by Marta Perry
“Compliments of the day care van,” she answered, and then looked over his shoulder at the mostly finished fireplace. Nate had built it against the outside wall in gray stone. Though brand-new, it had an aged quality about it that Jessica recognized as exceptionally superior workmanship.
“Oh, Nate,” she exclaimed, clapping her hands in delight. “It’s gorgeous!”
“If not yet fully functional,” he added with a grin. “Soon, though, Pop. I promise.”
“You don’t hear me complaining,” Jason said, wheeling his chair around to face them. “I’m just enjoying your company. Now hand me my little granddaughter so I can give her a kiss.”
Nate laughed and handed Gracie off to his father. “You got it, Pop. Hey...look at that, why don’t you?”
He tapped his finger against Gracie’s little sprout of a ponytail and laughed as it bounced. “Oh, man. Now that is what this little girl is missing, having to stay with a grumpy old marine. I’m never going to be able to do the hair thing with her. It’s a good thing she’s got you around for a female influence, Jess.”
Jessica’s heart welled as she watched the scene unfold and ingested Nate’s compliment to her. Gracie’s presence took years off Jason’s features, and Nate’s eyes were glowing with pride and joy.
Nate squeezed her shoulder. “How about I follow you back to the day care so you can drop off the van, and then I can take you home?”
Jessica nodded. “That sounds good to me. I’m starving.”
“And I’m cooking,” he assured her with a grin. “It’s the least I can do to make up for the way I abandoned you like that.”
Jason laughed along with Jessica.
“Okay, Pop,” Nate said, scooping Gracie back into his arms. “I’ll be back first thing tomorrow morning to keep working on the fireplace.”
“You take good care of that baby girl. And that lovely lady,” Jason teased with a wink.
Jessica blushed.
Nate chortled and swung Gracie into the air, making her squeal with delight. “You can count on it.
“C’mon,” Nate said as he and Jessica exited his father’s apartment. “Let’s go out the side door. I have something I want to show you.”
Once outside, he reached for her hand and practically dragged her to the corner of the building. His enthusiasm was absolutely contagious, Jessica thought, laughing aloud as she jogged beside him. He was definitely unlike any other man she’d ever known, a delightful cross of all man and little boy.
“I’ve set the pipes for the flue,” he explained, pointing toward the roof. “Now I’m working on stoning off the chimney. After that, all that’s left for me to do is call in the county inspector to make sure everything is up to code. Then Pop can stoke it as high as he wants and enjoy the heat.”
“And the view,” Jessica added. “The fireplace is just beautiful, Nate. You did a fantastic job. I know your father appreciates it.”
Gracie squealed and clapped her hands together as if in agreement.
Jessica giggled and pointed to the baby. “See? Even Gracie thinks so.”
Nate’s eyes warmed with pride.
“My girls,” he said huskily. “I don’t know how I ever got along without you two.”
His words had an immediate effect on Jessica, who felt heat flooding her face. Her throat constricted and burned until she was dizzy with the need for air. And it didn’t help her one bit that Nate’s gaze never left her face. She probably would have passed out cold right there on the spot had Gracie not distracted them both.
The baby clapped again, her little hands missing each other as often as they connected. She bounced in Nate’s arms, her legs pumping in excitement.
“Da-da!” she crowed triumphantly.
Nate held the baby at arm’s length, looking at her in amazement, his jaw literally dropping.
“Did you hear that?” he asked Jessica, his voice hoarse with emotion.
“Da-da,” Gracie repeated, as if making certain Nate had, in fact, heard what he’d thought he’d heard. “Da-da-da-da-da-da.”
Jessica knew Gracie was simply testing out her consonants, but her timing couldn’t have been any better. Sure, the baby may not yet have connected the words to the person, but it was the adult response that would teach her what the words meant. And Jessica couldn’t imagine anything taking the moment away from the beaming new father.
“I think she’s proud of you, too, Da-da,” Jessica said, excitement threading through her voice.
“Da-da,” Nate repeated, wonder in his voice. “Her first word was Da-da.”
“Well, of course it was, silly,” she said, laughing at Nate’s astonished expression. “What else would it be? You are the center of her little world, you know.”
Hugging Gracie close, he whooped in delight and then reached for Jessica, fastening his arm around her waist and dragging her against him. He lifted her clear off her feet and swung her around and around.
Talk about being swept off her feet! It was Jessica’s last conscious thought.
She laughed. Gracie laughed.
And Nate froze, his grip loosening enough for Jessica to find her footing. She was glad he continued to prop her up by his side, or she thought she might have melted right into the ground.
And then she looked up.
The smile on Nate’s face faded and his eyes grew warm and golden. His free hand slid up her arm and splayed across her cheek.
“Jess?” His voice was husky, the word hovering somewhere between a question and a statement.
Jessica couldn’t have answered him if her life had depended on it. Nor could she help her response, which was more natural even than breathing. She tipped up her chin and leaned in to him, an infinitesimal movement, but laced with meaning.
It was all the answer he needed.
