Penny must have heard her, because she laughed lightly. “When Elliot was born, bottle feeding was the preferred choice. Herman was horrified when I insisted on nursing our baby.” She came back into the room, carrying a tray with a sandwich, a cup of soup and a tall glass of lemonade, which she set on the metal footlocker Emma used as a coffee table. She nudged it within reach of Emma, then pushed the footrest she’d given Emma for Christmas the year before next to the couch.
Emma lifted her feet onto it and let out a long relieved breath. But Penny wasn’t finished. Not until she’d taken Emma’s two bed pillows from the top shelf in the closet where they were kept during the day and propped them behind Emma’s neck and under her knees.
“There. That’s better, isn’t it?” Penny patted her hand and continued moving around the small apartment, unpacking the few items from Emma’s overnighter and adding the baby items from the plastic bag to the secondhand chest of drawers Emma had found. “Too bad your mother can’t be here to help you,” Penny said.
Emma shook her head. That was the last thing she needed. “Mama’s helping my sisters back home with the grandkids she already has.” She shifted against the pillows and sighed sleepily. “She doesn’t understand why I’m a single mother, anyway, so her helping would have been accompanied by a lot of lectures I don’t want to hear. Once a week is plenty for me.”
“The only one needing a good lecture is that pimple on the face of society who left you to fend for yourself.”
Emma managed to smile at the caustic description of Jeremy St. James.
“Fortunately I’m able to wholeheartedly say that I approve of your new choice,” Penny went on.
“If you’re referring to Kyle Montgomery, he is not my new choice. He’s just…”
Penny waited expectantly, her eyes sparkling with expectation. “Just handsome enough to make even my old bones sit up and take notice?”
“You’re not old.”
Penny chuckled. “Old enough to know a perfect match when I see one. A grown man doesn’t track down a landlady at a church committee meeting to gain access to his young lady’s apartment where he proceeds to fill it with every flower known to humankind if he’s not totally smitten.”
Totally determined, totally insane and totally off-limits. “I don’t even know the man,” Emma insisted. “I met him just this morning.”
A fact that seemed to delight Penny even more. “Well, you certainly made an impression on him,” she said. “I’ll leave you to rest now, but I’ll come back this evening with some supper for you.”
“You don’t have to do that, Penny. I can manage.”
Penny stopped at the door and shook her head. “I know you can manage, sweetie. But sometimes you don’t have to do it all on your own, so let me help in the ways that I can.” She plucked a small white envelope out of the daisy arrangement and handed it to Emma. “Your admirer left this for you.” She winked and went out the door, shutting only the outer screen. Emma heard her footsteps on the stairway, then all was quiet again, except for the thumping of her pulse in her ears.
She nibbled the inside of her lip, turning the small envelope over in her fingers. He had nothing to say that she wanted to hear. Or, in this case, read.
“Oh, Emma, honestly. It’s just a card.” She tore open the envelope and pulled out the flat card.
Chandler is blessed to have such a lovely mother.
Emma’s eyes blurred. She looked down at her son to find him looking up at her. “We’re both blessed, aren’t we, pumpkin? I just figured that a man like Kyle Montgomery wouldn’t be able to see that.”
She lifted Chandler to her shoulder and readjusted her clothes. Kissing his cheek, she brought her legs up onto the couch and lay back, cradling him securely.
Then she closed her eyes and they both slept.
Chapter Three
By the next morning Emma decided she owed her mother an apology. Hattie Valentine had had six daughters, managing to feed and clothe them all, for the most part single-handedly.
Emma, however, seemed to be completely out of her element with just one baby. Chandler wanted to eat every other hour, which meant she got very little sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night she gave up on the notion of having the baby sleep in his bassinet and just kept him in bed with her. She stacked diapers and wipes on the floor beside them and slept when he slept. Fed him when hungry, changed him when wet.
This was not at all the way it was supposed to go, according to her Now You Are a Mother! book which spouted tripe about four-hour schedules and other such nonsense.
By midmorning, her small home looked like a tornado had torn through it, leaving flowers and minute baby T-shirts and receiving blankets behind.
Penny came by, took in the chaos without a blink of surprise and shooed Emma into the bathroom where, she assured her, she’d feel better after a nice long shower.
“As soon as I’m under the water, he’ll be hungry,” Emma had protested tiredly. “I’ll shower…oh, I don’t know, when he’s two years old.”
Penny had laughed and scooped Chandler off Emma’s lap. “I think I hear a verse of the baby blues somewhere in there.” She’d waved toward the bathroom. “Go on now. You need a few minutes for yourself.”
Emma wasn’t so sure, but she’d gone. She looked at herself in the mirror, grimaced and turned on the shower. A half hour later she emerged to find her apartment tidied up, Chandler sleeping and Penny nowhere in sight.
“Sure,” she whispered lovingly over Chandler in the bassinet. “Now you sleep.”
A creak on the stairs outside told her someone was coming up. Probably Penny. Emma adjusted the strap of her red sundress and smoothed back her wet hair. “You were right,” she said as she went to the wood-framed screen door and pushed it open. “I do feel better.”
“My sisters always say that flowers make a woman feel better,” Kyle Montgomery said smoothly as he reached the top step and smiled at her. He looked dismayingly appealing in pleated khakis, a whiter-than-white collarless shirt and navy jacket. Laugh lines fanned out from his eyes. “Your landlady said you were up and about. You look very nice in red. Fresh as a wild poppy.”
Emma flushed. Her hair hung straight and wet to her shoulders, her feet were bare, and the poppy-red dress stretched too tightly across her chest. She crossed her arms and moistened her lips. “Thank you for the flowers and card. It was very nice.”
A smile flirted with his lips as he looked at her. “May I come in?”
Emma swallowed. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ll probably end up being rude to you, and being surrounded by beautiful flowers from you when that happens seems like it’d be in poor taste.”
“Rude? Ah, Emma, I think you’ve just been honest. I’m glad you like the flowers, though. I have one sister who insists roses are the only flower worth receiving, but you didn’t seem like the rose type to me.”
“I’m allergic to them,” Emma said shortly. The last man to give her roses had thoroughly betrayed her. She wasn’t sure she’d ever disassociate roses from that awful time.
Kyle’s eyebrow peaked. “How fortunate I chose otherwise, then.” He reached past her through the doorway to the daisies sitting just inside and snapped off a bloom. He lifted his hand, frowning slightly when Emma gave a startled jump.
She