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And Emma, right. The baby he still wasn’t letting himself contemplate looked surprisingly small against Lucy’s trim yellow T-shirt, although he couldn’t remember exactly how big a baby was supposed to be. Had Bryan ever been so—
Don’t go there.
“All right, then,” Con answered her as well as himself. He had to stay focused on action, not on his son. “I’ve got some stuff to bring in, but let me know if you need any help, uh, lifting a suitcase or anything,” he concluded. “All right?”
Lucy fixed him with a steely glare. “Look, I don’t know how much clearer I can make this,” she said evenly, “but I am not taking anything, any help, from any Tarkingtons.”
From the fury with which she practically spit his name, Kenny must have really done a number on her. Which meant that, unlike the women who hinted about Porsches, she must have given her heart completely….
God, she must’ve loved him.
His brother had spent the past four years breaking hearts all over the PGA tour, but never the heart of a woman like this one. A woman who obviously wasn’t in it for the money, who wasn’t clamoring for some kind of reward. No, this naturally sensuous, vibrantly fascinating woman had loved Kenny Tarkington.
A fact which left Conner feeling curiously regretful.
“‘Feelings are our friends,’ remember?”
“I hear you,” he acknowledged, mentally shoving his therapist’s reminder aside. He didn’t need—or want—any feelings right now, not while dealing with yet another woman his brother had abandoned. A woman who, unlike the usual two-month girlfriends, must have believed Kenny’s glib promises of love…and who needed to know there was little chance of him returning anytime soon. “Last I heard, Kenny was playing the Asian tour.”
“Well, he can stay in Asia,” Lucy retorted, with a flush of color that seemed to light her entire body. “And you can stay, uh, here. In your house. Emma and I will be out in no time.” She whirled toward the table, picked up a stack of envelopes and shoved it into the box, then turned back to him with a final plea. “Just do like you said. Get your stuff, dump it on the floor, and…and go to bed. Okay?”
She wasn’t going to watch Conner Tarkington bring in whatever luggage he’d left in his million-dollar car. Or watch him unpack in the luxurious master bedroom she’d kept scrupulously untouched. No, Lucy vowed as she headed for the guest room, she was going to grab a change of clothes, Emma’s freshly washed diapers and her milk from the kitchen, then get out of here before the last fragile shreds of her pride collapsed.
Her friend Shawna had offered to make room on the couch for overnight guests, and Shawna’s husband Jeff could pick them up when he got off work at midnight. So all Lucy needed to do was pack whatever she could carry to the nearest all-night donut shop, and wrap the baby in enough sweaters to keep her warm during the walk…because she sure wasn’t going to wait around here.
Not after vowing to raise her daughter with the hard-won knowledge that accepting men’s favors was stupid.
But Conner Tarkington wasn’t making it easy to concentrate on packing. Maybe he wasn’t deliberately trying to distract her—he seemed intent on nothing but the trek indoors and out and back again, with a laptop computer and a series of airline-labeled file boxes—but in spite of his haggard face and crumpled executive shirt, the man looked incredibly good.
And she had no business thinking that way.
So the sooner she got out of here, the better. “We’re going to be fine,” Lucy told Emma, folding a dozen cloth diapers into her pink-plaid bag. She still hadn’t saved enough for a move-in deposit, and asking for help from Kenny’s brother was out of the question, but there was no sense in worrying her daughter. “Because Shawna—you remember her, she’s got those blond corn-row braids—will let us spend the night at her place, and tomorrow Mommy’s going to find another job.”
The diner had been perfect, because she could keep an eye on Emma while fixing sandwiches for businesspeople, but it didn’t pay as well as the upscale restaurant she’d worked at until February. She had quit waitressing when Kenny wanted to spend more time together, although she’d returned to work the day after his farewell message. But by then it was already too late to qualify for health insurance, which made it all the more frightening when she was ordered to stay in bed or lose the baby.
Still, with the rent taken care of, she’d been able to devote every envelope-addressing paycheck to the medical, grocery and utility bills—and to start a meager savings account for moving out in January.
Which was still five weeks away.
“We’re just moving a little early,” she assured her daughter, tucking the flap of the bag into place and heading for the kitchen. “Not into the trailer park with the nice trees, because that costs more, but tomorrow we’ll look in the paper and find, uh, somebody who wants a roommate with a seven-week-old baby. A wonderful baby.”
Emma gurgled as Lucy kissed her forehead, and when she closed the refrigerator door she saw Conner depositing another armload of boxes on the dining-room table. “We’re almost out of here,” she called, and he turned around.
