The Colorado Kid

He leaped to the task with obvious eagerness, as if some action, any action, was better than standing around stewing. While he carried them in, plopped them on the floor and ripped into them, Matty finished taking the fleece sleeper off the baby. Sebastian’s baby. Every time Matty thought about it, pain stabbed her chest.

Much as she probably ought to, she couldn’t leave the subject alone. “Did she actually say you were the father?”

“No. Her note just asked me to be Elizabeth’s godfather until she could come back for her.” He crouched beside the boxes, sorting through the contents. “Hey, everything’s in here. Formula, diapers, clothes. Even a book on taking care of babies. And there’s an envelope.” He tore it open and scanned the contents. “Instructions. Birth certificate. Medical records. Some sort of notarized thing giving me permission to have her treated if she gets sick.”

Matty’s tiny hope that the baby wasn’t his began to die. “Sounds as if she means for you to keep her for a while,” she said softly.

He didn’t acknowledge hearing her. “Okay, here’s what she says about feeding. The milk’s in cans, and she’s already sterilized some bottles and nipples, but she has instructions for how to do it when these run out.” Sebastian grabbed up a can and the package of sterilized bottles and nipples. “I’ll handle this in the kitchen. Keep rocking her. I think that helps.”

“Wash your hands!” Matty called after him. She wasn’t sure if rocking helped calm Elizabeth, but it helped calm her. She couldn’t imagine what was wrong with this ditzy Aspen woman. Sebastian was the guy to run to if you had problems, not away from. If he’d accidentally fathered a child, he’d want to do the right thing. If he had any feeling for the mother, or maybe even if he didn’t, he’d want to get married and provide the kid with a name and a matched set of parents.

Any woman who didn’t realize that, especially after knowing him well enough to make love to him, had to be terminally stupid. She didn’t deserve Sebastian or this baby.

He came back in less time than Matty would have expected, but then she remembered Fleafarm’s huge litter ten years ago—more pups than faucets. He’d had to fill baby bottles a lot that spring.

He handed her the formula. “Do you know how to do this?”

“I’ll muddle through. I don’t think it’s rocket science.” She took the bottle. At first the baby was too upset and refused to latch on, but gradually she seemed to understand what was being offered and accepted the nipple.

Silence.

Except for George Strait singing a love song and the crackling of the fire, both of which reminded Matty of what had been planned for this evening. She hoped the baby had kept things from progressing very far.

Sebastian let out a heavy sigh. Then he picked up the sheaf of instructions and sat down in a wing chair facing Matty. He flipped through the papers and took out one. “She was born on January twenty-ninth, which makes her almost two months old.”

Matty didn’t have to work very hard to figure it out. Elizabeth had been conceived on or near Sebastian’s birthday celebration in Aspen last year. She looked up from the tiny baby to gaze at him. “You’re quite a piece of work, you know that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Everybody around here felt so sorry for you because you were having a tough time getting back into the dating game after the divorce. They were so tickled that you finally invited a woman over for dinner, for crying out loud.” Matty hadn’t been tickled, but the rest of the valley had seemed overjoyed. “Meanwhile, you’ve been sowing all sorts of wild oats with some fellow avalanche survivor in Aspen.”

He tensed. “I have not been sowing all sorts of wild oats. I’m not even sure I sowed any.”

“Then what’s this all about?”

His face darkened to a dusky rose. “It’s just that I’m not sure. We were all tanked that night, all of us except Jessica.”

Jessica. Matty hated the name on principle. “Are you saying you can’t remember if you used protection?”

“I can’t remember if I made love to her, period.”

Matty hated this subject, but she had to know the truth, and she was growing impatient with Sebastian’s dense attitude. “Look, you probably did. It was your birthday. It’s logical that if you had something going with her, you’d feel like…celebrating.”

“That’s just it. I didn’t have something going with her. We’re just friends. When you survive something like an avalanche together, you see what people are made of. Jessica has guts.” He paused. “Or so I thought.”

“Mmm.” Matty deliberately kept her response neutral, but a woman with guts didn’t desert her baby, in her estimation.

Sebastian seemed to be considering the same subject. Finally he shook his head in bewilderment. “Beats me how she could do this.”

