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“Oh, that.” Nate shrugged and kissed a wiggling Gracie on the forehead before lowering her into the playpen in the corner of the kitchen, where it was visible not only in the kitchen, but from the living room, as well. “Yes, well, I’ve had a change of heart.”
“How is that?” Jessica was surprised at how her emotions plummeted at Nate’s words. She told herself repeatedly that it was none of her business what Nate did with Gracie. While that was probably true, she still cared—maybe too much.
“I decided not to look for a job right away,” Nate explained. “I put away most of the money I made when I was in the marines, so I have enough to live off—for now, anyway. I’m not sure if I’m going to be staying around long enough to make it worthwhile for me to pursue anything permanent.”
“I see,” Jessica said, though she didn’t. And she wasn’t about to analyze the way her heart dropped at Nate’s indication that he wouldn’t be around for long.
“Becoming Gracie’s guardian is a big adjustment for me. I’m like any parent with an infant, I guess, only I didn’t have nine months to prepare for her arrival, so I’m working on a curve.”
“I imagine it’s a big change for you from being a single man in the military.” Jessica paused thoughtfully and then asked the question that was plaguing her. “If you aren’t planning to stay at Morningway Lodge, then where will you go?”
Nate snorted. “Anywhere but here.”
Jessica wanted to question Nate further about his negative feelings toward the lodge, but she wasn’t sure he’d be keen on her poking her nose into his business any more than she already had.
She sighed. “I love it here. It’s so quiet and peaceful compared to the ruckus of a big city. You can see and hear God all around you.”
Nate stared at Jess, his gaze wide. She spoke so freely about God, as if she was intimately acquainted with Him. It was the way his mother had always spoken of the Almighty, Nate remembered, a feeling of nostalgia washing over him.
But Nate wondered at such naiveté, such sweet and innocent belief as these women shared.
He’d seen the ravages of war firsthand. He knew better than to believe in fairy tales.
He nearly blurted out that he wasn’t looking for God, but caught himself before he said the words out loud and couldn’t take them back.
There was no sense being rude, especially since her faith was clearly very dear to her. He retreated to his usual mode of dealing with issues he didn’t really want to address—he clammed up.
Jess didn’t appear to notice his sudden silence, and continued thoughtfully.
“Growing up, I lived in Los Angeles. Far too much noise and pollution for me. I’d rather have the clear, beautiful Rocky Mountains any day of the week, thank you very much.”
“Is your family still in California?”
She hesitated and her smile faltered, then dropped. Her gaze became distant for a moment, as if she had traveled in her mind to some other time or place; but at length she nodded.
Nate had the impression he’d just intruded where he was not wanted. There was much Jess was not telling him, but he would not presume to pry based on their very short acquaintance. He didn’t care for others disrespecting his privacy, and he wasn’t going to disrupt her.
He thought the best thing to do would be to change the subject. Baby Gracie’s soft babbling had turned to crying, so he reached into the playpen and plucked her into his arms. She quieted at his touch, but her eyelids were heavy and drooping.
“Gracie needs a nap,” he commented, bouncing the little girl on his shoulder to soothe her as he crooned. “Don’t you, sweetie pie?”
“Looks like,” Jess agreed.
“She won’t go down unless I rock her,” Nate said, nodding his head toward the small living room, where an old wooden rocking chair stood in one corner.
“May I?” Jess asked softly.
“Be my guest.” Nate handed Gracie off to Jess, who seated herself in the rocker and began to hum a quiet lullaby.
Even after a week with the baby, Nate still wasn’t comfortable when Gracie was fussy. He marveled at how quickly Gracie settled down in Jess’s arms. The woman was a natural with children.
He leaned his shoulder on the door frame separating the kitchen from the living area and folded his arms across his chest. There was something just right in the way Jess held the baby, he observed; even Gracie instinctively reacted to it.
Nate smiled at the pretty picture Jess and the baby made. Like a little family, almost. Ezra would have been glad to see it, he thought with a mixture of joyfulness and sorrow.
“You’ll be a wonderful mother to your own child someday,” he murmured.
It was the highest compliment Nate could think to give her, so he was stunned at her reaction.
She turned eight shades of rose before her face bled to a deathly white.
