Baby, Oh Baby!

“Right back at you,” Rachel told him. “I’ll see your spell and raise you an incantation or two.”

He grinned. “That’s what I like about you. You give as good as you get.”

She blinked up at him. “Did you just admit you like me?”

“I already admitted we’re friends, but it was probably part of that whole spell thing you’ve got going.”

“I see.” She slid her hands from his neck, down over the muscular contours of his chest. “Far be it for me to wear out my welcome. I’ll just take my spell and go home—”

“The hell you will,” he said, tightening his hold.

A sound came from the monitor in her pocket. A little cough and a sneeze.

“Omigosh. Emma.”

Baby, Oh Baby!

Teresa Southwick

To Angie Ray and Marianne Donley—my gratitude for all the nitpicking. Here’s to the power of three.

TERESA SOUTHWICK

lives in Southern California with her hero husband, who is more than happy to share with her the male point of view. An avid fan of romance novels, she is delighted to be living out her dream of writing for Silhouette Books.

The fortune-teller said…

The baby you ask for comes with a price.

The promise you make could cost you twice.

If the three born on February twenty-ninth rub the magic from the lamp and make a wish—on that day that comes only once every four years—each shall receive her most coveted desire.

But there is peril.

Each of the three must see beyond the evident. Look into the soul of the one her heart has chosen. Only then will she find the truth that is hers alone.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Prologue

New Orleans—February 29, 2004

“What are the odds of being born on February 29?” Rachel Manning looked at Ashley Gallagher and Jordan Bishop, her two best friends in the world and fellow leap year birthday celebrators.

“If you’re the three of us, the chances are one hundred percent,” Ashley answered.

Jordan tapped her chin thoughtfully. “When you think about it, the odds of three women remaining friends from the newborn nursery to the present are probably astronomical. We’re legendary, like the Three Musketeers.”

“Pop quiz,” Ashley said. “What was your best birthday?”

“You’re such a college girl,” Jordan teased. “Although we’re twenty-four today, technically we’ve only had six birthdays, so the question doesn’t put a strain on the memory banks.”

“This is the best birthday,” Ashley said. “How cool is it to be here in New Orleans?”

“I second that.” Rachel glanced uneasily over her shoulder. “It’s getting late. We should probably head back. I’d like to make a toast to us at a cozy hotel bar.”

“Aw, Mom, don’t be a party pooper,” Ashley teased. “This is my last carefree night. Tomorrow it’s back to work and classes. For the next two and a half months I have to gird my loins, or whatever you call it, to get ready for finals and graduation.”

“Hallelujah.” Jordan grinned.

“Better late than never,” Ashley defended herself. “I want to squeeze every last ounce of fun out of tonight. By my calculations, we only have about fifteen minutes left until our birthday is over. And we won’t have another official one for four more years.” Jordan linked her arms through theirs, urging them forward. “Let’s see what kind of trouble we can get into before we get that birthday drink.”

That was when Rachel heard someone yelling. Just ahead she saw a woman standing on the sidewalk outside a shop. She was agitated and pointing. “Stop him! Thief! Help!”

Rachel’s heart thumped hard against her ribs. Oh, where was that safe hotel bar when you really needed it? People on the sidewalk parted and she saw a slight figure in a black ski cap and dark clothes running straight toward them.

Jordan tugged on their arms, urging them out of the way, which was just fine with Rachel. But if he had a knife or a gun….

Then the thief was directly in front of them and Rachel saw Jordan’s foot slide out. As he went down, something fell from his hand and clattered on the walkway at their feet. Jordan bent and grabbed it. Half a second later the guy was up, shooting them a furious look. Rachel braced herself for his attack. But when a siren sounded, he took off around the corner.

“Jordan,” Ashley said, her voice breathless, “When you decide to find trouble, you don’t waste any time.”

“Everyone okay?” Rachel asked. She looked at one then the other of her friends.

“Yeah,” Ashley said. “Shouldn’t we do something? Call the police? Chase him?”

