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“I feel fortunate that I grew up in that kind of home,” he said, in the hope that offering information to Julie would encourage her to reciprocate.
But all she said was, “That is lucky.”
And then, in what seemed an obvious attempt to change the topic of conversation, “How long do you think the power will be out?”
Or maybe she was genuinely worried. He heard the concern in her voice and wished he could reassure her, but he didn’t want to give her false hope. “I don’t know. I think it depends on what caused the outage.”
“So it could be a while,” she acknowledged.
“It could,” he agreed. “But we’ve got the fireplace and lots of blankets, candles and flashlights, and a pantry full of canned goods. I promise—you might be bored, but you won’t freeze, get lost in the halls or starve.”
Her lips curved. “If nothing else, today has proven to me that there’s no point in worrying about things I can’t control.”
He could tell that she was trying to stay upbeat, but he didn’t blame her for being concerned. She was a first-time mother with a brand-new baby, trapped in a stranger’s house without any power in the middle of a snowstorm.
“Speaking of starving,” she said. “I think this little guy’s getting hungry.”
By the flickering light of the candles, he could see that the baby was opening and closing his mouth and starting to squirm a little despite being snugly swaddled in one of the receiving blankets Cameron had brought from the hospital.
“Just hold on a second,” Luke said, and went down the hall to retrieve the emergency flashlight.
He came back with the light and guided Julie the short distance back to the family room.
“While you’re taking care of Caden, I’ll get some blankets and pillows,” he told her.
“Okay.”
It didn’t take him more than a few minutes to gather what they would need, but he took some time to putter around upstairs, giving the new mom time to finish feeding her baby. He didn’t know a lot about the nursing process. Matt’s wife, Georgia, had only recently weaned Pippa, and while she’d been pretty casual about the whole thing, Lukas had always averted his gaze if he was around when she was breastfeeding the baby. Not that he was uncomfortable with the act of a mother nursing her child—he just didn’t think he should be looking at his brother’s wife’s breasts.
Of course, the whole train of thought was one that should definitely—and quickly—be derailed. Because now he was thinking about Julie’s breasts. And since there was no family connection between them, and therefore no intrinsic moral conflict, he couldn’t seem to shift his thoughts in a different direction.
He changed out of his jeans and shirt and into a pair of pajama pants and a long-sleeved thermal shirt. Bedtime usually meant just stripping down to his boxers and crawling beneath the sheets of his king-size bed, but he didn’t want to be too far away from Julie and Caden in case either of them needed anything through the night. Not to mention that it would probably get a little chilly in his bedroom if the power stayed out through the night.
He remembered that Julie was still wearing the robe he’d given to her earlier, and while it had served the purpose of providing some cover during the childbirth process, he didn’t think she would be very comfortable sleeping in it. He rummaged through his drawers until he found a pair of sweatpants with a drawstring waist and a flannel shirt with buttons that ran all the way down the front so that it would be easier for her to—
Trying not to think about that, he reminded himself sternly.
Instead, he turned his attention to the storm. He could hear the wind howling outside and the brush of icy snowflakes battering against the windows. If it didn’t stop snowing soon, it would take him forever to clear his driveway. And if the power stayed out, it would take even longer because his snowblower required an electric start.
The starter on the gas fireplace was electric, too, so he was grateful he’d turned it on when they’d first come in from the storm. The fire would keep the family room toasty warm, which wouldn’t just make it more comfortable to sleep through the night but was absolutely essential for the newborn.
He gathered up the clothes for Julie—adding a thick pair of socks to the pile—and the blankets and pillows and carted everything down the stairs. Having lived in this house his whole life, he wasn’t worried about missing a step or bumping into a wall, but he was worried about Einstein getting tangled up in his feet. However, the dog was conspicuously absent as Luke made his way down the stairs, causing him to wonder where the pint-size canine had disappeared to and what mischief he might be getting into.
He found the puppy curled up beside the sofa, close to Julie and Caden.
She was obviously exhausted after her busy—and traumatic—day, and she’d fallen asleep with the baby still nursing. The sight caused an unmistakable stirring in his groin, and Luke chastised himself for the inappropriate reaction. She was a stranger, in his home and at his mercy because of the storm. She’d just given birth to a baby, and he was ogling her as if she was a centerfold.
Except that he had never seen anything as beautiful as the sight of the baby’s tiny mouth suckling at his mother’s breast. The tiny knitted cap that Cameron had brought from the hospital had fallen off Caden’s head, revealing the wisps of soft dark hair that covered his scalp. His tiny little hand was curled into a fist and resting against his mother’s pale, smooth skin.
Luke tiptoed closer to set the bundle of clothes beside her on the couch. As he neared, Einstein lifted his head, his tail thumping quietly against the floor.
“Good boy,” he whispered, patting the dog’s head.
Then he unfolded one of the blankets and gently laid it over the lower half of her body, careful not to cover the baby. The little guy looked up at him, those big blue eyes wide and completely unconcerned. His mother didn’t even stir.
