Maybe he was coming down with something, but he was too quiet.
She needed to talk to Griff tonight. It was already well past dark and Griff Price had not returned to the house. He had left before she’d awakened this morning. Now Riley was almost ready for bed, so that meant a whole day with no contact between father and son.
She suspected Griff was staying away so he wouldn’t have to talk to her.
It was her fault. She should have stayed calm last night instead of closing the door in his face, but she had been so angry she would have said things he wasn’t ready to hear.
He thought the baby was her responsibility. His announcement had told her a lot. Could he actually think he didn’t need to have contact with his son at this point in the child’s life? That a temporary baby-sitter could take the place of both parents?
Into a bowl she put fresh greens from the garden outside the mudroom and glanced down at Riley, who sat quietly on an old towel in the middle of the kitchen floor.
Although Riley watched her all the time, he didn’t make sounds or smile. Jolie knew his eyesight and hearing were okay, she had given him some basic tests and he had responded by following her movements and turning to sounds.
She put the greens aside and took two wooden spoons out of a crock by the stove, placing them on the towel beside the baby.
“Pick them up, Riley. They’re for you. It’s okay to touch them.” She smiled at him, encouraging him with a nod of her head.
Riley looked at the spoons, then back up at her. He didn’t reach for the utensils, just continued to watch her.
She waited for a few moments, and when he didn’t move, she found a set of metal measuring spoons in a drawer, gave them a shake so they all clanked together, then laid them beside the other spoons.
“Don’t they make a fun noise?” she cooed, and bent over him, giving them another shake. “Take them.”
As she dangled the spoons, his gaze lingered for a moment longer on them, then returned to her face. This time she noticed his fingers opened and closed, but he still didn’t reach out.
She laid them down on the towel beside him. “When you’re ready, you pick them up.”
As Jolie returned to dinner preparation, the suspicion that something might be wrong emotionally with Riley tore at her heart.
She had no idea how to tell Griff that she suspected a problem. Her greatest apprehension was that Griff might not care. Could he be that detached from his own child? Or did he already suspect that something might be wrong, and he couldn’t accept a less than perfect child?
She wasn’t trained for this. She needed to take Riley to a pediatrician and get a professional opinion. Babies his age, normal babies, had only two speeds. Full tilt or sound asleep. They explored everything with insatiable curiosity.
Jolie’s hands stilled and she realized she had slipped back into her old way of thinking. There were things she could do, if she had the courage.
For instance, there were no toys in the house, no bright mobiles or wall hangings in his room to catch Riley’s interest.
When she stayed with her cousin’s children, sometimes it took an hour for her and the nanny to pick up their toys and games, even when the maid pitched in.
Perhaps Riley’s problem was a lack of stimulation in his environment. Most children formed an attachment to a special blanket or stuffed toy they had dragged around everywhere they went. He couldn’t do that because he didn’t have anything.
The only time she got any reaction from Riley was when she picked him up. Then he clung to her like a limpet on a rock at the shoreline. The feel of his little hands grabbing her almost broke her heart.
The back door slammed and Griff came into the kitchen through the mudroom.
Riley watched Griff come in, but showed no reaction.
At the other extreme, her pulse leaped at the sight of him. Annoyed at the purely physical reaction the man evoked in her, she smacked the metal bowl down on the counter harder than she had intended.
He glanced at her, an eyebrow raised in question. Then his eyes slid slowly over her apron, eyeing her as if she were wearing a lacy item from Victoria’s Secret instead of the ancient faded smock she’d found in a drawer.
Every nerve ending in her body seemed to tingle.
Flustered by his perusal and her reaction, she met his gaze. Courage, she thought, have courage.
She wasn’t going to let him intimidate her.
Her ex-fiancé used to do that to get her off a subject he didn’t care to pursue. But Charles had never been able to derail her with just a look.
Jolie shivered. Those blue eyes of his made her stomach do little flip-flops.
“Evening.” He held her eye for another disarming moment, then glanced down briefly at Riley before turning to the sink. He didn’t speak to his son.
“Good evening.” She kept her tone light and tried to keep her mind on the discussion she intended to have with him during dinner.
He had on a denim shirt that pulled across his shoulders as he reached to turn on the water. The color made his blue eyes even bluer. Deeply tanned skin made his hair looked gilded in the bright kitchen light.
In spite of how good he looked, Jolie didn’t miss the fact that lines of fatigue, so apparent yesterday, had deepened around his eyes and mouth.
Jolie watched the baby as Griff finished washing up. Riley displayed only a simple curiosity at the new person who had entered his presence. No smiles or squeals of happiness at seeing a familiar face, no anticipation of attention.
Griff had shown no interest in the child beyond a cursory glance.
They acted as if they were strangers.
Jolie felt a moment of panic. She wasn’t qualified to deal with this situation. How could she get Griff and Riley together?
Courage, she told herself sternly, you live with courage. You may not have the training for this, but you’re all they have to save them.
When she had vowed to have courage and do something outrageous every day, she had never considered taking on something as complicated as repairing the damaged relationship between a man and his son.
She had thought more along the lines of working up the nerve to get a tattoo in a place no one else would see.
The daunting task of fixing this parent-child relationship made the thought of decorating her hip with a small tattoo seem too trivial to think about.
But, she reminded herself, she was all this man and his son had. Jolie didn’t see Griff as the kind of person who would go looking for help.
She was pretty sure he didn’t know he needed help.
She was absolutely sure he wouldn’t want her help.
But, she told