Ever so slowly, he tilted his head to one side and brushed his lips over hers. It was the softest, briefest butterfly-wings of a kiss, but it sent Jessica over the moon and back again.
In that moment, she forgot all the reasons why this couldn’t—and shouldn’t—happen.
There was just Nate—his glowing eyes, his warm breath, his strong arms.
She wanted this. She wanted to be right here, right now, with this man. Tomorrow would be soon enough for regret.
He might have pulled back, but Jessica clutched onto his shirtfront and drew him forward.
That was all it took. He smiled, tunneled his fingers through her hair and kissed her again.
Just as their lips met for the second time, Jessica felt another hand in her hair. Gracie bunched up her little fist and pulled, and then laughed as if she understood her own joke.
Still locked warmly within their circle of three, Jessica and Nate laughed right along with her.
Chapter 10
Nate’s world was in overdrive, and all because of one little kiss. Okay, so maybe technically he’d gone in for seconds, but who could blame him.
Jess certainly had him off-kilter. He was a man who liked to act, not sit around mulling over his emotions. Yet here he was, checking and rechecking his handiwork on the chimney, knowing he ought to be concentrating solely on the final test to come and on whether or not this project of his was actually going to work and not smoke out the entire lodge.
He knew he should be nervous.
Instead, he was thinking about how similar his current emotions, those he experienced whenever he was with Jess, were to those of when he’d first received guardianship of Gracie.
Overwhelmed.
Confused.
Was this what it felt like to be in love?
He wished Ezra were here. He would know what Nate should do, or at least he would have had his back, leaving Nate feeling less exposed and vulnerable.
He remembered back to when Ezra first met Tamyra. Up until that day, Ezra h
ad been a committed bachelor, just as Nate was. And then suddenly his friend was out to conquer the world, and he’d had the energy and confidence to back that up.
It had come, Nate knew, from the love of a good woman. Tamyra changed Ezra’s whole outlook.
Ezra would have added his renewed faith in God, which seemed to go hand in hand with Ezra and Tamyra’s deepening relationship. At the time, Nate had chalked it up to a man molding his life to please a woman, but now he was not so sure.
Had there been more to Ezra’s faith? Was that what his friend had been trying to tell him?
Nate ran his fingers along the edge of the dried cement all around the stones, making sure there were no cracks in his handiwork.
For his part, Nate had teased Ezra unmercifully, and he’d certainly never understood what had come over his friend, not only to give up his bachelor freedom, but to step into the heavy-duty responsibility of being an active-duty marine, a husband and, eventually, a father.
There was a good reason Nate had never pursued a serious relationship with a woman, for who would willingly want to take on the life of a military spouse? He wouldn’t have wished that on any of the women he’d dated over the years, and so he’d kept things simple, and the women at arm’s length.
Or at least he’d thought that was the reason he’d remained emotionally distant.
Until now.
Until Jess.
Maybe the honest truth was he’d just never met the right woman—a woman who not only turned his head, but his heart.
Nate climbed down the ladder, only half aware when his feet met solid ground. With a grunt, he collapsed the twelve-foot ladder and carried it to the back of the building, where lodge guests wouldn’t accidentally trip over it in their comings and goings. He would have put the ladder away, but the toolshed was already full to overflowing, and he thought he’d probably need it to climb back on the roof for the county inspection.
Funny, but now that he’d been thrust into a role of responsibility for another person, an unexpected new father figure for baby Gracie, becoming a family man didn’t seem so bad.
Overwhelming, to be sure.
But not bad.
He’d never imagined that having someone depending on him for his well-being would feel so—good.
And never, ever, in a million years would he have imagined he could love someone as much as he did that baby girl.
If only his relationship with Jess was as straightforward and uncomplicated as his relationship with Gracie. He had less trouble reading Gracie’s mind than he did trying to figure out what Jess was thinking.
He let himself into his father’s apartment without knocking. These days, Pop anticipated his visits, and Nate certainly enjoyed spending time with his father. If he wasn’t mistaken, it seemed to him that Pop was getting stronger and healthier by the day, a fact that Nate thanked God for.
“When are you going to bring my little granddaughter around again?” his father asked as Nate fiddled with the flue to the chimney. He’d done quite a bit of construction on the lodge when he was a boy, but building this fireplace for his father had been a new kind of challenge. He wanted it to be just perfect when the inspector came.
“The county inspector comes out tomorrow,” he said aloud. “I’d like to invite Jess to be here, so maybe I’ll bring Gracie along as well.”
Pop crowed happily. “You do that. I can’t get enough of her. You know I have a God-given responsibility to spoil that baby girl.”
Nate chuckled and shook his head. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
He turned to face his father, who cocked his right eyebrow at him. With the way the left side of his face sagged from nerve damage, it gave his pop kind of a comical look.
“What?” Nate asked.
“You,” his father replied sagely. “You look different.”
Nate gazed down at his jeans and olive-green T-shirt, the same as he always wore. He shrugged. “I don’t know what’s different.”
