by Lucy Lennox
“Why are you so concerned with where I’m sleeping, Dr. Wilde?”
“I’m not. Forget about it.”
We ate in silence. West held Pippa on his shoulder with one hand while struggling to eat with the other. I finally felt sorry for him and offered to help.
“Let me hold her,” I said, reaching out to lift her off his shoulder.
His arms squeezed her tighter against his body, and I froze. Our eyes met over the bundle of blankets, and I could see remorse in them even though he still seemed reluctant to give her up. I remembered the day of the funeral, how possessive he’d been. It couldn’t be easy to go from being a part of this little girl’s world to not seeing her for several days.
“It’s okay,” I said softly. “I’m just going to hold her so you can eat. I’ll stay right here.”
“Sorry,” he murmured, releasing her to me while he kept his eyes locked on mine. I cradled her on my chest and watched him finally return to eating.
Once he was done, he carefully pulled a sleeping Pippa out of my arms and cradled her against his front as he stood up.
“I’m going to rock her for a bit before putting her in the crib.” He looked at me and seemed to replay his own words in his head. “If that’s okay with you, I mean.”
I wasn’t sure what saying those words had cost him, but it seemed a price he was willing to pay to spend time with Adriana’s daughter. I nodded and watched him make his way back to the nursery.
As I cleaned up our dishes and put away the leftovers, I could just make out his lullaby wafting across the open space between the kitchen and bedroom areas. The sound was low and sonorous, and it brought goose bumps up on my skin. I recognized the words and realized he was singing “Hush Little Baby.” The sound of it in that man’s voice was heartbreakingly beautiful.
I found myself inching closer and closer to the back of the house where the doorway to the nursery stood ajar. My body was close enough to the side wall to keep me hidden, and I stood there letting the sexy rumble wash over me like a warm balm.
As much of an ass as I’d still assumed he was, he sure as hell was sweet to my niece.
God, that baby girl was lucky. For just a moment I fantasized about Weston Wilde blowing soft words into my ear as he lay behind me in bed, pressed against my body with those long, warm limbs tangled in mine. I did not whimper out loud at the thought.
But fuck if I didn’t want to.
Chapter 8
West
As I finished doing my rounds at the small county hospital, I couldn’t stop thinking about Nico Salerno. It had been three days since I’d brought him dinner, and I’d stopped by every night since then on my way home from work to check on Pippa.
Not that Adriana’s house was on my way home. But hopefully he didn’t know I lived above my practice.
Those evening visits had been nice. We’d seemed to have found a neutral zone where we could stop hating each other as long as we didn’t discuss Hobie, Adriana, Pippa, the adoption, our families, or anything else remotely related to how he was doing with the baby. Discussion subjects allowed were work—his tattoo shop in San Francisco and my medical practice here in town, music—his love of retro rock and my love of acoustic guitar, food—both of our preference for anything we didn’t have to cook ourselves, and the weather, of course.
I’d brought him dinner every night, nothing fancy, just something to keep him from having one more thing on his plate. I hadn’t wanted things to get weird between us, and I’d continued offering to look after Pippa so he could catch a break. I could tell the man was losing sleep the way a new parent does, and I tried my best to encourage him to nap when Pippa napped. Unfortunately, he seemed to have a need to prove himself in some way and insisted he was fine.
Of course, I hadn’t believed it for a moment. He was noticeably paler and may have even been losing weight. Dark circles marred his lovely face under his eyes, and he seemed to have trouble concentrating. They were all signs of the sleep deprivation new parents went through in the newborn months. It wasn’t until the night before that I’d actually gotten proof of his exhaustion.
We’d been sitting down for Pippa’s bedtime bottle, Nico on the sofa and me in a side chair feeding the baby, when I realized he’d stopped talking in the middle of a story about a tattoo client of his. I looked up from the bottle Pippa was downing and noticed he’d fallen asleep sitting up. Just the realization he’d literally fallen asleep midconversation almost caused me to snort out loud.
