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“I don’t believe it,” his mother said.
Neither do I, Joe wanted to chime in, but knew that would undermine his accomplishment. He wished he could take credit for the technique. But it was something he’d learned on his niece. He was glad he’d remembered. He hoped this was the final exam, the last test to show Liz that he had what it took to be in her program.
It was something he wanted to do. On top of that, as the Human Resources Director for Marchetti’s, Inc., he was conducting his own unofficial research to see if on-site child care was feasible. He was always searching for forward-looking ideas to benefit the employees.
“I’m impressed, Joe,” Liz said.
Was there a grudging note of respect mixed with the sincerity in her voice? He hoped so.
“Thank you,” he answered, handing a dozing Tommy back to his mother.
Another baby started to fuss. Joe remembered it was the baby with the shallow latch. Valerie. Her mother, Andie, looked at him pleadingly. “Want to go for two?” she asked hopefully.
“Sure.” He took the infant and tried the same technique. In a few minutes, the fussy child had calmed.
For the rest of the evening, he became the resident nanny. It gave the mothers an opportunity to listen without interruption to the group. It gave him a chance to prove something to Liz Anderson. He didn’t know why that was so important to him, he only knew it was.
When time was up, the mothers all filed out and he thought their spirits were lighter than when the evening had started. Their radiant smiles as they walked past him were a big clue. So this is what a women’s support group was all about, he thought. Their husbands must be grateful. He was looking forward to learning more about the program. Not to mention the intriguing and exceptionally cute Nurse Anderson.
Andie looked up at him. “Do you hire out your services?” she asked wistfully.
He shook his head. “Sorry.”
“Are you going to be here next week?” Barbara asked.
“I’ll have to check my schedule.”
“Your social calendar?” someone asked.
“And business,” he added.
Barbara smiled at him. “You would make a wonderful father, Joe. I can’t believe no woman has snapped you up.”
He shrugged as he looked at the group of new mothers. “All of you are already taken.”
Then he was alone with Liz. She was looking at him strangely. “That was an interesting experience.”
“Interesting good, or bad?” he asked crossing one ankle over the other as he leaned back against one of the gray plastic chairs.
“I’d have to say good,” she answered slowly.
“You don’t sound convinced. I think it was clear that they love me,” he said.
“Those women are so tired they would love Godzilla if he could give them a minute-and-a-half of peace and quiet.”
“Are you comparing me to the giant lizard who ate Tokyo?”
“If the shoe fits.” She laughed. “I’m kidding. There’s no question that you were wonderful tonight. A real hero.”
“Thank you, Ma’am.” Before she got a chance to cancel out her compliment with a zinger, his cell phone rang. He flipped it open and said, “Hello?”
“Joe? It’s Abby.”
“Oh, geez. Abby. We had a date, didn’t we?” He smacked his forehead. He’d agreed to meet her and help her pick out a wedding present for her fiancé, his brother Nick. “I’m about ten minutes away. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Sorry, Ab. I’ll make it up to you.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
He flipped the phone closed and met Liz’s gaze. “That was my sister—”
She held up her hand. “Please don’t insult my intelligence by saying that whoever called was your sister. I can’t believe you forgot your date.”
“It’s not a date. It’s just Abby.”
“I can’t believe you have so little respect for her.” She shook her head. “And it is a date. By definition a date is a particular time to meet someone, usually of the opposite sex.”
He nodded. “All of that is true. But Abby is practically my sister.”
“Come on, Joe. This is me. I’ve already got your number. You don’t have to pretend. It won’t impress me. I’m immune.”
“I’m not trying to impress you. It’s the truth. I’m supposed to shop with Abby for—”
“Don’t. What you do on your own time is your business. The volunteer program is mine.” She headed for the door. “If you fulfill that obligation, I’ll be impressed.”
“Liz?”
She stopped and glanced over her shoulder. “What?”
He saluted. “I will be here bright and early for orientation. I’ll be the best darn cuddler you ever had.”
