Raising Baby Jane

Allie could see it and hear it in the panicky plans and the jittery movements. First and foremost, Karen was a mother and a wife. She wanted a big, loving, untidy family in her big Victorian house next to Connor’s. But she had a strong creative drive as well.

Her career as a commercial artist and photographer was important to her, this cover for a guaranteed bestseller was her biggest break so far. She needed to continue this success if she and John were to afford that parcel of kids they dreamed of. She didn’t want to blow it, and her camera had jammed, and of course she was scared.

“Sounds do-able,” Connor said. He gave an apparently casual glance at the horizon over the snow-covered mountains that ringed Diamond Lake and added, half under his breath, “More or less. If we’re lucky.” Then aloud he said, “Let’s go, Allie.”

“Don’t hold dinner for me,” Karen told Connor. “Although I’ll definitely be back.”

“Of course you will,” Connor soothed her, as if he hadn’t just spent five minutes trying to convince her she shouldn’t go in the first place. He hunched his shoulders against the growing chill. It was only just past four o’clock, but the day was darkening by the minute. There was bad weather in the forecast, although it hadn’t made its appearance yet.

“And for Jane you’ll need to—” She tucked a strand of light brown hair behind her ear and it stuck out messily, adding to her aura of nervous distraction.

“I know a fair bit about babies,” Connor soothed her again.

“Allie…doesn’t.”

“I gathered that,” he nodded.

He was actually a little put off by how cold Allie seemed toward her cute little niece. Maybe his positive first impressions were going to need some revision. She had neatly ducked the task of getting Jane into her snowsuit and Karen had done it instead, with a tight face. Was she angry at her sister’s lack of interest?

I would be, Connor decided inwardly. It doesn’t take much to show a little warmth toward a baby.

“Look after her—and Allie,” Karen said now.

“Oh. Sure. Of course.” Did Allie need looking after?

“Seriously, Connor.” For a moment, Karen actually held still long enough to look him in the eye. “She’s been through a really rough time, and she’s such a great person. Warm, funny, sincere.” She stopped suddenly, as if rethinking the wisdom of what she’d just said. “Anyway, I’ll be back pretty soon. I know what you said about the forecast, but look at that sky.” She waved in the direction where it was still blue. “Does that look like a storm to you?”

It didn’t, and Connor didn’t waste his breath pointing to the clouds that had begun to build behind them. She could well be right. The storm would pass to the west, or hold off altogether.

“And I have my cell phone,” Karen was saying. “Oh, this is such a nightmare!”

“No, it isn’t. Really, it isn’t.”

She hadn’t heard. “See you later.”

She was gone in a flurry of dirty roadside snow seconds later, and so he turned with a fatalistic shrug and began to walk back down the winding quarter mile of track to Diamond Lake.

Allie stood outside to greet him after he’d brought the snowmobile across the lake and wheeled it around to park it by the front door.

“You said this place was a cabin,” she said accusingly.

“Never did,” he returned lightly, following her inside. She peeled off her coat to reveal black pants tucked into damp leather boots, and a pale blue angora sweater that hugged her small frame.

He decided Allie was an assertive woman, despite her size! If he hadn’t heard it in her voice, he’d have seen it in the lift of her strong, but graceful jaw and in the electric flash of her dark eyes. Eyes like hot chocolate syrup, he could see, now that she’d unjammed that hat from her head.

“Karen said—”

“Karen might have said it was a cabin,” he pointed out, enjoying their trivial conflict. “But I didn’t. I probably used the word ‘place,’ as in, ‘my brother Tom’s place in the Adirondack Mountains.’ She must have assumed it was a cabin, as people tend to, when you mention mountains. I’m sorry if you’re disappointed.”

“Disappointed?” She shivered and stepped toward the warmth of the open fire, a sudden grin lighting up her face and draining away the tension in her that he still didn’t understand. “Are you kidding? It’s fabulous! And you even lit this fire! I’ve been toasting myself.”

“After what you said about blazing fires and good music and hot chocolate, how could I not?”

Knowing what a panic Karen was in, he hadn’t wasted time on coming into the house with Allie after he’d brought her here with baby Jane. And he’d deliberately left the fire he’d lit for her earlier to be a surprise. He didn’t know, at the time, what had prompted the impulse to light it in the first place. The central heating was very efficient.

