Cathy Gillen - His Baby Bargain

Sara offered Charley a sippy cup of milk.

“And your family...?” Did the McCabes know even part of what he’d just told her?

Apparently not, from his reaction.

Matt’s brows lowered like thunderclouds over his gray-blue eyes. “They know I don’t talk about what happened over there.”

“Except you just did.”

He frowned. “Only because I want you to know. So you’ll stop asking me if I can be hands-on with Champ or any other puppy, because I just can’t. I don’t want that kind of responsibility.” His grimace deepened. “Not ever again.”

Talk about a textbook case of PTSD. Sighing, she got a washcloth and cleaned Charley’s face and hands. Removed his bib.

Matt came closer. His mood shifting, now that his heart-wrenching confession had been made, he gazed gently down at Charley, who was now slamming both his palms happily on the high chair tray. “So I’ll gladly write a check. But as for the rest,” he gritted out, “there is just no way, Sara.”

Sara understood guilt, unwanted memories and unbearable pain. More than he would ever know.

Matt exhaled. Then moved so she had no choice but to look into his eyes. “And I would appreciate it,” he said, as their gazes locked, held, “if you didn’t talk to anyone else about what I’ve just told you.”

Even if it would help him eventually? Sara wondered, conflicted. Still, she knew a confidence deserved to be kept. So she did what she knew in her heart was right for their friendship, which miraculously seemed to be resuming.

“Okay,” she said, letting out a long breath, and lounging against the counter, too. “I won’t tell anyone what you went through over there. But if you do want to talk to someone...someday...”

He moved away again, his manner as gruff as his low voice. “No. All I want to do is put it behind me.”

Easier said than done , she thought.

But she understood.

Sometimes the only way to get past pain that immense was to stop reliving it and move on. Survive and advance. Hour by hour...day by day.

He removed a checkbook and pen from his shirt pocket.

“So, what do you think it will take to fund a drive for volunteer puppy raisers? Will a thousand dollars be okay to start?” He squinted at the hesitation he saw on her face. “What?”

Noticing Charley was beginning to look very sleepy, she lifted him out of his high chair, walked into the living room and sat down in the rocker glider. She brushed her lips across the top of his head, then positioned him so his chest was cuddled against hers, his head nestled in the crook of her shoulder.

Aware Matt was watching her closely, appearing to feel the same tenderness for her son that she did, she returned. “New ideas, and the money to fund them, are always appreciated.”

He followed and settled on the ottoman opposite her. Knees spread, hands clasped in front of him. “But?” he asked quietly.

She smiled ruefully, as Charley sighed and closed his eyes. “I’ll be blunt. I don’t think this is going to solve your problem with your family.”

Matt frowned. “Why not?”

Since Charley was drowsy enough to put down, she rose and carried him over to the Pack ’n Play in the corner of the breakfast nook. When she’d settled him, she turned back to Matt and said, “Because I know your sister, Lulu, and your mother, and they’re going to see any extroverted action by you, no matter how small, as a much-needed breakdown of the walls you’ve put up around you since you came back from the Middle East. And they are going to want to expand on that.”

Matt frowned. “So their nagging will increase, not decrease. Is that it?”

“Pretty much.” She went into the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee.

Arms folded in front of him, Matt lounged against the counter again. “So what do you suggest?”

She shrugged, wishing he didn’t fit into her household quite so easily. “It’s your family.”

He watched her measure coffee into the paper filter. With a wry half smile, he pointed out, “You come from a large family, too, darlin’.”

As always, the endearment melted her heart and made her way too aware of him. Physically, and in other ways, too. She poured water into the reservoir.

“Yes, but mine are spread out all over the country now. So their ability to badger me in person is limited mostly to phone calls and texts. They generally don’t just show up on my doorstep. Well,” she amended hastily at his skeptical expression, “my parents have come to see us a few times, and hinted that I should start looking for a job close to the university where they live and teach in Colorado Springs. But for now at least they’ve accepted that I want to raise Charley in the community where Anthony and I grew up.”

His glance drifted over her. “Think you will ever change your mind?”

Good question, one she was still wrestling with. “I don’t know. Maybe. But I like my job at Healing Meadow Veterinary Hospital. They’ve been really good about extending my maternity leave past the terms I initially thought I wanted.”

Although it had been rough, going through the last six months of her pregnancy alone, after her husband’s death. She’d had the support of her work colleagues and other single moms that she knew. Plus, her parents had come to Texas for Charley’s birth, and helped her for a few weeks after that, but since then, she had been mostly on her own, with help from friends whenever she needed and or wanted it. Of course, it wasn’t the same as going through a pregnancy with a loving husband at her side, sharing every moment of Charley’s growth and development with his daddy. Having Matt around today had shown her that. Made her long for an intact nuclear family, and the kind of hope-filled future a situation like that would bring.

Luckily, Matt had no way of knowing how emotional she was feeling, deep down inside.

Still, his attention deepened in a way that warmed her from the inside out. In deference to her sleeping son, he moved slightly closer and kept his voice low. “What terms did you want from your employer?”

She swallowed and tried not to flush. She may have had an unrequited crush on Matt once—when they were teens—but they were destined to be nothing more than friends now.

“Six months.”

Turning away, she forced herself to ignore the intense yearning for closeness, and the flutter of desire that swept through her. “But now that Charley is six months old, I can see I’m not quite ready to go back full-time.”

Ignoring the masculine warmth and strength emanating from his tall body, she busied herself wiping down the high chair. “So I’m going to stay on leave another three months, and then ease into work by taking emergency calls every other weekend, and seeing patients one day a week.”

Matt observed, “And you’re taking on Champ, too.”

Who, Sara noted, was curled up in a ball in his indoor puppy pen, fast asleep.

“For just a month or so.” She hoped, anyway. “But yeah, I really am going to have to find someone to help me with that.”

She got out the cream and sugar and set them on the island, along with a plate of oatmeal-cranberry-pecan cookies.

Matt watched her fill two mugs. “What about Charley?”

Their fingers touched as she handed him his mug. Aware she was tingling more now than she had been before, Sara furrowed her brow. “What do you mean?”

“You said you were going to need help to work with Champ and watch your son simultaneously.”

Sara stirred in cream and sugar. “Right.”

Matt drank his black. “Would you consider letting me assist you with your son?”

Sara paused. Was this guilt talking—or something else? She looked him up and down. “Let me get this straight. You...Mr. Lonesome...want to be Charley’s baby wrangler?”