The Baby And The Bachelor

2

BRIANNE HOWLED HER objections at having her pink outfit removed. She screamed about having her diaper changed. And she made Kim’s ears ring when she loudly protested having to put on a new dress.

“Sorry,” Stuart muttered, while Anna made the sign of the cross and Patrick once again reached for his hearing aid.

“Maybe I can help.” Kim finally put down her camera and took over the care of the child, not that she had much experience in dressing babies. But a blotchy, teary-eyed child would not take a good picture. The little girl knew enough to stick out her lower lip and give Kim a pitiful look from her big brown eyes, so Kim tickled her toes and made her giggle.

“How did you do that?” Stuart stood next to the couch, but out of the baby’s sight, as if he was afraid that Brianne would yell at him again.

“I have all sorts of ways to make babies smile,” she said, lifting the little girl into her arms. “Peekaboo, tickles with a feather duster, squeaky toys, things like that.”

She gathered the props she needed, handing them to Stuart to carry while she took the baby, who had now stopped crying and looked more curious than anything else. Kim’s audience followed her outside and around the side of the house to the backyard.

The lilac garden, a secluded rectangle of lawn bordered two sides by thick lilac bushes, lay behind the next door neighbor’s house. The huge white Victorian was the largest house in the neighborhood, and while some of the homes closest to the business-zoned street one block away had converted to businesses, “Lilac House”—with its dark purple shutters and elegant front porch—remained unchanged, as had Patrick’s and Anna’s large homes across the street.

Until now, Kim thought, ignoring the new No Trespassing sign posted on the whitewashed gate. She’d rented the space from Mr. and Mrs. Carlisle for the past four years, using the area for her outdoor photographs. When Mrs. Carlisle died and her husband went to live with his son, Kim and Kate tried to buy the strip of garden, but their letters to sweet old Mr. Carlisle had gone unanswered. There was little backyard space on their own property; between the garage and the parking area, there was no room to plant lilac bushes.

“Just a shame,” Anna muttered, following close behind Kim. “It’s so pretty back here and you’ve gone to so much work.”

“What’s a shame?” Stuart paused by the wicker baby stroller and frowned down at it. He negotiated his way around Kim’s favorite rusted wrought iron table and ornate iron chair, then stepped over several big pots of tulips and hyacinths leftover from the Easter photo sessions.

“That Kimmy can’t buy this,” the woman explained. “We think the house has been sold and it’s going to be turned into apartments and the lilac trees cut down for parking spaces.”

“That’s just a rumor.” Patrick gave Kim a reassuring look. “No one’s heard anything for sure.”

“I can’t seem to find out what’s going on,” Kim admitted. “Maybe Mr. Carlisle’s son is the one in charge of the property now.”

“He should be ashamed of himself,” Anna said. “He could have sold you the lilacs after you took care of them all these years.”

“It’s his property. He can do what he wants.” She handed the baby to Anna and then took the vintage sheets from Stuart, who gave her a pleading look.

“Tell me she won’t get stung by any flying insects.”

“She won’t get stung by any flying insects,” she repeated obediently, but her attention was focused on arranging the lace-edged sheet so that the wicker would show, too. She intended to take some black-and-white shots, along with the color.

“And we won’t be out here long,” he added.

“I’ll be as fast as I can be,” she promised. “If you would all stand back out of the way—no, over there, where you don’t cast shadows—Brianne and I will get to work.” Not that it would be easy to work, with Stuart frowning at her with that protective look on his face. His vigilance was surprisingly sexy, Kim realized, until she reminded herself to keep her mind on her work. She had no business thinking Stuart Thorpe was sexy, not when she should be concentrating on the job in front of her.

It didn’t take long to pose the baby in the stroller. The pretty little girl appeared to like being outdoors in the warm spring air. Most of the children she photographed did, especially if their feet were bare. Kim took some close-ups of those feet. The onlookers kept silent, except once when Stuart swore at a bee who dared come within eight feet of the wicker stroller.

Then Brianne screamed, spit up carrots on her eyelet lace collar and proceeded to call an end to the photo session.

“I guess that’s that,” Stuart said with a sigh, lifting her from the stroller. Since he already had carrot stains on his shirt, he didn’t seem to mind the new ones.

“I’m sure I have enough for you and her mother to choose from,” Kim assured him. Was she one of those socialites she’d seen him with on the front page of the Arts section in the Sunday paper? Was she slim and blond and very rich, with her very own lilacs and a car that didn’t need repairs every three months?

“Ooh, I’d like to see those pictures myself,” Mrs. G. said. She piled the sheets in her arms and Patrick moved the stroller out of the garden area and onto the back porch, while Kim led Stuart to the front of the house and the studio door.