“Are you okay?” he asked when she shot to her feet, swaying precariously. Her grip on Gracie was firm, but he could see that she was shaking.
“I—I’m sorry,” she stammered, thrusting the baby at him. “I have to go. Now.”
With Gracie wiggling and kicking in his arms, Nate watched helplessly as Jess bolted out the front door and up the path leading away from his cabin. She was running—literally running—away.
He shook his head, bemused. What had he said that had set her off that way? And more to the point, he thought perplexedly, how was he going to fix it?
Jessica’s cabin was only a few doors down from Nate’s, though it was a steady, uphill climb. She walked—nearly ran—the distance in half the time it usually would have taken her.
By the time she entered the emotional haven of her own small cabin, her chest was heaving and she was gasping for air. Her heart was racing so quickly she could hear it pounding in her ears, but it wasn’t only—or even mostly—the physical exertion causing the excruciating pain in her chest.
She was embarrassed and shamed by her actions with Nate, running out on him as she had, without a single word of explanation.
It was just that Nate’s off-the-cuff comment had hit her right between the eyes. He couldn’t possibly have known what he was saying, and he had most certainly meant his observation as a compliment.
Jessica hadn’t been prepared for the maelstrom of emotions that barraged her when she once again held baby Gracie in her arms. The scene had somehow transformed into something pseudo-intimate—domestic—between the three of them.
Nate. Jessica. Gracie.
A home and a family had once been the greatest desire of Jessica’s heart. But she’d already gone that route, and with devastating results. If she was now alone in the world, it was because she wanted it that way.
As much as she loved being around the baby—or more accurately because she loved being around the baby—it would be better for all concerned if she altogether avoided Gracie and her handsome marine guardian.
If she was not careful, her heart would be shattered again, perhaps this time beyond repair.
No, Jessica thought, not even consciously aware she was clenching her fists. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—let it happen again.
Chapter Four
After Nate put Gracie down for a nap, he slung a dish towel over his shoulder and filled the kitchen sink with hot, soapy water.
That was another thing about caring for an infant—the amount of dishes and laundry increased exponentially with the addition of just that one tiny baby girl. He had always had simple needs. This was way out of his realm of experience.
Nate set to work scrubbing out baby bottles and bowls of caked-on baby cereal, but his mind was quick to wander back to earlier that afternoon, and the bizarre way Jess had acted.
What was with the woman, anyway?
Nate had noticed her odd behavior from the first time they’d met—the on-again, off-again, hot/cold way Jess acted whenever she was around him. Or perhaps more to the point, when she was around Gracie.
The worst part, though, and the thing, if he was being honest with himself, that stymied Nate the most, wasn’t Jessica’s unfathomable actions at all. He might not yet understand it, but he could explain it away fairly simply. There must be a reasonable, rational explanation for whatever it was that was bothering her, and eventually, he would figure out what that reason was.
But at the moment, he was dwelling on something else entirely—that flash of time frozen in his mind when the three of them were together in the living room. Jessica’s presence had formed it into a homey, domestic atmosphere unlike anything Nate had ever experienced before.
Well, maybe that description was pushing it. His cabin was no more than bachelor’s quarters littered with a brand-new smattering of baby items. Not exactly what anyone would describe as homey.
But it wasn’t so much how the situation had looked. It was how it had felt.
And Nate really liked that feeling.
He realized he was daydreaming and snorted at his own silly behavior.
What was he thinking?
He used the dish towel to scrub his face and force his mind back to the present. His cheeks carried a week’s growth of beard on them—because, for the first time in ten years, he could go without shaving.
He shook his head. He’d been alone for far too long to be conjuring up fantasy families in his mind, where none existed in reality.
Still, the idea of a family wasn’t completely without merit.
Tamyra, Nate remembered, had rounded out Ezra, taken the rough edges off the heretofore certified bachelor. After the wedding, Ezra had been the happiest Nate had ever seen him. And then baby Gracie had come along and added exponentially to their love. She had, Nate realized, completed the picture.
He recalled being a little envious of his best friend. True love made life worth living, Ezra had told him a dozen times. But Nate’d had his work and his wanderlust, and that had been enough.
At the time.
