LITMIR.BIZ

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did she remember that?

      She searched her mind, watching him as he gently bounced the baby on his shoulder. He wore jeans and a gray polo shirt with black trim, filling the clothing with a body honed by running and wilderness sports. The fabric of the jeans pulled tightly across his thighs, and the sleeve-band of the polo shirt was tight, too. There was some impressive muscle mass there, and Jodie’s fingers remembered it, even while she was trying to remember the other thing—the thing about him not wanting kids.

      If he didn’t want kids, how could he school all that male strength into the tender touch and soft rhythm needed to soothe a newborn baby? When Maddy was ready, he handed Lucy over to her, and casually warned, “Watch the wet patch on her back.”

      But he didn’t want any of his own …

      Okay, it was over dinner, she remembered. They’d been out together—and slept together, heaven help her—three times since his temporary return to Leighville. As far as Jodie’s family were concerned, she and Dev had only been dipping their toes in the waters of the great big dating lake.

      To her, though, it immediately felt deeper. She’d had a major crush on him at sixteen when he’d briefly dated one of her good friends before he—Dev—had left for college in Chicago a couple of months later. Turned out the crush had never really gone away.

      She couldn’t track back to how the subject of kids had come up that night. Maybe something to do with his restless lifestyle. He was based in New York these days, but his work in international law took him all over the world—three months in London, a summer in Prague. He’d only come home for a couple of months last fall to take over his father’s small-town legal practice on a temporary basis while Mac Browne had heart surgery.

      Okay, so she might possibly have asked Dev, over their meal, if he ever intended to settle down.

      He’d probably said no, he didn’t. The I-have-nothing-to-offer thing, again.

      And then he’d definitely—twenty seconds or five minutes later—said that he didn’t want kids. Fatherhood didn’t fit with his plans.

      Which was fine, she’d thought, because he was only in town for a short while, and she’d only gone into this dating thing so she could finally get a thirteen-year crush well and truly out of her system and then wave him goodbye. A big grin, and no regrets.

      Or not.

      If I sleep with him, he’ll break my heart when he leaves, she’d thought back then. And if I don’t sleep with him, he’ll still break my heart when he leaves….

      But that was last October, and he was still here. The accident would explain part of it. October eighth, the two of them driving home after dark from date number four, a fall hike in Hocking Hills followed by dinner, when a driver in an oncoming car had lost control around a bend. Devlin had broken his leg in three places and had a permanent metal plate in there, but he didn’t even walk with a limp at this point, so shouldn’t he be safely back in New York or in a hotel room in Geneva by now?

      Instead he was standing here on her parents’ summer deck sharing a joke with her dad, throwing up his head when he laughed, shirt fabric pulling across his broad shoulders when he raised a beer can to his lips, reminding her far too strongly that she hadn’t remotely gotten the crush out of her system last fall, or during the nine months of coma and rehab since.

      He’d come to visit her in the hospital five times since she’d woken up, seen her at her most vulnerable, in tears and struggling to move and speak, fighting her own uncooperative body. He’d been so supportive, but cautious at the same time, never talking about anything too personal, and she had no idea what it all meant. Her brain still felt scrambled, tired, and life was a jigsaw puzzle with too many pieces missing.

      “Is she out here? How is she?” This was Jodie’s Aunt Stephanie, following Elin out to the deck. Seemed as if everyone had been invited today. Jodie began to feel overwhelmed and more than a little tired. She’d been discharged from the nearby rehab unit yesterday, and would still be attending day therapy sessions there for a while. She’d spent just one night, so far, in her own precious bed.

      “Jodie …!” Aunt Stephanie said, and leaned down to hug her.

      Dad put hot dogs and burgers and steaks onto the barbecue grill. Lisa brought out bowls of salad. Lisa’s husband, Chris, took a soccer ball onto the grass beyond the deck and began kicking it back and forth with a handful of kids. Everyone talked and laughed and caught up on family news.

      Maddy came down with Lucy wide awake and contentedly milk-filled in her arms, and Jodie asked her on an impulse, “Can I have a hold? If you put a pillow under my left arm, so I don’t have to use any muscle?”

      She felt a strange yearning and a rush of emotion that she didn’t remember feeling for her other nieces and nephews when they were newborn. Well, she’d only been in her early twenties then, not ready to think about babies. Lisa’s youngest was seven years old.

      “Do you want to, honey?” Mom asked, in a slightly odd voice. “Hold her?”

      “Yes, didn’t I just ask?”

      “Quick, someone grab a pillow from the couch,” Mom ordered urgently, as if baby Lucy were a grenade with the pin pulled and would explode if Jodie didn’t have her nestled on a pillow in the next five seconds.

      “John?” Maddy said, in the same tone.

      “Coming right up.” He ran so fast for the pillow Jodie expected him to come back breathless.

      Sheesh, she thought, I could probably ask for a metallic gold European sports car convertible with red leather seats right now, and there’d be one in the driveway by the end of the afternoon. You know, I should definitely go for that …

      Maddy stuffed the pillow between the arm of the chair and Jodie’s elbow. “Now, just cradle her head here, Jodie. If you’re not sure about this …”

      “C’mon, Maddy, lighten up. I’ve held babies before. I’ve been holding them for years.” Elin’s eldest two were in their midteens.

      “Yeah, but this is my baby,” Maddy joked, in a slightly wobbly voice.

      Okay, so it was a new-mother thing. Fair enough.

      But there was that feeling in the air again, everyone seeming to hold their breath, everyone watching Jodie a little too closely. Mom, Lisa, Dev. Dev, especially, his body held so still he could have been made of bronze.

      The accident. The coma. That was why.

      When she was one hundred percent fit and well, would they finally stop?

      “Shouldn’t be such a fuss, should it?” Dad muttered from behind the barrier of the barbecue grill. No one took any notice.

      Jodie held the baby, smelled the sweet, milky smell of her breath, the nutty scent of her pink baby scalp covered in a swirl of downy dark hair, and the hint of lavender in her stretchy cotton dress, from the special baby laundry detergent. Oh, she was so sweet, just adorable, and if everyone was staring at the two of them, well, that was fine and normal. It was one of the rightest sights in the world, a person tenderly holding a newborn child.

      “Oh, you sweet, precious thing,” she crooned. “Thank you for not crying for your auntie, little darling.”

      She bent forward and planted a kiss on the silky hair, and took in those sweet scents again, close to tears. As she straightened again, she could smell onions frying, too, the aroma unusually intense and satisfying, as if she’d never smelled frying onions before. Sometimes her brain reacted this way, since coming out of the coma. It was as if all her senses had been reborn.

      And then suddenly they hit overload, like little Lucy hitting overload when she was due for her nap.

      “Can you have her, Maddy? My arms are getting tired.”

      “You did great,” Maddy said, and too many people echoed the

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