His Brother's Baby

She could manage that easily enough, and she still had the traditional white shirt and black slacks she’d worn for catering jobs in the past. “But Emma—”

“Gram would be happy to baby-sit, remember? You know you can call her anytime.”

“All right, then,” Lucy decided, closing her eyes for a moment against the memory of Conner’s promise never to touch her again. “Because I can’t keep wanting him like this. I’ve got to get out of there—fast.”

Chapter Three

He had to get over this fast, Conner warned himself as he rounded a curve on the Scottsdale Greenbelt running trail. He had no business coveting Lucy. After all, he couldn’t keep a promise of love any better than Kenny could. But it was taking far too long for him to get this craving out of his system.

She kissed you back, remember?

Which made things worse. If she’d flinched or slapped his face, it would be a lot easier to put the whole afternoon out of his mind. But Lucy had responded with the same genuine passion she showed for everything else in life…with the dazzling enthusiasm that had intrigued him from the first night they met…with the same unabashed honesty that enabled her to explain a moment later that Kenny was the man she loved.

She hadn’t lingered over the vast differences between a man who offered nonstop excitement and a man who offered stolid responsibility. She hadn’t needed to. Because she’d made it clear that wanting Con was a mistake—

So forget it.

Running should help, Conner knew. This was the fourth day he’d taken off at lunchtime to run the nearby greenbelt. At least that afternoon of Frisbee had shown him how badly he needed the distraction of movement, but it was ludicrous that in four days of carefully cheerful companionship, he hadn’t quite been able to get Lucy Velardi out of his mind.

The way she’d closed the lid of his computer and insisted he come to the park.

The way her entire body had stilled as she whispered, “I loved him.”

The way she’d smiled when he helped Emma with that balloon—a balloon the baby had enjoyed so much that Con intended to replace it the next chance he got. Emma was a cute kid, he’d noticed over the past few days, always fun to watch while he waited for his pages from the printer. And watching her was a lot safer than watching her mom. This morning he’d enjoyed letting the baby grip his finger until Lucy whisked her off for a feeding.

And damn it, he was thinking about Lucy again!

Hell, anybody would think he loved her. But he knew better than to believe that, Con acknowledged as he caught sight of the splashing fountain ahead. Conner Tarkington might be capable of any number of things, but wholehearted love wasn’t one of them.

He’d learned that two years ago, when Bryan…

No, he wasn’t thinking about Bryan now. It was pointless. He was already atoning as best he could, and he didn’t need those agonizing memories of the holiday season two years ago to know he was incapable of loving anyone the way they deserved.

Which meant he needed to get this longing for Lucy out of his system before he forgot what the mother of Kenny’s child meant to him—a family responsibility, nothing more.

Con splashed a handful of water across his face and picked up his pace, vowing to keep his mind on the well-worn track of caring for Tarkingtons. As long as he stayed focused on the foundation, he could make it through the next five weeks. Bryan’s memorial was what mattered, his responsibility was what mattered, and he was never going to neglect a responsibility again.

Especially to a child.

Which was why he’d tracked Kenny down in Hong Kong a few days ago. His brother would check in on Thursday, the hotel had announced, so Con was planning to call him tonight while Lucy put Emma to bed. There was no sense confronting her with the possibility that Kenny could have forgotten her name.

“Lucy Velardi?” his brother repeated blankly when Conner reached him that evening. “Who—oh, yeah. You’re in Scottsdale now, right? Did she, uh…”

“She had your baby,” Con told him. “A girl, named Emma.” Lucy was bathing her in the kitchen sink right now, while he used the phone in the hall to keep his conversation private. “So it’s time to start taking some responsibility.”

“Yeah, well, last spring I sent her a check,” Kenny offered. “I know I said I’d marry her, but—”

But instead he’d walked out? Con felt his entire body tighten with fury. “You what?”

“It wouldn’t have worked! She was okay with that,” his brother added defensively. “I just didn’t think she’d keep the baby…. Look, I’ll pay a settlement or something, but it’s not like I really wanted a kid in the first place. And things are kind of tight right now, so… How much does she want?”

