A Bachelor, A Boss And A Baby
MaryJo had been growing sicker for years, but it had been a slow process. A lot of it had been brushed away as quirks. Then, last year, MaryJo’s parents had died in a flash flood in Texas, and that seemed to have pushed MaryJo past her tipping point.
First had come the social workers, then had come a pregnancy during which she couldn’t take any meds, and the next thing Diane had known, her cousin had a full-blown psychotic break. After the baby was born, the meds didn’t help much.
MaryJo heard voices that told her to do terrible things. She even hallucinated. In short, MaryJo had vanished into an alternate universe, and nobody believed it was safe to leave Daphne in her care, or even nearby. To this day, Diane was ashamed of how little time she’d spared for thinking of her cousin on the far side of the state. She’d gotten the wrap-up from a social worker after MaryJo was hospitalized.
Then, a little less than three months after Daphne’s birth, the baby had come to live with Diane.
Inevitably, though, Diane looked down at the sleeping child and smiled. Except when Daphne was fussing and inconsolable, Diane always felt happy looking at her. Something about a baby.
Then she turned back to her desk and opened the folder containing all the notes for her new job that someone had left.
* * *
Around noon, a quiet knock sounded on her office door. She glanced at the still sleeping Daphne and decided she’d better answer it rather than call out. Rising, she rounded her desk and opened the door to find two women of about her own age, early thirties, standing there with big smiles. One had silky chestnut hair to her shoulders and wore a Western shirt with a denim skirt and cowboy boots. The other was a redhead who wore a flaming red slacks suit that she carried off with panache.
“I’m Aubrey,” said chestnut hair. “And this is my friend Candy. We’re in the clerk’s office. We heard you brought your baby, and everybody is dying to see her, so we thought we’d skip down here first and prepare you. And maybe you’d like to go to lunch with us?”
At once startled and charmed, Diane returned the smile. “You can peek, ladies, but she’s sleeping for the first time since 1:00 a.m. I’d rather nothing wake her.”
“Of course not,” said Aubrey, keeping her voice low. “I’ve been through it. Sleep before everything.”
Deciding it was okay, Diane stepped back and opened the door wider. Both women crept in quietly and looked down on the angelic baby who only a few hours ago had been wearing horns and carrying a pitchfork. The mental image suddenly made Diane want to laugh.
“Ooh, how sweet,” breathed Candy. “She’s so pretty. And that’s saying something about such a young one.”
Aubrey elbowed her gently. “Wait till you have your own. But yeah, she’s gorgeous, all right. We’ll tell everyone to give you space, but now we can report back so they won’t be so curious. I didn’t know you were bringing a family. I thought you were single. Well, we all did.”
Diane flushed, realizing that the questioning had begun. She wondered how long before it turned into a cross examination.
“I am single. This is my cousin’s baby. I’m taking care of her because my cousin is seriously ill.”
“That’s a shame,” said Aubrey. “About your cousin, I mean. Well, I guess you don’t want to carry the baby across the way to the diner, but would you like us to bring you back lunch? And if you like coffee, don’t get it out of the machine in the hallway. It’s terrible. But walk half a block and you’ll get it world-class.”
“That’s good to know, because I do love coffee and tea. Especially a latte, but...”
“Oh, we’re part of the modern world,” said Candy. “The diner makes lattes. I do wish we’d get a decent Chinese or Mexican restaurant, though. Maude’s great, but basic.” She hesitated, then asked, “Do you want a salad or a sandwich? I can recommend the Cobb salad.”
“Or the steak sandwich,” Aubrey chimed in quietly. “That usually makes two meals for me. You wouldn’t have to cook tonight.”
“I love Cobb salads,” Diane said, but she couldn’t help thinking about a steak sandwich. Full of calories, but over two meals... “Let me get my purse. I think I’ll have the sandwich, after all.”
Candy quickly waved her hand. “Consider this a welcome-to-town present. It’s just a little thing. While we’re out, does the baby need anything?”
Yesterday’s trip to the market had pretty much taken care of that. “I’m stocked,” she said with confidence.
