“We’ll get along just fine.” His niece was in his arms, tugging on his earlobe as if she wanted to remove it from his head and fling it across the polished wood floor. Brianne Nicole Johnson liked to throw all sorts of things. “You brought her playpen, right?”
“It’s outside, by the door.” She paused and looked around his black-and-white living room. “This ultramodern furniture looks dangerous.”
He looked at his glass and chrome coffee table, his leather sofa and an entertainment center that had cost more than a semester at college. “It costs too much to be dangerous and besides, Bree is going to be too busy to have time to hurt herself, Payne. The activities list you gave me is two pages long.”
His oldest sister frowned again, but this time she walked toward the door. “Temple will be back in town by dinnertime. She said she’d call you from the airport and then come right over and get Bree.”
“Fine. Give me a call tonight and let me know how Phil’s mother is.”
“I will.” Now Payne looked as if she was about to cry. She loved her in-laws, and the thought of her mother-in-law in the hospital was almost more than Payne could bear, especially now, with her husband in Australia on a business trip. The three Thorpe siblings shared the same dark hair, athletic builds and dark brown eyes, but Payne was the emotional one of the family. And, as the oldest, the bossiest. “Make sure she eats on time.”
“Mummm,” the baby hummed, one chubby hand reaching out to her mother. Payne kissed her three more times and then hurried toward the door. She turned around once more and gave her brother another order. “You will make sure she takes a nap? And that her car seat is fastened correctly? And if she gets sick or anything, you can call her pediatrician. The number’s in the bag.”
“Fine.”
“And tell Temple I’m counting on her.”
“We can take care of Bree,” he assured her, knowing damn well his sisters didn’t actually believe he was thirty-five.
“Don’t forget her photo appointment at four-thirty. If she doesn’t get it done now I’ll have to wait another three months to get in. Oh, and I scheduled it between her nap and her dinner, so make sure you follow the schedule,” was Payne’s parting order.
“Will do.” Stuart shut the door and turned to Bree. “Your mom’s a real pain in the—well, you’ll figure that out when you’re fifteen.” Bree’s big brown eyes stared unblinking at him. “Then you call Uncle Stuart for help, okay?”
“Mmmm,” his niece gurgled and gave his ear another painful twist.
Stuart glanced at the clock on the mantel. It was going to be a long afternoon.
“I JUST DON’T KNOW WHERE the time goes,” Anna Gianetto muttered. She squinted at her watch. “Is it four-thirty or three-thirty?”
“Four-thirty,” Kim told her neighbor.
“Already? Ooh,” she said, fanning her ample bosom with a Providence Photography brochure. “I brought you too many things today.”
“It’s okay. My last appointment isn’t here yet.” Kim adjusted the array of children’s clothes so that the light was right and then, with Anna’s digital camera, took the picture.
“You do good work,” Pat O’Reilly said, patting Kim on the back while Anna retrieved the clothing. “You’re a good girl to do this for us.”
“I don’t mind,” she told them. She knew they were worried about her right now. Everyone was, which was more than a little disconcerting. Kim Cooper never liked being the center of attention.
“Well, you’re a good girl,” Patrick repeated.
“I know.” She winked at him. Her neighbors were like family since she’d known them almost all her life. Their venture into selling things on eBay, an online auction house, provided them with extra spending money and Kim with their company. They made her laugh, though her sister Kate thought Kim was a little bit crazy for hanging out with the elderly neighbors. “It’s a nice change from babies and cats and dogs.”
Patrick, a short, wiry man in his early eighties, shook one gnarled finger at her. “One of these days you’ll have your own babies, Kimmy, don’t you worry.”
“I’m not worried,” she promised. Two years ago, when Jeff broke off their engagement and said he “couldn’t commit,” she’d believed her family’s declarations that life held all sorts of wonderful surprises and all she had to do was stay cheerful. Recently she’d decided that maybe her life was simply going to be one long day after another. The men her sister had tried to fix her up with hadn’t been the least bit interesting—or maybe, to be fair, the men themselves weren’t interested in a nonglamorous version of her twin.
“You should get out more,” Anna said. “You spend too much time by yourself.”
“I will,” she promised, as she did every time her neighbors came to the studio. “I promise.”
“Robbie likes you,” Anna said. “He stops by from that gym of his sometimes, you know. ‘Aunt Anny,’ he says, ‘what am I doin’ wrong that Kim won’t marry me?”’
“I’m not in love with him, Anna.” Kim secretly thought Robbie, a competitive weight lifter, was more in love with his own body than wanting anything to do with hers. Anna, determined to take care of her young neighbor, had a legion of nephews she’d thought were “just right” for Kim.
“You could try harder. Women shouldn’t wait so long to get married these days,” Anna advised. She put the carefully folded clothing into a brown shopping bag. “That’s why they have trouble having babies, now. Their eggs are old. That’s not the way it was in our day. I got pregnant on our honeymoon.”
“Yeah,” Pat said. “Mary and I had our first boy when we were twenty.” He frowned, trying to remember. “Or maybe it was nineteen. My memory sure as heck isn’t what it used to be.”
“It’s too bad that things are different now,” Kim said, hoping her own eggs would give her a few more optimistic years before drying up. She was only twenty-six, not exactly middle-aged, so shouldn’t those little suckers be thriving? “Maybe I’m not the marrying kind.”
“Nonsense,” Pat said.
“Give me the old days,” Anna said. “When men were men.”
“And women were women,” Patrick added with a sigh. Kim often wished she could have seen what he looked like when he was younger. She suspected he’d been as handsome as sin and twice as charming. “No one even bakes anymore.”
“Hey,” Anna said. “You come by and I’ll make anise cookies for you.”
“Me, too?” Kim had a weakness for her neighbor’s Italian specialty.
“Sure, honey. We’ll have ourselves a little party,” Anna declared, satisfied that she had stuffed everything into her shopping bag.
“We’d better get out of here, Anna.” Pat jerked his thumb in the direction of the reception area. “Kimmy has real work to do now.”
They all looked toward the open door and heard a baby fussing and a low male voice trying to soothe—Kim searched her memory—Brianne Johnson.
“Hello?” the man called, sounding a little flustered. It was unusual for a father to arrive for a baby’s first photo. She hoped Brianne’s mother was out there, too, so the little girl would calm down.
“Coming!” Kim hurried over toward the door, a welcoming smile on her face. Her specialty was babies, while Kate did the glamour shots and more artistic projects. And this baby, she saw, was especially gorgeous. She had dark curling hair and big brown eyes, and a dimple in her left cheek when she stopped fussing and