Beginning With Baby by Christie Ridgway

Author:Christie Ridgway
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Jackson cautiously swung open the bathroom door and caught a glimpse of Phoebe in the tiny kitchen, safely and completely dressed. He breathed a sigh of relief. He couldn’t take any more surprises.

First there’d been his own surprising involvement in this “marriage.” Next, the nearly impossible-to-control attraction he and Phoebe seemed infected with. Then, only a day after he’d managed to cool down those dangerous postkiss moments by telling the story—a story he’d never told anyone—of Linc and Laura, he’d exited the bathroom to find her standing in the bedroom doorway struggling with the long back zipper of her dress.

She’d frozen momentarily, then swung around to face him, but not before he’d been sucker punched by the sight of her slim, beautiful back, the back strap of a shell-pink bra, and then the sweep of her spine as it curved toward a pair of matching panties.

Phoebe had blushed, and he’d gone hard.

But now Jackson shook away the thought and any lingering memory of his knuckles brushing the fragile bumps of her vertebrae. She’d been forced to ask his help—fabric was caught in the zipper’s teeth—and he’d nearly bitten his tongue through when the tiny golden hairs on her back had risen in response to his touch.

God. More than three weeks were left to share this space with her. He could only hope to live through them by reverting to his tune-out technique. With swift steps he made it to the love seat and buried his head in the morning newspaper that had been stacked neatly on the coffee table.

A spoon clinked against Phoebe’s mug as she wandered into the living room. She stopped to talk to Rex, prattling at him in baby talk as he sat in his infant carrier on the dining room table. Jackson ignored all of it, focusing on the latest front-page political news.

“Jackson?”

“Mmm.” He turned the page rather than look her way.

“When’s your birthday?”

He was so intent on finding a new article to interest him, he answered automatically. “Saturday,” he said.

Then wished it back. What would she do with the information?

But she was murmuring sweet talk to Rex again, and the sound of it caressed him. He needed to take his mind away from here, and he closed his eyes and forced himself to mentally recite his next year’s schedule. L.A. County. San Bernardino County. Up to Stanislaus. Down to San Diego.

“Jackson?”

He jumped. “What?”

“I asked you about Linc and Laura. I noticed from the return address on that envelope that they’re not far from here.”

“Yeah.” Close. And eighteen years old now. He thought of the packet of letters—one of the few connections he allowed himself to the past—that he carried with him from job to job, safely stuffed in the bottom of his duffel. Fourteen letters, one for each birthday he’d missed.

“Are you interested in, um, seeing them?”

“Yeah,” he said absently. That’s why he was glad their adoptive parents sent the photo. Even after all this time he had trouble believing they hadn’t stayed four years old.

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