He was dressed and over there in a flash, dog at his side, ringing her bell, then banging on her door—with that crying, he didn’t figure there was any danger of waking her up. Finally, after what seemed like forever but was probably less than half a minute, he heard the wails get closer. Then the door swung open...and his heart broke.
Because frankly he wasn’t sure who was crying harder, baby or mother.
Boomer shoved up against Tyler, whining in concern. Not even waiting for permission to enter, Tyler shoved past her and the kid, shutting the door. Wearing a pair of what looked like men’s pajamas, her hair stringy and tangled, Laurel was bouncing the poor little guy, his scrunched face so red it was practically purple.
“Give him to me,” Tyler said, but she shook her head, clinging even harder to the bellowing kid.
“There’s n-nothing you c-can do,” she said over the pitiful screams. “It’s c-colic, his doctor said. He’s fed, he’s dry, he just...cries, every night, for hours. And I don’t know what to do—”
Tyler gently clamped both hands around the baby’s back and—with no small effort—pried him away from his mother, setting the wailing infant under his own chin. Then, apparently operating on some instinct he didn’t even know he had—he’d never been through this with any of Ethan’s brood—he started pacing the living room.
“Go back to bed, honey.”
“I c-can’t do that—!”
“You’ve gotta get some rest or you’re not gonna be any good to him. So go. Now. No arguments.”
“I’ll never be able to sleep—”
Jonny paused, hauled in a shaky breath, then screamed so loud Tyler’s brain rattled. Worried, Boomer stood on his hind legs, his front paws propped on Tyler’s arm like he was thinking, Dude, what the hell is wrong with that thing? Tyler nailed Laurel with his gaze.
“It’s like this—either you go to bed now, or I hand him back to you, walk out that door and never come back. So what’s it gonna be?”
She looked at her squalling baby, then back at Tyler. “He’ll need to eat again in a couple of hours—”
“Then I will bring him to you.”
Finally, she stepped closer to briefly rub Jonny’s back, then practically ran from the room, shutting her bedroom door behind her.
And Tyler and the dog settled in for probably the longest night of their lives.
* * *
Laurel awoke with a panicked start, her head groggy, her breasts full. She glanced at the clock: Nearly seven? What the—?
She stumbled to the bathroom to pee, quickly drag a comb through her tangled hair. Then she scurried to the living room, where she found, illuminated by a single lamp left on beside the sofa, Tyler sacked out on her grandfather’s old La-Z-Boy recliner with a snoozing, fuzzy-headed Jonny splayed across his chest, both of them with their mouths sagged open. Boomer, stretched out beside the recliner, lifted his head to give her his goofy grin, his stubby tail wagging. Across from them, a pair of ridiculously chipper TV hosts bantered with each other. Laurel grabbed the remote and clicked off the TV, then looked down at the pair of sleeping beauties, her eyes filling.
Damn you, Tyler Noble.
How long the baby had cried, she had no idea. Having passed exhausted at least two weeks ago, she’d crashed like she’d been drugged as soon as her head hit pillow. So much for don’t need no stinking help from nobody.
As if he could smell the milk beginning to leak from her swollen breasts, Jonny stirred, then let out a tiny, wrinkle-faced squawk. Tyler instantly snapped to attention, his hands tightening around the baby as he blearily met Laurel’s gaze. Boomer scrambled to his feet to give his daddy, then the baby, sloppy doggy kisses.
“Good morning,” she whispered, taking Jonny and settling into the sofa, putting him to breast without bothering to check his diaper. The dog jumped up beside her to keep tabs on the proceedings, laying his jowly head on her knee. Tyler righted the recliner, blinking at them for several seconds before releasing a huge yawn. Laurel almost smiled—his hair, sticking out in a thousand directions, looked worse than hers. Although at least she didn’t have beard stubble. Small mercies.
“You said something about coffee?” he said, then frowned. “Yesterday?”
“Go for it.”
