First Came Baby

The perfect reason to stay?

Kate Hebert’s fling with Jackson Boone wasn’t supposed to be anything more than good fun. When she got pregnant, they married to please her dying grandmother, and Boone headed home to Peru. Now he’s in Comeback Cove to arrange their divorce and meet his baby son. But when Kate injures her ankle, Boone is forced to stick around—and step up his dad game.

A little hands-on healing makes Kate realize how great a real marriage with Boone could be. But family had never been Boone’s priority, and as far as he’s concerned, Kate deserves the life she’s always dreamed of. Seems they’ve done everything backward, and now Boone faces the toughest choice he’s ever made...

KRIS FLETCHER would like you to believe that her children’s science-fair volcanoes were all perfectly sculpted from papier-mâché, but the truth is that the mashed-potato episode of this book just might have a basis in fact. Ahem.

Kris grew up in Southern Ontario, went to school in Nova Scotia, married a man from Maine and now lives in central New York. She shares her very messy home with her husband, some of their many kids, two Facebook-fodder cats and a growing population of dust bunnies.

Books by Kris Fletcher

Comeback Cove, Canada

A Better Father

Now You See Me

Dating a Single Dad

A Family Come True

Picket Fence Surprise

Other titles by this author available in ebook format.

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

First Came Baby

Kris Fletcher

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08110-8

FIRST CAME BABY

© 2018 Christine Fletcher

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Version: 2020-03-02

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For Piya Campana. For five years, you soothed my nerves, calmed my fears and guided my thoughts and words to the place where I became proud to share them with the world. Most of all, you made me laugh, always in the very best of ways. I was truly blessed to begin my career with such a gifted and compassionate editor, and will forever raise my Iced Capp in your honor.

“I wasn’t trying to get away from you.”

It took Boone a second. It wasn’t until he let that slightly emphasized you sink in that he got the message. And even then, he didn’t want to believe it.

Kate shifted on the sofa, digging into her pocket. “Jamie’s sleeping longer than I thought,” she said, pulling out her phone. “Why don’t you peek on him. I’ll see if Allie can come...”

Her voice trailed off.

He reached for her phone and plucked it from her fingers. She made a sound of protest, but her grip didn’t tighten.

“Boone,” she whispered. “This isn’t a good idea.”

She was right. Totally and completely right.

But that didn’t stop him from sliding off the footstool and onto the sofa. Once he was at her side, hip bumping against hip, he wondered why the hell he had resisted before. Because nothing felt as right as being close to Kate.

Except, maybe, being closer.

Dear Reader,

Building a family is always a challenge. Imagine, though, trying to build one when the baby was a surprise...and Daddy isn’t sure he can be the kind of parent his child deserves...and by the way, Mommy and Daddy live on separate continents. That’s the situation Kate and Boone find themselves facing in this story. Believe me, it was a challenge and then, ultimately, the greatest treat to be able to face this dilemma with them!

By the way, if you missed the story of Kate’s younger sister Allie, Best Man Takes a Bride, you can find it on www.Harlequin.com. I do hope you’ll have the chance to check it out.

It’s been a privilege to spend the last five years visiting Comeback Cove with you. Whenever I visit the real-world town of Morrisburg, Ontario, which was the inspiration for Comeback Cove, I half expect to turn the corner and find myself at the Flip Flop Fudge Shop, or to walk into a store and buy ice cream made by the Northstar Dairy. If you should ever find yourself there—perhaps to visit Upper Canada Village—I hope that you will feel the same way.

Yours,

Kris

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

Dear Reader

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

Extract

CHAPTER ONE

KATE HEBERT HAD always prided herself on being able to multitask. But even she was amazed when she realized she was painting a wall with her right hand while cradling her five-month-old in her left arm—and that she was doing both while breastfeeding.

“Check it out,” she said to her sister, Allie. She raised the paint roller and wiggled little Jamie. “Call me vain, but I’m feeling seriously badass at this moment.”

Allie started laughing. “Wonder Woman has nothing on you.”

“We should write our own comic book. Super Mom. Instead of bracelets that can deflect bullets, she would have a nursing bra that bounces insults back at rude people.”

