shimmering in her eyes that it was—at least to her.
He wondered how it was that, only ten minutes earlier, he’d been thinking that they were managing okay and now Harper was on the verge of a meltdown—for reasons he couldn’t even begin to fathom.
“Haven’t you ever heard the saying ‘no use crying over spilled milk’?” he asked, striving for lightness in a desperate attempt to ward off her tears. “Well, I think the same could be said about nonfat milk.”
“I’m not crying,” she denied.
And maybe she wasn’t, but she definitely sniffled.
“Do you want to tell me what this is really about?” he asked gently.
She shook her head. “I’m just tired.”
Which was hardly surprising in light of the hours that she worked—not just at the studio but after Oliver was settled into bed at night. “It’s almost the weekend—you can sleep all day Saturday if you want.”
“I don’t mean physically tired, although I am that, too,” she admitted. “I mean tired of faking it.”
His brows lifted. “What exactly have you been faking?”
She drew in a deep breath and looked up at him. “That I know what I’m doing here, playing house, playing mommy, when the truth is, I don’t have a clue.”
He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, then cupped the back of her head and gently drew her closer, until her forehead was against his shoulder. “You’re doing just fine. We’re doing just fine.”
She didn’t pull back, but she shook her head again. “You already do so much more than I do, and when you ask me to do one little thing, I screw it up.”
“No one’s keeping score, Harper.”
“If they were, you’d get all the points,” she said.
“That’s not true,” he denied. “You’d get points for having breasts.”
That, finally, earned him a watery smile.
“Now, why don’t you go get Oliver while I finish making the mac and cheese?” he suggested. “There’s enough for you, too, if you’re hungry.”
“Maybe.” And then, proving she hadn’t lost her sense of humor, she added, “But only if you’re making it with nonfat milk.”
* * *
She didn’t have any of the pasta.
Instead Harper made herself a salad and munched on lettuce and chopped veggies while Oliver shoved handfuls of macaroni in his mouth and smeared cheese sauce all over his face and the tray of his high chair.
Ryan had taken his bowl of pasta into the main-floor den to do some work while awaiting the start of a conference call. In the past, Harper might have resented the inherent flexibility afforded to him because his family owned the business he worked for. Now she was grateful.
Not just because it allowed them to share childcare responsibilities but because their offsetting schedules meant that they didn’t have to spend a lot of time together. Because their late-night encounter the night before had reminded her all too clearly how dangerous it was to be in close proximity to Ryan Garrett.
“Mo!” Oliver demanded, banging his now-empty bowl on his tray.
“Please,” Harper admonished.
“Mo!” he said again.
She got up to put some more macaroni in his bowl, shook her head when she placed it in front of him. “You are a mess.”
“Mess,” he echoed, and grinned to show off his eight tiny pearly-white teeth in a mouth stuffed full of macaroni.
Smiling, she ruffled the soft, wispy curls that fell over his forehead.
He needed a haircut—his first haircut. A few months earlier, Melissa had told her that Darren was pushing her to take Oliver to the barbershop because he was tired of strangers mistakenly assuming their son was a daughter, even when he was dressed all in blue. Melissa had resisted, because she was afraid that if they cut off Oliver’s curls, they might be gone forever. And just in case, she’d already snipped one of them and tucked it into a clear plastic folder in his baby book.
The baby book that Melissa kept in the top drawer of Oliver’s dresser so it was readily accessible to record her son’s every milestone. She’d documented everything from his weight and length at birth and the day he came home from the hospital to his first smile, when he rolled over, sat up, clapped his hands, waved bye-bye, got his first tooth and took his first step.
It was a meticulous record of her love as much as her baby’s growth, and Harper didn’t know if she should continue what Melissa had started or leave the book as she had left it. Either way, she knew she had to talk to Ryan about taking the little boy for a haircut.
Sooner rather than later if he was going to insist on putting things like cheesy macaroni in it.
“I think that’s a sign that you’ve had enough to eat,” she said to him.
“Mo!”
She shook her head. “No more. Not today.”
“Kee.”
She was starting to understand his unique baby language and that word was one of his favorites. “Let’s get you cleaned up first. Then you can have a cookie.”
She wiped his hands and his face—and his hair—with a wet cloth, ensuring that no traces of orange sauce remained. “There’s my handsome boy,” she said.
He grinned at her, melting her heart. “Kee.”
She laughed. “Yes, I’ll get you a cookie.”
While he was munching on his arrowroot biscuit, she tidied up the kitchen. Then she washed Oliver’s hands and face again.
“What are we going to do this afternoon?” she asked the little boy.
He banged his hands on his tray. “Bah-bah-bah.”
“I’m going to need a translation on that,” she said as she unbuckled him from his high chair. “Either you want to play ball or you want to pretend you’re a sheep—which is it?”
“Bah-bah-bah.”
“Blocks,” Ryan said from the doorway.
Harper glanced up as she set the little boy on his feet. He ran straight to Ryan, who swung him up into his arms. “Do you want to play with your blocks?”
“Bah-bah-bah.”
Harper frowned as she moved into the living room. “Do you think his speech is delayed?”
“No, I think he’s a sixteen-month-old with the limited vocabulary of a sixteen-month-old.”
He
