Beginning With Baby

For some stupid reason he thought about the dawn again, and he could only watch as she reached her hand toward him. Her smile widened and that hand waved him forward. “Come in, come in.” She stepped back in welcome, all the while patting the noisy and unhappy baby.

In the face of all that friendliness, what could a man do? He let himself walk out of the dim hallway into the light of her apartment.

Just inside, he hesitated. Damn. It would have been better to voice his complaint in the neutral territory outside her door. But another loud squall from the baby had him squaring his shoulders. “I’m Jackson Abbott. I came over because—”

“I’m so glad you did!” She fished in her pocket for a pacifier, which the baby quickly tongued away. “I’ve been meaning to introduce myself and welcome you.” Another smile dug a dimple into one of her smooth cheeks. “I’m Phoebe Finley.”

Then, still trying to calm the baby, Phoebe Finley started rocking from foot to foot, and, following her with his gaze, Jackson went a little seasick. Fighting the queasiness kept him quiet for another crucial moment.

Crucial, because it gave her a chance to talk again first.

“I’ve been meaning to thank you, too,” she said.

His stomach dropped. Thank me?

Her body stopped moving, and she scooped the baby higher in her arms. “But as you can see I’ve been busy.”

Okay, the perfect opening, Jackson thought, preparing again to voice the complaint on his tongue. But the way she held the infant gave him his first full shot of the source of his sleeplessness. Instead of getting to the point right away, he stared at the baby and the baby stared back.

When Jackson’s mouth did finally open, he found himself talking to the infant. “Hey, little—” he narrowed his gaze and tried to make sense of the genderless shape she held, dressed in yellow terry cloth “—it.” A thick diaper covered the obvious parts. Its head was hairless, but Jackson remembered that both girl and boy babies were bald.

That happy dimple dug into Phoebe’s cheek again, as if she approved of men who greeted infants. “This is Rex. My brother’s baby boy.” She took a step toward Jackson, her tone confiding. “And the reason why I need to thank you.”

“Thank me for what?” Jackson asked gruffly, focusing on the dark sweep of Phoebe’s left eyebrow to keep his eyes off the baby and all of Phoebe’s smooth skin.

“For not complaining about the noise, of course!”

His gut dropped again, and his throat closed over a loud groan. “The noise?” he choked out.

The baby started crying once more, and she laid him against her shoulder and started bouncing on her heels. “You must have heard it,” she said.

“Oh, yeah,” he said faintly.

“Well, every tenant and his houseplant is complaining. Thanks to you, I’ve been able to point out to our landlady, several times, that if you aren’t bothered, then why should anyone else be?”

Jackson swallowed. “Yes. Why.” Why was he such an idiot? Why hadn’t he come over and ranted and raved on day one? “Is your…is your brother visiting you…for a short while?” he asked hopefully.

A funny expression crossed her face. “Well, uh, no. Just Rex. For the next month, at least. Maybe longer.”

Another month? Nearly his whole time left in Strawberry Bay! Great. If the baby fussed for the next few weeks the way he had for the last two, Jackson didn’t have a bunny’s chance in the fast lane of getting any sleep.

But then his eyebrows snapped together. Another month? This didn’t make sense.

She seemed to read the puzzlement on his face. “It’s a trifle, um, complicated. Rex’s mother died right after he was born, and my brother needed a little time away. I’m…filling in.” Looking down at the baby, she brushed a soft kiss over his head.

It wasn’t a “filling in” kind of kiss. It wasn’t a “filling in” kind of look in her eyes, either.

But he wasn’t there to assess, judge or, dammit, appreciate, even though he found himself fascinated by her lush and innocent mouth again.

Her tone turned confiding once more, and she smiled, obviously happy. “You’ve been so kind and tolerant, I don’t mind letting you be the first to know I hope to keep Rex with me forever.”

Jackson’s brain came to a screeching halt. “What?”

She cleared her throat. “Well, right now my brother is kind of, um, missing, but he’s going to come back, and then we’ll settle the custody of the baby.”

Still reeling, Jackson opened his mouth to set her straight. Someone needed to tell Pollyanna here that happy endings like the one she wanted were only in fairy tales. People had a way of going out of one’s life—under their own steam or because they were torn from you. In his thirty years he’d experienced both.

