by Lisa Plumley
Humming “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas,” Katie returned, sans cell phone. Probably, she’d turned down yet another party invitation, he decided. Impressive. The sheaf of paper she’d retrieved fluttered as she set it on the table beside the mousse and scissors. With an air of complete absorption, she dragged a chair closer and got down to work.
Between offering Belle bites of chicken with noodles, Jack sneaked glances at Katie. The dining room light glowed over her as she folded and creased and cut. The house seemed to settle in to embrace her…all over again. Remembrances of other times at this table, other togetherness, reached out to Jack.
Self-protectively, he angled his shoulders. Still, the sounds of snipping shears competed with the gibbering conversation he and his baby cousin had. Belle could understand many more words than she could pronounce, he discovered as dinnertime progressed. And as the contents of the baby food jars dwindled, he realized he felt more at ease with his new responsibility with each passing moment.
He’d spent time with Belle, of course. While visiting his family. But never alone; never for hours (or days) at a stretch. Getting to know Belle now was actually turning out to be fun.
She bashed her palms straight downward, sending a chicken-noodle-covered infant spoon sailing into the air. It landed—naturally—on Jack’s head. Okay, so make that messy fun. He plucked out the spoon. Scraped away a few squashed noodles. Made a goofy face at Belle.
She giggled.
His heart expanded. Awestruck by the sensation, Jack paused, his fingers still clutching the noodles.
At the same moment, he realized the snick-snick of the scissors had stopped. Slowly, he turned his head.
Katie sat motionless across from him, scissors slack. A half-clipped square of white paper dangled from her fingertips. She was watching him as though…as though she were a poor little girl with a mile-long Christmas wish list—and he was the grandest toy in the FAO Schwarz store window, all wrapped up in ribbons and bows. It was a look filled with a certain sense of revelation. A look so compelling, so needful, it was all he could do not to launch himself over the tabletop and explore the feelings behind it.
She blinked. Her expression changed. Moving carefully, Katie put the scissors on the table. Then she said the last thing he expected to hear from her:
“I’m not sure I can do this.”
Belle turned her head, as though understanding something important had happened. Lamplight gleamed off the clump of smashed peas drying in her hair.
“Sure, you can,” Jack said. He wanted to reach across the table for her hand, wanted to make Katie smile away the sudden downturn to her lips. “You have to. You agreed, at The Inquisition. One hundred percent commitment. Yes, sir!”
He mimicked a military salute. At that, she did smile. But wryly, like a woman who’d just strapped on her costume wings, only to spot another winter angel at the Christmas masquerade. There wasn’t much real humor in that smile—but there was a tinge of worry.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, seriously.
“You. Me.” Katie waved her hands, making paper flutter around her. “Us, together. Are we nuts to even try this?”
“Possibly.” His reply was punctuated with a Belle babble. Keeping his expression neutral, he began post-dinner baby-cleanup duty. “But I’m glad you’re here anyway.”
“Really?”
“Really. Otherwise, I’d have no one to share these yummy leftovers with.” He tilted his head toward the baby food jars.
She snorted. Then she looked at him again, exactly at the same time as Jack looked at her. The smile they shared next started out slowly. Then, as Katie seemed to gather strength from it, it blossomed into a full-blown synchronized grin. One that, miraculously, chased away a teeny, barely-noticeable, out-of-the-way corner of Jack’s usual Christmas season discontent.
“Okay, enough waffling,” Katie said. “Last chance jitters are over with. I’m in, no matter what. No more second-thoughts.”
As if in demonstration of that new philosophy, she let her gaze rove over him, frankly appreciative despite his bedraggled business clothes and baby food plastered hair. She raised her eyebrows. “After all, I always did like living dangerously.”
So did he, Jack decided. Because heartbreak loomed on the other side of that come-hither look of hers—heartbreak he’d already experienced once. And he was still here, wanting more. More smiles, more togetherness, more Katie. Her companionship eased him in ways he’d rarely experienced…and wound him up in ways he couldn’t help but feel again, now.