Now he understood. He’d wanted to imagine her face lighting up like that when she first saw it, and he’d gotten his reward as it lit up again now. It changed her whole personality, hinted at a warmth and softness and sense of fun that he hadn’t seen much of yet in that small package of womanhood. Karen had mentioned those qualities, but he wasn’t going to take them on trust. He liked to make his own decisions.

“Well, it was wonderful,” she answered him. “Thank you. I haven’t even tried to look around or unpack.”

“You haven’t made yourself that hot chocolate yet?”

“No, as I said, I’ve just been toasting myself. And—and Jane.” She frowned.

Remembering what Karen had said about looking after her, and the rough time she’d been through—had she been ill, maybe?—he offered, “I’ll make one for you, after I’ve taken your stuff up to your room.”

“I can do that. I can make the hot chocolate, too, if you’ll show me the kitchen. And I can cook dinner. Karen brought up a frozen casserole and some other stuff. While you look after Jane.”

“Whatever.” He shrugged.

Back to that again. She really didn’t want to be with Jane, he could tell. He was aware of a disappointment nagging at his guts like stomach acid, and he took a few moments to analyze it.

Until recently he hadn’t been in one place long enough to get serious about marriage to any woman, and he wasn’t sure, at the moment, if he was going to be in one place for much longer. He’d been feeling a little restless lately, not totally sure that he’d made the right decision to hook up with his two brothers in their software company. There was still something missing. Something important. Maybe an intuitive voice inside him was telling him, once more, to move on.

Yet he was a family man, at heart. He had loving parents. He had seven brothers he was close to, two of whom had made happy marriages over the past couple of years. He had three little nieces of his own now. He liked extended families, loved his nieces. Deep down, he knew that his sense of family was the best medicine for the times when he had questions about himself and his life that he couldn’t answer, and he didn’t have any qualms about prescribing that same medicine for others.

An outwardly healthy, capable, in-control woman like this should at least like her own sister’s child, he considered. No one was asking her to adopt the kid! What was her problem?

Fortunately, Allie hadn’t noticed his look of disapproval. She was over at the window, staring out at the gathering darkness, and she didn’t seem to notice his curiosity, either. How long was she going to stand there like that?

Minutes, apparently.

Jane was on her tummy on a receiving blanket spread out on the floor at a safe distance from the fire. The central heating had warmed the place up fast, as had the roaring fire in the fireplace. Jane was cooing at the leaping brightness and banging a toy. Needs fully taken care of, but utterly ignored. Allie just kept staring out the window. For some reason it seemed incredibly sad.

Instinctively, he went up to her, needing to understand her. He liked Karen a lot. She was warm, enthusiastic, full of energy and optimism…except when panicking about a jammed camera. Why was her sister so different and difficult?

He’d almost reached Allie when she turned from the window at last. “Those clouds are coming over pretty fast. Is it going to snow?”

“It’s starting to look like it,” he agreed. “I warned Karen about the forecast, but even half an hour ago it looked like it’d probably hold off, and she was desperate about that camera.”

“She’ll make it back, though, won’t she? They won’t close the roads. She guaranteed me she’d make it back tonight!”

The appeal and fear in her face hit him like an electric shock. “Then she’ll do her best, I guess,” was all he could say. It sounded lame in the face of her need.

Something about this situation had her completely terrified. Was it him? He didn’t think so, but there was something. Karen’s appeal to him to “look after” her suddenly made a whole lot more sense. Karen had known Allie would feel this way. How? Why?

And why did he have such a clear, powerful intuition that the answers were going to matter to him?

Chapter Two

“Right.” Allie pulled her mouth into a bright smile. “I guess you should show me my bedroom, then. It looks like there are plenty of them.”

“Five,” Connor said. “Six at a pinch.”

“Upstairs?”

“Upstairs. You can unpack while Jane’s still happy on the floor. Karen’ll want the Portacrib in her room, I assume.”

“I expect so.”

“I’ll put you in the adjoining room. Then if the storm does hit and stops Karen from getting back, you can keep the connecting door open so you’ll hear Jane if she wakes in the night.”

