Joining in the toast, she sipped some wine. Her gaze met his over the rim of her glass, a moment of connection between them, a silent bond that had nothing to do with houses or parents and everything to do with men and women and their places. Levi knew his place: it was in the kitchen, preparing a delicious dinner, and upstairs in a nursery putting a baby to sleep, and there was no question in Corinne’s mind, no question at all, that he was one hundred percent man.
She lowered her eyes, suddenly uneasy at the direction her mind was journeying. Gerald had sent her to Arlington to get a job done, not to entertain erotic thoughts about the one hundred-percent man who represented an obstacle to her accomplishing that job. She was here to rework a blueprint and a contract. The last thing she was looking for—with Levi or anyone—was an involvement that would complicate her life and tangle her emotions.
For some reason, she was absolutely certain that an involvement with Levi would tangle her emotions. He wasn’t the sort of man a woman could expect to pass through her life without leaving things different from the way he’d found them. Her heart would be disordered by his energy, her soul smudged with his fingerprints. Merely exchanging looks with him over a glass of wine left her feeling altered, somehow.
“I’m not sure we’re going to get much work done tonight,” she said, eyeing her watch. It was nearly ten. She ought to go back to the hotel and regain her perspective. She and Levi could fight their battle over the plans for Gerald’s house tomorrow.
He checked his watch as well. “I hadn’t realized it was so late. I guess we were less productive than we could have been.” He sounded vaguely apologetic.
“We had good intentions,” she said with a smile. He smiled back, and if she weren’t feeling so warm and easy inside, she would have regretted how natural it felt to share a smile with him. “Can we meet tomorrow?”
“Probably. Until the nanny starts work on Monday, my schedule is shot to hell—which means I’m pretty flexible.”
As if on cue, a feeble cry threaded through the intercom speaker, high and tinny. “He wants his midnight snack,” Levi explained, obviously less than thrilled.
Corinne glanced at her watch again. “It’s not midnight.”
“He hasn’t learned how to tell time yet.” Levi gathered a couple of plates and led the way into the house. Corinne helped by carrying the wine glasses indoors. “Just leave everything,” he called over his shoulder as he set the plates in the sink. He pulled a can of formula from a cabinet, popped it open and filled a baby bottle, splashing a small amount into the sink. “He demands a nightcap every evening. Twenty years from now, he’ll insist he can’t sleep through the night without a shot of brandy.”
“I think formula and brandy are a bit different.”
“Hard to say. He guzzles the formula, gets drowsy and passes out.”
She heard another, louder wail, this time streaming down the stairs rather than echoing through the intercom. The poor baby. If only he could talk, he might not sound so upset. He’d simply say, “I’m thirsty, Dad.” Or would he call Levi “Da”? Did he know Levi wasn’t his father? How much could an infant understand?
Corinne certainly didn’t understand a lot of it, and she was no infant.
For some reason, she felt compelled to follow Levi up the stairs with the bottle. Maybe she’d peek into his bedroom to see how the fireplace looked…but no, she honestly didn’t want to see how it looked. She didn’t want to go anywhere near his bedroom when her brain was dulled by a couple of glasses of wine.
Levi didn’t comment on her following him upstairs. He simply led the way into a small room that appeared even smaller because of the abundance of furniture crammed into it: a full-sized futon sofa, a coffee table shoved to one side, a small TV set on a wheeled stand, a crib, and a chest of drawers, the top of which was covered with a padded plastic sheet. A nightlight protruded from a socket, shedding a circle of orange light onto the wall behind it. Packages of disposable diapers were stacked along the wall under a broad, curtainless window. The room was, as Levi would say, filled with night.
He flicked a light switch near the door, turning on a lamp on an end table beside the futon. From the depths of the crib came D.J.’s plaintive whimper. “All right, D.J.—I’m here,” Levi announced, crossing to the crib and reaching in.
The baby’s cries increased in volume, signaling some sort of triumph as Levi lifted him up. His little face was ruddy, his hair sweaty as Levi perched him on his shoulder. “Ba-ba-ba,” he whined.
