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If Cory hadn’t cried for attention early the next morning, Cathy would have slept in. But the mother of a baby didn’t have that option.
Throwing on a robe, she lifted him from his crib and changed him. He was all smiles and coos, and his temperature was still normal, thank goodness. His cold seemed to be much better, too.
She’d barely finished feeding him breakfast when the doorbell rang. Who in the world came to visit at this early hour?
Lifting Cory to her hip, she opened the door to find Dave standing there, looking neatly groomed and smelling of woodsy scented shaving lotion. He looked cheerful and wide awake. Ye gods, a morning person.
She sighed. So Cory got that trait from the Langer side. She’d thought it was only a baby thing and maybe he’d outgrow it. Fat chance.
“Dave, what are you doing here?”
“Good morning to you, too. I thought you might like some help getting settled in.”
“At this hour?” she groused. “I wouldn’t even be up if it wasn’t for Cory.”
He raised an eyebrow. “It’s almost nine. I’m usually at the office by eight, so I wouldn’t call it early. May I come in?”
“Suit yourself,” she said ungraciously, suddenly conscious of her own dishevelment.
“May I hold him?” He stepped inside and held out his arms to Cory, who, to her surprise, responded by reaching both little arms out to Dave, whining, “Dada,” in a scratchy voice.
“For heaven’s sake. He never goes to strangers.”
“He knows I’m family, not a stranger,” Dave retorted.
“I suppose,” she agreed. “You and Don look alike, so he probably thinks you’re his daddy.”
Dave looked disconcerted at that remark. She handed Cory over and closed the door, one hand desperately attempting to smooth her mass of unkempt curls.
She followed Dave back to the kitchen, where he sat, bouncing Cory on his knee to the baby’s delight. She took a perverse pleasure in noting the contrast between Cory’s messy nose and Dave’s neatness.
“There are some tissues on the counter for his drippy nose. Help yourself to some coffee if you want,” she offered, waving an arm at the pot emitting the delicious fragrance of fresh brew. “If you’ll watch Cory, I need to get dressed.”
At his nod, she turned, grabbed a box labeled “my work clothes” from the stack in the Great Room and hurried into her bedroom.
Quickly, she showered, then ran a brush through her long, tangled curls to get some semblance of order and tied them back.
Why had he come back? Was he planning to stay involved in her life? Had that kiss last night meant he was interested in her?
Or he was just being a bossy Langer, making sure she took good care of Cory. Well, if that was what he had in mind, he could forget it. She didn’t need a man to boss her around or tell her how to be a parent.
If she’d wanted that, she could have let Daddy do it and accepted her parents’ offer to move home with them. No way! She liked being on her own.
The only time she’d regretted that decision had been when she’d adopted Cory. For a while, she’d been afraid the judge wouldn’t let her adopt him unless she married, but thank goodness he had. She was legally Cory’s mama, and that was all the complication she needed in her life right now.
Besides her stressful job, of course. She lived from contract to contract, always dependent on whether some editor liked her work, or moved to another house and left her subject to a new editor’s likes and dislikes. That was uncertainty enough for anybody.
Sighing, she dressed in clean jeans and a tee shirt and went back to the kitchen. Dave had opened a box of toys and had Cory by the hand, pulling a noisemaker.
“Please!” she said, covering her ears at the racket. “I thought I’d hidden that. I shouldn’t have even kept it.”
Dave laughed and handed Cory a squeezable toy chicken. As soon as Cory had transferred interest, he put Cory in his playpen with it.
“Have some coffee, grouchy.” He grinned to soften the criticism and poured her a cup, then sat down opposite her at the table. “Are you always this way in the morning, or is it just the move?”
“A little of both,” she admitted, managing a laugh. “At least Cory’s cold seems much better today.”
“I noticed that.” He turned to watch Cory pat the chicken, then pick it up and toss it around and crawl after it to pick it up again. “He’s a special little guy, isn’t he?”
