First Came Baby
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Kris Fletcher
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Chapter One
KATE HEBERT HAD always prided herself on being able to multitask. But even she was amazed when she realized she was painting a wall with her right hand while cradling her five-month-old in her left arm—and that she was doing both while breastfeeding.
“Check it out,” she said to her sister, Allie. She raised the paint roller and wiggled little Jamie. “Call me vain, but I’m feeling seriously badass at this moment.”
Allie started laughing. “Wonder Woman has nothing on you.”
“We should write our own comic book. Super Mom. Instead of bracelets that can deflect bullets, she would have a nursing bra that bounces insults back at rude people.”
Allie snickered. “Didn’t Wonder Woman have a fancy lasso for making bad guys tell the truth? Maybe instead of that, Super Mom could shoot guilt trips with her eyes.” She pitched her voice slightly lower in an imitation of their mother. “You want to tell me exactly what you’re doing? And don’t bother saying it’s nothing, because I can see by the look in your eyes that it’s definitely something.”
Kate laughed hard enough that she had to put the paint roller into the tray or risk ending up with a polka-dot floor. Probably the wisest course, since the purpose of this work was to make the place marketable, not marked up.
“Good idea.” Allie nodded toward the dormant roller. “In fact, you should sit down for a few minutes.”
“I’m fine.”
“I know you are. Now. But in about two or three minutes you’re going to realize that you haven’t had anything to drink in a couple of hours, and you’re going to get suddenly and horribly overcome with thirst and exhaustion. Then I’m going to remember that I promised Mom I wouldn’t let you overdo it, and I’m going to feel guilty and run off to get you some water. And when I come back you’re going to be half-asleep in the chair. So then I’ll have to burp Jamie, which means I have to get him off your boob, which kind of grosses me out. And then, he’ll probably spit up on the clothes I have to wear until this room is done. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather bypass the drama. So. Sit.” She pointed at the ancient wingback Kate had dragged into the room. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Kate had a fleeting notion to argue, then decided it would be easier to go along. Because though she hated to admit it, she did feel a little thirsty. “Okay.” She lowered herself into the chair slowly, so as not to interrupt mealtime—though these days Jamie was more likely to be distracted by new sights and sounds than by movement—and settled in.
Oh. That felt good.
“Bring me a cheese stick, too, will you?” she called in the direction of the footsteps echoing down the stairs. Allie’s answer came not in words but in a snort of laughter that Kate easily recognized as code for told you so.
As alone as it was possible to be with someone doing the vacuum cleaner thing at her breast, Kate closed her eyes and breathed out tension. Not that she had been working too hard. Far from it. She was still new-mama tired, but she hadn’t made it to the ripe old age of thirty without learning how to pace herself. Nor did the tightness in her shoulders have anything to do with painting. She’d been doing plenty of that over the past months as she brought Nana’s house back to life. Well, as much as she could do on her own.
No, it wasn’t exhaustion or painting that had her wound so tight. It was the reason behind them.
Jamie was slowing down a little, the space between his swallows growing longer. Time for a burp. She broke the suction, raised him to her shoulder and patted his back while rocking in the chair and talking over his wails.
“I know, I know. You don’t like to stop. But we do this every time, buddy. You might want to learn that pattern.”
His little head smashed against her shoulder. Hard.
“Ow! Don’t get violent, okay? You’ll get more in a minute. But then you have to give me time to really paint, because the room has to be done this afternoon. We need to get it ready for—” she lowered her voice “—for your daddy.”
So much for relaxation.
She patted some more, focusing on the April-fresh air coming through the window she’d cracked open, trying to soothe the anxiety that gripped her every time she thought of Boone coming home. Not that he had ever lived here, in either this house or Comeback Cove. Not that he even thought of Canada as home anymore.
But in two days, he would be here, whether she was ready or not. And painting was the least of her worries.
Allie bounded up the stairs, her footsteps eliciting the usual symphony of creaks and protests from the aging stairs. Jamie’s loud burp was just one more note in the song. By the time Allie sailed in, Kate had Jamie settled on the other side, leaving her free to cross her legs, sit back and gratefully accept her sister’s offerings.