He seemed to take a moment to gather his wits before pushing himself out of the chair, making his own bathroom pit stop before ambling to the kitchen, stretching and popping his spine as he walked.
“You sleep?” he called from the kitchen.
“Like the dead.” She paused, then said, stroking Jonny’s pulsing soft spot as he guzzled, “Thank you.”
“No problem.” She heard some rattling and clunking, the sound of water running. Minutes later the smell of coffee filled the house.
“Want a cup?”
“Not me, no. Nursing.” She paused. “But if you wouldn’t mind pouring me some orange juice...?”
“Coming right up.”
He appeared almost immediately with a huge glass of juice, which she took with another shy “Thanks,” drinking as greedily of it as the baby did from her. Tyler nodded then returned to the kitchen. “How...how long did he cry after I went to bed?”
“Dunno. Although, for future reference? He really digs The Weather Channel.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, smiling, as Tyler reappeared with his coffee. Shaking his head at the dog, he sat forward on the edge of the recliner, the mug cupped in his hands as he watched the baby.
“He really cries every night like that?”
“For the last week or so, yeah.”
“So how come I never heard him before?”
“Because it’s cold enough that everyone has their windows closed? His doctor swears he’ll outgrow it, but...” She shrugged. “It’s what I signed up for, so I can’t really complain.”
Tyler lifted his mug to his lips, taking a long sip before saying, very quietly, “Is it? What you signed up for?”
Laurel paused, then said, “We only have control over our choices. Over the consequences of those choices, not so much.” Jonny’s suckling became less frantic as his tummy filled; Laurel took the opportunity to gently detach him from the nipple and lift him to her collarbone, rubbing between his shoulder blades until he belched so loudly he startled himself, little hands flailing.
“Impressive,” Tyler said, and Laurel smiled, switching the baby to the other side as discreetly as possible. Then she lifted her eyes to Tyler.
“We’ve also been granted,” she said softly, “the grace to admit when we’re wrong.”
His gaze bored into hers. “Oh, yeah?”
“Not that I didn’t need to try doing this alone. Well, mostly—Gran does help, when she can—”
“So you two made up?”
Laurel smiled. “As if she could stay away from her great-grandson for long. But she’s been dealing with a stubborn cold the past couple weeks, so she didn’t feel right about coming over.” A short laugh preceded, “Hence the mess. Look—I still don’t dare let myself lean too heavily on other people. That’s just foolish. But...what’s more foolish is not accepting help when it’s offered.”
“No argument here.”
Her mouth twisted. “Unfortunately, there’s a very fine line between self-preservation and pride. And for my child’s sake...” She sighed. “What’s best for me isn’t necessarily what’s best for him. I can take care of myself, sure. He can’t. And if I’m too wiped out to take care of him...what then? So,” she said, looking down at her precious, precious baby, “this is me...letting go. Admitting how close I was to losing it last night...” Her gaze lifted again to Tyler’s. “As well as how incredibly grateful I am that you came to my rescue.”
A long pause preceded “This mean we’re good again?” and her heart turned inside out.
We were never not good, she thought. But all she said was, “Yeah. We’re good.”
His cheeks actually puffed with the force of his sigh before he got to his feet. “Okay, then.” One hand curved around the back of his neck as apology swam in his eyes. “I need to get cleaned up, head to work... Will you be okay?”
Laurel smiled. “You kidding? I got more than four hours sleep in one stretch last night. I’m ready to run a marathon. Anyway, Gran’s coming over later... She’s finally better. So we’ll be fine.”
He called the dog, who rolled his eyes up to Laurel, as though pleading with her to stay. “Boomer! Come on, she doesn’t need to deal with you on top of everything else. But we’ll be back—” Tyler’s eyes cut to hers. “We will, won’t we?”
“Anytime you want.”
“You sure?”
“Positive,” she said, and he grinned. The dog finally slid off the sofa and trudged behind Tyler to the door. Where he turned, one hand on the door’s edge, and said, “I really missed you.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
Then they were gone. Babykins finally done with his breakfast, Laurel shoved up off the sofa and carted the sleeping infant to the nursery, where she changed his diaper and laid him on his back in his crib. For several moments, she watched him sleep, his delicate fingers curled around one of hers, loving him so much she could barely breathe.