“Yeah, I’ve got your bottle.”
Instead of relaxing into Levi’s chest in relief that sustenance was imminent, D.J. twisted in Levi’s arms as if trying to wriggle free. “Ba-ba-baaa!” he babbled, the final syllable stretching into a sob.
“Easy does it, Tiger.” Levi carried him toward the chest of drawers. “You keep squirming like that and I’ll drop you.”
“Ba-ba-ba!” The baby’s voice rose resentfully.
“You want a dry diaper or don’t you?”
“Ba-ba! Lee-ba!”
“He wants his bottle,” Corinne said helpfully. She couldn’t say for sure that he did, but she’d rather watch Levi give him a bottle than change his diaper.
“Ba-ba!” D.J. insisted, his voice vibrating with exasperation.
“All right, all right. The bottle it is.” Levi grabbed a cloth diaper and the bottle and swung D.J. around in his arms.
The baby again tried to wriggle free. He stretched his hands and kicked his feet, screaming, “Ba-ba! Ba-ba!” with great indignation, as if to say, “You idiot—why don’t you understand what I’m telling you?”
Levi wasn’t an idiot, but he clearly shared D.J.’s mounting frustration. “Here’s your bottle,” he said, nudging the nipple toward D.J.’s mouth. D.J. pushed it away and let out a wail.
Corinne stood by helplessly. She felt bad for D.J. and worse for Levi. He was trying so hard to soothe the frantic baby, but nothing he did seemed to work. D.J. fought him with near desperation, shoving at him, grappling for something just beyond Levi, something in Corinne’s vicinity.
Corinne. He was reaching for her.
No, of course he wasn’t. Why would he want her? It only looked as if he was aiming at her because she stood near his head, and he was flailing his hands above his head.
“Ba-baaa! Ba-baaa!” He writhed within Levi’s strong embrace, stretching, striving. “Ba-baaa!”
“Let me hold him,” she said impulsively. Maybe it would help. It probably wouldn’t hurt. And she couldn’t bear to stand idly by while Levi struggled to keep D.J. from hurting himself.
Levi spun toward her, a puzzled frown marking his brow.
She moved closer to him, her arms outstretched. “Let me hold him for a minute. Maybe he’ll calm down.” She didn’t know why she believed such a thing would happen. She couldn’t remember ever holding a baby in her life, let along consoling an overwrought one. But D.J. did seem to be targeting her, fighting Levi’s hold and launching himself toward Corinne.
Lacking a better alternative, Levi shrugged and motioned with his chin toward a pile of folded cloth diapers on top of the bureau. “Grab one of those, first. You’ll want to protect your blouse.”
Deciding she’d rather not know what she had to protect it from, she shook open one of the diapers and draped it over her shoulder. Then she lifted D.J. into her hands.
He was heavier than she’d expected, more solid. She wasn’t sure what she’d thought he would feel like—soft and squishy, or bony and angular. But he was firm and warm. She could feel the energy inside him, a strength just waiting for his body to grow into it.
He immediately stopped crying. His eyes, damp with tears, peered up at her, curious, quizzical.
She adjusted her arms around him, cradling him. The cloth diaper on her shoulder no longer protected her against anything he might deposit onto her blouse from either extremity, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t squirm and fight. He just nestled himself into her embrace a
nd gazed at her, his breathing still a little ragged but his body calm.
His eyes were as dark as Levi’s. She could see her reflection in them.
She felt a touch at her elbow, Levi guiding her over to the sofa. She was grateful for his help; she couldn’t see where she was going because she couldn’t move her eyes from D.J.’s intense gaze.
Still with his hand on her arm, Levi lowered her to sit. She took comfort in the warmth of his palm against her skin, the way it steadied and reassured her. Once she was seated, Levi reached around her to slide the square of white cloth from her shoulder. “Lift him up a little,” he suggested, and when she raised D.J., Levi spread the diaper across her lap, smoothing it over her thighs.
