“I was—maybe still am—upset,” he admitted. “I was the first person she told when she found out she was pregnant, because I was her best friend. When Ava was born, Kelly asked me to be the godfather, but she never told me that her baby was actually my niece.”
“And you didn’t even suspect the connection?”
“No, I didn’t suspect anything. Because I didn’t know that Jack and Kelly had been involved, however briefly.”
“So why didn’t your brother guess that the child she was carrying might be his?”
“Because he didn’t know she was pregnant. Kelly made me promise not to tell anyone,” he confided. “I thought she’d met someone when she was away to school, fallen for the wrong guy and ended up pregnant. So I promised, because I never suspected that her baby was my brother’s baby.”
“Why didn’t she tell him that she was pregnant?” Julie asked curiously.
“I guess she was planning to tell him, but by the time she knew about the baby, he was engaged to someone else.”
She winced. “That would hurt.”
“Yeah.” He could acknowledge that fact without accepting it as justification.
“How did his wife react to the news that he had a child with someone else?”
“She never knew. They were divorced more than five years ago,” he told her. “And now Jack and Kelly are engaged.”
“Apparently your brother has forgiven her for keeping their child a secret.”
“It took him a while, but he did. And Ava is thrilled that she’s finally going to have a mother and a father.”
“In a perfect world, every child would have two parents who loved him or her and one another,” she said.
Which told him absolutely nothing about her situation. Where was Caden’s father? Was he part of their lives? Luke didn’t think so, considering that she hadn’t wanted to contact anyone to let them know that she was in labor, or even later to share the news that she’d had her baby.
“I feel fortunate that I grew up in that kind of home,” he said, in the hope that offering information to Julie would encourage her to reciprocate.
But all she said was, “That is lucky.”
And then, in what seemed an obvious attempt to change the topic of conversation, “How long do you think the power will be out?”
Or maybe she was genuinely worried. He heard the concern in her voice and wished he could reassure her, but he didn’t want to give her false hope. “I don’t know. I think it depends on what caused the outage.”
“So it could be a while,” she acknowledged.
“It could,” he agreed. “But we’ve got the fireplace and lots of blankets, candles and flashlights, and a pantry full of canned goods. I promise—you might be bored, but you won’t freeze, get lost in the halls or starve.”
Her lips curved. “If nothing else, today has proven to me that there’s no point in worrying about things I can’t control.”
He could tell that she was trying to stay upbeat, but he didn’t blame her for being concerned. She was a first-time mother with a brand-new baby, trapped in a stranger’s house without any power in the middle of a snowstorm.
“Speaking of starving,” she said. “I think this little guy’s getting hungry.”
By the flickering light of the candles, he could see that the baby was opening and closing his mouth and starting to squirm a little despite being snugly swaddled in one of the receiving blankets Cameron had brought from the hospital.
“Just hold on a second,” Luke said, and went down the hall to retrieve the emergency flashlight.
He came back with the light and guided Julie the short distance back to the family room.
“While you’re taking care of Caden, I’ll get some blankets and pillows,” he told her.
“Okay.”
It didn’t take him more than a few minutes to gather what they would need, but he took some time to putter around upstairs, giving the new mom time to finish feeding her baby. He didn’t know a lot about the nursing process. Matt’s wife, Georgia, had only recently weaned Pippa, and while she’d been pretty casual about the whole thing, Lukas had always averted his gaze if he was around when she was breastfeeding the baby. Not that he was uncomfortable with the act of a mother nursing her child—he just didn’t think he should be looking at his brother’s wife’s breasts.
Of course, the whole train of thought was one that should definitely—and quickly—be derailed. Because now he was thinking about Julie’s breasts. And since there was no family connection between them, and therefore no intrinsic moral conflict, he couldn’t seem to shift his thoughts in a different direction.
He changed out of his jeans and shirt and into a pair of pajama pants and a long-sleeved thermal shirt. Bedtime usually meant just stripping down to his boxers and crawling beneath the sheets of his king-size bed, but he didn’t want to be too far away from Julie and Caden in case either of them needed anything through the night. Not to mention that it would probably get a little chilly in his bedroom if the power stayed out through the night.
He remembered that Julie was still wearing the robe he’d given to her earlier, and while it had served the purpose of providing some cover during the childbirth process, he didn’t think she would be very comfortable sleeping in it. He rummaged through his drawers until he found a pair of sweatpants with a drawstring waist and a flannel shirt with buttons that ran all the way down the front so that it would be easier for her to—
Trying not to think about that, he reminded himself sternly.
Instead, he turned his attention to the storm. He could hear the wind howling outside and the brush of icy snowflakes battering against the windows. If it didn’t stop snowing soon, it would take him forever to clear his driveway. And if the power stayed out, it would take even longer because his snowblower required an electric start.
The starter on the gas fireplace was electric, too, so he was grateful he’d turned it on when they’d first come in from the storm. The fire would keep the family room toasty warm, which wouldn’t just make it more comfortable to sleep through the night but was absolutely essential for the newborn.