“He’s long gone.” Jordan was turning the tarnished brass she’d picked up from side to side. “The only thing we can do is return this. It looks like a lamp, straight out of Aladdin.”

Rachel shook her head. “That’s your adventurous streak talking. It looks like a glorified gravy boat to me. But obviously that woman wants it back.”

Together, they walked toward the waiting woman. She looked like a Gypsy, dressed all in black with a matching bandanna tied pirate style over her dark brown hair.

Jordan held out the recovered object. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” The woman turned the thing over, examining it. “If this had fallen into the hands of someone who abused it…” She shook her head and let out a breath. “I am very grateful.”

“It was nothing,” Ashley said. “Jordan’s big feet are always getting in the way.” She grinned when the owner of the big feet in question glared at her.

The Gypsy shook her head. “You shall be rewarded for your courage. Won’t you please come inside?”

“I don’t know about this, you guys,” Rachel said, glancing down at the fog swirling around their feet. It was then she noticed the strange green light glowing inside the shop.

“It’s all smoke and mirrors. You need to loosen up and be open to new experiences. Carpe diem. When an opportunity presents itself, seize it with both hands and go along for the ride.” Jordan linked her arms through theirs again and tugged them into the shop.

“My name is Faith,” the woman said. She turned, holding the dull, dirty brass thing as if it was spun gold. “Each of you must rub the lamp and make a wish.”

“I told you it was a lamp,” Jordan said.

“Isn’t the going rate for a good deed three wishes?” Ashley asked.

Jordan made a tsking noise. “No wonder it’s taken you so long to get through college. Do the math. One wish apiece is three wishes.”

“And one is all you need if it’s the right one,” the strange woman said.

“Okay. But as the story goes, a genie will appear. What do we do then? One guy? Three women? Do we arm wrestle for a date with him?” Ashley asked.

“No genie,” Faith said. “That’s very yesterday. But I promise if you wish for your heart’s desire, you will be rewarded.”

Ashley met Rachel’s gaze. “With your track record, it wouldn’t be smart to wish for a man. On the off chance your wish comes true.”

“No man,” Rachel agreed. Every time she’d let herself care, she lost something.

“I don’t want a man, either,” Jordan commented.

“Good.” Ashley nodded emphatically.

“Let’s do a group rub,” Jordan suggested, taking it from the woman. “We’ll wish for the most outrageous things we can think of.”

Together they took the lamp and rested it on their palms.

“Feel that?” Rachel asked uneasily. Warmth seemed to emanate from metal she’d expected to be cold. “It feels like it’s vibrating.”

“You’re just shaking.” Ashley looked at the lamp. “I’ll go first. I wish for money and power.” She glanced up and searched their gazes. “What?”

“That’s two wishes,” Rachel pointed out.

“Power is sort of a subset of money.”

As Rachel rubbed her index finger along the curved side of the brass, she thought of the pregnant teenager temporarily sharing her apartment. An emptiness opened up inside her producing an almost painful ache. “I wish I had a baby.” She smiled sheepishly at her friends’ shocked expressions. “You wouldn’t let me wish for a man.”

“That’s the best outrageous you can do?” Jordan heaved an exaggerated sigh. “I can top you both. I want to be a princess and live in a palace.”

“Oo-kay.” Rachel laughed. “That’s pretty outrageous since you have a better chance of kissing an above average-looking toad than meeting a handsome prince.”

But she found herself caught up in the moment and filled with a sense of anticipation. She watched and waited. But nothing happened. Although she hadn’t expected anything, she was oddly deflated when that’s what she got. So much for three wishes.

“Excellent,” Faith said, as she lifted the lamp from their palms.

Rachel rubbed her forehead. “How do you figure?” The Gypsy tilted her head. “Remember, magic works in mysterious ways. Happy birthday to you all.”

Stunned, they stared at her for several moments. “How did you know it was our birthday?” Rachel finally asked.

The odd woman smiled mysteriously.

Then a clock chimed midnight.

