lips, it was only to meet the warm intimacy of his amber eyes.
Finally she found her voice. “Any idea how long it will take for your brother to get back to you?” she asked, surprised at how casual and unaffected she sounded.
Thad looked unhappy. “No telling.” He clipped a pager and cell phone to his belt, searched around for his keys. “Russell could be in any time zone. He’s a photojournalist for a wire news service, always off on assignment somewhere, but he checks his messages every day, unless he’s in a war zone. Then, of course, it can be harder to get in touch with him.”
Michelle was rubbing William’s back gently. “What are you going to do?”
Thad eyed her reluctantly. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” He sat down next to her and smiled tenderly at the baby, who was looking back at him with sleepy blue eyes. “I’m due at the E.R. in twenty minutes. I’m trying to get someone to cover my shift for me. Meanwhile, I need someone to watch William.” He offered his index finger to the baby and grinned when William instinctively wrapped his tiny fist around it and held on tight.
Anxiously, Thad looked back at Michelle. “You know any babysitters I could call on short notice?”
Michelle knew what he was really asking. “You can’t take him with you to the hospital?”
Thad shook his head. “It’d be a bad idea. Too many germs in the E.R.”
He had a point there. She looked down at her tiny charge. It didn’t matter what she thought of Thad. This child needed tender loving care. “How old do you think he is?” she asked softly, smiling when William finally let out a healthy-sounding burp.
Thad chuckled, too. “A few days. Maybe.”
And already abandoned. Michelle felt tears welling in her eyes. “That’s what I thought, too,” she murmured thickly. She wished she could simply take William to her place and give him the home he deserved. But life was never that simple. Wishes were never granted that easily. She would not get the baby she wanted in her life this way.
“So back to the babysitter dilemma,” Thad persisted, oblivious to the yearning nature of her thoughts. “Any idea who I could call?”
“Besides any of your legion of female admirers?” she quipped, offering the last of the bottle to William.
“I’m serious.”
So was she. Michelle tested the waters with an idea. “Violet Hunter knows a lot about kids.”
“We dated a couple times, when I first came to town.”
So Michelle had heard. The pretty single mom had been one of Thad’s most persistent admirers.
“It was about six months after her husband died,” Thad continued cryptically. “It didn’t work out. From what I can tell, although it’s been about two years now, she’s still pretty vulnerable.”
Michelle had met the twenty-nine-year-old nurse—and her two little girls—at a charity fund-raiser the previous summer. She was very nice. And very much in the market for another husband.
She looked at him, waiting.
“I don’t want to give Violet the wrong idea,” Thad said finally.
Michelle studied him. Close up, he didn’t appear to be the kind of guy who enjoyed stringing women along. In fact, the opposite. Life had taught her that appearances could be deceptive. She did better relying on facts in her personal life, just as she did in her practice of the law.
“And the wrong idea would be?” she probed.
Thad regarded her with the patient cool of an expert witness. “That something might be possible when it’s not.” Regret turned down the corners of his mouth. “And if I call Violet—or someone else I’ve dated—and tell them I need help with the baby I suddenly have on my hands…”
“You’d probably be getting more than chicken enchilada casserole on your front porch,” Michelle said wryly.
“Exactly.”
“Whereas if you were to put me in charge…”
He suddenly seemed defensive. “It’s pretty clear where you stand regarding dating me.”
“But you’ve never asked me out, so I’ve never had the opportunity to turn you down.”
“But you would,” Thad countered.
True. If only because she didn’t want to end up wasting her time again on something that was never going to happen. Only this time, given Thad’s rep with the local ladies, she would know that going in. Deciding, since they were neighbors, it was best simply to be honest, she shrugged. “I don’t date players.”
His lips tightened. “I’m not a player.”
Michelle kept her eyes off the sinewy lines of his shoulders and chest. She did not need to remember how he looked clad only in a low-slung cotton pajama bottom, or be thinking about the crisp, dark hair arrowing straight down the goody line. She closed her mind to any further licentious thoughts. “Right.”
“I’m just honest about whether or not I see a future with a woman.”
Doing her best to slow her racing pulse, she got a hold of her out-of-control fantasies and retorted, “And you usually don’t.”
“Usually isn’t always,” he replied cryptically.
Which meant what? Michelle wondered. He’d had his heart broken, too?
Disconcerted—because that would give them something in common—she returned her gaze to the newborn nestled in her arms.
If William were her baby…
But he wasn’t, Michelle reminded herself firmly.
Still, the little guy was here now. He needed someone to watch over him until this mess could be sorted out. Someone who wouldn’t leave him on Thad Garner’s doorstep all by himself.
“Believe me,” Thad said, sounding as protective toward this tiny baby as she was, “if I had any other job, I’d stay and take care of the little fella myself. But I can’t leave the E.R. short-staffed. We’ve got the only trauma center in the entire county.”
Lives depended on Thad.
Just as William, it seemed, was momentarily depending on her.
Before Michelle could stop herself, she was pushing aside every self-protective instinct she had and volunteering. “Fine. I’ll do it.”
Thad’s eyebrows lifted in amazement. “You sure?” he said finally, standing. “It’s going to be twelve hours, unless I’m able to find someone to cover the rest of my shift for me.”
Forcing herself to shove aside the memory of another child, another time, Michelle stood, too. There would be no such heartbreak this time because she wouldn’t allow herself to get that involved with William or Thad.
Loving
