Her Baby and Her Beau

by Victoria Pade

  Kyla wasn’t sure if she should retreat or intrude and ended up just standing there. Lost all of a sudden in the view of Beau from behind.

  How could she not be? She wasn’t blind and his backside was as much a work of art as his front side was. Those shoulders were something! And the biceps peeking from beneath the ragged edges of cut-off sweatshirt sleeves were enough to make any woman’s mouth water.

  “I appreciate that you all want to help,” Beau said then, regaining Kyla’s attention. “I know you’re all worried that I can’t handle this. But I can. And if I run into anything I can’t handle, I’ll call.”

  His cousin must have accepted his decree because goodbyes seemed to be exchanged then and Beau closed the front door.

  At the sound of it clicking firmly shut, and before he’d turned away from it, he said, “Can I figure that if you still wanted them all around, you would have stopped me?”

  Is he talking to me? Kyla wondered in a small panic. How did he know she was up there eavesdropping? She hadn’t made a sound, there was nothing that would reflect her image and he hadn’t turned around.

  But he did just then, turning and glancing up at her without any surprise that she was there, as if he’d known it all along.

  “Do you have eyes in the back of your head?” she asked.

  “Combat,” he said as if that was an answer. “Helps keep you alive to be as aware of what’s going on behind you as you are of what’s going on in front of you.”

  Not only a marine until two months ago, but apparently in a war zone.

  Kyla mentally filed away what she was learning about him and headed down the steps, belatedly answering his question. “The twenty-four hours of bed rest is over,” she said. “It was nice of everyone to do what they’ve been doing and I appreciated it, but—”

  “They were hovering,” he concluded as she reached the bottom.

  The breadth of his chest provided quite a canvas for the sweatshirt with the letters USMC stenciled on the front. And even dressed in hanging-around-the-house clothes, his face was still cleanly shaven and there didn’t seem to be anything about him that was relaxed.

  “They were hovering a little,” she conceded. “Like you said yesterday, they meant well. And I feel a lot better after everything they did, so I’m not complaining. But no, they don’t need to go to the trouble anymore.”

  Those bright blue eyes of his gave her the once over, settling on her face in a way that seemed to bring a sort of softening to them before he said, “You look better...like you feel better,” he amended. “How’s the wrist?” he asked then. “Your fingers are still sausages.”

  “Bed rest didn’t do much for that. Maybe you should have let Lindie stay to give Immy a bath...”

  “No,” he vetoed instantly. “I did some research, watched a video on the internet and believe me when I tell you that we are now well-stocked with every baby gadget known to man. My grandmother and sister and cousins have had me out running around since they took you upstairs—every time one of them showed up they’d thought of something else we should have and they sent me out for it.”

  “I hope you kept receipts so I can reimburse you—”

  He frowned as if she was talking nonsense and merely continued with what he’d been saying.

  “I’ve stocked up on some kind of clothes called onesies and diapers and bottles and some deal that bounces her or sways her or rocks her or...I don’t know, maybe it shoots her to the moon, too. I’ve got a thing that goes in the sink to give her a bath and towels with hoods shaped like animals and baby body wash and...you name it, they’ve sent me out for it. It takes less gear to send men into battle, so we should have whatever we need.”

  Kyla shrugged. “Rachel had a lot of stuff, but I didn’t pay any attention to it. It’s probably good that they all know what’s necessary.”

  “They’re getting ready for Jani’s baby, so they know everything—”

  That came out sounding as if he was calling them know-it-alls and apparently he heard it, too, because he took a breath and sighed, amending his tone. “Don’t get me wrong—I love them and I appreciate that they care so much and want to help. But the fussing gets to me.”

  She could see that.

  “So,” he said then, as if getting down to business. “If you’re up to it, why don’t you let me give you the tour so you know your way around. Are you up to it?”

  “Sure.”

  Jani had ushered her upstairs immediately the day before, so all Kyla had seen of the place was the route Jani had taken her on from the kitchen to her room and the nursery.

  The guest room and nursery were beautifully decorated, warm and cozy. But outside of them the second floor had no adornment whatsoever—no family photographs on the walls, no artwork, nothing in the alcove where a cute little table or desk could be, not even cushions in the two window seats of the dormers she’d seen.

  Kyla hadn’t thought too much about it until he began to show her around the first floor. The house was larger than anything Kyla had ever been in, which gave the impression of luxury. But spacious room after spacious room contained only a bare minimum of furnishings, all arranged for pure functionality without a single decoration or any personal touch to make the house a home.

  “The guest room and the nursery are a lot different from the rest of the place,” she ventured when the tour was complete and they ended up in the kitchen where only a coffeemaker and toaster adorned the white marble countertops.

  “I had one of the decorators from the store do those,” he informed her, without adding whether or not he intended to have them do more to the rest of the house later on.

  And she didn’t feel free to ask.

  “Can I get you something to eat or drink?” he said then.

  “I don’t need to be waited on. If you show me where the glasses are I’ll get myself some water.”

  “Glasses are here,” he answered succinctly, opening a cupboard near the huge side-by-side refrigerator-freezer. “Water and ice can be had from the front of the fridge. Feel free to help yourself to whatever’s inside.”

