But when Neily Pratt had said this new kid was in foster care? That had struck a nerve.
No, his experience in foster care hadn’t been a horror story. But he did know the good and the not-so-good sides of it.
Alma Pritick had been the good side.
But there had also been Alma’s husband, Homer. And while Homer might not have been abusive, he had definitely been on the not-so-good side of foster care. Homer Pritick and the boys’ home before him—those were the memories that had spurred Chase to take the kid. Because the bottom line was that if the child was related to him in any way, he didn’t want him in that same system.
“So you’re gonna be mine,” he said as if he were talking to the baby rather than the baby’s picture. “At least for a while …”
Then he set down the photograph and picked up the DVD.
The DVD his older sister had made.
Sisters and brothers …
It just didn’t seem possible.
It was Logan who had sisters and brothers, not him.
Sisters like Hadley.
Hadley …
“I couldn’t believe my eyes, Had-Had-Hadley,” he said to himself as set down the DVD, got up and went to unpack his laptop computer so he could play it.
Sure, over the years Logan had told him that Hadley had slimmed down, but he hadn’t given it much thought. Hadley was just Hadley: Logan’s sister. Logan had told him things about Tessa and Issa and Zeli—Logan’s half sisters—and about his half brothers, too. None of it had meant anything to Chase beyond being Logan’s news from home.
But wow, seeing Hadley for himself? She hadn’t just lost weight, she’d grown up into a knockout.
Her previously bad skin was porcelain-perfect now. He’d never known she had high cheekbones or that what had just looked like dents in bread dough were actually damn adorable dimples in her cheeks. Her hair wasn’t stringy anymore; it was bouncy and smooth and silky and begged to be touched. The rest of her face had been so plump that until today, he’d never known what full, sweet lips she had. And even her eyes somehow seemed more remarkable—green but with a sort of topaz glimmer to them.
And the body! No one would ever guess that that firm, curvy little figure could have been whittled out of what she’d been as a girl.
Man, she was a beauty! A country-girl kind of beauty that made him think of Northbridge and clean air and fresh fields of hay, clear blue skies and snowcapped mountains.
A country-girl kind of beauty that—if things were different—he would have gone after with full force.
But even the new Hadley was still the little sister of his best friend and business partner, he reminded himself as he took the laptop back to the table. That alone was reason enough to keep his hands off of her, but add to it the fact that Hadley had also come back to Northbridge to be their upholsterer, the fact that they’d be working together, too, and there was no clear sailing for him on waters like that.
At least not with his philosophy on relationships. He never mixed the long-term with the short-term. His friendship and partnership with Logan were definitely long-term. Potentially, Hadley working with them could also be long-term. But a personal relationship with Hadley? A personal relationship with any woman was always short-term for him.
Besides, after the fiasco of his last relationship, he needed a breather from the opposite sex.
And topped off with this family and nephew thing, there was no room for romance even if being with Hadley wasn’t outside of his own self-set limits.
But damn if Hadley McKendrick hadn’t turned herself into someone who was going to make it tough on him to stick to his limits, he thought as he turned on the computer and waited for it to boot up.
He was going to stick to them, though.
When it came to Hadley, he knew without a doubt that he had to adopt a strict look-but-don’t-touch policy.
No matter how good she looked.
And damn, did she look good …
“It’s a lot to ask and I wouldn’t, except that this is our honeymoon and you know how excited Tia is to go to Disneyland—I just can’t cancel.”
“I wouldn’t want you to,” Hadley assured her brother. “And you’re right, Chase is going to need help with that baby—”
“Not just help. He’s going to need his hand held from beginning to end—babies aren’t his thing. He doesn’t know the first thing about them.”
Hadley certainly didn’t want to think about holding Chase Mackey’s hand.
“I’m sure he’ll be a fast learner,” she said, putting her own hope into words.
Logan had come back from Chase’s loft and immediately sought out Hadley in the living room of the main house, where she was hemming Tia’s flower-girl dress.
She’d been so lost in thinking about Chase and their first meeting that she hadn’t given a second thought to what her brother had said about needing her help—big-time. But now that Logan had asked her to stand in for him, to teach his friend how to care for the nephew Chase had agreed to take on, she was playing it cool. She was acting as if Logan’s request hadn’t surprised her, as if she wasn’t thrown by the idea of being Chase Mackey’s companion-in-childcare. But she was hardly as unruffled by the idea as she was pretending to be.
Working with Chase, living near him, seeing a lot of him—those were things she’d known were coming. Things she’d planned for. Things she’d decided she could handle in a purely friendly acquaintance sort of way that would ease them into this new phase in their lives.
But what her brother was asking of her was something else entirely. She wouldn’t have the benefit of Logan being around, or Meg or even Tia. She and Chase would be on their own together. Alone. In his loft a lot of the time, putting a nursery together, caring for an infant, with her holding his hand through it all.
And that was a little unnerving for her.
Still she said, “Whether he learns fast or not, you can’t miss your honeymoon to do something that I can easily do.”
“Are you sure it’s no problem?” Logan asked. “At least the vet is going to neuter the dogs and keep them until we get back, so you won’t have Max and Harry to take care of, too, but—”
“I’m sure there’s no problem. It’ll be fine,” she assured her brother, hiding her own misgivings.
Maybe not too well, because Logan’s expression was doubtful. “So you didn’t have any pangs of the old crush when you saw Chase again?”
“I told you I wouldn’t and I didn’t,” she said. Which was basically true. But she also hadn’t been able to ignore the fact that time had only improved Chase’s appeal.
She wasn’t going to confess that to her brother, though, so she said, “Since we’ve been back in Northbridge you’ve met up with a few girls you dated in high school without having any effect, right? So when it comes to Chase, it’s no different for me,” she reasoned.
“Okay. I’m not sure why I keep worrying about it.” Maybe because he had some awareness that to the overweight, unattractive young girl she’d been, this crush had been more important in its own way than any of his own casual high-school dating.
Maybe because he had an inkling that her daydreams of Chase had gotten her through some very rough times when teasing at school had been downright mean, and at home when she’d had their malicious stepmother to contend with.
But that was all in the very distant past. She honestly felt sure that she’d left her