New Year's Wife

He frowned into the dark and only gradually recalled the where and why of his current situation. A quick glance round the room confirmed it: Idaho. Julie’s house. Tyler glanced at his travel alarm, groaning when he saw the time, 4:30 a.m. He’d slept barely an hour and felt like hell.

What on earth had shattered his dreams? he wondered even as he heard the sound again. Crying. A child’s crying. One of brother Sid’s crew, no doubt. Perhaps the early bird.

But no, he decided moments later, frowning again. Something was wrong. This cry was one of pain.

At that moment, someone pounded on his door. “Dad? Are you awake?”

In a flash, Tyler stood beside the bed, tugging sweats over the briefs that were all he’d worn to bed since the house was kept so warm. He reached his door just as it opened.

“Dad, I-” Julie gasped. “You! Oh God, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize there’d been a switch in rooms.” She clutched a pajama-clad toddler against her chest—a boy, Tyler guessed—and jounced him as she spoke. “Where’s Dad sleeping?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” Tyler admitted. “Is this Sid’s stepson?”

“This is Sid’s baby, Josh. He fell out of bed and now he’s bleeding from somewhere, but won’t let me look to find out where.”

Tyler fumbled for the overhead light switch for what seemed an eternity before he found it. He then reached out to catch Julie’s elbow and lead her into his room.

“Sit on the bed,” he said, a command Julie obeyed with obvious reluctance. Josh sobbed softly, a sound that wrenched Tyler’s heart and reduced the child’s aunt to near tears, from the look of it.

Tyler dropped to one knee by the bed and touched the boy’s shoulder. “Hey, Josh, whasamatter?”

Without releasing his stranglehold on his aunt Julie, the toddler turned his head just enough to identify the speaker. His eyes, huge and dark, brimmed over with tears. Tyler instantly spotted the blood—on the boy’s face and on his aunt’s filmy pink nightgown—oozing from a jagged cut on the underside of his chin.

“It’s coming from a cut—see?—just under his chin, there. We’re going to have to wash it off so we can see how bad it is.”

“There should be a cloth in the bathroom,” Julie replied, pointing to the door that led to the bath just off Tyler’s room.

Tyler made short work of finding the cloth and wetting it with warm water. A quick search of the medicine cabinet produced Band-Aids, which he hoped were all he’d need. By the time he returned to the bed, Julie had managed to seat Josh in her lap so that Tyler could see his chin.

She reached for the cloth and Tyler gave it to her. The instant she tried to dab Josh’s chin he began to struggle and scream again.

“Let me,” Tyler said, taking the cloth back. “Josh. Hey buddy. Look-a here.”

Josh, still crying, but clearly curious about Tyler, did as requested.

“That’s great. Now be a big boy and let me wash you up, okay?”

To Julie’s obvious astonishment, Josh again did as asked, struggling only when Tyler touched the actual cut to asses its severity.

“It’s not deep,” Tyler was finally able to announce. “Just a scratch, really. No stitches required.” While he talked, he bandaged, then he used the cloth to clean Josh’s hands, Julie’s hands and finally her neck—tender ministrations endured without complaint from child or aunt. Gallantly he kept his gaze above the tips of her breasts, dark shadows under the sheer fabric of her gown. “There, all done. Feeling better?”

The question was directed to Josh, but Julie answered it. “Much, thanks. You’re very good at this. Got any little ones of your own?”

“No, thank God,” Tyler replied, a candid, but thoughtless, reply that earned him a censorious frown from Julie.

At once she placed a noisy kiss on her nephew’s head and hugged him hard—sure indication she valued rug rats much more than Tyler did. She then caught her breath, obviously just realizing that the gown she wore covered everything but hid nothing. Julie raised her gaze to meet Tyler’s, her face and neck flushed from forehead to cleavage.

“I’ve got to leave now…”

Though sorely tempted to argue, Tyler didn’t. Instead, he stood back and let her rise. Holding Josh to her chest as before—this time to hide breasts Tyler had once caressed—Julie backed toward the door. Only when she reached it did she spin around, and then just to dash out. She was quick, but not so quick Tyler didn’t get a glimpse of skimpy black panties, nearly bare bottom and long, shapely legs.

