explained, her voice saccharine sweet. “The baby’s out, I’m afraid, getting some fresh air with the nanny. She’s a woman with impeccable qualifications and references. Expensive, but my granddaughter deserves the best.”
“So, you’re not caring for Meg yourself?”
Jenna’s gaze snapped over to Gage and she smiled. Good question.
“Given that I don’t have any firsthand experience with infants,” Leeann replied a little stiffly, “I wasn’t too proud to seek assistance.” She brought her hands together, a terminating gesture. “I’d offer you refreshments, but I have an appointment with my lawyer in an hour.”
Jenna’s lip curled at the same kind of dismissal she’d heard from this woman too often in the past. Then she noticed something out of place—a jacket lying over a dining room chair. A heavy jacket…leather. Big.
She moved toward it, assessed the jacket, then Leeann. “Unless his tastes changed radically, this didn’t belong to my father.” It smelled of oil or grease.
Leeann stood very still, as if she were holding her breath. “That belongs to the nanny.”
“Don’t nannies wear pinafores and carry umbrellas?” Jenna asked skeptically.
Leeann manufactured a laugh and patted her blond chignon. “I meant the nanny’s boyfriend.”
Somebody’s boyfriend, Jenna thought, but not the nanny’s. Seemed it hadn’t taken Leeann long to fill her poor father’s shoes.
Her chest constricted.
Or perhaps Leeann had been seeing someone on the side all along.
Leeann swung her attention to Gage. “I presume you made the journey to pay your respects to my husband. A little late for the ceremony, I’m afraid.”
Gage nodded. “Jenna’s father was very generous to me.”
Leeann’s green eyes lowered even as they gleamed. “And to me.”
A weak mewling leaked out from behind a partly closed bedroom door. Jenna stilled, heard it again, then held her stomach. Meg.
A fierce protective instinct surged up and she pushed past Leeann into the room. In the darkened far corner stood a cot, pretty with lace and a hanging mobile of colorful clowns. Tiny fists waved above the mattress and the crying grew louder.
Heart squeezing, Jenna rushed to the cot.
Leaning over the rail, she carefully scooped the baby out and cradled her close. Meg hiccupped out another cry, but her big blue eyes, wet with tears, opened to gaze into Jenna’s. Did the baby recognize her? Did Meg think she was her mother?
For the most part, Leeann had made Meg unavailable for one reason or another, although she had been uncommonly generous the day of the funeral; Jenna had held her niece right through the service and afterward at the wake. But that day Jenna had been in a different zone, barely functioning. Now, however, she felt the connection between them as if she’d been zapped by lightning—strong, bright and formidable.
Tucking Meg close, Jenna breathed in the scent of powder and felt the deep-rooted knowledge of kinship. “It’s okay, sweetie.” As the crying petered out, she smiled softly down as her throat thickened. “You look so much like your mother.”
Behind her, she sensed Gage’s towering presence, then heard the comforting rumble of his voice near her ear. “And her aunt.”
From the rear of the room, Leeann made her excuse. “I’d just put her down and didn’t want her disturbed. I wasn’t sure you’d understand.”
You’re right, Jenna thought. I don’t.
But she kept those comments to herself. Leeann’s explanation might be embarrassingly lame, but Jenna didn’t want anything upsetting the baby again.
In the absence of a challenge, Leeann went on. “She’s sleeping through the night now. Amy used to speak often about what songs Meg liked to hear, the nightlight she preferred left on. Amy might have told you, too, Jenna…over the phone or in a letter.” Her voice crept closer. “When did you say you were heading back overseas?”
Jenna curled a finger around Meg’s silken cheek. “I’m not.”
She smiled at the baby gripping her finger as well as Leeann’s stunned silence. In the past she’d never gotten the upper hand as far as this woman was concerned. That’s why she’d left home so soon after finishing college. No matter the disagreement—bar two—her father had sided with his new wife. He’d valued their marriage, as he’d valued Jenna’s mother until her death. He’d told his daughter he didn’t want any upsets in the family home, then had asked why she couldn’t simply be polite and get along.
Her father couldn’t understand that Leeann had seen his strong-willed daughter as a threat. When they were alone, Leeann had made it clear there was room for only one mistress in the Darley household. The frosty glares, the subtle yet painful barbs…Having been brought up by a quiet and gentle woman, Jenna hadn’t known how to handle a female relationship based on rivalry. In the end, she’d handled it by throwing up her hands and walking away.
But she wouldn’t walk away from this fight.
“Wasn’t there an assignment,” Leeann stammered, “in Italy? You mentioned it at the funeral…”
Gage blocked Leeann’s progress toward Jenna. “She declined that assignment. Although we have talked about visiting Venice during a brief honeymoon.”
Every inch of Jenna glowed warm. Those words were simply part of an act to get Meg and keep her where she belonged. Yet it seemed like only yesterday that she’d gone to sleep dreaming of sharing a honeymoon with Gage. A young and foolish girl’s dream. She had never featured in his bigger plans.
Now Gage was an important man, and pedal-to-the-metal busy.
Why was he helping her?
Ashen-faced, Leeann navigated around Gage and planted herself before Jenna. “Did I hear right? A honeymoon?”
Gage cupped Jenna’s shoulders and his heat radiated through to her very bones. “When Jenna and I met again, the old sparks fired back up.” He looked down at her and smiled. “We’ve wasted so much time, haven’t we, darling?”
His earlier comments about her hair rose in Jenna’s mind. Finding the emotion she needed, she bit that bullet. “When Gage asked me to marry him, I…I knew it was right.” She turned, steadied herself upon facing the solid heat of Gage’s frame, then placed the baby in his arms.
Strong chin tucking in, he held Meg a little away from his broad chest…until the baby gurgled, then he cocked his head, his mouth curved slightly at one corner, and he brought her close.
A tower of a man holding such a tiny life. The picture made Jenna’s heart beat fast. Gage had no intention of fathering children. As he’d said, he valued his freedom too much and a child needed stability. Still, it was a shame that a man who possessed Gage’s more admirable qualities—leadership, intelligence, vision—would never pass those genes on. This situation with herself and Meg would probably be the closest he would come to fatherhood.
A
