She felt Connor’s arms loosening from around her, felt his lips leaving hers. The actions ushered in a chill that all but froze her heart.
The moment, with all its promise of what could be, was gone.
“Jamie wants you,” Connor murmured in a voice thick with all the emotion that he was struggling to shut down and away.
And I want you, Amy thought.
She knew she was being selfish, knew that of course the baby’s needs came first and definitely before her own, but she could always diaper Jamie, and feed him, and rock him to sleep.
But what was happening here might very well never happen again, never have all the perfect conditions in place to happen again, and if she didn’t snatch up her chance right here, right now, she might never—
Jamie’s cries didn’t subside. They grew a little louder, a little lustier in intensity, as if the baby sensed he needed to get her attention now, this moment, or she might not be able to come to him for a very long time.
With a sigh, attempting to collect herself, Amy stepped back from Connor. “It doesn’t sound like he’s going to stop.”
“No,” he agreed, his expression an unfathomable mask, “it doesn’t.”
“I’d better see what he needs,” she said, doing her best not to sound as breathless as she felt at that moment.
“Do you need help?” Connor offered as she started to turn away and head toward the stairs.
She wanted to be able to pull herself together. Focusing on Jamie would help her do that.
“No, I can handle this,” she told Connor. “Besides, it’s late. You need to get your rest so you can get up early tomorrow to work.”
Still, he remained standing where he was as she walked out of the living room. “Sure you don’t want me in there?” Connor called after her.
“No, it’s okay.” I don’t want you there. I want you in my room, with me, making me realize what a fool I was to run off with Clay like that and leave Forever. To run off and leave you, she added silently, really aching inside.
With a resigned sigh, Amy walked into the baby’s room. The moment she did and saw the small, tearstained face looking up at her, she admonished herself.
She had no business ignoring Jamie, even for a second. No business aching to make love with Connor when she was first and foremost Jamie’s mother and he needed her full, undivided attention.
“And you have it,” she said out loud, reaching into the crib and picking him up. “You have all my attention because you are the world to me and you always will be. Mommy just lost her way for a second,” she whispered. “But I’m back now and I’m back to stay. No worries, little man. You are the center of my universe. Now, let’s get you changed so that your universe is a little drier, at least for a while.”
Amy got busy, and as she did, she focused her thoughts on Jamie because he was all that mattered—and always would be.
Chapter Thirteen
Amy shifted in the passenger seat of Connor’s truck, trying to find a comfortable position for herself. It wasn’t that she was really uncomfortable; she was just nervous. The truth was she always experienced nerves whenever she felt as if she was being judged or scrutinized.
Or going to be.
She had never been able to find that place of inner confidence the way that so many other young women did. She had never been able to shake that ugly-duckling feeling that she had two left feet, that she wasn’t as pretty or as smart as all the other young women in town.
She supposed that was the reason she’d all but melted faster than a snowball in a desert in July when Clay had started paying attention to her. She simply could not get over the fact that someone as good-looking, as charming and magnetic as Clay, who could have his pick of any woman in Forever, was interested in someone like her.
So when Clay had crooked his finger in her direction and said Let’s go, she’d done so without a single second’s hesitation.
She should have hesitated, Amy thought regretfully, not for the first time since she’d gotten back.
As Connor pulled his truck into the parking lot right in front of Miss Joan’s Diner, she felt her stomach tightening so hard that, for a moment, she couldn’t manage to draw in a breath.
Connor slanted a look at her as he turned off the ignition.
“Amy, are you feeling all right?” he asked her, concerned. “You’ve lost all the color in your face.”
Was she ill? He was tempted to touch her forehead to see if she was running a fever.
Amy drew in a big breath. There was no point in lying to Connor and telling him that everything was fine. If he were anyone else in the world, maybe she could pretend everything was fine, but she couldn’t bring herself to lie, not to Connor, not even about little things.
“I feel like I’m eight years old again and bringing something to Miss Wright’s class for show-and-tell,” she told him with a self-conscious shrug. “Nothing I ever brought was good enough.”
She expected him to look at her as if she’d lost her mind and laugh, dismissing her feelings.
Instead, Connor surprised her by saying, “Well, it was. And it definitely is now,” he stressed. He reached for her hand, squeezing it. “There’s no reason for you to be nervous. All Miss Joan wants to do is to meet this little guy. She likes to grumble and act like she spits out lead, but that lady is a pushover when it comes to babies. Tell you what. We can sit here until you feel up to going in and seeing her.”
Amy flushed. “I guess that I’m being silly,” she admitted.
“You can be anything you want after what you’ve been through,” he said in a soothing, understanding voice. “But you know as well as I do that Miss Joan would be one of the first people to have your back if you ever feel like you need anything.”
Amy pressed her lips together, nodding her head. “I know,” she said, her voice so low it would have had to go up an octave to qualify as a whisper. Taking another breath, she centered herself, then nodded as she looked in Connor’s direction. “Okay, I’m ready,” she told him.
