“That’s because she looks just like her mama,” Matt said, touching a hand to his wife’s shoulder.
“Another unbiased opinion,” she said dryly.
He just grinned. “I’m Matt,” he said, offering his hand to Julie. “The real Dr. Garrett.”
“Not that he has much more experience than Lukas when it comes to delivering babies,” Georgia said.
“I did an obstetrics rotation in med school,” he pointed out.
“How many years ago was that?” his wife challenged.
“More than I’m willing to admit.”
“Well, according to Dr. Turcotte, Lukas did just fine,” Julie told him.
“Lukas had the easy part,” Matt told her.
“I’m not sure how easy it was to keep me from going into full-scale panic when I realized I wasn’t going to make it to the hospital to have my baby,” she admitted. “But he did it.”
“Those Garretts know how to get what they want,” Georgia told her.
“That we do.” Her husband’s admission was accompanied by a quick grin.
“I wanna play outside,” Quinn said. “In the snow.”
“Me, too,” Shane said.
“That sounds like a terrific idea,” their mother agreed. “Especially if Daddy and Uncle Lukas go with you.”
Both boys turned to Matt. “Yeah, Daddy. Pleeease.”
He looked at Georgia, his brows lifted. “Trying to get rid of me?”
“Just so that Julie and I can share labor stories and talk about babies and breasts and—”
“I’ll go play with the boys,” he said.
“Yay!” They raced out of the room with as much energy and enthusiasm as they’d raced into it.
Matt dropped a kiss on the top of his wife’s head and walked out of the room.
“I’m so sorry,” Georgia apologized when they were gone. “I really tried to entice the boys to stay at home with Ava—Jack and Kelly’s daughter—but even though they absolutely adore their cousin, they didn’t want any part of that today.”
“I’m glad you brought them,” Julie assured her. “They’re fabulous kids.”
“Most days,” Georgia acknowledged with a weary smile.
“And Matt—does he always do what you tell him to?”
“Usually.” The other woman grinned. “Of course, it helps that it’s usually what he wants to do, anyway. And he loves spending time with the kids—it gives him an excuse to act like a kid himself.”
“Do you mind if I ask you another question?”
“Ask away.”
“How did you manage two of them? I feel as if I didn’t sleep at all last night, and Caden’s only one baby.”
“I wasn’t on my own when the twins were born. Their dad worked a lot of long hours, but it seriously helped me get through the day just knowing that I could pass one or both of them off to him when he got home. So if you have any kind of support network, I would strongly recommend you utilize it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Julie said.
She was relieved that Georgia hadn’t asked about Caden’s father. She didn’t want to lie but she didn’t know any of these people well enough to tell them the truth. Still, she knew that she needed to tell someone, which made her think again about the appointment she’d missed with Jackson Garrett.
Since her reasons for wanting to consult with a lawyer hadn’t changed, she should reschedule that appointment. Except now that her brother’s friend was also the brother of the man who had delivered her baby, the situation was a little more complicated, making her doubt whether she should confide in him or find different legal counsel.
“Another thing to keep in mind is that it will get easier,” Georgia told her. “It will take a while, but you and Caden will establish rhythms and routines, you’ll start to anticipate his needs and adjust your schedule accordingly.”
“Fingers crossed,” Julie said.
“And when things get really crazy and you want to out-scream your screaming baby, just try to remember that incredible feeling of love and joy that filled your heart when he was first placed in your arms.”
“I still feel that,” Julie admitted. “Every time I look at him.”
“Savor it,” Georgia advised.
“What aren’t you telling me?”
The other woman hesitated, then shrugged. “Pippa went through a colicky stage, which was pretty much pure hell for about three months.”
Julie looked at the smiling, cooing baby. “Neither of you looks any the worse for wear.”
“Not now,” Georgia agreed.
“You have a beautiful family.”
“I’m a lucky woman—although it took me a while to get settled here in Pinehurst and realize how very lucky.”
“You’re not from here?”
Georgia shook her head. “I moved from New York City last February.”
“That’s a major change—not with respect to geography so much as lifestyle, I would think.”
“You’d be right. But I needed to make a major change. Phillip, my first husband, passed away when I was pregnant with Pippa, and I found it more than a little overwhelming to be on my own with two toddlers and another baby on the way. So when my mother invited me to move in with her, it seemed like a perfect solution.” She smiled wryly. “And it was until four months later when she moved to Montana.”
“Why Montana?”
“She fell in love with a cowboy.” Georgia smiled. “Which was great for her but a little unsettling for me, since I’d moved here to be closer to her. And then Matt moved in next door to me.”
“That’s how you met?”
She nodded. “And three months later, we got married.”
“Fast work,” Julie mused.
“On his part or mine?”
“I guess you’d have to tell me.”
Georgia chuckled. “I wasn’t looking for happily-ever-after. I wasn’t even looking for a relationship. I had my hands more than full enough with three kids, but Matt found a way to be there, to fit in, to be everything I never knew I needed. How could I not fall head over heels in love?”
