Baby 101

Automatically he shifted Greg lower into the crook of his arm, curled his hand around his bottom, cradled his head. Lana laughed, a bright melodious sound that warmed his soul the way her touch had warmed his skin. Jessie had never laughed like that, at least not for a long, long time. “That’s better. I was right. You were a running back, weren’t you?”

He grinned. He couldn’t help himself. “A real hotshot on my high school team, but never better than second string in college.”

Greg started sucking on his fist. “He’s hungry. What football metaphor can you come up with to help me out there?”

“Don’t try and get the whole ten yards in one carry.” She handed him the bottle.

“What do you mean by that?”

She smiled again. “Don’t let him drink too fast. And bubble him when the bottle’s half empty, whether he wants to stop sucking or not.”

“You are good at this,” he said, relaxing a little. “How about giving me a few more lessons?” It was the depth of his need to get a handle on this baby-raising that prompted him to make such an outrageous request.

“I…”

“I’ll pay you.”

“Certainly not.”

He wished he’d kept his damned mouth shut. She was a businesswoman and a Lord. He hadn’t been in Austin long, but he knew the Lord name was a respected one. She was way, way out of his league, and here he was offering to pay her for parenting lessons. For being a goddamn nanny. “Sorry, that was out of line.”

“It’s not that.” She looked at Greg, and he saw her mouth tighten slightly. “I don’t have time. I’m late now for a party. My godmother’s grandson…it’s his first birthday. I can’t miss it. And then there’s my business….”

“Just the basics,” he said, determined that she not walk out of his life as quickly as she had barged into it. “Just until I can get my feet under me.”

“They have excellent parenting classes at Maitland Maternity. Or you could make arrangements to leave Greg at the day-care center there. They accept infants. My friend Beth Maitland—Beth Redstone, I should say—runs it. The care’s excellent.”

She was babbling. He’d only known her for a few minutes but he’d bet his last cent, and he didn’t have much more to bet, that it wasn’t like her. She was entranced by Greg, he could tell. She wanted to say yes. He decided not to try to charm her. Hell, he wasn’t that good with women anyway, never had been. He settled on the truth. “I can’t afford full-time day care. Every cent I have’s tied up in buying and renovating this building.”

“Oh. Then a nanny?” She bit her lip. “No. I suppose that would be even more expensive.”

“And what woman in her right mind would want to be here all day?”

“Then it’s certainly no place for a baby.”

She had a damned good point and he knew it, but he was between a big rock and a hard place. Not only did he have everything he owned tied up in this place, but he had a big chunk of his parents’ money in it, as well. “We’re staying here, Miz Lord. For the time being we have nowhere else to go. Look, I’m sorry I asked. You’ve been a big help. Greg and I will muddle through. Go back to what you were doing. And thanks again.” He motioned with his head for her to precede him out of the kitchen. Greg sensed his agitation and began to fuss, pushing the bottle out of his mouth with surprising force. Two seconds later he was crying again.

All the starch seemed to go out of Lana Lord. “See, you’re upsetting him because you’re upset. You win, Dylan Van Zandt. I’ll help you with Greg until you can get the hang of it and get this place fit to raise a baby in.”

SHE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN Michael and Garrett would have conniptions when she told them what she’d agreed to do for Dylan Van Zandt. Not even being in the middle of little Chase’s birthday party with a hundred people standing around watching them had made a difference. She should have kept her mouth shut until they were all four alone. Michael had backed her into a corner and refused to let her go until she’d told them all the details. When she described going up the staircase armed only with a baseball bat, she thought her brother the security expert was going to have a stroke.

Michael lectured her on the stupidity of that kind of stunt, and Garrett lectured her on her lack of even a modicum of common sense for a good ten minutes, until she had all she could take and told them both to knock it off. If she wanted to help Dylan Van Zandt with his son she would, no matter what her siblings thought of the idea.

Shelby, bless her heart, had been all for it. She thought it was time for Lana to meet someone new. Garrett had said very little after that, but the set look on his darkly tanned face left no doubt in his sister’s mind that if there was anything even slightly out of place in Dylan’s life, her brother would make the other man wish he’d never laid eyes on one of the Austin Lords.

Family. She loved her siblings dearly but she could make her own decisions and trust her own instincts. Lana leaned against the headrest and drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. It was hot and humid, and thunder-clouds were building up over the hills west of town. If traffic didn’t start moving soon, her air-conditioning would give up the ghost. She should have had the car serviced weeks ago, but she’d been too busy.

And if she was busy then, she was going to be even busier in the future.

What had she agreed to? Parenting lessons? What did that entail? Baby-sitting? Probably. She could hardly leave Dylan’s son alone up there in the dust and dirt and mouse droppings. No, she’d have to keep him with her during the day. The thought made her heart skip a beat. A baby, one that she could care for as if it were her own.

She sobered at that. Greg wasn’t her baby. And she had better keep that foremost in her mind.