It was bizarre, she thought with a guilty flicker of awareness, how much the man looked like Kenny. Dark hair instead of blond, but the essentials were unchanged. The same rugged build, the same cleft in his chin, the same vivid blue eyes…except Conner’s gaze was harder. Darker.
More intriguing.
And it was a little unnerving to realize that some ancient, feminine part of her still found that look of effortless privilege so…so… Well, so attractive.
“Sure you don’t need any help?” Conner asked, and she flinched. On the surface his question was perfectly polite, but she knew what lay beneath it. She had seen the weary resignation on his face when he told her there’d never been a job, and she knew what he must be thinking. Here’s some good-time girl who fell into a gold mine.
Just like her mother…
“No,” Lucy answered abruptly, heading back toward her room for the stack of sweaters. “We’re fine.” She didn’t need to remember her mother right now, not with such a humiliating parallel staring her right in the face. When she’d begun supporting herself halfway through high school, she had vowed that Lucy Velardi would either pay for her own dance lessons or go without. That she would never, ever depend on the generosity of men with expense accounts and wives back home.
Until all of a sudden she’d let herself move in with a celebrity golf pro who spent money like water.
But at least Kenny wasn’t married.
Oh, God, was he?
He could have lied about that, too, Lucy realized with a sickening lurch in her stomach. They hadn’t spent much time discussing family, which at the time had suited her fine, but surely he would have mentioned a wife.
Wouldn’t he?
After all, he had mentioned a “big-time responsible” brother and a mother “who about died when my brother got divorced,” and he was the one who’d blithely suggested a quick wedding at the courthouse when the pregnancy test turned blue.
So she hadn’t fallen in love with a married man, Lucy decided, standing up straight and surveying the room one last time. Just a scumbag…which was Shawna’s description of the man who’d never once called to ask whether Lucy had given birth to a daughter or a son. The man who probably still hoped she’d gotten rid of his baby.
A hope which justified her refusal to ever contact him again. Although if she had, maybe she would’ve been warned about the arrival of his brother…a beautifully mannered attorney who probably suspected her of using Kenny for whatever she could get.
“He’s not thinking that,” she knew Shawna would protest, but Shawna hadn’t seen the grim set of his jaw when she announced that Kenny had already paid her. Maybe she was overly sensitive at times, but there was no mistaking the rueful look on Conner Tarkington’s face.
Shouldering the diaper bag and wrapping her baby in the pile of sweaters on top, Lucy headed for the front door and found Conner just coming inside with his keys in hand. “That’s the last of it,” he told her, holding the door for them with the kind of reflexive grace she supposed Cinderella’s prince might have shown. Then he stopped, as if only now realizing she was on her way out. “Lucy, where’s your car?”
That was a question she hadn’t expected. She’d been more prepared for a request to examine her bag for stolen silver, although that might be a little crude for someone as well-bred as this man. But instead, he was looking at her with startled concern, as if he couldn’t imagine leaving the house without a car waiting in the driveway.
“I don’t need one,” she said, balancing Emma against her shoulder with one hand while extracting the house key from her purse and holding it out to him. If she could just maintain this confident tone of voice, just let him report to his brother that Lucy Velardi was doing fine… “Tomorrow I’ll come get the rest of our stuff.”
“You—” He glanced from the key to her, then at the sleeping baby, and the frown in his dark blue eyes deepened. “Is somebody picking you up?”
What, all of a sudden he was worried about them walking in a neighborhood like this one? She’d never lived anywhere as luxurious as this secluded enclave of golf villas, not since leaving her mother and Mr. “I’m In Charge Here” the year she’d turned sixteen. “No, we’re going right down the street,” Lucy said, nodding toward the distant lights of Hayden Road, where the donut shop stayed open around the clock.
“At this time of night?” Conner sounded horrified, and he still wasn’t taking the key she held out. “I’m not throwing you and a baby out in the street!”
Maybe not technically, but from the moment he’d broken the news that the Tarkingtons had never requested a house-sitter, there was no other choice. Still, he looked troubled by the realization that she and Emma were actually planning to walk away. “You’re not throwing us out,” she told him, setting the key on the stucco wall that bordered the porch. “We’re leaving.”
“Lucy, wait a minute. I didn’t mean for—” With a swift gesture into the house, he pushed the front door open wider. “Look, there’s plenty of room. Why don’t you stay the night, and in the morning I’ll take you wherever you want.”
That was an unexpectedly generous offer, and it was silly to argue with him when the two-mile walk seemed longer and heavier every minute. Still, her pride wouldn’t allow a complete surrender. “In the morning, I can get the bus.”