Heaven knows her life wasn’t going the way she’d expected. Or hoped. Maybe it never would. But letting go, letting Tyler back into her life, and her child’s...she couldn’t even begin to put into words the feelings of peace, of rightness, buoying her right then. To reject Tyler because he couldn’t be what she wanted, instead of being grateful for what he was... To be afraid of something that hadn’t even happened...
Idiot.
The baby snuffled in his sleep, a tiny bubble of milk cresting, then popping, in the corner of his little cupid mouth, and Laurel smiled. Right now, things were good. Right now she had a healthy, sleeping baby with a full tummy, and almost five hours of uninterrupted sleep under her belt, and Gran would be over in a bit and Laurel was going to soak in the tub for twenty whole minutes....
And she and Tyler were friends again.
For now, that was enough.
* * *
Over the next couple of weeks, Tyler and Laurel settled into something like a routine, where he’d go over to her place after work several nights a week, and sometimes he’d bring pizza or Chinese food, or Laurel would heat up some dish or other that Kelly—who’d announced her own pregnancy with much hugging and squealing the week before—had donated to the cause. Or sometimes, now that Jonny’s colic was easing up and Laurel wasn’t quite as frazzled, she’d cook. After a fashion. God knows her heart was in the right place, but Tyler wasn’t all that sure the kitchen was it.
And on Sundays, since he’d had to work most Saturdays recently, what with people trying to finish up renovation projects before the real cold weather hit, they’d go over to Matt and Kelly’s, or bundle up the kid and take Marian out to eat. Almost like they were a real family.
Almost being the operative word, here.
He’d meant it about missing Laurel. So being part of her life again made Tyler feel good about his life in a way he hadn’t in a very long time. If ever. Like maybe, for once, he was on the right track. Or at least he could see the right track. But that almost...
A word that pretty much described his existence up to that point, didn’t it? Or at least his relationships, he thought as he crossed the frost-crunchy grass the Sunday before Halloween to get to Laurel’s. Like he was almost somebody’s son, or somebody’s brother...or somebody’s boyfriend. Only more and more he was beginning to think that almost wasn’t cutting it. Even if he had no clue how to upgrade to...to whatever came after almost.
Or even if he could.
But right now they needed to deal with grocery shopping. Not that Laurel wasn’t perfectly capable of juggling the kid and the stuff and the car—as she so often reminded him—but she did admit it was easier with him along. Easier for her, at least bearable for him, since grocery shopping ranked pretty low on his favorite-things-to-do list. Except today—not that Laurel knew this yet—they were going to buy a buttload of candy to hand out to trick-or-treaters, and a pumpkin or two to carve, and maybe swing by Target or Walmart or someplace and buy a bunch of junk to decorate their yards with. Webs and spooky lights and quite possibly one of those crazy inflatable things, a ghost or giant pumpkin or something—
He’d just knocked on Laurel’s door when his phone rang. Frowning at Starla’s number in the display, he answered, holding up one finger when Laurel opened her door. Jonny was dressed in his snowsuit—it was frickin’ freezing today—with a pumpkin costume over it. Hysterical.
“Yeah?” he said into the phone.
“Sorry to bother you, and you know I wouldn’t if I had any other choice...but I’ve got a flat and I need to be at work in twenty minutes. Could you possibly give me a lift? I’ll pay for the gas—”
“You don’t need to pay for the gas, but...hold on.” He put the phone on mute, then said to Laurel as she locked her door, “Emergency. Starla needs a lift to work. You want me to come back later?”
She gave him a brief, weird look then shook her head. “No, Jonny’s finally gotten into a good afternoon nap routine. No way am I disrupting that. Better if we tag along.”
“You don’t mind?”
“Of course not,” she said, starting toward her car. “But let’s get going.”
