was, in this house or somewhere else, that was where it felt as if he belonged. He’d believed he’d belong there forever. As he’d slowly gotten used to not having her around, he’d forgotten about it, mostly, until she was here again. Bringing the special energy and light that was Bree Donovan back into his life. But she’d be out of it again in just days or even hours, and he stopped to gather himself for a second. He blew out a long breath, then moved through his back hallway, trying to keep his voice cheerful and upbeat, as though he weren’t feeling a chaos of emotion in his chest. Hadn’t heard the literal sounds of chaos within the house. “How are things going?”
“Just peachy.” Her voice was strained and tense, which wasn’t exactly a surprise.
“Were you able to find—”
The sight in his kitchen had him stopping dead. There were diapers strewn on the floor, and a spilled bottle lay on the kitchen counter, its liquid half dried on the granite. The little bouncy seat the store had insisted Will needed was knocked onto its side, but thankfully the boy wasn’t inside. Bree’s back was to him as she tapped away at a laptop on the counter in front of her with surprising ferocity considering she was using just one hand. At the same time, her whole body was swaying back and forth and bobbing up and down, and her rear end in skimpy orange shorts moving sexily all around was so distracting it briefly short-circuited his brain.
“Uh, is something wrong?”
“Something wrong?” She swung around, her hair flying into her face, a crying Will clutched close to her breast. “You tell me. I’ve fed him, changed him, sang to him, put him down, picked him up, but he’s still upset. I’m looking online for more ideas on how to help him calm down, but so far no go. Do you think he could be sick?”
To his utter shock, the worried green eyes staring at him filled with tears. He’d never seen the woman anything but confident and completely together. He didn’t know what to do, but seeing her upset sent him practically running to her. “Bree, honey.” He swept her hair from her face, cupped her cheek in his palm and, without even thinking, pressed his lips to her forehead. The familiar scent of her filled his nose, overwhelming the smell of baby powder and formula, and he couldn’t pull away. Had to let his lips linger a moment to feel her skin. To breathe her in before he forced himself to step back and focus. “They just released him with a clean bill of health. I’m sure he’s fine. Don’t babies cry for no reason sometimes?”
“Maybe. Probably. I’ve checked him out, of course, but Pediatrics gets called in when we have an infant in the ED. So what do I know?”
“Pretty much everything when it comes to emergency medicine, that’s what.” He wanted to wrap his arms around her, to hold her close against him, to comfort this side of Bree he’d never seen before, but he knew doing that would just mess him up. Make him want things he couldn’t have. And the baby was the whole reason she was feeling this way, right? Since he’d badgered her to help, giving her the break she obviously needed made a lot more sense.
He lifted Will from her arms and headed toward the back door, hoping a little quiet in the room would help her catch her breath, and being away from her would help him catch his. “I’m going to take him outside for a few minutes. Why don’t you sit down and take a break?”
The eyes that met his were still wet and troubled, but she nodded as he walked the baby out the door and around the small backyard of his bayside home. To his surprise and relief, Will’s little face relaxed and he quit crying to look around, as though wondering what the heck that breeze was against his face and that bright thing in the sky was. “Well, how about that,” Sean said, feeling pretty proud of himself. After just a few laps around his short, springy grass, the child had gone fast asleep.
He was a little afraid to take Will back inside for fear he’d wake up and the crying would start all over again and upset Bree, but he couldn’t stay out here indefinitely. Especially with a frustrated woman in the house who just might decide to grab the bag she hadn’t been too keen on packing to begin with and take off so fast she left skid marks in his driveway.
The way she had after their breakup, when she’d stopped by for a nanosecond to pick up the few items she’d left at his house. That definitely was a day he never wanted to repeat. His chest tightened and his heart stepped up its pace at the thought, which was utterly stupid. As though her walking out the door now would be even close to that feeling six months ago. As if she’d shoved a scalpel through his chest, leaving him to bleed.
Stupid though it might be, he hurried in anyway, and the relief he felt when he saw her still in the kitchen weakened his knees. “He’s asleep,” he whispered. “I’m going to put him in the bassinet thing they brought. Be right back.”
When he tiptoed back into the kitchen after putting a knocked-out little Will into his bed, Bree was attacking the last of the spilled-bottle smears with fierce sponge wipes. Now that the crisis was over, the sight of her in his home doing everyday things brought all those mixed-up emotions back in full force. Disbelief at her conviction they were incompatible in too many ways. Anger at her overachieving stubbornness. The deep hurt as his hopes and dreams went up in burning flames, all stuffed down by logic and realism that they obviously just hadn’t been meant for one another the way he’d been sure they were.
He let his gaze wander from her silkily disheveled hair, around that tempting derriere, and down to the long, gorgeous legs he used to love feeling wrapped around his back. He wanted to keep looking. He wanted to do a lot more than look, which ticked him off. Hadn’t he just been remembering all the ways he was still upset with her? All the reasons their relationship had been doomed from the beginning, before they’d realized that truth? How bad it had felt when it was over, and how hard he’d worked to get over her?
Staring at her and wanting to grab her and kiss her at the same time he felt like yelling at her showed him loud and clear how awkward this was going to be. So awkward that the thought of calling that nanny service after all crossed his mind, only to be dismissed when he pictured how upset his mother would be. There wasn’t a human on earth with more ways to make someone feel guilty than his mom, and the challenge of handling one tiny baby had to be easier to deal with than that, didn’t it? Surely he and Bree could act like adults about being thrown together for just a day or two.
“Seems we might have a solution to crying that’s not fixed by food or sleep,” he said, proud that he’d kept his tone light and casual. “If he’s inside we take him out, and if he’s outside we bring him in. Easy-peasy.”
Bree swung around the same way she had before, but the green eyes that pinned his this time weren’t worried or teary anymore. They were filled with the kind of unflinching determination he’d seen in them many times. Times when she’d faced a big wave, or a skilled tennis opponent, or a difficult case at the hospital. Tough and determined and indomitable. He knew it would be nearly impossible to find someone like her again, and a heavy feeling pulled at his lungs. “Easy for you, apparently. And I’ll remember your technique. I’m sorry I didn’t handle things very well with him today, but I promise I’ll do better until your mother takes over.”
“You handled things fine. Alive and well and now sleeping are all that’s required.”
“Think there’s a little more to it than that, but thanks for not telling me I’m completely inept.”
“Is that what this is all about?” Ultra Type A Bree demanded perfection of herself at everything she did, so he should have realized that was part of why she’d been so upset. “You’ve never been inept at anything in your life. Maybe you’ve forgotten it takes time to learn new things, even if you are Ms. Perfection Bree Donovan.”
“I’ve