The women both smiled and began to make their quiet way to the door. Then Aubrey looked back. “Do you need day care?”
Diane’s heart leaped. “Yes. But...”
“You don’t know who to trust,” Aubrey finished. “How could you, being new in town? My brother’s wife works at the early-learning center. I’ll see if she can find you a space. Be back in a short while?”
With waves, the women left. Diane checked on the baby once again then settled at her desk, wishing for coffee and an answer to cosmic questions. She’d been so career focused until this, but now she had another life to worry about.
Forgetting the folder she needed to read, she sat and stared at the nearby baby. Daphne had already changed everything, and Diane suspected the changes had only just begun.
She just wished she had some experience to guide her.
* * *
Blaine stood on the road in question, surveying the situation. The road was elevated a few feet above the surrounding ranch land, which helped keep it dry and, in the case of blowing snow, relatively snow-free much of the winter.
But there was no question that the recent heavy rain and runoff had caused the road to dip dangerously, right over a culvert meant to equalize water buildup between the grazing land on either side and to prevent ponding as much as possible. But the recent rains had been anything but usual for this area, and problems had begun to turn up.
Climbing down to a lower position, Blaine scanned the figures the surveyor had gathered, then eyed the situation for himself. The question was whether they could save the culvert and road simply by clearing the asphalt, building up a layer of solid earth and gravel, then repaving over it.
Neither option would be cheap for the penny-pinching county commission, but the right option had to be chosen regardless of cost. A road cave-in could cause worse problems. And no matter what his decision, a lot of people were going to be bothered by a necessary detour.
His colleague Doug Ashbur, from the roads department, was inspecting the other end of the culvert. He called along it to Blaine the instant he saw him.
“Abandon hope,” Doug called, his voice echoing. “I don’t know about your end, but the metal’s rusting out down here, and the concrete casement is cracking.”
“Grand.” The view from his end wasn’t any better. He saw more than rusting steel and cracking concrete. He also saw a definite dip in culvert beneath the sinking road. The entire thing was trying to collapse.
He stepped back a few yards, being wiser than to enter that culvert in its current condition. Past engineers and road builders had tried their best, but the simple fact was that with the typical hypercold winter temperatures and the eventual thaws, that concrete was bound to crack. Even a minuscule crack would worsen with temperature changes, the ice expanding when water filled the small cracks, enlarging them, until this. The galvanized steel pipe under the concrete had been someone’s attempt years ago to prevent a catastrophic failure.
It had worked so far, but now it was a question of how long they had.
He eyed the ground above the culvert, beneath the road, and saw evidence that the ground was extruding from the smooth slope that must have once been there. So the concrete was no longer adequately bearing the weight of the road, the steel pipe was collapsing and the ground between the culvert and road had evidently washed away from the weeks of rain that must have penetrated through cracks in the old asphalt. An accident waiting to happen.
He called to Doug. “We’d better redirect traffic and close this road. See you up top.” He climbed the bank, using his hands when necessary, then went to his truck, where he pulled off his thick leather work gloves and stood staring at the dip.
It didn’t look like much now. There was also no way to be sure when it would become a big deal. It was far too weakened to be driving trucks and cars over, but it might last months. Even through the winter. And that was counting on luck a bit too much for his taste.
Up here he could feel the ceaseless breeze that never stopped in open places. While it was early autumn, the air was still warm and smelled a bit like summer. A very different summer than in Galway: warmer, drier, dustier. Sometimes he missed the cooler, wetter clime of home, but mostly he liked it here. Different, but with its own beauty, like when he turned to look at the mountains that loomed so close to the west. Any morning now he’d wake up to see the sugary coating of a first snowfall.
Doug joined him. “I’ll order up equipment, Blaine. It might be a few days before I can get it all together. You know how it goes.”
He most certainly did. This county didn’t have any resources to waste, and his too many bosses all had their eyes on things beyond the event horizon, like finally getting that oft-promised ski resort built and finding other ways to make this county more attractive and create jobs. Oh, and wealth. He was sure that had to fit in somewhere.
