Jackpot Baby. Muriel Jensen
it’ll help if I take the baby,” he said, walking toward her.
She aimed a hip at him to pass Max over and they were eye to eye for the space of a heartbeat. He felt his heart punch against his ribs.
Cool it, Romeo, he told himself. This is the wrong direction for you. So the blue turtleneck makes her hazel eyes an interesting shade of teal. So she looks tousled and vulnerable. This isn’t the real her. She has a sharp tongue and she doesn’t want babies in her life. You just freed yourself from a woman like that.
“I noticed a fireplace,” he said, settling the baby on his hip and pointing toward the living room. Max, surprised by the sudden movement, stopped crying. “Do you want a fire in it?”
“That’d be nice,” she replied, leaning back against the sink as though handing him the baby had been a great relief. “I was so preoccupied with the baby, I just now remembered to turn up the furnace. Max won’t let you put him down to build the fire, though.”
“That’s okay. I can do most of it one-handed.”
“Then you’re more talented than I am.”
“Not necessarily.” She looked like a woman who needed encouragement. “Potato peeling is definitely a two-handed job.”
She accepted that concession with a smile. “Dinner will be about another hour. Do you need something to nibble on in the meantime?”
That sounded hopeful. “Do you have something?”
She went to the refrigerator and pulled out a small plate of hors d’oeuvres—water chestnuts wrapped in bacon, little puffy things he couldn’t identify, and two slices of what looked like pepper jack cheese.
Maybe he’d fallen into something really good here.
“Do you always prepare hors d’oeuvres with dinner?” he asked as he accepted the plate gratefully.
She smiled. She had pretty white teeth and a small dimple in the left corner of her mouth. It snagged his attention.
“No,” she replied. “They’re left over from a party the Main Street Millionaires had last night to celebrate picking up our checks. Eat up. But let me get you crackers to go with the cheese.”
She reached overhead to a cupboard handle and pulled. Nothing happened. Then she smacked the door with the side of her fist just under the handle and it popped open.
“House is settling, or something,” she grumbled while removing several crackers from the box and adding them to his plate. “Want a glass of wine to go with that?”
He was already a little intoxicated with her closeness, but he replied, “Sure.”
“Let me get these potatoes peeled, and I’ll bring it to you.”
He went to the living room, holding the plate out of the interested baby’s reach. He found the light switch by the front door, then put the plate down on a low table. The baby’s eyes followed his movements as he took one of the bacon-wrapped chestnuts to keep himself going.
“This’ll give you heartburn,” he told Max as he reached into a brass wood box and dropped two chunks of wood and a wad of newspaper onto the hearth. He sat down cross-legged beside them, pushed back a simple wire-mesh screen and, while holding Max on his thigh, stacked the wood.
He tore the newspaper into single page widths, then folded and twisted them into a sort of kindling. He pulled a page away from Max as he tried to draw it into his mouth.
“That’s not what they mean by digesting the news,” he said into the baby’s scream of indignation. “I know, I know. You have big plans and someone’s always changing them for you. Well, relax. I brought you some strained squash. Yum.”
Connor spotted fireplace matches in a decorated tin cup on the mantel. He stood with Max, sat him on the beige chair right beside the fireplace, and while the baby screamed a protest at his abandonment, Connor lit the tinder, waited to see how well the draft would take, then added a third piece of wood at an angle atop the other two.
He straightened to see Shelly standing behind him with a glass of wine.
“Perfect fire,” she observed as it caught the top length of wood. She handed him the wine. “Boy Scout or pyromaniac?”
“Thank you. Boy Scout,” he replied. “I can also make a church out of Popsicle sticks, but that’s not as useful so I don’t show it off. You get the potatoes peeled?”
“They’re peeled and mashed and in the oven on top of scrambled hamburger and fresh green beans. In another forty minutes it’ll be shepherd’s pie.”
“Sounds wonderful.” He took a sip of the wine, then put the glass down on the coffee table and went to pick up the baby, but Shelly waved him away and took Max into her arms. He stopped crying instantly.
“I’ll hold him so you can drink your wine.” She moved to the sofa and sat down in a corner, settling Max in a sitting position in her lap. He played with a gold and silver bangle bracelet on her right hand. “It’s amazing,” she observed, “that at just six months old a baby’s figured out that if you scream loud and long enough someone will pick up.”
He sat on the other end of the sofa. “Babies are just like adults. Everyone wants to be held by someone who cares about them.”
No one knew that better than Shelly. She focused her attention on the baby so Connor wouldn’t see that in her eyes.
“Do you think you’re going to like Jester?” she asked to divert the conversation. “It can be pretty quiet here in the winter.”
“That’s okay with me. Medicine gives me all the excitement I need.”
“What do you do with your spare time? There’s good skiing not too far from here.”
He grinned. “In L.A. I often saw the results of skiing accidents sent to us for sophisticated surgery and decided that unless I could ski in a tank, it isn’t for me. I’m more of a putterer.”
“You mean…gardens and home repairs?”
He nodded. “I’m looking for a house with a shed or a garage big enough to hold a workshop.” He sipped at his wine and looked around her living room as though checking for what should be repaired. “It’s embarrassing, but at heart I’m the typical suburban guy who’s happy with a house to work on, a yard to mow and bicycles to fix.”
Shelly was charmed by that revelation. He should fit well into life in Jester, where the biggest dream was to see the community thrive.
“What do you do when it’s time to play?” he asked.
“I have evenings and Sundays off, and I usually spend that time trying to catch up on the personal stuff there isn’t much time for during the week.”
He frowned. “That doesn’t sound restful.”
She shrugged. “I do have a cook at the restaurant who’ll watch things for me if I have to leave. And during busy times, there’s a high school girl I call on to help out. But mostly, I work. It’s what my parents did, and it’s what I’ve done most of my life. By the time I was six I was doing dishes and helping to clean up and prep for the next day. By the time I was ten I could replace a waitress and prepare chili or stew on my own. It was a happy life, but I worked all the time.”
He looked sympathetic. “Not precisely a childhood.”
She’d thought about that a lot and had come to what she considered a sane conclusion. “It wasn’t,” she agreed. “And sometimes when I was an adolescent or a teen I was resentful that other kids could play baseball in the park or go to the movies while I was chopping vegetables and waiting on tables. But I realized early in high school that one of my friends was always free to do what she wanted because her mother didn’t really care where she was, and another one got to do all kinds of things I couldn’t because