his offer of help. “I wouldn’t turn it down.”
Well, that took care of that. He trailed after her into the bedroom. The crib sat on one side of the room, Nora’s rumpled bed on the other side. A window, cracked open, was between the two, and a cool night breeze curled through the room. The babies lay side by side along the mattress of the crib. Rosie and Riley looked pretty similar to his untrained eye, but he could pick out Bobbie. She was considerably bigger than the other two. But “big” was relative; they were all pretty tiny.
“I was hoping my mom would be able to help me with this stuff,” Nora said as she picked up the first baby and passed her to him along with a bottle. “That’s Rosie,” she added.
She proceeded to pick up the other two and brought them to her unmade bed, where she propped them both up against her pillow. She wiggled the bottle nipples between their lips.
“Time to eat,” she murmured.
The babies started to suck without any further prompting, and Easton looked down at the infant in his arms. He followed Nora’s lead, teasing the bottle into Rosie’s tiny mouth, and she immediately began to drink. It felt oddly satisfying.
“So this is how it’s done,” he said with a soft laugh.
“Apparently,” Nora replied.
They were both silent for a few moments, the only sound babies slurping. He leaned an elbow against the crib, watching the tiny bubbles move up the bottle and turn into froth at the top of the milk. He’d done this with calves on a regular basis, but never with a baby.
“I don’t blame your mom,” Easton said.
“Me, neither,” she replied quietly. “I just didn’t know where else to go. When you feel lost, you find your mom.”
Easton had never had that pleasure. His mom had abandoned them, and his dad...well, his dad could barely keep his own life together, let alone help Easton.
“Sorry...” She winced. “I forgot.”
Yeah, yeah, his pathetic excuse for a family. Poor Easton. He was tired of that—the pity, the charitable thoughts. Be thankful for what you have, because someone else thinks you’re lucky. It was a deep thought for the privileged as they considered how bad they could truly have it, before they breathed a sigh of relief that they still retained their good fortune.
“So why didn’t you come back more often?” Easton asked, changing the subject.
“I was busy.” She shot him a sidelong look. “Why?”
“It just seems to me that two weekends a year isn’t much time with your family.”
“We talked on the phone. What’s it to you?”
He’d struck a nerve there, but she had a point. Who was he to lecture her about family bonds? He didn’t have any of his own that counted for much. Besides, his complaint wasn’t really about how much time she spent with her family. He’d missed her, too. His life kept going in Hope, Montana, and hers had moved on in the wider world. He resented her for that—for forgetting him.
“Mom and I—” Nora sighed. “We locked horns a lot.”
“Yeah...” He hadn’t expected her to open up. “I noticed it, but I never knew what it was about.”
“Everything.” She shook her head. “Politics, religion, current events...you name it, we land on opposite sides of it. When I left for college, it gave me a whole new freedom to be me, without arguing with Mom about it. So I stayed away a lot.”
“Is that why you didn’t tell her about your half sister?” he asked.
He was watching her as she sat on her bed facing the babies, one leg tucked under herself. Bobbie finished her bottle first, and Nora put it down, still feeding Riley with the other hand. She was oddly coordinated as she bottle-fed two infants. Maybe it came from bottle-feeding orphaned farm animals. If you could wrangle a lamb or a calf into taking a bottle, maybe it was a skill like riding a bike.
“I needed to sort it all out in my own head before I told her about it,” Nora said, oblivious to his scrutiny. “It was like anything else. I thought I could have a sister—some semblance of a relationship with her—but I was pretty sure Mom would see that as a betrayal.”
“I get it.”
In fact, he understood both sides of it. It had to be hard for Dina to see her one and only daughter bonding with her late husband’s love child. Yet he could understand Nora’s desire to know her sister. The whole situation was a painful one—the sort of thing that made him mildly grateful for his lack of family coziness. At least he couldn’t be let down any more than he already had been. Rock bottom was safe—there was no farther to fall.
Rosie was almost finished with her bottle, but she’d stopped drinking. He pulled it out of her mouth, leaving a little trail of milk dribbling down her chin.
“Is she done?” Nora asked.
“She stopped drinking.” He held up the bottle.
“Okay. Just burp her, then.”
Burp the baby. Of course. He knew the concept here—he wasn’t a Neanderthal. He lifted Rosie to his shoulder, and she squirmed in her sleep, letting out a soft cry. Great, now he’d done it.
“Just pat her back,” Nora said.
Easton gently tapped Rosie’s back and she burped almost immediately, leaving a warm, wet sensation on his shoulder, dripping down toward his chest. He cranked his head to the side and could just make out the mess.
Nora chuckled. “Sorry.”
Riley had finished her bottle, and Nora reached for Bobbie. It was an odd sort of assembly line as she burped them and he laid them back in the crib. He pulled the white T-shirt off over his head, getting the wet material away from his skin. He wadded up the shirt and gave his shoulder an extra scrub. It was then that he realized he was standing in front of Nora shirtless. Her gaze flickered over his muscular chest, and color rose in her cheeks.
“I’ll just—” He pointed toward the door. He needed to get out of there. He’d fed and burped a baby—mission accomplished. He wasn’t supposed to be hanging out with her, and he definitely wasn’t supposed to be this casual with her, either.
“Okay. Sure—”
Nora’s gaze moved over his torso once more, then she looked away quickly. She was uncomfortable, too. Soiled T-shirt in hand, he headed out of the room. That hadn’t been the plan at all, and he felt stupid for not thinking ahead. Who knew what she thought now—that he was hitting on her, maybe? That couldn’t be further from the truth.
Blast it, he was up now. He might as well go down and make some breakfast. An early start was better than a late one.
* * *
NORA HADN’T EVER seen Easton Ross looking quite so grown-up. And she hadn’t imagined that under that shirt were defined muscles and a deep tan. He had a six-pack—that had been hard to miss—and it left her a little embarrassed, too. A good-looking man might be easy enough to appreciate in a picture or on TV, but when he stood in your bedroom in the moonlight... She laid Bobbie next to Riley and Rosie in the crib and looked down at them for a moment, watching the soft rise and fall of their tiny chests.
It wasn’t because she’d never seen a man without a shirt before. She’d always had a pretty healthy romantic life. But this was Easton—an old buddy, a quiet guy in the background. If he’d looked a little less impressive, she wouldn’t have felt so flustered, but my goodness... When exactly had skinny, shy Easton turned into that?
She was awake now—she’d have to get used to going back to bed after the 3 a.m. feeding, but she could hear the soft clink of dishes downstairs, and she had a feeling that she and Easton needed to clear the air.
Grabbing a robe, Nora pulled it around herself and padded softly