She smiled in pleasure. How could she not like anyone who adored her kid?
“Yes, he is. Getting him was the silver lining for me after that horrible accident.” Tears welled in her eyes when she thought of the day her parents had called to tell her Don was dead and Jenny badly injured. Then there had been the long vigil at the hospital and Jenny was gone, too. She shuddered at the memories.
He saw her tears and didn’t have the heart to tell her it had seemed the opposite to him. The fact that he’d lost his son along with his brother had seemed like the last straw. “I never want to relive those days,” he said truthfully.
“It was awful,” she agreed. “Jenny knew she didn’t have long to live, and she was so worried about Cory. After I’d agreed to care for him and she’d signed the papers with her lawyer, she just seemed to relax and let go.”
He couldn’t say anything past the huge lump in his throat. He couldn’t think of anything to say, so he just patted her hand, trying to comfort her.
She jumped up, grabbed a tissue from the box on the counter, and blew her nose. “Never mind me. I get this way sometimes.”
“Me too. They say it gets better with time, but it hasn’t yet.”
She washed her hands at the sink, then took a slice of bread and put it in the toaster and snapped it down. “Would you like some toast?”
“No, thanks, I ate earlier.” He watched her fuss with getting out butter and jelly to hide her embarrassment. She smelled cleanly of soap and had dressed neatly in worn blue jeans and a soft white tee shirt, prepared to start on making order of the boxes they’d piled in the Great Room yesterday.
“Oh, look!” She nodded toward the glass doors on the other side of the Great Room. “There’s a deer under the apple tree, eating the fallen green apples.”
Dave turned to look. “A beautiful doe.”
“Won’t the green apples make it sick? I used to get sick from eating them.”
“I doubt it. They seem to have an instinct for what’s good for them.”
She slipped quietly over to Cory and turned his attention to the deer outside. “A deer, Cory. See the deer?”
“See deer,” he said clearly, pulling himself up to the side of his playpen to stare at the animal through the patio door.
The doe raised her head, looked toward them and sauntered down to the lake for a drink.
Cathy sighed and moved back to butter her toast. “It’s so peaceful here. There’s no traffic noise. In my apartment in LA, I could hear emergency sirens at all hours of the day and night.”
“This is a wonderful place to raise a kid,” he agreed. “But you’ll have to keep him away from the lake.”
“Oh, I know. Cory stays with me, even when I’m working. He watches me or naps in his playpen.”
“Exactly what do you do?”
“Illustrate children’s picture books, right now on a free-lance basis.”
“And that entails?” he prompted.
Cathy sat down and bit into her toast. What was he asking here? The details of how she worked? If so, why? His brown eyes were watching her, expectantly.
He appeared interested in her answer, so she swallowed and said, “First I get an assignment from the picture book editor I work with and read the story. If I like it and think I can do justice to it, I negotiate the terms of the contract. Then I decide on possible pictures to illustrate it, and rough them out the way I think they should go. Some editors like to make their own suggestions, or want to approve the rough ideas first. I paint them in watercolors, then send them in. Usually that’s it, though sometimes she wants changes and I have to redo some of it.”
“It sounds like interesting work.”
But his eyes were saying she looked more interesting. He was making her nervous.
Cathy finished her coffee and stood up. “I’d better start making order out of this mess. I hate leaving Cory penned up in his playpen, but I won’t get much done if he’s crawling about underfoot.”
He rose. “I’ll help you keep an eye on him and move stuff, if you’ll tell me where you want it.”
She hesitated, chewing her lip and feeling uncomfortable. “You don’t need to do that.”
“Cathy, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to be.”
“Why are you here?” she asked bluntly.
He blanched as though she’d hurt him and said casually, “It’s Saturday, my day off. I can’t think of a better thing to do with it than get acquainted with my...with Cory and his mom. Do you mind?”
She swallowed. She should remember that he’d lost family, too. Maybe he did just want to get to know his nephew. It wasn’t nice of her to doubt his motives. It wasn’t his fault if she was nervous about being alone with him.
