might be all right for his older brothers. They’d both only recently become dads under unusual circumstances.
“But me?” Devon said.
He didn’t even want to think about it. About what it could mean. About how unsuited he was for parenthood.
He didn’t know the first thing about babies or kids or being a father. He wasn’t domestic—he paid a service to take care of his yard. He employed a neighbor woman to clean his house and do his laundry, to stock his refrigerator if he was going to be around long enough to actually drink milk.
And that was the biggest thing—his being around. He wasn’t. He traveled. A lot. Some months—hell, some years—he was away from home more days than he was there. He didn’t subscribe to a newspaper because he was never around to read it. He didn’t bother with a hardwired telephone or with cable TV because they were a waste of money when he wasn’t there to use them.
Did that sound like the description of someone who should be a father?
Of course it didn’t.
Plus, he didn’t want to be a dad. To be the one person some little kid depended on. For everything. For every mouthful of food. For clean diapers and whatever else babies required that he couldn’t begin to fathom. For clothes and shelter and learning to walk and talk—how was he supposed to know how to teach someone to walk and talk?
And the kid wouldn’t be a baby forever. Then what? Then he’d be the person to teach it right from wrong. The person who had to decide if the kid needed braces and how long to spend on homework and when to let it drive or date or a million other things that parents did.
“Maybe it won’t be mine,” Devon suggested, realizing he was breaking out in a sweat just thinking about what it would entail if Clarissa’s baby was his.
He flipped to the beginning of his portfolio to make sure he had all the photographs in the sequence he wanted them, escaping his own thoughts for a moment.
But only for a moment before the whole subject of a baby, of his own possible parenthood, sneaked back into his mind again.
But it was no easier to believe.
Keely Gilhooley had said it—he—was a good baby, Devon reminded himself as if that might help ease some of the gut-wrenching tension he was experiencing. She’d said Harley was adorable and even-tempered and sweet.
Maybe a little like Keely Gilhooley herself, he thought.
Not that Devon knew anything about her temper or her temperament. But she was pretty adorable.
He’d opened his door to find her on his porch and thought, Well, this is my lucky day.
Little had he known….
But still, Keely Gilhooley—just her name made him smile—was very, very easy to look at. In fact, she was so flawless that, with the autumn sun setting her aglow, for a moment Devon had thought she was some kind of vision.
He had a weakness for redheads. And she was most certainly that. Not just strawberry blond and not the unflattering orangey-red that some people sported. Keely Gilhooley’s hair was deep, rich, glistening red. Cherrywood red. And as if that weren’t enough, it was full and curly, too. The kind of hair that just made him want to grab handfuls of it as if it was a whole bunch of spun silk.
But the hair was only the beginning of her appeal. She had mesmerizing eyes. Great big, round eyes that were green but so light a green they were luminous. Ethereal eyes that might have made him think she were heaven-sent even without the sun making a halo around her.
And if the hair and eyes weren’t enough, she also had skin like a porcelain doll’s. Smooth, perfect radiant skin.
Even her nose was cute—small, narrow, straight—and her lips were pink and full enough not to need lipstick.
Plus her body was nothing to ignore, either. Not too skinny. Not too plump. Firm and compact, with just the right amount up front and in back.
Oh yeah, Keely Gilhooley was something.
“Not that it makes any difference,” he said as he judged his portfolio ready and closed it.
Sure, Keely Gilhooley was great-looking and he’d liked her on sight, but he also knew her type. The same type that had gotten him into trouble on the rebound from Clarissa.
He would bet money that Keely Gilhooley was like Patty Hanson—the woman he’d rebounded with after Clarissa. A hometown kind of girl. Wholesome and homespun. A nice, quiet, sedate woman who probably wanted to settle down. Who wanted a husband with a nine-to-five job. A husband who came home to dinner every evening. Who puttered around the house on the weekends and took her to the movies on Saturday night.
There was nothing wrong with that. It was just that Devon considered himself barely housebroken. And he sure as hell wasn’t a nine-to-fiver who puttered around the house on weekends.
So, regardless of how appealing Miss Keely Gilhooley was, he knew better than to do more than appreciate her from afar.
“But you certainly did improve the scenery while you were here,” he said as if Keely could hear him.
It was true, she had improved the scenery and eased the blow of the earth-rocking news she’d delivered.
That he could be a dad…
Devon’s stomach clenched anew as that possibility brought him up short again all of a sudden.
He could be a dad, and, tonight, for the first time, he was going to see the child who might have brought that about. The baby he might end up having to raise.
It was a daunting thought.
Almost more than he could handle.
And only one thing kept him from totally freaking out at the prospect of the evening to come—the fact that he was also going to see Keely Gilhooley again.
All right, so that wasn’t in keeping with his appreciate-her-from-afar decision.
But still, he was pretty shaken by this turn of events and for now he needed all the incentive he could get to take the next step.
“Is that you, Hill?” Keely called from the bedroom when she heard the front door open.
“It’s me,” her sister called back.
It was nearly seven-thirty in the evening; Keely had given Harley his bath and was getting him ready for bed while he happily chewed on a clean tennis sock he’d adopted as a teething ring.
After coming up the stairs, Hillary appeared at the doorway and took the extra two steps to the changing table to greet Harley with a rub of the tip of her nose to the tip of his. “Hello, sweet baby.”
Harley gave her a slobbery smile for her trouble and she returned to the doorway to lean against the jamb.
Apparently only then did she actually take in Keely.
“Well, look at you!” she said.
Keely