Chapter Two
Joe held up the tiny disposable diaper and turned it over and over, eyeing it from every angle. He slid Liz a look that was part mischief, part puzzled—and one hundred percent appealing. Her heart did a little skip and she tried hard to work up a good annoyance at him for causing it. She even resurrected her feelings from the other night when he’d tried to pass off the girl on the phone as his sister. She was only marginally successful in blunting the force of her attraction.
“Even a bag of microwave popcorn has directions that say ‘this side up,”’ he said. “How come there’s no arrow for top and bottom on this sucker?”
“A bright guy like yourself can figure it out. This is the end of orientation, the final exam. No cheating.”
Liz was alone with him in the newborn nursery. He was the only trainee volunteer, darn the luck. It would have helped if other trainee volunteers were there to take the edge off the one-on-one orientation.
Liz stood beside him, next to the changing table. In front of him was a battered rag doll for practicing. She wished she could say that the green wraparound lab coat Joe wore diminished his appeal, or blurred his heartthrob image. But no such luck.
He shook his head. “You never said anything about changing diapers when you were trying to discourage me from volunteering. The term ‘cuddling’ seems self-explanatory and does not encompass this.”
“Backing out already, Mr. Marchetti?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“I never said I wanted you to quit.”
“Not in so many words,” he shot back. “But my work experience is with people. I’ve learned to read between the lines, decipher the body language. All the tricks of the trade.”
“That’s something we have in common then. I’ve got some people experience myself. And in mine, nine times out of ten, they’ll let you down.”
“Then I’ll just have to show you I’m a ten,” he said, giving her a boyishly mischievous look.
“Everyone needs a challenge. Mine is to make sure you can handle our little bundles of joy. The key word here is joy. You have to trust me on this. Cuddling is a more satisfying experience for everyone involved if the baby is clean and dry.”
He frowned at the diaper in his hand. “Then show me the blueprint for this.”
She grinned. “Sell it somewhere else. I might buy your performance if I hadn’t seen Act One the other night. You know more about this baby stuff than you’re letting on. The question is why you’re trying to pull the wool over my eyes.”
Call her a reverse chauvinist, but she found it hard to believe that a man would volunteer to cuddle babies. Not only that, he’d shown up ten minutes ahead of schedule for his orientation. Since a part of her had expected him to let her down, she was still a little off-kilter from his early arrival.
As hard as it was to admit, Joe Marchetti was too good-looking, too charming, and too likable. She would have to be made of stone to keep from having feelings, more accurately a small, almost infinitesimal crush on the man. Her antidote—she would see his appeal and raise him a healthy dose of apathy. That meant she could neutralize the Marchetti toxin before it had a chance to work on her. She would bet her favorite stethoscope that he wasn’t used to women ignoring him. But ignore him she must.
She didn’t believe in happily ever after with any man, let alone a proven playboy like Mr. Marchetti. Her own father had been one. She would be a fool to fall for Joe’s shtick and get dumped, or go through years of misery like her mother had. Either way her heart would come out the loser.
“Pull the wool over your eyes?” He gave her a bogus look of smarting dignity. “I’m wounded, Liz. My incentive for being here is completely aboveboard. One would think that you think I have an ulterior motive.”
“Let’s just say I’m skeptical.” She smiled sweetly at him.
“Want to tell me why?”
She shook her head. “I want to wait and see.”
He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
“After all, you signed the volunteer contract. Item one—a commitment to actively participate in the Volunteer Program, for no less than three months, three hours per week.” She smiled and rubbed her hands together. “That means I have you, my pretty, for the next three months—no matter what.”
“Define ‘no matter what.”’
“Never you mind. Just do me proud. The life of the Cuddlers Program may be in the balance.”
“You got it.” Then he looked at the diaper again, and the doll used for training. “But if you ever tell anyone that I was playing with dolls, that contract won’t be worth the paper I signed it on.”
“Deal,” she said. She looked around the nursery. Empty isolettes were parked haphazardly against the wall. “It’s a slow day in here, or I would let you show off your skill with the babies.”