“Of course I don’t mind,” she said. “I...I can use your help.” She’d be all right if she could just keep things on a businesslike footing. She only needed to adjust her frame of mind. Stop thinking about his kiss.
“Good. Now, where do you want this stuff?”
She surveyed the stacks of boxes. “This stack can go into my and Cory’s bedroom, the one where we put his crib and changing table last night.”
“Will there be enough room?”
“I think so. These boxes contain mostly clothes that will go into the closet. There’s a good-sized dresser and chest of drawers in there too. They’ll hold a lot.”
“Okay. But wouldn’t you rather have Cory in his own room?”
What made him say that? Did he think she needed privacy for a lover’s visit? What lover? She bit her lip to keep from laughing at that silly idea.
“Maybe later. Right now, he’s teething and he wakes a lot at night. I want him close to me, so I can hear him.”
“We could fix up a baby monitor for you.”
“I’ll think about it later,” she said firmly. Who did he think he was, to tell her how to arrange things? Granted, it was half his house, but he’d said she could do as she pleased, hadn’t he?
He nodded and said no more, but moved the boxes where she’d asked. She unpacked them and put things away, glad that she’d taken the time to sort things thoroughly when she’d packed, so everything was in order now.
When it came to the kitchen things, she was more hesitant. The dishes, pots, and pans she’d used were more hand-me-down than chosen. Everything was already so well-matched and arranged in the kitchen here that she hated to add her own things. She finally decided to leave them in boxes in a large closet in the extra bedroom and only unpacked the food supplies she’d brought with her.
Cory seemed content to watch them walk back and forth with boxes and chatter to them as they passed. He probably found it more interesting than watching her work, which was how he’d spent a considerable amount of time back home. But he finally whimpered, telling her he was hungry.
“Time for a change, sport?” Dave asked, picking him up. He wrinkled his nose. “Ooh, yes. I think so.”
She laughed at his reaction to the odor of a filled diaper. “Let me have him. You warm him a jar of mixed meat and vegetables. It’s in the cupboard above and to the right of the sink.”
“Okay. Lunch coming up, fella.”
Dave had Cory’s food and a cup of milk ready when she brought him back to the kitchen.
She put a bib on Cory and fed him. “What do you want to eat?” she asked Dave.
“You could use a break, here. I thought we’d go for a drive and grab a bite at a fast-food place, okay?”
“Sure.”
“I can show you where places like the bank, post office, and grocery store are, too. Nothing’s hard to find out here, though. Sugar Lake is just a little burg, but it has all the essentials. We go into the malls near the Twin Cities for whatever we can’t find here.”
She smiled at him. “Sounds good to me.”
As they walked outside, she said, “We’ll have to take my car; it has the car seat for Cory.”
“Mine has one, too.”
“It does? How come?” Dumb question. Jenny hadn’t told her anything about him. Or if Jenny had, she hadn’t paid attention. Maybe the man was married and had kids of his own. Cathy thought about how easily Dave dealt with Cory, seeming to know just how to handle him to get him to smile and cooperate.
But if he was married, why had he kissed her? And why did he look at her in that interested way? She waited for his answer, then was puzzled when he only said, “I thought it might come in handy.”
“You don’t have kids? I mean, I guess I don’t even know whether you’re married,” she added lamely, but determined to know the answer.
“I was married, briefly, a few years ago. It didn’t work out. She didn’t want kids.”
The grim, closed look on his face told her not to pursue that subject. “Oh. I’m sorry. Wow! Nice car.”
“I like it.” He opened the back door of his silver Mercedes and stepped back while she put Cory into the new car seat and buckled him in. Dave held the door for her while she got into the front, then walked around and got behind the wheel.
She watched him as he drove, realizing she knew little about him. And if they owned a house together and he was determined to spend time with her, she’d better find out more.
Before she could think of something to ask, he surprised her by asking, “Were you? Ever married, I mean?”