The ranchers around here weren’t much interested in the big schemes. They just wanted to survive another year. But that meant they needed decent enough roads to carry cattle to the stockyard at the train station, roads over which to get to town and see their kids get to school...oh, a million reasons why folks these days couldn’t just be cut off from the rest of the world for months at a time.
Like it or not, expensive or not, the county was going to have to fix this culvert.
“I believe we’ve got enough in the budget,” he said to Doug. “This clearly can’t wait.”
“I agree. But we’ve got a dozen others that aren’t much better.”
“At least they’re not already collapsing. Let’s get the signs up. You have some barricades?”
Doug laughed. “Never travel without them. Okay, I’ll work on pulling together the equipment and crew.” He paused, looking back at the dip in the road. “How you want to do this? Another culvert?”
“We talked about other solutions, you remember. The problem is that if we don’t use culverts, the erosion just expands to eat the road.” As dry as this place was in general, he was often surprised how much of a headache water gave him. Usually in the spring, however. The last rains had been record-breaking for September.
While he put out some orange cones and staked some detour signs at the crossroad, his thoughts wandered back to Diane. He wondered how she was going to like dealing with the good ol’ boys of Conard County. He wondered if they’d give her a hard time about the baby.
Mostly he wondered why she was haunting his thoughts and why he kept thinking she was a tidy armful. And why his body stirred in response.
Well, he assured himself, that would wear off. It had to. Anyway, he’d hardly talked to her. Chances were he wouldn’t continue to feel the sexual draw when he learned what she was really like.
Wasn’t that always the way?
Chapter Two
Diane went to her little rented house that night with a briefcase full of files that had been left on her desk and a baby who’d eaten enough today to satisfy a horse...well, relatively speaking. It seemed as if she needed to be fed about every two or three hours, even though the social worker had said that should begin to slow down. Not yet, obviously, and it might continue through the night.
Oh, yeah, get the girl a pediatrician. Maybe she ought to start keeping a list so she didn’t forget something. The move and taking charge of an infant had left her a bit scatterbrained.
At the last moment, before settling into a small house she hadn’t yet been able to turn into a home, she thought to check her diaper stash even though she’d bought quite a few yesterday. Who would have thought such a bitty thing could fill so many diapers?
She counted and decided she had enough for a couple of days. Plenty of formula, too. And since Candy and Aubrey had brought her a huge lunch from the café, she didn’t need to cook.
Good heavens, she thought. The baby was sleeping contentedly, she could dine without cooking and she had time to kick off her shoes and collapse on the recliner that had been delivered just yesterday. Beaten and creaky, it held a lot of memories of her father, a veteran who had largely retreated to a distant land inside his own head. Memories of her father, as rare as the good ones had been, were something she didn’t want to lose entirely.
She wandered down the hall to the bedroom she hadn’t had time to unpack yet and opened a suitcase to pull out her favorite old jeans and a checked shirt as softened by age as the jeans. Her grungies, her comfies, whatever anyone wanted to call them. That night she had nothing to do except care for Daphne and herself...for the first time since she’d accepted this job. She supposed she ought to feel slothful for not unpacking just a little, but frankly, she was worn out. She could live out of a suitcase for another day.
When she emerged from her bedroom, slightly freshened for the evening, she heard Daphne stirring, making little sounds that might soon turn into a full-throated cry. Diaper. Feeding. Blaine had been right about one thing: it was actually very simple. Demanding but simple.
In a very short time, she had become practiced at pulling out a bottle and filling it with room-temperature formula from a can. The woman who had turned Daphne over to Diane had told her she didn’t need to warm the baby bottles as long as the formula was at room temperature. However, it had been chilly outside, so she put the bottle in a pan of warm water from the sink and gave it a few minutes to lose any chill.
She tested the warmth of the formula on the inside of her wrist, then went to rescue her increasingly noisy charge. A finger in the diaper told her that could wait, so she gathered the child to her and let her drink from the bottle.
Sitting in her recliner without putting her feet up, she became fascinated with watching Daphne eat. Her little eyes, beginning to get darker and resemble her mother’s, watched her back. Intense. Content.