“Ooh. That’s not a cheese stick.” Kate drank deeply before tucking the bottle of water at her side and diving into the plate of cheddar, crackers and apple slices with gusto.
“Yeah, well, I figure I’m allowed to pamper you once in a while. Though seriously, when are you going to learn to set an alarm on your phone to remind you to drink?” Allie mock scowled before grinning and gesturing toward the wall in front of her, where hints of faded wallpaper still peeked out from the first coat of robin’s-egg-blue paint. “I still don’t know if it was a good idea to paint right over this.”
“In a perfect world, I would have scraped off all seven layers and made a fresh start. But there’s a limit. Besides, this place is so old that the wallpaper might be the only thing holding it up.”
“You love it and you know it.”
“Well, yeah. But love doesn’t always make you blind to faults.” She grinned. “If it did, Mom would have run out of things to say to us years ago.”
“True that.” Allie grabbed her roller and attacked the wall once more. “So, Katydid, not that I don’t adore spending a gorgeous Sunday helping you paint instead of hanging out with Cash the Wonder Boyfriend, but how about you tell me the real reason this needed to be done so quickly? I mean, it was one thing when we had to get the first floor ready in record time. Things had to be perfect for Prince Jameson.” She curtsied to the baby. “But you said you weren’t going to put this place up for sale until he was a year old or so, and honestly, there’s lots of other work that’s more pressing than making this room look decent. So, what’s the rush?”
Kate let her head fall back against the chair. She had known this talk was coming. She simply hadn’t thought of the right way to handle it yet.
“Boone is coming.”
Oops. She should have waited until Allie had finished reloading her roller. That might have helped prevent the blue streak now decorating the floor.
“Son of a...” Allie grabbed a rag from the bucket of water and swiped at the wayward paint. “He’s finally making an appearance?”
“Don’t say it like that.”
“And why not? I mean, I know you guys only got married so Nana wouldn’t freak when she found out you were pregnant, but still. He’s been gone a year.”
“Ten months.”
Allie waved the words away. “Details. The point is, he has a beautiful baby who is five months old, growing every minute practically, and Boone hasn’t bothered to even meet him? Excuse me if I’m not feeling incredibly gracious.” She frowned at the half-painted wall. “Or if I suddenly don’t feel like busting my butt on this.”
“Allie, come on. You know he wanted to come back sooner, but it’s not like you can easily do a long weekend run from Peru to here. And with his partners gone, it’s been up to him to keep Project Sonqo running.”
“I know. I know.” Water splashed as Allie tossed the rag back into the bucket. “Look, I have lots of respect for what he’s doing there. The way he and the MacPhersons started Project Sonqo, the way they’re connecting the crafters with new markets and teaching the women how to see themselves as small businesses... It’s all good. Great, really. And I know that Boone had to step up when—what’s his name—Mr. MacPherson—”
“Craig. Craig and Jill.” Jamie was falling asleep, his swallows slacking off and his eyes closing in the classic milk-drunk pose. Kate gave him a gentle jiggle. She had no problem with him nursing himself to sleep, but she wanted to be sure he’d had enough. She didn’t want to lay him in his crib and get herself put back together only to have him wake up in fifteen minutes because he decided he needed more.
“Right. I understand that Boone had to take over when Craig got sick. I mean, look, cancer is bad enough when you’re dealing with it here. I can’t imagine what it must be like in that part of Peru, living so far from hospitals and everything. So, total sympathy, okay? But...” Allie scowled. “There must have been somebody Boone could have brought in to run things. Some way he could have been here when his own son was born.”
Kate held her tongue. Allie was well aware that Jamie’s arrival a couple of weeks ahead of schedule had complicated everyone’s plans. If he had been born on time, or even late—as everyone had assured her was usually the case with first babies—Boone could well have been on hand for the big event.
At least, that was what she told herself.
“Allie, I know you’re not happy about the way things turned out. But—”
“Don’t tell me to let it go. Because you know that if the positions were reversed, you wouldn’t.”
There was some truth to that. Anyone who hurt Allie had to be prepared to face the wrath of Kate, and if that happened, they ended up counting their blessings, because it meant that Kate got to them before her mother did.