“Yes, that’s the most sensible idea, isn’t it?” Allie agreed, outwardly calm.

“Let’s go, then.”

He placed some cushions around Jane’s receiving blanket, casually betraying his experience with babies. Jane wasn’t officially mobile yet, according to Karen, but she could shuffle herself backward along the floor on her tummy for quite a distance if she kept at it long enough.

“These’ll keep her safely corralled while we’re upstairs,” Connor said.

Allie ached with envying him. Just the way he moved around the baby. Just the way he could reach down to ruffle the fuzzy, dark-gold hair on her little head without even thinking about it. Some day, with the right woman, he’d make a great dad. But for Allie, the idea of herself as a mom had become so complicated—

She snapped that compartment of her mind shut like a jailhouse gate.

Now he’d picked up the crib, the diaper bag and the soft suitcase that contained Karen’s and Jane’s things. Allie grabbed her overnight bag and followed him up the wide stone staircase. This was a great house, only a few years old and full of gorgeous hardwood and stone. In any other situation, she’d feel like she was on vacation here and would look forward to exploring. The house, the island, the surrounding mountains, the nearby towns.

But with Karen temporarily gone and herself and Connor and Jane trapped here by the gathering night and the prospect of a snowstorm, it felt…Well, exactly like that, as if the house were a prison, an emotional hell that wasn’t her fault.

Trapped for how long? she wondered miserably. Would anything ever be truly right in her life again?

“Here you go,” Connor said, opening the door of a pretty little room high in one corner of the house. It had its own bathroom and an antique Amish quilt on the bed, a connecting door to a similar room where Allie would sleep, and a little window peeping out to a white view of flat ice and snow-covered pines…and freshly falling flakes, Allie saw, already coming down thickly. Karen would be over halfway to Albany by now. Had the storm hit down that way yet?

“Any idea how to set this thing up?” Connor indicated the Portacrib in its blue nylon cover.

“No. Sorry.”

She took her bag through to the connecting room, then came back and watched him helplessly as he unzipped the cover and rattled around with the legs and sides of the crib. He discovered some instructions printed on it and started muttering to himself.

Since she didn’t want to think too hard about having Jane so close to her during the night and what that would mean, she watched his body instead. It wasn’t a punishing activity. Even without the bulk of the coat he’d been wearing outside, he looked incredibly solid and strong in his dark sweater and pants, yet he moved very easily.

Or most of him did. For the first time, she noticed that he had a slight limp and it drew her attention to the lines of his thighs and hips, defined by the dark clothing he wore. Had he hurt himself recently? Or was it something permanent, dating from long ago?

And how come it didn’t detract from his masculine grace but only added to it? The limp hinted at a whole, complex range of possibilities about his past, suggesting there was a lot more to Connor Callahan than met the eye. And what met the eye was impressive enough to begin with. It was a long time since she’d met a man who wore his strength and good looks so casually, and with so little arrogance.

“Karen says you’re in the computer-software business,” she said, needing to know more about him. Karen had said she could trust him. That didn’t mean she felt comfortable with their situation.

“Yeah.” He nodded as he pushed the base of the crib into place. He had his sleeves pushed up to the elbows, and she noticed how strong his forearms were. “A couple of years ago I joined the company two of my brothers started. I head up their games division now. Tom has a pretty impressive computer up here, but I won’t be powering it up this weekend.”

“Karen will keep us busy as soon as she gets back.” I wish she hadn’t left. That darned camera!

“I offered her my disposable camera to take some shots with, but she wasn’t impressed,” Connor said. Once again, their thoughts had travelled along the same track.

“I should think not!” Allie exclaimed. “Have you any idea how she feels about that camera of hers?”

“I do now,” Connor admitted humbly. “It has features I didn’t know existed.”

“Yes, it’s some German or Swiss thing that cost her half a gazillion dollars.”

“Insured, I hope.”

“Definitely insured. I know she was acting a little crazy this afternoon, but my sister is actually very—”

“I know what your sister’s like,” he soothed, jerking the side rails of the crib upward with knotted hands to lock them straight. “A whirlwind of energy, with a heart of gold. She makes a great neighbor and a terrific mom.”

“Yes, she does, doesn’t she? An incredible mom.” Her throat was tight again.