“Living dangerously, huh?” He rose to rinse the cloth he’d used to clean up Belle’s cherubic, noodle-covered face. As he passed, he glanced down at the array of white shapes Katie had created. “That’s good. Because if you’re doing what I think you’re doing, you’re dangerously close to some major renegotiating. With me.”
Chapter Five
“Renegotiating?” Katie asked. “What kind of renegotiating?”
She lunged upward from her chair and followed Jack to the kitchen sink. Behind her, Belle used her spoon to bang on the dining room table, but Katie couldn’t concentrate on the exuberant rhythm. Instead, her mind was filled with thoughts of Jack—and what he could possibly have meant by that ominous, Scrooge-like renegotiating remark.
“Well, for starters,” he told her offhandedly, “I think you should stop making those paper snowflakes.”
Katie gaped at him.
“That is what you’ve been doing, isn’t it?”
She nodded. Definitely Scrooge. Definitely. How could she be falling (all over again) for a Scrooge? She, a woman who loved Christmas trees and candy canes and stockings by the chimney and milk and cookies for Santa—
She nodded. Then folded her arms defiantly over her middle as she trailed him back into the dining room. “Yes. Paper snowflakes. And the mousse is going to stand in for artificial snow in those big picture windows of yours.”
His lips quirked. She frowned and straightened her spine.
“It’s the best I can do until I can get to a store for supplies. And if you don’t like it—”
Suddenly, Jack rotated to face her. Katie all but skidded to a stop at the table’s edge, nearly nose to nose with him. Wearing an expression somewhere between amused and affectionate, he shook his head.
“I didn’t mean I want you to stop altogether,” he said. “I meant I want you to wait until you can show me how to make some snowflakes, too.”
“Me? Show you? Paper snowfla—”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“But I thought—”
“I know you did.” And at that, he (to Katie’s absolute amazement), actually burst into song.
“You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch,” Jack sang in a deep cartoon-y voice. He pointed to himself, eyes shining with humor, as he went on. “You really are a heel—”
“Oooh!” Katie walloped him over the head with a snowflake-in-progress. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop his singing.
Belle clapped her little hands and bounced in her infant seat, excited by her cousin’s antics. Waggling his eyebrows at Katie, Jack sang as he finished cleaning up the baby, comically exaggerating every verse. When he’d finished, Belle was free to crawl across her living room blanket to await a bath, and Katie was more certain than ever she’d gotten in over her head.
She actually thought Jack looked charming as he sang.
He stopped beside the table, further rumpled by his exertions with Belle. He glanced at her.
“That was my favorite Christmas song as a kid.”
“So I gathered.”
“I can’t believe I remembered all the words.” He shook his head. “It’s been years since I sang at Christmas. Don’t know why I did now….”
For an instant, he hesitated. He frowned, troubled.
“Belle seemed to enjoy it.” Katie couldn’t help but smile over the memory of big, tough Jack Brennan singing to his baby cousin. “So did I,” she added under her breath.
&
nbsp; “What’s that?” He leaned nearer. Grinning now (her intention all along), he cupped one hand over his ear. “Didn’t quite hear you.”
“I said I enjoyed your singing!”
“That’s what I thought.”
Just like that he was back—the same sure, sexy, satisfied man she was accustomed to. For a moment there, Katie had wondered if he really was troubled by Christmastime. His hesitation, his frown…. But then she’d realized no one could possibly make it through an entire holiday season (much less several) without singing Christmas songs. Jack had to have been teasing.
She hoped. Otherwise, he needed some serious de-Scooge-ifying. And he needed it fast.
“So will you? Show me how to make these?” he asked, nodding toward the paper snowflakes on the table. “I know I’ve done it before, but you’ve obviously remembered the technique better than I have. And it looks like fun.”
He looked like fun. More lighthearted than Katie could remember. Less businesslike, more open. And that, more than anything else, was the reason she agreed.
“After Belle’s bath,” she said. It was time to roll up their sleeves (figuratively, in Katie’s case)…and get wet.
