by Whitley Cox
But there wasn’t.
Dina’s death had been senseless and wrong. There was no reason for his sister to have died when and the way she did. It could have been prevented.
“I can’t imagine … ” She trailed off and wiped beneath her eyes again. “I’m sorry.” Tears slipped down her cheeks as she crouched down and stared into the car seat at a sleeping Sophie. “You didn’t deserve this, sweetheart,” she whispered, reaching out and stroking a finger over the top of Sophie’s delicate little hand. “You didn’t deserve this at all.”
Liam and Aaron exchanged looks over top of Isobel’s head.
Liam’s own eyes were welling up, and his jaw was tight.
Ah, fuck. Aaron was on the verge too.
Shit.
He’d stayed strong while at the hospital each day. Sophie needed him to stay strong. But once he arrived home, shut the door behind him and stared into the cold emptiness of his house, he’d lose it. Consumed by that nauseating, emotional mixture of sick sadness and boiling rage. He tossed and turned in his bed, crying until he couldn’t cry anymore, only to then go and kick the shit out of his punching bag hanging in the garage in the wee hours of the morning. Then, when he couldn’t swing another punch, he’d crumple to the ground in a new heap of tears until his eyes drifted shut and he managed to catch maybe thirty minutes of sleep on the cold concrete floor.
The endless back and forth between crippling sadness and sheer madness was exhausting.
But the anger felt good. It felt better than the pain that threatened to tear his heart clean from his chest.
He imagined the punching bag was the face of Dina’s shooter. The faces of those who don’t believe that guns need to be regulated and controlled. The faces of all those who could have prevented his sister’s death, Sophie becoming an orphan, if they’d just opened their motherfucking eyes and seen the reality of the world they now lived in.
His fists flexed, and he cracked his knuckles. His body was struggling now between rage and misery. Tears threatened, but fury bubbled.
They needed to get the baby inside. They needed to change the subject before he blew a fucking gasket.
He made a noise in his throat and lifted the car seat back up off the ground. “I’m going to get Sophie inside and unpack a bit.” He cleared his throat again before turning around and heading into his three-bedroom rancher, making sure to show the other two his back as a lone, hot tear sprinted down his cheek.
He set Sophie’s car seat on his brown leather couch, wiped his eyes, sniffed, stared at the wall for twenty seconds to get his shit together, then finally faced the other two.
Isobel and Liam simply stood in his living room, both their eyes focused on Sophie.
“I just bought some formula, so you can feed her that when she wakes up,” he said, opening up the plastic grocery bag and pulling out a bunch of premixed bottles of infant formula. “Nurses recommended this one. Should be gentle on her belly.”
Isobel’s head bobbed. “Okay.”
“Master bedroom is down the hall. I’ll put Sophie in the one closest to the bathroom, and you can have the one next to the living room.” He hooked a finger over his shoulder to let her know where the bedrooms were before putting his head down and opening up the diaper bag.
“You want me to live here?” Her voice was like a soft lullaby. She probably had a lovely singing voice.
He lifted his head. “You don’t want to?”
They both glanced at Liam, who immediately held up his hands in surrender. “I am merely the agent. It’s up to you two to negotiate the terms. I simply facilitate.”
“I can’t do this alone,” Aaron whispered. “I can’t. I don’t know how.”
Her eyes closed for a moment, and he held his breath. Was she going to leave? Say she couldn’t do this either?
“Let’s just take it week by week, how about that? I can stay for the first few nights to help you get settled, and then we can take it from there.”
Tension fled from his shoulders, and he nodded. “Week by week.”
She smiled. “One step at a time. We’ll make it work. We’ll figure it out.”
Aaron swallowed, then put his head back down and began pulling things out of the diaper bag. Sophie would wake soon, and he’d have to change her diaper and possibly even her outfit. He wasn’t sure the diaper bag had enough to last them. Eventually she would grow, and he’d have to get bigger clothes for her.
Eventually he’d have to go to Dina’s.