“She and John have become good friends since I moved in next door,” Connor went on. If he’d noticed her sudden emotion, he didn’t let on. “That’s why I was happy to bail her out with this book-cover deal. Contrary to what my brother accused me of when I went to pick up the keys to this place, it’s not ‘cause I have a wild urge to be immortalized as Nancy Sherlock’s answer to Rhett Butler on the front of three million copies of Days of Grace and Danger.”

“Three million?”

“That’s not unrealistic, apparently, if they go ahead with the movie,” he pointed out. “Although Karen says that they might reprint the paperback using movie stills for the cover.”

“Gee, you know all about it!”

“Don’t you, too? She’s been reading the manuscript of the book all week and giving me updates on the plot, as well as a play-by-play account of the problems with the cover design. I assumed she’d been doing the same with you.”

“Karen and I…Well, we haven’t spent a lot of time together lately,” Allie said uncomfortably.

“Haven’t you?”

He looked up. He had the crib all set up now, and had found the crib-size quilts folded in the top of Karen’s suitcase. Their eyes met as he shook one out, revealing a fluffy pink-and-white-striped flannel fabric. Allie flushed, then chilled, in the space of a few seconds. She could tell quite clearly what he was thinking.

He knows it’s because of Jane.

But he couldn’t know why. Was he going to let it go?

No.

“And yet you seem close, like you really care about each other and like each other’s company.”

The tone was mild, but he was deliberately pushing. She could tell. And she felt angry. How dare he? What gave him the right to probe like that, with all the hostility and disapproval such probing implied?

She glared at him, and then—wham! It hit her like needles of hot water under a welcome shower. Like the taste of chocolate after strong, sugarless coffee. Like the rush of a summer wave on a Carolina beach. There was chemistry between them, insistent and physical, full of promise and delight. Chemistry that shattered her control, even while it made her heart dance. Chemistry that frightened her, even while it sang to her soul.

Underneath, she’d known it all along, right from the first moment she’d heard that gravelly, cream-filled and not entirely safe voice of his. Right from the moment she’d seen the startling blue eyes beneath the intimidating black hat.

And her sudden understanding of this chemistry answered the indignant question she’d just silently posed. That was what gave him the right to probe for answers from her as he was doing. Because he felt the chemistry, too.

Her breathing was shallow now, and she wanted to run a mile. She couldn’t possibly dare to open up to this. She had to freeze him off. Freeze herself off, too, because there was no way she was ready to let a man into her life at this point—any man—when she had so much else to struggle with.

“We are close,” she answered him frostily at last. “Which is exactly why we can take some time out from our relationship when we need to.”

“And you’ve needed to just lately?”

“Yes.” She wasn’t going to explain any further. Let him think what he liked!

“Okay.” He shrugged and bent to spread a second quilt on top of the first. “Cute,” he commented, studying the lush, hand-quilted and machine-appliqued design of sea creatures illustrating the numbers from one to nine. He bent lower, and touched the bright beading that picked out a sea urchin’s shell. “Karen made this?”

“I did.” She turned deliberately away so she wouldn’t see the surprise on his face as he straightened, but he didn’t let it go, despite her crystal-clear signal.

“You quilt?” he sounded astonished.

The man was relentless!

“Yes,” she retorted. “And I have three heads and the body of a leopard.”

“Hey. Hey…” His voice had softened so that it sent hot prickles of need charging up and down her spine. “Is it a crime on my part to suggest that you seem more like a career gal?”

“Must people be purely one or the other?”

“No, of course not. But—”

“Jane’s fussing,” she announced abruptly, and fled from the room and down the stairs.

She only realized when she reached the bottom that it was the first time in Jane’s life that she’d gone to her willingly and without an agony of turmoil, in the handful of times they’d been under the same roof. And what a tribute to Connor Callahan’s effect on her equilibrium that was!

“Hi, little girl,” she said softly as she entered the big, open living area and approached the glorious warmth of the fire. Janey was whimpering and fretting as if to say, “Okay, I’m done looking at the fire. Isn’t somebody going to come smile at me soon, and show me something interesting? I’m bored!”