She shook her head.
“What about that trucker, Harry Jones?”
“Harry? What about him?”
“Are you dating him? Seriously, I mean?”
“No. He’s a friend of the family. He was living next door to my folks and was moving back to Wisconsin. When he heard I wanted to move to Minnesota about the same time, he was kind enough to offer to help me out by sharing his rented truck.”
Dave glanced at her to try to read her face. Was she telling him the truth? Harry had certainly seemed awfully familiar with Cory. And Cory had clung to him like he knew him pretty well. The idea of another man with his son stung. But it was his own fault if he didn’t know the boy. He tried to push the unfamiliar uneasiness away. Until he could prove his parentage, he had no right to the boy. Cathy didn’t know he was Cory’s father.
Did he dare tell her? Or would that push her further away? He wanted more than to visit Cory as an uncle. But would telling her the truth accomplish that?
“You’re an architect, I believe?” she asked.
“Yes. I and Ken Gould, my partner, share an office downtown.”
“What kind of work do you do? I mean, homes, businesses, schools, or what?”
“We take on a variety of jobs, but mostly related to businesses. Neither of us likes government red tape, so we try to stay away from doing those.”
“And your parents? I seem to remember Jenny saying they’d retired to Florida?”
“Yes. Orlando. They like it there. They enjoy having friends from up here visit when they come to Disney World. But I don’t see much of them these days.” He pointed at a grocery store on their left. “That’s where Mom liked to shop on the weekends when we stayed at the cabin. The steaks we had last night came from there.”
“They were delicious. I’ll remember that they have good meat.”
“Do you want to stop for anything now?”
“Not at the moment.”
He parked at the hardware store and said, “I’ll be right back. Want to come in?”
“No, I’ll wait out here.”
In a few minutes he was back, carrying a paper bag. He put it in the trunk, then got in, started the car, and pulled back into the street.
“There’s another grocery store at the other end of town, too,” he continued as if he’d never stopped talking. “Here’s the bank. The post office is down there on your right. It’s not open today, but I suppose you’ll have to tell them who you are and where you’ve moved before you can get mail at the house.”
“Yes, I’ll do that on Monday.” She tried not to giggle at the thought that he sounded like a bus tour guide.
“There’s a mailbox at the end of our driveway. The mailman used to come by about noon and probably still does. On down the street here are a couple of bars, some antique shops, a beauty shop, and a dress shop. The school and churches are off the main drag, over in the residential areas.”
“It looks like a thriving little town.”
“It is. But it’s much quieter in winter. The summer people who live around the lake liven things up at this time of year. When November comes, there won’t be many people staying here.”
“Most of them have homes somewhere else, then?”
He nodded. “In the metro area. They usually only come up for weekends or vacations. A few are retired and move south in the winter and return for the summer.”
“Must be nice,” she murmured.
“What?”
She blushed. “I meant it must be nice to have enough money for two homes, to be able to live wherever you like, to move with the seasons, follow the good weather. To me, that’s pure luxury.”
“Your family never had much money?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“We were comfortable,” she answered, defending them. “We never had a lot of extras, but we didn’t have to do without, either.” He had a nerve, sounding so superior. Money wasn’t everything.
“I didn’t mean that in an insulting way,” he said quietly.
She blushed and looked away. She had taken it that way. She had to stop feeling inferior. It was silly. She earned enough money with her work now to have what they needed.
Nothing like what he probably earned, of course, if this car was any indication. But she earned enough to support herself and Cory. True, she didn’t buy many luxuries. But there was no reason for her to envy others. Why did he make her feel so defensive?
They ate burgers at the local drive-in and headed back to her house. It was odd to think of it as her house.
“Cory seems to enjoy riding,” Dave said. “He’s asleep again.”
She nodded. “I was worried about how he’d be on the move here from California. But he always quieted down as soon as the truck moved.”