“Be right there,” Tyler told Starla, then pocketed his phone to take the baby from Laurel to put him in his car seat. Not that she couldn’t, but that wasn’t the issue. The issue was—the kid gave him a wobbly grin—this.
He couldn’t quite believe it, either, how attached he’d gotten to the little twerp. But there it was. And here he was. As opposed to Barry, who was still MIA.
“You still haven’t said how you know Starla,” Laurel said when they got going, looking straight ahead as Jonny occasionally cooed in his car seat behind them.
Yeah. This again. Tyler shifted in his seat—Laurel insisted on driving when they took her car, and, yes, it drove him nuts, even though she was probably a better driver than he was. “From when I was a kid,” he said. “Before the Nobles adopted me.”
“Like...a friend of the family?”
“Sure,” he said, not daring to look at her. “I hadn’t seen her for a long time, when we ran into each other again a few years ago. In Costco, in fact, when I was there with Abby, picking up some supplies for the shop.”
Every bit of it was true, including his spotting Starla three registers over from where they were checking out, that day two years ago. What he didn’t say, of course, was how his belly had felt like it’d caught fire when he’d recognized her. That it’d taken him another month before he went back, made contact. Her scream of joy when she realized it was him.
What he couldn’t say, didn’t fully understand, was why he still didn’t feel comfortable telling Laurel who Starla really was. Especially since, now having some hands-on experience himself with caring for a newborn, the pain of his mother’s abandonment had begun to loosen its grip, giving way to a weird blend of empathy and—here’s where things got dicey—shame.
Yeah, at first maybe he’d resisted coming clean to Laurel because they weren’t close, so his personal life, his past, had been none of her concern. But now that they were friends it mattered what she thought—about him, his choices. So to admit the truth also meant owning up to what a hardass he’d been all these years. Tyler could only imagine the look she’d give him, when she found out—
“So...that’s when you resumed your relationship?” she said, her words slicing through his thoughts.
“I think relationship might be pushing it,” he said, d
aring to toss her a smile. “Acquaintance is more like it.”
“You build walls for everybody you’re acquainted with?”
She was teasing, he knew that. But the inadvertent double meaning to her words hit him upside the head. “Hey. I built one for you. And we’d barely said hello to each other.”
“That wall was to keep your dog out of my yard. Or rather, to keep him in yours. So. Not entirely altruistic.”
He grinned again, even though by this point his stomach was roiling. Starla was waiting in her driveway, the world’s ugliest parka thrown on over her jeans. Maybe he’d take her shopping, get her a new coat for Christmas—
She was thrilled out of her gourd, of course, getting to see the baby. And she insisted on sitting in back beside him. Tyler knew she’d never expose their secret, if for no other reason than she’d said herself, she’d given up any right to call herself his mother years ago. A thought that now made him cringe.
“I thought you were pregnant when you came out to the house before,” Starla said in her squeaky-rough voice. “Ohmigosh, he’s beautiful! What’s his name?”
“Jonathon. Jonny.”
“Well, hello, Jonny! Ohmigosh, look at that! He smiled at me!”
Laurel laughed. “He just started that about a week ago.”
“Those gummy little smiles are the best,” Starla said, laughing as well...but Tyler heard the regret, as well. Or maybe he imagined it. After all, she’d seen his first smile, heard his first laugh. But...had he been colicky, too? Had she spent hours walking him trying to get him to stop crying? With no one to relieve her—?
“You have kids, Starla?” Laurel asked, and Tyler’s heart knocked.
The briefest beat preceded, “One. A son. He’s all grown-up now, of course. But I remember when he was a baby like it was yesterday.”
“Do you see him often?”
“From time to time,” she said softly. “We’re...not particularly close.”
“Oh...that’s too bad,” Laurel said, as Tyler’s chest cramped so hard he could barely breathe.
“Yeah,” Starla said. “It is. But I still have hope that we’ll sort out our differences one day. Because without hope, might as well die, right?”
More Than She Expected Page 16