Right to the bottom line, Conner observed. For all his freewheeling charm, Kenny was still a Tarkington at heart. “She doesn’t know I’m calling.”

“What?” His brother sounded incredulous. “You just decided to… Whose side are you on?”

He had always sided with Kenny, even while dealing with half a dozen disappointed women whose dreams of marrying money had never materialized. But none of them had ever borne Kenny’s child, and Lucy wasn’t even looking for money. “I’m thinking,” he told his brother flatly, “about the kid.”

“The— Aw, hell.” During the pause, he could almost hear Kenny realizing what time of year this was. “Look, I’m sorry about— Are you doing okay?”

The sympathetic question caught him off guard, but Con managed to swallow the unexpected rush of feeling in his throat. He didn’t need feelings. He didn’t have feelings, no matter what the therapists said. “I’m fine,” he answered hoarsely. “Just taking some time to set up the foundation.” And even though it was frustrating to quit after twelve hours of work each day, so far he’d stuck to his self-imposed limit.

Which was a lot tougher than he’d expected.

“Oh, yeah, Mom mentioned the foundation thing.” Their mother was the clearinghouse for family messages, although Conner suspected she talked to Kenny in Asia far more often than himself in Philadelphia. “Anyway, about Lucy’s kid…I’ll come up with something. Just buy me some time, okay?”

Lucy had called this one correctly from the start, Con reflected, remembering how much easier it was to breathe when he kept his focus strictly on facts instead of feelings. She’d insisted all along that Kenny had no interest in fatherhood, but that was still no reason to ignore his own responsibility. While he wouldn’t mention this conversation to her, he wasn’t about to forget another child.

“All right,” he told his brother, “but just so you know, I’m not letting this go.”

“You haven’t changed, have you?” Kenny muttered. “Still trying to make sure everything’s fair and square.”

“Somebody has to, dammit!” Conner snapped, just as Lucy emerged from the kitchen with Emma wrapped in a fluffy towel. “Look, I’ll talk to you later.”

She made no pretense of having missed his outburst, but at least she didn’t ask who he’d been talking to before slamming down the phone. Instead she gave him a look of frank curiosity and asked, “Somebody has to what?”

Minimizing bad news had always been part of his responsibility, both while growing up and while married to Margie. “Take care of the finances,” he replied, hoping he sounded indifferent enough that she would drop the subject altogether.

Apparently the strategy worked, because Lucy rested Emma on the sofa and rubbed the baby’s damp hair with the top of her towel before turning to another topic. “I meant to tell you, Shawna called a little while ago. She said they— You still don’t need me to work weekends, right?”

The last thing he needed was more time with Lucy. “No.”

“Okay, good,” she said, rewrapping the towel around the wriggling baby. “So I’ll get Shawna’s grandmother for Saturday—her name’s Lorraine, she’s really sweet. But I’ll tell her you’re working, so she won’t distract you or anything.”

A whole platoon of sweet grandmothers would be far less distracting than a woman he couldn’t let himself want. “No problem,” Conner answered, wondering why she felt obligated to notify him of a visitor. “You don’t need to clear it with me if you want to have someone over.”

“Well, she’ll be spending the day here,” Lucy explained, picking up Emma and starting toward her bedroom, “because they won’t let her baby-sit at the senior center.”

Wait a minute, this grandmother was a baby-sitter? “How come you need a sitter?” Con asked, following her as far as the door.

She didn’t seem to notice that he’d never come this close to her vanilla-scented room before. Instead she addressed him over her shoulder as she transferred the cooing baby from her fluffy towel into some fuzzy, footed sleepers. “That’s what Shawna called about. I got a job at the same place she—”

“Lucy, you’ve got a job!”

“Not on weekends,” she said simply, fastening the sleepers over Emma’s diaper. “And I need the money.”

Oh, hell, he’d messed up. He should have called Kenny sooner, arranged for some kind of child support before she had to take a second job. “Look, if you need—” he began, and she interrupted him in a rush.

“I don’t need anything from you! I take care of myself, remember?”