Valerie Parv - Baby Wishes And Bachelor Kisses

“You have a knack for this,” he told her, his rich baritone voice admiring. “It never occurred to me that her howls were a declaration of independence.”

“It wouldn’t unless you know what to expect,” she assured him. Working at the children’s shelter, as well as helping to bring up her foster brothers and sisters, she’d had more than the usual amount of practice for her age. It made the knowledge that she could never use her experience to mother her own child all the more painful.

As she felt her eyes start to swim, she blinked furiously. She had promised herself she wasn’t going to let this beat her. “There’s something else we can try. Do you have any ripe bananas?”

He looked startled but moved toward the refrigerator where a well-filled fruit bowl was perched as if it had been shoved there out of harm’s way. “Will this do?”

Bethany accepted the golden fruit, feeing it yield to her exploratory squeeze. “Perfect.” She peeled half the fruit, broke off two small chunks and placed them in Maree’s plastic bowl. “Here you go, kitten. Try these for size.”

With another gurgling “ah, ah, ah” sound, the baby pincered one of the chunks and dropped it onto the pile of cold spinach. Bethany’s flickering glance caught Nicholas’s pained wince, but he wisely said nothing. Moments later Maree rescued the banana and poked it into her mouth, gnawing on it contentedly.

Bethany levered herself up from her kneeling position beside the high chair. “The best thing we can do is leave her to eat the banana by herself. Or not as she chooses.”

“She won’t choke or anything?”

She shook her head. “You don’t have to leave the room. Just get on with a few chores and keep your eye on her progress, but let her make most of the running. As soon as she starts playing with the food, lift her down and wait until the next mealtime. It helps not to let her graze between meals. That way she’ll be hungry for what’s on the menu next time around.”

“You are truly amazing. Are you sure you’re real and not some kind of fairy godmother?” he asked, an appreciative light dancing in his pewter gaze. It made the years peel away so she got a momentary glimpse of the boy he must have been—handsome, devilish and irresistibly attractive. All the qualities were still there, but packaged in a body that was so undeniably male that she felt a surge of involuntary response.

What would it be like to be on the receiving end of a personal compliment from this man, she found herself wondering. She had a feeling he wouldn’t bestow them idly, but neither would he withhold them if he thought they were genuinely deserved. The thought brought a flush of color to her cheeks, and she turned to watch Maree so he wouldn’t see his effect on her.

Her reaction was as inappropriate as it was unexpected, and she tried to tell herself it was probably no more than a rebound thing. She had been hurt by Alexander. In his gratitude, Nicholas was being charming to her. He was also the most attractive man she’d met in a long time. It wasn’t hard to see why the combination should so disturb her.

If she let it. She decided to keep the conversation on neutral ground. “All babies go through this stage. They’re learning how to use their bodies and control their world, which starts with trying to control their parents. I’m sure Maree’s crying has dragged her mother out in the middle of the night plenty of times lately. It’s a kind of test to see if the baby can make her mother respond.”

There was a long silence punctuated only by the sound of the baby playing with the banana. “I’m afraid Maree hasn’t had that luxury. Her mother and father were killed seven months ago. I’m the only relative she has left.”

Her gaze flew from the gurgling child to the man standing behind the high chair. He looked as if he was carved from stone but his eyes held a bleakness which tore at her. Her admiration of him soared, even as she felt her heart go out to him in his personal tragedy. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

“You didn’t read the article in the local paper?”

She shook her head, and a frown of puzzlement etched his brow as if he had expected her to know and couldn’t understand why she didn’t. Was he mixing her up with another writer? The only way she could find out was by confessing her real purpose and now didn’t seem like the right time. “I’m afraid not. If you’d rather I went away and came back some other time.” She was gathering up her bag as she spoke.

His hand on her arm stayed her. “You don’t have to leave. It still hurts to think about, but I’ve had time to come to terms with what happened.”

The heat of his touch sent awareness flashing through her, as incandescent as a signal flare. Her eyes widened. Had Nicholas felt it, too? With an effort she met his eyes and made herself ask, “Was it an accident?”

He nodded. “There was a signal failure at a railway crossing not far from here. My brother and sister-in-law were driving across when an express train slammed into their car without any warning. Maree was the only survivor because she was strapped into a baby seat. Even then, given the state of the car, it was a miracle she survived. There wasn’t a scratch on her.”

This time when her eyes blurred she made no attempt to conceal it from him. “What a terrible tragedy.”

“It was, but all we can do is go on.”

“As you’re doing with your little niece?”

He nodded. “I’m all she has in the world, and I mean to give her the best upbringing I possibly can.”

The baby, her cheeks bulging with bananas, looked the picture of health and happiness as she bounced up and down in her high chair. Apart from the recent adornment of pureed spinach, she was spotlessly clean, dressed in a gorgeous romper suit decorated in teddy bears, with a pink ribbon adorning one of her baby curls.

She was in far better condition than her uncle, Bethany decided. Nicholas looked as if he had thrown his pants on in haste and forgotten—or never had time—to shave this morning. A bluish tinge darkened the strong line of his jaw, giving him a rugged, almost-piratical appearance which was more appealing than it had any right to be. The fatigue darkening his eyes only added to his masculine appeal, and to her horror, Bethany found herself wishing she could do something to help.

This would never do. She was here for one purpose and one only, to persuade him to let her write about the Frakes Baby House. But how could she come out and say so now, when he had just revealed the depths of a personal tragedy far greater than she had anticipated?

She couldn’t, she decided. Her hand closed resolutely around her bag. “I should go. The interview can wait until another time.”

“Dammit, you needn’t start feeling sorry for me,” he growled, startling her into freezing where she stood. “I’ve had enough of that from my neighbors around here. They act as if Maree and I have a contagious disease called tragedy. When you walked in knowing nothing about out situation, you treated us just like anybody else and it was like a breath of fresh air. At least stay and have a cup of coffee with me. You said yourself the best thing to do is keep busy in the kitchen while Maree feeds herself.”

Bethany gave a wan smile. “All right, one cup of coffee. But only if it’s no trouble.”

“After the morning I’ve had, coffee isn’t any trouble, it’s a medical necessity,” he assured her. “How do you take yours?”

“Black with one sugar,” she supplied, settling herself on a high stool next to a breakfast counter. It was cluttered with the remains of what looked like his breakfast, and she smiled wryly at the sight of an open packet of chocolate flavored cereal, a milk carton and a plastic bowl, the twin of the one Maree was using. Evidently Nicholas didn’t believe in healthy breakfasts, for himself, anyway.