Make Me a Match

by Melinda Curtis

  She was pretty, beautiful even. The kind of woman that men stopped and took notice of.

  Coop sat up straighter. Noticing. “Here’s our first customer.”

  She unfastened her jacket with small, delicate hands, revealing a small, delicate head covered in blond fuzz. A baby. Strapped to her chest.

  The room heaved a sigh of regret. Conversations resumed, albeit not at their usual volume.

  Slumping, Coop returned his attention to his beer. “And there goes our first customer.”

  Boots rang across the oak floor.

  Gideon tapped Coop on the shoulder. “She’s coming over here.”

  Coop turned back around.

  It was the weirdest thing. Coop was used to Alaska’s winters, used to the cold. But as the woman and the baby approached, the room took on a chill.

  She stopped in front of him and arched a golden brow. “Cooper Hamilton?”

  Coop nodded, rather numbly, because there was something familiar about the woman’s face, about her smooth voice, about the swing of her pretty blond hair across her shoulders.

  She gestured to the baby. “I believe I have something of yours.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “YOU DON’T REMEMBER ME, do you?” Nora Perry couldn’t help sounding angry and embarrassed. She’d traveled more than one hundred miles on a bus. It’d taken six hours instead of two. She was tired. The baby was tired.

  And the witty, handsome man she’d met ten months ago with the mischievous smile? He wasn’t witty—he was speechless. He wasn’t handsome—his dark hair brushed his shoulders unevenly and grew from his chin in short, thick stubs. He wasn’t smiling—his lips formed a shell-shocked, silent O.

  Coop led Nora to a tall wooden booth in the dimly lit, seen-better-days bar. She hung her parka on a booth hook, dropped her backpack to the floor and sat on the cold wooden bench too quickly, landing on her sit bones.

  Zoe fussed, probably overheated from Nora’s resolve-melting mortification.

  Coop didn’t remember her? Subtract fifty points from his man-appeal tally.

  Last time Nora had seen Coop, he’d had a stylish, clean-shaven jaw, a stylin’ opening line and a styled set of dance moves that would’ve qualified him for a spot on Dancing with the Stars, Alaska edition. They’d met at a bar in Anchorage last spring. Spring being a time when folks got a little nutty in Alaska because everything returned to “normal” for a few months. You didn’t have to wear parkas the size of sleeping bags or shovel as much snow.

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” Nora repeated when Coop continued to be struck dumb. She was having trouble slipping off the baby-carrier straps. Her lower lip trembled, much like Zoe’s did when her dirty diaper didn’t get changed quickly enough. “Am I that forgettable?” Her pride and her stomach slid to the floor. “Don’t answer that.”

  Nora finally got the straps off and settled Zoe in the crook of her arm. “You had no trouble with words that night in Anchorage.” There. A clue. Perhaps the humiliation would end.

  Coop couldn’t seem to drag his green gaze from Zoe. “I...uh...”

  Or not. More mortifying heat flash flooded her body. And when emotion flooded her hormonal, postpregnancy body, which was often lately, her milk came in.

  Could things get any worse? “We met at a bar.”

  “Uh...” His gaze stroked her face and then dropped below her chin to the milk-production department.

  “I didn’t have these then.” She waved a free hand in front of her now-tingling, melon-size chest and tried her best to glare at him. But it was hard to glare when the father of your child couldn’t remember you.

  Zoe squirmed then squinted and made a squishing sound in her pants.

  So much for a classy, civilized meeting.

  Still, it was hard not to love Zoe. Unless you were Coop. His gaze was still caught on the milk-production department.

  “Excuse me.” Nora scootched off the bench seat and rummaged in the backpack that served both as her purse and her diaper bag. Was it just last year she’d carried a budget-busting Dooney & Bourke tote? It seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Nora tugged her diaper kit free and shot Coop another deadly glare. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  Coop raised his hands slowly, as if in surrender, still in bachelor shell shock.

  Nora was having a shock of her own. She wasn’t just a one-night stand. She was a forgettable one-night stand.