Thirty minutes later, Katie and Jack were both drenched. They knelt beside the bathtub, Katie in her sodden red dress and Jack in his drippy shirtsleeves, staring in amazement at their tiny charge.
Belle splashed. They ducked, each retaining a now-practiced hold on the baby’s soap-slippery body. As the bathwater slid across the vintage white honeycomb tiles behind them, they straightened.
“What was in that dinner?” Katie asked, wide-eyed. “She’s super-powered!”
“Umm, mush. It shouldn’t have had this—” He dodged a flying rubber ducky. “—effect on her.”
“The Grinch song, then?”
“Hey!”
“Maybe the shampoo baby Mohawk we made in her hair?”
Jack shook his head. “She liked it. Besides, we rinsed it out right away—”
“After taking that cute snapshot.” Katie hadn’t been able to resist. Belle had looked adorable with her wispy hair sticking straight up.
“—and I can’t imagine a simple hairstyle affecting someone that strongly.”
Katie could. Obviously he’d never gone for a desperate post-breakup shearing and emerged looking like Howdy Doody.
“Well, something’s happened,” she told him. “She’s not usually this wiggly.”
Belle giggled and lunged forward like an Olympic diver going for a perfect ten in the Mr. Bubble One-Meter. Jack, who had one arm across her shoulders, caught her just in time.
“This baby,” he said, “has no concept of her own inabilities.”
“Neither did we, when we agreed to babysit.”
But they were doing pretty good, Katie figured. They’d tag-teamed on the bathing, one of them holding Belle steady while the other washed, then switching. Now the whole bathroom smelled pleasantly of baby shampoo, and Belle was squeaky clean.
Whenever they tried to take her out of the tub, though, she cried. The baby’s scrunched-up, disappointed face as she was lifted from the bubbles was the saddest thing Katie had ever seen—next to an un-bedecked Christmas tree on the curb for recycling pickup the day after New Year’s, of course. She hated the end of the holiday season. Glimpsing those once-glorious trees laid out for the chop always made Katie feel gloomy, like—
“We’ll have to distract her,” Jack said, successfully distracting Katie from her post-holiday thoughts, too. “I’ll sing while you let out the bath water. Once it’s gone—”
“Uh-uh. She’ll be scared. When I was a little girl, watching the water go down the drain terrified me. I was sure it was going to suck me right down with it.”
“Maybe Belle has a better grasp of physics than you did.”
“Har, har.”
“Well, she’s obviously too big to—oh, hell. Never mind. I can tell by looking at you. You’d sooner hammer nails with those stilettos of yours than risk scaring Belle.”
Katie nodded. “So would you, and you know it.”
“I generally stick to a sixteen-ounce wood handled claw hammer for home improvement projects, but—”
“Be serious. She’s getting pruney.”
They thought about it for a minute, while Belle splashed happily—bolstered in their grasp—with the bath toys Sierra had left. Just when Katie had begun to think they’d have to risk another bout of loud baby misery, an idea occurred to her.
“I’ve got it,” she said, snapping her fingers. Then she left Belle in Jack’s care and headed for the living room.
Left alone with Belle, Jack observed his baby cousin carefully. Then, experimentally, he grasped beneath her slick little arms and raised her a few inches from the water.
Her shriek reverberated from the walls with all the force of a jet screaming overhead.
Immediately, he lowered her back into the bathwater.
“It’s all right, Belle. I didn’t mean it.”
She cooed and went back to playing. Holding her, Jack eyeballed the towels on the bar to his right. They looked wonderful. Fluffy, dry, thick, dry. And dry. Geez, what he wouldn’t give to shuck off his soggy clothes and retreat to his home office for a few minutes’ fortifying, productive work.
He tried sharing his views with the baby. “But wouldn’t it feel nice to be dry? All cozy and warm and—”
“No dice,” Katie said from the doorway, flipping her cell phone closed. Again. “If looking forward to future rewards really worked, nobody would need a Platinum card. We’d all have enough savings to buy everything we wanted. Including a cute new pair of slingbacks whenever we spotted them.”
She looked momentarily dreamy, as though new shoes equaled nirvana.