There was a parking space in front of Oh, Baby!, and since it was Sunday evening she took it. Mostly she parked around the corner on a little side street to leave room for customers’ cars. She sat still for a moment looking at her building, seeing it with different eyes. It was made of brick, old and mellowed. The windows were tall and well-proportioned on the second floor, square and functional on the third. The four stores on the ground floor all had bay windows and oval glass in the doors. She loved the small-town feel of the neighborhood. It looked like Main Street somewhere in the Midwest, not just a few blocks off the main drag in Austin, Texas.

When she’d first opened her store, there had been a little flower shop between the bakery and the vintage clothing store. Along with a New Age bookshop, they made up the other tenants, but the flower shop had gone out of business long since. She hadn’t thought about it in years. There had been a curving marble stairway leading nowhere that the owner had used to display floral arrangements and garden ornaments, she recalled. And once she’d glimpsed an old-fashioned metal-gated elevator through an open curtain behind the counter. She hadn’t made the connection then—that the space behind the grandiose wooden doors had once been the lobby of an apartment building—but now she did.

And soon it would be again.

That meant people moving into the neighborhood, stabilizing it even more. She liked the idea. Young couples ready to start their families, all of them buying furniture and strollers and bottle sets and rocking horses. She liked that very much.

Lana was smiling when she arrived at Dylan’s door at the top of the stairs. It was open a few inches, as though he was expecting her. She pushed it wider and called softly, in case Greg was asleep. No answer. She walked into the empty main room of the apartment, taking a moment to look around. An archway she hadn’t noticed on her first visit opened into a hallway that must lead to the bedrooms. She wondered if there were two or three.

It would be nice to be living here, so close to her work, without that long commute and the upkeep on her parents’ huge old house. But her parents had loved that house. They’d lived there all their married life. And if she moved in here, the apartment wouldn’t be occupied by a potential customer.

Lana walked to the kitchen doorway. “Hello,” she said softly.

Dylan didn’t answer because he was sleeping as soundly as the baby in the carrier beside him on the table. His elbows were propped on the blueprints of the building, his dark head resting on his hands, a pair of reading glasses dangling from his fingers. Lana hesitated, undecided whether to wake him or to leave as quietly as she’d come.

Greg stirred and sniffled and made adorable baby sounds, and Lana didn’t leave. A moment later Dylan opened his eyes, blinked just like his son and focused on her. “You came back,” he said.

“I told you I would.” She’d explained about the party, that she had to be there. But she wasn’t sure he’d believed her when she said she’d come back. “How did it go?” she asked. His beard had darkened, she noticed, and he looked dead tired, despite his nap.

“Okay. I fed him again. Didn’t try for a touchdown in one run. Got him to burp like you told me. He fell asleep, and I guess I did, too. Damn, I had a lot of work I wanted to get done.” He stood and began rolling up the blueprints.

“Are those the plans for the renovation you spoke of?” Lana asked. She felt awkward standing in the doorway. She felt awkward around him, period. She’d been with Jason Fairmont almost two years, and she hadn’t even thought of dating since they’d broken up. But Dylan Van Zandt was a very attractive man, the kind no sane woman could be indifferent to.

“Yes.” The frown between his dark brows smoothed out a little. “Would you like to see them?”

“Yes, I would.”

He unrolled the blueprints, slipping one edge under Greg’s carrier and holding the other flat with the palm of his hand. “There are four apartments on this floor, corresponding to the storefronts below us. They all have two bedrooms, three if you count the maid’s room, here.” He pointed to a small room at the very back of the apartment layout. “I’m planning to turn those into a bathroom and walk-in closet for the master suite.” He circled the area on the drawing with his finger. “Updating the kitchens and bathrooms will be the biggest expense. Have to bring the heating plant and the electrical circuits up to code, too. And the elevator to comply with the disability laws. That could cost me a pretty penny to renovate.”

“Do all the apartments have fireplaces? And those beautiful high ceilings?”

“Yes, ma’am. But the fireplaces will have gas logs. They make ones so real-looking you can hardly tell the difference.”

“What about the third floor?”

“I figure two big loft apartments. I’m hoping this area of the city will start attracting artsy-craftsy types. It’s close enough to the university that that’s not too big a stretch.”

“And all those Generation Xers who work downtown and at the Statehouse are going to start wanting places where they can spread out a bit, raise a family and still not have the commute they’d get if they moved to the suburbs.”

“Exactly what I told my dad when I talked him into putting a chunk of his retirement money into this place.” He looked at her and nodded approvingly. Lana felt herself color slightly. She hadn’t meant to speak her thoughts aloud. She felt disloyal again, the way she had earlier when she’d been thinking about her birth mother. Her parents had loved their big Tudor in its old established neighborhood with gated driveways and enormous live oaks dotting the lawn. She loved it, too. But it was so much house for a single young woman. And it was a forty-minute drive into the city—on a good day.

“I hope it works out for you.”

Greg began to snuffle into his fist.