Baby, Oh Baby!

But all the logic in the world didn’t take away Rachel’s feeling that this baby had been left on her door-step. And she wanted to believe the teens really would come back. Unlike her own parents.

A rusty, familiar pain twisted inside Rachel. Wow, she must really be tired. It was the only explanation for dredging up those old feelings. That was ancient history and she really was so over it.

And who cared anyway when this beautiful infant was staring up at her with big innocent eyes. Something she’d never before experienced squeezed tight in the region of her heart. This child needed to be cared for and Rachel intended to do just that. To the best of her ability. Which was, at the moment, slightly handicapped on account of very little sleep.

She finished diapering the tiny girl, then cradled the baby against her shoulder. “Shh, little one,” she crooned. “What do you want? You’re fed. You’ve got clean pants. What’s wrong?”

She sat on her couch, but that produced another earsplitting squall that bordered on a pitch only a dog could hear. “Oo-kay.”

Instantly, Rachel stood and paced from one end of her ground floor two bedroom apartment to the other, wondering which would wear out first—the rug, the baby or her. Rubbing the infant’s tiny back as she walked, she tried to ignore her bone-deep weariness. Did all new mothers do this? How, after the physical rigors of giving birth, did the average woman manage this aerobic exercise?

A sudden knock on the door startled her. It was barely seven o’clock in the morning. Who could possibly— Hope expanded like a balloon inside her.

“Maybe that’s your mom,” she said to the baby. “She only left yesterday, but I bet she missed you like crazy and couldn’t wait for a decent hour to see you. Besides, she already knows you’re a baby and you don’t keep decent hours.”

Rachel slid off the security chain and turned the deadbolt, then yanked open the door. But it wasn’t Holly Johnson standing there. Not even close. Wrong gender.

“Morning, Rachel.” The deep voice never failed to scrape along her nerve endings.

“Jake.” Jake Fletcher, the man who rubbed her the wrong way. He also happened to be the baby’s uncle. Could this day get any worse?

“Sorry to bother you—” He stared at her. “Good Lord. Are you all right?”

She glanced in the mirror over the small table in her midget-size entry. Yikes! Her blond hair stood up in spikes all over her head. That was bad since she wasn’t going for the punk look. The only makeup she had on was what she hadn’t had the energy to wash off the night before. Having an infant crying at all hours in a small apartment wasn’t conducive to a regular beauty regimen. Beauty, heck. She’d barely managed basic hygiene. And the cherry on the melted sundae that was her life—she was in pajamas. Shorty pajamas. She was practically naked.

“I’m fine.” She clutched the baby tighter against her. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s about Dan.”

“Of course it is. The last time you came to my apartment was when you found out Holly was pregnant and your brother was the father.”

“I remember. She’d just been cut loose from her foster home after turning eighteen. And had nowhere to go until you stepped in,” he finished, his voice dripping sarcasm.

“I’m not sure what you’re implying, Jake. But like I told you then, I met her at the hospital’s prenatal clinic and suggested she stay with me temporarily.”

“So you could help her figure out what state programs might be of help to her,” he said dryly.

“It’s what I do. I’m a hospital discharge planner. It’s my job to know what programs are available to all patients.”

“Right.”

This guy really fried her grits and he had from the first moment she’d met him. “The last time you showed up on my doorstep you demanded that Holly marry your brother.”

“They have a baby. It’s the right thing to do,” he shot back.

“I’m not going to debate that with you at this hour. By the way, what are you doing here at this hour?” What are you doing here—period—was what she’d wanted to say. But she held back. Then she remembered. “Oh. Right. Dan. What about him?”

“Is he here?”

Uh-oh. He didn’t know where Dan was? She had the mother of all bad feelings.

“I haven’t seen him,” she said truthfully.

“He didn’t come by to see Holly and the baby?”

“Yesterday, then he left.” With Holly and not the baby. And Jake was supposed to know all about this.

“Can I talk to Holly?”

Rachel’s protective maternal mode switched into high gear. Holly had been adamantly against leaving the baby with Jake when Rachel had suggested it. And this guy had gotten on her bad side—he’d never been on her good side—since she’d first met him. Because of his perpetual disapproving expression every time he looked at Holly. When he came near her, the teen had clutched Dan’s hand. And if Jake spoke to Holly, she seemed to shrink—not easy when her belly had grown large with the baby.

Jake had accompanied Holly and Dan to childbirth classes and hovered like an enforcer, making it plain as the groove in his square jaw that he intended to call the shots in this situation. Rachel believed that one caught more flies with honey than vinegar. The teens had made a mistake. A really big mistake. But they needed direction not a dictator.

“Look, I know this probably isn’t the best time,” he finally said when she didn’t respond to his question.

“What was your first clue? The pajamas?”

One corner of his mouth quirked up. “I mean this in the nicest possible way, but you normally look better.”

“Better than what?” She couldn’t decide if he’d just paid her a compliment or not. At the moment she looked like something the cat yakked up, but usually she looked better? “What does that mean?”

“Your eyes are bloodshot and the circles underneath practically go to your—” He glanced down to her chest where the baby had relaxed against her, then raised his gaze to hers. “To your knees.”

“Obviously you don’t know what it’s like to be up all night with a newborn,” she snapped.

“No, I don’t.”

Rachel normally didn’t snap at people, even ones like him who tried to run the world. In fact, she didn’t much care for people who snapped at others. But after being up all hours of the night with a crying baby, snapping came sort of naturally.

It had felt good in fact—right up to the moment she thought she saw a flash of pain in his deep blue eyes. Now why did she have to go and notice that? She could be wrong. Nothing hurt the Jake Fletchers of the world—the strong, stoic, silent types. The hot, hunky, heartbreaker types. But when she studied him, the way he quickly shuttered the expression, she knew she wasn’t wrong. She’d seen that lost look before. More times than she could count. Jordan and Ashley had told her she should quit trying to mother the world. But old habits died hard. Case in point—Holly, her latest maternal mission.

“I’m sorry. That was rude of me to snap at you,” she said. “I guess my social skills need a good night’s sleep.”

“No harm done.”

“Okay, good. Let’s start over. Come in.” She let out a long breath, bracing for the conversation she knew they needed to have.

“Thanks,” he said, stepping over the threshold. He shut the door behind him.

“Jake, there’s something you need to know—”

“Dan’s gone.” Jake was holding his black Stetson in his hands, twirling it. “He didn’t come home last night.”

“I know.”

“You do?” Something dark and dangerous shadowed the chiseled angles of his cheeks and jaw.

“Being a teenage father must be a scary thing,” she said, which produced another look in his eyes that made her uneasy.