“Interesting economic theory. So we’re all just one pair of shoes away from financial solvency?”
“In a sense. It depends on the shoes.” She grinned, rising up on her bare tiptoes. She must have abandoned her stilettos in the living room. “Now, back to Belle.”
Smiling at the baby, Katie drew something from behind her back. Instantly, Belle quit splashing. Her infant gaze locked on the thing in Katie’s hand, and she held out both arms.
“Agoo!” she squealed. “Agoo!”
Jack glanced backward to see what it was. Because without a doubt, “Agoo” had to be the coolest thing ever to have elicited such a reaction.
“It’s a book.”
Katie nodded. “Pat The Bunny. It was the rattiest-looking thing in Belle’s bag. That means it’s the most loved.”
Awww, Jack thought. Obviously, despite what Katie had said earlier, he wasn’t the only “big mushball at heart” around here.
“Agoo! Agoo!” Belle insisted.
Katie held it enticingly out of reach. “After you’re all dried off, little Belle. Then we’ll read a story.”
It worked. Effortlessly—and without the waterworks this time—Jack pulled the baby from the bath. Katie helped him bundle her into a towel to dry off, then took over with a miniature soft brush to style Belle’s hair. Within minutes, his tiny cousin was diapered and dressed in her candy-cane-print pajamas with her favorite blanket in hand.
“I can’t believe that worked,” he said.
Sitting on the sofa now with Belle in her lap and the Bunny book in hand, Katie shrugged.
“Bait and switch. It’s what the designers always do to me, whenever I feel like I’ve finally got my wardrobe all set. I think it’s good to go, completely classic, ready to wear. I’m happy.” She gestured toward the lightweight sweater and jeans she’d changed into, post-bath. “Just as happy as Belle was in that tub.”
Ahh. So that was the connection.
“And then they trot out new designs, totally different from last season’s,” she continued. “And no matter how satisfied I was with what I had, I’ve just got to have them.”
“Maybe.” The intricacies of designers—and how they related to babies in bathtubs—were beyond hi
m. “But let’s face it. You bribed Belle into getting out of the tub.”
Katie made a dismissive sound. “Exactly what would you call a miniskirt revival after a season of below-the-knee lengths? Hmmm?”
He scrunched his forehead, thinking. “A leg man’s lucky day?”
She rolled her eyes and opened the book. “Spoken like a true male. You wouldn’t know fashion if it bit you.”
“It can do that?” Feigning horror, Jack headed for a smashed-pea-cleansing shower. “In that case, I’m never getting dressed again.”
“I should be so lucky.”
He stopped. Looked over his shoulder. Raised his brows.
Katie waved her free hand. “Kidding, Mr. Nudist Wannabe. Your bodacious unbitten booty is safe with me.”
Jack nodded and continued on his way. His thoughts, however, stayed with Katie…and all she’d said. Because while her official stance might be “safe,” she was gradually veering toward “dangerous.” He could tell.
Because so was he.
All of a sudden, he couldn’t wait to find out what happened when they got there.
Jack emerged after his shower with damp, finger-combed dark hair, a fresh shave, and killer abs that teased Katie for the briefest moment while he pulled on a clean T-shirt. Wearing it along with bare feet and a pair of casual cotton drawstring pants that rode low on his hips, he came toward the sofa. Upon spotting Belle on Katie’s lap, though, he stopped.
“Is she asleep?” he asked, looking hopeful.
Katie nodded. “I think so. I’m afraid to move and risk waking her up.”
The baby felt sweetly heavy in her arms, trusting and relaxed. The Pat The Bunny book lay on the sofa beside them, abandoned after much patting (of course) and giggling.
“Also,” Katie added, “my left arm is asleep. It feels like it belongs to someone else. Someone in another time zone.”
Jack grinned. At the sight, she felt her middle turn an excited somersault. In the dim room, with Belle peacefully settled, Katie suddenly felt all-too aware of her impending aloneness with him…and of her complete lack of a strategy to deal with it. She needed one, too (a susceptibility to charming, incredible-ab-endowed, joke-telling men was her only real weakness).
