Dance Away with Me(41)

*

Tess managed to transfer the little beastie to the sleeping nest next to her own bed without waking her. Wren was gaining weight and breathing well, which made Tess less anxious about taking these brief respites from carrying her in the sling. She picked up the baby monitor and hurried back downstairs to cross-examine Ian.

His leather jacket was gone, and he’d rolled up his denim shirtsleeves to his elbows, revealing those long-muscled forearms.

“You should be doing manual labor,” she muttered. “I’ll bet you’ve dug ditches.”

“I’ve hung drywall, too, and driven a forklift, but I’m hoping those days are behind me.” He sat on the couch. “Why are we having this conversation?”

“No reason.” Other than the distraction of those forearms, plus a coward’s desire to postpone hearing about Wren’s father. She sank into the matching couch across from him, the monitor by her side, and drew her feet underneath one hip. “What did you find out? How did he react?”

“I didn’t talk to him.” He propped his ankles on the coffee table. Unlike hers, his socks had no holes in the toe. “The guy’s a photojournalist, and he’s in some kind of foreign combat zone now. But I did locate his parents. They live in New Jersey. Princeton. That’s why it took me so long to get back.”

“Did they know about Bianca? That she was pregnant?”

“No. But he’s their only son, and once they got over their shock, they were happy to know they have a grandchild.”

She sank lower into the couch cushions. “What now?”

“They’re trying to contact him, but whether they talk to him or not, they plan to fly down next week to meet Wren.”

“I see.” She picked at a loose thread on the couch arm. “Did you tell them she’s a preemie?”

“I did. I also told them she’s being looked after by a trained nurse.” He took a sip of beer and carefully set the bottle on the table, watching her the whole time. “Wren isn’t yours, Tess.”

She bristled against the gruff gentleness in his voice. “Why would you say such a thing?”

“Because I know you better than you might think.”

He didn’t know her at all. He didn’t know how dead she’d been for so long or how much she used to love to laugh. He didn’t know that she had a career she could never practice again and no idea what she would do with her future. “I’ve barely been separated from her since she was born. Of course, I’m getting attached.” She came up off the couch. “I also know this is a temporary arrangement, but that doesn’t mean I’m willing to simply hand her over to a set of elderly grandparents who don’t know the first thing about taking care of an infant.”

“They’re barely in their sixties, and Mrs. Denning was coming back from tennis when I got to their house. He seems to be into mountain biking.”

Deflated, she sank back into the couch cushions.

He regarded her with an expression that, on anyone else, would have been compassion. “They appear to be decent people.”

“Great.”

He uncrossed his ankles and gave her some time to think it over by changing the subject. “I realized while I was gone that I haven’t paid you yet.”

She picked up the monitor and held it close enough to her ear so she could hear Wren breathing. “There’s no hurry.”

“Wren’s three weeks old.”

“In less than a week, it’ll be what would have been her official birthday,” she said.

He shifted his weight to his right hip and pulled a check from his left pocket. She instinctively recoiled as he stood. “You can give it to me later. Or not at all. You’re paying Heather.”

“This is yours.”

He was standing in front of her, the check outstretched in his hand. She’d never been more deserving of such a hard-earned paycheck. All the hours of lost sleep, her aching shoulders from the miles she’d walked trying to quiet a crying baby, the formula-stained clothes, the worry, the stress. She stared at the check and then closed her eyes. “I can’t take it.”

“Sure you can.”

“We’ll talk about it later.” She toyed with the baby monitor, not wanting him to see how stricken she was inside.

The couch cushion sagged next to her. “You’re tired now. We’ll settle this when you’ve had a couple of decent nights’ sleep.”

His rough kindness didn’t surprise her as it once would have. She’d sensed this softness inside him, a sensitivity he worked hard to keep buried. She made the mistake of looking up.

He was sitting so close. . . . Her fingers curled involuntarily into the chair arm. Their gazes locked. At first, she saw only his concern for her, but as the schoolhouse wall clock ticked into the heavy silence, something changed. A pulse leaped at the base of his throat, and her own breath quickened. His palm settled on her knee like a caress, and the warmth of his body filtered through her clothes. It was as if her refusal to take the paycheck had shifted the landscape, built a bridge where before there had only been a valley.

The schoolhouse rafters groaned. A gust of wind rattled the windows, and his eyes grew half-lidded. The periphery of the room began to fade into the shadows—the walls and windows, ceilings and doors, melting away.