And it didn’t make sense.
Why was Dev living at his parents’ place, even as a temporary thing? Jodie was living with hers because of the accident, but that was different. Why was he still here in Leighville at all, when she had such a strong memory from nine months ago, of his insistence that he planned to return to New York as soon as he could?
It had something to do with her, with the accident, she was sure of it, and if her family had somehow roped him into the whole let’s-protect-Jodie-till-she-can’t-breathe-on-her-own scenario, then damn it, he had to be stopped. He had to be told.
I don’t need it, Devlin. I don’t want it. Not from you or from anyone else.
She was definitely walking to Dev’s, and they were going to talk.
Chapter Two
“Shh-sh,” Dev crooned, bouncing the baby gently against his shoulder. “Shh-sh.”
It did no good. His rhythmic sway and soothing sounds had had more success with baby Lucy today than they were having now with his own child, in his own house. He’d heard her screaming as he came up the front path, and the sitter had met him at the door, looking harassed and more than ready to go home.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Browne, she just won’t settle.”
He’d taken the baby, paid the sitter, tried everything he knew in the hour since, but DJ was still crying. He knew from experience—over two months of it, since she’d come home from the hospital—that she would settle eventually, that it wasn’t anything serious or horrible, just colic, but it wasn’t fun to hear her crying and to feel so helpless.
Dev didn’t do helpless.
He’d sent his parents off to their vacation condo in Florida three weeks ago with a sigh of relief. Both the Brownes and the Palmers were acting way too protective of everyone involved, since his and Jodie’s accident nine months ago. He often suspected that the Palmers would take DJ from him completely, if they could. Maybe he should take them up on that, relinquish custody and go back to New York.
But his heart rebelled at this idea, the way it often rebelled at the suffocating level of Palmer helpfulness. Jodie’s mother and her two sisters here in Leighville seized on his need for babysitting too eagerly, he felt, trading on their combined experience of child-raising and his own helplessness. His parents had been taking a hand at it, too, but seemed suspicious that he was somehow being exploited, that Jodie had trapped him into this situation.
Which was ridiculous, since she didn’t even know about it.
Today, despite his misgivings about the attitudes of both Palmers and Brownes, he could have done with some family help, but it wasn’t possible, the way things stood. He was supposed to keep the baby safely away from the Palmer house.
Keep her away until Tuesday, the day after tomorrow, when Jodie had her appointment with doctors and therapists and counselors.
Zero hour.
His stomach kicked.
How did you prepare for something like that? He and the Palmers had been politely fighting about it for several weeks. The Palmers thought she still wasn’t ready, while Dev couldn’t handle the covering up, the distortions, the silence, even though he often dreaded what might happen once Jodie knew.
Doctor-patient ethics had become more of a concern with every step forward in Jodie’s difficult recovery. There was an insistence now that she had the right to be told, and that she was strong enough, so the moment of revelation had been fixed for ten o’clock Tuesday morning.
What would she want? Where would he fit? Would she understand how much he loved this baby girl, this surprise package in both their lives? He felt an increasing need to know how it would all pan out—he hated uncertainty, and not knowing where he stood—but there was a lot to get through first. For a start, how did you say it?
Jodie, you need to know at this point that while you were in the coma state …
DJ wailed and shuddered in his ear, but maybe it was easing now. Was she too hot? Dev preferred open windows and the chance of a breeze to the shut-in feeling of an air-conditioned cocoon, but what would be best for the baby? He rocked her a little harder and she seemed to relax into his shoulder, her sweet, milky breath soft on his neck.
He loved her more than he’d imagined possible, and he had no idea what this was going to mean, once Jodie was told.
“Stop crying, sweetheart. That’s right. Settle down, it’s okay. Is your tummy still hurting? Not so much now, hey? Not so much …”
How did this happen to me?
Nine months ago he’d been enjoying a hot fling, ground rules fully in place, with a warm, funny and surprisingly gutsy woman, who’d turned his temporary return to Southern Ohio from an act of duty into an unexpected pleasure.
Thanks to Jodie, he’d stopped seeing a slow-paced backwater town and started seeing the beauty of the changing landscape in the fall. Instead of feeling the suffocation of routine, he’d felt the sinewy strength of family ties. He’d rediscovered the pleasure of a good laugh, of collecting the morning newspaper from the front yard while the grass was wet with dew, of hearing rain or birdsong outside his window instead of city noise.
But it was just an interlude. They both knew it. He’d said it to her direct, because he didn’t want the risk of her getting hurt.
Even after the accident, he’d at first only planned to stay until his leg was put back together and healed. Jodie had family here. She wouldn’t be on her own, whether she stayed in a coma state or made a full recovery. He didn’t belong at her bedside, keeping vigil, the way her parents and sisters had.
But then …
DJ went through another spasm of pain and stiffened and screamed harder in his arms. “Ah, sweetheart, ah, honey-girl, it’ll stop soon.” He rocked her and massaged her little gut with the pad of his thumb.
How did this happen to me?
And what would change, come Tuesday?
Everything.
“Everything, baby girl,” he murmured. Hell, he was so scared about it!
The knock at his front door startled him a few minutes later, the brass rapper hitting the plate unevenly, a couple of strong, jerky taps and then a weaker one. With DJ still in his arms, her crying beginning to settle to a kind of shuddery grumble, he went to see who was there, and when he saw Jodie standing there, he knew he didn’t have until ten o’clock Tuesday anymore.
Zero hour was now.
The baby wasn’t Lucy.
Jodie worked that out in around forty seconds, as she and Dev both stood frozen on either side of the threshold.
The baby wasn’t Lucy, because Lucy belonged to Maddy and John, and had gone home with them to Cincinnati, and was smaller and newer than this little thing.
This little thing clearly belonged to Dev, and explained exactly why his crooning and shushing and swaying on Mom and Dad’s back deck had been so effective earlier today. He’d had practice. Recent practice, and a lot of it.
“You’d better come in,” he said heavily, after standing there in what appeared to be a frozen moment of shock. Jodie was pretty shocked herself. “I think she’s going to sleep,” he added. “You’re not catching her at the best time. I wish you could see her smiling, the way she’s been doing the past month.”
“It’s a girl?”
“Yes.”
“What’s her name?”
“I … uh … I call her DJ.”
“DJ,” she