Two cleft chins. Two sets of wide-spaced blue eyes. Two slightly upturned noses and two heads of light brown hair and two matching expressions of misgiving.
Her throat tightened, swiftly and unexpectedly.
Daddy. I should have said, “He’s your daddy.”
At last, Boone cracked a smile. “Hey, buddy.”
Jamie’s response was to open his mouth and let out a wail that could have punched a hole in the ceiling.
Oh, no. “It’s okay,” she said to Boone, to Jamie, to herself as she reached and grabbed. “He just doesn’t know you, that’s all. Give him a couple of days to warm up and he’ll be fine.”
“Sure,” Boone said in a hollow sort of voice. “Totally understandable.”
“I’ll take him downstairs. Change his diaper while you have a shower.” A joke might help. “Don’t worry, we won’t have the diaper lesson until tomorrow.”
“Probably a good plan,” Boone said, and grabbed a towel from the closet.
Kate backed out of the bathroom and hurried down the stairs. She shouldn’t have pushed it. Damn it, she was an early childhood educator. She was well aware that even a father who had been present from a kid’s first breath could sometimes be rejected in favor of the mom, and vice versa. She should never have forced this, especially when it was so obvious that Boone had been on the edge about it.
“But I want him to love you,” she whispered to Jamie as she placed him on the changing table. “I want him to know that you are the most miraculous little thing on the whole planet. I want him to hate every minute he has to be away from you. I want him to be in your life. Not because he has to be, but because he wants to be.”
It didn’t feel like too much to ask. And it wasn’t. Not from anyone else.
She just didn’t know if Boone could do it.
BOONE WOKE THE next morning to the smell of coffee and the sound of music.
He fumbled for his phone, squinted at the time and fell back against the pillow. It was barely five thirty. How the hell could Kate be doing the Julie Andrews thing at this hour?
But even as he lay there, he admitted that even though it was early, it wasn’t all bad. He’d almost fallen asleep over dinner last night. Thirty-six hours of travel with no more than a nap did tend to take a toll.
It wasn’t until just now, waking up a lot more refreshed and a lot less cramped, that he realized Kate had probably pulled off a similar marathon of wakefulness more than once since Jamie’s birth.
God, Boone, could you be any more clueless?
As soon as the words crossed his mind he stopped himself from piling on any more guilt. Not because it wasn’t true. He was clueless sometimes. But the words in his head had been a straight echo of his mother’s voice. He’d learned a long time ago that anything that sounded like her wasn’t something that should be indulged.
“Go downstairs,” he ordered himself. “Ask how you can help. And for the love of God, don’t freak if Jamie doesn’t want anything to do with you. You read the books. It’s just gonna take time.”
Time, and a whole lot of guts he wasn’t sure he had. Which Kate had probably figured out the moment he froze at the mention of holding Jamie.
He’d thought he was ready. After all the time he’d spent giving himself pep talks, he’d thought he’d convinced himself the mistakes he’d made as a kid were simply that, and not a guarantee history would be repeated. But when Kate had pushed Jamie toward him, all he could see was the unrelenting surfaces of porcelain and tile. All he could feel was little limbs slipping from his grasp. All he could hear was cries of pain.
He wanted to be a good father. He might not be an always-around one, but he still could be a dad who tickled his kid and changed diapers with ease and even tossed him in the air. But it was obviously going to take a lot more determination than he’d expected.
Remembering that one second when Jamie had first settled in his arms and looked up at him told him that it would be worth it.
Remembering the confusion on Kate’s face told him that he needed to let her know why this was gonna take work.
With his marching orders clear, he pulled on sweatpants and followed his nose to the kitchen.
Kate sat at the kitchen table with Jamie on her lap. He squealed and bobbed and dove like a prize fighter. The spoon in her hand hovered just out of Jamie’s grasp, like she was waiting for the perfect moment to swoop in and shove food in his mouth. Or maybe she was waiting for the right moment in the song she was singing—something about wheels and a bus and beep, beep, beep. Boone was torn between fear that Jamie would slide right off the slippery little robe Kate wore, and admiration at how easy she made it look.
She glanced his way with a faint smile. “Good morning, Sleeping Beauty.”
He could say the same. Except for her, even with her hair askew and glasses instead of contacts, it would be true.
“Hope we didn’t wake you,” she continued. “Somebody decided that five was the new eight.”
“I guarantee you, he didn’t inherit that from me.”
She waved toward the counter. “Coffee’s ready. Help yourself.”
A couple of minutes later, coffee appropriately doctored and that first life-altering sip working its way down his throat, he pulled out a chair on the other side of Jamie. “Safe to sit here?”
“Should be. We haven’t started finger food yet, so he doesn’t have anything to throw.”
Boone peered into the bowl that sat on the table just out of Jamie’s reach, assessing the contents while wondering how to start the conversation he knew was needed. “Do I want to know what that is?”
“Rice cereal. This is his first solid food, so we’re still figuring it out.” As she spoke, she slipped the minuscule spoon between Jamie’s lips.
“It looks like there’s more coming out of him than staying in.”
“That’s okay. He’s getting the hang of it, aren’t you, Jamiekins?” She buried a yawn in her upraised arm. “Sorry. Rough night.”
The guilt devil shoved a pitchfork in Boone’s conscience. “Did you get any sleep?”
“Some. I’ve had worse.”
Jab, jab.
She spooned up more slop and took aim, but stopped before the spoon made it to Jamie’s mouth. She sat a little straighter, took a deep breath, then turned to Boone with the spoon extended.
“Here you go, Daddy. Your turn.”
It was so obvious she was forcing herself to do this that his gut twisted.
Mierda.
He took the spoon and set it gently on the table, then leaned forward in his chair, arms braced along his thighs, hands clasped. “Kate, I need to explain something.”
She tipped her head but stayed silent.
“Last night, when I was so...weird...about holding Jamie, it wasn’t anything to do with him, okay? It’s because...” Damn. This was harder than he’d expected. “When I was twelve, I was in a foster home with a bunch of other kids. There was a baby. Tristan. He was...maybe a year old? I can’t remember exactly, though I know he was older than Jamie.”
Actually, what he remembered the most was the weight of Tristan in his arms, more solid and bulky than Jamie. Though since Boone had still been just a preadolescent himself at the time,