Chapter One

June 1, 2004—Sweet Spring, Texas

Through tired, aching eyes, Rachel Manning stared down at the grumpy month-old baby girl, then opened the tabs on the disposable diaper. After capturing the tiny, flailing ankles in one hand, she pulled down the diaper and wrinkled her nose. “Paydirt. No pun intended, Emma. But you’re such a sweet, delicate flower, how can you be such a party pooper?”

Whoa. Rachel hadn’t thought about that phrase since the night of her birthday celebration in New Orleans when she’d made a wish. She looked down at the infant waving her tiny arms and shook her head. Couldn’t be. And even if she believed such a thing was possible, surely her fairy godmother or wish warranty customer service representative could read between the lines.

I want a baby meant finding a man, falling in love and getting married. A baby would follow after nine months of pregnancy. She wondered if there was a wish complaint department because she had a bone to pick with someone. Several important steps had been skipped.

She shook her head. She was giving way too much credence to that surreal scene. Could a person hallucinate from sleep deprivation? “No way do I believe in magic lamps. I still say it looked like a solid brass gravy boat.”

The baby’s mewling sounds cranked up and blended into one, single full-blown wail followed by more unhappy squeaking. “It’s okay, Em. Don’t you worry your pretty head. Didn’t I say I’d take care of you? After a certain amount of arm twisting and guilt-tripping,” she mumbled.

Rachel had met Holly Johnson at Sweet Spring Hospital where she worked. The pregnant teen went to the obstetrical clinic for her prenatal care. At eighteen, she was released from the state foster care program and Rachel had taken her in. This baby belonged to Holly and her boyfriend Dan Fletcher. Very reluctantly, Rachel had agreed to care for the child, giving the teenagers a chance to find out if the two of them could make a go of it or not. They needed time to make a very adult decision about whether or not to give up this baby.

And Rachel took full responsibility for putting the idea of taking some time away into their heads. But who knew they’d tweak it like this? She’d only agreed to care for the baby after the kids told her Dan’s older brother and guardian supported the idea.

But all the logic in the world didn’t take away Rachel’s feeling that this baby had been left on her door-step. And she wanted to believe the teens really would come back. Unlike her own parents.

A rusty, familiar pain twisted inside Rachel. Wow, she must really be tired. It was the only explanation for dredging up those old feelings. That was ancient history and she really was so over it.

And who cared anyway when this beautiful infant was staring up at her with big innocent eyes. Something she’d never before experienced squeezed tight in the region of her heart. This child needed to be cared for and Rachel intended to do just that. To the best of her ability. Which was, at the moment, slightly handicapped on account of very little sleep.

She finished diapering the tiny girl, then cradled the baby against her shoulder. “Shh, little one,” she crooned. “What do you want? You’re fed. You’ve got clean pants. What’s wrong?”

She sat on her couch, but that produced another earsplitting squall that bordered on a pitch only a dog could hear. “Oo-kay.”

Instantly, Rachel stood and paced from one end of her ground floor two bedroom apartment to the other, wondering which would wear out first—the rug, the baby or her. Rubbing the infant’s tiny back as she walked, she tried to ignore her bone-deep weariness. Did all new mothers do this? How, after the physical rigors of giving birth, did the average woman manage this aerobic exercise?

A sudden knock on the door startled her. It was barely seven o’clock in the morning. Who could possibly— Hope expanded like a balloon inside her.

“Maybe that’s your mom,” she said to the baby. “She only left yesterday, but I bet she missed you like crazy and couldn’t wait for a decent hour to see you. Besides, she already knows you’re a baby and you don’t keep decent hours.”

Rachel slid off the security chain and turned the deadbolt, then yanked open the door. But it wasn’t Holly Johnson standing there. Not even close. Wrong gender.

“Morning, Rachel.” The deep voice never failed to scrape along her nerve endings.

“Jake.” Jake Fletcher, the man who rubbed her the wrong way. He also happened to be the baby’s uncle. Could this day get any worse?

“Sorry to bother you—” He stared at her. “Good Lord. Are you all right?”

