A Forever Kind of Family

Not just because it allowed them to share childcare responsibilities but because their offsetting schedules meant that they didn’t have to spend a lot of time together. Because their late-night encounter the night before had reminded her all too clearly how dangerous it was to be in close proximity to Ryan Garrett.

“Mo!” Oliver demanded, banging his now-empty bowl on his tray.

“Please,” Harper admonished.

“Mo!” he said again.

She got up to put some more macaroni in his bowl, shook her head when she placed it in front of him. “You are a mess.”

“Mess,” he echoed, and grinned to show off his eight tiny pearly-white teeth in a mouth stuffed full of macaroni.

Smiling, she ruffled the soft, wispy curls that fell over his forehead.

He needed a haircut—his first haircut. A few months earlier, Melissa had told her that Darren was pushing her to take Oliver to the barbershop because he was tired of strangers mistakenly assuming their son was a daughter, even when he was dressed all in blue. Melissa had resisted, because she was afraid that if they cut off Oliver’s curls, they might be gone forever. And just in case, she’d already snipped one of them and tucked it into a clear plastic folder in his baby book.

The baby book that Melissa kept in the top drawer of Oliver’s dresser so it was readily accessible to record her son’s every milestone. She’d documented everything from his weight and length at birth and the day he came home from the hospital to his first smile, when he rolled over, sat up, clapped his hands, waved bye-bye, got his first tooth and took his first step.

It was a meticulous record of her love as much as her baby’s growth, and Harper didn’t know if she should continue what Melissa had started or leave the book as she had left it. Either way, she knew she had to talk to Ryan about taking the little boy for a haircut.

Sooner rather than later if he was going to insist on putting things like cheesy macaroni in it.

“I think that’s a sign that you’ve had enough to eat,” she said to him.

“Mo!”

She shook her head. “No more. Not today.”

“Kee.”

She was starting to understand his unique baby language and that word was one of his favorites. “Let’s get you cleaned up first. Then you can have a cookie.”

She wiped his hands and his face—and his hair—with a wet cloth, ensuring that no traces of orange sauce remained. “There’s my handsome boy,” she said.

He grinned at her, melting her heart. “Kee.”

She laughed. “Yes, I’ll get you a cookie.”

While he was munching on his arrowroot biscuit, she tidied up the kitchen. Then she washed Oliver’s hands and face again.

“What are we going to do this afternoon?” she asked the little boy.

He banged his hands on his tray. “Bah-bah-bah.”

“I’m going to need a translation on that,” she said as she unbuckled him from his high chair. “Either you want to play ball or you want to pretend you’re a sheep—which is it?”

“Bah-bah-bah.”

“Blocks,” Ryan said from the doorway.

Harper glanced up as she set the little boy on his feet. He ran straight to Ryan, who swung him up into his arms. “Do you want to play with your blocks?”

“Bah-bah-bah.”

Harper frowned as she moved into the living room. “Do you think his speech is delayed?”

“No, I think he’s a sixteen-month-old with the limited vocabulary of a sixteen-month-old.”

He was probably right but she thought she’d check the vocabulary lists in her books again to be sure. “Your conference call is done already?”

He nodded. “I knew it wouldn’t take too long.”

She put the bucket of blocks on the carpet and sat down to play with Oliver. The little boy immediately upended the container. “Are you going into the office now?”

“Not today.”

She started the base of a tower for Oliver, aligning three square blocks for the bottom, then overlapping a second row to hold the blocks together. “Why not?”

“I thought I’d spend some time hanging out with Oliver this afternoon.”

“Big,” Oliver said again, offering her a blue block.

“He wants you to make the tower bigger,” Ryan told her, squatting down to add more blocks to the base of the structure she’d started to build.

“You just want to play, too,” she remarked.

He didn’t dispute her claim. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“You had Oliver all morning—it’s my shift now,” she reminded him.

“Just like no one’s keeping score, no one’s punching a clock here,” he said gently. “If there’s something else you’d rather be doing, I don’t mind honing my construction skills here.”

She hesitated, torn between the temptation to accept his offer, annoyance that he handled the little boy so effortlessly and guilt that if she let him, she would again be doing less than her share. “I do have some notes to write up for Caroline for next week’s shows.”

He shrugged. “Or you could take a nap so you’re not cranky tomorrow.”

“I’m not cranky now,” she snapped, her tone in contradiction to the words.

He just lifted a brow.

She turned on her heel and walked out.

Chapter Three (#ulink_196d6bd8-a4dd-520a-9d9c-7bab6455132d)

Harper hadn’t planned to fall asleep.

She’d decided that her notes for Caroline could wait, and she’d lain down on her bed to read another chapter in What to Expect the Toddler Years. She managed to keep her eyes open for four pages.

When she woke up, it was almost five o’clock and her grumbling stomach chastised her for not thinking about dinner before she’d put her head on her pillow. After a quick detour to the bathroom, she headed down to the kitchen to see what she could scrounge up for the evening meal.