The poor guy was wiped out. He’d mentioned one of his employees was handling the tattoo shop for him while he was gone, but he was still having to juggle some of the administrative duties long distance. In addition to the shop, I knew he was starting to worry about Adriana’s bakery and the maintenance of her house. I wasn’t sure what his plan for her assets was, but I’d overheard Honovi reminding him that there were bills that needed paying and employee payroll that needed to be run.
I’d offered to put Nico in touch with my sister who could do payroll stuff in her sleep, but the stubborn asshole hadn’t even let me finish speaking before announcing he was fine. He could do it himself. Apparently, the guy fancied himself a goddamned superhero.
When Pippa finished her bottle, I put her up to my shoulder with a burp cloth. I rubbed her back while watching Nico slowly slump farther and farther down in the soft sofa cushions. Instead of rocking Pippa for a few minutes before putting her down, I just kissed her little, fuzzy head good night and placed her in the crib.
When I’d returned to the living area, Nico had been lightly snoring in a heap on the sofa, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with him. Cover him with a blanket and leave? Try to move him to the master bedroom and tuck him into bed like a child? Leave him untouched and just stare at him like a creeper? Apparently, that was what my subconscious wanted to do since I was standing there gazing at the man like an idiot.
“Right then,” I muttered, stepping into action. The physician in me knew that the guy needed a restful night’s sleep in a real bed, so I reached around his back and began to lift him off the sofa in a kind of hug maneuver.
Nico smelled like heaven—an intoxicating blend of coffee, raspberries, and some kind of masculine body wash, along with the sweet familiar scent of clean baby. I wanted to inhale that scent into my nose and imprint it on my brain permanently.
As I pulled him up from the sofa and into my arms, he mumbled. His lips brushed lightly against the skin of my neck as he spoke, and I felt the sensation deep in my belly.
“Hm?” I murmured near his ear. I hoped he was still sleeping enough not to remember this, not to register who it was moving him. I didn’t want him to realize I was touching him and suddenly freak out.
“The baby,” he repeated in a gravelly voice.
“Shh, she’s asleep. It’s okay. Time for you to sleep too.”
He was slight enough for me to lift him in my arms and carry him the short distance to Adriana’s bedroom. As I lay him down on the bed, I noticed his long-sleeved T-shirt had ridden up over his belly button, revealing the illustrations permanently marked into the skin of his lower abdomen. For once, I was close enough to see what they were, and I noticed the most odd collection of images, everything from religious icons to Japanese lettering to tribal tattoos. There didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to what he’d chosen—almost as if he’d just closed his eyes and pointed to the boards each time he’d visited a tattoo parlor.
I rolled him across the bed enough to open up the covers and roll him back in place. It wasn’t until I pulled the covers over him that I realized how perfectly made the bed had been before I pulled the blankets back. Almost as if he hadn’t slept in it at all. Maybe he was just as fastidious as Goldie was about tidying up after himself when he was a guest in someone’s home.
The room was dark, but there was enough light coming in from the rest of the house to see the lock of colored hair that had fallen across one eye. I reached out to brush it back a
nd felt a pang in my chest. He looked so peaceful and vulnerable—no longer the feisty man I’d encountered the day of Adriana’s funeral or the one I’d confronted years ago in the movie theater but a sleep-deprived new parent, brought down a peg or two by fifteen pounds of chubby-cheeked baby.
It had taken every ounce of strength I had to turn around and walk out of that house instead of crawling into the bed beside him and curling around his tired body. Despite knowing he was a selfish prick who’d ditched his family as a teen just to prove a point, there was something about the sight of him there, asleep in Adriana’s bed that made me want to look after him—hold and protect him. Comfort him.
“Dr. Wilde?”
“Wha—?” I blurted, snapping my head up to see that I wasn’t, in fact, in Adriana’s house any longer. I was standing at the nurses’ station at the hospital with someone asking me a question. I cleared my throat and pulled myself together. “I’m sorry, what did you need?”
The young nurse smiled at me, and I realized it was a woman named Darci who’d been trying to catch my brother Hudson’s attention for months now.
