Baby 101

Garrett didn’t ask her again if she wanted to help in the search, and she was grateful. She wanted it all to go away. She wanted everything to be the same as it had been that morning, before Megan stopped by the store. But it was different. And for more reasons than because of these tokens from the unknown past.

She thought of the man and baby waiting for her at home. “No, Gar, thanks anyway. I’ll be fine. You’ll be going out of your way to follow me and you know it.”

“Then we’ll all be going.” Garrett allowed Megan to give him a quick hug.

“Good luck in your quest, Garrett,” Megan said.

“We’ll need it,” he replied grimly.

“And good luck to you,” she said to Lana. Unspoken between them was the knowledge that Megan alone knew Lana wasn’t going home to an empty house. “I think you’ve embarked on quite a different quest of your own.”

A QUEST OF YOUR OWN.

A journey to find something wondrous and fine.

A journey to find one’s self.

Except she knew who she was. Didn’t she?

Megan was reading too much into the fact Dylan Van Zandt was staying with her. It was just a more convenient way to help him hone his parenting skills, and safer for Greg, too. There was no deeper meaning in having him in the big, empty house she’d rattled around in since her mother died.

She parked her car in the garage, passing Dylan’s truck on the way in. Her dad’s classic ’57 Thunderbird was parked along the far wall, covered with a nylon tarp. Michael kept saying he was going to take it, tune it up and drive it, but he never had. It didn’t matter. The garage was big enough for five cars. Now it only held two.

She’d told Dylan to feel free to park his pickup inside, but he hadn’t taken her up on the offer. Not even today when it had rained all day and she’d left a spare remote for the garage door lying conspicuously on the kitchen island.

He seemed determined to keep his distance. And, of course, it was better for both of them that way.

She walked slowly along the brick path that led to the kitchen door. The rain had stopped while she was at Megan’s, although the air was so thick and humid it made little difference. The heavy scent of the night-blooming jasmine that covered the side of the garage perfumed the darkness. The moon rode high in the sky, peeking out from amid a tatter of fleeing clouds. There was light in the kitchen, and in the maid’s room where Dylan and Greg had taken up residence. Lana quickened her step. It made the house look more lived-in. As it had when she was a girl—when there was a family living here, not just one sometimes lonely young woman.

She punched in the code of the security system Michael had insisted Sheila install after their father’s death and stepped inside. Dylan was standing by the microwave, watching the seconds count down on the digital display beside the door, Greg propped against his shoulder.

The baby was awake, staring at the door as though waiting for her to appear. His head wobbled, and he laid it on Dylan’s shoulder. He was very weak yet, compared with other babies his age. Lana’s heart turned over in her chest. He appeared so tiny and fragile. He had overcome much already, but he had more challenges ahead of him than other children, and not just because he was born prematurely.

Growing up never knowing your mother was a hard thing to do. She had managed because she had loving adoptive parents who had smoothed her way. But Greg had only Dylan, a man who distanced himself from his son as well as everyone else—or at least her.

Dylan turned around. “Hi,” he said. He was wearing a blue oxford cloth shirt, hanging open, exposing a muscled chest covered with dark hair. Greg’s little fingers were tangled in the curling mat, and the contrast between the man’s strength and hardness and the baby’s utter helplessness and fragility sent a glittering arc of sensation from Lana’s heart to her womb. It wasn’t a sexual awareness, she told herself, but something more primitive than that. It was more the receptiveness of the female for the male of the species, the protector, the provider. It was conditioning over a million years, nothing more.

“Hi. I thought you’d both be in bed by now.” She wasn’t a cavewoman. This was the twenty-first century. Women were just as often the protector and provider as men. She ignored the increased beat of her pulse and moved into the room.

“Greg decided he needed a midnight snack.” The microwave beeped, and Dylan turned to remove the bottle warming inside. He secured the nipple and tested the liquid on the inside of his wrist, as she’d taught him. He shifted Greg from his shoulder to the crook of his arm and touched the nipple to the side of the baby’s mouth.

Greg turned his head automatically and latched on to the nipple, sucking greedily. It should be his mother’s nipple, Lana thought sadly. Did Dylan have such thoughts, too, as he mourned the death of his son’s mother, his wife, his lover?

He was frowning slightly as he watched his son. He didn’t look sad, only fiercely focused on what he was doing. His hands were big and wide, his fingers long and blunt-tipped. Strong hands that could mold and build, soothe a crying baby, arouse a willing woman. Again she felt that glittering tug of awareness deep inside her. It bothered her. She didn’t want to think about making love to any man right now.

And she noticed something else. Dylan was no longer wearing his wedding ring.

Lana forced herself to concentrate on the baby.

“He’s certainly hungry.”

“He took three ounces his last feeding. If he takes three ounces this time, I’m hoping he’ll sleep longer.”

“I’d be happy to give him his two o’clock feeding.” Lana heard herself say the words. Dylan did look tired. He let her take care of Greg during the day, when he was upstairs overseeing the renovations of her building. But in the evening and during the night, he kept the baby to himself.

“Thanks, I’ll take care of it.” A rebuff, but a polite one.

“I wouldn’t mind, really.”