Amazing. After just a few days she could feel her heart reaching out to this child, taking her in, wrapping her in swiftly growing love. If MaryJo got well, it was going to hurt to have to give this baby up. Hurt like hell.
But the social worker’s assessment had been brutal: MaryJo would never be well enough to care for her own child. If she improved, like so many with her illness, she probably couldn’t be trusted to stay on her meds. And if she didn’t keep taking her medication...
Diane shook her head a little and began to hum softly. Daphne continued to watch her, then with a surprisingly strong thrust of arms and legs, she turned her head from the bottle.
“Enough of that, huh?” Diane asked. “A little gas bubble, maybe? You eat more than that.”
Daphne scrunched up her face, so Diane quickly put the girl over her shoulder and began to pat and rub her back. She felt a bit embarrassed that Blaine had done it for her earlier, clearly thinking she didn’t know to do such a thing. But she’d forgotten in the midst of her overwhelming day.
She wouldn’t forget now. Rising from the chair, she paced and patted, continuing to hum quietly. When the little burp emerged, she offered more formula.
“Easy peasy,” Diane said. Twenty minutes later, she had the child changed—she decided she was going to need a changing table soon—dressed in a fresh onesie and apparently content enough to yawn.
“Success.” The best evening yet. She paced with the little girl on her shoulder some more, drawing out another tiny burp, then moved her to the cradle of her arm. Daphne waved one fist around then shoved it toward her mouth. In an eye blink, she fell asleep.
A very successful evening. Diane was smiling happily as she settled Daphne into her small travel bed. She needed to get a crib soon, too. But first there’d be another round of hungry baby around eleven.
One of her girlfriends had told her before she left her old job that she was lucky, missing the first three months of caring for the baby. “By four months,” Lucy had said, “I was beginning to wonder if the little brat would ever sleep through the night. You remember. I was in a fog of sleep deprivation all the time.”
Diane didn’t really remember, because she hadn’t seen a whole lot of Lucy after she birthed her first child. “Too busy” had been Lucy’s response to every invitation. She probably had been, too.
For that matter, she felt a bit guilty about how little she’d seen of MaryJo in the past five years. The kind of closeness some claimed with cousins had never existed between them, and there was little enough to pull them together when they no longer lived in the same town.
MaryJo’s parents had divorced a long time ago. She’d never seen her dad again. Then her mother had dived into a bottle and never emerged. The most amazing thing was that those two had been together when they got caught in a flash flood in Texas. As if they might have been reaching out to one another again? No one would ever know now.
It was hardly to be wondered that MaryJo was troubled, but the social worker assured her that the causes of schizophrenia involved so many factors nobody could pin all of them down. Bottom line, she really didn’t need to worry about Daphne getting it.
Diane hoped that was so. She couldn’t imagine that darling child growing up to be so ill.
She was just about to move to the recliner and close her eyes for a little while before heating up the remains of her lunch when someone knocked at the door.
Her heart accelerated. She’d come from a much larger city where knocks on the door at this time of night were a bit threatening. Too late for regular deliveries, and friends always called first. Plus, she really didn’t know anyone here, so it couldn’t possibly be a friendly call, could it?
On the other hand, as an official now, her address was had become public record, so finding her wouldn’t be hard if someone wanted to rant about something. Lovely idea.
But she shook herself, telling herself not to be ridiculous, and went to answer it.
She should have guessed. Blaine Harrigan stood there, wearing a light jacket now and holding a potted red gerbera daisy. “To brighten a windowsill,” he said with a smile. “I take it your new boss is happily sleeping?”
Just seeing him drew a bright smile from her and a rush of warmth. Man, she didn’t even know this guy. It was too soon to be happy to see him, wasn’t it?
Heck, she didn’t care. It was nice to see him, to feel as if she might have made her first friend here. She stepped back, inviting him in. “Thank you for the daisy. I just love it. What a kind thought.” She looked at the bright flower with a sudden feeling of comfort, as if she weren’t a total stranger here anymore. “I was thinking about making some tea. Would you like some?”
“I never turn down a cuppa,” he answered. He handed her the flower, and she motioned him to follow her to the small kitchen and dining area. She placed the daisy on the sill over the sink then turned to find him standing in the doorway, evidently awaiting an invitation to sit or go.
