First Came Baby Read online

  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.

  CHAPTER TWO

  BOONE HOPPED OUT OF the car as soon as it came to a halt, eager to be vertical once again. The drive from the airport to Kate’s little hometown on the Saint Lawrence River might have been the most comfortable hour of his journey, but it had been the one that most sent him out of whack. He needed to enjoy some sunshine and refresh himself and then get busy. Once his hands and his brain were occupied, he would be more grounded. More confident.

  More able to stop thinking about all the ways he wasn’t anywhere near as ready to be a father as he’d convinced himself he was.

  The trunk was already popped. He grabbed his bags, slung his backpack over his shoulder, and, while Kate was freeing Jamie from his restraints, let himself take in the house.

  Boone had never been here. Kate had been living and working in Ottawa when they met. In their few months together last year, he had made only one trip to Comeback Cove with her, and that had been when they’d driven down to get married in her mother’s living room. That was as far as her grandmother had been able to travel by that point. They had offered to hold the ceremony by her bedside, but she’d been a tough old bugger who’d insisted that she was not going to sit in bed wearing her nightgown as she watched her oldest granddaughter get married. She had made it to the ceremony in full wedding regalia—flowered dress, floppy hat and all. She had been the happiest person in the room.

  Not difficult, since he and Kate had both still been in shock, and her mother and sister had spent the whole ceremony giving him the evil eye.

  Nana had died a month after he’d left. He was glad he’d had the chance to meet her and quietly satisfied that he’d been able to contribute to an easy passing for her.

  But as he took in the house, he couldn’t help but think that Kate inheriting it might not have been the blessing she’d deemed it.

  Kate, Jamie on her shoulder, came to stand beside him.

  “It used to be amazing,” she said softly.

  He could see that. The wraparound porch, deep enough to shade rocking chairs; the strong Queen Anne lines; the turret on the right all gave the house character. Charm. Potential.

  It also needed a new roof and new windows in the turret and a new railing on the porch. And that was just the work he could spy with a casual glance.

  Well, the good news was that fixing this place would leave him so wiped there’d be no question of insomnia.

  “Nana couldn’t keep up with it. She tried, but it was too much. We told her she should sell and move in with Mom, but she always said this was the house that welcomed her as a bride and gave her the happiest years of her life, and she had no intention of leaving until she had to be carried out. Which is exactly what happened.”

  Boone, who had never lived more than six months in the same place until the end of high school, couldn’t begin to comprehend what it must have been like to spend almost an entire life in one house.

  “Come on.” She headed for the steps. “Careful on the porch. The chairs are strategically placed to cover the spots where the boards need to be replaced.”

  He did as instructed, trying not to wince at the number of chairs to be skirted, then followed her into the house, braced for water marks and sagging floors and God only knew what else. So it was a pleasant surprise to walk through the ornately carved front door, through the tiny, sunlight-filled vestibule, and into a cheery yellow room filled with the cushy furniture he recognized from her old place. Sun catchers in the bay window sent prisms dancing over every surface, adding to the feelings of warmth and welcome.

  “This is better than I expected.” He kicked off his sneakers and flexed his toes. “Oh, man, that feels good. I’ve been wearing those shoes for about thirty-six hours.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, I can tell.”

  Her grin told him she was teasing. Which shouldn’t have been as much of a relief as it was.

  She nodded toward the doorway into the next room. “Come on. I’m going to see if I can get Jamie into his crib. Then I’ll give you the grand tour.”

  He kept his eyes firmly glued on the walls and the ceiling as he followed her. For one thing, it gave him a chance to assess the structure. For another, it was safer than watching the sway of her hips as she padded in stocking feet across the plank floors. Or the brush of her hair against her neck. Or the curve of her shoulder where he used to bury his face and inhale her and...

  The floors. Right. Think about the floors. They would need to be sanded and refinished before the place went on the market.

  “You lived here for a while when you were a kid, right?”


  “Right. Just long enough to make it the first home I can remember.”

  As soon as they passed into the kitchen, his heart sank. Someone had obviously painted in here—the walls were a great shade of green, not too minty, just fresh and vibrant—but the cupboards needed a total face-lift, if not a complete gutting. The linoleum on the floor was cracked and peeling. And the window above the sink bore a long strip of...

  “Duct tape?” He glanced from the glass to Kate.

  She seemed embarrassed. “That just cracked last week,” she said. “We had a windstorm. A nasty one. We lost power overnight and had to stay with my mom. When I came back, I found that. I called the glass guys, but as you can imagine, they’ve been pretty busy. I’m on the list for next week.”

  “Cancel them. I can have that fixed in a day or two.” He measured the window with his eyes. “Okay, maybe a little longer, depending on whether the glass is a standard size. But I can definitely do that.”

  “Okay.” She lifted the lid on a slow cooker, releasing a rich aroma he hadn’t smelled in too long.

  “Chili?” he asked.

  “Mmm-hmm. I figured that would be a good one for tonight. If your flight was delayed, it would only get better.” She replaced the lid and kept moving.

  Boone was getting a good hint about which one of them had given Jamie the gene that kept that foot swinging all the time.

  He shook his head and followed her into the next room. It held only a rocking chair—strategically placed in front of a truly massive stone fireplace, complete with rock mantel—a computer desk, a bookshelf, and something that he was pretty sure was a changing table. At least, it looked like the pictures that had come up on the Google searches he’d conducted before Jamie’s birth, when Kate would talk to him about baby equipment. Changing tables and bassinets, bottle brushes and onesies, diaper pails and breast pumps.