But this was different. Boone had been nothing but honest from the start. Ten minutes after meeting him at a fan convention in Ottawa, she had known that he was going to be around for only a few months, that even though he was still Canadian he considered Peru his home, that there was no chance of anything long-term or forever between them. He wasn’t a family man. Kate, on the rebound from a bad breakup, had been fine with that. She’d definitely wanted permanence and a family someday, but at that moment, short-term and fun and intense had been just what she’d needed.
That was, until a perfect storm of chances and failures had led to the perfect baby sleeping in her arms.
“The point is,” she said, easing Jamie upright, “Craig and Jill are running things again, and as soon as they were caught up, Boone booked a flight. He’ll be here Tuesday. Call me sentimental, but I didn’t want to put him in a room that had faded flamingo wallpaper on one wall and giant chrysanthemums on the others. So we’re painting.”
Allie’s grunt was all the proof Kate needed that her sister didn’t approve of any of this. No surprise there. What was surprising was that Allie hadn’t yet mentioned that they were prepping a second-story room for Boone, when Kate and Jamie were already established in Nana’s old room on the first floor.
Any minute now...
“Hang on.”
Kate lifted her chin. She could wait for Allie to say it, or she could get the hardest part out of the way.
“That’s right,” she said as evenly as possible. “He’s sleeping up here.”
“You’re putting your husband—the man you haven’t seen in ten months, the guy who almost made you commit an act of public indecency on the beach that day—in a separate room?”
“That’s right. And no, before you ask, I’m not moving my stuff up here.” Kate rose from the chair with all the grace of a lame giraffe. “He’s not coming just to meet Jamie, Allie. Or to help me get the place fixed up so I can sell it. He’s also coming home so we can get a divorce.”
* * *
JACKSON BOONE’S FEET slowed as he approached the door leading from the secure area of the Ottawa airport to the public space. Once he stepped through that door, everything was going to change.
God, he hoped he was ready.
His head knew that the real change had happened months ago, when Jamie was born. Or when he and Kate had decided to get married so her grandmother—set in her ways until the end, as Kate had said—could die in peace, knowing her first great-grandchild wouldn’t be born out of wedlock.
Though really, everything had changed when he’d opted to leave his work in Peru for a few months to do some advanced study in nonprofit leadership in Ottawa. Or, more accurately, when he’d let a classmate drag him to a Star Wars fan gathering and he’d spied Kate across the crowded convention hall. One look at the purple streaks in her Princess Leia hair and his entire world had shifted.
Still, that had all been fun and games and some of the best times he had ever known. This, though. This was his kid. His son.
Boone had been a lot of things in his life. Student. Builder. Foster kid. The relative that had to be taken in. But in all his life, he had never really felt like a son. And he had no idea how he was supposed to be a father.
Think about Kate, he ordered himself yet again. You’re here to make things easier for her. That’s what matters.
Right. As long as he came out of this having helped Kate in whatever way he could, the rest would fall into line.
With that in mind, he hitched his backpack higher on his shoulder, braced himself and walked through the doors.
It took him a moment to find her in the crowd. He scanned the faces in front of him, looking for the thick brown hair and the glowing smile that had first drawn him to her. Winding his way through the reunions taking place on either side, he peered, ducked and—
There. She was over by the window, sitting on a bench tucked into an alcove.
Heat raced through him. They had talked regularly these past months, Skyping at least once a week, so it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen her since he left. He knew that she had cut her hair, and that the purple streaks were long gone. He had watched her jiggle little Jamie and pat his back and rock back and forth—probably without even knowing what she was doing, because if they gave out extra years for instinctive nurturing, Kate would have a lifespan stretching into the triple digits.
But it was one thing to watch all that happen from thousands of miles away and the safety of a computer screen. It was another to know that she was in front of him, to drink in the sight of her while voices bounced off the high ceilings and people laughed and cried on either side and folks brushed past him as they headed for the baggage area.
She hadn’t spied him yet. She was curled over—well, he assumed it was Jamie. From this angle, all he could see was a gray lump, a pack of some sort, from which dangled a miniature leg and an impossibly tiny foot, wiggling back and forth like it was waving hello to him.