Luke took another blanket and a pillow for himself and settled into a chair nearby, prepared for a very long night.
* * *
When Julie awoke in the morning, she found the bundle of clothes Lukas had left for her on the sofa. Though she had more than a few changes of clothes in the suitcases in the trunk of her car, she didn’t want to trudge through the snow to retrieve them while wearing nothing more than her host’s robe, so she gratefully donned the borrowed shirt and sweats. He’d also put a few toiletries out on the counter of the powder room: hairbrush, new toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste, all of which she put to good use.
Her first clue that the power had been restored was that the light in the powder room came on when she automatically hit the switch. Her second was the tantalizing aroma of bacon that wafted from the kitchen as she made her way down the hall. Though her grumbling stomach urged her to follow the scent, she knew she needed to take care of her baby’s hunger first. Because she had no doubt that Caden would be hungry, too.
She’d lost count of how many times he’d woken her in the night, his avid little mouth instinctively seeking her breast and the sustenance it provided. And while he never seemed to nurse for extended periods of time, he nursed frequently. The books she’d read offered reassurance that this was normal, but reading about it and living it were two entirely different scenarios. She understood now why new mothers were always exhausted—feeding a newborn was pretty much a full-time job.
Of course, she also realized that she wasn’t really feeding him yet, and that the frequent nursing sessions were necessary to help her milk come in. Throughout her pregnancy, she’d gone back and forth on the breast versus bottle issue but, in the end, she was persuaded by all the benefits found in breast milk—not to mention the simplicity of the method.
“Something smells delicious,” she told Lukas when she finally made her way into the kitchen.
“Hopefully better than the bread and jam you would have got if the power had still been out,” he told her.
“Right now, even that sounds good,” she told him.
“How do bacon, eggs and toast sound?”
“Even better.”
“How are you doing this morning?”
“I’m a little sore,” she admitted. “And tired.”
“I don’t imagine you got much sleep with Caden waking you up every couple of hours.”
She winced at that. “Obviously he woke you up, too.”
He shrugged. “I’m a light sleeper. Thankfully, I don’t need a lot of sleep, so I feel pretty good. Of course, being able to make my morning pot of coffee helped a little.”
“I gave up coffee six months ago,” she admitted, just a little wistfully.
“So what can I get for you?” Lukas asked. “Juice? Milk?”
“Juice is great,” she said, noting that there were already two glasses poured and at the table.
He gestured for her to help herself, then pointed to the carton of eggs on the counter. “Scrambled or fried?”
“Whichever is easier.”
“Which do you prefer?”
“I like both,” she assured him.
He shook his head as he cracked eggs into a bowl. “You’re a pleaser, aren’t you? The type of person who says yes even when she wants to say no, who goes out of her way to avoid conflicts or disagreements.”
She laughed. “No one’s ever accused me of that before,” she told him. “But I do try not to be difficult—at least not until I’ve known someone more than twenty-four hours.”
“So how do you like your eggs?” he prompted.
“Benedict,” she told him.
He chuckled. “Okay. But since I don’t have hollandaise sauce, what’s your second choice?”
“Scrambled,” she decided.
“That wasn’t so hard now, was it?” He added a splash of milk to the bowl, then a sprinkle of salt and pepper and began to whisk the eggs.
“I’ll let you know after I’ve tried the eggs.”
He grinned as he poured the mixture into the frying pan. “My brother and sister-in-law are going to stop by later today, as soon as Matt finishes clearing his driveway.”
She moved closer to the window. “I can’t believe it’s still snowing out there.”
“It’s just light flurries now,” he noted. “Nothing like what we had yesterday.”
“Everything looks so pretty, covered in a pristine blanket of snow.”
“Take a look out the back,” he suggested. “It’s not quite so pristine out there.”
She carried Caden to the window at the back of the room, noted that the snow there had been thoroughly—almost desperately—trampled. And then she spotted the culprit. Einstein, Lukas’s puppy, was racing around as if being chased by the hounds of hell. He had his nose down and was using it like a shovel to tunnel through the cold white stuff and then, when he’d pushed enough to form a mound, he’d attack it.
She chuckled. “What is he doing?”
“I have no idea,” Lukas admitted. “He has no idea.”
“It’s his first snow,” she guessed.
“Yeah. He’s been out there for half an hour and every few minutes, he spins in a circle and barks at it.”
“Pets are a lot like kids, aren’t they?” she mused. “They give you a fresh perspective on things we so often take for granted.”
“Some of them,” he agreed. “Daphne’s perspective is neither sociable nor very sunny.”
She laughed again. “Considering I haven’t seen more of her than a flick of her tail, I can’t disagree with that.”
“She ventured downstairs last night to sleep by the fire, but I’m sure it wasn’t for company but only warmth.”
“It was warm,” Julie agreed. “I even threw the blanket off a couple of times in the night.”
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