The Baby Chronicles

Chapter One

Colleen Stewart shifted uneasily on the hard chair across from her editor’s large, metal desk, holding back a ragged sigh.

Cold, hard dread inched through her. She had to find a way to get out of writing this article. She would never, ever be able to write “The Baby Chronicles” without letting all of those smiling, cooing, bald little toothless angels turn her heart to mush.

Mush she didn’t need.

“I don’t see what the problem is,” Joe said, yanking his stained yellow-and-red tie loose. “All you have to do is write about cute babies. Piece of cake.”

Cute babies a piece of cake? Hardly. “Joe, I turned down this assignment a week ago,” she said, deliberately excluding the reason she’d talked her way out of the job in the first place. Joe would laugh his head off. “Nothing has changed. I still don’t want to do it. Can’t you get someone else?”

He waved a hand in the air. “No can do. Rudy left town for a family emergency and Christy has her hands full covering the budget cuts at the school district. You’re it.”

Colleen bit her lip. “What about Angela?”

“On maternity leave.”

“Steve?”

“I fired him this morning.”

She flinched but kept at it, leaning forward. “Zack?”

“You’re it, Colleen.” He pulled his bushy, gray eyebrows together and scowled. “What’s the big deal, anyway? Just supervise the shoot and write the story, all right?”

She’d love to tell Joe why this seemingly harmless assignment was a big deal for her. But she couldn’t. Joe was a hard-line journalist and a traditional family man from way back. He would never understand her need to stay away from things like endearing babies, cute little animals, large, close-knit families and nice, lovable men. She’d learned long ago that there was no sense in hanging around things she could never have.

Things that made her ache inside.

She opened her mouth to refuse, but Joe’s ice-hard glare stopped her and she clamped her lips closed. Further argument was useless. She prided herself on her ability to get through tough situations with strength and self-control, just as she’d made it through her neglected childhood all by herself. She’d write this article while remaining unengaged and unfazed by the undoubtedly adorable babies. She had to. Her job as a reporter at the Beacon and her protected little world here in Portland, Oregon, depended on it.

“Anything else?” she asked, trying to sound up-beat. She glanced out the window, hoping the blue-skied, puffy-clouded summer day would cheer her up.

“Yeah, actually there is one more thing. We’re bringing in a freelance photographer for this spread.”

A psychological cloud moved across the sun. Her gut tightened. Ever since she’d been shuffled through the foster-care system, meeting knew people always made her feel off balance and vulnerable. “Really? Why?”

Joe shrugged. “The guy’s good, and he offered his talent for dirt cheap. Wants to build a career photographing kids. Thought this would be a good opportunity.” He looked over her head and smiled. “Ah. Here he is now.”

A barely perceptible, woodsy scent drifted across the air, teasing Colleen’s nose. She froze, momentarily confused, and a long, heart-pounding second later, recognition thudded into place. Only one person she’d ever known had smelled like a combination of trees and wind and the great outdoors.

Aiden.

But that was impossible. Aiden was overseas in some godforsaken, war-torn country taking pictures.

“Taking pictures,” she mouthed.

No. No way. She was imagining that outdoorsy, distinctive, heart-stopping scent, right? Aiden Forbes was thousands of miles away right now. He was absolutely, positively not standing behind her, ready to take over his new, unlikely job as baby photographer.

Almost incapable of movement, she somehow pressed a shaking hand to her fluttering stomach. A chill rushed up her spine, scattering goose bumps over her entire body.

Please don’t let it be him, please don’t let it be him. She’d broken up with Aiden eight years ago because he’d shown her, by loving her so completely, how incapable of loving she was.

Aiden was just a painful reminder of the unfixable flaw inside her and of all of the ramifications that flaw had had in her life. With Aiden around, she’d never been able to forget the defect that had made her parents ditch her into the foster-care system.

A deep, hauntingly familiar voice scraped across her raw nerves like a rusty chainsaw on metal, dashing her stupid hopes. “You must be Joe Capriati.” From the corner of her eye she saw a large, tanned hand reach to Joe over her shoulder. “I’m Aiden Forbes.”

Time slowed to a crawl. In the millisecond it took Colleen to draw a choked, desperate breath, her world tilted on its axis and almost sputtered to a stop.

She pressed her other quivering hand to the side of her face and bent her head, ridiculously trying to hide, even though she was dying to look at Aiden and see how the years had changed him. But she didn’t look, she couldn’t even move. Maybe he wouldn’t recognize her.

Of course he would. He wasn’t popping his head in for just a moment. He was the photographer on the story she’d just been assigned. She was going to have to work with him. Side by side. Photographing precious babies.

She closed her eyes and shook her head, wishing the floor would open up and swallow her whole.

Aiden Forbes, the only man who had ever been able to crack open the door to her flawed, vulnerable heart, was back.

Shaking Joe’s beefy hand, Aiden’s attention remained stuck on the seated woman he’d had to reach over, her blond, curly hair spilling down her back like wavy, near-white gold. She had a hand pressed to the side of her face, trying to…hide?

Something in the set of her shoulders seemed familiar, but he couldn’t put his finger on why. He’d only been back from Bosnia for a week, and he certainly hadn’t met anyone with that kind of hair.

Only one woman he’d ever known had had hair like that…

Nah. Couldn’t be her. Colleen had always said she’d blow this town as soon as she could. She was long gone by now, out of his life forever.

His curiosity and male awareness got the best of him, though. Would this woman have a face to match those long, perfect curls? As he pulled his hand away from Joe, he leaned sideways to get a look at her.

His heart stalled.

It was Colleen.

A jolt of stunned surprise exploded in him like a Scud missile going to ground, and the day she’d busted his heart into a million pieces flashed in his brain. Surprisingly sharp pain knifed him, as if she’d walked out on him yesterday instead of eight years ago.

I don’t love you, Aiden. I never will.

Her parting words still ripped through him like a tropical typhoon, jabbing at the rough scar she’d carved in his heart.

He mentally recoiled from that burning ache, hating the bitter reminder of the love she hadn’t returned, of how she’d walked away, leaving his dreams of a home and family in the dust.

The hellish years he’d spent photographing things most people saw only in their nightmares had honed his recovery skills to a fine point. But recovering from the shock of unexpectedly seeing the only woman he’d ever loved sitting right here, bringing all of the old pain and gagging bitterness to the surface, was damn hard.

She dropped her hand and looked the way he felt when he’d blown a whole roll of film. Tiny lines had formed between her delicate eyebrows and her plump, perfectly made-up mouth—painted in the same pink, totally hot shade she’d always worn—was pressed into a tight line.

“Colleen Stewart,” he drawled, hoping to keep the clawing pain inside him from showing. “That glad to see me?”

She slanted a gaze up at him and smiled a fake little familiar smile, the one she used when she didn’t want to talk, the one he’d seen often and always dreaded. Her intense blue eyes, which reminded him of the sky on a perfect summer day, sparked. “You have no idea.”

He lifted an eyebrow and tightened his jaw. What the hell was her problem? She’d dumped him on his butt, not the other way around.