“You still haven’t explained what happened that might make you the father.”

“Well, we really partied that night at the ski lodge—Travis, Boone, Jessica and me. Our avalanche reunion gig, we called it. We’d hoped Nat could make it, but he had some conflict at the last minute. Anyway, Jessica was staying at the lodge, because she works there as a reservation clerk, and we’d rented a cabin nearby, but not close enough to walk. We were so blitzed Jessica drove us home so we wouldn’t end up in a snowbank.”

“And?”

He blushed even deeper. “Well, you know how it is.”

“’Fraid not.”

“We were all flirting with her for the hell of it, acting like guys, but it didn’t mean anything. At least for me it didn’t. She helped each one of us to bed, and I vaguely remember trying to kiss her.”

Matty braced herself. “And after the kiss?”

“I don’t remember anything after that.”

She warned herself not to hope. “Then how can you assume you’re the father of this kid?”

“Why else would she ask me to be the godfather?”

“A million reasons.” Matty couldn’t stem the tide of hope. “You’re a good friend. You’re steady. You have the resources to handle this sort of responsibility. You’re caring. You’re gentle. You’re—”

“Clueless! I don’t know the first thing about babies!”

“So that’s why she sent the kid with an instruction manual.” Matty felt incredibly lighter. Just friends, he’d said. He couldn’t even remember the experience, if there had been an experience to remember. Elizabeth wasn’t the product of a torrid love affair. At the most, she’d been conceived in a passing moment he couldn’t even recall. Matty smiled down at Elizabeth. Maybe this wasn’t such a disaster, after all.

Sebastian watched Matty feeding the baby. She didn’t seem completely at ease doing it, but she appeared reasonably competent. Besides that, she looked very nice with that baby in her arms. Softer, somehow. She’d left her blond hair down around her shoulders tonight—that could be part of it. Usually she kept it tied out of the way with a bandanna, or twisted into a single braid.

He’d always thought Matty should have kids, but Butch couldn’t have them and he wasn’t the kind of guy who’d consider adopting. Butch. Sebastian’s gut always tightened when he thought about his late, great neighbor. He’d considered him a good friend. He’d mourned his death after Butch accidentally flew his Cessna into a mountain.

Unfortunately, for her parting shot, Barbara had ruined his memories of Butch by revealing their long-standing affair. Sebastian didn’t think Matty knew about that, and he wasn’t ever planning to tell her. He wished Barbara had kept the information to herself, except that it made the divorce easier to accept.

Matty had deserved better than Butch, Sebastian thought as she leaned over Elizabeth and looked into the baby’s eyes. Matty had the most honest blue eyes he’d ever seen. He’d trust Matty with his life, he realized with some surprise. He’d never thought in those terms before, and it startled him.

He could count on one hand the people he’d place that kind of trust in—Nat Grady, Travis Evans, Boone Conner…and Matty Lang. Not long ago he might have included Jessica in that number, but this baby thing made him wonder if he knew her at all. Leaving a two-month-old child didn’t seem to be in character with the Jessica he remembered.

Matty was studying the baby, as if to find some clue about her daddy’s identity. Sebastian was plenty curious about the baby’s looks, himself. Now that she wasn’t all red and screaming, maybe he’d recognize something.

Setting the papers on the lamp table, he got up and walked over to Matty. “Can you tell the color of her eyes?” He hunkered down next to the rocker, balancing himself with one hand on the arm of the chair.

“They could be gray, could be blue. It’s hard to tell.”

He leaned closer and looked into the baby’s eyes. They looked disturbingly familiar. Damn, but they could be the same color as his. This little bundle could be his daughter. His. His stomach twisted. This wasn’t the way he pictured bringing a child into the world, abandoned by her mother and thrust upon a father who didn’t know what the hell he was doing.

“What color are Jessica’s eyes?” Matty asked.

He wrestled his thoughts away from visions of doom.

“Um…let’s see. Brown? Maybe brown. I’m not real sure.” He liked the way Matty smelled, he thought as he compared her light scent to Charlotte’s overpowering perfume. Holding Matty wouldn’t force a guy to wear a gas mask. Holding Matty. Now there was an intriguing thought. She’d probably knock him from here to kingdom come. Or worse, she’d laugh.