“You would trust me?” he asked, phony humility in his voice.
“Now you’re fishing for compliments. Like I said, the way you handled the support group babies the other night convinced me you already have a certain amount of expertise. But remember, those babies were a few weeks old. You’re going to be handling little ones a couple of hours old. There’s a difference.”
“Piece of cake. It’s like riding a bike. You never forget.”
“You wouldn’t want to share how you acquired the knowledge in the first place, would you?”
“You already know I’m an uncle.”
She nodded. “But that doesn’t qualify you for nanny of the year. I know a lot of men who want nothing to do with babies, let alone children.” My father included, she thought before she could stop it.
“My sister Rosie strong-armed me into babysitting.”
Liz glanced from the top of his head to his worn jeans below the hem of his lab coat, then to the tips of his scuffed loafers. He was tall and had a muscle or two tacked on to that rather attractive frame. He was no lightweight. She remembered Rosie Marchetti Schafer. Joe’s little sister wasn’t strong enough to force him to do anything he didn’t want to. If his acquired knowledge came from babysitting his niece, it was definitely because he wanted to.
“How is your sister?” Liz asked, genuinely interested. She remembered the pretty, dark-haired woman and her hunky husband. They were hard to forget, let alone jettison the surprising envy Liz had felt watching a loving couple like Steve and Rosie Schafer.
“Fine.”
Liz put a hand on her hip and shook her head at him. “I can see you didn’t inherit the gift of gab.”
“What?”
“Fine?” she mocked. “No embellishment? That’s all you have to say?”
He stared at her for a moment, then proceeded to expertly diaper the doll without blueprints, arrows, or visual aids of any kind.
Task accomplished, he gave her his full attention. “Okay. I’ll embellish. Stephanie, my niece, is beautiful, healthy and in the process of being spoiled rotten by her doting uncles and grandparents. My sister and her husband are ecstatically happy. They love being parents. They could be the poster couple for the American family.”
For just a moment, Liz thought she noticed a wistful look in his eyes when he mentioned family. Then it was gone and she figured she must have imagined it. Easy to do considering where she worked.
Every day she saw moms and dads bring new babies into the world. Some of them had other children who came to visit and welcome a new brother or sister into the family. She recalled that Joe had several brothers. The Marchettis seemed to be a large and loving clan. That didn’t necessarily mean the sons were one-woman men. If nothing else, his looks made him a babe magnet. The attention he must get from women would be hard to ignore.
Not for a minute did she believe his spin from the other night. She would give anything to be able to dump her skepticism. But her childhood had been a front row seat in watching how imperfect marriage was. His parents may have stayed together for thirty-five years, but she would bet they weren’t happy about it. He was just doing what playboys did. Charm a roomful of women with what he thought they wanted to hear.
She wanted to accept that he had volunteered for the reasons he’d told her the other night. But the doubting Thomas in her believed that women were nurturers who derived pleasure from holding a baby. A man who was there ostensibly for that reason had to have an ulterior motive. Either he planned to milk the experience for publicity for the family restaurant chain, or he was there to meet women. Whatever his motivation, she would do what was necessary to protect the program.
“Anything else you want to know about Rosie?” he asked.
“No. I think you’ve embellished sufficiently,” she said sweetly.
“Good. Have you covered everything? About my orientation?”
She nodded. “Except which shift you want.”
Just then, the nursery door opened. Samantha Taylor walked in. She was an obstetrics nurse, and a tall redhead.
“Hi, Sam,” Liz said.
“Hey, boss.” She glanced at Joe as if she were trying to place him, then back to Liz. “What are you doing here?”
“This is Joe Marchetti,” Liz said as if that answered the question.
“Hi.” Sam held out her hand. “You look familiar.”
“We met about a year ago,” he said shaking her hand. “My sister had her baby here.”
“Yes,” Sam said nodding. “Now I remember. We talked that night. I told you about the cuddlers program.”
“That’s right,” he said, smiling that charming, orthodontia-ad smile of his.
