Hannah's Baby

How Isabella could continue to sleep through all the commotion, Hannah did not know. She sighed, and in answer to Joe’s question, said, “My father doesn’t want kids that young at the Mercantile.”

Joe steered his SUV into the hospital parking lot and parked in the slots reserved for the E.R. patients. “Well, maybe now is the time to change his mind.”

Hannah knew something had to be done. Her father simply could not keep working at the rate he had been. He needed to relax and enjoy life. “You don’t have to stay,” she told Joe as she got out of the car and bent to remove Isabella.

He looked undeterred. “You may need my help.”

It would be so easy to depend on him, so easy to fall for him. Hannah looked deep into his eyes. “Joe—”

He silenced her by pressing his finger to her lips. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

That quickly, the matter was settled.

“YOU’RE LUCKY THE CLOTHING display broke your fall,” the emergency room physician, Thad Garner, said an hour later after all the tests had been done. Hannah had been called in from the waiting room to see her dad and hear the results along with him. “Otherwise,” Thad continued with his usual bluntness, “you’d have more than a partially separated shoulder and broken arm.”

Sweat beaded Gus’s forehead and dampened his white hair. His skin was pale beneath the trademark scowl. “And now for the good news?” he grumbled, looking at Thad as if he were still the same kid who had stopped by the Mercantile to buy chewing gum after school.

“Surgery will be done first thing tomorrow morning, by the orthopedic team. Until then we’ll move you to a private room upstairs and keep you comfortable.”

Hannah could see the intravenous painkillers had already eased her father’s discomfort greatly. His irascible temperament was something else entirely. “Did he mention he was having chest pains when he fell?” She paced worriedly, not sure whether she wanted to hug her father or wring his fool neck.

“His heart is fine. For now. He still has to slow down. Stop working full-time at the store.”

Gus moved as if to sit up and stomp right out of there, then fell back with a groan. “You doctors don’t know what you’re talking about.” He winced and rubbed at the splint.

“I’m sure you think that, Mr. Callahan.” The doctor flashed an amused smile, as the nurse packed ice around Gus’s shoulder and arm. “In the meantime, we want you to get some sleep. So I’d advise you, Hannah, to go home and get some rest, too.”

“Do you know what time the surgery will be?” Hannah asked.

The nurse piped up. “Seven-thirty tomorrow morning. If you get here a little earlier, you’ll be able to sit with him before we take him up to the O.R.”

Hannah thanked her for the information, then turned to her father. “Can I get you anything before I leave?”

Gus grimaced and turned his gaze away.

Hannah kissed his temple, anyway. “I’ll be back tomorrow, Dad. Call the house if you need anything.”

He muttered something she was just as glad not to catch.

Hannah slipped out of the room as the orderlies came in. By the time she reached the waiting area, where Joe walked back and forth with Isabella, her father’s gurney had already been loaded onto the elevator.

“Everything okay?” Joe asked.

With Isabella cradled against his broad chest, he was the picture of a strong loving father. Hannah pushed the notion away. She could not afford to be overly emotional here. And she definitely could not afford to start fantasizing about things that were never going to be, no matter how attainable they seemed at this very moment. For Isabella’s sake—as well as her own—if she were to ever get intimately involved with a man again, she and he would definitely need to be on the same page in terms of their futures.

Aware Joe was still waiting for an answer to his question, Hannah quipped, “Nothing a personality transplant wouldn’t cure.”

He chuckled. “I take it he’s spending the night here?”

Hannah nodded and filled Joe in.

He looked as relieved as she felt that the injuries hadn’t been any worse. Seeming to realize how much she needed a hug, he wrapped his arm around her shoulder and tucked her in close to his side. “I’ll drive you two home,” he murmured.

MINUTES LATER, HANNAH UNLOCKED the front door to the home she now shared with her father…“I can’t believe she’s still asleep,” Hannah whispered, with a glance at the infant cradled against her chest. Isabella had fallen asleep in the hospital waiting room and hadn’t stirred since.

Joe lugged her suitcase into the front hall and set it down. “I can’t believe we’re not,” he joked.

Hannah turned to Joe. Although still as handsome as ever, there were shadows beneath his dark-green eyes and day-and-a-half stubble of beard on his face. He looked, just as she felt, in need of a hot shower and a bed before he gave in to fatigue and collapsed where he stood.

Slipping off her shoes, she padded soundlessly up the stairs and into the nursery that adjoined her bedroom. After brushing a gentle kiss across the baby’s cheek, she lowered Isabella into the crib she had ready and waiting.

Joe lounged in the door, ready to assist, as she eased open the snaps of Isabella’s traveling outfit, put on a fresh diaper and closed it back up. She covered her precious baby girl with a blanket. Joe moved to stand beside her, admiring the sweet picture of Isabella sleeping. With a sigh of contentment, Hannah switched on the nightlight, turned off the others and eased from the room. As they headed back into the hall, she faced him.

“You look like you’re about to pass out you’re so tired,” she observed, knowing the cabin he was renting was another thirty minutes from there, on winding mountain roads that could be treacherous under the best of circumstances. “You probably shouldn’t drive any more this evening.”

One corner of Joe’s mouth curved upward. Apparently amused at the way she was fussing over him, he inclined his head to one side and said drolly, “You’re probably right about that, but it’s too far to walk.”

That quickly, Hannah’s mind was made up. She took his arm in hand and led him farther down the upstairs hall. “You should sleep here tonight. You can stay in the guest room.”

The laughter left his eyes. “You wouldn’t mind?” he asked, searching her face.

She shrugged as if it was no big deal, when in fact it felt like a very big deal to her. She hadn’t had a man sleep over in ages, for any reason, no matter how pedantic. And never here, in her childhood home. “Seems to me I owe you,” she stated casually. And it was true. What was one night of hospitality after all he had done for her and Isabella over the past week?

Joe’s gaze locked with hers, and a whisper of awareness slipped through her. “The pleasure of the past few days was all mine,” he told her huskily.

And then he did what she was certain he had wanted to do for days. He took her in his arms and fit his lips over hers.

Hannah had been waiting forever for this, and he did not disappoint. The feel of his mouth against hers was electric. He tasted like mint and coffee…and man. Pressed up against hers, his body felt warm and solid and strong, his enveloping arms as seductive and tender as she ever could have wanted. As the contact continued, gently at first, then with intensifying passion, her emotions soared. He was everything she had ever wanted in a man. She felt a connection to him unlike any she had ever experienced, a longing that went soul deep. When he finally let the kiss draw to a close, she was so aroused she could barely breathe.

She started to speak.