She glanced in the mirror over the small table in her midget-size entry. Yikes! Her blond hair stood up in spikes all over her head. That was bad since she wasn’t going for the punk look. The only makeup she had on was what she hadn’t had the energy to wash off the night before. Having an infant crying at all hours in a small apartment wasn’t conducive to a regular beauty regimen. Beauty, heck. She’d barely managed basic hygiene. And the cherry on the melted sundae that was her life—she was in pajamas. Shorty pajamas. She was practically naked.

“I’m fine.” She clutched the baby tighter against her. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s about Dan.”

“Of course it is. The last time you came to my apartment was when you found out Holly was pregnant and your brother was the father.”

“I remember. She’d just been cut loose from her foster home after turning eighteen. And had nowhere to go until you stepped in,” he finished, his voice dripping sarcasm.

“I’m not sure what you’re implying, Jake. But like I told you then, I met her at the hospital’s prenatal clinic and suggested she stay with me temporarily.”

“So you could help her figure out what state programs might be of help to her,” he said dryly.

“It’s what I do. I’m a hospital discharge planner. It’s my job to know what programs are available to all patients.”

“Right.”

This guy really fried her grits and he had from the first moment she’d met him. “The last time you showed up on my doorstep you demanded that Holly marry your brother.”

“They have a baby. It’s the right thing to do,” he shot back.

“I’m not going to debate that with you at this hour. By the way, what are you doing here at this hour?” What are you doing here—period—was what she’d wanted to say. But she held back. Then she remembered. “Oh. Right. Dan. What about him?”

“Is he here?”

Uh-oh. He didn’t know where Dan was? She had the mother of all bad feelings.

“I haven’t seen him,” she said truthfully.

“He didn’t come by to see Holly and the baby?”

“Yesterday, then he left.” With Holly and not the baby. And Jake was supposed to know all about this.

“Can I talk to Holly?”

Rachel’s protective maternal mode switched into high gear. Holly had been adamantly against leaving the baby with Jake when Rachel had suggested it. And this guy had gotten on her bad side—he’d never been on her good side—since she’d first met him. Because of his perpetual disapproving expression every time he looked at Holly. When he came near her, the teen had clutched Dan’s hand. And if Jake spoke to Holly, she seemed to shrink—not easy when her belly had grown large with the baby.

Jake had accompanied Holly and Dan to childbirth classes and hovered like an enforcer, making it plain as the groove in his square jaw that he intended to call the shots in this situation. Rachel believed that one caught more flies with honey than vinegar. The teens had made a mistake. A really big mistake. But they needed direction not a dictator.

“Look, I know this probably isn’t the best time,” he finally said when she didn’t respond to his question.

“What was your first clue? The pajamas?”

One corner of his mouth quirked up. “I mean this in the nicest possible way, but you normally look better.”

“Better than what?” She couldn’t decide if he’d just paid her a compliment or not. At the moment she looked like something the cat yakked up, but usually she looked better? “What does that mean?”

“Your eyes are bloodshot and the circles underneath practically go to your—” He glanced down to her chest where the baby had relaxed against her, then raised his gaze to hers. “To your knees.”

“Obviously you don’t know what it’s like to be up all night with a newborn,” she snapped.

“No, I don’t.”

Rachel normally didn’t snap at people, even ones like him who tried to run the world. In fact, she didn’t much care for people who snapped at others. But after being up all hours of the night with a crying baby, snapping came sort of naturally.

It had felt good in fact—right up to the moment she thought she saw a flash of pain in his deep blue eyes. Now why did she have to go and notice that? She could be wrong. Nothing hurt the Jake Fletchers of the world—the strong, stoic, silent types. The hot, hunky, heartbreaker types. But when she studied him, the way he quickly shuttered the expression, she knew she wasn’t wrong. She’d seen that lost look before. More times than she could count. Jordan and Ashley had told her she should quit trying to mother the world. But old habits died hard. Case in point—Holly, her latest maternal mission.

“I’m sorry. That was rude of me to snap at you,” she said. “I guess my social skills need a good night’s sleep.”

“No harm done.”

“Okay, good. Let’s start over. Come in.” She let out a long breath, bracing for the conversation she knew they needed to have.

