by Kate Thomas
Without saying another word, Josh stood, dried his arms and wrinkled-prune hands on a fresh towel, then dropped it on the floor. Dani had a feeling he didn’t even realize it had left his fingers. “I’ll, uh...I’d better...” he mumbled to the far corner of the tub enclosure as he stepped over the used towel and eased past mother and son. “Then I—”
“Josh. What happened?”
He ran a hand through his dampened hair and gave a ragged sigh. At last, he looked at her, and the raw anguish in his turquoise eyes sliced right through her.
Instinctively she stretched a hand to him, but though his skin was warm, his eyes turned cool and distant, his jaw went titanium and his long fingers curled into fists against his thighs.
“Don’t worry. Michael’s okay. Not great, but...” Then the toneless barricade faltered and there was a desperate edge to his voice that tore her heart out. “I’m so sorry, Dani! The poor kid wanted—needed—something, but...I couldn’t figure out what—he had to cry and cry. I swear to you, I didn’t mean to make him so unhappy.”
Dani glanced down at her sleeping son. “Yeah, he really looks upset, doesn’t he?” she said with a smile. “He’s only a week old,” she gently reminded the Viking warrior who’d been vanquished by an infant. “This is all as new to him as it is to us. Sometimes I think he doesn’t know what he wants.”
“I never realized how hard it is to be a baby,” Josh said in a soft, broken voice, touching Michael’s cheek tenderly with one finger before he backed away. “But I... Maybe that’s why Carrie...” His voice faded, then he shook his head regretfully. “I’m sorry, Dani. I guess I’m not cut out for this.”
She kept her hands clasped around the baby. Because she wanted—more than she’d ever wanted anything in all her twenty-three years—to reach for Josh, to ease his pain in the most elemental way. And to assure him that the only failure was refusing to try.
“I’ll be downstairs,” Josh said tonelessly, and disappeared.
After placing Michael in the crib, Dani subdued the bathroom, unpacked, and headed for the kitchen.
While she prepared a simple meal of oven-fried chicken, mashed potatoes and steamed zucchini garnished with chopped tomato, she heard computer sounds, a telephone, and Josh’s deep voice coming from the living room.
Her fears that dinner might be awkward proved groundless: thanks to Michael, they ate in shifts.
In fact, their only direct contact the remainder of that day came as the midnight feeding concluded. A slight noise alerting her, Dani turned to see his huge, male shape outlined by the faint light filtering through the window.
“Josh...” As she breathed his name, he plucked Michael from her arms and in one motion, covered his shoulder with a pad and settled the baby against it.
“Dinner was delicious, but you must be exhausted. Go to bed, Dani. I’ll burp him.” The words were so soft and deep, they seemed to form inside her head like clouds.
When she started to speak, he laid a callused finger against her lips. “No,” he said. “Just go. He’s almost asleep so... I won’t screw this up,” he promised.
What could she say that wouldn’t betray her foolish heart? With a helpless sigh, she went.
The next morning she had breakfast ready when Josh came downstairs clad in a custom-tailored charcoal suit that adored his bold, masculine beauty. He also wore a blindingly white shirt, an understated silk tie—and an aloof, preoccupied expression.
Her sweet, handsome slob, magically transformed into a sophisticated, successful attorney, hid behind the sports section while he devoured perfectly scrambled eggs and melt-in-your-mouth biscuits.
Finished, Josh let the paper slide to the floor as he stood and thanked the top of the refrigerator for breakfast, then asked if it needed anything. When Dani shook her head and that braid shimmered, he got the hell out of there before he grabbed it, reeled her in and took her right there on the kitchen table. “Don’t hold up dinner,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ll be late.”
He’d made the decision last night. Between Dani’s everstronger appeal and his failure with Michael, Josh had no safe choice but retreat.
By sheer willpower, he managed to immerse himself in work all day every day that week, staying too busy to wish for another second chance.
Until Saturday.
