but more often they were left at home with the nanny.

The unconventional upbringing was something she’d had in common with Melissa. Her friend’s parents had split when she was in the third grade, and after that she’d done her share of moving from one home to another, never feeling as if she completely belonged in either. As a result, she’d been determined to provide a better upbringing for her son—and a “normal” home in which parents sat down to share meals with their children. Harper wasn’t convinced that was “normal” but she was willing to do her part to maintain at least the illusion for the little boy.

“This pie is delicious,” she said after she’d sampled her first bite.

Obviously Oliver agreed, because he was managing to put more of the steak and gravy in his mouth than on his face.

“One of my aunt Susan’s specialties,” Ryan told her. “I can only take credit for moving it from the freezer to the oven.”

“Between your mother and your aunts and your cousins, we probably have enough pies and casseroles and pastas to last until Christmas.”

“My family has always believed that food can help alleviate any crisis.”

“That much food would solve the hunger crisis in a third-world country.”

“My mother also knows that I can burn toast,” Ryan said. “And she probably didn’t want to make any assumptions about your cooking skills.”

“I can put together a decent meal if I have the time and the right ingredients,” she admitted.

“I wasn’t sure,” he teased. “Because I haven’t seen you eat anything other than salad.”

“That’s not true,” she denied.

“You’re right—salad and a taste of whatever else is put on the table.”

Since that was closer to the truth, she didn’t dispute it. Instead she said, “Even over and above the stocking of our freezer, your family has been amazing. Although there were so many people here the day of the funeral, I’m not sure I remember even half of their names.”

“I’ll make name tags for the next family gathering,” he teased.

“That would be helpful,” she said, her response perfectly sincere. “But for starters, which one of your bothers has the little boy—Jacob?”

“Jacob is Daniel’s son—but Daniel is my cousin. Braden and Justin are my brothers.”

“Justin is the doctor?”

He nodded.

“Is he married?”

“No.”

“But Braden’s married?”

He nodded again. “To Dana.”

“Do they have any kids?”

“Not yet.”

“And you have a sister who has a baby girl, right?”

“Nope—no sisters at all. You’re probably thinking of Lauryn, who is another cousin.”

She frowned. “But she referred to you as her daughter’s ‘uncle Ryan.’”

“It’s an honorary title.”

Harper shook her head. “No wonder I’m confused.”

“Andrew, Nathan and Daniel are my cousins through my uncle David and aunt Jane. Andrew is married to Rachel and the father of Maura. Nathan is married to Allison, who is the mother of Dylan. And Jacob’s father, Daniel, is married to Kenna.

“On my uncle Thomas and aunt Susan’s side, there are three female cousins—Jordyn, Tristyn and Lauryn. Lauryn is the only one married, and she and her husband, Rob, are the parents of Kylie.

“I also have three more cousins—Matthew, Jackson and Lukas—in upstate New York. Matt and his wife, Georgia, have four kids, Jack and Kelly have two, and Lukas and Julie have a toddler.”

“Name tags would definitely help,” she told him.

He just grinned. “What about your family?”

“Small,” she said. “And scattered. My dad has a sister who works for an insurance company in Wyoming, but she never married and doesn’t have any kids. His mother is down in Florida, but I haven’t seen her since I was a kid. My mom was an only child, so there’s just my parents, myself and my brother.”

None of whom had shown up for the funeral, despite the fact that Melissa had been her roommate in college and her best friend since.

Gayle Everton-Ross had expressed sympathy when her daughter called to tell her about the tragic heli-skiing accident that killed Melissa and Darren, but she hadn’t been able to talk long, because she was on her way to a meeting. Peter Ross had been busy on the set of the popular soap opera The Light of Dawn, and Spencer, an underwear model and wannabe actor, had been playing a bit part in an Off-Off-Broadway production.

“Are you close?” Ryan asked.

She shook her head. “Melissa was more my family than anyone I’m actually related to.”

“I have brothers and cousins,” he said again, “but Darren was my family, too.”

“I know.”

They finished their meals in silence. Even Oliver was quiet while he ate, more interested in his food than any attempt at communication. As Harper picked at her salad, she found her thoughts wandering. She’d met Ryan, through Melissa and Darren, more than six years earlier, but she wouldn’t have said that she knew him well. And while they were friendly enough, they weren’t friends—they were too different for that.

They’d occasionally hung out together, usually in a group, but they didn’t have much in common and never really hit it off. Even when Melissa and Darren got engaged and asked Harper and Ryan to be their maid of honor and best man respectively, they didn’t work particularly well together. She’d claimed he was too laid-back and he’d accused her of being too uptight, but they’d managed to put their personal differences aside for the benefit of their friends.

Then came the wedding night—when Harper ended up in Ryan’s bed. The next morning, they both agreed it was a mistake, and neither of them ever told anyone else what had happened.

When Oliver was born, the proud parents again turned to their best friends, asking them to be godparents and co-guardians of their baby. They’d both agreed, neither of them willing to let a little bit of personal history get in the way of their friends’ wishes. Of course, neither of them had anticipated that the guardianship would ever mean anything more than their names on a piece of paper.

Now, only a few months later, they had to figure out a way to work together for the sake of the little boy. Because the reality was that there wasn’t anyone else who could take care of Oliver.

She was certain of that because she’d spent a fair amount of time over the past few weeks trying to figure out if there were any other options—and desperately hoping, for Oliver’s sake, that there were.