He gathered up the clothes for Julie—adding a thick pair of socks to the pile—and the blankets and pillows and carted everything down the stairs. Having lived in this house his whole life, he wasn’t worried about missing a step or bumping into a wall, but he was worried about Einstein getting tangled up in his feet. However, the dog was conspicuously absent as Luke made his way down the stairs, causing him to wonder where the pint-size canine had disappeared to and what mischief he might be getting into.
He found the puppy curled up beside the sofa, close to Julie and Caden.
She was obviously exhausted after her busy—and traumatic—day, and she’d fallen asleep with the baby still nursing. The sight caused an unmistakable stirring in his groin, and Luke chastised himself for the inappropriate reaction. She was a stranger, in his home and at his mercy because of the storm. She’d just given birth to a baby, and he was ogling her as if she was a centerfold.
Except that he had never seen anything as beautiful as the sight of the baby’s tiny mouth suckling at his mother’s breast. The tiny knitted cap that Cameron had brought from the hospital had fallen off Caden’s head, revealing the wisps of soft dark hair that covered his scalp. His tiny little hand was curled into a fist and resting against his mother’s pale, smooth skin.
Luke tiptoed closer to set the bundle of clothes beside her on the couch. As he neared, Einstein lifted his head, his tail thumping quietly against the floor.
“Good boy,” he whispered, patting the dog’s head.
Then he unfolded one of the blankets and gently laid it over the lower half of her body, careful not to cover the baby. The little guy looked up at him, those big blue eyes wide and completely unconcerned. His mother didn’t even stir.
Luke took another blanket and a pillow for himself and settled into a chair nearby, prepared for a very long night.
* * *
When Julie awoke in the morning, she found the bundle of clothes Lukas had left for her on the sofa. Though she had more than a few changes of clothes in the suitcases in the trunk of her car, she didn’t want to trudge through the snow to retrieve them while wearing nothing more than her host’s robe, so she gratefully donned the borrowed shirt and sweats. He’d also put a few toiletries out on the counter of the powder room: hairbrush, new toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste, all of which she put to good use.
Her first clue that the power had been restored was that the light in the powder room came on when she automatically hit the switch. Her second was the tantalizing aroma of bacon that wafted from the kitchen as she made her way down the hall. Though her grumbling stomach urged her to follow the scent, she knew she needed to take care of her baby’s hunger first. Because she had no doubt that Caden would be hungry, too.
She’d lost count of how many times he’d woken her in the night, his avid little mouth instinctively seeking her breast and the sustenance it provided. And while he never seemed to nurse for extended periods of time, he nursed frequently. The books she’d read offered reassurance that this was normal, but reading about it and living it were two entirely different scenarios. She understood now why new mothers were always exhausted—feeding a newborn was pretty much a full-time job.
Of course, she also realized that she wasn’t really feeding him yet, and that the frequent nursing sessions were necessary to help her milk come in. Throughout her pregnancy, she’d gone back and forth on the breast versus bottle issue but, in the end, she was persuaded by all the benefits found in breast milk—not to mention the simplicity of the method.
“Something smells delicious,” she told Lukas when she finally made her way into the kitchen.
“Hopefully better than the bread and jam you would have got if the power had still been out,” he told her.
“Right now, even that sounds good,” she told him.
“How do bacon, eggs and toast sound?”
“Even better.”
“How are you doing this morning?”
“I’m a little sore,” she admitted. “And tired.”
“I don’t imagine you got much sleep with Caden waking you up every couple of hours.”
She winced at that. “Obviously he woke you up, too.”
He shrugged. “I’m a light sleeper. Thankfully, I don’t need a lot of sleep, so I feel pretty good. Of course, being able to make my morning pot of coffee helped a little.”
“I gave up coffee six months ago,” she admitted, just a little wistfully.
“So what can I get for you?” Lukas asked. “Juice? Milk?”
“Juice is great,” she said, noting that there were already two glasses poured and at the table.
He gestured for her to help herself, then pointed to the carton of eggs on the counter. “Scrambled or fried?”
“Whichever is easier.”
“Which do you prefer?”
“I like both,” she assured him.
He shook his head as he cracked eggs into a bowl. “You’re a pleaser, aren’t you? The type of person who says yes even when she wants to say no, who goes out of her way to avoid conflicts or disagreements.”
She laughed. “No one’s ever accused me of that before,” she told him. “But I do try not to be difficult—at least not until I’ve known someone more than twenty-four hours.”
“So how do you like your eggs?” he prompted.
“Benedict,” she told him.
He chuckled. “Okay. But since I don’t have hollandaise sauce, what’s your second choice?”
“Scrambled,” she decided.
“That wasn’t so hard now, was it?” He added a splash of milk to the bowl, then a sprinkle of salt and pepper and began to whisk the eggs.
“I’ll let you know after I’ve tried the eggs.”
He grinned as he poured the mixture into the frying pan. “My brother and sister-in-law are going to stop by later today, as soon as Matt finishes clearing his driveway.”
She moved closer to the window. “I can’t believe it’s still snowing out there.”
“It’s just light flurries now,” he noted. “Nothing like what we had yesterday.”
