A Texas Soldier's Family

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  Hope turned, a welcoming smile on her face.

  If she was still piqued from their slight tiff earlier, Garrett observed, she wasn’t showing it as she patted her son’s back, nuzzling his blond head.

  To his surprise, he found his irritation with Hope gone, too. The time-out from each other had helped. So had the realization that in a temporary hookup, which was what Hope kept insisting this was, each individual’s values didn’t have to line up the way they would in a successful permanent arrangement. In a fling, all that mattered was for a couple to have fun hanging out together, and they did, and have an even better time in bed. Which was also where they really clicked.

  Work never factored into it.

  Nor did their long-term wants, needs and expectations.

  So there was no reason they couldn’t continue to enjoy each other’s company in the short amount of time they had left at the ranch.

  Hope glanced at Garrett, admitting ruefully, “I think Max expects rocking up and down like this will actually launch him where he wants to go.”

  It certainly appeared that way, Garrett thought with amusement as he crossed the room to their side.

  Max pushed up harder.

  Hope’s smile widened. “Do you mind holding him for a second? I’m trying to warm his bottle for him.”

  “Sure.”

  No sooner had Garrett shifted Max onto his shoulder than a loud burst of air escaped. Hope wrinkled her nose at the odor of digesting milk.

  “Or maybe not...” she said. “Given what he’s about to do.”

  The smell emanating from the diaper area told the whole story. He slanted her a glance. “You think I’m afraid of a little poop?”

  She propped her hands on her hips. Lifted her chin. “Aren’t you?”

  Garrett knew when he was being tested. “Nah. Best he get it out now. Otherwise, it will wake us all later.”

  Hope wrinkled her nose. “True.”

  He glanced at the work spread out over the plank table. It appeared she had been as busy as he had.

  “Still writing the Q&A?”

  As much as he was loath to admit it, he figured it was necessary. His mother always felt better when she had a script to follow.

  “No,” Hope said cheerfully. “I finished that a few hours ago.” She chuckled as her son balled up his fists, turned red and worked on his task with a few healthy grunts.

  “Ah, the joys of parenthood,” he teased.

  Hope groaned and shook her head. “You have no idea...”

  He was beginning to get one, though.

  Garrett watched as she tested the baby formula on her wrist, then, still finding it lacking, put the bottle back in the bowl of warm water.

  She ambled closer. The increasing odor had them both wrinkling their noses.

  “Sure?” she teased, holding out her hands, as if to take Max. “It’s not too late to change your mind.”

  This was all part of having a kid in your life. To his surprise, he liked every moment, even this. He would really miss Max when he was gone.

  Max’s mommy, too.

  If he were honest...

  Which was why he should keep things nice and casual between them.

  He gave a wry smile. What better way to keep the romance out of the situation than by dealing with a little stink? He stared at her, deadpan. “To show you what a trouper I am, I’ll even change his diaper.”

  Hope’s merry laughter filled the bunkhouse. “This I have to see.”

  She accompanied them to the makeshift changing area she had set up on the sofa. Garrett laid the infant down on the thick, waterproof pad. Keeping hold of Max, the way he’d seen Hope do, he sat down, too. The snaps that ran down both legs of Max’s sleeper were easy to undo. Same with unhooking the sides of the diaper.

  He peeled it back. Dared a peek. Couldn’t help but groan right along with Hope.

  It was so gross.

  “You can still bail,” Hope challenged him.

  “Nope.” Garrett lifted the little boy off the mess, folded the messy diaper in half, put it aside and set Max back down on the waterproof pad. “I’m doing it. Aren’t I, Max?”

  Garrett plucked the wipes out, one after another, carefully cleaning until Max’s entire diaper area was as clean as a whistle. Which wasn’t exactly easy, since Max kicked his legs and feet the entire time and tried to grab the soiled wipes with his little hands.

  Hope hovered. “You’ve got a little spillover on the changing pad...”

  “I’ve got it.” Using more wipes, Garrett cleaned that, too. And then Max’s little hands and feet, for good measure. Satisfied all was well, he slid a fresh diaper beneath the baby, fit it against him, just the way he had seen Hope do dozens of times in the past week, then fastened the tabs. The sleeper got snapped up, too, although that took a moment to figure out. “Now you can have him while I go wash my hands,” Garrett declared proudly.

  “Good job, Dad,” Hope teased.

  Dad?

  Funny, he liked the sound of that, unexpected as it was to hear.

  Her hand flew to her mouth. “I’m so sorry,” she rushed on. “I don’t know why I said that. I must be getting a little punchy.”

  Or you just have your defenses down.

  He paused to let her change places with him. He shrugged off her mistake matter-of-factly, for both their sakes. “It’s probably because I’ve been acting like one...”

  “Or because Max doesn’t really have one.” Hastily, Hope gathered her now fragrant-smelling son into her arms. “So no one currently has that title, which is why it was okay to make a joke, because I wasn’t taking anything away from anyone else.”

  He stared at her in surprise as her face flushed bright red. He had never imagined she could be so embarrassed. “You really don’t have to spin this, Hope,” he said gently. “I’m not offended.”