He gave her a slight smile, as if conceding that she could take care of herself just fine. “All right. But I’ll tell you the truth,” Conner said, reaching to pick up her discarded key and dropping it on the table just inside the door. “I really don’t want to stay up all night worrying about you. And Emma.”
Oh.
Well…
When he put it that way, Lucy decided, staying one more night in the Tarkingtons’ home seemed like a pretty reasonable choice. And it would certainly make things easier than waiting with Emma at the donut shop. All she needed to do was return to the guest room where she’d spent the past eight months, and remember that nobody could lose their independence by accepting only one night of hospitality.
“All right,” she said, stepping back inside as Conner turned off the porch light and checked the front door deadbolt…the same rituals she’d performed every night since returning here alone in March. “Thank you.”
“No problem.” He started down the hall toward the master bedroom, then turned back. “You can lock your door if you want,” he suggested, and as his dark gaze met hers she realized with a sudden, startling flicker of warmth that they both knew how very little space lay between their bedrooms. “But just so you know, I’m going right to sleep.”
“Good night,” was the only response she could think of, and as soon as she delivered it Lucy ducked into her own room to catch her breath. Lock her door? As if she hadn’t learned a long time ago to protect herself from whatever she had to? It was sweet of him, in a way, to act like she needed such a promise—like she was some blushing virgin who’d never dream of spending the night in a stranger’s house—but she knew perfectly well that a stranger as respectable as Conner Tarkington would never approach her door.
Still, his attempt at reassurance was endearing. And somehow, oddly satisfying. Because it showed that, at least on some inner level, he was as aware of her as she was of him.
Not that anything would come of such awareness, she reminded herself after phoning Shawna and canceling the request for a place to stay. A blue-blood lawyer would probably never look beyond the surface of a woman he viewed as a gold digger…and it wasn’t like she wanted him to! No matter how ruggedly attractive Conner Tarkington might be, no matter how unexpectedly nice he might be, she wasn’t letting herself wonder about him.
But as she put Emma to sleep in the blanket-padded bureau drawer on the floor beside her twin bed, she had to remind herself with increasing severity that she was not going to think about this man. About his intriguing combination of challenge and compassion. About the same compelling gaze and instinctive self-assurance that had drawn her to Kenny in the first place.
No, she wasn’t letting herself make such a mistake again. Ever. Because she now understood the danger in noticing the raw, elemental appeal of a man like that.
It had been far too easy to fall in love with a Tarkington.
And it had cost far too much.
Coffee.
He needed coffee.
Conner opened his eyes and felt a moment’s disorientation at the sight of the white stucco ceiling before remembering where he was. The Scottsdale vacation villa, right…which would explain why this room seemed so much lighter than the oak-paneled office where he’d woken up too often lately, before vowing to limit his workdays to twelve hours or less.
Still, there was always coffee in the kitchen at Weller-Tarkington-Craig, where the more ambitious junior partners arrived by dawn. And judging from the light on the ceiling, it had to be past dawn. More like—he blinked at the watch on his bedside table—seven-thirty in the morning?
God, had he really slept that late? There was no excuse for it, not on his first day of setting up The Bryan Foundation. Even though he’d pushed himself harder than usual these past few weeks, completing and reassigning cases to cover his leave until January fifteenth, sleeping until seven-thirty in the morning was unforgivable.
He’d better get that coffee fast.
It didn’t take long to shower, shave and dress for a day with no appointments, and by seven-forty Conner was heading for the kitchen—when the lusty squeal of a baby woke him more effectively than a jolt of caffeine.
A baby…?
Emma, he remembered.
And Lucy.
He found them in the living room, where Lucy was just bundling her daughter into a quilted carrier. “You must’ve been wiped out, to sleep through all the noise this morning,” she observed, picking up her own denim jacket with the same easy grace he remembered from last night. “Emma’s been up since five.”
Con vaguely remembered hearing an infant’s shrill cry sometime during the night, but the sound must have been absorbed into some dream. Still, it had made him wonder again why Kenny had chosen someone with a baby to keep him company during the Phoenix Open.
Although the baby couldn’t be more than a few weeks old, so she wouldn’t have been around at the time.
And Kenny had probably been dazzled by Lucy’s sparkling energy, which Conner had to admit was even more enticing after a full night’s sleep. This morning she wore her wild curls pulled severely off her face and a conservative white shirt tucked into khaki slacks, as if dressed for a job interview, but there was still no hiding her vibrant, vivid beauty.