“You have a lot of help here,” Stuart said. “Does Kate work here, too?”

“Yes. She specializes in bridal portraits and graduation photos.”

“Not baby toes?”

“No.” Kim smiled, remembering her twin’s disastrous attempts at photographing a set of triplets last year. “Kate’s not exactly the domestic type.”

“And her sister?”

She turned and ushered him into the reception room. “Babies are my business.”

“Hold her for a minute, will you?” Stuart didn’t wait for an answer and Kim found herself cuddling Brianne again while Stuart gathered up the baby’s possessions and haphazardly stuffed them into the diaper bag. When they were ready to leave, Kim tweaked Brianne’s big toe and made her smile. “Take good care of your daddy, sweetheart. I think he could use a break.”

“I’m not her father, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “She’s my niece.”

“Whether she’s your niece or your daughter, you’re still taking care of her, right?” His niece? It made more sense, come to think of it. The brilliant and handsome Dr. Thorpe would certainly practice safe sex and birth control. She rubbed the child’s little feet with gentle motions. The exhausted baby leaned against her and sighed.

“Yeah, I’m the baby-sitter until her aunt arrives.” He looked at his watch and then back to Kim. “Which is any minute now.”

“Your niece?” Pat looked from Stuart to the baby and then back again. “Why didn’t you say that in the first place?”

“I thought I did,” he said, shrugging. “My sister’s mother-in-law is in intensive care up in Maine. She had to leave before my other sister—the real baby-sitter—got back from vacation.”

“She couldn’t take the baby?” Kim was surprised.

He shook his head. “There’s no other family up there—her husband is on his way home from Sydney—and Payne didn’t want to leave her with strangers while she was at the hospital.”

“Hospitals are no places for babies,” Anna declared. “Too many germs in the waiting rooms, if you know what I mean.”

“I’m sure my sister would agree with you,” Stuart said.

“Stuart’s a doctor, Anna,” she reminded her. “He knows all about germs.”

“Well, then, he can tell me what this is.” Anna pointed to her left arm. “Come here, young man, and see if you know your business and can tell me what this spot is.”

“I’m a surgeon, not a dermatologist, but I can tell you if it’s chicken pox,” Stuart said, but he obeyed the woman and crossed the room to peer at her forearm. “It looks like a wart to me.”

“Not skin cancer?”

“I doubt that very much, Mrs. Gianetto, but I can give you the name of a good dermatologist if you want to have it checked further.”

“Nah,” she said. “I trust you.” She stood and reached for her shopping bag.

“Maybe you should do as he says, Anna,” Patrick said.

She laughed. “I just saved fifty dollars. Come on, Pat. Let’s go back to my house and get these things listed on eBay before we run out of energy.”

“Don’t forget the camera,” Kim said. Patrick picked up the camera and took the shopping bag from Anna’s hand.

“Are you closing up?” he asked, clearly unhappy about leaving her alone with a strange man.

“Absolutely,” she promised as Anna stopped to pat the baby’s head. “Brianne was my last appointment for the day.”

“You come for dinner tonight,” Anna whispered. “I’ll fry up some sausage and peppers just the way you like. And I got some good bread at Zachinini’s this morning, too, when I went down to the post office.”

“I can’t,” Kim said, genuinely sorry to miss eating anything from Zachinini’s bakery or Anna’s kitchen, but the knowing sympathy in her neighbor’s expression was more than she could bear. “I’ve got a lot of work to do. Kate’s behind on three weddings—”

“Oh, that one,” Anna sighed, rolling her eyes. “She’ll be zooming up the street in that fast little car of hers tonight?”

“As far as I know.” Kate had called four times today already, unusual for a Friday night, but typical of her protective twin.

“Thanks again, Kimmy,” Anna said. “You doing the yard sales with us tomorrow?”

“Maybe.” Memorial Day weekend was the unofficial beginning of the yard sale season, which meant an early morning on Saturday looking for “treasures.” She knew her neighbors were simply trying to keep her from remembering what she would have been doing this weekend, if things had turned out differently.

“I’ll bring the truck,” Patrick promised. “We’ll go out to breakfast after.”

“I’ll let you know,” Kim said, watching her friends leave. Patrick gave Stuart one last warning look and then went out the door.

“Watch yourself on the steps, Anna,” she heard the old man say before the door shut. Kim turned toward Stuart, who gave her a devastating smile.

“Thanks for the help calming her down,” he said. “She hasn’t closed her eyes since I’ve had her.”

“She’s very sweet,” Kim said. “I think you’d better take her home and put her to bed.”

