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His Brother's Baby
His Brother's Baby
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His Brother's Baby

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She could manage that easily enough, and she still had the traditional white shirt and black slacks she’d worn for catering jobs in the past. “But Emma—”

“Gram would be happy to baby-sit, remember? You know you can call her anytime.”

“All right, then,” Lucy decided, closing her eyes for a moment against the memory of Conner’s promise never to touch her again. “Because I can’t keep wanting him like this. I’ve got to get out of there—fast.”

Chapter Three

He had to get over this fast, Conner warned himself as he rounded a curve on the Scottsdale Greenbelt running trail. He had no business coveting Lucy. After all, he couldn’t keep a promise of love any better than Kenny could. But it was taking far too long for him to get this craving out of his system.

She kissed you back, remember?

Which made things worse. If she’d flinched or slapped his face, it would be a lot easier to put the whole afternoon out of his mind. But Lucy had responded with the same genuine passion she showed for everything else in life…with the dazzling enthusiasm that had intrigued him from the first night they met…with the same unabashed honesty that enabled her to explain a moment later that Kenny was the man she loved.

She hadn’t lingered over the vast differences between a man who offered nonstop excitement and a man who offered stolid responsibility. She hadn’t needed to. Because she’d made it clear that wanting Con was a mistake—

So forget it.

Running should help, Conner knew. This was the fourth day he’d taken off at lunchtime to run the nearby greenbelt. At least that afternoon of Frisbee had shown him how badly he needed the distraction of movement, but it was ludicrous that in four days of carefully cheerful companionship, he hadn’t quite been able to get Lucy Velardi out of his mind.

The way she’d closed the lid of his computer and insisted he come to the park.

The way her entire body had stilled as she whispered, “I loved him.”

The way she’d smiled when he helped Emma with that balloon—a balloon the baby had enjoyed so much that Con intended to replace it the next chance he got. Emma was a cute kid, he’d noticed over the past few days, always fun to watch while he waited for his pages from the printer. And watching her was a lot safer than watching her mom. This morning he’d enjoyed letting the baby grip his finger until Lucy whisked her off for a feeding.

And damn it, he was thinking about Lucy again!

Hell, anybody would think he loved her. But he knew better than to believe that, Con acknowledged as he caught sight of the splashing fountain ahead. Conner Tarkington might be capable of any number of things, but wholehearted love wasn’t one of them.

He’d learned that two years ago, when Bryan…

No, he wasn’t thinking about Bryan now. It was pointless. He was already atoning as best he could, and he didn’t need those agonizing memories of the holiday season two years ago to know he was incapable of loving anyone the way they deserved.

Which meant he needed to get this longing for Lucy out of his system before he forgot what the mother of Kenny’s child meant to him—a family responsibility, nothing more.

Con splashed a handful of water across his face and picked up his pace, vowing to keep his mind on the well-worn track of caring for Tarkingtons. As long as he stayed focused on the foundation, he could make it through the next five weeks. Bryan’s memorial was what mattered, his responsibility was what mattered, and he was never going to neglect a responsibility again.

Especially to a child.

Which was why he’d tracked Kenny down in Hong Kong a few days ago. His brother would check in on Thursday, the hotel had announced, so Con was planning to call him tonight while Lucy put Emma to bed. There was no sense confronting her with the possibility that Kenny could have forgotten her name.

“Lucy Velardi?” his brother repeated blankly when Conner reached him that evening. “Who—oh, yeah. You’re in Scottsdale now, right? Did she, uh…”

“She had your baby,” Con told him. “A girl, named Emma.” Lucy was bathing her in the kitchen sink right now, while he used the phone in the hall to keep his conversation private. “So it’s time to start taking some responsibility.”

“Yeah, well, last spring I sent her a check,” Kenny offered. “I know I said I’d marry her, but—”

But instead he’d walked out? Con felt his entire body tighten with fury. “You what?”

“It wouldn’t have worked! She was okay with that,” his brother added defensively. “I just didn’t think she’d keep the baby…. Look, I’ll pay a settlement or something, but it’s not like I really wanted a kid in the first place. And things are kind of tight right now, so… How much does she want?”

Right to the bottom line, Conner observed. For all his freewheeling charm, Kenny was still a Tarkington at heart. “She doesn’t know I’m calling.”

“What?” His brother sounded incredulous. “You just decided to… Whose side are you on?”

He had always sided with Kenny, even while dealing with half a dozen disappointed women whose dreams of marrying money had never materialized. But none of them had ever borne Kenny’s child, and Lucy wasn’t even looking for money. “I’m thinking,” he told his brother flatly, “about the kid.”

“The— Aw, hell.” During the pause, he could almost hear Kenny realizing what time of year this was. “Look, I’m sorry about— Are you doing okay?”

The sympathetic question caught him off guard, but Con managed to swallow the unexpected rush of feeling in his throat. He didn’t need feelings. He didn’t have feelings, no matter what the therapists said. “I’m fine,” he answered hoarsely. “Just taking some time to set up the foundation.” And even though it was frustrating to quit after twelve hours of work each day, so far he’d stuck to his self-imposed limit.