At once his body responded to the sight. With a groan he fell facedown on the bed, overcome with memories of the taste, smell and feel of her. Was this, then, the power she held over him? Sheer sexual thrill? It was a familiar spell, to be sure. One not experienced since the first time they met, eight years ago, but one well remembered all the same. The difference was their ages. She’d been a child then, a hot-to-trot teenager whose kiss had not revealed her innocence, but set him on fire. How did she kiss now that she was grown up and experienced in the ways of love? Tyler dared not try to imagine. If the kiss of a teen could haunt him for eight years, what would the kiss of a woman do?

Tyler groaned again, softly, but from the heart, then crawled back under the covers. Surprisingly he slept, but his dreams were crazy and erotic—the dreams of a man beguiled.

“More bacon?”

“Yes, please.”

Standing just outside the kitchen swing door, Tyler listened to the sounds of a family at breakfast. Several emotions washed over him at once, not the least of which was discomfort that surely resulted from the fact that he was the only child of a single parent. Acutely aware of his past experiences with—and subsequent aversion to—large, noisy families, Tyler actually turned to slip back upstairs when the door swung out and hit him in the backside.

“Oomph!” he exclaimed as a small boy charged past him.

“Come on in, Tyler,” called John Newman from the kitchen. “There’s plenty to eat and a place to sit now that Tim’s headed to the den. The Tournament of Roses Parade is on, you know, and he doesn’t intend to miss it.”

Squaring his shoulders, Tyler pushed through the door into the kitchen filled with family members. Only Kit could not be accounted for. Tyler assumed she was already at work.

John gave him a big smile. “Have a seat. Have a seat.”

Tyler skirted the table slowly en route to the proffered chair, nodding an awkward greeting to all who ate and stopping at Josh’s high chair to lean down and peer at his bandaged chin. It looked great, he thought, an opinion reaffirmed when Julie spoke.

“He’s fine today. Thanks again for helping out.”

“No problem,” Tyler murmured as he brushed bread crumbs and bits of egg off the chair just vacated by Tim, then sat.

“I want you to know that I don’t always do that,” Julie said.

“Excuse me?” All Tyler could think of was her sexy nightgown. Did she mean that she sometimes slept naked? he wondered, body stirring at the thought.

“Run to my daddy for help when I get in a tight spot,” Julie replied, unaware of the direction his thoughts had taken, but setting him straight all the same. “I’m a big girl except where the kids are concerned. Then I fall apart at the least sign of trouble.”

Tyler squirmed to ease the sudden bind of his jeans and faked a smile. “The thought never crossed my mind.”

“Here, son,” said John, passing Tyler a blue china bowl filled with scrambled eggs, cooked to perfection.

“My mother has a bowl like this,” Tyler murmured for lack of anything else to say. “She’s a retired nurse, living in Washington state.”

“With your dad?” John asked.

Tyler shook his head. “Alone.”

“Your dad is dead, then?” Apparently John was every bit as nosy as Don had warned.

“A deadbeat. One of those guys who’ll skip out on a woman without marrying her when she tells him he’s going to be a daddy.” Tyler noted the looks of sympathy passed between Don and Julie. He also noted that Julie then frowned at her dad in an obvious attempt to shut him up.

It didn’t work.

“Sorry to hear that,” John said, his tone very matter-of-fact. “His loss, of course.”

Tyler shrugged in reply and set down the bowl, now minus a generous helping of the eggs.

“We have sausage and bacon, biscuits and hash browns, too,” John then said, clearly oblivious to the tension in the room or the fact that for some reason Tyler had just blurted his deepest, darkest secret. “Eat hearty.”

“Thanks,” Tyler murmured, his gaze glued to the table before him. In seconds his plate was filled and, to make further foolish confessions impossible, his mouth.

Tyler’s illegitimate roots obviously didn’t bother John, who appeared bound and determined to discuss them. “Your mother never married anyone else, then?”

Tyler quickly swallowed. “No.”

“So you have no brothers or sisters?”

“None.”

