His Brother's Baby

From the steel in her voice, he knew this was an argument he couldn’t win. At least not yet. “So…”

“So, Lorraine will be here Saturday,” Lucy concluded, nestling Emma in what looked like a bureau drawer lined with blankets. My God, his niece was sleeping in a drawer? “But I’ll tell her you’re working, so she won’t get in your way.”

And she didn’t, Conner acknowledged on Saturday after four hours of listening for any fussing from Emma and hearing nothing at all. This pudgy, white-haired grandmother seemed like a nice lady, although he wished she had come bearing gifts…like a crib, or a car seat, or any of the other things Lucy would never accept from a Tarkington.

But the sitter did such a great job of keeping Emma out of his way that by midafternoon—with only four hours left on his workday limit—he found himself almost missing the baby. And when he moved into the kitchen for coffee and insisted that she and Emma weren’t in the way, he was pleased that Lorraine took him at his word.

She didn’t seem to realize that he had very little experience with babies, because when she shifted Emma for a better grip on Conner’s finger, she smiled at the baby’s rapt expression.

“Looks like she wants you to hold her,” Lorraine said, moving his coffee out of the way and handing him the baby as easily as if she were handing him a dinner plate. “There you go. Isn’t she just the cutest thing?”

Emma felt so incredibly fragile that he was uneasy about breathing, but she didn’t seem to mind his lack of skill at holding a baby. In fact, she nestled into his embrace so warmly that for a moment Conner let himself imagine that she felt safe, comfortable, cared for….

That Emma felt loved.

“I’m going to run to the rest room,” Lorraine told him, and he nodded without taking his eyes off the child in his arms.

He had to give her back, of course. He wasn’t capable of caring for a baby for more than two or three minutes, but it was surprisingly sweet to pretend that he knew what he was doing, and that this little bundle of life welcomed the assurance of his heartbeat against her own.

Still, he handed her back to the sitter without trying to prolong the moment, and hastily retreated to his work. It had been a fluke, that’s all, enjoying that sense of protecting a baby. But two hours later, when he heard Emma wake up from her nap with a hearty cry, he closed the lid of his computer and followed the sound.

“Somebody needs a clean diaper,” Lorraine observed, lifting the baby onto the dresser Lucy kept covered in blankets. Then, apparently taking it for granted that Conner had arrived with assistance in mind, she nodded at him. “Want to hand me the pins? We’ve got the old-fashioned kind, here.”

He could do that, Con decided. There was a pile of diaper pins right there on the dresser, and it couldn’t be that hard to offer one whenever the expert held out an expectant hand. Still, he was amazed at how deftly Lorraine folded the cloth under Emma’s squirming body and tucked it into a neat triangle shape. “You’re good at that.”

“Years of practice,” she told him, then set the baby down again and whisked off the just-applied diaper. “But anybody can do it. I’ll show you.”

Conner gulped. There was no way to refuse that offer, even though he hadn’t quite planned on learning such a skill. But within a few minutes he realized that the baby-sitter was right.

“I can do this,” he acknowledged, lifting the freshly diapered baby into his arms and marveling at the knowledge that he, Conner Tarkington, had completed the entire task himself.

Maybe he couldn’t love a child, but he could sure take care of her.

“Of course you can.” Lorraine gave him a cheerful smile as he nestled Emma into the crook of his arm. “Babies are easy as pie.”

“It’s easy,” Lucy muttered to the low-hanging desert moon as she skirted an ocotillo cactus behind the festively lighted hacienda, circulating yet another tray of chorizo-stuffed tarts. “I used to do this all the time.” For the past week she’d kept telling herself how easy it was, how she used to sail through the workday after dancing all night, but the pep talks were starting to wear thin. Still, it shouldn’t take too much longer to get back into the swing of things.

At least she hoped not.

“Oh, the chorizo!” a woman exclaimed, and Lucy turned with a practiced smile to offer the tray. Tonight’s guests were a cordial group, celebrating somebody’s fortieth anniversary, and it was encouraging that most of them looked old enough to go home early. With any luck she’d be finished by ten, the Joseph’s van would already be waiting to shuttle everyone back to the restaurant, and she could get enough sleep that Emma wouldn’t need to wait more than thirty seconds while she dragged herself awake for the two o’clock feeding.

But first she had to circulate these tarts. Then the jalapeño crackers, the miniature tacos and another round with the chorizo.

Working inside would be more fun, she knew, because the hosts had set up a dance floor in the great room, and she’d enjoyed the music whenever she returned to the mansion-size kitchen to refill her tray. On her last trip they’d been playing a song she loved, a song she’d danced to a hundred times on the radio, and she had entertained herself by peeking at the couples out there. Some of them were good; some of the younger men were the kind she’d have chosen for herself if she had her pick of partners.

I’d rather have Conner.

The thought startled her—what was she doing, envisioning him as any kind of a partner? Lucy hastily returned her attention to the hors d’oeuvre tray. She wasn’t going to think that way, she told herself as she offered tarts to a cluster of people by the pool. Not when she’d finally made it through almost an entire day without remembering their kiss in the park.

Not now that she was finally regaining her independence.

She’d held the thought of independence like a talisman, every time she handed Emma over to Lorraine and changed from her diner clothes to her catering uniform. With every hour of evening and weekend work, she was closer to acquiring the money she’d need to move out before Christmas. And with every hour of circulating trays, directing guests to the bar and collecting crumpled napkins from the patio planters, she was proving that Lucy Velardi could pay her own way in life.

That she didn’t depend on anybody’s goodwill. Especially not a “gentleman’s.”

It had surprised her, Lucy remembered as she returned to the kitchen, the first time her third-grade teacher addressed the girls and boys as “ladies and gentlemen.” She had always thought the term applied solely to those friends of her mom who visited at random hours and occasionally presented her with a pack of gum or a comic book.

Those gentlemen who had made it clear, through years of gifts and favors granted or withheld, that nobody mattered more than the man providing the money.

But by now she had moved beyond the humiliation of depending on any gentlemen. Which was why, Lucy reminded herself as the party wound down and the crew supervisor directed her to collect all the glassware left outside, she needed to pay Lorraine as soon as she got home. Before Conner could offer his help and whip out a checkbook, the way he’d done a few nights ago when he dismissed the sitter twenty minutes early.

Lorraine wouldn’t have left, of course, if she hadn’t trusted him with the baby, so Lucy had decided she wasn’t going to fuss about Con sending the sitter home. But she drew the line at letting him pay someone she’d hired herself. As long as she and Emma were living under his roof, she needed to guard her pride.

Still, she admitted while she finished her share of the cleanup, pride was costly. It was costing her tonight, in aching muscles and growing fatigue, but the power of independence was worth it. And when she finally made her way to the desert-landscaped front yard to wait for the shuttle, with her first week’s pay voucher safe in the pocket of her black slacks, Lucy felt taller than she’d felt in a long time.