Allie snickered. “Didn’t Wonder Woman have a fancy lasso for making bad guys tell the truth? Maybe instead of that, Super Mom could shoot guilt trips with her eyes.” She pitched her voice slightly lower in an imitation of their mother. “You want to tell me exactly what you’re doing? And don’t bother saying it’s nothing, because I can see by the look in your eyes that it’s definitely something.”

Kate laughed hard enough that she had to put the paint roller into the tray or risk ending up with a polka-dot floor. Probably the wisest course, since the purpose of this work was to make the place marketable, not marked up.

“Good idea.” Allie nodded toward the dormant roller. “In fact, you should sit down for a few minutes.”

“I’m fine.”

“I know you are. Now. But in about two or three minutes you’re going to realize that you haven’t had anything to drink in a couple of hours, and you’re going to get suddenly and horribly overcome with thirst and exhaustion. Then I’m going to remember that I promised Mom I wouldn’t let you overdo it, and I’m going to feel guilty and run off to get you some water. And when I come back you’re going to be half-asleep in the chair. So then I’ll have to burp Jamie, which means I have to get him off your boob, which kind of grosses me out. And then, he’ll probably spit up on the clothes I have to wear until this room is done. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather bypass the drama. So. Sit.” She pointed at the ancient wingback Kate had dragged into the room. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Kate had a fleeting notion to argue, then decided it would be easier to go along. Because though she hated to admit it, she did feel a little thirsty. “Okay.” She lowered herself into the chair slowly, so as not to interrupt mealtime—though these days Jamie was more likely to be distracted by new sights and sounds than by movement—and settled in.

Oh. That felt good.

“Bring me a cheese stick, too, will you?” she called in the direction of the footsteps echoing down the stairs. Allie’s answer came not in words but in a snort of laughter that Kate easily recognized as code for told you so.

As alone as it was possible to be with someone doing the vacuum cleaner thing at her breast, Kate closed her eyes and breathed out tension. Not that she had been working too hard. Far from it. She was still new-mama tired, but she hadn’t made it to the ripe old age of thirty without learning how to pace herself. Nor did the tightness in her shoulders have anything to do with painting. She’d been doing plenty of that over the past months as she brought Nana’s house back to life. Well, as much as she could do on her own.

No, it wasn’t exhaustion or painting that had her wound so tight. It was the reason behind them.

Jamie was slowing down a little, the space between his swallows growing longer. Time for a burp. She broke the suction, raised him to her shoulder and patted his back while rocking in the chair and talking over his wails.

“I know, I know. You don’t like to stop. But we do this every time, buddy. You might want to learn that pattern.”

His little head smashed against her shoulder. Hard.

“Ow! Don’t get violent, okay? You’ll get more in a minute. But then you have to give me time to really paint, because the room has to be done this afternoon. We need to get it ready for—” she lowered her voice “—for your daddy.”

So much for relaxation.

She patted some more, focusing on the April-fresh air coming through the window she’d cracked open, trying to soothe the anxiety that gripped her every time she thought of Boone coming home. Not that he had ever lived here, in either this house or Comeback Cove. Not that he even thought of Canada as home anymore.

But in two days, he would be here, whether she was ready or not. And painting was the least of her worries.

Allie bounded up the stairs, her footsteps eliciting the usual symphony of creaks and protests from the aging stairs. Jamie’s loud burp was just one more note in the song. By the time Allie sailed in, Kate had Jamie settled on the other side, leaving her free to cross her legs, sit back and gratefully accept her sister’s offerings.

“Ooh. That’s not a cheese stick.” Kate drank deeply before tucking the bottle of water at her side and diving into the plate of cheddar, crackers and apple slices with gusto.

“Yeah, well, I figure I’m allowed to pamper you once in a while. Though seriously, when are you going to learn to set an alarm on your phone to remind you to drink?” Allie mock scowled before grinning and gesturing toward the wall in front of her, where hints of faded wallpaper still peeked out from the first coat of robin’s-egg-blue paint. “I still don’t know if it was a good idea to paint right over this.”

“In a perfect world, I would have scraped off all seven layers and made a fresh start. But there’s a limit. Besides, this place is so old that the wallpaper might be the only thing holding it up.”

“You love it and you know it.”

“Well, yeah. But love doesn’t always make you blind to faults.” She grinned. “If it did, Mom would have run out of things to say to us years ago.”