Which was a lot tougher than he’d expected.

“Oh, yeah, Mom mentioned the foundation thing.” Their mother was the clearinghouse for family messages, although Conner suspected she talked to Kenny in Asia far more often than himself in Philadelphia. “Anyway, about Lucy’s kid…I’ll come up with something. Just buy me some time, okay?”

Lucy had called this one correctly from the start, Con reflected, remembering how much easier it was to breathe when he kept his focus strictly on facts instead of feelings. She’d insisted all along that Kenny had no interest in fatherhood, but that was still no reason to ignore his own responsibility. While he wouldn’t mention this conversation to her, he wasn’t about to forget another child.

“All right,” he told his brother, “but just so you know, I’m not letting this go.”

“You haven’t changed, have you?” Kenny muttered. “Still trying to make sure everything’s fair and square.”

“Somebody has to, dammit!” Conner snapped, just as Lucy emerged from the kitchen with Emma wrapped in a fluffy towel. “Look, I’ll talk to you later.”

She made no pretense of having missed his outburst, but at least she didn’t ask who he’d been talking to before slamming down the phone. Instead she gave him a look of frank curiosity and asked, “Somebody has to what?”

Minimizing bad news had always been part of his responsibility, both while growing up and while married to Margie. “Take care of the finances,” he replied, hoping he sounded indifferent enough that she would drop the subject altogether.

Apparently the strategy worked, because Lucy rested Emma on the sofa and rubbed the baby’s damp hair with the top of her towel before turning to another topic. “I meant to tell you, Shawna called a little while ago. She said they— You still don’t need me to work weekends, right?”

The last thing he needed was more time with Lucy. “No.”

“Okay, good,” she said, rewrapping the towel around the wriggling baby. “So I’ll get Shawna’s grandmother for Saturday—her name’s Lorraine, she’s really sweet. But I’ll tell her you’re working, so she won’t distract you or anything.”

A whole platoon of sweet grandmothers would be far less distracting than a woman he couldn’t let himself want. “No problem,” Conner answered, wondering why she felt obligated to notify him of a visitor. “You don’t need to clear it with me if you want to have someone over.”

“Well, she’ll be spending the day here,” Lucy explained, picking up Emma and starting toward her bedroom, “because they won’t let her baby-sit at the senior center.”

Wait a minute, this grandmother was a baby-sitter? “How come you need a sitter?” Con asked, following her as far as the door.

She didn’t seem to notice that he’d never come this close to her vanilla-scented room before. Instead she addressed him over her shoulder as she transferred the cooing baby from her fluffy towel into some fuzzy, footed sleepers. “That’s what Shawna called about. I got a job at the same place she—”

“Lucy, you’ve got a job!”

“Not on weekends,” she said simply, fastening the sleepers over Emma’s diaper. “And I need the money.”

Oh, hell, he’d messed up. He should have called Kenny sooner, arranged for some kind of child support before she had to take a second job. “Look, if you need—” he began, and she interrupted him in a rush.

“I don’t need anything from you! I take care of myself, remember?”

From the steel in her voice, he knew this was an argument he couldn’t win. At least not yet. “So…”

“So, Lorraine will be here Saturday,” Lucy concluded, nestling Emma in what looked like a bureau drawer lined with blankets. My God, his niece was sleeping in a drawer? “But I’ll tell her you’re working, so she won’t get in your way.”

And she didn’t, Conner acknowledged on Saturday after four hours of listening for any fussing from Emma and hearing nothing at all. This pudgy, white-haired grandmother seemed like a nice lady, although he wished she had come bearing gifts…like a crib, or a car seat, or any of the other things Lucy would never accept from a Tarkington.

But the sitter did such a great job of keeping Emma out of his way that by midafternoon—with only four hours left on his workday limit—he found himself almost missing the baby. And when he moved into the kitchen for coffee and insisted that she and Emma weren’t in the way, he was pleased that Lorraine took him at his word.

She didn’t seem to realize that he had very little experience with babies, because when she shifted Emma for a better grip on Conner’s finger, she smiled at the baby’s rapt expression.

“Looks like she wants you to hold her,” Lorraine said, moving his coffee out of the way and handing him the baby as easily as if she were handing him a dinner plate. “There you go. Isn’t she just the cutest thing?”

Emma felt so incredibly fragile that he was uneasy about breathing, but she didn’t seem to mind his lack of skill at holding a baby. In fact, she nestled into his embrace so warmly that for a moment Conner let himself imagine that she felt safe, comfortable, cared for….

That Emma felt loved.

“I’m going to run to the rest room,” Lorraine told him, and he nodded without taking his eyes off the child in his arms.

He had to give her back, of course. He wasn’t capable of caring for a baby for more than two or three minutes, but it was surprisingly sweet to pretend that he knew what he was doing, and that this little bundle of life welcomed the assurance of his heartbeat against her own.