Too many sensations flooded her: awe at the reality of this baby in her arms, mild panic that she might hurt him, joy that her arms seemed to make him happy—and awareness of Levi’s hands on her legs, her arms, her shoulder. Levi, hovering over her, watching her, smiling in surprise and encouragement. His fingers gliding along her thighs, his face just inches from hers.
“I’ll get the bottle,” he said, straightening up.
Good. She didn’t want him standing so close to her anymore, close enough that she could feel his breath against her cheek. As long as he was a safe distance away, she could concentrate on the baby.
D.J. moved his arms in lopsided circles and took a swipe at her chin. When she lifted her head out of slapping range, he grabbed her breast and squeezed it.
“Hey!” she snapped, as if he were a fresh guy taking liberties. But he was only a baby. He didn’t know that pawing a woman’s breast was out of line.
“He’s looking for milk,” Levi murmured, handing her the bottle.
Corinne felt her cheeks grow hot at the realization that Levi had seen the baby grope her breast. Then she acknowledged he was right; babies regarded breasts as nothing more than a source of milk. She held the bottle upside down above D.J.’s face, and a drop of pale white formula dribbled out and landed on his chin. He emitted an outraged squeal.
“Here, like this.” Levi covered her hand with his around and angled the bottle toward D.J.’s mouth. Gently, he steered her hand, nudging the nipple against D.J.’s puckered lips. D.J. twisted his face away and squealed again, but Levi moved the nipple back to D.J.’s lips, pressing until the baby reluctantly took it. He gave it a hard suck, then subsided and guzzled the formula.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered to the baby, even though his eyelids began to droop. “I wish I had that other kind of milk to give you, but I don’t.” How tragic that he’d lost his mother. How sad that he had to get his nourishment from a plastic bottle with a weirdly shaped latex nipple on it, rather than from the breasts of the woman who’d given him life. Watching him suckle, she felt tears gathering in her eyes.
The futon cushion sank against her hip as Levi lowered himself to sit beside her. “Are you okay?” he asked.
She sniffled and forced a smile. “I was just thinking about how much he must miss his mother.”
“Yeah.” Levi lowered his gaze to D.J. The baby seemed half in a trance, blissfully devouring the bottle’s contents. “The first few days, he really fought me over the bottle.”
“The first few days?”
“After his mother died.”
She wanted to ask when D.J.’s mother had died, who she’d been, how Levi had been connected to her. Here Corinne was, feeding a baby about whom she knew nothing other than that this architect she was supposed to be working with had custody of him. Probably Tara the baby-sitter from across the street knew more about D.J.’s mother than Corinne did.
But Levi was sitting so close to her, his shoulder brushing hers, his gaze merging with hers somewhere just above the baby’s face—and she almost didn’t want to know about the other woman in his life, even if she was dead. Corinne didn’t want to think he had a life as complicated as her parents’, where people were always falling in and out of love, raising each other’s children and step-children, moving from house to house and family to family but never quite sure where home was supposed to be.
“He’s my nephew,” Levi abruptly volunteered. “His mother was my sister.”
“Oh.” She preferred that to other possibilities, even though it meant he’d lost his sister. “How did she die?”
“A brain aneurysm.”
“That’s awful. She must have been young.”
“Much too young,” Levi said quietly.
She reflected on that for a moment, more tears filling her eyes. She wasn’t usually a weepy person. She’d learned to stop crying every time her mother announced another marriage or divorce or move. No use grieving over the transience of life.
But this was truly heartrending. A man had lost his sister. A baby had lost his mother.
Levi had told her a little, and now she wanted to know more. “What about D.J.’s father? Where is he?”
“Who the hell knows?” Levi sounded less bitter than bewildered. “My sister never even told me his name.”
“So you—you just got custody of D.J.?”
“It was what Ruth wanted.” His voice was just a shade above a whisper, as if he hadn’t quite accustomed himself to the entire situation. It must have happened fairly recently. Earlier that evening, he’d said that a month ago he hadn’t known what a walker was.
Why would his sister have asked Levi to raise her son? He had all those brothers and sisters—why choose a bachelor uncle? Why not the self-sufficient grandparents? Had Levi’s sister wanted to protect her son from growing up in a dark house?