I helped make that foot.
His mother, during the rare times he had spent with her, had assured him regularly that he wasn’t the type to have any success at making things. But as Boone stared at that tiny foot holding his attention as securely as if it were a hypnotist’s watch, he knew that in this, at least, his mother had been dead wrong.
Kate finished fussing with the pack, gave a little pat to the front of it, and kissed the top of Jamie’s head. The foot swung faster.
A loud wail pierced the roar of voices. Boone flinched and hurried forward. He’d heard Jamie cry over the phone many times. Intellectually, he understood when Kate laughed it off and assured him that cries were simply the way babies communicated, and that while there was always a reason, the reason was rarely the end of the world.
But this sounded different. More demanding. Maybe it was simply because it wasn’t coming to him via satellite or whatever, but this cry went straight to Boone’s gut.
Mierda.
Kate stood, her arms below the pack, swaying and jiggling. She raised her head and scanned the area, her hazel eyes squinting, then widening as she spotted him.
He wasn’t sure what kind of welcome he had expected. A hug? Maybe. A kiss? No. Kate had made things very clear when they’d last talked. Their marriage was over, exactly as they’d planned. No hard feelings. They were both adults. They both knew this had been only temporary, and now that her grandmother was dead, well... But since they weren’t planning a future together, she felt it was best if they kept things platonic while he was in town. Easier on everybody, she had said. And since the one thing Boone wanted most in this visit was to give Kate what she needed, he had agreed. He understood.
That didn’t mean he liked it.
Whatever reunion he might have hoped for, it was washed away by Jamie’s cries, which were becoming both stronger and more panicked. Kate hurried toward him and stopped a few inches away.
“Hey.” Her smile was tired and strained, but he caught a hint of the glow that had first washed over him all those months ago. She raised a hand, and for a second he let himself think it was the prelude to an awkward hug, a quick brush of her lips to his cheek or mouth, but no. She simply cupped his cheek and patted it. The way she would one of the kids in the day care she would return to directing once her maternity leave ended.
He hadn’t realized how much he’d been hoping she didn’t mean the whole platonic thing until that moment.
“Hi.” His voice sounded rough and strained to his own ears. Probably because he hadn’t said anything more than, “Coffee, please,” to anyone since leaving Ollanta yesterday. His hand hovered near the kicking, squirming pile of frantic that was Jamie. Would it make things worse if Boone touched him? All the books he’d read about babies assured him that they needed and were soothed by touch, but there was a hell of a difference between theory and practice.
“Sorry about the warm greeting.” Kate rolled her eyes. “We had a bad night. I think he’s cutting his first tooth.”
A memory surfaced from when he’d lived with... Was it his aunt Carol? No, it might have been one of his foster mothers. Gayle? She had been one of the younger ones. There had been a baby. There had been teething. There had been cold canned spaghetti and meatballs for dinner and lunch.
He had thought he couldn’t admire Kate more than he already did. He’d been wrong.
“Let’s get your bags before he breaks everyone’s eardrums,” she said, and headed for the escalator. Boone hurried behind her, glad to be upright and stretching his legs again. Once they reached the main floor, he aimed for the baggage carousel but stopped when he felt a tug on his sleeve.
“You get your things,” she said over the baby’s cries. “I’ll take him outside. The change of scenery might calm him down a bit. I’ll meet you right by the door.”
Before he could answer, she zipped away. The usual airport cacophony sounded almost peaceful once the doors slid closed behind her.
He’d spent much of his travel time assuring himself that he was ready for this. He felt like every moment of the last few months that hadn’t been devoted to work had been spent teaching himself how to be a father. He’d read everything about childcare that he could get his hands on. He’d played with the kids who came to the Project Sonqo office with their parents, perfecting his peekaboo skills. He’d even worked up the nerve to visit some websites for people who had grown up the way he had but who wanted to break that cycle with their own kids.
It had all seemed so possible when he was in Peru. So manageable. Now, with the echo of Jamie’s cries rattling inside him, he had to work hard to convince himself this was a good idea.