But then his mouth snapped closed. None of this was his business or the reason he’d knocked on her door. “Listen,” he started. Hell, what was he going to say now? Could he really burst even the smallest of her fantasy bubbles by griping about the kid? “I came over because—”

At the sound of Jackson’s voice, the baby started squalling again. Phoebe patted, shushed, rocked, but nothing worked.

Accepting defeat, actually a little glad about it, Jackson shuffled backward. Much easier to hit the nearest discount store for earplugs and a white-noise machine.

But Phoebe wasn’t having it. She reached out and caught his sleeve, obviously determined to be the good neighbor, at least in this. “Did you come to borrow something?” she asked, pitching her voice over the baby’s crying.

“Some sleep,” Jackson muttered.

“Something sweet?”

He threw up his hands. With the baby crying and her morning eyes on him, he couldn’t put more trouble on her plate. “Yeah,” he conceded. “I came over to borrow some sugar.”

“Oh, certainly,” Phoebe said, with another one of those sunny smiles.

And that’s when it happened.

She cast a look toward her kitchen.

Cast another at the crying child.

He read the difficulty on her face. How to get that sugar and soothe baby Rex, too? Ironic, when Jackson didn’t even want the stuff.

But letting her get something for him seemed the fastest way out of there, so, for the first time in what seemed like forever, he volunteered for child duty. “Give him to me,” he said.

She hesitated, but probably figured Rex couldn’t be any less content. With careful movements, she transferred the baby to him. At the sensation of the warm, vulnerable weight in his arms, Jackson sucked in a sharp breath.

Rex’s crying immediately stopped.

Darkish eyes stared up at Jackson. A tiny fist waved about as if controlled by a mad puppeteer.

Jackson concluded the kid was stunned by its first closeup of an overworked male in serious need of eight hours of hibernation. But even after a few moments, the crying didn’t restart. The baby’s movements actually calmed, and as Jackson hitched him closer to his chest, Rex appeared to fall asleep.

More irony. Of the two of them, the wailer was the one getting the rest.

He looked across at Phoebe. She was staring at them, apparently stunned.

Jackson lifted his shoulders in a small shrug, more than a little surprised himself. Yeah, in the past he’d had a way with kids. But who could have guessed that after fourteen years without use, it was the one thing he hadn’t left behind.

Chapter Two

Jackson was out of his boots and into his breakfast the next morning when he heard a knock at his door.

He knew who it was, which was why he took another swig of cola instead of going to answer it. Through the walls Rex cried again—the baby had sounded unhappy ever since Jackson had returned from work. And even though it was just after six, he suspected the baby had been awake for some time. The knock came again, percussion to Rex’s noisy discontent.

It was Phoebe Finley and the baby at his door, of course, and he planned on ignoring them until they went away. He didn’t want to encourage any neighborly tête-à-têtes, any more than he wanted to find himself close to that baby again.

Once was enough.

Becoming acquainted with Phoebe and the child who wasn’t hers—but that she obviously cared so much for—was a scenario much too close for comfort. He’d been in her size sixes before, desperately wanting to hold on to someone—in his case, someones—who could be wrenched away.

Jackson wasn’t stupid enough to get entangled, even peripherally, in that kind of setup again.

The baby must have paused to take in a breath, because in the momentary quiet, Phoebe’s voice sounded through his hollow-core front door.

“Jackson! Jackson! Please answer. I’m in dire need of a good neighbor.”

That left him out, Jackson thought smugly, but then her voice pleaded again. “Help,” she said.

God, even if his brain wasn’t stupid, his feet sure were. The two of them pushed against the floor to get him standing and even walked him to the door. His hand didn’t hesitate to open it, though his good sense limited it to only a couple of inches.

Dark hair tumbling, blue-gray eyes pleading, two even, white teeth doing a number on her full lower lip. “My hero,” Phoebe said.

“I’m not.” He glanced at Rex, whose head had jerked toward Jackson at the sound of his voice. “What’s the problem?”

She bit her lip again. “Our landlady, Mrs. Bee, and about two-thirds of our fellow tenants. Rex has been awake and unhappy since 4:00 a.m., and I’ve received complaints. Mrs. Bee is starting to make odd threats.”