He should have gone to his sister’s condo over the past week while Sophie was still in the NICU, but he just couldn’t. He’d pulled into the parking lot for her condo building three times, only to sit there for fifteen minutes, curse, yell, bang his hands on the steering wheel a bunch more and then toss the truck in reverse and peel out of there.
He couldn’t go into that building when he knew she wasn’t in there. He couldn’t go in and see her half-finished cup of tea sitting on the counter like he knew it would be. See her plants that probably desperately needed watering or the pile of mail in her mailbox.
He couldn’t.
“Would you like me to go out and buy a few more things for Sophie?” Isobel asked, her voice calm and reassuring. “Newborns really don’t need much in the beginning besides love, a full belly and plenty of diapers.”
“She’s right,” Liam piped up. “A few sleepers in case she spits up or shoots shit up her back, but other than that, they’re pretty low-maintenance.”
“We can go and grab things from the nursery when you’re ready,” Isobel continued. “When she needs them. But right now, all she needs is you.”
He lifted his head to Isobel’s face. “I’m not enough. She needs her mother.”
She took a step toward him, her blue eyes fiercely focused. “You’re going to have to be enough. That little baby needs you more than ever now. You can do this.”
A squeak that sounded like a baby guinea pig drew their attention to the couch. Sophie stretched and made a silly face, scrunching up her features before she slowly opened her dark eyes. She stared up at both of them, blinking several times before yawning wide.
“Oh, that’s a good sign. I’m already boring her,” he said dryly.
Isobel leaned down and gently unbuckled Sophie from her car seat before reaching in and pulling the baby free, cradling her against her chest. “Hi, Super Sophie,” she cooed, kissing Sophie’s forehead a couple of times. “Did you have a good sleep?” She pressed her nose against the baby’s head and inhaled deeply. “Mmmm, nothing quite like that new baby smell.” She let her eyes flutter shut and rocked them both gently back and forth. “They need to figure out a way to bottle it.”
Sophie yawned again, showing off her gummy mouth and tiny pink tongue.
Isobel opened her eyes when Sophie began to squawk and bop her head against Isobel’s shoulder. “Oh, she’s rooting. Must be hungry. Go see your uncle, baby. I’ll go and fix you a bottle.” She passed Sophie to Aaron, her movements careful but sure. She seemed far more confident holding such a small creature than Aaron was. He felt like he was going to drop her at any moment.
Immediately, once she was in his arms, he sat down on the couch and laid her on his lap.
Isobel grabbed the bag of formula and bottles he’d bought at the grocery store and took it to the kitchen.
“Babies are more resilient than you think,” Liam said. “I mean they don’t bounce when you drop them, particularly on their heads, but you also don’t need to hold her like she’s a Ming vase either.”
Aaron shot him an irritated look. “She is a fucking Ming vase. She’s more priceless than a Ming vase. She’s all I have.” He choked out that last part and fixed his eyes back on a curious and alert Sophie. Her little arms jerked, and her fingers wrapped tightly around his index finger, holding on for dear life. “You’re all I have.”
Liam coughed, shifting back and forth on his feet. “Right. Sorry.”
Aaron let out a slow breath a
nd lifted his head back up, pinning his gaze on Liam. The guy looked like shit. Which was probably exactly how Aaron looked. Bags beneath his eyes, untidy short beard, worry lines, bedhead.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said. “You’ve really stepped up for Soph and I. We couldn’t have done it without you. You’re a true friend to Dina.” He swallowed as the emotions threatened to ransack his composure. “You’re a true friend to all of us.”
Liam’s jaw wobbled, and he sat down on the other end of the couch, running his hand through his dark blond hair, then dragging it down to scrub over his face. He tugged on his chin. “Ah, man. Ain’t nothing right or true about any of this. It’s fucked up, is what it is. Not Dina. Anybody but Dina.”
Aaron clenched his jaw so tight, he thought his eyes were going to bulge clean out of his head.
Anybody but Dina was fucking right.