“Thanks,” he said, stepping over the threshold. He shut the door behind him.

“Jake, there’s something you need to know—”

“Dan’s gone.” Jake was holding his black Stetson in his hands, twirling it. “He didn’t come home last night.”

“I know.”

“You do?” Something dark and dangerous shadowed the chiseled angles of his cheeks and jaw.

“Being a teenage father must be a scary thing,” she said, which produced another look in his eyes that made her uneasy.

“Where is he? And Holly?” he demanded.

“I don’t know.” That was the truth. She wouldn’t know until they contacted her. “But they’re together.”

“I’ve taught him to accept the consequences of his actions. It’s not like him to run away from his responsibilities,” he said, raising his chin toward the baby in her arms.

“He didn’t run away—not exactly. They just needed some space to think things through.”

“They’ve got a little girl,” he said, an edge to his voice. “What else is there to think about?”

Rachel glanced down at the sleeping baby. She lowered her own voice to just above a whisper. “Look, I’m going to put Emma down and—”

“I’ll hold her.”

“What?”

“Your ears tired, too?”

Now who was snapping? She wondered what his excuse was. “I heard you just fine,” she said, studying him.

Why would he want to hold the baby? Weren’t most men afraid to hold babies? And he was a big man—at least six feet. At her own five feet one inch, most people towered over her. But that didn’t make her as cranky as Jake Fletcher towering over her. A day with a looming Jake Fletcher definitely didn’t do much to sweeten her case of the tired crankies. Because he wasn’t most people. He was good-looking, in a rugged, masculine way. He was a cowboy. He made her nervous.

He owned one of the biggest, most successful ranches in the Sweet Spring area. And if she was looking for signs, the black hat in his hands was a humdinger. Didn’t all the bad guys wear black hats? It was almost the same color as his hair. In his dark blue eyes there was an expression of world-weary cynicism that, for reasons she didn’t want to think about, chipped away at the ice surrounding her feelings about him.

Or maybe it was that darn, rather dandy dimple in his chin. Her grandmother always said dimple on chin, devil within. Time would tell about that. But she knew he had a nice mouth—when it wasn’t pinched and pressed into a line clearly indicating his irritation.

“You don’t have to hold her,” Rachel finally said. “I’ll put her in her bassinet.”

“I want to hold her. Is there some reason you don’t want me to?”

Yeah, she wanted to say. Her mother doesn’t trust you. Had Holly ever let him hold the baby? This infant was his niece. So unless she wanted to look like she had a heart stored in the deep freeze, she should let him. “Do you know how to hold a baby?”

“How hard can it be? She’s not as heavy as a sack of oats,” he said seriously.

Her eyes widened. “She’s not a sack of anything. She’s a baby. You know, delicate. You can’t toss her around like a sack of—”

The sudden, slight upturn of his lips said “gotcha.”

“Okay.” Her mouth curved up reluctantly as she tucked the information away under T for teasing in the Jake Fletcher file. “But really, you’ve got to support her head.”

Rachel stepped closer to him and laid the sleeping child in the crook of his arm. The fragrance of soap mingled with something—not aftershave she decided, noting stubble on his lower cheeks and jaw. He hadn’t taken the time to shave, but he smelled good. She’d already noted he was a big man who dwarfed her miniscule entryway. But why did he look bigger holding a small baby? His broad shoulders seemed even broader, his thickly muscled arms stronger. Yet he held Emma as if she were priceless, breakable glass.

Rachel’s insides jumped like she’d just touched a live wire. Sleep deprivation could really do a number on your nerves, she decided.

“I’ll go put on some clothes.”

“Good idea,” he said.

Good idea, she thought with a sigh. Second cousin to his “Good Lord” when he’d first seen her. As in she looked like road kill. Followed by, if she couldn’t put a bag over her head, she should at least put some clothes on. On the bright side, clothes would make her feel less vulnerable. It was clear she needed coffee. Bad. Because under normal circumstances she wouldn’t give a rat’s backside what the heck Jake Fletcher thought of her.