“I just wanted to make sure you knew about the bonfire party Saturday night out at Walnut Farm,” she said in her usual friendly manner. “There’s going to be a ton of people there, and we’re doing hamburgers and hot dogs. It’s just a BYOB thing, you know? I was hoping you might come by and maybe…”
Here it comes, I thought.
“Bring your brothers and sisters,” she finished. I noticed a pink blush rise up on her fair skin and wondered why the hell Hudson hadn’t asked her out yet. The woman was sweet as hell and great with the patients.
“Yeah, sure. Sounds like fun. You need us to bring anything in particular?” I asked, shooting her a wink and causing her blush to deepen further.
“Whatever you think would make for a good time will be fine, I’m sure,” she said.
“Gotcha. I’ll tell the Wilde crew and see you Saturday night. Thanks for letting me know.”
I completed the notes in my charts before heading out to the parking lot. I’d intended to drive back home and finish up some paperwork at the office before heading to my grandparents’ house for dinner, but of course I found myself heading to Adriana’s house to stop in and see Pippa.
When I pulled through town, I spotted Nico’s rental car parked out front of the bakery. I wondered if the baby was with him. It felt a little strange to see him somewhere out and about in town. As if he had a life that wasn’t limited to looking after Pippa while stuck inside Adriana’s little house.
It wasn’t really any of my business though, so I kept driving, past the sandwich shop and the bookstore until finally pulling down my own street toward home. Despite knowing what Nico Salerno did was truly none of my concern, I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Why the hell was I so obsessed?
On my way to Grandpa and Doc’s house a little while later, I realized what it must be. I simply wanted to understand why he’d left town when he did. Why had he left Adriana and their mother at the mercy of the Billinghams? Sheriff Billingham had always been an overbearing son of a bitch, and his two sons were mirror images of the man himself. Had he truly left because of them?
It had only taken Curtis Billingham forty-eight hours after our interlude at the movies to join in with some friends of his, calling my cousin Max a queer after they caught him checking out some guy’s package in class. After that, it had taken all my self-control not to out Curt to his supposed friends. Instead, I’d simply rebuked his further efforts to get me to suck him off, and I’d told my family the guy was an asshole, and we’d all done our best to ice him out.
The fucker still hadn’t gotten over my rejection nor had he stopped trying to get into my pants every time he had a little too much to drink.
Adriana had always wondered why Nico had left, and I’d always felt guilty for having a suspicion and never telling her. I wanted to know for sure. Had it been because of what he’d overheard us talk about that night in the movie theater?
I felt an ache in my jaw and realized I’d been grinding my teeth in frustration—something I’d been doing more and more of lately. I didn’t like not understanding something. Or someone.
When I parked in front of Grandpa and Doc’s farmhouse on their sprawling ranch a little ways outside of town, three dogs came leaping off the porch and running toward me. The largest was a sweet old coonhound named Grump and the two little ones I always referred to as Sweet and Salty because of their personalities.
I reached down to greet them with ear scratches when I heard the front door open and the sound of Grandpa’s voice calling out to me.
“Get your ass in here before I kill your other grandfather.”
I looked up to see Grandpa’s narrowed eyes and stiff jaw. I chuckled. “What’re you guys bickering about this time? Did Doc forget to turn the car off before going into a restaurant again?”
And just like that, Grandpa’s ornery mood dissolved into a smirk. “Oh god, that was the funniest thing ever. Come on in and let’s give him hell about it again.”
He held the door open while I led the three dogs into the spacious home. I could hear some kind of jazz music playing in the back of the house and followed the sounds until I found Doc in the kitchen.
“Westie, don’t listen to a thing that old man tells you,” Doc warned. “He’s in a mood.”
I leaned in and gave him a quick hug before lifting the lid of the fat Santa cookie jar that lived on the counter year round and always had sweets in it that Doc had made. Jackpot. Homemade brownies.
“Mmm, just what the doctor ordered,” I mumbled, grabbing a thick brownie before putting Santa’s head back on his body. “Why is Grandpa mad at you? He told me you guys had dinner at El Senõr’s last night and you accidentally left the engine on the entire time you were in the—”
Doc shot Grandpa a look. “One time, goddammit. I did that one time, and I still blame you for distracting me with those pants. Shut the hell up, you old geezer. Your memory is for shit.”
