LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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