  Coop was just like her father: a happy-go-lucky drunk going through life in memory-stealing binges.

  I’m not going to let Coop hurt Zoe like Dad did me.

  Nora was in Kenkamken Bay for one thing and one thing only. Child support. She wasn’t looking for a relationship with her baby daddy. Coop, being a self-centered bachelor, would probably be relieved that all she wanted was money. With direct deposit from his bank to hers, he need never see her or Zoe again. In fact, given who he was, Nora preferred it that way.

  The ladies’ room was a pleasant surprise. It was clean and had a drop-down change table. Nora made quick work of the diaper, enjoying Zoe’s cooing nonsensical song. But the restroom lacked a place to sit and breast-feed. And boy, did she need to breast-feed. Given Coop’s stupefaction, her breast-feeding in public would probably send him to an early grave, which—setting aside her own discomfort at the public airing of a private event—would be highly satisfying.

  Spirits bolstered, Nora opened the door.

  Coop was waiting for her, no longer looking like a man who couldn’t believe he’d plowed his beloved sports car into a tree. His green eyes sparkled. His grin dazzled with straight teeth as white as snow. “Tangerine dress. Yellow heels. St. Patrick’s Day.”

  She’d wanted him to remember her. And yet...Nora felt as if the unsalted nuts she’d eaten on the bus were giving her indigestion.

  “You ordered white wine.” His grin spread over his now handsome—despite the beard—face. Funny what a smile did to a shaggy man’s looks. “We went back to your place and—”

  “Please.” Nora walked past him to the booth. “Not in front of the baby.”

  Everyone in the bar stared. She felt their eyes like a field mouse feels a circling hawk’s calculating gaze, almost as if they were protective of Coop, more than ready to join him in rejection of her paternity claim.

  Her steps quickened. A woman in a strange town accusing the local golden boy she’d had his baby?

  It’d been a mistake to come. A desperate, stupid mistake. She’d find the means to get by without Coop’s money. She’d get a second job. She’d trade babysitting services with other working moms. There had to be a way to raise Zoe without Coop’s help.

  He slid into the booth across from her, looking decidedly chipper. “The thing is, Nancy—”

  “Nora.” She resented his too-late chipperness and his too-false charm.

  “I remember you.” His voice dropped from light and pleasant to dark and repellent. “And I distinctly remember using protection.” His smile never wavered as he tried to back her off from her claim.

  Her father had a smile just like it, one that said he never worried about anything. And Dad didn’t worry. Not when he’d lost everything because one of his many get-rich-quick ideas failed. Not when he had a baby with a woman he didn’t remember meeting in a bar.

  “You missed your weekend with the kids,” Nora’s mother would say. “It was three weeks ago. And your check—”

  “Bounced again? I’ll write you another.” Dad would flash a minty smile meant to cover the alcohol on his breath. “Why waste time arguing? I’m here. And the kids want to have fun with their old man.”

  Nora and her brothers hadn’t wanted anything to do with him. Not when he drank beer until he passed out and practically forgot their names.

  “Protection?” Nor
a wanted to be sick. She swallowed back the memories and held on to her resolve because the bus wasn’t scheduled to leave for another hour. “As my doctor told me...ninety-nine percent effective means one lucky woman in one hundred gets a golden ticket.” She angled Zoe’s sweet, innocent face toward Coop. “Here’s mine.” Not his. Never his. She’d never raise a child with this loser.

  The wattage on Coop’s smile never dimmed. “Why wait so long to tell me?”

  “Since you didn’t call me afterward, I figured you were just a beer-swilling guy looking for a good time, and I assumed I could afford to raise a child on my own.” Diapers. Day care. The dollars added up far too quickly. “One of my assumptions was wrong.”

  His eyes narrowed, but that smile... “I’ll want a paternity test.”

  She nodded, unfazed. “I brought one.”

  * * *

  “SHE’S GOT YOUR nose, Coop.”

  Coop couldn’t see what Gideon saw, maybe because a demoralizing thought kept buzzing in his brain. You’re going to lose your second opportunity in the NHL, even if you win the bet.

