by Noelle Adams
“So are you looking at public libraries then?”
“Yeah. But it’s really a different career path, and there are budget cuts there too. I’ve been talking to the library here, and they’ve given me ten hours a week, but that’s all they can do right now.”
His expression shifted slightly, although she couldn’t exactly interpret the shift. “So you’d be okay staying in Willow Park?”
Her eyes widened. “Yeah. Of course. I’d love to live here again if I could get a full-time job. There’s just not much in this area, so I’m having to look farther out.”
“I thought maybe you wanted a bigger area like Asheville.”
She wondered if he thought she’d become some sort of big-city snob who didn’t like small-town living anymore. It couldn’t be farther from the truth. “I liked Asheville fine and would be happy to stay there, but I love Willow Park. Mostly, I just want a job, and I want to move out of my parents’ house—however that happens. Even the two jobs I’m doing now aren’t enough to afford rent in this town.”
“Rent here is crazy overblown, because it’s so hot with tourists and retirees.” Micah’s forehead wrinkled as if he were thinking hard. “You know, I don’t know if it could work for you, but I’ve got a—” He broke off whatever he was going to say when his phone chirped with a text message. He pulled it out and glanced down at it.
Alice turned back toward her computer, since she assumed the conversation was over. She didn’t know why he’d stopped to talk to her so much today. They hadn’t had such a long conversation since they’d both been in high school. Maybe Daniel had been lecturing him on treating his assistant so aloofly. Or maybe Micah had finally realized that she wasn’t chasing him.
It would be nice if he’d smile at her once in a while, though.
She told herself to remember her fourth rule—about not making up stories about men’s intentions and motivations—and forced herself to stop wondering.
She could feel Micah still standing there, next to the desk, and she suddenly felt flustered. She was tempted to look over to discover what he was doing, but that would be getting dangerously close to breaking her fourth rule.
So she kept hitting letters on the keyboard, even though they weren’t making any intelligible words.
“Well,” he said, clearing his throat again. “It looks like you’re busy. I guess I’ll talk to you later.”
She stopped typing and smiled at him, still feeling confused and disoriented. “Yeah. Have a good afternoon.”
So he walked out. She watched him leave, trying not to admire too much the sight of his firm butt and long legs in his jeans.
Girls all over town were crazy about him, from age eighteen to thirty-five. Any one of them would jump if he showed any interest in them. There wasn’t any sense in Alice thinking in that direction. Just because they’d had the one summer together, when she’d believed him to be sweet and funny and smart and devout and everything she could ever want, didn’t mean anything now.
She’d never been deluded about her own desirability. She was okay-looking—with long curly brown hair and big blue-gray eyes—but there was a reason that, when she was twelve, Micah had coined the nickname “Dormouse” for her. It had been a play on her name, of course, since instead of looking like Alice in Wonderland, she instead looked like the Dormouse—tiny, with a too-big mouth and too-small nose, and by nature more of a reader than a talker.
She was just finishing the bulletin when Jessica came out of Daniel’s office.
“Thanks for bringing me lunch,” Alice said. “It was really nice of you to think of me.”
“Of course. No problem at all.” Jessica was smiling, but her smile faded as she glanced around the office. “Did Micah take off already?”
“Yeah. He left a few minutes ago.” There wasn’t any reason for him to stick around, but Alice thought Jessica looked surprised and annoyed for some reason.
“All right.” Jessica sighed and then straightened up. “Hey, are you free for dinner on Friday evening?”
“Yeah.” It didn’t take any thinking to figure this out. Alice was free on every night of the week she wasn’t working.
“Come over to our place. I’ve having a few people over. Do you think you can make it?”
“Sure. Thank you.” Alice had known Jessica all her life too, since they’d all grown up in Willow Park together, but Jessica was a year or two older, so they’d never really been friends. It was very nice of her to be making an effort, though. Alice didn’t like to be pitied, but she wasn’t about to refuse a kindly offered invitation. “Can I bring anything?”
“No, you don’t have to—” Jessica broke off, and her mouth twisted wryly. “Well, actually, would you mind bringing a salad? I’m always stressed out over meal-planning, so it helps if I don’t have to make everything myself.”
“Sure.” Alice grinned, appreciating the other woman’s honesty and good-humor. “How many will be there? Just so I know how big a salad to make.”
“I’m not sure. Four or five. No more than six.”
“Okay. Thanks for asking.”
Jessica was smiling, as if she were very pleased with herself, as she left.
Alice looked at the door out of which the other woman had disappeared. Jessica was quiet and unassuming, never trying to be the center of attention. Growing up, she’d always been like Alice—not one of the popular girls, not the one the guys always went after.
But Jessica had managed to snare a fantastic husband anyway.
It should be encouraging, but it wasn’t. Alice reminded herself that it didn’t matter anymore. She was resurrecting her life—and doing things better this time. She had what was most important. Plus, she had her rules, and she wasn’t going to break them by dwelling on what she didn’t have.