“You wouldn’t want to go home with us, would you? She looks pretty comfortable in your arms.”

“I think you can handle it,” she said. It really wasn’t fair for a man to be that good-looking.

“Tell Brianne that,” he said. He stepped closer and, with a gentle motion, lifted the baby and turned her to lean against his food-stained shirt. His fingers grazed Kim’s breasts, something she tried to pretend she hadn’t felt. “Well, it was good seeing you again.”

“You, too. Good luck.”

“Tell your sister I said hello.”

She looked at Brianne drooling on Stuart’s shoulder and smiled. Babies were her favorite clients—and the most challenging.

“Are you sure you won’t come home with me?” He had a decidedly wicked and desperate expression, she noticed. He made her want to smile, but she resisted. She knew when she was out of her league, baby or no baby.

“Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Too bad.” He picked up the diaper bag and the rose blanket in his left hand. “Bree likes you.”

“Bye.” She took one more longing look at the baby. Cuddling Brianne had been the brightest spot in her day.

“I DON’T LIKE THIS,” Patrick declared, sitting down at Anna’s kitchen table. He liked Anna’s kitchen, because it reminded him of his own, with its faded linoleum floor and solid red and white Formica kitchen set. And Anna’s kitchen smelled of food, while his just…smelled. He ate too much popcorn now that he’d figured out the microwave oven his daughter had given him for Christmas last year.

“Don’t like what?” Anna’s bulk was hidden by the refrigerator door as she removed pan after pan of Italian concoctions. “Hey, you want a beer?”

“I don’t like leaving Kimmy with that man,” he grumbled, taking the bottle of Budweiser Anna handed him. “Thanks.”

“He’s a doctor,” she reminded him. She lifted the lid off a frying pan and sniffed. “A man of science.”

“He’s not good enough for her.” The twist-off cap popped off easily and Pat took a healthy swallow. His own doctor had told him that one beer a day couldn’t hurt anything, not at his age. But Dr. Shaunnesy was pushing sixty, still smoked cigars and visited Ireland once a year. He wasn’t some pretty-face, fancy-ass surgeon who wouldn’t know good beer if it was poured on his Mercedes.

And Pat had noticed the Mercedes, all right, shiny as could be in the parking area north of Kim Cooper’s house. “Give me a Cadillac any day,” he said.

“What’s cars got to do with anything?” She arranged all sorts of pans on top of the stove and then took the cork out of a bottle of red wine. She drank a glass every night with dinner, Anna did. And had, she’d informed him once, since she was fifteen.

“I dunno. Can’t you do anything with that nephew of yours?”

“Robbie?” She turned from the stove and shrugged. “He says he’s asked her to marry him four times and she keeps saying no.”

Robbie Gianetto wasn’t the brightest light on the porch, in Pat’s opinion, but Kimmy was too young to keep grieving like this. Any port in a storm, he figured. Even as shallow a port as Anna’s thickheaded nephew. “She needs to get on with her life since things didn’t work out with Jeff.”

“Look who’s talking,” Anna said, shaking a wooden spoon at him. “Mary’s been gone five years now and you won’t even get on a plane and visit your sister.”

“I get out of the house enough,” he said. “I don’t have to fly to California to prove anything. I like my house just fine.”

“Humph.” Anna stirred the peppers in the pan, filling the kitchen with the aroma of good Italian cooking. “I like my house, too, but at least I get to Florida a couple of times a year to visit my sister and her son.”

“I don’t think much of Florida,” he declared, his stomach rumbling with anticipation. “And I don’t think much of that doctor fella either. He’s not good enough for Kimmy.”

“Somebody better be,” Anna said, waving the smoke away from her face. “She’s not getting any younger.”

“None of us are, Anna,” he said, taking another sip of ice-cold beer. “None of us are.”

“YOU’RE KIDDING. THE GORGEOUS Stuart Thorpe was here?” Kim’s twin sister leaned against the kitchen counter and retrieved her margarita. With short spiky red hair, gold hoop earrings and perfect makeup, Kate Cooper looked like a woman confident of her beauty. Her lime-green shirt fit snugly, as did the black Capri pants that hugged her legs. Kate had a gift for fashion and flair, while Kim had a talent for…babies.

“Yep. All six feet of him.”

“What’d you do?” She took a swallow of her drink and smiled. “See, isn’t it better with extra tequila?”

“I took pictures of his niece, which was why he was here.” Kim sipped her drink, then coughed. “Remind me never to let you near my blender again.”