Pop guffawed loudly. “Not your clothes, boy. Your face.”
Nate instinctively ran a hand across his cheek, noting the stubble. Other than the fact that he needed to shave, he couldn’t feel any difference. “What’s wrong with my face?”
“How is Jessica doing?” Pop asked, ostensibly changing the subject.
“Jess? She’s fine. Why?”
Pop crowed again and pointed at Nate as if in accusation. “I knew it! I knew it! You’re walking around with your head in the clouds, boy. There’s only one thing that can put such a gleam in a man’s eye, and that’s a good woman.”
Nate spent exactly two seconds thinking about trying to talk his father out of his fanciful notion, and then decided it wasn’t worth the effort. Pop was dead-on with his assumption, and anything Nate could think of to say would only confirm it and subject him to an even worse bout of teasing.
Better just to remain silent.
He turned back to the fireplace and grunted. “Shall we light her up?”
Pop chuckled. “By all means. Let’s see if a bomb defuser can build something up as well as he takes things apart.”
Nate stiffened, feeling that his father was talking about more than just the new fireplace. Nate had torn down his share of family relationships over the years.
But Pop was still chuckling, so Nate let it go. He placed a couple of logs he’d cut earlier in the fireplace, and then added some old newspaper for kindling, pushing the wadded-up paper into the cracks between the logs.
“Ready?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder as he fished in his pocket for a pack of matches.
Pop beamed and nodded.
Nate struck a match and lit the crumpled newsprint in several places, blowing on the small flames to add more oxygen. After a moment, the wood caught fire, and soon there was a warm, snapping blaze.
Still crouched before the fireplace, Nate leaned on his elbows and stared intently at the crackling flames, thinking how the golden warmth reflected what he was feeling in his heart.
Life was good.
Better every day, in fact. He couldn’t help but send up another silent thank-you to God. He seemed to be doing a lot of that lately, he realized.
Pop wheeled his chair up next to Nate and laid a hand on his shoulder.
“It’s wonderful,” Pop said in a hushed tone.
“Yeah, Pop,” Nate agreed in the same quiet, reverent tone of voice. “It is.”
* * *
Nate bounded forward with the most adorable combination of anxiety and youthful anticipation that Jessica simply didn’t have the will to resist him when he showed up at her cabin an hour before she was due at the day care and asked her to spend the day with him while the county inspector looked over his handiwork.
The day care wasn’t at full capacity today, and she knew the other teachers could handle the children. Besides, Nate had coerced her with the knowledge that Jason Morningway wanted to spend some time with Gracie, and Nate would, he wryly pointed out, be too busy with the inspection to keep an eye on the baby.
She felt decidedly awkward after the kiss she’d shared with Nate, but he wasn’t treating her any differently than he ever had, so she forced herself to relax and go with the flow, mentally denying the intimacy she was feeling in her heart.
Could she put the past behind her and forge her future with Nate? Her stomach clenched just thinking about it.
Eventually, she would have to face what she was walking headlong into. She would have to put a label on them. She would have to crawl off the fence she’d been straddling since the day she’d met Nate and Gracie and declare a side.
But not today.
This day belonged to Nate, and Jessica wanted to be by his side as he triumphed over the skeletons in his own closet.
She didn’t protest when he took her hand to help her out of his Jeep, nor when
he hitched Gracie to his other side and laced his fingers through Jessica’s. He was looking for support, she reasoned; and after all, that was what she was there for.
The county inspector, who introduced himself as Michael Sheridan, was waiting for Nate in the dayroom, sitting on the sofa and consulting his clipboard.
She and Nate ushered Michael into Jason’s apartment and the inspection began. Giving Jessica’s hand one last squeeze, Nate slipped Gracie into her arms and turned his attention to Michael Sheridan’s questions. Not wanting to be in the way, Jessica hurried to Jason’s side and propped the baby in his lap.
She watched the inspection from a distance, her attention slipping back and forth between Nate and Michael, and Jason and Gracie.
To her surprise, Jason slowly lifted his left arm and crooked it to give Gracie a better seat on his lap. The strain on his face told her what kind of effort he was expending, but the results were astonishing.
“Why, sir,” she exclaimed. “You’re moving your left arm!”
Jason grinned widely and winked at her.
“Call me Jason, please. And yes, I’m getting limited movement back in my arm. My leg is still giving me problems, but my physical therapist is hopeful I’ll regain some sensation there.”
“That’s wonderful news!”
“Rosemary, my physical therapist, is a real drill sergeant. She doesn’t let me get away with anything, and she is constantly pushing me to work beyond what I think I can do.”
“Sounds like she’s doing her job,” Jessica teased, punctuating her sentence with a chuckle as she slid into a chair across from Jason and leaned forward. Nate was leading Michael outside, so she turned her full attention to Jason and Gracie.
“And this little one,” he continued, kissing Gracie on the forehead, “has turned the word motivation right on its ear.”
“She does that, doesn’t she?” Jessica queried softly, reaching her index finger out so the baby could clasp it. “She’s turned all of our lives inside out.”