“Everything looks so pretty, covered in a pristine blanket of snow.”
“Take a look out the back,” he suggested. “It’s not quite so pristine out there.”
She carried Caden to the window at the back of the room, noted that the snow there had been thoroughly—almost desperately—trampled. And then she spotted the culprit. Einstein, Lukas’s puppy, was racing around as if being chased by the hounds of hell. He had his nose down and was using it like a shovel to tunnel through the cold white stuff and then, when he’d pushed enough to form a mound, he’d attack it.
She chuckled. “What is he doing?”
“I have no idea,” Lukas admitted. “He has no idea.”
“It’s his first snow,” she guessed.
“Yeah. He’s been out there for half an hour and every few minutes, he spins in a circle and barks at it.”
“Pets are a lot like kids, aren’t they?” she mused. “They give you a fresh perspective on things we so often take for granted.”
“Some of them,” he agreed. “Daphne’s perspective is neither sociable nor very sunny.”
She laughed again. “Considering I haven’t seen more of her than a flick of her tail, I can’t disagree with that.”
“She ventured downstairs last night to sleep by the fire, but I’m sure it wasn’t for company but only warmth.”
“It was warm,” Julie agreed. “I even threw the blanket off a couple of times in the night.”
“I thought about turning the fire off, but until the power came back on, I was reluctant to lose our only source of heat.”
“I really can’t thank you enough,” she said. “When I think about what could have happened if you hadn’t come home and found me in the ditch last night—”
“There’s no reason to think about anything like that,” Lukas told her.
“Well, I’m grateful. I don’t know anyone else who would have done everything that you’ve done—for me and Caden.”
“If the people you know would have left a laboring mother trapped in a ditch, you need to meet new people.”
She managed to smile at that. “Okay—most of my friends would have opened their doors under those circumstances, but I don’t know that their hospitality would have outlasted the storm.”
“Are you suggesting that I should throw you out into a snow bank now?”
“Well, maybe you could wait until after you’ve fed me breakfast,” she suggested.
He set a plate in front of her, then reached for Caden.
Julie transferred the baby to him without any protest or hesitation. After all, this man had helped bring her son into the world. And even if that hadn’t been her choice at the time, she couldn’t fault his competence—and she couldn’t forget the expression of awe and wonder on his face as he’d gazed down at her newborn baby. Or the sense of absolute rightness that she’d felt in the moment that he’d placed the tiny, naked body in her arms so that he could cut the cord.
It was as if that act had somehow forged a bond between them—two strangers brought together by circumstances neither of them could ever have foreseen.
“He really is tiny, isn’t he?” Lukas said, settling the sleeping baby into the crook of his arm. “I’ll bet he doesn’t weigh half as much as Einstein.”
“You wouldn’t say he was tiny if you’d had to push him out of your body,” Julie told him, and dug into her eggs.
He winced at the thought as he picked up his own plate to take it to the table. “You’re probably right about that.”
She nibbled at a slice of crisp bacon and hummed with pleasure as the salty, smoky flavor flooded her taste buds. “Why is it that the foods that are so bad for you always taste so good?”
“I never really thought about it,�
�� he said, scooping up a forkful of eggs.
“You wouldn’t.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re a guy. You don’t have to count calories or worry about fat content or carbs.”
He shrugged as he chewed. “I pretty much eat what I want to eat.”
“For the past several months, I have, too,” she admitted. “I figured a pregnant woman should be allowed some latitude. Of course, I’ll probably regret it when those extra ten pounds keep me in maternity clothes for another couple of months.”
“You don’t look as if you’re carrying ten extra pounds,” he told her.
“Right now it’s more like twenty.”
“Then you were too skinny before.”
She picked up another slice of bacon. “No one ever accused me of being skinny, either,” she assured him.
He studied her from across the table for a minute before he asked, “Why would you want to be?”
It wasn’t a question anyone had ever asked her before. All of her friends—everyone she knew—wanted to be thinner, prettier, richer. It was every American woman’s dream. Wasn’t it?
“I’ve never understood why women obsess so much about their bodies,” Lukas continued.
“Yeah, because men never judge us on the basis of our appearance,” she said dryly.
He didn’t deny it. “A pretty face and an appealing figure usually catch our attention,” he admitted. “But men are simple creatures. We’re not looking for perfection—we’re just looking for a woman who’s willing to get naked with us.”
Her brows lifted. “Really?”
“Pretty much.”
“I’ll be sure to share that insight with my friends when we’re sweating through Zumba classes.”
He grinned. “We also like women who aren’t afraid to shake their stuff.”
Julie couldn’t help smiling at the predictably male response. And as she finished her breakfast, she found herself marveling over the fact that she’d known Lukas for such a short period of time but somehow felt comfortable and at ease with him.
At home in Springfield, she knew a lot of people through her job at The Grayson Gallery and through her association with Elliot. As a result, she felt as if she had a certain image to uphold. She would never pop out for a quart of milk unless her hair was neat and her makeup immaculate. She rarely wore blue jeans and the only gym shoes she owned were exclusively for use in the gym.
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