Jackpot Baby. Muriel Jensen

carefully to her feet with the baby. O’Rourke made a move to help her, but she glared at him and he took a step back. “On the corner of Peterson.” Then remembering the street names had been changed this morning, she corrected herself with a sigh. “I mean Big Draw Drive. It’s a yellow house with white trim and a Beware of Cat sign on the door.”

      “Should I be worried?” he asked with a very small smile. “Or is it a joke?”

      “It’s never been tested,” she replied, shifting the baby in her arms. It was amazing, she was beginning to realize, how so small a bundle could feel so heavy after a while. Her purse fell off her shoulder with the movement and O’Rourke reached casually out to put it back. It was just a brush of touch through the thickness of her parka, but she felt it. She thought that odd. “I saved the cat from a snowstorm, so he’s very devoted to me. If you were to shout at me, he might very well attack you.”

      He lowered his voice as he walked her to the door. “I’m martial arts trained,” he said, and pulled the door open. “Is there anything you want me to pick up on the way home?”

      She was surprised by the thoughtfulness of the question, considering the way he’d treated her in the beginning—and the way she’d treated him in return.

      “I meant diapers, wipes, powder,” he said.

      She hadn’t thought of that. And she couldn’t see herself shopping with the baby in one arm and pushing a cart with her other hand. Experienced mothers had a way of doing that, she was sure, but she couldn’t see herself managing it.

      He seemed to be reading her mind. Or he simply considered her completely incompetent.

      He pulled her back into the office and closed the door. “Hold on a minute. I’ll get you a few diapers to keep you going until I can pick some up for you.”

      He took off at a lope and disappeared into a hallway. He was back in a moment with a black soft-sided briefcase into which he’d placed several disposable diapers, a sample tube of antibacterial ointment and a sample pack of wipes.

      “Whose briefcase?” she asked as he put it on the same shoulder as her purse.

      “Mine,” he replied, opening the door again. “We don’t have anything as civilized as a paper bag, and you do have your hands full.”

      Again his consideration confused her.

      His stomach growled and he grinned, putting a hand to it. “Sorry. With Nathan gone, I didn’t have time for lunch today.”

      She was going to hate herself for this, but she said politely, “I make a good shepherd’s pie, if you’d like to join me for dinner.”

      Surprise registered in his eyes. “I would, thank you.” He pulled up the sweater she had wrapped around the blanketed baby and placed it so that it covered Max’s head.

      She hurried down the steps, moving carefully where the snow had made them slick. It was only a block and a half to her home, but she went to the coffee shop first to pick up the baby carrier. She tried to put Max in it to simplify the walk home, but he awoke and began to cry. She put her purse and the briefcase over her shoulder, threaded her arm through the handle of the carrier and headed home with the baby in her free arm, fast asleep again.

      She tried to pick up the pace, but the complicated burden she carried forced her to slow down. She noticed the snow drifting over and around them in silent strokes. Snow was so much a part of winter life here that it was just another fixture of downtown, like the lights and the trees they’d planted in better times.

      Dusk had fallen and the streetlights were on. Downtown was a little fantasy world, every shop outlined in white outdoor lights. The merchants had gotten together to trim their businesses for Christmas two years ago, and everyone had liked it so much, they’d left them up. The relatively small amount it had upped their power bills was a small price to pay for casting a glow in the middle of a cold, dark winter.

      She hurried up the six steps to her cottage, smiling when her new sensor porch light went on. She fitted her key in the lock, reached in to flip on the living room light, then closed the door quietly behind her, the baby still asleep.

      The cottage looked very different than it had when her mother had decorated it. She’d loved Victorian-style furnishings and had had the place cluttered with medallion-back sofas, chairs with doilies on the arms and spindly little tables covered with knickknacks. Shelly had sold everything but a little desk she’d put up in her bedroom and decorated in a plainer, more comfortable style. She had a red-and-cream-check sofa, a big beige chair by the brick fireplace, two wicker rockers she’d painted Chinese red with cushions she’d covered in yellow-and-green-flowered fabric.

      There’d been a dining room right off the living room, but she’d taken out the table and chairs, since she never got to use them, and extended the living area into one great room.

      The kitchen woodwork, which had been the same shade of blue as the restaurant, was now a mossy green color. She’d painted the walls a soft pink and pulled the colors together with a border of potted flowers in yellow and pink. A little square table that could seat four but was really more comfortable for two sat near a window that looked out onto her large backyard and the rolling hills beyond.

      She always loved coming home. The restaurant was her life, because it had been her parents’ life, but as a child she’d always been eager to come home after going to the restaurant after school. As an adult, she’d taken even more pleasure in her home. Though she spent precious little time here, it was a haven. A lonely haven, but still a haven.

      She put the carrier on the table and placed Max in it while she put the other things down and removed her coat. He woke up instantly and began to cry. The cry turned quickly to a screech of displeasure. She changed him and tried to feed him, but he was too busy screaming.

      “Okay, okay,” she placated, picking him up again. “We’ll just have to cook with one arm.”

      She learned, over the next hour, that that was not as easy as it sounded.