  Flattered, maybe. Crazy as that sounded. But not offended. Nope. Not offended in the least. Still ruminating on the reasons behind her Freudian slip, Garrett went to the kitchen sink and lathered up well.

  Hope followed him. “Okay. Because I—” she tipped her head up to his, Max still gathered against her breasts “—I really do appreciate everything you’ve done for us the past few days. From buying groceries to taking us to the hospital, to holding Max and giving him a bottle and changing his diaper.”

  He had pretty much done it all.

  Aware she looked as if she felt she and Max had imposed on him, Garrett waved off her guilt. “You’ve been helping my family. I’m helping yours. It’s the way the world works.”

  “Or should,” she said, a slight catch in her voice.

  Another silence fell, more companionable this time.

  Max looked at the bottle of milk. He gave a little lurch. “Meh...meh...”

  Garrett took it out of the warm water, wiped the outside dry then tested it on Hope’s wrist. “Perfect,” she said.

  He handed it to her and she settled on the sofa, Max in her arms, and began to feed him. But not before he’d gotten in a few more hungry cries.

  Garrett settled beside them, observing softly, “It almost sounds like he’s saying Mom, Mom, instead of meh, meh.”

  “I know.” Hope smiled tenderly, admitting, “I can’t wait for the day when he really does call me that.”

  The question was, would he be around to witness it? “It won’t be too long,” Garrett predicted, leaning close enough to breathe in the baby powder scent of them both.

  Hope sighed wistfully. “Actually, it will be months from now, according to the developmental timeline.”

  Months.

  Would he even recognize Max by then? He knew how much babies could change in appearance as they grew the first couple of years. The differences were even mo
re significant when you weren’t seeing the baby every day, the way he was now.

  He forced himself not to think about that.

  Or grow maudlin—as Hope looked about to do.

  After all, no permanent decisions had been made.

  Garrett tucked his little finger into the center of Max’s fist, grinned when the baby gripped it tightly. As if he didn’t want to let Garrett go any more than Garrett wanted to let Hope and Max go.

  “Yeah, well,” Garrett predicted gruffly, pushing the unwanted emotion away, “I think Max is so exceptional he’ll be way ahead of that.”

  Hope beamed. “I do, too.”

  They exchanged grins.

  In that moment, he saw the faint shadows beneath her eyes that even makeup couldn’t hide. He thought about the fact that she still wasn’t making enough milk and that the prescription for that was a healthy diet and lots of rest. The latter of which she definitely had not gotten today.

  “You look a little tired,” he told her, not sure if it was the lover in him or the physician doing the talking. “Want me to finish feeding Max while you get ready for bed?” So she and her baby boy could drift right off to sleep?

  Hope mistook his suggestion. The color came back into her cheeks. “Oh, I’m not headed for the sack,” she said firmly, squaring her slender shoulders. “At least, not anytime soon.”

  Chapter Ten

  Well, that made two of them making stupid verbal slips tonight, Hope thought in chagrin.

  Drawing a deep breath, she tried to pretend her mind hadn’t immediately gone in the same direction as his the minute bedtime had been mentioned. When the racing of her pulse, the innate desire to make up for their little tiff earlier in the sexiest way possible, said otherwise.

  Aware he was still assessing her intently, Hope forced a smile. “I have several more hours of work to do, minimum, before I call it a night. But...” Being careful not to dislodge the bottle of formula from Max’s mouth, she handed over her son. “If you want to feed Max for me, I really would appreciate it.”

  Garrett shifted the little boy against himself and settled on the sofa, one brawny arm resting on the cushioned end, Max snuggled against his chest. “No problem.” His mood just as purposeful as her words had been, he continued giving her son the bottle.

  Was he just doing this to make up for how short he’d been with her earlier? Maybe. He was a mature adult. He knew she was just doing her job. That she was who she was, just as he was who he was. They would never share the same view about how necessary appearances were in life. Never mind whether or not they should be manipulated to secure an outcome.

  She’d never be as blunt as he was.

  And he sure as heck was never going to be anywhere close to discreet.

  It didn’t mean they couldn’t be friends, Hope rationalized, doing her best to protect both their hearts.

  And interim lovers...

  All she and Garrett had to do was accept that whatever was going on with them was only temporary, and take it day by day, moment by moment.

  That would certainly lessen the overall stress of the situation. And wasn’t that what she was all about? Choosing the path of least conflict? For everyone?

  * * *

  OBLIVIOUS TO THE tumultuous nature of her thoughts, Garrett looked up at her as Max’s feeding slowed down. Seeming no more anxious to revisit their earlier tiff than she was, he asked curiously, “What was Max drinking earlier? When I came in?”

  When Max had still had frothy white bubbles on his lips. Once again, Hope had to work not to appear self-conscious. “Breast milk.”

  “Then, if he was just fed a few minutes ago...?”

  “I didn’t have enough.”

  His glance went to her breasts.

  Her nipples immediately tingled, but not because she didn’t have enough milk.

  Funny, he hadn’t noticed the loose fit of her blouse. But then, he’d been too busy looking deep into her eyes...as if trying to figure out what to do about the hopelessly intimate situation they’d let themselves get into.

