Raising Baby Jane

Watching him ease her gently out of the high chair, Allie asked in a distracted tone, “Shall I set the table in here, or…?”

“Nicer to eat by the fire, don’t you think?”

“Uh…yes, it would be.”

“Want me to take her up to bed while you start setting everything up on the hearth?”

“Thanks. Yes.”

There was a tiny pause.

“Want to give her a good-night kiss?”

Another pause.

“Okay.”

He brought the baby over and held her out for her kiss, his blue eyes fixed steadily and thoughtfully on Allie’s face.

I’ve never done this before. I’ve never kissed her, she thought.

But she managed it, and it didn’t last long, just one little press of lips—dry lips—on a soft, velvety cheek. Somehow she kept those flooding feelings dammed back.

When he’d gone, though, tiptoeing from the kitchen with Jane’s head resting heavily on his shoulder and her breathing slow and even, Allie had to lean against the granite counter to keep from buckling at the knees.

Karen called while Connor was still upstairs. She sounded tired but resigned at the far end of the phone. And Allie was resigned to what she knew the news would be.

“Where are you?” Allie demanded.

“Albany. I’ve just checked into a motel. Sorry I didn’t call earlier, but the trip down was a nightmare. The snow started just after the Saratoga exits and, boy, did it hit thick and fast! When I got here, the camera store was about to close. I had to sweet-talk the guy into staying open and taking a look at the thing.”

“How is it?”

“Fixed. He had the part. Took him half an hour. Then I started out on the Interstate to get back up to you.”

“That was crazy, Karen!”

“I know. But I kept hoping maybe it hadn’t gotten so heavy up there. I mean, the sky was still blue…well, half-blue…when I left! And they turned me back. They’ve closed the road. If the snow eases off by morning, which it’s supposed to do, if I can believe the Weather Channel, they’ll have plowed and I can get back.”

“Plowed all the way up to—” Allie began, but Karen didn’t let her finish.

“How’s Jane?” she demanded.

“Asleep. Connor took her up, oh, about twenty minutes ago.”

“Okay, then.” Karen took a deep breath. Clearly, she wanted to ask more about the baby. Did she play? Did she take a bath? Did she seem upset? But Karen apparently decided to hold the questions back.

She didn’t say, “Kiss her for me,” either, and Allie didn’t tell her sister that she already had.

“I’m going to call you again first thing tomorrow,” Karen promised. “And I’ll give you the number here if you need to call me.”

Connor came back downstairs just as Allie was winding up her conversation. He paused halfway down and for a few moments listened quite shamelessly—she’d turned and seen him, so it didn’t feel like eavesdropping—intrigued by the mystery and complexity of the woman he was just beginning to get to know.

He listened to the way she handled her sister, soothing her anxieties, teasing her a little. She was clearly comfortable with their loving and supportive relationship. And yet they “hadn’t spent a lot of time together lately.”

He thought about the quilt she’d made for Jane, and what that said about her creativity and her care for beautiful things. I really must find out about her career, he decided. He’d been assuming it was something high-powered but rather cold. The sort of job where she’d wear a power suit, size eight, and deal with money or property or corporate clients. Accountancy or law or international banking.

But how many international bankers took the time to create a beautiful handmade quilt for their niece? And how many people, no matter what their profession, would make a quilt for a baby they couldn’t even hold or touch without stiffening as if they’d been turned to ice?

He felt this overwhelming need to take her by those fine-boned shoulders and demand, “What happened to you? What damaged you? And how can I help you to heal?”

And that last question was completely insane, because he’d only known her for three hours. It didn’t make any sense at all.

Abandoning the unanswerable issue, he reached the bottom of the stairs as Allie put down the phone. “Everything okay?”

“She’s in Albany, at a motel. The camera’s fixed,” she summarized, and added a couple more details.

“Are we ready to eat? It smells great!”

“Karen’s a fabulous cook.”

“I know. I’ve tasted her chicken potpie and her lasagna.”

“Her beef casserole is even better.”

“Do you cook?” he couldn’t help asking as they brought the food through to the hearth together. He was quite prepared to be unsurprised if she did, thinking again of the quilt, but she made a face.