Now everything was different. Not just in his circumstances, either. His heart felt as altered as the difference between a Colorado blizzard and a California summer. His priorities had shifted from thinking only of himself to having someone else as the center of his existence.
He had a baby to consider now—a little girl who deserved to be raised in a family with both a father and a mother.
Someone like Jess, he realized. A woman who was sweet and caring and who knew how to care for an infant; who would love Gracie the way Nate loved Gracie.
As if on cue, the baby made an enormous pterodactyl scream from the playpen, startling Nate and setting his hair on end. He dashed to the playpen and scooped Gracie into his arms.
Gracie was hot to the touch. He didn’t need the thermometer to tell she was burning up with fever. Panic immediately coursed through him, stinging his limbs like an explosion of white-hot nails in an IED.
Snatching the thermometer from the tabletop, Nate rushed to the rocker and took a seat. He attempted to mimic what Jess had done, placing the tip of the thermometer under the baby’s arm, but it was a lot more difficult than it looked, even if Gracie wasn’t fighting him the way she had with Jess. She wasn’t fighting him, but was staring up at him with her big brown eyes as if pleading with him to make her all better.
He didn’t know how.
She was frighteningly lethargic.
He checked the thermometer, and another surge of panic coursed through him.
Gracie was running a fever of one hundred and four degrees.
The sound of her cell phone ringing startled Jessica from her sleep. She groaned loudly. She’d nodded off in her easy chair and now her shoulders were stiff and she had a kink in her neck.
Stretching her head from side to side to work loose her muscles, she reached for her purse, which she’d haphazardly tossed on the coffee table earlier. Groggily she dug for the still-pealing phone.
“Hello?” she said, her voice still a little slurred as she wiped the sleep from her eyes with the palms of her hands.
It wasn’t surprising that she’d fallen into a deep, dreamless slumber—ever since she was a child, sleep had been her defense mechanism against stress. Her mind and body simply shut down, giving her the rest needed to face her trials afresh.
“Jess?” The one word was laced with so much fear and alarm that Jessica was instantly alert.
“Nate? What’s wrong?”
“It’s Gracie.” Nate’s anxious, labored breathing set Jessica right on edge, and she gripped the phone more tightly within her grasp. “She spiked a high fever. I don’t know what to do.”
“Oh, no!” Jessica inhaled sharply, her whole heart and soul immediately appealing to the Heavenly Father to protect the sweet little baby girl. She tried to quell the rising alarm in her head with little success. “How high?”
“One hundred and four degrees. Jess, what should I do?”
“I’m on my way over,” she asserted, trying to keep her voice calm and reassuring despite the way her heart was pounding in her head. Adrenaline coursed sharply through her veins, making her tingly and light-headed.
Whatever promises she had made herself earlier about not seeing Nate or the baby again flew right out the window as if they had never been.
They needed her now.
There was no question that she would be there for them, at whatever cost to her own heart.
She was already reaching for her coat and sliding her feet into her old hiking boots. Her thumb was poised over the phone’s exit button when Nate spoke again, his voice rushed.
“I…I phoned you because…because I didn’t know who else to call,” he stammered.
It occurred to Jessica that the obvious choice would be Vince, who was family. Wouldn’t that have made the most sense? Why hadn’t Nate called him?
But now was not the time for such questions. She rapidly ticked down the list of vital issues, forcing her mind to concentrate on priority.
“Does she have any other symptoms? A sneeze? A cough?”
“She’s pulling on her ear and crying,” Nate choked out. “Does that mean anything?”
“Okay, listen, Nate,” Jessica said, an instinctive sense of God’s strength and peace enveloping her as she took control of the situation. “You need to get her temperature down.”
“How do I do that?” he asked, his voice tight. “I just gave her some more medicine, but it will take some time to see any effect. What else can I do?”
Jessica heard Gracie pealing in distress, and her heart turned over.
“Hush, baby girl,” Nate crooned. “Uncle Nate’s trying to help you, honey. Jess?” he queried uncertainly. “What do I do?”
“Fill the sink with lukewarm water. You need to give her a sponge bath,” Jessica directed. “That’s going to be the fastest and most effective way to bring down her temperature.”
“She’s so tiny.” Nate’s taut voice cracked with emotion.
“And she’s not going to be happy about that bath. It’s hard to be a parent at times like this.”