Getting out of the truck, he came around the hood to the passenger side and opened her door, taking her hand to help her out.
“Okay,” he announced. “You wait right here and I’ll get Jamie out of his car seat for you.”
She had expressed surprise earlier to see that Connor had taken the car seat out of her vehicle and transferred it to his truck so that Jamie could be safely strapped in for his first official visit to Forever and Miss Joan’s Diner.
“You think of everything,” she marveled as he brought Jamie to her.
The baby was clutching on to the edge of his shirt, most likely getting it sticky, Amy thought. And miraculously, although he was aware of it, Connor didn’t seem to mind.
“Except how to get you to stop feeling nervous,” he commented.
A shy smile curved the corners of her mouth. “You’ve done a pretty good job with that, too,” she said. “I’m about as calm as I’m ever going to be, walking into Miss Joan’s Diner and having her judge me.”
“Miss Joan doesn’t judge,” Connor gently reminded her. “She just looks at you and ‘assesses’ the situation.” He placed the baby into her arms, then gently separated the small fingers from his shirt. Jamie mewled in protest. “You ready for this?” he asked Amy.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she answered, allowing her stomach to do one last flip-flop before she finally tightened her stomach muscles.
“Then let’s go in and have you show this little guy off,” Connor urged.
He took hold of the crook of her arm, helping to guide her up the steps to the diner’s door. He held the door for her as Amy walked into the diner, carrying Jamie in her arms.
The conversation didn’t instantly stop when she entered with her son, but to Amy it felt a
s if it had. She could have sworn that she was walking across the floor to the counter in what amounted to slow motion. If people were still talking, she couldn’t make out any of the words. Not until she reached the counter and Miss Joan, who had shifted away from a customer and made her way to the exact spot where Amy would stop.
“Hello, Miss Joan,” Amy said, the words feeling rather stiff and scratchy in her throat. She struggled hard not to feel like that insecure little girl again as she said, “This is my son, Jamie.”
Sharp hazel-green eyes took complete measure of the child in Amy’s arms in an instant. With a nod, Miss Joan raised her head and directed her gaze at the baby’s mother.
“Well, it certainly took you long enough to bring him in,” Miss Joan said.
Connor immediately stepped up, interceding and deflecting the blame from Amy.
“That was my fault, Miss Joan. I was too busy with the ranch to bring her and Jamie into town.”
Miss Joan glared at him. “She’s not a side of beef that needs ‘bringing in,’ boy. Amy knows how to drive. She’s been doing it since before she got her license, as I recall,” the woman informed him, reminding Connor that she never forgot anything.
And then her eyes shifted back to the baby in Amy’s arms.
Her voice softened. “What d’you say this handsome little guy’s name was?” The question was meant for Amy, although Miss Joan never took her eyes off the baby.
“His name is Jamie,” Amy answered, a sliver of pride entering her voice.
Miss Joan nodded in approval. “James,” she said. “Good, strong name.” She raised her eyes to Amy’s. “You keep him on the right path, make sure he doesn’t stray off it. You have any trouble, you bring him to me and I’ll have a little talk with him.”
Amy knew better than to demur or say that she wouldn’t dream of bothering the woman with trivial things like instituting discipline when it came to her son. That was her job, one that she did feel qualified to take on. Knowing the difference between right and wrong wasn’t all that hard.
So instead, Amy politely said “Yes, ma’am, I will” and was rewarded with a quick nod of approval from the older woman.
“Why don’t you get yourself a table, you three, and have some coffee and some of Angel’s banana cream pie?” Miss Joan told them. “Angel just took it out of the oven less than half an hour ago.” It was the closest Miss Joan came to coaxing. “You can have that, then go and help that baby of yours hang up his first ornament on the town Christmas tree.” Anyone overhearing Miss Joan knew it was an order, not really a suggestion.
“But I already hung one up for him,” Amy gently reminded the woman.
“He wasn’t here to watch you do that, now was he? Now he is,” she replied simply, ending the discussion. “So, coffee and pie?” Her eyes swept over both of them even though their answers were a foregone conclusion.
“Coffee and pie,” Amy echoed, knowing that Miss Joan meant well.
A small, pleased smile whispered along the older woman’s lips.
“Coming right up,” Miss Joan answered. Crossing to the window that was opened between the front of the diner and the kitchen, Miss Joan peered into the latter. “Angel, two slices of that banana cream pie of yours,” she called to the attractive young woman in the white apron who seemed to be everywhere at once.
Satisfied that the order would be filled, Miss Joan went over to the urn to get the two cups of piping-hot coffee she’d promised.
In the interim, Amy and Connor went to the closest empty table, a booth, and slid into the seats that were opposite one another.
“See?” Connor said, lowering his voice. “I told you that you were nervous for no reason. She’s crazy about Jamie.”
Amy wouldn’t have exactly said Miss Joan was crazy about the baby. “How can you tell?” Amy asked him.