“Have a seat,” she said, pointing to the ridiculously small table with two chairs. This place had come partially furnished, a relief to her because she hadn’t wanted to ship her things from Iowa. None of it had been worth shipping. Her life revolved around her work, and decorating had mostly involved plastic storage containers and repurposed boxes. Hey, it had served her needs.
But now...well, what was here could do with a few additions for the baby.
“So you’re enjoying a little peace and quiet,” he said as she filled the kettle and put it on the gas stove.
“Until around eleven,” she agreed. “I’m sorry you caught me in such a mess earlier. I’m new at this, but I’m not stupid. I don’t know why I didn’t think of burping Daphne. I do it all the time!”
He laughed quietly. “No excuses needed. You’re tired, probably overwhelmed. I mean, a new job and a new baby all at once? And more to come, I believe. I’ll bet the little one starts creeping and crawling soon.”
“She’s already trying,” Diane admitted. “When I put her down on a blanket. But I’ve only had four days with her. A lot to learn.” She hesitated. “You said you were from Ireland, right?”
He nodded.
“Then my tea is probably going to appall you.”
He leaned forward a little on his chair. “Tea bags? I’ve learned to admire their advantages. Easy and quick, especially for a single guy who only wants one cup. Now, if I really want to brew a pot, I can do it, but usually I’m on the run.”
“I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I make a pot with tea bags.”
“I’ll show you when we have some time. Anyway, I’m going to buzz into yer meetin’ with the commissioners tomorrow.”
“The culvert?” she asked, turning to pull out two mugs and a box of tea bags and put them on the table.
“It has to be replaced quickly. The road is sinking, the concrete is cracking and the steel drainage pipe is buckling. Me and Doug from the road department closed off the road today. I don’t want some poor rancher to start driving over it and find his bonnet—sorry, hood—six feet in the ground.”
Diane nodded. “Not good. Do you like milk and sugar?”
“I’ll go for straight. Thanks. Yeah, the budget has been way too tight for too long. Been patching and mending as best we can, but there’s only so long we can push things off.”
“I know. Infrastructure is one of my pet peeves. Nothing works if you haven’t got it.”
“Ah, some common sense!”
She couldn’t repress a giggle at that. She wasn’t totally unfamiliar with the difficulties he mentioned. No place ran like a smoothly oiled machine, no budget was ever sufficient and personalities always got in the way. “Did you expect something else from an urban planner?”
His grin broadened. “I’ve known all types in my life.”
She was still smiling as she poured boiling water into the mugs over the waiting tea bags. Soon the rich aroma of black tea began to waft through the kitchen. “So why did you leave Ireland?” she asked. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”
“Now that’s a story,” he answered. Once again his deep voice took on the rhythms of the American West, leaving behind the hints of Galway. And they were just hints, poking out from time to time. He’d clearly been in the States for a while. “Like many places in the world, Ireland was booming just before the economic crash. Unlike many places in the world, we didn’t recover quickly. We had too much boom. We were bringing in workers from all over the world, building fast, growing, and then...” He shrugged.
“Whatever. Life was getting harder, finding work was getting harder and I had a bit of the wanderlust in me. I hopped through a few jobs, then stopped here.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Because I like it. It’s different. Galway’s beautiful with mountains and plenty of seashore, and the town itself has a lot of charm in parts. But I have to say, I wasn’t prepared for the sheer size of your country. I was astonished and spellbound. And then I saw the mountains here. They dwarf anything I’d ever known before, plus there’s a whole lot of wide-open space, space almost beyond imagining. It would be hard to tear me away.”
She nodded and set her tea bag on the saucer in the middle of the table. Lifting her cup, she closed her eyes for a few seconds just to inhale the fragrant steam. The questions buzzing her head were dangerous, so she diverted. She didn’t dare ask about people she would be working with. “All tea comes from a single Asian plant, from Yunnan in China. It grows elsewhere now, and there are probably varieties, but most of the flavor we love has to do with how the tea is aged.” She opened her eyes.