Julie didn’t envy the other woman her happiness. Georgia had obviously traveled a difficult road to get to where she was at. But she did wonder what it would be like to fall head over heels in love and to know, as Georgia obviously did, that she was loved the same way in return.
Julie had never experienced that depth of emotion. She’d had intense crushes and serious infatuations, all of which had eventually faded or fizzled. She’d thought she was in love with Elliott—she never would have agreed to marry him otherwise—but she also would never have described herself as head over heels. Their affection for one another had grown over time, a result of common goals and shared interests. Which, in retrospect, seemed more like the foundation for a strong business partnership than a successful marriage. And then even that foundation had crumbled.
“Of course, the Garrett men are all charmers,” Georgia continued. “Which might explain why Luke is the only one in Pinehurst who’s still single. Is your baby’s father in the picture?”
The question came at her so unexpectedly, Julie found herself shaking her head before she realized it.
“Good.”
“Why is that good?” she asked curiously.
“Because of the vibes in the air between my brother-in-law and you.”
“I think you’re misinterpreting something.”
“Am I?” the other woman mused.
She felt her cheeks flush. “I don’t even know him.”
“You don’t have to know a man to be attracted to him,” Georgia said matter-of-factly.
“I suppose not,” she agreed.
“But I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“You didn’t. I’m not,” Julie said. “I’m…confused.”
Georgia smiled. “Yeah, I remember that feeling, too.”
Julie didn’t know what to say to that, so she was grateful that t
he other woman didn’t seem to expect a response.
“But I didn’t come over here to play matchmaker, only to bring a few things that you might be able to use for Caden.”
“It looks like more than a few things,” Julie noted, relieved by the change of topic.
“I had twins,” Georgia reminded her. “Which means that I had to have two of everything, including infant car seats. I’m still using one for Pippa, but you’re more than welcome to the other one. The base secures into your vehicle, and the carrier pops in and out, which is great for carting a baby around or even just as a place for him to sit while you’re doing something else.
“When the twins were babies, I used to put them in their car seats on the floor in the bathroom while I was in the shower, because I was absolutely paranoid that something would happen if I didn’t have my eyes on them every single minute.”
Julie smiled at that. “Glad to know it’s not just me.”
“It’s not just you. In fact, it’s probably most new mothers.”
“I just feel so completely unprepared. I thought I’d have more time to get ready. My own fault for listening to a friend who assured me that first babies never come early.”
“They are more often late than early, but each baby comes in his own time,” Georgia told her.
“It would have been nice if Caden had waited to come until after the storm had passed.”
“But now you have an interesting story to tell when he asks about when and how he was born.”
Julie would never forget the circumstances of her son’s birth—or the connection that she now felt to the man who had helped deliver him. “There is that,” she agreed.
“Mommy!” Clomping footsteps came through the kitchen, then a snow-covered bundle appeared in the doorway. Wrapped up as he was in the bulky snowsuit with a red hat pulled down to his eyes and a matching scarf wrapped around his throat, Julie couldn’t tell if it was Quinn or Shane. But if she had to guess, she would say Quinn, since he seemed to be the more talkative and outgoing of the two brothers.
“Uncle Luke sent me in to get a carrot,” he announced.
Georgia rose to her feet. “A carrot?”
“We made a snowman!”
“You look like a snowman,” his mother told him.
The child giggled. “Shane ‘n me made angels in the snow, too.”
“Well, you’re dripping all over Uncle Lukas’s floor,” Georgia chided. “So come back to the kitchen while I find you a carrot.”
Since Caden was asleep again, Julie set him down in the playpen and followed them to the other room. “I think I want to see this snowman.”
“It’s out there.” Quinn pointed a red, snow-covered mitten toward the back window.
Julie had made her share of snowmen as a kid, but even with the help of her older brothers, she’d never managed to put together anything of the scope or scale that the twins, along with their new daddy and uncle, had assembled.
It was a larger-than-life creation, with arms that reached up to the sky. There were mittens on its hands, a striped scarf around its throat, and a matching knitted hat on its head. The eyes were probably dark stones but they looked like coal and the mouth was made up of smaller stones curved into a lopsided but undeniably happy grin.
But as impressive as the snowman was, it was Lukas, wrestling in the snow with his shy nephew, who captivated her.
Georgia joined her at the window.
“Isn’t he awesome?” the little boy said.
Yes, he is, Julie thought, before she tore her attention from the flesh-and-blood man and shifted it to the one made of snow.
“I almost expect him to start dancing,” she told Quinn.
“You’d need a magic hat for that,” Georgia advised.
“Do we have a magic hat?” he asked hopefully.
“Nope. Just a carrot,” the boy’s mother said, and handed him the vegetable.
* * *
When Frosty’s nose was in position, Matt decided that the boys’ hard work had earned them big cups of hot chocolate with lots of marshmallows on top. Of course, this suggestion sent them racing back into the house to beg their mother to make it, which warned Luke that his brother wanted to talk to him without the twins overhearing their conversation.