“True that.” Allie grabbed her roller and attacked the wall once more. “So, Katydid, not that I don’t adore spending a gorgeous Sunday helping you paint instead of hanging out with Cash the Wonder Boyfriend, but how about you tell me the real reason this needed to be done so quickly? I mean, it was one thing when we had to get the first floor ready in record time. Things had to be perfect for Prince Jameson.” She curtsied to the baby. “But you said you weren’t going to put this place up for sale until he was a year old or so, and honestly, there’s lots of other work that’s more pressing than making this room look decent. So, what’s the rush?”

Kate let her head fall back against the chair. She had known this talk was coming. She simply hadn’t thought of the right way to handle it yet.

“Boone is coming.”

Oops. She should have waited until Allie had finished reloading her roller. That might have helped prevent the blue streak now decorating the floor.

“Son of a...” Allie grabbed a rag from the bucket of water and swiped at the wayward paint. “He’s finally making an appearance?”

“Don’t say it like that.”

“And why not? I mean, I know you guys only got married so Nana wouldn’t freak when she found out you were pregnant, but still. He’s been gone a year.”

“Ten months.”

Allie waved the words away. “Details. The point is, he has a beautiful baby who is five months old, growing every minute practically, and Boone hasn’t bothered to even meet him? Excuse me if I’m not feeling incredibly gracious.” She frowned at the half-painted wall. “Or if I suddenly don’t feel like busting my butt on this.”

“Allie, come on. You know he wanted to come back sooner, but it’s not like you can easily do a long weekend run from Peru to here. And with his partners gone, it’s been up to him to keep Project Sonqo running.”

“I know. I know.” Water splashed as Allie tossed the rag back into the bucket. “Look, I have lots of respect for what he’s doing there. The way he and the MacPhersons started Project Sonqo, the way they’re connecting the crafters with new markets and teaching the women how to see themselves as small businesses... It’s all good. Great, really. And I know that Boone had to step up when—what’s his name—Mr. MacPherson—”

“Craig. Craig and Jill.” Jamie was falling asleep, his swallows slacking off and his eyes closing in the classic milk-drunk pose. Kate gave him a gentle jiggle. She had no problem with him nursing himself to sleep, but she wanted to be sure he’d had enough. She didn’t want to lay him in his crib and get herself put back together only to have him wake up in fifteen minutes because he decided he needed more.

“Right. I understand that Boone had to take over when Craig got sick. I mean, look, cancer is bad enough when you’re dealing with it here. I can’t imagine what it must be like in that part of Peru, living so far from hospitals and everything. So, total sympathy, okay? But...” Allie scowled. “There must have been somebody Boone could have brought in to run things. Some way he could have been here when his own son was born.”

Kate held her tongue. Allie was well aware that Jamie’s arrival a couple of weeks ahead of schedule had complicated everyone’s plans. If he had been born on time, or even late—as everyone had assured her was usually the case with first babies—Boone could well have been on hand for the big event.

At least, that was what she told herself.

“Allie, I know you’re not happy about the way things turned out. But—”

“Don’t tell me to let it go. Because you know that if the positions were reversed, you wouldn’t.”

There was some truth to that. Anyone who hurt Allie had to be prepared to face the wrath of Kate, and if that happened, they ended up counting their blessings, because it meant that Kate got to them before her mother did.

But this was different. Boone had been nothing but honest from the start. Ten minutes after meeting him at a fan convention in Ottawa, she had known that he was going to be around for only a few months, that even though he was still Canadian he considered Peru his home, that there was no chance of anything long-term or forever between them. He wasn’t a family man. Kate, on the rebound from a bad breakup, had been fine with that. She’d definitely wanted permanence and a family someday, but at that moment, short-term and fun and intense had been just what she’d needed.

That was, until a perfect storm of chances and failures had led to the perfect baby sleeping in her arms.

“The point is,” she said, easing Jamie upright, “Craig and Jill are running things again, and as soon as they were caught up, Boone booked a flight. He’ll be here Tuesday. Call me sentimental, but I didn’t want to put him in a room that had faded flamingo wallpaper on one wall and giant chrysanthemums on the others. So we’re painting.”