  Kyla fought the smile that threatened at that. His instructions were clipped and cursory and she was beginning to feel like a new recruit being shown the barracks.

  “Pantry is here,” he continued, moving to a portion of white bead-board wall.

  The kitchen had a country feel to it despite its lack of decoration and—like the rest of the house—had so many possibilities for warmth and charm that weren’t being emphasized.

  “You just push...” Beau said, demonstrating by giving a framed section of the wall a shove that moved it inward and then opened that portion of paneling that was really a door.

  Just out of curiosity, Kyla peered into the walk-in pantry, finding only two shelves with anything on them—everything lined up neatly.

  “Bread, chips, nuts, cereal, protein bars, cookies—anything you want, have.”

  Sir, yes, sir...

  The words went automatically through her mind just as the baby monitor on the counter suddenly transmitted the sound of Immy’s waking-up noises. Beau snapped into action.

  “I’ll get her. Have your water and sit, rest.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kyla said, the words escaping this time on their own.

  Beau seemed to catch himself, screwing that handsome face into a grimace for a moment before he said, “Sorry. My family keeps telling me to lighten up. I’m not good at it yet.”

  Kyla merely nodded as Immy began to cry in earnest and he headed in the direction of the stairs.

  She’d barely gotten her water and perched on one end of the bench seat that went with the large U-shaped breakfast nook before he was back, with Immy in one arm and a stack of baby things in the other.

  “What do you think? Bottle then bath, or bath then bottle?” he asked, clearly hitting on the first thing he wasn’t certain of since he’d blocked Lindie at the front door.

  “I’m not really sure,” Kyla conf
essed, trying to remember what Rachel had done. “I guess I didn’t pay much attention to a schedule—if there was one. Now that I think of it, sometimes Immy just woke up for a bottle and went back to sleep, and other times she was awake for a while and then had a bottle right before they put her to bed. She isn’t crying...seems like bottles are for that.”

  “When she was up this time yesterday Jani didn’t feed her right away. She walked her around the house and took her outside, then...I don’t know, she put her on a blanket on the floor and did some kind of coo-cooing thing for a while.”

  “Then bath first,” Kyla guessed without any authority.

  “Okay, bath first. I’ll do it, but you’d better make sure the water is the right temperature.” He dropped the stack of baby things on the counter, then glanced from Immy back to it all. “And maybe you could hold her while I get set up.”

  Kyla joined him and he passed Immy to her. Though once she was holding the baby in her left arm, it wasn’t easy to turn on the water and test it with her injured right hand.

  Beau realized that as he covered the counter beside the sink with the towel and stepped in. “Should I take her back while you do the water?” he asked.

  “No...maybe just turn it on and start to fill the sink and I can test it.”

  “Okay,” he said, doing as she’d suggested.

  How could two intelligent, educated people be so stumped by this? Kyla wondered as Beau filled the sink and she repeatedly poked the tips of her swollen fingers into the water until it was warm enough but not too hot.

  By then Beau seemed to have arranged everything he’d brought with him in some sort of order—including a foam insert he’d put into the sink—and he was putting his huge hand into a pink bunny mitt as if it was a driving glove.

  Kyla couldn’t help laughing and it brought a perplexed frown from Beau.

  “What? It’s like a spongy washcloth. It was with all the other bath stuff.”

  “It’s very cute,” Kyla said in the midst of another laugh. “Rachel just put some soap in her hand, but that’s another way to go.”

  “It’s really soft,” he said defensively. “My hands might be too rough otherwise.”

  “Okay,” Kyla said even as she laughed yet again. “It’s nice that you thought of that. It’s just...it doesn’t go with the rest of you.”

  He used the mitt to splash a little of the bathwater her way. “Don’t give me any guff. You’re no better at this than I am,” he countered, this time in a tone that was only playfully stern, one she remembered well. He’d used it whenever she’d teased him when they were kids.

  But they weren’t kids and Kyla reminded herself not to let down her guard.

  Beau reached for Immy then. “Okay, I’m ready for her. Give her to me and go sit down again.”

  Kyla held Immy just enough away from her body so he could take the infant from her without touching her. But once he had Immy on the counter she ignored the rest of his orders and stayed by his side just in case.

  Despite her fears, he didn’t do too badly with the bath on his own. Once Immy nearly slipped out of his grip and Kyla lunged to catch her, but he corrected the situation before the baby’s head went under water and before Kyla could do anything with her one good hand anyway.

  Kyla talked him through diapering Immy when the bath was finished and Kyla had patted her dry. They fumbled through dressing her in a pair of footed pajamas like the ones Rachel had favored, then Kyla told Beau about swaddling—something Rachel had taught her—and they both breathed a sigh of relief at having accomplished what seemed like a feat.

  The remainder of the afternoon and early evening centered on Immy, and opening and assembling the equipment Beau had purchased for her—an abundance of things stacked in a corner of the family room.

  That busywork succeeded at keeping Kyla in the present and warding off thoughts of the past, which helped stave off her resentment.

