Boone by Emily March

Author:Emily March
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Chapter Eleven

Boone had experience with being blindsided.

After intercepting a pass and running it back for the winning touchdown in the semifinal round of the state high school football championships, he’d been tackled from behind by the losing quarterback and gotten his bell rung. Once when Boone was at his grandparents’ lake house, a rattlesnake wrapped around a bicycle’s handlebars had surprised him. The viper sank its fangs into Boone’s forearm and necessitated an emergency life-flight trip to a hospital with antivenin in stock. Add in Mary’s suicide and discovering how Ashleigh had betrayed him, and that just about made him a blindsiding expert.

This experience gave him professional status.

He swallowed hard and stepped forward, his gaze shifting between the man and the woman for the scant seconds he was able to keep his eyes off the baby. “Mr. and Ms. Devlin?”

“Mr. McBride?”

“Yes. I’m Boone McBride.” For the next few moments, anyway. Until he stroked out or his heart blew up. Could his pulse pound any harder and faster?

The man stood. “I’m pleased to meet you, Boone. I’m Jared. This is my wife, Katie. We’ve been honored to take care of this little one for the past month. She’s such a good baby. Just a little doll.”

“A little doll,” Boone repeated. It was true. She was tiny, with a heart-shaped mouth and smushy little nose and a round head full of dark hair that definitely had a reddish gleam to it. Red! “I’ve always been partial to redheads.”

He took two steps closer. A little doll. Not Trace. She has an innie rather than an outie. Then, as if she sensed him, her eyes blinked once. Twice. And opened.

Boone gazed into those dark-blue eyes, and he promptly tumbled head over heels into love.

He cleared his throat. “May I hold her?”

“Of course.” Katie Devlin rose and picked the baby up from her carrier, taking care to support her head. “She’s just finished a bottle, so she should be content for a bit. She might even stay awake for a few minutes. Do you want to sit down before I give her to you?”

“I probably should,” Boone murmured, pulling a chair out from the table and taking a seat without tugging his gaze away from the baby.

She was skinny, he thought, surveying the bare legs extending from the pastel-pink onesie with a white heart on the front. Was that normal for a newborn? Beyond welcoming new children of his friends and neighbors in Eternity Springs, he had little experience with newborns. He didn’t have a ton of experience with babies either, for that matter.

As the thought occurred, he finally glanced away from the infant toward Hannah. She was standing back, not quite part of the tableau. When their gazes met, she gave him an encouraging smile and nod.

Boone turned his attention back to the baby, made a cradle of his arms, and Katie Devlin handed her over. With the baby’s head nestled in the crook of his left elbow, Boone stared down into the little face, emotion clogging his throat.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.