  It can’t be mine.

  The baby swaddled in neon pink in Nora’s arms seemed like any other to him: round cheeks, tufts of blond hair, squinty eyes. Maybe the eyes looked like his after one too many beers the night before, but those days were few and far between now. As were his days of picking up women in bars.

  A change made too late, it seemed.

  He’d retreated with sluggish steps to the bar when Nora told him she was going to breast-feed. “It might not be mine,” he said to his friends. His words didn’t sound convincing.

  Nora’s words sounded convincing.

  “Congratulations on a baby girl.” Coach guffawed and set a shot of whiskey on the bar in front of Coop. “She’s got the Hamilton nose. Won’t be long before you’re having tea parties and playing with dolls.”

  “Taking her to tap-dancing lessons,” Ty said slyly, clearly enjoying this too much.

  “Laying down the law with the guy who takes her to prom.” Gideon grinned.

  “Jumping the gun, as usual.” A band of disappointment tightened around Coop’s chest. If he was a dad, he had an obligation to stay where his child was. “Let’s wait for the results of the paternity test. In the meantime, back to the issue at hand. Matchmaking.”

  Mary Jo, the bus-route driver, banged into the foyer and through the second door, shaking off snow that covered her boots and parka. She’d been a couple years ahead of Coop in school, but she looked as old as truck-driving Derrick, a crony of hers and ten years her senior. Lines had made permanent inroads on her forehead and from the corners of her frequently frowning mouth. Her divorce battle had aged her.

  Nora waved to Mary Jo, buttoning up her yellow blouse. “Is the bus ready to leave?”

  “The bus isn’t going anywhere.” Mary Jo clomped across the wood floor, tugging off her gloves. “That darn weatherman was wrong again. It’s a blizzard out there. Service is cancelled for the day.”

  “But...I’m stuck?” Nora’s horrified gaze bounced around the bar and landed on Coop. “Here?”

  She’d taken the bus. She’d implied money was tight. There were hotels and motels in town, but could she afford a room? And how would she get there? Mary Jo wasn’t offering a ride. Helio’s Taxi was closed for the day. He was in the back on his fourth beer. Between the drifts of snow on the ground and the severity of the storm, it wouldn’t be safe for Nora to walk anywhere with a baby.

  Coop felt paralyzed.

  Next to him, Ty was lost in thought, staring at the Anchorage Beat. Gideon asked Mary Jo if her divorce was final. Derrick tugged on a gray streak in his beard and made a joke about the fragility of buses on Alaskan highways. Trucker humor. Mary Jo gave Derrick a smiling gesture of disrespect. Bus-driver humor.

  Just another Friday night at the bar.

  A dark and stormy night. Near whiteout conditions. A woman alone. With a baby.

  A baby that could be his.

  He dropped his booted feet to the floor.

  Ty’s head came up. He assessed the situation with goalie-like speed. “Don’t do it. Don’t ask her to stay at your place.”

  “Why not?”

  Gideon stepped into Coop’s path, keeping his voice low. “Even the Moose Motel is better than your place.”

  Coop had expected advice about keeping his distance from Nora until he knew that baby was his. He hadn’t expected criticism of his home. “Are you kidding me right now? Free accommodations? She’ll be grateful.”

  “She’ll think you’re incapable of looking after yourself.” Ty made a sweeping gesture that encompassed Nora, the baby and then Coop. “Look at her and then take a good, long look at your scruffy, backwoods self.”

  “If that’s a commentary about my beard—”

  “Who cares about your weak attempts at facial hair?” Gideon had on his banker face, which was also his poker face, which was also his don’t-be-a-doofus face. “Your place is a dump. Duct-taped carpeting, leaky faucet, creaky floors.”

  “It’s warm and dry. I can sell it or abandon it if I ever get out of this town.” That’d been the reason he’d taken it in trade for an RV he’d been unable to move on the car lot. “My place is free for Nora. Don’t forget free.”