Still, he handed her back to the sitter without trying to prolong the moment, and hastily retreated to his work. It had been a fluke, that’s all, enjoying that sense of protecting a baby. But two hours later, when he heard Emma wake up from her nap with a hearty cry, he closed the lid of his computer and followed the sound.

“Somebody needs a clean diaper,” Lorraine observed, lifting the baby onto the dresser Lucy kept covered in blankets. Then, apparently taking it for granted that Conner had arrived with assistance in mind, she nodded at him. “Want to hand me the pins? We’ve got the old-fashioned kind, here.”

He could do that, Con decided. There was a pile of diaper pins right there on the dresser, and it couldn’t be that hard to offer one whenever the expert held out an expectant hand. Still, he was amazed at how deftly Lorraine folded the cloth under Emma’s squirming body and tucked it into a neat triangle shape. “You’re good at that.”

“Years of practice,” she told him, then set the baby down again and whisked off the just-applied diaper. “But anybody can do it. I’ll show you.”

Conner gulped. There was no way to refuse that offer, even though he hadn’t quite planned on learning such a skill. But within a few minutes he realized that the baby-sitter was right.

“I can do this,” he acknowledged, lifting the freshly diapered baby into his arms and marveling at the knowledge that he, Conner Tarkington, had completed the entire task himself.

Maybe he couldn’t love a child, but he could sure take care of her.

“Of course you can.” Lorraine gave him a cheerful smile as he nestled Emma into the crook of his arm. “Babies are easy as pie.”

“It’s easy,” Lucy muttered to the low-hanging desert moon as she skirted an ocotillo cactus behind the festively lighted hacienda, circulating yet another tray of chorizo-stuffed tarts. “I used to do this all the time.” For the past week she’d kept telling herself how easy it was, how she used to sail through the workday after dancing all night, but the pep talks were starting to wear thin. Still, it shouldn’t take too much longer to get back into the swing of things.

At least she hoped not.

“Oh, the chorizo!” a woman exclaimed, and Lucy turned with a practiced smile to offer the tray. Tonight’s guests were a cordial group, celebrating somebody’s fortieth anniversary, and it was encouraging that most of them looked old enough to go home early. With any luck she’d be finished by ten, the Joseph’s van would already be waiting to shuttle everyone back to the restaurant, and she could get enough sleep that Emma wouldn’t need to wait more than thirty seconds while she dragged herself awake for the two o’clock feeding.

But first she had to circulate these tarts. Then the jalapeño crackers, the miniature tacos and another round with the chorizo.

Working inside would be more fun, she knew, because the hosts had set up a dance floor in the great room, and she’d enjoyed the music whenever she returned to the mansion-size kitchen to refill her tray. On her last trip they’d been playing a song she loved, a song she’d danced to a hundred times on the radio, and she had entertained herself by peeking at the couples out there. Some of them were good; some of the younger men were the kind she’d have chosen for herself if she had her pick of partners.

I’d rather have Conner.

The thought startled her—what was she doing, envisioning him as any kind of a partner? Lucy hastily returned her attention to the hors d’oeuvre tray. She wasn’t going to think that way, she told herself as she offered tarts to a cluster of people by the pool. Not when she’d finally made it through almost an entire day without remembering their kiss in the park.

Not now that she was finally regaining her independence.

She’d held the thought of independence like a talisman, every time she handed Emma over to Lorraine and changed from her diner clothes to her catering uniform. With every hour of evening and weekend work, she was closer to acquiring the money she’d need to move out before Christmas. And with every hour of circulating trays, directing guests to the bar and collecting crumpled napkins from the patio planters, she was proving that Lucy Velardi could pay her own way in life.

That she didn’t depend on anybody’s goodwill. Especially not a “gentleman’s.”

It had surprised her, Lucy remembered as she returned to the kitchen, the first time her third-grade teacher addressed the girls and boys as “ladies and gentlemen.” She had always thought the term applied solely to those friends of her mom who visited at random hours and occasionally presented her with a pack of gum or a comic book.

Those gentlemen who had made it clear, through years of gifts and favors granted or withheld, that nobody mattered more than the man providing the money.

But by now she had moved beyond the humiliation of depending on any gentlemen. Which was why, Lucy reminded herself as the party wound down and the crew supervisor directed her to collect all the glassware left outside, she needed to pay Lorraine as soon as she got home. Before Conner could offer his help and whip out a checkbook, the way he’d done a few nights ago when he dismissed the sitter twenty minutes early.

Lorraine wouldn’t have left, of course, if she hadn’t trusted him with the baby, so Lucy had decided she wasn’t going to fuss about Con sending the sitter home. But she drew the line at letting him pay someone she’d hired herself. As long as she and Emma were living under his roof, she needed to guard her pride.

Still, she admitted while she finished her share of the cleanup, pride was costly. It was costing her tonight, in aching muscles and growing fatigue, but the power of independence was worth it. And when she finally made her way to the desert-landscaped front yard to wait for the shuttle, with her first week’s pay voucher safe in the pocket of her black slacks, Lucy felt taller than she’d felt in a long time.


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