“I scramble. As in eggs. I toss. As in salad. And I reheat. As in leftovers, takeout or TV dinners. That’s about it.”

“You live alone?”

“I have an apartment,” she confirmed.

“Not the best incentive, is it, living alone?”

“Incentive?”

“For becoming a great cook.”

“No,” she agreed. “You need people to cook for, don’t you?”

“People you care about,” he said, pinpointing her meaning more exactly.

For a brief moment, their eyes met, then she looked quickly away. But not before they’d each read far too much in the other’s face, by the light of soft table lamps and a glowing fire. Things you couldn’t even put into words.

Then they both came to their senses and got busy dishing the gravy-rich casserole into bowls, unwrapping the garlic bread from its foil wrapping, breaking it into steaming pieces, tossing dressing onto salad, pouring a little red wine.

“Your sister hasn’t mentioned what you do for a living,” Connor said as they began to eat, each hunkered down on one of the squishy two-seater sofas pulled close to the hearth.

He tried to make it sound like a casual question, but for some reason he really wanted to know. He had the instinctive sense that whatever it was, he was going to be surprised.

He wasn’t wrong, and when she told him, he had the answer to at least one of his many questions about this woman. He knew why, whenever he heard her voice, he felt as if they’d met before, despite the fact that he could never have forgotten meeting a woman like Allie.

“Actually, I’m a radio announcer,” she said, with a grin that was almost apologetic, as if she’d already understood that he was expecting something from left field. “I do the morning drive-time program on Philadelphia’s Country Classic Radio WPYR. We Play Your Requests. We’re Not the Biggest, but We’re the Best.” She’d dropped into her on-air voice half way through, rich and melodic and upbeat.

“Oh—my—lord!” he got out, stunned, then had to check to make sure he’d really gotten it right. “You mean you’re A. J. Todd? The A. J. Todd?”

“Stands for Alison Jane.”

“I listen to you all the time, on my way in to work. Karen never said.”

“Why should she? It’s a minor station, and our broadcasting range is pretty small. I’m not exactly a nationally syndicated shock jock.”

No, but as far as I’m concerned, you do have the sexiest voice on American radio, bar none.

Fortunately, he hadn’t said it aloud. Alone here, with the night ahead and only a six-month-old baby girl for chaperone, he didn’t need to have her thinking he was coming on to her. Somehow he suspected that she could do a pretty good job of freezing a man into solid ice if she had a mind to, and though he hadn’t made up his own mind what he wanted from her yet, he definitely knew it wasn’t that.

He groped for something safer. “Are you ambitious, career-wise, A.J. Todd? Would you like to be a big name in radio?”

“Of course!” she answered, then paused, narrowed her eyes a little and repeated, “Of course I would,” in a much less definite tone.

He sensed a little chink he could use to enter her world, the way a spelunker might slide through a crevice to find a huge, unexplored cavern system. “It’s not obligatory to be ambitious, is it?” he asked.

“Well, no, but I guess I’ve always been the career woman in the family. Karen’s doing great with her art, but family comes first for her, and always has. Clare, our younger sister, has a religious vocation and has known it since age ten.”

“So you’ve positioned yourself as the ambitious one?”

“Positioned myself?”

“You’re a middle child, right? So am I. I know the drill.”

“As I understand it, there are six middle children in your family,” she pointed out, a little cool.

So she didn’t like this kind of analysis? Tough! Connor decided. For some reason, he really wanted her to know that she could trust him, open up to him. To the point where he was prepared to force it a little.

“Makes no difference,” he answered her. “There’s still the same need to fight for a unique place. In one way, that’s good. In others…Well, I spent a good few years working at stuff I didn’t really enjoy, just to prove a point.”

“Like what?”

“You mean what point? That I was my own person, I guess.”

“No, what did you work at?”

“Oh, drilling for oil in Alaska, roadying for a country-music band, doing stunt work in films. That’s how I banged up this leg, don’t know if you’ve noticed.”

“I noticed,” Allie admitted. She didn’t admit that to any healthy, red-blooded female, the slight imperfection could only make him seem sexier.

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