  “You’ll be amazed at what a woman won’t forget.” Ty’s gaze drifted back to the Anchorage Beat. “Whatever. That’s the second bad decision you’ve made tonight. Let’s just hope you don’t make a third.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “HOME SWEET HOME.” Coop opened the door for Nora and stepped aside.

  Nora had been giving Coop points for a nice truck. No rust-eaten side panels. No dented fenders. No crumpled fast-food wrappers. And he’d driven competently on the snowy roads and through the storm.

  But the house...

  A dark and dated mobile home. Subtract ten points.

  Duct tape across the foyer carpet and on the transition to kitchen linoleum. Subtract twenty points.

  The shabby, sagging furniture and dreary lighting, the bigger-than-big-screen television, the mess of boots and shoes by the door, the stack of empty soda cans next to the sink. Subtract forty points.

  Her backpack dropped to the ground. If Coop lived like this, how could he afford child support?

  “That you, Cooper?” A scratchy, sleepy male voice erupted from the back at loudspeaker volume.

  Zoe startled, jerking against Nora’s torso beneath her parka. Nora slid the zipper down, preparing to get settled in. What choice did she have but to stay?

  “Yeah, Pop. I brought home a guest,” Coop shouted. He shoved a workout bag beneath a storage bench, nudged a jumble of shoes and boots against the wall, hung up his jacket and another that was on the carpet. “My dad moved in a couple years ago. He couldn’t live alone after the accident.”

  The floor creaked in a back room. Coop’s father appeared in the hallway, leaning heavily on a cane with a hand that had no fingers.

  Nora gave Coop all his dark-mobile-home, worn-living-room and bad-housekeeping points back.

  The older Mr. Hamilton had short, peppery hair and the spotted, leathery complexion of a fisherman. His steps were stilted—he walked with his gaze on the carpet in front of his feet—and he spoke like a ringmaster whose microphone had died. “If it’s Gideon, I didn’t get the dishes done today and the week’s recycling is still on the counter. Got busy watching my shows and—”

  “Pop—Brad, this is Nora,” Coop said at baby-waking volume. He stopped cleaning. Stopped moving. Stopped looking like a man who made the world go around with his smile. He looked like a boy about to tell his father he’d been in a playground fight and broken his best friend’s nose. “She’s, um...”

  Nora tried to shrug out of her parka so she could remove a sti
rring Zoe from the baby carrier. Coop helped her get free, allowing Nora to slide the carrier straps to her elbows and cradle Zoe.

  “Well, I’ll be,” the older man said as he slowly worked his way to her. He laid the hand with a complete set of fingers on Zoe’s head. “She’s got the Hamilton nose.” His sharp green gaze turned on Coop. “Haven’t seen these two in K-Bay before.”

  “Me, either.” Coop managed to sound both rebellious and repentant at the same time.

  Nora resented them talking about her as if she wasn’t standing there holding the next generation of Hamilton genes. “I’m from Anchorage.”

  “Forgiving my son and movin’ here, I hope.” Brad smiled, making Nora realize where Coop had gotten his forgive-me-any-sin smile. For some reason on the older man it didn’t seem so slick. “Family should stick together. It’s hard to raise a child on your own. I should know.” He moved with a hitching gait toward a recliner.

  “Paternity hasn’t been proved.” Coop cinched the bag of kitchen trash and tossed it out a side door.

  “Have you seen this baby’s nose?” Brad waved his arms, sending the chair rocking.

  Nora gave Coop twenty bonus points for having a decent dad. But she had to be firm about things. “It’s his, but I’m not moving here.” She had a life in Anchorage: a secretarial job at a high school, benefits, brothers, friends.

  “It’s too early to say that. Newborns are easy. Wait until she’s two.” Brad sat in a grubby tan recliner with a breath-stealing, free-fall backward style. “Prepare the extra room, Cooper.”

  Coop had already disappeared down the hallway.

  “Sit, Nora, and tell me all about my grandchild.” Brad spoke so loud that Nora suspected he was hearing impaired.

  She took a seat on the couch near him, placing the carrier next to her, and said in a loud voice, “This is Zoe. She’s five weeks old.”