Smooth Talking Stranger (Travis Family #3)(24)

You gonna take him to Austin? "

My shoulders hitched in a helpless shrug. "I'll call Dane. I'll . . . I don't know how this will work."

It wasn't going to work. I knew Dane well enough to be certain that there was serious trouble ahead for us.

It occurred to me that I might lose him over this.

The day before yesterday, my life had been great. Now it was falling apart. How was I going to make room in my life for a baby? How was I going to get my work done? How was I going to hold on to Dane?

A little cry floated from the bed. Somehow that sound brought everything into focus. Dane didn't matter at the moment. Logistics, money, careers, none of it mattered. Right now the only important thing was the hunger of a helpless infant.

"Call me when you decide what to do," Jack said.

Heading to the minibar, I rummaged for a bottle of chilled formula. "I'm not going to bother you anymore. Really. I'm just sorry I—"

"Ella." He came to me in a couple of relaxed strides, catching me by the elbows as I straightened. I tensed at the feel of it, being lightly gripped by those warm rough-cast fingers. He waited until I could bring myself to look up at him.

"You're not involved," I said, trying to sound grateful but dismissive. Absolving him.

Jack wouldn't let me look away. "Call me when you decide."

"Sure." I had no intention of ever seeing him again, and we both knew it.

His lips twitched.

I stiffened. I didn't like it when someone found me amusing.

"Later, Ella."

And he was gone.

Luke squawked from the bed.

"I'm coming," I told him, and hurried to get his bottle ready.

SEVEN

I fed Luke and changed his diaper calling Dane would have to wait until Luke was ready to rest again. I realized I was already starting to arrange my life according to Luke's patterns. His eating and sleeping and periods of wakefulness formed the structure around which everything else had to be interpolated.

Settling him on his back, I hung over him, crooning bits and pieces from nursery songs, dredging them up from childhood memory. Luke bobbed and arched, following me with his mouth, his eyes. I took one of his waving hands and pressed it to my cheek. His palms were the size of quarters. He kept his hand on me, staring in absorption at my face, seeking the connection as much as I did.

I had never been so wanted or needed by anyone on earth. Babies were dangerous . . . they made you fall in love before you knew what was happening. This small, solemn creature couldn't even say my name, and he depended on me for everything. Everything. I'd known him for little more than a day. But I would have thrown myself in front of a bus for him. I was shattered by him. This was awful.

"I love you, Luke," I whispered.

He looked completely unsurprised by the revelation. Of course you love me, his expression seemed to say. I'm a baby. This is what I do. His hand flexed a little on my cheek, testing its pliancy.

His fingernails were scratchy. How did you trim a baby's nails? Could you do it with regular adult clippers, or did you need some special tool? I lifted his feet and kissing the little pink soles, innocently smooth as kitten paws. "Where's your instruction manual?" I asked him. "What's the baby customer-service number?"

I realized I had not given my married friend Stacy nearly enough respect or understanding when she'd had her baby. I had tried to work up some sympathetic interest, but I'd had no idea what she'd been faced with. You couldn't until you faced it yourself. Had she felt this overwhelmed, this ill equipped for the respons-ibility of growing a person? I'd always heard that women possessed an instinct for this, some hidden cache of maternal wisdom that unlocked when you needed it.

No such feeling was coming to me.

The only thing I could identify was a powerful urge to call my best friend Stacy and whine. And having always believed in the therapeutic value of the occasional good, thorough whine, I called her. I was in new territory, the perils and pitfalls of which were entirely familiar to Stacy. She had dated Dane's best friend Tom for years, which was how I'd gotten to know her. And then she'd accidentally gotten pregnant by Tom, and he'd done the expected thing and married her. The baby, a girl named Tommie, was now three. Stacy and Tom both swore it was the best thing that had ever happened to them. Tom even seemed to mean it.

Dane and Tom were still best friends, but I knew that privately Dane thought of Tom as a sell-out. Once, Tom had been a liberal activist and rugged individualist, and now he was married and owned a minivan with stained seat-belt straps and a floor littered with empty juice boxes and Happy Meal toys.

"Stace," I said urgently, relieved when she picked up the phone. "It's me. Do you have a minute?"

"Sure do. How are you, girl?" I pictured her standing in the kitchen of her small renovated arts-and-crafts house, eyes bright as lollipops in her smooth mocha complexion, intricately braided hair knotted up to bare the back of her neck.

"Doomed," I told her. "I am absolutely doomed."

"Problems with the column?" she asked sympathetically.

I hesitated. "Yes. I have to come up with advice for a single woman whose younger sister had a baby out of wedlock and wants her to take care of it for at least three months. Meanwhile, the younger sister is going to stay in a mental health clinic and try to get sane enough to be a mother."