She’d been stupid about men for too long. Jeff, her first boyfriend and her first fiancé, had evidently moved on long before he’d ever bothered to tell her. And she, being stupid, had ignored all the obvious clues that something hadn’t been right between them.
And then she’d known that she and Bill had different views about marriage and, in particular, the role of wives, but she’d assumed they could work it out—until he refused to budge in even the slightest of ways and finally broke the engagement because she wasn’t properly submissive.
Now that it was over, she was glad to be rid of both of them, but she knew she was to blame for letting herself get into the situations. Stupidity had consequences, after all. So, four months ago, she’d developed a set of rules. She didn’t think they should be universally applied to all women, but they were what she needed to keep from being stupid again. They were helping her be content with her newly established life, and they would protect her heart.
There were five of them.
1. Never assume a man likes you unless he both tells you and shows you.
2. Never go out of your way to encourage a man to ask you out.
3. Never trap a man in a conversation about his feelings that he doesn’t want to have.
4. Never analyze a man’s behavior or read into his motivations and intentions toward you.
5. Never, ever, ever daydream about a future unless he’s promised you a future.
Those were her rules, and she was determined to keep them.
***
A couple of hours later, Daniel went to visit someone in the hospital, and Alice took that opportunity to haul the piles of books from the credenza into his office and start shelving them on the bookshelves there.
She’d organized Daniel’s books when she’d first gotten the job, so they were all in a clear, logical order, and she knew where each one of them went.
She could dress as casually as she wanted to work at the church—at least, that was what Daniel had told her when she’d gotten the job—but she always made an effort to look somewhat professional, since people stopped by fairly often and she was the first person they saw.
Now, however, Alice was regrettin
g her random impulse that morning to put on a skirt, since she was on her knees in front of the bookshelves, putting the last of the commentaries back in place.
At least no one was around, since she was in a rather undignified position, with her skirt pushed up to her thighs to give herself freedom to move.
“Daniel,” a voice came from outside the office. “Daniel!”
She recognized the voice, but he was in the office before she could move or pull down her skirt. She froze as she looked over her shoulder, befuddled by Micah’s sudden appearance.
He seemed equally startled to discover her on the floor, after his eyes scanned the room for his absent brother. “Oh,” he said, standing in the doorway.
It took her a minute to pull herself together, but when she did she managed to smile. “He went out to the hospital to see Mrs. Cooper.”
“Oh.” Micah was such a self-assured man that it was strange to see him look so stumped.
Then there was a different sound in the office. It took Alice a few seconds to even identify it. It was so unexpected that she was sure it wasn’t right.
It sounded like a baby whimpering.
Finally, her eyes drifted down to something Micah was holding. A baby carrier. A baby carrier.
“Is that a baby?” she asked, her voice hoarse with surprise.
He looked down at the carrier as if he’d forgotten he held it. “Yeah.”
She scrambled to her feet, rather clumsily, and hurried over to look at the baby as he set the carrier on Daniel’s desk, right on top of the printed copy of sermon notes for Sunday. He was carrying a bag over his shoulder, but he didn’t set that down.
She peered into the carrier and saw the baby—maybe four or five months old—wearing a pink sleeper. Her eyes were blue and grumpy, and her whimpers were quickly turning louder.
Instinctively, Alice reached out for the girl and pulled her up to rest against her shoulder, patting her back in a comforting manner.
Alice had always liked kids. She’d never had baby-fever, but she certainly knew what to do when one was starting to cry.
“What are you doing with her?” she asked Micah, who’d been staring at the baby with that same glazed look of bewilderment.
“I…I don’t know.”
“Well, whose is she?” Surely this baby hadn’t dropped from the sky into the back of Micah’s truck.
His features twisted slightly—maybe anxiety, maybe disbelief. “That’s the thing. I think…I think she’s mine.”
Two
“What do you mean, she’s yours?”
“I mean she might be my daughter.” Micah still looked almost frozen, as if he hadn’t fully taken in what was happening.
Alice shifted the baby from one shoulder to the other, jostling her slightly as she continued to whimper. “But how…where did she come from?”
“Her mom died in a car accident last week, and her grandparents just showed up and said she’s mine.”
“So they’re taking care of her? They just want you to…to know her?”
He shook his head, his eyes fixed on the baby’s profile. “They said they can’t raise her full time.”
Alice swallowed, trying to understand this, trying to get her mind to work. She felt as stunned and paralyzed as Micah looked. “They don’t want her?”
“I think they do, but they’re not in great health and they don’t think they can anymore. They said I’m the father.”
They stared at each other for a minute, and Alice felt strangely like they completely understood each other, in a way they hadn’t since they’d been working at the summer camp.
“What am I going to do?” Micah breathed at last.
“I don’t know.” She shook her head hard, as if that might clear her mind. “I guess you need to figure out if she’s really yours and if her grandparents are serious.” She glanced down at the baby, who was making soft little gurgles. “Poor little thing. What’s her name?”
“Cara.”
Cara lifted her head and peered at Alice’s face inquisitively. Alice couldn’t help but smile at the round blue eyes.
