Christie Ridgway - Beginning With Baby

“Say again?” she said.

Crossing his arms over his chest, he once more narrowed his gaze. “Package. For you. Might be important.”

She blinked, appreciating his succinctness. “Oh. Okay. Thank you.” Though she doubted Teddy would have made a decision so quickly—he wasn’t one to promptly respond to anything even slightly unpleasant—she’d better check it out.

Whirling around, she bent for the diaper bag, Rex, the quilt and the stroller.

“Let me.” Jackson reached for the baby.

Phoebe dumped the diaper bag in the seat of the stroller and folded the quilt then placed it atop the bag. Squashing a traitorous sense of feminine smugness over the man she was walking away with, Phoebe waved her fingers in a brief goodbye to the still-stunned play group.

The stroller wheels crunched over the dusting of sand on the park’s cement path. With Jackson leading and Phoebe slightly behind, they headed toward home. She gazed on the broad expanse of his back and tried not to be fascinated by the powerful muscles she saw playing beneath the worn fabric of his shirt.

Suddenly little footsteps pounded against the cement behind them. The three-year-old mop top caught up with them, her fat cheeks pink with exertion. Her mother was trailing behind her, a puzzled look on her pleasant face.

“Mister!” The toddler looked up at Jackson with the same kind of awe that Phoebe barely hid better.

Frowning, he looked down. A pained expression crossed swiftly over his face, but then was gone. “What?” he said harshly. Then he took a breath and seemed to deliberately soften his voice. “What is it?”

“You that baby’s daddy?” She pointed her sticky lollipop at Rex’s puffy, diapered bottom.

He shook his head, turning as if to move on.

The tot wasn’t going to let him go that easily. “Mister!”

Jackson froze, then shifted back. “Yes?” He raised an eyebrow and his lips tilted upward, his expression now half-amused and all masculine.

A totally foreign zing of heat sizzled through Phoebe’s bloodstream. She blinked.

The little blonde blinked.

The little blonde’s mother stumbled.

They all stared at Jackson, his face hard, but patient, and the picture he made in rough boots, soft jeans and chest-baring shirt, cuddling the tiny infant. Goose bumps prickled Phoebe’s scalp.

“Yes?” he prompted again.

“Well…” The little girl seemed to screw up all her courage. “If you’re not his, will you be my daddy?”

The toddler stared up at Jackson.

The toddler’s mother emitted a little squeak.

Phoebe briefly closed her eyes, without a clue as to how Jackson might react.

He shocked her. Hunkering down, Rex still cupped against his chest, he looked at the little girl eye-to-eye and smiled.

It was the first time Phoebe had seen him give one, and she almost keeled over in the sand. It softened the stark handsomeness of his face, changing it to something altogether devastating. White, warm, Jackson’s smile gave Phoebe another secret zing where a woman who’d made her kind of promise to herself had no business zinging.

The smile must have given the little girl confidence. “Well?” she demanded. “Will you be my daddy?”

He smiled once more, then tapped the little blonde on the nose with one long finger. “Thanks for the invite, pumpkin,” he said gently. “But I’m not cut out to be anybody’s anything.”

Jackson stood outside Phoebe’s door, a tall takeout cup of coffee heating each palm, and creamers, sugar packets and red stirrers balanced on each plastic top. He didn’t know why he was here. Well, yeah, he did. On his way into the Victorian after work this morning, he’d run into Melinda Richie, the nurse who lived on the first floor. She’d just happened to mention that Phoebe and Rex had a rough night.

He’d suddenly remembered dark hours from a thousand years ago. Crying babies that were only soothed by walking the floors in someone’s arms. Being so tired he hadn’t made it to school the next day, even though he’d already missed way too many of his classes.

Listening to Nurse Richie describe Phoebe’s disturbed night, an unexpected, but by now not unfamiliar, Samaritan impulse had overcome him. The day before, the impulse had sent him to find Phoebe in the park—a bust of an idea, since the package was something not urgent and pertaining to her business. This morning the impulse had taken control once again and sent him back out of the Victorian and to the local Speedy-Mart for the coffees and bagels he now held.

No sense letting them go to waste. Hands occupied, he lightly tapped on Phoebe’s door with the toe of his boot.

When she opened it, Jackson nearly dropped the cups. Long brown hair tumbled and tangled, eyes at half-mast with weariness, and wearing a simple sleeveless, white nightgown, she looked like a woman who’d just risen from bed.

Jackson restlessly shuffled his feet.

She shifted baby Rex against her body and then her eyes opened wider, her whole face brightening at the sight of what he held in his hands.

She sniffed delicately. “Coffee? Is that coffee?” Her eyes blinked once slowly, as if she was coming awake. She lifted her gaze to him. “I’ll pay you whatever you ask for one of those cups.”

What if he asked for a taste of her mouth? It sat there on her face, right below those morning-sky eyes and that perfect nose, bare and ripe for kissing. Tempting him. He shuffled his feet again.

“You’re welcome to come in,” she said. “As long as you bring that coffee with you.”

He followed her inside, kicking closed the front door with his foot. Then, as if she’d just expended her final energy reserves, Phoebe slipped bonelessly to the love seat in her living area. She flung out one arm, exposing the blue veins at the crook of her elbow. “I’m way too tired to drink it. Intravenously, please.”

He half smiled at her little joke, thinking he’d much rather put his mouth on that translucent, innocent skin. She would taste like she smelled, flowery and soft.

“Jackson?”

He approached her slowly, then sat beside her to set the cups on the small table in front of her. “Sugar? Cream? How do you take it?”

Her head moved from side to side against the cushions, spreading her hair against them. “I can’t remember. Black will be fine.”

He busied himself making an opening in the plastic top. “The night was that bad?”

Her eyes were closed. “Rex wasn’t happy unless I was jiggling him and walking. At one point I tried sitting on the couch and moving my feet, but he’s way too smart for that, my little guy is.”

My little guy, she’d said. Didn’t she know how dangerous it was to think that way? “Here.” Jackson nudged her free hand with the coffee cup. “Is Rex sick or something?”

She sat up a bit to take a sip of the coffee, carefully keeping the hot brew away from the baby. Her happy sigh at the first taste made the whole damn trip worthwhile. She took another sip, then looked over at him.

“Not sick, according to Melinda. Do you know that she’s a n—” At his quick nod, she continued. “I called and asked her to check on him, and he didn’t show signs of anything but indigestion. She suggested a change in his formula. We think he might be a lot happier from now on.”

He nodded. “Makes sense.” He reached over and ran a finger down the sleeping baby’s back.

Phoebe shivered, and he saw goose bumps rise on the bare skin of the arm that clasped the baby.

He frowned. “You’re cold? Do you want a robe?”

There was a little flush on her cheeks, from the coffee maybe. She shook her head. “I’m fine.”

“You’re sure?” Sleepy and pink-cheeked, she looked vulnerable. Tempting.