The Trick To Getting A Mom

“I need to sit,” Emily pleaded, breathless.

As he helped her to the step, he tried not to think about Jilian’s difficult delivery. “Can I do anything for you?”

“Yes!” She clutched his arm. “Promise me you’ll see Candace tomorrow. Explain about this afternoon. She deserves an explanation.”

Emily was right. Candace did deserve an explanation. Maybe even an apology. She was a good person. Just not the woman for him.

Another contraction almost doubled Emily over. Still, she clung to his arm. “Promise.”

“I promise,” he said quickly to alleviate her obvious distress.

Looking up, he saw a dripping Alex standing at the corner of the house, fear etched on her face.

“It’s okay, punkin,” he said, extending his free hand to her. “Aunt Emily’s about to have her baby.”

“Here?” Alex squeaked, running to him, throwing her wet arms around his leg.

Emily let out a short laugh. “You two adventurers would appreciate a front-yard delivery, wouldn’t you?” She began to pant.

Sean put his arm around her and soothed her.

Within minutes the Emergency Response Unit arrived. Fortunately, the paramedics performed their duties seamlessly. Sean, with Alex plastered to his side, wouldn’t have been much help. He assured Emily he’d wait for her children to get off the bus, that he would bring them to the hospital. He’d also get in touch with Brad. Yes, he knew his pager number.

As the paramedics began to close the doors to the unit, Emily caught and held his gaze.

“Let me call Uncle Brad,” Alex chirped, patting the back pocket of Sean’s jeans. “Hey! Where’s your phone?”

With a sense of dread, he felt his empty pockets.

“It must have fallen out when you fell in the mud. At Kit’s.” Alex’s eyes lit up. “We’ll have to go back to look for it.”

“No.” He didn’t like that idea. “Not now. We can use Aunt Emily’s.”

Alex made a beeline for the phone abandoned on the front step. “But we’ll have to get yours sometime,” she declared with a grin. “And when we do, I’m bringing my books for Kit to autograph.”

Sean’s stomach dropped.

He’d thrown himself into Alex’s fantasy of travel and adventure because it was only pretend. And, therefore, safe.

Then Kit blew into town. A real traveler with iconoclastic baggage. He didn’t so much envy her travels as fear what she represented. She was the siren. Luring his daughter and enticing him with her song.

CHAPTER THREE

KIT SAT IN THE EMERGENCY ROOM cubicle, waiting for a nurse to return with her release forms. The stitched-up gash in her right forearm throbbed as the local anesthesia wore off. Biting her lower lip against the pain, she tapped the fingers of one hand into the palm of the other. It had been one long, frustrating day—starting with that blasted yard sale.

Sean and Alex McCabe had left her in a stew. Alex, because the kid reminded Kit of herself—or what she might’ve been like if she’d had the benefit of a remotely normal family. And Sean because…well, because Sean was Sean. Strong. Sexy. Self-confident. With an intriguing, barely suppressed anger—or an itch—that ran right below his responsible surface. He hadn’t changed much in nine years.

Except now he had a daughter.

Did that mean he also had a wife? He hadn’t been wearing a ring, but what lobsterman did? Around heavy equipment, a ring was a physical liability.

Why did Kit care about a ring or a wife?

Getting angry at herself for having given Sean McCabe’s marital status two thoughts had been Kit’s first mistake, she realized, thumping her heels against the examination table, waiting.

Hopping the neighbor’s chain-link fence to use their backyard hose as an impromptu shower-and-clothes-wash-in-one had been her second. As she’d scoured reluctant grass stains out of her jeans with her fingernails, she had remembered the feel of his body against hers. Remembered the sound of his laugh. The look of intensity in his eyes as he’d explained why he’d stayed to help.

Because it seems pretty damned important to you.

Sean shouldn’t have been her concern. Climbing back over the neighbor’s chain-link fence should have been.

And that was her third mistake. Her thoughts unfocused, she’d slipped and ripped her forearm.

Where was that nurse?

Her skin crawled under her damp clothes, still dirty, while her stomach growled. It was seven o’clock. Breakfast and her morning shower at the turnpike truck stop were a distant memory.

A plump nurse with pastel scrubs and a tiny, fuzzy koala attached to her stethoscope entered the examination cubicle. Kit didn’t know whether to resent Nurse Sunbeam’s well-fed perkiness or envy her cleanliness.

“We’ve filed your insurance. Here’s your release.” She handed Kit a yellow sheet of paper, then a second white one. “And here are instructions for taking care of that wound. If you have any problems, don’t hesitate to come back in.”

“I won’t have any problems,” Kit declared, sliding off the examination table. She’d been in worse situations without benefit of hospitals and antibiotics. Her stomach growled again. She needed to find the cafeteria. Clutching her papers, Kit headed for the elevator.

The elevator doors opened onto a bright and cheery food court. Just as Kit stepped out, a doll’s head rolled to a stop at her feet.

“Uncle Sean,” a child complained, “Alexandra’s not playing nice.”

How many Seans and Alexandras could there be in Pritchard’s Neck?

“But playing house is soooo boring,” a now familiar voice shot back. Alex McCabe’s. “I wanna play headhunters and cannibals.”

“Eeuuww!” girlish voices chorused in disgust.

Kit picked up the doll’s head.

Two little girls huddled on a plastic chair and tried to protect their family of dolls from a sword-wielding assailant. Make that a rolled-up newspaper-wielding assailant. Alex. Still dressed in mud-spattered overalls.

So where was her father this time?

A groan near a bank of soft-drink machines drew Kit’s attention to two jean-clad backsides—one adult, one child—which presented themselves to the world from an ignominious position on the floor. It seemed the two were trying to retrieve something from under one of the machines.

“Aha!” Rolling to a sitting position, Sean held aloft a plastic action figure. “Look, Noah,” he said, ruffling the young boy’s hair and handing him the toy, “just because Alex dares you to do something, doesn’t mean you have to—”

Sean stopped as if stung. Stopped and stared at Kit. The flinty look in his eye said she was the last person he expected—or wanted—to see.

Well, he was the last person she wanted to see.

“Kit!” Alex’s face, on the other hand, transformed with joy. Throwing down the newspaper sword, she rushed at Kit as if to hug her, then pulled up short when she spied the bandage on her forearm. “What happened? Lions? Tigers? Bears?”