Ten minutes later, his ancient suitcase rolling crookedly behind him, Boone exited the terminal into the welcome coolness of early spring. Not that Ollanta had been hot. In the mountains, it rarely grew more than pleasantly warm. But after four flights’ worth of stale air, it felt good to breathe deep and not get a lungful of other people.
Kate waited by a bench. She was doing that bouncing jiggly thing again. Jamie had stopped crying, at least loudly, but as Boone approached he could see that the wriggling hadn’t slowed.
“Is he really chewing on his hand?” he asked.
“Yep. He’s hungry.” She set off across the parking lot at such a brisk speed that he was glad his legs were long enough to keep up. No cramped-plane stiffness for her. They hustled in silence—well, silent other than the snuffling noises coming from the baby—until they reached the little red Mazda he recognized.
Kate hit the button to unlock the doors and pop the trunk, then handed the keys to Boone. “Go ahead and stow your stuff. Then maybe you could start the car so it can warm up a bit? I need to hang out in the back seat with little Mr. Piggy for a few minutes.”
“Sure.” Good God. People always talked about culture shock when traveling from one country to another. No one had ever warned him that parenthood was the biggest culture shock he would ever know, but so far that was the case.
And he’d been here only fifteen minutes.
Once he’d deposited his things and got the car started, he screwed up his courage and twisted in the driver’s seat to take in the scene behind him. Kate had tossed her coat across the car seat. He had a great view of her pink sweater and the snorting, squirming baby in her arms.
“Doesn’t he ever stop moving?” Even as Boone spoke, that hypnotic foot started thrusting rhythmically once more.
“Sure. When he’s asleep.”
Jamie made a strange sound, like a cry mixed with a snort, then seemed to attack. Kate winced.
“Whoa. Are you okay?” Boone hadn’t expected that. Kate had nursed the baby many times when they were Skyping, but again, yeah. Different continent, whole different experience.
“Like I said, he’s cutting a tooth. His mouth hurts. When he nurses, that increases the pressure, so it hurts him more. So he stops earlier, but then he’s still hungry, so he has to eat again sooner than he usually would.” She brushed Jamie’s cheek with her finger. “Plus he’s kind of stuffed up, which often happens when they’re teething, so it’s hard for him to breathe and eat at the same time.”
How the hell did anyone ever make it past infancy?
“So.” She smiled, though with a little more force than he had ever seen before. “How were your flights?”
“I survived.”
“I see that.” The corners of her mouth twitched. Some of the stiffness seemed to be fading. “What do you need most? Shower, food or sleep?”
You.
He pushed the thought away before it could show in his face. Platonic. Separate bedrooms. All for the best.
He got it. He really did. But it had been a lot easier to agree when she wasn’t sitting a few inches away from him with Jamie weaving tiny fingers through her hair and her sweater hiked up so that everything essential was hidden from his eyes but most definitely not from his memory.
He stared down at his fingers, pretending he was inspecting them for grime. “A shower would probably be a good idea. It would help me stay awake, too.” He smiled and risked a glance her way. “But after that, yeah. Something other than airline food would be great.”
“Good. We can take care of all of that once Little Mister here decides he’s done.” As she spoke, she did a complicated maneuver with her hand and the baby’s face that looked as smooth and practiced as a magician’s performance. He wasn’t sure precisely what was happening. One minute everyone was happy. The next, Jamie was crying and she was tugging her sweater down, and he was pretty sure he’d glimpsed something he shouldn’t be glimpsing if he wanted to get through these next weeks with any semblance of sanity.
“Burp time,” she sang out, undoubtedly for his benefit. She glanced from Jamie to him. “You want to try?”
He froze. “That... I mean, uh...”
“Don’t freak, Boone.” Another hint of the laughing woman he remembered peeked around the fatigue. “I’m just messing with you. No one’s first time holding their baby should involve gas and spit-up.”
Part of him tried to absorb her words, but he was distracted by the bright, trusting eyes of his son soaking in the world around him. It was a good thing he was going to be around for only a few weeks. Because while Kate made this all look so possible, he knew it was anything but. Knew, too, that no matter how much he read or practiced, the odds were high that he could never be the kind of father he wanted to be.