A suspicion that was confirmed when Matt said, “So what’s her story?”
There was no point in pretending he didn’t know who the “her” was that his brother was asking about. “I don’t know many of the details,” he admitted. “She tends to skirt around personal questions.”
And though his brother probably wasn’t concerned with her financial status, Luke suspected that Julie came from a family with money. The car Bruce had towed out of the ditch was a late-model Audi A6 that he knew, from a trip to last year’s auto show, was worth a pretty penny. The watch on her wrist was also pretty—and costly—and her clothes were likely designer. He wasn’t familiar enough with any specific label to be able to identify what she was wearing, it was more in the way they fit, the quality of the fabrics and the cut. On the other hand, he suspected that Julie would look equally stylish dressed in an old potato sack.
“Did she say anything about the baby’s father?” Matt pressed.
Luke shook his head.
“Did you ask?”
“Of course not.”
“Why not?”
“Because I figured if she wanted me to know, she’d tell me.”
“Aren’t you curious?”
“Sure,” he admitted. “But it’s really none of my business.”
“She’s living under your roof.”
“She was stranded in a storm.” Luke felt compelled to point out the obvious. “I haven’t put her on the title to the property.”
“I know,” his brother admitted. “Just…be careful.”
“Careful of what?”
“Falling for her—and her baby.”
He snorted. “I’m not the falling type.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” Matt warned.
“No need to worry,” he assured his brother. “She’s not going to be here long enough for me to even lose my balance.”
“It doesn’t take long.”
Of course, Matt would know. Seven years earlier, he’d accepted the daddy role not just easily but eagerly when he’d learned his girlfriend was pregnant—only to find out, three years after their wedding, that the child she’d given birth to wasn’t his. And yet, that experience hadn’t prevented him from falling all over again—this time for a young widow and her three children. Thankfully, that story had a much happier ending.
“And I’ve seen the way you look at her,” Matt added.
He frowned at that. “How do I look at her?”
“The same way you used to look at the green mountain bike in the window of Beckett’s Sporting Goods store when you were a kid.”
Luke remembered that bike—and the quick thrill that had gone through him when he’d seen it in the family room with a big bow on it the morning of his twelfth birthday. A thrill not unlike what he felt whenever Julie walked into the room.
“She’s a beautiful woman,” he said, careful to keep his tone light.
“She is that,” his brother agreed. “But there’s something about her—a vulnerability that reminds me too much of the wounded strays you were always bringing home.”
“First a bike, then a puppy—I wonder if Julie would appreciate either of those comparisons.”
“I’m not worried about her. I’m worried about you.”
“I’m thirty-four years old,” he reminded Matt.
“And starting to think that it’s time to settle down and have a family?”
“No.” Luke shook his head. He was happy for both of his brothers, pleased that they were happy, but he didn’t want what they had. Marriage and kids? Not anywhere on his radar.
At least not before he’d heard Caden’s first indignant cry and looked into those wide, curious eyes trying to foc
us on a whole new world. In that moment there had maybe—just maybe—been the tiniest blip on Luke’s radar. Not that he would ever admit as much to his brother.
“Right now, the only thing I’m thinking about is hot chocolate,” he said, and turned to follow the path his nephews had taken back into the house.
Chapter Seven
“I really like your brother’s family,” Julie said to Lukas after Matt and Georgia had packed up their kids and puppies and gone.
“He definitely lucked out when he bought the house next door to Georgia,” Luke agreed. “She’s one in a million.”
“He must be one in a million, too—a man willing to take on the responsibility of her three kids.”
“Not just willing but eager,” he admitted, remembering how he and Jack had both worried about their big brother’s single-minded pursuit of the widowed mother of three. “Of course, Matt’s always wanted a big family. And he couldn’t love those kids any more if they were his own.”
“You can see it in the way they are together—like all of the pieces just fit.” She sounded just a little bit wistful.
“They do fit,” he agreed. “But that doesn’t mean it was easy.”
She looked down at her baby, snuggled contentedly in her arms. “That’s what I want for Caden,” she told him. “A real family.”
Luke waited for the warning bells to start clanging inside of his head, but nothing happened. Okay, so maybe he was overreacting. After all, she hadn’t been looking at him when she’d said it, but at the baby. There was no reason—aside from a possibly overinflated ego—to think that she imagined him anywhere in the picture of that family she wanted.
In fact, it was entirely possible that she wasn’t thinking about him at all but the man who was her baby’s father. Which, recalling his brother’s warnings, seemed the perfect opportunity to ask about him.
“Maybe Caden’s father wants the same thing,” he suggested.
“I told you—Caden doesn’t have a father.”
Of course, he knew that wasn’t true. He also knew that whatever had happened between the man and Julie didn’t negate his parental rights and responsibilities. But she obviously wasn’t ready to tell him anything about that relationship. Maybe he’d cheated on her—or maybe he’d been cheating with her. If the man already had a family with someone else, he wouldn’t be in a position to give Julie the family she wanted for her son.
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