Liam grunted, drawing Aaron’s attention away from his dark thoughts. “So listen, no pressure or anything, join if you want, come when you’re ready, but … I’m a single dad too, and over the last few years, I’ve gotten to know other single dads. Through work and other ways too. I started a club. The Single Dads of Seattle. We meet every Saturday night at my place for poker. You’re probably not ready to come tomorrow night, but the offer is always there.
“Some dads hang out with their kids other days during the week, playdates, whatever. But what it mostly is is a group of men who all fucking get it. We get how hard it is to be a single father. Some of us are full-time single dads, some of us part-time. We have each other’s backs. Babysit for each other if needed. We’re a brotherhood. Or a fatherhood. A family.”
A family.
Aaron was about to say he wasn’t ready to socialize when Isobel’s voice interrupted his thoughts.
“Who’s ready for a bottle?” she asked.
He lifted his head up from Liam’s face to the gorgeous young woman coming toward them.
Fuck, she was young. What was she, twenty-five? Twenty-six? There was no way this woman was a day over thirty. Unlike Aaron, who was not only a day over thirty but a good eight years over.
He lifted Sophie off his lap and stood up, grabbing—well, more like snatching the warm formula bottle from Isobel’s hand. “I’ll do it.” He grunted, moving over to the window, cradling his niece in his arm and offering her the bottle.
“Oookay,” Isobel said, not seeming to be affected by his gruffness. “So, are you wanting me to stay over tonight? Because I didn’t bring anything. I’d have to run home and grab a bag of clothes.”
He didn’t bother turning around to face her but grunted an answer. “Yeah. Go get your stuff, then come back.”
There was a pause, then footsteps heading toward the front door. “Okay, I’ll be back shortly.” Another pause. “Text me if you need anything.” Then the front door shut, leaving Aaron and Liam alone once more.
Aaron felt his new friend’s presence before Liam entered his peripheral vision. “Dude, don’t fuck the nanny,” Liam said. “I know she’s hot. Fuck, she’s crazy hot, but you can’t fuck your nanny.”
Aaron adjusted Sophie in his arms, tilted the bottle up a little more and then glared at Liam. “Don’t you think I know that?”
“Knowing and doing are two different things. Tread lightly, my friend.” He slapped Aaron on the shoulder. “And get some sleep. You look like shit.”
Aaron focused back on a guzzling Sophie. “I look how I feel.”
Liam hung his head and squeezed Aaron’s shoulder in a comforting and brotherly way. “You and me both, man. You and me both.”
4
Isobel slid in behind the steering wheel of her white Toyota Corolla and put the keys in the ignition. She didn’t put the car into reverse. She didn’t move. She just sat there and stared at the garage door to Aaron’s house, wondering what the hell she’d just gotten herself into.
He was hot.
Boy, oh boy, was he hot.
Big, muscly, a force of nature like she’d never seen before.
And that hair. Dark red, thick and lush with just the smallest hint of a wave.
She’d always had a weakness for redheaded men. Outlander had ruined her. Now all she lusted after, fantasized about was a big, tall Scotsman lifting his kilt and taking her hard and fast on a bed of heather.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
That didn’t help a bit.
Those arms. Holy Batman. Those weren’t even arms. Those were tattooed tree trunks busting out of a thin black cotton prison. He needed to release those glorious beasts for all the world to admire.
And lick.
Oh crap.
She slammed her palms on the steering wheel and rested her forehead on top of the back of her hands. “No, no, no.”
She should be marching back into that house and declining the job. Say something came up and she would find him a replacement nanny. That she couldn’t work for him. Couldn’t live with him.
Holy mother.
Aaron wanted her to live there.
She was going to be under the same roof, day and night, with the sexiest thing she’d ever laid eyes on.
And were those dog tags beneath his shirt?
Was he some kind of soldier? A fighter pilot? A sniper? Oh dear heaven and earth, a SEAL? Was he a SEAL?
She whimpered as she lifted her head up, jumping when she came face to face with the man who had her whimpering. His head cocked to the side in confusion, her purse in his hand.