“Then I guess the Newman household is a culture shock for you, huh?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Well, don’t let that put you off. Big families are a lot of fun, son, and if you’re smart, you’ll find yourself a good, fertile woman real soon and get busy making one of your own.”

“Da-ad!” Julie scolded, her eyes shooting daggers at her tactless parent.

John looked at her in surprise, clearly clueless. “He’ll be glad he did, honey. Why, where would I be now if it weren’t for all you kids and grandkids? Alone, that’s where. Alone and lonely.” He pointed a finger at Tyler. “Your father made a poor choice that I’m sure he now regrets. There’s no reason for you to make the same one.”

“No, sir,” Tyler murmured, a lie. In truth, there were several, not the least of which was that big families gave him the willies. No, not even for old-age companion-ship would he endure the interference, inconvenience and irritation of them.

Chapter Three

“Are you, um, starting the driving lessons this morning?” blurted Don in an obvious attempt to change the subject. “We have sunshine. We have clear roads.”

Tyler exchanged a look with Julie, whose face still glowed pink with embarrassment for her dad’s pep talk—another reason Tyler was glad he didn’t have a houseful of kin to deal with.

“If that’s okay…?” she ventured. “The sooner we begin, the sooner we finish. I don’t want you to have to hang around here instead of the slopes. I’ve heard they’re great this year.”

“This morning is fine,” he assured her, adding, “As for the slopes, I’m on no set schedule this trip, so whenever I get to them is fine.”

“Tyler quit his job with Sky Flight,” Don told his dad, as if Tyler’s comment about schedules had just reminded him of the fact.

John poured himself a cup of steaming black coffee. “That so? Who are you flying for now?” He offered the pot to Tyler.

“Actually, I’m self-employed at the moment. I do some charter work and some crop dusting.” Tyler picked up an unused mug so John could fill it.

“He also performs with an air show,” Don added. Tyler noted that John seemed impressed by the announcement. Julie, however, appeared a bit stunned. Thankfully, talk turned to general topics after that. Tyler, no longer the subject of conversation, thank God, perused everyone at the table, beginning with a blond-haired girl who had to be Sid’s other stepchild. Petite, obviously shy, she sat to the right of her step-grandfather, John, who smiled down at her every few seconds.

Without a doubt John was the type of person who thrived on the chaos of a large family. Tyler didn’t remember the late Mrs. Newman all that well since he’d only met her once, but he carried in his mind an impression of warmth and motherly patience. He guessed that her loss was probably the reason John had called his family back home.

To the little girl’s right—was her name Celia? No, Carly—sat Don, complete with bloodshot eyes and unshaven face. One beer too many? Tyler wondered, instantly excusing the overindulgence. New Year’s Eve came just once a year. Tyler knew from experience that Don was a health nut who never drank anything stronger than beer and then only on special occasions such as little sis’s birthday party.

And speaking of little sis…she sat a high chair away from Don, at the end of the table across from her dad and to Tyler’s left. She looked beautiful this morning, he thought, none the worse for a night of drama.

With her hair pulled back in a ponytail and wearing a tattered sweatshirt, she could easily have been sixteen almost seventeen, just as she was the day they met. That reminded Tyler of his mission, and noting that she’d finished eating, he made short work of cleaning his plate, too.

“Carly and I will take care of the kitchen,” John said, when Julie stood from the table, moments after Don excused himself and ran off to get ready for his salespeople, and carried her plate to the sink. “You get started on those driving lessons.”

“But—”

“Don’t argue.” He waved his hands as though to shoo them out. With a shrug, Julie met Tyler at the door, through which they exited.

“My jacket’s in the coat closet. Where’s yours?” she asked.

“On that hook there.” Tyler pointed to a rack near the front door on which hung his leather jacket. Since the closet was nearby, they walked together.

“Shall we?” Julie murmured after she’d donned a denim jacket, inclining her head in the direction of the door that led to the garage. Tyler led the way, opening the door and then stepping back so Julie could pass through it into the garage. Moments later found them peering under the hood of the Corvette—a dream car in Tyler’s opinion.

“I just want to learn to clutch and shift this thing,” Julie grumbled when Tyler automatically reached for the dip stick. “I already know how to check the oil.”