Christie Ridgway: Beginning With Baby

“His father phoned last night,” Phoebe suddenly heard herself saying. She didn’t know why she was telling Jackson. Maybe because there was nobody else to tell.

His expression went even more unreadable. “Rex’s father?”

She nodded. “We talked about the baby. I told him how I felt about Rex. That from the first moment I saw him, it was, well…I can’t explain it.”

He shrugged. “Nature made babies to appeal to us.”

“It was more than that.” It had just felt right, from the very beginning. “He still wants some time he said, but I’m not going to worry.” She brightened now, just thinking about the possibilities. “Things have a way of working out, don’t you think?”

“You are young,” he murmured under his breath.

“I’m hopeful.” She smiled at him. “And a good cook. Enjoy.” With a nod at the muffins, she made herself turn back toward home.

Hopeful, good cook and hopeless romantic, she thought, as she heard his door click firmly and without hesitation behind her. But that last minor problem was solved. In the course of a few pulse beats, her silly little heart had thrown out a few questions that had been quite simply—and sensibly—answered by the hard man with the daddy’s touch.

“I should be going,” she’d said.

And he’d replied, “Yes.”

After returning to her apartment, Phoebe went through the motions of her normal day. Midmornings she had started taking Rex out for a bit of fresh air. After Teddy’s first phone call, she’d realized that if Rex was going to be around for a while, she’d have to come up with some sort of routine for herself and the baby. So at about ten each day, she put him in the stroller she’d bought and rolled the baby down the block to the small and shady city park.

Serendipitously, that first morning, she’d run into an acquaintance from one of her college classes, Lisa. The other woman had a baby a few months older than Rex, and she’d organized a neighborhood play group that had a daily meeting time of ten, and a designated meeting location of the sandbox to the left of the swings. Mothers and their children made it to the play group the days they could, and all had immediately welcomed Phoebe and Rex.

One of the last to arrive today, Phoebe found an open spot among the mothers and children, then spread out the little quilt she’d carried under her arm. Next she set down Rex and his diaper bag. His eyes wide, he stared at her, seemingly mesmerized by her hair stirring in the breeze.

After an initial greeting, the conversations resumed around her. Older children rushed by with sand toys in their hands, and crawling babies explored the connected and multicolored worlds of the various quilts.

Lisa, baby Andrea on her hip, plunked herself down beside Phoebe. “How’s it going today?”

Phoebe smiled at her new friend. It still amazed her how even pseudo motherhood created such instant bonds. “So much better. I’m starting to get the hang of keeping him happy.”

Lisa nodded. “It takes a while.” She chucked the serious Rex under the chin, and the baby’s lips quirked in an automatic smile. “He looks great.”

Phoebe studied her little charge. Downy dark hair, silky eyebrows, eyes turning browner by the day.

“You know, I think he’s starting to look like you,” Lisa said.

“Worse.” Phoebe smiled, her heart aching a little. “He’s starting to feel like mine.”

As she’d tried to explain to both Teddy and Jackson, that had happened nearly instantly, too. She hadn’t anticipated it and couldn’t explain it, but something strange had occurred the moment she’d held him. Her heart had bloomed, and this tender, almost painful love had poured out. For a woman who had always wanted a family desperately and who had been lonely for too long, it was a feeling both unignorable and potentially dangerous.

“You hear from that stepbrother of yours again?”

Phoebe nodded. “Last night. But he’s still hard to pin down.” That was the danger. If Teddy did nothing about the situation, she might lose the baby. She took a calming breath. “And I’m hearing plenty from that landlady of mine. She’s making all sorts of unpleasant noises about a single woman raising a baby alone. She’s even talked about contacting Social Services.”

Lisa frowned. “Don’t let her do that! At the very worst, they could take Rex away from you. At the least, if you’re going for custody of Rex you don’t want even a hint of a problem.”

“I know you’re right, but…” She shrugged, tracing the tiny curve of Rex’s ear. “Though I think she’s self-righteous and interfering, at heart I’m sure she’s well meaning. I just don’t know what to say to satisfy her.”

“Tell her you’re not going to be single forever. Tell her…”

Another one of the nearby moms had been listening in. They had all been so supportive and friendly that Phoebe had shared her predicament with many of them. “Yeah, tell her you’re going to marry someone—” she broke off, her eyes widening and a mischievous grin appearing as she peered over Phoebe’s shoulder “—someone like that!”

Laughing, Phoebe threw a casual glance behind her. Then the laughter died. Jackson, looking rumpled and dangerous in jeans and another of his work shirts—half-unbuttoned—was stalking her way.

Oh, goodness.

A breathless panic made her look frantically around her for an instant, trying to figure out why an unattached man like Jackson Abbott would be striding across the grass in the direction of playground swings and shrieking children.

He was staring directly at her.

Something brought her to her feet. It was the width of his shoulders, maybe, or that glimpse of tanned skin in the vee of his shirt. Possibly the hard, chiseled planes of his face.

Earlier this morning his looks and manner had unleashed pinballs of reaction in her belly. Now his sensuality acted on her like a fishing line. One look and he reeled her right in.

He halted a couple steps from her. “Phoebe.”

She gulped for air like a landed sturgeon. Just her name on his lips gave her a rousing wave of shivers.

The other women around her had fallen silent. Out of the corner of her eye, Phoebe saw another female, this one a golden-haired mop top of a toddler with a lollipop in one hand, stop in her tracks to gape at him.

She swallowed. “You were looking for me, Jackson?” After their unstated conversation this morning, she’d doubted she would ever see him again. And she’d been glad of it.

Daddy’s touch or not, she’d been right about the hardness of the man. An attraction to one such as him was something she couldn’t afford right now. With Rex—and Teddy for that matter—occupying her life, she was exactly right in thinking the last thing she needed was another troublesome male.

Still, just looking at him made her cheeks heat.

His eyes narrowed. “You okay?”

She swallowed again. “Sure. Fine.” Stop babbling, Phoebe. “Okeydokey.” Curses. The thing was, all the cautions and unstated rebuffs in the world didn’t make that deep aloneness she sensed in him any less compelling.

Her hand fluffed her bangs self-consciously. “Why, um, why are you here?” she asked, staring at his hair and the way the smooth and shiny stuff curved against his strong neck.

“A couriered package was left for you. They knocked on my door first, by mistake, and I signed for you, but then I got to worrying that it might be something…important.” He frowned darkly, as if worrying about her annoyed him. “Maybe it’s from Rex’s—from your brother. Mrs. Bee told me where I could find you.” He paused. “Phoebe?”

She started. Darn! She was as easily mesmerized as Rex. From Jackson’s hair her gaze had wandered to the dark stubble of beard along his jaw, and she’d heard, but not quite absorbed, his explanation.