Jackson grimaced. While their elderly landlady looked like something off a bakery box, he knew she was better suited to selling nails, as in “tough as.” But he turned his grimace into a forbidding frown. “So?”

She swallowed. “So I thought maybe you could do your magic on Rex and get him to sleep again. He must be exhausted, and it didn’t take you but a couple of minutes yesterday.”

It was Phoebe who looked exhausted. Shadows circled her eyes, making them that much bluer, and her appearance that much more fragile. But Jackson ignored the observation. “No,” he said, swinging the door closed. “I’m in the middle of breakfast.”

The wooden door bounced off a small white sneaker. “Please. Couldn’t you eat and hold him at the same time?”

Years ago he’d been able to do that with both arms full of babies.

“Please,” she said again. “I wouldn’t ask, but I think I really need to appease Mrs. Bee right now.”

Telling himself he was making up some badly needed points in Heaven, Jackson reluctantly opened the door. She came right inside, smiling over her shoulder at him. “Once you sit down I’ll hand him to you.”

The smile died as she took in the Spartan bareness of his apartment—a threadbare couch, a couple of orange crates, a folding table and chairs that served as his dining room.

He found himself excusing his surroundings. “I’m only here temporarily,” he said, gesturing at the naked walls. “My job requires that I move from place to place.”

She didn’t say anything, but her eyes widened again as she looked at what was lying on his table. “That’s your ‘breakfast’? Beef jerky and a cola?”

“It’s turkey jerky,” he defended.

“Still.” She made a face.

As if he was tired of being ignored, Rex started fussing again. Jackson sighed. “Hand him over,” he said.

“Not until you’re seated in front of your…meal.”

He shot her a disgruntled look as he sat down. “Listen, I work nights and my stomach’s on a different time clock than yours, okay?”

“It’s on a different planet than mine,” she said mildly, but then walked toward him and handed over the still-mildly fussing Rex.

The baby immediately quieted, and Jackson shut his eyes for an instant, trying to shut out the sensation of baby again as well as the bittersweet memories the feeling evoked.

“What’s this about working nights?” Phoebe asked suddenly.

He started, and then took a sip of soda before answering. “I begin the job at 9:00 p.m.,” he said. “And I get off at five in the morning.”

She nodded. “So that’s where you go. When I noticed you keeping those kind of hours I just assumed you had something serious going on with someone.”

He laughed shortly. “Not my style. I spend my nights working.”

She came a little closer, the skirt of her flowery dress swishing around the smooth skin of her calves. A fragrance, feminine and creamy sweet, drifted over him.

Blood rushed to Jackson’s groin, and he stifled a groan.

She said something to him, but he didn’t absorb it, not with his eyes focused on her skin and his head dizzy with her scent. It looked as if it was time he did a little something more with his time off. Fostering relationships, even the casual kind that would ease a man who moved on regularly, required more effort than he’d been willing to make lately. But if the scent of a woman—a woman with a baby—and the sight of six inches of her legs could make him poker hard, then sex had made itself a priority.

He heard her voice again, and he forced his gaze away from her and to his soda can. “What?”

“I asked what kind of work you do.”

He didn’t dare look at her again. “I’m an engineer for a company that’s retrofitting overpasses—do you know what that is?”

“Making the overpasses earthquakeproof?”

He shook his head. “Not quite. But better able to handle the stress.” He told her a bit about his work and how he moved from one location to another.

She came closer, looking over his shoulder to check on the stubbornly alert Rex. “Well, California has oodles of overpasses,” she said.

Her female-scent was that much closer, too. “That’s why I’m oodling all over the state,” he answered, keeping himself sternly focused on the conversation. “I’m only here for another month or so.”

She’d started to laugh at the “oodling” but quickly turned serious. “You like it, then? Working at night? Moving around?”

“I’m suited to it.”

She pulled out the only other chair he had, the one beside him, and sat down, the soft fabric of her dress drifting over her legs.

“What about you?” he found himself asking.

Her eyebrows came together. “What about me what?”

Jackson cursed himself silently. What the hell was he interrogating her for? He didn’t want her to get the idea he was interested. But she was looking at him expectantly. He shrugged. “Does your life suit you?”