“Those do look like your eyes,” she murmured.
“I know.” Micah’s tone was subdued, slightly stretched.
He was a single guy who hadn’t spent a lot of time around babies. Having one thrust on him was probably the last thing in the world he wanted or expected.
“Okay,” Alice said. “I can watch her, if you want, while you go and try to figure out some answers. Why do they assume you’re the father? Where did her grandparents go?”
“They were going to the hospital for some sort of procedure. I guess I should have gotten more…I was so stunned I just…”
Alice felt an intense wave of sympathy for Micah, who really looked like he might just buckle under the weight of this development. “I’ll watch her so you can do what you need to do.”
“Are you sure?” He rubbed his jaw, which was slightly scratchy from half a day’s stubble. “I know you have to work—”
“No, it’s fine. I’m finished here for the day, and I don’t have any hours in the library today. I might just take her home.” She faltered, thinking about how her mother would hover, asking questions, if she showed up at the house with a baby in tow. “Or…”
“You can take her to my place,” he said, obviously seeing her hesitance. “If that’s okay with you. It might be easier.”
“Yeah. Good.” She went to put Cara back in her carrier. “You’re in that house on Plymouth Street now?”
Micah was always in the process of flipping a house. He bought a rundown property, moved in, and worked on it in his spare time. When it was fixed up, he sold it—for a huge profit, since real estate was a hot commodity in the picturesque mountain town—and bought another property to do it again.
“Yeah,” he said. “The one on the corner with the oak tree in the yard.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys. As he spun one off, he added, “Here. Are you sure you don’t mind? I know I just kind of dumped this on—”
“It’s fine,” she assured him, pocketing the key and then strapping Cara in the carrier. “It’s really fine. I like babies.” She smiled at Micah’s anxious look. “I’m serious. It’s really fine.”
This evidently reassured him because he picked up the carrier as Alice went to get her purse and shut down her computer.
They left the church and headed to Alice’s car.
“Oh,” she said, as she opened her backseat. “We might have a problem.”
Micah just stared at her.
“They didn’t give you a base to the car seat, did they?”
“No. They just gave me the bag and that.” He gestured to the carrier. “I guess we need a car seat.”
“I think that is the car seat, but I thought they latched into some sort of base.” Alice tried to remember the last time she’d seen an infant in a car seat, and she couldn’t even remember. “Maybe it hooks with the seatbelt.”
“The seatbelt would hook to this thing? What would it hook to?” He peered at the carrier but obviously didn’t know what he was looking for.
“How did you get her over here?” She suddenly had a vision of his putting Cara in the bed of his pickup with his tools.
“I just set it on the floor of the passenger seat.” His face twisted in guilt. “Shit, I’m terrible at this.” Then he gave a start. “Sorry.”
She shook her head to dismiss his concern about his language. “Okay, let’s see if we can strap it into the backseat.” She lifted up the fabric lining the bottom of the carrier and perked up. “It’s got these grooves here, so maybe the seatbelt is supposed to go through here.”
So they put the carrier into the backseat and both leaned over to try to hook it in.
They tried several different belt positions, but couldn’t seem to make it work in a way that made the seat feel secure.
When they kept bumping heads in the small space, Alice went around to the other side to giv
e them both more room to work.
The whole time, Cara just stared at them alternately with big blue eyes, clearly mesmerized by all the activity.
Alice was getting more and more frustrated with their inability to figure out the car seat. Plus, she was getting hot in the stuffy back of the car.
“We already tried it that way,” she said, when Micah tried to belt the carrier in a familiar configuration.
“Well, how is it supposed to go? Don’t you know how to work these things?”
“Why would I know? I’ve never had a baby. You’re supposed to be the one who’s mechanically inclined. Why can’t you figure it out?”
“I sure wouldn’t have designed this ridiculous contraption in a way that’s impossible to attach.”
“Oh wait,” she said, remembering something she should have recalled earlier. “I think it’s supposed to face the other way.”
“That can’t be right,” Micah said, turning the carrier as she’d indicated. He was leaning over, and he looked just as hot and frustrated as she felt. “Why would they make the poor babies look at nothing but the back of the seat?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s safer or something. Let’s just try it. Maybe the belt goes through like this.”
Micah fed the belt through the loops, and the buckle got stuck at one point. “Shit,” he muttered, trying to free the belt. “Shit.” Then he glanced up at her. “Sorry.”
“You don’t have to keep saying sorry,” she said, slightly snippy. “I’ve heard worse, you know.”
“I know you have.” He sounded just as bad-tempered as her. “But do you really think I should be teaching her bad language?”
“She can’t even talk yet.”
“Well, she can hear.”
“Fine,” Alice grumbled, tilting the carrier slightly to make room for Micah’s run of the belt. “Try to watch your language then.”
He gave her a cool glare, but it changed when Alice was able to snap the seatbelt closed.
They both tested the carrier to make sure it was stable, but they couldn’t get it to move more than a few inches, no matter how they tugged on it, so they assumed it would do for the short ride to Micah’s house.