When they arrived back at the house, Dave lifted Cory from the car seat. Cory stirred, then snuggled into his neck and went to sleep again. Dave marveled at how good the feel of his soft skin felt against his own. Cory smelled good—like soap and baby powder. He carried him inside.
Cathy led the way and pulled back the quilt on his crib.
Dave carefully laid him down and pulled up the quilt, noticing it had yellow ducks on it. Cathy’s face had a happy glow as she looked at the sleeping boy. Obviously, she loved him. His heart turned over. At least he could be assured of that. Don and Jenny had left Cory in good hands. But he still couldn’t help wishing they had left Cory with him. They tiptoed out to the main room.
“Thank you for your help and lunch,” she said politely, sounding as though she expected him to leave now. But he didn’t want to go back to his lonely apartment. He wanted to stay here and listen to his son make baby noises and hear Cathy talk to him.
“I’ll help you move the rest of these boxes wherever you want them,” he said, ignoring her hint.
“Well,” she hesitated. “They contain my art supplies. I haven’t decided where I’ll work yet.”
“Oh. Well, let’s see. You need good light, don’t you? How about the front bedroom? That has a large east window overlooking the lake.”
“That would be ideal,” she admitted. “But there isn’t enough room in there.”
He frowned. “What do you mean, there isn’t enough room in there? It’s about fifteen feet square. How much room do you need?”
“Oh, that’s plenty, but...I mean the room is full of furniture. A queen-sized bed and dressers.”
“No problem. I’ll just move those things out to the storage area above the garage.”
“Are you sure that’s okay? I mean, your folks won’t mind?”
He tipped his head, looking at her quizzically. “What do my parents have to do with this?”
“Well, you said it had been their furniture...” Cathy knew she was stammering and felt herself flushing. She always seemed to say the wrong thing, especially around him. Why was that? Why did he send her pulse racing and make her feel like a tongue-tied teenager?
“They gave it to Don and me. Then you inherited Don’s half from him and Jenny. So it’s up to us what we do with it now.”
“Oh. Well, moving it above the garage is fine with me if it’s okay with you.” She looked at him uncertainly.
“Then it’s settled. You tell me what you want to keep in there, and I’ll move the rest out.”
He was staring at her again, as though daring her to let him help her, to not send him away.
“All right.” She drew a deep breath. She could do this. She only had to avoid touching him.
He leaned forward and lifted her chin with his hand. “You’re beautiful, Cathy,” he said hoarsely.
So much for avoiding him. She swallowed and licked her lips, uncertain what to say. With a groan, he stepped closer. He wrapped his arms around her and covered her lips with his. Heat soared along her veins at the wonderful warmth of his kiss. And another kiss. Her eyes closed as pleasure pooled, flowing through her like warm honey on hot toast.
He nibbled her lips and moved to kiss her earlobe. She slid her fingers through the soft curls along the back of his neck. Yes, they felt as good as they looked. His lips moved down to her throat, then back to her waiting lips. Her tongue tasted his, wanting more and more. But she shouldn’t be doing this. Certainly she shouldn’t be enjoying it. She was a mom now, not a teenager, for heaven’s sake!
With an effort, she broke the kiss, lowered her arms, and stepped back.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, looking dazed.
“I...I told you we need to keep things on a businesslike basis,” she stammered.
“Why?” he asked, his voice thick with raw emotion. “We’re both single adults. You kissed me back like you enjoyed it, too!”
“Because that’s the way I want it,” she said stubbornly, refusing to elaborate.
“Okay. Forget I got out of line.” With a huff, he turned back to the task of emptying the bedroom.
She sighed, at once relieved that he accepted her limits, and disappointed that he hadn’t tried to renew the kisses. She’d enjoyed those kisses and wanted more.
Whatever was the matter with her, letting her hormones rule her head? He wasn’t the first handsome man to make advances, after all. She knew what trouble that led to, she thought, remembering her disastrous engagement the year before and the painful breakup after she’d discovered he had another lover.
She didn’t need any complications in her life now. She had Cory to think of.