Allie’s grunt was all the proof Kate needed that her sister didn’t approve of any of this. No surprise there. What was surprising was that Allie hadn’t yet mentioned that they were prepping a second-story room for Boone, when Kate and Jamie were already established in Nana’s old room on the first floor.

Any minute now...

“Hang on.”

Kate lifted her chin. She could wait for Allie to say it, or she could get the hardest part out of the way.

“That’s right,” she said as evenly as possible. “He’s sleeping up here.”

“You’re putting your husband—the man you haven’t seen in ten months, the guy who almost made you commit an act of public indecency on the beach that day—in a separate room?”

“That’s right. And no, before you ask, I’m not moving my stuff up here.” Kate rose from the chair with all the grace of a lame giraffe. “He’s not coming just to meet Jamie, Allie. Or to help me get the place fixed up so I can sell it. He’s also coming home so we can get a divorce.”

* * *

JACKSON BOONE’S FEET slowed as he approached the door leading from the secure area of the Ottawa airport to the public space. Once he stepped through that door, everything was going to change.

God, he hoped he was ready.

His head knew that the real change had happened months ago, when Jamie was born. Or when he and Kate had decided to get married so her grandmother—set in her ways until the end, as Kate had said—could die in peace, knowing her first great-grandchild wouldn’t be born out of wedlock.

Though really, everything had changed when he’d opted to leave his work in Peru for a few months to do some advanced study in nonprofit leadership in Ottawa. Or, more accurately, when he’d let a classmate drag him to a Star Wars fan gathering and he’d spied Kate across the crowded convention hall. One look at the purple streaks in her Princess Leia hair and his entire world had shifted.

Still, that had all been fun and games and some of the best times he had ever known. This, though. This was his kid. His son.

Boone had been a lot of things in his life. Student. Builder. Foster kid. The relative that had to be taken in. But in all his life, he had never really felt like a son. And he had no idea how he was supposed to be a father.

Think about Kate, he ordered himself yet again. You’re here to make things easier for her. That’s what matters.

Right. As long as he came out of this having helped Kate in whatever way he could, the rest would fall into line.

With that in mind, he hitched his backpack higher on his shoulder, braced himself and walked through the doors.

It took him a moment to find her in the crowd. He scanned the faces in front of him, looking for the thick brown hair and the glowing smile that had first drawn him to her. Winding his way through the reunions taking place on either side, he peered, ducked and—

There. She was over by the window, sitting on a bench tucked into an alcove.

Heat raced through him. They had talked regularly these past months, Skyping at least once a week, so it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen her since he left. He knew that she had cut her hair, and that the purple streaks were long gone. He had watched her jiggle little Jamie and pat his back and rock back and forth—probably without even knowing what she was doing, because if they gave out extra years for instinctive nurturing, Kate would have a lifespan stretching into the triple digits.

But it was one thing to watch all that happen from thousands of miles away and the safety of a computer screen. It was another to know that she was in front of him, to drink in the sight of her while voices bounced off the high ceilings and people laughed and cried on either side and folks brushed past him as they headed for the baggage area.

She hadn’t spied him yet. She was curled over—well, he assumed it was Jamie. From this angle, all he could see was a gray lump, a pack of some sort, from which dangled a miniature leg and an impossibly tiny foot, wiggling back and forth like it was waving hello to him.

I helped make that foot.

His mother, during the rare times he had spent with her, had assured him regularly that he wasn’t the type to have any success at making things. But as Boone stared at that tiny foot holding his attention as securely as if it were a hypnotist’s watch, he knew that in this, at least, his mother had been dead wrong.

Kate finished fussing with the pack, gave a little pat to the front of it, and kissed the top of Jamie’s head. The foot swung faster.

A loud wail pierced the roar of voices. Boone flinched and hurried forward. He’d heard Jamie cry over the phone many times. Intellectually, he understood when Kate laughed it off and assured him that cries were simply the way babies communicated, and that while there was always a reason, the reason was rarely the end of the world.

But this sounded different. More demanding. Maybe it was simply because it wasn’t coming to him via satellite or whatever, but this cry went straight to Boone’s gut.

Mierda.

Kate stood, her arms below the pack, swaying and jiggling. She raised her head and scanned the area, her hazel eyes squinting, then widening as she spotted him.