“No kidding,” he muttered, wondering if she was seriously planning a job interview at this hour of the morning. “I guess you didn’t need coffee to wake up, huh?”
Lucy grinned apologetically as she shouldered the pink diaper bag resting on the table beside the front door. “There isn’t any coffee,” she told him. “I quit drinking it while I was pregnant, and the past week I’ve been getting it at the diner.”
Oh, hell. “Where’s the diner?”
“Emma and I were just on the way there,” she answered, which made him remember that she’d mentioned a weekday shift someplace. “The bus comes at eight, so—”
“I’ll take you,” Con offered, bracing himself for more time with the baby. “As long as I can get a cup of coffee there.”
Starting coffee was her first task of the day, Lucy assured him, because she had the place to herself for lunch setup until the owner arrived at nine. So within a remarkably short time he found himself at the polished plastic counter of an old-fashioned diner, taking his first, sustaining gulp from the thick white mug she handed him.
“You’re a lifesaver,” he told her as she poured another mug for herself and pulled a handful of flimsy paper placemats from under the counter. “I have to remember to pick up some coffee on the way home.”
“Next best thing to a baby when you need to wake up,” she agreed, deftly spreading placemats from the far end of the eight-seat counter to his side, where the baby carrier rested. “Isn’t it, Emmie?”
The baby responded with a perfectly timed coo, jubilantly waving her fists from the depths of her carrier. It was easier than he’d expected, Conner realized, watching Emma’s look of rapt attention—a wide-eyed fascination he hadn’t remembered from last night. “She’s a morning person, huh?”
“Yeah,” Lucy agreed, tweaking her daughter’s fist with a smile of pure enjoyment, “and I don’t know where she gets that.” She picked up her coffee, then rested the mug on the counter so she could look at both the baby and him as she took her first sip. “I’ve always been a night person, and her dad…” She shrugged, as if Emma’s dad was the type who had never watched a sunrise. “Well, you know Kenny.”
Kenny?
Conner almost choked on a mouthful of coffee. That piece of news, delivered so offhandedly that Lucy evidently viewed it as common knowledge, explained a lot. His brother’s abrupt departure for Asia, Lucy’s haunted look when she mentioned that Kenny had already paid her, and most of all the reason she’d been offered this house-sitting job in the first place. But for Kenny to install her in the family home and then just walk out…
“Does he know about Emma?” Con demanded.
Lucy’s eyes darkened with what looked like a flash of hurt. “I haven’t talked to him since March,” she answered flatly. She picked up the baby, who was still waving both fists, and cradled her gently against her shoulder without meeting Con’s gaze. “He didn’t want her, and I don’t want him involved.”
But if Kenny had said he didn’t want Emma, which wasn’t hard to believe, then he’d obviously known about the baby. And while it was bad enough to walk out on a woman, it was something else altogether to ignore a child.
You did the same thing, remember?
“Well, even so,” Con observed, moving from the shaky ground of threatening emotion to the reliable bedrock of fact, “he’s got some responsibility, here.”
It wasn’t until Lucy’s posture stiffened that he realized he’d struck another sore spot…either that, or a source of fear. Not that Kenny would ever demand visitation rights, but maybe Lucy didn’t realize that.
“Not actually raising Emma,” he hurried to explain, “but at least paying his share.”
The explanation didn’t seem to make much difference in the rigid set of her shoulders. “I don’t want that, either. Just leave it alone, all right?”
“But…”
She turned the baby even closer to her, so that Conner could see nothing of his niece but a soft pink blanket, and glared at him. “Emma is mine, and I don’t need anyone else getting involved!”
Making things better would be a serious challenge, he realized, considering that no one except himself was unhappy with the status quo. Kenny obviously hadn’t cared to follow up on his child, and Lucy just as obviously didn’t want any assistance.
In fact, she seemed almost panicked at the very idea.
“All right,” Con said. A courteous withdrawal was always a safe delaying tactic, and it might take a while to locate Kenny on the Asian tour. Meanwhile, he would have to arrange for child-support payments until his brother showed up. But before he could find an acceptable way of phrasing such an offer, Lucy surprised him once again.
“I mean it,” she insisted, facing him across the counter with such intensity in her gaze that he wondered for a moment whether she had guessed his plan. “As far as Kenny’s concerned, I could’ve gotten rid of her and he’d be fine with that. So he’s got no business in Emma’s life—and neither do you.”
“All right,” Conner repeated, more loudly this time. “Lucy, I hear you. I won’t fight you for the right to change her diaper.”