  It lasted through Immy’s feeding, through Immy’s burping, through Immy falling asleep and right up until Beau stood to take Immy to bed.

  But that was when he looked pointedly at Kyla and said, “How about if we order a pizza for our own dinner and maybe talk about...things?”

  Kyla knew what he meant by things.

  And that was when the past and present collided once again...

  * * *

  “Will you tell me your side of the story?” Beau asked.

  Even after he’d taken Immy to bed they’d still skirted the subject of their past. They’d discussed pizza toppings, where in the house to eat, whether to use paper plates or not, what to drink.

  But now that the pizza had been delivered and they were sitting opposite each other in the breakfast nook eating, Beau brought it up again.

  “My side of the story?” Kyla said, her voice instantly gaining an edge it hadn’t had earlier. “I realized I was pregnant not too long after you left Northbridge that summer. I didn’t know how to get hold of you—”

  “Because you said it was useless for us to try to keep in touch. You didn’t have a cell phone of your own and your parents could barely afford theirs, so you weren’t allowed to get calls on it. You said that you never knew where your family would go next, that even once you got to wherever that was, you’d only have internet access away from home...”

  She had said all of that because it was true. And while it had been hard—and oh-so-painful—she’d had to be realistic. She’d wanted more than anything to believe they might be able to keep up a long-distance romance, but she’d known through her history of constantly moving around that trying to maintain even friendships just didn’t happen. That once she was gone, she was forgotten, and that when she tried to reconnect she was just left facing that fact.

  It was a thought she hadn’t been able to bear when it came to Beau.

  So yes, she had put up a brave front, and said her goodbyes intending them to be permanent. They hadn’t exchanged so much as an email address.

  “I did say that,” she admitted. “Then I had to get your family’s Denver address from the guy who was running the ranch.”

  “Which is where you sent the letter I just got the day before yesterday.”

  “Lost in the mail all these years?” she questioned bitingly.

  He shook his head. “Intercepted by my great-grandfather and tucked into one of several journals that my brother Seth found not long ago. GiGi has been reading them and she found the letter. H.J. wrote about what he did, but I want to hear your side.”

  Pizza didn’t go down well with all Kyla was feeling, so she wasn’t eating much of it.

  “I sent the letter,” she said. “When I didn’t get any answer, I had to tell my parents on my own.”

  Beau wasn’t eating much better than she was, and at that his eyebrows rose and his voice got quiet. “How was that?”

  “Awful! A pregnant sixteen-year-old daughter, a grandchild, medical bills and another mouth to feed? None of that was in their plans, and we were short on money already. It was the maddest they ever got at me.”

  And the most afraid she’d ever been—crazy, irrationally scared that they might just go on to the next stop without her.

  But pride wouldn’t let her say that to him.

  “I told them I’d written to you to tell you,” she went on. “But that I hadn’t heard from you. That made them even madder. So my father decided he was going to Denver to deal with you and your family. That this wasn’t going to be just our problem.”

  “And that’s what he did. He came to Denver.”

  “Yes, as you know perfectly well because you saw him here.”

  “I never saw your father again after I left Northbridge. It was H.J. he met up with when he got here,” Beau said.

  “You did too see him!” Kyla’s voice raised on its own. “My dad said H. J. Camden himself called you in and you swore you’d never touched me! That if I was pregnant, there was no way it was yours! Like I was some kind of skank who could have been wit
h anybody! Who had been with everybody!”

  The words flooded out with all the anger that had been festering for fourteen years.

  “Oh, Kyla, that just didn’t happen. It wouldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t have done that to you.”

  He wasn’t shouting. He was calm and he even made that sound genuine. But Kyla wasn’t buying it.

  “My dad said you admitted we’d spent a lot of time together but swore it was only as friends—as if there wasn’t anything else you could be with the daughter of the hired help! And your great-grandfather believed it and backed you up!”

  Beau shook his head in unwavering denial.

  But Kyla didn’t waver, either.

  “My dad said that H. J. Camden threatened to bring his lawyers into it if we tried to push for any help or support from you. He said he’d fight us tooth and nail. That we’d have to get a court order for even a paternity test. That he’d make sure my name was smeared long before yours ever was because he wasn’t letting anything or anyone hurt your chances of going to Annapolis when you graduated. My dad said H.J. swore he’d crush us like bugs and that you just stood by...”

  Beau shook his head again. “I don’t know if H.J. made those threats or not—he could have. I wasn’t there and he didn’t write about that. I do know that he wouldn’t let anything keep me out of Annapolis.”

  “So my dad said there was nothing we could do. That H. J. Camden could ruin all of our lives and we couldn’t afford to fight him. I had to accept that you were out of the picture and never try to contact you again.”

  Beau didn’t flinch. “And were your parents still mad?” he asked.

  There was something suggestive in his tone—a hint that the question was leading somewhere.

  “No,” she admitted tentatively, wondering what he was getting at. “My parents got a lot more understanding after that. I figured they knew I hadn’t been with anyone but you all summer and that they felt sorry for me because of what you’d done.”

  She’d thought that they’d finally come to see that she’d really loved him and was devastated to have him deny her.