You can unpack while Jane’s still happy on the floor. Karen’ll want the Portacrib in her room, I assume.”
“I expect so.”
“I’ll put you in the adjoining room. Then if the storm does hit and stops Karen from getting back, you can keep the connecting door open so you’ll hear Jane if she wakes in the night.”
“Yes, that’s the most sensible idea, isn’t it?” Allie agreed, outwardly calm.
“Let’s go, then.”
He placed some cushions around Jane’s receiving blanket, casually betraying his experience with babies. Jane wasn’t officially mobile yet, according to Karen, but she could shuffle herself backward along the floor on her tummy for quite a distance if she kept at it long enough.
“These’ll keep her safely corralled while we’re upstairs,” Connor said.
Allie ached with envying him. Just the way he moved around the baby. Just the way he could reach down to ruffle the fuzzy, dark-gold hair on her little head without even thinking about it. Some day, with the right woman, he’d make a great dad. But for Allie, the idea of herself as a mom had become so complicated—
She snapped that compartment of her mind shut like a jailhouse gate.
Now he’d picked up the crib, the diaper bag and the soft suitcase that contained Karen’s and Jane’s things. Allie grabbed her overnight bag and followed him up the wide stone staircase. This was a great house, only a few years old and full of gorgeous hardwood and stone. In any other situation, she’d feel like she was on vacation here and would look forward to exploring. The house, the island, the surrounding mountains, the nearby towns.
But with Karen temporarily gone and herself and Connor and Jane trapped here by the gathering night and the prospect of a snowstorm, it felt…Well, exactly like that, as if the house were a prison, an emotional hell that wasn’t her fault.
Trapped for how long? she wondered miserably. Would anything ever be truly right in her life again?
“Here you go,” Connor said, opening the door of a pretty little room high in one corner of the house. It had its own bathroom and an antique Amish quilt on the bed, a connecting door to a similar room where Allie would sleep, and a little window peeping out to a white view of flat ice and snow-covered pines…and freshly falling flakes, Allie saw, already coming down thickly. Karen would be over halfway to Albany by now. Had the storm hit down that way yet?
“Any idea how to set this thing up?” Connor indicated the Portacrib in its blue nylon cover.
“No. Sorry.”
She took her bag through to the connecting room, then came back and watched him helplessly as he unzipped the cover and rattled around with the legs and sides of the crib. He discovered some instructions printed on it and started muttering to himself.
Since she didn’t want to think too hard about having Jane so close to her during the night and what that would mean, she watched his body instead. It wasn’t a punishing activity. Even without the bulk of the coat he’d been wearing outside, he looked incredibly solid and strong in his dark sweater and pants, yet he moved very easily.
Or most of him did. For the first time, she noticed that he had a slight limp and it drew her attention to the lines of his thighs and hips, defined by the dark clothing he wore. Had he hurt himself recently? Or was it something permanent, dating from long ago?
And how come it didn’t detract from his masculine grace but only added to it? The limp hinted at a whole, complex range of possibilities about his past, suggesting there was a lot more to Connor Callahan than met the eye. And what met the eye was impressive enough to begin with. It was a long time since she’d met a man who wore his strength and good looks so casually, and with so little arrogance.
“Karen says you’re in the computer-software business,” she said, needing to know more about him. Karen had said she could trust him. That didn’t mean she felt comfortable with their situation.
“Yeah.” He nodded as he pushed the base of the crib into place. He had his sleeves pushed up to the elbows, and she noticed how strong his forearms were. “A couple of years ago I joined the company two of my brothers started. I head up their games division now. Tom has a pretty impressive computer up here, but I won’t be powering it up this weekend.”
“Karen will keep us busy as soon as she gets back.” I wish she hadn’t left. That darned camera!
“I offered her my disposable camera to take some shots with, but she wasn’t impressed,” Connor said. Once again, their thoughts had travelled along the same track.
“I should think not!” Allie exclaimed. “Have you any idea how she feels about that camera of hers?”
“I do now,” Connor admitted humbly. “It has features I didn’t know existed.”
“Yes, it’s some German or Swiss thing that cost her half a gazillion dollars.”
“Insured, I hope.”
“Definitely insured. I know she was acting a little crazy this afternoon, but my sister is actually very—”
“I know what your sister’s like,” he soothed, jerking the side rails of the crib upward with knotted hands to lock them straight. “A whirlwind of energy, with a heart of gold. She makes a great neighbor and a terrific mom.”
“Yes, she does, doesn’t she? An incredible mom.” Her throat was tight again.
“She and John have become good friends since I moved in next door,” Connor went on. If he’d noticed her sudden emotion, he didn’t let on. “That’s why I was happy to bail her out with this book-cover deal. Contrary to what my brother accused me of when I went to pick up the keys to this place, it’s not ‘cause I have a wild urge to be immortalized as Nancy Sherlock’s answer to Rhett Butler on the front of three million copies of Days of Grace and Danger.”
“Three million?”
“That’s not unrealistic, apparently, if they go ahead with the movie,” he pointed out. “Although Karen says that they might reprint the paperback using movie stills for the cover.”
“Gee, you know all about it!”
“Don’t you, too? She’s been reading the manuscript of the book all week and giving me updates on the plot, as well as a play-by-play account of the problems with the cover design. I assumed she’d been doing the same with you.”
“Karen and I…Well, we haven’t spent a lot of time together lately,” Allie said uncomfortably.
“Haven’t you?”
He looked up. He had the crib all set up now, and had found the crib-size quilts folded in the top of Karen’s suitcase. Their eyes met as he shook one out, revealing a fluffy pink-and-white-striped flannel fabric. Allie flushed, then chilled, in the space of a few seconds. She could tell quite clearly what he was thinking.
He knows it’s because of Jane.
But he couldn’t know why. Was he going to let it go?
No.
“And