Chapter Six
“What are you doing here?” Josh asked, surprised to see Marletta at her desk, wielding a red pencil, when he let himself into the office on Saturday morning.
The secretary snorted. “I’m trying to get some work done.” Her red pencil kept moving. “What’s your excuse?”
I’m avoiding temptation. “I work here, too—remember?”
“Humph. You haven’t spent five minutes bein’ productive this whole week. Why start now?”
“That’s not true.”
Damn the woman! There was enough ice in his voice to sink a transatlantic liner; she just sailed right past it.
“Oo-oh. I stand corrected,” Marletta said with her patented laconic sarcasm. “Let’s see... In the past five days, you returned three or four phone calls. Wrote a letter...”
Josh’s secretary jabbed her red pencil in his direction. “Mostly you sat in your office all week, keepin’ an eye on the furniture.”
“I was catching up on my reading,” he declared. Well, it was worth a shot.
“Uh-huh.” The two syllables were loaded with more skepticism than a White House reporter.
And her suspicions were valid, of course. He’d held law journals open in front of him for hours on end. Occasionally remembered to turn a page, but he hadn’t read a single article.
How could he? He kept hearing Michael cry.
With a groan, Josh sank onto the leather love seat provided for waiting clients and buried his head in his hands. All those years he’d held that grudge against Carrie for denying him a chance at fatherhood—and he was no good at it.
“Walker. Hey, Walker, snap out of it.” Marletta sounded genuinely concerned.
No wonder Carrie hadn’t consulted him. No wonder Dani’s pine green eyes held shadows when she looked at him. Intimately acquainted with him in one way or another, they knew...
Marletta’s normally fluid tones sharpened. “Hey, bag the misery, will ya?
“You’re the boss, remember? If you want to goof off once in a while, go ahead. In fact,” she continued in a suddenly bland tone that put Josh on red alert, “why don’t you take next week off? You know, stay home with your... guests.”
“Not” Lord knew, he wanted to. He missed Michael
Every night he’d go home late, eat something delicious Dani had left in the oven, vow to go straight to his own room—and end up slowly pacing the nursery floor, carefully rubbing the baby’s back until he expelled those pesky milk bubbles and fell asleep. Then he’d stand silently beside the crib, absorbing every little sigh and gurgle and the adorable, scrinched-up faces Michael made while he slept...
Michael’s mama makes faces in her sleep, too, Josh thought with a smile, then frowned. He felt like a damned voyeur checking on her while she slept, but...he worried about her overdoing it. There was evidence of it everywhere: the living room almost eerily tidy, clothes he’d forgotten he owned were appearing, clean and pressed, in his closet and dresses, and those delicious smells filling the house—pot roast, lasagna, that heavenly chocolate meringue pie last night....
He just had to tiptoe into Dani’s room after leaving Michael! Had to straighten the covers and tuck them around her. Had to smooth back the tendrils of hair escaping her braid and whisper his thanks for everything.
Didn’t have to bend down and brush her soft cheek with his lips, though.
That was the other reason he didn’t dare hang at the house. At the office, he could almost convince himself Dani Caldwell was just another woman, but the minute he heard her sweet, slow drawl or the silly nonsense she crooned to Michael, or saw her eyes sparkling like dew-soaked summer grass, or her lips curved i
n one of her mischievous smiles...he wanted to kiss her again, hold her, take her upstairs to—
“No!” he repeated. He thought he understood a little better what she meant about forgiveness, now that he’d faced his own terrible flaws, but Dani deserved more than he could give. So the fewer entanglements between them, the better. She and Michael would be gone soon and then...
Then he’d experience real loneliness. Josh sighed.
“Okay!” Marletta threw the red pencil down on her desk, then snatched it up again. “Okay. Sit in there and mope till you turn to stone,” she said slowly, taking the red cylinder in both hands. “But, if you don’t come clean about what’s really goin’ on, mister, my retirement starts today.”
“Oh, come on, Marletta, nothing’s—”
The red pencil snapped in two. Josh stared at her, then groaned. He’d forgotten that hair trigger on her temper.
