Hannah Bernard - Baby Chase

“Hey, guys!” She knelt down and hugged the five-year-olds. “How long do I get to keep you today?”

“Until tomorrow!” Samuel jumped up and down, trying to reach the coat-hanger. “Mom says that there’s plenty of room because Tom and Sally are away.”

Grinding her teeth, Erin forced a smile as she helped the boys hang up their jackets. She wouldn’t have minded having them staying this weekend, especially with Nathan in the house, but she would have appreciated being asked.

“Hello!” Nathan appeared in the kitchen door and smiled at the boys, then looked at Erin. “I can see the resemblance. Are they yours?”

“Noooo,” the twins said in unison. They were used to this question but it never failed to disgust them. “She’s not our mother, she’s our sister!” Daniel added.

The boys stared curiously at him.

“Are you Erin’s boyfriend?” Daniel asked. Nathan shook his head with a smile. “I’m afraid not.”

“Oh.” The child looked dejected. “Mom says we can’t have little brothers, but if Erin finds a boyfriend and gets married then we can have little nephews instead.”

“You already have a little niece,” Erin reminded her brothers. “Soon she’ll be old enough to play with you.”

“She’s a girl!” Samuel pointed out indignantly. “Do you have any boys?” he asked Nathan.

He shook his head. “No little boys and no little girls.”

“How come?”

“Well…I don’t have a wife, for one.”

“You should get one,” Samuel advised, looking very serious. “When girls become wives, then they are OK. You get to cuddle up to them in bed and everything.”

A corner of Nathan’s mouth twitched. “That is a bonus,” he agreed solemnly. “It can get lonely in bed.”

“Yes,” Daniel chimed in. “But if you don’t have a wife, you can snuggle up to a teddy instead. Do you have a teddy bear?”

“Well…no.”

Daniel nodded, his little face serious. “You should get a wife. They’re better. Sometimes they also make brownies.”

“You little chauvinist…” Erin muttered under her breath, grinning as Nathan fought to hold back his laughter. Losing interest in marriage counseling, the boys scampered off, heading for the small office, to Thomas’s computer.

“I didn’t know Tom had little brothers.”

“There is a lot you don’t know about this family,” Erin said, then bit her tongue. She would have to live with this man for a whole month. It wouldn’t do to keep attacking him the whole time. Softening her voice, she continued, “We also have a little sister on our father’s side. Her name is Alexandra and she is only three.”

“I see. And you have a twin sister, don’t you?”

She nodded. “Erika. She’s a lawyer.”

“Your parents must have been very young when they had the three of you.”

She nodded, then followed the boys into the office. Nathan followed her in, and the two little chauvinists pounced directly on him as a fellow computer patriot.

“Would you sit with them just five minutes while I get dressed?” she asked Nathan, reluctant to ask him for a favour, but not wanting to leave the boys alone with all the expensive equipment. Thomas had spent a great deal of time teaching his brothers how to play with his computer without damaging anything, and they were fast learners, but she didn’t quite trust them yet.

“Of course.” He smiled at the boys. “I bet there is a game or two you can show me, isn’t there?”

“Yeah!” the boys chorused with enthusiasm. “There is this one with demons and dragons where you have a sledgehammer…” One twin shushed the other and both glanced at Erin.

She couldn’t help but laugh. “Nathan, just use your best judgment. Nothing too bloody.”

Smiling, Nathan lifted one boy up and sat down at the computer, holding him in his lap. “We’ll be fine. Don’t hurry on our account.”

Erin ran upstairs to her room. She replaced Nathan’s shirt with jeans and a white sweater, and brushed her hair. Her brothers had interrupted just in time, or she would probably have attacked Nathan again. And she shouldn’t: after all, what he did or did not do was none of her business. Somehow that man managed to push all her buttons. She wasn’t a confrontational type; in fact she had the opposite problem of avoiding conflict rather than facing it. Her temper had never matched the color of her hair, and she had always done her best to get along with people.

Nathan Chase was not going to change that. She was going to be polite and nice to him. He was family after all. He was right—it was none of her business how he spent his time. And it was not his fault that Sally had decided to make them live together. She could even forgive him for that conceited teasing last night. After all, the circumstances were bizarre and the man half-asleep.

She grabbed the shirt and headed for the washing machine, stuffing it inside before she succumbed to the temptation of holding it to her face and inhaling his scent. That shirt had already got her in enough trouble in dreamland. She paused, a bottle of detergent in her hand, reflecting on her feelings and not liking them one bit. She responded strongly to his presence, there was no denying that. Perhaps her anger worked to mask her attraction to him.

No.

She shook her head firmly and finished her chore. She did not want a man in her life at all, especially now. Even if she did, she reminded herself, he had made it clear he considered Sally’s matchmaking idea ridiculous. She ignored the small sting this thought cost. It was for the best. She would be friendly to Nathan, because he meant so much to Sally, she would stay out of his way, and soon all this would be over.

Soon she would have her baby.

The three males were engrossed in a flying simulator when she came back downstairs. Nathan looked briefly up and acknowledged her with a small smile, but did not seem to be in a hurry to get away. Quietly she sat down in the easy chair in the corner, watching them. The picture of Nathan playing with her two little brothers clashed with her mental image of the cold and aloof man who didn’t care enough to see his own niece.

“Tom is our big brother. He is a programmer,” Samuel boasted to Nathan while his brother had control of the joystick. “He tells the computers what to do. Can you do that?”

“Not as well as Tom, no. I’m a photographer. I take pictures.”

“You take pictures?” Daniel flew his plane over enemy territory, bombarding a fleet of ships below. He did not sound too impressed. “Just ordinary pictures?”

Nathan chuckled. “Yes. Just ordinary pictures.” Erin thought back to Sally’s scrapbooks, holding hundreds of clippings, all Nathan’s pictures from every corner of the globe. None of them could be called ordinary. Even in her own biased judgment, the quality of his work was indisputable. His photos were stark and unflinching, pulling the viewer in and not letting go until a point had been made.

“Can you do magic?”

She watched Nathan frown as he tried to follow the child’s train of thought. “Magic?”

“Mom took us to a photographer once. He did magic tricks. Mom said he did that to make us laugh.”

“I’m not that kind of a photographer.”

“What kind, then?”

“I take pictures for the newspapers,” Nathan explained. “Do you guys have a camera?”

The twins shook their heads.

He stood up and deposited one little boy back on the chair. “I’ll show you mine,” he said, returning a few minutes later with his camera bag. The boys abandoned the computer game and crowded around him as he opened it and showed them the different lenses and tools, even allowing them to handle the delicate equipment.