“I know you wouldn’t. But I think I can keep up with him.”

Lana dropped onto one of the stools arranged around the center island. “Would you like a cup of coffee?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Too late for me. You look right at home sittin’ there.”

“I spent a lot of hours here. My mother was a wonderful cook.”

“Mine isn’t,” he said, and grinned. “It’s a good thing my dad can cook or we’d have all starved.”

“I have a limited repertoire, but I’m good at what I do. Great-grandma Bostleman’s buttermilk sugar cookies. And pot roast and chicken and dumplings.”

“Sounds good.”

“I’ll make us some the first cool day. But Shelby got all the real culinary talent in the family. Since we’re all adopted, she insists she picked it up from Mom through osmosis.” She fell silent, thinking of the hours just past, wishing her mother was here for her to confide in.

“How did your evening go?”

She hadn’t expected him to ask such a personal question. So far their short conversations had centered on Greg’s care, the weather, whether Dylan needed towels or soap or toilet paper for the bathroom. Her surprise must have registered on her face. “You looked kind of shell-shocked when you walked in the door.”

“I am.” Her arms ached to reach out and take Greg from him, to cuddle the little boy close and take comfort from his baby warmth and softness. She sat up a little straighter. “It’s not every day you hear from the mother you never knew. And then to find out she’s still as anonymous as she ever was.”

“What do you mean by that?” He moved a few steps closer, hooked the toe of his shoe around a stool, pulled it away from the island and settled himself on it without jarring Greg or taking the bottle out of his mouth.

Lana rested her elbows on the countertop and propped her chin on her hands. “My birth mother sent a package to Aunt Megan with a note that what was inside was for us. She obviously found out who had adopted us and that Aunt Megan was still in contact with us.”

“Or at least she hoped so.”

“No. She thanked Aunt Megan for finding us a good home.” Lana recited the little note, picturing the block lettering in her mind’s eye. “It was printed, as though she wanted to disguise her handwriting. As if she didn’t want us to have that small a hint of who she was.”

“Where was it mailed from?”

“Here in the city. I don’t know which post office. Garrett’s going to try to find out.”

“Garrett?”

“My older brother. There are four of us, you know?”

“No, I didn’t know.” He took the bottle out of Greg’s mouth and put him over his shoulder. He patted him on the back, gently, the way she had taught him. The baby burped and immediately began demanding the rest of his bottle.

“Abandoned on the doorstep of Maitland Maternity twenty-five years ago. We’re triplets, Shelby, Michael and I. Garrett’s the oldest. Shelby owns a diner on Mayfair, near the clinic. Austin Eats. Have you heard of it?”

“No, ’fraid not.”

“We’ll go there for lunch someday.”

“Sounds good.”

“Michael’s head of security at Maitland. Garrett owns a ranch outside the city. I have the store. We’ve got cousins scattered around the country here and there, but since Mom and Dad died there are really just the four of us. What about you?” She didn’t want to think of the way her family had changed in the past few hours. She had felt the earth move under her feet when Garrett and Michael squared off about searching for their mother. She didn’t want to think how deep a rift it might eventually cause in their relationships.

“One brother, one sister. Both married with kids. Both living out of state. Aunts. Uncles. Cousins. We didn’t have much but family growing up. It was a bust time then.” Lana nodded. Texas’s economy had had a lot of booms and busts during the years it had been so dependent on the oil industry. “My dad nearly lost the business more than once. I joined the Marines when I got out of high school because he wouldn’t let me work for him, and I didn’t have the money to go to college. I ended up in Saudi.”

“You were in Desert Storm?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about it.”

For a moment she thought he would refuse, but then he began to talk. He told her of the weather and the vast expanses of sand. Of nights in the desert beneath a sky filled with stars, days spent readying themselves for combat. He talked of his friend Greg, his son’s namesake. Dead of cancer at twenty-seven. He didn’t mention his wife or how they had met, but surely it must have been through his late friend.

Dylan’s voice was low and rough, but soothing, too, like whiskey and honey mixed. She wanted him to go on talking, and she was afraid he would stop if she broke the spell with a question about Greg’s mother. The baby watched him and listened, too, his big blue eyes focused on Dylan’s face. It must have filled his world.

Greg finished the bottle, and Dylan burped him again. The little boy snuggled his face into Dylan’s neck and fell asleep. Lana wished she could do the same. “You’re getting very good at that,” she said. “He’s much more comfortable with you already.”

His mouth tightened. “I’m trying.”

“You’re a natural. Greg’s lucky to have you. Even if he has lost his mother he still has family. It will mean a lot to him in the future. I know. I don’t have any real roots of my own, only grafted ones. I loved my parents dearly, but sometimes it’s a little lonely inside.” She didn’t know why she was telling him this. It was late. She was tired. She didn’t like the sudden darkness that drained the softness from his eyes and hardened his face.

“I’ll do my best to give him that, if I can.”

“If you can? I just told you you’re doing great at this daddy business. He’s lost his mother. It’s tragic, but he still has you. You’re his father—”

Dylan cut her off. “That’s where you’ve got it wrong. I have every reason to believe Greg is another man’s son.”

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