“I know,” Allie answered her, as if Jane had spoken her complaint in clear English. Then, with her heart beginning to pound, she bent down and picked the baby up.

But it was too hard. “Are you looking for your…your Mommy?” she asked, her voice coming out with an unnatural intonation.

What would happen if I kissed her, just smothered her with kisses, and smelled her little head and let her little hands grab at my clothing? Allie wondered. What would happen?

Unconsciously, she held Jane farther away from her and her arms were stiff and awkward. No wonder the baby writhed, arching her back and screwing up her face. She wasn’t happy with such blatant ineptitude. She wanted to be held against a warm body. Who could blame her?

Allie heard Connor’s footsteps behind her.

“Want me to take her?” There was a surprising amount of understanding in his voice.

“Uh, sure. I was going to get that hot chocolate, wasn’t I?”

“Yup. I’ll take a mug, too, while you’re at it. Kitchen’s back through that door.”

“Two hot chocolates, coming right up. And I’ll put the casserole in a low oven to start heating up while I’m at it,” she planned aloud. “It must be still half-frozen, and it’s already after five o’clock.”

“I guess Janey, here, will want to eat early,” he agreed.

He was holding her with casual, practised ease, bouncing her on his hip and earning radiant, open-mouthed smiles, entirely uncomplicated by the presence of teeth. Allie’s envy and torment was like a straitjacket.

“The jars of baby food are in her diaper bag, I think,” Allie said. “Is there a microwave? Because I think she likes them warmed up.”

“There’s a microwave. Any idea what time she eats and goes down for the night?”

“I think she’s usually down by seven, but she has a bath before that, so I guess she eats at about six.”

“See, kiddo,” Connor crooned, “we’re cookin’, here. We’ve got your routine worked out—we know what you eat. You’re not gonna miss your mommy at all, are you?”

If the gurgle was an answer, it sounded like Jane agreed.

Allie hid in the kitchen for the next half hour, apart from ten minutes spent sipping her hot drink by the fire while Connor changed a messy diaper. He made so little fuss about the task that she didn’t even realize he’d done it until he dumped the diaper bag back on the end table next to the squashy cream sofa and announced, “Fresh as a daisy again.”

Back in the kitchen, as she turned the oven up higher and found salad and garlic bread amongst the provisions her sister had brought, Allie wondered about Connor’s new attitude. He didn’t seem so hostile anymore, and there was a peacefulness in the atmosphere now. Against the night-dark sky, the snow still whirled, thick and silent, promising changed plans, but in here it was seductively cozy.

The savory aroma of the beef casserole began to snake through the house, mingling with the faint tang of wood smoke. Connor had put on some soft music, and maybe it was that or maybe it was the warmth of the fire, or just the long, travel-filled day, but Jane was getting tired.

At six, Connor came into the kitchen with the baby and announced, “No way is this little princess going to make it until seven o’clock, and I think we’d better skip any thought of a bath.”

Allie just nodded, pushing back a dangerous rush of tenderness at the sight of those rosy little cheeks and heavy lids.

“She’s finished her bottle,” Connor said. “I’ll feed her her fruit in here, and she might be asleep before she’s even done. Now, let’s think. Where’s the high chair?”

“There’s a high chair here?”

“Believe me,” he drawled, “in the Callahan family, there’s always a high chair.”

She laughed in sudden delight. “That’s nice!”

“Is it?” He flashed her a look that was curious and ready to be convinced.

“It says something about a family, when there’s always a high chair.” Her face had softened with her smile.

“Yeah, I think so,” he agreed, then added, “Actually, here there’s probably two high chairs. Tom and Julie have twins, just one year old. Adorable little monsters, they are. I’ve been doing a fair bit of hands-on uncle-ing over the past six months or so, and I’m speaking from experience!”

“Boys?”

“Girls. My mom had eight boys. This generation, so far, is specializing in the other kind.”

“Your mom must be thrilled.”

“She is. And as for Dad…”

He didn’t say anything further for a while, just found one of the high chairs folded away in a storage closet and brought it out. Then he sat Jane in it, put her in a bib, heated a jar of pureed apricots in the microwave, stirred and tested it carefully and began to feed her with a rubber-tipped spoon. As he’d predicted, her little head was nodding by the time he got to the bottom of the jar.