They were questions she had no business asking. Instead, she stared at the child in her arms. He had nearly drained the bottle. His complexion had faded to a serene pink, and his hair curled as the sweat dried from it. Corinne twirled her pinkie gently through a ringlet near the crown of his head. His hand shot up, and he captured her pinkie in his fist. His fingers were tiny yet shockingly strong. What a fascinating creature he was.
Actually, for all she knew, he might be quite ordinary. She had no experience with infants, no grounds for comparison. But she found it amazing that this little boy could go from frenetic to tranquil in less than three minutes, that he could be so small and yet so fierce.
She also found it amazing that the instant she’d taken him in her arms, he’d stopped crying. She, Corinne Lanier, who hadn’t even known whether she was holding him correctly…once she’d embraced him he’d relaxed and his beautiful, dark eyes had captured her.
He’d gone for her breast. Maybe he thought she was his mother.
No, of course not. Even babies must be able to recognize their own mothers.
D.J. emptied the bottle with a final, weary slurp and his eyes fluttered, not quite shut but not quite open. He had long, thick eyelashes. When she glanced at Levi, she noticed that he had long, thick eyelashes, too.
“He looks as if he’s ready to fall back to sleep,” she murmured.
“Would you mind holding him for just a minute longer?” Levi asked. “If I pick him up now, it might wake him up, and then it’ll take me forever to quiet him down again.”
“Okay.” Her arms arched protectively around D.J., she leaned back into the futon’s cushioning. Levi plucked the empty bottle from her hand, stood and carried it to the bureau across the room. From there, he gazed at her for a long moment, then returned and resumed his seat beside her.
Neither of them spoke. The only sound in the room was the rhythmic sighs of D.J.’s breath as he sank slowly into slumber. His mouth puckered and pulsed, as if he was dreaming about his bottle. The warmth of Levi’s nearness spread through Corinne.
She would never in a million years have imagined herself in such a situation, in the haphazardly organized nursery of a strange baby, holding that baby and sitting next to a tall, enigmatic, unforgivably handsome man as the night slipped away.
She would never in a million years have guessed that she could feel so peaceful.
*
DARK WAS whe
n he missed his mother the most. He used to smell her in his sleep and know that she was in the room with him, also sleeping but close enough to keep him safe. He would open his eyes into the darkness and hear her breathing. She would leave a tiny light on near the door, and it would make the bars of his crib slash across him in black shadows. He would see his bear, soft and brown next to him, and his mother would be lying in her bed. He would see the lumps of her body under the blanket, and her hair in a meshy pile around her head.
Now, when he opened his eyes he didn’t see her anymore. The man left a little light on, just as his mother had, but when he looked through the bars of this crib, she wasn’t there. He didn’t know where she was. Her smell wasn’t in the air. Her breathing wasn’t whispering around him.
So he would cry.
The man always came after a while. He’d change D.J.’s diaper and give him a bottle. The nipple didn’t feel right to him; it was hard and shaped funny, and the milk inside it didn’t taste like his mother’s milk. But drinking it calmed him, and it seemed to please the man.
Tonight, he’d brought the woman with him. Her hands were so soft, and her arms curved around him, thinner than the man’s and not quite as secure, but they felt lighter on him. She held him on her knees and stared into his eyes and he drank from the bottle. Her face was so pretty above him. She looked worried and gentle and the milk had tasted better than usual, just because she was holding him.
If he couldn’t have his mother, he would take her. D.J. wanted a woman. He wanted someone as soft as his bear, someone whose skin wouldn’t scratch if she rubbed her cheek against him, someone whose fingertips sparkled. Someone with a high voice. He wished she would sing to him the way his mother used to.
She didn’t sing. She only held him and fed him and gazed into his face until he was too tired to gaze back. When she held him his gums didn’t hurt. He didn’t feel hungry. He could let himself relax, let the dark settle in and protect him. He could sleep, knowing that when he woke up again, everything would be okay.
Hush, Little Baby Page 7