“I suppose. I’ve been slowly working my way through college, and my business keeps me hopping.” She shifted in her seat, crossing her legs so that more of the smooth skin of one calf was exposed. “Now that I have the baby—”

“What’s your boyfriend think of that, by the way?” Damn. Stupid question number two.

Her eyebrows rose. “I don’t have a boyfriend,” she said. “And I don’t expect to snag one anytime soon.”

Her answer provided an odd spurt of relief that Jackson wasn’t sure was bad or good.

She cast another glance at the baby, then suddenly popped up from her chair. “You did it. You got him to sleep again.”

He looked down. Sure enough, Rex was sleeping away, his mouth falling open and a drop of drool running out and toward Jackson’s forearm.

Phoebe smiled as she tenderly touched the sleeping baby’s cheek. “I thank you. Rex thanks you. Though they don’t know it, the tenants of 1006 Bartlett Street thank you.” She bent over to retrieve the baby, the rounded neckline of her dress falling forward to give Jackson an innocent peek at two perfectly fine breasts in a white lacy bra.

He bit back a second groan and looked away as she scooped the baby out of his arms. He breathed out, too, to keep her dangerous scent from reaching his lungs.

Then she turned away. At last. It was over. She was finally leaving, and there’d be no more contact between them, he promised.

At the door, though, she spun around, her dress floating out around her legs, the beginnings of a smile brightening her face and crinkling the corners of her morning eyes. He wanted to look away.

“Gee,” she said, her lush mouth curling up. “I just gotta ask. What are you doing at 6:30 a.m. for the rest of your life?”

Early the next morning Phoebe typed quietly at her computer. Rex was asleep—for what seemed like the first time in days—and she didn’t want to disturb the baby or her neighbor.

It was the least she could do, now that she knew Jackson Abbott worked nights. Before meeting him, she’d always assumed the hours her mystery neighbor kept were due to some hot-and-heavy romance he had going. And after meeting him…

Well, if he hadn’t denied it himself, she would still think he had some hot-and-heavy romance going. He was the type of man who found women easily. He was big, solidly big, with wide shoulders, narrow hips and strong, thick thighs. Like a pirate, she’d thought nervously, the first time she’d seen him. There was even a small gold earring that winked at her from the rumpled tangle of his coffee-dark hair.

His eyes were dark, too, and heavily lashed, and the first time they’d looked at her they’d seemed to swallow her up.

She shivered now, remembering it.

To top it off, inside that dark and dangerous exterior was an awesome daddy technique that was downright magic. At first, Phoebe figured Rex responded to him because the baby was used to her stepbrother, but nothing about Jackson’s deep voice or muscled chest was anything like Teddy.

It was a puzzle. Jackson was a puzzle.

She tried to put it from her mind, but as her fingers flew over the keys, she kept coming back to him. To the familiar way he held the baby and the undefinable expression that entered his eyes when he did.

To his denial of a woman in his life and the frisson of feminine response she’d felt when sitting across from him in his apartment yesterday.

To the bleakness on his face when she’d joked about what he was doing the rest of the mornings of his life.

Another delicious shiver rolled down Phoebe’s spine. Dark and mysterious men were lethal. But a dark and mysterious man who held a baby as tenderly as he might hold a woman’s heart…

She pulled herself short of going down that path. Her focus was on being Rex’s mommy. He was the only man in her life that mattered, and it didn’t take a genius to realize that Jackson wasn’t exactly welcoming a relationship with Rex and her, anyway.

Jackson was merely her neighbor.

Just then she heard the sound of booted footsteps in the hall and the telltale jingle and click of keys in the lock next door. Her mere neighbor was home.

Phoebe was glad Rex was quiet because Jackson was probably tired and hungry and ready to settle in for sleep right after another epicurean’s delight of dried meat and sugary soda.

Ick.

It was a short leap to the thought of the zucchini nut muffins she’d made the night before. Big fat ones, bursting with raisins, walnuts and cinnamon. Much better than beef jerky. Excuse me, turkey jerky.

Couldn’t she just pop over with two or three? A kind gesture, wasn’t it, that would keep her focus on him as her neighbor rather than anything more dangerous.

Because anything more was impossible.

She was a woman with a new baby. He was a man moving on, in a very short while.

So bringing over a little thank-you gift of home cooking would put her in the right frame of mind to put him out of her mind.

There. That made sense.