I snorted on chocolate crumbs and glanced back and forth between Grandpa and Doc. They were usually so sticky sweet in love, even after all these years, that it was kind of fun to see them annoyed with each other.
Grandpa pointed at me and laughed. “Get mad at him, not me. I didn’t bring it up.”
Doc looked at me with a smirk. “He’s pissed because I made the brownies with avocado instead of butter to make them healthier.”
I choked as the fake brownie got lodged in my throat. “Ew, groth,” I sputtered, making my way to the sink to spit out the offending item and take a sip of water from the tap. “That’s disgusting.”
Doc laughed and elbowed his husband. “Did you see him eat half of it? Now he can’t pretend he didn’t like the healthy version.”
Grandpa couldn’t help but join in, laughing at me right alongside Doc until his face was buried in Doc’s neck and Doc’s arm was stretched around Grandpa’s shoulders.
“Har, har,” I said, shooting Doc the evil eye. “Joke’s on you. I picked up chocolate éclair cake from the bakery this morning before work, and now I’m not sharing it. Wouldn’t want to foist something unhealthy on you two bozos.”
That just made them laugh even harder until Doc whispered something in Grandpa’s ear and Grandpa smacked Doc’s ass with an “Atta boy” before heading back outside.
“Where’s he going?” I asked, opening the fridge to get a soda.
“Out to the truck to secure your dessert. Hand me a can of that, will ya?”
I got diet sodas for both of us, and we took them to the long farmhouse table between the large kitchen and family room. There was a glass dish of cut up carrots and other veggies already on the table, and I quirked a brow at Doc.
“What’s with the healthy stuff? Is something going on I’m unaware of?” I asked quietly, looking out the window to make sure Grandpa wasn’t within earshot. Grandpa was over ten years Doc’s senior, and I knew Doc worrie
d about him.
“His cholesterol was up at his last checkup, that’s all. I’m just making sure he doesn’t kick off before me. I’m not sure I could handle that, you know?”
I saw the concern in his eyes and the love shining forth as Grandpa made his way in the back door with an armful of Adriana’s chocolate, fat, and sugar specialty I’d been stupid enough to pick up.
“Oh shit, Doc. Sorry about that,” I began. “I shouldn’t have picked up the éclair if—”
He put his hand on mine where it rested on the table and squeezed. “Nonsense. Nothing says we can’t have a treat every now and then. I just want us to get back in the habit of balancing it with good stuff. You know the drill, Dr. Wilde.” He winked at me before leaning back and taking a sip of his soda and continuing. “What’s new? I haven’t seen you in a few days. Have you been by to see the baby?”
I ran my hands through my hair in frustration. “Yes. Every night after work.”
“And?” Doc gestured for Grandpa to join us and reached out to hold his hand after Grandpa took a seat in the chair next to him. “How’s the new gentleman doing with her? Doing okay?”
I shrugged. “He says he is, but I don’t know. I get the feeling he’s barely hanging on, you know?”
“Well, it’s hard when you’re not used to it. Ask any new parent and they’ll tell you,” Grandpa said with a kind smile.
“He won’t let me help. Like, with anything. There’s no way he can keep this up,” I said. “The guy looks like the walking dead.”
“Is Goldie still helping?” Doc asked.
“No. Nico told her he was fine on his own, and she believed him.”
I caught Grandpa making significant eyeballs at Doc before Doc spoke. “West, Goldie knows what she’s doing. If she trusts the guy to take care of Pippa without help, you and I both know she’s right. What’s this really about?”
“I don’t know,” I said. And it was true. I really didn’t know. If I had to guess, I would have said I was more concerned about Nico himself than the baby. Nico wasn’t getting enough sleep or enough to eat or any kind of stress relief. I had to assume he was a giant combination of stress, malnutrition, lack of exercise and minimal fresh air. “He… he won’t let me help him. And no one should have to do all that on their own.”