“Oh, I can tell,” Connor assured her. “Besides,” he pointed out, nodding at Jamie, “how could anyone resist that cute little face, those bright blue eyes and especially those chubby little cheeks?”
She couldn’t help but think of Jamie’s father. Except for once or twice in the very beginning, Clay’s eyes had been flat and registered no emotion whatsoever whenever he looked at his son.
Rather than refer to Clay by name, Amy responded, “It could happen.”
Connor shook his head. “Not in Miss Joan’s case. She wouldn’t have made such a big deal out of asking to see him if all she had intended to do was reject him. Trust me, that woman has a soft spot in her heart when it comes to kids.”
Amy still seemed really tense, he thought. Leaning over the table between them, he lowered his voice again and told her, “Take a deep breath and relax, Amy. You’re among friends. You have been ever since you came back to Forever.”
Amy forced a smile to her lips before saying, “I know that.”
The next moment, rather than send over one of the waitresses with the tray of two coffees and two plates of banana cream pie, Miss Joan brought the tray over to them herself.
“There you go,” she said, setting the tray down on the table between them. And then she looked again at the infant in Amy’s arms. “He seems like a happy baby,” she pronounced. “Here’s hoping nothing ever happens to make him lose that.”
“We’ll make sure of it,” Connor assured her. And then he reached into his pocket and took out his wallet. “What do I owe you, Miss Joan?”
“The respect I’m due,” the woman automatically replied. And then she said, “It’s on the house. Merry Christmas, you two.” The woman appeared to entertain a private thought, her eyes shifting from Connor to Amy. What looked like a ghost of a smile played along her thin lips for a moment. “It’s about time,” she murmured under her breath before she turned on her crepe heel and went back behind the counter.
“What did she just say?” Connor asked, turning toward Amy.
“‘Merry Christmas, you two,’” Amy repeated.
Connor shook his head. “No, the other thing. After that.”
Amy shrugged. She’d heard Miss Joan, but what the woman had said just raised more questions, questions Connor might not want to explore, so she pretended that she hadn’t heard her.
“I didn’t catch it,” she told him.
Connor didn’t want to let it go. “Something like ‘it’s about time,’” he said.
But Amy continued to play dumb. “I couldn’t make it out. It might have been that,” she allowed, not wanting to discount the woman’s words entirely.
But she had no desire to push them, either, because she didn’t want Connor to feel as if he was being cornered, made to go along with something against his will.
Yes, he’d kissed her when they’d finished decorating the tree, but when Jamie cried, abruptly bringing an end to the intimacy, he had made no attempt to recapture that moment or even to say something about picking up where they had left off later. If he had been interested in her at all he would have said something to that effect, or at least acted as if he wanted to pick things up later.
Instead, the second what had been going on between them was forced to stop, it had stopped. Which to her meant that Connor wasn’t all that into her or into there being something more, something meaningful between them.
Connor McCullough was her friend and that was where it stayed. Anything else was all in her mind.
And in her dreams.
But neither of that had any place in the real world. She needed to remember that and act like an adult, not a child waiting for Santa Claus to come down the chimney with a sack full of gifts.
* * *
SOMETHING WAS OFF.
Connor studied her face for a moment, trying to decide whether Amy was uncomfortable because of what Miss Joan had said, or if he was the one making her uncomfortable.
And if it was the
latter, why was he making her uncomfortable?
He didn’t recall feeling before that women were this complicated, but then, it had been a long time since he’d even had the time to contemplate things like that. The last time he’d even wondered about what made women tick was five years ago, when he’d found out Amy had run off with Clay Patton. That had happened less than a week after graduation and he remembered feeling completely crushed.
When Amy had turned up on his doorstep earlier this month, baby and all, he’d thought that despite the past, maybe he’d been given a second chance.
Now he wasn’t so sure.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Amy noted.
For a second, Connor’s mind went blank and he couldn’t come up with a good excuse. “Just thinking,” he finally told her.
“About work,” she guessed, feeling guilty. “I took you away from the ranch. We could have come some other time.”
“I’m not thinking about the ranch,” he said. “And we came because Miss Joan wanted to see the baby—and I like keeping Miss Joan happy,” he added. “She’s kind of special to me.”
There, he thought. That should take the emphasis off Amy.
“Think we can get Jamie to hold on to an ornament long enough to get him near enough to the tree?” he asked her.
“Maybe,” she said, “but I really doubt that he’s going to be able to hang an ornament on the tree.”
Connor smiled. “He can if I help.” And then he added, “If we can swing that, it’ll make Miss Joan happy.”
Amy didn’t agree. “But Miss Joan’s going to be in the diner. She won’t know the difference.”
Connor looked at her, wondering if Amy actually believed that. He felt he knew Miss Joan a little better than she did.
“Trust me, Amy, Miss Joan always knows the difference.”
“Then we’d better go and see about finding a way to get Jamie to hang up that ornament,” she said, sliding out of the booth.
Taking her son into her arms, she led the way out of the diner. They had an ornament to hang.
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