With Rex still snoozing away, she carefully locked her door, secure in the knowledge that the slightest peep from her baby would carry right through the wall between her place and Jackson’s.

Still, outside his front door, with a plate of her famous muffins in hand, she hesitated. If she returned to her apartment—

Today would be a rerun of the day before. She’d be squirming on her seat, thinking of him sleeping just a wall way. Oh, yes. Definitely best to force the focus onto that neighbor idea.

Unlike yesterday morning he answered her knock right away. Wearing heavy construction boots, jeans and an unbuttoned shirt, he looked both weary and wary. He blinked at her slowly, for a moment hiding the bittersweet chocolate color of his eyes. “Another problem?” he asked gruffly.

Only if you didn’t like looking at swoonworthy inches of hard, golden chest. Phoebe swallowed. “N-no. I…” Why had she come?

His gaze flicked down toward her hands and she followed it.

The muffins. Right. She’d brought muffins. “Here,” she said, holding out the plate.

He didn’t take it immediately, instead eyeing the gift as if it might be poison. “What’s this?”

A lock of dark hair fell over his forehead. It brought his unapproachability down a notch, which for some weird reason made her babble. “A thank-you. A neighbor—no, zucchini nut—” She broke off, perplexed by her tongue, which kept getting tangled.

His lips twitched. “A nutty neighbor?” he asked innocently.

She laughed for him, and her tongue unknotted. “Zucchini nut muffins.”

He still didn’t take them. “What for?”

“For you. For helping me out. In appreciation.”

Rising up on his toes, he peered over her shoulder as if she might be hiding something behind her. “Where is your midget sidekick, anyway? Signed up for Little League already?”

She shook her head in amusement. “You’ve been hiding your funny side, haven’t you? He’s asleep, believe it or not.” She nudged Jackson’s midsection teasingly with the plate, her gaze suddenly coming to rest on his very male, very naked and very rippling ab muscles.

God. A strange flush of heat washed over her cheeks.

His long fingers grabbed the edge of the plate. “Hey,” he said. “I could be ticklish.”

Phoebe didn’t let go, and sizzling bursts of feminine reaction pinged from place to place in her belly. “Well,” she said, her mouth going dry around the near-flirtatious sound of her voice. “Are you?”

When he didn’t answer, her gaze slowly crawled up his bare, heavily muscled chest, over his throat and the five-o’clock shadow on his chin. Past his chiseled mouth, his strong nose, to meet his dark, dark eyes.

She had no idea what was lurking in their depths.

Her hand loosened from her side of the plate, one finger at a time: thumb, forefinger, middle finger, ring finger, pinkie. In all the long moments that it took, neither one of them blinked.

Phoebe swallowed and finally let her hand fall. “I should be going.”

“Yes.”

Neither one of them moved.

“I have a baby…” she said lamely.

“Yes,” he agreed, seeming to understand what she meant.

“So…” Her feet didn’t obey.

“Give the little guy my best.”

“I will.” The little guy. He was her concern now. But she was going to have to initiate a serious discussion with him. And soon. When it was Rex and Phoebe against the world, Rex was going to have to come through for her sometimes. If he insisted on waking up at 2:00 a.m., a few tears to save her at a crucial moment like this would be a nice payback.

“His father phoned last night,” Phoebe suddenly heard herself saying. She didn’t know why she was telling Jackson. Maybe because there was nobody else to tell.

His expression went even more unreadable. “Rex’s father?”

She nodded. “We talked about the baby. I told him how I felt about Rex. That from the first moment I saw him, it was, well…I can’t explain it.”

He shrugged. “Nature made babies to appeal to us.”

“It was more than that.” It had just felt right, from the very beginning. “He still wants some time he said, but I’m not going to worry.” She brightened now, just thinking about the possibilities. “Things have a way of working out, don’t you think?”

“You are young,” he murmured under his breath.

“I’m hopeful.” She smiled at him. “And a good cook. Enjoy.” With a nod at the muffins, she made herself turn back toward home.

Hopeful, good cook and hopeless romantic, she thought, as she heard his door click firmly and without hesitation behind her. But that last minor problem was solved. In the course of a few pulse beats, her silly little heart had thrown out a few questions that had been quite simply—and sensibly—answered by the hard man with the daddy’s touch.