“It won’t do you any harm.” Kate rummaged through the cupboards until she found a bag of tortilla chips, which she poured into one of Kim’s yard sale finds. “Where do you get this stuff? It’s chipped.”

“I liked it.” She wasn’t about to confess to buying it for fifty cents at a yard sale last summer. The blue and white bowl had flaws, but it held the exact amount of popcorn made from a microwave packet. “And it matches the tile.”

Kate turned and opened the refrigerator. “Do you still have that pineapple salsa I brought last week?”

“It’s in there, behind the milk.”

“I see it.”

Kim took her drink and the bowl of chips across the room to the small white couch and set everything in the middle of her coffee table, a mahogany relic leftover from their parents’ house. She’d painted it white and placed a piece of vintage fabric on top. The blue and pink rose material covered up most of the flaws and blended with the raggedy quilt folded along the back of the couch. The one-bedroom apartment she called home took up the second floor of the house that held their photography business, but it had grown obvious to both women that they needed the space to expand. The business they’d inherited from their father couldn’t keep growing unless they had more studio space in which to work.

Once Kate settled herself on the opposite chair, she kicked off her black mules and eyed her sister. “Tell me about him.”

“Who?”

“Your doctor.”

“He’s not my—” she began, but there was no point in disguising the truth. Her sister knew damn well that Stuart Thorpe had, at one time many years ago, been the man of Kim’s childish dreams.

“Did he say anything to you?”

“Just that it was good to see me.” Kate looked so disappointed that Kim almost laughed.

“He’s still one of the best looking men I’ve ever seen in my life,” she admitted.

“Call him. A weekend with a sexy doctor might do you a world of good.” Then she stopped, stricken. “I’m sorry,” Kate murmured, the smile gone from her face. “I shouldn’t tease, especially about this weekend.”

“It was a long time ago. And I can deal with it, honest.” She really, really hoped Kate wasn’t going to cry.

“Jeff was a real SOB.” Now her twin looked as if she was trying to blink back tears.

“Kate—”

“Mom and Dad wanted you to come to Florida this weekend. They wanted to spoil you and show you all the sights.”

“I know. Mom’s called every night this week hoping I’d change my mind.”

“She sent a ticket for you. It’s in my purse.”

It was silly to feel trapped by one’s own family, but Kim felt suffocated by their concern. She didn’t want her parents to worry; she dreaded hearing the concern in their voices when they called her to hint about taking a vacation right now.

And all because of Jeff, whom she thought was a good and decent man, had asked her to marry him. Two years ago she’d planned to get married this Memorial Day weekend. They’d set their wedding date, had a celebration dinner with their families gathered together at Jeff’s favorite steakhouse, and then four months later he’d confessed he’d thought it over and changed his mind. He was too young to settle down, he’d said. And then he’d run off with his nineteen-year-old office assistant, rumored to be pregnant with his child.

“I’d rather stay home,” she said, hoping Kate would understand. Kate usually did, despite their different personalities.

“Not all by yourself?”

“No. With a male stripper who’s going to fulfill my every fantasy.”

“You wish.” But Kate smiled. “But there’s always the good doctor. You could call him and tell him you’ve changed your mind.”

“Don’t make more of it than it was. It’s not as if I ever really went out with him, except for that one blind date. In a group from the apartment house on Wickenden Street, remember? You said he was nice enough.”

“It was strictly platonic, though I think he might have kissed me good-night.” Kate frowned. “I didn’t know you liked him or I wouldn’t have gone out with him at all,” she said. “Rules are rules.”

“It didn’t matter.” She took another cautious sip of the drink. “He never gave me a second look.”

“Because you probably never said one word to him. Even now you could pick up the phone and ask him out to dinner.”

“You could do that. I can’t imagine it.” Stuart Thorpe was out of her league. Period.

“I don’t know why we’re so different.”

“We drove Mom crazy.” Kate was the demanding one, Kim the quiet one. Kate talked first, but Kim learned to read at age five. Kate talked to strangers while Kim hung back, waiting for her twin to assure her that everything was fine.

“I think we still do.” Kate wiggled her painted toenails and stretched her legs. “Are you sure you won’t go out with me tonight? There are going to be lots of wonderful men there. Friday night is always good and it will keep your mind off Jeff and that whole mess.”

“No, thanks. I’m not brooding or feeling sorry for myself, Kate. Honest.”

“Will you call the doctor?”

And say what?

“No. And not in a million years, no matter how much advice you give me.”

“Ah, I see. He’s the one who got away,” Kate said, taking another sip of her drink.

“No.” Kim tucked her feet underneath her and remembered her senior year at Rhode Island School of Design, the well-known art school. “He’s the one who never came near me at all.”

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