  Hope swallowed. “I could have put Max back to bed, but I knew he was still a little hungry, so if I had gone ahead and put him down he would be up again in two hours. On the other hand, if he gets as many calories as he needs now, even if takes a little longer to feed him since he’s not as intensely interested as he was a little while ago before he had the edge taken off his hunger, he will probably sleep a good six hours.”

  “Six hours? Really?” Once again, Garrett looked as interested as any proud daddy.

  But he wasn’t Max’s daddy.

  And would never be.

  She needed to keep reminding herself of that.

  Hope moved away from the compelling sight of Max snuggling up to Garrett.

  So Garrett was not just strong and protective, he was also laudably tender, too. So what? It didn’t change anything between them. Couldn’t. And if she let herself imagine otherwise, they’d both be in big, big trouble. “He slept that long last night,” she reported, trying to distract herself by tidying up the kitchen, emptying out the plastic bowl and putting it in the rack to dry.

  “But, again, that’s what is on the developmental schedule.” Hope paused to dry her hands. “I think the only reason Max wasn’t doing it before this was because he was growing and wasn’t getting quite enough nutrition from my breast milk alone to help him sleep through the night.”

  Garrett’s eyes tracked her every movement as she walked around the breakfast bar. “So you’re okay with combination feeding now?”

  Hope settled in front of her computer once again. “I’m beginning to see the beauty of it.” She pulled her chair up. Elbows on the table, she rested her chin on her folded hands. “I also realized I don’t have to be so hard on myself. As a mom, I don’t have to do everything perfectly. I just have to try to do my best.”

  The upward curve of his masculine lips was as encouraging as the gleam in his eyes. “I’m glad.”

  Once again their glances meshed, held. Once again Hope wished she wasn’t working for his mother and the foundation. That the two of them could put everything else aside and just be together like this.

  But she was working for the Lockhart Foundation.

  And she had a job to do if she was going to protect Lucille and the family’s reputation the way she had promised. So, without another word, she turned her attention to the computer screen and went back to work.

  * * *

  GARRETT HAD BEEN wondering if a formal apology for their earlier disagreement was warranted.

  She’d quietly indicated it wasn’t.

  Now, as she immersed herself fully in her work, he had to wonder if he’d read her mood correctly, after all. Frustration formed a knot in his gut.

  How was it he had just ended up in the confusing morass of his youth? With everyone surreptitiously working to protect each other’s feelings, appearances of civility reigning supreme and no one saying what they really meant or felt?

  Suddenly, the idea of reenlisting in the military, where everything was short and to the point, seemed a lot more appealing than it had just twenty-four hours before, when he’d been wrapped in Hope’s arms.

  Maybe his earlier self-assessment was right.

  He just wasn’t cut out for this.

  With a decisive frown, Hope picked up her laptop and brought it over. She settled beside him, close enough so he could see the screen while still giving their tiny chaperone his bottle.

  She picked up a throw pillow and wedged it between the two of them. So she could rest her elbow on it while she worked? Or to ensure they wouldn’t physically touch?

  He didn’t know the answer to that.

  However, he did know she still smelled like lavender baby powder and the vanilla-scented
hand soap she favored.

  They were both, he noted, very soothing fragrances.

  Max, opening his eyes to grin up at his momma, seemed to think so, too.

  Hope spared her son a sweet smile, causing Garrett’s heart to lurch painfully in his chest, then went back to the task at hand, explaining, “I’m still trying to put together the backstory on the foundation. Not the abbreviated one that’s on the Lockhart Foundation website, which tells us virtually nothing about your parents except that they are rich and want to do good.”

  “Wow. That’s harsh.” But true in a way he never would have expected an exceedingly tactful woman like Hope to come out and say.

  “I know. It doesn’t begin to cover how the foundation came about. And I need that.”

  “Why?”

  She scooted as close as the pillow wall she had built would allow. “Because of this.” She clicked the split-screen function. Eight different windows popped up. He read the titles of the stories out loud: “‘Lockharts Try to Get Ahead of Potential Lawsuits.’ ‘Too Late to Do Good?’ ‘Boxed Into Giving, as Charities Revolt.’” He exhaled roughly, a muscle pulsing in his jaw. “Wow. I thought you said that leaking the information about what my mom is doing ahead of the eleven o’clock news would diminish the bad publicity.”

  “And it has.” Hope clicked on another screen of multiple headline windows. “This is where we started.”

  He continued to read. “‘Lockhart Foundation Stiffs Charities.’ ‘Lockhart Foundation Turns Its Back on Needy.’ ‘Nonprofits Tell the Ugly Truth about Lockhart Foundation Largesse.’”

  Looking more accepting of the situation than he felt at that moment, Hope explained, “We went from all bad publicity to a press that is doubting whether your family and the foundation is bad or not. The next step is to take those doubts as an open window or door, and give the public another glimpse of who your parents really were when they started out and how their largesse all came to be.”

  “Makes sense.” Noting Max had pushed the nipple all the way out of his mouth, Garrett set the bottle of formula aside and shifted Max upright, so the baby could look over his shoulder while working up a burp.