Maddie twisted around in the bed, her eyes soft and unfocused. The room smelled of sunshine on clean linens, the sweet scent of newborn baby. An odd sensation that managed to be vague and sharp at the same time sliced through him as a stray shaft of sunlight grazed the top of her head, turning her dull brown hair a rich, golden color. And she had on one of his shirts, he noticed, that blue plaid that had gotten all soft, just the way he liked it.
“One problem with this hotel,” he said, his throat suddenly dry, “is the lousy room service.”
Maddie smiled, slowly and lazily, and his heart just hopped right up into that dry throat. “Hardly,” she said in that scratchy little voice of hers, before carefully pushing herself upright. Her just-washed hair was all feathery and soft around a scrubbed face, making her look more than ever like a child.
Only not.
She yawned, then nodded toward the cases. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” He shifted, hooking his thumbs into his jeans pockets. Told himself he was the doctor, he had a right to be there. “Sorry to wake you.”
Her eyes had gone a smoky-blue. From the colors in the shirt, he supposed. “S’okay,” she said, only then she must’ve noticed he was staring at the shirt, because she looked down at it, then back up at him, blushing a little. “Ivy said you wouldn’t mind if I borrowed this until I got my things.”
“I don’t,” he said, because oddly enough, he really didn’t. Only then she laced her hands around her knees through the bedclothes, and smiled, and damned if something inside him didn’t just melt all to hell.
Ryan cleared his throat. “How’re you feeling?”
“Like I just gave birth. Other than that, not too bad.”
“Any light-headedness?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Bleeding’s normal?”
“Seems so to me, and Ivy said it was, too. I’m cramping some, but I guess that’s to be expected.”
Ryan folded his arms across his chest, grateful to be back on solid ground again. “A good sign, actually.”
“What they don’t tell you is the pain doesn’t quit once the baby’s born.”
“You want a Tylenol or something?”
But she shook her head, just as he figured she would.
“You don’t have to tough it out, you know.”
A thin smile stretched across her lips. “Yes, I do.”
Not knowing what to say to that, Ryan walked over to the bassinet, grinning down at the ruddy-faced little girl asleep inside. “She kind of grows on you, doesn’t she?”
This time, Maddie’s laugh was full and rich. “Takes after her mama, I guess.”
Despite the lack of self-pity in her words, they perturbed him nonetheless. “You’re not red and wrinkled, Maddie,” was the only thing he could think of to say, which was at least worth another laugh.
“No, I suppose not. But I’m no beauty, either. Not like Katie Grace. I imagine I’m gonna have to beat the boys off with sticks by the time she’s ten.”
Amy Rose began to stir, making little “feed me” noises. Ryan gathered up the baby with an ease fine-honed from handling other people’s babies for so many years, talking silliness to her as he checked her diaper—no meconium yet, but he imagined that would pass with the next feed—then carried her to her mother. But he didn’t give Maddie her baby right away, using the infant as an excuse to bide his time until he figured out what to say.
Damn. He was no good at this kind of thing. But there was no way he could let her self-deprecation pass, either.
“Don’t sell yourself short,” he said, which earned him a puzzled look. “We never see ourselves the way others do, you know.”
“Oh,” was all she said, then reached for her daughter, a tiny crease settling between naturally arched brows. Her hair slithered over her shoulders in a hundred glistening layers as she spoke softly to her baby. Her scent surrounded him, shook him, a combination of shampoo, his own clean shirt and…her. Somehow, inexplicably, whatever it was that would enable little Amy able to pick her own mama out of a hundred other nursing mothers, Ryan picked up on, too.
She undid two buttons, guided her baby to a high, small breast. Ryan made himself focus on Maddie’s face, again unnerved by his reaction. Not only was it unprofessional, if not downright unethical, but up until an hour or so ago, he would have thought it impossible.
He retreated to the end of the bed, leaned on the footboard. Quietly dug himself in deeper. “In fact,” he said, “my brother even commented on how pretty you are.”
Her head snapped up at that. “Your brother?”
“Hank. He owns the Double Arrow.”
Silence followed, punctuated only by the sounds of a busily suckling baby, the hiss of heat from the radiator. Then: “Does kindness run in your family or what?” She lifted those steely eyes to his, littered with questions. And maybe a little hope. Or was that disbelief?
Ryan folded his arms across his chest. Smiled a little over the ache nudging his heart, that this woman should mistake a casual comment—not even made in her presence, for pity’s sake—for kindness. “Not especially, no. What I mean to say is, none of us are any good at flattery. Well, except maybe for Cal. I mean, our mother made good and sure we could keep company in polite society without embarrassing her, but…”
Ryan caught himself, wondering how—and why—the conversation had flipflopped. But she was grinning at him, her ingenuousness trickling past his resolve. “How many of you are there?”
Oh, hell. He didn’t want to go down this path, he really didn’t…but he did like making her smile. Especially since he imagined there wasn’t a whole lot in her life worth smiling about these days. “Three. Me and Hank—we’re eighteen months apart—and Cal, the baby.”
“The baby?”
“Well, to us he is. He’s eight years younger than I am.”
“Which probably still makes him older than me.” She angled her head, making her hair glisten some more. “Right?”
Ryan stuffed his hands into his back pockets. “Well, I guess it does at that.”
“And your parents?”
“Both dead.”
“Oh.” Her cheeks pinked. “I’m sorry.”
“They were already older when they had Hank and me. Mom was in her mid-forties when Cal was born.”
“Oh, my goodness!” she said, her eyes wide, then added after a moment, “Does Cal live around here, too?”
“Yep. He raises horses, out on the family farm. Well, his farm now. We all