She brandished a pencil stub like a saber. “Don’t you spread any more of that bull manure, sonny. Ever since I’ve known you, Walker, you’ve done nothing but work. Even your so-called vacations, you go out to Montana and help your brother punch cattle. You’ve got—” Marletta started ticking items off fingers “—no hobbies, no friends, no love life. Nothing.
“Then one day, out of the blue, I get a call. ‘Fix up a nursery for me. I’m bringing home a baby.’ And then what?”
Marietta tossed the pencil parts at the trash can as she answered her own question. “Then nothin’. No explanation. No descriptions. Not even a picture of this supposedly incredible infant. You just waltz back into the office like nothin’ happened.” She was practically shouting now.
Abruptly, she lowered the volume and her voice resonated with sympathy. “Only...something did happen, and I want to know what it was.”
He tried denial, but she rejected it before he got past N to head for o.
“Look. From the first day you hired me, I never pried, did I? Even though any fool could see that something or somebody was eatin’ you up inside. But this time a baby’s involved and you’re so upset you can’t stuff it away, can’t get a lick of work done. So spill, Walker, or I’m outta here.”
Josh turned. Intending to stalk regally into his office and slam the door. If she wanted to quit, let her. He wasn’t baring his soul again. Not even to Marletta.
And yet, after one step, he came to a halt. Because words began pouring out of him like coins from a slot machine.
He heard himself tell her about the flash flood and Dani going into labor. Then backtrack to cover law school and Carrie’s betrayal. Finally, Josh described his disastrous experience with Michael, sparing no detail of his own pathetic failure.
“So you see,” he finished, wondering ironically why taking Annie’s advice to quit feeling sorry for himself seemed to involve so much talking about the very subject he’d avoided like the damned plague all these years. For some weird reason, though, “picking at the scab” didn’t hurt as badly this time; he wasn’t as raw underneath it. “I’ve spent all this time outraged and sick with wanting something I shouldn’t have—because I’m lousy at it.”
“Let me get this straight,” Marletta said, her mouth twitching as she picked up a new pencil and stuck it in her hair. “You’ve been hiding in this office all week because... because a baby cried at you?”
Josh frowned at his secretary. Michael most certainly was not just any baby. He was—Dani’s baby. Not mine, even if I still wish he could be.
“I’m not hiding,” he protested automatically. “But didn’t you hear me? I tried everything I could think of and I couldn’t calm him down. He cried for almost an hour.”
Marietta’s laughter rolled through the room like a river in spring flood. “Walker, you slay me,” she said when the flow dropped to the occasional chuckle. “Listen here, my Lorene once cried for a week solid.
“Do you know how to ride a bike?” she asked, changing the subject abruptly.
“What does—”
“Just answer the question,” Marletta commanded.
He should have never let her near those books on crossexamination techniques.
“You can’t equate bicycles and babies, Marletta. Bike riding’s a learned skill. Parenting is an instinct You either have it or you don’t.”
Josh thrust resigned fingers through his hair. “And I don’t.” He could hear the bleakness in his voice and didn’t care. He was tired of hiding his feelings. “I had no idea what Michael wanted, how to make him happy.
“What a doofus I am,” Josh said in disgust, shaking his head as he shoved his hands to the bottom of his pockets. “All that garbage I used to tell myself about the injustice of being denied my chance at fatherhood...and all along—”
“Oh, can it, Walker,” Marletta interrupted.
Darn woman didn’t even respect devastation.
“Having five children makes me the rug rat expert around here. And I’m telling you, instinct just makes you want to care for the child. It sure doesn’t tell you how, ’cuz each child, each stage, is different. What works with one may bomb with another.”
She shook a schoolmasterly finger at him. “You learn parenting by doing it. So why don’t you go home and get in a few lessons with that baby you’re crazy about?
“And with his mama,” Marletta added, flashing her smarmiest, know-it-all smile. “You’re crazy ’bout her, too, aren’t you?”