Oh crap!
He wandered around to the driver’s side door and waited for her to roll down her window.
“Everything okay?”
Swallowing, she nodded. “Yeah, just, uh … I have a bit of a headache.” He didn’t have a baby in his arms anymore. Why not? Her eyes searched his big frame for signs of a tiny baby hiding somewhere. Oh, now she really was losing her mind.
Lack of sex will do that to a person.
“Where’s Sophie?” she finally asked, having not let the oxygen reach her brain before asking the stupid question. Obviously, Sophie was folding the laundry in the house while lip-syncing to Green Day.
She’s probably in the house sleeping, you moron.
“She fell asleep after her bottle. Liam’s holding her. I came out here to grab the bassinet I bought. Noticed you forgot your purse.” His blue eyes seared her skin until a tingle, not at all unpleasant, ran through her, ending firmly between her legs.
He held out her purse.
“Right.” She took her purse from him. “Thanks. Can’t forget this.” She smiled at him, but every bit of it was forced and awkward. She wanted to put the car into drive and plow headfirst into his garage door hard enough to knock herself out so she didn’t have to think about how his eyes twinkled in the sunlight or his tattooed biceps rippled when he crossed his arms over his chest. What did the tattoos mean?
She couldn’t quite tell from the angle and the fact that they crept up beneath the sleeve of his shirt. What she could tell was that they were hot.
She didn’t want to stare too long at his arms, or his chest, or his shoulders, stomach, thick thighs, the V of his legs … fuck. Where could she look?
His face.
Damn, that was hot too. But safer territory than anywhere else on his body.
She smiled another awkward smile, hoping he hadn’t caught her ogling his arms.
He didn’t smile back but instead pinched his brows together and looked down the bridge of his nose at her.
Isobel squirmed beneath his intense gaze.
“You’re coming right back?” he asked.
She nodded for the umpteenth time. “Yep.”
He nodded once. “Okay.”
“Bed!”
She groaned inwardly, then groaned again and even harder when his eyes grew wide.
She shook her head, her face on fire. “I mean, bedding. Do you have a bed for me? Or should I bring some of my own bedding and a blow-up mattress or something?”
Understanding slow
ly crossed his face. “Guest room has everything you’ll need. Just bring your clothes.”
She was staring up at him but let her eyes travel down the length of his frame, and of course they stopped on what was right smack dab in front of her, the V of his thick, powerful thighs in his well-worn jeans.
Aaron cleared his throat, forcing Isobel’s neck to nearly snap in two, she flung her head back up so fast. “Get going,” he ordered, his tone gruff and almost mean. “Get back soon.” Then he headed past her toward his truck, which was parked beside her car in the double driveway, and retrieved the bassinet from the pickup bed. He walked toward the house right in front of her car but didn’t bother looking at her.
She couldn’t decide if that was better or worse.
She waited until she heard the front door of the house close before she tossed her car into reverse and pulled out of the driveway.
Only then did she realize how soaked her panties were and how much her nipples ached. She glanced down her body at her breasts. Her bra had no padding, and it showed. Oh boy, did it show. Hard peaks poked out beneath the thin white cotton of her T-shirt.
She paused at the end of his driveway and bonked her head on his steering wheel again. This was such a bad idea. Such a bad, bad, bad idea.
She glanced once more at the house, only to see Aaron standing in front of the living room window, staring at her.
Fuck.
Averting her eyes, she checked her blind spot, her rearview mirror, and then backed out into traffic as fast as she could.
She needed to get away from the pheromones and testosterone and whatever that incredible manly smell was. It was driving her loony. She wasn’t able to think straight.
“Bad idea,” she repeated. “Bad, bad, bad.”
She needed to turn the job down. She had to.
But then her mind wandered to sweet baby Sophie and how badly she needed a village around her. A team of people devoted to taking care of her, making sure she had all the love she’d ever need.
She couldn’t abandon that baby.
Her heart wouldn’t let her.