Josh felt his face grow hot. “I don’t—”
Even if he wanted to, he didn’t dare risk his heart on Dani Caldwell. A man only got one second chance, after all—and she’d seen him at his worst. Several times. She’d reject him in a heartbeat. Besides... “She’s a widow,” he protested.
“That means her husband’s dead,” Marietta observed. “Not her. Of course, she’d have to be pretty desperate to get involved with someone like you....” She paused to study Josh’s face, long enough to make him uncomfortable, wondering what she saw there that made her own expression grow so solemn.
As usual, she didn’t keep him in suspense for long. “Aw, shoot, Walker, you’re somethin’ of an idiot on occasion. But basically, you’re a good person. You deserve some happiness. If Dani’s what you want, go for it.”
Josh rubbed a hand over his jaw. Damn, he’d smelled those waffles this morning and forgotten to shave again. Rushed downstairs just as Dani lifted one out of the waffle iron and plated it. She’d made some kind of raspberry syrup from scratch, too. Lordy, those things tasted like ambrosia!
“And if she’s what you need,” his secretary said, interrupting Josh’s fond reminiscence, “don’t let anything stand in your way.”
Well, he didn’t need anyone, of course, but...making love to Dani for the next forty or fifty years and raising Michael to manhood had a heck of a lot more appeal than scrambling around to find a woman who left him cold because she didn’t have pine-forest green eyes, then exchanging security for a family.
“Love is somethin’ you learn by doing, too,” Marietta added.
With a grin, she waved the new pencil at him like a scepter. “So, just get the heck out of here, okay? Go home. I can’t get any work done with you skulkin’ around here.”
Desire pounded through his veins. A little anxiety, too. No, that was terror racing through him. What if he proposed marriage—strictly a platonic one of convenience, of course—and Dani reacted so negatively she advanced her departure date?
What if he gave parenting another try and really couldn’t master it? Would he have to hunt up Carrie and beg her forgiveness?
Or was that what Dani meant?
And what if he could learn?
Maybe he should give himself a second chance, too.
He wasn’t ready to call his sister-in-law and tell her hell just froze over, but... Okay, maybe he would go home. Give himself another try with Michael. Sound out Dani’s receptivity to a...merger. If the signals were positive, he just might have a hope of finally getting the future he’d given up on for six stubborn years.
“Dammit, Marletta,” he said, matching her grin. “You’re right. I am the boss. I’m going home.” To give his second chance a real chance.
Unfortunately, the phone rang before he made it to the office door.
Foolishly, Josh took the call, then went home, but not to stay. To pack.
Dani and Michael weren’t there.
A note on the kitchen table indicated they’d gone to the park across from the town homes’ entrance.
For a moment Josh wanted to rush over there after them and blurt—What?
Nothing. Not yet, anyway.
But, dammit, he should be the one taking Michael to the park! To the zoo. To Little League and soccer practice. To Cub Scout meetings. A boy needs a father.
As much as I need Michael.
Huh. Let’s see you sell that one to Dani, who knows how well you parented her son. And who deserves a man who could love her completely, permanently. Ready to try that?
Josh grabbed clothes and toiletries, scribbled a brief note at the bottom of Dani’s and went to Cleveland instead.
Dani took a deep breath. After all she’d weathered—Jimmy’s emotional desertion and drinking sprees, his death, her in-laws’ threats to take Michael—she would not blubber over Josh leaving town for a week.
She’d do what she’d always done. While Josh Walker made himself scarcer than a summer snowstorm in Texas, she’d stay busy.
Room and board—that was the deal, she reminded herself as she settled Michael on his stomach in the playpen, gave the soup another stir and set up the ironing board. While Michael worked on holding his head up, she’d iron a few more of the shirts she kept finding in various corners of the house.
Dani filled the iron’s water tank, flipped the tab to steam and set the temperature slide at cotton. You’re playing Cinderella, she chided herself. Living out your childhood dream of a baby, a home, and a wonderful man... trying to forget that midnight’s approaching.